Tag Archives: legends

Spotlight: Ingrid Prohaska

30 Nov

November 30, 2011

Sit back and relax, Dear Readers. If you are reading this on your phone or mobile device I welcome you, but I also suggest that you find a place to sit down and get comfortable for a while. In fact, before we go on, go ahead and bookmark this page. When you get to the end of this post you’ll see why. In fact, let me give you some advice. Don’t.

Don’t get to the end in one sitting.  Take your time, come back to this over a few days. Pause. Savor it. Find that quiet and comfy spot and prepare to stay there for a while. But you’ll be there in body only. Your spirit is taking a little trip.

A trip to Vienna….

“Hi, my name is Ingrid and I’m very happy to be a mobster.

My main work is writing poetry and short stories; to publish my precious pieces I run a blog – “DancingElla’s Words“.

Some of you might know me as a legend teller on FlashCast. The idea came up when I read a blog post by JRD Skinner and almost at the same time he told me about his interest in Vienna. This reminded me of my old love in these legends and so I’ve started to transform the Austriagerman originals into English. You can find them all at “Viennese Legends“.

Finally a huge thanks to bmj2k for his invite!
I hope you’ll enjoy the selected potpourrie of my work and you’ll have an entertaining time.”

  • Legends

A legend about a junker, his vices and how to get a magical coin …
“The Heckthaler”

A bone house is the location of this creepy legend …
“Revenge of the Dead”

In ancient times three little devils played their mischievous tricks on the Viennese in and around St. Stephen’s church …
“The Three Little Devils”

  • Poetry

“Broken Mirror”
by Ingrid Prohaska

The mirror broken
a smash on my soul
a chapter closed

Scars on my face
a tear
just one
the last one

Then she turned into stone.

Copyright © 2011 Ingrid Prohaska


the original post > http://dancingella.blogspot.com/2011/07/broken-mirror.html

“The Fall”
by Ingrid Prohaska

Dark sides
dark impressions
dark poetry

I feel that I fall
and I fall
I fall

Hands are reaching out for me
offer me their help
but when I try to take them
I have to see
these hands are bones
of dead
or undead
I feel the cold
and I’m scared

So I fall deeper
and deeper
deeper
into a universe
where the sun doesn’t shine
and no flower can bloom
where tears freeze into sharp stones

An unknown land
without any light
where one can’t see
and hardly breathe
dark feelings are stronger than ever

My inside cries

But in my scream
there hang the words
for me to hear

I will survive!

Copyright © 2011 Ingrid Prohaska


the original post > http://dancingella.blogspot.com/2011/09/fall.html

“About a Break”
by Ingrid Prohaska

  • Short  Story

A story about light and heavy bags …

“On the Terminal”
by Ingrid Prohaska
I got out of the train on that big terminal. I had a lot of bags; my baggage had become very heavy during the long lasting journey. I felt tired, somehow burned out, hopeless and nearly desperate. I didn’t know, where my journey would go when I was going to leave the station again, but I was sure – I didn’t want to take all these heavy bags with me any more.

I carried my baggage into the station hall and looked for a silent place. Finally I sat down on a bench in a low frequented area. I thought about what I could do. I watched the passengers carrying their suitcases and bags. Some of them carried very heavy, others seemed almost to dance with their light bags. “I wish that could be me; dancing through the life only with light bags, carrying only things I really need.”

I had lost some of my light bags with things I was missing now. And somehow I was already used on the heavy bags I carried with me; this made it so difficult to dump them. Sometimes I asked myself, why it was so easy to lose light bags, and seemingly not possible to get rid of heavy ones.

While I was lost in my thoughts, my eyes fell upon a sign “Lost & Found”.

“Hey,” I thought, “there are the experts!”

I took up all my bags, carried them towards the sign, walked into the agency and looked for a friendly face. A middle-aged man with a blue working-coat stood behind the desk. He had a boring face without any expression.

“Can I help you?” he said expressionless with a monotonous voice.

“Yes, I really want to get rid of my heavy bags. Could you please give me an advice?”

“Never heard about someone who wants to lose something,” he answered still monotonous, “Normally people come to us because they want to find what they have lost.”

