She stands stark still, after she first exits our abode. Observing the “scene”…sniffing the air … breathing in the scent of all that have passed this way…human or otherwise. I touch the neck of her fluffy mane, and say “NO BARK”. I stand for a while watching her perusal of her perceived domain.

SHE’s A GOLDEN FLOCK GUARDIAN

As the cold night air hits my face … I ask myself “why am I up“? Oh yeah, tis coffee’s fault. One towards the end of my shift, to keep me up and at em. Mistake. I’m tired, but I just HAD to write these lines before I finally succumbed to the creeping sleepys.

Big ol’ paws and her golden fluffiness greets me upon my return from work. From her slumber yonder on my bed, she has been awakened by my key in the lock. Pounce pounce pounce, across the 6 foot space she dances. My first words usually “NO”. I believe she interprets the word in this particular instance to mean, “only bounce alittle bit“.

Headphones @ a Call Centre

Breakfast consisted, this morning atleast, of 2 cups of coffee, 1 Protein Shake, and 1 box of Junior Mints. Lunch was much healthier, I’m not an imbecile. If one is to spend ones day countering volley’s of verbose vitriol and strange accents, than one needs her vittles.

I’ve been in a daze these last few days since my violating encounter. Pain creeps in achy throbs down my glutinous Maximus every once in a while, than down the back of my leg. Twinge, twinge my backside reminds me of its presence, as I trudge along the uneven snowy sidewalks. I must take my pleasure therefore when I can, and to give myself time and opportunity, in order for my ideas to flow from finger tips to cyber-space.

My workday begins with a four block walk to a bus, so I can walk again 4 blocks…and back and again. I’ve dropped the piped music from my smartphone, in exchange for silence and a book to read. This current one I’m inside is a delightful distraction. As Tolkien heads to Oxford, after winning a scholarship, I can almost see the gangly verbose figure he must have been. In love with a girl he was forbidden to see (for she was 3 years his senior), he trudged along obediently. For his reward he found himself in the ALPs, and it was there he found Gandulf. Beautiful.

The postcard he found had the caption Der Berggeist or “Mountain Spirit”, by the German artist J. Madelener…and so was born the character that would one day bring him fame.

from ‘J.R.R. TOLKIEN: a biography‘, by Humphrey Carpenter
“and it shows an old man sitting on a rock under a pine tree. He has a white beard and wears a widebrimmed round hat and a long cloak. He is talking to a white fawn that is nuzzling his upturned hands, and he has a humorous but compassionate expression; there is a glimpse of rocky mountains in the distance. Tolkien preserved this postcard carefully, and long afterwards he wrote on the paper cover in which he kept it: ‘Origin of Gandalf’.”

Reading it on the bus makes for a more pleasurable ride to work. Tis a detail I have missed from my life, the way a book can draw you in and blur the lines of the world around you, as you focus on the images the words conjure. A good biographer can raise the dead, as we glimpse these carefully crafted snapshots of a life.

Inspiration lies in the study of those we admire. It is a principal of writing I adhere to, doggedly. Capturing the essence of some admired crafter of characters, or lyrical lines, is a rare joy. After all, it is all in the details that one brings truth to words.

So in the day I read, and by the pale moonlight, I write.

Weekly Writing Challenge: Collecting Detail