Fragments.

I'm struggling with the Letter F.  I might have been iffy about yesterday's letter, too, even though I knew I was going to write something about engineering.  What it turned into was something else entirely.  I don't want that for today.  I want something short for a change.  I thought about doing a Flash Fiction Friday, as it was practically begging to be done, but I'm doing a whole week of fiction next week, so I decided against it.  Instead, I offer fragments of unfinished things in various drafts folders stored throughout the Web.  Some are complete thoughts.  Others, not so much.

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He brushes teeth for a living.

That's all that he can do.

He eats nothing on Thanksgiving

but a box that tastes of glue.

He's a monkey spaceman pirate

Straight from Planet Argumflax

And if you give him carrots

he'll fill your brain with useless facts.

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The knife pierced between his shoulder blades once. Twice. Three times. Satin hands caught him as staggered and pitched forward. He knew their touch intimately. Innately. "Mother?"

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All the clocks stopped working simultaneously. Chaos ensued.

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The last several posts I've written have gone stagnant or into remission.  They simmer in the lineup, all bubbly and noxious.  The same thing that happened to them is happening to this one.  I'm stuck.  See, I've not really ever been one to believe in a writer's block, but lo, I seem to find myself against one.  I don't know where or how to proceed.  I could write in full about what Avonlea's been up to, how she's been sleeping much better and feeding even better than that.  She's got another appointment tomorrow to get more immunizations, poor thing.  She's twisting her hands and laughing and smiling and grunting and being quite adorable and entertaining. Or I could talk about Keisha and how I'm trying to be a better husband than what I am, how she is such a beautiful, wonderful wife that God saw fit to bless me with.  I could talk about the Christmas, how it cometh like a gust of wind through a paper mill, how most of our gifts are bought, many wrapped, and yet there's no snow.  There's much I could talk about, but I just don't feel like it.

No, really, I'm not even sure where I'm going.

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Do you ever think about the way we do things?  Why, for example, do we have stores like Wal-Mart? Why is our education system from K-12? Why is a full day's work made up of only eight hours (shouldn't that be called a third day's work)?  Why do we have programs and routines, habits and norms?  Why do we do church the way we do?  And even more pointedly, why do we just accept these things for what they are?

"Don't rock the boat" we're told, and yet we admire the people that do.  Without boat-rockers things would be stagnant and wretched.  Without boat-rockers there would be no revolutionaries, no activists, no reformers.  But for the life of me I cannot figure out why we don't rock the boat on some things.

fun·da·men·tal/ˌfəndəˈmentl/
Noun: A central or primary rule or principle on which something is based

I've come up with a few possibilities.

It's how we're programmed.  As babies we learn that food is good.  Food is comforting.  Food satisfies the empty feeling in our tummies.  Thus, we assume that food is good and necessary, and we bury this fundamental in our brains.  As we age this type of thing evolves with us, and we assume things are good because they make us feel good.  But somewhere along the lines we substitute (or possibly confuse) good with truth and we end up

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I sometimes wonder how close I am to madness.  It's like the line that separates sanity from psychosis.  Sometimes I'm not sure which side of the line I'm on.

I think this happens when life catches up with me.  Rush after rush after rush after whatever