July 29, 2010 Exercise
Wordsmith’s Warmup: Homonyms. Mix up a batch of these entertaining words into a single paragraph and see what happens.
air, heir, err
He was high on the air in the mountains. He savored each breath. And every night for a week, sitting by a roaring campfire, he imagined he was the heir to a new dawn. Then he would fall asleep in a warm sleeping bag that smelled of woodsmoke and smokies, and would awake with eyes sandy from sleep to gaze at an unmarred, baby blue blanket spread a thousand miles over his head. But each bird that flies must eventually return to a less perfect world, where man may err and all creatures must die, and so too he descended from his rocky playground, where among the folly of kings and the pain of mankind, the memory of his mountains sustains him.
July 29, 2010 Exercise
Wordsmith’s Warmup: Homonyms. Mix up a batch of these entertaining words into a single paragraph and see what happens.
rein, rain, reign
The drought’s reign of terror lasted three long years. Not a single drop of rain fell on the cracked earth from April to April to April again, although dark clouds hovered permanently on the horizon. People left in droves, bound for a more fertile country, wherever that was. The government enforced ration laws, they pulled up hard on the reins, but the wild mustang of the people was dying of thirst and when they bucked the politicians lost control. Folks fled in panic towards the oceans flanking our wide land, emptying the mountains and plains in the middle, abandoning the industrial network connecting the coasts… The comfort of water was such a relief, even full of salt, that not a few days passed before we heard news on the radio that another dehydrated man had drowned himself in overzealous immersion. But we stayed put, us hardy few. We dug deep wells in the middle of our country, we guarded the dried up lakes with our lives, not a few of which were lost. And most recently we were rewarded: after three starving summers and three desperate winters, the tight-fisted clouds finally loosened their grip and dumped rain in the middle. On our land and the surrounding area we received five blessed minutes of a thorough downpour. The water dropped in sheets and the cracked earth greedily swallowed. Although we were skeptical at first, wary of the change, it was enough. It has rained in our area five times since the first cleansing. The grass at last begins to sprout and the sight of green gives us hope. But the rest of the country remains dry. As before, people begin to journey in pursuit of greener pastures… and I fear a new reign of terror has begun.
July 29, 2010 Exercise
Write a scene that depends on the failure of a reasonable expectation
Jeremiah has a recurring dream in which he steps out of a steaming hot shower and reaches for his towel, and while he is standing there drying off he notices his reflection in the mirror and there is – nothing except the towel.
Jeremiah is both amused and disconcerted by this dream. It is kind of silly, after all, seeing the towel pinned to the air, or wrapped around his invisible waist.
It is disconcerting, however, because when Jeremy steps onto the cold tile of his bathroom this morning, he looks in the mirror and sees – nothing, just like in the dream. Except he hasn’t made it to the shower yet, so there is no towel. In the mirror he notices instead the offset pattern of smiling yellow rubber ducks on the shower curtain.
He stares into the mirror for a frozen moment, his mouth hanging open. Then he whips around and stares at the shower curtain. The ducks swim in a stylized azure sea.
To still the dizziness, Jeremiah looks down at his feet. O blessed relief! They are still there, bare, with tan lines from his sandals. His legs are there also and with a heavy sigh Jeremiah touches shaking hands to his face, to the top of his head; he hugs his arms around his torso. Once again the world spins at a manageable gallop.
But still icy waves lap against the shores of his heart. Jeremiah turns around, much slower this time, directing his eyes away from the tall silver surface. His eyes move over the inset floodlights above, the plastic pieces securing the borders of the mirror. He looks at the porcelain sink that stands confidently on it’s only leg. The hot and cold water pipes run out of the wall, turn up at right angles, and attach beneath the gleaming white sink.
With a great effort, Jeremiah marshals the last squadron of his courage and looks in the mirror, looks for all intents and purposes straight into his own eyes. He looks at the mirror and sees – more yellow ducks.
The ducks begin to swim again in earnest. The world hurls itself of its axis. Jeremiah faints.
