Love with her was pure irrationality and perfection in one sweeping, sudden fury.
The lancia boat I was lying inside on my back teetered side-to-side, creaking like trees moving by the wind’s hand. I felt the ancient splinters vying for my salt-dried skin. The sea splashed over the side of the boat, tickling my limbs, reminding me with each tongue of water that I was amongst the rawness of the sea, which could take me at any moment in one swipe. The sea reminding me of my immortality instigated the memory of Valentina. I closed my eyes, seeing her petal silk lips whispering if love, if love, if love, over, and over again until our lips were inches apart, almost kissing. Almost. It almost happened. Then I saw her hands dousing creamy white lotion onto my skin. Her hands pined for my skin. But she had already faded into a memory, as if what happened between us occurred many years ago, when it was only days ago. There was still more of her I had yet to experience; I feared this, and yet it thrilled me at the same time. She lingered, waiting for me to take the next step. One part of me wanted her to disappear, but never too far away from reach.
Passage from Mon Corps et Moi (My Body and I) (1925)
“But since God the Father wants nothing to do with me in His Paradise, the same as yesterday, I must go on using objects, earthly creatures. Today, however, I am not inclined to making advances.
Fortunately the other is here to save me.
The other feels that thinking has gone on too long.
I hear: It’s time to go home.
It’s true, dawn leads to love.
Let’s go.
At home I touch this body, as I have already had the honor to touch others, wishing only to rid myself of my most specific desires, without the hope of satisfying any, or the wish to prolong them.”
Hello everyone! It has been a while since I’ve posted a blog. I think we can all agree, that life has a way of pulling you in all sorts of directions.
As I have been planning for two (yeah… I think I’m crazy) feature films, I thankfully haven’t neglected my fiction writing. Recently, I went through a transformation in terms of creativity, planning, content, and the act of DOING.
Basically what I’ve realized, is instead of working tirelessly on one full length novel, I am starting to craft existing stories I’ve written, as well as new stories, into short story, novellette, and novella lengths (I am leaning more towards the novellette and novella lengths- see the note below for word counts). When I am finished, it will be published on Amazon for Kindle.
I’m not sure if anyone else has felt this way, but I find completing an entire manuscript of 70,000 – 80,000 words occasionally daunting (Stephen King talks about a 3 month timeline for a first draft, but is that always viable?). I am technically close with a few writing projects, but it just never seems to get finished, as I am torn between life tasks (hello animals), reading, and filmmaking.
This is me looking serious while holding my dog Caddy’s paw. In the lower right hand corner is Ulysses, by James Joyce. This was taken on Bloomsday.
Shorter stories will allow me to do the following: hyper focus on essentially one slice of the pie, hone my skills in a more economical way, craft stories around a genre/sub-genre that I feel passionately about (LGBTQ/YA/Romance), build a platform, and actually get something published out there for you all to read. The proof is in the results, right?
What’s your favorite short story, novellette, novella, and/or flash fiction? My absolute favorite novella is TheLover,by Marguerite Duras.
No, I am not going to abandon the full length novel. It is coming. For now, short stories are the way to go, at least for me.
What do you all think?
The link below will take you to inspiring site. Go ahead, click on it, read some posts, and then tell me what you think. Or better yet, do it yourself!
Is the novella (reading it electronically) the new wave of this age’s fiction? Could Finnegans Wake made as much of an impact as it did in 1939, if it were written today?
Oh, we all wish we could write Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
I’m tired of here, I’m tired of humanity and all that we stand for and all that we don’t, and these eyes heavily laid upon the green messy carpet outdated for years but who would notice– not I sah, not I, for I want what everyone else wants, making it all go to shit because we compete for this or that, food on the shelves a plenty to make us sick, houses depleted and ugly to make us sick, medications full create all the same get those dogs and cats on the same medications side affects side affects as long as the pocket presents the side affects do not exist until they actually happen and then they’re sorry so sorry they ever met you and that’s what I think when I walk, trying to keep up with the dogs because I am so lost in the darkness of disgusting humanity– disgusting adults– disgusting teenagers– disgusting children– we regulate animals but not humanity no snip snip opiate here, opiate there, don’t worry about the side affects for they do not concern you nor your child so they don’t actually exist until they actually do– all of the muck and dirt combing through my mind as I walk behind them until I reach the smells and the blackness of the sky and greyness of the sea at a time when most humanity is not to be seen for it is too cold and too dark, only then when I smell the seeping clams and muscles while the dogs trot amongst their mother rocks and dirt do I realize that life isn’t alway to shit because nature is there such as the ocean to bring me back to the one and all source loving and true– t’aint nothing more true than the grey ocean sans line to see not to cross, and then I cross it unbeknownst and perhaps I want to go further as the mermaid sirens call me as the gulls flap me as the ducks twirl me to want and I want and this– that– is all I really do want, not this construction not this green paper, not this fake job, not this disheartened look, not this soiled house crumbling to the marshes, but the ocean that appears at night like I could walk across it and through it and disappear to something more and true
We take our dogs Caddy– a wild at heart Australian Cattle Dog/Beagle (you see the Beagle in her ears and howl), and Dylan– the sweetest Toy Poodle who tells everyone he loves them with his tongue– to the empty beach of Hampton, New Hampshire.
It is low tide, so the gulls are having a grand ol’ time gulping washed up crabs and clams. The boulders are exposed. Only the ones who live nearby and who have companion dogs are out right now. The rest– the wannabes— wait in the shadows for summer.
