Worthing Flash

Mask of His Own None of the masks on the wall of the costume shop would give anybody a hint of who was underneath, the man thought. The frog mask said only clowning amphibian. The crescent moon and the attached kitten head covered up enough to leave the person beneath a patchwork mystery. The captain and his tricorn hat told of a different age that suggested nobody who was now living. Up and down the wall, faces covered by diamonds of red, black, and white gave no clear idea of the figures they were meant to depict. The archetypes of Comedy and Tragedy plastered over individual features and extinguished them. A person would never be recognized in any of the different masks. The man looked then into the oval mirror set up for the shop customers. As he saw himself there surrounded by the masks on the wall, he wondered what his face would show anyone of who he was. Would they guess what he believed at heart? His receded hairline that revealed the shape of his head did not reveal...

Father and Son  Trevor built a large house, maybe the best in town. He meant it for his son Tom and the family Tom would have. Then Tom went away for college and decided he wouldn’t come back. Trevor lives in the house still but lets it go to shambles, unlike a home meant to last.

Norbert Kovacs Email: norbertk@att.net Word Count: 590 words Taken for a Ride after Bon Voyage! from Los Caprichos by Francisco Goya (Spain) 1799 Jose saw no problem about climbing aboard the angel’s back in his bedroom. He had died after long illness and knew, as a spirit now, he must leave his body behind. For its part, the angel, with its broad, spread wings and lowered head, seemed both able and eager to take him. So, Jose got on, and the angel carried him away. At once, they went coasting through the night air high over his city. What a rush of speed! What a fantastic flurry of roof tops and towers! Could he have deserved as wild an adventure as this?, he asked himself. For he knew, though he kept it quiet, he had not been perfect in life. Not that he anticipated anyone to mind anymore… As they went their course, the angel dove into a couple of homes and took up other spirits who had departed life that cold, dark evening. Jose turned eagerly toward his new companions...

A Short Study of Friends a response to In the Studio by Marie Bashkirtseff (France) 1881 As I stood there painting, I wondered over my artist friends at their different preoccupations around the studio. Anne had been halfway through mixing the paint on her palette when Georgette came by, putting some short, quick remark to her from behind. Anne looked up over her shoulder at her, dark eyes puzzled and searching. I made out a sense of disbelief in her face that said Georgette had crossed a sort of line saying what she had. For her part, Georgette stood there tense, as if to sympathize with the shock she knew she had given. If only I knew what it was about. A short way from Anne, Giselle dabbed at the small canvas on the chair before her. She held her extra-long brush near its end (a difficult way to paint in my mind) as she filled in part of her portrait. After making a few strokes, she stared at the top of her brush, then the half-finished picture on her canvas, as if weighing some ...

TAKE DOWN (Response to Deposition by Pascal Möhlmann (2024) ) The painter said they had arranged the scene as he liked, "thank you very much", so the crew of his assistants emerged from the corners to take it down. It was a crucifixion scene, the cross made of two long panels of wood leaned against a horizontal rafter of the studio; another wood panel rested in front of them on a sawhorse where the main figure had stood. The arrangement resembled a giant painter's easel, the artist's attempt at an understated comment on his work. The crew took down the long panels of wood easily; none had been nailed to hold them in place. The young woman in the red sweat jacket, who'd stood on the cross, the two assistants lowered toward the floor. The woman descended stiffly, her head leaning on a shoulder, her neck strained from its long pose. But everyone was glad to see her coy expression despite the trouble. Her left arm that had been firm to the cross she held rigidly ...

