~the Slipstream~

(Sestinas are pretty absurd as far as the having tons of rules goes. This is sort of based on that plot outline for a play that I did a while back. Need a title.)

The eager wind races over the face
Of the deep blue, white tipped sea,
Rolling the water below it up into
Waves. Its airy shriek becomes a hymn
To the quickly gathering storm, whose eye
Forms above the Pacific’s deepest well.

A small craft briefly atop an ocean swell
Sees more than it’s prepared to face.
A lone sailor’s straining eyes
Look out across the reckless sea
To see wind and water whipping round him;
And his vessel whipping round, too

He grips the gunnels but makes no move to
Seek the cabin’s shelter. Maybe it’s just as well:
It’s clear that this will be the end of him.
The water spits, the wind pummels his face,
And as it strives to shake him loose, it can see
The maniac gleam rising in his eye

Is this a man much braver than I?
Who chose to remain in safety, refused to
Break out and follow my friend to the sea.
If this is to be his end, then I surely chose well:
My life will not be torn apart by elemental fates.
Yet my monotony sees no end. Hmm.

Somehow it seems that I’m less real than him
Though this storm might be only in my mind’s eye.
I paint a crazy grin on his wind-bit face
And he watches the chaos with glee. He screams into
The wind; then, knowing that he might as well,
Laughs as I throw him to the sea.

A world away from my home in Tennessee,
A friend’s last breaths are torn away from him.
The endless ocean is now where he’ll dwell,
But knowing what I know of the man, I
Cannot help but imagine that he will go to
meet death with a smile etched on his face.

But if he faces death on the stormy sea,
Better there be two, and not just him.
I wish that I’d gone along. Oh well.

This started as a personal tool for me to lay out what I have ‘on the go’ creatively (aside from the whole productivesmog business which will come into its own because it has to because it’s on a timeline). But I feel that somehow making this public will put more pressure on me to actually follow some of this through. A lot of these things are on the site in various forms..

WRITING

Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings (play) – An office worker is challenged by an old friend to break the mediocrity of his day-to-day drone. He doesn’t. Then he thinks maybe he should have. Adventure and self-actualization ensue. Adaptation meets Heart of Darkness. (potential to combine elements of ForceSuntoRise into it, since they are very similar thematically)

Force the Sun to Rise, again (short story) – expand and improve original in order to actually convey intended message. Am a bit into this.. started last year.

Pale Gaze (novel) – A wealthy civil servant meets a strange young woman living in a house that is slated for destruction to make way for a townhouse development. He becomes intrigued, perhaps obsessed by her, and tried to determine how she came to be where and who she is. Her upbringing was largely devoid of outside human contact, so her perceptions of the world are almost alien and call into question the role of society in making us who and how we are. This could be the big one. I really think this has loads of potential. I’m just being extremely careful with it (to the point of not working on it) so I don’t fuck it up.

Faraway Trains (short story) – Maria, a 16 year old girl, travels against her mother’s will to spend christmas with her estranged father. Her mother has done her utmost to keep her from seeing him. Maria has met him twice: once over a decade ago when he was introduced as her uncle, and more recently and awkwardly when they met briefly in his hometown. She is determined that whatever either of her parents say, she will get back the father she lacked growing up.

A Song Sung and A Book Writ Through Gritted Teeth and Clenched Fist (novel/short story?) – A young fellow travels abroad, to a room in rural Britain, with high hopes for writing his great novel. He awkwardly tries to fit in, and his starry-eyed idealistic view of the place is gradually stripped away. Crime thriller? Not sure yet.

Why Dream in Technicolor (play) – A despondent young man (on one stage) imagines (on stage two) how things might be if only he could get his head out of his ass and be more like people tell him to be. Had this idea in first year and have written a few pages. Has potential, I think.

Northenden (comic) – comic series based on my GURPS campaign. This would be totally cool, and the best medium to tell this story I think. I would just need to find an artist. It can’t be me.. I just don’t have that talent.

Busf#cker!!! (comic) – based on monologue; on hold due to mostly lost interest.

VISUAL ART
‘laptop to the head’ (photography) – Someone lying in a field, wrapped up by all sorts of cords and wires, a gash in their head and a laptop nearby

OTHER
Post Apocalypse (installation) – There is no one left on earth to tell their story. Instead we learn of their lives through their detritus, fragments of things left over: answering machine messages, TVs left running, letters (get it?.. post!), etc. Neat device to tell a story, just don’t know what the story should be. Also need to consider that if this is the world of the present or future, computers will affect what will be left running/open. Could have a computer terminal with certain things open, but that sort of goes against the tangibility i would really want to be a part of this.

RPG CAMPAIGN IDEAS (also potential for fictive endeavors)

Northenden – It will never die! And will likely occupy much of my creative thought process for years to come. I’ve seriously grown quite close to this bastard. In fact, I think I love Lord Osark! (who I’ve decided looks exactly like Jeff Tweedy)

No One’s Land - the last survivor(s) of an apocalypse wake up in an abandonned landscape; try to survive and determine whether he/she/they are alone

The Dustbowl – In the depression era US, an orphaned young woman whose big city life has fallen apart inherits an inn from her uncle and moves to the middle of nowhere to try starting fresh; things get interesting. Started this (barely) as a solo GURPS game with Val. I still am quite attached to it, just never felt I had the time to focus on it because Northenden was taking all my brainpower in the summer (seriously).

