I’m on My Way, words and music by Charlie and Craig Reid @1988 Warner Bros. Music Ltd. Admin by WB Music Corp. (ASCAP)

The above picture is a painting I did called Dance Class. It's one of my all time favorite's.

I wonder if it’s possible to place a hit on a chirping bird? For the last two nights I’ve been awaken by the sounds of a bird that apparently does not know it’s still dark outside. The tweeting appears to start around 4-5 am I’m not sure. Usually, around this time of year the sound would not have come to my attention because I would have had the fan on blotting out all outside noises. Lately, it hasn't been particularly hot or cold outside. For all I know this bird could have always been happily chirping away for the past four years without my knowledge. Anyway, to avoid waking up earlier than needed I’ll have to bite the bullet and turn on the fan. I’ll be sure and bundle up good tonight.

The Writer’s Digest writing prompt for the day is to randomly select five words out of the dictionary and use them in an opening paragraph to a short story. Hmmm, here goes nothing.

The five words I will be using are skydiving, forage, tatami, citizen, and analysand.

Corporal McNally sat on the dull well worn tatami on the floor of prison he was being held in. He had always wanted to visit Japan but not in this capacity. All in all, he thought to himself, he’d rather be skydiving than here. This thought made him chuckle because he had a life long fear of heights. McNally thought back to happier times. He smiled at the memory of visiting juke joints in Mississippi on steamy Saturday nights. The thought of being back home on his family farm feeding the cattle forage made him smile. This memory most of all warmed his heart. He so loved the animals there. He also thought back once again on how he, Corporal Newt McNally, son of a tenant farmer, ended up in a Japanese prison. It was a wild twist of fate that started his adventure into the nightmare he was now in. Just like all the able bodies men in his town he signed up for the war because it was the right thing to do for a law abiding patriotic citizen. Little did he know that this simple act would start his descent into madness. He would be for ever more a patient, a mere analysand to a sinister psychoanalyst.