This is the third in my current series of experimental writing. Loosely based on Dada and Surrealistic automatic writing, I have collected a list of five words each from ten different folk who either left comments on the blog (leave your five words here, if you wish to be included in future experiments), on Google+, or on Facebook. Contributors to this experiment are: Monika Ashwin V, Ampat Koshy, Mike Stone, Allen Nettleton, Jerry Ingeman, godessofsmallthings, Rayona Tuneelo, Christine A. Farley, Jen Pettit, and Peter Valentine.
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UPDATE JAN 2017: My new book, The Palm Reading after The Toad’s Garden includes this story as the title story of the first section.
The Toad’s Garden
A trinket that will traffic in trigonometry falls across a toad’s forest plaza. Love, without sex, creates a constant in the calculations of nothing. The toad lives on a nice and norval diggery ave, where it wonders, “Where’s my gawddamn slippers gorn?!?!”
It’s all a straw dog drawn along the floor. The capacitor follows the missing lines of calculations to enter an elephant. Mercury in retrograde or quicksilver at your feet, tosh. The grumpy steel worries when it will fall, effervescent sparks pluming, lonely, into the rolling molds.
The woman with the beard feels fright for the toad, poor wretch, while tending her garden. The rain-pulse pounds down the crimson flowers. Their efflorescence is the pneuma she seeks to savor. It is a stretch to deliver this thought to her tongue, precocious and fleeting this, and you, yet, still want it, she thinks. Her tongue tastes salty sweat trickling in the heat.
Crimson Flower Efflorescence Photo Montage ©Michael Dickel
Menu for the series
Experimental Chaos | Experiment two—The Other Day | Experiment three—The Toad’s Garden | Experiment four—Reflexive Properties | Experiment five—Word-Tossed Salad | Experiment six—Deciduous Mirror Reflecting
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You can read this story
and other Flash Fiction by Michael Dickel
in The Palm Reading after the Toad’s Garden
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Categories: Experimental writing
Meta/ Phor(e) /Play 
You are the first person to ask me what it means. I wrote “A nice and norval diggery ave” in the spirit of Carroll’s Jabberwocky (norval and diggery are words I made up), but I meant it to be an elaboration of an acronym “ANANDA”, which means bliss or happiness. In the Hindu Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, ānanda signifies eternal bliss which accompanies the ending of the rebirth cycle. This was part of a line of poetry I wrote in college, “A nice and norval diggery ave, love in neverness dividing always”. The second part was an elaboration of LINDA. Linda was a girl I lost my sanity over. I’m feeling better now, thank you. I was hopelessly mystical in those days. Thanks for making me a part of your experimental writing.
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Great idea! Loved the outcome too. I will most certainly pop back in to read more.
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I look forward to your future visits. When you do pop back in, please consider leaving five random words for a future experiment 🙂
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I’ll do so now and when I come back to read future experiments will do so again.
Wind
Love
chicken
soil
air
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hunter
wharves
sea goings
sand
autumn
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I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to leave messages back on Google + but was able to share this!
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Thank you for sharing it!
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how innovative. love it.
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sunshine
traffic
radio
lineup
grief
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1. torch
2. physiognomy
3. mortify
4. estuary
5. Socratic
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1. Wonder-wench
2. pussyvan (http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/195348/18-obsolete-words-which-should-have-never-gone-out-of-style/),
3. любовь
4. Lilith
5. sphere
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I think if you want me to use Russian in the Cyrillic alphabet, you should also give me a link to its pronunciation and meaning. Please? 🙂
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