For my 4000th: Something I'm writing.

[Chan790]

I don't write often, especially for a public audience...I'm far too critical of a self-editor so I have to compose madly in a drunken frenzy a million synapses firing stream of thought. Anyways...the first two paragraphs of a short story I keep coming back to. I hope you enjoy.

Please don't inform me that my science is incorrect I already know that, I'm caught between science-fact and quality prose. Seeking the balance between the right facts and the right imagery still.

boy - J. Channing, (c) 2008

Petrichor can be defined as the smell of thunderstorms and heavy rain, a pleasant truth which hides a far more interesting reality; the actual source of petrichor aroma is bacteria poop driven from the dirt by the unrelenting pounding of heavy deluge upon droughted soil, only to be ionized by static charge dissipating, the the equal-and-opposite reaction to lightning. For reasons not remotely explicable by science, petrichor occurs strongest in sun storms, those rare events when the rain falls from a cloudless sky producing rainbows on rainbows for as far as the eye can see. Nick and Libby Howardson died on a beautiful day, not in any way uncommon for spring in New England, while their son Olaf nearly drowned in a four inch deep ditch on the side of U.S. 44 where it snakes through the low mountains of northwestern Connecticut. Being the age of pre-pubescence, Olaf Howardson is nearly by the smallest of margins a dog in a boy's body.

Nick had been up since 2am, driving home from a family weekend in Montreal, rushing to be back for an English department meeting at 1pm. Libby had implored him to stop at three different Starbucks for an espresso or a sugary treat in the last hour of their lives. Had he, he would have passed through the canyon 5 minutes later, minimally, he'd have been more aware of the falling rocks sooner or swerved faster. “Had he” isn't a game we're going to play though. “Had he” leads to “Was he”: Was he distracted by the beauty of the rainbows? the smell of the rain, did it remind him of a long ago memory? If it had been dreary, would they have lived? Maybe Yes No, because it's my story and I've killed them. 131 miles from home, just outside of the town of Simsbury, CT, at 9:41am, while Nick was half-dozing off behind the wheel; a squirrel ran along a rock ledge knocking loose some small rocks which cascading downslope soon gathered more and larger stones, before depositing themselves into the southbound lane of the scenic road directly in front of Nick Howardson's blue minivan which subsequently plowed into them doing nearly 41 mph, the brakes barely touched.