Maybe I've just read too many things?

I have a problem with the novel. It's not that I can't write it, and it's not that 2,500 words a day is too much to ask of myself, it's just that every time I'm writing and I'm not in that rare, completely batshit crazy inspired mode, I feel that everything that I write is full of cliché and ideas that have been used before, by better, older writers. Take this for example:

Gimbal picked up the tuxedo jacket and turned it inside out, rummaging through the pockets on the inside. There were quite a few of them, mostly made by Gimbal himself. There were pockets under the lapels and in the sleeves all the way up to the elbow, and eight or nine pockets on each side–Gimbal had lost count a log time ago–that were sewn in with such skill that, unless you had sewn them yourself, you could never find them. Gimbal picked through seven pockets before he found what he was looking for: a cigarette case. It was gold and incredibly thin, with AGW etched onto one side, and a rather elaborately etching on the opposite side of a gloved hand holding forth an ace of spades. Gimbal twirled it in his hand, it glittered in the dim light of the dressing room. The once-sharp edges were worn almost smooth, and tiny scratches scattered across the surface. A good deal of the case, around the hinges and front, was tarnishing. Gimbal popped it open and took out a slightly flattened cigarette. Four more pockets and he produced a lighter.

Tell me that doesn't sound like old hat, like a dime-a-dozen description. I'm worried about it! And the thing is, at the same time, I know that it's really okay, and that my style of writing still has some originality to it, I'm just so used to, well, myself that I find it boring, and I can't write in any other way because, in truth, I'm just not that good at being en pointe all the time.

Of course, I have to be fair and say that in those moments of inspired prose, I can't write much more than 2,500 words, and that's the completed story. I can't keep up such heavy pacing for anything longer or it starts to get tiring or just fades out, and I don't care.

Ah, well. I do what I can, right?

In other news, I saw Iron Man today, and yes, Robert Downey, Jr. was wonderful. Yes, Gwenyth Paltrow was somehow tolerable and, actually, cute. Yes, Terrence Howard was thrown in there for no apparent reason but to make a cheap War Machine reference, yes, Jeff Bridges totally phoned in the Bad Guy Character Acting With The Weird Facial Hair. Yes, the special effects were perfect. Yes, they handled the comic-to-movie adaptation well. No, it was not worth sitting through the entire credits sequence just to watch Samuel L. Jackson in full-on Nick Fury garb say the word "Avenger". No, it will not end up being better than The Dark Night, just like how Spider-Man was not better than Batman Begins.

I might be the only person who thinks this, but I have never bought the Marvel Comics canonical characters (mainly the ones Stan Lee created: Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Darevdevil). Maybe it has to do with me growing up with DC (though to be fair, this generally means "Batman", and I don't have the complete expertise that I'm sure countless other people have, don't shoot me), but I always thought that the Marvel heroes were a tad wimpy, hiding behind their sob stories (waah, my uncle died, waah, I'm persecuted for being different, waah, when I get angry I turn green and smash things, waah, I'm a rock-person, waah, I'm blind, waah, I don't want to be the Silver Surfer) and relied too much on them (people refer to it as "humanity", but I call it "the easy way to get sympathy") instead of creating solid, interesting characters, settings, arcs, and so on. DC heroes are born out of death, man. How does Superman come to Earth? His planet dies. How does Bruce Wayne become Batman? He watches his parents get killed in front of him. Wonder Woman was exiled for loving a mortal man. The Martian Manhunter is the last Martian because he watched all the other ones die including his wife and daughter. Not only that, but DC heroes seem to have a lot of smarts among them. Batman, Elongated Man, the Martian Manhunter, The Question, The Sandman, all are brilliant detectives who seem to be smarter than the entire FBI put together.

One thing that I've always loved about the DC universe is that it is just that: a universe set apart from ours, that reflects certain elements but keeps the rest to itself. This universe is full of places that we don't have: Gotham, Metropolis, Star City, Central City, so on and so on. What does Marvel do? Set everything in New York. Why? Sympathy, man. Look, this hero is in a real place, he's just like you and me! Shut the fuck up, Stan Lee. I would take Gotham City over New York any time.

Anyway, my brother and I got into an argument on the way home about whether or not Batman Begins was a good movie. To which I reply, HA. Of course it was good. My brother's not that smart.

To be fair, I never got the Fourth World stuff from DC. But then again, Jack Kirby was always a little out of it.

Oh, and DC Comics publishes Vertigo, which printed Sandman, Watchmen, Constantine, Fables, and a whole bunch of other great titles that I can't remember right now, because I'm tired.

