contrast of white on white
I basically searched "love" on my iTunes and am listening to the 245 tracks that came up. Originally 304, but I deleted an entire Babyshambles album, so.
Right. So. I wrote something, apparently. I'm kind of proud, actually. Took about and hour of actual writing and then just sporadic little whiles of fiddling with it and fixing all that was wrong. Still is pretty messy and I don't think it's clear but whatever, don't feel like rereading it for the 3223rd time.
Just...something that came to me, I guess. Started with random scattered sentences about people's dreams. Turned into...a big fat ball of fluff? A sort of "dream on, hope ahead" message to myself and anyone who wants to read, I guess.
Contrast of white on white // Original fiction.
1107 words. G.
Lucy dreamt about being a wildlife photographer. Half the year in a house in the suburbs of Boston and the other six months wearing rain boots and following the course of the Orinoco river. She would work at a coffee shop until she had enough money for the Nikon camera she wanted so much and then take off.
Josh dreamt of being a psychologist. He yearned for the insight rather than the satisfaction of making feel people better. His dad had been a schizophrenic. Go figure. He would study at Brown and then settle in the core of some yet-to-be-decided city and dedicate himself to building a personal library while analyzing few people at a time even though he'd be a distinguished therapist
They met through and online dating service. She was working two part-time jobs (waitress at a coffee shop and cashier at a Laundromat) and he was crashing in people's couches at different UMass dorms. The rest (how they got together, how money was spent on plane tickets, how they connected, how they ended up like this--an apartment in Providence, a job as a street photographer in a long-running newspaper and a couple therapist, respectively) is a mystery. I'm guessing somewhere between daysthatturnedintoweeksthatturnedintomonths of "I miss you"s and expensive phone bills, something was established. What was? Just something. A domestic and heart-warmingly unanimous way of settling.
When asked, it's like their former dreams never existed, or were simply dissolved inside the liquid that is life. "Regret it?" Lucy asks. "Regret what?"
Josh just advises me to read Freud before messing with Lacan. "Otherwise you'll get it all wrong. All wrong."
-------
Leah dreamt big. Of whatever she could (baking, parachuting, carpentry, a solo career, six children), whatever anyone would normally ask in lesser quantities, she wanted it harder, longer, bigger.
"There is not much to be said about my life," she says. "Three failed attempts at breaking a Guinness record, two failed marriages and a success at climbing Mount Everest. Oh, and a couple of years teaching spoilt children how to keep from slipping on an icy slope."
She tells the story backwards though. College graduate, average GPA. A year and a couple of months training herself for the climb. Then the aforementioned success. About ten days of freezing cold and chattering smiles. The young boy who had been her guide died at the top of the mountain; they never really found out why--cardiac arrest, maybe. Hypothermia. She ate a hot dog sixteen miles down from the mountain's zenith. She says they, her and the rest of the group, sung a Beatles' song at the top of the mountain. "Only the chorus. It was too cold for anything else." She can't remember which one, though.
Anyway. They, her made up band and her, came back down to earth. She'd lost a toe to the cold, and a guide. "Couldn't bring him down with us," she says. "Would've been too much weight." Then, they--those strangers and her--dedicated themselves to acclimating. Then she flew all the way back to Home, Oregon, guide-less.
Afterward, she met Gary. And then Steve. Four years, a wedding, a shitty job at a shitty company. Then a lover, who stirred something in a non-specific part of her, but something moving was better than stone, so she kept him. A sudden love for air-balloons. Here go the three attempts at breaking a record that didn't quite compute (they all involved something related to helium and heights and Venezuela). Then a divorce and a break-up with the guy who now she didn't feel anything towards, either. Then a boyfriend and another and then Eric and his family heirloom ring. And a South American wedding. Chile: far away and completely incomprehensible. Suitable, too.
