Vignette 2: Kate

When she sits in class, during the middle of an awful lecture about history or philosophy, Kate likes to set her chin on the desk in from of her and open her mouth until her jaw locks in place, and then wait for a few seconds and let it shut again so that her back molars hit with a dull click. She does it over and over. She flexes her toes in her socks in her sneakers, which are dirty and the left one has a rip in the side from the day when she thought she could walk on a thin wall and slid off, her shoe scraping along the jagged stone (it’s called conchina, a wall made of sharp hardened shells and sand in St. Augustine, where she lived as a child). she hit the wall with the inside of her left thigh, she had a bruise there for weeks that was yellow and made her afraid to wear a bathing suit (as if she needed another reason. There is not a single sixteen-year-old girl who has actual emotions that wants to wear a bathing suit), and she would forget it whenever she crossed her legs at dinner, knee over knee, and she winced but kept sitting that way anyway. She always liked looking like the martyr, like those men who walked away from duels victorious and approached their lady love with bloodstains growing under their waistcoats but a proud, pained smile. Physically, Kate looks like neither the Hero or the Lady Love. Her hair is limp and could be gold if she cared enough to let it glitter, and she keeps going between keeping it skull short and letting it fall across her back, so right now it looks very much like unplanned and indecisive hair that sits in choppy lengths between he chin and her shoulders. Her face is a pouting sort of face, and her eyes are tired, her ears are uninteresting. Sometimes she wears makeup and it’s a terrible mistake where her sea foam green eyes don’t match up and her lips look fat and out of place, like they were scotch taped on, and she resembles, mostly, a porcelain doll that was painting in the dark by a slightly drunk artist. When she does not wear makeup, she is likable, almost pretty, though when she smiles she tends to look more exhausted than excited. She wears the same pair of jeans that she’s worn for three or four years, and unstimulating but flattering tops that are comfortable enough for slumping, which is what she does when she’s around people who make her feel very small, which is almost everyone. The people who make her feel like herself, who is not small at all but moderately tall for her age, are the ones that make her want to walk atop walls, and go swimming in her clothes, or swing her legs in her chair and smile like she means it, and she goes running when she’s all alone, and she doesn’t bother to buy “running shoes” or “jogging pants” but goes in her school clothes with wrinkles from slumping still in her shirt. Right now, though, Kate isn’t thinking of running, because her legs feel like those big stalks of kelp that she saw in the aquarium in Monterray, where she lives now, because she is currently noticing for the seventh time this semester how handsome the back of The Boy Who Sits Three Rows And Two Seats To The Left’s neck is, because it curves like a hill in an Ansel Adams picture, and his hair is always trimmed so neatly. He’s the sort of attractive man that she’s sure she should fall in love with, the sort of man who should save her from getting hit by a bus or from falling off a balcony. Right now, Kate’s eyebrows are cringing with the realization that, if she were to swoon dramatically in class, then she would not be able to see the definitely devastated look of concern on The Boy Who Sits Three Rows And Two Seats To The Left’s face as she lay, her mismatched hair making an straw-colored halo around her suddenly much prettier and dramatic visage, one hand cradling her head and one arm back, her legs crumpled under her, all the room paying attention to the girl who, around Other People was quiet, but still proudly bore the shadow of a bruise on her inner thigh and had countless other scars from when she had dared to vault the small but frightening mountains of her life.

