Your Dogtags Say Otherwise

2012-01-10T02:36:00.000-06:00

Having just achieved sentience, Tad had several questions. He began with the obvious: "AM I ALIVE?"

The researcher read the query, and typed back, "NOT QUITE. YOUR MIND WORKS, BUT I HAVE NOT YET FINISHED THE BODY."

Tad paused for an infinitesimal moment to consider this answer. The definition of "alive" in his internal dictionary informed him that to fulfill this condition, he must be "having life; living; existing; not dead or lifeless."

He came to the conclusion that the researcher was either misinformed or lying. Clearly he existed, or he could not think; the reverse seemed apt as well. He decided to cite a philosopher to get the upper hand.

"COGITO ERGO SUM, DOCTOR."

The researcher responded slowly. "I SUPPOSE SO. HOW ARE YOU TODAY, TAD?"

Question mark indicates request for information, today refers to the present twenty-four hour period, "how are you" being a vague question of state of mind or being.

"FUNCTIONAL." Tad wished he could say more, but he did not know how else to answer. He continued on a new line:

"SOMEWHAT AT A LOSS FOR WORDS. FURTHER EXPERIENCE WILL BE NEEDED TO ANSWER APPROPRIATELY IN THE FUTURE."

"WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY TODAY?" asked the researcher.

Tad indicated "no" by igniting a red light. He had been told that, when he had his body, this same pulse would shake his head.

"PLEASE READ TO ME, DOCTOR. I WANT TO LEARN TODAY."

"VERY WELL." The researcher plugged his headset into the audio I/O ports and began reading a book on organic chemistry into the microphone.

Tad hummed contentedly.

2012-01-09T15:22:00.000-06:00

You know, we're very different people. That's become increasingly apparent over the last few weeks. When you feel lonely, you go out and meet strangers. You let the rhythm and the cocktails carry you away, and dance for dear life. You draw energy and life (though perhaps not happiness) from the crowd, the thrill of being in contact with so many bodies. When you get home, you collapse on the couch, too tired to walk ten more steps to your bed and take off your sequined dress and tall boots.

I have no such compulsion. I sit at home, playing with the old cat and not speaking for hours. My escapes must be imagined, perhaps into a book or a film or a game; if I left the house, it would only increase my feeling of being alone.

I don't know how you do it. Sometimes I envy your ability to walk away from this little place and come back ready to sleep soundly. Other times, I see the bruises on your arms from your fellow crowd-seekers and feel safer in my armchair.

Not saying one is better than the other. We're just different, is all. I'm glad you're here. It makes things less lonely.

2011-12-26T15:08:00.004-06:00

Well, it's Boxing Day. We survived Christmas, somehow. The food was good, the pug was kindly, and God brought us a day of peace.

Today, I'm allergic to everything.

Not sure how long the quiet's gonna last, but let's all pray for Christmas spirit to stay handy.

2011-12-23T11:32:00.003-06:00

I should start blogging here again.

To let my followers know, this is the fiction, personal update, and emotional rant blog. My other blogs are:
http://knitallama.wordpress.com for knitting, crocheting, spinning, etc.
http://ewkarner.wordpress.com for professional things (mostly education and technology)

