Remains
Above Lucy, a white-hot smudge of sun threatened to break through the haze. Below, the heat appeared to ripple off the asphalt and make the dead world dance. A flash of light in the cracked road caught her eye. She bent down to inspect her treasure: a lone paperclip, rusty but intact, having waited patiently for decades to be found. She pulled a chain of paperclips from her pocket and threaded her new discovery to the end. She closed the chain around her neck, pretending it was covered in colorful jewels instead of debris from years of exposure. Around her, the air shimmered as heat warped the landscape.
The UV sensor clipped to Lucy’s shirt beeped and flashed purple. She needed to find shelter soon until the haze swallowed the sun again. She looked around her, but all she saw was barren ridges stretching in every direction. She had wandered farther from camp than usual this time. The only shelter in sight was a heap of metal and glass in the distance. The UV sensor beeped faster now, blinking red. She had no choice. She ran toward the wrecked structure.
Most of the ceiling there had collapsed, but some of the glass walls still stood. Inside, she found rows of dusty clay pots propped up on tables, some small and plain, others large and painted with faded swirls of color. Lucy reached into a pot and scooped up a handful of cold dirt, letting it fall through her fingers. It smelled like rain. She wasn’t expecting to find anything. She wouldn’t have known what to look for anyway.
Lucy stopped in her tracks at the last pot. There was something purple in the dirt. She arched an eyebrow, turning the discovery over in her mind to figure out what it could be. Finally, she plucked it from the dirt and lifted it up to her nose. The scent rising from it was earthy with a hint of something sweet. She nibbled a petal and spit it out, deciding to stuff the purple thing into her pocket to show her mother.
She looked up and saw the sun had retreated into the haze above the glass structure. Lucy took the opportunity to run back to camp. She burst into the tent panting. “Ma, look at this!”
Lucy’s mother was crouched over a bowl mixing fortified grain. She looked up and smiled at the multicolored chain around her daughter’s neck. “Jewels fit for a princess!”
Lucy looked down and blushed. She had forgotten about her creation made from old things forgotten and found. “I mean this,” she said, pulling the crushed purple thing from her pocket. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Her mother gasped and froze. “Is that—no, it can’t be… just like the ones my mother used to grow in the Old Era. Lucy, where did you find this?”
“In a weird glass building,” Lucy said. “What is it?”
Her mother reached out and gently took the petals into her hands. “It’s called a violet,” she said. “We had them where I grew up.” She saw the confusion painted on her daughter’s face and laughed. “It’s a type of flower. It’s alive. Back then, clean water flowed in pipes underground. We used to spray it all over the flowers just to keep them beautiful. Just to have something nice to look at. That was before the droughts and famines, of course.”
Lucy looked at the dry stalks of grain in the basket beside her mother, who had gathered them that morning. “So this is alive? Can’t we plant it again?” Her eyes glistened with hope.
Her mother shook her head. “I’m afraid all we can do is put it in a cup to appreciate it while we have it. We can’t dip into our water supply, though. Without its roots, it won’t have long.”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to… did I kill it?” Lucy’s eyes welled up with tears.
Her mother embraced her. “In this world… you gave it mercy.”
The Weight of The Public Gaze
Whenever I try to be
More then the asking price
In relation to you...
Whenever I break this mold...
Whenever I write this code...
I don't see no silhouette...
And the sun hasn't risen yet...
I feel like I've won the fight
Against the world's
Sweeping virus!...
...It's just me and my faculties
Hanging out on the line!...
My skin has that offshore scent,
Hairs prickle like fiber tents...
Blood makes it's own anti-bodies...
Yea, I run my own factory!...
And the criminal parasites
Don't have a clearance pass,
And though rodents scuttle through
I'm still taking chances!...
Yea, this dance ain't no
Power play!...
I'm here on the up and up,
And the shoulders
I rub against
Get a juiced potency...
Whenever I try to be
More then the asking price
In relation to you...
Whenever I break this mold...
Whenever I write this code...
I don't see no silhouette...
And the sun hasn't risen yet...
I feel like I've won the fight
Against the world's
Sweeping virus!...
It can't just be lucky draw...
I'm holding my monkey paw...
The corner you chased me in
Had it's blemish exposed...
