Don Park

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**Koh Lanta Creative Writing Group**

====== 2024/2025 Season ======
===== 2025-Jan-23 =====
==== Muffin Job Interview Decision ====

She was in the middle of the only job interview she had landed all year. 

The muffin they gave her was turning into a pile of crumbs as she picked at it, waiting for the interviewer to finish his diatribe on the glorious history of the company.

She was a chemist and sitting inside the manufacturing plant for General Mills cereal company was actually exciting because the chemical makeup of american cereal was always changing.

The muffin was flavored with vanilla 342, a classic choice she recognized right away. A little heavy on the palm old but a decent muffin overall. 

She was always coming up with ideas to generate specific flavors in a lab. Her brownies that tasted more like licorice than chocolate were famous to her friends.

She didnt care if red #1045 was known to cause cancer in rats or that the vegetable oil from India often arrived at her last job contaminated with heavy metals. 

A winning flavor could create the next kitkat bar or twinkie. She wanted the fame, and maybe a nobel prize in chemistry. Noone would hold her back this time. 

Her ChatGPT resume had a few hallucinations, but nothing to cause suspicion. Her big idea was to create new chocolate. Twice as addictive as before. The secret ingredient is menthol. It works for cigarettes and it could work for chocolate too.

==== Nurse Coordinate Simultaneous ====

Hi simultaneously nursed his wounds and coordinated the relevant traffic flying into JFK airport. His job was important and he took pride in his work. He'd been an air traffic controller for 8 years. Two at Miami and 6 at JFK.

He played with toy airplanes as a child and dreamt of becoming a pilot. As an adult, a medical condition kept him from flying the plane so he did this instead. 

His callouts over the radio were friendly but he knew a single miscommunication could be disastrous. Last week his arm started going numb for no reason but it would fix itself 30 minutes later. He didnt tell anyone about it. It was a busy afternoon when Untied Arab Emirates 313 cleared to land runway 12 Left, he said. He moved his hand to click on the screen but it wouldnt move. His life flashed before his eyes and he frantically thought about what to do next.

===== 2025 Jan 30 =====
==== Temperamental Time Travel Pancake ====

The toaster was on the fritz again. It had the equivalent of catching a cold in the world of appliances. Normally a sick appliance would crawl into the spacious oven where there were nursing beds and silverware attended to your every need. The cold happened often enough that toaster wanted a more permanent solution. It had been said that water heater was more wise and powerful than any other appliance, though its lair was far away and dangerous.

Toaster packed a bag and set out to reach the basement. Take me with you, the salt shaker said. My glass is chipped and my cap is rusty. So salt shaker rode on top of the toaster while toaster made a slow waddling movement across the counter.

They climbed down a string of lights to the ground. They moved towards the basement stairwell when salt shaker screeched and said pepper! I see you behind the refridgerator! I thought you were gone forever! So salt shaker left toaster to be with pepper shaker. Toaster made it down the first step to the basement, motivated by the idea that water heater might have a real cure. 

On the third step toaster started to loose a good grip on the floor and thought he might go tumbling down the stairs when at the last second both salt shaker and pepper grabbed toaster and saved him. They made it to the bottom and water heater had beer and snacks waiting for them.

==== Purple Sunset Jellyfish ====

Suk swung the screaming 1954 VW Beattle engine hard to the left to turn into the set of docks that held up the homes of 30 or so Thai families. Suk had been out on the water all day fishing with three other men. The fish hold was half full when the sun started to set. The water shimmered a purple hue interrupted by the occasional large jellyfish. Suk's father talked about how the daily catch was so much larger 20 years ago. He wonedered what the youngest village members would do for a livinc. Half their teenagers already spend summers in Bangkok, working in shopping malls or driving tuktuks.

Suk lifted fish from the hold into large buckets on the dock, with people waiting to gut and clean the fish.

Suk made 20 baht per kilo of fish. He was better than most about saving and had plans to buy a boat of his own. His girlfriend lived in the nearest town, 2 km away, but he had little free time. Suk was happiest on the water, surrounded by immense beauty and relative isolation. It seemed that VW engine could run forever. He wondered if the Germans who made it could imagine what it is doing for him now.



