Creative Endeavors
This story ate up a bunch of time today that should have been spent doing "real work" (read: studying for the exam tomorrow and finishing the nearly a week late paper), but I'm still rather pleased with it, and thought that since it's relatively short I would slap it up here and see how it reads. If you wouldn't mind spending 20 miniutes on something of mine just like in days of yore, I would be vastly appreciative. Also, I can take criticism. I know that the title makes it sound like a Buffy episode, but bear with me, please. And with that I give you:
The first hundred years were the hardest, but I know who I am. I was born in a dirty cottage with a fire in the hearth and I remember my mother’s face when she died a few hours later, absolutely worn out. All mothers died in those days, or nearly all. My father did not like me; I squalled through the burial, wildly hungry. But I was strong, stronger than a son, stronger than him, stronger than the walls of the church that I tried not to go into. I heard my mother call me Larken, and even though my father called me Mole for the rest of his life I knew what my real name was. The first year that I was able to I helped plant potatoes. I nestled a seed potato into the ground and patted dirt down over it. It was thin, worn out like my mother. I looked at the next one and thought: If this is the seed potato, then I know who I am. I am the planter. I am going to live forever.
At the end of the Hundred Years’ War I was scrubbing floors and changing linens in a village called Lewes, where a red-headed scholar taught me to read in Latin. I taught myself to write by tracing out the shapes of the characters in a bit of spilled flour. I read the Bible, the only book he had with him. I brought him ale and he brought me letters; it was not the end of the bargain, but that was no surprise. If he is the traveling scholar, then I know who I am. I am the inn girl. I am going to live forever, and I will always be beautiful. He will die soon, but not before we have enjoyed each other thoroughly.
The scholar’s name was Bryan; I vowed when I was very young not to forget the names of anyone I love. I keep waiting to forget how, waiting for love to become irrelevant. I am waiting to learn how not to make mistakes, and yet here I am, caught in the cycle. Bryan married me and took me to live in the city. He was my first husband. I had already outlived four children, only one of whom had seen a brief adulthood, but the scholar’s were the first that I nursed in bed while strips of daylight came in through the shutters. If she is the child, then I am the mother, and I will always be alone. I will outlive her, and all of her full and half siblings, until one is born strong enough to live forever, like me. Perhaps then I will die, but until then I will love her.
I learned how to mourn well, with only a fraction of my heart. There would have been too much grief if I had not taught myself to weep away as much as possible in a few weeks before putting the person away in my heart forever. I thanked God for my adept memory, and built a museum of moving portraits inside my heart. I do not stroll there idly, but only enter to see someone specific before striding out again past longing eyes and the curling tendrils of wilted fingertips. I do not stop to talk to whoever catches my eye, for that way lies madness and despair. I open and shut my mind like a book, looking for a particular passage that reminds me of a happier time before continuing my day’s work. Remembering is for me like visiting old, old friends who have not changed at all and always welcome me with open arms. I am always happy to see them. If you are the memory, then I know who I am: I am the living person, and I have no other choice.
The first hundred years are the hardest. That’s what I tell everyone who wants to live forever. When we have this conversation it is usually after dinner, and the other party is usually drunk. They confuse immortality with living forever, but I know the difference. Immortality is divine, coming to those touched by something great and unimaginable, whether it be from above or below. I, by contrast, am just a hanger-on. If that is an angel in the sky, then I am the one who refuses to die, born stronger than the walls of the village church that had been there for four hundred years before I was even born. I went back there five years ago, passing through en route to my new home in London, and the church was still standing. I traveled alone, as I always do, the very postcard of a sensible young woman on the move. Though it has not moved my body beyond the age of twenty, time has pressed the village very gradually to the west so that the church is now a lonely ruin with a donation box and a rack of brochures. I thought about taking one, but instead took them all and used them to light a fire in the center of the nave. The smoke swept up to the ceiling and washed out over it like water poured onto the stone. The fire grew brighter as the light outside faded away. The sight of the pink clouds over the fields made me cry as I remembered, without wanting to, my father with his scythe walking out through the wheat that he could not coax any taller, determined that it should become bread. He died of plague, calling me by my mother’s name. I let the fire burn out. If you are the fire, then I know who I am. I am the one who gets cold in the dark. I am the one in the stone cave surrounded by unnamed spirits who whisper to no one, least of all me. I am six hundred years old now, but I could be twelve thousand and the fire would not have changed at all. This is the difference between immortality and living forever. Immortals don’t care about the constancy of flames, for they were there when the fire was born. But I am going to live forever, and remember every single way that the world changes until the very end.
