On the way home... (at about 8:30 PM)
Mama's red straw hat sits perched on the dashboard. Through the van's speckled windshield runs the road: a two-laner, blacktop with a dotted yellow stripe. It slides away to a quick rhythm, the yellow dashes disappearing one by one. Soft conversation, laughter from the back seat, punctuates the continuous rattling of our car's interior.
Behind us the sun sank into thick clouds, leaving a rim of faded pink circling the horizon, giving way to similarly faded blue-grey and lavendar clouds.
Samwise sits next to me in the front row, knitting sedately on a long straggly product fished from the depths of my handbag. I scribble in my messy-book. Behind us, Mari and Vinca flash the camera every couple seconds, posing and taking turns with the sunglasses, bursting into fits of giggles. The excuse? They're bored. And oh, yes: they're Dorks.
The yellow stripes keep up their monotonous tick, complementing the color of that red straw hat. Mama searches the radio stations for some music.
I look around, and see mostly tilled RED dirt fields. Occasionally there's a muddy creek, a little cemetery, or a wee farm-town. The filling stations and dilapidated fences punctuate the roll of the terrain: hill upon hill, each forming a line and horizon all to itself. The valleys are shallow, covered by the same brushy green grass, cedar trees, and silence of the hills.
And the sky dulls to a cloudy gray.
Now I'm smelling peppermints and jelly-beans. A discussion of Toby Kieth ensues between my three fellow travelers, and a familiarly quiet song plays on the radio. The road bends and turns toward home.
We're almost there. Lit billboards and a filling station at the intersection mark our road, while out in a familiar cow pasture surrounded by a white pipe fence, a man in a pick-up shoots bottle-rockets.
The four-lane highway has a white line, and the red blinky lights of fellow-drivers glow out ahead. Radio towers blink in the dark sky, the trees close in around us, the road bends and bends again.
Vinca and Mari hang their heads over the back of our bench to hear the music, and I turn around. Behind us the sky glows orange. Strings and mandolin rise and fall together; the night falls.
City lights, bridges, billboards. We're taking the friends home first.
And so, good-night.
Post-Scriptum: We saw the fireworks over the lake on our long way home, and turned on the classical station shortly thereafter, hearing all those pieces one expects to hear: Handel's music for the royal fireworks, Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. When we got home, we heard some traditional American hymns sung by the Anonymous Four (Fric asked if they were angels! LOL!), and THEN Copeland's Appalachian Spring conducted by Leonard Bernstein and played by the Los Angelos Symphony. After that it was very late and we turned off the radio. :P
Behind us the sun sank into thick clouds, leaving a rim of faded pink circling the horizon, giving way to similarly faded blue-grey and lavendar clouds.
Samwise sits next to me in the front row, knitting sedately on a long straggly product fished from the depths of my handbag. I scribble in my messy-book. Behind us, Mari and Vinca flash the camera every couple seconds, posing and taking turns with the sunglasses, bursting into fits of giggles. The excuse? They're bored. And oh, yes: they're Dorks.
The yellow stripes keep up their monotonous tick, complementing the color of that red straw hat. Mama searches the radio stations for some music.
I look around, and see mostly tilled RED dirt fields. Occasionally there's a muddy creek, a little cemetery, or a wee farm-town. The filling stations and dilapidated fences punctuate the roll of the terrain: hill upon hill, each forming a line and horizon all to itself. The valleys are shallow, covered by the same brushy green grass, cedar trees, and silence of the hills.
And the sky dulls to a cloudy gray.
Now I'm smelling peppermints and jelly-beans. A discussion of Toby Kieth ensues between my three fellow travelers, and a familiarly quiet song plays on the radio. The road bends and turns toward home.
We're almost there. Lit billboards and a filling station at the intersection mark our road, while out in a familiar cow pasture surrounded by a white pipe fence, a man in a pick-up shoots bottle-rockets.
The four-lane highway has a white line, and the red blinky lights of fellow-drivers glow out ahead. Radio towers blink in the dark sky, the trees close in around us, the road bends and bends again.
Vinca and Mari hang their heads over the back of our bench to hear the music, and I turn around. Behind us the sky glows orange. Strings and mandolin rise and fall together; the night falls.
City lights, bridges, billboards. We're taking the friends home first.
And so, good-night.
Post-Scriptum: We saw the fireworks over the lake on our long way home, and turned on the classical station shortly thereafter, hearing all those pieces one expects to hear: Handel's music for the royal fireworks, Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. When we got home, we heard some traditional American hymns sung by the Anonymous Four (Fric asked if they were angels! LOL!), and THEN Copeland's Appalachian Spring conducted by Leonard Bernstein and played by the Los Angelos Symphony. After that it was very late and we turned off the radio. :P
posted by Unknown at 11:03 AM
7 Comments:
Oh, Pippin, this is so lovely! It sounds just like something that someone at Quartz Mountain wrote, and I mean that as a compliment. Beautiful, beautiful.
I can understand Fric's question- Anonymous4 really does sound a little like the epitomy of angels.
The symphony played a selection from "Rodeo" (by Copland) at the park. Interesting how the same tunes/composers get circulated around for specific holidays.
P.S. I feel like a little shrimp when I read this and then remembered what my own post about last night was like. Harumph. It should've been *you* who went to Quartz this year for writing!
Harumph yourself. I have posts like your latest one, and they're fine, because they let people know that you're still there. I've written bunches of them, and though they're really no good, they just had to be written because I HAD to say SOMETHING for all those people who check my blog.
And besides, I can't write poetry to save my neck (X_X), and yours is amazing.
Actually, that first paragraph was referring to your second-latest post. Your latest post was a narrative, not a sketch. It's great, and I'm on the way over there to tell you about it.
Oh. Was THAT the sketch?
Oh, and I resent that! We are NOT!
Yes, that was the sketch.
I'm sorry you resented that. I only wrote it in because Miss Pervinca actually SAID it as if it were some sort of fact. See how I capitalized the "D"? That was supposed to give you some sort of hint... :D
...and I just noticed, like any semi-intelligent person would, after reading his own work for the second time through...
that "DORK" was an EXCUSE given by the girls themselves. It was supposed to tag along with "bored."
I'm sorry for the misconception, Mari. Perhaps I should take it out.
Post a Comment
<< Home