1000 Days

The unifying theme for the week will be “The Bringer of Mist”. Check out the ‘bringer‘ tag for more. I’ll step off from a post from day 51: “Grandma has a Wolf’s Heart“.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37451064@N00/1480066693

The newly fallen leaves stacked poorly in her hand. These red and yellow and gold leaves retained their suppleness. This natural, nearly flesh-like offering, contrasted her brittle metalic fingers. The leaves’ tones wavered through the various shades of autumn. Their organic patterns occasionally punctuated with a spot of green or a tear or an insect-made hole. Haphazard symmetry drew my eyes to the web of veins branching from larger to smaller paths and out to the rim. The brown wind-worn edges showed the future for each.

Her knuckles were stamped and folded tin. I hadn’t seen a tinker of this generation outside of picture books. I would have expected a rime of [chemical name here] darkening the simplistic joints, but she seemed greased and newly made. I knew she wasn’t. Her arthritic posture and shuddering movements betrayed her age. The gleam of her naive but precise frame was the result of care not recent making.

When I did not immediately take the leaves, she spoke.

“Take them or I will unmake you.”

###

I felt my seals dry and crack in that instant. I imagined the golden fresh lubricants from my recent tuning bleeding out and staining my distal framework. I would overheat next and lock-up. Grandma would move on with her elegant hunched gait, but I would be here, under this tree, till the mist came.

Then the world came back to the present.

I wiped my greasy hands on the canvas flap of my bag and dropped it to the ground. I rolled my hands from anterior to posterior looking for any grime or foreign material that might taint the leaves. Finding none, I took the leaves singly with my left hand and stacked them in the opposite order of Grandma’s in my right.

As I reached for the last leaf her tin hand grasped my brass one like a bird lighting on a branch in a storm: practiced and without fail.

Word count: 150
Day 243

Below is my effort to mimic a comic book. I’ve not written this but paraphrased from an actual comic book. I’m looking to reproduce the feel in my head not to pass this off as my own work.

The motivation for this piece is about ten years of reading comics and the newest version of Celtx. They added a comic book template.

Page 1

Panel 1 Outside a high-rise club in downtown Tokyo

SIDEKICK
Think she’ll bite?

Panel 2 Inside same club; well dressed patrons of all cultures
dance in the background; Sidekick and HERO sit at a
table for two in the fore.

HERO
There are only two ways for this to go. We’ll know
soon enough.

SIDEKICK
Whatever. I’m just killing time here.

Panel 3 Our hero is displeased.

HERO
I didn’t ask you here and I don’t need you.

Page 2

Panel 1 Our Sidekick is undaunted; bubbly in fact.

SIDEKICK
And miss this banter? Clearly you’re a powerhouse
in this scene. How’d you solo this far up the
ladder?

Panel 2 Reverse on our convo from the dance floor

HERO
How do you know I soloed this far?

SIDEKICK
Not sure. You’ve got a loner vibe. As for me it
was time I got my game on. No one else looking out
for Sidekick.

Panel 3 On our hero again

HERO
This scene stands for more than your selfishness,
Sidekick.

Panel 4 Over our hero’s shoulder on angry Sidekick.

SIDEKICK
Pft! Climb down from your castle some time to see
how the rest of us live. We’re scrounging for
position down here and it not getting better, it’s
getting worse. I’m not getting screwed over!

HERO
This scene is about defending the people. It’s
been that way along time. Time erodes our
culture…

Panel 5 Hero’s eyes

HERO
…unless we remember what it stands for.

Word count: 260
Day 242

Ahead of any of the rest of this I should thank those of you that read 1000 Days.  I appreciate the lot of you silent as you are about your participation.  Also, a big shoutout to you robots combing the Internet for RSS feeds: thanks for stopping by.

The theme of concern resolving from those that do provide me feedback is that I don’t present a cohesive thread of any kind.  Each day is new.  Each day is disconnected from most of the days before it.  Each day is a start with no middle or end.

I agree.  And I dislike the disconnectivity as much as you.  For anyone previously tentative about coming forward with criticisms of 1000 Days, let that admission alay any fears of authorial retaliation.  I’m OK with external criticism of my work in part or whole.  LEt’s not let that be the crack that breaks the dam and looses relentless volumes of bashing though—I’m no masochist.  Alone in a vaccum with just pen and paper erodes my creativity and quality.

