writing

Prompted: You wake up covered in paint

All you want is some peace and quiet, you know? You’re sitting there, hanging with the terps and the other canvies, and you’re chilling. You’re all a little high, see what I’m saying? Can’t help it, those terps are always high, you catch a contact off them no matter what. Whetheryou like it or not. It’s not a bad life. Sure, some got it better than others. Canvie 98/4 over there, he’s hanging on the wall, just chilling, but every day the skins come in and boy do they worship him. They can’t get enough of him! They’re always talking about what a piece of work he is. Or maybe work of art? I don’t know, man, you can’t expect a canvie to get things straight in this kind of situation. Anyway, point is, I was just minding my own business, you see? Just hanging out, just chilling, and suddenly, I get snatched up from my comfy spot where I was getting to know this new canvie, a real beauty she was too, this really rare oval and tight man, tight like a drum. So I get snatched up just as she’s beginning to warm to me, and I just know that old bastard River Scene At Dawn will go for her because he’s been really nasty ever since he got retired and can’t even enjoy his high anymore, always just talking about the good old days.

So anyway, I get put up right in the light and next thing you know the turps are there with me and damn if I don’t get smothered with them! I mean it’s great for a while, sure, best high I ever had, but you know, it does wear off and eventually I wake up from the drowsy and find I’m covered in paint. All over me, just covered, top to bottom, end to end, and not just that but I find out next thing that they’ve changed my name too! Now I’m not 563/2, I’m bloody Nude On a Bathtub Rim! What kind of name is that, I ask you? Nothing, nothing, not even the wall and the attention, is worth this.

An In-Flight Message

Attention, all Galactica Air Customers. We’d like to welcome you on board this Twelve-K Shuttle to the L4 Asteroid Belt. Before our Certified-Sleep-Process is induced, we would like to ask that you pay attention to our few rules and regulations.
First, for those of your traveling with us for the first time, the Certified-Sleep-Process is induced by a minuscule spinal shot administered through the back of your seat. It is guaranteed not to damage clothing. Please contact our customer service if you believe any damage has been done.
In the highly unlikely event of your Sleep wearing off, you may press the blue button on your seat arm to introduce a second shot. Please do so immediately upon waking up. Our cabin crew will be patrolling throughout the flight and will ensure your health and safety during the flight. However, since passengers on this Shuttle are not zero-G certified, you are required to maintain Sleep and Seating conditions at all times.
In the case of an emergency, our crew will attempt to fix the problem and may attempt a quick landing if extreme measures are called for. If this happens, the Certified-Sleep-Process will be automatically induced a second and third time in quick succession in order to create a stable and safe, panic-free environment upon the Shuttle.
Finally, our in-flight Dream-system is up and running now, and for the next thirty minutes you are free to decide on your entertainment for the remainder of this flight. For our customers in Titanium-Star, there are several more channels to choose from, which our Chromium passengers may purchase for a fee as well.
Please sit back, enjoy the Real-Water! bottles provided free of charge in your armrests, and enjoy the flight ahead.

The Nonbeliever

The nonbeliever stared out at the broken bodies, dressed in running shorts and t-shirts. He sighed. He shut his window, but the sirens kept wailing and he couldn’t keep their sound out. He had seen events unfold through the thick, double-glazing, and he wondered why he wasn’t more moved. He was left cold. He felt like he was watching a movie. Just another movie.

He turned to his computer and opened up his social media websites. There were many of them. It was where his life took place, his real life, the one divorced from the lumbering, uncomfortable, needy flesh that was his body. He didn’t like physical necessities. He found them embarrassing and ungainly. Words were what moved him.

Online, he found that he was already late to the party. Everyone knew about what was happening right outside his window. He realized he could be a valuable asset and positioned himself again so he could see out while typing. He began feeding live reports and found himself with a dozen new followers, almost immediately.

When he uploaded a picture, he was shocked to find even more hanging onto his words. He described what he was seeing and hearing and even opened the window again, just for a moment, to try to get a whiff of the smoke. It smelled like smoke.

