In a notebook somewhere, or maybe just in my memory is an image. I am laying on my back watching the sky through a canopy of tree branches.
In this memory are structured words and lines describing grey lawn-darts blasting through a blueish grey sky. And other birds. I don’t have the patience to capture that image. Of being covered in grime and exhaustion. Of laying on my back on a wooden planked back porch. Feeling, or ignoring, the splinters pinching through my salty crunchy shirt.
Of rubbing my face with rot and dirt and dried sweet. Scratching pockets of sunburnt skin and out of place whiskers.
Smoke vanishing into the grey of the sky, or getting lost in the black leaves. And occasionally a bird darts over the scene as if to make a point.
My notebook may indicate that it was relaxing or inspiring or simply a happy distraction. Or it may be a few scrawled lines about overhead lawn-darts. It won’t indicate that I occasionally remember playing chicken with my brother, in which I was actually a target that wasn’t supposed to move when this huge sharp thing was hurling toward me.
We’d also play this game where he’d shoot at the bottle I was holding.
Or he’d chase me down with a lawnmower.
I found this as I was searching to see if I ever transcribed my notebook exercise. I don’t know if it’s the most recent version or not. What I can tell you is it’s written in plain-text as a markdown document. I can also tell you is it’s a TextWrangler auto-backup of a 750words.com post. The file name is 750 (2011-07-12 02-25-15-316). In the same folder are cached copies of C. K. Williams’ Whacked.