12.09.10
Posted in Writing at 10:27 am by Beau
100 Words Entry – Day 8
It was after the fact when Miriam finally confessed, by that time having opened her own small bakery on Draught Lane, a few streets down from the old neighborhood. She was surprisingly forthcoming with us, feeling that the secrecy and paranoia that was built into every stone and brick of our district was strangling us and any future we thought we might have. So she talked about The Women’s Council, a group of local women who took it on themselves to provide help and support to the families of our streets, without the approval or knowledge of the district governors.
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12.07.10
Posted in Writing at 3:24 pm by Beau
100 words Entry – Day 7
Miriam Foyle was the first hint at what we eventually came to know as the other, more true trade of Mr. Gunn. Miriam, who had grown up with us on the streets around the district, fell into trouble when she started seeing one of the Brookhouse boys on the sly. Her father had long since disappeared in one of the factory disputes and her mother attentions were focused on working the long hours at Gables Merchantile & Exchange to put simple food on the table. So Miriam took the opportunity to follow her foolish whims, leaving us all, fatefully, behind her.
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12.06.10
Posted in Writing at 4:37 pm by Beau
100 Words Entry – Day 6
Because Mr. Gunn’s shop was at the corner of Porro Lane, he was alloted an alley with a side entrance to his shop and a back staircase up to his small rooms above. It was at this entrance that women in trouble would appear, typically at dusk when there was just enough shadow to hide their faces without being conspicuous. Those of us lucky enough with windows along the street, and inattentive mothers and aunts, would perch on the sills of an evening to watch for any comings or goings after his shop had closed and his real business began.
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12.05.10
Posted in Writing at 8:46 pm by Beau
100 Words Entry – Day 5
Mr. Gunn always approached the Black Garden with a dusty list, scratched over with his slanting, black inked script, detailing exactly what he needed from that corner of the yard. He carefully chose the berries, leaves, and pieces of gnarled bark according to his list, placing each in its own bowl or small, opaque vellum envelope. He would then gather the bowls and envelopes into a worn, wooden tray with a twisted iron handle and wind his way back from the dark, back corner of the garden, towards the dark of his house, and his waiting guest in the parlor.
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12.04.10
Posted in Writing at 5:50 am by Beau
100 Words Entry – Day 4
It was stealing looks through the crumbled mortar between the old factory bricks of the alleys when we first spied on Mr. Gunn, toiling away in the Black Garden. Unlike our own aunts and shut-away spinsters who tended various patches of weedy, languishing plots, Mr. Gunn had cultivated clean rows of robust, lush, and well-kept plants. It was the routine of watching him day after day that helped us notice that when he worked in the Black Garden, his normal apron was replaced with one of heavy oiled canvas, his gloves became thick, and his manner turned stringent.
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12.03.10
Posted in Writing at 2:23 pm by Beau
100 Words entry – Day 3
The garden behind his home was well-appointed, neat, and filled with plants that no one else could name or think on how to use. There were the usual cooking herbs; short, squat, in varying degrees of silvered leaves, both thin and fat, long, and short.
Then there were other things, flowering but not flowers, with darker green leaves, sometimes burnished into dark reds and in a few cases, dark purple, so that at dusk, when we typically stole through the hidden alley ways between the housing walls, they appeared black.
This was the part we named the black garden.
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12.02.10
Posted in Being Better, Writing at 4:41 pm by Beau
100 Words Entry – Day 2
Mr. Gunn, who always lived at Number 20 Porro Lane for as long as we could remember, was the most well-known herbalists around. His garden, small, well-kept and maintained, hosted more plants and herbs than anyone else in the district. He treated most maladies which made him indispensable to our tired, run-down community of aging spinsters and the damaged, life-long working class.
He kept mostly to himself, preferring to keep company with the few books and journals we were able to circulate through our shops. He was also, quite surprisingly, an accomplished and resourceful abortionist.
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Posted in Being Better, Writing at 4:38 pm by Beau
100 Words is a simple concept: for one month, write 100 words, no more or less, each day and post it. It’s apparently been around for years and admits to coining the term “social tasking” rather than just a social network.
I like it and the idea. I have to tip my hat to Barnes and Jodi for getting me pointed in the right direction. I fail miserably every year at the 2,500-words a day for a month in NaNoWriMo, so much so that this year, I didn’t even pretend that I was going to participate. But 100 words every day for a month? Even I can manage that.
Day One:
It is agonizing for me to see it. I am confused and afraid of what I think I should do as opposed to what I want to do which is ignore it and hope it just goes away.
If I even had a gun, would I go out and put that poor, young deer out of it’s misery, with it’s front, mangled leg dangling, twisted, and infected; the result of some careless hunter on the first day of hunting season.
How can compassion be so gray and so heart-wrenching? How can I stand to do something or do nothing?
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