#objectwriting

The worry of splinters every time I twist. But a few more should do it. Steam licks the hob lights, I’ve left the fan off so that it warms my house at the same time. Winter hacks. Cold feet waiting eagerly for hot soup. I wonder where the lid that fit this pot has gone. Instead the oversized one drips condensation onto my stove top. The black glass looks up at me sadly, wearing his new stains, waiting for the smelly cloth to smear his face again. The cycle of life is more about cleaning and dirt than life and death. Endless cleaning, just so we can dirty it again. Carrots floating just beneath shiny oil, twisting playfully in the rising bubbles. I can barely smell the soup because my nostrils have been scalded by the steam for too long, but I hope it smells good. I lean back wearily against the cold marble counter, feel the weight lift off my hips and a pain shoot through my back. Age comes for us all. From seed to dust. Boing to thud. Swimming in the soup of life. The steam has cleared my nose at least. I think about a hot tub and the irreplaceable feeling of being caressed by water that’s just a little bit too hot. To be a carrot in soup.

This is the 1st part in a series of ~daily 10min object writing posts I’ll be doing to practice for lyric writing, each on a different topic A flash of light, a picture embedded on the previously clean dark film. A glossy film roll hides within the dark crevice of the plastic camera. Deceptively cheap in appearance and build, with a feeling of lightweight cheapness, the feeling that you could break it at any second. Yet this cheap toy creates an illusion of the past, something we cling onto in the age of perfect shots and angles. A flash and a small picture is added to this dark canvas, not to be seen again until the entire roll is full of them. These pictures are forgotten until they’re one day rediscovered, never seen before printing day. Casual photography gives way to happy accidents, later producing smiles, laughter and tears. Moments meant to be captured may fail due to the quality of the film but new ones will be found among the chaotic tape. The camera travels, fitting easily in a pocket for a ride along in the subway on another great adventure until one day the film sputters and the great adventure ends. When the great adventure ends it’s reflected on and repeated. If this journey is revealed too early the film destructs, this journey must be reflected on in the dark after it’s completed, any day time reminiscing will result in the light scorching any memories of the journey. Enjoy these parcels of the past because they serve to lighten the serious mood of modern camera technology and bring us to an era where the experience mattered more than the shot. 

#TinyAdventures @chrisleeramsden have 10 mins to write about an everyday object and I have 10 more to illustrate it. ———— 07 ———— ROWING BOAT You clatter into this hollow vessel, every sinew in your legs straining as the horizon goes haywire. Water laps against the sides, frothing beneath each timber, threatening a drenching with each slurp and bubble. And your every movement rings with a submarine echo. From a distance, so peaceful, so fluid, but get close, pick up the thick shafts of heavy oars that turn your hands into toddlers’, and rowing becomes a conversation with a stammering uncle, or a trudge through deep snow in threadbare socks inside wellies that are two sizes too big. You push off. The boat creaks. Your knees too. One oar bites into the water, but the other skims the surface, twisting you on your seat and spraying you with water laced with fragments of all the dead things that once lined its banks. But then you find your beat and the boat picks up speed, a lascivious tongue licking the water, and your pulse locks into the cyclical dip and pull of the oars as gulls wheel overhead, crying. ———— #FlashFiction #ObjectWriting #illustration #graphicnovel #enstregiluften