====== 2023/2024 Season ======
===== 2024-Jan-19(?) =====
==== Suspicious Backpack Fluctuation ====

'Unattended Bags will be confiscated' came over the airport PA system. Ralph'a blue backpack was like any other, except for one small difference. It was full of records. Records for DJing at the beach bar he liked to go to. Soon his journey would be finished and he would be among friends. On the same island was an observatory and Ralph would resume his day job of tracking satellites for a non-profit dedicated to reducing space junk in orbit. It was tedious work but important. Next to the observatory was a colony of frogs. Ralph always knew when it was going to rain by listening to the frogs. A little bit of frog sweat made the best mushroom shake. The community of scientists on the island knew each other from McMerdo station on Antarctica. They knew how to get along and they knew what kind of food to cook for each other. Each person was there for a different reason. Some to save the Earth, some to build a resume. One day Ralph spotted an object in space that shouldn't be there. He calculated its trajectory to be dangerously close to the earth. "Its time to find a new homeworld." he said.

===== 2024-Jan-26(?) =====
==== Watch Flamboyant Coconut ====
Dale checked his watch. He was convinced life moves in a straight line. Cause and effect. Preparation and result. He was successful. His life checked al lthe boxes. The result proved the theory. Mary ate from her coconut after drinking it dry. She wasnt quite sure how she ended up on the island. Her life always felt rather random and her best coping mechanism was to remain flexible. Expectation is at odds with opportunity, she liked to say.They both happened to be eating dinner at a beachside restaurant that was in the middle of a flamboyant fire show. He made reservations, she dropped by on a whim. The restaurant was packed so the waiter put them at the same table. We dont have fireworks like this back home, he said, gesturing to the fire show just outside the restaurant. I once caught my kitchen on fire, she responded. He thought about his plans to catch his favorite TV show in an hour. She wondered how she might finish the bottom left of an oil painting she was working on. Suddenly an ember from the fire show landed on the table and set the tablecloth on fire. They both got up and ran to the bar while the staff put out the fire. He ordered a beer. She found a ukelele. The bartender liked to play the harmonica. He took a drink and sung a song about love.


===== 2024-Feb 2 =====
==== Milkshake Exile Flummoxed ====
Pong's fastfood job put him in front of many different personalities. As someone who deals with the public for minimum wage, he was better at deescalation than anyone he knew. A woman with a french accent came in to order a milkshake. "We're out of chocolate" Pong said. Flummoxed, the lady ordered vanilla instead. After work, pong rode his scooter down the dirt road to his him, passing loose chickens, cats, and cows. He fed the cat that hangs out closest to his door and got in a hammock.He thought about his brother in exile and how to reach him when he could only write letters. Ink on paper is a powerful medium but it takes time. Time to write, time to send, and time to read. Maybe thats why its effective. His brother had a bard life, banished to a video game island with 1994 era graphics and sound. He had lots of supernatural friends, who could do supernatural things. Pong wondered how his own life could be supernatural. Asking questions is kind of superpower. So is being kind. He fell asleep in the hammock to the sound of geckos.


===== 2024-Feb-9 =====
==== Ruby Despair Crafty ====
Where to go is always the next question for the nomad. The world has become incredibly small with the invention of instant messaging and air travel. What do you look for in a new destination? What are the signs that you're done with the current location? Is it a sense of despair saying your needs arent being met that causes you to dream of rolling the ruby dice in a crafty attempt to improve things?Can you sit your way to a better state of mind with the monks? Can you drink your way there or use the fruits of modern chemistry? The wording of the question has clues to the thinking of the one asking. There is much to appreciate in front of our eyes that worry makes hard to see. Effort is its own kind of magic. Listening. All the atoms of the universe want you to see the connections between them. Suffering grounds us in the earth and joy lifts us up.

===== 2024-Feb-16 =====
==== Flowers Lies Painball ====

[poem]
A lie can grow like a flower
Its appeal is also its power.
Living a lie will lead to a fall
and get hit in the face like in paintball

The row of flowers sat in the garden, happy and bright. Rhodie turned to Dalia to say what do you want to do today? Dalia said the same thing we do everyday, stare at the sun and grow. Rhodie said I'm tired of that, what else can we do? I wish I had legs. Rhodie dreamed of being in a pot so her owner could move her from place to place. Dalia had been in the garden for 3 years, including the great chill of 2021. She knew flowers that didn't make it, and was glad to just be.

