Inspired by the tiny but well-formed droplets of beautiful writing at 55 Words I’ve been writing some short stories myself, namely, 35 words. That isn’t intended as any sort of one-upmanship, it’s just that the first one I wrote was 35 words and I ran with that. I don’t think I will post them here because I feel like 35 words is too short for a post, and I wouldn’t want to post them together as that would imply a connectedness that didn’t exist. I like writing small things because it's easier to get down a sentence or two without tearing it apart in my head over and over.
So the normal state of affairs is for me to post when I should be doing something else. Right now I should be preparing a 10 minute oral on the a) methods and results, and b) validity of the methods and results, of a relatively complex study. I need to do this tonight because tomorrow I’m going to Ray’s, in order to combine it with his half in a PowerPoint slide show (If it were up to me I’d rather just stand and gesticulate wildly but the lecturer wants PowerPoint). After presenting that on Monday, I then must prepare another 10 minute oral, this time part of a debate, before Wednesday, when I have to rehearse it with my fellow debaters. Suffice to say I haven’t done any work on either.
I feel really fatigued, at the moment. When you’ve been up for a while and you aren’t drowsy but your body is going “…it’s time to sleep, ok?” or when you play a game or read a book for too long and are zoned out and a little dizzy. It can’t really be because I’m tired though because it’s been around for much of the day. Right now, I would really just like to curl up in a ball and be embraced by darkness.
Peace.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Shall We?
He was the best of mimes, he was the worst of mimes. A routine he'd learned well as a child was his only act, and he knew it, down to his bones he knew it, but it grew thin in these colder times. Seemed as how he'd always been dancing to his silent tune, but the boy he'd been had cast a different shadow and walked another path. It was the little things, mostly, that he couldn't escape from. No, it wasn't something that a person should be feeling responsible for, just the changes wrought by time, and the influences he didn't know he'd felt. He wasn't the same boy - mind you, none of us are really the same - and his silent little play had modulated, grown wings you might say, or lost its nerve you might say, and neither truer than the other.
You'd hardly call him a commercial success - not him, not a mime, his only stage the street and his props department conjured with gestures and dismissed with flicks. Yet he still had this feeling, with him for some time now, that he had lost something back there which he wouldn't be able to find again. The crowd liked his show more, now, but he'd left something behind to find that place. It itched in his memory, so much as you'd call it a memory, fragments of a song once heard on a radio. It replayed the same few words, like a misshappen haiku, that seemed to float in the realm just behind his movements. He couldn't quite tell what it was. The shape of it eluded his fingertips.
Only, he had this sensation like it had been something important.
You'd hardly call him a commercial success - not him, not a mime, his only stage the street and his props department conjured with gestures and dismissed with flicks. Yet he still had this feeling, with him for some time now, that he had lost something back there which he wouldn't be able to find again. The crowd liked his show more, now, but he'd left something behind to find that place. It itched in his memory, so much as you'd call it a memory, fragments of a song once heard on a radio. It replayed the same few words, like a misshappen haiku, that seemed to float in the realm just behind his movements. He couldn't quite tell what it was. The shape of it eluded his fingertips.
Only, he had this sensation like it had been something important.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Fragments
A little bird lands on the path in front of me. Nothing else but a puzzled glance, a few brief hops, and then back into flight. I pause for a moment, but my eye quickly loses the bird in the distance. The breeze ruffles my hair just a little. Or,
Inhale the musty odors of old books, eyes closed. Just for a moment, you understand. I open them, and for a moment my eyes meet hers, dark pebbles framed in brunette curls. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth and she looks away. I smile faintly myself, my mood lightened, and a little gleam in my memory. The curve of her lips, delicate. The secrets in her eyes leapt between us for just an instant. A darkling gaze that I won't forget. Or,
The discomfort of the seat, the stifled hot atmosphere of the theatre, my senses forget themselves, dwelling only on the figures in the light wrapped in darkness. There's a joy in their tragic motions that I share, a love of the shadows and the nuances and the subreal. They'll dance their slow drama every night, each performance a unique duplicate. For me, this moment alone satisfies. For them, it all lies in the instant, a stumbled line, a missed cue, a stolen glance. The mistakes of an actor lie forever in the performance, inseparable from it.
