Skip to main content

A Sky Painted Flat


Today's path is not complicated. It follows flowering lanes, between the bell hyacinths and the bluebell leaves. It pilots under a sky painted flat, with cameo ware cloud. It loops the cool grass in the field where the wind blows over badger bones, where vivid slime grows in the stream overflow and daisies tinge pink at the petal tips. Buzzards wing thermals and the cattle are sat, chewing. Dog runs, dip dyed in mud.
And the evening is straightforward too, is routine. A drive across Plymouth as the daylight fades and neon softly flickers. Small groups of people stop to communicate. One here holds a pint glass, another, a bag from the takeaway counter. The air has a tarmac earthiness: tangs of tyre rubber and buttery garlic.


~110,625 words make up The Novel so far. Working on Chapter Nine out of ten. End in sight! But I fell asleep over my laptop this week. Much energy expended. It makes one jittery. It has resulted in a thick cough and a thin delirium. The end is sighted and will be reached. Only I might need a medic. Will settle for a brandy. Indebted to the unruffled sky.

Comments

Suze said…
This was so beautifully written, Lisa.

I hope the cough is nothing serious and that you are able to bring to completion your worthy work.
27 March 2014 at 16:38
Lisa Southard said…
Thank you Suze :-) A routine rundown cough is all it is, not enough to stop me. Enough to remind me to sleep! Hard not to rush now the end is sighted too!!
27 March 2014 at 22:16
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contact Pants Conundrum

There is weather today, I do note it: take a few moments to reckon the size of a cloud (big) and the frequency of rain (sporadic.) Centre of my interest though is a stack of magazines. Not the fashion kind. This is martial arts research. I'm not even sure what it is I'm looking for, but intuition calls loud. A range of old adverts skew some amusement. Contact pants, for example. Pants are not trousers where I come from. They are underwear. Professional contact pants: improved smirk value. But why would a person be likely to purchase a grappling hook and a lock pick set? For specialists and hobbyists only, the blurb assures. Guidance on the pheromone spray that attracts women against their better judgement? I doubt it works any more proficiently than the mysterious potion that defines your muscles while you sleep. But, then: I wonder is some sprayed on this paper? What was my intuition thinking, making this ghastly shout… Tea break time. There's a lot of words...
2 comments
Read more

Back From The Future Blog Party

Another joint blog adventure- if you want to see who else said what the list of participants is here . The premise is this: 'You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you. You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox -- sent from ten years in the future -- and it's filled with items you have sent yourself. What's in it?' Here's how I imagined it: Before dawn? Shadows outside, first forming. Sleep has gone, I don't know where. Coffee I can find. All the way from Machu Pichu, this fair-traded pack. Scissors are in the drawer, which ...
26 comments
Read more

A Happy Kind Of Idiot

I am watching hazel leaves shimmy in a breeze, they are keeping time with the buzz of nettle stings that run from my fingertips to my elbows. It feels like I'm wearing gloves made of needles; why didn't I just wear gloves to clear the nettles from the raspberry hedge? But I like to know the plants, how they grow, how they smell, how they stain and sting, what bugs shelter in their leaves, what grubs and gastropods nestle at the roots. How the roots sneak under weedblocks, moon-pale, and over open ground where they are purplish, bullish.  I like the work to affect, I like interactive life.  It has a little pain and a lot of interest.  Not all the nettles are gone, of course, some must be left to house caterpillars, and they are a healthy vegetable for people too. Today’s crop is for compost though, to feed the soil, the miracle stuff from which this abundance grows. How could I not wish to be close to that?  At home I have a shower, scrub my sore hands- and still I sm...
Post a Comment
Read more