So I lied about updating?

Nothing enough happens here to update about, and I'm not the type that blogs about the mundane. I did that on Livejournal. I'm all grown up now.

If you want a summary, look at this:


Yep, that's me, and that's my room: the glorified storage locker that is Mary Chapman Court, Flat 6, Room B. I hope to heck that I don't die here, because if I do, then I am going to haunt the most depressing place to haunt on this plane. And if you were wondering, yes, those ARE oil pastels that I painted on the wall! How kind of you to notice! The first one I made was of Morgan Le Fey. See? She's wearing a red dress with an apple tree on it!! I rock at symbolism, and I rule at being addicted to mythology. This is an obvious thing, especially because I list myself as an Archetypicalist*, and because I refer to events in life or feelings by what tarot card they relate to best. The second picture is of Eros and Psyche, and it took me way too long to finish, and used too much pastel, so now my black is shorter than ever. The one above it, which you can only see a little bit of, is a work in progress.

I think that the most important thing to talk about is that I've added two writing projects to my schedule. The first is a novel, the first that I've ever planned. It's about a young woman in the 1920s, who becomes a magician in Atlantic City. There's a lot of magical realism and some fantasy in it, but for the most part I want it to be about her and her struggles to figure out the magic that she's trying to master (hint: it's real magic), while also painting a portrait of some sort of American sensibility. Here's a couple extracts or what I've got so far:

They got hot dogs and knee-highs from a stand on the boardwalk the next day and ate them on a bench nearby. The surf whispered under their feet, Maybelle was wearing a white dress with red poppies embroidered on the hem and neckline with black patent leather shoes, Bridget felt dowdy in her pleated skirt and good blouse, which was ivory and had a bow in the front that the wind kept pushing dangerously close to the mustard that dangled from her hot dog. She wore a black hat, Maybelle’s head was bare and her ringlets waved proudly in the breeze.
“I’d like to tell myself that I was just too pretty for the pageant,” she was saying. “Those judges just didn’t know what to do, and that made them too scared to give me the crown.” She laughed at herself and looked at her lap. “But I know that’s not really what happened, anyway. But I like to think that.”
“Well you are very beautiful,” Bridget said, and felt stupid immediately. She was starting to realize that with Maybelle she was a new sort of nervous. She had been nervous when she talked to police officers, or Gimbelli, or her parents, or her landlady, but this was different. She didn’t want Maybelle to get up and walk away.
Maybelle thanked her quietly for the comment and smiled squintingly in the sunlight. Bridget felt more confident. She finished her hot dog and wiped off her hands. “ ‘Ere,” she said, swallowing. “Watch this.” She held her left palm in front of Maybelle, showing both sides. “See? Empty.” She flicked her fingers quickly, and a new silver dollar glinted between her middle and forefinger. She reached over with her right hand and took the coin in her fist. Then she opened her right hand. It was empty.
Maybelle smiled coyly. “I’ve seen that trick, it’s still in your other hand.”
Bridget opened her left hand. Empty. She looked around on the ground, apparently flabbergasted at the coin's dissapearance, then her eyes settled on the side of Maybelle’s face. She grinned and reached behind Maybelle’s ear, retrieving the shining silver dollar.
“Very nice. But I’ve seen that one too. It’s all those hand tricks magicians use.” Maybelle crossed her arms, looking proud of herself for figuring out the illusion.
Bridget looked crestfallen, but only for a second. “Oh,” She said, “I missed one.” Then she reached behind Maybelle’s other ear and pulled out a second silver dollar, holding it next to the first one in her palm. Then she pulled out another. And another. Six silver dollars materialized out of Maybelle’s hair until Bridget finally sighed with exasperation and ran her fingers through Maybelle’s chestnut ringlets, and a shower of silver fell onto the bench and the ground around them.
Maybelle opened her mouth and raised her eyebrows in suprise. Bridget winked, and immediately felt stupid, but Maybelle laughed. “With all those dollars, you should be buying me dinner.” Her skirt was fluttering perfectly, and her lips were red an curved up at the edges, a smile full of friendship and secrets.

......

