Apparitions

I spent last weekend in Denver at an independent publisher conference. Though I was a speaker, I had an opportunity to sit in on a two hour writing seminar lead by Anne Randolph, an excellent writing coach. Anne led us through three exercises and the first was to write for five minutes starting with the word “unfamiliar.” Here is what I came up with:

Unfamiliar faces crowd the confined space of the stalled car. No one speaks. We are strangers, riding toward our individual destinations. We have unexpectedly paused and the sudden silence causes unease. The faces are impenetrable masks, revealing nothing of the complicated stories lying below the surface. Eyes avoid eyes and some peer out the darkened windows toward grey, soot packed walls that encase us here. Then relief: The train jolts into action and moves forward, slowly resuming speed and carrying each one of us on our singular journey toward an assignation that will add yet another chapter to each of our fragmentary books.

Ezra Pound is the father of this short piece of writing. In college I had memorized a two line poem he had written early in the 20th Century. It goes like this: “The apparition of these faces in a crowd/pedals on a wet black bough.”