(My failed reasonable expectation was: a man that does not see his own reflection in the mirror. This wasn’t one the book offered, but I wanted to make up my own. If you’d like to have a go, the book gives the following suggestions: an anchorman who refuses to speak; a car door that lacks a handle; a radio that receives a single station; a museum guard who touches the paintings; a faucet that delivers something other than water.)
July 28, 2010 Exercise
Write about the one who refuses to fit in
M. Hello, my name is M. and I’m a private investigator. *holds up badge*
S. Hi. Can I help you?
M. You went to high school with a man named Darius Kineco.
S. Uhm… yeah… so what?
M. I’ve been hired to track him down. Do you remember him?
S. I see.. is he in trouble?
M. Actually, he’s missing. Do you remember him?
S. Oh, man…. Remember him? How could anyone forget that kid?
M. He was worthy of distinction?
S. Well, in a way. He wasn’t the valedictorian or the captain of the football team. He wasn’t even really that good looking. But everyone knew who he was. He just stood out somehow.
M. What made him different?
S. Well one time he came into school with Henna tattoos all over his arms chanting mystic voodoo charms. He was always comfortable in front of a crowd, and everyone came to watch him do his thing, if not because they thought he was being serious, then to see the freakshow. Do you know how long those fake Henna tattoos last? Weeks, man.
M. The other kids didn’t ostracize him for it?
S. No way. He was so charismatic even when he was doing strange things… The whole school was talking about it before homeroom was out. Then the principal heard about it. Can you imagine he reacted? Heh.
M. The administrators didn’t like the tattoos?
S. Of course not! This was a small high school in the midwestern United States. They didn’t like anyone to be different. I suppose most schools are like that, they try to flatten out the kids and push them towards the middle instead of encouraging them to be who they are, or who they want to be.
M. So what did they do to him?
S. They pulled him out of our Calculus class and sent him home. Told him he had to wear long sleeves to cover the tattoos until they washed off.
M. He didn’t listen, did he?
S. Ha ha… nope. He came back in the next day without a shirt on. They sent him home again. On the third day he came in wearing a t-shirt, short-sleeved – but now he had the tattoos all over his face too.
M. Interesting.
S. Yea, they let him stay at school after that, and then he stopped painting himself. The tattoos were there for weeks, though, and he acted like he never noticed them.
M. Did he ever tell you why he did it?
S. He told me he was interested in their culture and in order to understand it he had to live it. But he probably told someone else a different reason. He would tell people whatever reason he thought they would react to best. A reason for each person. I don’t know how he kept track of it all. Probably, though, he just did it to see what would happen. He was delighted whenever anyone looked at him sideways.
M. You seem to know him well. Were you friends with him?
S. Not really…. I mean, during our senior year we had Calculus together. We sat next to each other because our last names both start with K. That’s when we talked the most, and it was that year that he did the Henna tattoo thing… He did a lot of other strange things that year, too. Like just before he disappeared, he stuck a thousand plastic forks into the grass at the fifty yard line of the football field in the shape of a duck.
M. A duck? … As a prank?
S. Yea. But they never caught him. He was good at not getting caught, he knew just how to act…. but I know he did it, cause I asked him about it in Math class the next day. I remember this very clearly. I didn’t ask him directly because I knew he’d deny it, so instead I asked him, “What do you think it means, the duck prank on the football field?” He laughed, at first, and didn’t answer. He just pretended I hadn’t asked and went back to staring out the window. But then just after the final bell rang, while everyone was making noise leaving, he leaned in close to me and said “It’s because they’re all quacks.”
M. Heh. That’s pretty funny. What else did he do?
S. Oh just little things, things that are harder to explain… the way he walked, the way he talked, that he never had any close friends even though he seemed comfortable enough around people. He kept his distance so well… And he never did anything because it was the cool thing to do, or because other people were doing it.
M. You said he disappeared?
S. Yeah, a couple weeks before we graduated he just skipped town. Never told anyone where he was going. Never heard from him again.
M. Yes, well, actually that’s why I’m here. He sent you a postcard.
S. What? He never sent me a postcard.
M. Yes he did, but you never got it. See? *Pulls a postcard out of his pocket* It’s right here. “Dear S.”, and it has the address of your parent’s house in Ohio. You just didn’t receive it.
