#SoCS

Where Are His Eyes?

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Linda G Hills  Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt is: “close eyes and point.” When you’re ready to write your post, open a book, a newspaper, or whatever is handy and close your eyes and point. Whatever word or picture your finger lands on, make that the basis of your SoCS/JusJoJan post. 

 

You need to have a voice to sing,

legs so that you can  walk and run

hands to grasp things with

but

you do not need eyes to write.

You don’t have to see to create.

 

In this portrait of Victor Hugo

all you see where his eyes should be

are two pools of darkness.

 

I wonder if his eyes were really that dark

or if the painter was telling us a little story about Victor Hugo.

 

I think his eyes in this painting tell a story about his works of art, his writing, his dedication to his causes weren’t exactly the stuff of comedies. I wonder if he had a sense of humor? What did it sound like when he laughed? Could he laugh? His beloved daughter died by drowning before she was 20 years old. Her husband died trying to save her. I wonder if the sound of his laugh changed after her funeral. I’ll bet it did. How could it not have changed?

e really enjoyed going over this painting, it brought up some great ideas, made me think of the way we react to the world and what happens in it and the mark it leaves on us.

In this case the world left it’s mark on Victor Hugo’s face, it left it where his eyes used to be.

 

Victor Hugo
by Léon Bonnat

The Light House By Victor Hugo

Octopus By Victor Hugo

My First Story

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Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday Prompt: First Thing

First thing I saw when I opened the door was the small dark room lit by one window covered with spiderwebs and dust.

The pale yellow light struggling through the window did nothing to drive the shadows away from the aged  books on the shelves that lined the walls.

The  floor was littered with more books but like the books on the shelves,  some of the covers were faded, others looked brand new. Some of the volumes spines had been broken with care,  and others with unbridled enthusiasm.

Who read these books, I wondered, who put them on the shelves? Who left them on the floors and piled in the corners?

I reached down and I picked one up, I opened it and turned the pages slowly one by one.

The pages were blank.

I walked into the room and set it on a table.

I went to the shelves and I took down one book after another and turned the pages and found that they were blank too.

I was about to drop the last book I had pulled down on the floor and instead I put it back where I had found it.

This small dark room I had wandered into  was full of books covered with dust, discarded, abandoned, forgotten and left to rot where they fell or where they were left.

There was an old chair next to the table, I pulled it back and carefully sat down. It creaked a little but it held.

I pulled one of the books towards me, I opened it’s cover and I turned one page and then another. It didn’t smell musty, it didn’t look moldy, so

I reached for a pen- one of a dozen or so  scattered around the table and I thought about what to write and then it came to me:

It was just me, all alone in a dark room full of dust and spider webs and books waiting to be written.

So I wrote,

The last thing I heard, before I started to write was the sounds of creaking boards and a gentle breeze making it’s way through a small dusty window filled with sunlightt

The Corner Project

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Linda G Hill’s  Stream of Consciousness Saturday Prompt: “In the Corner.”

Artist: David Ospina

At the end of February  2020 I neatly stacked in the corner of my workroom a selection of books, some craft projects and mystery puzzles/adventures,  each labeled with dates noting when I needed to start each one.

I even had a calender for the books I wanted to read for my Goodreads Challenge.

I have a goal to read a hundred books a year- and no I’ve never hit 100 but I can get over half of them in so I keep that goal the same. Last year though, I only read 10.

I never completed a craft project and I never even started my Mystery Box Adventures because shortly after planning out my year long project the Coronavirus shut down the state I live in.

So over Christmas- which was not exactly a big red letter day, I decided to pull out my neglected projects from their place in the corner and I took them to my dining room table and went over them one by one.

I could have had so much fun last year, I could have a little less bored, weary and instead I could have been inspired.

So I have two choices.

I could scrap the lot and choose new books, projects and games to work on.

But- do you know I have miniature models of little houses that I could still put together- they actually light up and one of them is a model of a living room with a little dog standing at a piano. There’s a mystery box adventure about a fire at a theatre where everyone in the audience went insane and it burned down. A lunatic asylum is involved. How did it start? Who was responsible? It’s a fun puzzle and I had actually been inspired to take a few notes for a story.

The books- what a selection- there a ghost stories, books by Dickens and some that I bought because the man who owns the bookstore I shop has never let me down and I just know they’re going to be great.

And my guitar- I had my acrylic nails taken off so that I could start playing again.

My guitar is in a corner and I played it a little today.

It felt great.

So I’m thinking that I don’t have two choices about my corner projects. I have one.

I have to go back and do them.

For the first time in almost a year, I’m actually looking forward to what I will do tomorrow.

amm

Drawn To It

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For Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday Prompt: Magnet

I like to look up,

into the sky

with my eyes wide open

even if it is raining

or snowing

Or pigeons are flying over head

desperately shedding feathers and poo.

 

I like to look down at

ruts in the road carved by cars and running water

and ice puddles

with cracked surfaces that remind me of aged skin

and gardens that have gone to seed patiently waiting for next Spring

 

I’m drawn to them all

like magnets to steel

like silly girls to pretty boys

who wear to much cologne.