Not Kansas
IndieInk, Whatnot Comments (5)
This week’s installment of the IndieInk Writing Challenge was submitted by Chelsea:
Somewhere over the rainbow …
Okey dokey, then.
Take a good long look at this picture. I know, right? It’s like the Swiss are shoving their landscape in our face and demanding that we like it. Beautiful watch-making bastards.
When I saw that this morning, I immediately went into daydream mode. I thought about what it would take for me to end up in such a place. The simplest answer, so obvious that I’m ashamed it took me minutes to come up with it, would be to cure the disease on which I currently do research. Clearly. Then I could patent my discovery and cover the back yard in tarps to catch the money that would no doubt rain down like … dollar bill-shaped rain … from the heavens. I would then buy the property in that picture, pack whatever might be worth keeping, and move to Switzerland. After a certain period of general decompression (curing stuff is stressful), I’d send the above picture accompanied by the following letter:
Dear Friends/Family/Other,
I am not dead.
Actually, truthfully, I’ve never been more alive. A lot has happened since that whole disease-curing thing and the subsequent cash tsunami, but the only thing really worth talking about is what’s in the picture. It’s mine, you see. That barn? I turned it into a library. Every morning, I make coffee, then I skip (not walk, not jog…I skip) out to that barn where I read or write for hours and hours. Sometimes, when the spirit moves me, I throw on some shoes and I climb that big pointy guy in the middle. ‘Why?’, you ask. Why not? Stop asking such ridiculous questions.
You may be curious about a phone number. I was always so available, wasn’t I? HA! I sure was. Man, that was great. Gird your loins for disappointment: I have no phone. As a matter of fact, the first thing I did the night that I arrived was purge myself of “satan’s earpiece”. I stabbed the cell phone with a sharp stake, drove said stake into the ground, doused it all in gasoline, lit it on fire, then danced around my wee lithium-ion torch like a savage for hours, howling at the moon and laughing like a hormone-ravaged hyena. Don’t try calling me, is what I’m saying. I’m gloriously unavailable.
Enclosed is my address. Please. Visit. Seriously. I want you all to experience this. Skip with me to the library each morning, spilling coffee in the process. We’ll climb the mountain after a rainstorm, laughing at the danger and the immanent possibility of slipping and plunging to our death. We’ll do it so that I can show you the rainbow and whisper, ‘This is what Dorothy was talking about. Welcome to my pot of gold.’
Yours incredibly,
Sir
P.S. Seriously. I don’t have a phone.
Sir @ June 30, 2011
[...] Chelsea challenges Sir: Not Kansas [...]
Ha! Hilarious and beautiful! What a wonderful place to sit and write for hours on end, indeed.
Great writing! I was in Switzerland many many years ago. “Pain a la vanille” was my favorite breakfast dish. Heaven all the way around. Will never forget the place and the “Pain.”
“This is what Dorothy was talking about. Welcome to my pot of gold.” I absolutely love this. What a great spin on the prompt!
sometimes i forget my phone in the house and go the whole day without it. it’s like not carrying a little ringing stone around; extremely liberating.