S. Right… my parents sold their house and moved to South Carolina after I graduated high school. Wow. You sure did your research. What’s it say?
M. Nothing. The only thing on there besides Dear S. is the return address, which is the adddress of a public post office in Casablanca, Morocco.
S. And now he’s missing…. why are you looking for him?
M. I’m not at liberty to discuss that. You may keep the postcard. I have copies of it and the only prints on it belong to Mr. Kineco. Have a nice day.
July 27, 2010 Exercise
Write about the inexplicable menace in a seemingly neutral object.
To anyone else it looks like every other can of soda. It gleams in the light and is perfectly cylindrical. There is a tab on the top which, when pressure is applied correctly, frees a satisfying sigh from the contents within.
But for Beth it’s different. She has declared war on all processed, caffeinated, and sugar-infused beverages, or any combination thereof. She believes that these beverages, of which the can currently gleaming on the table is a jealous green color, are the bane of her existence.
These beverages, which most people consider no threat, are the main reason why her repeated attempts to lose weight have ended in failure.
A can of soda to anyone else; the Enemy to Beth. She sits in a chair at the kitchen table. She is locked in a staring contest with the Enemy.
The Enemy’s color is green, and their emblem, the words “Mountain Dew” printed at a cocky angle, taunt her. It is unbearable. Beth’s resistance for the past few months of failed dieting has had no color or emblem. But now that the Enemy has a name to match hers (Enemy vs. Beth), it seems only fitting that she have a color and an emblem to match theirs.
She leaves the table and puts on her her yoga clothes. They are all black (because black is a slimming color) and that becomes her color. For her emblem, since she is at war and she has recently watched that Ninja Assassin film, she chooses the Ninja. She vows by whatever means, particularly stealth and cunning, to defeat the Enemy.
Beth opens a window and throws the Enemy into the alley.
The Enemy slams into the brick wall, unprotected, and explodes. Yellow liquid sprays out at odd angles, hissing. Then, comatose, the Enemy falls and crunches onto the pavement where it bleeds out and dies.
Still not satisfied, Beth charges the fridge. She drags out the half-empty twelve pack of soda and chucks it out the window to proceed the way of its dying comrade. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she returns to the pantry and takes out the remaining three twelve packs of soda, six Caprisuns, the Smirnoff coolers, the margarita mix, the gallon of fruit punch, and the powdered ice tea and defenestrates the lot of them with unmitigated zeal.
Now Beth stands next to the open window. She breathes heavily, but the urge to open a can of soda has passed, and even if she did still want one there were none left in the house. She goes into her bedroom, unrolls her yoga mat, and spends an hour concentrating on her breathing and wishing for a flat stomach.
That night, after Beth has cooked a healthy dinner with whole grains and vegetables and successfully avoided going to the grocery store to buy more delicious drinks, Beth’s landlord calls her to complain about the sticky heap of decapitated beverages and beverage boxes in the alley. She admits to throwing them out the window, feeling no shame, and promises to clean them up in the morning.
July 21, 2010 Exercise
Write about something on the verge of collapse: building, bridge, marriage, contest, institution, alliance, certainty
The phones are busy, the screens are red, and that’s nothing unusual. There is always work to be done in tech support because there are always customers with problems, real or self-caused, to be dealt with. But today, no one is answering the phones.
We were taught how to evacuate the building in training, and reminded every few months. During the exercises we shuffle single file out the nearest exit and down the staircase, following the waving motions of the chosen point-guards in hard hats. We joke around and laugh during the exercises, we take our time and enjoy the fifteen minute reprieve from work.
But during the real deal it is different. The sirens are deafening, the flashing lights disconcerting. Is this a drill? we ask each other. Is this for real? Our lines are not neat. We do not shuffle in single file. We run over each other to get down the stairs, we push through the narrow doorways. People try to go back for their bags or their coats or that precious family photo they keep on their desk, but once they are on the stairs, going back up is like swimming against the current. They are dragged backwards, or sideways, or forced to turn around. The current is inexorable. Some of the point-guards forgot their hats. One or two abandoned their posts in favor of survival, and who could blame them? At this point, the floor is shuddering. Plaster is falling on our heads from the ceiling.
