Pebbles: A Collection of Short Stories

In the Year 2021

Dear Diary,

I got thinking about those old black and white cartoons today. The ones with the lanky characters driving down a mostly deserted scene in what appears to be a steam-powered car as the background rotates behind them while whistling the same tune over and over again. Of course, they're blissfully unaware of all of this. But it's the background that grabs my attention. It's canned; the same pattern of trees, farmhouses, and mountains cycle through the scene at a regular cadence. The characters continue to remain blissfully unaware, too focused on some trivial problem like a hole in their bucket that spills the water it's holding. Sure, the problem shifts, literally. They futilely cover the whole, only to have it slide to the other side of the bucket. The hole may even spout two eyes of its own and give the viewer a cheeky wink. As a kid, it was funny. Holes don't escape fixing in that manner. But after this year, those cartoons from 80-years ago no longer seem trivial nor silly, and the holes in the world move precisely as they did in the cartoons, erratically and without warning.

I want out, Diary. I'm tired of wandering this lonely rotating background. I want to see new trees, a colonial house instead of a farmhouse, maybe a beach instead of mountains. In 2020, I got to see how small my track is, and in 2021, I want more. Sure, pressure can yield diamonds, but stress doesn't always produce diamonds; sometimes, it delivers atrophy, and 2020 has withered too many.

I want my cartoon defect to stay put, Diary. This novelty of the gap swooping around the bucket with the humorous accent of a slide whistle has been lost. I want to stick the cork in it, and I want it to hold. I don't want to worry that the cork will fall asleep and tumble to the dusty ground as the bucket joyously begins to leak again. And I don't want the hole to wink at me.

I want to feel real again, Diary. I no longer wish to be surrounded by voiceless melancholy, separated within the flickering images of a filmstrip, nor filled with a colorless hollow that echoes my every thought.

I want to live a life in color, not black and white. I want to speak in articulate words, not murmurs and shrieks. I want to break out of the stale image and forge a new path. I want to see what's over the mountains and past the trees. I want to see new faces and whistle new tunes.

Diary, I'm not a cartoon. In 2021, I'd like the world to stop acting like a filmstrip dancing dangerously close to combustion. The dry tinder flickering too close to the heat of the projection lamp is overwhelming.

I don't want to pretend the oblivious cartoon characters never existed, and I don't want to forget the filmstrip, but it's time to digitize.

Thanks in advance!