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Covent Garden Flowers; Tuesday [05/19].
Tuesday, May 19th, 2020 06:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_oleanderThere was, inexplicably, the sounds of trains in the flower shop that day, undeniably, though Astrid couldn't pinpoint the source of what was making it. She figured, if she ever did, it would be some sort of pun, but she wasn't imaginative enough to think of what it could be, and she stopped caring after a while, especially since there was one lone orchid that was playing a guitar. A tiny little flower sized electric guitar, which seemed to bore his longing up like sparks, a music profound in its objectless desire, beautiful beyond solace or solution.
It made her think about how sometimes she imagined she had a father who worked nights for the railroad. A signalman for the Southern Pacific who wore heavy fireproof gloves big as oars, and wiped sweat from his forehead with a massive forearm. If she had a father who worked nights for the railroad, she might have had a mother who would listen for the click of the door when he came home, and she would hear her quiet voice, their muffled laughter through the thin walls of the house. How soft their voices would be, and sweet, like pigeons brooding under a bridge....
If she were a poet, that’s what she’d write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. Men who loaded trains, emergency room nurses with their gentle hands. Night clerks in hotels, cabdrivers on graveyard, waitresses in all-night coffee shops. They knew the world, how precious it was when a person remembered your name, the comfort of a rhetorical question, 'How’s it going, how’s the kids?' They knew how long the night was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers lived without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare.
Maybe she could use that for her writing class, her stories and songs class. But, right now, she just used it to sketch pictures, while the mysterious train sound pressed on to the soulful guitar of one lone orchid with a mysterious procured electric guitar.
Covent Garden is open!
[[ and totally lifting passages straight from Chapter 26 of White Oleander by Janet Fitch ]]
It made her think about how sometimes she imagined she had a father who worked nights for the railroad. A signalman for the Southern Pacific who wore heavy fireproof gloves big as oars, and wiped sweat from his forehead with a massive forearm. If she had a father who worked nights for the railroad, she might have had a mother who would listen for the click of the door when he came home, and she would hear her quiet voice, their muffled laughter through the thin walls of the house. How soft their voices would be, and sweet, like pigeons brooding under a bridge....
If she were a poet, that’s what she’d write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. Men who loaded trains, emergency room nurses with their gentle hands. Night clerks in hotels, cabdrivers on graveyard, waitresses in all-night coffee shops. They knew the world, how precious it was when a person remembered your name, the comfort of a rhetorical question, 'How’s it going, how’s the kids?' They knew how long the night was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers lived without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare.
Maybe she could use that for her writing class, her stories and songs class. But, right now, she just used it to sketch pictures, while the mysterious train sound pressed on to the soulful guitar of one lone orchid with a mysterious procured electric guitar.
Covent Garden is open!
[[ and totally lifting passages straight from Chapter 26 of White Oleander by Janet Fitch ]]