WRITING EXERCISE

I'm lying on my stomach in bed, exhausted after a full night's sleep. I can't seem to win. I even went to bed before midnight. I'm sure it's my dreams. Most of them involve knives and necks and giant green snakes. Everyone is trying to kill me.
I lie there for a moment, wrestling with my memory, what was it this time?
I give up eventually, I can't remember a thing. All I know is that I have a beating headache and my throat feels like a field of thistles. I'm sick of being tired. I'm tired of being sick. There should be a word to describe this feeling.
I roll onto my back. I can hear someone rummaging around in the lounge. Probably Sophie collecting last minute bits and pieces before class. I close my eyes and there is the murmur of a river of cars rolling down our street outside. I hear the front door open and close again. It must be getting late. I reach for my phone. It's only 9:14. My class is at 12 but it's in town and the bus takes about 30 minutes if it's on time, which it never is, so I have about – (a struggle with morning arithmetic) – an hour and a half.
I shuffle into the kitchen to the beat of morning traffic and check out my options. A slightly rubbery meat pie left out overnight, a half eaten box of chocolate cookies and a packet of chocolate frogs, mostly intact. I notice the bench is also covered with breadcrumbs, which is annoying because I'm constantly telling everybody to clean up after themselves, and everybody says yes, it's a good idea, but as soon as I leave the room they transform into pigs. Suddenly I'm in one of my dreams again, and my house mates are giant malicious pigs trying to kill me with poison pie, drown me with breadcrumbs, feed me toxic chocolate. No wonder I'm sick.
I pick up the pie and throw it in the bin. I fill my hands with oranges, take a sharp serrated knife and kill them all, slicing through their bellied skin, leaving them severed and halved on the chopping board. Then I squeeze them, squeeze them all, my fingers twisting the fleshy, orange meat. I want every last drop. I throw all the rinds in the bin and drink the liquid slowly, thinking how good it must be for my throat. I put my cup down and say “Freshly squeezed orange juice,” out loud a few times, because it feels good. Today I will get better. I say that out loud too. Then I grab my lunch bag and raid the fridge for healthy food. I find an apple, a pear, some ham and cheese and two whole potatoes, left over from last nights dinner. Then I turn to the cupboard, and discover Sophie's new store of corn crackers, almonds and sunflower seeds. I help myself to these. I butter the corn crackers and layer the ham and cheese between them like sandwich filling. I cover the potatoes in glad wrap and put everything in the lunch bag....

Busking Impressions

Morning comes with a splintering of light and I am suddenly awake. My skin is prickling and there is a faint ringing in the air, as if the sun had just broken into the sky with a snap and the sound was still reverberating through my bedroom.
I slip out of bed in an instant, pull my curtains aside and slide my window all the way up.
Then I am still. I stand there, at the window, and watch. The sky is a wash of grey cloud ships, their bows dipped in gold. Colour is spreading across the whole valley, shining on shingles, lighting up white walls and casting pools of shadow behind them. I stand there for some time, listening to the sound of my breathing, the infrequent hum of early vehicles. In this moment I am calm, I am balanced, but I know this feeling will not last long.

My breakfast is rushed. I have a lot to do.

The day is full. The soles of my shoes are hot from rushing about so.

Now it is five o'clock and I take a shower. I take out my brown jeans, a blue jumper and a red scarf for the cold. Then I pick up my guitar.

The bus is 11 minutes late. The bus driver is a grey, thin faced lady who asks loudly for my ticket.
I explain that I have no ticket. I fish in my wallet and tell her I brought change for a ticket, and then discover I have none. I begin to apologise. I tell her I have no change, only a fifty dollar note.
'No shit,' she says, 'can't you read?' she says, and bangs her elbow on a sign by her seat:
PLEASE HAVE CORRECT FARE READY.
I find a seat quickly.



Now it is six o'clock, and I'm sitting on the corner. Waiting is making me nervous. All I can think of is how funny I must look perched here on the rim of a garden, all wrapped up in my red scarf.
The air is fresh and the street is alive, humming with dinner conversation and pedestrian chatter. The guitar feels cold in my hands.
I plunk out a few notes. Across the road, an old man with a black moustache looks up from his table, scowls, and looks back down at his takeaway. My fingers wont move. Ironic, I think dully, all that practice and now I’ll screw it up in front of an old fart who's not even interested.
I adjust my scarf and flex my fingers across the strings, plucking softly so I can hear what I sound like before Mr. Moustache gets a chance to yell abuse.
Slowly, I begin; forcing soft notes out of the reluctant nylon. I begin to sing, but my voice is thin and reedy, its like singing through a long tube stuffed with tissues.
I grit my teeth and brace my shoulder against the wood, curling my fingers and pulling them back and forth, back and forth, building a light thrumming sound. The strings begin to warm in my hands, and I start to play louder, faster; thick throbbing chords of sound. And now I am singing, and I don't care who's listening. I am singing and my voice is floating in the air as my fingers are flying back and forth, back and forth, like spiders legs dancing on nylon strands of sound. Colour is filling the courtyard, shining on shingles, lighting up faces. In the midst of music I am calm, I am balanced.