May 4, 2003

• Steering the Craft exercise 5: Chastity.
  
  The goal is to write 200-350 words without adjectives or adverbs or dialogue.
  
  The alleyway is behind my house, and the cedar tree is in my yard. Literary historians of the future will debate whether the boy is me or not.
  
  –
  
  The alleyway wasn’t an alleyway like you think of one. It was more a path, almost like a forest path, except lined by fences and trees that had been manicured, pruned by professionals.
  
  A boy, raingear glowing like a piece of the sun, squatted by the side of the street where it crossed the alleyway. He watched the puddle define itself, drops of rain pushing ripples outward toward the edges. He sat for a while and watched it. Boys do this sometimes.
  
  The edge of the rainclouds was nearby, to the south. Looking up, he could see the thin stripe of blue on the horizon, hinting itself into being, obscured by the hills and the houses of the neighborhood.
  
  He stood and continued along the alleyway. This section was bordered by a wire fence on one side, and he could see the yard beyond. The alley came closest to a cedar tree that seemed, to the boy, to have been there since the beginning of time. Its branches shaded the path from the rain. The boy shook the beads of water off his raincoat, leaned up against a fence pole.
  
  The rainclouds were breaking up. Patches of white and gray traded status with patches of blue. The sun came out and shadows stretched as if awakened from sleep. Sunlight filtered through the cedar branches and mottled the ground.
  
  The boy felt a kind of contentment that he hadn’t realized was possible. He filled his lungs with the scent of cedar and rain. He stood there for some time, breathing, observing. A crow came and chastised him. He laughed and walked along.
  

  • 9:36 am
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