Room. Street. City. Planet.
Write four sentences describing progressively larger or smaller spaces. For instance: the room where the girl sleeps, the street outside her room, the city, the planet; or the neighbourhood, the alley, the shed, the box where the stray cats live.
(The Agony Lab is relocating to WikiFray. Let's see if that helps.)
Friday, February 09, 2007
Four Sentences
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22 comments:
okay, I realize this is diverting from the sadness we all feel and the general mood around here, but what the hell:
Ever-so-slowly she lifted the cashmere, slid off the silk, shimmied out of the lace and then, softly, slipperied into the ....
(Help, give me a good finish - I can't think of how to end it here)
creek.
"... jello wrestling pit."
Duh! Do I have to do everything around here?
Sure, I can help:
Ever-so-slowly she lifted the cashmere, slid off the silk, shimmied out of the lace and then, softly, slipperied into the ....
adjoining bedroom, where a very tall, alarmingly gaunt naked man was seated on the bed. He was too busy rummaging in his belly button to notice her as she quickly retreated back into her hotel room. Who the hell is that? Jerry said she should get room 315. He'd be in room 317, he said, and they could pass through the adjoining doors and his associates would be none the wiser. She'd better call Jerry. She pawed through her purse for her cell phone and chanced to listen to Jerry's message again. Ah—room 314, the message said. She smacked herself in the forehead. She never could seem to get directions straight.
Originally included in my post: "Pleave clothes and ID at the door (submit anonymously)."
Also, my first reply was something about injecting sterno. Never mind.
Ha! Excellent! I knew you guys would come through. So to speak.
[you guys are not sticking to the assignment...]
coarse burlap dress lying in a heap on the battered cot. As she moved, she felt the rough weave chafing against her nipples and thighs, sending tingles shooting down her torso and up her legs (though she knew they'd sting later). As she stood, she struck her head on the low ceiling and corrected her balance, placing her hand on the corrugated wall of the stifling shed. She withdrew it quickly, burning; perhaps the master would bring cool water soon.
God, sounds like you're in for it Dawnie.
“Who knew you could be this happy?” thought Aleece DeLoix to herself as she sat on the little dock dangling her toes into the sparkling blue water that lapped at the edge of her property, and though she was due soon to leave this idyll to return to the drab realities of her off-island life, her dear little cottage was never far from her thoughts. And it was hers—her very own—built with the money she’d saved from her weekend job as a lap dancer at the Sweet Spot Lounge in town. That job had also paid for the leg extension mods that had brought her height to six feet, and that’s had what made Mallori notice her among all the many beautiful women that populated their little mono-gendered hamlet. Weekends here with Mallori made all the other days bearable, but even the sublime pleasure of that association wasn’t going to save Aleece’s butt if she was late for her meeting. Inside the cottage, she checked to see that the doors and windows were secure before gliding down the to the basement—in too much of a hurry now to use the stairs—and opening the trap door that brought the Exit window up, and with one little click, Alex found himself at his desk with just three minutes to spare before the meeting began.
(You must never, never-ever let me go into Second Life for any reason. Promise me. Except perhaps for research purposes. In fact, maybe I could be WikiFray’s foreign correspondent in Second Life. Wouldn’t that be cool?)
You misunderstand, Topazz - that one was for you.
...bed, luxuriating in the feel of the silk on her skin. She looked up at the vaulted ceilings, then out the plate windows, staring down the side of the snow-covered mountain, and across the valley beyond. Only yesterday, she’d felt the stifling pressure of people surrounding her, sitting in her cramped airplane seat, hurtling across the empty sky at breakneck speeds. Tonight, she’d sit at her window and watch the northern lights cascade across the deepening sky, but coffee in her luxurious bed was as expansive as she could muster for now, having had so little sleep the night before.
You must never, never-ever let me go into Second Life for any reason. Promise me. Except perhaps for research purposes. In fact, maybe I could be WikiFray’s foreign correspondent in Second Life. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Was this your assignment submission? You went from denial, to maybe, to possible, to excited in four short sentences (well, two sentences and two incomplete sentences, anyway). Isn’t that what rationalization is about? Cramped self-denial, using a justification to wedge a possibility open just a crack, getting your fingers around the edge with various excuses, and then flinging the door wide open in self-indulgence?
Expanding potential/space. Nicely done.
ummm...i meant that to her in a good way, TK. Breaking through the wikiwall and all, you know, talking to the camera. Life is one big long documentary.
See, that's what I was hoping for: novel interpretations of progression through space. Psycho/emotional space was one I hadn't thought of at all.
Good catch, TK. I love it when I'm accidentally smart.
I dunno, topazz - have you ever given cyber-sex a try?
"Accidentally smart" indeed. [snort!]
Working on that whole "blonde" routine, are we?
Isn't that one of the qualities of good writing? All the subtle parallels and harmonic variations on a theme?
Cybersex? That's so 1998.
so you didn't see my subtle variation at all, on your theme? Shedding 3 layers and getting down to the 4th?
Okay then, back to the drawing board.
Two disks of air protect her eyes, separating the treated water--hypocholirte, thiosulfate, something awful like that--from the sensitive tissues, air quiescent and unaffected by the thrashing currents on the outside. Her sheltered eyes follow the blue tile line, her body freed from the earth by the mysteries of buoyancy as she pushes her way back and forth through a ceramic box of unruly water. The air above the pool swelters, and drops condense from the rusted beams and peeling ceiling paint to threaten the fragile electronic guts of my laptop. I manage to find boredom here in the unappealing din, but outside it is freezing.
Hi topazz: I was thinking that if anyone was going to invite you to rejoin wikifray, it should be me, and so I am.
Beautiful, anonymous. And inspiring. Maybe I'll have another go at my little exercise here, which I discovered is neither as easy nor as straightforward as I'd thought it would be. Writing - oh, the agony!
Anon--
You're raising the bar [gulp]*
*(stealing from you switters, 'cause yes, you do have to do everything around here).
Jeez, now I want to take credit for it! I thought anonymity was part of the game. But anyway, guess what I was doing yesterday.
Ender,
Thank you for that. I really appreciate the gesture and I'll certainly think about it. Not being petulant, just that I seem to have finally found a happy medium as far as time spent both here and on the fray, and my outside life. I credit you Ender, with getting me to finally start up my own blog. And while I'm at it, thanks to everyone else here who've invited me back and made me feel so welcome.
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