Post by The Observer on Feb 11, 2008 19:28:36 GMT -5
Here is an interesting character. I like to draw word-pictures. Sometimes I go to public places and sketch people with words as an artist might with pencil. This is not an actual person, but I had a pretty good picture in my head. What do you think of him?
The juggler sat on the worn iron bench in the city park. He was a slight man, short with a pudgy face and tattered hair the color of tree bark. His hair covered his ears and dropped over his eyes, hunched over, he held his juggling balls loosely in his long slender fingers. Fingers like spiders, they caressed his instruments of mirth and laughter, but did not play them. His head was cocked ever so slightly to the side, and he stared at a spot on the ground somewhere between his sneakers. Everything about his seemed used up, dried up, desiccated like a crop after drought. Even his clothes, a worn fleece jacket, tufts of fleece missing from the wrists and elbows, and jeans with great, ragged holes revealing pale kneecaps, seemed somehow shriveled from a former self. It was almost humorous really, to see a juggler, a creature of life and laughter, so deprived of the precious gift he had once heaped upon others. Like a marionette with its strings cut, the juggler sat limply and lifeless on the cold iron of the park bench. Motionless. Motionless, except for that tiny flicker of faded blue eyes that peered from behind the mess of hair. Hair that obscured the juggler’s sight, but not his vision. The eyes remained motionless, fixated upon something far beyond the realm of the living. A drop of sunlight caught itself upon the juggler’s cheek, a wet trail marked its passage down his face to where it dripped off his chin and fell, shattering itself upon the pavement.
The juggler sat on the worn iron bench in the city park. He was a slight man, short with a pudgy face and tattered hair the color of tree bark. His hair covered his ears and dropped over his eyes, hunched over, he held his juggling balls loosely in his long slender fingers. Fingers like spiders, they caressed his instruments of mirth and laughter, but did not play them. His head was cocked ever so slightly to the side, and he stared at a spot on the ground somewhere between his sneakers. Everything about his seemed used up, dried up, desiccated like a crop after drought. Even his clothes, a worn fleece jacket, tufts of fleece missing from the wrists and elbows, and jeans with great, ragged holes revealing pale kneecaps, seemed somehow shriveled from a former self. It was almost humorous really, to see a juggler, a creature of life and laughter, so deprived of the precious gift he had once heaped upon others. Like a marionette with its strings cut, the juggler sat limply and lifeless on the cold iron of the park bench. Motionless. Motionless, except for that tiny flicker of faded blue eyes that peered from behind the mess of hair. Hair that obscured the juggler’s sight, but not his vision. The eyes remained motionless, fixated upon something far beyond the realm of the living. A drop of sunlight caught itself upon the juggler’s cheek, a wet trail marked its passage down his face to where it dripped off his chin and fell, shattering itself upon the pavement.