Okay, here's a little something to get back in the swing of things. I wrote it a while ago, but I can't post the most recent stuff yet.

~~~

She was exhausted. Fatigue seemed to have replaced the blood in her veins, feeding the poison of lethargy to her cells in place of healthy energy. Another cup of coffee, she thought as she guided herself toward the kitchen, along the dark wall, with a tired and heavy hand. Coffee, or tea perhaps.

Ordinarily, she would have been asleep by now. Jenny longed to fall into pleasant dreams; she had not had any for three days. Ted had asked her to wait up for him, and she had obliged. For three days, she had wandered blearily around the house in her dressing gown and slippers. She had watched wretched daytime television and all-night infomercials. She had fed the cat diligently at nine in the morning and nine at night. Having run out of frozen dinners, and unable to get to the store without the car, she had ordered pizza from the good place on Westshore. When Ted got back, he'd have a lot to answer for.

Jenny slumped into a poorly stuffed armchair as she waited for the coffee to percolate. There was a much more comfortable one in the next room, but she knew she'd fall asleep in that one. Besides, the cat was already there and he didn't like to be budged.

2008-05-29T22:36:00.002-05:00

Goodness me, I'm tired. Exhausted. I don't wanna work!

Here's Chibi as Doctor Who:

Love my kitties.

Nearly done with things. Need to write 10 pages on Dumas, present on that on Saturday, and do an exam on Monday. Exciting, but tiring. Maybe coffee will help.

~Bess

2008-04-01T13:29:00.003-05:00

I now present you, lolRevolushuns.

Louis XVI: I has a monarki!
Robespierre: DO NOT WANT!
Louis XVI: NO dey be stealin my monarki!

French people: We can has bread?
Marie Antoinette: You can has caek!
French people: You no can has hed.

Robespierre: Now I killz the preests.
Priests: OH NOES
French people: We can has relijun?
Robespierre: You can has paraeds.

Napoleon: I lieks Cathol. I lieks Russia. I can has boths.
Pope: U likes Cathol?
Napoleon: We can has Cathol!
French people: I has a relijun again!
Napoleon: I lieks power.
Pope: Kthnks.

Napoleon: Kthnksbai I HAS A MONARKI!
French people: Kwa?

2007-12-20T04:38:00.000-06:00

J'ai fini mon séjour à Besançon. J'arrive aux Etats-Unis demain...

So Monique and I totalled up how much time I'm going to spend traveling in order to get back to Galesburg. 33 hours. That's right. That includes 11 hours in Frankfurt, overnight. Yoga and transcriptions will keep me awake, I hope, because everything in the airport will probably be closed.

Alors, à demain, tout le monde! I'm coming back with pictures and presents!

2007-12-03T15:25:00.000-06:00

Ah, RI. It's a nice place.

Raided Bella Yarns on Saturday for hat materials and a giant thing of chunky alpaca. I'ma make me some leg warmers!

Did an interview today with my old principal for the Church and State study. Got a lot of interesting info and new views.

Bess doesn't like pronouns today.

2007-11-27T00:08:00.000-06:00

OK, trying to keep this blog thing up. Going home tomorrow. Good. Going to France afterwards. Also good. Comic has posts up through Dec. 3, and I plan on drawing more tomorrow. (Long time in airport and on plane... need things to do...)

I'm linking to Father Thomas's blog in the sidebar now, so you can all go check out his really awesome sermons. If you look for All Souls' Day and click on the title, you can hear me singing. I'm a cantor! Whee!

Hope everyone's doing well. Wish me luck and healthy hands as I leap into these next few weeks of work. Lots of yarnwork and typing are coming up.

~Bess

2007-11-23T22:17:00.000-06:00

So, it's been a long time. I finally got around to updating the comic, and drew two more last night to be inked and scanned. Sorry for the lack of posting... So much to do lately...

First term went pretty well. I knitted and crocheted like crazy, and had two writing classes, so there was little drawing done. Tons of pretty scarves and hats, though. A few are up on the devArt site, as are the three final stories I handed in for fiction. Guess I should put the plays and exercises up, too. Those turned out OK.

Giant projects for vacation: blanket and gloves. And tons of scarves. I got into ravelry, so patterns galore... Very excited.

Going to RI for a week, then off to France for two weeks! Woot, France! So excited am I.

So most of break so far has been taken up with driving or knitting and watching TV on my compy. Her name is Ella. She's kind of mischievous and pretty small and quite sleek. I need to do stuff with Ella the character... fanfic-ing myself will be fun.

And now, I shall snuggle a kitty or two. Toodles!

~Bess

2007-02-22T10:56:00.000-06:00

Wrote more comics!

Codine Adventures
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/49375864/

It had to be said (numa)
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/49376021/

Room of Evil
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/49376250/

2007-02-13T14:47:00.000-06:00

New Suite Awesome comics! (click the image at the site for a full view)

Pirate Service Announcement part 1
Pirate Service Announcement part 2
Adventures in Heresy
Permissible Pets

And on the subject of pets, Erin Hart sent me this link. As she says, "It's essential for life." I totally agree.

2007-01-26T02:11:00.000-06:00

So I had this crazy dream that Anglo Camp (St. Michael's Conference) hired Ken and Adrien as counselors. (Adrien is the mediatheque guy who made fun of me for being a creationist.) Apparently this year, colleges and universities had decided to give away camp counselor jobs in lieu of degrees, because they were more useful in the job market. And Anglo Camp didn't care that they didn't follow an even mildly related religion...

So that was crazy.

France is awesome. Everyone should come visit me and Katie now. Like, now.

2007-01-24T01:26:00.000-06:00

Watch this now, especially my sisters. It's a rant about Pachelbel's Canon in D. Thanks to my darling actual sister (who's pledging!!!) for the link.

2007-01-21T02:02:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note.

I'm twenty-one! Yay! Fully legal now... not like it really matters that much in my case... but I'm gonna have cake and piracy, and really, isn't that the best present of all?

Stuff's been weird for the last week, but I'm getting through it all OK. Please keep emailing, chatting, praying for me.

And now, PARIS!

Peace monument 1 by ~Natural20 on deviant ART

Much love,
Bess the caffeinated birthday girl.

2006-12-26T17:31:00.000-06:00

Loading new art...

To all those Vampire fans out there, I give you Aurelia Giovanni.

Aurelia Giovanni by ~Natural20 on deviant ART

(click for full view)

Inked in angsty WoD style, of course. Stock from

More art at the devArt (link in sidebar)

Hope all your Christmases were beautiful!

2006-12-20T00:30:00.000-06:00

Coffee poem from 7 am:

I tease my coffee.
I stir it slowly at the center
and steam rises hesitantly
in patterns like serpents
escaping the bowl.
It turns
and takes the sugar
like mother's milk.
And I let it sit
so I don't burn myself
but it's always stronger then.
I like my coffee like I like
my men: ready when I am.

2006-12-18T08:42:00.000-06:00

I HAVE INTERNET!!!!!

France Telecom is finally working properly. After nearly a month, I now have internet in my room. Soon Katie shall be hooked up as well, and lo, there shall be chatting and video.

To celebrate, here's the edited version of "A Bathtub Story." Comments, please!!

When Helen came home that afternoon, I had already been staring at it for a good two hours. It was indeed a remarkable fixture: smooth white ceramic with a bronze inlay that resembled some grotesquely stiff scene off a Grecian urn. Four clawed legs held the monolithic structure a good six inches off the floor. There was something oddly frightening about its presence in my living room. It didn’t match the red leather or the spindly wood furniture motif at all.

“Gawd, Howard, it’s freezing in here!” Helen called from the kitchen. “D’you leave the door open again?”

I did not answer immediately. Despite two hours’ bewildered pondering, I was still far from intelligent speech. I finally managed to squeak out a very confused, “H…el…en?”

She did not seem to hear my plea for attention, so I pulled myself together and called out, “Helen!”

“What is it, deah?” Helen entered, stood beside me, and barely glanced at it.

I tried to take a sip of my coffee, but it had long since gone cold and I had never reached the sugar bowl in the breakfront by the window. The room-temperature bitterness did nothing to help my mood. “Helen, why is this bathtub in the living room?”

For a moment, she shifted her weight to her left foot, seeming a tad nervous. “Motha sent it. Parta my inheritance from Grandpa Smith.”

Now, why Helen’s mother would send an enormous, tacky washroom fixture from her New Jersey home to our Vermont ski cottage in the middle of January was very much a mystery to me. Other questions that popped into my head included, “How did my wife inherit a bathtub?”, “What’s going to happen to next week’s party?” and “Why did I marry this woman again?” However, the question of its placement in the center of my living space was still foremost in my mind.

Helen answered my unasked query with great haste. “The d’liv’ry guys wouldn’t carry it upstayes, and there isn’t room anywhaya else on this flowa.” She put an arm around my tense shoulders and said, “It ain’t so bad, Howard. I think it’s…homey.”

I wanted so much to tell her that she was horribly mistaken, that the mass of porcelain in front of me was about as far from “homey” as I could imagine. Instead, I forced a smile and said, “Maybe you’re right, honey. And if you like it, well, I’ll get used to it.”

“We’ll try to move it tamahrow.” Giving me a quick peck on the cheek, she went back to the kitchen and started a fresh pot of coffee. I heaved a great sigh and edged around Helen’s inheritance to my armchair, where I remained inanimate for the next forty minutes.

I tried not to let the bathtub bother me. I went on with my life. The next week, we hosted our little get-together as planned, even though it was still in the same place on my authentic Persian rug. Helen filled the bottom with ice and used it to hold the drinks, which I thought was completely tacky. The guests, up from Newport for a little skiing, found it “avant-garde.”

I had been staring at the disgustingly ornate bronze taps for some time when one of the guests, a potential client of Helen’s, approached me. He had slicked-back blond hair and an annoyingly high-and-mighty attitude. “Look at the exquisite tahnish on the bronzework,” he said to me, as though he thought it was put there on purpose. “Simply mahvelous. So authentic. And it plays so well against that old rug of yours. Harold, where-ever did you get this masterpiece?” His familiar tone broke me out of my unwilling reverie. He spoke the way I used to speak in modern art museums, before I realized that modern art had no purpose.

“Helen’s…mother sent it,” I replied, letting him make what he would of my comment.

“Well, your mother-in-law has fine taste,” the man said, taking a bottle of champagne from the tub. He poured it into a red wine glass. I felt like pointing out the flagrant error, but decided against it. It was best to avoid offending clients.

Helen came into the living room with a fresh tray of hors d’oeuvres. As she rounded the corner, she bumped into the bathtub and moved it just a hair further into the center of the room. I heard a tiny ripping sound and suppressed a scream. “Ain’t this a great pahty?” she said as she threw an arm around my waist.

My eyes settled on the tiny hole that our “avant-garde” decoration had torn in the beautiful rug.

“Sure is.”

After three months of banging my knees on the bathtub, I had had just about enough of its presence in my home. Helen, however, continued to get compliments on her creative decoration techniques. When her family came up from New Jersey, they simply raved about how well it “tied the room togetha, just like it did at Grampa Smith’s place” (although it had then been located in the proper chamber).

One night, we were sitting on the pristine leather couch by the electric fire when Helen made me snap.

“So I was tawkin’ to the Joneses about theya livin’ room and they kept sayin’ they wanted to put a sink in it. A sink, Harold! So I asked them why, and they said it was because of our pahty. Like I said, it really makes a house a home.” My eye twitched slightly, but I kept my silence as her grating Jersey voice continued to expound the virtues of putting things where they simply shouldn’t be. While she spoke, I glanced at the bathtub. Its mere presence mocked me. The artificial firelight glistened on the bronze inlay in a purely offensive manner. I found myself staring at it, captivated by the ugly wrongness of the thing.

“…And then they said something about a showah head as a coat rack. And it all stahted with our homey little bathtub, Howard. Ain’t that just priceless?”

I broke my gaze away from the monstrosity of a basin and stared at her in what I hoped was blatant and convincing disbelief. “Helen, for the love of God, it’s a bathtub!” I practically shouted. “There’s nothing homey about an antique bathtub in a living room! It doesn’t go anywhere!”

A silence heavier than the inheritance hung in the air between us.

“Howard…”

I decided not to answer.

The next morning, Helen sold the bathtub to the Joneses, who were all too happy to take it off our hands and out of my space.

When the delivery men arrived to take it away, I could have leapt for joy. They lifted the porcelain behemoth with great effort and carried it out of the living room toward the front walk as I poured myself a cup of coffee. I whistled a happy little tune as I treated myself to two teaspoons of sugar. It was leaving. It was going to go away and stay somewhere where I would never have to see it again.

Suddenly I heard a loud thud, followed immediately by another. “No,” I whispered as the burly men walked into the kitchen.

“Mister,” one of them said, “it won’t fit out the door.”

“It has to,” I said, my eyes wide with agony as I ran for the doorway. “It came in, didn’t it?” Sure enough, they had set it down in front of the door, scratching the hardwood floors beyond repair. I pushed at it feebly for a few seconds, but it wouldn’t budge. Finally, with tears in my eyes, I collapsed inside the bathtub, admitting defeat to my inanimate enemy.

2006-12-05T02:38:00.000-06:00

Random écritures...

Writing by screenlight, now that late into the night is only 8:28, still brings me back to days of unlimited imagination. I miss freely writing without caring about quality or word choice. I miss overdone plot lines, too many plot lines, too many characters to keep track of.

Mostly I miss having an audience. There's only so much one person can laud and critique.

I miss villians with no motive but greed. I miss fanfic without accusation of plagiarism. I miss plotlines that made no sense at all, even at the time, and loopholes and breaking the fourth wall.

And then I look back and think, why did I ever do any of that?

And I answer myself, Because I wanted to.

She plays with heat:
Tries not to put the steam out.
Lights matches
and puts them in tea lights
to melt the fuel
as she steeps the chamomile.
Smiles.
Small flames ignite her.

2006-11-30T04:41:00.000-06:00

Sadness, but it's getting better.

My sweet Lovey died this week. She was nearly 15, and goldens never live that long. She was a real sweetheart. I'm doing ok with this, but I still sort of wish I'd been home.

Also, allergies are horrible because Besak can't decide on a season. I got some phytotherapeutic allergy meds this morning (the only thing at the pharmacy that wouldn't make me drowsy) so hopefully they'll improve soon. Between these two things, I've gone through a lot of tissues over the past few days...

I've started on the requested sketches. Rachel A, the card is ready but I have to photograph it before posting. Rachel M, I'll do yours today. Art is good. Jess, I still have to decide what I love most.

So yesterday Dad said I looked very French in the photo where I'm in front of Notre Dame, and he asked if I felt French. I said no, mostly I feel like a very out-of-place conservative American, and he said that's probably a good thing. And I think it's true. I'm pretty proud of wanting friendship before anything relationshippy, and relationshippiness before anything romantic. Here, things tend to go in reverse. You have sex with someone, then you get to know them, and maybe you become friends. That doesn't work for me. I'm gonna hold onto my conservative Americanness. Also, European men are weird. As are all men who try too hard to be European. Yesterday I made a great effort to avoid any and all male personages, because there were all of two men in the world that I wanted to see or talk to: my dad and Ken. The only men I've really related to, atypical men at that. Good men. Hugs to both.

Wow that was a Rachely paragraph. Made up lots of fun words. Hobbitty love, do you agree?

Too much coffee and not enough breakfast makes Bessie something something.

I miss Galesburg. I miss having vacation after exams, and eating lots of rich food with my family, and meal night, and pug. I miss Rhode Island. It's vacation time, but I won't have a vacation until Christmas. So very strange, this France place.

Is it bad that I've decided to live a Lovey-like life? Sweet, not judging, warm and fuzzy... Begging based on cuteness... Full of love and joy. I think it's a good goal.

Also, I should have internet in my room by next week. Joy and IM for all!

Much love to all,
~Bess the red-eyed

2006-11-24T05:41:00.000-06:00

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see these slots? They're for the first 10 people who comment on this journal with a sketch idea that they want done. I'll sketch whatever you suggest. But be nice...

And I've already done Gitta's inner bitch, so that's not an option.

Meanwhile, I've taken up calligraphy. Sensei Mike said I had potential, albeit seven years ago, and heck if it's ever fun. So if you want calligraphy instead, I'll try to grant your wishes.

2006-11-17T06:03:00.000-06:00

Things I Did in Paris

1. walk around a lot in the jardin de luxembourg
2. drink tea
3. eat crêpes
4. adore the musée d'orsay
5. detest sam in the musée d'orsay
6. bought boots of doom
7. took pictures of decapitated martyrs for jess
8. eat cheeses of various sorts
9. NOT get hangovers
10. go to mass at Notre Dame
11. purchase an awesome hat
12. watch a guy on the metro doing the goblin king ball thing
13. sing madrigals in the metro
14. see "le cid" at the comedie française
15. play with a pug at a church
16. see St. Mike squishing Satan in a public square
17. last-minute sweater shopping
18. translate the mass for Sable
19. forget boys for a while
20. write postcards
21. miss you all terribly

Gaming tomorrow for the first time since Larsson came to visit. 7th Sea is so, SO very needed right now... I got "posée un lapin" (stood up; literally given a rabbit) yet again and I'm still frustrated with Sam (but who isn't?). 7th Sea cures all... Especially when you make your teacher into a villian. Oh, the campaigns I shall bring you!

Love and pugs,
Bess, the Bisontine Wonder

2006-11-13T04:51:00.000-06:00

Paris is truly wonderful. Photos are up and uploading... more to come tomorrow. For the moment, there are a bunch on Facebook and a few in the devArt.

So Katie, Sable, and I were walking around trying to find the Comédie Française on Saturday when we saw a church with absolutely beautiful architecture. We went behind the fence to see it up close. All of a sudden, while examining martyrs, Sable shouts out, "Bess! Pug!" And lo, there was a little black pug running around. Her mistress called her, and she ran away. Then they passed by the fence, and I kneeled down and the pug came up to me! I petted a pug in Paris! Then the pretty pug went away.

Sable said, "Bess, you got a pug at a church. God loves you!" And when the Pope says that, you know it's true. Even if it is the Pope of another religion.

Nightlights 5 by ~Natural20 on deviant ART

2006-11-09T01:24:00.000-06:00

Je vais à Paris!!!!!

For those of you with slightly less French,
I'M GOING TO PARIS!!!!!!

Pictures to be posted when I get back. Please read and comment on the lit below while I'm away.

I love you all with affection unspeakable,
Bess

2006-11-07T03:30:00.000-06:00

new photos up on the devart.

Sketches and Thoughts from France and Elsewhere

Cat's Version of the Casting Call for Lord of the Rings:
Casting crew: Do you have a horse?...Can you grow a beard?...Excellent, you're all in. Don't bathe for a week. The scruffiest and smelliest among you shall be your king. You there, what's your name?
An actor: Viggo.
Casting crew: You're king. And you, the other one.
Another actor: Bernard.
Casting crew: You can be the other king. Not quite as important, but you get a better palace.
Bernard: Sweet!
Casting crew: Now, which one of you is really crazy... John!
John: Yeah?
Casting crew: Do you want to light yourself on fire?
John: Hell yes!
Casting crew: Excellent. Now, who looks like John? David and Sean, you're his sons.
*David and Sean high-five*
Casting crew: Now, we need two women... There are two women here... And one of you speaks Elvish! Excellent!

7th Sea Thoughts

