Creative Writing Class
What would you do if you had a month to hone your writing skills?
I for one am entirely too excited for words, and that could be a problem, because I just started a Creative Writing summer class at UofL.
For your first assignment, you must write a page about the image of a bumper sticker with the tagline, “I brake for unicorns.” Now, what in the world do you come up with? Serious? Fantastical? Prose? Poetic? I fiddled with a little something like this:
The glaring brake lights hit my eyes at the last moment.
The mahogany tagline, “I brake for unicorns,” was smacked onto the edge of the vintage VW’s bumper, squashed between stains of chaotic rust and the newness of a polished, ebony paint job.
Black . . . charcoal, like the color of midnight, the car blended into everything else – everything mute. The ignited frenzy stalled, corroding the perfect sense of serenity before it happened . . . It all spiraled backward – like time held out its hands to push the sequence back from whence it gushed forth.
The night rumbled on, the pick-up truck racking its brains out to the tune of another humdrum melody languidly playing on the radio. The pulse of the night sank slowly into the beat of the wind . . . flip, flap, flip, flap, hushhhhhhhh of the dark rows of grasslands galloping by in strides of fanciful laughter.
With my palm pressing itself against a sore steering wheel, I hardly noticed the ache as the wind licked my other hand – out the window.
Sparingly, I took in the sights. There was nothing on which to perch my eyes. Nothing of interest. Everything a blur. Black. Cottony swoons of nebulous nothingness swished past my tired eyes.
My ebony chucks polished off a swift kick to the accelerator. Bah-boom-baa-room-zzzzz!
I blocked out the world then . . . a sorry mistake.
A jolt of lightning splashed the sky like a paint dollop on a fresh canvas. Everything beamed brightly, glaring like the ionic lights on the VW bug – more like a hunk of metal meteorites bursting spontaneously from nowhere.
Fog lights.
Red brakes.
Black.
Textures of ruby, hazy coffee, and golden light careened behind the car that tumbled toward me. Clutching the steering wheel, searing hot nerves pulsed energy through the roof of my head. I jerked my arms to move the car. Everything froze.
Gasp.
Splinters of icy glass shattered before me. Every inch of the windshield collided with my upheld forearms. The car screeched forward, nowhere to turn. Squeezing my eyes shut did nothing for the scenery that just jammed its arms in to open the shutters of my vision. The broken window scattered stinging licks, every slice splashing crimson ticks of tiny glass particles through my skin.
Not enough time for words to scream out.
Everything meshed together.
A world of peace and another of pieces crashed into one realm of unreasonable pain and misfortune. A whirlwind of tirades, the breeze bashed its teeth against the creaking collision.
The VW bumper sliced its way through the windshield, bits and pieces of the mahogany sticker screaming, “I brake for unicorns!” Like a whip, my truck lurched backward, my being hesitating harshly between the impact and the loss of breathing room.
Not a moment later, silence again paraded past – silence that stung one’s eardrums that searched for a timbre of sound.
The truck rum-rum-rumbled in a stalled park – beaten to a standstill. Everything washed back uncertainly as I lowered my bloodstained forearms. Tensely, my pulse bashed through my head in heaps of rhythmic pain. I opened my eyes. The VW – gone. Whoosh. Like a scene from The Wizard of Oz. Everything seemed so still. The windshield – whole. Not a scratch on the surface.
I blinked . . . The mahogany sticker was strapped into the passenger’s seat, covered in shiny glass shards.
Short Story Slam
Some John Wayne anyone?
haha okay, I’m supposed to write a short story or poem about this photo. And, I don’t feel like a story right now, so let’s go with a poem . . .
Buckaroo eyes
A thin cargo trim,
Before the cowboy tries
To dream against a whim.
Hand draped idly,
Protective. Perspective
Never hastens wildly
Except to sweep the scene retrospective
Before it all . . .
After the squall,
Came another story–
A truer journey
Told across the wrinkles
And twinkles in his starboard eyes–
The wily expression of cowboys
And indians messing around with the race of space . . .
And time.
