When irrelevance become relevant

Ah, Wednesday, we meet again.

My coffee became cold in its teacup, until I blasted it in the radiation box, or more commonly referred to, the microwave. It’s not gross if it’s a black coffee, right?

So, the day begins.

I had just whipped up a bowl of warm porridge oats, and a scent of comfort wafted through the air as it dawned on me. My second cousin gifted us pure maple syrup upon returning from her trip to Canada, and it’s unopened maple leaf-shaped bottle, finished with a bow of string around its neck, is currently sitting pretty in a display cabinet in the kitchen.

A display cabinet, of all places.

There it had been forgotten about. Its presence was merely part of the furniture by this point. Unused furniture that's sole purpose is to collect dust on and around itself.

It wouldn’t bother me so much if I hadn’t been splashing out on — to my standards — expensive bottles of some liquid substance that looks like maple syrup, doesn’t quite taste like maple syrup, but costs a fraction of the real stuff.

I’ve been using this?

I questioned myself, disgusted, looking at the bottle of fake gloop that I was about to administer into my porridge.

And in that instance, I clambered upon the cabinets in an attempt to claim myself a reward. Pure maple syrup in my porridge.

Gone were the days of an affordable well-known brand that I will not disclose.

I was classy now. I was the real deal. If this were a fashion statement being made, I was fabulously draped out in designer labels.

Alas, it was not, and I was still in my penguin printed dressing gown at this point.

So why does all this kerfuffle even matter?

Well, the truth is, it does not. Or so it would seem, but it does create

an image,

a scene,

a person,

and a purpose.

Though arguably shameful, I have made it no secret in my life that I do not read. I have a hard time sticking to something, even when it’s enjoyable. I haven’t seen the TV series’ you’ve seen, and I probably haven’t seen the films I’ve previously told people I want to see.

That said, I do have an imagination. An imagination that has created worlds, tragedies, triumphs, people, and places that I often drift to in my mind, manipulating them a little more each time.

I have a beautiful imagination that is calling to be freed in the form of being written.

I was exploring an empty historic church in Bedwyn when I came across a rusty old table.

The folding kind that, as a child, we would have to clean of activities and put away in pairs after Brownie meetings. Except this table, that wore a sellotaped paper sign with ‘books for restoration donations’ scrawled across it, was crowned with piles upon piles of secondhand books.

Books on religion, books on science, science-fiction books, and books that's genre I couldn’t really make out at all.

I picked up a copy of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the fact that I had seen film adaptation, heard it was a best-seller, or perhaps it was one of my own characters prompting me to take a chance on it. Either way, I dropped my donation in a box and took the scuffed-cornered copy home with me.

Though since disregarded, the disgust and anger I felt after the first chapter nearly determined a refusal to read on, for this book is powerful and is already teaching me so much.

Like when irrelevance becomes relevant. That little details of life paint a big picture. Or simply that being inspired by your own experiences is what turns a character into a person, and is what encourages a person to turn a page.

Regrettably, I don’t know who Alice Sebold is or what she’s been through, but this book sure does resonate with me for its rawness and realist approach on something so sorrowful.

Perhaps this is no news to book readers and aspiring writers out there, but for me, this was a developmental discovery of which I am grateful for.

My work-in-progress novel, How to Nurse a Butterfly, has been revisited and continues to unfold.

And as for the maple syrup? It was delicious.

I’ll get back to reading, now.

12.June.2019

Wednesday