Seems as if I’ve been posting tiny tidbits on Facebook and Twitter, as well as a score of posts for blogs elsewhere. I will be joining Lipstick Chronicles, and will be posting every other Friday starting in February. In the meantime, I’ve posted there a couple of times thus far. And for writers, of course, I am still posting blogs to Writer Unboxed the 4th Wednesday of every month.
To get myself back to the regular practice of blogging here, a process I genuinely enjoy, I’m going to use this blog as a little writer’s notebook through the month of January. I’ll post whatever I notice about the world on my daily journey through it. This is from a day or two ago, but it is the thing that made me want to begin.
On Wednesday, I had a pedicure at a shop I do not usually frequent. It was staffed by only two, very very young Vietnamese kids, she not more than twenty, he only a little more than that. She did not appear to speak English much at all, though he was quite enthusiastic and a good salesman. He was my pedicurist. Friendly, but not too chatty, and I was reading a book on my iPhone, so I didn’t really want to talk very much. After awhile, I noticed that his left thumb was small and wasted and didn’t move. It didn’t seem to hinder him. I went back to reading. A little later, I noticed that his forearm had a thick, old scar down the top, elbow to hand. It went all the way through, as if a sword had sliced through it. He moved his hand well enough, so much so that it did take that much time to notice the scar and the immovable thumb. My writer brain wanted to know what he’d done to it, and I find myself writing scenarios. I wondered how old he was. It must have been quite a dramatic scene. It must have done something to the tendons. I wondered how his mother felt when it happened, how afraid she must have been.
He fetched hot towels and said, “Feels good, right?” and I nodded. I went back to reading.