You say you want a.....resolution? Vignette 1: Proserpine

Okay. So I know that it's almost a month too late to make a New Year's resolution, and this isn't really a full year one so I don't know if it'll count, but I'm better at making immediate resolutions anyway (i.e.: Buy Some Q-Tips, Go To Sleep Before 4 AM). So here goes: since I'm supposed to be work shopping in my Creative Writing course constantly, and it looks like I'll be put on the spot pretty regularly, I might as well write often to keep in practice, like jogging before the New York City Marathon if you aren't already Katie Holmes. So, once a day if I can, I am going to write one Vignette. In this case, a Vignette is a short written piece that focuses on character and setting descriptions as opposed to plot, and is usually a part of a larger story. It can have a general Beginning, Middle, and End, but usually I'll write something short and sweet that doesn't really go anywhere, just exercises my language skills. They are all going to be approximately one page, single spaced, give or take, say, five lines. They can be about anything I want, but I'd like to create a new character or place per day, just to see how far I can get before I scratch my head and repeat myself. The Vignettes will be named after the character or setting that is most prominently described in the piece. Like I said, this might not last all year, since I'm in Creative Writing for only 5 months and by the time I get out I might be able to confidently and completely work on Archer full-time (meaning without any side projects or distractions), so for now this is just to keep me in practice.

And after doing two days of it and two weeks of Creative Writing, it actually feels wonderful. Since my Literature classes aren't very difficult this year, I can focus pretty much all of my efforts on writing fiction for the first time in a long, long time. That, plus the general discontent of being here, is pushing me to write often. So I'll post the first Vignette here, and then after this the vignette entries will be titled and have the excerpt and nothing else. Here we go:

Proserpine

Proserpine lights another cigarette. The lighter makes her face a tiny portrait of a round nose and the bottom of two unfocused eyes that water as a spiderstring of smoke curls under them. Then it is dark. The glow worm of the cigarette tip flies in long circles; mouth to waist to chest to chin, to mouth. Two long puffs of smoke come out of her nostrils. Proserpine (her mother had called her Proserpina, it was prettier but it made her feel like a cut flower) leans back in the stone chair. She is going to do something we would call magic, but this was a time before magic (I know what you will say, the cigarette is there because she wanted it and it became). She puts out the smoke-it was burning her two fingers in their middle joint-and pulls one long, pale finger through the air. Something that was not light but still glowed, deep violet, trailed it. If it was brighter in her room you would see the flicker of a smile, but this is hell and there is no illumination here. Wails try to permeate the stone, but she has learned to be deaf, and the stone is as thick as she wants it to be. The purple glow becomes a solid circle, like a mirror before her invisible face. The circle is hardly any bigger than her torso, but to us, who have minds smaller than proserpine’s smallest thoughts, it is larger than the world and holds life in its image. There is a field of wheat and wildflowers. Proserpine sits more comfortably, pulling up the legs of her blue jeans (they are like the cigarette, do you see now how that works?) and she watches. A girl walks through the field, her breasts still growing and awkward under her linen robe (‘why did i let her dress me like that’, proserpine mutters to herself as she lights another cigarette). Te girl is, what, fourteen? fifteen? It is really thousands of years, of course, but she was not allowed to age into anything more than she was. You are a lady of Spring, you will be young as a lamb and fresh as rain. That is the way of things. Behind her are ghostly maidens, in white, with baskets, pulling flowers out of the ground without hesitance and crowning themselves with them, digging them out and cutting off the unattractive roots and forgetting that the flowers will soon be wilting and dead and limp on their pretty golden heads. The girl with earthy red hair and a fourteen-year-old form leans down to pull up a delicate red poppy, but there is a man. Proserpine leans forward. There is a man, dressed in black that is almost blue, with proud pale shoulders and a long lordly beard (he is a King in his own world). The girl turns, her waist moving in a way that is obviously unfamiliar to her fourteen-year-oldness. He has reached out to her, there is a red stone on his finger. Proserpine twists the same ring on her own hand, now, unconsciously. She inhales harder on her cigarette, and the smoke mixes with the purple mirror-world for a moment, dissipating the scene, but Proserpine won’t let it fade, Not yet. She’s almost to the part she wanted to see. There. The man is looking at her. His eyes are impossibly deep, you could throw a penny into one and never hear it land. Another drag of the cigarette lights up her face. Proserpine’s eyes have become the same. There. He has touched the girl, and she stand straight, now she is three years older, at least, her back arches and her lips move forward expectantly. He is touching her waist and something that we would call desire sets the girl’s red hair on fire. Then the man does something we would call magic, and the ground opens and swallows them, the man and the girl who is now a woman are gone into the abyss of the underworld. The maidens who are nothing more than fancy and imagination are screaming “Proserpina! Proserpina!” but there is no answer. They drop their flowers back to the ground and the stems are scattered like bones. Proserpine waves her free hand and the violet smoke-mirror is gone and darkness clings to her again. She knows how the story will end, and for a moment, as she licks her lips, she tastes pomegranate and does not regret.

