Climb. Beer. Wind.

Note:

This free write is a continuation of what I began in "Type. Window. Comprehend".

And, so, one moment The Fate Scheduler had been in his kitchen thinking of her, The Girl Who Smelled of Pine; the next, he was standing in what appeared to be a huge gymnasium full of people who were wandering about any which way. He blinked, looked about him, and then blinked again; attempting to make sense of what had happened. It was a futile effort, as there was no sense to what had happened. Those in the room seemed to be in a state of total confusion; as if everyone had just been snatched from somewhere else and had absolutely no idea why they were now there. Since that was exactly what had happened to him, staying put seemed to be the thing to do. Maybe in another eye blink, he’d be back in his kitchen. It wouldn’t do to move from this spot, only to become even more lost and befuddled, like the majority of the other people in there seemed to be.

As he stood there in observation, he confirmed to himself they were indeed inside a huge gymnasium; there were the basketball end boards and hoops; looking, he noted, a bit ratty and tatty as their nettings were torn and hanging down in places. To either side of him against the walls were wooden bleachers; and, his sensitive nose was telling him, the place smelled like decades of sweat, stinky feet and bubble gum.

Watching the people roam about, it dawned on him that he was reminded of the several times he’d been in a similar place registering for college classes. There was the same sense of almost panic, of not knowing what one was supposed to be doing. Buoyed by a bit of confidence that perhaps he’d figured something out, certain details of his surroundings began to make themselves clear. First off, over towards the east side of the room, there was a long row of tables, behind which sat a group of people; each wearing a somewhat bored expression on their face. In front of each person’s section of the table was a large placard with a letter of the alphabet clearly printed within its center. “A” was on the far left, next was “B”, then “C”, and so on, with “Z” on the far right. As he watched the tables, he saw the person sitting behind “T” lean over to the person sitting behind “S” and whisper something. “S” nodded and stifled a huge yawn. Well, then, obviously, this was some sort of registration center, and yet, not one of the others in the room were approaching the tables.

The Fate Scheduler was uncertain. He thought perhaps he should walk over to the tables and go up to his letter; in fact, he was sure this was what he was supposed to do, but he held fast to his position because he hated being the first to do something in case it was not the right thing to do. This trait was one of the reasons why he’d never made much of a name for himself at his firm; he was not destined to climb the proverbial corporate ladder.

He shifted his gaze from the tables; eyes darting about the room, searching for something that might provide an answer as to what he should do. As he did so, he heard a loud BANG coming from the side of the gymnasium opposite from where the Alphabet People were sitting. He craned his head around in time to see the large, multiple doors being flung open, one after another, each with such force that it bounced off the interior walls. Streaming in through the doors was a massive crowd of people; easily the same amount as which were already inside the gym. He noticed that, while the people already in the room were in a state of confusion, those coming in appeared to know exactly what they were doing, with each one of them approaching one of The Confused with outstretched arms and welcoming smiles on their faces. Slowly, slowly, awareness dawned on the faces of The Confused as they each in turn recognized the person advancing towards them. Then, shouts of joy echoed throughout the room, accompanied by a rush of almost incomprehensible conversations of which he could only make out snippets of “Oh my God! Oh my God!; and “MOM?”; and, “Take it easy, there, Cowboy, it’s all going to be okay now”; and “Holy shit! I need a beer and I need it NOW!”

In this midst of this cacophony, a new emotion; The Fate Scheduler was bereft. No one was singling him out. He was totally alone. On the heels of this, a glimmer of hope. Maybe this was a mistake and he wasn’t supposed to be here after all. Perhaps this was, in fact, a quite nasty dream. With this in mind, he immediately began to pinch himself. When he didn’t awaken, he went at himself like a man gone insane; pinching every skin surface he could reach, wrenching the flesh this way and that in his agitation, aware all the while that this was both futile and he must look like a total fool, but unable to stop himself all the same.

Then came another loud BANG from the other end of the room; the door with this one opening with such strength that it brought with it a whoosh of strong wind similar to those that swirl around you and blow grit in your eyes and deposit bits of trash at your feet. Except this wind brought no dirt or garbage, it brought his third grade teacher, Mrs. Sippy. He stopped pinching himself and gaped at her.

“Well then,” she said eyeing him. “You always were an unusual child”.

Mrs. B

Hay. Soar. Murder.

She edged out the door, hoping not to disturb her sleeping mother. The door squealed in protest; she held her breath and turned to glance back to see if this had awakened Mam. Poor Mam, she looked so dreadfully grey and tired lying there on the small cot. And old. She looked old. But, she was not awake, thank the good Lord. Elizabeth went out into the grayish late November afternoon, closing the heavy door softly behind her.

