What I would give for a clean notebook...or a fresh, blissfully cool breeze on my sticky skin. Half filled with nonsense wit-fully jotted down several years prior, I wondered vaguely how much paper was left, exactly. And if it would be enough.
The power had been lost for over six hours ago to nothing: not a storm, nor strong winds, nothing. Only 90 degree heat. As now, as I sat on a bare bed, writing by candlelight at what I believed to be ten thirty, I wondered just what I would have given for the reliefs I wanted so strongly.
My pillar candles flickered. To my lazy relief, a gently breath of a breeze came through the window. Sharp little pitter-pats from the light shower poked holes in the silence of my night. Relief? Were you calling to me? I pushed a small mountain of pillows away from the window but didn't yet move. I kept writing. My inspiration was surrounding me like the summer storm and somewhere deep down, I might have felt that if I did move, I would have to pause and this moment would be lost forever. My handwriting was big and loopy, a fault I placed on the fact that the candles to my right cast a shadow over the page where I wrote my words. Childish writing.
I couldn't take it anymore - I moved by the window. Away from the light, I couldn't see my writing whatsoever. And surprisingly, the new position didn't offer much more relief than the first. Just my luck...I had the worst of it.
What I would give for a less bleak outlook. Or silence from the rain-drunk screaming frogs in the back yard by the pond and pool. If I just closed my eyes and listened, it wasn't so bad. If I wasn't concentrating, there was no concentration to be lost. I laid my head on my arm beside me and tried that: not thinking. My eyes closed and I itched my face with the end of my pen. Far away in the outskirts of on consciousness, I wondered in this Michigan Night Music was trademarked to this place. And if I ever traveled or went away to somewhere vastly different, if I would miss it or ever really hear it again.
I was tired. And as I thought more and more about what I had just written, I wondered if my fictional storied would ever be that good. What you just read happened, is happening right now as I write in that old, half-filled notebook. Certain details like that were very distinctive. So distinctive that I made it feel genuinely real. That realness is what I desired for my stories. Only this is real, they aren't. All I've got to do is pierce a hole in the barrier that separated them. Which presented a genuine challenge on my part.
ThaddeusTheThird · Mon Jun 09, 2008 @ 03:13am · 0 Comments |