Her eyes were wet like glass.
Clear and deep, they were the only feature of her body that echoed a life once lived. Her feathers so black, so vapid gave off a thick perfume of ash and smoke. You could touch her skin with your eyes. The organ was so leathered by the fire that it draped a blanket across her large frame causing it to disappear into the now soot painted walls. The new camouflage would not help her here.
She had died a second time.
The feathers had burned off of her coat but their tips, fragmented, were attached to the body as if she had turned into a flightless porcupine atop the legs of a small giraffe. If you shook her, remnants of her burnt self would fall to the floor like fire flakes, snowing. She had no purpose but to continue to stare and watch as the rest of her frozen body burned amongst the electrical wiring.
Who will take her picture now?
It's important to me to be able to write descriptively and imaginatively about experiences I encounter because when we design, we must inherently create a space, an image, and describe it. Like a detective, the mind has to be as small as an ant, and walk every surface of the space or object, explore every shadow and have an intimate relationship with the unseen surroundings. If I can't draw a space at first, I'll write about it. This is a design exercise that works best when describing mundane things which force you to change scales such as olive oil and balsamic vinegar, locks on a door, or the proper way to eat a hard boiled egg. For my ten lucky readers, I can post others in time so you can understand more about these mental exercises I make for myself. Just let me know in the comments section.
If you ever see me in some sort of a haze or deep thought, I am usually doing one of these exercises. This is the first time though that I've told anyone what I was really thinking about. Hopefully you can gain something from it.
The space here is a section of the taxonomy shop in Paris called Deyrolle which burned in a tragic fire.
Our lady, a stuffed ostrich:
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