#coffeebreak: last snowfall
Today’s #coffeebreak challenge. Write for 10 minutes on the image below and post an excerpt of the results in the comments area. Enjoy!
No related posts.
Today’s #coffeebreak challenge. Write for 10 minutes on the image below and post an excerpt of the results in the comments area. Enjoy!
No related posts.
6 Comments
Daniel was stumped. Up until now he had found Mark’s writing challenges easy. Useful too. This one was different. It was sitting heavy in his guts like a petrol station sausage roll. I mean, people walking in the snow? No problem! That could lend itself to any number of interesting scenarios. Such as, I don’t know, an interesting snow shoe situation:
Man: Oh excuse me ma’am, I believe you have my shoes on.
Woman: Oh, do I? How silly of me.
They kiss.
Or maybe something more up my alley, something a little supernatural.
Maybe a Yeti finds himself wandering the streets of New York and then accidently stumbles into FAO Schwarz – the famous toy store (think Tom Hanks playing the floor piano in Big). Then he gets sold to a brother and sister who take him home by cab, and… No, that sucks.
This is hard.
So maybe the story should be more of a cautionary tale, designed to warn bloggers of the care they should take when asking their readers to contribute. I mean, this has led to a lot of angst. I looked at Mark’s website this morning and his Hello there, Mark here banner, which had previously seemed so quirky and friendly, now felt like it was laughing at me.
Hello, I’m Mark. I’m here, messing with your mind. You’re there. Suffering in your jocks.
That kind of thing.
People walking in a snowstorm? I mean, honestly?
She stopped by the tram to feel her way through the next cloud of sleet. The flimsy corner store umbrella in her hand sunken and torn in one corner, a slither of wet ice slowly filling the bag thrown hastily over her shoulder. In the street ahead confused signs of an accident. A man sprawled on the bitumen, two thin streams of blood drying below his nose. His white hands poised cupped inches from his face as if trying on a mask of his own flesh. Down a side alley a youth cradling the hot steel of a recently fired revolver. The front stall of a street vendor upended, a litter of cheap aluminium pin badges still coming to rest on the road.
Okay, so it can be done.
Once, I was stalked by a woman in a white parka. She was really quite attractive in a strange sort of way, with sunken grey eyes and swollen lips and olive skin which could have been the result of heritage or poor diet. It was hard to tell. She was definitely stalking me, because she said so when she cornered me outside the lolly shop on Burke Street. She was waiting for me when I finished shopping for my niece’s birthday party bag treats: Gummi worms, those incredibly luscious chocolate freckles and a bit of red liquorice just to piss off all the parents because it was how I liked to get my kicks in those days. The woman was leaning against the wall and locked her eyes on mine intensely, so that I didn’t even notice when she stuck her foot out and sent me sprawling, along with my confectionary loot.
She rushed over, helped me up, and told me she’d been following me, and mentioned the giant puddle I had jumped over, just to prove she wasn’t lying. She asked what I thought of her parka and I said it was lovely but might need a bit of a wash. She grabbed my cheeks and pinched them in a way they hadn’t been pinched since before my overenthusiastic grandmother died years ago. The cheeks were happy and revelled in the attention, but I hit the woman’s hands away.
The woman seemed to transform her face and became a soft-featured, puppy-dog eyed young girl. She told me she only wanted to tell me I was beautiful but had been tearing her hair out figuring out how to approach me. I told her I wasn’t sure how I felt about other women, and she said that just because she said I was beautiful didn’t mean she was hitting on me. And then she said she could help me figure out how I felt about women. At this point I was still lying on the ground and she was still crouched over, her face alternating between gentle and ferocious, angry and sad.
The fall of the last snow flake of winter is a metaphor to me. A parallel for a decision I was staring at grimly. A marker for my attempt to grab hold of a real chance of happiness with both hands, after a long period devoid of any personal warmth. Have you ever witnessed a moment in life, when you realise it is your last real chance at happiness? That if you don’t embrace this moment, your life will be that much more bitter and less colourful, and somehow filled with a regret that will taint your existence, lying dormant just below the surface, never quite within reach, but ever present…
But, there is always a cost involved. There is no such thing as an easy choice. You don’t get something for nothing. You have to give something up for the chance of freedom which rolls around only sporadically. It may be your courage you are forced to deliver, for this trade with the devil, it may be your security, it may be your hope or even your sanity. But when you know this moment, when its touch is as recognizable as the gentle excitement of a familiar lover, when you really know, then deep down you realise, you have no choice. When that whirlwind of life grips you in its talons, you just gotta fly with it, or you really will be lost.
That’s how it was, when it came to Simone. I knew I had everything to lose in that moment, that metaphor, that time in my life, if I didn’t take this chance. I would be lost to her, and lost to myself forever. Knowing all this, it didn’t make my choice, my play at laying it all on red and watching where the chips would fall, it didn’t make it any easier. Because there still were so many pieces of the puzzle yet to fit into place.
The greatest challenges in a man’s life, the most difficult decisions, are made in the corridors of his heart, within the walls of his mind, and how to utilise the gifts of his instruments, his own two hands to deliver the right kind of results, to chase a cause which is worthy. The struggle is also the fight of the subconscious, to break through the barriers of resistance and convince the mind of the wisdom of the decision.
Standing back watching those snow flakes falling, I just didn’t know if I had the strength to make this decision, if I had the courage. Time was beginning to fail me, drawing out quickly to an ethereal dead-line. Knowing intimately all the while, the nature of that fickle beast we call opportunity, knowing she was an impatient master, I didn’t have long…
Thanks Elena for stopping by. I hope the exercise was somewhat useful for you. And thanks of course to Ben and Dan, who never seem short of digital ink for these challenges.
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