House Description Exercise

Posted by admin in Your Work      2 comments

Feb
24

Since I’m getting on a plane for Eastern Europe in a few hours and have no idea what my internet access will be like over the next several days, here is my house description exercise–Amanda:

1205 Elm Street was a wooden Mansard Victorian jutting unapologetically onto the corner of Elm and Oak.  An elaborate wrought iron fence segregated the property from the surrounding decay of tired brick buildings, worn and weighted by the soot of urban pollution and withering from neglect.  A marble fountain guarding the entrance just beyond the gate had long ceased to spout water from the tiered decanters of smiling bacchus and now stood like a gaudy tomb in a graveyard; a grey, lifeless reminder of grandiosity for which time had passed.  Behind the fountain, patches of weedy overgrowth had digested the stone walkway leading to the porch and rested, like engorged leeches, along what had once been the lawn.  Paint pulled away from the wood exterior of the house in tight splintered shards, closely guarding the secret that it had once been a pristine white.  A leaning square tower and an eroding tin roof were the crowning reminders that, however pretentious the home had once been, better times had moved elsewhere, much like the rest of the area in which it sat.  The only remaining home in a strip of businesses, most of which had been boarded up and many more that would be within a handful of years, it  had become the point at which everyone driving by on their way into the heart of the city started to roll up their car windows and lock their doors.