Starting next week I’ll be organizing each week by a theme.  All seven—usually just five—will pivot on a core idea.  I may announce that idea ahead of time; I may not.  That pivot may come in the form of a straight forward story of sorts or it may simply be a bunch of stories about socks, or knives, or the wind, or greed.  In any case a theme.

In the spirit of collaboration—but not too much (maybe 99:1)—I’ll solicit themes in the comments below.

Word count: 260
Day 241

Some areas of the Internet—the blogosphere at least—brim with cheer. Like formerly downward Christians back from a fresh revival they wipe inspired sweat from their brows and proselytize their message. Drunk on their own success they upliftingly decry a seemingly simple message of hope: do what you love. Or sometimes: follow your dream. There is just no way to be happy unless you do things that fill you with joy.

Well, no shit.

These people are grandparents that have forgotten the trials of parenthood. Trust funders raft-hopping in Thailand to get back to basics. Headlining pentagenarian rockers singing burnt-out-from-the-road lyrics—as if.

Listen up Internet cool-aid drinkers: I have a mortgage. I have a family. I have dogs and cats and a car loan. The bank, the grocery store, the vet, and the other bank don’t take bliss checks. They don’t even feign interest in my need for personal satisfaction and inner peace. They send me big envelopes with little envelopes inside. They don’t bother to pay for the return postage.

Yes, I got here on my own. I will get out on my own. I’ll get out by keeping my less than soul satisfying job and paying them off a little while longer. I’ve got practical debts and concrete needs. Those require satisfaction before I do.

I’ll defer my dreams, my passions, and my loves for later—maybe even for ever—so shut up with your fluffy bunnies and sunshine.

Word count: 245
Day 240

8:37 - 23 mins to write.

8:38 - Crap, that went fast.

Friday evening the world sped up a bit.

Around 4:30 Grandma arrived to pick up Hope for a sleep-over. I showered during the event, but I’m told she grabbed her stuff, trundled over to the car, and climbed into her seat. We thought she’d balk or cry. Excellent.

Near 5—before or after I don’t know—the rest of us bunched into the mini-van en route to the other babysitter’s house. Two miles up from here one stop sign per mile. Dump Joy off like a newborn at the doorstep of a church then headed west. Again, one stop sign per mile. His time six miles. That happens to be one mile more than necessary—fast is slow; slow is fast.

We get very well parked for both the frontside and the backside of the movie. Scoot through the mall to the food court near the theater.

“No we can’t rent one of those little cars. What do you want to eat, pizza or hot dogs?”.

“I need to go potty.”

“Do you too?”

“No.”

“Good. Do you want a hot dog or pizza?”

We dine at the ‘little tables’ near the powder blue ‘57 Chevy table. It’s like parent-teacher night at grade school with our knees bumble the table top. Faith savors a pizza slice like she’s got all the time in the world. Grace devours a hot dog sans bun like she’s got none at all. Mom and I share the bun and crust and some chicken nuggets that she got when my attention drifted.

Kung Fu Panda was ok. I didn’t laugh at any of the parts the rest of the audience laughed but I could usually see why they did. Some scenes moved fast like a frenetic car chase and I wondered if the girls followed the action. Dreamworks rolls a little different then Pixar.

I couldn’t get over the unanswered question of why the panda’s father was a duck. Nor exactly what animal Sifu was.

Word count: 342
Day 239

Fired up Adobe Buzzword from Acrobat.com this morning. I needed to port my login over to the new site. Plus a recent article on the Writer’s Technology Companion had me feeling guilty I’ve not given this platform much of a shake.

Of course I’ve been away awhile. I’ve been working on some hefty documentation at work. I needed a break from composing sentences–we all know how painful that is for me.

His body lay face up on the tile floor; his head jammed sturdily in the corner of the kitchen cabinets. Each of his arms spread an even distance from his torso with the hands hooked under the toe-kick. This is the way he would look to a groundling if he were flying overhead. The only asymmetry: his turned head and his scratching fingers.

This man, Travis probably, scrapes gently at the wooden edge running from his left eye to near infinity. He’s been making this one single simple movement all his life. The surface is mostly smooth but for a bit of a burr that catches his nail as he extends the tip fully. His fingerprints catch it, turning the knuckles slightly, as he contracts. Some part of his mind must be counting the strokes, must be calculating when the burr will erode completely while his finger grows fresh skin cells to replace the ones rubbed off in the process. It’s possible that there is, in fact, a number in there somewhere. This man, Travis, has no plans to retrieve it.