“Well,” I said, “I also lost a lot of things during my journey. So, maybe you can help me in this way?”

“Yes,” he said and gave me a form, “fill it out, make a list, describe your bags and bring it back. Then we will see, if someone has found your things.”

I took my pen and wrote down a list: love, time, joy, humor and hope.

I gave him the list and a smile crossed his face.

“Yes Lady, these things are often lost. Our backroom is full of these things. These are light bags. People rather lose light bags than heavy ones.”

He opened the door to the backroom, so that I could have a look into it and I was really surprised.

“And nobody comes to get back what he has lost?” I asked.

“Seldom,” he said. “Although many people miss their light bags, they don’t take the time to find them. Others even don’t notice what they have lost. So, we’ll have a look for your bags.”

He went into the backroom and while I was waiting, I felt hope coming back. And really how I had felt, he brought me the well acquainted bag of my hopes. Suddenly I felt joy. I had tears in my eyes when he brought me my bag of joy a short time later.

I left the “Lost & Found” agency again with my bags of hope and joy. And anyhow – my heavy baggage seemed lighter. I sat down again in the station hall. I cried and laughed the same time.

“Hey Lady, is everything alright with you?” An old man had sat down beside me. I told him my story about getting back my hope and my joy.

“But I still wish to lose my heavy bags.” I ended my story.

“What is in your heavy bags?” he asked.

“Well,” I sighed, “I had a lot of bad experiences, hurts, guilt, doubts, fears. – Do you know how to get rid of them?”

He smiled. “Losing heavy things is not so easy, eh? They are often connected with the fear of forgetting and forgetting bad things is often connected with the fear of happening again. Right?”

I nodded.

“Love helps,” he continued.

“But I have lost my love.” I answered sadly.

“Okay,” he said, “and what’s about your self-love? I’m pretty sure you have some, otherwise you wouldn’t wish to change your baggage.”

I looked around, “Could be I have a little bag self-love anywhere.”

“So take care of your self-love, let it grow. This can be a way to lose your doubts and fear and guilt. I’m sure you won’t miss them. And love will heal your hurts. And love,” he said, “will become more and more, if you take care of it and you will be able to give love and so you will get love.”

I felt that this man was right.

“And – do you also know, how I can find my lost time and my lost humor?”

He smiled again. “Time,” he said, “is lost. It is past. But take care of your future moments. Try to enjoy every moment in your life. And humor,” he said still smiling, “humor, you’ll see, come back alone.”

Before I could thank the old man for his advice, he disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. But he was right again.

After I had left the station – with my light baggage I had decided to walk except of taking another train – I found a bag of humor. I laughed and I danced and then – I wrote down this story.

Copyright © 2007, 2010 Ingrid Prohaska


the original post > http://dancingella.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-terminal.html

  • Links

DancingElla’s Words > http://dancingella.blogspot.com/


Viennese Legends > http://vienneselegends.blogspot.com/

DancingElla’sWords on facebook > http://www.facebook.com/DancingEllasWords
DancingElla on twitter > https://twitter.com/#!/dancingella
 —
DancingElla’s Words, where my stories are at home

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A New York Legend

19 Sep

September 19, 2011

Today’s post is a tantalizing tale of imponderable probability and vague veracity. Settle in for The Mad Nazi and the Invisible Bridge of Mid-Town Manhattan.

During the post-war building boom the New York skyline reached for the stars. Great towers of steel and glass soared as city real estate became scarce. Land barons and moguls found themselves boxed in shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors in the crowded city, unable to expand their holdings. But even if they could not expand horizontally, they could still reach for the sky. The height of their buildings was limited only by manpower, materials, and imagination.

Imagination was never in short supply, and manpower was delivered by thousands of returning GI’s. One of the side-benefits of the war effort was that new materials and technology developed for the military was becoming available for civilian use. And some should never have fallen into civilian hands.

In the last days of World War II, a fiendishly brilliant but utterly mad Nazi scientist toiled in Hitler’s laboratories to create a method of making German warplanes undetectable to Allied eyes. He planned to build a new generation of war machines out of an invisible metal he was on the verge of creating. And if planes could be made invisible, so then could tanks, battleships, and ultimately even soldiers.

