serendipitous rhapsodies

Fragment #015: Rusted Love Memoirs #001

2005-06-07T00:46:00.000-04:00

Either Way - Guster

Airports are bittersweet. You're always leaving some thing, some one, some part of yourself to embrace some thing else, some one else, some other part of yourself.

Long line of impatient people and he's just one of the others waiting in the limbo.

You were almost kind.
You were almost true.
Don't let me see
that other side of you.

You will learn in time
that you must be cruel.
I'll have to wait
to get the best of you.

Tears threatened in the green pools of his eyes and slowly, upon a blank, dazed face, did one solitary tear slide down. She had finally shattered him into millions of tiny shards, never to be pieced together again. He had been inducted into the hall of the walking wounded.

The official beginning of what is tentatively titled "The Rusted Love Memoirs." Originally written on 23 Febrary 2005.

Fragment #013 & #014: An Exercise in How To

2005-04-21T22:31:00.000-04:00

A blogger I read has his posts classified by various tags... one of them is the "How To" tag. Below is a spin off from that, only I couldn't come up with an appropriate title, which I find disappointing because it highlights the necessity of a title.

Take her on a walk to the crowded street of immigrants where you first fell in love.

It was June. The stars shone brightly in our concrete jungle that night. "My heart's racing. Listen," he softly commanded.

She loves your green, incandescent eyes and hands nearly twice the size of hers.

The night looks more pure at the apex of summer, the two of you more innocent than new born babes.

--

I basically went through my iTunes playlist, randomly picking out titles of songs to form some sort of comprehensible piece.

She waltzes through Manhattan gridlock; Rusted Root send[s] me on my way.

She's a dancing queen, this cherry blossom girl. And he, he the universal traveller has got to hide [his] love away.

She's only happy in the sun on another lonely day. She talks to angels all along the watchtower, tells them, "I'll be your baby tonight."

It's a life without love in a world of tears and we're all alone, looking for solace in shadow[s].

Welcome to the end she told me in Amsterdam. "Everything's not lost," I tell her time and time again on our holiday in Spain. She insists, "We're colorblind rushing head first into a sixth avenue heartache."

Godless in our sleep, godless in our wake, never insincere, not even when we hit rock bottom.

"What will become of me?" I ask. "A fatal tragedy is all I'll be."

A fond farewell, a ballad of big nothing, the biggest lie, happiness.

"Everything means nothing to me," she murmurs on her way out.She promises, "Some day, I'll be a better version of me across the universe and these words will seem like pyschobabble, a maddening shroud, the dumbing down of love."

In our darkest hour, we reached such great heights, beyond her life in a glass house and we'll sail to the moon, brush the cobwebs out.

Naked in the rain, we'll smoke cigarettes and drink chocolate milk, hooked on a feeling of ecstasy.

Beautiful people lost in a crowd; all we need is food & creative love and we'll laugh, laugh as the sun on our way back to earth.

"You're a most peculiar man, mother nature's son," she writes on a poem on the underground wall in a hazy shade of winter.

We're free fallin' into our reflection.

"I've been writing a bittersweet symphony to reach you; all the while, you've been dancing in the moonlight, my brown eyed girl. I just don't know what to do with myself, believing only in dreams and "whatif"s and "ifonly"s.

In the waiting line out of town, I'll stand because we're destiny in this world.

Fragment #012: Footage

2005-01-07T01:11:00.000-05:00

Oneword.com: Footage

They swirled in the plush, black chairs sitting admist reels upon reels of footage from earlier that day. Film students. It's what they did. Their immaculate Macintosh machines expertly creating self-effacing masterpieces that would remain in their basements.

They spun to forget; they spun to remember. It was a night of lasts. Post-humously, they would be engraved into the minds of this supposed counter-culture generation. Living, they were just two other degenerates pissing away their lives as dregs of social welfare.

Fragment #011: Animal

2005-01-06T01:01:00.000-05:00

Oneword.com: Animal

His heart beat was furious in his ears; stampeding through the meadows, he took no notice. The eerie calls of the wild danced chaotically with the tribal beats producing the most cacophonic sounds but they were his anthem. These were the sounds that had given them life, nurtured them to maturity, and would finally ease them into the six feet deep darkness.

