Writing Workshop上写的小练笔
题目是一组油画“Encounter"
Staring at a painting series "Encounters" in which strokes of colors meet, melt, blend and then separate, in order to tell vague traces of stories happened in moments far away, yet still possess the power to haunt your mind now and then, Laura is immersing in reminiscence about a time when her whole world brimmed over with reckless and wild youth, when she was bound by nothing but juvenile love, when she as well had numerous encounters: some shabby-clothed children with blue naivete in their eyes she saw in a remote village in China, a nun she nodded to in a small chapel in Germany who had a touch of bashfulness and conventional rusticity in her smile, an old Japanese man she talked to who spoke Asian accented English in which every "sh" sound started with a stress and ended with an "ee", an instant-noodle-haired musician she exchanged CDs with in a train from France to Italy whose heavy freckles almost covered his true face color. Yes, many many years ago, she traveled with only a sketch pad, a few charcoal pencils, and a worn, greasy canvas bag emitting a turpentine smell, just like many other artistic girls who are in love and have the faint and inexplicable melancholy between their brows. She explored the unlimited territory of humanity through listening to voices from different strangers she encountered. She observed and felt every expression on their faces, along with every tree, brick, sky which served as the settings of these stories. She came and left, remembered and forgot. Everything she saw in her eyes, she heard around her ears, she felt on her finger tips was so fresh, essential, and as if concentrated with all the poetry of the world, that she laid aside things defined her, her joy, her pain, her talents, her stupidity, her history and her future. She was free, pure and tranquil. Totally. And as if, forever.
Laura is contemplating the pictures. Her eyes are getting sore and sore, and eventually drops of tears with memory glowed within rolled down to her chest. "Why?"she asked herself, "why am I not that girl anymore?"
Laura, a 43-year-old housewife living in a lovely suburban house, standing in the pine wood decorated living room with both hands full of groceries (some frozen ones are dripping water), shedding tears for pictures on a white plaster wall, is not a girl anymore. Now the housewife Laura goes to a supermarket once a week and a farmer's market once a week, which in summer bustles with sweaty men and women who contribute a smell mixture of perspiration, deodorant and cheap perfume to the already suffocating air. The housewife Laura cooks food three times a day, carefully choosing fresh vegetables, washing rusty -odored blood off defrosted meat, racking her brain to find nutritious recipes for her husband and three sons. The housewife Laura does laundry once a week, clean the house once a week, disinfect the toilets once a week. She barely touches her painting brushes now. She doesn't remember the feeling on her fingers of putting a stroke on a blank canvas. She'd rather get some sleep than going to an art gallery. She hasn't given a glance at her old oil paintings which are hanging in her bedroom for maybe 15 years now. The housewife Laura is not that girl anymore. She is an anxious middle-aged housewife. She doesn't have any encounters.
Thinking about the change, Laura makes a deep exhale, so long that her chest feels a sting. Years has passed, and all of a sudden, right at this moment in front of these pictures, she senses the slow, either long or short process of dying. She might experience it alone, on the same couch which she is sitting on, in the exactly same position, with the same mixed odor of morning bacon, cooking smoke, face soap, and hair spray, which clings deep down to the fibers of her clothes like a leech sucking all her charm away. She couldn't help but jumping off the couch. Is everything going to be like this, forever? Even after another 20 or 30 years? She dropped all the groceries, leaving them on the ground with water flowing out of the plastic bag, reaching its hands to the far end of the carpet. She strides to her bedroom, changes her clothes, as fast as she can, like a soldier escaping from a battlefield, taking off his uniform, changing his appearance, for death is chasing behind. She sits on the edge of her bed, and closes her eyes. In her nostrils is the remaining odor from her hair. She felt angry about this scent, about this home, about everything currently in her life. But deep in her heart, she knows she's the one that made everything happened, and she's the one that betrayed the original her. Crying. Crying. Crying. She keeps doing that as if crying is the only way to put her back to who she was. Until ten minutes later She seems dried out and empty inside her chest, her stomach, and her mind. It feels like she just washed everything out of her body with buckets of tears. Emptiness, is not the only thing one can feel in front of a white canvas. Excitement and prospect are always accompanied by. Remaining silent for a while, she calms down and opens her eyes. She sees her paintings whose golden frames are mottled with rusty dark brown. She smiles, recalling and tasting the old feelings of encountering new loves and being unknown about the future. She stands up, making sure there's something she needs to do, to feel alive. She walks to the basement, fumbling all the cases and shelves, and in a moldy box she finds her old sketch pad whose pages are yellow, soft and kind of fuzzy due to the deterioration in damp conditions. She touches it, holding some charcoal pencils in her hand, running upstairs, right through the living room, and out of the house. She closes the door lightly behind her, looking up in the azure sky. This is a hot June day. The air is suffused with sweet flavor of new soil and verdant grass. John, a neighbor, is mowing his lawn, his sweaty forehead shining in the sun; Wendy, a retired school teacher, wearing her flowery silk dress, frowning at a beetle on her Achillea. They look at her, "No need to cook today?" "No, no cooking, not now, not today." Because this is a nice moment to start over, by walking away before dinner cooking time, by taking a large sketch pad firmly in her hand, by not knowing where to go, by crying for a painting on the plaster wall that is as white as a dream.