Never enough of it
To tell
Pray well
How the scar crossed
His gray-stone eyes
Or a freckle of luck
Kept him alive . . .
But there’s an experience
That forgets the rest–
It’s the perseverance
In this man’s chest.
Dreaming Epic Proportions
You know that dream you had that fits right into a sci-fi movie? Well, let me tell you, this is one scene I’ll give you for that film you’re working on . . . I’ll warn you beforehand that my dreams are crazy adventurous, bending the rules of physics, with sub-plots, and are highly dangerous. And, yes, I do dream in color. . . .
This is what happened.
Dark, almost inherently so was the void, the tunnel. Trickling movement made its tenuous threads thick along the corners of my eyes. Skeletons. Pieces. Broken debris. Dirt.
He yanks my arm. I ignore the tug as my eyes latch to a tiny object on a pedestal. It glows faintly. Jumping to it, I flip it open, the light in the pages pouncing forward. A highlighted section finds its way to my eyes as I hold it up, ” . . . the Good Shepherd.” Flowers and medieval renditions of knights and shields press their faces into my view. I hold out the book to the darkness, and everything whirls to a tumultuous . . . clarity.
We’re standing in the backyard now. Everything is the same. Basketball rim high above. Azaleas in bloom. Birds . . . not chirping. Nothing moving. No wind. No voice. Nothing. He stares at me with his hazel eyes. Does he have a sword in his hand? Everything’s too quiet. And, then a puppy bounds into my sight. He’s been there, it seems.
Then, my eyes screech to a halt as the screaming image lurches into view, croaks and creaks and rocking bellows collapsing onto my ears. “We have to run . . .” I squeak. Is that an audible sentence? He pivots. I think we both screamed when the steel ship miles wide and a football field high collided with the concrete in front of us. A metal chain yanks at the starboard side as the ship bounces like a ball in screeching clangs as houses go down like the tide rolling. Toward us. He ducks, me under his arm, as the ship barely reels over us in a jolting jump. The rocks tremble.
“Go! Go!” No need to say it twice. We were both off and running into the street, the alley. Something in the prophecies (who knows where I came across those) said, “laying in the ground . . . the ground. We have to–” I tremble, my words almost falling out as the ship behind us springs back on its chain. Much like a heat-seeking bowling ball, the tide turns and the ship heads straight for us. Feeling like a mouse haunted by a hawk. “Lay down in the ground?” He bows to the earth. “No!” Come on, there has to be another explanation . . . “The sewers!”
The thunder of the booming ship runs over the banging of my heart. He goes down first, then me, then the dog. The worst kind of noise, like the jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex, bites the earth. Everything quakes. Including me. This sewer system is more like an abyss than a sewer. Chain-linked fences–green–span the place on both sides. Nothing below–just blackness . . . and nothing as walls besides those green coils. I hang on to this place with everything I have as the ship booms on.
I look at him, his strong hands holding the dog in place between both fences. A vision rocks my gaze as I cling against the clanking green.
I see a creature as dark as the night, dressed as dazzling as the flowers. It holds its eyes in mine, smiling wretchedly. A facto-mortem, they’re called. They were the things that placed the poisonous apple in Snow White’s story . . . the spinning wheel in Aurora’s way . . . the obstacles of passivity. In a spiral of pain, the world tosses back to me my clinging hands.
“We need to act now . . . or we’ll become a fairytale.”
He stares at me. The gleam of a shaft of sunlight wilting his expression. He opens his mouth . . .
The end. I know. Best time to wake up.
But, the funny thing is–the subconscious tie of truth–the moral to this dream. The sin of passivity. I was talking to God about this the other day . . . how belief and action are one and the same. Lee Strobel once said in an interview, “Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me how you live, and then I’ll tell you what you believe.”
Faith is action. Not passivity. The obstacles in our lives are set like chess pieces in the battlefield of the mind. And, it takes time, it takes effort, it takes courage to make a move.
Don’t let the facto-mortem . . . “death facts” get you. There is a far greater Truth out there we need to be actively pursuing.
So, that was my dream. What a way to start the day waking from that one. Live to die another day, I say. For, to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. I will take up my cross . . . daily . . . and follow Him. Dead to myself. But oh so alive.
