{"id":308,"date":"2017-08-01T23:35:33","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T04:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/?p=308"},"modified":"2017-08-01T23:35:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T04:35:33","slug":"silent-lucidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/silent-lucidity\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent Lucidity"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know if it is the absurdity of the news coming from those elected into power as of late or the thousands of fireflies enjoying the unmowed jungle surrounding my house, but lately I keep thinking back to summer nights spent on the wraparound porch of our house on Bayard Place. The porch encircled a stately two-story house complete with a thick wooden banister that I was determined to slide down one day (thank goodness I never did as I surely would have sailed right through the leaded-glass front door). I taught myself to ride a bike on that porch and read\u00a0Oz<\/em>\u00a0there every afternoon. We were a block from the St. John’s River and a quick bike ride to honeysuckle bushes so thick I was convinced they were hiding a portal to another world. And in the evenings, our porch would host a congregation of neighbors sent to cure the world of all its ills.<\/p>\n

I wonder what they would say tonight. Would they shake their heads, perplexed? Would they become so agitated they’d pace the full length of the porch? Or would they sit quietly, drowning their fears in one cold beer after another?<\/p>\n

I don’t have any answers today, which feels odd. Back then, sitting on that porch, listening to the grown-ups complain about gas prices and unemployment and Soyuz spying on them in their living rooms, I thought I had all the answers…if someone would just let me be part of the conversation.<\/p>\n

This week’s Carrot Ranch<\/a> prompt:\u00a0In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story using the word crystalline.<\/p>\n

Silent Lucidity<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was five years old, I unscrewed the metal-topped beer bottles for the neighborhood adults gathered on our porch. The crystalline liquid fueled their ingenuity, and they solved the world\u2019s most pressing problems with a flair and finesse that would be the envy of any statesman. I listened in awe, unscrewing more metal tops while detailing the numerous points in my head that I was anxious to contribute to the discussion. But as the twilight emerged and darkness deepened, the neighbors wandered home to their dirty dishes and unpaid bills, leaving me alone to contemplate my unspoken statecraft.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know if it is the absurdity of the news coming from those elected into power as of late or the thousands of fireflies enjoying the unmowed jungle surrounding my house, but lately I keep thinking back to summer nights spent on the wraparound porch of our house on Bayard Place. The porch encircled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Silent Lucidity...where did all this nostalgia come from? #flashfiction","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,62,16,20],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","tag-carrot-ranch","tag-current-events","tag-flash-fiction","tag-writing-challenge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/postcard-writing.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WVQN-4Y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}