Herman Gimbal Waite, who called himself the Great Gimbelli until the day he died, had very little about his face or figure that would earn him his assumed title and his renown as a magician. He refused to ever speak of his date or place of birth, though in 1923 most who knew him or knew of him would tell you that he was, at that time, between forty-five and fifty-three years old, and was born and raised somewhere in Ohio. Some claimed that he knew the flyers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, but this was most likely a rumor that he himself planted so that he could have more intrigue around his version of the Levitation trick, which would make his assistant fly circles around the stage, complete with her arms outstretched like airplane wings.
He was not a tiny man, but of no significant stature; but his insecurities about this would make him wear tall shoes while on stage, so as not to be diminished by any female guests or assistants (this happened on several occasions when he was first performing in vaudeville, and it made him blush so much that the ladies would be wrongly flattered). He parted his hair down the middle and waxed it down, though a coffee-colored curl would pop up every now and then, and his mustache was one of the most humble in the business: a simple triangle of hair that stretched to the corners of his lips, which he kept well trimmed. In fact, the Great Gimbelli was quite dashing as soon as he got the hang of performing, and got tailored suits that showed off his slender form, and white gloves that he somehow kept perfectly spotless, and a pair of wire glasses that were the perfect silver to match his perfect blue eyes. To say that he was vain as well is no understatement, Gimbelli was a conjuror and was sure that he had the same effect on women (and, more than likely, certain men) that he did on the coins he would pull out of the air, or the doves he would produce out of hats and tailcoat pockets: they would come to him when he wanted them.
Of course, do not let any of these vanities fool you. Gimbelli was, first and foremost, a fantastically good illusionist. He would not give credit to his inventions and innovations to some secret dead religion or culture, there was no mysterious Sphinx, no Indian Rope Trick, no Alexander The Great’s Vanishing Sword or Solomon’s Magic Flute or any of the other “two-bit foppery” in his act: it was all him. When he spoke about his tricks, he spoke in a strange poetry or mystery and beauty, talking not of old gods and kings but of the cosmos, and fate, life and death, and the inside of the soul and the mind. And few spectators believed it more than Bridget Alcyone.

Not bad, right? By the way, Bridget Alcyone is the main character. I'm doing research about the golden age of magic and so on, and am actually enjoying reading a book called Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer. It's not a very difficult book to read, but it's got plenty of information about magic and magicians and, more importantly, illusions and how they were made. The book itself is pretty well outlined for the initial stage, so I think it can be done by the end of this summer if I manage to get more researh done. It's also making me want to take a few magic lessons, which would be fun to look into.

The second project isn't completely mine. For a while now Amanda and I have been looking into the mythology and culture of the American South, and now we're decided that to create a series of American Faerie Stories would be pretty cool. It would be a gradual thing--I don't have anything done yet--and like I said, it's a collaboration project. But it's something to think about. No idea when or if it'll be finished, but I love the idea so I don't mind.

So now I've got Archer, Bridget (whatever the title is I haven't decided yet) and the Southern stories, plus whatever other short stories I write in the meantime. I wish more than anything that they end up, you know, making me money, or at least the pride of being published.

That's it for now, until the next random time that I decide to update; perhaps I'll take a few pictures with my webcam when I take the computer to UEA Tuesday.

Oh, and Henry Smutton liked my Persephone story, and so far I'm pretty confident in saying that, if it isn't the best of the best so far in the class, it's at least very close to the top.




*on Facebook

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.

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.

Boxing day blues

My family needs a break.  We've been running around putting together schedules and get-togethers and Pre and Post-Christmas festivities.  We need a day where go out to a movie and order a pizza.
I've been sprucing up the computers with OS Leopard, and while I was going through some of my old old documents, I came across this story that I wrote when I was, like, 16:

She only read the letter once. It sat unfolded on the table of the cafe, bright white from the July sun that beat down upon it.

Dear Helen,
I am writing on a sad occasion. You're friend, Joanna Hamilton, was struck by a city bus yesterday and was killed. Mrs. Hamilton has only just told me, and I feel that it is important that you know, since I remember how much you and Joanna were friends. I am sorry to have to tell you this. Please write or call, the funeral will be this week-end.
Love always,
Mother

Helen Gilman folded the letter and put it back in the envelope that it had arrived in. She sipped her water and ate her sandwich in silence. Helen had not seen or heard of Joanna Hamilton since they graduated high school. Joanna stayed home and got a job at the local soda fountain, Helen went to college fifteen hundred miles away. That had been three years ago, when the class of 1966 had taken their graduation pictures. Joanna had held onto Helen's shoulder, kindly looking into her brown eyes and talking about how they needed to write to each other to keep in touch. Joanna had sent one letter, but Helen had become so swept into the world of college that she had never opened it. The world that she had left behind meant little to her then, and Joanna had been part of it. The letter was now somewhere in Helen's desk.