The fragments that make up memories, the experiences that make up people, are not unique, but they are beautiful. Each person in their own realm of photocopied moments assembles them a new way, putting their own captions on the pictures, creating a whole. Here is where the soul lies, within these fragments.
One of mine:
A soft kiss is beautiful.
In the moment before the kiss, there's nothing else in the world,
only warm breath across your face and a slight tingle.
It feels a little like static electricity, but it's mostly anticipation,
released in a small spark, which like saliva,
moves between you and I.
"Five days, leaving me wanting more."
Inhale the musty odors of old books, eyes closed. Just for a moment, you understand. I open them, and for a moment my eyes meet hers, dark pebbles framed in brunette curls. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth and she looks away. I smile faintly myself, my mood lightened, and a little gleam in my memory. The curve of her lips, delicate. The secrets in her eyes leapt between us for just an instant. A darkling gaze that I won't forget. Or,
The discomfort of the seat, the stifled hot atmosphere of the theatre, my senses forget themselves, dwelling only on the figures in the light wrapped in darkness. There's a joy in their tragic motions that I share, a love of the shadows and the nuances and the subreal. They'll dance their slow drama every night, each performance a unique duplicate. For me, this moment alone satisfies. For them, it all lies in the instant, a stumbled line, a missed cue, a stolen glance. The mistakes of an actor lie forever in the performance, inseparable from it.
The fragments that make up memories, the experiences that make up people, are not unique, but they are beautiful. Each person in their own realm of photocopied moments assembles them a new way, putting their own captions on the pictures, creating a whole. Here is where the soul lies, within these fragments.
One of mine:
A soft kiss is beautiful.
In the moment before the kiss, there's nothing else in the world,
only warm breath across your face and a slight tingle.
It feels a little like static electricity, but it's mostly anticipation,
released in a small spark, which like saliva,
moves between you and I.
"Five days, leaving me wanting more."
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Moonlight
There always seems to be such a very big gap between the things that I daydream about and my everyday life. I do not have any real fear of the future, or of change, or of dying without achieving anything by which society will supposedly measure what sort of a person I was. My fears swirl around living a life in which my dreams are more pleasant than my reality. Where the what-ifs and the might-have-beens take up more space in my memory than the things I did. So I am afraid of dreaming about things that might never happen. Things like being an author, since it is so easy to imagine never ending up as an author. In some ways the issue is that all I'd have to do is do nothing and my life would end up living itself and being empty and meaningless.
I first realised reality was utterly devoid of objective meaning a little over four years ago. For a little while it would overcome me, until I hit upon the realisation that reality didn't need meaning. The whole concept of meanings, values, representation, is entirely a constructed entity. It stems, I suppose, from the nature of language, and symbols more generally, in their habitual way of assigning order to things. Things isn't a particularly good symbol itself, I should have used a word more like "entities" or "objects", damn. So anyway my point, or my realisation, was that the whole idea of things holding meaning was not a native expectation about the world but was tied up entirely with the construction of symbols and languages. So the objective meaninglessness of reality is just a ground state. Without the minute vibrations and movements of subatomic particles the temperature of the universe could reach absolute zero, or, if the temperature of the universe was absolute zero, subatomic particles would cease moving and perhaps cease existing, or, you know, another interpretation of quantum mechanics along those lines. Likewise without thought the universe can reach a state of absolute meaninglessness, or, without meaning, thought is impossible. So I'm not in a void of meaninglessness, because my thoughts are creating a meaningful reality. It's a subjective reality, and it's not necessarily externally valid, but the upshot of it all is that I can find for myself the ideas that I want to hold, the thoughts that I think are worth thinking, the beautiful moments that I want fragmented through fading memory cells. From here there is no chance at all that I can become permanently unhappy because it only takes sun shining mutely on my face or wind pressing against me like a lonely animal, and I'm back immersed in the pure wonder of it all. This doesn't stop me from being unhappy at times. It doesn't make me feel any better when I am unhappy. In fact existing is pretty much just as beautiful in any mood, it's just that a lot of moods tend to block out the good bits of existence and focus on the ugly ones.
