Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Week 1, Theme 1

Prompt: Set a scene in which something will happen---or in which something has happened (or, just as likely, both). But don't say what has happened or what will: allow that to be implied as part of the scene you evoke. If you like, choose a scene that entails some deliberate preparation: a meal, a ceremony (official and institutional or improvised and individual), a game, a job. The type of scene, actual or imagined, is up to you. From what point of view is it seen? Who sees it? What are the limits of that point of view?

November rays of sun peeked in through my window as I rotated the slats of the venetian blinds, light blue with spots of white and navy paint from the many careless paintings of my childhood room. The patches of snow in the front yard stood as reminders of the “unseasonably” cold weather that, contrary to its name, seemed to hit Evanston every November. The oak-lined street, dappled in leaf-pattered shade every summer, was now fully soaked by the November rays save the outlines of barren branches stretching across the black pavement, like crevasses interrupting the snowy landscape stretching below my window. It was Tuesday. Trash day. Hulking blue plastic garbage cans, CITY OF EVANSTON COLLECTION SERVICES blazed across every surface, were strewn to and fro in front of each house. The ones directly in front of me covered three or four slats worth of blind-space, while those at the far end of the street, closer to Walgreens, were closer to blue pixels surrounded by the white, brown, and rarely green patches of ground. Some of the bins were placed neatly in front of the square houses, but most were on their sides, their thin plastic hinges open, with forgotten pieces of cardboard or spent bubble wrap spilling out to the damp ground. Their wheels rotated when the strong, cold winds blew by. Looking at the scene, I would not have been surprised to see tumbleweed blow down the street, treading over the crevasses as it made its way through the spent Winter’s landscape. In front of a few of the houses sat small, half-filled royal blue recycling bins, waiting their turn for collection. I closed the slats of the blinds imagining the smaller affair that was soon to follow – the recycling trucks always came a few hours after the trash men.

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