And, in that principle we must find that God is not a crutch. He’s powerful. Much more powerful than we could ever imagine. In Exodus, God tells Moses to “be sure to do the WONDERS that I have placed within your power before Pharaoh.” What a verse! God has put wonders in our paths to accomplish. That means YOU are a powerful being, child of the Most High God, Who has called you to do wonders through Christ Jesus’s grace.
So above the standpoint of a dream, let me say this . . . Don’t let people think for you . . . But, then I just did, didn’t I? The point being–fill your head with God-sized wonders and truths . . . not the arguments, opinions, thoughts of the world or other people . . . but of God. He’s the one that matters. And, He has given you the power to move . . . to have your being in Him. To act. What’s your choice?
I thought magic was just make believe
He blinked. Another thought trailing through his head like a rabbit burrowing down a bunny hole.
Through his eyes the whole story unrolls in a glance of telling magic. Everything looks different from here . . .
Brown, dark, coal-colored brown are these two alike. Lively, to tell the short end, and brave, to tell the long.
He blinked.
An other young man perched upon the other side of a window caught his blinks. The door slithered open under the hand of a hot day, uncurling waves of windy cold coming to meet our blinking friend.
This “other”, of origins untold, met this entering soul with a charming smile . . . disarming. Other, as we’ve named him, comes to grips with the interesting being a few paces forth. Other puts a finger on a deck of cards, his wandering hand patting the stream of numbers and faces oddly falling into place.
Michael blinked.
He blinked again.
Assembling fact from observation rivets such eyes as his. They spin inside his head.
“Care to sit?” Other’s handsome features dip, kindly revealing his intrigue of the visitor.
Michael’s head shook, cordially accepting the invitation with an eager air, completely enthralled by the cards in the young man’s hand.
“You like magic?” Other’s sky blue eyes dance as the pitter patter of card feet flies through the air.
Michael’s eyes respond more than the shaking of his cranium speaks. Eyes, the brown duo, shriek a pleasing yes as they crease.
“Okay . . . watch closely.”
Other waves a few cards from the stained table, clearing his throat with the simplest of coughs. Michael’s tense expression holds itself still, a little furrow shadowing his brow in tender lines.
His brown eyes squint.
The card disappeared.
Vanished.
Gone.
Excitement.
Intrigue.
Wonder.
The screw on Michael’s jaw unwinds slowly as if to give a leash to his speechless tongue. Nothing forms words.
A warm laugh unfurls from Other’s throat with a, “You like that, huh?”
With a few open-mouthed shakes of his head, Michael proceeds to keep vigil of the deck in Other’s meek hands.
“Okay . . . watch closely.”
Michael’s intent stare breaks from the card for a moment, traveling up the young man’s highlighted face with such wonder as to stir magic to its highest momentum . . . tumbling magic into reality. Other’s eyelashes cascade over such eyes as were unique to blue . . . soft and full of another world.
Michael’s sight dashes back to the lively display efflorescing from the cunning fingers of the magician.
But, what makes this exchange so special is that this character called Other, though obscurely outlined, is quite well-known to you. Though, you may wonder as to where you met him . . . in some distant land . . . as if by magic.
And, what makes this exchange truly magical is that this character called Michael—
The card disappeared.
Vanished.
Gone.
No questions asked.
Excitement.
Wonder.
Other’s lips purse in a simple simper.
“I thought . . . magic . . . was just make believe.” Michael’s mouth moves.
Other’s eyes close in light of a wonderful smile.
And, what makes this exchange truly magical is that this character called Michael—sees through autistic eyes.
Through his eyes the whole story unrolls in a glance of telling magic. Everything looks different from here . . .
Brown, dark, coal-colored brown are these two alike. Lively, to tell the short end, and brave, to tell the long.
He blinked.
