"What they [are] really doing here is telling the creation myth backwards as the symmetrical conclusion to the history of the world. Escaping exile in an alien dystopia, human beings storm paradise and, upon reentering, tear off their clothes without shame. God's judgment is overturned, nonsense is unlearned, a woman presents an apple to a snake, symbolizing the release of nature from the yoke of human will. Genders cease to be rigidly defined, each person becoming a complete unity of masculine and feminine characteristics. Finally, in only seven days time, the entirety of the old world is unmade, and on the last evening the lights of all cities, no longer powered by vast unsustainable infrastructures, blink out one by one."
-Greil Marcus, reviewing Expect Resistance.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
write a story where the setting changes from winter to spring in a single day. the morning starts cold and dark, snow drifting down from above, the trees outlined like chalk bodies. as the day progresses, it gets warmer. slush puddles form in crevices and on street corners, large chunks of snow start melting and falling from the high places, raining down from the trees, dropping like bombs. by the afternoon, water is dripping everywhere from all surfaces, seeping through roofs and spilling down gutters, dripping from eaves and running down the streets. chunks of snow bursting off the tree limbs and dancing in the sunlight. little piles of snow still left in corners and shadows. By the time of the late sunset that evening its all gone, and people take off their coats, the air no longer coloring their breath. have this follow the emotional outline of the characters (obviously).
listen to Astral Weeks, especially "Sweet Thing," while writing.
listen to Astral Weeks, especially "Sweet Thing," while writing.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
She listed her lovers on a yellow legal pad in pencil. The wild ones and the fearful, those she had to teach and those that taught her. Those who clung and the ones who kept a frightening distance. She drew a star next to those that stayed. The ones who left--gathering her sheets around themselves like burqas, like cloaks, only to drifting down through the floor and out through the door, leaving a painted trail through her home--those names she slowly crossed off.
“There’s no such thing as remorse,” she said and hands you the note.
“There’s no such thing as remorse,” she said and hands you the note.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Wind Fish
So I kind of forgot about this. It's a post I made on a friend's blog called "Things You See While Eating," which is exactly what the blog's about--kind of a sociological people-watching experiment. Here's my contribution, semi-based on reality, semi-based on improv class (so its a bit silly), and semi-based on Link's Awakening.
http://thingsyouseewhileeating.wordpress.com/
Chicago, IL
It was the kind of place that was painted bright pastels, the kind of place where the staff was enjoyable rude, the kind of place owned by oily curmudgeons and wide-eyed cranks and reformed dreamers, the kind of place that made a mean turkey sandwich. I went through them pretty quickly, cycling through every sandwich shop in the neighborhood a week at a time. But this place, this was my new favorite because I could get both potato chips and potato salad—because potatoes are too delicious for just one kind.
With snow on my shoes, I trudged down the steps to the current week’s favorite basement sandwich shop. I sat down with my order and I dipped the potato chips in the potato salad and wondered at the true goodness of potato magic. The sandwich was too salty, the pastel rainbow on the wall looked more faded than usual, and I wondered if it was time to move on and start dining at the place across the street, Farakan’s Deli Dog.
I pulled out my current book, something about the Spanish Civil War, and tried to disappear. I try to evaporate right there, to slip back to 1938, to feel the sand and the sun and the oil of the rifle sliding between my fingers, to hear the sound of military chants floating on the air of Andalusia, to try to forget that I work beneath florescent lights.
“Yo, I ever tell you bout Johan?”
The voice was not Castilian.
“No, man. You never told me about no Johan.”
I looked up. It was these two guys, a big one and a little one, sitting at a table across from me eating pastrami sandwiches and talking loud enough to fill up the basement room, their vowels hanging from the ceiling, their saliva dripping from the walls, their laughter tunneling through my ears. Didn’t they know the Anarcho-Syndicalists were about to be routed by the Fascists? Can’t they shut up for one minute while the war reaches its inevitable and bloody turning point?
“Let’s go, bro. Who’s Johan? Lay it on me,” the little one said waving his hand.
These two guys. The little one looked like he wanted to be the big one. They were wearing overalls and workman’s boots, both with paint and plaster stains all over their clothes, heavy coats hanging next to them.
“Johan was this one, this guy, that Mindy used to know in college,” the big one says, biting into a potato chip. He’s bald with a beard.
“Oh man, how is Mindy? You really lucked out with her man. She’s really got the uh—” The little one made a squeezing motion to his chest. “You know?” He’s clean-shaven and wears a beanie cap with a hardhat sitting on the table next to him. His overalls fit better and look newer than the bigger guy’s looser, more frayed clothes.
“Hey man, lay off. That’s my live-in girlfriend you’re talking about there.”
