When I Consider
Just lately I've begun working through Alice LaPlante's Method and Madness: The Making of a Story, reading the text and attempting the exercises at the end of chapters. Below, the fruits of my labor.
I Am a Camera
It is a late February day and I have just returned from an hour's walk. At 48 degrees F, it was cold by this area's usual standard. My winter coat was zipped up to my chin; the chill air stung my cheeks. As is often the case on such a day, no one else was out walking. Not as usual, though, the surrounding hills and our locally famous mountain were wearing a rare (though admittedly scant) mantle of snow. Leaving my house, I turned in their direction and walked to the end of the street, where my view was wide and open. new homes are being built across the way, between where I stood and the snowy hills beyond. because these homes are painted in earth tones and have red tile roofs, and because the sky was a fetching brew of clouds—from dark gray, rain-laden threats to tall
Cumulus blimps with sun-warmed edges defined by clefts of bright blue—I could imagine I was looking at an Italian mountain village. But the accuracy of this vision was dubious: for although Alpine peaks, like my mountain, might be veiled in mist, tile roofs there would be snow-covered, as would the ground; a world overwhelmed by white. The ground beneath my feet was only wet and the nearer hills a bright Irish green. This scene was uniquely of here. And this afternoon, alone on my walk, it was uniquely mine.
~2/24/23
I Don't Know Why I Remember
I don't know why I remember that particular thirst so well. I have certainly been thirsty many times since. But on that long ago Saturday morning when I was maybe 11, mounted on a borrowed horse in a dusty riding ring, I remember a thirst that (now I think about it) was—must be—awfully like an addict's thrall. It was an all-encompassing, senses-consuming focus on the desired fix. Which in my case—as I trotted endlessly around the ring, posting up and down to the horse's stride, my juiceless mouth the target, my imagination a high caliber delivery device—was anything liquid. The cure for my acute distress, two full cans of Orange Crush—jackpot from a nearby vending machine—is among the keenest feelings of reprieve I have ever experienced. I chugged the entire first can in one long draught, then begged for another. It lasted no longer than the first. If there were insistent burps in the aftermath, their memory is long gone. I remember only the urgency of the need, the exquisite relief of its ease.
~2/23/23