word calisthenics

When I was a teenager, I took drawing classes. One of my favourite exercises consisted in having a fellow classmate draw a wild, free scribble on a page in our sketchpad, and transforming it into whatever our mind happened to see.

I wondered what the equivalent would be for a writer. If we were many, we could continue each other's stories, bounce words and ideas off each other, but on my own? Then it occurred to me: simply pick words at random and weave them into whatever story my mind happened to see.

So here are my first two attempts.

1. but / jukebox / reel / motive / tutoyer

(For those unfamiliar with the last selected word - tutoyer - it is the act of using the French familiar “tu” rather than the formal “vous”. It’s similar to the Spanish “tu/usted”. I never would have guessed that tutoyer was in an English dictionary, but there it was, under my finger, in my Merriam-Webster.)

He ordered a coffee, then slid out the banquette and fished some coins from his front jeans pocket. He peered at his weatherworn hands; it appeared he succeeded in getting all the blood off. His mind reeled, and he steadied himself on the old jukebox in the corner of the diner. Of course, the cops would soon come; they could show means and opportunity – but they would never understand his motive. Even he wasn’t sure he did. “Tu veux-tu aut’ chose?” asked the waitress, in the hoarse voice of someone who’s spent far too many years in smoky dive bars. Goddamn, how he hated being tutoyé’d by complete strangers – how rude.

For the second take, I decided to try an online
"random word generator",
which yielded

2. cyclist / cold / bill / coding / capitalist

All words in "b" and "c"...how odd.

The bitterly cold wind blasted the cyclist in the face; he tucked in his head and kept pedaling through the slushy streets of the city. He dreamt of being a trapeze artist in the Caribbean, but coding for the man at the center of the most evil capitalist empire of the Great White North paid the bills.