Sunsets (Story Challenge Day Five)

I’ve challenged myself to free-write a new story each day for one week. You can read about my thoughts behind the challenge, as well as the day one’s story, Help Me Mister, here.  You can also read day two’s story, “The Dead Man,” right here, day three, “Chess Story,” here, and day four, “How Fox Got His Winter Clothes,” here.

As before, the challenge is to start and complete a new story each day for a week. The story can be any length, must be free-written, and can not be edited afterwards. Please excuse the resulting spell, grammar, and other literary idiocy.

Day Five: Sunsets

The ravens followed Marguerite home. She had been picking up groceries from the corner market around the block, a few odds and ends to see her through the end of the week.

She noticed them when she glanced behind as she was about to cross the street. A great mass of dirty black ravens perched on every surface. It would have been impossible to count them if Margaret even had a mind to try. She sighed, a big theatrical one meant to be heard all the way in the back row, and continued pushing her little wheeled caddy toward home. Maybe if she ignored them they would get the hint and go away. They didn’t and the raven’s followed her home.

After she put her shopping away, and given the kitchen counters an unneeded scrub, she glanced out the window at her front yard. The ravens were milling about, muttering to each other and molting on her grass. She had a young man from across the street mow it every other week and now she would have to give him another five dollars because of the mess.

She pulled open the window and stuck out her head.

“Go on now,” she said, “scat! You go tell your boss that I ain’t coming.”

The ravens looked at her but didn’t leave. They milled about and by the next morning more had arrived. The mailmen had taken one look and decided to leave her mail on the sidewalk in front of her gate. He placed a rock on top of it so the mail wouldn’t blow away, which Marguerite decided was thoughtful of him.

Margret stopped by that afternoon. Marguerite was standing on her porch with her hands on her hips, giving the ravens a stern look in the hope that they would get the hint, after an hour they hadn’t. Margret leaned on the font gate and looked at the yard.

“I don’t suppose your planning on going with them,” said Margret.

“No, and I done told them as such,” said Marguerite.

Her neighbor nodded and went on.

Later that evening, Death came by wearing an eggshell blue waistcoat and a seersucker suit. Marguerite let him in and told him he looked like a snake-oil salesmen.

“But this is a nice face,” she said after they were seated and the tea was served. “This face is much kinder.”

Death sniffed at the steam rising from the delicate tea cup.

“You know what I’m going to ask you,” he said.

“Yes, and the answer is no. I’m not done yet.”

He nodded and sipped.

“Done with what, Marguerite?”

“I don’t know, all this. Seeing stuff, learning stuff.”

“There is only so much in this world.”

“Yeah, and I ain’t done looking at it.”

“Marguerite,” said Death, putting down his china cup, “things must move on.”

“Let them move then. I’m staying put.”

“What then? You’ll make your tea. You’ll go shopping. You’ll watch the sunset, and then you’ll do it all again.”

“I like the sunset.”

Death plucked at his sleeves.

“They are lovely. We used to be able to stand on the mountain tops and watch the sun dip into the valleys and watch the stars come out all in the same breath; you would not believe the colors.”

“I would. I remember,” she said, putting down her cup and crossing her arms.

“The problem with sunsets,” said Death, “is that you must eventually realize that one looks just the same as the other.”

“I still think they’re pretty, and if that’s all you have to say then I think it might be about time for you to be getting on your way.” She stood politely and showed him to the door. He paused on the bottom step of her porch and looked back.

“Do you want to know why the sunset is celebrated? It’s the closing of a day.” He straightened his waistcoat and left. The ravens followed him.

She closed the door behind him and went back inside. She finished her tea, gave her counters an unneeded scrub, and went back out on her porch. There was one raven left in her yard. It watched her from on top of the clothes line, swaying back and forth in the late afternoon breeze. She sighed, another big theatrical sigh, and tried to give the bird a stern look, but didn’t have the heart. She went back inside, retrieved her hat and her shawl, and left.

The hill wasn’t a tall one, but evening was coming to an end by the time she got to the top. She sat and watched the sun dip into the valley and the stars come out, all in the same breath.

She couldn’t believe the colors.

 

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Day five, can’t believe I made it this far. I’m coming down with something, so today was a bit of a slog, but we made it through. Have you tried anything like this or have your own writing challenge to share? Drop a comment below.  

 

…and the Sea

Here are a few shots from my recent hunting trip to Carlsbad beach. Instead of taking time to integrate them into a written piece, or essay, as is my typical modus operandi, I thought I would present the shots and try to let them stand on their own. These were taken with my borrowed Rebel 350D with the stock 18-55mm, if you are into that kind of thing.

Mixing memory and desire…

Fall has arrived in Southern California, bringing with it cooler temperatures, seasonal allergies, and most importantly, it’s brought the rains.

I love the rain. Not particularly in that hippie, let’s take off our shoes and go dance barefoot and naked in it, but I do love the rain. For me, there are few things as refreshing and beautiful in this world as a rainy day. Grey moody skies not only transform the world, but they also have the power to transport me.

Not necessarily to happier times, just earlier times.

I grew up in the woods and mountains of North Carolina. Most of my childhood was spent outside, exploring, climbing, tramping over every inch and square of my territory. Because of my love for the outdoors, or perhaps the genesis of that love, I was fascinated with survival stories such as Robinson Crusoe and The Hatchet.

So my excursions into the woods became adventures of survival. I made countless shelters, preparing for the day when I would be stranded and forced to rely on my wits against the untamed wilderness. Of course all this took place within a few hundred yards of my house, but you should always be prepared. Shelters meant comfort, safety, and happiness.