So I jump over razor wire,
And I double back to my lot...
All the pleasures you've offered me
Only give off a sour scent...
I can't put on that service smile...
I must leave you in dust my child...
...Whenever I try to be
More then the asking price
In relation to you...
7/7/25
Bunny Villaire
Spiritual Inertia
I was standing in a resting train, which is ironic, as I was on-board for my final rest. I was alone in the railroad car, untethered to life, no wrist strap from which to secure myself. Since "you can't take it with you," I wasn't holding on to anything.
Destination? Who knew?
When the train began to move, only my feet moved with it, but my body fell behind. I stumbled backward. My conscience, in contrast, had no feet and it hit the wall.
Or did the wall hit my conscience?
Or were my conscience and the train back wall meant to be conjoined, and some ethereal physics simply finalized the prophecy?
This required considerable thought.
The air (æther?) in the train moves when the engine engages, moving back a little as it sloshes to the back, although I know that that very same air, eventually, will accelerate.
All this time I thought my conscience worked in a vacuum. I thought it was private, intangible, immoveable. Now I know that all my parts, including my spiritual parts, are affected by momentum, defying inertia. Defying the very air I seem to still be breathing.
And defying relativity:
I see others on other trains through their car windows—seemingly faster or backwards, and my own motion is bemusing.
I don't know where I'm heading, but somehow I bought the ticket.
The æther will stabilize at some point, and my spirit will drift back as it expands between the wall and me.
But it takes time for the air to keep up, accrue on its springboard, and snap me back to the middle of the car where my feet are still firmly anchored. But the æther—my very breathlessness—won't accelerate it as much as the train. The external forces of good and evil are at work. There are track switches ahead as the rail splits toward different destinations.
This railroad is the track of my life, with stops—selected in the past—driving the rail switches now.
The train comes to a stop. My spirit drifts back, forward, in a reverse of how I had started. Do I get off here? Is looks like here and now, as before, I have a choice.
Homunculus
The homunculus is a representation of the man behind the man, the woman behind the woman, the body behind the body: the graphic mapping of what parts of the body are put together in proportion to how they’re laid out and innervated as related to our brain tissue. Not all sensations and volitional movements are distributed evenly. Thus, the homunculus is a distorted—even a comical—little creature.
For example, the hands are very sensitive, so the hands of the homunculus are large. So are the sex organs. And the lips. For that is how the mapping, in a Mercator projection fashion, pans out. (Think of Greenland.)
Everyone has a homunculus of their own; everyone’s homunculus changes as they grow older, wiser, and mature. Some homunculi, unfortunately, change as people grow hateful, resentful, and cruel. If only everyone could see their own homunculus and that part of it by which the soul is represented.
I once had a stable homunculus. It had grown over the years via honesty, integrity, and love for my fellow man, adhering happily along the convolutions, the gyri and sulci, of my brain.
Then came one of those fellow men with whom I’d gone into business. His name was Dwayne. Dwayne was a bad man. I didn’t know this, of course, as such men disguise themselves as reasonable and conciliatory to your best interests—especially when they have nothing and come to you for everything. Their homunculi lie in wait for the opportunity to get in a cheap shot. Their very own homuncular digits twitch to finger your own brain’s concavities.
Good men know how to make what’s in their best interests jive with what are your own; bad men leave you as roadkill. Dwayne aimed for living, breathing sentient creatures to make them roadkill.
Now I lick my wounds and knead the tire tread marks on me, my homunculus prone in the pit of the sulci where my reptile lives, having fallen there like a sucker through a trap door.
My reptile.
Every human brain, including mine, has such a reptile deep in the pits. It is the flight-or-fight captain of an armed ship. There in the primaeval abyss it sails, looking up from the basal ganglia of emotion and memories, an ancient and oh-so-human region of the limbic system called the amygdala.
Maturity and the sense to choose my fights carefully saw my homunculus outgrow my reptile by age 7; but now, floundering helplessly in the abyss, it is a sitting duck for it.
Bad memories lock together in the hippocampus tightly. Hatred is a glue that is thick.
When bad things happen—when bad people do bad things—these memories get the highest priority in sticking together in patterns of synapses that radiate their poisonous dendrites into everything else. The hippocampus is named after the Greek words for “sea horse” because of its shape. Yet, it is not a sea horse, but the proverbial elephant that never forgets—the storage bin for the poison arrows of emotion from the amygdala.