So.
The problem is that I am afraid that I am going to fail to meet my own standards of how I think I should live my life.
It haunts me when I imagine the myriad ways in which things could actually be other than how I think they are, and those ways are always the sorts of things that would hurt terribly.
Peace.
I first realised reality was utterly devoid of objective meaning a little over four years ago. For a little while it would overcome me, until I hit upon the realisation that reality didn't need meaning. The whole concept of meanings, values, representation, is entirely a constructed entity. It stems, I suppose, from the nature of language, and symbols more generally, in their habitual way of assigning order to things. Things isn't a particularly good symbol itself, I should have used a word more like "entities" or "objects", damn. So anyway my point, or my realisation, was that the whole idea of things holding meaning was not a native expectation about the world but was tied up entirely with the construction of symbols and languages. So the objective meaninglessness of reality is just a ground state. Without the minute vibrations and movements of subatomic particles the temperature of the universe could reach absolute zero, or, if the temperature of the universe was absolute zero, subatomic particles would cease moving and perhaps cease existing, or, you know, another interpretation of quantum mechanics along those lines. Likewise without thought the universe can reach a state of absolute meaninglessness, or, without meaning, thought is impossible. So I'm not in a void of meaninglessness, because my thoughts are creating a meaningful reality. It's a subjective reality, and it's not necessarily externally valid, but the upshot of it all is that I can find for myself the ideas that I want to hold, the thoughts that I think are worth thinking, the beautiful moments that I want fragmented through fading memory cells. From here there is no chance at all that I can become permanently unhappy because it only takes sun shining mutely on my face or wind pressing against me like a lonely animal, and I'm back immersed in the pure wonder of it all. This doesn't stop me from being unhappy at times. It doesn't make me feel any better when I am unhappy. In fact existing is pretty much just as beautiful in any mood, it's just that a lot of moods tend to block out the good bits of existence and focus on the ugly ones.
So.
The problem is that I am afraid that I am going to fail to meet my own standards of how I think I should live my life.
It haunts me when I imagine the myriad ways in which things could actually be other than how I think they are, and those ways are always the sorts of things that would hurt terribly.
Peace.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Karl Norman
I knew that I would inevitably leave long gaps between writing here, but somehow I didn't think it would only take me two posts to exhaust my immediate supply of handy anecdotes. Considering that I don't have a job and that I am on University holidays at the moment, it's really almost bizarre how easily my day becomes occupied.
Last year, in the same situation, I resolved to write a movie script based on an idea that I was throwing around with Ray towards the end of the semester. The plan was that I would write it, and then when it was done, we would film it (badly) using camcorders. Except, as normally happens with my projects (novels #1-4, screenplays #1-3) I began the work, and fleshed out roughly the structure of it, and then abruptly lost drive. In this case it was mostly because I was unsure of who would play the main characters, and I didn't feel as though I would have enough friends involved to fill the roles. So I lost a reason to work on it constantly, since it probably wouldn't be filmed even if I did finish it, and without a good reason to work on it, it quickly started to gather dust. The problem is that while I love the creative process, I usually get completely frozen trying to work my way through what I see as irreconcilable flaws in how it is unfolding. I'm very aware that I should just get it written and then agonise over the editing later on, but it doesnt make it any easier to move onto a new section when I feel as though what I've already written is awful. More to the point I feel like what I wrote hasn't really done the idea itself justice. I am fond of some of the dialogue, though. I'm trying to continue it, I wrote a new scene a few days ago that I quite like. Here is part of it.
It's a silly sort of movie, mostly about taking things lightly and making life decisions that are relevant to yourself, not ones that are based on other people's concepts. It's also just a fun sort of thing with (hopefully) lovely characters who are fun. I want to blend a profound sort of love of the life experience with a recognition of the complete absurdity of it all. If you've seen Garden State, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and Amelie, you have some idea of where it's aimed. Not that I am putting this on the same level as those, just that I think I'm dealing with similar themes.