“Yeah, well don’t think I ain’t takin’ a turn at her when you’re done.”
“Ay! What’d I just say?” The big guy pounds the table making the hardhat jump.
“I dunno, you were saying something about some dude named Jamal or something.”
“Johan,” the big guy says and glowers at him. “So Mindy used to know this guy. Said he was studying to be a marine biologist.”
“Mindy went to college? Man, brains and beauty, bro.” The little one motions to his head and his chest.
“She was there for like a semester before she dropped out. Then I think she used to just hang out wit her college friends for a year even though she wasn’t in school no more.” The big dude took a sip of his drink. “So anyway, this Johan. The dude liked whales and the college had a whale tank. It was a weird place she went, there was like a whole freakin’ zoo and a seaworld in there. Guy got in the habit of whale watching. He’d roll out of the dorm, ride his bike down to the tanks and just sit there watching them for like hours at a time.”
I was listening now. I was still holding my page open, still staring at the words like I was reading but my eyes were silent and listening.
“He didn’t have many friends or nothing. He was friendly with some people in his classes and some of his teachers or whatever, but you know, what she was saying, he didn’t hang out with anybody. Didn’t go to the bar after class or nothing.”
“Maybe that’s why he was staying in school and Mindy had to dropped out,” said the little guy.
“Yeah probably. No friends to drink with, I’d do homework and watch whales too.”
“Or at least watch some Van Damme movies or Skinamax or something.”
“Yeah, really. So eventually this Johan guy started getting in the tank with them,” the big guy took a bite of sandwich and continued with his mouth open. “With the whales. Even though only the caretakers and like the professors were supposed to be in there. This guy would climb into the tank every morning when no one was looking and swim with the whales.”
“Nobody kicked him out?”
“Not at first. Guess they didn’t have the heart. She said this guy was like a dolphin. He looked like he was traveling through the water without moving his hands or feet, he’d just kind of glide. He’d do rings around the whales and only come up for breath as often as they did. Like some kind of merman.”
“Or a mermaid.” The little guy held up his arm and let the wrist go limp. They both laughed.
“Good one,” the big guy shook his head, put a chip in his mouth. “Every day this guy was swimming with these freakin’ whales. She said crowds started forming not to watch the whales but to watch him slide through the water, grab onto their fins and pet them and everything. She said it went on like that for months until one day he refused to get out of the water when the caretakers came for feeding time. They called in campus security and everything. It was a big deal. The crowd started chanting ‘Attica’ and shit. And the next day, the crowd showed up but he didn’t. He just stopped coming. Dropped out of the marine biology program. Straight up switched his major to genetics.”
They sat there eating for a while. “Was he tryin’ to genetically engineering himself into a whale or something?” said the little guy.
“Actually, and don’t tell Mindy I told you this, cause she said it was all just a rumor, but it’s the opposite.”
“What?” the little guy said around a mouth full of pastrami.
“He decided the whales were too much like human to be animals. He was trying to free them from their bodies, from their whale-shaped prisons.”
“Oh, gimme a break.”
“I swear this is what she said. She was still hanging around the campus now and she said everyone was talking about it, everyone was saying ‘whale-shaped prisons’ and talking about weird genetic manwhales walking around pretending to be college kids. Any time they didn’t like somebody, or wanted to stop hanging out with a kid, they decided it was cause the person actually was a secret manwhale freed from his ‘whale-shaped prison.’”
The little guy rolled his eyes. “This guy turned the whales into people?”
“Said they were better than most of the regular people he met,” the big guy looked at his watch.
“Well you can’t argue that. Look at all these assholes,” the little guy waved his arms around the deli. “I wouldn’t mind having some whales in here if this is the best we got.” He looked over at me and I quickly averted my eyes back down to my book.
“You keep it up you’ll have as few friends as the merman. So,” the big guy took a sip of his soda. “Nobody had even seen this kid in a couple months when she says people heard these weird sounds at night, and shadows moving across the moon. The next day there were a bunch of smashed cars and some broken pavement out in the parking lot of the aquarium. Looked like a hurricane had torn through or whatever. And inside, the whales were gone. Poof, just gone.”
“And where was the merman? That Johan?”
“When they finally found him he was naked, wet and shivering, and standing at the top of the campus radio tower staring at the sky.”
I closed my book and went to throw away my garbage.
“What?” the little guy said, eating the last of his chips.
“Said he’d succeeded. Johan said he’d set them free.”
“You telling me those whales flew out of there?”
“I’m only telling you what Mindy told me.”
“So what happened?” the little guy said.
