Sunday, November 15, 2009

Some Writing

I decided I ought to put a little bit of my writing up here on this blog, so I chose this: these are some description notes I took while on a walk on a trail.

The Carriage Hill Exploration

The boardwalk continues, several feet above the marsh, the zigzag line. It feels like a remnant of a dark shanty town; and all was cleanly wiped away, save this one path. I can feel the ghosts of stilted houses when I stare across the lower cattails into the bare poplar crowns, with one lone white birch, a stark signal in the distance. It marks the hut for councils, in the dream there - of a past that never was, no more faded than those pasts that are no longer.
The older cattails rustle in a wind-gust. Most are dry as papyrus. These have matured from young greenery into perfect instruments, always playing for an absent - or perhaps merely incorporeal - audience. If I look over there, my vision is across the lake, the wide ruffled expanse reminding me that this is a very small marsh indeed. And it is turning unfreindly, as I shiver. The warmth that bred a soup of life here is gone. No more frogs, no more water-spiders, no more tadpoles - the wind sounds so mournful as if because, now that the cattails have just finally, after so long, perfected their song, all the listening ears have cruelly fled. Their conductor is a dead half of a tree, standing out in their midst, of a breed unrecognizable. It leans, and the only three meagre branches point, the way I've come. It is a sign, a traditional "Turn Back", built by that ghostly village whose boardwalk I enjoy, and spotted with white mushroom disks out its side.
But I move on. As I turn a corner - here, perhaps, hosted a barbershop above the water, there a dock for villagers to take their canoes out on the lake, a sound responds to me - the quite distinct sound of something fleeing over bits of dry ground on the marsh, something hidden by fallen branches and briary somethings proffering toxic berries. As I stand, watching my nothing, it sounds once again - and then must be gone, for I hear no more? Could it be? Life, still here? Animate life? Heavans, no. More likely, an alien from outside the marsh, with outlandish elongated ears and a cotten tail. If I wait long enough (and I do) another sound, this time a birdsong from farr off, clearly a lark far too dignified to descend to the marsh, and loud about it, too. As I cast about for the faint, distant chirpings that follow, I notice on one of the trees on the north side of my path has frown right beside the boardwalk. And, of course, the most outlandish thought enters my head. It really wouldn't be a difficulty at all, just to step out, and puit my foot in that low fork there. I could hoist myself into that tree quite easily. And so, having come upon a most certainly bad idea, I must simply do it.
But I am interrupted. A sound like water dropping on a rottne board catches me, and I turn back to see a starling sized woodpecker pecking his way up my sign-conductor-tree. He (or she) spirals up like the lines on a barber pole, then disappears, does it again and finds his hidey-hole nearly up the top. He pokes his head out once or twice, perhaps to see if I will leave, then gets bored with sitting at home and pokes his way up the tree once more.
Finally, I get up in the tree. Barring the slight security of some interloping twigs, I invade the wide fork of the tree. What a nice perch! Almost as nice as the woodpecker's, though a deal lower. I am still inferior to his black-and-whiteness, and he is still poking around his tree. You think he would know it better. Only now do I really notice that the marsh is the perfect spoiler of all clothes, a half-frozen miasma of water and hummus, whose effluvia are unpresent surely only because the cold has stifled them. Oh well, little price to pay for being a part of the scene. I'm no longer some invader on the boardwalk, but a representative of the long lost village of Never-was to the dead republic of the swamp. At least, I am, and proud of it, until I have to get down, set upon the path again, and turn back the way I came, leaving my huts and rope bridges to the imagination of the marsh. Let it do with them as it pleases. From a distance, back up the slope, the whole marsh is nothing but a few trees poking up in front of the lake. The whole expanse of water altogether is nothing but a cold still-life, lonely, distant and undeniably unhaunted. One feels as though they could marsh back down to that boardwalk and claim the whole place for themselves. But I know that the moment my foot creaked upon a board, the true marsh would return, complete with spooky signs, quiet orchestras, and a thoroughly disapproving woodpecker, reigning king and the temporal absence of all other citizens, animal or human.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Looong Time

Erg... It's been a while since I posted here. Oh, well. Hard to know if anybody ever reads this thing anyhow, seeing as I haven't found many opportunities to link to here. It's been even harder to write during school than last year! I have a killer religion project that eats up 7-5 every Saturday at least, so I'm getting next to nil done. I did finish outlining my next big project (a stand-alone story about a 12-year old boy who plays too many video games) but I haven't written an actual line yet. Pity. I started a short story, but I haven't finished it yet. And the first quarter's already over! Yikes!