CYCLIST (Response to Dynamism of a Cyclist by Umberto Boccioni (Italy) 1913) He powers forward on the bike. Helmeted head low to the handle bars. Back shifts, humps up, sinks. Bottom rises high. Abdominals pump. Legs push down then rise. Shirt flaps behind, lifts his number, 15, in the breeze. The bike wheels whirl, spin and spin, the spokes whipping circles. He charges, propelled. His wheels glide over pavement. The pavement runs towards him, dashes behind; the stripes painted there zip away--blurs. Pebbles pass like flashes, far off stars. Road signs streak by in bright red, yellow bands, their words and images flying too fast to be known. He feels his speed. SWIMMER (Response to The Swimmer by Stefanie Rocknak (USA) 2006) The race starts, and he is charging through the pool. Water bursts from either side of him, his arms cutting the water's top. The sloshing white churn swallows his face. His legs kick like a storm. He is glad realizing he leads the pack. His chest barr...

THE TWIT-O-LOGICAL MECHANISM (response to Paul Klee's Twittering Machine. URL: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/37347 ) Precision is essential to operating the machine. That statement is very true despite what some call the whimsical form of the device. For one, it takes exactly three pounds of force per square inch to turn the fitted handle. Any less proves futile. Any more poses risk of machine implosion. A game enthusiast, heedless of what was required, once revved the handle that hard both it and the transmission bar adjoined burst into a thousand, random bits. The parts had to be reassembled at great cost to the machine owner. Properly instructed, however, most people turn the handle without such embarrassing incident. When the transmission bar is set going at the optimal revolutions per minute, the coiled wire will activate. Each coil on it is looped two hundred ninety degrees to allow the best force transmission along the line. As a carefully calibrated piece o...

by Norbert Kovacs (Response to The Angelus by Jean-Francois Millet (France) 1857-59 and Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus by Salvador Dalí (Spain) 1933-35. Image URLs: http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/langelus-345 and https://archive.thedali.org/MWEBimages/Collection%20Images/OILS_images%20saved%20for%20Web/2000.5_Arch%20Rem_web.jpg) The copy of the Angelus had worried him from when he first saw it hanging on the schoolroom wall. He believed the two peasants had buried a dead infant in the field at their feet. Later, he heard it said the peasants had stopped work to pray the Angelus after hearing the church bell ring in the distance. But his first reading of the picture stuck with him, and he went on trusting it. The basket by the peasant woman, he told himself, did not hold potatoes as it appeared, but the rumpled blanket that had swaddled her infant. The two absorbed in prayer were no mere peasants, either. Didn't the sharp angle of the woman'...

Since her diet plan had derailed, thirtysomething homemaker Kayla Sawicki realized that, to lose weight, she would have to get some good, regular exercise. She searched YouTube for a regimen that might do her the trick and hit on the Hi-Flyin' Workout, a program designed by a professional fitness trainer. The Hi-Flyin' Workout was full of exercise to slim and tone arms, flatten stomachs, and firm legs. It's everything I should do all in one neat package, Kayla thought beside herself with glee. She watched and re-watched the trainer's video to learn the program, got herself choice exercise gear (namely a comfortable teal sweat suit and a snazzy pair of athletic shoes), and tried the workout in her living room one morning after her husband had gone to work. Kayla struggled from the get-go. She pressed hard to do a first push up; her arms lifted her only inches before she collapsed into the carpet. She raised her head to do a crunch, but her shoulders hardly stirred...

by Norbert Kovacs Kayla had trouble to decide which foods to have on her new diet. An apple seemed it might be fine but so did a granola bar to the thirty-something homemaker. Wheat bread sounded nutritious, but why not strawberries crusted with sugar, too? Kayla fetched several foods from her fridge and set them on the kitchen table, her hope that she would reckon the easier if the actual items she was considering were right before her. She considered bananas and dark chocolate; she reflected on avocados and tortillas. Research studies that she had read recommended and panned all of the foods. She recalled one that said milk helped build strong bones and muscles, another that said it overcharged our growth hormones. Kayla gained no traction and sat staring at fruit and beverage, a blank of indecision. The housewife fetched and spread the food from her fridge again one day as her husband Pete sat eating breakfast there at the table. A burly, heavyset broker of forty, Pete liked to...