If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you know I love to travel. You may not know, though you've probably suspected, I love books as much as I love traveling. To me they're much the same, reading is just a different mode of travel, a more powerful mode. Books allow me to travel without leaving home, to places that may or may not really exist. I get to meet characters and hear tales, some which are real and others which can only be found in books.
I've been reading a special book for the last couple of months. I've renewed it so many times, if I don't return it soon, the librarians will suspend my card, placing me in library limbo. The book is, 420 Characters, by Lou Beach. It was published in 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I've never written about a book before, but this one is so unique and has given me such pleasure, I just have to talk about it before I return it to the public library. I expect a copy will soon be joining my home library.
420 Characters consists of illustrations by the author and miniature stories, each no longer than 420 characters, including letters, spaces and punctuation. I love these stories! Each one is detailed, engaging and complete on one page. Beach tells a better story in those few lines than many multi-chaptered books I've read. I've mulled on some of his stories for days.
His book has inspired me to improve my writing and stretch my imagination. Until I start physically traveling again, I'm going to travel in my mind, writing 420 character stories. Here goes # 1:
THE TALON-HONED MISSILE launched from the sky---death on feathered wings. She gained on the tiny bird until both predator and prey exploded kamikaze-like into the invisible panes, smudging the windows and leaving two feathered bodies littered on the damp sidewalk. A clerk scooped the bodies into a dust pan while women steered their carts around the obstruction, rechecking their lists and planning their evening meals.
The temperatures were in the twenties, but the sun was warm. If it hadn't been February, I would have said that spring had arrived. I was out for a ramble at one of my favorite parks: Proud Lake Recreation Area, in Commerce Township, Michigan. My family and I camped here when I was a kid and as a 6th grader, I spent a snowy week here at science camp. Today, when I searched for signs of spring, I found pussy willows.
The Sweetest Valentine, I Want To Be Your Cutie---She stuck the tiny stickers on endless mandarins, the same stickers she'd once cursed while sifting garden compost in the summer. Summer seemed far away from the refrigerated warehouse where she packaged produce twelve hours a day. Fresh fruit wasn't in her budget, but the kids didn't mind the canned seconds from Krogers. $7.20 an hour wasn't much but it beat welfare.