Fragment #010: Fade

2005-01-05T01:58:00.000-05:00

I'm really not finding the time to stay with these onewords, which is terrible to say I can't even take out sixty seconds of a day to post these. I'm so backlogged. Although I'm still logging them in as their orignial dates, this one is actually being written over a month later on 9 February. This is terrible for the creative writing aspirations. However, without further ado, here's "fade," a fragment which could be of great use if it is expanded properly.

Oneword.com: Fade

That's all they were to her, malleable objects that faded into the darkness whenever play time was over. Housed in circular containers with their neon bright lids, she never mixed them together. That would destroy the social hierarchy that existed amongst them, never blatantly instead coated in sweet subtlety.

The walls were constantly built higher and higher. Eventually a day would come where the play-doh figurines would live in an alternate reality so far from the one she had so carefully constructed to nurture her.

Fragment #009: Sneaking

2005-01-04T01:41:00.000-05:00

This has got to be the most terrible fragment I've ever written but since the purpose of this blog is to hold all my random, unedited, first drafts here it is.

Oneword.com: Sneaking

"I have this sneaking suspicion that you're hiding something from me," she frowned at him.

"Like what?"

"If I knew what, Joe, it wouldn't be hidden."

"Whatever." The door slammed shut at his back as an exasperated sigh escaped from Julie.

"I'm so sick of his bullshit," she muttered to herself, punching in the number to her dealer. "The usual," she said quickly and the dial tone clicked in.

Fragment #008: Worth

2005-01-03T18:38:00.000-05:00

Oneword.com: Worth

A reflection of a ruffled girl stares back.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what doth thou thinketh of my worth?"

The mirror responds, "Not good enough, simply not good enough."

None of us good enough to fit this precarious mold society has so zealously created of us for not even the best amongst us fits it.

Fragment #007: Hunger

2005-01-02T18:37:00.000-05:00

Oneword.com: Hunger

You and I have not known hunger, not the acid-churning-stomach-eating-itself type of hunger. You and I have not known the terror of spending days turning into weeks of survival on a single piece of bread. You and I have not known the delight in eating a proper meal of a main dish, sides, and dessert after a life spent looking for crumbs.

Fragment #006: Submit

2005-01-01T18:33:00.000-05:00

Due to major technical troubles I have not been able to post my oneword.com writing prompts here so this is just playing catch-up. Nothing fancy, mostly one-liners to a short paragraph as usual.

Oneword.com: Submit

They were children born of submission. The beta race in this brave new world. Their occupation is to serve the masses, the masses being the alphas, economically or socially. They had no political stature. They were the robots that toiled in factories. They were the vessels which gave birth to the next generation. There was neither a sense of happiness nor misery; a simple complacency is all they knew.

A Few Steps Forward

2004-12-30T03:46:00.000-05:00

"A few steps forward" is a prompt I got a while back, where exactly I don't remember. It reminded me of this photograph my parents have sequestered away that they only take out to show people when they want to embarass me with those "oh-so-cute" baby pictures. I'm wearing (what I find to be) a rather hideous yellow dress, a grin on my face and a glint in my eye, apparently taking my first step towards a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Two liters of sweet, brown, carbonated liquid stare at her from the coffee table. She eyes back at the red label that circles the bottle. She knows the scarlet cap sealing away the classic Coca-Cola taste but her short arms reaching towards it are useless.

Had she been capable of having a conversation with that bottle of Coke, she would have most certainly cautioned it. "Look here, now. This town just ain't big 'nuff for the two of us and you might could say that I ain't going nowhere."

Looking around, she sees a blur of faces and all the splattering about she did drew no attention. Ooh, I know her she notices as a smiling woman kneels down besides her and cooes. Giggling, she wildly flaps her arms, holds them out in a desperate attempt to be lifted off the rough, carpeted floor.

Rocking and rolling on the ground and look, I can stand if the couch helps me. Arching upward, weight bearing down on her legs and she realises the magic in her feet. Ah, I can do it on my own. Lurching forward, she tests her tentative footing. Hands still stretched out, she takes one and two and three, increasingly firmer steps towards the hand holding hostage the bottle.

It takes five and she's at the feet of that same lady but all the tugging on her leg won't get her what she wants. Bending down, mommy picks her up. "Coke? Oh no, not for you, my love."

Valiant effort, no doubt, she tells herself. Turning back for one last look at the now-empty bottle, I'll be back.

[related mp3: Gravity - A Perfect Circle ]

Fragment #005: Chart

2004-12-30T03:05:00.000-05:00

Oneword.com: Chart

She's vibrant primary colours trapped in the stark white walls of a mental institution. She is an artist but the white she sees is not her canvas, pleading to be painted. She imagines but the white she sees are not blank pages of paper, aching for her scribbles.

