words

"Thwapped" and "scootch" are words. So sorry spellcheck, throw all the angry squiggly red lines at me you want.

Part 4

      But maybe just the idea of this mansion will be enough... I already have ideas and atmospheres creeping into my thoughts, a close-up on a broken window, maybe, with vines curling tenderly around the sharp edges... that's actually not a bad idea. Shifting on the rock, I pull my bag around and get my sketchbook out. I scrawl a few notes, and do a quick thumbnail of the image in my head. I'll need to find some reference for old glass, I have an idea of what a window would look like, left solely to nature's attention for several decades, but I'd feel better if I had something to look at, to get the subtleties right.

      I decide to follow the fence and creek for another half hour or so, and then consider heading back if nothing new of interest turns up. I think I'll listen to an audiobook on the walk back, it will make it a little less tedious to retrace my path. For now, I leave my iPod on shuffle, tuning in and out as I walk, stopping now and again to take a few more pictures, or make notes of compositions popping into my head.
      Before long, I realize that the creek is curving toward--- no I guess it would be the other way around, the fence is curving closer to the creek. Definitely closer... oh it does! A few dozen yards ahead, the creek flows right into the fence, passing through it somehow or another. There's got to be some kind of opening there, they wouldn't have let the water run right through the iron railings, they'd rust so soon that way. I can't tell at all from here, the vines and other plants grow even more densely here, being so near the water. I'm so glad I came out here before full summer hits, I'd never be able to get through any of this stuff. And mosquitoes... I hadn't even thought about that, this creek bed is going to be a hellhole of bugs when the temperature gets just a little bit higher. All the more reason to keep going today.
      I'm halted a good five feet from the place where the creek passes under the fence. Even though most of it is dry and brown, dead growth from last year, there's just so much plant matter that I can't get any closer without a battle. The creek is narrower here, so it runs a little deeper, deep enough that I can't possibly step in it. There are stones, but nothing big enough to help me. I can push through some of this stuff, but... what kind of a gap is there in the fence, anyway?
      Glancing around, I find a young tree amidst the brush, close to the water. It will sort of hold my weight, if I hold on to it while leaning out across the creek... I crouch down and get a good grip on the tree with one hand, then lean as far out as I can, as close to the water's surface as I can, trying to see under the vines and other growth... there's definitely light coming through, more by the water than elsewhere... there! There's fence to either side, but definitely not over the water itself, there's a break of some kind. Standing back up, I push my way a few feet into the crackling dry branches and vivid baby leaves, trying to decide if the vines above the water look any less dense than the ones on the sides... and I'm pretty sure they do. All I should have to do, then, is come back with decent boots, and I can wade through the creek and under the opening made for the water. Awesome.
      I have no actual reason to think that just because the water is allowed onto the other side of the fence at this point, that there is anything of interest on the other side of the fence. Hell, I don't even know which side of the fence is the “inside”! I'm going to come back anyway though, despite what my head says. My curiosity demands I investigate the other side of the fence, and so I shall.
      I find a rock to sit on at the water's edge, and gaze toward the hole I can barely make out. Despite all my brain's attempts to be rational, I can't help but feel there's something just a few feet away, hidden by the vine-draped fence... if I could just reach a little farther, I could touch it...
