WordPress Daily Prompt: Now? Later?

We all procrastinate. Website, magazine, knitting project, TV show, something else — what’s your favorite procrastination destination?

My orchids seem to procrastinate most of the year. I buy them in flower, with a few buds. The buds stop procrastinating when they are settled at home and with the motherly care I give them they blossom. When they are finished flowering I keep them, hoping and waiting for the next flower season, but they procrastinate and procrastinate. When the leaves begin to wilt, turn brown and stalks shrivel I know that there will no longer be procrastination, they give up and die. So beware humans, it could be us.

I do not procrastinate: procrastinate? The first time I heard this word I was busy with the dictionary. Perhaps it is one of those Americanisation’s, something invented across the big pond? Perhaps I was not listening in my English class at school or perhaps it was a word that never existed in my vocabulary or country.

I think I was procrastinating constantly when I was younger, but blame it on my youth. There were so many more important things, like listening to beat music, catching up on the latest fashions and generally hunting for Mr. Right. After meeting Mr. Right, I discovered I had no time for procrastinations. I was changing diapers, feeding babies and ensuring that I was not living in squalor and general chaos. I was proud. I did not have squalor but a well ordered, clean organised chaos.

As I no longer procrastinate, I have no favourite procrastination destination. I worked in a company in the export department. You do not procrastinate when a customer somewhere at the other end of the world is waiting for a machine part. His complete factory is laying still. He cannot finish the job because some forgetful person has procrastinated about sending his badly needed tool. As this person could have been me, I decided not to procrastinate because I would be in danger of losing my job.

Imagine George Clooney wanting to star in his new advertising film for a favourite coffee sort, and the expected coffee does not arrive because the lady organising the coffee parcel procrastinates. Not only has she lost a chance of meeting George Clooney for a cup of coffee, but George Clooney cancels his contract with Nespresso the coffee company. There is no place for procrastination in the modern world of stress.

I do not procrastinate, because at my age I no longer need to procrastinate. When you are referred to as “The old Mrs. Angloswiss” you no longer bother to procrastinate. Your fate is sealed, you are beyond procrastination. You are verging on a demented condition, forgetfulness, and are excused. It is an enjoyable life, freed from the burden of remembering to do things you should. You are excused.

My felines regard me with yearning eyes when their food bowls are empty not to mention the black looks if water is scarce and the accompanying threatening meows. I have no chance to procrastinate. The feline police ensure that I do not forget or put it off until I feel like it.

If I am hungry I cook and eat. My bills are all programmed in the computer, so no chance of putting them off. Every day the man in the WordPress t-shirt sends me a reminder that the daily prompt has arrived, thus procrastination is not possible from my side. I sometimes have a feeling that he does a little procrastination when the prompt might be late, but he is excused. It is a stressful job arising each morning studying a new prompt idea. If he procrastinates, Mrs. Angloswiss is there on the forum with her complaint to remind him that just because he was celebrating a new look or new grid idea the evening before,  it is no excuse to procrastinate.

Perhaps a new member of the WordPress committee joined and she or he was welcomed with a new t-shirt, a few welcome drinks and taken out to a meal the evening before. This is no reason to procrastinate with the next daily prompt. Life must go on, the empty bottles must be thrown out and the ash trays emptied. Daily prompt procrastination cannot be excused, there are millions, thousands, hundreds, about 100 victims waiting for a new daily prompt to fulfil the purpose of their blogging lives.

Mr. Swiss has now decided to mow the lawn. There was a little procrastination involved, although he finds we cannot have an unkempt lawn with weeds and long grass. We are Swiss and Swiss have neat lawns, so no time for lawn procrastination. 

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WordPress Daily Prompt: Write Here, Write Now

Write a post entirely in the present tense. 

Photographers, artists, poets: show us NOW.

Waiting for the train: it will arrive soon. I must concentrate, pull myself together. People just walk past and ignore me. Just a commuter, perhaps a musician with a guitar case on my shoulders, travelling to a music lesson or one of those street musicians that sit on the pavement and collect a few pennies for singing and strumming a cover version of something that arrived in the hit parade ten years ago.

If only they knew. There is a commotion on the platform and the town band arrives and organise their instruments. The air on the station is pregnant with the sounds and smells of an approaching train. A tiny mouse runs along the railway tracks from a train that no-one sees, but he feels it in his little pawed feet. “How sweet” a schoolgirl tells her friend and they both point their eyes in the direction of the mouse.

I do not have time to study the antics of a mouse that will one day be crushed by the wheels of an approaching train. There are more important things to do. The band strikes up its tune, a march, something military. It suits the atmosphere and the person arriving on the next train will be happy to find he is being honoured. There are some that will not be celebrating the arrival of this person. They are waiting in a prison for their execution because they said too much, and the band plays on.

My hands are trembling. “Keep still you fool” I tell myself. It will be done and done with in a few seconds. There is a distant rumble, the air along the tracks vibrates, a noisy monster is arriving and now is the time. Open the guitar case and take out its contents. The tune I will be playing will be swallowed by the patriotic clang of the band. My music will be honourable, but not for all. My brother and my father will clap their hands when they hear of how my music will be celebrated.

The train pulls nearer. I am counting the carriages, one, two, three and there I see him dressed in his pompous peaked hat with his rows of medals. I put my hand in the guitar case and remove not a guitar, no I remove a round object: remove the pin and throw with all my might. The train window splinters with shards of glass. The noise of the band is drowned in the noise of the explosion: hand grenades are loud but effective and the carriage of the train explodes in a shower of metal, blood and gore. The deed is done and I leave the station. There will be no survivors this time. 

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