[related mp3: You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - The Beatles ]

Fragment #004: Tsunami

2004-12-30T02:45:00.000-05:00

DailyChronicles: Tsunami

The plates rumble softly at first, building up to an increasing fury. The ground beneath her grumbles, initating its tango for two but on the surface she seems as serene and idyllic as vacationers on a beachy paradise, the salty, sea breeze caressing their tan, silky bodies.

Her world was crumbling around her; she, the girl standing precariously at the edge of life. What will prevail is your passion, not your tale. The passion that propagated high speeds, travelled transoceanic distances without losing energy.

Pick the right major. Pick the right career. Pick the right life.

We're all counting on you.

Don't fuck up. Don't end up like every other has-been and never-will-be.

Be someone. Be someone big. Be someone famous.

There's no room for passion in our world, save the burning, lecherous desires for the crisp green.

Rocks tumble off the cliff, falling falling falling, and her footing is unsteady. She's condemned, the world her accusor. To be who you want to be, to be who you need to be are declaratives from which fairytales are spun; they aren't reality.

Standing in a boxing ring, she fights to her death against nature... this man-made, skyscraper destruction of the soul. It's fruitless, her arms are flailing and the waves are washing over her in this pull-push dance into submission.

Nature is at war, breathing its rage through the cool blues and you will all dissipate into me, it warns as they laugh in its face. Pass me another beer, dear. We'll just lie on the beach today.

And then darkness lulls them out to sea. The battle's lost and he's won, she's won, man's nature won, Mother Nature won. The only fact: you lost. You lost decisions and indecisions, happiness and grief, heartbeats and breaths.

The end needs work, and some other parts as well, but it was a ten minute activity. Edits later.

[related mp3: Hurricane -Bob Dylan ]

Fragment #003: Navigate

2004-12-29T03:58:00.000-05:00

Oneword: Navigate

The black SUV rumbled down the street, a frazzled soccer mom behind the wheel.

The phone rings. She hits speaker.

"Hello?"

"Mom, where are you? You never pick me up on time and every teacher on duty hates me."

"I'm coming honey."

Pulls up at school to see a frown on her son's face.

He gets in, "I wish I lived with Dad. He's never late."

Fragment #002: Campaign

2004-12-27T17:18:00.000-05:00

Oneword: Campaign

They were campaigning for the presidential election. They did the grass roots or so they say. They raised the funds and gathered the man power but they couldn't find a man who'd lead them to victory. There was an "oldie goldie" senator from MO, a vivacious doctor from Vermont, the down home southern boy, that liberal senator from MA, the mousey representative from Ohio, and others... but none of them could save us. None of them even tried.

Fragment #001 : Single | Authorise

2004-12-27T01:37:00.000-05:00

I found this website oneword.com, which gives you a one word prompt and sixty seconds to write something incoporating that prompt. Plus, there's a livejournal website I frequent dailychronicles, which does more or less the same thing: providing a word or a phrase and ten minutes to write. So this is what I've got.

Oneword: Single

A single moment was all they shared. A quick glance exchanged in passing as they rushed towards their respective gates, most likely flying to opposite ends of the same place but in that glance they found a perfection that only the cosmos could have orchestrated.

DailyChronicles: Authorise

Hunter slammed the manilla file onto the heaping piles of paper on Johnson's desk.

"I've had enough," he ground out. "I'm sick of chasing these lame-ass coke heads all over LA. Years of busting my ass with the right classes and the proper internships and the best recommendation letters have got to land me some where better than playing a little bitch cop in Orange County. I work the FBI for fuck's sake. Give me a decent assignment.

"Cool it, kid. You think you're some hot shot coming out of Yale and automatically, you're going to get the high-profile cases. Get me some coffee: black, two sugars.

Resigned, Hunter sighed and went to get the coffee. "Fuck, we're out of cups," he murmured to himself. He turned and surveyed his department: all these agents working diligently on some top-secret task or another while he's stuck getting the boss' coffee. "This is bullshit." Crouching down, he fiddled with the lock on the cabinet door, "we lock the cabinets we keep cups in," he told himself.

Extracting a styrofoam cup, he heard another voice, "Hand me one too while you're down there." Jenn, he gathered from the bitchy, commanding tone. Je-sus, wasn't anyone here happy about anything? Hunter straightened and thrust a cup into the icy blonde's hand.