Dwayne.
I had built Dwayne up, truly believing his success would be my success and that the sum of our produce would exceed the addition of the parts. It’s the essence of any true partnership. I referred him business that came from what I myself would have garnered. We were successful—together: me from my hard work and cleverness—and Dwayne…from me.
Then he became more successful than me, and I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t long before he insisted on renegotiating the distribution of our net income.
A former client reported Dwayne had called him to tell him I was too busy to handle his account and that he, instead, would be handling it. Dwayne had confided in my employees that I had a list of them I planned on firing. Then he gave me his notice and moved next door, along with the employees he had claimed were on my list.
This sort of thing happens every day. It’s called business as usual. It’s called capitalism for some.
It’s as if business as usual is a license to cheat and steal while denying any foundation of ethics. “I have to do what’s best for me,” is the mantra. Loyalty comes in a distant also-ran once someone feels their oats.
Next, I lost many lucrative contracts, later hearing that Dwayne was spreading vicious lies about me. Things about me and the IRS. Things about addictions, cruelty, and exploitation. Things about me and my daughter. My board memberships were dropped, and it wasn’t long before he sat in my spot on each. My wife got a letter from a woman Dwayne knew who claimed “it was over” between her and me.
The only way to fight such a man smartly is by doing nothing. Do not play his game. Surely people would know the man I had always been. But the reality is that the truth never catches up to the lies.
When bad things happen to good people, it’s enough that it’s because they’ve been targeted by genetics, acts of nature, or disease. Those are mindless things that cannot be blamed. But when the bad things happen by design, by designing-bad people, it’s hard to understand why the assaults continue until way past complete ruin, even when the perpetrator has already more than won.
His win was complete. I once had it all; now I had nothing. Now he had it all. Including all that was mine. I had lost my reputation, job, my vocation, my money, my wife, and my family.
And my mind. There is no cruelty worse than being at the mercy of someone who is cruel.
So my homunculus—who is me—languishes, interred below the foundations of my limbic system, simmering in hate and fantasizing revenge. They say you can’t fight a dirty fighter because it’s hard to know where you draw the line. At burning down their house? Murder?
At some point, even under the fog of the primitive mind living precariously at the behest of self-serving reptilian hormones, you have to declare you’re better than that.
That took me a long time. It was hard. Does it mean forgiveness? Forgetting? What would Jesus do?
What would the Godfather do? It was just business, the ol’ bottom line.
The road to progress is eliminating your obstacles, and your obstacles are your enemies. I hadn’t started this, but I set myself up for it by drinking the poison of good faith. But good faith, for some, is just a fuse that is lit, burning its way to a victim who is expected to explode. Someone who didn’t take cover.
Someone who never saw it coming.
I wanted to ruin him…right back. Hurt him. More than he had hurt me. This was my amygdala talking now, the seat of emotion in my limbic system, and the very reptile that swaggers along the path of restitution via revenge. That path creates neurotransmitters that feel good, yet they are the dirty humors that engender fighting dirty.
I realized I might not be better than that.
After all, isn’t self-defense a noble pursuit? An inherent right of life? Can’t homunculi fight it out when their very existence is threatened? How ugly can one’s homunculus become?
I lay in the stagnant muck of my limbic system, breathing in the ashes of discord. I hacked up the bile I was living on. I seethed in a perversion of body temperature, overheating the stew I treaded.
Dwayne had to pay.
The trap door to hate is locked from the inside, just like Hell. But there are cracks in that trap door. I saw a sliver of light, reflecting from a mirror my original homunculus held, pivoting it this way and that to offer the side-eyed glimmers of illumination that stung like hope. I braced myself from the glare, from this hope. But I owed my homunculus an open mind; I owed hope a revisit. When you’re so mired in venom and maladaptive thinking, hope may sting, which is can make it hard to withstand. It’s easier just to go with the stench of spite, anger, and vengeance.
There was something about my original homunculus, something persevering from the values I had been taught. The slivers of light began to sting less. I sat up.
I was better than this.