Writing a short story
A little story about a hoipe has caught my eye, and I think I’m going to make it into a short story with a little twist. It’s really hard to confine a story down to 2500 words, since I’m used to writing a novel, which is about 100000 words. But, I’ll let you know how that goes as I keep trying to shave down my descriptive parlance. haha…I hope that doesn’t hurt me too much. But, here goes nothing! So, far I’m at 2889 words, and I feel like it’s going to get longer from there. :)
Breaking Wild
She walked away, carrying a bottle of clouds and sunshine, letting it loose. His eyes followed her, creased with the passion of a crescent moon shining down from the night sky. He found his hand atop the lid of a bottle encasing a sunset; the top unscrewed so easily, unfolding its contents to the pallid sky, slapping paint onto the white sheet of a pallet. He remembered what it was like, capturing time . . .
He leaned back, furrowed eyes deepening in contentment as he fiddled with another bottle in his hands. A crisp cloud resonated from the jail of glass. He remembered how the clouds used to puff and swirl, evaporating slowly into a bottle held by his once shivering hands. He had waited all night to catch those roaming tigers on the mountainside, listening to their rumbling roars and echoing tendencies of lightning, rain, and thunder. And so, the capture was worth it when that first ray of sunlight spilt through the horizon. The color—so vibrant—and the vapor of clouds—so white . . . The stroke of time was perfect, and another moment crept into the bottle, captured and whole and crisp—just like a photograph, but tangible.
What if you could bottle up a piece of life? That had been his question for many years—one that he never could seem to place in a bottle itself.
He knew full well that captivating a moment was not a splash in a puddle or a dance in the rain, but it was a true art, a love of what you captured, a thirst for something pure—truer to form than could ever be defined by two-dimensional things.
Take a cloud, for example—their white tufts swirl and transform, move and dance, among the azure wisps of wind above your reach, and yet if you take the time to fancy them in a picture, all is lost as if you just tried to catch the vapors with your bare fingers, watching them sift through the cracks in your hand . . . He never realized that his art was the same, prosaic action—trying to capture something so untamed and wild in itself that if you did survive the capture, it would be a pity to master something so beautiful.
When he dropped his work for a moment, carving his way into the streets of the city, it was as if everything changed.
The woven streets of Venice wound their ways alive with people, stirring and striving toward a destination of even more busyness and bustling. But, something seemed amiss—the old man who bottled time strolled, PIT after PAT of his shoes atop the crags of brick and stone. He sighed, shallowly, almost absently, filching a glance at the perfect, blue sky. But, it was not the sky that moved him to sigh; it was only its picture that made him blind to his reasoning of why he was so distraught and distant to the thing he loved most—his art.
Then, something weaved its way into his head amongst the blurs of people, the striking tossing and turning of each head, and the rocking of his body . . . A whisper twirled upward into his ears as he pulled his cart along, fashioned with all manner of shining bottles that cradled moments unspent, un-relished, un-enjoyed.
“Sir,” the tone persisted.
He kept on, still transfixed upon the focus of listlessness, his sadness contained inside.
“Sir?” the murmur hung in his ears, like a dribbling beat of a mallet upon the stretched-top of a drum.
He turned.
“Yes, little one . . . what may I do for you?” He crouched, smiling slightly as he followed her expression that wound its way toward the bottles; this was the expression that would forever transform his perspective.
“Your bottles. They’re beautiful.” She replied to his stillness.
“Would you like one?” His rejoined came to a shallow end as her eyes almost blistered with glossy tears.
He had not taken the time to notice the rags about her body.
“Oh . . . no . . .” She sheepishly rocked herself backward a hair.
His smile faded, falling on the pavement, and at once, his true self came through, twisting the edge of his own bottle’s top.
“I was just wondering, though . . . if you are so concentrated on bottling a moment up, how can you truly enjoy the scene?” Her eyes lifted to his, and you could say that her eyes held the first splashes of true color that he had seen in a long time.
It was then that he realized: you cannot truly enjoy a moment in its entirety if you are too worried about capturing the scene, the masterpiece, because if you do capture it, the awe of that unbridled stallion will fade, breaking its Wild.
Crackkk! Splissse!
The bottles shattered, leaving a vision that would send your world turning.
A little Christmas spirit…
A tail of a pup . . .