Helen didn't cry, nor did she write or call her mother. She felt no need to; Joanna was dead, and that meant hardly anything in her life. Joanna Hamilton had become a worn black and white photograph in Helen's technicolor world, the loss waned in comparison to the battles Helen had fought and lost and overcame in the past three years.

She finished her lunch and stood up, throwing the letter away with the used plate and cup. She had known people to die before. Her brother had been drafted to Vietnam in 1966, two years later he came home in a coffin, a hole in the side of his head. One of Helen's friends had been beaten brutally in a riot, he died a few days later of internal bleeding. Helen had known people to die, and the death of her brother in a war and her friend protesting that same war were more significant that Joanna being struck by a bus.

Helen walked home, down the street and across the campus to her dormitory room. The sky was clear and blue, the sun heating the dark hair on Helen's head. She passed a few friends in the field, and two young men, Roger and Chris, came over to walk with her, talking about the plans that they had for the rest of the week. A man millions of miles away was scheduled to land on the moon the next day, and the entire country was buzzing with excitement. Helen shrugged at the topic, trying to wonder how a man walking on the moon was going to solve any of the world's problems. It would be a decent distraction, though, she mused. Roger chuckled and asked her to come over to his house that night; a few friends were coming over too, including Helen's roommate Melissa. Helen agreed, and the two men turned around to go back to the group in the field, Roger turning around once more to wave goodbye. Helen smiled and waved back. He did look handsome that day.

Helen's dormitory room was at the topmost floor of the building. It had been the attic, but it became a room when another dormitory building had burnt down and the students had nowhere else to go. Helen opened the window and turned on the ceiling fan. She lay on her small bed, looking up at the rafters that held up the roof of the building, before sitting up and reaching into the bottom drawer of her desk, pulling out an old, yellowed envelope with her name and address written delicately on it. She looked at it, her eyes tracing up the stems of the flowers that were printed on the paper. She tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter, which was written on matching flowered paper. She wondered if Joanna had changed, if she had avoided a correspondence with someone who might have been protesting the war and the injustices in the world at the same time as Helen had. But it took only four lines of the letter to prove these suspicions wrong, and Helen crumpled the paper in disgust, tossing it into the trash along with the envelope.

She went to sleep, and woke up when Melissa came in, home from shopping. They talked for a while, about the moon landing and the upcoming year and the war. Helen had taken part in this conversation before, and her responses were robotic, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She turned over in bed, toying with a silk scarf on the table, a birthday present from her parents. She had not gone home to see them that summer. She loved them, but never had the urge to get on a plane and go home. It was too far away, and had stopped feeling like home altogether.

Melissa shrugged at Helen's complacency and asked her if she was going to the party that night. Helen nodded, but said that she wanted to take a shower first, so she picked up a towel and went down the hall to the bathroom.

The water was warm, but the heater for it was small. Helen didn't care, though. She sat down, her back against the wall of the shower, and let the cold water fall upon her. She though back to when she was young, when her parents had taken her and her brother to Niagara falls. She remembered asking if she could stand under the waterfall, and just let it all fall down upon her. No, her father had told her. The water was cold and deep, and the pressure from the waterfall was dangerous. But for the next few weeks all that Helen could think about was the feeling of all that water rushing onto her, and she wished for the sensation that she imagined, the cool rush and relaxation of the pummeling, churning water upon her.

Her daydreams were broken by another girl from the dormitory pounding to the door, yelling for her to come out. Helen turned off the water and dried herself, then went back to her room, telling the girl at the bathroom door that she had used all of the hot water. The girl frowned and walked away to wait for the heater to fill up again.

Helen dressed, then she and Melissa walked the few blocks to the house that Roger and Chris shared. A few people were there already, sitting and eating. Helen said hi to those she knew and hello to those she was introduced to. She sat down on the couch next to Roger and looked out the window at the sunset. The darkness set in, and they lit candles, changing everyone in the room into flickering ghosts.

The conversation drifted from the war to the moon to the weather to the economy and back to the war. Helen listened mostly, interested more in what people said than the actual subject at hand. One of the other students had brought grass with him, and they rolled a few marijuana cigarettes to pass around. The smoke filled the room, and drifted into Helen's lungs as she inhaled. She and Roger shared one for themselves, and she let herself relax, let her body be closer to his as he put his arms around her slowly. Her lips trembled with anticipation as he brought his face closer to hers. They kissed, and she opened her mouth and breathed in the smoke from his. They brought each other closer and closer, until she felt herself completely intwined with him. Another one of the students laughed, chiding them. Roger looked down at Helen, and there was a silent agreement between them. Roger handed the joint to the laughing student and led Helen upstairs to his bedroom.

