a moment in the day: building

Sitting at my computer unshowered on a Saturday, tinkering with the front cover for the book City of Weird. I'm so deep inside that place that I don't see the room around me, or the clutter of papers on my desk, the jacket I left on the floor, only this deep, dark fantastical world I'm building out of pixels. Reds, blues, yellows, shading and shadows. World-building makes you a kind of god. Right now, I'm building a city, I'm building a monster.

Click of my mouse, and over that, the hammering of a fellow world-builder. Bradley K. Rosen is in our backyard, putting French doors on the garage that's going to be Stephen's artist studio. I like that Brad is building the opening through which Stephen will be soon doing his own world-building.

I also like that the power is on. I need electricity today. Last night, luckily just after we'd finished watching a movie, the power went out due to high winds. The entire neighborhood dark. I walked Nicholas in the frozen front yard. The wind was a freight train through the trees and Nicholas kept moving in and out of the little glow from my cell phone flashlight, appearing and disappearing in the black, tail tucked, not happy, still taking his time to find just the right place to pee. I had the leash around my wrist and squeezed hard in my hand but I still felt like he would slip from my fingers and be gone.

We went to bed wearing extra layers, listening to the wind and to the world flying apart outside.

This morning, walking Nicholas again, in the light, I surveyed the damage, such as it was. The garbage container was overturned and the plastic wheelbarrow. There was a thin sheet of metal that used to be attached to the fence between our house and the neighbors', loose and flapping in the breeze. But the tiny pumpkin, healthy and left over from Halloween, is still sitting on the porch.