There were others like him, sending out messages of hope and love. He stuck to the facts. He was a nonbeliever, after all. He knew communication was essential, but didn’t believe in the power of prayers. He knew that help was possible, but didn’t believe in the fluffy notion of good thoughts. He was seen as a good source of information and valued for these qualities.

Over time, however, the news he could glean from his window grew scarce and the online world turned to grieving. It nursed its wounds and condoled the bereft. He recoiled. He was a nonbeliever. It wasn’t possible to believe in the goodness of people after he’d witnessed himself standing and staring motionless, emotionless, at the carnage unfolding itself below in the tortuously slow way of nightmares.

Glutton for Punishment

“Man, that’s annoying.”
“What?”
“Don’t you hear that noise? That eee-hee-eee-heee?”
“Uh- oh, yeah, I guess. Is it driving you nuts? Want to go in?”
“Nah, it’s fine. Sorry. Go on.”
“Okay. So yeah, so I was telling her about how it was, you know, meeting the other girl- woman, sorry, sorry, woman- and she was fine with it. What?”
“Huh? No, sorry, I mean, yeah, I’m listening, it’s just that noise. I’m trying to figure out what it is.”
“I think it’s like a rusty metal gate or something. You know. The wind moving it or something.”
“Oh yeah. Yeah, you’re totally right. Anyway, do you really think she was alright with it?”
“I don’t know, see that’s what I’m saying. I think so. Besides, she can’t keep her mouth shut when she’s not, right? Like, we know that by now.”
“Do we?”
“I mean, I didn’t mean it like that, you know what I mean. It’s just that she’s honest with me. You know? Like to a fault.”
“Yeah, I guess, but I – what? Mom, I can’t hear you! No, I’m outside! I’ll do it later! Sorry.”
“It’s fine, no worries. Do you want to go talk to her?”
“No, no, no, she can wait, she’s just annoyed about the laundry but I told her earlier that I’d do it after you left. So it’s like totally fine. Don’t even.”
“Kay. So…”
“So yeah, anyway, what I’m saying is, I don’t know that she’s honest with you. Always. I mean, are you sure?”
“Totally sure. I mean, trust me on this. I know it.”
“Okay. But so how is that a bad thing? I mean, if she’s honest with you, and she seemed fine with it, then it’s fine. Right?”
“Right. I mean, yeah. It is.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. I think. I mean. Yeah.”
“But…?”
“Nothing, no, nothing, it’s just that she always seems so tense, like she does want to say something but she can’t say it and it’s kind of annoying, you know?”
“So you mean she’s not fine with it.”
“She says she is, though! And even if not, it’s not like I can do anything, right? Right.”
“Right. Except like talk to her some more.”
“Yeah, I guess. But we talk so much. I mean, like, I like talking to her, I love talking to her, obviously, but I’m just sick of it being like, you know- listen, you look like you totally can’t stand that noise anymore. Sure you don’t want to go inside?”
“Yeah, I’m sure, I’m sure.”
“So-”
“Actually no, it’s totally making me go crazy, let’s go in. It’s like once you realize it’s there you can’t stop listening to it, right?”
“Yeah, totally. But it doesn’t bother me as much I guess.”
“How? It’s like the most annoying noise on the planet. Eee-uh-ee-hee-uh.”
“You’re bringing it inside now too?”
“It’s stuck in my head, man, like actually, it’s awful. Anyway, coffee? Tea?”
“Sure.”

