The Cabin

This is my favourite place.  It is my home.  I bought it and I helped make it.  Many people think that this is a poor substitute for a real house or flat.  they come and admire it and comment on how quaint it is but, they go home and ask their husbands or wives how anyone could live in such a tiny place. They don't realise how lucky i feel to be here.  it may be cold in winter; I have to put on jumpers in the evening and a few winters back I even went to bed in a hat for a few freezing nights.  In the summer it can get boiling hot and stifling until you throw open the door and the double windows and the fresh breeze wanders through the house.

Yes, it might seem like a doll's house to many but I don't mind.  It fits me and there is no space wasted.  There is no guest room and I have to climb up a ladder to get to my own bed at night but this to me is joy, not deprivation.  I walk out on warm evenings feeling the grass underfoot and watch the midges dancing in the air.  I rest my back against the front door and feel the caress of the sun on my face.  

I watch the apple tree turn from bare, to blossom, to fruit and then watch as it weeps it's brown leaves to the ground.  I watch the blackbirds feasting on the fallers; pitted with disease and harbouring some maggots but such richness is still encased in those rosy orbs.

When I am at home, I feel that I can do or be anything I want and although the house is animate I can almost hear it's breath synchronised to mine.


Time up.
Inspiration:  I'm really rushed tonight I have loads of work to do so I wrote about a special place to me and this is the easiest one I've done.

Chekhov's Gun

Ellis wasn't an unattractive kid, he was just awkward and quiet.  Like so many teenagers, he spent too much time thinking, his black thoughts turning inwards, constantly tormenting himself over trivial inadequacies.  As a consequence, he was sullen and avoided the other students at school as much as possible.  All apart from one.  She was a golden girl, popular and beautiful but gentle and 

open, completely the opposite of himself: Jessica.  It was as if she existed for him in a permanent halo.  When she walked past, along the buzzing corridor, his gaze, although covert, devoured every single fragment of her.  He had been watching her like this for years and he was exhausted by the hollowness of his adoration.  He needed recognition.  He felt compelled to make some sort of connexion, he didn't care how small, he just wanted her to notice him, to witness in his eyes the awe in which he held her.  Ultimately, he wanted her to love him like he did her. 

He hadn't planned it exactly but he took his chance.  As she walked past on her pilgrimage to class, he allowed his books to tumble from his hand.  They slid like a wave breaking at her feet.  She looked at him and down at the floor, looked back, cocked her eyebrow at him, without the the hint of the gentle smile she used so readily for others, nearly everyone, he thought, and walked on. 

Time up.

Inspiration:  from The Write Practice, they suggest: Practice foreshadowing by writing a scene, early in the first act of a story, and slip in Chekhov’s gun. Don’t fire it yet.  Just make it present somehow.

Beautiful People

Vincent Peters Photography

"Oh, God, yeah, completely.  I know exactly what you mean."

"He really gets it, you know?  He really capture what's going on in the mind.  You know?"

"Oh, yeah, totally.  He really gets that." Christina had completely forgotten who or what they were talking about.  It didn't matter though, she'd worked with Javier on a couple of shoots now and he was always the same: completely focused on himself and the jobs he'd been on, who he'd worked with and for, and how he really wanted to break into acting.  Reflecting on the echoes of his last sentence she concluded that he must have been speaking about a photographer but she couldn't remember which one.

She was so unbelievably bored.  She was hungry too and the stench of the cigarettes they'd been using as props had started to turn her stomach.  It felt like the tar was permeating her every pore.  Her neck was sore from the ridiculously hackneyed position she'd been asked to hold, a rip-off of the 1950s Hollywood publicity shots - done a million times before - and she was freezing cold.  What was worse, Javier, the self-centred idiot, didn't seem to notice or mind the inconveniences of the shoot, he just kept on taking regardless.  She really just wanted to yell at him to shut up but satisfied herself with the mental image of stubbing the lit end of her cigarette out in his eye.



Time up.
Inspiration:  The photo.  I wanted to image an interaction from a given image and imagine what was going on beneath the gloss.

The Desperate Man

                        
'Tempt not a desperate man'

With a mind quivering like the tender leaves of the birch in a spring gale, he writhes there in his agony.  She cannot be his.  She will not be his.  He will never possess her.  His dreams and fantasies, tender and dramatic, domestic and passionate, that have supported his body and soul for so long, have been ripped away.  A huge cavern has appeared at his feet and now his mind turns to the temptation of flinging himself into the abyss.  His expressions of longing, of the justice of his claim over her, of the deep connexion that he could never break, now or ever, are as useless to her as the empty leaves of the memoir next to the corpse.

He cannot conceive the future, he flings his mind to the past, reliving the promises made and given, the two souls entwining to become one.  His incredulity that is was possible for one soul to break free from the commixture of the two.  How could it be possible that her vision of their future could possibly differ from his?

Who would he spend eternity with now?




Time Up.
Inspiration:  I saw this picture and the title reminded me of Romeo.  Naturally, it made me wonder why a man might become desperate and, like Romeo, my mind lead its way to love.