===== 2024-Feb-23 =====
==== Crossing Journey Organization ====

The sails were filled with wind even though the Starlight Daydream was still docked to the old teakwood marina.The charter company had packed the cargo hold to the gills with food and drink. It takes 36 days to cross half the pacific ocean by sail. Captain Azul was ready to guide the boat and its passengers all the way to hawaii. he never used a map because he had a compass that points to the holder's fondest memory. Azul lived on the big island of Hawaii for 7 years. He learned how to sail there and wrote a book on being an ocean captain. He helped build the Starlight Daydream from trees that grew on the island. Time seemed to pass effortlessly when Azul was at sea. The infinite expanse of blue in the day and the field of stars at night were the only cycle that was obvious from the boat. During one night's ship's dinner a passenger spoke something in Nahuatl, a native language of central america. Suddenly Azul knew he had grown up in Guatemala and played with other children there. Two weeks later of following the compass, the ship docked not in Hawaii but in Guatemala and Azul found his long-lost parents.

===== 2024-Mar-2 =====
==== Snowflake Overrated Forgiveness ====
Every thought he had was exciting and unique in the hours after taking Salinzatol, the new cognitive enhancement drug Pim's company was working on. Every concept in his mind was fleshed out completely and he could communicate that idea with detail and emotion. He drove home carefully, knowing this is a prototype and knowing competitors would kill to get a copy of the formula. One side effect is short term memory loss. Pim found himself back at work the next morning with no memory of the previous night. He asked his coworker what time he got in that morning. The coworker replied Pim was already at his desk when the coworker arrived at 6am. Maybe Pim never went home at all last night. Pim went to the laboratory where we worked most of the time to find a new vial containing a forumla. Pim had made something new during the night. It was an antedote to the first formula with a note saying "the formula is overrated." 

==== Judgement Origame Sunshine ====
"Hand me the shovel" Paul said in a shadowy corner of the mini-mart parking lot. He dug a shallow pit and put the nuclear fuel inside and covered it - unlikely to be found in the next 48 hours.The next day Karl left his desk at the nuclear institute to go into the basement. He noticed right away some nuclear fuel was missing. Karl guessed it was an inside job. His coworker Paul had been unhappy at work for months and also belived sunshine and solar power were the answer to humanity's energy needs. Paul surpressed the judgement of his friends to allow himself to commit this extreme act of activism. The institute existed for self preservation and not to better humankind. Paul passed judgement and decided to destroy it. Theresa was a former employee with connections throughout the industry. Her invention could convert trash into chocolate. It just needed fuel. Nuclear fuel. She put down an origami crane to laugh at her plan, as she pulled into the minimart parking lot. 

===== 2024-Mar-8 =====
==== Leverage Jellyfish Volleyball ====
Wilson! Tom Hanks cried to the volleyball as it floated away forever. It had been his only friend on the island. Tom, being a rich movie star, stayed at an exclusive 5 star resort that everyone on the island referred to as paradise. Tom flipped through the travel brochure that was left in his room, looking for something to do. All he had to do was pick something and his entourage would make all the arrangements. Half of Tom's friends were other famous people. Tom had been watching Game of Thrones lately so he invited the entire cast to the island for a week of sun and fun. This became somewhat annoying because the cast kept using dothraki, the invented lanugage used on the show, to talk to each other. Tom and the rest of them were dog-paddling in the water when Tom noticed a huge amount of air bubbles coming up from the water. The crew had accidentally summoned a water dragon to their location. In an astounding display of power and strength, the water dragon's head broke the surface of the water and looked down at them. 

==== Yellow Sunshine Lizard ====
Larry drove his yellow van around the back alleys of venice beach, los angeles, CA. He was a drug dealer but only for the overpriced pharmaceuticals that really helped people. Larry's clients hardly knew to look for the sunshine lizard painted on the side of the van. Big pharma and good karma was the catch phrase written below kjd image of the lizard.