Category Archives: Vignette
Life’s flame
Tiny story: The advantages of scraps and shards
What the world does with its children
I’m sorry world – Rupi Kaur
I am sorry this world could not keep you safe.. Continue reading
A hand’s lines – Julio Cortazar
The following story is a wonderful example of a resistance vignette. I’ve translated it from Spanish. From a letter thrown on the table, a line extracts itself and runs along the pinewood then goes down a leg. If you look closely, you can see the line continue along the hardwood floor, climb the wall, enter … Continue reading
Writerly magic
There is a magical relationship between writers that have never met. It has something to do with shared experience and solidarity and a common cause, and what happens when poetic minds join. Toni Morrison captured one such relationship so perfectly, in this tiny story: Two-Minute Seduction I took my heart out and gave it to … Continue reading
Numbers:
42 was the meaning of life. 43 was death – for the 43 Mexican students forcibly disappeared in one go, and for the 43 people in Venezuela killed during rightwing barricades. 11 (April, 2002) was coups and the will of the Venezuelan people trampled on 13 was overcoming defeat. It was when the Venezuelan people … Continue reading
Humanity / Story / Tiny stories / Vignette / Writing
Excerpt: The Butterfly Prison
The first pages of the Butterfly Prison: Who made the story rules? Once, stories had been an oral tradition, a way to teach. Then they were stolen, canned, and sold. But now and then people tried to reclaim stories. They told them in order to redefine corrupted ideas and to name injustice. They broke the … Continue reading
Humanity / Story / Tiny stories / Vignette
Letter to a little person
To new tiny person, New being, seed of human, bundle of questions with a whole world to get to know, remember to delight in falling over. Babies are wonderful at getting up again. Keep that. Remember that imagination is your strength. Wonder keeps you alive. Ask as many questions as you can, always. Play until … Continue reading
Story ache
Every person had at least one incredible story frolicking inside them. But the market chose quick satisfaction, supermarket weekends, air-conditioned adventures, television colonisation, thought minimalisation, bomb production. It made the story people tired. Stories died. Souls put to paper, internal battles portrayed in magic metaphors were blown into the air, then caught in nets and … Continue reading
On 1 November the animals were blamed..
On this day, the first case of mad cow disease was found in Britain. Eduardo Galeano writes… Danger! Animals! In 1986 mad cow disease struck the British Isles and more than two million cows suspected of harbouring contagious dementia faced capital punishment. In 1997 avian flu from Hong Kong sowed panic and condemned a million … Continue reading
