Author: Douglas

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Day 91: Less, but Better Words

My traffic spike is well and truly dead.  It back to just me and the words and not a single pair of eyes.  At least that’s what my WordPress.com Stats plugin says.  I don’t know if that tracks feed readers–I kinda think not.  If I get time I might wrestle with Feedburner today.  Though when I glanced recently it didn’t look to have changed it’s chunky UI.

I’ve written of my jealousy of artists being able to make a stroke or two on a page and have a clear product.  I’ve even tried to put my money where my mouth was, but the effort is flagging.  Sunday I drifted through the entire inventory of a art supply store here in Houston looking for books and hope.  I made out pretty well.

Flipping pages in one of the more instructional how-to’s I came across an exercise entitled “Treatments of Water”.  Below the title was some text I didn’t read–how little respect I have for my passion for words.  Below those were five sketches the author/artist may have spent less time on than it takes to sharpen a pencil.  Lingering on the page was not necessary as the gestalt smacked me hard with about four clear thoughts at once: artistry is work no matter how much I think it isn’t, a primary characteristic of water is it’s desire to be level, edges like rocks or glass lend water all it’s interest, and I could parallel this lesson in words.

With wild lack of imagination, or perhaps unintentional homage, my first rendition was of five scenes involving water.  Some less directly than others.

I enjoyed the effort and liked the structure but ultimately I was sloppy in my execution.  I put in too many words and sentences to have truly mimicked the artist’s lean example.  I will be trying this again soon using less, but better words to accomplish more.  Maybe a few of these will instruct me on how to use more less but better word combinations.

Word count: 332

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Day 90: Waking Up with Hiccups

I have a feeling that both the physiological and the metaphorical hiccups will plague me today.  As a side note, I also went to sleep hiccupping.  What follows is not intentionally an extension of yesterday’s Five Times with Water.  Also, nothing to do with hiccups.

To the inexperienced, the uneducated, the mundane it might just be mist–or fog.  That’s all it would have been to Eric a fortnight ago.  Now it was more like a humor.  A seeping vapor of Melancholic rising off the foreign landscape becoming Sanguine.  But maybe that’s just Eric.  Maybe that’s just new-Eric.

Eric traveled with his girlfriend Jill to the [something Chinese] province of China to do some guided backpacking.  They spent two-weeks traipsing the backwaters of the nation discovering [this], [that], and [some other things].  Mostly they discovered that she was pregnant.  And didn’t want to be.

There was a fight in which the phrases, "This isn’t the 50’s.  You don’t have to do the right thing because you knocked me up." and "When did you become such a God damned Feminist?" were exchanged.

Eric brooded on the Feminist thing.  He didn’t really know what it was supposed to mean.  As far as he could recall Feminists were pretty laid back these days and Jill had never claimed to be one nor had she really become a ‘God damned’ one either.  But it did have a rhythm on the tongue as he’d said screamed it.  He’d long ago learned never to use the word cunt unless you were ready to proceed directly to the nearest exit, so he restrained himself–somewhat.  He wasn’t ready to end it.

Word count: 294

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Day 89: Five Times with Water

The dip and the stoke of the paddle in the clear mountain lake hypnotized me.  Gravel, rocks, and boulders glided beneath me.  Their refracted positions making them look magnified.  I hardly noticed as the level surface before me bent sinuously into a hole of falling water.

***

Plap, plap, plap, plap.  Wake waves splashed out a brief beat at the corner of the fishing dock.

***

We’d been talking.  I’d just said, "I’m not sure I understand anymore.  I’m not even sure I want to try to understand."  It didn’t seem like a great thing to say.  I know I wouldn’t want to hear it, but it was the truth.  The effort to understand her moods, her thoughts, and her feelings exceeded what I was willing to invest.  I thought she was going to reply.

In the past she might have said, "What the hell?" or "Brian, please think of this from my perspective." or even "You always were a lazy prick."  Instead she stared at her drink.

Water condensed on the cold glass.  A fog of humidity grew to a field of speckles.  Those coalesced into droplets.  The droplets cohered into light refracting beads that further obscured the whiskey tainted light–yes, she drank whiskey.  The combined mass of water was too much for one drop.  It ran down the glass and escaped.

"You know, you’re right."

***

The forgotten spill soaked into his sock from the carpet.  Instantly he clenched his teeth and raged inside.

***

Fr. Tom could still feel the coolness in the handle.  The metal had not fully warmed to his hand.  Any other time of the year.  Any other Mass and he’d feel solitary.  He never felt alone, that was not possible, but he never felt with his Prisoners.  When they renewed their Baptismal vows and he anointed them with three shakes of holy water from the aspergillum it shouldn’t have made him feel more connected, but it did.  Splashing near strangers in the chest and the eyes and the hair with water separates people.

***

At first I thought I could pull out ten of those, but five felt good for a first run of this exercise.

Word count: 350