Friday July 11th, 2014

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose about: urges.

Raspberries, apricots, apples, plums, cabbage, green beans... oh, and garlic too. That will be our market table tomorrow. Becky will be joining me for the first time and I'm looking forward to sharing the experience with her.

Hopefully the sun will show some mercy on us.

Mine:

It approaches slowly, unnoticed in its silence and delicate footsteps. There is no fault in not seeing it coming, as no one ever does. If you had some warning of its arrival you might be able to prepare, to fight back, to retain... some semblance of control.

But that, of course, is not how this sort of thing works.

3 comments:

Greg said...

Good grief it looks like it's going to be unbearable in that kind of heat! I hope that there's at least a breeze to cool you a little, and that you've got plenty of water with you!
A fantastic description of an urge there. I think you've captured the abstract nature of it perfectly; I wonder what concrete example you had in mind while you were writing it?

Urges
"I get urges. I have an urge right now to get up and slap you upside your silly face."
The man reclining on the chaise longue, his polished shoes crossed across one another and his crisply ironed trousers pulled up enough to reveal pink socks, looked at Dr. Fraud in mild horror.
"In fact," continued the psychiatrist in his Austrian accent, "I think I will just do that!"

Anonymous said...

His hands clenched and unclenched themselves. His jaw was tight, his teeth almost grinding each other into nothing. Warmth was everywhere in his body, especially in one place in particular.
He had to have her.

Marc said...

Greg - lots of water helped. Not much of a breeze though, if I recall correctly. It was pretty unpleasant by the time end of market rolled around.

I actually didn't have any urge in mind. Oh, that's not entirely true. I think I had murderous urges in my thoughts... for no particular reason.

Ah, Dr. Fraud. Always keeping his patients on their toes!

Ivybennet - oh my! Excellent descriptions do a great job of conveying the strength of this urge.