      A bit of color in the water catches my eye, and I look around for a stick. Finding one, I prod at the thick layers of decaying leaves and plant debris at the bottom of the creek bed. There are stones underneath – marble? It's a bright enough white to be marble. I poke around closer to the bank, until I uncover some close enough to reach in and pick up. I swish the stone around in the water to clear off the mud, then hold it up where the sun can strike it. Definitely marble, the same kind of crushed stone my grandma had by her back porch when I was little. My stomach lifts a little closer to my throat, my heart picking up and giggling defiantly at my brain. There's got to be something close! And the water's flowing from the opposite side of the fence, flowing out from there to here, so the stones must have been on the other side... stones that have no business being in the middle of the woods where there is no human habitation. The abandoned mansion is on the other side of the fence, that's all there is to it. I roll the stone around in my hand for a minute, smiling at the small sparkles of light that glint from the small flat surfaces on the rough-cut stone. There's got to be something over there...
      I lean toward the water again, gently tossing the stone back to rest among its brethren... and another color catches my eye. A bright cobalt blue? It's right near the bank, so I reach in to pick it up. A bit of china? Not quite... at least I don't think so. One of my friends growing up lived a little farther outside town than I did, the houses were a little older, and we used to find bits of broken dishes in her vegetable garden, or at the edges of the farmer's fields. Just little one, maybe two-inch bits, white porcelain with delicate blue details. But the blue in this is different, and the weight feels different too... I rinse it off a little more in the water, and find that there's orange, and lighter blue, in an almost Oriental style of abstract vines and flowers. It looks similar to the fence, actually, something in the style of it.
      The fence is far too expensive to have had a trash heap near it, this can't be a broken dish. I don't actually know what rich millionaires used to do with their garbage, but somehow the thought of them keeping it piled up on their own property doesn't sit well with me. And not beside a pretty little creek running through their yard.
      Retrieving my stick, I poke around the creek bed some more, pushing aside the heavy old leaves, testing the mud, seeing what else is in there... I hit something bigger than the marble stones, and smoother than stones anyway. Eagerly, I try to pry it up. It's under some leaves, and sunk in some awfully sticky mud, but I feel it giving---
      And then it flips away from my stick, flopping over on its other side, back into the mud. I scootch closer to the water's edge, and start prying at it again, trying to coax it back toward me. Eventually I move it closer - it's not easy pushing something from its opposite side with a stick. I need something with a hook... but there aren't any sticks around me the right shape, so I persevere with my straight twig. Finally, I can see if, the moving water beginning to clear the mud off portions of it. It's square, maybe four, five inches across - and has the same pattern as the bit of china I already picked up. I can't see more than an inch or two, but it looks gorgeous...
      Once it's in reach, I plunge my hand into the water and snatch it up, shaking it vigorously under the water, reaching in with my other hand to push the ancient mud off its surface. Then, curling my hands around it, I lift it tenderly out from the water, and bring it into the light.
      It's solid, there are a few darkened cracks in the glaze coating it, but the square tile seems to be intact. The colors aren't smooth... it's definitely hand painted, the variations are clearly brush strokes. The blue of a winter evening, the aqua of the brightest summer sky you've ever seen, and a coral... a coral that reminds me of blood on a freshly-bitten lip, though it's really more orange than that. There's something vital and almost feral about the color, set against the cool blues like that... A thin black outline traces the flowers and leaves and flourishes of the design, and there is so little variation...
      This is a single tile, maybe five inches. Like a bathroom tile... That's what it reminds me of, Roman baths, though the style of this definitely isn't Greek or Roman. Most of my art history is pretty hazy, but I can tell that much. Definitely more east than that, maybe Russian or Islamic in origins... I have my book somewhere in the apartment (after spending as much as I did on the thing, I wasn't about to give it up for the twenty bucks the campus bookstore would have given me), I'll have to look it up when I get back. I pull out my sketchbook, and lay the tile carefully in the middle of it, hoping the pages will cushion the ceramic from any stumbling around I might do on my long walk back.