Oh, Neil, I’m getting lazy

My writing habits have become abysmal lately. I still write every day, because by this point it just feels weird not to. For a week and a half or so, when I was on holiday and barely touching my computer, I didn’t write except the odd quick email or instant message on my phone. But other than those few days, I don’t think I’ve not written for an extended period of time in about a year now – be it parts of an essay, notes, comments on other people’s posts on the web (more thought-out than they should be, maybe, but still), long emails, or fiction. There’s not a day, anymore, where I don’t think about my writing, the work-in-progress I have going on, or allow ideas and sentences to germinate in my brain for further use. I lose the latter more often than not. Another of my bad habits is my inability to commit to keeping a notebook on my ACTUAL PERSON at all times. I have more than one, as well as pens, in my backpack at all times, and that backpack is with me wherever I go. But it’s not the same. Needing to rummage in a backpack isn’t the same thing as being able to whip a notebook out of my pocket and jot something down. I need to either find jeans with bigger pockets (damn you, girl jeans!), find some way to stuff a notebook into my bra (there’s definitely a business idea waiting to happen there – easily bendable, stuffable notebooks, for any crevice of your body you may want to keep one in) or else just start walking around with a permanent marker and jot things down on my hand. But then, if they’re no good, I won’t be able to wash them off. And I’ll run out of space pretty quickly.

The real answer, of course, is to get back into a more routine writing habit. At least, that’s the answer as far as I’m concerned. Every writer has her or his own ways and means and needs. For me, writing every day for an extended period of time that is for my own purposes – not for schoolwork, in other words, and not out of a feeling of obligation to anyone but me – is the best way to make sure I use the things that float around my head all day.

Noticing New York

Some people notice the buildings. They look up, the backs of their necks wrinkling like old men’s foreheads, and they strain their eyes and get dizzy with vertigo. They notice the heads carved above the windowsills on lower Broadway. They notice the snazzy designs on the Flatiron and the dials on the elevators going from the lower tracks to the main concourse of Grand Central.

Some people notice other people. They notice the variations in skin color and, for the first time, stare at their arms encased in black coats and gloves and their chest wrapped in scarves and realize that on the crowded bus where the windows are all blocked they cannot see any reflections of themselves. They notice the possibility of their skin being any color at all; they could blend with any of the races siting around them or be a mix of any or all of them. They could be green or blue or polka-dotted and it wouldn’t matter in this moment.

Some people notice the reactions, the connections, the bizarre randomness of people finding one another in lines for coat checks, on street corners, inside corner delis, before entering a taxi, upon exiting an elevator.

Noticing everything in New York City is impossible. Noticing as much as possible is the constant, ultimate goal. It is a city evolving and living up to and through every stereotype it has ever had while building new and unique traditions for itself at the same time. Things are old and new, familiar and strange at the same time. There is a sense of having been everywhere before and seen everything, even as the unfamiliar shadows of taller buildings than those ever encountered before fill the streets and avenues. New York is a city of unnoticing lives being noticed by noticers.

Homeless

You love your work. You’re thankful every day that you get paid, even though the donations trickle in slowly and the funding gets cut year after year. You still have a salary and you’re still doing something important. Something you care about. Something that moves people. You are in the very kernel of life, eighty-thousand leagues below the sea and down deep to the center of the earth. You have two children and a partner and you love them all. There are good days and bad days, because life isn’t perfect. But when your fortieth birthday rolled around, you were happier than you’d ever been in and you wondered whether people could see it on you, on your lined face and in your tired eyes. Happiness, joy, you’ve come to realize, are quiet things for you, and you experience them in the pit of your belly and the tips of your fingers and in the peace that falls on you when your head hits the pillow and you smell the familiar body of the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with stirring beside you.

Two weeks after you turn forty, you get the assignment. You accept it, because you’ve never turned one down before. You will do your best, but you’re not sure how to begin. You make the usual phone calls. You do the necessary research. You watch the episodes of the better TV shows that involve these people whose lives you’re supposed to start showcasing. You get lots of help. But when you walk to the metro that whole first week you’re more aware than you’ve ever been before. Your eyes have been opened. You see them everywhere, lurking, smoking, talking, even laughing. You see them going into stores and buying things. You notice that they have cellphones. You see them near churches. You see them rummaging in their bags and baskets.

You don’t approach them on your own. You’re too scared. Too nervous. You feel superstitious about them. They are your black cats and ladders and umbrellas inside the house. They threaten to shake you out of your joy. They’ve already begun, without knowing it.

