Caitlin McColl
Stories (137/0)
Radio Silence - Part 9
There was no one to blame but him. Not the engineers. They did their job, they did everything correctly. It was the compounds. Well, and maybe it was the idiot that didn’t secure the area before leaving the room too, causing the compound to escape the secured air locked space and get out into the main hangar. Yeah, that was him. And, Richard thought, he might’ve put a touch too much of the solidifying agent and not enough of the chemical that would make it fill the gap, and stay up there, like some form of cosmic caulking agent. Oh and the fact that it wasn’t actually loaded into the dispersal mechanisms. The rockets that were supposed to launch it into the atmosphere and send it to where it was supposed to go. The guys that had all those specific trajectories and timing and everything worked out. They weren’t given the opportunity to play their part.
By Caitlin McColl3 years ago in Fiction
Twisted Love
We were too different. We were two different species, to be truthful. I should have known it could never have worked. In fact, I must have, deep down. Of course, I saw the looks we got walking down the street together - when people got close enough to see that she was different. To see that her skin wasn’t like mine, wasn’t like most of ours. Sometimes people didn’t notice at first the strange lack of humanity to her skin, the bland, featureless-ness of it. It was smooth, like stone, like marble. But it was pliant at the same time. A strange substance, but I didn’t mind it. If others didn’t see her skin, they almost immediately saw her eyes, once they got close enough. You can never miss meccha’s eyes. They are literally windows to their insides. Every meccha’s eyes are gold. Bright copper, reflecting their inner workings through their clear irises.
By Caitlin McColl3 years ago in Fiction
Writings on Covid-19
Something that I find kind of fascinating with the Covid-19 pandemic that we’ve all been experiencing for…(counts) 18 months-ish (if it started in March 2020 where you are, as it did where I am), is the fact that everyone on the entire planet can relate to the experience as we are all going through it. And that’s just so strange to think about. I don’t think there has been any other experience that every human being in the world can also relate to. Isn’t that crazy to think about? And life has turned into a world of dichotomies - mask wearing vs. not, vaccination vs. not (and if you have got the vaccine, it’s almost like a competition! Which one did you get? Pfizer? Or AstraZeneca, Moderna or J&J (or other ones that are more regional like Sputnik V in Russia)).
By Caitlin McColl3 years ago in Humans
Writings on Life and Purpose
Since my mom’s death, I guess I’ve been on a journey (without really realizing it), to help me find the purpose of life (or, rather, my purpose in life). So when I found the mindfulness website Elephant Journal and started writing for them in December 2020, it turns out a lot of my pieces revolved around this topic - finding purpose and meaning and connection and how to live life to your best ability and to be your most ‘authentic’ as the kids say these days.
By Caitlin McColl3 years ago in Journal
Writings on Death and Grief
Over the past almost 6 years since my mom passed away at the age of 65 from alcoholism (and to be totally honest, my dad, brother and I were all quite surprised she made it to the age she did, considering many with that disease don’t make it that long, sadly), I’ve written quite a bit on the subject of death, grief and loss. I’ve come to realize that writing about it has been very cathartic and helpful for me in processing my feelings and my experience of it all. And has continued to be helpful since the passing of three other family members and my furbaby border collie son (all since the beginning of the pandemic).
By Caitlin McColl3 years ago in Families
Writings on Spirituality and Mindfulness
Let’s get this right (as Gordon Ramsay often says). I’m not religious. Never have been. My dad is, I think, Catholic (he has his mom’s rosary), but never practiced. My mom was protestant (again, neither were raised religious, but my grandpa always said a prayer of sorts and amen before the start of every large family holiday meal).
By Caitlin McColl3 years ago in Longevity
6 Fun Facts About Synesthesia
Have you ever said something to a friend or family member that they thought was really strange? Like maybe that a certain song sounded orange or that you could ‘see’ music? Or that the number 5 is green to you? If so, you may have Synesthesia, a neurological condition that scientists are still trying to figure out more about it and why it happens. The word means to blend the five senses. People with synesthesia (known as synesthetes), experience the world differently – to put it simply, think of it like crossed wires in their brains – their senses are hooked up to each other in weird ways where one sensory source produces another result – such as tasting sounds or hearing colours. There are many different types of synesthesia such as Chromesthesia – where a person hears a sound and sees a colour associated with it (high pitched sounds are often brighter colours and lower sounds are darker). Different people may see a certain sound as a different colour. One of the most common forms of this condition is grapheme-color synesthesia– where people will see letters or numbers with different colours. For example ‘A’ might be yellow and 12 might be a shade of blue.
By Caitlin McColl3 years ago in Psyche
Radio Silence - Part 8
You wouldn’t think that the end of the world would happen just because you didn’t get to have your normal cup of coffee, now would you? But in Richard Gillivray’s world, that is exactly what happened. The downfall of civilization. Because you ran out of coffee. It’s like something from a movie. Something you’d see and you’d say to yourself ‘yeah, right, like that would ever happen’.
By Caitlin McColl3 years ago in Fiction