I stood up, which angered my reptile. The skirmish with it was ugly, but when it was over my righteous hands had gained purchase onto some higher convolutions—the higher, modern lobes we had evolved to keep our reptiles in check. I strained to lift myself upward. The light grew brighter, the hope grew more tangible, and the reptile began slipping away. Hope no longer stung but was warm and nurturing.
It felt good. Being “better than this” was an achievement, a noble deed done well, and then it felt worth the bruises, cuts, and concussions.
People like Dwayne do well…for a time. But they leave a trail of enemies as they go. The hippocampus of the one doing the slighting doesn’t have the memory glue as sticky as the one who is slighted. Before too long, Dwayne got hurt. Hurt bad. In fact, he was killed. By his wife, who got off on self-defense—the noble pursuit and inherent right of life.
Did I win?
It’s not a competition. Business-as-usual is a competition; capitalism is a competition. But good faith is not. Good faith is one’s definition. It is that part of one’s homunculus that overlies the soul that innervates it.
My climb from primitive rage to civilized appraisal was a metaphor for the rise of the survivalist troglodytes to modern man. There was a reason we had evolved higher convolutions to suppress the murderous, self-serving thoughts of our rudimentary reptiles.
It was because our destiny was to kick the mesomorphic cavemen and their reptiles aside—to be better than this.
Right aisle, 7 rows back
Who dares to tell me?
That I
just need to
blow off some steam?
Incorporate routine
into my regime?
Who dares to speak
it to my face
and expect me to
relinquish
with grace?
The abundance of
my Life flow?
My motivation
that carries me,
from each day to
another day?
What sort of
monster lives inside
your hate?
All this Evil miring
in the cesspools
you inhabitate?
Laughing, you might
find me,
laughing in your
sneering face.
I am
not scared,
I am not afraid.
For you, there is
nothing in me,
but Love
that parallels
all your contempt and rage.
I've been told
I'm foolish,
but nothing
deters my aim.
I will go on
and then
one day
I will not.
And you,
will do
the same.
the gift is you still exist
there are shades of darkness
tints of pressing pain
taken as a whole
unbearable
this box
so very much like
grandma's button basket
often sorted over spent hours
into like piles shapes tints meaning
separate sheer sadnesses from the unbearable
that doubled you over never ever to recover from
the gift is you still exist to ponder categorize arrange
A dry drunk longing for a wetland.ing
Buried alive.
Smash.
Too late for a grab.
Unmarked tombstone soaked in memories.
Last request,
Last call.
Coming alive again.
Glass shattering.
Sinking in watered down quicksand.
Grabbing onto spinning tombstone.
Raining.
Straining head above ground for a last call quench.
Last crawl for alcohol.
Resuscitating on the shortest straw.
A sinking barstool.
Feet drop.
Morning light hanging above head.
A light bulb dim.
Hazy idea.
Stay or leave.
Feet on the ground.
Too weak to push back up.
pink umbrellas and lemon trees growing in my mind.
Getting dark.
Closing time again.
Swatting barflies
Induced
Seduced.
Bar stool spins
A quick leak.
Glass half empty.
Morning optimist.
Glass half empty.
Lights getting brighter.
Glass half full.
Still an optimist.
Bar tab expired.
Nursing and cursing.
Evening ending.
Thirsty again.
.
Welcome Sorrow
There is a time and a place for Sorrow. Let Sorrow make a home in you.
Sorrow bathes and lathers.
It soothes.
Sorrow is a strange thing.
Sorrow is the weeds in our soul.
Try to purge it and it grows back as quickly as it came.
Sorrow makes the world stark and real.
Sorrow creates a want for more.
Sorrow is the hallowed breath.
Listen.
Sorrow blooms gratefulness.
Awe.
Harry Situation Reviews: Jurassic World Rebirth
Jurassic World Rebirth is the seventh entry in the Jurassic Park franchise. The film stars Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Ed Skrein. It was directed by Gareth Edwards, best known for directing modern science fiction classics such as Godzilla (2014), Rogue One, and The Creator, and was written by David Koepp, who returns to the franchise having been the screenwriter for the first two Jurassic Park movies.
Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the dinosaurs are suddenly having difficulties surviving due to the Earth's current environment and are slowing dying once more, only able to sustain themselves in tropical areas around the Equator. A company representative (played by Rupert Friend) hires a team of mercenaries (played by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali) and a paleontologist (played by Jonathan Bailey) to help extract blood from the largest prehistoric animals in order to develop a new drug that could cure heart disease. This expedition leads them to an island in the Caribbean where they not only encounter dangerous dinosaurs but also new experimental mutant dinosaurs too dangerous for any theme park.
Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a huge fan of the Jurassic Park franchise. And while I haven't been the biggest fan of the last couple Jurassic Park movies, I'm always interested to see what the franchise can do next, especially if it means introducing new dinosaurs to the big screen. So, was this new entry a roaring good time or a steaming pile of coprolite (fossilized dino dung)?
The first positive as always, for me, are the dinosaurs themselves. As someone who has been a lifelong fan of these incredible animals it always brings a smile to my face whenever the Jurassic Park franchise shows them on the big screen, regardless of the numerous paleo-inaccuracies. And they're brought to life thanks to the film's incredible visual effects. Having Gareth Edwards in the director seat is a great choice because the man excels at showing how enormous something is from the perspective from the audience, as evidence from his previous work. The dinosaurs look and feel gigantic. These are the best looking dinosaurs I've seen since the first two films. I like the designs for most of the prehistoric animals. The one I'm not fond of is the new design for the Quetzalcoatlus looking like an oversized toucan.
As for the film's introduction to the two new mutant dinosaurs, the Mutadon and the Distortus Rex, I'm not a fan of their overall design. The Distortus Rex looks like the ugly stepsister to the Rancor from Return of the Jedi. As for the Mutadon, it's another dumb hybrid dinosaur that the franchise seems to be obsessed with in the past ten years. Thankfully, they're uses sparingly and do not overshadow the main dinosaurs in the film.
The acting is pretty good too. There is not one cast member I can say that delivers a bad performance. Everyone does a really good job. I think the one that stands out the most is Jonathan Bailey, as he seems to be having a really good time in this movie. There's a great scene where his character walks up to an herbivorous dinosaur and he pets it and he gets all emotional from the moment. I don't blame him. In that situation, if dinosaurs were alive today, I would get emotional too. Overall, solid performances throughout.
Unfortunately, this is where the positives end because this film's story is a mess. What I said in the main synapsis is only part of the main story. The other part of the story revolves around a family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo playing as the father) are shipwrecked after an attack from the Mosasaurus, get rescued by the mercenary team, only to fall overboard onto the island after an attack from a Spinosaurus pack. And so the film switches back and forth between the mercenaries and the family until they all reunite towards the final act. It's like David Koepp had two different ideas for the movie but couldn't decide which he wanted to go with.
While the acting maybe good, I can't say the same for the characters. There wasn't a character that I particularly liked in this movie. One character I found to be very annoying, and I was hoping they would get eaten by a dinosaur, but sadly did not. Also, obvious evil company man is obviously the bad guy. Not that the other villains in the franchise have been subtle, but the writing makes it painfully on the nose that this guy isn't a good guy.
On top of all that there was some very cringy dialogue mixed with some awkward humor, which unfortunately seems to be on par with these new Jurassic World films. It's like they're trying once more to mimic the humor from the MCU films, but once again failing at it. The only times I actually laughed was just how awkward or stupid it was.
But the worst thing about this movie is that there were a lot of moments where I found myself a little bored with the movie. This film slaps you with some intense action scenes that I just did not care for. There was nothing that left me at the edge of my seat, probably because I didn't care if the characters lived or died. Now that's not to say I thought the movie was completely dull. There were a few scenes I really liked. My favorite scene in the whole movie was the part where the mercenaries encounter a herd of Titanosaurus, where it recaptures that sense of awe and wonder from the first film, and John Williams' theme is playing the background. I admit watching that got me smiling the whole time. And I liked the scene where the family is trying to escape from a Tyrannosaurus down a riverbed, which was lifted from the first Jurassic Park novel. However, I felt dulled out because the marketing team seemed to have revealed everything in the trailers and promos that it leaves no real surprises.
