David Summerfield
The Place I Take Flight
The green wood table with red delicious, waxed apples, purple silk chrysalises resting in a wicker basket is the runway of imagination and inspiration from which I take flight every morning. There is a soft dark in the kitchen like a gentle fog when I enter that is not foreboding but embracing. There is only the sound of my slippered feet like cat feet on the hardwood floor as they carry me lightly, a little unsteadily to my swivel chair, a Big Lots special with a paper-thin cushion which I fall into with a resigned swoosh.
I awaken the screensaver. Its sudden brightness stabs my eyes. As I contemplate writing the screensaver goes blank again. I swirl the mouse and the screen comes back to life. I peer bleary-eyed into the glass at its current motif of great coral reefs under a blue sky, until a tide of inspiration comes, a temporary barrier between me and the task at hand.
The percolating scent of dark roast permeates the room it finishes I pour my favorite cup. As the cup empties my fingers go to the keyboard like the controls of an airplane, I take flight.
An article I read described the known duration of Earth as one year, man’s known existence as the last ten minutes, actual recorded history the last few seconds. If it were true then like Thoreau at Walden Pond locked in my own quiet struggle to do what I must, I could only think what a minute and finite struggle it was to know however productive, or fruitful my life might be or become, it would only be a bare speck, a nanosecond of time in the known universe.
Still, my fingers fly to the keyboard like heat-seeking missiles begin to type and clack as if by some guided force, like Patton’s third army never yielding, in the same defiant way, I keep writing imagining, keep flying.
David Summerfield is a graduate of Frostburg State University, Maryland, and a veteran of the Iraq war. He has been an editor, columnist, and contributor to various publications within his home state of West Virginia. His creative nonfiction has appeared previously in Military Experience and the Arts.
I awaken the screensaver. Its sudden brightness stabs my eyes. As I contemplate writing the screensaver goes blank again. I swirl the mouse and the screen comes back to life. I peer bleary-eyed into the glass at its current motif of great coral reefs under a blue sky, until a tide of inspiration comes, a temporary barrier between me and the task at hand.
The percolating scent of dark roast permeates the room it finishes I pour my favorite cup. As the cup empties my fingers go to the keyboard like the controls of an airplane, I take flight.
An article I read described the known duration of Earth as one year, man’s known existence as the last ten minutes, actual recorded history the last few seconds. If it were true then like Thoreau at Walden Pond locked in my own quiet struggle to do what I must, I could only think what a minute and finite struggle it was to know however productive, or fruitful my life might be or become, it would only be a bare speck, a nanosecond of time in the known universe.
Still, my fingers fly to the keyboard like heat-seeking missiles begin to type and clack as if by some guided force, like Patton’s third army never yielding, in the same defiant way, I keep writing imagining, keep flying.
David Summerfield is a graduate of Frostburg State University, Maryland, and a veteran of the Iraq war. He has been an editor, columnist, and contributor to various publications within his home state of West Virginia. His creative nonfiction has appeared previously in Military Experience and the Arts.