Looking forward to reading it.
Day 4
Even when I wake up not knowing what the day will bring, my words and writing projects are of consolation. Whether it is spring, summer autumn or winter, I turn to words. In understanding my past, I turned to words. My premature arrival into the world with my identical twin sister was unexpected and that, as well as my life up to now, did not let me rest until it was in my memoir. Memories, good and bad are my words.
Such an experience was something that I felt compelled to work on to tell the story of my life , and of who I am as a person living with the serious health complications I have. It was one I felt liberated to tell.
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Day 5
Paul my dad,red-faced and tight-fisted, roars my name like a furious lion and punctuates the air with his fingers as he shouts.
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This is really good. Immersive and detailed. It actually makes me feel like I am there and cold as I read it.
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Day 2:
It seemed to take forever, after the sweeping right hand turn, to actually approach the waterfront. It started out as a city like any other modern city, of wide suburban boulevards housing mall after mall after strip motel until you approached the older part, the part with the international bridge towering over it in her broken, unrelenting majesty. She drove to the end of the main road that first time, seeing the bridge approach like a hunched giant, until she missed the turn and ended up beneath the concrete battlements, with the squawk of thousands of starlings gathering before their fall migration and over it the hum of traffic and roar of the air brakes as the international bounty descended into town. How had she missed it, the great escape she sought?
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Day 2
The gravely dirt road narrowed as it neared the house. It stood alone surrounded by verdant, undisturbed nature and a lack of neighbors, just what his friend had desired when acquiring the property. Jerome kicked clods of dirt as he approached the unwashed white clapboard house. Chuck’s focus—devoid of a woman’s touch—was on a sparse inside and on the acreage behind where they planned to plant their seeds to begin the industry. The half-acre patch had been levelled and the ground lay fallow.
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Day 5
Rose, shaken and raging, marched forward, like a soldier on a mission, and knocked as if she wanted to knock the door down.
Wonderful people, I wish you all a happy Easter.
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Day 5
Julie, her face severe and precise, leaned forward in clipped perfection, scraping my soul in tangled circles under her peach claws, until only my rotted remains congealed on the floor, shook her fist at me, then banished me from the room.
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Happy Easter to you also!
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The final Day 6 - This challenge has been fun! Thanks!
“She changed as the years passed by. She kept slowly shedding all traces of the high school girl who used to fail Maths and Physics, who used to ask me for help with homework. The pimples from her face gradually disappeared, leaving her cheeks and forehead to turn into glowing skin. The high ponytail she used to wear changed into layered hair then into short bangs. Her casual jeans and Tshirt look turned into tailored pants and blouse. The last time I saw her was at the recent town hall meeting, speaking to one of the city council guys. Anyone could have said that she had grown into a confident woman.”
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Day 3
Roarings of March hangs over into April. Brutal gusts everywhere; gusts wavering boughs, modulating from whispers to shouts, gusts bending branches and cracking limbs, blossoms torn from trees. While families of rabbits and squirrels sequester, blackbirds, cardinals, robins, mockingbirds and smaller wrens and tufted titmice shelter. Sudden flares as transformers pop like cherry bombs and power halts, interrupting time and turning on the flashing of digital clocks faces. Neighbors awaken and fumble in the dark, guessing at the duration of darkness and disruption.
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Day 6
Mary’s usual uniform is baggy jogging bottoms. She hates the gym as the bullies are there. To me, her friend Mindy, she is fine as she is… I know she is bothered by the girls who bully her. We went to different universities and then I went back to our old town years later. Days passed and I had no answer to my text to Mary. I decided to go out for a walk.
I saw her. The previous straight brown hair was now wavy and a dark red like cranberries. Sports shoes relaced with sleek heeled boots and the jogging bottoms were now black ultra skinny jeans. The grey coat made her hair stand out.
Hearing my footsteps, she turned and said “Hi Mindy.” I returned the greeting and wondered if I could one day match her immaculate makeup look. I also wondered if she would be the same inside or if that person was gone.
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Great contrast between the cold (ice) and warm/ hot (soup and fireplace). Excellent piece
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Great visuals, sights and sensations.
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Day two
What a view and not a soul in sight.