It was in the final stages of testing when an allied air strike destroyed the laboratory, burying the last hopes of Hitler just scant days before the planes were to go into production, and the deranged scientist himself died in the blast.

Not long after, American troops arrived and occupied the area. In a pouring rain, a lone soldier took refuge in the ruins of an old building. The soldier, a private returning from a patrol, took as much shelter as the half-collapsed building could provide, moving far back into the structure. Poking through overturned cabinets and kicking piles of ashes and half-burnt papers, his eye caught a single page, nearly uncharred, and covered with what seemed to be diagrams and blueprints for a strange new airplane. Although he couldn’t read German, he judged by the angry red words stamped across the top that he had found something important. He carefully folded it and stored it in his pack, and when the weather allowed he returned to camp, where the strange document passed from private to lieutenant to colonel, up the chain of command to general, and ultimately to a small and secret government research lab in Washington DC.

The formula the scientists interpreted was beyond even the intellect of the top US research scientists. Try as they might, none of them could create the “invisible metal” of the brilliant but insane Nazi. Out of desperation, the top army generals turned to the one man capable of synthesizing the complex chemical compound. He was a young genius, a whiz kid of science, whose New York chemical company was the centerpiece of scientific advancement. He had led his company in creating many innovations for the government during the war, and his rapidly growing Manhattan offices now occupied most of the floors of two gleaming skyscrapers that stood directly across from each other on either side of a busy mid-town avenue.

The brilliant chemist was not only able to follow the mad Nazi’s work, he continued it, creating dozens of invisible metal prototypes, many of which graced the offices of powerful congressmen and senators. And not only was they invisible, but any metal infused with the compound became extremely strong and flexible.

The first practical demonstration of the invisible wonder metal was to be a bridge connecting the two office towers, spanning the busy metropolitan street below. No longer would the scientist have to dodge crowds and taxis while going from one department to another, the invisible walkway would make his company whole, allowing him to stride on the sunlight 20 stories above the traffic.

Being a military project, the bridge was built in secret, at night, and it took far shorter than expected because the metal was so easy to work with. In a matter of mere days the span was completed and top ranking officials flew in to New York to witness the unveiling.

All was ready, final tests had been completed, and just hours before the bridge was to open, a junior laboratory assistant rushed into the company’s head office and, with a force that dented the desktop, smacked the final test results down on the head scientist’s desk. A terrible discovery had been made.

Prolonged exposure to direct sunlight made the metal react with oxygen, turning it weak and brittle, though still maintaining invisibility,

It was a devastating blow. The government cancelled their contracts, and all the money that was poured into the invisible metal project was never recouped. The company was ruined, and no one ever crossed the invisible bridge in the sky. It was classified a military secret and all documents pertaining to it were confiscated.

The chemical company sold one skyscraper, then the other, and though it limped along for a few more years they eventually went bankrupt and the amazing wonder kid of the scientific world killed himself by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.

The buildings went through a succession of owners and tenant after tenant took over the chemical offices. None of them knew that just below a certain window lay an invisible walkway, and the bridge, whose existence was known only to a very few to begin with, was forgotten and lost to memory.

The only records of it can be found in certain old and dusty documents filed in the bowels of the National Archives, and for six decades the bridge has been high in the sky, like an invisible Sword of Damocles, hanging above the heads of the unknowing throngs below.

The few in government who have been around long enough to remember the bridge refuse to discuss it. If pushed, they will tell you it is only a myth. After all, would you tell the people of Manhattan that a brittle and nearly collapsing invisible bridge twenty stories in the air might come crashing down at any time as they crossed a certain busy street in mid-town Manhattan?

This New York Legend comes to you courtesy of a New York radio legend, overnight icon and late-night radio pioneer, Long John Nebel, with flourishes and embellishment by yours truly.

Cue mysterious laughter.

An audio version of this legend first appeared just last week in the amazing FlashPulp website. Check them out for awesomeness and goodies!

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