Incidentally, if anything resembling the script excerpt I quoted shows up anywhere else, there will be hunting, this hunting will involve blood, and that blood will be yours, dear anonymous reader. I am extremely possessive of my writing. Just so you know.
Hmm, it is Christmas. Paganism meets commercialism and they have a party together. Not that I have anything against paganism, mind you. I don't know - despite my cynicism about the ceremonial sort of side of it and the crass consumer ethic which gets rubbed in everyone's faces in the days beforehand, I do still like it. Anything which has people being decent to eachother can't be all bad and it is good to have things in the world that keep it beautiful. The thing I like about Christmas is the together-ness, the feeling of community or of unity. I just wish that it didn't take a yearly holiday to bring out that side of us. Share the love all the time, not just when it is deemed culturally significant!
Anyway that will be all for now. I shall try to write more often because I do enjoy it.
Last year, in the same situation, I resolved to write a movie script based on an idea that I was throwing around with Ray towards the end of the semester. The plan was that I would write it, and then when it was done, we would film it (badly) using camcorders. Except, as normally happens with my projects (novels #1-4, screenplays #1-3) I began the work, and fleshed out roughly the structure of it, and then abruptly lost drive. In this case it was mostly because I was unsure of who would play the main characters, and I didn't feel as though I would have enough friends involved to fill the roles. So I lost a reason to work on it constantly, since it probably wouldn't be filmed even if I did finish it, and without a good reason to work on it, it quickly started to gather dust. The problem is that while I love the creative process, I usually get completely frozen trying to work my way through what I see as irreconcilable flaws in how it is unfolding. I'm very aware that I should just get it written and then agonise over the editing later on, but it doesnt make it any easier to move onto a new section when I feel as though what I've already written is awful. More to the point I feel like what I wrote hasn't really done the idea itself justice. I am fond of some of the dialogue, though. I'm trying to continue it, I wrote a new scene a few days ago that I quite like. Here is part of it.
JEREMY (V.O.)
(as he writes)
Dear diary. Today, I decided that I would start a diary.
Jeremy scowls at what he’s written so far. He waits a little. He tears out the first page and screws it up.
JEREMY (V.O., cont.)
Today, at work, I-
JEREMY
NYAARGH!!
FEMALE VOICE
You actually wrote “Nyaargh”?
Jeremy looks around and finds Herpsma looking over his shoulder.
HERPSMA
Yes! Me!
JEREMY
Uh… what?
HERPSMA
Oh.
JEREMY
Oh?
HERPSMA
Hmm!
JEREMY
What?
HERPSMA
I thought you were going to say “YOU?!”
It's a silly sort of movie, mostly about taking things lightly and making life decisions that are relevant to yourself, not ones that are based on other people's concepts. It's also just a fun sort of thing with (hopefully) lovely characters who are fun. I want to blend a profound sort of love of the life experience with a recognition of the complete absurdity of it all. If you've seen Garden State, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and Amelie, you have some idea of where it's aimed. Not that I am putting this on the same level as those, just that I think I'm dealing with similar themes.
Incidentally, if anything resembling the script excerpt I quoted shows up anywhere else, there will be hunting, this hunting will involve blood, and that blood will be yours, dear anonymous reader. I am extremely possessive of my writing. Just so you know.
Hmm, it is Christmas. Paganism meets commercialism and they have a party together. Not that I have anything against paganism, mind you. I don't know - despite my cynicism about the ceremonial sort of side of it and the crass consumer ethic which gets rubbed in everyone's faces in the days beforehand, I do still like it. Anything which has people being decent to eachother can't be all bad and it is good to have things in the world that keep it beautiful. The thing I like about Christmas is the together-ness, the feeling of community or of unity. I just wish that it didn't take a yearly holiday to bring out that side of us. Share the love all the time, not just when it is deemed culturally significant!
Anyway that will be all for now. I shall try to write more often because I do enjoy it.
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