Brady Writes

I started a creative writing class through Ann Arbor Rec and Ed this week. This was our in-class writing assignment. I didn't manage to get any of the rest of the writing throughout the week done.

I was surprised at how much there was to hear today. I was early, so I sat down on the newly green grass for a few minutes and just listened. I watched how the light played on the branches of the trees, sharply contrasting shadows. It was good photography light, but there wasn't a lot to take pictures of and I didn't have my camera anyway. The first thing I heard was the birdsong. There was a lot of it. I picked out at least three different songs. I think there was a bobwhite in there somewhere. After a while, I focused on the background noises. The hum of airplanes overhead as they approached the nearby airports, the sound of cars on the road nearby. The occasional yell of a kid out enjoying the sun. I wondered what it would be like to not hear those sounds, to truly hear the world as it is, and not how we have made it. And that's when I heard it. Underneath everything, the birdsong, the airplanes, the children, underneath all of that. At the edge of my hearin...

Well- Three months into my goal.  It's going.  It's more natural for me to take some time to stop and write, usually at the end of the day.  This month, I wrote in two different states.  I wrote on an airplane, during an opera, while listening to a collaborative piano recital, and during the comercials while watching LOST with friends. March was a hard month for goal keeping.  I struggled both with my writing goal and my running goal, mostly because of other commitments eating up my available time.  Going in, I was kind of hoping that March would be the month that I would be able to not skip any days.  Clearly, that didn't happen.  I did manage to write at least 24 times in March, so if you go by the greater than 21 rule, the month was technically a success.  I feel like it could have been better though.   I can't promise April will be any better.  My favorites for the month: - The Wind Blew in Detroit Today (Although I think it still needs work.) - The Penny - Eastbou...

He stopped to pick up a penny that had fallen to the side of the boardwalk.  It was just a penny, nothing special about it.  Not particularly shiny, in fact, he almost hadn't seen it. She would ask, he knew, and so he kept an eye out. "Did you find me anything today, Daddy?" Her eyes would get that special gleam.  She always saw through his attempts to just buy her something.  She wanted it, but she wanted him to find it.  He had never fully understood why she didn't want him to bring her new things.   Once, when he had found six shiny marbles in the gutter, she had been so excited that the nurse had to come in and try to calm her down.  An abandoned key was as wonderful for her as Christmas was for most kids. There was an old Ikea vase on the bedside table slowly filling with the flotsam and jetsam that she insisted that he bring.  He knew the nurses didn't really want it there, but she had made such a fuss when they tried to take it away that they left it just t...

I decided to take a different approach today.  Elizabeth runs a marvelous blog over at Picture a Day , and she posted a very intriguing image today:   So I decided to try to figure out what had happened:

At the intersection where the eastbound freeway traffic exits onto the last road before I get home, I often see a man standing with his back towards me. (I'm coming westbound). He's facing into traffic, holding a cardboard sign. I always wonder what his sign says, but he never faces the direction that I'm coming. I assume that he is asking for money, for food, for help. Once I thought I saw him collecting bottles from the cars stopped at the light, presumably for the ten cent deposit. I don't even know if its the same man every time. A few days back, I noticed he was standing on another piece of cardboard. Was it, I wondered, like an ergo mat, to cushion his feet? Or was it another sign with a different message? He's never there when I'm coming eastbound, but I really only do that on weekends and at night. I'd save bottles for him, but there's no deposit on bottled water. I wish I knew what his sign said.

She knocked again, and then tried the door.  Fortunately, it was open. "Hello?  Mrs. Applewhite?" Sara called into the house.  "I've got your rations for the week." The air coming from the house smelled slightly smoky, a little like burnt paper.  Sara decided it might be best to check to make sure everything was alright. Everything was certainly not alright.   The bookshelf in the front room had been knocked over, and books were lying everywhere.  The smoky smell increased as Sara moved deeper into the house.  The kitchen was in no better shape than the living room. Sara thought she heard something like a whimper as she entered the kitchen to set the rations on the breakfast nook table, one of the few clear surfaces in the room.   "Hello?" she called out again. Then she heard it again, quiet but seeming to come from the bedrooms towards the back.  Sara set the bag down, and rushed back to the bedrooms.  Between the chill of the house, and the ever smok...