Then came Leah: mountain climbing instructor. Basic levels. Never really went above 400 meters. Dealt with excited kids and unsure parents, pretending-to-be-bored teenagers and cheap pick up lines about how "it's so cold outside, baby, wanna go inside and warm it up?" Eric and her, they lived in a chalet sort of thing, in the outskirts of a mountain town. Indeed, they did, right until they didn't. He got his heirloom back and she started working in a little shop in town. Lived right on top of the place, too. Sold antiques and stuff. The old owner had liked her and on a whim left it all to her in his will. Good customers during high season and then a quiet life for the rest of the year.
And then? "Well, I'm still here. You're making it sound so much more exciting then it really was, though." She looks longingly out the window, breath fogging up the glass. This is Leah: 53, looking fit, climbed the tallest mountain in the world, married two men, no children, sells antiques from all over the world in a little town in The End Of The World, Chile. "I still think of all the things I could've done..."
------
Ralph simply had nightmares of dying alone. Perfectly normal childhood, maybe a slight stiffness in the whole human contact department from his mother, if anything. Nothing mentionable about his teenage years, middle school and high school simply a blur, from where Ralph tries to extract some sort of painful memory to justify what he did next.
He hung himself an afternoon in August, in the living room of his inherited suburban mono block, because not everyone finds the right words, the right person and the happy ending.
His neighbor's daughter, a tiny little thing named Sharon, followed a cat to the inside of his house and found him hanging there.
She screamed and screamed and screamed some more. The cat snuck through the window and another neighbor burst through the door.
-------
Half-way around the world, Elena dreamed of being in love. Outside, it rained; inside, someone stared at her from behind his coffee, all the way across the room. And while someone's nightmare were passed on to a naive child, two pair of eyes connected. There was no fire, no sparks or electricity. Just a bashful smile, a what if and a promise of so much more.
Because whether our dreams aren't what ends up being reality, whether we are blinded to the dusty memories of our accomplishments, or whether we were just too afraid to begin with, promises will always exist. They will be broken, they will be dreaded, but they will also give hope. And that's what really keeps us spinning.
Anyway. It's 3:42 AM. Going to sleep sounds smart. Also, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. Tempting.
Right. So. I wrote something, apparently. I'm kind of proud, actually. Took about and hour of actual writing and then just sporadic little whiles of fiddling with it and fixing all that was wrong. Still is pretty messy and I don't think it's clear but whatever, don't feel like rereading it for the 3223rd time.
Just...something that came to me, I guess. Started with random scattered sentences about people's dreams. Turned into...a big fat ball of fluff? A sort of "dream on, hope ahead" message to myself and anyone who wants to read, I guess.
Contrast of white on white // Original fiction.
1107 words. G.
Lucy dreamt about being a wildlife photographer. Half the year in a house in the suburbs of Boston and the other six months wearing rain boots and following the course of the Orinoco river. She would work at a coffee shop until she had enough money for the Nikon camera she wanted so much and then take off.
Josh dreamt of being a psychologist. He yearned for the insight rather than the satisfaction of making feel people better. His dad had been a schizophrenic. Go figure. He would study at Brown and then settle in the core of some yet-to-be-decided city and dedicate himself to building a personal library while analyzing few people at a time even though he'd be a distinguished therapist
They met through and online dating service. She was working two part-time jobs (waitress at a coffee shop and cashier at a Laundromat) and he was crashing in people's couches at different UMass dorms. The rest (how they got together, how money was spent on plane tickets, how they connected, how they ended up like this--an apartment in Providence, a job as a street photographer in a long-running newspaper and a couple therapist, respectively) is a mystery. I'm guessing somewhere between daysthatturnedintoweeksthatturnedintomonths of "I miss you"s and expensive phone bills, something was established. What was? Just something. A domestic and heart-warmingly unanimous way of settling.
When asked, it's like their former dreams never existed, or were simply dissolved inside the liquid that is life. "Regret it?" Lucy asks. "Regret what?"
Josh just advises me to read Freud before messing with Lacan. "Otherwise you'll get it all wrong. All wrong."