You are never more aware of a warm and dry place when the world around you isn’t. When a sudden rain shower would spring up I would tuck into one of my shelters, or under just the right kind of tree, and watch the rain renew the world around me.

In the rain, everything was more vivid. Colors, dull and faded under the sun, burst to life. The overpowering and familiar smells of the outdoors would sink back, allowing the subtle undertones of soil and wood to take the stage. The voice nature would slide behind a soft veil of hissing water. Each individual rain drop would paint everything with a splash of sound.

In short, the world was transformed.

Many years later, I was playing a cowboy in an outdoor wild west stunt show, the role that would earn me my moniker. We had a real, functional, steam locomotive that would take guests out through the wilderness for a nice thirty minute ride. While out there, my fellow performers and I would disembark and put on a short show. It wasn’t always easy, and it wasn’t always fun, but it was an entirely unique experience for us.

This one day in particular, I was leaning against the corner of a building, my gun in my hand, waiting to ‘rob’ the train, all in the pouring rain. I could feel the ground washing away underneath my boots, every square inch of me was soaking wet, and water was running off the brim of my hat in thick rivulets.

Then the smell reached me.

At that time my life was spinning rapidly out of my control. I was lost and everything was upside down. My work was a piece of flotsam that I clung to. I was miserable. I focused so hard on the here and now that I didn’t have to think about anything else. In short, I was blind.

It was the smell of the soil freshly turned by a falling rain. The soil you find deep beneath the tallest trees, soft and black. My wet clothes no longer mattered. My problems would work out. I was transformed. I was renewed. I was twelve again with my back to a tree, watching droplets work their way from one leaf to the next. And I understood something easily learned, and just as easily forgotten. I learned that life goes ever on.

Many years later, rain still takes me back to those places. Back to the long forgotten and yet still familiar places of my childhood. Moment’s lost, only to flow back unbidden at the first scent of rain on the air. It remains a link to where I’ve come from. A reminder that sometimes happiness is as simple as sitting under a big enough leaf and letting the world continue without you for awhile.

I love the rain. I love the smell, the sound, the feeling of gray rainy days. In times of peace it makes me aware and conscious of that peace. In times of turmoil, it reminds me that the world will continue and that peace will come again. In short, I love the rain.

So yeah, go take off your shoes and go dance barefoot and naked in it.

One year later

How quickly time flies when you are having fun. Not having fun? Too bad, it’s flying anyway.

The ever plodding forward momentum of time, the insoluble nature of it, is very much on my mind this morning as I ride the morning train into LA. I’m thinking about where I was precisely one year ago.

Exactly in the same place I am now.

Let me clarify. Physically, I am in the same place. I am riding the exact same morning train, heading to the exact destination. One year ago it’s likely that I would be sitting in this exact same seat.

But let me tell you sister, for everything else we’re miles away.

One year ago I was newly arrived in Southern California, destitute from bad choices and crippled by hubris. I had arrived firmly and most definitively at a crossroads and rather than gather the rubble of my life around me, cling to the shadows that remained as I had so many times in the past, I gave away the vast majority of my possessions and packed the few things that remained. With my backpack and single suitcase, I flew out to join my family in Southern California.

Go west young man.

Gone was the big screen HDTV, The PlayStation 3, the electronics, the furniture, the miscellaneous shit that I had been hoarding for years. I spent my last three dollars in an airport Wendy’s. Like so many before me I was heading west hoping to find gold, and I couldn’t even afford a sifting pan.

And that was then. If I were to go back and find that man, that other me, one year ago on this train, I doubt I would recognize him. If I were to speak to man, I wouldn’t know his thoughts. He would be a stranger wearing my face.

A few years ago I was on vacation with some friends and, spur of the moment, we wandered into a mirror maze. I had recently made drastic changes in my life, losing over sixty pounds being one of them. I was finding myself again, it took another three years and more than a few extremely bad decisions to actually do it, but I digress. At that time I was first beginning to feel glimmers of who I really was.

So there we were in this mirror maze. The mirrors throw all sense of direction and spatial understanding out the door. You can be standing right next to your friend and the mirrors make it seem like they are at the end of the hall and vice versa. We’re making our way through, slowly, laughing as we bumble into the mirrors, the walls, each other. I’m walking down a hall and I see a man coming my way. He’s got shorter brown hair, a hint of stubble. Just some guy, you know? We’re walking directly toward each other.

I step to my right to let him pass. He does the same. I laugh, apologize, and step to my left. He does the same.

It’s me. The man I’m trying to step around is me. I looked myself dead in the face, made eye contact, and didn’t even know it. You look at yourself in the mirror every day, but how many times do you actually see.

Today, as I sit in this familiar seat, watching the sun spill over the Southern California hills, I look back at where I’ve come from, and where I am now. One year ago I was directionless. Today, I know where I’m going.

On Monday I received word that I had passed the audition to get into The Second City’s graduating ensemble, an audition that a good many of my extremely talented class mates did not pass. I’m flabbergasted, honored, confused, elated, humbled.

I found love when and where I least expected. And it’s good, it’s pure. It has a clarity, honesty, and vastness that I never thought possible, but always dreamed for.

I get asked to write scripts. I get to perform and make people laugh almost every day. I get to be me and I am loved for it. I am doing exactly what I want to do and the universe is allowing me to make a living doing it. How cool is that.

The universe swept ever onward. It wasn’t until I just let go and let it carry me along that I found my course. You struggle and suffer and push when sometimes all you need is time. Trust it and things will have changed without you even noticing.

Time flies, you might as well have fun.