A dog . . . at least, that’s what his whole existence told him until the teeth of doubt crept up on him and danced around his tail—more like a dog than himself, chasing its fluffy ball of a stuffed tail. . . . see the whole story by clickety clacking the link . . .
LIFE
Losing everything—that’s where we begin.
Nowhere . . .
. . . is . . .
. . . Everywhere . . .
. . . And, solitude is the only place you can hold in the hollow of your hands without it cracking to pieces.
Silence—its beat engulfs your senses, wiping them away with a loud hum that overcomes every minute moment of comfort.
Darkness—where icy images tilt the world, making up reality in tales of dusk and myths of light.
Cold—icicles transpierce the once warm meaning of your veins, slowing the pulsing life within you.
Noise—whispers of tripping sound fear the mask of silence, yet the murmurs pitter forth as if agony stirred them to speak.
Light—where a hand, once cloaked in black, returns itself as a blurry sight; the fingers wave drifts of movement against your cracked skin.
Warmth—life floods back into your veins.
Life starts; blood rushes; pain drowns.
Life . . .
Life . . .
Life . . .
A beating rhythm surmises relief as the air wraps its dithering fingers around the instrument from which the drumming noise rolls.
THUMP . . . It beats fervently for hope.
TH-THUMP . . . It waits, stuttering, as if life wanted more than to exhale the dusty ruins of this setting.
BEAT . . . Your heart beats; the waves of coolness drift away, and all you are left with is a memory—a memory of how it used to be: life without meaning.
1. Theme: Life without a real relationship with Christ is meaningless (Ecclesiastes). Also, you have to realize that you lose everything before you gain your everything, your every breath, Christ.
2. Character: This essay recounts the life of a sinner before Christ and after Christ, a meaningless life and then a life full of verve and breath. As my friend put it: Jesus is the man with the tools to shock you back to life in a vacant hospital room where your heart monitor has nothing more to examine until it jumps up ever so slightly in a pulse.
Saturday on the Eastern Front…
It’s a cloudy one…have to say that I’m excited about it being fall, but I really want it to be sunny. :)
All right, so here’s what we’ve been doing in Speech and Comp… :)
Character sketch…o man…here we go…maybe you can tell me something more about him:
“Stay down! They hunt by air waves . . . Be still,” his voice beckoned, reaching for my sentience, but something kept me bound to itself as my frame stood above the mountains of white that paraded before me.
“Tay!”
I pivoted to note this remark. Tugged to the ground by the hearty grasp of my friend, the ground bit my hand, wrenching its icy teeth through my singeing nerves.
“I have to recover our flank . . . Wait here—and, DON’T MOVE,” his breath stumbled out of his mouth in colorless, tenuous threads.
Absently, I retrieved his explanation as the interesting fore provoked the fixity of my eyes to wander through the trails of the creamy white of a sudden winter. The cold imbued every aspect of this strange place; it appeared still, but something lurked in its stead that brought the remnants of peace forth in the writhing fingers of fervent discontent.
A figure, cloaked in black, skulked through the waning land. Its form, tall and dark, sifted through the shifting flakes of the peppery white that met their end in its dusky cloak.
Shadows shrank away, and he stood—a formidable stature in a sea of white.
His eyes panned to me; they soaked in everything, taking their time with the things that passed across the grazing reflections of his sight. Azure, they appeared intensely, questioning this scene in its fullness, as they reached toward me like two shivering hands.
My brow must have furrowed, for he tilted his head and emulated my expression with such a fervent aura as to speak, his ribbon mouth circled in an “o”. Then, his lips formed a small smile, his ever-blue eyes creasing.
A glistening track caught my gaze for the moment, winding itself down from a source of a now expressionless pool of blue—a trail of tears.
“My name’s Arkus . . .” His lips quivered, the sweet strain of his voice collapsing.
Who is he? What does he want?
All right, so in composition class, here’s the rub:
MAKE A PICTURE TRUE
We looked at a photo . . . our group saw a black and white picture of a football player on the ground. Our assignment: write about it as if you were there. Make the reader feel the photo . . . All right, here goes nothing . . .
