It has been a rough patch of living as of late, Mercury is about to complete her (damned) retrograde, which has left in its path tiny piles of destruction. I awoke this morning feeling that - while everything on the surface was fine - the world was somehow askew. I fumbled with my notebook, unable to find words. My cup of morning tea remained untouched, and my body refused to contort itself to any shape vaguely resembling a downward-facing dog. A bust, it was heading to be a bust of a morning - which, of course, runs the risk of evolving into a bust of a day. And that is not what I am after. I decided, hesitantly, that what I needed was a change in perspective. To shift not what I was looking at but rather the direction from which I was seeing it.
2 Comments
Something short I came across in my old files. Written last June here in Suratthani. One of those pieces that I'm sure at the time I thought was nothing, but finding it again now, I want to know where it was going, where it came from. It's nice to see one's own writing in this light.
when the pin drops He said to me, it has always been you. Different chapters, different books, call it what you will. You did not materialize at age twenty-whatever, you do not get to shed that skin, you are a human. You have always been. And I said to him, you are right. Like you have always been, or usually are at least. How is that you see me? So truly, and so deeply? Like everything else that has ever existed, we started as a mere possibility. One that I may have glossed over in my peripheral, unknowingly, and let go of immediately. But a seed is a seed, and this one was buried deep. So deep that I didn't feel it growing in me, not until the days turned into years and our circumstances, winding around the world like vines, once again brought him into my life. Sometimes you don't realize you have been sitting in silence until the pin drops. Suddenly I heard music. I don't remember the first time we kissed, or who initiated it. But what ensued. What ensued shook me like an earthquake, it shifted my plates. My foundation would never be the same. From the inside, I watched the egg break. This is a short story that I wrote many years ago for a fiction writing course while studying at Columbia College Chicago. The piece was published in Hair Trigger 32, an award-winning literary anthology published by the college, in 2010. It's a story that I come back to occasionally and think, "Wow, where did this come from?!" It's a bit dark and twisted, and perhaps part of what will one day be a longer story. I hope you enjoy!
Eyes wide open
Mouth shut Stare down into A part of me I had Long forgotten. Reignite My phosphorescence, Solar light, In a space where Time disintegrates. And curled up in The essence of Our veritable selves We relish a connection Of cosmic proportions, To something far grander Than what is possible For our human minds To comprehend. But we feel, Like lightening, We are Everything. This was a short fiction piece resulting from a grab bag exercise. My 10 words were: grass, catch, globe, frost, lake, fashion, tight, ghost, hole, shore
Glorious was the morning that shone brightly before Aman's weakening eyes. From the very spot where he stood every morning at this time - a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other - he watched the blades of grass catch fire with icy hues of blue, frost settling on their thin, frail lines. Winter was upon his world again, and his lush green pastures were transforming, the fields having been plowed for the last time, left to rest under the dome of nature's snow globe. His chest compressed tightly on a lungful of smoke that escaped through his nose like a ghost, fading into cold morning air. This story came from a "Grab Bag" exercise at our last meeting. My 10 random words were:
belligerent force biscuit carnival facet glorious tantrum boat costly range My grab bag selection of writing genre was: children's story. Clover In a town far, far away, in a land where flowers grow almost as tall as the trees, lived a little boy named Clover. Clover's real name was Tom, but he was a lucky boy, so that's what he preferred to be called. And so, he was. He lived an ordinary life filled with what to him seemed extraordinary occurrences, each day bringing a new kind of magic. Sometimes though the days seemed to test his luck, and this was one of those times. The following (totally awesome) poems are the result of a "recycled poetry" exercise that I'm in love with right now. Read more about it here. Special shout out to Annie in Khanom for providing the dictionary pages, which turned out to be perfect for this activity, and gave me the push I was looking for to try something new. - Tipple -* Tipple means to drink liquor, I learned from this page. Tipple on.
This week in our Thai class with Kru Ice (shout out!) the Mathus girls had to write stories using the Thai we have learned so far. Below is my story, Mongan Khong Arabelle or Arabelle's Dragon. Keep in mind my creativity was limited by my limited (but growing) language skills, but I'm still pretty impressed with it! Thai on top and English translation below. Cheers!
This work of art is a result of our grab bag activity. Basically, you write down the first 10 random words that come to your head and then select a genre from our grab bag. This time, I drew the 4-panel comic. For more genre ideas and links to other examples, click here. My words for this particular activity were:
anchovy elevator relinquish transit binary crapshoot fornicate electric grasp neutron This story came from our anagram activity. We started with a word - catastrophe - and from that made as many words as we could. We came up with a list of nearly 100. I used all of those words in the (rather silly) story below. For more info on this exercise or for other ideas, check out our writing section.
A forest to a man standing outside looks like but a line of trees. It's a visible wall behind which the world lies still and in front of which man rules all. |
AuthorChicago-born citizen of the globe, rich in the things that really matter. Let's get weird. Categories
All
Archives
January 2019
|