Navigation: Home |

World Breakfast
By Ardan Michael Blum (a tale for adults)


- I -

How many words could I manage before the tide left? The idea was a chapter with one-word or one sentence or maybe two for each time the waves came in to the beach where I was huddled with the audio recorder going on and saying something. The low tide and the high tide at that beach were the chapter changes.

Staff at the manor house in the book bag were mixing with sand and Saxon short, clear cut words by Steinbeck. The books of the waves gone into Eternity.

Stuffed animals and angels sleep in the bag. Some dream of ready roasted eats and iced tea. Now they sleep in the book bag as a small van delivering croissants carries it and melons under an archipelago of South of France hills. ... On to place, subject, and tale.

At the time where this story had to get a plot, Pigott Deroller had made two document piles of writing. There was the “Ops” pile and the “Research" stack, and both had at the very top the “best of the best” in their respective work. From up a ladder, you will see the score rise for information based on “the consistency of the point of view or its goal”.

It was just about then that a train horn signaled that there was more to the world. People were riding the train to the last stop on the line where the engine was turned around (facing the way just come) and everyone got out for an hour - driver, first class, second class and dogs. The beer hall served large french fries, steaks and not surprisingly beer. Lots of beer. Dogs got steak bits and fries and water. Joy spread. The driver sang a song. People applauded. 

The end of the line bistro was a favorite with the town of M___ up the track where people ate bread and cheese from the one single goat that was to die and leave the town without cheese and their only culinary delight was the round trip for dinner which brought everyone back to town without a care in the world, till the next morning and the burial rights for the goat produced great collective lamenting. Then people ate the last cheese slowly and talked about what they wanted to read. 

The reading could be legal matters, folk tales, a style manual, a page from one or another. A biography would do fine, how to read braille in braille would not.

The town would have to distract Pigott Deroller. Sometimes it was up to a few gypsy women to put on a show of light erotic dimensions accompanied by a lute or flute and other times it was just someone claiming to have found a trove of documents in their attic and Pigott Deroller out of the way, the town would go in and select reading material for the train ride to the beer hall; once read, these pages - the paper - was used to wrap greasy food for takeout.