Sunday Scribblings--Simple

The theme over at Sunday Scribblings this week is "Simple." Here's my little, written-between-marking-up-student-stories exercise.

Two weeks ago, he used a word generator he found online. The generator coughed up one word at a time, and after he read each word, he wrote it down and then refreshed the screen, waited for his next word to appear. He did this six times, wrote down in pencil on a piece of scratch paper: corral, want, triste, azure, shell, falter, tintinnabulation.

It will be simple, he thought. I will take these seven words and make a story. I will corral them, make them mine.

Fourteen days later, he still wants to write that story.

It's the simplicity of the act that both draws him toward it and prevents him from getting any words on the page. He thinks about the word generator, wonders if there's some word for his predicament. How many times would he have to refresh his screen in order to find it?

He has transferred the seven words from the piece of scratch paper to a white, rectangular dry-erase board that hangs behind his desk. He has written the words on the board in blue block letters.

Sometimes, he gets up from his desk and puts his ear next to those azure words on the dry-erase board and listens to them, as if, like seashells, they might emit sounds. Usually he hears nothing. But sometimes, when his house is very quiet, it's as if he can hear bells. The tintinnabulation of the bells he hears, though, does not make a tinkling sound.

The ringing is slow, sad, and unfaltering.

Some days, he can stand there next to the board and listen to it for hours.