Strange, fast-flying bitch of a week. Funny weather bringing a lot of mild awfulness broken up by days of outright beauty. Mix of pure research joy and PowerPoint tedium at work (a win I’d say as it could have been much worse this time of the year). Car breaking down in the middle of nowhere. A hefty price tag on the express fix at a local garage so that I can at least drive the car back to my more reasonable mechanic. I don’t see myself breaking any records in Xmas shopping enthusiasm this year.
The nice thing about the day wasted so unexpectedly, however, was the opportunity to see few places I’d never have thought of visiting before. The memories may prove useful later on. Like the weird, kind of mosquesque catholic church overlooking a small Midlands town. Or a martial arts parlour in that town, apparently specialised in training ninja kids. Probably by stuffing them into samurai armour imitations they had on display in the front window. I wish I could see a training session there. Or maybe I don’t, especially not these days, with such a surplus of cheap creepy stuff everywhere around.
Regarding writing, there has been no progress on the short stories that had been my primary focus only a week ago. But! I bumped into a link to a literary contest. It is about a novel in progress. The deadline is ridiculously tight. It will probably be crazily competitive so I shouldn’t realistically hope to make it even to a longlist. However, it could be a nice kick in the butt for a couple of weeks, forcing me to establish a proper writing habit. Maybe I’ll also learn a thing or two about writing longer stuff even if I won’t manage to produce anything worth submitting. Let’s see where this project will take me. So far I know how it beings and ends. Connecting the dots should be easy now, right?
In the meantime, I try to keep my inspiration on standby even during the busy days. There have been two very seasonal haikus.
Decapitated
sucking colours off the skies
roots of springs to come.
Milky mirror lake
buried the tears of autumn
between grinding stones.
Then a few more lines in the story of the mysterious tree standing by the river.
Beware! A beast walks through the woods these days, singeing leaves with a withering spell of fall.
Oh-so-innocent swans chased her out of the water, right into the maw of the forest. She’s one with the wood now.
I also had few moments on the move. Some were kind of mystical…
You ran up a vine trail towards long lost myths. The drone of tyres on a nearby road has faded. You’re gone.
The others were more on the whimsical side…
These annoying hails of cars. The giant regretted he hadn’t taken an umbrella for his rush hour stroll.
That’s it for this week. Now off to the “real” writing. Maybe there will be something to share from the new intense pastime project in the upcoming days. At the very least, I should have some very oceanic anecdotes about drowning in too much ambition.
Oceanic Soup 