This was a fun and hard exercise, thank you for an engaging prompt! Here's my attempt:
The library is a crowded respite from the summer heat, study groups in muted chatter and parents shushing eager young readers; the humid air inside is like a laundromat, and thoughts tumble at each table, ideas refreshed and newly pressed, gathered up to carry home.
So good! There is so much music and embedded rhymes (eager/readers and refreshed/pressed) and the long e: respite/heat/eager/readers/refreshed/pressed. And the long i of library/respite/ideas--by placing them close together I can hear that long i. The extended simile is wonderful! The word "laundromat" tumbles off the tongue, too. The sound changes beautifully at the end with the long o in "home." There is a shift, then, at the sound level.
Hmm, I missed that. But is it future tense, or subjunctive mood, or both? Or is subjunctive only ‘I would have…’? Is there a difference between saying ‘she will’ vs ‘she would’? The will sounds more definitive; the would, more dreamy, more like, ‘maybe.’ But I get lost in these distinctions sometimes, as I assume you may have already gathered!
But maybe it’s all a form of past tense: “Spring was the season…people would wander…she would be a part of the hive…” Past tense with subjunctive mood, as in, spring is really happening, but the awakening might only be happening in her mind? (Which is kind of what you already said, sorry!)
"Would" is future tense (when writing in the past tense) and also the conditional: we would do this if this happened. So... I can see how this wobbles between a future tense (in the past tense story) and that it is happening as a habitual action.
This was a fun and hard exercise, thank you for an engaging prompt! Here's my attempt:
The library is a crowded respite from the summer heat, study groups in muted chatter and parents shushing eager young readers; the humid air inside is like a laundromat, and thoughts tumble at each table, ideas refreshed and newly pressed, gathered up to carry home.
So good! There is so much music and embedded rhymes (eager/readers and refreshed/pressed) and the long e: respite/heat/eager/readers/refreshed/pressed. And the long i of library/respite/ideas--by placing them close together I can hear that long i. The extended simile is wonderful! The word "laundromat" tumbles off the tongue, too. The sound changes beautifully at the end with the long o in "home." There is a shift, then, at the sound level.
Thank you and I see much more to consider and play with...so fun
I really like this idea of cleaning or refreshing the mind with ideas and books, brain laundry! (But not brainwashing; brain-rinsing?)
Yes, me too!
The last six words resonate most with me: ‘a reason, a function, an intent.’ I want to know what they are!
There was a sense of resolve with this rhythm and the lack of conjunction.
As though she is awakening from a period of hibernation.
Or wanting to awake--that future tense "would."
Hmm, I missed that. But is it future tense, or subjunctive mood, or both? Or is subjunctive only ‘I would have…’? Is there a difference between saying ‘she will’ vs ‘she would’? The will sounds more definitive; the would, more dreamy, more like, ‘maybe.’ But I get lost in these distinctions sometimes, as I assume you may have already gathered!
But maybe it’s all a form of past tense: “Spring was the season…people would wander…she would be a part of the hive…” Past tense with subjunctive mood, as in, spring is really happening, but the awakening might only be happening in her mind? (Which is kind of what you already said, sorry!)
"Would" is future tense (when writing in the past tense) and also the conditional: we would do this if this happened. So... I can see how this wobbles between a future tense (in the past tense story) and that it is happening as a habitual action.