KMS Blog

Sometimes I create parts of stories that simply don't fit.  Here's something pulled recently when I was editing...

 

Until he had been dropped off at the school, Darnell had never in his life been out of Philadelphia except for occasional field trips and other day excursions to the shore.  At fourteen years of age the night sky for him was one of little wonder; a washed out version of its daytime self where a half-dozen stars, easily overlooked, twinkled meekly through the canopy of light. Now in the seclusion of a small Vermont village and far from the comforting lights of the city, he felt just how vast the world could actually be.  On his first day, Darnell had gone through Mount Claire’s orientation, been assigned a room, and settled in.  But he had little in common with the other students and so decided to wander outside to be alone.  He pushed through the front door of the dormitory, which led to a small concrete pad.  The door closed and Darnell stood overlooking the gentle curve of a valley whose shadows rose, uninterrupted, to meet the shadows of the sky.  Behind him a single bulb burned, while just beyond its reach darkness pressed in, as if all the night were gathered there.  Over his head two thousand stars twisted and boiled, set afire in the stillness of the New England night.  They were violent, active things whose motion broke their colors into a thousand writhing fractals overhead.  Darnell turned back towards the embrace of the light bulb, and quickly rushed back inside. 

 

Too excited to sleep – it seemed impossible, especially as a middle-aged man whose existence had grown as regular and reliable as a Sunday sermon.  Early in life, as one flies through their twenties and thirties, life is defined by a frantic change; friendships dissolve around marriages, whole new families are born and grow, and vocation is marked by an upward advance and ambition.  As the forties give way to the fifties, though, one begins to dread change, for more often than not it means something tragic, unexpected; the death of a parent or friend, cancer, the loss of employment, the decline of the body, or the uncertainty that waits beyond the few remaining breaths of an exhausted marriage.  Middle age, as Will experienced it, was defined by a methodical, stubborn steadiness.   And yet after four months of traveling to New York City every week, like some kind of beatnik, his methodical patterns, those familiar thoughts and daily routines and beliefs, had all been quietly exposed.  Will had became aware, slowly at first, then more rapidly, of just how much his life had slipped into unconscious routine, and once exposed to a critical eye, he found the revelation as startling as it was invigorating, and began to peel away the layers of his languorous existence to see what lay beneath.  For the first time in as long as he could remember he was awaking excited to start his day and moving with a new energy, and a new appreciation, of just how incredible life could be.  He felt driven by passion even when doing simple tasks, and strong emotions – often contradictory – ran through his mind at the most inopportune times.  It seemed like he had somehow mostly slept through the last decade of his life without even realizing it.