i’m pretty sure i will be returning to this assignment for edits in a few weeks…this one, one that i wrote a few months ago, and one which i have yet to write i’ll be polishing up before i send in the “best” one in for (possible) publication. yipes! that’s a scary thought. people actually read what i write? maybe…i should stop while i’m behind. ;) needless to say, constructive criticism is always appreciated and if you have suggestions i would love to hear them.

thanks for the reminder. don’t feel silly…i need them more often than you’d suspect. did i ever mention the meltdown i may or may not have had last week? =)

“They alternately recede into the distance and loom in the foreground, as though some colossal camera lens keeps twisting, changing the depth of field with every moment.”

“Maybe some small part of me expected to see the scenes I remembered from the documentary, an intricate grayscale lacework of men and machines, because it was almost disappointing to see color, clean and intense from the surreal cast of a dying sun: red dirt, blue water, bright sky, yellow tractors preparing to build the bypass bridge that has long since been completed.”

“Beneath an infinite sky no mind could fully comprehend the vastness of that place, but the context of the low and brimming clouds whittled it down to a thing one’s imagination could almost grasp – and, in so doing, showed it in its full proportions.”

“I could almost imagine that all I knew had turned upside down and that we walked in sandy, windblown clouds while the earth swept above us in slow-moving currents, or that perhaps two parallel worlds had interlocked somehow and that if I could only pierce the depths of the fog above, I might find another desert road reflected there.”

“When the clouds closed in over that empty land, I felt free, alone in an unbounded landscape. When they lifted I felt claustrophobic, shut in by the weight of the empty heavens and the space around me.”

Those were some of my favorites. I really liked your closing sentence, too.

I know this project wasn’t something you found particularly interesting, but I think you did a good job with it. If you find yourself returning to edit and revise it toward the end of your class, I’d love to discuss it with you—wording, transitions, narrative style—stuff I’m not qualified to talk about (especially considering that I’ve only read four pages of the work your trying to model), but I’d love to help if I can.

About life being hard… I find that topic (with more than a hint of the cry ‘life is confusing’) anew upon my tongue or in my thoughts more and more often as the years go by. But so far, every trial, coming to a close, has brought with it some value—some sort of refinement or growth that I never would have sought on my own. And I guess I need to dwell on this as much now as ever. But I feel silly writing this here as if to remind you. =) I doubt you need a reminder. Just know that you’re not alone. ;)