Staring at a painting series "Encounters" in which strokes of colors meet, melt, blend and then separate, in order to tell vague traces of stories happened in moments far away, yet still possess the power to haunt your mind now and then, Laura is immersing in reminiscence about a time when her whole world brimmed over with reckless and wild youth, when she was bound by nothing but juvenile love, when she as well had numerous encounters: some shabby-clothed children with blue naivete in their eyes she saw in a remote village in China, a nun she nodded to in a small chapel in Germany who had a touch of bashfulness and conventional rusticity in her smile, an old Japanese man she talked to who spoke Asian accented English in which every "sh" sound started with a stress and ended with an "ee", an instant-noodle-haired musician she exchanged CDs with in a train from France to Italy whose heavy freckles almost covered his true face color. Yes, many many years ago, she traveled with only a sketch pad, a few charcoal pencils, and a worn, greasy canvas bag emitting a turpentine smell, just like many other artistic girls who are in love and have the faint and inexplicable melancholy between their brows. She explored the unlimited territory of humanity through listening to voices from different strangers she encountered. She observed and felt every expression on their faces, along with every tree, brick, sky which served as the settings of these stories. She came and left, remembered and forgot. Everything she saw in her eyes, she heard around her ears, she felt on her finger tips was so fresh, essential, and as if concentrated with all the poetry of the world, that she laid aside things defined her, her joy, her pain, her talents, her stupidity, her history and her future. She was free, pure and tranquil. Totally. And as if, forever.
Laura is contemplating the pictures. Her eyes are getting sore and sore, and eventually drops of tears with memory glowed within rolled down to her chest. "Why?"she asked herself, "why am I not that girl anymore?"
Laura, a 43-year-old housewife living in a lovely suburban house, standing in the pine wood decorated living room with both hands full of groceries (some frozen ones are dripping water), shedding tears for pictures on a white plaster wall, is not a girl anymore. Now the housewife Laura goes to a supermarket once a week and a farmer's market once a week, which in summer bustles with sweaty men and women who contribute a smell mixture of perspiration, deodorant and cheap perfume to the already suffocating air. The housewife Laura cooks food three times a day, carefully choosing fresh vegetables, washing rusty -odored blood off defrosted meat, racking her brain to find nutritious recipes for her husband and three sons. The housewife Laura does laundry once a week, clean the house once a week, disinfect the toilets once a week. She barely touches her painting brushes now. She doesn't remember the feeling on her fingers of putting a stroke on a blank canvas. She'd rather get some sleep than going to an art gallery. She hasn't given a glance at her old oil paintings which are hanging in her bedroom for maybe 15 years now. The housewife Laura is not that girl anymore. She is an anxious middle-aged housewife. She doesn't have any encounters.
Thinking about the change, Laura makes a deep exhale, so long that her chest feels a sting. Years has passed, and all of a sudden, right at this moment in front of these pictures, she senses the slow, either long or short process of dying. She might experience it alone, on the same couch which she is sitting on, in the exactly same position, with the same mixed odor of morning bacon, cooking smoke, face soap, and hair spray, which clings deep down to the fibers of her clothes like a leech sucking all her charm away. She couldn't help but jumping off the couch. Is everything going to be like this, forever? Even after another 20 or 30 years? She dropped all the groceries, leaving them on the ground with water flowing out of the plastic bag, reaching its hands to the far end of the carpet. She strides to her bedroom, changes her clothes, as fast as she can, like a soldier escaping from a battlefield, taking off his uniform, changing his appearance, for death is chasing behind. She sits on the edge of her bed, and closes her eyes. In her nostrils is the remaining odor from her hair. She felt angry about this scent, about this home, about everything currently in her life. But deep in her heart, she knows she's the one that made everything happened, and she's the one that betrayed the original her. Crying. Crying. Crying. She keeps doing that as if crying is the only way to put her back to who she was. Until ten minutes later She seems dried out and empty inside her chest, her stomach, and her mind. It feels like she just washed everything out of her body with buckets of tears. Emptiness, is not the only thing one can feel in front of a white canvas. Excitement and prospect are always accompanied by. Remaining silent for a while, she calms down and opens her eyes. She sees her paintings whose golden frames are mottled with rusty dark brown. She smiles, recalling and tasting the old feelings of encountering new loves and being unknown about the future. She stands up, making sure there's something she needs to do, to feel alive. She walks to the basement, fumbling all the cases and shelves, and in a moldy box she finds her old sketch pad whose pages are yellow, soft and kind of fuzzy due to the deterioration in damp conditions. She touches it, holding some charcoal pencils in her hand, running upstairs, right through the living room, and out of the house. She closes the door lightly behind her, looking up in the azure sky. This is a hot June day. The air is suffused with sweet flavor of new soil and verdant grass. John, a neighbor, is mowing his lawn, his sweaty forehead shining in the sun; Wendy, a retired school teacher, wearing her flowery silk dress, frowning at a beetle on her Achillea. They look at her, "No need to cook today?" "No, no cooking, not now, not today." Because this is a nice moment to start over, by walking away before dinner cooking time, by taking a large sketch pad firmly in her hand, by not knowing where to go, by crying for a painting on the plaster wall that is as white as a dream.
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