I was the Tin Woodman. Or the Scarecrow. Or whichever one of those Oz fuckers didn’t have a heart. At least that’s what I’ve been told. But that isn’t really the issue here, at least not now. The issue is that if it weren’t for an overwhelming desire to have a yellow tee shirt I would still be breathing, still be narrating from the realm of the living. Instead, I’m in this weird, pseudo past tense disaster of a novel, trying hard to keep my verbs in order. And I still don’t have a yellow tee shirt. Or a heart.
Literally the first paragraph I've produced in two months. The start of something that I can feel slowly working its way to the surface. Something big, something fast, something like a shark or a whale or whatever. Not sure where it is going, and it seems like there or three of four separate ideas swimming around in these sentences, butthat'll all get worked out later. Hopefully.
7.22.2009
7.06.2009
Patience
Continuing with the theme of archive emptying, here is a storyboard/plotline I wrote up for a story I never even started.
* time is a closed, repeating loop
* the number of human lives on the planet is fixed
* no new lives are ever created
* when a person dies, or reaches the end of one life cycle, they are reincarnated as another person and follow that particular life cycle until its end. And so on
* somehow, the main character is made aware of this situation
* he continues to kill himself until he cycles through every possible life cycle in the hopes that he will eventually be reincarnated as himself and use this 'second chance' to make right some wrong (probably something to do with a girl/lover)
* the time loop always ends with total destruction and then starts over
* by being aware of the loop and altering it (by continually killing himself) he eventually reduces the lifetime of every person on the planet, causing a catastrophic breakdown of time
* he realizes thus and is forced to live out every life in its entirety, essentially on autopilot
* after he explains this to the girl, he is reincarnated as her, and while living her life on auto pilot he realizes she is in love with someone he understands is better for her than he is
* he accepts that she will never love him fully and is doomed to be a self-aware automaton
perspective: after-the-fact narration? Or after-the-fact until he is reincarnated as her? Probably after-the-fact; a memoir of everyone who ever lived.
the train metaphor: time is a train track that is a giant loop. There are many trains on the track. Every time a train reaches the end of the loop a new conductor takes over and drives the train for the duration of the next loop.
Looking back on this, I now find that last part, the train thing, most interesting. To the degree that if I ever summoned the motivation to re-visit this story, it'd probably just be about train conductors on a fixed loop.
* time is a closed, repeating loop
* the number of human lives on the planet is fixed
* no new lives are ever created
* when a person dies, or reaches the end of one life cycle, they are reincarnated as another person and follow that particular life cycle until its end. And so on
* somehow, the main character is made aware of this situation
* he continues to kill himself until he cycles through every possible life cycle in the hopes that he will eventually be reincarnated as himself and use this 'second chance' to make right some wrong (probably something to do with a girl/lover)
* the time loop always ends with total destruction and then starts over
* by being aware of the loop and altering it (by continually killing himself) he eventually reduces the lifetime of every person on the planet, causing a catastrophic breakdown of time
* he realizes thus and is forced to live out every life in its entirety, essentially on autopilot
* after he explains this to the girl, he is reincarnated as her, and while living her life on auto pilot he realizes she is in love with someone he understands is better for her than he is
* he accepts that she will never love him fully and is doomed to be a self-aware automaton
perspective: after-the-fact narration? Or after-the-fact until he is reincarnated as her? Probably after-the-fact; a memoir of everyone who ever lived.
the train metaphor: time is a train track that is a giant loop. There are many trains on the track. Every time a train reaches the end of the loop a new conductor takes over and drives the train for the duration of the next loop.
Looking back on this, I now find that last part, the train thing, most interesting. To the degree that if I ever summoned the motivation to re-visit this story, it'd probably just be about train conductors on a fixed loop.
Dear Jayne
Sometimes I write fake letters. For fun, or something.
Drunk, and writing this to you instead of my journal, which is probably a mistake but I guess I can always read this in the morning. I don't know, but either way words are qued up at the tip of my pen and it is best to get them going as soon as possible. I was thinking about the sun and how much I'd like to see it close up. If I ever found out I had a terminal illness I'd steal a spaceship and fly into the sun. Cremation and spaceflight all in one package--very appealing, no? I feel the need to write as quickly as possible, while my fingers still tingle, to capture the precise nature of this state of mind. This is all non-sense, but at the same time it's all that I am--words and ink and flesh and bone and hair. Naked, cold, hungry. I'm not sure I have a firm grasp on vocabulary now, but the first sentence of this page should be a reasonable excuse. Strike now, while the iron is hot! When we die we will exist in ink and paper--a history of thought and intention. Everything sounds epic when you're inebriated and I apologize for the grandiose ramblings of this letter. But as I said, I'm ink and paper and intention and can't be held responsible for late-night self-expression, can I? Not sure...if it were raining I'm sure I'd feel even more introspective ----- I think it is important not to censor yourself. I feel like the more I ramble the closer get to some truth, unknown or obscured by my conscious mind. Stoner poetry, for sure, but I'm not stoned I'm just tired and full of echoes or shadows or reverberations of former lives. Strike while the iron is hot! Capture these ghosts and spectres and imprison them on a page within an ink cell. Midnight cats make the night easier, their calm demeanor's are comforting, soothing. But I will not be soothed. I will rage on into the depths of the night content with the absence of others. The more/higher walls I can build the better. Now I'm just being ridiculous. I should go now--sleep--dream about things more exciting than reality, which isn't too hard. Really all I need is a flying car.