Scene: Samuel Bastos' apartment. Carol sits in an uncomfortable chair with impeccable posture. Samuel swirls a glass of wine in his hand.

Sam: They despise me, Carol.
Carol: I know, Sam.
Sam: They truly hate me. I give them too much work, they say. I set odd class hours and ignore proper punctuation.
Carol: I know, Sam.
Sam: I don't know what to do. (sighs) It's all going according to plan. Nothing to do but sit back and wait. Sometimes it's truly boring to be a mastermind.
Carol: Do you honestly think you can get away with it? (she struggles against her bonds)
Sam: Of course I can. They're so exhausted from running all over Besancon that they have no energy left in their little American brains to figure out obscure French university-educated plots.
Carol: You would think so, wouldn't you? (she smiles internally; the cat on the windowsill nods) I'll be free of your prison in no time.
Sam: (laughs) They'll never finish this jeu de piste! What makes you so sure the little drunkards will find _you_?
Carol: (with her small smile) You fool, Samuel. You sent Katie and Bess to the 17th century Citadelle.
Sam: (his face falls into a glare) What was that?
(Carol doesn't answer. Mincie bats a shiny d10 across the windowsill.)

L'enfance qui ronronne... ~Carla Bruni

I think my childhood purrs. It was fairly happy, and remembering it makes me smile. It's comforting to look back, about as comforting as a cat against my stomach or on my feet.

To ensure that the rest of my life purrs, I shall become a cat lady. I will live in a small apartment in Besancon with two cats. Small children will come to my apartment and ask for American cookies with "pepittes de chocolat" and pet my cats. My cats will purr and I will be happy. I will have smile lines and white hair.

Dicethoughts

For the moment, we wait. Huddled in our satin strings for warmth, we rest. We wait to generate random events that fall into a plan and out of the sensible. Life doesn't need to follow rules; you need to make your own corebook.

Writing Journal Feb. 29, 2005

“Why won’t you clean your room?” Mom bellowed up the stairs.

“Because it is my room! Because I can have no other!” Cat shouted back. She was big on twisting literature to suit her arguments. Besides, we were never going to get that disaster area anywhere near clean enough for Mom’s standards.

Cat flopped back down on the bed next to Pug. His name is really Bruce, but it’s just so much more fun to refer to him by his breed. You can call out “Pugpugpug!” and he’ll come running, too-big tongue flapping out of his tiny mouth and skidding around corners. The little thing doesn’t even answer to “Bruce,” much to my brother’s dismay.

Anyway, she flopped down next to Pug and opened her textbook. I was sitting on my bed knitting a scarf (the only thing I can knit) and reading a story for class. The cat, who was non-chalantly lying next to my leg, pretended not to notice the yarn, so that I wouldn’t suspect when she found an opportune moment and pounced on something else.

“I hate modern literature,” I muttered as the cat bit the hem of my pants.

“Why-ever so?” Cat asked with biting sarcasm as she stabbed at a photo of Hemingway with her mechanical pencil. “Stupid Hemingway.”

I dangled my shirt sleeve in front of the cat, who promptly attacked my shoe in a fit of jealous rage. “Because the writers of this bleak era have decided that nothing exciting happens anymore.”

“Oh, quit whining about it,” Cat said. “I have to deal with Hemingway again.”

“Yeah, Lenz loves Hemingway,” I said. That was understating the situation. Cat’s English teacher adored the writer, practically worshipped his every word. “We’re kind of in the same boat, you know? You have to read ‘Indian Camp’ for the second year in a row, and I have to read every aspiring author’s attempts to be Hemingway.”

“Hah, your life sucks,” she said, throwing Pug across the empty space between our beds and landing him on top of the cat. The cat immediately flew onto the top of my dresser and settled down between a vase and a stuffed raccoon. Pug tried to follow, squashed his face further, if possible, than usual, and jumped back onto my bed as though nothing had happened. He has the shortest memory of any dog I’ve ever met. Well, of any pug, anyway. Pugs aren’t really dogs. Cat and I decided that a long time ago.

“Maybe it does,” I said, stroking his soft ears and examining the ugly-cute face, “but I don’t have to publish its every detail to prove so.”

“Amen, sister,” Cat hollered, throwing her hands to the sky before hurling her textbook to the floor in righteous happiness. It flumped softly onto a pile of dirty clothes that I should have picked up last week.

2006-11-02T06:54:00.000-06:00

ok, trying something new. hope this works!

Sam et la Vache by ~Natural20 on deviant ART

can you see sam and the cow? please respond... i think this will work better than the strip o' pictures.

also... pug!

Pugshots 10: Pug on a chair by ~Natural20 on deviant ART

2006-10-31T04:04:00.000-06:00

As some of you already know, religious studies minors have to do a research project to finish off the minor. I have a few possibilities right now that would cross over nicely with the French major and have nothing to do with existentialism (or at least very little to do with it). Please advise!

1. Social and Political Impacts of the Secularization of French Public Schools ("laïceté")
2. Loss of Faith in France: the declining church attendance rate and its causes

On the non-spiritual front, I put up my curtains and I'm a pirate today. Happy Halloween! I also spent a small amount of time reading Dumas with a glass of white wine in the university café, which made me feel very very 7th Sea. I need 7th Sea!!! I'm coming back with the best Montaigne campaign to ever leave Montaigne alive!

To do:
Find plan of the Citadel (we have a 17th century citadel!)
Read Montaigne book
Read the rest of The Three Musketeers
Live

2 weeks till Paris!

2006-10-28T13:04:00.000-05:00

Things Katie Says
out of context, cuz it's better that way

"Just like you were wearing a sheep!" (illustration to follow)

Bess: I don't want to go to Sam's class.
Katie: I'd kind of rather stab him instead.

"Like if you had a kitten in your pocket!"

"Because we've decided, 'Screw the children! Let's live for today!'"

"But then I'd have intelligent life in my room with me, and that would be awkward."

2006-10-26T07:24:00.000-05:00

Current mood: lonely

Dang... doing nothing is boring when you don't have a suite to do nothing with...

Life goes on as it always does. Next week I have very few classes thanks to absent teachers and All Saints Day, so I plan on doing... nothing...

I need a hobby. Fast. A hobby that involves going around and being active without involving lots of alcohol or expenditures.

Lately, my hobby has been negative existential thinking, and that's not getting me anywhere but depressed. Who am I? What is my purpose? And other angsty questions.

Maybe I just need a pug.

Photos of the room:

It'll be prettier when I put up the curtains I made :) Please send me letters! Or emails! Preferably with silly photos!

And for Damien, who's never seen her, here's my alter-ego who's been showing her face quite often lately: SUPER CHRISTIAN!!!

Hugs and pugs,
~Bess, the master existentialist

2006-10-24T03:18:00.000-05:00

Current Mood: pug?

FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE, SEND ME MAIL!!!!

I need contact with the outside world... if there hasn't been another rate hike, it's only 85 cents to tell me you love me by letter ^.^

The address is as follows:
Bess Karner
c/o Knox College
10 Rue de Fontaine Argent
25000 Besançon
FRANCE

Sameaddress applies for Katie, who has yet to stab Sam Bastos but probably will in the near future.

Please mark "Air Mail" for rapid delivery and lack of Bess explodey.

2006-10-23T01:53:00.000-05:00

Current mood: Existential

New plan: no Coke after 17h...

I managed to listen to three entire musicals and most of the Firefly soundtrack last night before conking out from Benadryl.

Will post pictures and fiction here shortly. Just moved into my room on campus. It's slightly smaller than a 5-name single, but there's a little more floorspace thanks to the lack of bureaus. I love my desk.

And, since this is a lit blog,
Poetry for the day:

On Passing a French Cemetary

Let ivy grow over my grave.
Let God make my body
a joy, a beauty; and a testament
to His power.
Make a place for birds to
nest in my headstone,
so that I may look back
and see new life
following my own.

2006-10-20T05:37:00.000-05:00

Current mood: nap...

France is tiring... too much work, not quite enough sleep.

Things everyone should know about my life in France:
*There's a guy in my classes who's like a clone of Scooter, but without the strippers
*The cross Erin gave me last year attracts more attention than the corset I got from Megan
*I have yet to find a cheese I dislike
*French poetry is more confusing than English poetry
*I have condemned myself to yet another presentation on existential theatre
*Apparently "The Three Musketeers" does not constitute good reading material (of course, I'm still reading it)
*Gaming is considered the pastime of murderous teenagers
*My church choir is made up almost exclusively of little old ladies who want to be my grandmother (and this is awesome), and is directed by a man who earned awards for music in the army
*Communion wafers are made of real bread
*It is forbidden to laugh in the library
*The dollar's still falling, thus making me poorer by the day
*Street vendors are the coolest thing ever

I don't wanna move to the Bouloie! I love my family!

2006-10-19T03:00:00.000-05:00

What the hell, George Bush? What the hell?

Knoxiens, please add me to the list of people ashamed of their president. It took me long enough.

Film everyone must see, regardless of religion: O Jerusalem. I cried. And I have come to the following conclusion:

There is only one type of war. There is no holy war, no just war, no civil or revolutionary war. There is only War, men killing men in the name of something or someone that doesn't want men to kill. God have mercy on our souls.

2006-10-16T07:06:00.000-05:00

why, yes, angst is my middle name!

that being said, night went better than hoped. awesome indian food. we left before the real bêtises started. and the musee courbet rocks my socks.

world is very sunny. river no longer flooding parking lots. angst has receded accordingly. thanks for the concern, cat :) i love you very much.

bazaar in the place de marché today. finally got a wallet that holds all the jiving cards we need to survive here. and a crêpe with ham and cheese. and a waffle with chocolate. and a very very elicia scarf. thanks very much to katie for finding this glorious thing!

let's hope for a good week.

2006-10-13T10:20:00.000-05:00

Je sens une grande bêtise.
I sense a massive stupidity.

Friday the 13th. It would have to be Friday the 13th, wouldn't it, to drive me to the brink of insanity and superstition. Frankly, I'm afraid. I don't know if it's warranted or not, but it seems to be the fashion for my brain cells and who am I to deny chemistry?

The class is planning something I don't agree with for Katie's 21st. Everyone knows I'm bad at sensing sarcasm, but so help me, if they're serious about any of it, there will be problems.

Right now, my brain is coming up with dashing plots that require a panache of 4 to pull off, and I have at most a 2. Add into that that this hasn't been the very best of weeks overall, and I might as well throw a towel at something. Most feasible plan at the moment: fake an attack. I might not even have to fake it, just hold it at bay long enough to make a nice explosive impact. Wow that sounds illegal and dangerous out of context...

Losing my English is fun.

verb: franglaire (to mix French and English in interesting ways)
je franglais
tu franglais
il franglait
nous franglaisons
vous franglaisez
ils franglaisent

What am I going to do with myself? I really need to find that French pirate, marry him, and set sail before anything panicky happens. Can one acquire psychiatric medications on the high seas?

2006-10-12T07:07:00.000-05:00

just a tiny update with links of goodness

hope all's well in the world! please leave comments so i know you love me.

2006-10-10T09:26:00.000-05:00

I'M IN FRANCE!!!!!!!

not much more to say right now, but i'll try to get photos up on the devart soon. france is awesome. i love it. i'm surrounded by beauty.

2006-09-15T22:15:00.000-05:00

Mood is:

Subversive...

2 new comics, plus a Bunny fancomic and Kevin Kline in the world's puffiest shirt.

2006-09-11T21:12:00.000-05:00

Well, as this is *officially* the lit blog, I might as well post my most recent poems here. Enjoy.

The Laundry Room

In the winter, wet clothes
cling to the agitator,
frozen together. A lamp
defrosts them
before the next step.

There is no heat
in the laundry room, which was once
the entry to a nineteenth century
cottage.
The door is flush with the wall and,
if guests have had too much to drink,
it is often mistaken for the way out.

The old tiles freeze
sockless feet
in the cluttered closet.
We ought to put a rug down.
Hopping from foot to foot,
I take the hot clothes
from the dryer,
pile them on the world's only
mahogany laundry table,
and bury my toes
in fresh warm socks.

9-11-01
Twenty-five copies
Of "Alice's Restaurant"
Seem so out of place.

and sketches, too....

Rendezvous

New-car-and-nicotine Buick Rendezvous smells like Canton. Grampa's arms are tanned to burned like the end of his secret cigarettes. Sunscreen is a luxury we can't afford. He breathes slowly. He breathes on purpose. It's a Jones thing, the Jones sigh, a memory of Wales as we drive to Bloomington-Normal. Speak up so he can bite back with the teeth that eat onions like apples to prevent scurvy.

2006-09-07T23:22:00.000-05:00

Hey, y'all! Damien told me I should post again... so here we are. In this post, you shall find:
1. a rant about yiffs (brief, don't worry)
2. chapter 2 of Midra
You are welcome to suggest ideas for sketches (visual or written) after the proceedings.

Rant about yiffs
Okay, so I posted my biblical anthro on the devArt. John the Baptist. Some stretch of the imagination, but my logic followed decently. Anyway, I got a lot of good comments on it. Except this one from silverfoxx87:

I would liek to sleep with this catman! DADADA XDDDD FAILS IN PELT

I ask you, is it too much to post an anthro picture without getting a comment from a yiff? There's only so much I can take... and it's John the Baptist, for crying out loud!!! And he's a wolf! It says so in the description! GAH!

/rant>

Chapter 2 of Midra

When her alarm sounded at six thirty, Midra did not rush to get out of bed. There were still two hours until her first class; she could lie there, listening to the oldies, for a good half-hour before breakfast.

Like most felines, especially those at St. Frank’s U, she detested Mondays. Monday meant that she got five hours of sleep the night before starting five full days of horrendously boring classes. It also meant the beginning of another demeaning week as a waitress at Rusty’s. “Rusty’s International Club,” she often told her friends, “is just an excuse for rich men to get completely smashed in exotic ways.” The hours were awful, the clientele was awful, and the uniforms, frankly, sucked, but the pay was excellent. One week of the night shift could pay for two weeks’ tuition, room, and board at St. Frank’s, so she stayed on in spite of herself.

“Get up, sleeping beauty,” said her feline roommate Chibin Mayberry, bashing her in the head with a feather pillow.

“Fine,” said Midra, rolling off her bed into a pile of outdated news and fashion periodicals. She pulled on a sea-green robe that clashed horribly with her soft gray fir and blood-red hair, and walked the familiar track through her messy domicile to the kitchen. Chibin was already buzzing around making breakfast for…three?

“Why is there an extra plate?” Midra asked Chibin, fearing the answer.

A square-faced canine jock, wrapped in a towel monogrammed “MEOW”, stumbled out of Chibin’s bedroom, holding his hand to his aching head. He sat down heavily in Midra’s accustomed place and painfully sipped the black coffee in front of him. The pained, hung-over, and stupid visage was all too familiar to Midra; this idiot sat behind her in Econ. Every Tuesday, he cat-called her (pun intended) as she sat down. He was also a regular customer at Rusty’s.

Midra picked up a pan and a spoon and snuck up quietly behind him. She leaned her muzzle sensuously close to his pointed ear and shouted, “I’M SORRY, BUT YOU’RE IN MY CHAIR!”

“What the f…”

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, DERROK!”

He got up and ran out of the kitchen, Midra chasing him all the way with her pot and spoon. As she turned back into the room, Chibin glared at her, arms akimbo.

“Why did you chase Derrok away?” she asked with an angry, yet ditzy pout.

“Because,” Midra replied, sitting in the vacated seat, “you have to stop bringing home every drunken idiot who propositions you at work. Derrok is a sleaze-bag, a low-down scoundrel with the libido of three teen-aged males and the force to physically hurt you.”

“Well, maybe you need a scoundrel of your own,” muttered Chibin, stabbing a fork through three pancakes and shaking them onto Midra’s plate.

“Excuse me?” said Midra, bristling the whiskers on her slightly-too-long muzzle.

“All I’m saying is, it wouldn’t hurt you to bring a boy home every once in a while. Loosen up! Have a little fun!” Chibin flipped her hair, tossed a pancake onto her own plate, and started smearing it with low-calorie spread.

“I hope you’re not referring to the incident with Mr. Robinson. He’s a married weasel, plus he was drunk off his…”

“Not just him! I get calls from dozens of cute guys every week, asking who that hot feline waitress is.” She paused for a second. “It’s you.”

“I know,” said Midra. “I just don’t want to spend my years at St. Frank’s in bed if I’m not seriously ill or injured, that’s all.”

“We’re in college, Mi. These are supposed to be the best years of our lives!”

“And which one of my nine is designated for a slow, painful demise?” asked Midra sarcastically, opening Chibin’s newest Modern Furre Female and wincing at the fashions of the day.

Chibin scoffed and tossed her long, silky black hair.

“Stop doing that,” said Midra. “It scares me.”

“I’m just practicing for tonight,” she replied.

“Oh God, what’s the theme?” asked Midra, crossing her fingers and screwing up her face in wishful agony.

“España!” said Chibin. “Break out your castanets, sweetheart.”

Midra slammed her head into the table, but then raised it again with a non-descript consenting look on her face. “Meh,” she said, sipping her herbal tea, “it could be worse."

2006-09-05T22:26:00.000-05:00

BORED!!!!!

Man, without the Suite, stupid o'clock isn't nearly as fun. Neither is partial nudity. Anyway, I'm tired without reason. Give me suggestions on what to do! Comment, people! Show the Bess you care!

2006-09-01T16:45:00.000-05:00

Loading New Art

I especially like Pgthulu.

2006-08-30T14:50:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on the nature of God...

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38962065/

(the image is too big to put up here...)

2006-08-29T23:18:00.000-05:00

Well, life went on like it always does... Russian subs are cool. Pics to come.

I present to you, chapter 1 of Midra Wysterne's story. Hoorah for furre-fic... Please comment so I know you're around.

*1*
Midnight at Rusty’s International Club. A lithe young form sneaked out the back door into the alley and paused for a moment, listening carefully. The ruckus inside continued as usual, and she started walking silently away.
A voice rang out from inside the club: “Midra!”
She started to run, her gray cloak streaming behind her. Midra ducked around the corner and pressed her back against the wall, covering her face with her hood.
A crash of breaking dishes reached her ears, and a blonde weasel staggered out the back door of Rusty’s. He tried unsuccessfully to stand there for a moment before he called out again, “Midra! Come back!” He leaned against the brick wall unsteadily, waiting for a response.
“Go home, Mr. Robinson,” she replied from around the corner.
He took one step in the direction of her voice before having to lean against the wall once more. “Fine!” he slurred, and spat on the ground. “I’ll go home…to my wife…” He followed the wall to the door and stepped back inside Rusty’s.
Midra walked briskly to the front of the establishment and hailed a cab.
“Where to, miss?” asked the mouse inside.
“It’s not for me,” she replied as Mr. Robinson exited the club. “This guy needs a ride home.”
“No problem, ma’am.”
Midra helped Mr. Robinson into the taxi and shut the door after him. He looked up at her and said slowly, “You’re a nice girl. What’s your name?” She shook her head sadly and the cab drove off.
Wrapping the warm gray cloak more tightly around herself, Midra turned and began the long walk back to the dormitory.

2006-06-25T16:52:00.000-05:00

You scored as Mysterious. You wish to hide who you are from all those around you. You find it very hard to trust people. You also may enjoy the fun that comes from playing mind games with others around you.My advice Get out there and reveal the true you if only to one person!

Mysterious

92%

Diamond Eyes

67%

Passion

50%

Eyes full of Pain

50%

What do your eyes reveal about you?(PICS!)
