Whoo Boy! Although art supplies and children's summer schedules are nice things to think about, I am completely maxed out. The DREAMS summer program starts Monday and in preparation I have only left my office the last few days to take out the garbage, an outing which provides very minimal fresh air, satisfaction and/or feelings of having been in the outside world. Now, though, I am home from work and have washed my hair with strawberry shampoo and drunk an iced spiced chai latte. Sumanth is at the grocery shopping for things to make tacos and oatmeal cookies and Jasper is swimming and shedding in a way that seems very happy.
In a desperate need to fill my head with other things than summer camp spreadsheets, I've been thinking about some of the stories that I've started writing but haven't finished, and possible ways I might be able to preserve some of the characters within them. One is about a woman who wakes up with her face smelling like something different each day. Another is about a man whose hearing begins to flicker at certain times during the day, allowing him to hear only fragments of conversation or allowing him only to hear certain sounds, like the sound of shoes hitting the ground as people walk. One story is about a baby who eats books instead of food and learns to talk from the words that he eats. One is about a clinic that helps people who are allergic to the absence of things. One is about a town that has a deep well filled with layers of blue paint in many different shades. When people fall into the well, the different blues remind them of things that they've seen during their lives and it helps them to make big decisions. I've started writing all of these stories, and have come very close to finishing a couple of them, but can't quite seem to really wrap any of them up in a way that seems right. I'm thinking that maybe I will combine some of them and see if that helps. Or maybe all of the characters I have can live in the same town with the blue well and the Absence Allergy clinic? I heard that all of the Nancy Drew books were written, not by Carolyn Keene, but in a book factory of sorts where different people were responsible for separate parts of the book. Maybe what I need to do is get a job starting stories in a book factory like that.
2 comments:
this morning i woke up and thought my face smelled different until i realized there was a half eaten bag of popcorn on the bedside table.
The position I'm applying for in the Book Factory is Detail Adder. An older friend, whom we both know, had the upper frequency range of his hearing aid boosted, and the lower range reduced, because he wanted to hear what women said and couldn't care less what men said. He told me that he could hear the leaves under his feet, but not thunder. He could hear the wind in his windows, but not the knock at the door.
Have I got the job?
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