She made her way over to the barn, which loomed in front of her, dilapidated, sagging at its sides, but still surprisingly strong and erect for such an abandoned structure. And, abandoned it was; ever since Papa died and that one never-ending late summer/early fall three years ago when she and Mam attempted, fruitlessly as it turned out, to reap the harvest and keep the barn stocked with hay for their meager menagerie of live stock.

She wasn’t sure why she was interested in going to the barn; she hated the barn. Not just because it was a physical reminder of their failure; in fact, it had nothing to do with that at all. She hated it now because she used to love being inside its wall so very much. That was ages and ages ago, when she was a young and foolish girl of eleven. After her chores were done, after the mid-day meal was eaten and the dishes were cleared, washed, dried and put away into the old Hoosier pie safe; Mam would nod her head at Elizabeth, signaling it was fine for her to go the barn to explore, play and dream.

Now, as she wandered into its musty depths, she had to brace herself against the involuntary shudder that rolled over her. How could she have ever loved this terrible place? She closed her eyes against the rush of painful memories; those that had completely overtaken the pleasant ones from her girlhood. Overcome, she leaned against one of the empty stalls for support. She closed her eyes and could still smell the scent of long gone animals. Ghost horses. What were their names? She couldn’t recall.

The sound of scuttling overhead brought her back to the present. Her eyes snapped open and upwards towards the hayloft. She didn’t want to look there and it wasn’t for fear of seeing a rat or two. Yet, as strangely as she was drawn to the barn in the first place, she found her feet moving her towards the creaky ladder that led up to the loft.

As she climbed, she got a glimpse of the double doors at the far end of the hayloft. Amazingly, despite the multitude of storms they’d had over the past several years since the barn had been in use, they were still tightly latched. Still sitting on the ground next to the closed doors was her old beat-up steamer trunk, the one that had once belonged to Mam’s younger sister.

How she’d loved to kneel in front of that ancient thing, using it as a desk of sorts, and pretend she was a famous writer. She’d written a lot of silly pieces there, young girl starry eyed notions of adventure, romance and true love conquering all. Still, she’d also enjoyed the view from that vantage. She’d open up the doors and stare out at the great wide open; looking west towards the trees that stood silent sentry in the distance or glancing up into the blue skies while dreaming she was a mystical creature, a girl with wings, who could soar like a bird over Coozie’s Creek to the south.

Now, the trunk was covered with cobwebs and rat droppings.. And, all of those silly, silly dreams? Those stupid, stupid stories? The person that she was now, the woman that she’d become, looked back into the past and felt both scorn and an immense sadness for the young girl who had no idea what was to come.

She walked over to the doors, undid the rusty latch, and flung the doors open with such force that both doors crashed into the side of the barn with a loud THUNK that echoed across the quickly darkening evening sky. She approached the edge of the loft floor; as close to the gaping opening as she dared, and peered out. The view was still breathtaking. She could see miles in every direction. To the south, the glistening silvery trail of Coozie’s Creek. To the north, the spire of the town’s church. And to the west, just visible arising from the tops of the trees in the forest, wisps of smoke from the Childress’s cabin.

“That family”, Mam had declared one day when Elizabeth was still in the habit of playing with dolls on the kitchen floor while Mam fixed supper, “Is decidedly odd”. Papa, sitting nearby, grunted; whether in agreement, disagreement or just his Papa grunt which usually meant, “Yes, my dear”, Elizabeth never knew.

As her eyes grew accustom to the growing darkness, she watched the smoke from their cabin continue to drift up, up, up to where she couldn’t distinguish where it ended and the gloaming sky began. She stood there a very long time remembering what Calvin Childress had introduced her to in this very loft the winter after Papa died. Mam had been right; and Elizabeth knew now exactly how odd and how disturbed at least one of the Childress clan was.

As she recalled, her eyes narrowed sharply, and her thoughts turned to murder.

Mrs. B

Writing Exercises

Over the years, I've both attended classes and read books that purported to teach one how to write, or, if one already knew how to write, how to either instill discipline to the writing process, develop a personal style, publish something that's already been written, etc., etc. Like many explorations and excursions in my life, I would typically go gang-busters for a month or so afterwards, only to have the enthusiasm eventually peter out, to be replaced by some other new adventure.

This morning I opened up my Blog and was somewhat aghast to see I've not posted anything for almost two weeks and what I have posted in the last month or so has been relatively weak. In all seriousness, I do have things to write about; in fact, several things, many of which are in mid-production and floating somewhere on my hard drive. I also tend to wake up in the middle of the night thinking about a dream I just had and say to myself, "Wow, you should write about THIS!" But, by the time I get around to sitting down at my computer, either the ability to recall the dream or the desire to write about it has vanished; replaced by thoughts of "What is on my to do list for today?"

