My biannual losing submission to NPR’s Three Minute Fiction follows. English teachers should write, so I do.
“Timestamp”
Timestamp:::
Hello? Hello. There’s, I don’t know. I’m going to try you again later.
Timestamp:::
I couldn’t – I think I tried you earlier. I’ve just lost track of time. I keep getting this machine. I just wish this was a conversation. It’s – I guess the machine tells you when this is.
Timestamp:::
I’m sorry.
I/
Timestamp:::
Listen: Maybe a story will help put this into perspective. Years ago, I think, we were in Gstaad and the wind came up suddenly. This was winter. Anyway, the wind came up suddenly and although it hadn’t snowed in what seemed like several days, the limbs of trees around our chalet stirred and flooded the air with crystalline glitter. I said the wind came up, but it came down, suddenly, with a rushing sound like a train passing through a local station, but then up again, maybe as cold pressed over warm air and rebounded. When the wind came down, then up, lifting the snow off every light surface, it stalled. Neither of us breathed for I don’t know how long and the air was solid. We were frozen in that moment in cut glass hanging in a windowsill framed in southern light. I don’t know, do you/
Timestamp:::
Look, that wasn’t Gstaad at all, but I think Les Gets or Vevey. Where are you? It’s funny. Not funny, but strange to dictate to you like this. Mediated. What time is it there? Jetlag. Jetlag is like a fat floppy bunny incubating my brain. I guess bunnies don’t incubate anything.
Maybe that actually makes more sense as a description for jetlag with the error about bunnies, but/
Timestamp:::
Your answering machine is demanding. How long is the time window for leaving a/
Timestamp:::
There was another time, maybe you remember, in the Alps, near one of those funny huts with beautiful shutters and boozy coffees in warm wooden rooms, above tree line. So much of the Alps is above tree line. Not like the Rockies, which are much higher, but which line their flanks with lodgepole and spruce. Anyway, the hut. I can’t remember when it was, exactly, but we were climbing on skis near a ridgeline when the snow came. Did I leave this story already? Did I tell you this? Perhaps you remember. Maybe I’d better/
Timestamp:::
I was remembering the alpine hut and snow falling over snow above tree line. The story doesn’t matter. It’s the dislocation of losing all definition. I could see you, clearly, above me. How far? Impossible to know, but I could see you. I couldn’t reach you, but we spoke, wondering – up? Down? Which way was which? We’d pick a few turns down and fall over slowly, simply lost within our inner ears, balance collapsing into itself without external cues. We had only the memory of the ascent to guide us back down, not even very far – 600 meters? But we doubted, slipped and slid, sure of the encroaching moment of weightlessness, when our skis would slip off into whiteness with nothing beneath/
Timestamp:::
I wonder with what voice your machine crows back the time of this call? Female, male, brash, muted? What time is it there? It doesn’t matter. I don’t even know what time it is here.
Timestamp:::
I was recently in the desert. It feels recent. Nighttime shocked with its cold, but the stars pierced the darkness and the Milky Way stretched overhead, at least from here to there, wherever you are, whatever the clock reads in that place.
This is no way to have a conversation.
EduCommunicate 