Grasshoppers in the Park
Created | Updated Nov 29, 2011
As most h2g2ers know, the Alternative Writing Workshop is a fund of fascinating works in progress, a forum where h2g2 writers meet, greet, read, critique, and generally tease the life out of each other.
Recently, Cactuscafe poured inspirational fuel on the prose fires with her story entitled Grasshoppers in the Park. Soon everybody was grasshoppering around. The results were so good, we thought we'd share them with a wider audience.
Here is Cactuscafe's original story, the one that caused all the fuss. Read it, and see what it inspires you to do.
Grasshoppers in the Park
Last week, on a walk through the park, I noticed a lady sitting on a bench. She was crying and talking intensely to a concerned companion. I wondered what was the reason for her sorrow.
Immediately I heard my answer. In fact, it was so insistent that I had to stop at a bench myself, and write it in my notebook:
The lady grieves for Grasshopper.
This happens often. I become agitated by curious cryptic sentences that appear in my mind at random. I have a joke with myself that these sentences are created by the spirit of an author who lives in my head. This author has no specific name. At the moment I am calling him Muse. This is not a very original choice, I know, but he likes the name. It makes him feel poetic.
Muse can be a clown or a philosopher, a prophet or a sage, although usually he is none of these. He is just the invisible author of strange sentences.
This particular sentence appeared to be all alone.
The lady grieves for Grasshopper.
It floated out into the void. I hope it finds its way. Perhaps Grasshopper is the name of a poet who leaps through the dimensions of his mind in search of lost sentences. Perhaps he will one day find my beautiful sorrowful lady.
After this, I wondered if a grasshopper would now leap out of nowhere and land beside me on the bench. It didn't happen. The only thing to leap out of nowhere was Muse, who appeared with another sentence.
You are in the wrong park for coincidences, my friend. I suggest you hop on the next bus out of here.
I whispered it a few times to myself, then went to find the bus stop.
A couple of stops along, my friend Dave hopped onto the bus, with Mercury Rev playing loudly through his headphones. It was good to see him. Dave has a great taste in music.
I told Muse about this. He said he didn't believe me, but I think that is just because he didn't get the coincidence.
So I prepared this simple explanation:
Mercury Rev is the name of a rockband from New York. One of the original band members is famously known as Grasshopper,
Too late. Muse had disappeared into a cryptic sentence of his own making, that had absolutely nothing to do with grasshoppers, but which did include a brilliant, yet secret, anagram of the word coincidence. I know this, because he told me.
I didn't believe him, of course. At least, I said I didn't.
Muses. Who needs them.