I do have many things I'd like to accomplish today; but, I told myself while out walking Lucy this morning that I'd allow myself until 10:00 am to "dork around" on the computer with email, Facebook, checking out various web sites, reading the morning paper, etc. After doing much of these things (except reading the paper), I clicked on my Blog and thus began this particular entry/train of thought.

My first inclination after seeing that my last post was Friday November 4th was to go to my stock pile of past writing pieces and post something, anything, that appeared (to me at least) to be relatively interesting. Of course, in fact, this is something like cheating; somewhat similar to someone using a picture from many many years ago to represent what they look like today. While browsing through these files, I came across a spreadsheet I haven't opened up in a very long time. The idea came from a class I took at Duke way back in 2004; a bunch of random words listed in columns. For the life of me, I can't remember now if the words are supposed to follow any sort of pattern and I don't know if I came up with them or they were provided by the instructor (likely a bit of both). What I do remember is, you're supposed to put each of the words on a slip of paper, put all of the slips into some sort of container, and, when you want to write but you are stuck for ideas, pull out two or three of the slips of paper and free write for fifteen or twenty minutes about whatever comes to your mind. So, pulling a few random words of my spreadsheet by way of example, I might end up with "Hay" "Soar" and "Murder" as prompts.

And, speaking of free writing, I also recall from a book I read that it is a MUST to sit down every day and simply free write. Whether it be from prompts or just what may be running through your brain, you must do it to keep in shape; similar to what working out at the gym does for your body. This is easier said than done; it's a challenge not to get distracted. Case in point, as I'm writing this, Mr. B just came home from his morning meeting and the dog is wigging out. He's going to come into the kitchen soon and start talking to me (I have 10 more minutes to go before it's 10:00 am!) and I'll, well, peter out.

I just remembered another writing exercise; it also uses prompts but instead of random words, the prompts are statements or questions, such as, "Your first car". Or, "What makes you happy?" I've actually written and posted quite a few pieces from this exercise but I think my stash of prompts has gone missing so I'll need to recreate them.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that, since I can't seem to come up with anything really fresh and intriguing to write about on my own, I think I'm going to go the writing exercise route on this Blog for a while. There may be some weird stuff that comes out of it, I'll warn y'all in advance!

Ok, time's up for now!

Mrs. B

Brushing My Hair

I do want to post something since it's been a few days and my admiring public is waiting. But, lately, my allergies (or WHATEVER) have really been giving me a run for my money. Meaning, they are truly bothering me. And, in odd-ball ways. Sometimes, I feel "them" in my ears. Today, I actually feel "them" in my TEETH, or, rather, my gums. Why? What is it? The gunk dripping down from wherever; draining; and, getting to my teeth? Ack! Am I gonna get something like Meth Teeth? UGH!

Ok, so, I was digging around in my writing files and I found the following writing exercise. I think I wrote this three or four years ago. I got the exercise out of a good book entitled, "How To Become A Writer" (I should really finish reading this/doing all of the exercises).

I remember this one; it was HARD because the directive was to write about something very simple; a mundane task you do every day, like, brushing your hair. But, you were supposed to put as much detail in at as possible.

So, this is what I came up with. You try it, it ain't easy!

Mrs. B

Brushing My Hair

I walk into the bathroom, turning on the three light switches with my right hand as I do so. I look at myself in the mirror. Likely, I grimace; not liking what I see. I decide that my hair is messy and that it needs brushing down. I probably have not styled it at all and so it's really not looking so hot.

I reach down with my right hand and open up the third drawer (the one on the bottom). With my left hand, I rummage around the drawer to find my vent brush. I pick it up and brush down the hair on the left side of my face first. As I brush downwards, I flick the brush upwards as it hits the ends of my hair in order to sort of flip up the ends. I repeat this same thing for the hair on the right side of my face. More than likely, I do not pay any attention to the back of my head as I can't see it so it's not there. Next, I brush the hair on the left side of my face, the hair next to my left ear, over my left ear. I repeat the flicking of the ends motion. I repeat this for the hair on the right side of my face.

I pout and pucker my lips at myself in the mirror as I always do this and I don't know why.

I turn around and open the door of the white closet with my right hand and with my left hand, I take out the bottle of hairspray. I turn back towards the mirror without shutting the door to the white closet. With my right, hand, I fluff the back side of my hair up to puff it out some. I take the lid off of the hairspray bottle with my right hand and spray my hair with my left hand, using my right hand to continue to fluff and puff my hair and also to arrange my bangs to my liking.

I turn around and put the hairspray bottle back into the white closet (it is still in my left hand) and shut the door to the closet with my right hand.

I walk out of the bathroom and turn the lights off with my left hand as I leave.