spelling and an illustration

I could not for the life of me figure out how to spell "tetanus" earlier. I was writing on my dinner break at work, so I had no internet (I'll never remember to ask the boss for the wifi password, and anyway, the lack of distraction is a REALLY good thing), and I couldn't google it to get suggestions, and eeeeevery variation I could think of was still too far off-base for OpenOffice to figure out.

And, just now, I spelled "rambunctious" just fine and dandy on the first try. I and O and U all properly in their places.


I wiki'd around a bit about wrought iron fences, because I decided I wanted one. (...I wonder when that happened? I had something else in mind for the girl to find, and what happens? She finds a fence. I have no idea how.) I used a loooot of really elaborate ironwork in last year's NaNo, and I'd found some really stunning references. But I wanted to see if I could get an idea of a) how long ago the stuff was used, and b) how well it would hold up. Turns out ironwork goes back to a least 2000 BC. Good times. (The really elaborate decorative stuff came in starting in medieval times, hardcore around the 1500s.) How well it holds up... most of the things from 2000 BC have rusted away, but things in Europe have been in place a few centuries easily. Apparently there's a LOT of variation in iron, especially the farther back you go, since the whole process of working with it has had an awful lot of variables.

But the real result of my wiki wanderings? was this picture:



...that's pretty much the most incredible fence I have ever seen. Just the style of it, all swirls and things, not a trace of a straight line, just this vast organic motif... that is absolutely stunning. I'm in so much love. So, the fence my (still unnamed) main character has found, is pretty darn similar to this one. A bit smaller, and a bit more detailed, but, pretty much this one. <333

Part 3

      I follow the creek farther and farther into the woods like this, standing amidst the water whenever I can, trying to get my camera to pick up all the nuances my eyes can read in the colors and textures. I have no idea how far I've walked, it's been over an hour but I've stopped so many times that I can't have covered all that much distance. A little dell of ferns off to one side draws me away from the water at last, the sun making the newly-born greenery absolutely luminescent. But the woods around it are surprisingly dense. The little nook of ferns and decaying logs is surrounded almost entirely by walls of vines and impenetrable brush. I'm sure that will make it all the more charming and secluded in the summer, but right now it's just intimidating. So I exit the way I came in, and head back toward the creek. A check of my compass reveals that the creek has meandered a lot, because without my noticing I'm now headed in a totally different direction. I really had no idea how far these woods went back, and I'm getting the feeling it's a lot more than I'd thought. Back at the creek bed, I pause to take a drink from my bottle of water. Turning in a slow circle, I look casually around to see if there's anything more interesting than the creek... and I stop, staring at the other side of the water. Is that a fence? It looks like it goes in a straight line, though the vines covering it make it hard to tell.
      Just my luck, there's absolutely no way to get across the creek right here. Up ahead, I can see a few more big stones, and I head quickly toward them. It's a bit of a stretch to reach the first of them, but they're stable and after the first one it's a reasonable path across. I can still see the fence, though I think it's a little farther from the water than it was back down the creek. There's a lot of low scrub, shorter plants than most I've run into in here, and I trip and nearly fall on my face several times. But eventually I make it to the low wall of vines... and it looks an awful lot more substantial than the usual drooping barbed wire run through the woods. I tug some of the vines aside, cautiously pulling them away a bit at a time, in case it really is barbed wire under there. Not really in the mood for a tetanus shot today.
      It's not barbed wire, it's... I don't actually know if it's iron, but it looks like a wrought iron fence. Leaning in closer, I keep pulling away the vines, but my care now is to not risk damaging the fence rather than worry for my fingers. Only a few inches of it are visible, but it's gorgeous... and it doesn't look like any fence I've ever seen, there are huge swirls of vines and flowers, tiny spirals and minute buds. There's none of the simple parallel lines that make up most iron fences, it's one spiral whirling into the next and the next. The top doesn't seem to be quite flat, the flowers and vines make it vary – the real vines growing over it had actually evened it out, instead of giving it false lumps. It's only a little taller than me, but I'm sure there's a good few inches of it underneath the thick layers of aging leaves on the ground, so it's probably about six feet high. It feels taller, the design is so large and bold... There's a bit of rust in places, and a few rough edges where small pieces have broken off. I can't imagine the change in temperature and moisture from winter to summer has done it any favors, our winters aren't bad, but it's obvious this has been neglected out here for a long, long time. The vines are so dense... and I'm almost positive there are no houses near here. I mean I guess there might be, but, I've looked at this area on a map, and there's no road in this direction for at least a mile.
      But I guess there must have been a house, or something, here at some point, why would you build a fence this gorgeous in the middle of the woods?
      Last time I was at the local bookstore, I saw a whole series of books filled with old photos of all the little towns in the area. But I never did pick one up... I'm sure they're still there, or there's one at the library. It's a small enough town that there will always be a few people obsessive about its history, always someone who knows the story of any place. I suppose it was some millionaire or another, who moved out here to get some fresh country air in his lungs, in the lungs of a sickly young wife maybe, but the money was soon gone through some trouble, and who's going to bother putting a fence up for auction? Though I have to say, I'd have bought a piece of it if I could, it's so incredibly beautiful...
      I've cleared most of the vines and debris away from a section maybe five feet in diameter now. God would I love to clear it all... but my hands are getting ripped to shreds on the dried old vines, and the new growth is almost impossible to break. I'd need tools to do it properly, and gloves for sure. Sighing, I take a step back, letting my fingers trace lightly around a swirling iron vine. The light is all wrong for a good photo, but I take a few shots anyway, in case by some awful chance I can't find my way back here or something. The bottom falls out of my stomach for a second as the idea hits me – but no, I'll find it, all I need to do is follow the creek in and I'll be fine.
      I can find the fence... but can I find the reason it's here? I look around, but there's no more clue than the long stretches of vine-covered fence running in both directions. It curves pretty sharply away from the creek behind me, no wonder I didn't see it until this point. Still, it follows the creek for awhile from here. I look up toward the tops of the trees, and check my compass... I'm not sure there will ever be a good light time for photos in an area this deep in the woods, but maybe I'll have better luck closer to noon? It can't be far from that now... my watch informs me it's about eleven. Guess I'll keep an eye on the light as I go, but if it's that near noon and it's still not getting down here, that doesn't bode well for photos.
      I slip my camera back into my bag for now, and after another sip of water, I continue on into the woods, sometimes beside the fence, sometimes moving back to the water's edge, my eyes straying more into the trees to either side, looking for some other trace of human habitation...

