Friday, March 18, 2011

I've Missed Writing Exercises

since I disbanded the writing group, but Lala likes to do them and so we did two last night before bed.

We walked up the hill to Il Ritrovo for a supper of shared salad and pizza. There are not enough adjectives to tell you how yummy it all was. Next we stopped at a chocolatier to get a small sweet for dessert and then it was back downhill (downhill is better than up) to find Lala's first geocache--and a severed deer leg lying on the pavement. Ick. Then we came in and got to writing.

March 17--"On Eisenhower Interstate Highways one mile in every five is straight so it can be used as an air strip in times of war or other emergencies." Just find a straight road. My hands are sweaty on the yoke. Wind screaming in where there used to be a window makes my eyes tear but I can't lift a hand. I contort my head first one way and then the other to wipe my eyes on my sleeves. Damn you, Steven, damn you for being stupid enough to fly head-on into a pair of seagulls. Damn you for sitting there and letting a spear of glass pierce your eye. Anger is my only crutch. If I think about my situation the panic that I feel nibbling around the edges of my mind will start taking bigger bites of me and I'll be lost. If I let panic take over I might as well point the nose of this goddamned stupid airplane at the ground and go out in a blaze of airplane parts and pine trees. I'm grateful that Steven's plane is a prop, I guess. "They fly low and slow," he always says, "so it's hard to get into trouble." "Well, I've got news for you, mister," I tell his lifeless body beside me, "this low and this slow feels like plenty of trouble, thankyouverymuch."

Time to do more walking, writing, and a little knitting. It's a tough job, but I'm up to it.
--Barbara

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