The island expanded before my eyes as the boat approached; the departure had been delayed until the storm subsided, but the waves were still high, my fingers held tightly around the rope, as my body moved with the rhythm. The captain shouted; words swallowed by the wind, he was pointing to the house in the far north of the island, with the big tower, where the lighthouse keeper lived.
The only other person alive on this island except for me for the next few weeks, until the summer guests arrive.
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Day 6
Time changes a person, not so much in the appearance, but more in the character. And Andrea had changed. And I, who still consider myself her best friend, can clearly see it. I can see it in the way she doesn’t avoid other people’s gaze anymore. She is not afraid to be seen anymore, and more importantly she is not afraid to be part of the world. But the aspect that better shows her change is ironically in what you hear. There was a time when Andrea talked in whispers, afraid the world could have noticed her presence if only she had raised her voice. Now her voice is an explosion of joy, so contagious to bring a ray of sunshine even on the darkest days.
Andrea is not the same anymore; or maybe she always was destined to be the fun, and confident woman she is now. Maybe time doesn’t change a person, maybe time simply gives a perosn the chance to find out who she really is.
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Day 2:
This was surely not the hilly sea-scented streets by the Halifax harbour where Don had grown up. No, sir.
McGee Street and its industrial brick buildings, once the house of a flourishing film district, now defunct, sharing the space with narrow brick Victorian houses bordering the streets like rows of flowers, and the odd South East Asian store, was definitely not where Don would expect to find Petey. The last time Don had talked to the retired sailor, who was already looking more dead than alive, missing teeth, coughing after every three words, Petey had mentioned where he lived, proudly pointing out he was a hop away from lake Ontario.
Looking at the house in front of him, Don asked himself what kind of lunacy had taken over the old man’s brain for the latter to consider that a lake could ever match the open sea.
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Lesson 6
In fact, from this point of view, life is not so much a sprint as a cross-country race. It is scarcely possible to avoid observing your neighbors as they jog by in a competition of their own. It has been my fortune, accidentally to watch several of these downward travelers, for some stages on the road to ruin.
One woman upwards of forty years old when I first observed her, and she made a neat, clean appearance in her work uniform, always timely and cheerful. For three years she kept falling - through poor decisions and over mean relationships, grease coming with smudges, wrinkling her attire, the face sagging and eyes dulling, her attentions scattered and nervous, her shoulders bowed, and cheek bruised, the hair thinning and unkempt upon her head; the last that I ever saw her, standing in the night air, then picking up cigarette butts from the ground, and smoking them, with three other hollow-eyed, thin, people searching for purpose.
I fancy I can still hear her sigh as she recounted dreams of the new life for them - her and her kids. There was something heart-breaking in this gradual declension at this early an age when you would have thought her out of reach of such calamities, building funds for retirement and saving; you would have thought her insulated in a safe place in life, whence she could blossom gradually and glide honorably into the arms of the grave.
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Thanks Daniel for such a quick & fun course. I am terribly behind but I will try and catch up!
Assignment Three
Rain everywhere. Rain spraying the shallow trails, where it flows into holes in the ground. Rain plummeting down trees with the speed of meteorites, hauling loose leaves down the barks, wrenched away from canopies. Rain drenching the sacred hallows of trees where squirrels sheltered. Rain thrusting its way into my eyes, compelling it close, sneaking into my mouth, my ears swashing with the loud splash of rain against my skin. Rain dousing her footsteps, the only markers bringing me closer to her.
I look up, watching tankards of water flying its way to me, to the hallows of trees, on its barks and its leaves, to the creek and the ground, flooding the trails and the soil of the forest. Parting the green canopies in a great gush of cascading reservoir, obliterating traces of my beloved. I stood there, no longer trying to move. Letting my rage merge with maddening rain, it tasted salty, like tears. The voices whispered, she is lost forever you silly fool! Perhaps, I thought, this is the best. She is safer this way.
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Day 3
Wind everywhere. Through every litte inch of opening wind is here. Blowing through our house, wind catches cat and mouse, and scares them deep under the bed where no one sees. Wind grabs the dust from under there and blows it up into the air, wind carries out, its no ones fault, but how I long to see this wind just disappear.
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