As I mentioned a few weeks – no maybe it was more than a month ago, I am having a real purge to try and get rid of STUFF and although I will never the tidiness I actually want, I might be able to clear the decks and establish some order. Various charity shops are benefiting, the dustbin is unusually full, and even though it’s not apparent – even to me, I am making progress.
I was going through a box of notebooks and papers – I don’t know why I hang on to old stuff I wrote, but I guess a lot of writers do. Unexpectedly, and with great excitement I came across a short story I wrote which was not based on situations and characters I had created from my experience and observation. I wrote in a completely different style, as well as a different setting and subject. I thought it was lost, but there it was, in a folder with other bits and paces of writing.
Here is the first paragraph:
I am the emperor’s gardener. I am working on a new site in the south lands. The site has been measured, plotted and pegged. Today I have started to dig a new section. I bow my head towards the earth, bend my back and feel my muscles move beneath my skin. I break and turn the soil, tear up the plants they call weeds, dig out the stones and rocks and toss them onto a pile in the corner of my plot. The boy Ko comes and loads the rocks into a basket, hefts it onto his back and carries it off to tip into a cart. He cannot fill the basket, the rocks are too heavy so he has to run between me and the cart. He has to run, if he is too slow there are other boys to do his work. Little Ko, his brother, clears the uprooted plants and saplings and scampers backwards and forwards, they are not so heavy and his back isn’t rubbed raw and bruised blue.
I don’t remember exactly when I wrote it, it was the summer of 1988 or 1989, and I had moved from a house where I had been very unhappy, into a newly built bungalow. A freind told me new houses were being built, and I had gone to see it, and it seemed just perfect. My sister was a wheelchair user and I knew one day I would have responsibility for her so a bungalow would be perfect. I think a good fairy cast a spell! I sold the sad house, bought the bungalow, and moved in with the no problems or hold-ups. The bungalow was new, and the garden was just a field! I set to, so when I wrote about the digger attacking the ground and heaving out rocks – that was me. Because it was a new development, there was all sorts of stuff under the surface of the garden, I guess I must have been very fit after a summer of hard and tough digging.
I guess now I should appreciate even more that tidying has some purpose and some unexpected surprises!
My featured image is of someone who very much enjoys rootling in the mud!
Lois Elsden 