The couple you speak to, the pair of them, have been handed to you on a silver plate by a charity who wanted to help you. You’re grateful to the charity, to their contribution, which feels strange since normally it is the other way around with charities. They’re grateful to you, usually. The couple they’ve supplied are perfect for your story. They’re around your age but look like your parents, they have health problems, they are coherent and can be recorded. You go with them everywhere, that first day. You took with you a wad of five dollar bills in your pocket, anticipating the need to get them to cooperate with you. You’re surprised. They talk to you as if you’re a tourist to their world. They’re eager to show you around, share their complaints, explain their situation, but they don’t ask for a thing in return. It’s another upside-down situation – you’re the tourist, but they’re asking you to take the sound-bite photograph of them. They trust you with their lives. The man lets you hear him begin to cry in the soup kitchen as he worries about his partner’s health, and you wonder if you would feel the same responsibility in his place, caring for this woman with no teeth. The woman looks at the man, concerned at his expression of emotions, so rare and untried, and you wonder whether you would worry about another man’s feelings if your legs hurt all the time as much as hers do.

You are brought into reality by them, and it is painful, a red-hot poker to your guts. When you fall into bed that night, your partner rolls away from you and mutters that you smell of smoke. You sniff. You showered, but didn’t bother washing your hair. You were too tired. You imagine the couple, stretched out on the sofa bed in your living room, piled under duvets and heads resting on clean pillows. They aren’t there, of course. They’re in their tent underneath the highway overpass, where you left them earlier. You left them where you left the job, somewhere else, to be resumed and returned to tomorrow, when you’re ready to leave your home again.

________________
This story was inspired by this news story on NPR’s All Things Considered. It is entirely invented and bears no real relation (besides that imagined) to the reporter or the subjects of the story.

Exhaustion

A carbonated drink fizzed as the cap was screwed off the top of the bottle. A spoon scraped around the little cup made of styrofoam and cancerous chemicals. A baby cried. I stared out the window and listened to the cafe make the sounds of life behind me, and I wondered whether I should participate. My brain felt sluggish. I could move and think and speak, and had been doing so all day, but it seemed as if I needed to make a conscious effort to do these things. I needed to think “move” before I moved, “speak” before my lips opened. It was disconcerting, being so bossy towards myself.
The mug of tea in front of me had gone cold. My hands felt heavy with the weight of too much awareness. I looked at them, trying to see whether there was a visible difference in grams. Maybe they were actually heavier. But no, they looked the same, large palms, long fingers, the joints closer to the palm seemingly chubby and oversized to me.
I wondered whether a parade of Disney characters walking outside would energise me. No. Probably not. Maybe a spiritual experience, an Angels in America kind of revelation. Too much energy. The perfect thing, really, would be if the cafe disintegrated behind me and the chair I sat on turned into the foot of a bed and I could simply let my body go, entirely, all at once, and lie down. I would sleep for hours, maybe forever.

Some Instincts

Shivering through space, Daley tiptoed across the library in her overcoat, gloves and woolen hat. Every cough ripped through her throat like ice chips going up rather than down, the reverse of her favorite summertime treat, crunching posicles in the yard before they melted.
Her body was a nesting place for germs and it made her uncomfortable to be around people who could catch her diseases but she had no choice. The world hadn’t stopped when her fever had risen to 102. The shelf she was searching for was being elusive, skipping around the library and purposefully evading her.
Terry’s blue and black coat flashed in her peripheral vision and warring instincts kicked in. She didn’t want him to see her like this but she wanted him to see her, to remember she existed outside the universe of beer pong and lax boys sucking on helium balloons for a laugh. Terry wasn’t above that sort of thing – Daley liked to think she was – but he had something to him that was more than that as well.
She couldn’t decide what to do quickly enough, and so he was gone, slamming out of the library like everyone seemed to do, as loudly and disruptively as possible. The sound reverberated in her head and she still couldn’t find the shelf mark she was looking for. She wished she could ask for help but her voice was reduced to a crow’s scratchy caw and whispering hurt even worse.
It was time to give up, she realized, surprised that her body had already figured this out and that she was falling to the floor, knees buckling, hands pulling some books off the shelf with her just to make sure that someone would hear and come running.
At least, she thought before everything went black, some instincts are still working.

