Welcome to Earlobe Calming: a collection of desperate, vulnerable, collaborative acts.
This is the first entry in the third and final component of Earlobe Calming, a collaboratively created serial fiction called The Guestbook. My goal with Earlobe Calming is to find financial stability by making creative work in community with others and The Guestbook is the perfect embodiment of that. Each entry in The Guestbook is based around a six-word prompt submitted by a listener along with a $6 contribution. The inspiration for this is the six-word-stories trend initially started by Ernest Hemmingway and patrons of the Penumbra Podcast who use their usernames as a way to introduce fun details into the story like “Puck Falco’s collection of silly little hats” or “Red Ruby Seven Truther.” Essentially, each six-word-prompt helps to build the world of the guestbook in combination with all the prompts that came before. If you’d like to help build the world of the guestbook and contribute a six-word prompt you can do so by going to gabriel.town/earlobe, clicking on C for create and filling out the form you find there. With that all said, let’s crack open The Guestbook.
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This is the sound of a book I picked up at a rummage sale a couple of weeks ago. This is also the sound of the neighbor’s dog barking but just pretend its clever sound design. its hardback , sized as a coffee table book with a brown mottled cover and gold embossed writing on the that says Guestbook. I’m not sure how it ended up here in Ireland but from the entries I’ve read it seems to be from a vacation home somewhere in North America. There are quite a few entries, it seems someone added an entry each time they stayed at the house and every time I open it I find something new and interesting. So I thought it would be fun to read from it for the podcast, just flip to whatever page and see what we find. Alright here we go.
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September 12th, 2004. Just having one last cup of coffee before we hit the road. We’re all packed into the Focus and Bobby is just putting away breakfast dishes. Gorgeous sunrise over the lake this morning, like every morning this week. I almost forgot how beautiful it gets here late in the summer, but of course as soon as we pulled off the highway on our drive here Wednesday all the cabin memories come flooding back. It was such a kind idea for Mom to suggest Bobby and I come up for a weekend we’ve really enjoyed the break from city living. I think Bobby is surprised by how much he likes life on the lake, he was worried he wouldn’t be able to sleep without traffic noise outside the window. I think I impressed him with my cabin know-how, he even helped me crank the boat out of the water and put the cover on last evening, what a trooper!
After labor-day is a perfect time to be here, nice weather and the lake is quiet with all the families away for school. The two of us just enjoyed buzzing around the lake with a couple beers, swimming around in the north bay. No fishing of course, I’ll leave it up to Dad to give Bobby a lesson when we’ve able to be up together, or maybe Cliff would like to give it a shot. Speaking of, seems like Tracy’s family had a nice time last weekend, they did a good job of cleaning up of course but the kids may be missing a Barbie and one of those little toy cars, found them under the couch on on Friday and put them on the table for the next time the Anderson clan comes up.
Alright, Bobby is giving me that look and I’ve still got to wash out this coffee mug before we head out! Can’t wait to be back up, maybe we can get the whole family out sometime next year.
Love,
Matthew
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If you’d like to contribute a Guestbook entry, a Money Talk, or propose a project for Earlobe Calming you can do so at gabriel.town/earlobe and click on C for create. Thank you for listening and thank you for your help.
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