Draft: Social Maoists

the beginning of a story I'm writing the first draft of this morning:

We got away from the news feed first thing. Didn’t even switch anything on when we woke up. On the cliffs we were doused in sunshine and then, having scaled our way down between bushes (white blossoms shook free marking the slender trail), we got out on a seaweed-crowned promontory. Brown granite in irregular pyramids with space to walk at their tops only a foot or so wide, almost always covered with slick black seaweed and limpet shells.

She jumped in first, no hesitation. I stood for quite some time. It was cold under my feet. Almost no breeze. Warm sunshine on my body (she had assured me that no one could see from there, though I could spot a few pathways beyond white blossoms).

In the water it was better still, though getting out was not easy. But then we lay out on two of the only crooked spots we could find that were just big enough, and there was silence. Not silence in the sense of no sound. But no music. No noise from ideas and nothing to tell you what had happened in the world. What sounded like two dozen birds were singing chorus-style, like call and response. Meanwhile the sea rushes in and drags out below us, gentle like the sound of wind (there was none) but with tremendous power.

We got home around nine. Day off so you’d think we could just relax more. A lot to get done in the sense of nothing much to do at all. Just reading that we both said we would like to do. When the sun’s out everything seems easier. We would set up by the window in the front room and read together. It all seemed too idyllic. We joked about being a pair of posers out of a lifestyle magazine. Pot of coffee with the cat slumbering nearby.