Worthing Flash

By Linda S. Gunther I put on my reading glasses and flip through the pages of SENIOR TIME magazine which arrived today, a publication I usually throw away instead of reading. Junk mail I considered it, something I receive once a month with my membership. But why not look at it? Am I a snob?  I open to the middle of the magazine - page 29. The headline reads: DEPRESSION QUIZ - Where are you on the scale? I sit down on the sofa, open the drawer in my coffee table, take out a pen and look at the quiz. Enter your ratings: 1 (none at all), 2 (More than 50% of time), or 3 (Almost every day) Little interest or pleasure in doing things? I’ll give myself a 2. Feel depressed? Damn, some days it’s a 3. Tired or have little energy? Definitely a 3. I get tired before 4 o’clock. Feel bad about yourself or that you’ve let your family down? Unfortunately, a 3. Told my son that I can’t watch his Pit Bull while he goes on vacation....

In the wilderness, the moose towers over bears, wolves and other deer. In the wilderness of alleys and under bridges, desperate humans huddle, pass needles to ease their yearnings and their pain. In the wilderness, the moose prefers non-needled trees, scoops for leaves with moist and prehensile lips. In the wilderness of angry homes, humans tangle with words, painful innuendoes, stinging slaps, rage hot and orange. In the wilderness, the moose, antlered with velvet, slips through dense forests, tangled trees and branches, moist nose open to the scents of water, food under snow, to mates. In the wilderness of board rooms towering the city, humans with fists clutch their plenty, dream of opulent and sunny vacations. In the wilderness, the hungry predator stalks with the power of his hunger and his pack while the sharp and deadly hooves the moose can kick and swing in all directions afford him safety. In the wilderness, the moose searches for minerals, licks the salted winter hig...

‘ The first ship, its first voyage: on its quest for the Golden Fleece the Argo arrowed between the dread Clashing Rocks and landed in distant Mysia. Off for water went the handsome young hero Hylas, the innocent virgin Hylas. He finally found a rare spring, a spring with a nymph – beautiful Erato, as amorous and voluptuous as she was beautiful. While he gazed in wonder at the spring, she gazed at him, meltingly, from under wine-dark eyelids. Shading the spring and gentling the breeze were trees, heavy with sweet-scented queene-apples, trees from whose glancing leaves trance came shimmering down. All around the pool a swoon of colour: vermilion orchids and silvery lilies and roses of purple and gold, stirring silkily, whispering mystery. Through the pellucid water he stared at the bed far below, starred with sard and sardonyx, jacinth and jasper, beryl and chrysoberyl – gems to daze and maze the mind. Out from the trees stepped Erato, murmurin...

I’ve picked up a job as an extra in Nicole Theron’s new vehicle, ‘There Will Be Blood In Fargo’. I’m Customer No. 3 on the set of the Transylvania Bar. I have a bushy beard and I’m mostly in shadow, so no-one picks up on the fangs. One of the Coens (I can never remember which is which) yells ‘Action’. In strides Nicole in all her pale and willowy elegance. She orders a Rhesus Negative Highball and scans the room. ‘Cut. That’s lunch. Back in an hour,’ shouts Ethol. As she slides off her stool, Nicole glances in my direction and our eyes lock briefly, each excitedly conveying ‘It takes one to know one’. At lunch she sits, alone, under a giant beach umbrella. She’s wearing dark shades (just like mine) and her caked-on make-up makes her skin look like alabaster. She sips from a steel thermos, presumably to disguise the metallic smell of its contents. I loiter until she sees me and then, with a barely perceptible nod, she invites me to take the director’s chair beside her. From the s...