found:Old exercise “Where you are”
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Just to keep in practice, I found an old notebook with some exercises I pulled from a creative writing book and had no memory of doing.The assignment was to decribe where you are ,without naming the place.
A thousand busy, bustling travelers;weary and hurrying.Looking for their gate, rummaging through a purse for lost tickets, calming crying children, sobbing their good-byes. A thousand voices simultaneously conversing with a fellow traveler, a future friend or family member.Cell phones smashed against ears,”Can you hear me NOW?”
Judging eyes mull over clothing choices and cultural quirks. A loud speaker announces important information. Disappointed shoulders slump at a cancellation.Excited explorers leap up to board their next adventure.
Electronic blips and bleeps scan bodies for possible weapons. My cranberry juice is contraband.My pickeled jalepenos are absconded. There goes my plan to set them aflame and bomb my fellow passengers in a suicide mission.
Comfort and tranquility are found at the bar and I drink it all in….
1 Comment to “found:Old exercise “Where you are””
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David says:
This one amused me greatly, especially your “contraband.”
The bit about the judging eyes “mull(ing) over clothing choices and cultural quirks,” really hit home. I sometimes find it hard to read at airport gates, and usually end up people-watching, silently (or in whispers to traveling companions) judging.
One of my own airport quirks is that I’m always, always surprised if I don’t see someone I know at my gate if I’m flying to or from my hometown. Milwaukee is a city of ~650,000 people, and the surrounding area has over 2 million … and yet I always expect to see someone I know, and am disappointed when I don’t.
The stupidest thing is that I don’t believe I have ever, in my many dozens of flights in or out of the city, actually seen someone I know at the gate.
We all have our own little idiosyncrasies — and it’s up to us writers to try to make sense of them.
Or at least to point them out for the amusement of the reader.