      Half an hour later, there's nothing new, and while the moderate heat of the springtime sun is getting down here, the light is still pretty patchy. Unless I can get all the vines off a section of fence, the vines are going to overshadow the detail in the ironwork... so I can capture the outlines of it, but not the texture, which is only half the information I need for a drawing. I clear a smaller section away this time, trying to get both sides as best I can, so a bit of light can get through the fence, and the iron stand out against the more distant background of trees and things. It's seriously a pain, trying to slip my hand between the unyielding iron curls – even if there were a gate somewhere, I'd never in a million years see it, and I'm really not confident about my ability to climb over something taller than me. (And I'd be absolutely terrified of breaking off even the tiniest piece...) I clear maybe a foot square, and take a few pictures, and then find a nice cozy rock to sit on for awhile.
      I take the sandwich out of my bag, and keep it in its plastic bag as I eat it – I don't want to waste any of my drinking water on cleaning off my hands, and I'm not exactly confident about how clean the water in the creek is. I turn off my iPod for a little while, listening to the environment around me. Lots of birds, but I have no idea what kinds, I'm awful at bird calls. The creek isn't a particularly rambunctious one, so there's not much more than a muted gurgle from it. What makes me happiest, is that I can't hear a single car. That is fantastic. It feels so nice to be completely alone and unobserved now and again, left to whatever thoughts you'd like without interruption by the rest of the human race... I don't blame Mr. Mystery Millionaire for building a place out here, if that's what happened, there are definitely days I'd have no problem with a driveway that's two miles long.
      I stay on the rock for a little while, putting my hands behind me and leaning back, closing my eyes and breathing deeply, letting the quiet of the woods seep into me, letting the freshness of the air soak into my skin...
      Ugh, I hate crows! That's got to be the most obnoxious sound nature's thought of yet, they're so unreasonably loud and it's such a harsh, grating noise. Maybe I'm just biased, having been woken up so many summer vacation mornings at five a.m. by a crow or two that was partial to the tree right outside my bedroom window. Still.
      Looking around, I can just make out the large black shape of the evil bird in the top branches of... oh I'll have no idea what any of these trees are until they have leaves on them. Then I'll know a maple from an oak, and maybe a birch tree. Birch trees I might know by the bark, but that's about it, and that's only because I think they're really pretty. Too bad they're so overdone in art...
      The crow flies off, which is good, because it was up way too high for me to be able to throw something at it. But my nice meditative mood is broken, and I sigh and look around. How much farther do I want to keep walking? I'm dying to know where the fence leads, but without having any ideas of what I might be looking for... I might just walk in a big circle that extends for a mile around the house – if the house is even still there. If it was even ever there! I have this gut feeling that there's a house, or at least was one, but maybe it's just wishful thinking. I could do such pretty drawings around a forgotten old mansion.