The blank sky blazing to lurid colors and white ringing vibrantly true, the football field rolled on ahead, the piqued shocks of grass all spent in the dust and ash of victory’s tune. But, it wasn’t victory that split the air, it wasn’t cheer; what splashed through the biting air of fall came to rest upon the shoulders of a shuddering soldier—a grass-kissed jersey folded itself over silence, collapsing into the despair of a loss, the death of a tribute. My eyes never strayed; they rested, imbibing every inch of this warrior’s stance. He shivered at moments he breathed, worrying his hands about the grass—glass blades biting his hands as he clutched their shards in agony. He lay like that, slain and desperate, for a while. I soaked my eyes in the cool gloss of a blink, trying to strain away the blistering breezes as they soared by. Then, my pupils collapsed upon ripping themselves ajar, strung tautly now to a line of lighted beads, emanating shocks of white sight. I looked away, my eyes trailing downward through the peaks and valleys of the numbered lights that counted faultily of the score. A few spectators, sorely rushed for lack of time, brushed by my sorry stance in excitement; their clean cotton bit my back as they thrashed through, creating a tension in my being that clung to the rimy rail of the stands. I stood, shivering, biting my lip as a breath caught the air in visibility for a moment, borrowing a cloudy cloak from its hands. Something drowned; that something was a something I could not pass words upon, but it happened to be a something of great importance to the warrior defeated by a sea of grass. Out of place it seemed to be, rocking its regal ridges against a plain plot of land. Somber solace spread its callow wings over this soldier, his frame hunkered in the splashes of groaning grass that relieved the air of the want to be taken in.
Memoir of a first grader…
So, I hated my last one…the one about the wind because it’s too serious… :) So, here’s the one I’m turning in! Hope you enjoy! :)
It was possibly the most stupidest thing I had ever done in my 1st grade career—ok, ok, maybe the second most stupidest thing I had ever done…next to the time I ran into that pole, but that was because there was something more interesting than where my feet were taking me. Oh well, that’s all over now—back to the second most stupidest thing I have ever done in my life…it happened on a cool day like this…
It was a day, much like the regular days of fall—you remember: when the wind picks up and licks your face clean like the tongue of a dog smacking its chops after wiping your strawberry-ice-cream-covered face. It was one of those days, yep, and I should have seen it coming.
So we plodded along, a single file line as always, popping our heads out of singularity every so often to try and figure out what Mrs. Peterson was feeling like today, if she would give us a long recess or a short one because we had started giggling that morning—Matthew had done something rather funny by kicking the door opened a few times, so we thought that was humorous, but we should have known that it would lead to a whole slew of things at recess…one of them being a shorter time outside. Phooey.
Well, there I was, racing around the bend of the monkey bars, the pat clop clip of my worn shoes upon the mulchy gravel…I had been deemed the fastest thing on two legs, so all the boys were running after me now, sprinting at my heels. I got tired of this game because they could never catch me, so I called it quits and started on a new venture—to be the first one to conquer the inevitably winding monkey bars. Wow, those things are high.
So, I sized them up—eyeing them like a real expert, sniffing up a little bit of cold drips so I wouldn’t have to wipe my nose half-way through them. Then, I leaned forward—my shoe-laces dangling like shoe-laces do, and I grabbed the first blue bar, hoping that I could swing my way through. So it began—the most stupidest thing I had ever done in my 1st grade career.
I swung and twisted and maneuvered around, slipping at one point, then hoisting myself through the maze of the meandering monkey bars. I guess it was something of a spectacle because everyone started watching, wondering if I was going to fall or keep my wits about me…as for myself, I was starting to wonder the same.