Black. Two sugars.

"Here's your damn coffee," Hunter said, holding out the cup to Johnson.

Just Visiting

2004-12-06T01:20:00.000-05:00

One would think that I have an absurd fascination with the name Emma since it appears so often in my stories but this is more of a coincidence than anything else. This isn't something recent. In fact it's nearly two years old but I'm looking into reworking/expanding.

The heinous beeping of my alarm clock jarred me from sleep, waking me to face the sunshine poking softly through the blinds of my bedroom. Surveying my surroundings, it was safe to say that during the night, a tornado had ransacked the room. By nature, I am not a neat person, albeit an organised one in a disorganised fashion. Regardless, the state of this room, even by my abysmally low standards, looked as if it were beyond repair.

Grudingly, I tumbled out of bed to dress for the day, knowing that cleaning the room would be delayed until that evening if not later, just like the night before last or the one before that. Hell, a thousand moons had come and gone since I had last seen the carpet on this floor. Hurriedly, I grabbed my daily cup of Zimbawe AAA coffee and cream cheese bagel and rushed out of the flat so I would reach the station in time. One thing I have learned living in big cities is that the underground does not wait for you.

Stepping onto the tube, I mentally flipped through my schedule: nothing out of the ordinary. However, something was bother me as if I had forgotten, some important meeting or visit. I racked my brain for the remaining twenty minutes of the seven o'clock hour. On the dot, at eight, the doors of the tube slid open in front of the hospital where I worked and I quickly released myself from its confining embrace. Today was no different than any other, I assured myself while preparing for the storm of patients' complaints that would confront me the moment I stepped through the double doors of the ER.

On cue, a nurse came up to me with no less than four charts cradled in her arms and began, "You're late and they," she pointed towards the queue in the lobby, "are not happy. Here, take some of these and get started. It's not even an hour into the day and we're already running late," she mumbled grumpily.

"It would do you a world of good to look on the brighter side of things once in a while, Emma," I absently commented. My attention focused on the charts in my hand.

"Oh, good grief! Not all of us are bright balls of sunshine this early in the morning," was her tart response.

Flashing Emma a quick smile, I headed towards Curtain Area 3, where my first patient waitied patiently, or more probably impatiently.

"Good morning, Mrs. Doubtfire, what seems to be the trouble today?"

"With that said, my day of dutifully listening to complaints began. The bulk of my patients were sweet, old ladies, who dressed up to go see their physicians with problems that usually accomapny old age. Always a sympathetic listener, but more often than not, I could provide no cure. Modern medicine had not gotten that far and I'm no miracle worker.

The last troubled patient satisfied, I grabbed my coat and bid farewell to the staff. On my way out, I caught a glimpse of Emma. "Is it still too early, Emma?" I questioned teasingly.

"No, Doc. It's too damn late. All these grumbling ol' folks with not a thing wrong with 'em. Why they oughta stay at home!"

"You need a vacation, Em." I waved and strode out through the door.

"A good meal would have done wonders," I thought to myself, "but to get that, I would have to be a good cook."

The tube delievered me at my flat precisely thirty minutes after I had gotten on. A light in my kitchen window beamed down at me. Had I left it on this morning? No, no I had not. I was sure of it. Taking two steps at a time, I bound up the stairs and pushed my way through my half open door, only to be tantalised by aromas I knew could not have been coming from my kitchen. I stepped back to checked to see if I had entered the right place. 2F the door read. It was the right place alright. Just then, my mother's voice called through the corridor.

She pulled me into an embrace and it hit me, that meeting or visit I had conveniently forgotten about was my mother's visit. She must be furious with me considering the state of my flat but another glance at her face proved otherwise. I walked into my room to confirm my suspicions. Indeed, she had cleaned my room. Continuing my inspection, I found a note under my pillow, "Don't fret. I'm just visiting." That was my mother, the note explaining it all.

[related mp3: In My Room - The Beach Boys ]

The Story

2004-12-02T13:14:00.000-05:00

Today is the big day. Other than the "novel" Mr. Smith made us write in ninth grade, this is the closest I've come to producing a complete story. Here it is, in all it's glory of eighteen pages.

Untitled

It should download and open as a MS Word Doc file. Let me know if there are any technical errors.

P.S. I'm on the hunt for a title so throw some suggestions this way.

