Short Story - The Drawing Pin

An attack of metaphysics for you all this month - a stream of consciousness piece of writing created for the Creative Prose module of my Masters in Literary Studies and Creative Writing. However, given it was shortly after writing this that I wrote the story that evolved into my novels, see if you can spot at least one theme from there that was on my mind!

The Drawing Pin

By Katherine Vick

   A glint; light catches. In a seconds pause, my eye is drawnto flash of hurried bronze, a whisper of brightness that touched, just for aninstant, on the shining dome of a drawing pin pushed deep into the brown jigsawof cork that sheathes the nearby wall. My gaze lifts – I stare for a moment atsmooth convex surface, mostly dull but for a golden twinkle along one rim, asunny wink in my direction, reflecting the dim glow of a cloud sheathed sunbeyond the windowpane.

   It’s misty today,a dull pall that lingers like an off-white shroud over a forest of chimney topsand TV aerials stretching to a featureless, blank horizon not all that faraway. On a good day, I can see the hills from here, dark lumps that undulate inoh so familiar patterns, distinctive and engraved upon the mind; I’ve walkedthose hills. Stood on their heights and stared out in new directions, towardsnew hills unclimbed, horizons untouched but yearning.

   What if I were toclimb on those distant hills beyond hills, feel the crumble of soil beneath myboots, sit upon damp grasses or cool stones and stare, breeze singing throughmy hair as I gazed across silhouettes of places far away, trees against the skyline, a tumble of green fields and dancing birds that swoop and flap and singfor joy at the first sweet hints of spring, chasing, dancing in the sky frombranch to branch, from cloud to cloud to pass across a hilltop where a singlefigure gazes back at the distant horizon she knows and realises that were sheto stand upon those familiar hills, she could stare across a low expanse ofhedges, insects, tiny creatures, past houses and the unseen lives of peoplenever met to the ridge on which she lives and sits and writes and stares at thelittle glimmer of light against a drawing pin.

   I cannot see thosehills today. The haze is bright, a circle of cloud that encloses me within adome of golden-white, its upper reaches stained with hints of blue that shimmerthrough the shifting white like spilled water. There is a glow in the sky – itis getting lighter, brighter, the sun is fighting back and setting the mistaglow.

  It glints again, thedrawing pin. Bronze against gold but more, a hint of colour, of reflectedspace, a little microcosm of the world beyond, distorted against its gentlecurving surface, falling away. It is an indistinct image, no more than a blur,a tiny flashing hint of what lies without. Hardly a true mirror. But that waswhat they used once, wasn’t it? Polished bronze in distant past was the bestkind of mirror a lady could have, a prized possession, the truest sight of onesown self that they could find. It is strange to think of a world without goodmirrors, where the clearest idea of your image, of yourself, was a hazy imagein gleaming bronze or a shifting, swirling reflection cast in undulating water.What must it be like, not to see yourself? Not to know yourself as the rest ofthe world sees you, to have no image of your appearance to fall back on. Somuch in our lives these days is down to appearance, a blessing and a curse – aperson is judged in an instant by how they appear. But is that fair? People seethemselves but rarely – they live in their thoughts, in their mind, the waythey look is a covering they do not see, cannot see with their own true eyes.Surely it should be what lies within that counts, the person not the covering.But still, we look and we judge by looking. It should not be but it is so. Onlyone person can ever know the secrets that lie within the world of their ownmind; however much you know someone, you can never, will never know it all. Wecannot read thoughts but we can read faces and so then image becomes the world.

  Image is a strangething. Does it matter to a blind man what he looks like? And someone blind alltheir lives – they could have no concept of sight. It would be alien to them,incomprehensible; the world in their heads would be constructed of touch,smell, hearing, taste alone. Not to see – not to perceive the world throughsight is almost unfathomable but that must be the way it is, for how can youknow sight if you have never seen? How can you describe colour without usingcolour, seeing colour, light without dark? To them, my drawing pin would be noshining mirror of bronze that catches and distributes light – it would be asmooth, slippery surface, a taper, a sharp point to prick the finger.

   A world withoutsight. What would that be for me, right now? The hum of my computer ringing inmy ears, the twitter of starlings fighting in the garden. The smell of burningdust – I need to wipe my monitor. The feel of my canvas chair against my back,the hard wood of its arms against my elbows, soft material of clothes againstmy skin. The residual taste of chocolate biscuit. The drawing pin, too far totouch or taste, silent and odourless, would mean nothing from here if it couldnot catch my eye. What if there was no sight – for one, art as we know it wouldbe meaningless. Would we have paintings of smell, sculpture of touch and tasteif sight were not so dominant? Would music become a rich tapestry to paint theworld, the reflection of sounds from all around you becoming a picture of aplace or person, a portrait by voice? Could the drawing pin that holds the workof art in place become the work of art itself?

  Strange thoughts tohave. Different worlds that we can never know in our world made for seeing. Arethere other ways that we could see the world, other senses beyond ourcomprehension? In some sixth or seventh sense would the world be a place ofeven greater beauty? How would a sixth or seventh sense allow me to perceive adrawing pin, stuck in a corkboard, pinning a piece of paper in new andunexpected ways?

  What is that,anyway, that piece of paper my pin holds? Oh yes, a list of things to do fromweeks and weeks ago, a reminder of tasks long forgotten and never taken down, amemory pinned in place. Is that the role of the drawing pin in life – to pinmemories up where you can see them? Lists of things to do, some done, somewaiting in the future, telephone numbers half forgotten, calendars that scrolltomorrow into yesterday and paintings of places that may or may not have evercrossed the eyes and pictures and photographs of friends and family grinning atyou from the backdrop of holidays, weddings, birthday parties, the passing ofyears, of time, of memory itself, all pinned in place and staring down at you.Is that the lot of the drawing pin – to hold up the past whilst gleaming indistorted bronze a curving splash of colour from the present, a fleeting glintof light there and then gone, never to be seen again? A moment in time, a past,a present, a future, all can be found if you look hard enough.

  It glints; lightcatches. The haze has thickened, the gleam of hidden sunshine dulled, hints ofblue chased away before the wave crests of gathering cloud, the dome set firmwith weakened, chastened glow. So much for the sun.

   Light catches andthen fades away across my drawing pin. But it will glint again.