(no subject)

[pegkerr]

From jhetley, misia and others, post a bit from your work in progress.

[Note: There's a garden store near my home in South Minneapolis which has a giant steel sculpture of a fish in front of it, I'm guessing, oh fifteen feet long or so, and eight feet tall. How perfect for my book. The cows are a metal sculpture in the front yard of a house in the neighborhood, made of oil storage tanks and upside down steel milk tins]

"I want us to drive past the fish. And past the metal cows."

"No cows today. I have to stop at the bank machine."

"All right," Ingrid said reluctantly, with the air of someone driving a hard bargain.

Ingrid had her seat belt off and her door open before Solvieg turned off the ignition. The fish, supported by two steel pipes, arched above the fountain of gray-green grasses, its gaping mouth pointed up toward the gun-metal gray sky. Ingrid reached up to pat a fin, and her blond hair against the fish's steely side looked like a reflection of golden sunlight caught in a ripple, playing across the flank of a fish underwater. Solveig stared. So bright against that cold gray metal. If she were to close her eyes, the memory of that gold would shine against the inside of her eyelids, like the glow of a candle in the darkness. She's six now. I see her in this instant, just as I saw her in those instants when she was four, when she was five. She is always just-now, but when she was four I couldn't imagine her as anything else. But when I look at pictures of how she was then, I think, oh yes, look how much younger she looks. Her hands are plumper and more babyish, her nose more snub. But when I look at her, she’s the Ingrid I’ve always known, just as she is today. How does that happen, that I don't see the changes she’s going through?

Edited to add: Here's the website of that garden store. Load it up and just stay there at the intro screen without entering the site, and a photograph of the outside of the store with the giant fish in front will appear after their logo.

Comments

[blackholly.livejournal.com]

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The fish!

I adore the fish.

[seajules]

This reminds me of how I view my sisters, especially the youngest. It's very evocative of a certain kind of melancholy.

Color me intrigued. *G*

[aome.livejournal.com]

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Squash those "am I a writer?" doubts, Peg. This passage just shines. Both voices feel very real.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

You've captured exactly how it feels when I look at Meg... this is beautiful.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

We have a cow in our driveway. It wears mardi gras beads. We use it as a confirmation signal when giving directions. "When you see the cow, you know you're here."

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

You're writing a love letter to your daughters.

K.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Absolutely!

[anemonerose.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is lovely, Peg! Thanks for sharing it with us. :)

[akamarykate.livejournal.com]

This is so beautiful.

Now I have to find my blonde, six-year-old niece and give her a big hug.

[carol-j.livejournal.com]

Beautiful!!

*applauds*

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

thank you. this is from the heart, and it shows. i know self-doubt comes easy, but you really must know that you can do it, you are doing it. brava!

[pameladean]

All right, Peg, this settles it. There is nothing wrong with your book that you aren't perfectly capable of fixing. You have not lost it, you are not scrabbling around to begin all over again at the novelistic equivalent of nursery school, this is not unsure, this is not amateurish, this is not stale, this is not tentative.

Pamela