Into the Night

2004-11-30T13:58:00.000-05:00

Fragment I developed this morning...so much for waking at 9 am and working straight until class. Below is a piece written in the past hour while having distracting AIM conversations.

With the departing Damek and Freidrich, Charlie picked up the dishes to take to the kitchen as Nikolai got up to pour a post-dinner drink to accompany his cigar. Whiskey over rocks should do the trick.

"Put those dishes down, lad. We've got all night to clear up. Have a seat here," Nikolai offered and so Charlie sat.

"Tell me about that notebook of yours," Nikolai said pointing towards Charlie's pocket. "I see you writing in it all the time. What do you write about?"

Pulling out the small, black notebook, Charlie thumbed through it, while trying to find the proper words to explain his musings. "I don't know that I write any thing special, any thing profound. Some times, I write stories and other times, I just write my thoughts." He paused, finding his sketch of Damek from earlier in the day. "Here," he pointed, "I drew Damek earlier. He's got the perfect look for the villain in a story I'm writing."

"The story, it's in that book?" Emma asked. "Would you read it some time?"

Charlie hesitated before agreeing. It had been a while since he had read any of his work aloud. He mentally shrugged the images of the nights he had spent reading stories over the phone and the nights he had read to her as she lay beside him. No need to spend life plagued by memories of the past, he reminded himself.

The silhouttes of a lanky young man and an aged couple appeared upon the walls of the inn, from that night onwards. Funny, you would think that the old and wise would be the story tellers as the child eagerly listened.

[related mp3: I'm Coming Home - Broken Legacy ]

Dinner

2004-11-30T02:18:00.000-05:00

Less character development, more plot development. Considering changing Charlie's name to Sebastian but that seems too aristocratic. I need something more common man, something relating more to a wanderer. Not someone who's name evokes the feelings of a person, spoiled by riches, who goes slumming.

The evening rush, if one could call it that, crept upon the inn. Charlie had put away his sketch pad and Nikolai was behind the bar, listening to the sob stories of the same three guys who had the same problems with their families or their businesses for the past century. Events under the inn's roof ran like clockwork, redefining predictable.

Nine o'clock rolls around and the customers began to clear, sans Damek and Freidrich of course. Because she always cooked as if she had a large family to feed, Em asked the two men to join the family for dinner.

Nikolai cleared the bar. Charlie cleared the tables, replenishing them with tableware as Em brought out the dinner. Damek and Freidrich sipped their brandy, watching it all happen around them.

Finally, they sat down to dinner. Conversation was sprase, leaving Charlie to marvel at the comfortable silences he was able to share with these near strangers.

Em could never stay quiet around Charlie. She was like a child in a candy store when it come to conversation with him. Unable to decide on which question to ask, unsure of whether or not the answer would be too sweet or too sour for her taste.

They had already covered the pleasantry bases, superficially at least - where he was from, where he had most recently been, what had provoked him into adopting this wandering lifestyle.

"How long do you think you might stay," she ventured.

"I rather like it here. I'd like to stay a while."

"Of course you should. You can stay as long as you'd like," she replied with satisfaction.

The exchange between Charlie and Em had piqued Freidrich's curiosity. He was the more reserved of the duo but having spent numerous hours at Nikolai's inn, the mess that Em was waltzing into was becoming blatantly obvious. The boy had plans to stay a while, he repeated to himself. He was an odd character, this Charlie. More often than not, Freidrich would glance up to find him writing in that black book of his or furiously sketching something that only the boy could see.

"He gives me an uneasy feeling," Freidrich muttered to Damek as they excused themselves from the table and headed home.

A frown appeared on Damek's face, "Admittedly, he's not like the folks around here but I say nothing bad will come of him."

"Of course something bad will come of him," snapped Freidrich. "When he leaves, Em will be in pieces again."

"Isn't life funny...the best of people have the worst luck."

This was really hard to write. I'm having a lot of trouble writing dialogue. Suggestions welcome and appreciated.

[related mp3: Scenes from an Italian Resturant - Billy Joel]

Em

2004-11-29T04:54:00.000-05:00

Nikolai's wife, currently being referred to as Em, makes her first appearance in the story. We're down to three days until the reading and I'm still muddling through character development. I've got a story line in the works. I'm thinking Charlie with his aversion to inter-personal relationships finds family in Nikolai and Em, despite his desire to keep himself at a distance. He comes from a particularly close-knit family but his vagabond-ish ways have put more than just the physical distance between them. Also, I need to change the name Charlie. It's just been a place holder. Suggestions welcome.

