Flying Home
One weekend as I was flying over the eastern part of Colorado on my way back home, I looked out the window and felt a sensation which I will try to put into words. In the surprising landscape of the state, the eastern part is rather flat and filled with farms, whereas the western part is filled with the suddenly rising and falling mountains for which it is quite famous. It is the eastern half that one sees on the way to Denver. As I looked out over this scene it looked as one enshrouding quilt with an odd patchwork of circles, semicircles, squares, and odd rectangles that were sewn together by different generations through the years, each of which tried to express the similarities as well as the differences between them. I started to feel that I was lying in a bed covered by this quilt with these patterns that were intermittently interrupted by wrinkles created from the small rolling hills that appeared with the occasional loose strand of a stream. I then looked through the window on the other side to see a fluffy pillow of clouds behind my head. It was a very warm and comfortable feeling.
Author's Note: This is just an exercise in description. It's not really a tale.
posted by Brandon @ 7:51 PM
5 Comments:
Very nice - a warm, comfy feeling, like waking to a cool morning burried under a warm blanket. Great description.
Lovely descriptions, Brandon. I'm reminded of a photospread I recently saw, views from a helicopter. It's amazing how different the world looks from above.
"I looked out over this scene it looked as one enshrouding quilt with an odd patchwork of circles, semicircles, squares, and odd rectangles that were sewn together by different generations through the years, each of which tried to express the similarities as well as the differences between them."
Highly-clever lines!
You have an aptitude as I said before for writing serious literary fiction and entertaining the reader throughout. Your prose is always far from dull.
You take your time to express this little snippet, almost as if you're peeling an orange skin for the reader, bit by bit. Without drama and anticipation, it still has the right effects.
It was also interesting how you used the slight theme of a quilt to create a warm firelight image of sorts that led right up to the fluffy pillow of clouds. Where the reader is slowly but surely drawn into a canvas of pictures that demand a lullaby.
You're not just good at detailed characterisation
but also these sort of descriptions that would work excellently, if you merged it into contemporary poetry.
Missed you, Brandon.
It is amazing looking down at a landscape. It really is like this huge colourful patchwork quilt. So the description was apt. Well done. And I echo Susan's sentiments. We missed you.
That familiar patchwork image is given a lovely comfortable twist here, Brandon. From, 'As I looked out...' the words roll together in a flowing description.
I enjoyed this piece.
Addy
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