521 prompt #8, or "l'epoque avant mes pieds"

Part One

[parts of a morning somewhere between november 2007 and march 2008, recalled mostly through the sense of hearing and the action of repetition]

the wind splatters against the living room window, wet with snow and angry; the door slams, barking against the frame, the lock grinds

three short flights of stairs down to the parking lot, each step on them made treacherous by a pastrami-layering of ice and snow, snow and ice

ice crunches

i remember when i could get my car out from underneath the snow. no chance of that now. if you follow my footprints from yesterday, still visible in the snow because only two other people have hazarded the walk to my apartment building in the last three or four days, they will take you out of the lot and down a hill that parallels grand avenue, which you can see to your left as you descend.

the amount of slush on the road makes it seem impossible that anyone could safely drive on it, yet occasionally one brave driver or another sissing of tires through slush takes their chances, travelling at low speed.

you have to walk on the balls of your feet while descending this hill; it's so sheeted over in ice that putting weight on your heels makes your feet immediately slip forward. walk carefully.

once you reach the blockbuster parking lot, you can see further ahead and the post-apocalyptic nature of the scene becomes clear: stadium way ascends ahead of you, visible only in blotches due to the sheeting snow.

crosswalk alarm beeps, like a bird that has no business being alive in this weather

i remember having to leave my truck, back when i had a truck, at the base of this hill for a week because there was so much ice on the road leading back up to my apartment that cars simply couldn't drive up it without sliding back down.

you proceed through the parking lot, the abrupt end of the crosswalk alarm leaving the proceedings in an eerie silence save for the near constant whistle of the wind

the next hill is worse. grab the handrail; you'll probably need it. unless you like the taste of ice and ground smacking you in the face. this sidewalk is ridiculous. no traction at all to be had.

splash of a gravel truck driving by to your left

proceed up stadium way until you get to b street. turn right. turn almost immediately left. usually crossing this street at this intersection is awkward at best, and dangerous at worst. this morning, with pullman in wasteland-mode, you tromp through snow almost as deep on the road as it is on the sidewalk. road crews have given up on the sideroads days ago. to your right, further up the b street hill, you see a girl in a red parka and blue jeans and red plastic boots go down, slipping on the ice and hitting with a nasty thud that you feel but don't hear. she gets back up immediately and continues; at this point in the winter falling on the ice is no longer a noteworthy event. continue along until you reach harvey street. instead of taking it turn right. then turn on c street. this looks imposing, i know. but c street is at this point easier to take than b street. trust me, i have bruises to prove it.

a car engine sputtering, trying to start in the cold. another already idling weakly. further up the hill you can hear the shrill screech of something that must be an improvised ice scraper rubbing against a frozen windshield. the sounds of winter morning near the university in pullman.

this is the hill i've climbed every day (with the rare exception when i go up b street) since i started working as a graduate student in pullman. i never had a reliable car, never had the money for a parking permit, never wanted to rely on public transportation, wanted to stay in shape. so i've gotten in the habit of walking. i can remember the sidewalk covered in piles of dirty gold leaves in autumn, peppered by sprouting patches of grass in spring, and shaded by the huge trees that fill yards in summer. this is the barometer, in a sense, with which i gauge the attitude of the natural world in pullman, the calendar with which i track the passing of the seasons.

the path snakes up and up ahead of you before curving off to your right. it seems slightly crazy that cars would drive up or down this hill in normal weather. this isn't normal weather, though. the ice is a little less of a problem on this hill, but the incline more than makes up for it. lifting your boots up and then plunging them back into nearly knee-deep snow as you ascend is draining, to say the least.

a crow caws from a lamp post above and behind you

as you climb, you can see people in full winter outdoor gear...inside their houses, squinting as they peer outside, expressions on their faces illustrating the decision they're currently obviously weighing: how important is that 8:10 class, anyway?

about halfway up the hill, the incline angle increases, and it starts to feel like the whole enterprise is worthless. your only choice though, is to keep going. wsu's campus is on a hill, and this is the least icy approach. you must keep climbing, or you'll die.

okay, you're not going to die.

a door creaks open behind you and to your left. booted footsteps stomp out onto a wood front porch. someone groans. possibly a death rattle.

crest the hill. pack yourself on the back (figuratively). it's all downhill from here.

foot traffic is suddenly visible as campus comes into view. many brightly colored dots with legs move against the near-solid background of snow and ice. bryan tower stands up against the wall of snowfall. it's still lit in the early morning, odd neon almost-pink like a surreal lighthouse. walk toward it.

from here it's a short jaunt along the sidewalk, past more red, orange, and yellow (why do people wear such bright clothes in the winter?) dots, and then along the left side of the hello walk

frozen trees branches scrape against your arm and backpack, a dry susurrus

and through the breezeway to safety. good work. be ready to do it again tonight, at 2am, on your way home to bed.

Part Two

"[One] of the things I enjoy about using various sound effects is how they carry their source time and place with them." (Cardiff 81)

The one thing I kept thinking about as I was writing this script was how the sounds communicated particular visuals. Most of the sounds I used are pretty typical walking-type sounds - the kinds of things you'd expect to hear on a walk in Pullman on any day, during any time of the year (with the exception of the snow sounds, of course). But the particular ways in which they were presented were intended to contextualize them in a specific empty/cold/winter sort of way. For instance, the door slamming and the lock turning sound differently against the background of a snowstorm than they do during, say, a sunny summer day. There are crows in the summer too, but somehow their cawing doesn't sound nearly as ominous. Envisioning these sounds in a certain way can help transport the reader visually to the particular environment in which the action takes place.

I also attempted to use the perhaps overly simple trick of lowercasing all of my language in the script so as to communicate a smaller, shrunken feeling to the action going on; as if the language itself was acknowledging the vastness of the environment it was taking place against by shrinking away.