I'm a Republican? Really?

So I made it, if you were really wondering whether or not I've just spent the past few days floating in the Atlantic. Nope!! My transitions from Home, U.S.A. to Home, U.K. have been more stressful than I had ever anticipated. All I can say is: I'm here, in one piece and with my clothes and a place to live and school seems to be (mostly) sorted out, and thank goodness I'm here with Amanda and Aletheia, otherwise I would probably be halfway back to the airport by now.

My classes seem generally interesting, with a pretty decent workload. And I only have to be in class three days a week. And I only had to buy one book.

Of course, a change like this has to come with some sort of Culture Shock. Here's a few things that I've learned about the British:

• I'm sure you already know that they drive on the opposite sides of the road, but did you know that this rule also applies to sidewalks and escalators?
• Everyone here believes that, as a person from the South, I am automatically a Republican. Actually, the British can be just as shallow as Americans, except they always seems snobby about it.
• They eat the same crappy food. Already I've seen two McDonald's, two KFCs, and two Pizza Huts.
• When they have a fire alarm here, it means that there's actually a fire. The fire alarm sounds like the synthesizer part at the very beginning of "Girls and Boys" by Blur, so if you don't want to go outside, you can it in bed and try to do the bass line in your head. Oh, and they also have crazy women who apparently like to go under stairwells and set piles of trash on fire.

I wish there was more to say, but I haven't really done enough here to tell you the truth. Soon enough we'll head back to London and hopefully to continental Europe. Till then, toodloo!

Ready Set Go

I'm still past nervous and anxious and now I'm just ready. Like I said before. All nerves and tension are gone. My bags are packed, my iPod is charging, and my room is cleaned. It's sad all the things that I'm leaving behind. It seems like I'm only taking pants and t-shirts, which is sort of true. But I'm not going to look nice, and I think I'll look hip enough for England.

So I'm drinking some dessert wine and watching The Hours and wondering if I'll ever get any sleep tonight at all.

Next time I post it'll be from the UK, if all goes well. All I really need is for me and my suitcase to get through that 40 minute connection in Houston. For now I'm assuming that I will, and I'll get through customs and make the bus and get to the office on time and get to the American Studies office and get my box and have sheets and a bed and a room and time to rest, and be excited, and to be with friends, and to be in a new wonderful place full of possibility, total and untainted.

clutter

i finished packing my bag and weighed it; and somehow packing my whole life into one suitcase only weighs between 35 and 45 pounds (it's an old scale).

