Writing Exercise

This is my first attempt at the in-class free writing exercise. The song and artist that we listened to in class are to come. This is my first draft - the only thing changed is that I fixed some of the spelling and words that ran together because I was typing too fast to pay attention to spaces.

The sun rises over the misty town and the gloom begins to disperse. The fog is thick this morning, Jenniy is cold on her way to work. She tucks her pea green jacket around her frail form and wishes that she could afford something thicker, something without large worn holes in it, something new. In the gloom large shapes seem to loom quickly out at her, and she flinches as large letter box marches through the fog. Or rather, as she marches through the fog towards and then past the box. In this fog there is no direction that is easily discernible – she hopes she is heading in the right direction, and is simply putting one foot in front of the other in the direction that she launched herself in as she stepped out of her squat that she shares with 10 other working individuals. If there is no sense of direction can there be any sense of progression? Is the world moving at all, or is iti simply moving as she moves, and passing her by, and she is being left behind. She stops and fades into the fog, becoming one with the nebulous gasses in the air. There is nothing that she can do, she thinks, no direction that she can take, that will ever get her out of this mire. There is no future, not past, there is simply this gray and difficult to see now. The fog is so thick that she can barely see her toes in their worn work boots. She closes her eyes and walks forward again. If she cannot see the fog then it cannot exist, it cannot consume her, it cannot destroy her. But if she cannot see the fog, and the fog doesn’t exist, then if she cannot see herself, can she exist? Or by closing her eyes does she become gaseous herself, a mere whisp in the collective fog that is merely whisps of other peoples souls? She continues to move forward, the pressure of her feet against the cobblestones a distant feeling in the cold numbing fog. She is losing all sense of self as she continues forward. Then there is a sharp pain that jabs at her through the fog of her cold and the fog of her spirit and it forces her eyes open. She has walked into a bench that lines the boulevard that she works on. In the time that it has taken her to lose her soul in a gray world, the sun has fought through the thick fog and begun to evaporate it. Where there was only a blanket of grey blindness, now there are shapes glistening with dew and sparkling in the sun. But nothing looks the same anymore to her. Everything is tinged with the sinister knowledge that as soon as she closes her eyes, she will lose herself again.