Overall, I went into this movie with low expectations and still came out of the theater feeling disappointed. If I had to rank this movie I would say this is arguable the second worst film in the franchise, just above Fallen Kingdom but a little below Dominion. I personally cannot recommend it, but I cannot stop anyone from seeing it. If you want a fun popcorn flick to turn your brain off to, this is movie is for you. For me, I'll wait to see if the franchise evolves or goes extinct. Or eventually crossover with the Fast and Furious franchise.
Positives:
-The dinosaurs
-Great visual effects
-Good performances
Negatives:
-More mutant/hybrid dinosaurs
-Two conflicting stories
-Bad dialogue & writing
-Dull action
Final Grade: D+
So those were my thoughts on Jurassic World Rebirth. Have you seen it? What were your thoughts? What is your favorite moment from the Jurassic Park franchise? Please be kind, leave a like and comment, and check out more reviews here on Prose!
Best Quote:
Dr. Henry Loomis: "Science is for everyone, not for some."
#HarrySituationReviews #scifi #action #thriller #dinosaurs #paleontology #JurassicPark #ThisMovieSucks
Jackson Street; Paved With Poppa’s Broken Dreams
Poppa and Mamaw seemed happy enough, though they lived in the tiniest house on the block. You didn’t ever see Poppa Jackson much. The one-armed old man mostly worked. He had to, I always supposed, seein’s to how I had four uncles and five aunts, who together had supplied us with twenty-one cousins and counting. I never heard the old folks complain though, even if they didn’t have much.
When Poppa wasn’t “at work”, which is to say doing whatever it was he did when he wasn’t to-home, which I can’t say for sure what that was ‘cause he didn’t ever talk about it, but I’m rambling again… Mamaw says I ramble too much. Anyways, when Poppa was at home you could almost always find him out there in the shed fixin’ old trucks and tractors and such; sharpenin’ implements, or mendin’ em… other than on Sundays that is, when he and Mamaw walked up the street to church together. Poppa was handy with the welding ’, or with whatever was needed really. There was nothin’ I ever saw that he couldn’t fix, even with just the one arm, and if he did ever need another hand he’d just fix him up a jig of some kind and just keep on a-going, never askin’ nobody for nothin’.
I recall dawdlin’ in that shed once when I’d been sent out there by my Mamaw to take him a hot coffee, and to fetch her churn or somethin’-to-other. While I was loafin’ there it seemed a good time to ask him why he was always out here in the cold, fixin’ stuff up? He’d stared at that rusty old tractor he’d been working under for a long time before finally answering me, and I mean a long time. He stood there so long, in fact, that I thought he’d had a spell, and was about to holler for Mamaw to come quick. But before I could Poppa finally spoke, though he didn’t ever rightly answer my question.
”Funny thing, Jabbo.” Poppa Jackson called all of us boys Jabbo, probably on account of he couldn’t keep our names straight. I remember being surprised that, although I was all of twelve years old at the time, how tiny my hand felt in the one good one he had left as he led me out back of that shack to where even more rusty things laid scattered about in the tall grass, awaiting fixin’.
“These old trucks and tractors was once dreams themselves.” He’d said to me, pointing a particular one out. “That tractor there was how some man planned to have just a little more time to spend with his family, and just a little more money to spend on ‘em too. That tractor was to be his way to get by. You know, I‘d bet that tractor did the job it was bought to do, too, although whether there was more time and more money would have been up to the man, and not the tractor.
“But that’s ever-body else, Poppa. What about you? What about your dreams?”
”I declare, Jabbo, you do ask questions. Answer me this, do you like livin’ here?”
”Well, yea. I guess I do.” I’d said, not really sure what he was gettin’ at.
”You guess? Well, how come you like it, do you reckon?”
”Because Mamaw lives here, and all of my cousins, and my aunties.”
”And what’s the name of this here street we all live on?”
”It’s Jackson Street.”
”That’s right, boy. And who’s ‘The Jacksons’.”
I turned my eyes down the little street my Poppa was gazing down, with it’s tidy, little houses’ laid in a row, and I did not laugh. “We are, Poppa.”
”That’s right, Jabbo. Didn’t you know you lived on my street of hopes and dreams?”
Being just twelve I wasn’t exactly sure how we’d all come to live on Jackson Street, or exactly what it was my Poppa meant, but I squeezed his big ol’ hand anyways before running the picklin’ churn in to Mamaw so’s as not to get whooped.