VAGUE IDEAS
-A story told in fragments, different characters in different settings and genres, but they all relate to each other and form a cohesive whole. Again, interesting device.. need a story.
-Short film script about… something. Russ said I should write something that he could shoot. So I should. I mean this guy has mad skillz. Opportunity!
-Should paint something again…
-More songofthedays. those are good for stretching the writing muscles.

The edited version of this is dissimilar enough and not necessarily better enough that I’m going to leave both up, I think, you know…for kids. Interested to see which one people like more. The revised one is more purely description, so is a bit restricted in form.

Final:
A haphazard thigh high hedge stumbles along the sidewalk edge, changing from bright red to yellow speckled green and spotted with unintended gaps. In colour and shape it could be a last-minute Christmas decoration set by your unemployed uncle, clutching his stomach and reeling from too much eggnog and gin. As a purely physical boundary it is entirely ineffectual, but its ugliness at least keeps a passerby’s eyes from straying away from their path and into the front yard. The hedge breaks at a fenceless chain link gate, rusted the same brown as the exposed branches of the mostly hawthorn boundary.

The hedge is not the property’s only ambassador to the outside world. The patchy lawn is dominated by a pair of straight-standing firs, placed evenly on either side of the concrete path that leads from gate. These evergreens shoot straight up into the bright blue storm flecked sky, with little concern for the more subdued height of their nearby, now leafless, peers. Their only competitors in the struggle to be the most grandiose of neighbourhood trees are each other. So they stand together above the power lines, their majesty easily mistaken for domineering smugness.

All of that—the hedge, the firs, and a cluster of ragged cedar bushes at the end of the lawn—is just a diversion from what lies behind. The off-white stucco house is trimmed in faded black. The small, square front window can conceivably be viewed from the street, but only at specific angles. Such an angle reveals laced curtains closed behind weathered glass with ribbed shutters that we can only assume would be shut were they not screwed into the wall. Like the tacit classmate who barely speaks when rarely spoken to, it’s hard to know whether this withdrawal is set off by assured self-importance verging on the solipsistic… or simple shyness.

Draft:
A discarded side road curls around low rent housing and an overgrown vacant lot. An uneven thigh high hedge follows its sidewalk, breaking at a fenceless chain link gate, rusted the same brown as the branches of the sparse hawthorn boundary. The path beyond the gate leads briefly through a lawn much greener than its neighbours’, but dominated by two straight-standing firs placed evenly on either side. They shoot straight up into the bright blue storm flecked sky, with little concern for the more subdued height of their nearby peers, whose leaves have mostly already left to paper surrounding lawns and rooftops. Not content to limit their stake to the neighbourhood’s sky, the spiny branches of these two trees hang low to attend the grass like massive yet gentle combs.

The off-white stucco house is simply trimmed in faded black but reveals little of itself to the street, instead burying its face in those two thriving spires of fir and a cluster of cedar bushes directly at its front. Its two small, square front windows can conceivably be viewed, around the untamed wilderness before them, from the street—but only at specific angles. Such an angle reveals laced curtains closed behind weathered glass and ribbed shutters that would likely be shut were they not screwed into the exterior wall.

The gate, one of whose poles stands slightly askew, is occasionally seen to be opened. Mainly at half past four on Thursdays and Sundays, when a hunched octogenarian in a straight turquoise coat with impractically large buttons creeps slowly along the walkway with the help of a brown plastic cane. Though this pattern rarely continues into the winter months. Sometimes after sundown a window, more likely the right, is lit from within. Not tonight.

More being forced into the forms of poetry. The idea of the pantoum is the repeating lines. Based on the example that the monsieur Donaldson wrote for us the repeated lines don’t have to repeat exactly, so I was a bit open with that. Erm. It’s alright I guess. I think the idea of the pantoum is really neat, but as with most poetry it feels like writing with my hands tied behind my back and like I could say much more in a much more compelling manner if I just stuck to elegant and eloquent prose. This is a considerable revisation of the original as of Oct 22).

She said that she would take care of me,
But I can’t see how she’ll make this worthwhile
It’s dark and so cold that I can’t feel my hands.
A car drives by overhead, no stopping.

I don’t see how this will be worth it.
Why does she think my loyalty can be bought?
Another car continues straight over the bridge.
Was it just her eyes got me into this?

My loyalty can be bought, but she couldn’t know.
This is a fool’s game, no one is coming.
It was just her eyes got me into this.
My feet are gonna get me back out.

I was a fool for playing, and now I’ll be leaving.
O’Leary can do her own goddamn dirty work.
But as I lift my feet to back slowly out
A glock barks twice in the winter night.

It’s O’Leary, doing her own goddamn dirty work.
I catch sight of her as I turn round.
Then a glock barking twice more in the cold winter night,
And me falling into the cold winter ground.

I see everything has turned around for me now
It’s dark and so cold that I can’t feel my hands
And I lie on the red ground, remembering how
She said she would take care of me.