They fell on the bed together, tearing away the apprehension with their clothing. She was under him, Roger was nibbling her ear, he was kissing hard on her neck and chest, they were moving together, crying out in passion and revelry. The drug they had taken only heightened their senses, and each of his warm touches sent a fire through Helen that could not settle. When they had tired, Roger fell beside her with a grunt of exhaustion. She sat up in bed, breathing deeply. She looked down at him, his skin shining from the sweat of lovemaking. He smiled, and she smiled at him. They rested, and then began to talk quietly, not about the war or the moon, but about the things that lay beneath those subjects, the things that started war, the desires that sent men to the moon. But somehow, Helen was not as impassioned about these things as the man lying next to her. He started to talk about how they could change the world, how they were adults now.

And then, for no apparent reason, Helen realized it. She realized that they were not adults, they were just children, that talking about the war was just philosophical jargon that changed nothing, that landing on the moon was a waste of time, that there was no us or them, no me and you, there was only a person or all of humanity. She realized that if there was an afterlife, no one would ever know what it was, and that the earth was just one tiny speck in one giant void. She realized that love and flowers were beautiful, but that lovers left and flowers wilted and old age would bring grief and pain and memory loss. Helen saw it all flashing before her, like a deluge of water over her.

"Niagara Falls." She whispered.

Roger had fallen asleep. She smiled sadly at him, knowing that she had just learned more than he would ever know. She slipped out of the bed and dressed quietly, not even looking for Michelle as she wandered back outside.


That night, Helen Gilman went home and hung herself from a rafter in her dormitory room. It wasn't very high off the ground, all that she had to do was kick away the kitchen table chair that she was standing on. Nine hours and ten minutes later, nobody knew, because nine hours and ten minutes after Helen broke her own neck a man was stepping out of a small capsule and onto the moon. All of Helen's friends and family were watching in awe, doing their best to remember where they were so their children and grandchildren could hear about it from them.

Melissa had spent the night at Roger's, and came home later that afternoon. She gasped when she walked into the room, And called Roger immediately to help take her down. They cut the silk scarf that Helen had used to kill herself and laid her gently down on the bed. Neither of them cried, too pale and shaking from the shock. Neither had ever seen a dead body this closely. Roger ran his hand over Helen's face, closing her vacant eyes and shuddering as his fingers brushed over the now purple mark on her neck where he had kissed her the night before.

Melissa looked around the room for a note. She finally found it, sticking out of the pocket of Helen's jeans. She unfolded the note slowly and with trembling fingers. Roger read it over her shoulder.

Melissa folded the note once more and looked at her friend. the words had explained nothing. Melissa crumbled it into a ball in her fist, putting her elbows on the bed and resting her face in her hands. Roger said nothing, looking out the window at the other students on the field below, who were taking advantage of the warm, clear July afternoon.

They decided to tell Helen's parents in person. Melissa, who knew the family a little more than any of the other students, went to tell them. It was not the first time that Mrs. Gilman had opened her door to such an announcement. She invited Melissa in for tea, and held on to Melissa when she heard the news and tears ran down her cheeks, creating pale streaks in the powder that she had worn that morning when she had gone to church. Melissa cried too, feeling the pain of Helen's death five days after it happened.

Melissa went to the funeral, and Roger came too, bringing Chris with him. Roger wanted to be alone for a while, so Melissa and Chris went out for a drink. Eleven months later they were married. Chris turned out to be a severe alcoholic, and Melissa left him four years later with a bottle of gin and divorce papers to sign. They had one child, a little girl that they almost named Helen, but chose Samantha, and Helen became the girl's middle name. Melissa went on to be a history teacher, and wanted to include the story of her friend's suicide into her lectures about the sixties, but didn't quite know where it fit in. On every anniversary of Helen's death, Melissa took out the small, wrinkled piece of paper that Helen had written and wondered what the words meant. They seemed so bleak, but not so simple.

The question as to why Helen Gilman committed suicide was raised and contemplated by everyone that knew her. Some thought it was one of Helen's existential whims gone too far, others thought it was a side effect of drugs. Mrs. Gilman thought it might be caused by grief over the death of Joanna Hamilton, or maybe her brother. Roger thought that she had had a philosophical epiphany, and hung herself as a result. What the epiphany was, he could not even fathom. He wondered, too, if he had been in love with Helen, but realized that he had not. He graduated and tried his hand at studying history, writing a book on the sixties, but died in a car accident four days before it was on the stands. The death of the author helped the book become a bestseller, but it did not mention the death of Helen Gilman, since, like Melissa, Roger did not know where it belonged.