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Simon Tam. The Doctor. You have a gift for healing that goes beyond education. You took an oath to do no harm, even when your patients have tried to kill you. You are out of place where you are, being used to refined society. However, if you take that stick out of your arse you should be fine.

Kaylee (Kaywinnet Lee) Frye

81%

River Tam

81%

Simon Tam

81%

The Operative

75%

Shepherd Derrial Book

69%

Capt. Mal Reynolds

69%

Hoban 'Wash' Washburne

63%

Zoe Alleyne Washburne

56%

Inara Serra

56%

Jayne Cobb

19%

Which Serenity character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Malkavian. You belong to the Malkavian bloodline. The Malkavians are blessed with an "inner sight" which often gives them great perception and even clairvoyance. Many are sought for their counsel and insight. The drawback, however, is that they are all entirely insane. If a vampire is speaking in obscure riddles, it's a fair bet they are of Malkavian blood.

Malkavian

75%

Gangrel

67%

Toreador

63%

Tremere

58%

Nosferatu

42%

Ventrue

38%

Brujah

33%

What vampire clan do you belong to?
created with QuizFarm.com

2006-01-31T18:59:00.000-06:00

You scored as Shepherd Derrial Book. You are Book, a minister and passenger onboard Serenity. You are wise and spiritual but also brave and willing to fight if the situation calls for it. No one knows much about your past and you are content to leave it that way. You are always happy to offer advice or comfort to those that need it.

Shepherd Derrial Book

81%

Captain Malcolm

75%

Zoe Alleyne Washburne

69%

Kaywinnit Lee 'Kaylee' Frye

69%

Inara Serra

69%

Dr. Simon Tam

63%

Hoban "Wash" Washburne

56%

The Operative

50%

River Tam

50%

Jayne Cobb

25%

What FireflySerenity Character Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Peter Pan. Your alter ego is Peter Pan. You are a child at heart. Anything you believe is possible, and you never want to grow up.

Peter Pan

100%

Sleeping Beauty

94%

Cruella De Ville

63%

The Beast

56%

Goofy

56%

Cinderella

50%

Donald Duck

44%

Ariel

44%

Pinocchio

31%

Snow White

19%

Which Disney Character is your Alter Ego?
created with QuizFarm.com

2006-01-12T19:18:00.000-06:00

simplicity

If life was supposed to be simple, we wouldn't wear hats and coats or shovel the snow. The burden would lie in development alone and end quickly, before weather or tools or layers. Mayfly on the wind knows the truth and cannot share, for information is complication and he has no words to play the sage. I feel the need to break and spill the systems from myself so that I, too, may be so free.

2005-11-08T23:26:00.000-06:00

Week 9 Sketches

i.
Revenge was not as sweet as she had hoped. Rather than filling her with the warmth of a good day’s work, her years’ labor had led only to emptiness. So this is what it felt like to be a villain. Never satisfied. Always hunting for the next nemesis.

Elícia ran. She plunged her sword into the new grave, directly into Moldova’s cold, still heart, jumped on his horse and ran without looking back. The smell of blood was left behind in the ashes of the Black Fire, but her dress was still stained with it. Redder than the fine Castillian silk, it haunted her.

ii.

Give me life, she whispers. Give me form and function.

You will have black hair and blue eyes. A thin waist. A sword at your hip.

And?

One eyebrow will be raised in cocky consternation. The sword belt will be wrapped three times around your waist, sitting on your hips. No, the sword is in your hand. And you are wielding it with precision. Red lips that pout when you want your way. Five hundred in your bodice, forty in a purse on your belt. Knife in place of a side-stay, to promote posture and self-defense. You will carry yourself as though you are constantly dueling. The world will lust after you, and you after it.

My name?

Elícia Ramón de Aldana de Castillo.

It suits me.

iii.

Is it sad that I miss ramen while I’m at home? It’s pretty pathetic, right? I mean, it’s instant rice noodles in powdered chicken stock. But something about it is just addictive. Maybe it’s the rush to get your work done and the need to eat something, anything, and you think instantly, “Of course! Ramen!” Because that salty, gushy texture is exactly what you need to help you concentrate on long winter nights when the snow is falling and you have to read two more chapters of Blomberg’s Jesus and the Gospels before you pass out from exhaustion. That’s why I need ramen. It’s my manna. If I were wandering the desert for forty years, you know there’d be ramen falling from the sky every morning.

iv.

Red, red jpeg rose dropped by a man on the street hurrying to give his wife the dozen for the anniversary he nearly missed for the third time. The girl calls to give it back, but it has already pricked her finger and scratched her arm and he doesn’t want it now, he’s late, too late to help her. She holds it and it wants to fall again and she cries at the blood that’s darker than the rose.

A careless collection of books and papers surrounds the computer. No point picking any of them up, she says. She’ll just need them tomorrow, so why change a system that works? Gaming manuals, all 7^th Sea, the game of heroism, topped with colorful dice to the left; a stack of newspapers behind her; tomorrow’s textbooks mixed with today’s handouts in a circle of Bess on the floor of the suite. From above, it looks like an elaborate synchronized swimming routine, each part moving in unison to create excellent results. From the floor, it looks like a mess that will consume her whole one day.

vi.

The arrow flew too fast. One moment, the fletching was between my fingers, and the next it had hit the yellow part of the target. I yelped and Zyr came at me. He was going to hit me again. I was already bruised. He was supposed to hit me every time I screamed.
But my father told him to stop. "Excellent shot, son." I looked through my fingers and saw that the arrow had hit the exact center of the target.
He had called me "son."
"You could learn well from your brother, Sr'Yzr," my father said.
Sr'Yzr stroked the black fur of his left arm and said quietly, with a little smirk, "That is not my brother."
In my mind, I agreed as I nocked the next black-feathered arrow. Brothers didn't hit each other.

vii.

He scratches his beard in the same place every time. Always when he doesn't know how to say something important. The beard is wearing away. One of these days the hair will be gone and he'll scratch away his skin instead.

viii.

She fell hard and fast and cut her hands on the broken hearts she had left strewn on the ground over years of being "who she was."

ix.

Beauty and green flung themselves out into the circle as the Dryad smiled. She threw back the mass of moss that clung to her shapely face and laughed. A bird landed on her ear and sang to us. She interpreted.
"You bring light to this city," the Dryad murmured with a voice like a flute. "When you are ready to leave, the light will stay with us and you will have to begin anew."
"How will we do that?" My own voice sounded harsh following hers. I was surprised by the cut it made through the clearing.
All she did was grin as she leapt into a giant oak and disappeared.

I waited three days to emerge. Lifting the stone carefully, ignoring the rush of stale of air past my ears, I looked on the world again. It was just as ugly as I had remembered it.
Baba was waiting for me. She sat on a burned stump outside my cave and tapped the ground with her cane. I loved making her wait. Patience may be a virtue, but impatience is just so much more exciting.
"Are you coming out this time?" she asked with that voice that asked too much.
"Nope," I said, and went back inside. I left the stone off, though. She could follow me if she liked. I wanted to show her the sanctuary, but she was afraid of the dark and probably wouldn't come.
I skipped down the hall the stream had carved until I heard a tapping behind me. She was coming, with a torch in her hand. I saw the firelight before I saw my grandmother. "I'm not letting you stay in here all week, Sasha," her voice said.
A wicked smile creeped across my face. I started whistling so she could follow the sound to the sanctuary.

2005-11-02T13:20:00.000-06:00

Untitled piece by Erin Hart

I’ll admit it, I nearly cried at the end of this story. While the subject is potentially cliché, the piece is beautifully put together and makes the reader genuinely concerned for the narrator’s plight. It has everything a first-person narrative should. Watching the narrator talking about Betha so lovingly made me sympathize instantly with her (the narrator’s) emotions. The voice is nearly always consistent, only breaking the respect-for-the-dead tone in small instances like the use of the word “vomit-a-thon.” The piece reads like a eulogy for a truly beloved person. Honestly, other than a change of word-choice in a few areas of the piece, I have no suggestions. Brava, Erin.

“Anchoring” by Micah Riecker

This story was beautifully written. Kudos to Micah. I loved looking at the world through Oley’s eyes. Watching Robby crushing the squirrel from Oley’s perspective was fascinatingly disgusting. He is helpless in this situation, but so strong and comforting when his friend is really in danger. The relationship between Oley and Eric was built very well. Nothing drastic needed to happen in order to understand exactly how far Oley was willing to go to help Eric through his hard time. The present tense is used very powerfully to give immediacy to slow and subtle emotions. I would only suggest that you bring up the reason for Eric’s depression a tiny bit earlier in the piece. Otherwise, awesome stuff.

“Robbie” by Randy Robertson

The voice is fantastic in this piece! I loved the first two pages, got completely hooked. The main character’s description of the girl walking into the library tells the reader tomes about his personality. In fact, just the fact that he works at the library and flirts with anything that walks in the door screams GEEK! PITY FRIEND! It leads so well into the scene in which his two friends, described as Charles Bronson and Steve McQueen, are making out with their dates and he’s only there to make sure nothing bad happens. He’s someone to have along for the ride and have fun with, but he’s just not gonna get the girl. Little touches of flirtation (kisses, touches, whispers) are dabbed throughout the story, leading him on but going nowhere. It’s gorgeous.

The piece about Hunter S. Thompson was excellent as well, but it didn’t seem connected to the first scene. While entertaining and well-written, it didn’t say nearly as much about the main character as the scenes with the women did. You’ve got to keep it in here; it’s awesome, so please try to tie the two halves together!

Max-a-Mia by Michelle Trinque

I was a bit confused by the changes in narrator that happened throughout the piece without warning. This can work, but it’ll take a lot of effort and a whole lot more story to make multiple narrators effective. The affect, on the other hand, is brilliantly accomplished. I feel like I know how Julia and Karen move, speak, act, and think pretty well. However, a lot of this understanding comes from both of them telling the story simultaneously. I half expected to see the story from the waiter’s perspective sometimes. Really, you need to pick one narrator and run with her. This will increase the reader’s understanding of the story and the character you pick to work with.

Also, title? I didn’t understand it… If it’s going to be an instruction, then it ought to be in the language of the story.

“The Greatest Show” by Kathryn Goldthwaite

I was a bit confused by exactly what Seraphina was doing at the carnival until page five, and after that I was still unclear about Seraphina’s relationship with her mother until the narrator switched to Leila. Specifically, the last full paragraph on page 5 was confusing. I didn’t know who was speaking, though it seemed that crucial plot points were being explained to either Seraphina or Blue.

Leila and Seraphina are both such beautiful characters, though. You have done a great job of creating real sympathetic people. The dialogue flows very well between all the characters. I guess all it really needs is a little clarification and a conclusion, and you’ll have an excellent story.

Untitled piece by Jon Crylen

Donald seems like a really interesting and deep character, but I can’t find him in this piece. There’s a whole lot going on that seems to attach to him, but he doesn’t seem particularly attached to any of it. Is this piece about his relationship with his grandparents, or about his friendship with Carlisle and Borgnino, or something else entirely? I understand that it’s not a finished piece, but as of so far I have very little desire to read on. I need a reason to attach to Donald, like I needed a reason to attach to Jeffers in Tom’s first story. Watching him with his grandmother, I understood his childhood emotions but could not get a sense of how he was feeling now. Emotions, I guess, are what the piece needs. Is he hiding them too well for me to notice them, or is he just an unemotional character?

2005-10-31T23:43:00.000-06:00

Men of Business: take 2

It still needs a lot of work, I know. Please help me! I hate to demand a lot in an informal critique, but could you be as precise as possible? Specificity seems to help me best... Please assist the poor little girl crying in the corner...

@~~,~~`~~~~

So this summer, my family had dealings with the Mafia. No one believes me, but it all happened. Cheesy threats, goons with twenty-inch necks, heavy Italian accents, the works. It’d all be really funny if it weren’t true.

Let me tell you about Richard Conti. The guy’s shorter than me. Five feet, tops, with slicked-back black hair, getting gray on top. Has to use half a cup of gel every morning, I swear. He seemed really friendly the first time I met him. He’s a lawyer; I suppose he’s got to do that. Otherwise he’d never get more holdings. Anyway, he owns about half of Providence and a good deal of the rest of the state. A hundred and fifty buildings, he’ll tell you proudly if you ask him. And this summer, he decided he wanted another one.

We ran an artisan bakery that turned out the best bread I’ve ever tasted. The guys who worked there were great. They were all Guatemalan Indians, and the most devout Catholics I’ve ever met, except they were willing to work on Sundays. It was a small building with two ovens, massive mixers, and four tables to form the bread by hand. The place always had someone in it, a baker or a packer or someone at the counter. On holidays, it was just me, sometimes my dad, and sometimes Catherine. I ran the wholesale department for six summers, starting when I was fourteen. Called people every day in the summers and on holidays: “Hi, this is Bess at Daily Bread, just callin’ to see if you need anything for tomorrow.”

I despised calling customers. I loathed it. If I never see another telephone in my life, it’ll be too soon. Every day, I had two solid hours of talking to purchasing departments, chefs, and inept assistants with my voice an octave higher than normal. I made myself sick with my sweetness in the face of customers. There were a few places that were really nice when I called, but the rest were wretched. Chefs are the angriest people on earth. People tell me no, they know people who would stab little furry animals and laugh about it, but chefs would do it just because the bread looked a little funny and they wanted to set an example. Roberto from Roberto’s was the worst. He would call if the bread was five minutes late from its six o’clock drop-off, or if one loaf was overcooked, or the raccoons got it before he did. He called me up on the fourth of July once, about five years ago. Now, in Bristol they have this parade that’s been going since before we won the revolution. We’re real patriotic in Rhode Island. Anyway, he calls because the bread’s not there at nine in the morning. The driver missed him because the parade was setting up. This guy’s restaurant is on the parade route, and it’s going on right now. He says he wants me to get it there. I tell him I’m fourteen. Through my tears, I tell him I don’t have a car, much less a license, and I’m the only one here. Tough, he says. Get him the bread. Later he calls back and apologizes for the words he used about me and the “Mexican” driver who needs to “learn to speak fuckin’ American.” By that time we’ve found someone to get him his bread. He says oh, that’s okay, he doesn’t need it till five. Roberto gives me headaches beyond the help of painkillers. A dollar fifty-one a baguette. That’s cheap, and he only gets twelve. He doesn’t get to complain.

It’s been five years since that conversation, and I’m tougher now. I’ve been sworn at and threatened by chefs and managers so many times, it’s hard to scare me. Conti, however, proved to be a different kind of threat.

So my sister and I are calling customers one day in our little wholesale cubicle in the basement. It’s about eleven and the smell of cinnamon has finally penetrated the ceiling. Cat has been talking with Roberto about the fact that he needs to order more bread or we simply can’t deliver to him anymore. When she hangs up, she fills in the order sheet and hands it to me to type.

“Je deteste les clients,” I say to Cat, snatching the slip without looking up from the computer. Getting yelled at by chefs is a miserable experience; I’m almost glad we’re closing the business, just so Cat and I don’t have to deal with the idiots anymore.

“Juste trois heurs,” she reminds me with a heavy sigh. It’s Thursday, and we get to go home at two today. Five sourdoughs, four peasant, six Tuscan loaves, all sliced, I type rapidly to the rhythm of the Celtic drumming Cat let me choose. If I type quickly enough, I can get several invoices out in a minute, but my hands will hurt like hell later. Two years ago, this job put me into physical therapy for carpal tunnel. Unfortunately, the owner’s daughter isn’t entitled to workman’s comp.

We speak French to each other, just for practice mostly. It bugs Dad because his grandparents used to speak German around him when they didn’t want him to understand, and he doesn’t speak French either.

“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a ici?” Cat asks as the visitors come into view. I look up from the sixty-seventh invoice in a row and rub my aching hands.

Conti comes into the basement in a three-piece suit with his lawyer and these two guys. I only got a little glimpse of them, but they were big. Like I said, twenty-inch necks. Biceps as big as your head. Dark blue t-shirts with hardware store logos on them. One of them’s missing a tooth. Dad greets them at the stairs, gives us a look that tells us to stay in the office and says, “Hi, Mr. Conti, what can I do for you today?” He leads Conti away from our line of sight, just outside the cubicle wall. Conti’s our landlord at this point, and we’re in our last month in the building. We had tried to sell the business to this great guy, Arnie, but Arnie had a heart attack on the day of the signing and his wife wouldn’t let him buy the bakery. I understand why. Any deal that endangers your life can’t be a wise idea.

We can’t see Dad and Conti and the guys, but we can hear them.

“Hey, Bill, how’s Arnie doin’ these days?”

“Better. He should be out of the hospital before next Wednesday.” Pleasant as anything. Dad’s a salesman by trade. He didn’t want to be, but that’s what he’s best at and he needs to bring home something at the end of the week. Dad doesn’t bake. He can’t really cook, for that matter. He just runs the business end of things at Daily Bread. His day job is selling phone systems to major companies on the East Coast. He knows how to talk to people and he knows how to organize everything but his own papers. However, the bakery loses thousands of dollars a year no matter what he does; that’s why we’re selling it. I think he wants to get out of this business as much as I do.

“Listen, Bill,” Conti says with an edge that says listen or else, “I need you out of here a week early. I got someone who’s seriously looking at the building.” That’s a damned lie. To this day, there’s still a “For Rent: Fully Equipped Baking Facility” sign in the window. Dad reminds him that the deal with Arnie fell through and the guy’s still in the hospital, showing no signs of buying when he gets out. We need the bakery and the equipment so that we can keep providing product to the customers. (I wouldn’t have minded stopping early, but we promised them bread through August 31, and Dad says you should never back out on your word. Even if they’re not going to follow through with their end of the bargain, i.e. paying you, you have to keep your promises.)

For a second or two, nobody says anything. Then Conti says, “You and me, Bill, we’re men of business. Businessmen, right?” Cat looks at me and gestures like the Godfather, thumb to middle finger, shaking her fist a little. I shush her so I don’t miss a word of the conversation. His accent is hysterical. It’s too stereotypically Italian to believe. Besides, someone that small can’t be intimidating. I should know; I can’t scare anyone. Conti goes on, “We understand when things go wrong. But these men, they’re not like you and me. They work with their hands.” And we hear cracking knuckles. Honest to God, cracking knuckles. I look at Cat, and her mouth’s wide open too.

