Friday, February 8, 2013

Beowulf, the story Pages 36-38; 43-48



Check for 3 snapshots: sample on blog



Reminders:

Friday, February 8, reflective rough draft due

Thursday, February 21, reflective essay due on turnitin.com


Gray Veil


My life has been many different colors.  I remember the soothing blues and dark greens of summer evenings when woods,  sky, and ground melted into the darkness.  Reds, blues, and browns blurred tan with white at Saturday basketball games.  Blazing orange and yellows on  a summer’s beach have left their brush marks on my mind.  My face has been painted by the amber licking flames of sputtering logs separating two good friends on a July night. 

But one color, a certain tenacious shade of gray, has dirtied the brush and spreads its weariness into all the paint it touches. 

I first notice this color in seventh grade.  There were puddles of leaves and matted yards of grass.  The grass wasn’t exactly browned or yellowed, but hardly green, betraying in it blend with earth its own lack of color.  The streets had lanes of dirt near the curb, with a grimy stripe down the middle, like the crusted ring in an old metal coffee pot,  marking water lines.  The days looked warm from indoors, seducing people to wear light jackets, while outdoors, gusts of wind would poke raw fingers up jacket sleeves and down the necks.  My body shivered as I made my way into the public library.  The librarian, who wore her years upon her face like a shoe upon its papery sole, raised a brow at me as I walked by her.  I made may way to the table with the oversized books, wondering why so many great books didn’t fit on regular shelves.  I found a book and sat on the bench by the door.

While I sat, three girls came walking in, laughing,  tossing hair, and bumping arms that carried ninth grade books.  When they neared, the closest  stepped on my foot.  My head jerked up and my mind flashed with the words I would have to answer to her apology.  But she continued walking, leaving behind the scent of a woman’s perfume.  There were no words to excuse her step, no notice of me at all.  The incident seemed insignificant.  My toe hardly knew the difference, but that foggy color dropped its veil on this memory and it has always been with me. 

The second time that color appeared was a few quick months later when my family  moved to a different town.  Packing became a confusion in all its careful orderliness.  I remember taking my last look at all the empty rooms, once so full of me, and hearing the big front door slam shut with all the finality of a last good-bye.  Days later I stood in front of a mural of strange faces when introduced to new classmates.  They looked at me as though to learn something about me.  But they could never know me or the secrets I left behind in that old house.  They could never see the worn path through the back yard or the small unmarked grave of my dog under a neighbor’s porch.  They could never know, and I could never tell them.  That mural of faces grew tinted with  a clammy gray shade.

The third incident was after we had just received a bit of snow.  It was the kind of snow that parents hate but kids love.  It t jumped into children’s hands,  packing itself, and darting its way at a hundred different targets.  I hurried home from school and started working on a snow fort.  The fort seemed to sprout from the ground and round itself out.  I piled snow on snow and packed it hard until the fort was swallowed up in evening.  The next day I hurried home to drill a couple peepholes. I started a cold war by manufacturing tens of frozen ballistic weapons.  Having created a large enough arsenal, I rested against the frozen walls that protected me from winter winds.  I waited for someone to assault my walls, but no assault came.  I waited to hear the sounds of other kids playing outside, to test their snow weaponry against mine. No one showed.   Suddenly I  felt a dampness against my skin and jumped up to brush my clothes off.   Looking over my shoulder at the back of my jeans, I saw that same gray color spotting my clothes.  That color had somehow invaded even my fort so I ran inside my house to put on some dry clothes.  The next time I saw that fort, half of  it had dissolved back into the ground and I didn’t even care.