Fragments From Floyd

Just so I can say I have something to show for my blog-free discipline this week, here are two paragraphs from the middle of a rewrite from last year I am working on. It is tough going, but it's going. This is part of a retrospective where I am describing the period of time when I first moved back to Virginia and was trying to adjust to isolation and purposelessness, cold wind, and fog.

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"Trapped inside and blown to tatters the first step beyond the door, I paced the tiny cabin floor like an animal that Saturday, back and forth, feeding the cheerless wood stove miserly bites when I could see my breath inside. Cartoons on the TV were no comfort. The cat was no company. How I could possibly fill two empty days of this harsh foretaste of the long winter to come--fill them with anything that would take my mind somewhere, anywhere but here? The confinement became a worse suffering than the cold and by mid-day the walls had almost sucked the life from me.

Layered in winter garb, I found work making kindling on the lee side of the house, under the deck. Sheltered from the abrasive full force of the wind there, only the eddies of cold would spill over the roof and lick their way into my gloves and down my neck under the old plaid scarf. Then one tendril of air lifted the smell of the cedar-lined closet from that scarf-- the aroma of a safe place in the home we had just abandoned forever. The spiced, clear smell of cedar ambushed me. The truth of it took me to a place where I had belonged, had been in control, and thought I knew what lay ahead. Could this have been only a few months ago? The familiar balm of cedar spoke of age and security and warmth. It mocked my cold misery, its memory provoked the loneliness that faced me in the winter ahead. Smells can be cruel in their bluntness and honesty. Under that plaid scarf a sob swelled and lifted and left on the wind. It tumbled down over the garden fence, south, toward North Carolina."