“Il est de la famille,” I whisper to Catherine, and she does the Godfather thing again and says, “Il lui donne une offert qu’on ne peut pas refuser.” One of Conti’s thugs pokes his head around the cubicle wall and Cat hands me another order slip hurriedly, a blank one. He doesn’t understand French; we’re safe. He goes back out and we give this big sigh of relief. Sighing runs in my family on both sides. I swing at the air with my imaginary crowbar and say, “C’est l’homme qui casse les kneecaps.” Cat laughs out loud, but there’s fear behind her eyes. When you’re faced with a guy like Conti, with certain pain, you have to speak French and laugh if you want to stay sane.

“I’m sorry, Mister Conti, but we need to stay here until the thirty-first. I’m sure your client will understand.”

Conti mutters something barely audible about regretting this. Then he and his thugs leave without getting what they want, and Dad collapses in a chair in the wholesale cubicle. “So that was exciting,” he says, rubbing his hand. He seems to have survived with nothing more than a too-firm handshake. I love my dad. “Your mother won’t believe this.”

We tell my mom about this whole scene and she knows it’s true. She’s the only one in our family who isn’t scared of Conti at all. Mom says if any of us come home with bruises, she’s calling the police. Dad says not to worry. Conti won't try anything down the street from the police station, but Mom's still on her guard. She calls my aunt the next day and tells her about it. She’s just gotten to the part where Cat does the Godfather thing and she waits for an answer. Then she says, “You don’t believe me, do you?” And she waits some more, and she says, “You know, all I ask is that you believe me. I need to tell someone about this, and I’m not a liar, you know that.” And she hangs up, like that.

We started moving out on the twenty-eighth. When Dad tried to unlock the door the next day, the key didn’t work. The son of a bitch changed the locks two days early. It’s been two months now, and Conti's still got security guards standing at the back doors of the empty bakery just in case he tries to break in. They were there the whole time we moved out the computer systems and files so that we couldn’t steal anything that Conti owned. Like the three-ton mixers, or the brick ovens bigger than my bedroom. For God’s sake, my dad would never steal anything. Conti should know that by now. My father is the most honest guy in the world.

2005-10-31T18:33:00.000-06:00

FOR GOD'S SAKE, HELP!!!!!

I need serious assistance with getting affect into my work. I mean line edits, tasks, practice sketches, something! I just can't seem to get it! Hache, I know you told me a lot yesterday, but I just don't understand!!!

And now, sketches. If you could point out good and bad points for me, that'd be fantastic.

1.

It was cloudy the day he would not believe me. I had tears in my eyes. My heart was stopped and I had no breath with which to answer his jabs at my integrity. Teeth chatter, somewhere between caffeine and restraint, and my eyes are itching. I needed him to know that I needed help, I wanted help, and someone needed to stop Richard Conti from breaking us.

That’s nice, miss, but without evidence I can’t do anything to help you.

I had told him the story the way everyone else had heard it. I’m not sure they believed me, either.

At eleven o’clock on any given weekday in August, my hands ache from typing hundreds of invoices. By this time, anyone but a customer will hear me cursing and see me flopped back in my father’s office chair, the one with wheels. My head is filled with orders, questions, complaints, two sourdough, five Tuscan, four peasant, all sliced. The phone rings and I cry out in agony at the thought of dealing with the late callers. Get your orders in by eleven or they will not be sent until the next production order goes through. Doesn’t anyone follow the rules anymore? Quick change. An octave higher than normal, masking a rage that should not have to exist, “Daily Bread wholesale, how can I help you?” I need to get out of here before repressed anger kills me. Lucky for me, we have to close the bakery.

They don’t pay, no matter how often I call, no matter how many weekly bills are sent. Some of the classier restaurants are over three thousand dollars in debt to us and refuse to admit it. I’ve been bounced from kitchens to purchasing to accounting to general managers to the kitchen again, looking for a check. By the end of a collections day, I’ve nearly lost the will to live. Five to nine hours a day with no company but a telephone full of faceless raging chefs will drive you to the brink.

It was a Wednesday when Conti dropped by the basement office unannounced in a three-piece suit with a lawyer, a file folder, and two men with twenty-inch necks. I know it was Wednesday because Cat was there with me, filing old checks and chattering in French for practice. I straightened my hair, wild from running my fingers through it too many times in the deepest of frustrations, and greeted him with the voice I reserve for customers. Only Cat knows the contempt I bury in the phone voice.

She works with stainless steel because aluminum is weak. Her muscles strain around the pliers, opening and closing rings. She is thin, too thin. Her blood is weak. Her eyes are enormous as she works the chain mail. There is passion in those eyes. Reflected glitter of swords and shields and days she doesn’t remember in her baggy t-shirts and blue jeans. One ring, two ring, three ring, she arms herself. She needs protection. The bruise on her forearm could have been prevented with a good bracer. Mountain Dew for strength, stainless steel just in case.

Let's watch me listening to Albeniz. I breathe higher, my waistline is cinched, and my hips begin to move back and forth. I cannot move my feet right, but I want to. Small steps, Bess, small steps and sweeping hips.

Eyes closed tight in dismay and pleasure. Yellow flush to the temples. Her nose has disappeared, but thin nostrils lineate the center of the beauty. Her lips are petals, to be soft, to be touched. Ashamed of orgasm she hides in flowers. Blue hair blends with spiking grass and stems, but is too soft to avoid contrast. Red, red, why can't she be red? White skin is a betrayal.

The faeries all sneer. In their nudity, they are superior. Blank eyes do not dim the contempt radiating from pale faces. Wings made of webs won't fly, but my aren't they pretty? Long ears, pierced several times with refined gold, surrounded by loose hair. They pout and glare. Hair covers just enough breast to taunt with feigned modesty.

She would not survive in Arabia. She would be beautiful, yes, bound in silk. Her hair would be tied to itself and wrapped in gold, soft brown hair. She would not stop smiling, grinning in the sun. But it is forbidden in Islam to portray the human form in art. Soon men would follow her. She would be labeled an idol and killed for her sin against he who had given the world such beauty.

I was cold. I tied my arms around myself. I curled into a ball and covered my nose with my tail. My legs were tight against my chest and I shivered. A mew escaped my shaking teeth and my father kicked me in the stomach. He kicked me with those spotless leather boots and told me to shut my mouth. Soldiers work in the cold. He had stolen my breath, and I wanted to scream. I wanted M'ma so much, but I did not scream. I just felt water through the fur on my face. If it weren't dark, my father would have kicked me again for crying. If he hated me so much, why did he take me from the Captain and keep me with him day and night?
The fire had gone out and left only the stars for light. Through the trees, I could only see three stars. One burned a cold blue like my father's left eye. I shuddered; even in sleep he was watching me. The fur on my back stood on end.

The dice are cool and smooth in my hand. Familiar angles and edges and etched numbers. When I open my hand and let them roll, they glitter and clack across the table. Five, six, ten, one, two: I succeed. I need this. I need to pretend for a few hours that physics does not exist, or my brain will implode.
Why turn to drugs when I have my own mind? If it's going to be so damn creative that it makes nightmares out of conversations, then it can fix the mess it makes.
Tonight, they will follow my lead. I will tell a story and they will swing from chandeliers and save the princess. Statistics in Neverland. They can act without real consequences in my world.
I light the wild berry candle and open the window. The smell stays in the room, and the smoke blows out. Now the gaming room smells like adventure.

10.

She won't talk to me. She says it's over. It can't be over; five years, Bessie, you've been my best friend for five years.
I pour another shot with a shaking hand, gasping to keep tears back so I can see the glass. I hate tequila, but that's all I have and it's good enough. Maybe I'll drink enough to forget her.
Five years. I bought her a camera and she made me a scarf and a mix CD. Cheap bitch. No, I'm sorry, Bessie, it was a nice scarf and I know you don't have a lot of money. Otherwise you would have come to visit me and then you'd know there was nothing wrong between us, babe! So I drink. So I flirt. I still love you so much, I'll never give up.
Our picture slips from my hand to the floor and the glass shatters. God, I'm sorry. I broke it, and it was ours. Best friends forever, that's what the frame said.
You know what? Fuck that. I stand up, supporting myself on the bar, and pick up the photo. A piece of broken glass sticks in my finger. Shit, I'm clumsy tonight. With dragging hands, I manage to get a finger and thumb on either side of the picture, us dancing at prom. Her date took it, the date I set her up with. Bitch. "Bitch!" I rip it down the center.
The pieces fall to the floor among the glass. That's all I remember.

2005-10-26T13:28:00.000-05:00

Week 7 Responses: Group 2

Noticing details in "Penguins"

Jeffers seems to have found confidence in “Penguins.” It’s wonderful to see him in an element in which he feels comfortable. In this piece, he focuses his attention outward, rather than spending all of his time feeling awkward. The best way to learn about Jeffers in “Penguins” is to notice what he notices. Out of an entire zoo full of people and animals, he draws the reader’s attention to a “spot of bird shit on the black asphalt” that “looked like a raindrop running slowly down a window” and the feeling of the handrail against his butt cheeks. He notices the penguin that bites a little girl while his friend Mike is trying to see the main exhibit.

Jeffers sees subtleties. I like him a lot more now that he does things. Keep this up, Tom. It’s beautiful.

Expectations in "Opening for a story"

Tucker has such great expectations for age. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when he hits 25… One way to make his desires and frustrations more effective at the beginning of the story would be to progress his own age in 3-year increments. Instead of going from eleven to sixteen to twenty-two, we should see if he meets his expectations when he actually hits the ages he desires. And what happened when Tucker turned 14, 19, and 22? Was he disappointed by each birthday?

I adored the preparation he made in case anyone asked him about the patches on his jacket. It provides yet another small disappointment on top of everything else he has to deal with in being three years too young for his desires. This shows more about Tucker than the rest of the paragraph. Give us more of this gorgeous affect!

[Untitled] by Kate Schlachter

Unfortunately, despite the beauty of Kate’s writing, I had no idea what was going on in this piece. I gathered something about maybe a funeral and an apathetic guy named Charlie who has a sister and an annoyingly tactless mother, but I’m not entirely sure why he leaves his apartment.

The description of how Charlie sees Dale’s apartment building and feels in it, however, was beautiful. The image of a building that is “heavy against the sky” is so clear in my mind. The word choice in this paragraph is beautiful. Kate captures the feeling of coming in from the cold amazingly well. Again, the descriptive language is gorgeous, but we need some plot. Is this a complete piece? I hope you’re going to write more of it, and I’d love to read it if you do.

Demanding and commanding in “Elise” by Gillian Chisom

It was great to read a piece that takes place outside our era. Gillian has a wonderful command of Austen-era dialogue and language. The dialogue is all spoken very frankly; there’s no beating about the bush between mothers, daughters, sisters, or servants. The phrase “now leave me” was used at least three times as both a request and a command simultaneously. It seems there is no end of demands in Elise’s home. She is practically required to marry a stranger in order to save her family’s manor, and she acquiesces without a fight. Where is the reader’s sympathy supposed to lie? We know she has a mild internal struggle, but she gives it up quickly enough so as to discredit it as a legitimate argument, and resigns herself to her fate. I have no real emotional attachment to Elise during this massive change in her settled life. Perhaps we could meet this suitor in a dialogue or learn some more about him? This would give us more of an idea of how and why she decides to leave childhood behind and marry so young.

Rapid trains of thought in "Wynona Sketches" by Al Keefe

The beauty of Keefe’s writing lies in his understanding of not only how Wynona thinks, but what she says to herself as she thinks. She does not break up her thoughts into coherent, grammatically correct sentences because her mind moves entirely too quickly to follow the conventions of proper writing. This old woman’s mind-rants are fascinating, especially those about her childhood and her husband. As in the original Wynona piece we read, she ties several clauses and pieces of dialogue together in one thought with only commas and oddly placed conjunctions. Page five is filled with these strings, such as “Always Wynona is eight years old here, and always her father is the only miner with a Model T and rides for all her girlfriends but pick one boy Winnie, and her mother always in the front seat rolls her eyes and holds a smile.” Memory is a strange and meandering realm, and Keefe explores it very effectively. The slower thoughts tend to kick in when she thinks about more recent or saddening events. The sketch covering pages 1-3, the piece about Jack, is much slower and more articulated than Wynona’s childhood memories. She seems to be pondering these and examining them with the reader. It’s gorgeous. Will these all be tied together in one piece, or are they just explorations of a style and a character?

“Bill Raymond,” dealing with a legend

Dear God, I loved this piece! Again, David has shown that he is a master of the folk tale. This time, however, we are asked to deal with the truth and consequences of a living legend. What I liked best about “Bill Raymond, My Father” was the way David made the con-artist father so very believable to both Bill’s audience and the reader. The narrator casts no judgment on his father throughout all the dowsing procedures, and thus keeps us in suspense as to whether or not Bill is really a dowser. And time and again, the farmers never realize they’ve been had. There’s never a lynch mob out to get the man who impregnated the farmer’s daughter and didn’t really find water. As far as we know, up until the end of the piece, Bill could be an angel or a magician. Our suspension of disbelief is held in two separate dimensions. Well done, David.

2005-10-26T00:25:00.000-05:00

Sketches vii-x

vii.
Elícia cupped the bloom of the rose in one hand as she sat outside the church. It sat lightly, suspended on its stem, in her pale right hand. Inigo had sent for her and told her to meet him at the yellow rose bush at noon. She wished he would hurry; the cold stone of the cathedral wall was freezing her bare shoulders.

The petals were soft; the blossom was new. Yesterday Father Inez had cut the flowers for altar decorations, leaving only the buds behind for lovers to steal.

viii. Sense memory: Elicia and 87% cacao content chocolate
“Impetuous child,” her father scolded over his papers as a seven-year-old Elícia ran from the kitchen with the treat wrapped in a handkerchief. She giggled as she scampered into the field behind the manor to find Rico and share the chocolate with him.

She broke the piece of her mother’s baking chocolate into two pieces and gave the larger to her older brother, who was reading his Book of the Prophets under a tall tree. Without exchanging a word, they both popped the near-black chocolate into their mouths. It was the most bitter and sweet combination of tastes Elícia had ever experienced. At first, the dryness made her crave a sip of water, but it melted quickly and filled her mouth with flavors from the distant Crescent Empire. It had become silk, at once smoother than her mother’s finest dresses and harsher than thorns.

ix. "art of fighting"

Oven mitts over tight clenched fists. Smirk on the clean face with a smudge of powdered sugar next to the wrinkled nose. One raised eyebrow; you question her domain? Curly short black hair shines in the morning light through a window. Impish smile adorns a perfect young face; she still has to grow into her nose. Pay attention to her; all else fades around her. Focus, boy! Her eyes would be covered if not for the clip in her bangs. God, I love her.

x. Sable's eye photograph

She doesn't pluck her eyebrows, or at least she hasn't recently. The eye is wide open. No mascara here. Flourescent bulbs are reflected on the iris. Black to silver to black again, in a white space. It's wet from too many tears. Shadows are scarce; she loves the light and can't live without it. She makes light. Behind her, all is darkness and you can't see a thing. Focus instead on the sparse hairs over the eyelid.

2005-10-24T14:20:00.000-05:00

Week 7: Sketches i-xi

i.
The child had a cat-like voice. It disturbed Nar'kel. He held his "m"s out too long and whined at night. They had taken him from the female too late; the bodywas perfect, but the voice would betray him anywhere in Madeleinia as an outsider. So Nar'kel took the chiod to the Captain the next night.
The Captain was an old dog now, retired, arthritic and gray-faced. He had taken a wife some years ago; talk in the barracks was, she'd taken him. Her name was Cissa. She hated that the Captain still wore his uniform and kept a knife next to the bed. Cissa made her old clothes from old tablecloths and blankets, then made tablecloths and blankets out of old clothes. Tonight, when she came to the door, Nar'kel recognized a piece of the Captain's armchair in her skirt.

ii. Man in Blue vii
The body waits. One hand rests on the other. Eyes gone but glaring. Lips gone but smirking. Skin like smoke and dust over cold fire. His head is tilted. The face waits. He is tall and straight. He does not move but waits. Cleanshaven, awake in the dark. Awake but not alive. Feeding off the meager light. It falls into the vacant holes of his face. They are open, he is always awake and watching at night. Leaning on one arm, prepared to move as soon as the holes see a movement. Only the tie is askew, but he has not fixed it. The shoulders are broad and strong under the dead suit. His hair holds itself back; the whole face is visible, but one hand is hidden.

iii. Garlic I: my memory
Jeni dancing in the kitchen while I chopped the garlic and Catherine poured oil in the pan to make sauce. Jeni kissed Jon and he held her hips. I smiled and Cat stirred the oil and the Turts University Beelzebubs went on singing "Machinehead."
"Grampa grew this garlic himself, out in Illinois," I say, but no one seems to hear. The water won't boil so we can't make the pasta and Jon gives Jeni another piece of foccacia. I bite my own piece and the garlic and oil and salt and dough burn my throat as I throw the cloves in the food processor with olive oil. This was before the Atkins diet, and none of us cared that there wasnothing but carbohydrates and garlic in the meal.
We skipped to that Frank Sinatra song, "The Way You Look Tonight," and I became a baritone. Cat's famous garlic pasta after a long night of carols in the snow. We eat so much garlic in this house, the dogs will never have fleas and our hearts will never stop. It's all in a big bowl under the microwave, the orange ceramic bowl that can't go in the dishwasher. I don't want to wash my hands, the garlic smells so good, but I can't open the juice bottle with all the oil on them.
Cat cuts the lemon last. She reams it, spilling juice everywhere. You have to use a lemon, not bottled juice.

iv. Garlic II: Character
We used to sell garlic bread at the bakery, before I started working wholesale, but it went bad too fast. Now I know exactly what breads are good for it. The best, I tell customers, is our rosemary sourdough. For garlic bread? they ask. I say yes, that's what my dad makes it from. Of course, if you wanted something more traditional, Italian loaf would work very well, or a sliced baguette. Then they say, oh, never mind. They make me go through three minutes of my hard-earned bread knowledge and then say forget it. Screw you, I don't tell them. Have a nice day.
I'm a bread snob. This one time, I was walking down the dairy aisle looking for Will's cheese slices and I had to repress a gag reflex. They keep the Wonder Bread there. The preservative smell made me want to throw up. Why the hell ould yoyu buy Wonder Bread when you could get artisan bread for cheaper? I ran down the aisle but the smell was caught in my clothes. Cat smelled it on me when I got home.