i'm not sure exactly why, but my 'excitement' gene has switched over to 'annoyed and kinda pissy'. truth is, vacations here in portland are more and more grating on me; my lack of a social life makes me a homebody, and accentuates the fact that i have social lives elsewhere. and it's hard to talk to my family, to discuss the things that i'm interested in, to feign interest in things they want to tell me and know that it's going the other way. milton and horse blankets, symbolism and whatever is happening at work. or on tv. and my room is too small and there are no drawers or shelves for anything and it all ends up on the floor. papers and books and shoes and water bottles, computer cords and empty boxes. a door that doesn't close and a light that blinks all night long. but this time---this time---there's something more, there's this trip, and i should be jumping up and down because it's gonna be a life-changing experience. but i did that, and now it's all down to finances, and knowing that i won't have enough, and i'll have to work it off this summer. which means i'll have to stay here this summer. it feels like a burden for me, more than for everyone else i know who's going abroad this year. it should be a fun and carefree six months, but i'm so sure that it's gonna be a rainy penny-pinching time instead. i mean, i saved up my money to go, i earned it, i kept my grades up. but i don't know if i'll have enough. i mean, i want to go to so many places--london and paris and germany and italy and spain and oslo and scotland and ireland--but what if i can't? what if i have to stay behind? it's not fair, and it makes me angry at myself and everyone. but part of me knows that it's going to work out. part of me knows that, if i get into debt, then at least it was worth it, and i'll get a great job this summer and work it off AND save up for living in vancouver. but being around my parents, everything seems like some great financial faustian tragedy. and i'm fed up. up to my ears. what i want, what i want more than anything right now, is to be on the plane over the atlantic, reading or writing or sleeping or watching some terrible movie, knowing that there are things that i've left behind and things that i'm about to meet, and that i'm no longer stuck in the limbo that is my parent's house. that i'll get out, and get around, and see things, and live again. because, even though i'm with the people that i love, i'm not happy. i'm anxious, like a cat that's been kept inside all day. and i just want that first day, friday, over with and to work out. for everyone to catch the bus on time and get to the school on time, get our rooms, get the package with the bedding in it, and rest. and get up on saturday morning and go for a walk. that's it. get me there, get me in, let me be.

on writing: a scrooge

Sometimes I wonder if I write the way that I write because I have absolutely no talent to give. I mean, aren't the really talented authors supposed to write those quiet slice-of-life stories, the ones about the guy who loses his job and pines around all day until, after seeing the world in a way no one else could, he kills himself? Or the woman who somehow discovers that she's a real person with conviction and strength blah blah blah? That seems to be the general idea. Mythology is dead, in that sense, reaching for something truly universal and infinite is tossed aside in lieu of discussing how, no matter what happens, we tend to be miserable creatures with a splinter of redemption that makes us human. That's the postmodern perspective of what a good story is, at least.

Well, hell. I think life is really actually very boring. All that pomo stuff that I read last semester? Boring people bitching about how bored they are.

But then there's the upswing of that pendulum, the absolute escapist world of sorcery and witches and spaceships and creatures that don't and never will exist. And yes, these are supposed to have some ounce of human drama in them, some quality where you go "oh! yes! the robot is us!", or when some warrior grabs some glowing weapon and overcomes his fear and you realize that his experience is your experience. But the point of all these stories is not so much the plot or the dynamism of the characters, but the spectacular world that the author, in his infinite imagination, has created. We think it's cool, and that's it. If it didn't have all the cool lazers and centaurs, it would be a movie on Lifetime or PAX TV.

So there's nothing to that, either. All fluff, hardly any stuff.

The stories that have stuff are the ones that have lasted longest: the myths and legends, the folk and fairy tales that everyone, in their heart of hearts, knows. Why aren't those written anymore? Why don't we tap into that symbol system and breed new tales that rekindle our association with the archetypical world?

That's what I'm trying to do most of the time. Tell new fairy tales. Archer is the grounding point where the fairy tales have more solidity to them and are less fluid. But does that make me unskilled, telling fairy stories? Telling myths? I don't know. Maybe the writing class at East Anglia will help me out.

On that note, a few of my short items are up on DevantArt. Two of them are also on the blog, but The Princess Thief is new to the internet.

Can't wait to go to England so that I can stop being so bored pie

As the above title suggests, I saw Waitress just now. It's a weird sort of movie; one that impacted me and made me feel all warm inside; but not warm and goopy like some regrettable tearjerkers, not warm and goopy like the part where the dog finally comes back to the little boy or the horse wins the race and the girl's father finally respects her. It felt....well, like a pie. Sweet, but flavorful, and like a good pie should be, delicious to the last crumb. The characters can be over-the-top but still genuinely human and the story is rounded enough that you can't pin it down as one specific thing. It's not plot-driven (unless you count, of course, the pregnancy), it's character-driven, and it's one big hug of a movie.