Part 2

      The woods look bigger from the inside than they do from the outside, I always forget that. If I go too far, I'm totally going to get lost. Dad always trained us kids to bring a compass with us when we went off wandering, but I never really went that far by myself. The woods back home scarcely qualified as woods, you were never more than five, ten minutes' walk from seeing where they ended. It seemed so much bigger to me as a kid... But here, I'm on unfamiliar ground. I've lived in this apartment since I graduated college five years ago (five years, already??), but never really explored the area around it much. Campus, I covered every inch of ground, but somehow working leaves you less time for walks than classes ever did. Or maybe it's just that I had to hunt for quiet, private places on campus, and here I have the whole apartment (small as it is) to myself. I have to be at work in two hours, I really shouldn't walk out of sight of the edge of the trees anyway, not today. There's a creek maybe thirty feet to the right, if I just follow that, I'll have my path back to the edge. I'm sure my old compass is in one of the piles of boxes back in the apartment. Maybe I'll come back on my next day off... if it's not so gloomy out. The damp feels even more oppressive under the trees, it's almost cold here where the sun only barely gets in, even with the trees still nearly leafless. In another week or two, those leaves will fill in all the thousands of little gaps between the knuckled branches up there...
      I spend a few moments studying that interlacing of branches. It's something I've seen a thousand times, drawn a few times too, but every tree is different, and each time I look at the lacy combination of branches there are new patterns, different ratios of light and dark, so many shapes caught in the spaces between...
      I walk slowly toward the creek, skipping through a few songs on my iPod – I don't want anything too loud and energetic today, but I don't want to start sleepwalking either. The ground starts getting soggy and more green, as little water-loving plants are already breaking through the moldering leaves of the old year. I study the area between where I'm standing and the creek bed, and see that it just gets lower and more wet the closer to the bank... which is barely even a bank here, the creek just spreads into this whole large area. I am not at all equipped for slogging through a swamp today. I'll have to come back some other time...
      But I walk a little ways farther anyway, parallel to the creek instead of toward it, seeing if the ground dries up any. And it does seem to, though I still can't get anywhere near the slowly moving water. Does it only flood like this in the spring, or is this whole area that marshy? Looking around, I realize that if I knew more about plants, I'd know the answer... but I don't. There's lots of dry brush, and vague bits of neon green sprouting all over, but I have no idea what's what, and even if I did... I know all plants like water, but I have no clue which ones need to be perpetually drowning in it.
      Looking at my watch, I sigh and shift the bag on my shoulders. I should head back... it feels like such a pointless little walk, but I'll need to change my jeans and shoes at least before work now. And I need to fight my way back through the scrub at the edge of the woods... I feel tired just thinking about it. I try to focus on the fact that at least I snared some inspiration from the colors in the dead leaves, in the tangle of branches overhead... but that's really not enough to lift my mood.
      I skip through a few more songs, and land on something or another by Morrisey or The Smiths, I never know which is his solo stuff and which with the group. I don't recognize the song, but it's gloomy, so I let it play as I trek back to my apartment.