In rural towns like Boheme, a farmer passes his land onto his son, the chemist schooling his child in the art of business. Similarly, Nikolai's father assumed that his son would take over the keeping of the inn when he came of age, that he would marry and have children a-plenty. What no one planned on was a rebellious twenty year old Nikolai sailing off into the cold uncharted waters north of their home. No one planned on an early death in the family, one requiring Nikolai to give up his dreams and return home to take care of the mother mourning the death of her husband. No one planned that the woman Nikolai married could not bear children. No one had planned for the winter of life.

Sweet and maternal as she was, the fact that she would never have a child waking her in the dead of the night was a most striking blow, one that Em had barely endured. She remembered the sudden chill that settled over the room as the doctor softly told her that she would never have children. She remembered how blinding the white walls in his office were and then there had been darkness.

She remembered the day Charlie had first walked into the inn and the gut-wrenching blow to her stomach, the one she felt every time she saw a child, every time she realised that this one could have been one of her own. When he asked about lodging, she offered him a room. When he asked whereabouts he could find a job, she promised him one on the spot. They could find something for him to do, she reasoned.

"You get settled in. I'll get you something to eat," she said, directing him towards his room.

Uttering his thanks, Charlie hurried to the room to set down his back pack and one duffle bag. All of his life, neatly packed into two bags but that was the life of a world-worn vagabond. He set up his fragments of home in the room. Parents. Friends. All those inter-personal relationships that he had carefully avoided haunted his soul. Every time he made his new world familiar, he entertained the possibility of returning to his old life but every time, he dismissed the thought a half moment later. He was too steeped in his ways.

Hmm...seems like this turned out to be less of Em, more of Charlie. He's the main character so I suppose it's alright. I don't know. It's late; sleep beckons.

[related mp3: Bruised - The Bens ]

The Trial

2004-11-25T01:21:00.000-05:00

Do know where it came from, don't particularly know where it's going. It's less fictional than any of the other pieces, I suppose one could say thus not flowing very well but the sentiment is there. Better development on it another day.

She trembled nervously, picking imaginary lint off of her charcoal black suit. The glares from the jurors made her squirm in the creaking, wooden chair, in the small Alabama courtroom.

"All rise for the Honourable Judge Smith," a strong, disapproving voice commanded.

April shot upright. She wasn't going to let these close-minded people one-up her on anything.

A plump white man walked in and April sighed. The decision had been made before it was even heard. She could see herself being carted off, hands tied behind her back to the town square where a crowd would gather to watch her head chopped off by the guillotine.

"You're being melodramatic, April," she softly chided herself, dismissing the vision in her head.

But it was hard not to feel persecuted when every person she knew was accusing her of throwing her life away, of losing her head to the bohemian ideals of decades past, of ending up working a dead-end job while trying to pursue some hopeless artistic ideal of a life.

How do you justify life when the person you have become is the epitome of everything you ever wanted to be when those who surround you stare you down with distaste colouring their eyes?

"Being poor is hard but being rich and pampered and without inspiration or desire to just let it bleed is much, much harder," she exasperated but it was fruitless.

In the concrete jungle of life, there was no time for romance between the pen and the paper, no time for lusty affairs between the artist and his paintbrush. Hours spent walking in parks and browsing art in museums were wasteful and intellectual discussion pretentious. The rules demanded grande coffees with skim milk and three sugars in winters and iced lattes during summers, lunching at posh-Manhattan resturants, the hour spent deliberating over the latest fashion trends and office politics.

This carnivourous lifestyle she could not adopt. She was the child of Gaia - the proverbial free spirit - born to run free among the meadows, across the mountains, and through the valleys.

[related mp3: Food and Creative Love - Rusted Root ]

Nikolai

2004-11-24T23:50:00.000-05:00

Further character development on the same story for Fiction. Here we delve deeper into the inn-keeper, Nikolai.

Nikolai ran a frustrated hand through his greying hair. Checking the register was his least favourite part of the job. Finances, numbers, money - it wasn't his thing. The business wasn't in trouble; in fact, financially, he was rather well off but his heart wasn't in it. If he had it his way, he would still have been sailing the rough, Arctic waters. There was something strangely soothing about crashing waves and daunting icebergs, something peaceful about all the soft, white, snow that covered the Earth for as far as the eye could see.

