Flash Story: Holding Bay: Fern Smith:
Flunking down on the soft day-couch butted up to the large sunroom window my eyes cast to big sky, realising I am in holding bay.
Batting away suggestions of doing words, a complete compunction about verbs. Always been a little that way inclined all my life finding ways to wriggle out of the ‘around the house’ jobs, jobs in general and never rounding myself out as a full “I am a…” person.
Slithering away at parties when discussing ‘what do you do?’ People say I am an artist. Yeah right not so good as selling ‘work’. I tried once knocking door to door with my leather briefcase full of A4 of vivid ink washes of grotesque people, didn’t go down too well. Many a door in face.
Tried car boot sales. Laying out a dusty smelly picnic rug that had be scrunched up in the back of an unkempt car while carefully placing my grotesque scantily clothed figures down, all laid out into a story, of sorts. Mothers yanking arms of their transfixed children goggling at ‘contemporary art”. As the day waned, bored, I pack up with the other sad sack sellers. No extra cents.
My mind wonders into constant long sentences of doubt. What am I holding onto where do I think I am going why am I so adverse, cryptic, who am I anyway, some upstart with no ambition, who wants ambition, do I want to live in a house where eyes stare and haunt, truant, never staying anywhere that long, people asking questions.
Ah that was all so long ago now.
The couch is my sea. Finessed in the art of scuttling sideways. An artist of non-doing. An artist of note. The sky draws me in, soaring with the pelicans riding a draft in a unison v, synchronised flying, so way up high. The storm clouds approach. Where do they go to when it rains?
The operation is in a few weeks.