      It's a good two weeks before I get out to the woods again. I just haven't had time, or I've been so tired, or it's rained or... I shake my head to clear out the thoughts. I am going to have today. I am not going to think about work or any other looming responsibility. I have my camera, my little sketchbook and a favorite pencil (oh Pentallic woodless graphite pencils, you are the greatest invention ever), fresh playlists on my iPod of upbeat music and artsy music and all the stuff that inspires me, a bottle of water and a sandwich and an apple in my bag, and no work today. And there's sunlight! I set off toward the woods actually smiling, just gazing up at the brightness of the blue in the sky above and grinning for sheer joy at the sunlight. One of Coldplay's newer songs comes on... “Square One”, that's it, off “X & Y”. They totally turned into U2 on that album, and then having Brian Eno produce “Viva La Vida”? Totally sealed it. But somehow I can't bring myself to really mind, their sound is just fantastic, it's gotten so epic and grandiose and expansive, while still keeping some amazing textures running through everything... They're one of those bands that I always wanted to like, I knew I should, but it wasn't until “X & Y” that I really did – though despite growing up on U2, I have a few moments of indecision now trying to decide if I'm hearing Jonny Buckland's guitar or The Edge's. The tempo picks up and so does my pace, and I feel the urge to just start running through the grass, sprinting, like a child racing the wind... but I don't, I'm too old and dignified for that. Ha. Instead I let my hips sashay a bit, setting my strides in time to the music, singing softly along. “It doesn't matter who you are...”
      I walk along the edge of the woods a bit until I find the entry point I used last time. It isn't great, but at least I can get through it, and manage a few less scratches this time anyway. Today, I have on waterproof hiking boots. And I have a compass. I am invincible. I check the compass once I'm under the trees, and look around to find some other marker of the location... There, there's a fallen log with neon orange fungus on it. That's pretty good. And I want to follow the creek anyway... something about running water is always fascinating. I remember when my sister was little, she was obsessive about it, always demanding to look at the fountains in the mall when we went shopping, or have me take her to the creek in the woods back home. I played in the creek a lot myself, though I never was big on swimming. Hate getting things in my eyes.
      Again, I walk parallel to the water a little ways, not quite sure just how much water my boots will repel. Anyway my boots are just hiking boots, not the knee-high monstrosities I had as a kid. At the time, they were amazing, but I'm pretty sure my artistic nature would puke if I tried wearing anything like that now. The hiking boots are bad enough. But the ground seems to get a little higher, or maybe the creek bed is just lower, as I go farther into the woods. Anyway, I can get closer without being sucked into squishy mud. The creek isn't all that deep, maybe two feet, but it's still pretty wide here – it doesn't really go very far beyond the edge of the woods, just fades into swampiness and then vaguely wet fields. I wonder if there's a spring back in here somewhere, or if this is just an offshoot of a bigger stream?
      I grin as The Monkees' “Listen to the Band” comes up. It's completely absurd that I should like this song so much. It has one verse. Sung several times. The chorus consists of one line. It has twangy steel guitar, and a completely arbitrary brass section. By The Monkees, in their declining years of the late '60s. But somehow, it all works, and it makes me happy.
      I creep gingerly toward the edge of the bank, trying not to stumble into a pit of mud. Squatting down, I can see bits of plants trying to grow under the water beside the bank – I wonder if it's seaweed, or like cattails or something? Stones are starting to appear here and there in the creek bed, mostly small ones, but a few larger here and there, making the water bend and twist to get past them. I adjust my footing and lean as close as I can, trying to take a few pictures, I know I don't have the right setup for good water pictures, but the lines of the water as it moves are so fascinating. Water's so hard to draw well, you can't really draw the water itself, all you can do is show the effects it has on the things it touches... and that's different with every passing millisecond. I must have a hundred reference shots, and I still struggle every time I need to draw it. Non-draw it. Whatever. There's a rock large enough for me to stand on in the middle of the bed, I wonder if it's stable?
      Tentatively, I stretch out my leg, straining to reach the rock... but it's too far, just a few inches out of reach. The water's a good six inches deep at the bank here, which is about four inches deeper than I trust my boots. But looking up the creek farther, I can see there are more rocks ahead, there'll be a spot somewhere I can walk in it and maybe get some good shots. Already I'm trying different compositions in my head, I'd love to capture just a scrap of the fluid curves of the lines in the water, coiling itself around a stone and meeting itself again on the other side... There's a hundred shades of clear between the air and the ground below...