“I dunno. That was around when she stopped even going to the campus. I was thinking about it though. About how nice it sounds.” The big guy touched his beard and looked at the hardhat. “Just watching whales swim around, no home but the water, no worries but when you’re gonna breath next, all the fish you can eat. That’s gotta be good.”
They got up to leave, not bothering to pick up the trash on the table. “Yo, you think Mindy slept with that Johan guy?” the little guy said.
“I dunno. But if she did I’ll fucking kill her,” the big guy said with his hand on the door.
“Then I’ll have the corpse to myself. Lookout world!” said the little guy as the door closed behind him.
I picked up my coat, felt the hole in it and put it on. After wrapping the scarf around my neck, I stepped outside. At the bottom of the stairs leading back up to street level was a puddle of black silted snow that had melted and pooled. The air was cold and blank like a razor blade. I started walking up the steps and thought through the windows in my life: the bedroom that looked out on a brick wall, the lunches that were underground, the office that looked into another identical high-rise.
My breath was a fog that uncurled itself away from my face and hung suspended for the second before it disappeared. The air was mirrored and glacial, a shade that sparkled clear and ancient like blue Antarctic ice. And I stood there shivering and I lingered, staring at the sky, waiting for whales.
http://thingsyouseewhileeating.wordpress.com/
Chicago, IL
It was the kind of place that was painted bright pastels, the kind of place where the staff was enjoyable rude, the kind of place owned by oily curmudgeons and wide-eyed cranks and reformed dreamers, the kind of place that made a mean turkey sandwich. I went through them pretty quickly, cycling through every sandwich shop in the neighborhood a week at a time. But this place, this was my new favorite because I could get both potato chips and potato salad—because potatoes are too delicious for just one kind.
With snow on my shoes, I trudged down the steps to the current week’s favorite basement sandwich shop. I sat down with my order and I dipped the potato chips in the potato salad and wondered at the true goodness of potato magic. The sandwich was too salty, the pastel rainbow on the wall looked more faded than usual, and I wondered if it was time to move on and start dining at the place across the street, Farakan’s Deli Dog.
I pulled out my current book, something about the Spanish Civil War, and tried to disappear. I try to evaporate right there, to slip back to 1938, to feel the sand and the sun and the oil of the rifle sliding between my fingers, to hear the sound of military chants floating on the air of Andalusia, to try to forget that I work beneath florescent lights.
“Yo, I ever tell you bout Johan?”
The voice was not Castilian.
“No, man. You never told me about no Johan.”
I looked up. It was these two guys, a big one and a little one, sitting at a table across from me eating pastrami sandwiches and talking loud enough to fill up the basement room, their vowels hanging from the ceiling, their saliva dripping from the walls, their laughter tunneling through my ears. Didn’t they know the Anarcho-Syndicalists were about to be routed by the Fascists? Can’t they shut up for one minute while the war reaches its inevitable and bloody turning point?
“Let’s go, bro. Who’s Johan? Lay it on me,” the little one said waving his hand.
These two guys. The little one looked like he wanted to be the big one. They were wearing overalls and workman’s boots, both with paint and plaster stains all over their clothes, heavy coats hanging next to them.
“Johan was this one, this guy, that Mindy used to know in college,” the big one says, biting into a potato chip. He’s bald with a beard.
“Oh man, how is Mindy? You really lucked out with her man. She’s really got the uh—” The little one made a squeezing motion to his chest. “You know?” He’s clean-shaven and wears a beanie cap with a hardhat sitting on the table next to him. His overalls fit better and look newer than the bigger guy’s looser, more frayed clothes.
“Hey man, lay off. That’s my live-in girlfriend you’re talking about there.”
“Yeah, well don’t think I ain’t takin’ a turn at her when you’re done.”
“Ay! What’d I just say?” The big guy pounds the table making the hardhat jump.
“I dunno, you were saying something about some dude named Jamal or something.”
“Johan,” the big guy says and glowers at him. “So Mindy used to know this guy. Said he was studying to be a marine biologist.”
“Mindy went to college? Man, brains and beauty, bro.” The little one motions to his head and his chest.
“She was there for like a semester before she dropped out. Then I think she used to just hang out wit her college friends for a year even though she wasn’t in school no more.” The big dude took a sip of his drink. “So anyway, this Johan. The dude liked whales and the college had a whale tank. It was a weird place she went, there was like a whole freakin’ zoo and a seaworld in there. Guy got in the habit of whale watching. He’d roll out of the dorm, ride his bike down to the tanks and just sit there watching them for like hours at a time.”
I was listening now. I was still holding my page open, still staring at the words like I was reading but my eyes were silent and listening.
“He didn’t have many friends or nothing. He was friendly with some people in his classes and some of his teachers or whatever, but you know, what she was saying, he didn’t hang out with anybody. Didn’t go to the bar after class or nothing.”