The Old Yankee Bitch– we never asked for her name and she didn’t ask for ours (we only know each other’s dogs’ names, naturally )– stands waiting in her marshmallow jacket on the other side of the mini jetty. We make eye contact at precisely the moment Caddy squats and shits. Good thing I brought a bag, otherwise she’d scold me for leaving the shit, even if I buried the shit under the sand. People here leave their used needles in the sand for all of us plebes to step on, so what the hell?
The fox-like Delilah, a Sheltie, of course is at her side. As I walk up the cement stairs to throw the bag-o-shit away, I look around and Delilah is waiting at the base of the stairs. How did she get there so quickly?
“Hello Delilah! I’ve missed you so.”
Caddy is delighted, and needless to say, so is Dylan (Delou aka Bob Dylan).
I unhook the leashes from their collars. Off the three best of friends run; tails up, tongues out. We run after the three, who outrun us, looking behind to make sure us slow ones are keeping up.
We say our customary hellos to The Old Yankee Bitch. We cheer on the dogs– they are the most important phenomenon, after all– another dog outside our knowledge joining the pack, a senior black lab.
Caddy herds him like her blood tells her too. The man leaves with his black lab.
Dylan chases a jogger who is on the other side of the wall, and we’re fearful for a moment that he’ll soon blend in to the dirty snow. Perhaps the jogger would want to take him. I run and call him like a crazed mother. He races back to us.
Time to go home.
As we walk, The Yankee Old Bitch calls Delilah a bitch. Her term of endearment, but she’s really pissed that she can’t fully trust Delilah to do the right thing and not run off. Then she looks at us as we convey our adieus.
She says in the same tone and nonchalance as calling Delilah a bitch, “I found my husband dead on the couch. Delilah barked and whined for him. Anyway, have a good day and we’ll see you tomorrow.”
People bore the dead earth. They sit on the tall chairs as they once did as children in their high chairs. What’s changed son? You didn’t get more interesting, did you.
Man in the pressured suit. He smiles as shiny as his hair. He worked on that hair a great deal, well a lifetime. Now he can talk about his hair and how he just did a business deal with so and so who used to own the Atlantic.
“Ocean?”
The bricks bleed. Stop laughing. When can I get out I can’t get out where am I it’s nothing it’s all shit it’s all classless nothing is better than the last I think I’ll always be searching for something beyond this–
“What are you stupid? It’s a business deal.”
The plebes. Gawk at that T.V. Judge everyone’s shape and face. You know best, don’t ya. Talk about that weatha. Eagle on the back of your sweatshirt. Get outta’ here.
“You’d never see those women in Hampton.”
“He-he-he-he!”
“They put too much in it. Who dresses like that?”
Gawk at that young pair of women walking in just to try the ambience of bricks. Their hair is fake. So who cares?
The pair aren’t more interesting than you, so don’t worry. They sit with boxes of light blinding their faces. Something’s surely better than here.
Well, you’re right sweetie.
“The mortgage hasn’t cleared yet…so–” He places on his jacket that glows in the dark so he must be blue collar ain’t he?
Walk by in your checkered muted shirt. Glance at the pair who will never notice you.
“You must be doing homework on Abraham Lincoln.”
Try Thoreau. And no, this isn’t homework. Would He be seen here? Would he shake his head, or merely watch with amusement? WWTD?
The poor servant from Columbia, short like 5′ 2″, smiles polite to a fault, as if the pair of women were her own pained children, and apologizes for the unavailable brewskie
“No one was there.”
The one closest to the brinks continues to stare at the light box while the Columbian apologizes profusely, a lowly beggar.
“Thank you.”
The light box needs no thanks.
I actually don’t know where she’s from… maybe I should ask.
“Ten grand? Five million dollar royals taken away.”
“I’ll buy you anything you want to drink.”
“Ha–hahahah. Alright, I’ll see ya.”
“Cash me out.”
“I saw that new Tesla coming out.”
“I would’t get anything from them for five years.”
Two days and three nights, reason screams from the tops of its lungs, is not a sufficient amount of time to deem two individuals fell in love. Perhaps, I muse with the most logical sincerity, it was a simple bout of lust, just as one comes down with a bout of coughing seemingly out of nowhere. The cough exudes a miserable eternity, making you scorn yourself when you took for granted the days you walked about your silly normal life without feeling the combustion burning from your throat, traveling up your esophagus, only to spit in an unnatural force out of your mouth. That unforgiving day it begins, but as quickly as it came, it is gone, and once it is gone, it is completely forgotten until the next fickle bout tickles your throat.
A fire romps within the dwellings of a kept creature, I, a lost girl influenced by the masses, a timeless roaring rage to keep purity alive all in the name of doing what is right. Life seems long when the years trickle into a puddle, merging with otherness into sameness. It’s the acceptance of hiding which makes life normal. Sameness, hiding, long, acceptance.
I felt, I thought, I ceased. Time decayed after her.
The word lust is too sturdy and clear; whatever it was, it felt fragile and hazy in my bones and mind, as if for the past month I wandered lost in a foreign nightclub.
Monsieur (Xavier) DOLAN – Laurence Anyways – Suzanne Clement
One of the best examples of filming an insanely staged scene, and it’s actually happening, but it dwells in the character’s head because maybe it’s not actually happening. None of this is real. You know when you look good and it’s a bunch of zero-fucks-given. It’s in your head no it’s not it is but no.
And some groovy eighties music– almost seventies. Is that Captain Smith? VISAGE – Fade to Grey
