The Wasteland

Yes, Son of Man has been a wasteland for a week. I couldn't help it. I had to write a descriptive piece the other day for my Literary Nonfiction class. I thought I'd post it since I don't really have much else to say. Sorry about the inconsistent font. I am not sorry enough to do anything about it though...

The loosely fastened and freely swinging screen door gave entrance directly into a small, cluttered living room. Fruits of a lifelong love of trains and train culture overlaid every surface and occupied every corner. The room is dimly lit by one bulb covered by a dusty flat brown shade. Photographs and paintings of various types of trains travelling through snow-covered plains or ever-green hills covered most of the space on the white walls. The book shelf opposite the door held most of Farley Mowet’s work as well as many large hard covers about the Avro Arrow and was littered with trinkets: a rail spike, a train ticket hole-punch, and at least a few glass balls with similarly themed insides. In one corner there was a bell in its mount, presumably from an old steam engine, standing twenty-five or thirty centimetres wide and as many centimetres tall. The bell mount rested on a matted and faded, once goldenrod shag. This carpet, along with living room couch and chair, contributed to the mild odour of animal feces and stale urine in the house. Between the living room and the kitchen a massive cat laid in its bed made of an old M&M’s Meat Shop box, the edges of which had been knocked flat by the sheer inadequacy of the box to hold such cat. Yellowed, decade-old sheets of newspaper surrounded the box and blended almost seamlessly into the discoloured linoleum.