Thursday, April 28, 2011

Unfinished Sampler

Last night I went to bed after watching about an hour or so of Avatar, after declaring it Pocahontas with tall, blue aliens. The bio-luminescent landscape was the most interesting part, and as my daughter said, it made me wish it existed. (The element that the humans wanted from the alien landscape was called "Unobtainium." Who wrote this?) None of it made me want to stay awake, so I went to bed and read a chapter of a book where a man has his suitcase riffled through while he's sleeping on a train. This is unsettling, but he finds no answers. All of the sentences were short and it reminded me of some writing advice for beginning writers -- write in short sentences.

The short sentences, the recovered suitcase without a culprit, the computer generated blue people battling it out on the television downstairs, it all put me to sleep. It was humid in the bedroom. At 4 a.m. lightning broiled the sky, and rain shot through the window and into the laundry basket on the floor. I felt it against the exposed part of my back, the rejected lump of covers at the foot of the bed. Outside was angry, and it invited itself inside.

I fell asleep and had dreams of of crying and yelling, "This is not the shit house!" This morning from my writing desk, the Q-tip of pear tree sways back and forth. The lilac nods in the breeze. All the furious rain that pelted the house is captured in the needlepoint grid of the screen like an unfinished sampler.

This is not the shit house.

The rain worked with a spiderweb stretched over the seat of a chair on the patio to knit a sequined chair cover. The tensile strength of the web is impressive. As the wind pushes through the open weave of the seat, the web waves and each captured drop glitters.

3 comments:

Indigo Bunting said...

Mmmmm, so visual, a picture of here a month from now.

Storms, raining here.

This is not the shit house. Intriguing.

I have an email address for you but it has an old name so I don't assume it still works. I will say here: Have been slowly working my way through November 2010 (by day) and always thrill to read you. Recently, I particularly loved November 13, the post office post. I used to want to work there myself.

Deloney said...

Hi Jenny. I haven't seen Avatar but I did read the two Flash Fiction pieces you wrote for Avatar Review. Loved 'em both.

Dona said...

Pocahontas with tall, blue aliens. YES! Exactly my thought.