Day 5? I think it's day 5. Started getting some hits finally. Listening to a lot of Hawaiin slack key guitar stuff while writing. Although this is supposed to be a just for me thing, and now I already feel like a "sell-out hack", the hits definitely are a good motivator to keep going. I won't fool myself that anyone cares about my story, but maybe atleast you're interested in the incremental increase over time as a quantitative contingency experiment. I don't know if that last sentence made sense. But, obviously, you get what I mean.
Anyway, I keep hitting this brick wall, even when you try to pull the "work/relaxation/don't think" thing. The only trick (so far) is to not take this stuff seriously at all and just make it up as you go along. Oh, and I swear this story is going to go somewhere. If anyone is actually following it. Quantity over quality.
Oh, one final thing! Going to a Star Trek convention tomorrow. Getting a picture with Leonard Nimoy in what may be his final appearance at the official Star Trek Convention.
It was cooler that morning. There was a breeze coming from where the lake used to be, George’s second night in the cabin went much easier. He had his head back on his shoulders. Shopping in a new place slowly make it become familiar.
He decided to leave Winslow with Smokestacks, who was taking his time getting going that day.
On second thought, going to go back to this story later on. Today we'll do something else.
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The foreman wouldn’t pay him for the week if he didn’t get back soon. As it were, the donkey was making no effort to free itself from the mud which it wilingly entered. It’s haul of hay was soiled with wet mud. The sun itself was sweating profusely, or so it appeared through the dense air.
Panicked, the old ranch-hand Jorge fed the donkey the last of his ginger biscuits in a panicked attempt to coax it out of the pit. Stretching its neck up to eat out of Jorge’s hand, the donkey quickly receded into the mud. As it did, Jorge’s hopes died like the people of Tokyo when Godzilla stomps back into the water in the midst of an alien creature invasion. Sitting on a near by stump and shaking his head, he realized the thread on the stitching of his nametag was coming loose from his cowboy suit. Pulling a thread to attempt to tighten it, it become uneven like a bad moustache.
The ass-kicker of the group passed by with his obedient, well mannered, tan donkey. Seeing Jorge sitting on the stump, and his gaze slowly fixing onto the donkey in the mud, he attempted not to smile but had it break across his face in a condescending smirk. Tying his Donkey to a nearby tree, he made his way over to Jorge who was hiding his head in his hands.
“Hector,” The suave ranch hand breathed his name into the wind, rhetorically. He bore the quiet confidence of the perpetual helper.
“I will show you a trick!” He called out to Jorge. Sitting down on the grass next to Jorge, the suaver man coolly removed his enormous boots, being careful of the spurs, and proceeded to roll his pants up to the ankle. He then stormed unhesitangly into the mud, ingratiated himself to the uncooperative donkey with a headlock and noogie combination, and whispered something into its ear. The donkey let out a loud hee-haw, kicking its front paws out in front of it. Locked into eye contact for a few moments, the suave ranch hand peered directly into the donkeys soul with a sideways glance, and acceptantly the donkey began an attempt to rise to its feet.
“You see!” Hector drew his legs out of the mud like removing a teabag from hot water. He walked towards Jorge with arched shoulders, as if to say “It is not so hard, is it?”
“But what is the trick?” Jorge asked. “To be buddies with the donkey? I am trying to be his buddy. He plays me like a chump.” Surveying the landscape, Jorge added: “And I am not suited for this line of work.”
“I must go,” Hector said, retrieving his boots and pulling them back on like socks. With this, he untied his donkey and headed off down the trail. He called back to Jorge: “You have to make it come to you!”
The second Hector was out of sight, Jorge’s donkey brayed softly and pulled itself out of the mud and back onto the trail. It’s coat was disgusting, the thing looked like a piece of shit. If it went to donkey school, it would have been at the table in the back of the cafeteria with the kids that don’t speak english. As the bales of hay began to dry out, they solidified into matted clumps. Attempting to scrape them off, Jorge accidentally detached them, and as they hit the ground the donkey immediately started chomping it.
Jorge swung fiercely and violently at the donkey, immediately regretting what he had done. It looked up at him like a woman of ill repute fairly new to the profession. He tried to caress its muzzle, but it pulled its head away. As he retreated to the stump once more to regret what he had done, it finished off the rest of the hay.
Standing in front of the foreman, George held his hat in front of him to elicit sympathy. He was going for the “hard working guy” look that he had seen so often in the movies. Growing up, he got to read a lot of his grandfathers old Cowboys and Indians short stories in magazines. He wasn’t sure which side to empathize with, but either way now he considered himself to be living the dream. Not that he felt like he was particularly well cut out for it, even before his failures in the field.
The foreman shook his head, rearranging a stack of papers on his desk and then messing them up time and time again. Jorge wasn’t sure he had even heard about what had happened, but Hector surely attempted to stay on everyones good side.
“You’ve spoken to Hector,” Jorge said, mustering the courage to look up at the foreman.
“Hector?” The foreman gave a look of disgust. “Why would I have to speak to Hector? All of the other men, they make fun of you. They say, ‘Oh look at Jorge!’ Look at how he is stuck in the mud! He does not know the first thing about donkeys!”
The foreman rose from his desk, striking fear into Jorge who dropped his hat and put his hands in his pockets as a force of habit. He never knew what to do with his hands. “Let me tell you something about donkeys that your mother should have let you know a long time ago,” The foreman said. Jorge was confused about the mother comment, but thought better of asking for clarification. “A good donkey is like a good woman. Or a good friend. It is like a good person. You cannot want it to come to you, instead, when you back away it will follow. Another thing, donkeys love mud. If you do not do your damndest to steer that donkey away from the mud, it will SUBMERGE itself every time. AND DONKEYS EAT HAY!”
Jorge felt more foolish than usual. Returning to his donkey in its stable, he felt solidarity with the creature. Some day, he thought, I will win you over.
It got more fun toward the end when I tried to rush to get to a thousand words so I could make an appearance at a birthday party. Yeah. I hate phoning in an ending like that. But these stories are all cyclical, so he'll wake up the next day and show a slight improvement. Like a montage. See ya tomorrow
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