LJ Idol - Wheel of Chaos - Wk 8 - Infrastructure

[bleodswean]

Going for my soak, she called, pinning her hair up as she made her way to the bathroom.

Their apartment had been created out of dormered attic space on the top floor of a three-story Victorian house. The dying elms stood even taller than the peaked roofline and through most of the windows one had to peer through the peeling white bark branches and the hand-sized leaves. The house stood resolute and glorious with a postage stamp backyard and just a hedge between the porch and the cracked sidewalk in front. The first half of its centuried life had been as a single-family home, the last half as a multi-family building with five units. Two on the ground floor and two on the second floor, the attic a sprawling dwelling space comprised of nooks and crannies tucked beneath the eaves, long coveted in the downtown art scene and handed off from one hipster to another whenever vacated. They had lived in it happily for three years. The first heady year of finding themselves exactly where they were supposed to be was gone and some weekends they spent touring open houses. They wanted to believe themselves to be people who could renovate their own Victorian.

She was settled into the massive claw foot tub, scented and bubbled, candles lit, her day washing off her skin. She reached over to a stool for a jar of clay mask and began slathering her face. He came in and turned on the lamp that stood on an antique table beside the door. He had a book in his hands.

What will you regale me with tonight, my librarian?

Bathtime story hour? Hmmm. Might have to pitch that at our next meeting.

She laughed.

I found this old civil engineering book in the depository this morning. It’s about designing inner townships, gridded streets, parks, dedicated shop fronts, municipalities, no mention of suburban boroughs whatsoever.

Sounds riveting.

Doesn’t it just!

Some things are not written to be read aloud.

All things are written to be read.  He settled on the floor, his shoulder blades against the curled edge of the tub. The giant tome opened on his upraised knees. There’s a lot of diagrams.

As there should be. Read the poems in between.

He began at the beginning and the low sonorous sound of his voice ran along the patterned lino and individual words became hard to distinguish.

It’s putting me to sleep, she complained.

A diabolical plan when you’re immersed up to your chin in water. It’s putting me to sleep, too. Admittedly.

But

Yes

Can you imagine how we came to this. How we left our caves and discovered the meadows and then somehow devised city planning. Concrete.

Not intended as a jungle by any stretch.

No. But then why did it become so primitive?

Imagine Pan and a maenad lying on their backs in long meadow grasses, a creek burbling nearby. Birdsong and breezes in the treetops.

In Arcadia!

And somehow urbanism surfaced in their consciousness. The goat foot god must have known that would be the beginning of the end for him. The religion of the slurbs. The slow but sure death of the villagers.

Should we become pastoralists?

Too late for that, I’m afraid. Transcendentalists, perhaps?

She filled the cups of her hands with bath water and rinsed her face. You’re not joining me tonight?

I think I’d rather you get dressed and let’s walk down to the park, feed the ducks.

O’ that they were swans. The waterfowl are all asleep, my dreamer. Tucked into the bushes.

Beneath the debris of the unhoused.

You’re getting morose. From a book! I’ll get dressed. Go mix us up some drinks and pour them into our Stanleys and we will wander the city for a while and get slightly drunk. We can look for new For Sale signs.

No escape to a life in the country for us?

What on earth would we do in all that wide open space?

Comments

[dadi]

You always deliver a perfect movie of delicious images that remain vivid in my brain!

[kizzy]

The religion of the slurbs.

I love this sentence merely because of "slurbs", LOL.

This is delicious, as always. Setting them with one taking a bath fits quite nicely in the meadow/concrete type of way I can't quite describe but it works.

[murielle]

Fell in love with the attic apartment! Exactly what I wanted in the 70s. Now I'm in my 70s it would need an elevator.
What a fabulous take on a prompt I cannot remember offering.

((Hugs))

[muchtooarrogant]

Murielle, you know what's funny? You were the person I immediately thought about when I read this introduction. (grin) I remember how much you enjoy attics from the last time I wrote about them.

Dan

[murielle]

Hi Dan!

I thought about your story too! Love it, I still think about it. You created an image that lives in my heart.

M

[meridian_rose]

Some amazing description in the opening paragraphs. They wanted to believe themselves to be people who could renovate their own Victorian. I like they want to believe it but maybe it's not true. It's a bit of dream, an ideal.

I admit I struggle with this new style, where you never use dialogue markers. It can become very hard to tell who is speaking when and when the dialogue ends, during longer stretches. Still this exchange is lovely, Some things are not written to be read aloud./ All things are written to be read. and will stay with me.

Personally the time to ask me to go for a walk is before I bathe after which I want to get into lounge wear/sleepwear not get dressed again :P But maybe this is something they do often and I like the image of them hand in hand watching for ducks still awake despite the later hour.

What on earth would we do in all that wide open space? Build something from scratch so you don't struggle with the inevitable disasters uncovered during renovations? Have more space for your books? They're certainly an interesting pair I'll be happy to read more about :D

[muchtooarrogant]

Hahaha, I love the idea of perverting the Stanley cup water fetish by filling the tankard with an alcoholic drink. I think you'd run the risk of getting much more than slightly drunk though. (grin)

I liked, "The goat foot god must have known that would be the beginning of the end for him. The religion of the slurbs. The slow but sure death of the villagers."

Dan

[alycewilson]

This was an engaging slice of life. I could picture all of it as if I were there.

[earthspirits]

Delightful story, and how I'd love to reside in such a marvelous old house (I used to live in a couple of Victorians, once upon a time).

That claw foot tub scene is wonderful too. My grandmother's house had its original Victorian claw foot, it was immense!

Dialogue is perfect in this!

[legalpad819]

Such a fun read!

[marjorica]

Great stuff.

I love going fantasy house shopping.

[xeena]

You always have such very vivid imagery that makes it so easy for us to envision everything!

[inkstainedfingertips]

You create some really beautiful, vivid images. I really like the image of the claw foot tub. It's especially sharp. It's slow and languid, which fits the tone of your piece perfectly.

[drippedonpaper]

This put me into mind of a painting I once saw of a man reading to his wife who was bathing (not an especially revealing painting, but the...somehow it really touched my heart.) It's definitely something that would show a depth of closeness in a relationship.

I hope your characters find a place they love (with a bathtub ;)