Wednesday May 6th, 2015

The exercise:

It is time to get random. Go find a song as randomly as you can manage and procure its first line. Let us know which one you've borrowed and then use it as the opening line of your poetry or prose. Then it's all yours from there - take it wherever your imagination directs you to go!

The wind has been howling all day here. It's driving me a little crazy. Also: it made mulching the strawberries this morning about as fun as poking myself in the eye with a needle. Repeatedly.

I still got some done, though not as much as I would have liked. This afternoon I was with Max and I attempted to pot up some tomato plants with him. Managed to get one tray done which is... better than no trays.

After that we joined Kat in the garden and I helped in our attempts to stay on top of the weeds. As we do every year.

Max was with us for about five minutes before he wandered off to see what Grandma was doing with the horses. Which was great, as he was happy and we were able to get some work done at a reasonable rate of speed.

Mine:

Teardrop Windows by Benjamin Gibbard

"Teardrop windows crying in the sky," she said without provocation. "I can't pass by them without stopping to stare for at least a little while. I don't know how everyone else fails to notice them."

"Hmm." I was aiming for agreement without being explicit. I honestly had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

"I'm glad you can appreciate their sadness and beauty," she said with a wistful smile. I guess I had succeeded in my mumbled effort. "I think that the others ignore them because they convey a truth which the vast majority of our population simply are not comfortable with."

"Yeah." I tried to follow her gaze, hoping to find clouds. What I saw instead was a sky filled with blue. I kept looking where I thought she was staring and nodded in a long, unhurried motion.

"I mean, it's so clear, isn't it? When you stop to consider them for even a moment?" I had started to sweat by then, the grumblings of passersby as they maneuvered around us growing louder and more intimidating in my ears. "Obviously we have imposed too much of our will on our planet! Even the buildings are beginning to cry at the sight of all the nature we have forced them to smother!"

"Right!" She snapped her head toward me but I forced myself to adjust my gaze to the skyscraper she must have been staring at. I hadn't meant for that to sound so... relieved. "It's like... a wonder the people walking beneath those windows haven't drowned. By now. In their own shame."

"So true, baby. Couldn't have said it better myself." She squeezed my hand tightly and returned to her study of windows that had never shed a tear since the day they'd been constructed. I released a long breath out of my nostrils, letting go of panic and stress, and tried to relax.

There was still hope I'd get to see the inside of her apartment. And that was all I and, more importantly, my employer really cared about.

3 comments:

Greg said...

You got stuff done today, depsite the hamperings, and that's the important thing. It's the days when nothing gets done that you have to worry about :)
Huh, that's an interesting conversation from an interesting woman, and I think I'd be rather stuck for words when talking to her as well. Your narrator does a pretty good job of keeping up! And now I'm curious as to what's in her apartment too... and how real her teardrop windows actually are.

Mine's an old one, but it's fantastic to listen to:
Lawyers, guns and money by Warren Zevon

Well, I went home with the waitress. The restaurant owner couldn't make change from the hundred I gave him, so he offered me the waitress instead. You gotta love these backwater places, they gotta a whole other idea 'bout how a man does business. The owner mighta been a bit tipsy though, as he offered to gift wrap her for the taking but I'd driven there on Billy's moped and figured that I wouldn't get her to stay on it too well if she was all wrapped up. So I got the steak that was left wrapped up, since Billy's mongrel's been looking a bit thin since he got back to chasing the dragon and the waitress just up and positioned her keister on the pillion like a good girl and off we drove into the night.
The downside to these backwater places is that there's no streetlights, but then there's not much policin' neither, so I hit seventy-five and that old bike rattled and growled like a coyote with distemper. The waitress put her arms around me and snuggled her face into the back of my neck, but I knew that was just on account of going at that speed with no helmet just means you get hit by every bug out there. Fatal for the bug, bad for your looks. Those little bruises are quite something when there's near eighty of them on a face.
We got back to the cabin without hitting anything I needed to stop for, nor seeing no policefolk, and that's a good night out as it goes. The lights were on but Billy was sitting on the stoop, squatting down like a rice-farmer and whistling softly through what's left of his teeth. He got off the meth before they all fell out, but it was a close thing.
"Billy!" Looks like the waitress knew my man, but he was deep in a hole and not responding. She shook his shoulder a few times, and then looked at me.
"He'll wake up when he's ready," I said and took the steak out back to feed his mongrel.

Anonymous said...

I tried to turn a happy/fun song into a serious and scary prompt piece. I hope it worked!

Random Song Prompt: Dental Care by Owl City

I brush my teeth and look in the mirror but all I could still see where the rolling knolls of grass and lying cattle spread over the field after battle. The more I stared at the mirror—at the knolls tinged red in the setting sun—did I realize my mind’s eye had been lying to me all along. Geremy had been right, of course; the field at Faerenshire had been flat ever since the country fell into the hands of the Tyrant. The knolls my memory had supplied me with ever since the age of ten was a lie.
Faerenshire didn’t contain hills after the battle. The only things that littered the field were burnt supply wagons and dead bodies.

Marc said...

Greg - I like to think that somebody considers her a dangerous activist or something like that, and wants evidence gathered to... I dunno, discredit her. Maybe. Anyway, glad mine intrigued you at least.

That is a fun song, thanks for the link!

Hah, that's a great reason for taking the waitress home - not at all what I would have expected.

I must also say that I am intrigued by this trio. Very much so.

Ivybennet - I'd say you've successfully changed the tone from the song, that's for certain!

I like the hints of something more littered throughout this one, as I'm left curious to know more about... all of it, really.