Writer's Drift

Inspired by Shakespeare, or rather by the mediocre standard of literature he currently found himself immersed in, Nathan Bixby retired to his cottage in the remote Georgian wilderness, not entirely indifferent to his own serene origins, where he contemplated the misery of fame and fortune; those peasantly folk who’d written the greatest tales of our times in a bid to acquire for themselves a touch of that force which is the insurmountable nature of inner pride, only to be deceived and instead be burdened with such a thing as unfathomable riches and inscrutable public scrutiny. Writing, then, for Nathan Bixby was a means of showcasing one’s own perceived potential. That far be it for a parchment to overrule the tides of serendipity he found himself engulfed by; the conglomerate of a city where the big publishing houses reigned not enough to prize him away from such a thing as untouched quiet.

He had money, did the scribe, in fact far too much than he would have cared for. If only he could give some of it away: though nowadays, to perform charity meant to take on additional duties; such as the vetting of sources, which unexpeditious of tasks, to a man of Nathan Bixby’s spontaneous nature did not appeal. At least not enough for the affluent to head to the nearest bank – a few fifty miles away which was from his cottage – and write out a check signed to the Conway Institute of Higher Studies for the Impoverished and Underprivileged. The charity, to which he’d contributed graciously in the past, had, to Nathan Bixby’s liking, helped secure the educations of many a deprived youth, such as one himself had been in a certain time. It was organizations like the Conway Institute which had enabled the boy who’d grown up on the pragmatic banks of the Mississippi to garner for himself a reputable arsenal of words and figures; though he’d always had a softer spot for the former. And look where it had brought him now. To his amicable threshold, where he could sit in thought and be not festered by such a thing as ambition, or its like having not seen the light of day, which is a tremendous outlet for energy to seep itself through.

There was much to do even in this detached locality. For starters, wood needed to be chopped and brought back to the cottage, to be used as firewood; for the nights out here were cool and tinged with a shade of that frosty bite which no man – certainly not a man who’d grown up in the warm riviera of the south – could cope so readily with. So, wood Nathan chopped, and hard work it was. He spent himself so much, and so completely, that to read then in the accompaniment of the ensuing fire rendered it a complete experience unto itself. Certainly, he read Gregorious Billwax, who had a knack for inducing a chuckle in many an intolerant folk. Though Nathan Bixby was far from intolerant; and as such his joy, if there had been a neigbouring situation on hand, would have been made known to, both in decibel and authenticity. Humour released him from the isolation which he both so enjoyed, and at times found himself unable to bear longer than a further moment. Something profound in the intent of one who has set out on spreading a festive cheer in times unfestive, thought to himself Nathan Bixby, as he now found himself teary and weary-eyed, spent by the day’s exertions, and thus to be found zooming imminently into the arms of a kindly caretaker.

#

Upon waking, he found in front a woman with a blazing set of red hair, green eyes, and a smile which he hadn’t seen since he was the age of twelve. He had last seen its like grace the personage of his then best friend, Martha, though the woman in front resembled her only in personality. She was, in fact, alluring in an entirely different way; abstract, un-conceptual, as to render a wordsmith for a lack of descriptive.

“Who are you?” asked Nathan, waking from his reverie, though not entirely concerned by her presence, for the sight of a fellow being, deep in the Winter Solstice, was not amongst the most off-putting of sights to tame.

“May I sit?” she asked. Nathan nodded, though before practicing of she undertook a momentary diversion.

The creature walked herself over to the bookshelves, and picked from it an occupant of whose choice Nathan privately applauded. It was an author he hadn’t read in much a time, not, in fact, since he’d been twelve. It was Martha’s favourite book – a gift she’d handed him on his eleventh birthday to commemorate their growing friendship – ‘Roger Pickaxe Fights a Gnome’. Nathan Bixby quivered, as he watched the woman lend herself to its palpable comforts. The air grew a touch chillier inside the cabin, even with the fire achieving at its zenith.

“Oh, by the way, I’m Woelma,” she said spurtingly, as if reminded of earlier inquisitions just in time. Nathan nodded, and then proceeded to ask of her just what she thought of the frightful state of literature which had gripped their times. Before she could respond, he himself reiterated of his disenchantment towards its factuality, as to lend sufficient arguments so to influence any rebuttal as may have arisen from the other side in due course. Though he needn't have at all; he was to be found partnered, both in opinion and vociferousness of, which pleased him not a whole lot less.

“Not much by way of subject-matter in the booklets of today, won’t you say?” she inquired of her observer, who nodded vigorously, accentuating the point with an example or two.

“I find Ulman’s work dull,” he offered, glad to have found someone to share an opinion with, “and Shawn Connor has a repute for inducing the most frightful of workday fantasies, which, for obvious reasons, I’m not a great fan of.”

“I find Ulman slightly more tolerable than Connor,” stated Woelma, noting now her correspondent as amongst the primary residents of the bookshelf, and to whose knowledge's dawning she reached for his latest: The Shaman’s Bildungsroman.

