I was wandering through my local cemetery the other day .... as you do ... and mulling over those small matters of how to earn some money and what direction should my life go in.
I was also marveling at the ways in which our ancestors mourned and celebrated the lives of those who've died. There were crosses of all shapes and sizes, many tall Celtic ones, there was a carved stone anchor to remember a salty sea dog. Doves and angels mingled with veiled urns and quieter, less obtrusive graves, many cloaked in ivy, some crumbling or headstones lurching like unsteady drunks.
Then I chanced upon this. An obelisk, one of dozens. But this one has, at its tip, a hand. I'm not sure if you can make it out, but there's a cuff, a hand, a finger pointing upward toward Heaven. Well, things like this are a gift to a short story writer. I found the opening of a story dropping into my mind. I repeated it like a chant as, Fate would have it, I'd left the house without pen and paper.
'The hands that point the way are hidden in plain sight ...'
Yesterday afternoon the story began to take shape. A woman at a crossroads in her life, wanting to find a direction to take, wanting to see the pattern her life's supposed to take. She sees a hand, then another. The fingers seem to point the way, but toward what?
I was also marveling at the ways in which our ancestors mourned and celebrated the lives of those who've died. There were crosses of all shapes and sizes, many tall Celtic ones, there was a carved stone anchor to remember a salty sea dog. Doves and angels mingled with veiled urns and quieter, less obtrusive graves, many cloaked in ivy, some crumbling or headstones lurching like unsteady drunks.
Then I chanced upon this. An obelisk, one of dozens. But this one has, at its tip, a hand. I'm not sure if you can make it out, but there's a cuff, a hand, a finger pointing upward toward Heaven. Well, things like this are a gift to a short story writer. I found the opening of a story dropping into my mind. I repeated it like a chant as, Fate would have it, I'd left the house without pen and paper.
'The hands that point the way are hidden in plain sight ...'
Yesterday afternoon the story began to take shape. A woman at a crossroads in her life, wanting to find a direction to take, wanting to see the pattern her life's supposed to take. She sees a hand, then another. The fingers seem to point the way, but toward what?