Description has never been my ace card. I don’t think that way. A tree’s a tree. I don’t need to know that it’s an oak, of a particular size, a certain age, or that it has a singular shade of bark.
It’s a tree. I’m good with it being a tree. But many people enjoy descriptions in the stories they read so I have a certain sense of obligation to include some when I write.
In this story, I’ve tried to think about what to describe and all I can think of is asphalt. I imagine my first scene. With my mind’s eye, I look around so I can describe the setting. I see asphalt.
To jazz up the story, I take another approach. I try to infuse a sense of veracity by choosing to root the setting in what I have known as a child. This should help convey a sense of authenticity. So I base my setting on my own physical conditions growing up.
“The day is dry and the place is grey as cigarette ash because the eye sees asphalt. Just asphalt. Only asphalt. It is inevitably grey.
“There are some pebbles here and there. Where the asphalt splits and a dandelion pops up through a crack, there’s a wad of flattened gum the colour of mucus.
“Even the sky looks as if it is made of dry asphalt because it is grey. It is filled with clouds the colour of ash. Cigarette ash. Dry asphalt.”
Where I grew up everything was asphalt. Bloody asphalt bloody everywhere. And so my story’s asphalt. We’re born to it. We live out our lives on it. We gaze upon asphalt horizons. We walk on, bike on, drive on asphalt. We surround our homes with it.
If we didn’t have asphalt, we’d never take a bus because we’d never be able to find one. And do you know why? Because when you want a bus the first thing you look for is asphalt. Same with cabs.
No asphalt? No stores.
No stores? No food.
No food? We starve. And why?
Because we didn’t have asphalt!
The world is asphalt and so my story is asphalt. It’s set in it. It’s surrounded by it. And the sky is grey because it also looks like asphalt, bituminous pitch filled with stones and sand, all shades of grey. Asphalt always looks grey. Like cigarette ash.
And it’s everywhere. Roads and sidewalks; driveways and parking lots; schoolyards and walking trails. All made of the ubiquitous grey granola called asphalt.
It is in this setting that something stirring occurs involving two compelling characters. Unfortunately, having become caught up with the subject of asphalt and my decision to describe it, I’ve completely forgotten who those characters are or what occurs between them that is so dramatically powerful.
All I can remember is that it occurs in a place that is predominantly asphalt. It reminds me of my childhood, grey as cigarette ash.
April 2019