Part 1

      It's not really a great morning for a walk. It's not even a good morning for one, it's gray and chilly and bleak. Not even the nice kind of gray, where there's mist and atmosphere and “scope for the imagination”. It's just depressing.
      But yesterday was such a perfect shining morning, and I just slept through it. I caught the tail end of it, the light just turning from the purity of early morning, whose air hasn't been breathed by a single soul, into the comfortable warmth of noon, when I finally dragged myself out of bed. And then couldn't catch any more than that glimpse, in my hurry to get ready for work, in the bleariness that bogged down my eyeballs. I can't ever really get away on my lunch/dinner break, someone always needs me for something, so I hate to leave the building. By the time I'm home, it's getting dark, and while the summer gives me a little bit of daylight, I'm always so tired, and need to get something to eat, and then it's gone, any little glimpse of beauty I might have found gone forever...
      Pathetic fallacy. This many years out of high school, and that term still pops into my head. Nature sympathizing with the plot, or the emotions of the character. I think I have the reverse problem, I fall into whatever mood the weather is in... I really should not have come out this morning, I'm going to be miserable all day.
      But I feel so awful about having missed yesterday... and so many of the other bright mornings lately. I don't pay attention to little bits of beauty like I used to. In college, walking to classes every day, I amused myself on the countless walks by looking around, by noticing the flowers on the ornamental trees by the main buildings, by taking in the hundred gradations of color in the water stains at the ends of pipes, by studying the way the shadows fell all through the day, by trying to name the colors of the campus at night, the navy velvet of the evening sky, charcoal of the buildings in shadow, rose-gold of the aging lights...
      I was drawing every day then, constantly sketching things I saw around me, settings from my dreams, grabbing at every idea that my imagination glimpsed – I had to, in order to churn out so many assignments. Some of it was crap, but most of it somehow wasn't. Mine weren't the best in the class, not by a long shot, but I (almost) always liked them, there was some hint of what I was trying to get across always there, even if the hand was positioned a little awkwardly or whatever. There was something there. It wasn't ever perfect, I always found faults afterward, but... there was something there.
      And as draining as it was, and as much as the whole idea of rules for art angered me, and everything else... I miss the art I made. I still keep a sketchbook on me all the time, there's always something in my purse and beside my bed. But days at a time will go by without me adding a thing to them... I have to fight to think of something to sketch, or make a note of. And drawing... it's been months. Sketches here and there, even a basic pencil drawing once in awhile, maybe a light watercolor wash or bit of colored pencil, but it's rare. A full-blown thing that I've totally lost myself in, spending hours and days on getting the face just right, adding the details of wood grain, deciding where the light should fall... I haven't done something like that in at least a year, maybe more. I just don't feel like I have a good enough idea, or the time to execute it the way it should be done, I don't have the drive to get sucked in and just draw, forgetting about food and sleep and everything else... There's always something else to snare my attention, tv and the internet and silly games and phone calls, cooking and washing dishes and cleaning the bathroom, work and work again the next day...
      And for as many all-nighters as I had back then, rubbing charcoal into paper until – literally – my fingers bled, I don't think I was half so tired as I am now. My life is quiet, work really isn't all that bad, I work at a small store with a lot of great people, but... I don't have the energy I used to. My thoughts just feel so empty.