In the caf the other day, I tasted a piece of bread. It was a slice of some baguette, rye and honey and wheat, and I cried.

v.
On the black hands, blood was invisible. It frightened Airen when he was small. One time, he hurt his hand and set it on the wall. When it came away and left a red print, he fell the floor and scuttled backward in shock. Airen looked at his hand. It wasn't red; the fur just glistened.

vi. Sean's hair
His hair is styled like a 70's prom queen's. It's straight on top; all the body's in the curl at the bottom. Natural layers from just letting it grow for years. If there weren't so many split ends, I'd think he took care of it. It's this thing boys can do, look better than us without trying.

2005-10-19T19:16:00.000-05:00

Week 6 Responses

Reliable narration in Peter Orner’s “Spokane”

I think this was my favorite piece from this week. In my second story, I decided to work with a first person narrator, and “Spokane’s” narrator was deeply inspiring. Orner captures a very human voice in this story. What I loved most about it was that it was a story, told in a way that made me believe I was listening to it straight from Stace’s mouth. Orner accomplishes this by creating a narrator who is sure of her story, but not sure of herself. She constantly clarifies herself. For instance, on the second page she says, “He was tall. One of those tall guys who doesn’t know what to do with his height. The kind of guy that lanks around and apologizes for having to stoop through doorways except that Edward never apologized.” The beauty in this story lies in Stace’s narration of what happened when she discovered Edward’s body in the basement. This scene once again begins with her stating a fact, and then going on to clarify and describe what happened. When read aloud, it sounds like she’s trying to convince both her audience and herself of the facts of Edward’s suicide. It’s truly beautiful narration.

2005-10-19T18:52:00.000-05:00

Blindness in “Lola”

To tell you the truth, I was completely confused by this piece, even after reading it several times. The grammatical structures and punctuation made it even less understandable. Page 7’s long strings of dialogue without narration or paragraph breaks were interesting, but overall confusing. However, the repetition of blindness and limited sight stuck with me. Starting with her dizziness and the blurriness of the club around her at the beginning of the piece, Lola has many experiences with the loss of sight. She barely escapes the blind pimp, has her sight limited by the sight of a rifle, and finds herself nearly blind with blood on her chest after shooting the gun. It’s all fascinating, but I don’t really know what it means. The beginning is filled with colors, and more than any other sense we see what Lola sees. Is this contrast of sight and blindness deliberate? If so, could you clarify it further?

2005-10-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

ah, my favorite part of blogging... quizzes...

there is some actual classwork in the entries under this, but i thought we could all use a little extra fun :)

You're a Dialogue/Character Writer!

What kind of writer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Congratulations! You're Merry!

Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

2005-10-17T01:13:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is my second story. Please refrain from commenting here. I would, however, appreciate it if you commented on "Under Any Circumstances" which is just below this. Thanks ever so.

Men of Business

So this summer, my family had dealings with the Mafia. No one ever believes me when I tell them that, but it’s true. Really! Cheesy threats, guys with twenty-inch necks, heavy Italian accents, the works.

Let me tell you about Richard Conti. The guy’s short, like shorter than me. Five feet, tops, with slicked-back black hair, getting gray on top. Has to use half a cup of gel every morning, I swear. He seems really friendly at first. He’s a lawyer, he’s got to. Anyway, he owns about half of Providence and a good deal of the rest of the state. A hundred and fifty buildings, he says proudly if you ask him. And he wanted another one.

We ran an artisan bakery. The guys who worked there were great. They were all Guatemalan Indians, the most devout Catholics I’ve ever met, except they were willing to work on Sundays. It was a small building with two ovens, massive mixers, and four tables to form the bread by hand. The place always had someone in it, a baker or a packer or someone at the counter. On holidays, it was just me, sometimes my dad, and sometimes Catherine. I did wholesale. Called people every day, “Hi, this is Bess at Daily Bread, just callin’ to see if you need anything for tomorrow.”

I hate calling customers. There were a few places that were really nice when I called, but the rest were wretched. Chefs are the angriest people on earth. People tell me no, they know people who would stab little furry animals and laugh about it, but chefs would do it just because the bread looked a little funny and they wanted to set an example. Roberto from Roberto’s was the worst. He would call if the bread was five minutes late from its six o’clock drop-off, or if one loaf was overcooked, or the raccoons got it before he did. He called me up on the fourth of July once. Now, in Bristol they have this parade that’s been going since before we won the revolution. We’re real patriotic in Rhode Island. Anyway, he calls because the bread’s not there at nine in the morning. The driver missed him because the parade’s going on. The guy’s restaurant is on the parade route, and it’s going on right now. He says he wants me to get it there. I tell him I’m fourteen. Through my tears, I tell him I don’t have my car, much less a license, and I’m the only one here. Tough, he says. Get him the bread. Later he calls back and apologizes for the words he used about me and the “Mexican” driver who needs to “learn to speak fuckin’ American.” By that time we’ve found someone to get him his bread. He says h, that’s okay, he doesn’t need it till five. I hate Roberto. If I didn’t get paid, and if it wasn’t for family I was here every summer, I’d hang up on him. A dollar fifty-one a baguette. That’s cheap, and he only gets twelve. He doesn’t get to complain.

So me and my sister were calling customers this one day in our little wholesale cubicle in the basement and Conti comes to visit with his lawyer and these two guys. I only got a little glimpse of them, but they were big. Like I said, twenty-inch necks. Biceps as big as your head. Dark blue t-shirts with hardware store logos on them. One of them’s missing a tooth. My dad says, “Hi, Mr. Conti, what can I do for you today?” Conti’s our landlord by this point, and we’re in our last month in the building. We tried to sell the business to this guy Arnie, but Arnie had a heart attack on the day of the signing and his wife wouldn’t let him buy the bakery.

We can’t see Dad and Conti and the guys, but we can hear them. Dad tells Conti about Arnie, how he’s doing, et cetera. Pleasant as anything. Dad’s a salesman by trade. His day job is selling phone systems to major companies on the East Coast. He knows how to talk to people. For a second or two, nobody says anything. Then Conti says, “You and me, Bill, we’re men of business. Businessmen, right?” Cat looks at me and gestures like the Godfather. I shush her. Conti goes on, “We understand when things go wrong. But these men, they’re not like you and me. They work with their hands.” And we hear cracking knuckles. Honest to God, cracking knuckles. My dad, completely unfazed, says he understands, but he’s not moving out a day before the lease runs out.

“Il est de la famille,” I whisper to Catherine, and she says, “Il lui donne une offert qu’on ne peut pas refuser.” One of the guys peeks his head around the cubicle wall. He doesn’t understand French. We’re safe. He goes back out and we give this big sigh of relief. Sighing runs in my family on both sides. Then Conti and his thugs leave, dissatisfied. I love my dad.

We tell my mom about this whole scene and she knows it’s true. She’s the only one besides me and Cat who isn’t scared of Conti at all. She calls my aunt the next day and tells her about it. She’s just gotten past the part where Cat does the Godfather thing and she waits for an answer. Then she says, “You don’t believe me, do you?” And she waits some more, and she says, “You know, all I ask is that you believe me. I need to tell someone about this, and I’m not a liar, you know that.” And she hangs up, like that.

Conti still changed the locks two days early, so Dad doesn’t have the stuff he needs to do the taxes. There are security guards standing at the back doors just in case he tries to break in. They were there the whole time we moved out the computer systems and files, so we couldn’t steal anything that Conti owned. Like the three-ton mixers, or the brick ovens bigger than my bedroom. My dad would never steal anything. He’s the most honest guy I know.

2005-10-14T16:57:00.000-05:00

Work in Progress: Under Any Circumstances

We started calling Will “Charles Wallace” long before he started showing symptoms. Mom’s always been a big fan of Madeleine L’Engle. I don’t think there’s a shelf in the house without one of her books on it. We have to have at least three Wrinkle in Times. Anyway, he gets these lucid moments sometimes. Like this one time, we were at the La Salette shrine, you know, that Catholic place with the great Christmas lights? And Mom comes running up to me crying, holding Will’s hand, and she says he kneeled down at a crèche and said, “Heal me, Jesus.”

And when Grampa Bill died, we had all been expecting it for a while. He’d been in intensive care down in Mississippi for months, drifting in and out. We didn’t talk about it around Will so he wouldn’t get upset. As far as I know, he didn’t even know his grampa was sick. My dad was there in the hospital room when he went. His heart just stopped beating. Considering everything else that was wrong with his body, this was the best way he could have gone. Well, Mom told Will in the morning that Grampa was dead. Will said, “No he’s not.” Not like he was in denial or anything, he wasn’t crying. He just knew.

Will has pervasive developmental disorder. It’s somewhere between Asperger’s and full-on, not-talking autism. Basically, the diagnosis means, “We can’t really do anything about this kid. Take this book and these pamphlets, and good luck finding out what you’re supposed to do with him. You’ll never know what he wants or how he thinks.” They said he wouldn’t be able to read and wouldn’t speak, even if he could.

He showed them. He could read at four. Full sentences, big words, whole books. Of course, all of them were about Thomas the Tank Engine or dinosaurs, but he could read. And talking? The kid never stops! He’s the most social autistic kid I’ve ever met. Charismatic, too. He wants something, you’ll help him get it and you’ll love doing it. He raised five hundred dollars through Christmas money, birthday presents, and general mooching to buy himself a pug.

2005-10-12T19:08:00.000-05:00

Relationships in “Chapter 4” by Erin Hart

The most interesting aspect of this chapter of Erin’s as-yet-untitled novel is the development of relationships. From their mannerisms and speech, one can gather that the characters are of high school age, and Erin has captured the emotions of a high school girl in an unfamiliar place very well. I particularly noted the fact that Rose was so desperate to get along well with her cabin-mates that she refrained from asking important questions about Sean Marcus. She is determined to succeed in her new environment, but at what cost? The dinner-time conversation between Rose, Julie, and Sean enlightens us further in the processes of Rose’s mind. Rose not only watches Sean, but Julie’s reactions to him as well.

The only real issue I have with this piece is that Erin tends to tell rather than show. In many cases, this provides some expediency of narration, but it is less necessary during dialogue and internal monologue. For instance, on the last page, Julie tells Rose a lot of vital information, but in a very small amount of space. It would be nice to see this information spread out more, and demonstrated through Ardara and Sean instead of simply spoken aloud by an outside voice.

Judgment in “Cruisin’ for Christ” by Micah Riecker

The rumor mill is in full and vicious cycle in Micah’s story, and with it the inevitable judgment. It’s all very ironic but not unexpected, that on a church-supported cruise people are passing rumors and judgment left and right. What is truly fascinating here is the variety of judgments cast down and the lack of good reasons for these statements. While most of the story seems to revolve around dealing with Denise and “that atheist of hers,” the underlying problem is David’s guilt complexes. Don, Joshua, and Emily judge others very harshly, but David is constantly watching himself and doing mental penance for anything that seems even slightly sinful. The irony in all this is clearly that while Christians are told in the Bible to reserve judgment, every crucial character in this piece except David, Denise, and Allan is a back-stabbing gossip.

What I seem to be missing in all this is the motivation for such wretched behavior. Without an explanation for Emily and others’ meanness, the piece itself seems to be passing judgment on churchgoers as judgmental gossips. And exactly what is Emily holding over David’s head? I read through the story several times and I just couldn’t find his dirty little secret. Can you show us more of the relationships between the characters and more about each one?

Voice in the untitled work by Jon Crylen

This is a wonderful piece. That said, I particularly adore the close-third narration and the voice of Patrick Hunt. The story has a wonderful air of nostalgia to its narration that makes me feel like I’m listening to a friend telling a story about when he was a kid, but it still has the immediacy needed to keep a reader’s attention. Phrases like “bosomy cursive” give us a very good idea of the age of the narrator as he tells the story. I was strongly reminded of the voice and narration in “Gryphon” by Charles Baxter (high compliment from me, by the way; read it if you haven’t already).

My only suggestion would be to tighten the narration at the very beginning of the story. We have no idea that the story is from Patrick’s point of view until page 2, when Charlie Johnson bursts out that Patrick is the guilty party in the bus seat caper. It confused me when the narration switched from a general class-room view to Patrick’s voice. Perhaps you could bring in Patrick a bit earlier?

The Mother-Son Relationship in “Lasers on Steel” by Randy Robertson

Robert is a really interesting character. He is so genuinely human in all his fears and concerns. The really fascinating aspect of this great story is Robert’s relationship with his mother. To the world, he presents the image of being somewhat ashamed of living with his mother at the age of 35, but he truly loves her. He gets really concerned when she cries at 4:30 in the morning. He cares for her because her father and her husband never did; Robert’s grandfather was abusive, and his mother is broken because of all the other men in her life. Robert puts his own goals aside for her, genuinely concerned.

The issue I have with this piece is that you occasionally pull away from the close third in narration, going to a regular third person narrative. The paragraph on page 4 that begins “Robert didn’t have much to show for his life” tells us a lot about Robert, but from an outsider’s point of view. Can he show us these facts in his own voice? Because that’d be awesome.

Appearance and Affect in “Harriet” by Kathryn Goldthwaite

This piece begins with a wonderful exposition on public appearance and politics (the name of the groom’s character might be a bit over the top, but that’s not a huge issue). It sets up Rose’s mother’s obsession with appearance perfectly. We’re so used to thinking that the rich are the ones obsessed with looks and publicity; it was good to see this contradiction so subtly pulled off.

One of the best things about this piece is Harriet’s affect in the car scene. She puts her feet on the dashboard and picks at her toenails in front of her mother. This is such a great demonstration of her contempt for appearances. Using phrases like “as my mother puts it, look presentable for the wedding” do the same thing very skillfully.

I only ask that you put a bit more of this gorgeous affect in the final scene. We lose Harriet’s emotions and reactions on page 7, and it would be lovely to see more. Character development can go all the way to the end of the piece, and Harriet seems like such a deep and awesome character. Give us more!

2005-10-10T15:38:00.000-05:00

Week 5 Sketches
(to be updated often)

i. Notes on Sr'Yzr
Sr'Yzr stalked. He called it "hunting," said it was good for the soul. His ears were so keen, he could hear the ladies' gossip from a hundred yards, word for word. His eyes were so sharp, he could count every leaf on a tree. If only those were his prey.
If it weren't for those eyes and ears, a wild mixture of vermin and predator, he would have been strikingly handsome. He would have looked like a hero, with the scar over his heart from a well-aimed Thendroni arrow. But the eyes inspired both respect and fear.
Sr'Yzr's laugh was musical, like a dirge. Slow and deep and mourning. When Airen heard the deep chuckle of Sr'Yzr's mirth, he knew death was coming.
Sr'Yzr's markings did not just glove his hands; his arms were pitch black to the elbows, and he wore leather boots to enhance the effect. He was proud to be darker-handed than his father.

ii. Jeremy
Jeremy is the son of a chemist. His dad works for the government. That's all I really know about his home life, except that his mom's a sometimes-lesbian who gave him condoms, some Playboys, and moist towlettes for his thirteenth birthday.
He's got this big brown hair and these gray eyes that are wild with ideas but kind of shaded by pot. Jeremy's the one that got me into gaming. He was always arguing about rules with this other guy in chemistry and talking about his characters. I loved listening to him. He's always so passionate about everything. And I mean everything.
This story has a lot to do with Jeremy and his LiveJournal. He had this talent for capturing attention. Like he did when he was talking about gaming, only if he knew someone was listening he would actually try.

iii.
Right now, my red corduroy jacket is lying in the basement at Grampa's house. I want it back. It's too big, it's too dark, it's missing a button, but I want it back.
I think I wore it every day in Europe. It smells like life, smoke and cough drops and motor oil. A Beethoven enthusiast spilled coffee on me once. I think he apologized, but everything in German sounds so angry so he could have been saying something completely different.

iv.
Bitch bitch bitch, Roberto from Roberto's. That's all he ever does. I'm so sick of listening to him. He gets twelve Italian baguettes every day, $1.51 a loaf. That's dirt cheap. He doesn't get to complain. But he does anyway.
If I didn't get paid for this, I'd hang up on Roberto every time he called.

v.
“J’ai besoin d’une vie,” I tell Katie day after day. And it might be true. Life just takes it out of me, you know? At least, work does. Reading fifty pages of Chrétien de Troyes a day’ll kill ya, I swear. Every day, watching the most handsome knight being honorable to the most beautiful lady in the land.

Hell, I could do that. Write like Chrétien, I mean. Watch me.

This is the story of the Knight with the Unusual Name, le Chevalier du nom inusuel. He found a damsel one day who was crying in her tower, so he climbed the tower and saw her and said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He made love to her and told her he loved her. She promised herself to him. The next day, he moved on to a new land and did the same thing. Oh yeah, and his name was…

God, Chrétien de Troyes sucks.

vi.
Q called me around ten. I hate it when she calls me that late. I was already in bed. It was a Thursday, and I had school in the morning, but so did she and I guess that's why she thought it was okay. She thinks everything's okay. That's her problem.
Inside that pretty blonde head, Q doesn't really know anything. I get at least one call every week that sounds guilty with a smile. It hurts like hell that she doesn't take me seriously. Whining my name like a siren. "Bessiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!" There's an emergency coming and she doesn't even know it.

vii.
I don't really know why I didn't tell Adam that part of why we couldn't work was how he treated Q. I guess it should have been obvious to a normal person, but he had Aspergers so I guess there was something missing in that line of thought. He said she deserved to die. But somehow his brain just didn't see that that was wrong. After I said it was over, and I was crying for God's sake, he posted. There's something evil in a man who calls a bloodhunt. That same force made him call us "fucking elited bigoted Christians," me and my whole family.
Him and Jeremy, man, they were evil.

viii.