His life at the inn had settled into a nice routine but then again, after thirty-years of the same thing, it was hard for it to be anything but routine. Damek and Friedrich's harsh German voices replaced the sounds of the crashing waves that had once lulled him into contentment and the only daunting icebergs in his life now were the glares he got from the duo if their glasses of brandy ran low. And there was Charlie, his new busboy. Charlie was an American but he wasn't like the handful of Americans Nikolai had encountered.

He didn't know Charlie that well, just that he had recently arrived in Boheme* that he needed a job and a place to stay. He was a good kid, just a little distant as if he spent most his time in an a world that existed only in his head.

"Can I get you something to eat from the kitchen," Charlie asked, approaching the bar.

"No, lad, this here will hold me until dinnertime," Nikolai said, pointing at his pint of lager. "Why don't you eat dinner with me and Em tonight? She likes seeing you."

There was something to be said about liquid lunches but Charlie didn't argue, nodding his head instead. Nikolai's wife was somewhat of a mystery to him. She had taken to him quickly, adopting him as her own child.

[related mp3: Losing My Religion - R.E.M. ]

The Pub

2004-11-23T17:46:00.000-05:00

I think this is going to be the jump off piece for the short story I need to write for Fiction. Set in northern Europe (or some imaginary place in my mind that resembles northern Europe), it is supposed to be the story of a world-worn vagabond recently displaced from a metropolis to rural Europe.

Yellow light danced shadows on the aged, wooden walls. Two older men sat at a corner table, speaking softly as they snifted glasses of brandy. Nikolai stood, preoccupied, in his usual spot behind the bar, white apron around his waist and small white towel over his shoulder, pen tucked behind his ear as he flipped through the register. The afternoon lull was not a particularly exciting, but nothing of great excitement happened often in these parts anyway.

In the opposing corner, Charlie, the busboy, was slowly cleaning up after the lunch hour crowd. Reaching his last table, he put down the plates and plopped down in a chair. Sinking into it, he pulled a small sketch pad and pencil out of his pocket. For ages, he had wanted to capture the permanent fixtures of Nikolai's Inn. Damek and Friedrich had sat in that same corner, speaking in hushed harsh German, with brandy at their sides since the first time he had walked into the pub.

"A bar in New York would never look like this," Charlie thought, the charcoal in his hands quickly shading Damek's sharp features. Neon flashing signs and obnoxious college freshmen girls dressed in the most scandalous of clothing loitered in the bars he remembered. They were like boisterous animals let loose for the first time. The virginal whiff of freedom proving to be far too intoxicating.

Perhaps if I ever hit gold, they'll look back upon me and say that I was a misogynist [re: the last paragraph mostly]. They wouldn't be too wrong. Besides, famous supposed misogynist include Hemingway and I'll be damned if I wouldn't want to be linked to him in some way or the other. Hemingway was also an alcoholic so if you're wondering what to get me for the holidays (because I promise Santa, I've been a very good girl), some hard liqeuer ought to hit the spot.

[related mp3: Both of Us'll Feel the Blast - Waterdeep ]

Finding Freedom

2004-11-21T05:51:00.000-05:00

Oseye's Fiction class asked for a story written after observing the world from "a great height." The Brooklyn Bridge, she recommended partially due to proximity, partially because the World Trade Center no longer is. Much like anything else she asks for, I doubt this one will hit the spot for her but last time I checked, I was writing for myself and not to make Oseye splooge her lovely African inspired colourful garb.

This story doesn't start, follow-through, or end the way I had intentioned. All I had in my mind is an image of a "Jimmy Stewart - Rear Window-esque" character, shooting on a bridge, the Brooklyn in particular. Below is an unpolished, unedited, first draft.

New York City is a collection of boroughs, five in all. A thirteen mile stretch of land, Manhattan, lies between the East and Hudson rivers. North of Manhattan is the Bronx, which leads into the richest area in the country - Westchester County. The borough of Kings [Brooklyn] and its partner [Queens] are strategically located east of the island. Further east and you run into Long Island, comparable to Westchester in its suburban appeal. Last and perhaps least is the neglected middle child of the boroughs - Staten Island, once a part of New Jersey now a part of New York City, but only begrudgingly.