Vacancy Filled

PHOTO / Marc van der Chijs

PHOTO / Marc van der Chijs

If it were possible to approach the subject of JK Rowling without discussing her previous work, I would do so. To mention the name “Harry Potter” is to bring up an entire slew of associations, whether positive, negative, or bored-to-tears indifferent. As a disclaimer, I must admit that I am a fan – the kind who always appreciated Rowling’s works on its own merits, first and foremost, and only then pinned a Hufflepuff badge on my backpack. I was, and still am, a devotee of the seven-book series, but I dislike the films, and stay away from the vast and – to me – frightening world of online fan-fiction.

It is as a writer rather than a celebrity that Rowling became a published author, and she wrote the Harry Potter books in a particular style. Her voice has always been uniquely hers, from the very first particularly, peculiarly, English sentence of the first book – “Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

The Casual Vacancy, JK Rowling’s first novel since she completed the Harry Potter series and its various offshoots, was promoted, disappointingly, as if it was an extension of the HP universe. The books filled the entire wall of shelves behind the Waterstones cash registers here in Oxford, the novel was promoted and given lengthy reviews in major magazines and newspapers, and it was generally treated as if it was going to be another merchandisable opportunity for the likes of Universal Studios and Sony (who each, respectively, runs the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida, USA and the online virtual book-world Pottermore). While the reviews were very mixed, running the gamut from glowing to scathing, the book was generally treated as the work of celebrity rather than what it was: a first literary novel by an author who was (as she admitted to being) both proud of her book and wary of its reception.

Rowling has now proven that her voice is consistent. The language in the novel is simple and straightforward, while blindsiding the reader here and there with a brilliant observation or description that is shocking in its apparent clarity. Her vivid English-isms aren’t lost either: each section of the book opens with a quaint quote from a 17th century book of parish-council rules.

What is most amazing of all, however, is Rowling’s heretofore hidden talent for writing some truly despicable real-world characters. It is wonderful, exhilarating and endearing. A discussion that is still common in the writing and publishing world is the difference between men and women authors and their aptitude in writing unsympathetic characters. Women are often said to write too “nicely”, resulting in books of lesser merit or critical acclaim. Rowling strikes a blow for women authors everywhere in not softening her novel just because she is known also to be a children’s author (although, as an aside, anyone who claims that the Harry Potter books are for children may want to take a second look at them).

The Casual Vacancy’s characters are unflinchingly, unapologetically, and unabashedly nasty, one after another: Samantha, a middle-aged woman who ends up snogging a fifteen-year old boy while drunk at a party; Howard, the morbidly obese town bully who touches Samantha’s ass every time he sees her, though she’s married to his son; Simon, who buys stolen goods and hits his children and his wife but still thinks he’s one hell of a swell guy; Fats, a middle-class teenager who believes that it’s more ‘real’ to sleep with a girl from the slums he doesn’t actually like, because having a tough life is cool and enviable. Listing the characters like this makes them sound almost ridiculous, but Rowling’s superiority as an author is that each character is absolutely believable and has a motive and reason for acting as he or she does. Though the reader may end up hating them, she also ends up understanding and empathizing with them.

Rowling’s powerful novel deals with big issues – from ambition, loneliness and family to race, addiction and poverty – but it doesn’t shove any moral notions down the reader’s throat and it doesn’t offer idealistic, impossible, solutions. It portrays a slice of reality between its two covers, a story worth telling and worth reading, and, yes, (for those for whom this is the main the draw) it gives the reader the bizarre pleasure of seeing the word “fuck” written many times by the same woman who invented the snitch, butterbeer, and Dobby the house-elf.