So, I kept reaching and swinging, reaching and swinging…then, I came to the hardest part of the whole thing—the turn at the very end. I had almost made it! The first one to conquer the monkey bars! But, how in the world could I contort my burning arms around the turn at the end? I sighed for a second, dangling like my shoe-laces at this point—everyone watching. What was I going to do? Well, I gulped, sniffed, watching the long bars parade themselves in front of my watery eyes—they were getting quite blurry now because of the cold. That last bar over there seemed like a long reach, too long, like something that you want so bad but you can’t quite get it because you’re not tall enough—that happened a lot. So, I pushed forward, holding out my arm to the next bar, reaching…reaching…reaching! Got it…shoo…that was a hard one…Now, I’m kind of stuck, between the bar of my left arm and the bar of my right one…My arms are shaking now, kind of tired-like. Oh my, everyone’s still watching. Only three more to go…only three more…come on, you can do it…Just count…One, two…three! I swung one arm, then the other…Okay, only two more, two more…One, two…three! Got it…only one more…one more…One, two…uh, oh…uh, oh…I’m slipping! Take a second, breathe…wait for it…My legs are now wildly flailing, my arms trying to regain their composure, blisters screaming on the palms of my hands. My breath is dangling now, kind of like my untamed shoe-laces.
Wait a second…I’m here…I’m on the last one! How did that happen?
I open my eyes, the blackness all gone…I made it, and I was dangling in the wind, like the last leaf of fall, holding onto something I had already conquered…Was it really the most stupidest thing I had ever done in my whole entire life? Well, there was that one time when….
All right, composition class just started…
You know what that means! Writing! Yay! :) haha…Okay, so here’s my first piece…unedited… :) Oh man, I’m nervous…
The assignment: the memoir of a child…from your perspective…
That’s what it was…so simple…so easy…so…something…what’s the word? Well, anyway, it’s the wind that sweeps by, soothingly wrapping its outstretched fingers around my long hair—inviting, comforting, swinging…swinging…swinging…
The chains of the swing are long and winding, crashing together in pings and clinks when their ends are empty, though lively swaying in the wind…
Wind…it catches me fully in its cool licks, like the tongue of my dog colliding with my strawberry-ice-cream-smeared face. It feels so easy to accept—the wind, I mean—as it brushes back and forth, simply scattering the scathing leaves onto the sidewalk by the monkey bars. It’s fall, and everything is so alive and crisp, the smell of icy clearness washing itself across the lurid, blue sky…
Sky—that’s where I’m headed, rocking forward, then falling backward, pushing toward the destination of azure clouds. Sky—one part of me senses that I’m supposed to be up there, flying, and I guess the other does too, never reminding sentience that it’s said to be impossible.
Impossible…my fingers grip the rusty metal of the chains that hold the platform of dreams toward the sky, like the hands cosseting a dove. Rocking away all sense of sight, I fill my eyes with darkness, breathing and drinking in the air—what’s left of the leaf-laden scent anyway. There’s sounds…
Sounds…they all regress into a fuzzy muffled noise—the clicks of the metal fetters that guard the swing, the height of my classmate’s yell, the chatter of a few students by the tall oak tree, the clop pat clop of their shoes running along the mulch, and all through the lens of the wind—the woosh of it, the shyness of it, how sullen it seems to be today, washing its cold frost against my face anew, making my nose red and my fingers white in their grip of the swing…
Swing…won’t you swing? Take a seat on the back of the wind, make-believe you’re here with me on a journey of simplicity; but, you see, it’s not the complex things that make life worth its time here…it is the simple, the cleverly unsophisticated ways of a child, just trying to notice how a bird can take flight on the impossible journey. The wind and the simple can take a small mind somewhere so big; all you have to do, is step into the shoes of someone small and get the most out of everything you do…So, swing, and let your life unfold like the uncrumpling fingers of the outstretched wind toward your dreams…Swing…swing…swing…
The “hoipe” series….
All right…I created a little story off of an inside joke a friend (shelby) and I had… She misspelled a word, so these stories are inspired by her great and very fortuitous lack of spelling skills. :) So, for starters: a hoipe is a small mouse-like creature, smaller than a chipmunk. This animal has two tufts of hair just by its eyes with white hair sprinkled all along its frame. A hoipe has small ears and nimble paws, a long, slender tail and a lion’s fluffy end of that tail… Okay, got the picture? Oh yes, and they have very large eyes, usually very lucid in color…so here we go… the first of the hoipe series is in the post above… haha… enjoy. :) If you don’t enjoy it, that’s okay, cuz I’m entertaining myself here… :)
Reece the hoipe
