Slowly, now
May. 18th, 2008 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreaminghopeIn the morning, as I rinse my coffee mug, I see a chickadee on my back porch. Russ and I have seen him there before. He is almost completely round – a little feathered ball with a beak – so I'm not how he can fly at all, much less take off fast enough to escape the neighbourhood's feral cats. He pecks about, probably eating the crumbs from my breakfast. When I next go to the window, he is gone.
If I'd thought that I had any aptitude as an artist, I don't think I'd ever have become a writer. All I ever wanted to capture was moments. The trouble is, most people want narrative, so I tuck those moments away in the pages of a story. If I could draw or paint the way I see those moments in my head, I wouldn't have to write about them.*
As I walk along the street, a bald eagle soars over my head, disappearing just over the top of the two-story warehouse behind me. The cars speeding past me had no idea why I stop suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk and turn slowly to follow that eagle with eyes and wish. They may not even see me stop.
The cars also don't see the raccoon. A juvenile by his size, he looks like he has fallen out of a natural history museum display – he is frozen in position, no sign of trauma, as though he was walking along the sidewalk and then simply fell over dead. I saw him in the morning on my way to the gym. On my way home from the gym, someone had covered his face with a piece of paper.
My back deck is high and I can see over all the fences for houses around. The elderly Chinese woman next door has five items drying on plastic hangers scattered about her garden. She doesn't notice me lingering over a glass of wine when she takes them in.
Two fences over to the West, a man is building something. Something that involves a sheet of plywood as big as his porch. Something that involves frequent re-measuring and a lot of standing back and looking. He doesn't seem to have any power tools, and I don't think he is very accustomed to hand tools. The saw scriches through the wood three times, then he pauses to check that he is cutting straight. Scrich-scrich-scrich – pause. Scrich-scrich-scrich – pause. Then he moves on to hammering: bang-bang-bang – pause. Bang-bang-bang – pause. For all that he is close to twice my age, quite a bit larger than I, and male – he reminds me of myself.
Across the alley, someone seems to be rehearsing some sort of stringed instrument. The music drifts through their open window; it sounds like a higher pitched banjo. The melody wanders from song to song, pausing but never stopping.
As the sun begins to dip below the roofs, the house two yards to the East hums with an electric lawn mower – the first grass cutting of the season. I don't know how he justifies using an electric mower for his little strip of grass; it must be more work to pull out the mower and deal with the cord – he holds it high over his head most of the time – than it would be to use a little gas weedwacker or a manual mower.
At about five in the evening, the crows stop in East Van on their daily commute from Stanley Park to the suburban park where they roost at night. The electric lines are full of black wings and the air is full of their excited cries. They seem to be telling stories; I bet they know the best stories.
*Charles de Lint, "The Fields Beyond the Fields", Triskell Tales.
If I'd thought that I had any aptitude as an artist, I don't think I'd ever have become a writer. All I ever wanted to capture was moments. The trouble is, most people want narrative, so I tuck those moments away in the pages of a story. If I could draw or paint the way I see those moments in my head, I wouldn't have to write about them.*
As I walk along the street, a bald eagle soars over my head, disappearing just over the top of the two-story warehouse behind me. The cars speeding past me had no idea why I stop suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk and turn slowly to follow that eagle with eyes and wish. They may not even see me stop.
The cars also don't see the raccoon. A juvenile by his size, he looks like he has fallen out of a natural history museum display – he is frozen in position, no sign of trauma, as though he was walking along the sidewalk and then simply fell over dead. I saw him in the morning on my way to the gym. On my way home from the gym, someone had covered his face with a piece of paper.
My back deck is high and I can see over all the fences for houses around. The elderly Chinese woman next door has five items drying on plastic hangers scattered about her garden. She doesn't notice me lingering over a glass of wine when she takes them in.
Two fences over to the West, a man is building something. Something that involves a sheet of plywood as big as his porch. Something that involves frequent re-measuring and a lot of standing back and looking. He doesn't seem to have any power tools, and I don't think he is very accustomed to hand tools. The saw scriches through the wood three times, then he pauses to check that he is cutting straight. Scrich-scrich-scrich – pause. Scrich-scrich-scrich – pause. Then he moves on to hammering: bang-bang-bang – pause. Bang-bang-bang – pause. For all that he is close to twice my age, quite a bit larger than I, and male – he reminds me of myself.
Across the alley, someone seems to be rehearsing some sort of stringed instrument. The music drifts through their open window; it sounds like a higher pitched banjo. The melody wanders from song to song, pausing but never stopping.
As the sun begins to dip below the roofs, the house two yards to the East hums with an electric lawn mower – the first grass cutting of the season. I don't know how he justifies using an electric mower for his little strip of grass; it must be more work to pull out the mower and deal with the cord – he holds it high over his head most of the time – than it would be to use a little gas weedwacker or a manual mower.
At about five in the evening, the crows stop in East Van on their daily commute from Stanley Park to the suburban park where they roost at night. The electric lines are full of black wings and the air is full of their excited cries. They seem to be telling stories; I bet they know the best stories.
*Charles de Lint, "The Fields Beyond the Fields", Triskell Tales.
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Date: 2008-05-20 12:18 am (UTC)I love love love your writing and am always awaiting news that you have found a publisher.
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