Strange Stories in my Head

I finished the tin box root cellar below the floor before I even had breakfast. Then I ate some cereal, for I was getting light-headed and dizzy from lack of food. You would think I have more than enough food but I always seem to be near collapse if I delay breakfast by a few hours. I guess I eat early the night before too. I usually eat by four or five in the evening so I guess by noon the next day it’s been a while.

After breakfast I cut down more trees around the garden to let in more light. The rhubarb especially seems to really reach for the light. Also, I think I can cut back on the slugs if there are less trees around. I am slowly filling my woodshed too. I cut up quite a few of the poplar from a few days ago and then started on the newer trees. Two of them I peeled for building materials later, but the rest went to wood.

After I was tired of that, I took a lukewarm shower, since the sun hardly came out all day, and then loaded my latest contribution to the Lost in the Tunnels novel and did some editing on Naked in the Road, my 2002 novel that I am returning to for editing purposes before I release it as an e-book. I would write it differently now, but I think it still stands as a novel.

Today I watched Paris, Texas, a Wim Wenders film. It is frustrating in parts, since the characters mess up their lives so completely. You want to shout at the screen to give advice, cajole, and threaten.

After the film, I went to the stream to see how high the water was with all the rain. Surprisingly, I could probably still cross it with boots on. The land was so dry that it must have soaked up all the water that fell.

It rained on the way back as I carried a dead tree from partway along the trail. That’s how I get much of my firewood. Dead trees brought from nearby.

I was thinking about the Leonard Cohen song, “Alexandra Leaving” this evening and sat down to write a short story, “My Lost Little Girl,” told entirely in dialogue about a man who is describing his loss to someone in a professional capacity. It is meant to portray the man’s own vagaries of memory, for we are unsure as readers if he even has a daughter or if he is responsible for kidnapping someone’s kid, or if the entire loss is in his head. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the story and likely I’ve messed up my writing tonight by wiping my mind by this story, but at least I have something to show for the day.

About Barry Pomeroy

I had an English teacher in high school many years ago who talked about writing as something that people do, rather than something that died with Shakespeare. I began writing soon after, maudlin poetry followed by short prose pieces, but finally, after years of academic training, I learned something about the magic of the manipulated word.
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