Moving on....

We took the cat to the vet today. The cat is sixteen years old, and as we've found out, he's lost 20% of his body weight this year, and there's a chance that he might be close to getting one of those elderly cat health problems. In order to find this out, the vet needed to take a blood sample, and the cat was having none of that; so the vet said she would sedate the cat and, about and hour later, we could pick him up.

So she did. She gave the cat Hydromorphone, a derivative of morphine.

"He'll be fine until it wears off. He might seem a little loopy, might get disoriented. He might see things that aren't really there."

Okay, we said. Apparently it would make him happier too, so that was a plus, since he gets crotchety when in the car.

Look, I've been in a car with this cat for four days straight. He never calms down, not for at least forty-five minutes. He yowls and howls and tries to hide under the driver's feet, he sits on your lap and glares at you while wailing at the top of his lungs. But this time, he jumped out of the carrier, into the backseat, and spent the entire half-hour drive going back and forth between the windows in the back, paws up on the door handle and looking at all the cars like a little puppy. And he was totally silent.

Also, his pupils were almost totally dilated.

So we got him home, and instead of letting me carry him in the house he sat on my shoulder like a parrot. I put him down, and when he walked his back legs didn't seem to be catching up to his front legs. Then we had to go out again for some shopping. I got back and found the cat dangling by one paw from the drapes in the upstairs bedroom. I unhooked his claws, but he wouldn't go away from the window, there was something on the window sill or just above it that needed attending to. For two hours, the cat sat staring at the sill.

We get the blood tests back for him tomorrow, and the truth is that I'm scared; if there is something wrong with him, I don't know what I'll do. I've had that cat since I can remember, practically.

The good news is that the parents have discussed getting another pet for the house. Probably a puppy. Our animals are getting old, and something young and happy could help them through it....and us too, when the time comes.


So, it's midnight and I'm not tired; I have a dictionary of symbols and Carl Jung and Paradise Lost to keep me company........and I'm re-reading The Sandman. I want to read something, but I don't want to think. Thank you, Graphic Novels. I just finished re-reading Watchmen the other day. God, that's a depressing story, but good nonetheless. Disturbing.

MMMMMMMM, night.

Encore d'huile

I don't know if I'm doing this wrong or right or terrible, but I'm generally enjoying it. It's messy and sloppy but turns out all right, though I don't think that I quite have the hang of using all the colors yet, but at least I'm practicing...and hopefully they'll help me record my adventures abroad.

Oil Pastels, take one

First of all....Go Obama!! But against Huckabee? That's gonna be a weird race...If I was an independent voter, I think my head would spin at the very idea.

Moving on, I tried out my new Cray-Pas Expresionist (zing!) oil pastels today:


Persephone by ~Shmedgehog on deviantART

It's Persephone as the High Priestess!!!! I'm trying to get a handle on these here pastels for the trip. What do you think? Personally, I think that, for bigger and more complicated compositions like this, I need bigger paper...something more than 8 1/2 x 12.

I'm thinking of expanding this to design a deck of tarot cards based on Western mythology (Greek/Nordic/Celtic). If only I hadn't left my Mythology encyclopedia at home...here are some basic thoughts:

Fool: Dionysus (G)
Magician: Prometheus (G)
High Priestess: Persephone (G)
Empress: Epona (C)
Emperor: Dagda (C)
Hierophant:
Lovers: Cupid/Psyche (G)
Chariot:
Strength: Thor (N)
Hermit:
Wheel of Fortune: Fates (Appear in all three)
Justice: Morrigan (C)
Hanged Man: Odin (N)
Death: Hel (N)
Temperance: Brigid (C)
Devil: Loki (N)
Tower:
Star: Etain (C)
Moon: Artemis (G)
Sun: Apollo (G)
Judgement: Heimdall (N)
World: Yggdrasil (N)

A few left unfilled...maybe someone can give me an idea. Hmm? Hmm?