A Reprise

Tonight I resumed knitting my black shirt, sitting on the front porch. Then, I walked down to the pond and there I saw a large vulture devouring a snake. I uncovered many more thoughts, and half-finished thoughts, and more of what I don't know, about what is important to me and my feelings about people, and the earth. I thought about who and what I long to be.

I'm moving the story into a sort of rural, sort of urban steampunk setting, but I haven't been able to think of any good technology yet. I have been thinking about some high-tech steampunk farm equipment though.  The ringing of the school bell signaling the start of class could be heard throughout the entirety of the little town.  Antonia Primm, the new schoolmistress, stood nervously at the front of the room as the children dashed in, their disorder, laughter and general irreverence increasing her uneasiness. The former schoolmistress had, unfortunately, eloped, after over half a semester of wandering under the apple trees with a farmer, scrawling poetry in the composition books from which Miss Primm now must teach, and allowing her students to do whatever they pleased. The students had brought with them a wisp of spring pollen that brought Miss Primm dangerously close to a sneeze.  "Ahem." Miss Primm's brows raised, and with it her voice as she...

This has been in my stickies forever. I haven't been able to find anything to add to it. "I don't know what it was," the one young lady said, trembling, to her companion. "In the woods, past the cemetery yonder, in the twilight was a girl's form. She was white as a pearl, with wind-tumbled black hair. Her eyes burned like coals. She was a ghost, a ghost, I tell you." "No," Mrs. Tibbet said calmly, pouring the tea. "That was Shirley Nightingale. Everyone around here knows Shirley. She is good and kind, but strange. She likes to do good things for people. She makes gifts for the folks around here and leaves them on their doorstep. But everyone knows the gifts come from Shirley. She has the strangest imagination. She makes wooden carvings of animals like no one has seen. Some folks say Shirley is a witch. But she's not. She's just a little touched." "I want to speak to her," Willow said, who had never exper...

I'm sitting in a Starbucks, like I normally am when I am writing in this journal. It is kind of funny, I was just wondering to myself, do I like living in the country, or in the city better, and would it be all the same for me in a suburb moreover? I have found actually that maybe I have changed, that maybe my preferences have changed, that being alone or being in silence too much is actually very painful for me. This is so different than it used to be. I don't know if I suck at making conversation with people or what. I like to think I am always better than I think I am. It gives me confidence. As I was sitting here a man mentioned to me that I always used to hang out at the Starbucks on Green Oaks. Wow, that brought back such memories. Do you realize how many years ago that was? At least seven. We both expressed serious regret about that place closing down. I started scenes and characterizations there that I haven't been able to finish because the characters are "t...