When we get outside, we are ushered across the street by those point-guards still in possession of their faculties. I help hurry people out of the building, but I am getting in the way and so I go to join my friends across the street and watch as the brick building dismembers itself. What happened? Is there a fire? An earthquake? Can you imagine? Here, of all places? We never thought it would happen to us.
But it is happening. Certainly, as pieces of the red brick facade fall to the sidewalk, as a part of the ventilation equipment throws itself off the roof and lands not ten feet from where we are standing, it is happening.
The fire truck arrives. They move us back further. We walk up the street and partway across the bridge, standing at the apex of the bridge and watching our workplace destroy itself from within. By now a crowd has formed and the firemen have blocked the traffic so that no one passes the building. We keep our distance as we would from a leper.
Without warning, the building collapses in on itself, like in one of those demolition videos you see on the news. Except this one is not neat. It sprawls across the street where we stood previously. Debris gets tossed into the residential areas. The walkway under the road is plugged up with fallen building pieces. When the dust clears, I can see telephones and computer monitors sticking out, busted, tangled in the brick and plaster in the rubble.
After a three week inspection, we are told that one of the main supports had been eaten away by termites in the sub-basement level, the pressure causing a chain reaction that undermined the rest of the foundation’s integrity. Basically, the building’s knees buckled.
Our office is relocated, we are offered our jobs back if we wish to commute an hour, but most of us turn it down. The money the company loses in the building’s collapse is a pittance compared to their profits, but after they discovered the source of the disaster, some of the people in our workplace sue the company, sue the union. We all get reparations checks, big ones. A year later, a local journalist is doing research and discovers that the company ignored the termite problem in an attempt to cut costs. As a result of this recent scandal, they lost half their customers. In six months, the company is forced to sell, to split the century-old monopoly and hand the pieces to the highest bidder.
Thanks to the reparations checks, and the good fortune to be freed from that job and it’s poorly kept building in one piece, one of my friends decides to finally pursue her career as a federal police officer. Another becomes a body builder while finishing school. A third starts his own business and appoints himself CEO. In three years he is worth ten million dollars and competing with the former pieces of the company he was working for.
July 20, 2010 Exercise
Open an imaginary door. What do you see?
The door is solid metal, without decoration or detail, finished but unadorned. It has a simple handle, a bar of aluminum sticking out and bent at a right angle on the left side about level with my stomach. The handle doesn’t rotate, exists only for leverage, and I use it to pull the door from it’s depressed frame of a similar make. There is a slight resistance, at first, like it is shut from the other side by the force of a vacuum. I apply more force, put my weight into it, and when it gives there is a whoosh of cool air that brushes past me, causing me to shiver involuntarily.
Looking through the open door is like looking through thick, poorly made, or very old, glass. The image is warped, out of proportion, distant, but the cool air blows through it as if it were not a solid wall, as if I could walk through it. The warped image through the apparent wall of glass is velvety black and speckled with lights that sweep and undulate slowly. It reminds me of the sky on a cloudless midnight, of the turbulent sea below a glaring sun. When I reach my hand out to touch the glass, my fingers go numb. It is colder than the breeze, cold as a meat locker, cold as the dead season in the arctic. My heart beats faster, my hands shake. I am underdressed for this, I think. I did not wear the right clothes. But will I ever get another chance? The old man said this was a one-time offer. This is the infomercial from hell.
I am frightened. The first touch numbed my fingers and now I must put my whole body through. I start again with a finger, followed by a hand, then my whole arm. Each time a piece of my body crosses through the woozy, velvet curtain it is like it is removed from my body. My arm is through and I try to wiggle my fingers but cannot feel them, cannot tell if they are moving. I withdraw my arm again. My fingers are like little ice cubes but they are still there, moveable but stiff. Crossing through this curtain is like climbing into a cold pool. It is more difficult one piece at a time. Best to get it over with in one jump. I push the metal door all the way open, take a few steps back to gain some speed, then charge through.
It is exactly like jumping into a cold pool. My chest constricts. I cannot breath. I try to breath anyways and inhale water. I am choking. I am dying.