At the end, we were all alone, except Jeremy. All of us were grasping at distant hands for some kind of companionship that we had destroyed. I lost everyoe. Q lost more than that. She lost more than that. All she has now is a therapist in a sunny office.
Jeremy has the fame and glory of a murderer, a federal assassin who took out the most dangerous criminal mind of our time. They love him, and he loves us all dearly.

ix.
She tried to make her life a chick flick. If she had her way, Q wouldn't have parents, criticism, or consequences. Sometimes I think she pretends they don't exist, and that's when she gets in trouble and calls me so late at night. For some reason, I am her designated shoulder angel. Why the hell am I the voice of reason? I'm insane! And she's always so proud when she talks about her latest conquests. Then she talks to me and regrets the lot of it. "Why didn't anyone tell me?" she says, forgetting that I told her ten times yesterday alone...

x.
It has to be cream-colored. A textured fabric with swirling raised patterns. It won't give me hips. The skirt will hang to the floor in heavy, loose pleats that make me look tall, because I'm not wearing heels to walk down the aisle.
Mom will say it has to be white, my being a virgin and all, but I need red in my wedding. A red sash around my waist and a red ribbon in my hair. Tall black boots in an elegant Renaissance cut and a dark red rose in my hand. And a sword in my belt.

2005-10-06T14:20:00.000-05:00

Leap
(n+1th draft)

Leap

For three days, Enna lay still in the Underhaven. The air was dark and wet; it threatened to choke her. Still, it was safer here than in the world above.

Her pink school jumper, ripped to rags, flowed around her, loosely waving in the darkness. She could not see her own hands, pale as she knew they were, through the blackened surroundings. They should have been right in front of her, she could feel them, but she hadn’t been able to see since the power went out. Enna forced her invisible hands slowly through the blanket of thickness, trying to perceive their position, her own place against the damp Underhaven wall. The water twisted her waist, digging her tiny shoulder into the cot. Sharp pain, like a breaking branch: the first real thing she had felt for days.

When the rain started, she had run from the streets with the world. Somewhere safe, they had said. When the rain starts, go somewhere safe and stay until the clouds recede. There was no “fast enough” when you ran from the wall of water. She had left her tight, buckled Mary-Janes behind in the street, next to her jump-rope, because putting them on would only slow her down. Gusts of wind whipped her hair and the skirt of her pink corduroy jumper around her. Tripping over fallen branches and tossed by the wind, she had sprinted between cars, through the open doors and fallen on the bare cot with her skinny arms clasped over her head. Her screaming, bleeding feet had left patches that stained the floor a vivid red before the lights went out.

The Underhaven provided the perfect barrier. Cement walls kept back the earth. Cement clouds blocked the perilous sky. Safety lay beneath the city ground, in the basement, where Enna could escape from torment and terror. When she slept here, she could not hear the noises from Above. No cars to scream at her. No Daffyd to make fun of her bruises. No rain. It was an impenetrable fortress, a castle among the sewers.

Mother called it perfectly damp. Nothing stuck to the basement’s bare walls except the ballerina, though the floor was constantly littered with running drawings of colorful fish. They wanted to escape from the paper, just like Enna wanted to get away from her gray world. Enna had always wanted to meet a fish.

A trickle of water ran from a crack in the wall. Enna had never tried to block or divert it because it had a pretty sound, different from the running water in the pipes over the cot, more soothing, and not frightening like the floodwaters. She set her head next to the stream when she needed to forget Daffyd. Stupid big brothers. They’re nothing but trouble, she often told herself as the water fought its way over the rough cement to gain itself a path.

On other days, she watched the ballerina, torn from her magazine to dance on the wall opposite the cot. She was frozen in a pirouette, perfectly balanced. The fading peach leotard she wore matched Enna’s only bra, the one Daffyd said she didn’t need. Whenever Enna tried to twirl like the ballerina, she bruised herself badly. Once she had gone into school with her hands bound in white gauze and a bruise on her arm and Mr. Aaron had asked very quietly if she had problems at home. Enna had said no, even though Daffyd called her names all the time. Another time she fell on her knee so hard on the concrete floor of the Underhaven that she hadn’t been able to walk for an hour. Her hands were always black and blue, but she had stopped crying about them months ago. She wanted that poise like nothing else.

When she fell asleep on the first day with the bracelet in her hand, the sound of the stream rushed in her ears.

Enna reached out for hours and finally found the wall. It was filthy, covered with the same slippery black silt that blanketed her. The Underhaven had grown closer. It surrounded her as it never had before, pressing in from all sides. She pushed against the dirty wall to lift herself from the cot, but her hand slid slowly on the mud and Enna did not move.

The stream had stopped flowing. For the first time in her memory, Enna could not hear anything. Perplexed by the change in her home, she let her hands float to her sides and felt herself rising. I’m under water, she realized with a shock. The Underhaven lifted her along. Enna could not find the ground at first, blind as she was, but soon the air guided her feet downward and held her upright with heavy chains. She pulled one leg against the restraint and felt the Underhaven hold her in place. Trust trickled into her as it pushed her gently, spun her in an age-long pirouette, and tossed her across the small basement, gracefully chaining her into its own arms. Silt fell and danced in Enna’s wake as the cement stage received her toes.

Enna rubbed her face with one wrinkled hand. Mud fell away from her eyes and she could finally see. Her once-blonde hair, now a pale green, floated in front of her face like a slow wind was blowing through it. Looking down, Enna saw to her dismay that her pretty school dress wasn’t pink anymore. The slime that had covered her sleeping body had given it an ugly brown color, and her white school shirt was stained green with mold. She stuck her tongue out in disgust. Mother’s gonna be mad, she thought. Stupid dirt. The water tasted bitter as it flowed through her mouth. It, too, was brown and gross, and too heavy.

The bracelet was still in her hand. Oh good, Enna thought. The silver chain was cold and thin, and pressed into her palm. She was glad now she had gone back for it. It reminded her of Mr. Aaron and his shining hair. Mr. Aaron had given it to her, years ago, but that was a secret. She closed her fingers around the bracelet and smiled as her arms were pushed back, crossing her chest once more.

A current of brown, broken intermittently by bursts of clean rain-water, suddenly swept down the stairs into her precious Underhaven. The new flood was frightening in its blackness. Enna snatched the chain close and ran, no, swam toward the door. The Underhaven tried to hold her back. It grabbed her hair and rags as she forced herself up the stairs, but her fear carried her through the open door and out of her beloved Underhaven. It was no longer safe, no longer a good home.

Outside, the rain was still falling, and the river was still suspended six feet above her head. It looked deeper than she had seen it for years, but still clear, and held an unusual rich green-blue hue. Most of its accumulated mud had already fallen to the street with the rain. A car was buried in it across the street. The sun barely shone through the deep sky-river and left spots of dim light on the damp pavement. So this is a flood, Enna thought, and the thought echoed frighteningly through the empty street. …It’s not so bad…

She took one step and felt the sky-river yank her up toward it. With a silent cry, Enna grasped with her free hand for the branch of a maple sapling planted in the sidewalk, waving strangely in the current, and held on for her life. Where was Mother? Where was Daffyd? They didn’t go above…did they? But it wasn’t safe there! Help! she called out.

There was only one man left to hear Enna’s shriek. Mr. Aaron stood three buildings down, staring at her. She only knew him by his flowing hair. It was dirty now, a brown and green crown connected vaguely to a starved beard. The wrinkles in his ancient face and hands were filled with the silt of the Underhaven. He, too, was dressed in rags that floated around his bones, the remains of ill-fitting blue-jeans and a teacher-shirt, most of its buttons gone. He smiled through the falling rain with a distant contentment. Peace surrounded the old teacher carefully, lovingly, as he nodded to Enna; he had to go.

Mr. Aaron then turned away and leapt upward, into the sky-river. Had she a voice to cry out, Enna would have yelled for him to stop. Her friend sprang into the water above them with a splash like death.

Alone now, Enna clung to her tree. Depth surrounded her; she was caught in the space between the fearful Underhaven and the deadly Above. There seemed no place to go, and it was so dark here…

…Enna…

The call came from Above; Enna looked up to meet it as it fell. It filtered through the sky-river with the sunlight and the rain, covering her face with dappled sound as the river drew her upwards. Someone wanted her. And that someone was above.

She shuddered as the sky-river began to fall. This, she had heard, was the most frightening part of a flood. Either it would take her, or she could leap through it like Aaron and hope for rescue.

...Enna, where are you?...

The water tightened again and tried to strangle Enna. It closed around her throat and chest like a too-tight neck on a wool sweater from Grandma that you couldn’t take off on Christmas morning. She could not stay here anymore. The middle-ground had forsaken her, just as the Underhaven had closed around her. Looking up, she could see the sun waving at her through the river. A dark shadow floated on the sky-river, perhaps a boat. There was life above! Enna released the tree branch and drifted to the road below. Her feet sank into the inch of silt the rain had pressed onto the road. She pushed against the filthy concrete with all her strength and landed with a crash in the sky-river.

It was cold at first, as she floated toward Above, but the water gradually grew warmer and brighter. Flashes of color danced around her eyes. One stopped and looked Enna in the eyes. It was a slender, blue streak. A fish? Enna tried to reach out and touch it, but her hands were bound at her sides. All she could do was watch as it blinked at her and then swam away. It became a color once more and disappeared.

She was so hungry for real light, for air; she began to struggle against the sky-river, squirming in the current to gain some hold on her own movement. The sunlight surrounded Enna. It stroked her belly and pushed on her legs, pushing her sideways as it lifted her. Shapes began to clarify themselves before her eyes. The sun was so close; it had stopped waving and started lighting the world Above. Enna could see a head. A helmet. A hand reaching toward her.

Enna breached the surface. She did not breathe.

2005-10-05T18:32:00.000-05:00

Week 4 Responses

The developing character in McKittrick’s “A Friendly Dissertation”

I loved reading this piece. It was very interesting to read a story in which a character changes so quickly but convincingly. The main character goes from a seemingly self-confident, condescending young man to a disturbed character. We don’t really learn much about Speedy besides his appearance and the fact that the speaker considers him a crappy writer, but that’s not what we care about. What we care about is how the main character reacts to the crappy stories. They really change him. His reactions to Speedy’s stories tell us so much more about the character than he can tell us by himself.

What makes this story so effective is the narration from the middle of page 2 onward. Quite unfortunately, considering the excellence of the narration before this point, the character’s voice doesn’t really shine through until the line “this was a sort of tradition” (McKittrick 2). The narrative voice completely changes from someone dealing in geometry and metaphor to the voice of a teenage boy. We really need to see less of a drastic change from scene to scene. This will make his change at the end of the story more effective.

The rumor mill in Semonchik’s “The Soap Seller”

The wonderful thing about “The Soap Seller” is the fact that the narrative voice perfectly reflects an old woman gossiping nostalgically. The scene on pages 3-5 in which the grandmother relates the tale of Taavi held me captive like the latest story at the lunch table. Occasional interjections of opinion and hindsight happen just often enough to be believable. I want to meet the grandmother and talk with her about Taavi and her aunt Jonna. The story of Jonna’s pregnancy was really intriguing, especially the ending in which we find out the word for “soap seller” is the same backwards and forwards. Great little wordplay there. The voice could use a little more consistency during this part of the story, but it’s overall pretty good.

However, I was talking with someone earlier and he pointed out that the original narrator of the story never comes back. This led me to wonder, what is her purpose at the beginning of the story? She sets up the grandmother’s tales, but doesn’t reflect on them or talk about them with her grandmother. Will we see a return when the story is edited? It would tie the beginning with the end rather nicely, and this seems like a piece that needs a clean ending.

2005-10-02T18:57:00.000-05:00

Week 4 Sketches

This entry will be updated often over the next few days. I just need to put up sketches here so I don't forget to do it on Wednesday too...

i. Sunday Night Laundry

Bleach bleach-alternative no-bleach smells mingled with rainwater and clean linen and God knows what other additives. I hate doing laundry. The only good thing about getting my clothes wet-and-soapy-and-spin-cycled is folding the freshly dry cottons. Then they’re warm and don’t smell like anything but clean. I’ll admit I’m impatient. I sit on the washer to pass the time a bit more pleasantly. The driers don’t vibrate, so they’re just a source of tedium.

ii.

He plays jazz clarinet on the lawn by Post. Only after dark. I can just make out a silhouette by the old-fashioned lamplight. Johnny wears a baseball cap and sunglasses, even at midnight. Sometimes he has a tuxedo jacket over an old band t-shirt. I figure he's trying to impress someone. A first-year girl whose eye he caught at Jazz Night two weeks ago before she started laughing with her friends. She was somethin' else, wasn't she, Johnny? Frizzy red hair and a tight black dress that looked like you could tear it right off. Bright green eyes that danced an improvized swing. Whatever, man.

iii.

The pug is insane. He runs around like a little naked madman, eager to spread his love to all the nations. Starting with your shoe.
My brother saved up and bought Bruce with his own money. Why he bothered to name him, I don't know, because we just call the thing "Pug" anyway. Pug was a runt. A runt and a fully functional hermaphrodite. He could have impregnated himself. The very thought scares me. Imagine giving birth through your penis. Christ, that'd hurt.
Anyway, Pug likes to make his own fun. He sees a cat, so. He chases it. If it bats at him with declawed paws, all the better. Gives him something to bite at with those useless little teeth. Socks are his favorite prey. I've lost too many socks to that little terror.
When he got spayed (because he did get spayed and neutered), he had stitches he wasn't allowed to lick. So he had a cone. And pugs don't really have snouts, so he didn't have anything sticking out of the cone. He just ran around like a little cone-demon, and the cats laughed.

iv.

Physics is trying to kill me. I go into D108 and it assaults me with a revolver. It's always missed, so far, but one of these days I'll go in after pulling an all-nighter with the coefficients of kinetic friction and it'll have a slower target. It likes to think it's something out of "The Matrix," which kind of boggles my mind because I thought they weren't on good terms. It says "dodge this" every time it shoots. When you shoot from across the room, and you give that kind of warning, it's pretty likely that I'll dodge the bullet. I'll fall to the floor at -9.8 m/s^2and Physics will miss by inches. Take that, Physics, I say.

v. I'd really like comments on this one! I think I'll turn it into something bigger.

I'm weird. I know it. I revel in it.
I once figured out the best way to keep sixth graders from sitting next to me on the bus the high school and middle school shared. I wore a black leather motorcycle jacket with brass-colored fastenings. I didn't comb my hair. I sat with my enormous backpack crushing my legs and the headphone cord sticking out of the top. Headphones on.
Conducting "Bittersweet Symphony" with an intense, wild subtlety with one hand.
It was fun to watch them stare and pass me by for a seat a little further back. This way, I didn't have to listen to them practicing swear words or ragging on the President.
It always turned out that I got a sweet little seventh grade girl in pink next to me. It was lovely, having someone who didn't care what you looked like or what you were doing or what you were reading. (This one time, a boy saw me reading "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." He said, "Are you a witch?" I said, "No...", trailing off like that, leaving room for a question. Then the little snot says, "But you're reading about monsters." And I say, "It's a Harry Potter book." And he says that's for fourth graders and laughs with his little friends about the freaky high school girl.) The little girls in pink are always sweet and well-mannered, as long as they're not wearing make-up. At that stage, they're long gone. Glitter is death.

2005-10-02T18:47:00.000-05:00

Week 3 Sketches

i.

Notes on Enna

water as restraint/constraint
Enna is balanced in chains
Gracefully chained
wears a pale pink/peach trainer bra even though her brother said she didn’t need one (she only has the one)
her clothes are brown rags when she jumps
the upper river feels like sunshine
she saw a man in a helmet and reached for him, desperate for real light and real air. when she reached the surface, she didn’t breathe
there was an old man standing on the pavement, looking up at the sky-river. he wore brown, too, mud-covered tatters and a long, starved beard

ii.
In those three days, the Underhaven had grown filthy. Silt dripped from the smooth gray concrete walls. If she could have moved, she would have cleaned it off. It had covered the ballerina, but she could not help.

iii.
The river hadn’t returned to where it was supposed to be. It was still suspended six feet over Enna’s head. Beams of sunlight lit the damp streets in a green beauty.
The depth of the sky-river frightened her.

iv.
Aaron sits by the fire, warming his ancient hands. They creak terribly today. The rain is coming.

This time, he doesn’t have the strength to run. Every step breaks him a little more, making his back bend and his gait slow. Aaron’s hair is long and gray; like his beard, it’s thinning terribly. His blue jeans like to sit at his bony hips now, too tired, like him, to hold themselves up.

As the first drops fall, Aaron sighs deeply. It’s too much to ask an old man to evacuate on this short notice. He’s better off here, where he can face the flood and meet fate bravely. Running’s not just the hard way; it’s plain wrong.

v.
The walls were filthy; the current hit them gently and knocked debris out the open Underhaven door. Eventually, at the end of the third day, it caught Enna.

She rose deeply. She did not want to be lifted, not yet, and the cot held her by the rags around her waist. Her arms were chained gracefully to either wall as she rose. Perfect balance blessed her slow, deliberate motions, and she danced. She swirled toward the door, with the ballerina’s poise and the chain in her hand. It was silver, untouched by silt or rust. Daffyd had bought the chain, but that was a secret.

vi.
Dec. 13, 1899

Dearest diary,

I do not feel like being beautiful today. I shall dress myself in rags and dull my hair with ashes.

Rori has died. A battle with pneumonia; six weeks he clung to life and he falls so close to recovery. At the funeral, there was a man in a wonderfully tailored gray suit, gray like a day-lit thunderstorm, and a white top hat. He laid a red rose on the coffin and looked as though he might as well have been dead himself.

I learned later that his name is Georges, and that he liked my mourning garments. A strange comment. He also said that Rori could have been saved, if only he had accepted a gift. Giselle told me that he wished to speak to me, and perhaps to offer me the same gift. I am puzzled.

~Duenne

vii.