“Maybe that’s why he was staying in school and Mindy had to dropped out,” said the little guy.
“Yeah probably. No friends to drink with, I’d do homework and watch whales too.”
“Or at least watch some Van Damme movies or Skinamax or something.”
“Yeah, really. So eventually this Johan guy started getting in the tank with them,” the big guy took a bite of sandwich and continued with his mouth open. “With the whales. Even though only the caretakers and like the professors were supposed to be in there. This guy would climb into the tank every morning when no one was looking and swim with the whales.”
“Nobody kicked him out?”
“Not at first. Guess they didn’t have the heart. She said this guy was like a dolphin. He looked like he was traveling through the water without moving his hands or feet, he’d just kind of glide. He’d do rings around the whales and only come up for breath as often as they did. Like some kind of merman.”
“Or a mermaid.” The little guy held up his arm and let the wrist go limp. They both laughed.
“Good one,” the big guy shook his head, put a chip in his mouth. “Every day this guy was swimming with these freakin’ whales. She said crowds started forming not to watch the whales but to watch him slide through the water, grab onto their fins and pet them and everything. She said it went on like that for months until one day he refused to get out of the water when the caretakers came for feeding time. They called in campus security and everything. It was a big deal. The crowd started chanting ‘Attica’ and shit. And the next day, the crowd showed up but he didn’t. He just stopped coming. Dropped out of the marine biology program. Straight up switched his major to genetics.”
They sat there eating for a while. “Was he tryin’ to genetically engineering himself into a whale or something?” said the little guy.
“Actually, and don’t tell Mindy I told you this, cause she said it was all just a rumor, but it’s the opposite.”
“What?” the little guy said around a mouth full of pastrami.
“He decided the whales were too much like human to be animals. He was trying to free them from their bodies, from their whale-shaped prisons.”
“Oh, gimme a break.”
“I swear this is what she said. She was still hanging around the campus now and she said everyone was talking about it, everyone was saying ‘whale-shaped prisons’ and talking about weird genetic manwhales walking around pretending to be college kids. Any time they didn’t like somebody, or wanted to stop hanging out with a kid, they decided it was cause the person actually was a secret manwhale freed from his ‘whale-shaped prison.’”
The little guy rolled his eyes. “This guy turned the whales into people?”
“Said they were better than most of the regular people he met,” the big guy looked at his watch.
“Well you can’t argue that. Look at all these assholes,” the little guy waved his arms around the deli. “I wouldn’t mind having some whales in here if this is the best we got.” He looked over at me and I quickly averted my eyes back down to my book.
“You keep it up you’ll have as few friends as the merman. So,” the big guy took a sip of his soda. “Nobody had even seen this kid in a couple months when she says people heard these weird sounds at night, and shadows moving across the moon. The next day there were a bunch of smashed cars and some broken pavement out in the parking lot of the aquarium. Looked like a hurricane had torn through or whatever. And inside, the whales were gone. Poof, just gone.”
“And where was the merman? That Johan?”
“When they finally found him he was naked, wet and shivering, and standing at the top of the campus radio tower staring at the sky.”
I closed my book and went to throw away my garbage.
“What?” the little guy said, eating the last of his chips.
“Said he’d succeeded. Johan said he’d set them free.”
“You telling me those whales flew out of there?”
“I’m only telling you what Mindy told me.”
“So what happened?” the little guy said.
“I dunno. That was around when she stopped even going to the campus. I was thinking about it though. About how nice it sounds.” The big guy touched his beard and looked at the hardhat. “Just watching whales swim around, no home but the water, no worries but when you’re gonna breath next, all the fish you can eat. That’s gotta be good.”
They got up to leave, not bothering to pick up the trash on the table. “Yo, you think Mindy slept with that Johan guy?” the little guy said.
“I dunno. But if she did I’ll fucking kill her,” the big guy said with his hand on the door.
“Then I’ll have the corpse to myself. Lookout world!” said the little guy as the door closed behind him.
I picked up my coat, felt the hole in it and put it on. After wrapping the scarf around my neck, I stepped outside. At the bottom of the stairs leading back up to street level was a puddle of black silted snow that had melted and pooled. The air was cold and blank like a razor blade. I started walking up the steps and thought through the windows in my life: the bedroom that looked out on a brick wall, the lunches that were underground, the office that looked into another identical high-rise.
My breath was a fog that uncurled itself away from my face and hung suspended for the second before it disappeared. The air was mirrored and glacial, a shade that sparkled clear and ancient like blue Antarctic ice. And I stood there shivering and I lingered, staring at the sky, waiting for whales.
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