-------
Leah dreamt big. Of whatever she could (baking, parachuting, carpentry, a solo career, six children), whatever anyone would normally ask in lesser quantities, she wanted it harder, longer, bigger.
"There is not much to be said about my life," she says. "Three failed attempts at breaking a Guinness record, two failed marriages and a success at climbing Mount Everest. Oh, and a couple of years teaching spoilt children how to keep from slipping on an icy slope."
She tells the story backwards though. College graduate, average GPA. A year and a couple of months training herself for the climb. Then the aforementioned success. About ten days of freezing cold and chattering smiles. The young boy who had been her guide died at the top of the mountain; they never really found out why--cardiac arrest, maybe. Hypothermia. She ate a hot dog sixteen miles down from the mountain's zenith. She says they, her and the rest of the group, sung a Beatles' song at the top of the mountain. "Only the chorus. It was too cold for anything else." She can't remember which one, though.
Anyway. They, her made up band and her, came back down to earth. She'd lost a toe to the cold, and a guide. "Couldn't bring him down with us," she says. "Would've been too much weight." Then, they--those strangers and her--dedicated themselves to acclimating. Then she flew all the way back to Home, Oregon, guide-less.
Afterward, she met Gary. And then Steve. Four years, a wedding, a shitty job at a shitty company. Then a lover, who stirred something in a non-specific part of her, but something moving was better than stone, so she kept him. A sudden love for air-balloons. Here go the three attempts at breaking a record that didn't quite compute (they all involved something related to helium and heights and Venezuela). Then a divorce and a break-up with the guy who now she didn't feel anything towards, either. Then a boyfriend and another and then Eric and his family heirloom ring. And a South American wedding. Chile: far away and completely incomprehensible. Suitable, too.
Then came Leah: mountain climbing instructor. Basic levels. Never really went above 400 meters. Dealt with excited kids and unsure parents, pretending-to-be-bored teenagers and cheap pick up lines about how "it's so cold outside, baby, wanna go inside and warm it up?" Eric and her, they lived in a chalet sort of thing, in the outskirts of a mountain town. Indeed, they did, right until they didn't. He got his heirloom back and she started working in a little shop in town. Lived right on top of the place, too. Sold antiques and stuff. The old owner had liked her and on a whim left it all to her in his will. Good customers during high season and then a quiet life for the rest of the year.
And then? "Well, I'm still here. You're making it sound so much more exciting then it really was, though." She looks longingly out the window, breath fogging up the glass. This is Leah: 53, looking fit, climbed the tallest mountain in the world, married two men, no children, sells antiques from all over the world in a little town in The End Of The World, Chile. "I still think of all the things I could've done..."
------
Ralph simply had nightmares of dying alone. Perfectly normal childhood, maybe a slight stiffness in the whole human contact department from his mother, if anything. Nothing mentionable about his teenage years, middle school and high school simply a blur, from where Ralph tries to extract some sort of painful memory to justify what he did next.
He hung himself an afternoon in August, in the living room of his inherited suburban mono block, because not everyone finds the right words, the right person and the happy ending.
His neighbor's daughter, a tiny little thing named Sharon, followed a cat to the inside of his house and found him hanging there.
She screamed and screamed and screamed some more. The cat snuck through the window and another neighbor burst through the door.
-------
Half-way around the world, Elena dreamed of being in love. Outside, it rained; inside, someone stared at her from behind his coffee, all the way across the room. And while someone's nightmare were passed on to a naive child, two pair of eyes connected. There was no fire, no sparks or electricity. Just a bashful smile, a what if and a promise of so much more.
Because whether our dreams aren't what ends up being reality, whether we are blinded to the dusty memories of our accomplishments, or whether we were just too afraid to begin with, promises will always exist. They will be broken, they will be dreaded, but they will also give hope. And that's what really keeps us spinning.
Anyway. It's 3:42 AM. Going to sleep sounds smart. Also, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. Tempting.