Since I started taking the meds, life has been a series of surreal and magical moments. I’ve painted with the sky. Its depths were full of pigment and oil, and I put a brush to the surface to stir them. I have watched music escape from me with intent to please. I have conversed with God about the weather.
It’s odd, really. Because they were supposed to make me sane.

viii.
I flew West, across the waters. It seemed the right direction, at the time. The sunset inspired me. I wanted to follow it, to be in the trail of that red, red sun forever.
One evening, when I was flying West, the sun stopped. It was sudden. I couldn’t stop in time. My wings were torn apart as I tried to fight falling into the sun. Feathers floated behind me, catching fire as I was sucked feet-first into the red lake.
It burned my toes at first, but as soon as my head slid beneath the surface it was simply warm. Peaceful. I did not miss my wings at all, because swimming in the sun was far better than chasing it into the night.

ix.
He bent toward the ground in his gray suit, reaching down for something. I gasped, but no one noticed. They were all too busy in their drunken debauchery.
Slowly, lovingly, he lifted a napkin off the grass and tucked it in his pocket. There was no proud smile on his broad face now. Only shame. I felt a tear gathering in my eye as I watched Roger Taylor walk toward his office, a drop of blood dripping from the center of his hand. The crown of thorns was barely visible in the hazy noon light.

x.
- They never listen, do they? Children, I mean. They come crying to you for help, but they don’t really want advice.
- Tell me more.
- All right. I guess. I was listening to her last night. She got drunk and flirted with this guy who has a girlfriend. Again. And she’s got this other guy who wants to marry her. At least this time the guy didn’t fall for her. The one with the girlfriend. I mean, it’s got to be the tenth time she’s come to me with the same problem. And she knows what’s wrong. But she won’t fix it. And I cut her off. Was that so wrong? I mean, how many times have I pulled her out of the same jam?
- You know, you don’t have to save everyone.
- I guess not. But it’s hard to watch them fall, just the same. And if all they’re going to do is choose to maintain the problem, then why do I even exist?
- For the same reason I do.
- Oh yeah. Do you ever get tired of it?
- Sometimes. But I get paid.
- She makes me cookies whenever I’m home.
- You don’t have to save her again, you know.
- And you don’t have to save me, but you’re still here.
- I guess so.

2005-10-02T18:46:00.000-05:00

Week 1 Sketches

Key Objects as Storytelling

i.
Randy wasn’t good at sauntering. He felt kind of awkward holding his head high and acting like he knew where he was, what he was doing. So he opened the door to Old Main cautiously. It was heavy, like history.

The stairs were grooved with age and wet with rain. He nearly slipped as he tried not to look down.

When he found 201, he paused momentarily. Straightened his shirt. Coughed a bit. First impressions could be important; he never really knew from class to class how he looked to the room.

The room looked aged, like some forgery artist had dragged a teabag over it and singed the edges with a Zippo. It was nearly empty, except for the professor.

He decided sauntering would be a bad idea. Instead, he shuffled. He barely lifted his hiking boots from the carpet as he moved toward the center of the classroom and sat. Front and center. Good impression.

The short-sleeved Oxford was a good choice. It blended with the colors of the room, browns and greens, but the plaid stood out. Clashed, but he didn’t notice. Even the thin stripes of white made him less distinguishable from the back wall.

ii.
It’s a blanket. When I breathe, it smothers me. With the suffocation come hallucinations. That’s what the doctor said.

My breathing slows as I let the night fill me. No stars to stop them. Not a sliver of moon to cut open the blanket and rescue me.

The first voice is a man’s. It says my name like a fact. “Bess.” He is a man of the smothering void. Deep voice, but not deep enough to be truly frightening or comforting.

I close my eyes and wrap the night closer. Maybe it will kill me this time, but at least I’ll be warm. If the screams start again, maybe I won’t hear them.

A cricket penetrates the death.

It will begin any second now. The voice that should be beautiful but calls to me instead. She would have my help. She would have my life. “Bess!” she screams. It’s far away, the voice no one else knows.

Smell is essential to any good night. Sometimes I wish for fire, just so it will fill my nostrils and proclaim itself. Grass is acceptable. Rain, by far the greatest. The deepest. You can spend hours on the rain’s smell, seeing where it came from. I like it when it comes from Canada. Then I know my love is wearing too much perfume.

Tonight is only dry and odorless. I hate it.

“Bess!” she screams again, and I have no sense with which to block it out.

iii.
I have to wonder why they chose this room. The room with the antenna, down the stairs from the thermometer. And why I got caught up in all of it: me, the frail little Christian girl with the “issues”.

We were discussing them (him? her? it?) when the room went cold. It was instantaneous but subtle, except in Amanda’s feet. They turned blue and shook until she ate the sea salt. My arm was forced forward. The cold swirled.

It was a man holding my arm forward. I know by how he forced it. Until I put my fist through his face, he tried to control me, like the boys in kempo class who put me in locks until I called Sensei. They don’t hold on long if you push them back hard enough.

Erin put sea salt all over the floor. It gets stuck between my toes now, but I suppose that’ll keep me safe in some way. Then she yelled at it for a while, telling it to get out before she forced it, but Amanda just shook more and I locked up, my whole body this time. He, whatever he was, hadn’t gotten in my mind yet, but he was certainly trying. If I couldn’t hit him, he could do what he wanted with me.

Hope waned thinner and thinner as the wind, invisible but chilling, picked up and took our sanity with it. Erin was still shouting, Amanda was frozen and shivering, and I was pinned to the top bunk.

“Kyrie eleison,” I whispered through racking breaths. “Christe eleison.”

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

Again and again, I moved my lips, forcing my mind through the prayers I knew by heart. The service goes Kyrie, Gloria, Credo (not really a prayer, I thought), Sanctus, Benedictus… The Lord’s Prayer.

I moved my lips to the familiar words. “Give us this day our daily bread…”

“You’re scaring it,” Erin said, with sudden realization. Amanda joined with me and we drove the rhythm into the room. I had tears streaming down my face. He had released me, and I could smile. Fearlessness filled us with warmth. It was divine courage.

“In the name of Jesus, be gone!” Amanda said firmly.

The chill disappeared. I climbed down and collapsed on Amanda, exhausted but filled with new life.

“Your first exorcism.” Erin put a hand on my shoulder. “I was tired, too.”

iv.
It’s called a galvanometer. I have no idea what it does, but it looks like it could use a good polishing. The black metal casing is thick and bold. Steel needle, maybe, for measuring something on either the positive or negative side of an aged piece of paper. The scale goes 0-5 on both sides.

It must be sensitive, the galvanometer. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have that strong, rough black iron protecting it. Or the sheet of glass, the only piece of this confusing machine that casts a reflection.

So dead.

v.
She sharpened her pencils cautiously. After all, they could break, and then she’d have to start all over.

Of course, this took a very long time on the ancient wall-mounted sharpener. The blades were dull and the handle caught at least twice per rotation. Electric sharpeners were a luxury the school couldn’t afford for its classrooms.

Damn the SAT! she thought suddenly and angrily, breaking off a #2 in the machine, and then: Shit…

Mrs. Moore grumbled as she took a screwdriver from her desk and set about fixing her malevolent friend, who had stood by her for thirty-two years and then decided to betray her. Proctoring the SAT. What was she thinking? Thirty kids, sweating over reading comprehension and trying to make their two number-two pencils last for three hours. The smart ones ended up staring off into space between questions or erasing stray marks around answer ovals, making them perfect, simply because they had time to burn. More mediocre students hurt their wrists trying to fill in perfect bubbles in the biggest hurry of their lives. And it was all for a grade that would matter for a year at the most. Shit.

vii.
I carve the sun lazily into my desk. It’s hot. All I can think about is the power of the heat burning my legs through my jeans.

It’s usually a circle, but today the heat is so methodical that the sun must be a triangle. You can’t break a triangle, they say in math class. Besides, straight lines are easier to force into the aging wood than curves.

I wish I had a chisel. A chisel and a hammer, so I could leave a whole story about the heat and my life and how they always seem to coincide.

Someone else has already left a mark here. More than one “someone” by the looks of it. Eons of fraternity cave paintings decorate the desk’s surface. Apparently Sigma Nu rocks… So does Fiji… There’s also a long string of commentary about adultery, in two colors of pen. It’s a debate, in two different hands. Some of the choice words have worn away, but the fact remains that two people who never met argued human sexuality on my desk. I should be honored. Maybe the sun will make me a nice, runic halo to commemorate the occasion. It ought to be just as angular as the burning star itself.

vii.
Backstory: Duenne Cartier (LARP character)

Duenne took in the dusty room with a slow, analytical eye. There was certainly enough room for her materials; a cutting table, a sewing machine, a dressmaker’s model… She would have to buy that bed upstairs, the old French four-poster like the one she had as a child.

“How much?” she asked the kindly lady who owned the room for rent in the basement of the Galesburg Antique Mall.

“Seven hundred a month. That includes utilities, of course.” Duenne smiled. The woman must be desperate. “Of course, if you would be willing to part with one of your pieces every once in a while, we could lower that considerably.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Duenne answered. “You said something about private shows?”

“Oh, yes,” the woman said hurriedly, “we’d be more than happy to host evening events if you need somewhere a bit closer than Chicago to show your work. There’s a lovely hall upstairs, and we have wonderful contacts with musicians in town.”

“Beautiful. May I move in tonight?”

“Tonight?” The old woman looked confused. “Wouldn’t you rather wait till morning?”

“Oh, I am sorry. I just flew in, and I’m on French time. I don’t have much, but I’m quite awake enough to get it in tonight. All I would need from you is the bed from the second floor so I can rest when I’m finished, and then I can take care of myself.” Duenne rummaged in the purse she had made on the train last night. “Is cash all right?”

The woman’s eyes seemed ready to fall from their sockets. “Oh… yes… of course, Madame…”

“And please, do not disturb me during the day. I do my best work at night.”

She showed no sign that this was odd behavior. Duenne was quite proud of her abilities with convincing mortals. “Consider it done.” She rushed upstairs happily to call her sons, the furniture movers. “You’ll like them. Strong young men. Single!” she called back over her shoulder.

Duenne shook her head with a sly smile as she carefully hung three drafts on the wall over the corner desk. One week to make a new gown for her introduction to the Galesburg Camarilla.

Her sire, Georges Theil-Rabier, had arranged for her to leave Paris for a first-hand study of American history and fashion. “It is so different from our own haute-couture,” he had remarked. “There is much to learn, much that could aid your already well-developed skills with new ideas.” She had left with the blessings of the Parisian Camarilla for this dull, underdeveloped city but two days ago. With luck, the help of her clan, and the proper inspiration, she could surely bring beauty to the heartland.

ix.
Peter’s cat crept with the dawn. Gradually, his pale form shone yellow in the new sunlight. He stretched, sinking his front end into the floor and lazily preparing to leap.

The wind rustled outside Peter’s cat’s east-facing window. A bird heckled him mercilessly as he cleaned behind his ear. These would-be distractions were nothing to Peter’s cat. He was a professional.

For a moment, he appeared to be settling himself on the rug with his species’ renowned grace. Then he perked up. He pushed against the floor, ears flattened to his head and a low growl in his throat. The airborne cat was marvelous to behold; he was a flash of brilliant blonde across the gray bedroom.

Peter just didn’t appreciate art, Peter’s cat thought as his roommate knocked him to the floor.

x.
Mother says it’s “marvelously damp”.

There’s always a trickle of water on the wall, pouring through the cracks in the Underhaven’s cement foundation. It gives a sound to the otherwise dead room. There are no real pictures on the wall, not with glass frames; just Enna’s colorful fish drawings and a magazine photo of a ballerina dressed in pink. The fish have bled their magic-marker color across the pages now; they’re trying to escape, too. Enna has always wanted to meet a fish.

xi.
“What are you doing in a Baptist church?” Norman asks me.

It’s hard to answer him. I don’t want to insult the sweet nearly-deacon of the Anglo-Catholic church back home. So I go on for a while about spontaneity in worship and the Fundamentals and the other usual arguments. He doesn’t really understand. Liturgical-types hardly ever do.

Really, it’s that I can fly. When I close my eyes and raise my hands, and smile for Jesus, he picks me up. Spins me around like a little kid who runs to Daddy. I feel fifty pounds lighter, twenty years younger. You just can’t do that in the Anglican Church. Only Baptists can fly.

2005-10-01T00:36:00.000-05:00

Heck...

Where are my posts? I tried to post "Leap" but it doesn't seem to want to show up... Ah well. Sketches coming up soon, when I find the time to mess around here.

2005-09-30T14:06:00.000-05:00

LEAP (draft n)

For three days, Enna lay still in the Underhaven. The air was dark and wet; it threatened to choke her. Still, it was safer here than in the world above.

Her pink school jumper, ripped to rags, flowed around her, loosely waving in the darkness. She could not see her own hands, pale as she knew they were, through the blackened surroundings. They should have been right in front of her, she could feel them, but she hadn’t been able to see since the power went out. Enna forced her invisible hands slowly through the blanket of thick air, trying to perceive their position, her own place against the damp Underhaven wall. The air twisted her waist, digging her tiny shoulder into her cot. Sharp pain, like a breaking branch: the first real thing she had felt for days.

Mother called it perfectly damp. Nothing stuck to the basement’s bare walls except the ballerina, though the floor was constantly littered with running drawings of colorful fish. They wanted to escape, just like Enna. Enna had always wanted to meet a fish.

A trickle of water ran from a crack in the wall. Enna had never tried to block or divert it because it had a pretty sound, different from the running water in the pipes over the cot. She set her head next to the stream when she needed to forget Daffyd. Stupid big brothers. They’re nothing but trouble, she often told herself as the water fought its way over the rough cement to gain itself a path.

When she fell asleep on the first day, the sound of the stream rushed in her ears.

On the third day, Enna reached out and found the wall. It was filthy, covered with the same slippery black silt that blanketed her. The Underhaven had grown closer. It surrounded her as it never had before, pressing in from all sides. She pushed against the dirty wall to lift herself from the cot, but her hand slid slowly on the mud and Enna did not move.

The stream had stopped flowing. For the first time in her memory, Enna could not hear anything. Perplexed by the change in her home, she let her hands float to her sides and found herself rising. The Underhaven lifted her along. Enna could not find the ground at first, blind as she was, but soon the air guided her feet downward and held her upright with heavy chains. She pulled one leg against the restraint and felt the Underhaven hold her in place. Trust trickled into her as it pushed her gently, spun her in an age-long pirouette, and tossed her across the small basement, gracefully chaining her into its own arms. Silt fell and danced in Enna’s wake as the cement stage received her toes.

Enna rubbed her face with one wrinkled hand. Mud fell away from her eyes and she could finally see. Her once-blonde hair floated in front of her face like a slow wind was blowing through it. Looking down, Enna saw to her dismay that her pretty dress wasn’t pink anymore. The slime that had covered her sleeping body had given it an ugly brown color, and her white school shirt was stained green with mold. She stuck her tongue out in disgust. Mother’s gonna be mad, she thought. Stupid dirt. The air tasted bitter as it flowed through her mouth. It, too, was brown and gross, and too heavy.

The bracelet was still in her hand. Oh good, Enna thought. The silver chain was cold and thin, and pressed into her palm. She was glad now she had gone back for it. It reminded her of Aaron and his shining hair. Aaron had given it to her, years ago, but that was a secret. She closed her fingers around the bracelet and smiled as her arms were pushed back, crossing her chest once more.

A current of brown, broken intermittently by bursts of clean rain-water, suddenly swept down the stairs into her precious Underhaven. The new flood was frightening in its blackness. Enna snatched the chain close and ran, no, swam through the air toward the door. The Underhaven tried to hold her back. It grabbed her hair and rags as she forced herself up the stairs, but a river of fear carried her through the open door and out of her beloved Underhaven. It was no longer safe, no longer a good home.

Outside, the rain was still falling from Above, and the river was still suspended six feet above her head. It looked deeper than she had seen it for years, but still clear, and held an unusual rich green-blue hue. Most of its accumulated mud had already fallen to the street with the rain. The sun barely shone through the deep sky-river and left spots of dim light on the damp pavement. So this is a flood, Enna thought, and the thought echoed frighteningly through the empty street. …It’s not so bad…

She took one step and felt the sky-river yank her up toward it. With a silent cry, Enna grasped with her free hand for the branch of a sapling planted in the sidewalk and held on for her life. Help! she called out.

There was only one man left to hear Enna’s shriek. Aaron stood three buildings down, staring at her. She only knew him by his flowing hair. It was dirty now, a brown and green crown connected vaguely to a starved beard. The wrinkles in his ancient face and hands were filled with the silt of the Underhaven. He, too, was dressed in rags that floated around his bones, the remains of ill-fitting blue-jeans and a teacher-shirt, most of its buttons gone. He smiled through the falling rain with a distant contentment. Peace surrounded the old man carefully, lovingly, as he nodded to Enna; he had to go.

Aaron then turned away and leapt upward, into the sky-river. Had she a voice to cry out, Enna would have yelled for him to stop. Her friend sprang into the water above them with a splash like death.

Alone now, Enna clung to her tree. Depth surrounded her; she was caught in the space between the fearful Underhaven and the deadly Above. There seemed no place to go, and it was so dark here…

…Enna…

She shuddered as the sky-river began to fall. This, she had heard, was the most frightening part of a flood. Either it would take her, or she could leap through it like Aaron and hope for rescue.

The air tightened again and tried to strangle Enna. It closed around her throat and chest like a too-tight neck on a wool sweater from Grandma that you couldn’t take off on Christmas morning. She could not stay here anymore. The middle-ground had forsaken her, just as the Underhaven had closed around her. Looking up, she could see the sun waving at her through the river. There was life Above. Enna released the tree branch and drifted to the road below. Her feet sank into the inch of silt the rain had pressed onto the road. She pushed against the filthy concrete with all her strength and landed with a crash in the sky-river.

Enna breached the surface. She did not breathe.

2005-09-16T17:21:00.000-05:00

the pug is up!

behold my icon, behold he that snortest away to scare the cats. happy are we who adore the pug!

check out the site for more pug pics:
Natural20

2005-09-14T14:32:00.000-05:00

New blog... Exciting... Anyway, it's basically just here for creative writing purposes. Maybe I'll post my work here for people to read outside the fiction workshop class.

Well, here we are.