The first hundred years are the learning years. Learning all the things that everyone must learn in the first twenty, and the harder lessons after that. How to grieve without dying, how to love without giving up everything, how to attract and deflect attention. I learned to give up everything every forty years or so and move on to a new town before anyone could mutter ‘witch’. While the sixteenth century dawned I learned to read and write in English, and then more languages until I was a stranger to no part of Europe. I buried Bryan and then his children, three sturdy girls, and moved on. I went to Venice, learned to speak Italian and went into the only business available to a young woman without anything of her own. There my knowledge of the separateness of mind, body and heart was made concrete and there I was set entirely free. There would be no more unconditional surrender. If you are the one buying my body, then I am the one selling, and I am the only one who really knows what your money is getting you. I sent my mind into the other room with my heart to tell stories and play cards until I was finished. What times we had.
But after the first hundred years things get much simpler. Everything settles into cycles, and you learn to wait out the worst parts until things improve. I have survived the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the deflation of Catholicism, the rise and fall of Fascism; leaders and their revolutions come and go but I am always the same, and the scales always re-balance themselves. I have learned to blend in with crowds and avoid their wrath while they raise and tear down regimes that I saw grow out of nothing, just like them. I remember the first time I saw an Italian fresco, an anatomical etching of the human digestive system, a freight train, television. I spend twenty years making a fortune and twenty years losing it. I learned that there is always room in a city for another tavern, and have been consistently successful in that business since 1692, when I opened my first bar outside of Wittenberg. If he is the drunkard, then I am the one making a profit from the problem that will ruin his life. In this way I am not dissimilar to the Devil, but since I will never meet the Beast personally, he does not worry me. I have learned to curse in every language, in every century, and my vocabulary of oaths is as vast as the ocean. This proficiency, when paired with my impeccable memory for all that I have read and experienced, makes me a formidable opponent to my patrons’ inebriated declarations. When my bar goes under, as it inevitably does, I pack up my things and travel.
I went to America in time to witness the twentieth century. Reports up until then had made it sound like a land of capitalist savagery, and so I waited for it to become more civilized, and was not disappointed. I preferred the first fifty years to the second, even if my bar did require a password for a while. During that time I fell in love with a fast young girl in lavender high heels and a dark blue dress. Her name was Edith and she was beautiful. Was the nimblest dancer in the place and I made sure from the moment I saw her that she only drank the good stuff. In this age without inhibitions I had her in my arms within weeks; her voice was the color of her dress and I bought her bracelets with lilac paste stones to match her shoes. It had been at least a century since I had last had such an affair, and I reveled in the experience of lavishing her with my love and attention. The delight I took in drinking in Edith was boundless. She is one of the first of my lovers that I have a photograph of. It’s a sepia print the size of a cigarette case and shows her in nothing but shoes, stockings and jewelry in the upstairs light of midday in the city. She brought me my first guava one delirious evening, split it open with her fingernails and showed me how to eat the sweet, chalky meat inside.
After a few months little Edith began to stray, as I knew she would, but I ignored the signs as long as she still came to me. In spite of all I had learned I was entirely devoted to her. But then I saw her on the lap of one of my barkeeps, giggling, and I was filled with anger so compelling that it distilled into a liquid calm, a deadly clarity. I was on fire, and I knew just what to do. If she is the cheating lover then I know who I am: I am the jealous one, allowed to flood rage before letting her go. After a week or so nobody missed her. Looking at her body, still warm in my bed, I thought: If you are the dead body, then I know who I am. I am the one who made you. I am going to live forever, and because I chose it, you will always be dead.
