A Touch of Fog-- an excerpt
Here is the opening to a short story/novella I just recently finished. It needs work, (the ending is way too aburpt for one among other things) but its a fine little yarn and I thought I'd wet my adoring fan's apetites by putting it here. If you want to read the rest (and I would LOVE if you'd read it and give me feed back) Just email me and it's yours.
Enjoy!
Cori
Touch of Fog
It’s something almost impossible to describe. A letting go, a holding on, a drifting away, a seeking towards, a vastness of being while feeling infinitesimally small; a sense of exhilarating freedom, while being locked in a cage. As I said--difficult. How does one describe seeing to the blind or hearing to the deaf? There is just absolutely no basis for comparison. It’s something that I’ve been able to do for most of my adult life, nearly twenty years now. I was asked to describe what it is I can do, what I have always been able to do. Something I have always just referred to as ‘traveling’. Granted it’s not traveling in the conventional sense where I hand someone a ticket and end up in some hotel, although I have been known to frequent many a hotel laundry- but I digress. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve never tried to coolly explain my gift to anyone else. Not that other’s haven’t known, but it’s just so much easier to show than tell.
I guess I could begin by explaining my earliest memory of it. I was twelve years old, I had gone on holiday with my grandparents to the sea- that I remember clearly. The wonder of the waves on sand and whole new world of sight, scent and feel. For some reason we were at the beach early in the morning, so early the sun was just rising. I recall well the light of the rising sun filtering through morning mist. I was enraptured by that light on the air, that heavy white wonder, you see it was my first sight of fog. I was completely in awe of it, clouds on the ground, as if a piece of the sky had taken temporary residence before me. I remember walking towards it hand outstretched to the pearly luminescence. I’m certain my grandparents called out to me, warning me to stay close, but all I could see, all I could feel were the welcoming arms of the bank before me. It seemed to call to me in a way I’ve never heard before or since. Almost as if it spoke, whispered sweet promises to my young little mind, beckoning me closer, closer. Next thing I remember was my grandfather’s firm grip on my collar yanking me back and shaking me.
“No.” He told me sternly, a vehemence on his face I’d never seen on my kindly grandfather, “No!” He said again louder this time his face to the mists as if he spoke to them instead of me. “Ye can’t have him, not this un ye can’t have him!” He called out, an old pain in his tone so raw even I heard it. Before he drug me away from the encircling tendrils. Away from a rapture I couldn’t name. He led me back to the car, the car that some how had moved to a spot I recalled several miles up the coast. I had no idea how long I’d been lost in the mists, or how I came to be miles away from where I’d entered it. They never spoke to me of it, but my family moved shortly there after, moved into the deep desert a place of heat and dryness, a place as far from fog as they could take me.
Still I suppose that doesn’t help you much does it? Or explain how I came to be where and what I am now. I guess there’s just no help for it but to begin at the beginning as they say...
Enjoy!
Cori
Touch of Fog
It’s something almost impossible to describe. A letting go, a holding on, a drifting away, a seeking towards, a vastness of being while feeling infinitesimally small; a sense of exhilarating freedom, while being locked in a cage. As I said--difficult. How does one describe seeing to the blind or hearing to the deaf? There is just absolutely no basis for comparison. It’s something that I’ve been able to do for most of my adult life, nearly twenty years now. I was asked to describe what it is I can do, what I have always been able to do. Something I have always just referred to as ‘traveling’. Granted it’s not traveling in the conventional sense where I hand someone a ticket and end up in some hotel, although I have been known to frequent many a hotel laundry- but I digress. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve never tried to coolly explain my gift to anyone else. Not that other’s haven’t known, but it’s just so much easier to show than tell.
I guess I could begin by explaining my earliest memory of it. I was twelve years old, I had gone on holiday with my grandparents to the sea- that I remember clearly. The wonder of the waves on sand and whole new world of sight, scent and feel. For some reason we were at the beach early in the morning, so early the sun was just rising. I recall well the light of the rising sun filtering through morning mist. I was enraptured by that light on the air, that heavy white wonder, you see it was my first sight of fog. I was completely in awe of it, clouds on the ground, as if a piece of the sky had taken temporary residence before me. I remember walking towards it hand outstretched to the pearly luminescence. I’m certain my grandparents called out to me, warning me to stay close, but all I could see, all I could feel were the welcoming arms of the bank before me. It seemed to call to me in a way I’ve never heard before or since. Almost as if it spoke, whispered sweet promises to my young little mind, beckoning me closer, closer. Next thing I remember was my grandfather’s firm grip on my collar yanking me back and shaking me.
“No.” He told me sternly, a vehemence on his face I’d never seen on my kindly grandfather, “No!” He said again louder this time his face to the mists as if he spoke to them instead of me. “Ye can’t have him, not this un ye can’t have him!” He called out, an old pain in his tone so raw even I heard it. Before he drug me away from the encircling tendrils. Away from a rapture I couldn’t name. He led me back to the car, the car that some how had moved to a spot I recalled several miles up the coast. I had no idea how long I’d been lost in the mists, or how I came to be miles away from where I’d entered it. They never spoke to me of it, but my family moved shortly there after, moved into the deep desert a place of heat and dryness, a place as far from fog as they could take me.
Still I suppose that doesn’t help you much does it? Or explain how I came to be where and what I am now. I guess there’s just no help for it but to begin at the beginning as they say...
posted by Deb Bluth at 6:35 AM
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