Drunk, and writing this to you instead of my journal, which is probably a mistake but I guess I can always read this in the morning. I don't know, but either way words are qued up at the tip of my pen and it is best to get them going as soon as possible. I was thinking about the sun and how much I'd like to see it close up. If I ever found out I had a terminal illness I'd steal a spaceship and fly into the sun. Cremation and spaceflight all in one package--very appealing, no? I feel the need to write as quickly as possible, while my fingers still tingle, to capture the precise nature of this state of mind. This is all non-sense, but at the same time it's all that I am--words and ink and flesh and bone and hair. Naked, cold, hungry. I'm not sure I have a firm grasp on vocabulary now, but the first sentence of this page should be a reasonable excuse. Strike now, while the iron is hot! When we die we will exist in ink and paper--a history of thought and intention. Everything sounds epic when you're inebriated and I apologize for the grandiose ramblings of this letter. But as I said, I'm ink and paper and intention and can't be held responsible for late-night self-expression, can I? Not sure...if it were raining I'm sure I'd feel even more introspective ----- I think it is important not to censor yourself. I feel like the more I ramble the closer get to some truth, unknown or obscured by my conscious mind. Stoner poetry, for sure, but I'm not stoned I'm just tired and full of echoes or shadows or reverberations of former lives. Strike while the iron is hot! Capture these ghosts and spectres and imprison them on a page within an ink cell. Midnight cats make the night easier, their calm demeanor's are comforting, soothing. But I will not be soothed. I will rage on into the depths of the night content with the absence of others. The more/higher walls I can build the better. Now I'm just being ridiculous. I should go now--sleep--dream about things more exciting than reality, which isn't too hard. Really all I need is a flying car.
Super Random
Seriously more random than anything yet posted here. Strange things recently found in a notebook:
I remember the days, snow packed, across two streets that separate school and home. Quiet, walk around old brick building, alone, though fresh footprints suggest others are here, inside, waiting. Those same wet footprints navigate hardwood hallways, glisten under lights suspended a bit too high for precise illumination. The classroom is cold. Ancient radiators spit and hiss as they try to counteract the windows above. The lights in here are closer; they provide more modern light. I remember blood blisters in kindergarten, lies and tickets in first grade, burnt hands in second, glasses in third, static water fountain shocks in fourth, snowy halls in fifth...
This page, already tainted by the first--
And on the table I find a single hair. Long, brown. With the proper technology I could make a clone of whomever left his hair here. Would they be the same? How well an automobile runs depends on the quality of gasoline used to power it. Or, you can make the same machinery operate differently by using different circuitry. Or, a brain can be physically identical but I can't imagine it would work the same, have the same thoughts.
How did I get here? This class, a drone, to infinity by way of every rambling backroad imaginable, never changing pace or intonation or randomness. Hidden fidelity. Who is this woman in the rowboat? An image of peaks and valleys; just find me the girl. Minimality is a factor, L.A. riverbed longshot. Perfect apex -- dry lake -- salt flats -- slowly tilt -- water and energy -- an ocean filled with plastic
I remember the days, snow packed, across two streets that separate school and home. Quiet, walk around old brick building, alone, though fresh footprints suggest others are here, inside, waiting. Those same wet footprints navigate hardwood hallways, glisten under lights suspended a bit too high for precise illumination. The classroom is cold. Ancient radiators spit and hiss as they try to counteract the windows above. The lights in here are closer; they provide more modern light. I remember blood blisters in kindergarten, lies and tickets in first grade, burnt hands in second, glasses in third, static water fountain shocks in fourth, snowy halls in fifth...
This page, already tainted by the first--
And on the table I find a single hair. Long, brown. With the proper technology I could make a clone of whomever left his hair here. Would they be the same? How well an automobile runs depends on the quality of gasoline used to power it. Or, you can make the same machinery operate differently by using different circuitry. Or, a brain can be physically identical but I can't imagine it would work the same, have the same thoughts.
How did I get here? This class, a drone, to infinity by way of every rambling backroad imaginable, never changing pace or intonation or randomness. Hidden fidelity. Who is this woman in the rowboat? An image of peaks and valleys; just find me the girl. Minimality is a factor, L.A. riverbed longshot. Perfect apex -- dry lake -- salt flats -- slowly tilt -- water and energy -- an ocean filled with plastic
7.04.2009
Random
One from the archives (maybe parts of this found their way into other things):
Forgotten cats outside the window. Wrappers from many teas, assorted on the linoleum. Remembered cats stretched across circular dinner tables, creating curved meridians. Another cat prowled back into the light, from the dark between chairs and couches. The sole desire, the primary mission: cashews. Cashews and Nut-thins, and maybe the delicious background flavors of Goldfish crackers. Sudden cats, spiraled up and down. Lips thick with salt, such a good time to be had fainting for the orange and red keys, fuzzed together, a sort of plastic melted over as a cover
Forgotten cats outside the window. Wrappers from many teas, assorted on the linoleum. Remembered cats stretched across circular dinner tables, creating curved meridians. Another cat prowled back into the light, from the dark between chairs and couches. The sole desire, the primary mission: cashews. Cashews and Nut-thins, and maybe the delicious background flavors of Goldfish crackers. Sudden cats, spiraled up and down. Lips thick with salt, such a good time to be had fainting for the orange and red keys, fuzzed together, a sort of plastic melted over as a cover
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
