Closing Thoughts

 I want to reiterate what I said at the end of our final class: it has been an honor for me to think about our texts with you this semester. I have learned so much from your thoughts and ideas and appreciate your willingness to be in conversation together about difficult material. You asked for me to post the short, short that I wrote that was influenced by Cloud Atlas. I've pasted it in below. Although I hadn't read "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" before I wrote this, I can see some affinity between the narrators in these two stories. I appreciate feedback, if you've got any. Critical feedback is great; tho' it's always nice to hear when my writing works, I find my writing improves the most when people point out why and where it's not working.

The Carving

Along the top edge of the wooden carving there is a dark sky.   Darker brown, wavy lines depict wind blowing.  Against the dark sky there is a twig and sod hut.  It is where she lived, as a child.  A choppy river runs horizontally through the carving, filling in the bottom half of the block.  Really, all of this is just background.  It’s not what your eyes would focus on if I were to show you this carving.  Instead, what you would see would be a girl.  She sits on the dirt in front of the hut, carving. Her simple dress is sleeveless, her brown arms and legs are muscled.  She is small, petite. Shavings curl around her head, bouncing.  Her eyes, though crafted of wood, are vibrant.  She is a willow tree.  She is flowing water.  She is sap, coursing through xylem, pushing through phloem. 

In the spark etched into her eye is reflected another image, a sketch. At the top edge of this drawing there is a cloud-filled sky.  Against these clouds there is a metal shack.  Where she lived, as a child.  A stony path runs horizontally through the picture.  The stones are large; jagged edges rising up out of level.  Behind the path is a fire.  Really, all of this is just background.  It is not what your eyes would focus on if I were to show it to you.  Instead, what you would see would be a woman. At her feet, a whittled stick turns to coal in the embers of the fire.  The sleeves and hem of her grey dress are torn; her arms and legs poke out from it--harsh, black lines.  She is thin.  Her eyes are dark smudges.  She is a twig clutching one papery leaf. 

In her hands she holds another image, a photo of the apartment building where she lived as a child.  There is no background in the Polaroid.  There is no sky.  The foreground is completely taken up with red, sooty bricks.  The only thing interrupting this expanse of rust wall is a smudged window, through which you would see a woman with curly brown and grey hair and an open photo album.   The album is opened to the page containing the only surviving photograph of the townhouse where she lived as a child.  In this sepia-tinted photo, a group is gathered on the granite doorstep.  If I were to show it to you, you would see that at the very center is a baby, wearing a creamy baptism dress, an open locket around her small neck.  The rest of her family has faded into the background of the fading photograph.  The watercolor contained in the open locket is of the farmhouse where she lived, as a child.  She is standing to the right side of the pale yellow house, her palm held outward, shading her eyes, obscuring her face.  In the creases of her palm is imprinted the memory of the thatched roof cottage where she lived as a child.  On one of the stones that make up the walls of this cottage is a petrogylph of the cave where she lived as a child. 

You would see it clearly.  If I were to show it to you.