Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Writing Exercise from 52 Weeks of Wordage.

Exercise # 189 - Up & Down

Describe the ceiling and describe the floor in:
  - the room where you are right now
- the last library you were in
- your childhood bedroom
- your last elementary school classroom
- a magnificent palace
- a wigwam
- a very peculiar wigwam constructed by a New York City-based artist

Oh, gosh, folks... A couple of these require me to rely on my memory. This is not a good thing.

BUT!

The great thing about writing is that, if you can't remember, you can just make crap up. Success!!



Yes, I'm procrastinating.
I should be writing the first 100 words of my CiM assignment for Professional and Organisational Development.
However, twiddling my pen or staring at my keyboard  doesn't seem to be letting it happen, so, applying the old adage ' a change is as good as a rest' I'm going to crank up my brain with an attempt at this exercise.

Off we go.

- the room where you are right now

I hardly want to look up or down in this room.
Both have been on my list of 'things to be sorted out in 2011'
Have they been?
Of course not.

I'm finding myself sighing silently at this point.
Writing about a task undone as I procrastinate about another task is rather apt, but not at all comfortable.

So...the ceiling.
I've never been a massive fan of artex, or the amount of effort that people have put into making artsy patterns in it, and thats what I see when I briefly glance up above me.
An off white expanse of swirling, not quite symmetrical whorls, stippled in the centre like strange sunflowers.
Its edged with coving, only part painted from when it was damaged when we re plastered the longest wall.
[I really need to get that sorted by the end of the month!]
There are small dots of black in odd places up there too.
I always mistake them for flies or mosquito's.
What they actually are, are the tiny fragments of a giant paper spiders legs, stapled to the ceiling one halloween, and fixed so securely that I would have to dig them out to remove them.
When I paint the ceiling and coving...
[ I stop for a second to make a note in my diary re actually doing that, in the hope that it will get done before Christmas ]
...then I hope they wont show.

In the not quite centre is the ceiling light.
A tri-armed, matt black metal and frosted white glass, shallow design.
Rather shallow in depth - my ceilings are not very high - it casts a clear,bright light from its low energy triple tubed light-bulb emerging stamen like from each cup of frosted glass, rather like white buttercups hanging from black stems.
I need to dust up there more I see.
They are rather grey buttercups in places.

[Now I'm thinking of procrastinating with regard to this project and whipping my long turquoise non-feather duster around the light fitting.
But I don't.
One type of procrastination at a time I think. ]

On to the floor, since I cant bear to think about the ceiling any more.

Not that the floor is any more satisfying.
Why i thought that a deep burnt orange would be a good colour for a basement floor I have no idea.
Well, I do...
I thought that it would warm up a cold and dull room.
But all it did was to overpower everything else in it.
It's so hard to co-ordinate with too!
At least I had the sense to keep it to a plain, short pile, otherwise nondescript carpet.
It's lived, has my carpet.
If you know where to look you can see the birthday parties, the change from study to dining room, the art projects and atmospheric candle lit evenings etched on its face.
Yes, ok,it needs replacing.

Maybe next year.



- the last library you were in 

I dont have to think too hard for this one.
That would be the library on the Chelmsford campus of the Anglia Ruskin University.

Actually though.....
When I think of 'up', I can only bring to mind floor above floor of books.
There were at least 4 floors above the one that I was on.
Each one with books shelved 6 high, blocking my view of the walls as I glanced up.
I'm sure there was a ceiling, but I have no idea what it was like.
Something wooden to match the tables?
Or glass to match the strange double layered shelf like protuberances that guard the upper sections of the windows?
For all I can remember it could have been filled with dancing letters and numerical signs, formed by the explosion of overloaded student brains as they grapple with new concepts and ideas.

As for the floor.
Grey.
I think it was grey.
Grey and boring.
Designed that was to stop students from looking down, so that they can aspire to whatever heights they so wish.


 Now I have to stop and make tea, or my daughter will starve.
She assures me that this is the case, and it is my place as a mother to believe everything she says.

More procrastination later then!