Nathan regarded her nervously as she performed this simplest of tasks, requiring not much complex dexterity, for a woman who shared with him such remarkably accurate views on literature no doubt would afford the same scrutiny to any extension thereof; no scribe to be spared in the wrath he incurs from such a customer as a determined consumer. He was, Nathan, most times, confident of his craft, though now he found himself having acquired a disposition which he had only familiarized himself with in his early days as a writer; having beta-readers go through what you’ve interminably pondered for a vast sum of time, and hoped to have made something coherent out of. The test of time and critical examination had strengthened Nathan Bixby, though not seemingly enough, as he found such energies himself embodying. He had almost a thing or two to say in defense of his self, and premature such defense would have been too, though he caught himself in time; there was no workaround concerning the holy grail of reading ethic, which was that one ought not to taint one’s exertions in the act of it by such a thing as praise, advice, or even the allaying of fears as one may harbour prior to the picking up of any a printed copy. That a reader ought to be afforded the privilege of unbiased activity. And so, Nathan contended himself with mellow terror and nervousness. So great did it grow, that he rose and duly offered himself the nectar of water which he had thus fair abstained from; not his tonic, as they say, though reform disregards misdeeds.

Finally, after what seemed like a good hour of stifling condition, though a thawing fifteen minutes it had merely been, Woelma looked up and, with a grace that ought to befit the most devout of critics, smiled at Nathan.

“Well?” Nathan’s eyes seemed to ask. And in apt response he received:

“Not quite as dull as Ulman, though I find myself amidst currents of a workday fantasy.”

Nathan smiled back. He’d received worse, though in fact, had he allowed the moment to settle a moment longer, this would have been deemed a pat on the back! He there offered his guest some warm tea infused with honey, and together they sat and spoke of such times as one’s best times, and when the atmosphere seemed to offer a further formidable adversity and a humble reminder of it's presence, of one’s hardiest. They had a lot in common, did these most sporadic of couples, though not nearly enough as yet to consider the other a newly acquired friend.

#

“Let’s go for a walk,” suggested Woelma, after they’d exhausted both talk and silence to each’s own.

“Let us,” agreed Nathan, a stickler for activity, and together they set out, in the direction of blowing gust and nomad’s footstep, though this tricky journey was to made further procurable by the company of one such who one may lean on without delivering as much a moment’s notice.

Despite having tamed the environment modestly during his tenure in the outback, Nathan found the time and its subsequent symptoms unlike any he’d ever braved. Here he was, in the company of folk whom he barely knew and then knew all so well, such that he stumbled over a log he’d had the previous foresight of knowing it’s precise locations of, and then over another, though this, to be fair to Nathan Bixby, had been a previously unencountered foe. Wolema offered to retrieve him from the floor on each occasion, though Nathan Bixby politely and profusely refused. He hadn’t found himself wishing to impress another in an extremely long time, and he wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip through his now bleeding fingers. Woelma noticed his efforts in subjecting her to his naughty, though innocent, whims, and played along by continually choosing to offer her help, only incessantly to be countered by the axiom that this was all 'a fair night’s work for Nathan Bixby, don't you worry.'

As if.

Woelma has studied the person both through mannerism as well as the way he adorned his domestic; and the conclusions she’d drawn, if only through insufficient data, were his being a man of a fundamentally principal and sound nature, though soft, with often a private desire he wished to see manifest itself in the world, for he thought it a righteous and worthwhile byproduct of his truest musings. He was gentle, and yet wildly in his ways. His speech was ordinary – nothing to suggest of a stupendous, and thus senseless, education which seems to render one’s consonants miraculous and even uplifting – though that of a refined intellectual’s. His eyes bespoke a mere brown, though in them lay visions of many a better tomorrow. Well, at least the desire to see their likes of. There, here, she felt that had her interests been otherwise, she ought to have found his cozy attempts at flirtation of a succeeding note, though Woelma was not to be found untethered in the grounds of companionship. She arose from origins she dared not risk leaving too far behind. She was here but for a solitary dusk, and by daybreak she’d be well on her way to some or the other extraordinary plain. Though it was admittedly as worthwhile a ploy of time as any that they found themselves where they did, embodying the fragrances that they did, for if not aligned in trajectorial hearsay at least pure in strength those eternal aromas were, which, if something may be said of anything worth saying a thing of, is the gold standard by which one ought to measure the value of one’s time as is being lived.

As they came upon the river banks, the moon shone from behind the clouds, as it often seems to at such and such juncture in a story. Both gazers were under no illusions as to what the significance of the moment was to each’s own perspective, for either held varying versions of it, though there remained the hope, as there inevitably is in dominions of relationship, that a majority of agreed with the other’s interpretation of it. They held hands, these two, and lay down upon the dew-glistened grass, melting into the meticulously laid-out bedding. There seemed nothing else to do, or nothing better to do.

The night passed fairly easily, if quickly, and by morning the absence of entwinement realized Nathan to the fact of it, which was that the Georgian wilderness held for him no longer its impressing charm, and that now perhaps was a time to explore his options; see what the city had in store for him. He’d steer clear from the fraudsters and the hipsters, the bankers and philosophers, from opportunities and its associated disadvantages, though, for the most part, he was looking forward to knowing things he hadn’t known before.

#