      This was not a good morning for a walk, this weather is making me completely ridiculous. Look at things! That is why I came out, to look at things, to see the world around me again. I have a few hours before work, my lunch is already packed, I am going to walk for awhile. Fumbling in my pocket, I find my iPod, and flip through the playlists until I find “dad stuff”. Dad is addicted to his stash, which is a stash of pretty much everything except drugs. Growing up, he accumulated stacks of records, and eight-tracks, and when tapes came in he had those, and then cds, and then hard drives got big enough to actually hold enough, at a high enough quality, to make him happy. I had no idea growing up, but he's a major audiophile. One of those guys who was upset to lose the “warmth” of vinyl. Mp3s are like blasphemy. He started out ripping everything into those massive old .wav files, and was like a three year-old on Christmas morning when .flac and .ogg and whatever else came out. And of course, none of that stuff is normal, and all I wanted in college was an iPod. I really think it almost made him cry, but I begged him to make me some mp3s. So it's all encoded at insanely high bit rates and whatever else, most mp3s are a megabyte in size for every minute of sound, but Dad's... it's a little scary. But, I have my comfort music in a form that's actually usable away from his mountains of equipment, so it's all good.
      It's still depressing out here. I'm following this vague path leading along and around a brush row next to the apartments, which looks like it will eventually meet up with some woods... but it's really damp, it must have rained a little overnight, and it's too cloudy for anything to have dried yet. R.E.M.'s good for days like this... I skim down through the playlist, looking for one of their earlier ones. “Talk About the Passion”, that works, mellow but not weak, a little yearning and melancholy but with a good walking beat, to keep moving on to... “not everyone can carry the weight of the world”... I still have no idea what half of the lyrics are on these early albums, I've been listening to them pretty much since birth, thanks to my parents, but I'm pretty sure Michael Stipe makes up a lot of words. “Come-duh-dee-en, come-duh-dee-en, deh-taun” almost sounds French at the end, but God knows. Doesn't matter, I still love the nebulous nature of these albums, and the atmosphere... it just feels cozy to me, “Murmur” and “Reckoning” and “Life's Rich Pageant” are like snuggly sweaters on a fall day. Even in spring, like today, when the snow's gone and everything is just sloppy and soggy, and the little spurts of bright green are so jarring and garish against the drab landscape.
      Spring is supposed to be inspiring. It's really not. It was great when I was a kid, splashing through all the giant puddles everywhere. Now it's just soggy and drab. The light is almost always weak and chilly, and when the sun is actually out it's so deceptive, it looks so nice but then you step outside and it's still cold, and you need your winter coat, and it's miserable.
      The silhouettes of the trees around me are blurred by buds and small leaves, the greens all a painful chartreuse, just that awful awkward yellowed-green, and set against the cool tones of slate and tan and umber. But I suppose there's something still in the bark of the trees, the contrast in their details made more dramatic by the dampness, which makes the dark areas all so much darker. Though damp and somewhat heavy, there's a faint hint of freshness in the air, the clear scent of water lacing its way through the mustiness.
      The bottoms of my jeans are drenched. I always hated raingear, even as a kid, but damned if it wasn't effective stuff. The remains of last year's leaves, once so bright and vivid, are a muddy decaying mess underfoot... but I stop a moment to pull out my sketchbook, and make a note of the colors – they're subtle, but would make a really nice backdrop for something. I should have dug out my camera, but I haven't even looked for it since... January? Sometime when the snow was fresh and the shadows on it crisp and sharp. Mouse-brown, a tanned ash, rusty chocolate, scraps of terracotta, the almost-black shade of brown of Paul (the high school boyfriend)'s hair... he went into some branch of the military not long ago, I haven't heard from him since. I worry about him, but it's a distant worry... so many of my connections seem distant now...
      I put the sketchbook back in the small bag slung over my shoulders, and look ponderously at the wall of brush in front of me, blocking the way under the trees that mark the edge of the woods. It looks like there's a break in the vaguely greenish bushes over to the right... it's faint, but enough of a path for me to squeak by, getting thwapped by branches and poked by twigs for a good ten feet before I'm far enough under the canopy that the stuff doesn't grow as high. I stop to take a breath, looking around and trying to be less angry at nature for scratching my arms all over.

plot point woo!

Tom is a miracle of plot. Anytime I have a dilemma, or don't know how something is going to work, or need some kind of dramatic thing - I just describe what's going on, he groans and rolls his eyes at how much he hates the topics of my writing, and then gives me some totally brilliant idea to run with.

I was trying to sort out how my character was going to discover the stories of the garden? Asked Tom about it, and he gave me the most BRILLIANT solution. Just enough actual cutting-edge physics to make it plausible, but still cutting-edge enough that I can adjust the actual effects to whatever the heck I need. And it'll work *perfectly* to do just the kind of Moberly-Jourdain thing I wanted.

...I have a bit of physics to go study, but not today. Today, I have to actually *start*. Since beginning a story is so hard, I'm just going to write whatever occurs to me first and go from there.

As soon as I name my main character. ^^;; Thank you Internet for your stacks of reference material - like lists of most popular baby names in any year of the last century. <3