Years passed, and grass grew and died with the changing seasons over the grave of Helen Gilman, which was buried on the right of her older brother's, and later to the left of her mother's. Mr. Gilman lived to see the first few years of the new century, and one morning his nurse found him still in his bed, clutching a photograph of his family in his hand. The children in the picture were young, and they smiled and squinted in the sunlight in front of a fence where people were standing looking over the edge. Mr. Gilman was wearing his old army uniform from the second great war, though the buttons were a bit tighter on his midsection. He had burned the entire uniform in sorrow the day that he had learned of the bullet that had lodged in the head of his only son.

The nurse took the picture out of his cold, limp hand, looking at the faded smiles of the lost subjects in it. She turned the photograph over, and read the brief description:

Niagara Falls, 1957.



It's not terrible, by far. There's definitely a level of inexperience in reference to the drugs and sex, and the use of Niagara Falls as a symbol seems stilted at points. I'm glad that I've improved since then. But I was somewhat succeeding in the bleak tone that I go for sometimes. And it could have been worse.


I have a package to fill for East Anglia and then some cleaning or whatever to do. I feel congested and would much rather just lay in bed all day, warm and cozy.

Also, I'm trying to fight the post-holiday need to spend my gift cards as soon as possible...

Back with a vengence

Recently wrote a pretty nice story, but it's not going here. Rather, I think that this is the right place to put some quips that I've jotted down in my Moleskine (it's so damn spiffy, all reporter-style and black; I just get and idea and flip!!). Here's one for now, from a particularly downsome day a few weeks ago:

This is what reality is--it is when you look at a rose and call it 'red', and you are sure that it is, without question. Because if there is even the slightest doubt in your mind that the rose is not red, if your belief falters in any way, then reality is shattered, then all is chaos and black spots on a white canvas. Reality was probably invented when someone tried, vainly, to call a rose red without wanting to be inclined to call it anything else. Reality is refusing to say that the truth might not be true.

It's fun to look through something that you wrote in months or years in the past and go "Huhm! What got me into that mood?" I've become so tired and embarrassed of this that I throw away notebooks that I recognize as being more than six months old. Of course, this is coupled with The Great Notebook Dilemma. The Great Notebook Dilemma is when a writer--say, for instance, myself--is sitting down with a notebook one day and begins to what is, at the time, possibly the beginnings of the greatest collection of words in Literature. However, like all great works, this is abandoned within the hour. A few weeks later, the notebook is picked up again, and I realize that those six or seven pages are the most uninspired dreck imaginable, and God Forbid anyone should chance upon them. Sensible, I rip them from the notebook and throw them in the fire. Immediately I am struck with another fantastic idea that I write in the now purged notebook....and the process continues. Eventually, I am left with nothing but the cardboard spine of a notebook, within which tiny specks of paper still cling like refugees to the binding, some with half-letters still prominent. My dilemma comes when I open an old drawer months later and find several notebooks that are completely torn, save for a few sheets of paper near the back. What to do then? Keep them for the paper? Find a way of binding them all together? No, I think, best to throw them away, or, as I usually do, shut the drawer and forget it for another year.

You know, there's something about Schubert's Ave Maria that makes me feel a little lonely, a little light. I think that it might be how the phrase "ave maria" is so damned beautiful.

All right, gotta wrap this up. I'm halfway through Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel. Though it is quite good and contains a great deal of detail about the world in which it takes place, the lack of emotion within the actual characters bothers me. A modern writer, no matter how much she wishes to emulate Victorian writers, owes it to a feeling society to talk about, well, feelings.

Night before last, as a break from Clarke, I read and finished "Seymour: an Introduction" by J.D. Salinger. Very self-referential, amusing, human. The only questionable aspect was how the narrator, Buddy, kept acting as though he really wanted to talk about himself instead of his brother. Such asides would amount to nothing and distract from the actual progression; things like Buddy alluding to his being/not being homosexual (I had no idea what that was about).

Still, nothing is coming close to my recent favourite, Everything is Illuminated. Read it.

Still to read this summer: some more Joyce, Water for Elephants, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, maybe Vonnegut or Keroac. God be damned, I will never read The Lovely Bones.