Snapshot of Life

I came home and by the time I had eaten dinner the windows had transformed into black mirrors. Since it was blessedly a Friday, I settled down by the stove with The Scarlet Letter. The worn futon in the alcove next to the rear of the stove, where I was sitting, was covered with an old red cloth, and the warm lights set into the ceiling above it gave the impression of warmth. Combined with the very tangible heat from the soapstone stove it really was warm, but it was a February evening and I was happy to be inside next to the stove and not outside, where a first few flakes had just started their determined assault on the seasoned house. After a while I got up to make tea, and with the mug set on the blue-checked tablecloth, steam wreathing the electric teapot, caught a glance of myself in the mirrored window to the right, in a red bandana and jeans and chopped-off hair. I hung there for a moment, like the proverbial deer in headlights, looking at myself, before I turned away. The next object I saw completed the scene in some way: a fat paper-maché mask with a top shaded from yellow to gold to red-orange. The mug, the mask and I instantly grouped themselves in my memory, snapshots collaged to document a moment of my life. I returned to the stove with my tea and took up The Scarlet Letter.

Oh dear, I believe I'm verging on the unreadably soppy. Do tell me if that happens.

I'm writing like Madeleine L'Engle, in that I'm mingling truth and fiction. Sure, I came home today and saw a mug and a mask and myself, but I'm kind of doing half-truths. This happens a lot. Thus, if you read something really outrageous [that I post] it's probably not true.