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Five Times with Air

Overnight I’ve been challenged to write in a particular manner.  I’m not above taking requests—or demands—for certain types of writing.  I had not expected my armchair quaterbacking to take on such an obscure angle.  However, I not ready to go there just yet.  Later this week you’ll discover me rocking the subjunctive.

Wikipedia’s entry on that mood is rather helpful despite being linguistically dry.

Today I’m going to throw out some warm exercises since my time is short.  Instead of the water sketches I’ve done in the past I’ll move on to another elemental: air.

Fall arrived among the Ponderosas of Northern New Mexico yesterday afternoon.  The leaves haven’t changed because conifers don’t and aspens go late.  The calendars haven’t called the earth to it’s autumnal equinox.  The thermometers haven’t trended down or widened the gap between their day and night markings.  The low to the ground, blustery, and often still Summer winds have risen—altitude and pitch—to the treetops and a near hissing rush.  I can’t touch them nor them me, but we hear each other and heed.

—

A demi-god of open fields snatched the diamond of paper and sticks from Thomas’ frail grip.  The boy’s heart surged into the heavens with the kite like a dragon on a string.  His heart hiccoughed to a halt then sagged limply.  The slain kite bled joy into the grass and twitched like a broken thing.

—

“Hold still.  Don’t close your eys all the way but let them relax.”  Mela told her then leaned close.  She could sense his substance, feel his bodies heat, like her eyes were open and she was seeing him.  Never had her other senses been as robust as they were with him near.  His scent was raw and moist and lush like freshly turned soil resting in the shade.  His was not a sophisticated smell.  It was decidedly base.

She gripped his warm hands tighter with her cold, but wanted to melt.  She wanted not to be who she knew she was.  He smoothed the cool skin of her palms with his thumbs without looking and breathed a puff of air into her eye to catch up the strayed lash.

His warmth spread from the friction of his thumbs to the blush of his breath on her face.

Think I’ll wrap there instead of going to the other two.  Air/wind is tough.

Day 280

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Are You Scared?

This weekend I completed my stalled reviewing of the Matrix Trilogy.  The gap of time between one and two measured in weeks, if not months.  The gap between two and three only a few days.  If you’ve seen them you’ll not be surprised.

Turns out that the second and third movies improved with the gap.  Directors shoot for the best perception possible for their movies but I doubt they factor aging into that equation.  It worked for me in this case.  They still didn’t excel, but they didn’t bomb the way they did when I first saw them.

All this is a clunky lead in to what I really wanted to highlight.  In the third movie there is a tertiary storyline with Tank and Dozer’s sister—Link’s wife—and an incidental woman with a shaved head.  The second scene with them together has one asking the other if the other is scared.  Dressed in homespun garments they crouch in a mechanical access line waiting with the other newly volunteered infantry members.  These ground troops wait in line to die.

I recognized this scene as similar to how I like to start much of what I do here at 1000 Days.  If I can, I really enjoy starting just a little late in a story so the reader is already missing out on what’s gone before.  In the Shanty arc I’ve significantly written on here I have one character coming in for a landing, another about to board a gondola, and a third hitching a ride in the middle of the desert.  Elsewhere I’ve dropped in on hunters atop a perch watching prey approach.  Soldiers being shot at.  Voyageurs dragging a frozen body through marshland.  Old teachers overlooking the gathering of the tribe to safety.  I rarely start with a wideshot—an establishing shot.  I almost never start out describing scenery then follow with placing characters in that set.  I guess this is my style.

Day 279

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In Less Than a Day’s Time

Four boys glow on the porch of the mountain cabin. The morning sun tints them in orange. Their denimed legs create infinite shadows down the rippling floorboards. The dew-soaked, bark-stripped, rough-hewed, corner-post Ponderosa steams from the warmth. The west side of the cabin and the unkempt meadow grasses shiver in the shade and the frost. Someone’s written their name with a hot-from-a-pocket index finger in the slick-soft white stuff: “KARL”—with a ‘k’.

All four matriculated from High School. Probably all four in college back home. One of the two in the middle is old enough to drink. Every one of them thinks himself a full-grown man.

Before the day is done they’ll saddle up and kick their heels into Rounder, Rust Bucket, Taint, and Taylor’s Rod. Before the day is done they’ll round up a remuda of nearly a hundred horses and head to the higher Spring pasture. Before the day is done the youngest will be dead and the other three wishing it weren’t so.

When the sun is gone another one will be dead and the other two pleased.

Well, that went dark on me fast. Nice that I don’t make it hard on myself to write. Shouldn’t be too challenging to kill two of them off and leave the other two happy about it in less than a day’s time.

Day 278