Each of these boroughs are connected by bridges. Bridges are rampant in New York City from the monumental archictectural accomplishment that is the Brooklyn Bridge, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, to the Verrazano - the longest bridge - connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn. There are Girder Span Bridges [Hook Creek, Little Neck, Third Avenue], Steel Arch Bridges [George Washington Bridge], Swing Bridges[Grand Street, Macombs Dam, Ship Canal, and City Island bridges], Vertical Lift Bridges[103rd Street Ward’s Island Foot Bridge and the Roosevelt Island Bridge], Retractile Bridges [Carroll Street Bridge in Brooklyn and the Borden Avenue Bridge in Queens], and the celebrated Suspension Bridges [the tourist attraction Brooklyn and the blue Manhattan and the hipster's haven, Williamsburg - scattered up the East River].

As an amateur photographer, Ethan had spent every free moment he could scrounge up, between busing tables at a diner in Midtown West and hostessing at a particularly fancy new money Upper East Side resturant, freezing New York City moments on one of these bridges. His life was counted in photographs - colour, black and white, sepia, portrait shots, action shots; he was a master of them all.

Thanksgiving Day gave way to a bum-rush of people at both the diner and the resturant. One would think that people would cozy up in their homes, watch the Macy's Parade or the football game, and make their own feasts but no. The diner had never been more crowded. Happy families squished into bright booths. Obnoxiously loud pop music played in the background as waiters rushed from the tables to the kitchen and back again, with Ethan quickly wiping away remnants of Thanksgiving as each table emptied. Is this how the Indians and the Puritans had done it, he wondered on his crosstown shuttle and uptown 4 to the resturant.

He wanted to expect a quiet night. It had gotten colder. He blew his breath and it formed a cloud, quickly rising into the dark night. As he approached the resturant, he pasted on his plastic smile. The patronage lined up outside and around the block.

Don't you people ever eat at home? he wanted to ask.

He pushed past the line and into the resturant.

"You're late. It's 6:01 and we've got a full house already," Carson, the manager, glared at him.

Ignoring him, Ethan pushed his way into the back room to change into his suit. Sleek black pants, crisp white shirt quickly replaced the jeans and flannel shirt he had been wearing earlier. He shrugged on the tailored black blazer, his fingers tying the perfect bow at his collar. For just half a moment, he entertained the idea of becoming a suit but quickly blinked it away. For the next eight hours at least, he would stand grinning that perfectly gorgeous white smile at his disgustingly rich, snooty customers.

Most of them would shove past him to prove that they were regular vips, escort to "their" table not requisite. Some would make it a point to be guided to their tables as if they deserved the special attention. Then there was Mrs. Robinson, how she stayed alive in this vicious, catty circle was beyond Ethan's comprehension. Just like clockwork, she walked through the doors at precisely eight-thirty.

"Ethan, my dear, when are you going to quit this dead end job and do an art show with that photography of yours," she greeted.
"Soon, I hope," nodded Ethan, politely guiding her to a table by the window.

She had asked him that same question every night since he had mentioned his hobby even though she hadn't seen any of that so-called-wonderful art. He had given her the same stock answer every night but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that she cared enough to ask.

"I want to see your name in the paper for an opening," she murmured as Ethan helped her with her coat.
"Good night, Mrs. Robinson."

With that last goodbye, the long night at the resturant ended but the day was just beginning for Ethan. Switching back into his comfortable jeans and flannel shirt, he added a sweater for warmth, and a jacket to block the wind. Hat, scarves, gloves, check. Unwanted but necessary precautions at least until he got to a bridge. It would be the Brooklyn tonight. It had been an epic day in history, he wanted to celebrate it in style.

Usually, he photographed the buildings forming the skyline, the opposing Manhattan or Verrazano, the amorous couple or the lone straggler, the moon, the bridge itself and the cars passing beneath the pedestrian walkway and bike path. Never had he focused his lens below, onto the night painted ebony waters of the East River. Tonight, he would.

Without hesitation, he swung himself onto a beam and tip-toed across. Careful, don't look down. Slowly, he lowered himself into a crouching position, pulling the camera out of its bag. Lying down on the beam, the lens focuses once. Unclear. The lens focuses twice. Unclear. The lens focuses thrice. Clarity. What does a photograph of a November-chilled river look like? It looks like confusion. What do secrets quietly gliding trough to crest sound like? They sound perfectly harmonious. What do the crashing waves feel like? They feel like freedom.

Ethan feels himself sinking into a comforting cloak of darkness. Some guiding force teaches him how to body surf, wave to wave like an otter. Eyes closed, camera clutched in hand. He floats on, into the chilled river, into the secrets, into freedom.

[related mp3: Writing to Reach You - Travis ]