Friday March 25th, 2011

The exercise:

Four lines of prose about: the astronaut.

We made some good progress on the yard today. I was also quite excited to see some signs of life in the lilac bushes at the edge of the road. Spring is indeed here, despite the lack of sun.

Mine:

Will had wanted to be an astronaut ever since the first grade. The other kids would change their dream professions when they grew up on a daily - if not hourly - basis. Will never wavered.

But now, as he looks around the six by ten room in which he'll be spending the next four months, with two other men, with the vastness of outer space pushing against the walls, he must be wondering whether or not he had ever properly understood what being an astronaut really entailed.

4 comments:

Greg said...

It was sunny here yesterday, so I don't know what you're doing wrong Marc -- if the UK can get sunshine, there must be lots to go round!
I like your tale today, it has a ring of authenticity to it. It sounds like a one-way journey though, if it's only four months....

The astronaut
Star-voyager, an entity eleven million kilometres long made mostly out of nebulaic gas, poked at a nearby star causing it to go nova. His date for the evening, the similarly sized Laika, giggled like a little girl.
"Astronaut?" he said, offering her one of the little metal capsules that seemed to grow around the blue-green planet near his feet. He shook the can to loosen the little screaming things inside, and watched with delight as she picked one out, stripped it like a shrimp, and ate it.

Heather said...

He'd been walking around with his head in a bubble his whole life. Outside of the stars and the composition of planets, nothing else interested him. Then a girlfriend introduced him to classic Michael Jackson. And that is what he said inspired him to do the Moon Walk on every planet he put foot on.

Watermark said...

Marc - your piece today inspired mine :)

Greg - Chilling! That definitely gave me a mental image of our earth :)

Heather - I like that! :)

Here's mine:

The Astronaut

It was Tommy’s turn to answer the question of what his dream job was and the teacher stood waiting for a response. There were future doctors, teachers and scientists but no one had shared Tommy’s future career ambition yet of being an astronaut.

“And what does an astronaut do, Tommy?” asked the teacher.

“They get to wear awesome suits, fly about in the sky forever and ever fighting off aliens and saving the world,” beamed Tommy to a slightly frustrated teacher as the rest of the class broke into giggles.

Marc said...

Greg - well, you lot obviously stole it. So give it back.

Ah, so that's what NASA isn't telling us. I cringed at the bit about peeling one like a shrimp.

Heather - haha, cute. I can totally picture someone choosing to do that :)

Watermark - I quite like Tommy's definition. If it were right, I'd definitely consider a career change :P