The first hundred years were the hardest, but I know who I am. I was born in a dirty cottage with a fire in the hearth and I remember my mother’s face when she died a few hours later, absolutely worn out. All mothers died in those days, or nearly all. My father did not like me; I squalled through the burial, wildly hungry. But I was strong, stronger than a son, stronger than him, stronger than the walls of the church that I tried not to go into. I heard my mother call me Larken, and even though my father called me Mole for the rest of his life I knew what my real name was. The first year that I was able to I helped plant potatoes. I nestled a seed potato into the ground and patted dirt down over it. It was thin, worn out like my mother. I looked at the next one and thought: If this is the seed potato, then I know who I am. I am the planter. I am going to live forever.
At the end of the Hundred Years’ War I was scrubbing floors and changing linens in a village called Lewes, where a red-headed scholar taught me to read in Latin. I taught myself to write by tracing out the shapes of the characters in a bit of spilled flour. I read the Bible, the only book he had with him. I brought him ale and he brought me letters; it was not the end of the bargain, but that was no surprise. If he is the traveling scholar, then I know who I am. I am the inn girl. I am going to live forever, and I will always be beautiful. He will die soon, but not before we have enjoyed each other thoroughly.
The scholar’s name was Bryan; I vowed when I was very young not to forget the names of anyone I love. I keep waiting to forget how, waiting for love to become irrelevant. I am waiting to learn how not to make mistakes, and yet here I am, caught in the cycle. Bryan married me and took me to live in the city. He was my first husband. I had already outlived four children, only one of whom had seen a brief adulthood, but the scholar’s were the first that I nursed in bed while strips of daylight came in through the shutters. If she is the child, then I am the mother, and I will always be alone. I will outlive her, and all of her full and half siblings, until one is born strong enough to live forever, like me. Perhaps then I will die, but until then I will love her.
I learned how to mourn well, with only a fraction of my heart. There would have been too much grief if I had not taught myself to weep away as much as possible in a few weeks before putting the person away in my heart forever. I thanked God for my adept memory, and built a museum of moving portraits inside my heart. I do not stroll there idly, but only enter to see someone specific before striding out again past longing eyes and the curling tendrils of wilted fingertips. I do not stop to talk to whoever catches my eye, for that way lies madness and despair. I open and shut my mind like a book, looking for a particular passage that reminds me of a happier time before continuing my day’s work. Remembering is for me like visiting old, old friends who have not changed at all and always welcome me with open arms. I am always happy to see them. If you are the memory, then I know who I am: I am the living person, and I have no other choice.
The first hundred years are the hardest. That’s what I tell everyone who wants to live forever. When we have this conversation it is usually after dinner, and the other party is usually drunk. They confuse immortality with living forever, but I know the difference. Immortality is divine, coming to those touched by something great and unimaginable, whether it be from above or below. I, by contrast, am just a hanger-on. If that is an angel in the sky, then I am the one who refuses to die, born stronger than the walls of the village church that had been there for four hundred years before I was even born. I went back there five years ago, passing through en route to my new home in London, and the church was still standing. I traveled alone, as I always do, the very postcard of a sensible young woman on the move. Though it has not moved my body beyond the age of twenty, time has pressed the village very gradually to the west so that the church is now a lonely ruin with a donation box and a rack of brochures. I thought about taking one, but instead took them all and used them to light a fire in the center of the nave. The smoke swept up to the ceiling and washed out over it like water poured onto the stone. The fire grew brighter as the light outside faded away. The sight of the pink clouds over the fields made me cry as I remembered, without wanting to, my father with his scythe walking out through the wheat that he could not coax any taller, determined that it should become bread. He died of plague, calling me by my mother’s name. I let the fire burn out. If you are the fire, then I know who I am. I am the one who gets cold in the dark. I am the one in the stone cave surrounded by unnamed spirits who whisper to no one, least of all me. I am six hundred years old now, but I could be twelve thousand and the fire would not have changed at all. This is the difference between immortality and living forever. Immortals don’t care about the constancy of flames, for they were there when the fire was born. But I am going to live forever, and remember every single way that the world changes until the very end.