Change

There is a change coming, I can feel it.  It is the lightness off the air, the glow that lingers a fraction longer in the darkening sky.  Perhaps it started with the song of the robin in the hedge.  Perhaps it started when I felt suddenly overburdened with the layers of clothing I wore for the ritual Sunday walk.  I feel sure, though, that it was some internal kind of clock.  The same one that tells us when it is time to wake or sleep; the same that tells us that something is not quite as it should be and we need to be on our guard; the same that tells us that we have found someone that will make our life more comfortable than it has every been before.

Change is not always for the good, but more often than not it is.  In any case, we can't stop it, not this change, being in the hands of Nature and this change is always for the better, long anticipated and wished for, longed for, in fact, and when it starts to arrive it is like a deep sigh, a knowingness that everything will be alright. 



Time up.
Inspiration: was a bit lacking tonight.  I just wrote about how I felt about the change of the season.

Not of Woman Born

Your tiny head nestles into the crook of my neck, my arm supports the bend of your spine and we share our warmth.  My spare hand strokes your front. I allow my fingers to trace paths down your chest, meandering along the length of your body, white, patches of black and brown and faintest glimpse of pink beneath sparser hairs.  Your eyes gaze directly into mine, you do not flinch or turn away, those deep, black pools reflecting my face, distorted.

What would you tell me, if you could? Would you repeat the loving words I murmur to you?  Would you chuckle when I bury my face into your chest and rub my nose against your cheek, whispering simple nothingsof love? Your look conveys nothing except your trust, binding.  A contract, everlasting between us.

You are more my child than anything I could produce with another of my species and when your paws fan the air near my lips, begging for more tangible affection, I would deny you nothing.



Time up
Inspiration: I wanted to write about my dog tonight.  So I did.

As She Walked

It was that time of the morning when you're awake but you may as well not be.  Your eyes are still itchy from the adhesive of sleep that had been wrenched apart, your face is peachy and warm from the blankets and the blast of cold air as you open the front door is as rude as an unfounded insult.

Yes, it was that kind of morning. But dogs need to be walked and so that is why I set out with the frost still thick on the grass and sounds muffled by the cloying mist that fondled the earth.  I trudged along the road and up into the field.  My blood had started to charge my mind and I was sloughing off the drain of sleep just as the warming winter sun was beginning to wade through the fog.

I crested the hill into the sun which had crowned the top and it was then I saw it.  Lying flat on its
stomach as if asleep or waiting silently for its prey to be fooled by its prostrate form. It's enormous
head far out into the bay, it's back curving up between the cleft of the downs ; there was no doubt about what it was.   I turned desperately to check behind me, to the left of me, to my right; no one.  No one to witness or share this sight.  No one to believe me either.  Then I realised, my mobile phone had a camera. I fumbled in my pockets, letting tissues, poo bags and gloves fall incontinently as I searched.  I felt the hard case and flipped it open.  It was only then, when I aimed the lens at the shape, that it started to disappear.  Clearly it sensed that it was being watched, thought better of
appearing so obviously in daylight and had decided to leave no trace except the ghost of its presence.


Time up.
Inspiration: I took the photo at the top this morning.  When I showed my mother and said what I thought it looked like she didn't agree with me.  Hence the story of truth or imagination. 

The north wind

It hasn't been bright for a while. By that I mean there has been absolutely no sun for weeks. In fact, when I saw some tentative brightness from behind the cloud I was almost shocked; it brought a sound of appreciative surprise to my lips, in any case. What is so lovely about extended periods of greyness is the euphoria that comes when they they are broken by glorious sun. Everyone trudging around through damp and muddy ground, head's lowered, every thought turning inwards, as if minds hibernate even when we force our bodies out into the chill, can look up for moment, their worries disperse while an involuntary smile is raised and it's as if their soul takes a fresh breath.

I was drawn outside. I just went. No coat, scarf or gloves. Just as I was. It wasn't in a trance-like state, it was just a determination to out, to give that burst of light my undivided attention with no barriers to keep us apart. And it was wonderful. It did not warm me, the north wind was blowing hard enough to chill my very marrow, but it did unburden me, unwind me and lighten me and for much more than a moment.

Time up.

Inspiration:
Today, I just took inspiration from something that happened today. I wanted just my voice, as honest as possible.

Rain

Streaming down in ribbons it was, the rain. Gushing and spraying like someone suddenly amused whilst drinking. It blistered on the ground for a millisecond and then pooled creating a tiny mirrors for the nettles and long fronds of fern.

It fell, not from a dark sky, but one that was a uniform light grey; a librarian's cardigan, a collared dove's wing, a pulped newspaper. It was drab but encouraged the green of the grass to glow, the brown of the trees to darkened in paths down its trunk like the skin of a snake and made the noises of man recede whilst the drips turned into a roar from above.

Wayward spray clung to windows in little balls only releasing when they encouraged themselves on each other to tear down the pane, recklessly exhausting themselves on the ground beneath, their destination reached at last.

Time up.
My inspiration today came from the weather outside yesterday evening and was meant as a descriptive piece only.

N.B. I couldn't post this yesterday as my Internet was down. How reliant we are...