Post by Kaim Starkhani on Dec 9, 2012 9:35:58 GMT -5
(yes, I'm posting a lot. Sorry!)
I wrote a page-long imagery piece a few months ago that I like. I was feeling really, really, REALLY awful and for once in my life I thought hey, I can write something to distract myself! I tried to immerse myself in what I was writing about to be in a new situation. I think I should try this again sometime, it certainly helped.
Tell me what you think! It doesn't exactly have an end and it's unedited, but I like it.
--
The street is dark. Streetlamps dot the slippery-shiny streets, yet their orange glow doesn’t extend far beyond the puddles of light on the ground, kept in their boundaries by a nighttime sky and a cloud-covered sliver of moon.
Peri walks down this street, or rather, down the scraggly sidewalk alongside it. The atmosphere is deserted, but she knows the train station is right ahead. It’s calm, quiet, and just chilly enough for her to have draped a long woolen jacket over her shoulders, but not enough to have slipped her arms through the dangling sleeves. Her shoes make dulled tocks against the wet concrete that seems to stretch on, and on, far past her destination. She wonders if it ever ends, if maybe a hundred miles away there are men doggedly pouring concrete, smoothing it down and constantly lengthening the walkway until it leads to everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere all at once.
Then, she wonders what her specific destination will be like. Peri’s never even been half a mile from home, let alone on a train ride halfway across the country. Her arrival will be somewhere so completely different from here that her mind can’t seem to wrap itself around what it could be like. Futilstown. Certainly the word town is in the name, but the book she’d read about it claimed it was a great city full of new ideas, cultures, and people. She still remembers the creak of the stiff new spine of the book as she pressed it open, and the sharp smell of the fresh, glossy pages.
Her own little village is the type that isn’t marked by a dot on any world maps. It’s insignificant in the scope of things. It’s not worldly and it’s not advanced and it’s a home that she’s known her whole life. There’s one small street lined with several shops, a market square that on Sundays was visited by merchants from other towns, and a few outlying farms. At the outskirts of the village there is a sidewalk that disappears into the horizon in one direction, and travels down the hill in the other direction. Peri has been walking on this sidewalk for many miles, and she feels like maybe she’ll disappear into the horizon, too.
She’s close to the station by now. She’s never been to one before, but she can hear the bustle. And—if she strains her eyes, ahead there’s a larger orange glow than the ones enclosing the streetlights; a brighter glow, too, with more variation in shade and value.
Peri feels like she’s in a dream as she comes ever closer. She watches as the station looms up in front of her. It’s more of a platform, with a ticket booth before it and the long dark tracks extending on the other side. The bustle she had heard before is really a small group of people, with a few solitary figures scattered along the platform. There are sconces lining the front wall of the ticket office facing that platform that shine bronze light, and three more streetlights spaced equally on the platform. These streetlights have a different design than those that had lined the long walk to the station: these are shaped like candelabra, with tree-like branches curling out from the center, tipped with light bulbs themselves.
She steps nervously onto the platform and her low heel shuffles a little on the grit. At the ticket window she asks for “one please, to Futilstown,” in a wavering voice. When the man asks if it’s a one-way ticket, she can’t find her voice so she nods instead.
She grips the ticket in her hand now and stands by a light, a few feet away from the gathering of people. They’re talking and she could probably eavesdrop on their conversations if she wanted to, but she’s distracted by her own thoughts. She looks down at the ticket. She feels like it should be meaningful and a symbol of some sort, but all she sees is the small gray paper that has a small sweat stain from the clutch of her small hand.
She dreads the sound of the train whistling towards them, flying to the station. If she strains her ears she imagines maybe she can hear it, creeping its way inexorably closer.
I wrote a page-long imagery piece a few months ago that I like. I was feeling really, really, REALLY awful and for once in my life I thought hey, I can write something to distract myself! I tried to immerse myself in what I was writing about to be in a new situation. I think I should try this again sometime, it certainly helped.
Tell me what you think! It doesn't exactly have an end and it's unedited, but I like it.
--
The street is dark. Streetlamps dot the slippery-shiny streets, yet their orange glow doesn’t extend far beyond the puddles of light on the ground, kept in their boundaries by a nighttime sky and a cloud-covered sliver of moon.
Peri walks down this street, or rather, down the scraggly sidewalk alongside it. The atmosphere is deserted, but she knows the train station is right ahead. It’s calm, quiet, and just chilly enough for her to have draped a long woolen jacket over her shoulders, but not enough to have slipped her arms through the dangling sleeves. Her shoes make dulled tocks against the wet concrete that seems to stretch on, and on, far past her destination. She wonders if it ever ends, if maybe a hundred miles away there are men doggedly pouring concrete, smoothing it down and constantly lengthening the walkway until it leads to everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere all at once.
Then, she wonders what her specific destination will be like. Peri’s never even been half a mile from home, let alone on a train ride halfway across the country. Her arrival will be somewhere so completely different from here that her mind can’t seem to wrap itself around what it could be like. Futilstown. Certainly the word town is in the name, but the book she’d read about it claimed it was a great city full of new ideas, cultures, and people. She still remembers the creak of the stiff new spine of the book as she pressed it open, and the sharp smell of the fresh, glossy pages.
Her own little village is the type that isn’t marked by a dot on any world maps. It’s insignificant in the scope of things. It’s not worldly and it’s not advanced and it’s a home that she’s known her whole life. There’s one small street lined with several shops, a market square that on Sundays was visited by merchants from other towns, and a few outlying farms. At the outskirts of the village there is a sidewalk that disappears into the horizon in one direction, and travels down the hill in the other direction. Peri has been walking on this sidewalk for many miles, and she feels like maybe she’ll disappear into the horizon, too.
She’s close to the station by now. She’s never been to one before, but she can hear the bustle. And—if she strains her eyes, ahead there’s a larger orange glow than the ones enclosing the streetlights; a brighter glow, too, with more variation in shade and value.
Peri feels like she’s in a dream as she comes ever closer. She watches as the station looms up in front of her. It’s more of a platform, with a ticket booth before it and the long dark tracks extending on the other side. The bustle she had heard before is really a small group of people, with a few solitary figures scattered along the platform. There are sconces lining the front wall of the ticket office facing that platform that shine bronze light, and three more streetlights spaced equally on the platform. These streetlights have a different design than those that had lined the long walk to the station: these are shaped like candelabra, with tree-like branches curling out from the center, tipped with light bulbs themselves.
She steps nervously onto the platform and her low heel shuffles a little on the grit. At the ticket window she asks for “one please, to Futilstown,” in a wavering voice. When the man asks if it’s a one-way ticket, she can’t find her voice so she nods instead.
She grips the ticket in her hand now and stands by a light, a few feet away from the gathering of people. They’re talking and she could probably eavesdrop on their conversations if she wanted to, but she’s distracted by her own thoughts. She looks down at the ticket. She feels like it should be meaningful and a symbol of some sort, but all she sees is the small gray paper that has a small sweat stain from the clutch of her small hand.
She dreads the sound of the train whistling towards them, flying to the station. If she strains her ears she imagines maybe she can hear it, creeping its way inexorably closer.
And in chorus, we learn how to read music. What about you?
But yeah, working on the missing location pictures. <3