Then suddenly I am through. It is cold and dark and loud. So loud. I am on my knees. This noise was not on the other side. I cough the water from my lungs but no water comes out. The other side was quiet, calm, but this side is roaring. I look over my shoulder and there is no warped velvet curtain. There is no curtain at all. In it’s place is a spotlight that sweeps side to side. Now to the left, now at me, blinding me, now to the right. I turn back and the spotlight sweeps to either side of me and when the spots fade from my vision I finally discover the source of the noise. There is a crowd below me. This is where the lights came from. It is not a sea, but a sea of people. They are holding glow sticks and lighters and cell phones. They stand below me, packed in tight, screaming, lifting their arms and crying out. I see with the aid of the sweeping spotlight the faces of countless boys and girls, men with children on their shoulders. There are people as far as I can see, the sea spreads to the end of my vision and beyond the horizon, they curve with the earth. I rise from my knees and straighten. I crossed through. I am on a stage. I made it.
July 19, 2010 Exercise
How will you spend this day?
I will spend this day, the day after a long weekend camping at a BMX competition in Cologne, a hot sunny day at the peak of summer, a day where I don’t have to debase myself in front of rude customers at the restaurant, in recovery. Today I have the time for recovery, and I intend to relish it. In fact, it is almost dinner time (barbecued pork ribs marinating in beer and barbecue sauce) and, looking back on the day, I am not dissatisfied with my performance. I visited one friend for the conversation. I retrieved some lost affects from another. I discovered a camping park with a lake fit for swimming, rules that allow open fires, and a surrounding forest riddled with bike trails less than fifteen minutes drive from my house. To some this may sound like a full day and not a day for recovery, but if in recent months I have unveiled a truth it is that twiddling thumbs and wasted days actually deplete the health level of a human being. In fact, a functional convalescence has nothing in common with idleness whatsoever. Among other things, a healthy body and mind need sun and exercise, both mental and physical. My legs have had their share for the day, my skin is still warm from walking outside, and now, though I can already feel the evening drawing my eyelids towards sleep, I exercise my mind by writing. There are many hours yet ahead of me and with the muses on my side and a pen in my hand they will be as full as the hours that came before.
* Explanation: posts whose titles follow the format Endless Inspiration # are for writing practice and contribute to a standing bet I made with this good friend. The prompts will be typed into the top of the post in bold and followed by responses. The prompts are from a book called The Pocket Muse 2: Endless Inspiration for Writers, where the # corresponds to the page number in the book where the prompt can be found. There are 217 pages in the book, most pages have prompts, and the first one is on page 5. The terms of the bet are that we each write 5 prompts per week until the entire book is finished. I do not necessarily intend to do them in order, just to do them all. I will post them relatively soon after I write them. They will be raw, uncut, and unrevised. The point of this exercise is not to attain perfection but to write creatively every single day and to keep each other motivated.
Visit Cynthia’s site and see that she keeps up her end of the bargain. Come back and see that I keep mine.
Nietzsche on Freedom: “First principle: one must need strength, otherwise one will never have it.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
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July 1, 2010 Technology, The Internet
It’s a sad day in Internet history. The Feds shut down Ninjavideo and now I have to go somewhere else to watch seasons of TV shows that are off the air, somewhere else to find out whether a new film is worth buying on DVD. Did you read that right, Mr. Executive? I’m still going to watch your shows and your films somewhere else.
What have the film and television industries got to win from stomping down Internet ‘piracy’? They say they’re protecting their creations but a real artist would never complain about free distribution of their work. Why? It’s free publicity. You say they have “no respect for creativity or innovation” and yet you’re the ones stunting the growth! The artist wins nothing from ending so-called ‘piracy’ and they can’t stop it anyways. When they shut down one site four more jump in to take it’s place.
I’ve said it before: these big industries don’t understand the Basic Mechanics of the Internet and so they shoot themselves in the foot; they try to hold their guts in when their belly has already been sliced open. How juvenile! How insecure! Lashing out against those that want to spread their work is a desperate move, a symptom of a failing industry. I don’t know what they think they’re winning by these reactionary tactics but it’s not money and it’s not fans.