like lightning

[helenic]

It's been a beautiful afternoon. After my too-lazy morning and a pointless Ancient History seminar I cycled back from the faculty via college so I could pick up my funding cheque and get it to the bank before it closed. The people at Accounts had lied to me; it wasn't there. But my route back home took me across Jesus Green and along the river, racing the storm as the sky grew violet and cloud-lit. Distant thunder melding with the growl of tarmac under my wheels as I sped across the footbridge. I was indoors before it broke, and while rain pummelled the windows I drank tea and listened to music and wrote 2 000 words of a ghost story in just over an hour. It needs rewriting and cutting practically in half, but it's there and far easier to edit than when the words were in my head.

The rain's stopped now, and the storm-filtered afternoon sun is golden and darkening. I'm going to make more tea and run a bath and do some reading. I'm always strangely affected by the electricity of storms, mental energy and emotional restlessness held in check by absolute physical calm. Everything's taking place on the inside. It's like the world is running on two different speeds, and I'm watching it in slow motion while ideas rise up, flickering, behind my eyes. It's getting dark.

Comments

[karajanks.livejournal.com]

What a great entry. Sounds just perfect. :-)

[purple-pen.livejournal.com]

A pity about your cheque, but we benefit from this excellent post.

ghost story

[velvet512.livejournal.com]

Maybe one day you'll read your ghost story to people with a yen for urp. I have an erotic ghost story I wrote for a Halloween Party in a haunted manor house in the Forest of Dean. If all goes to plan I'll read it for Secret Chiefs in London next month.

[oakwonder.livejournal.com]

May the writing in the story be as satisfying as it is here.

Re: ghost story

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether I'll be reading it or telling it, yet. I imagine something between the two.

There's no reason I couldn't tell it again at the Funny Farm meet. Perhaps you could entice romauld to do the same?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Satisfying! Now there's a word I haven't heard applied to me for a while!

I'm intending to post it, I think, but the internets will get a far more rigorously edited version than the party on Saturday :)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thankyou *smiles* I'm loving that particular cycle route at the moment. When I've got my digital camera working again I want to do a photoessay of all the canal boats and bridges and things.

The lady in Accounts said it had been put into the internal mail on Tuesday, so I antipate it arriving at college in - ooh, about a week.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I didn't get enough work done. But the mood was definitely worth keeping.

Re: ghost story

[velvet512.livejournal.com]

Now that's something extra to look forward to. I read mine last year (or was it the year before?). See you there ..

[eirynn.livejournal.com]

Oh...what a beautiful post. I will go to sleep with the sound of those words rambling through my head.

(I'm sorry I didn't introduced myself and I'm late in commenting the post...I just found you through amberspyglass and I couldn't help writing you.)