The first hundred years are the learning years. Learning all the things that everyone must learn in the first twenty, and the harder lessons after that. How to grieve without dying, how to love without giving up everything, how to attract and deflect attention. I learned to give up everything every forty years or so and move on to a new town before anyone could mutter ‘witch’. While the sixteenth century dawned I learned to read and write in English, and then more languages until I was a stranger to no part of Europe. I buried Bryan and then his children, three sturdy girls, and moved on. I went to Venice, learned to speak Italian and went into the only business available to a young woman without anything of her own. There my knowledge of the separateness of mind, body and heart was made concrete and there I was set entirely free. There would be no more unconditional surrender. If you are the one buying my body, then I am the one selling, and I am the only one who really knows what your money is getting you. I sent my mind into the other room with my heart to tell stories and play cards until I was finished. What times we had.
But after the first hundred years things get much simpler. Everything settles into cycles, and you learn to wait out the worst parts until things improve. I have survived the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the deflation of Catholicism, the rise and fall of Fascism; leaders and their revolutions come and go but I am always the same, and the scales always re-balance themselves. I have learned to blend in with crowds and avoid their wrath while they raise and tear down regimes that I saw grow out of nothing, just like them. I remember the first time I saw an Italian fresco, an anatomical etching of the human digestive system, a freight train, television. I spend twenty years making a fortune and twenty years losing it. I learned that there is always room in a city for another tavern, and have been consistently successful in that business since 1692, when I opened my first bar outside of Wittenberg. If he is the drunkard, then I am the one making a profit from the problem that will ruin his life. In this way I am not dissimilar to the Devil, but since I will never meet the Beast personally, he does not worry me. I have learned to curse in every language, in every century, and my vocabulary of oaths is as vast as the ocean. This proficiency, when paired with my impeccable memory for all that I have read and experienced, makes me a formidable opponent to my patrons’ inebriated declarations. When my bar goes under, as it inevitably does, I pack up my things and travel.
I went to America in time to witness the twentieth century. Reports up until then had made it sound like a land of capitalist savagery, and so I waited for it to become more civilized, and was not disappointed. I preferred the first fifty years to the second, even if my bar did require a password for a while. During that time I fell in love with a fast young girl in lavender high heels and a dark blue dress. Her name was Edith and she was beautiful. Was the nimblest dancer in the place and I made sure from the moment I saw her that she only drank the good stuff. In this age without inhibitions I had her in my arms within weeks; her voice was the color of her dress and I bought her bracelets with lilac paste stones to match her shoes. It had been at least a century since I had last had such an affair, and I reveled in the experience of lavishing her with my love and attention. The delight I took in drinking in Edith was boundless. She is one of the first of my lovers that I have a photograph of. It’s a sepia print the size of a cigarette case and shows her in nothing but shoes, stockings and jewelry in the upstairs light of midday in the city. She brought me my first guava one delirious evening, split it open with her fingernails and showed me how to eat the sweet, chalky meat inside.
After a few months little Edith began to stray, as I knew she would, but I ignored the signs as long as she still came to me. In spite of all I had learned I was entirely devoted to her. But then I saw her on the lap of one of my barkeeps, giggling, and I was filled with anger so compelling that it distilled into a liquid calm, a deadly clarity. I was on fire, and I knew just what to do. If she is the cheating lover then I know who I am: I am the jealous one, allowed to flood rage before letting her go. After a week or so nobody missed her. Looking at her body, still warm in my bed, I thought: If you are the dead body, then I know who I am. I am the one who made you. I am going to live forever, and because I chose it, you will always be dead.