Thursday, September 01, 2011

Drabble: Substrate

For some reason this took me back to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with "An audience! Perfect! A lucky thing we came along."

Weird, huh? You'd think I would be all Michaelis-Menten with this one, but no, I chose Stoppard. Let this be a lesson to you: I will always, always choose Stoppard. Of course, now that it's written, I'm not sure I got across what I wanted to.

The cart trundled sadly into town; its uneven wheels making up for the cement roads and giving it a suitably lopsided, lurching appearance. The banner was barely legible: “Carnival Veronica.” I remembered it being painted in crisp, bright colors, trailing flags that glittered in the sunlight, but now it just all seemed brown and gray and decrepit. Crumbling. Sad. 
“Daddy! Daddy! A circus!” cried Bethany, and she tugged on my hand. “Let's go see the circus, can we, daddy? Can we go?” 
“Of course,” I answered, seeing my memory reflected in the glow of her face.  


What I was going for was a magical carnival, one where what you see is a reflection of your imagination/innocence/expectations. But it feels a little bit more like "Kids like the silliest stuff, don't they?" which is totally not where I was going. Suggestions?

1 comment:

Ed said...

If you arent where you want to go yet....Keep going, going on, (call that going? call that on?)