Random: Default Icon Drabble Challenge

[nebroadwe]

Here's an interesting exercise, originated by mcee and passed on by evil_little_dog among others: "Write a drabble (100 words exactly) based on your current default icon. No changing it! Just write it as it comes; no beta-reading or mulling over. Any fandom or no fandom at all."

My current default icon doesn't come from a fandom per se -- more like one of the world's larger meme clusters :-) -- but here goes nothing:

Once, they say, she sat listening at the feet of him who's both the Author and the Work, earning a sisterly scold, and became a character in the book she reads, her reputation forever fixed as the one who ignores what seems central (whether kitchen or court) in favor of what is -- patron saint of inversions, of the world turned upside-down. Don't be fooled, she warns us: though the words be all you have, they are enough. Tolle, lege -- for that is now, as it was in the beginning and ever shall be, world without end, the better part.

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Author's Note: This probably requires a bit of explication. My icon comes from a painting now called "The Magdalen Reading," probably created by Rogier van der Weyden of the Netherlands in the early fifteenth century. (It's presently in the collection of the National Gallery in London.) The painting is a fragment of a much larger altarpiece, most of which has been lost, but which is hypothesized to have shown an enthroned Madonna with the Child Jesus on her lap in the center and various saints, including Joseph, Catherine and John the Evangelist, positioned around them.
    "The Magdalen," as a character in Christian art and legend, is a composite built from female characters in several different Biblical stories (among them, the woman who washes Jesus's feet with her hair, the woman from whom Jesus casts out seven devils, and Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus). This portrait of the Magdalen with a book harks back to the story in Luke 10:38-42 in which Jesus visits the house of Mary and Martha and commends Mary for her attention to his teaching, even though Martha would rather she had helped out with the duties of hospitality.
    Tolle, lege is Latin for "Take up, read" -- a man named Aurelius Augustinus heard this phrase in the sound of a bell ringing one day, picked up a Bible and went on to become one of the founding fathers of Christian theology. Reading can be a dangerous activity -- you never know what you might find yourself doing under the influence of a good book ... :-)

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UPDATE: Just wanted to note that this challenge has thus far produced two very good FMA drabbles. The first comes from evil_little_dog -- a perfect snapshot of Ed's thoughts in the midst of a fight. A good drabble needs a strong central conceit and language to match -- this has both.

The second comes from youngest_one and is also Ed-centric, but takes a more leisurely tack. It's a reflection on Ed's upbringing paralleled against his situation as a young man chasing a dream. Another mark of a good drabble is a closer that leaves one saying, "Aha!" or "Hmm ... " The excellent use of the subjunctive in the final lines of this drabble do that for me very nicely.

Share and enjoy!

Comments

[anat-astarte.livejournal.com]

Wow, very powerful- I loved it.

Thank you for the recs, I enjoyed them as well. :)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! It's seldom I discover something worth recommending that the world isn't already aware of. I'm a bit of a follower that way. :-)