He enjoys the solid elevated sensation the tile provides. Travis is sure he can feel the concrete below the tile, the sand below the concrete, the clay beneath the sand, and the whole of Earth below that. He doesn’t have to imagine he’s atop a pedestal of obdurate granite. He is atop such a thing. He’s been place here personally by tearless God or fate or fucking circumstance.

The mundane cabinets balance the centrifugal exertion of everything that’s happened since it happened. Without his arms and hands under these, he’s sure he’d be pressed through the ceiling and attic and roof and into the sky. Travis is not moving his arms from their secure place just yet. He does turn his head to look upward along his anticipated trajectory. If he grows bored of the scratching–or the burr comes loose–and he has nothing better to do but be flung further into space he’d like to be able to roll to the side to align his body with the rafters so he can be passed through the softer parts. A Dole banana sticker on the underside of the counter flares in his attention.

###

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Let me. Let me. Let me!” Connie begs.

“Constance, you can’t reach the cupboards,” says Travis.

“I can reach here.” Constance dabs the sticker to the underside of the counter top and runs into the living room.

“Get back in the kitchen to eat…” Travis gives up this time.

###

His body lay face up on the tile floor, but now he’s curled and sobbing. The floor does not move nearer the ceiling.

Word count: 508
Day 238

I’ve been thinking of writing something that I haven’t written.

But I’m going to have to save that for another night.

I watched Iron Man again yesterday. Alone because friends were unavailable and I refused to wait—plus, you only have some many opportunities in this household to ditch the kids and go out at all. I’m not a reader of the comic surprisingly, so I know nothing of the canon. While the X-men which I’ve read heavily run into Tony Stark as Iron Man occasionally, the Pepper Pots’ character remains unfamiliar.

On the drive home I began to fictionalize a conversation that might have occurred between an actress similar to Gwenyth Paltrow and her assistant or agent or whomever in deciding to take the roll. Lines and reactions sprang into my head faster then I could store them for later transcription. It felt strangely like I recalled a movie or dreamt while awake.

I doubt I could now string it together coherently, but I’ll try to arrange the exchanges (mostly couplets) in a likely order. Remember I fictionalized, so don’t picture Ms. Paltrow when you read the following—except when it makes sense too.

“Well?”
“It’s an arm-candy.” Karen Person tosses a script over the cream leather couch to the glass coffee table in the center of the room. The slap echoes quickly in the featureless room.
“When did an arm-candy get thirty pages?”
“Still.” Karen flips her fingers through her beaded dreads like she’s biting her thumb in a Shakespeare play. “When did arm-candy look like this?”
“Exotic arm-candy then.”
“They won’t give it to me. I’ll have to audition like everyone else.”

—

“Thirty pages isn’t enough to get me over the title.”
“Sweetie, no one’s getting over the title on this not even Charlie. We can probably get you a ‘with’ or maybe an ‘and’.
“‘With’?”
“Yeah, they pulled one of the Graingers out of mothballs to play the baddy.”
“John or Robert? Has to be John.” Karen walks to the window overlooking everything. “I can see that.”
“Really?”

—

“I won’t get paid full. Hell, I might not even get the bling.”
“It’s not that much work to get paid that much for. I’ve seen the shooting schedule and most of your stuff’s done in a month. Right here in LA. In and out.”
“‘The Unbelievably Good Kisser’ and ‘Trance’. That’s why I won’t even break two figures.”

—

“We’re shooting this all in the States? That’s where the money’s going.”
“Charlie’s in it.”
“He loves Canada. Didn’t he buy a place there back before?”
Rita gives Karen a blank stare then raises an eyebrow like a question. When Karen still doesn’t flip she leads her. “Before….”
“Oh shit that’s right. He can’t even go to Canada?”
“He can’t leave the country at all.”
“I know it’s not our country Rita. But still, Canada?”

—

“It’s an arm-candy.”
“Arm-candy for Charlie Cross. Richard Paquin on as director.”
“Summer, Thanksgiving, or Christmas?”
“Summer I bet. I think they’re looking to spill Trey’s juice.”
“Mmm, Trey. Why can’t I be in a movie with him?”
“You were already.”

—

Anyhow, that’s all I’m going to bother to transcribe. You get the gist. I don’t know that there is as much characterization in there as there is info-dumping. But I guess sometimes you have to do that too.

Word count: 541
Day 236

Gonna do the 1-minute timer thing again today. I’ve been crap for a week now and need to get something out there to prove that I’m alive. The visceral reaction I mentioned last time may play better for my approaching day than it did my receding day last time. Now where’s that online timer…

• Grant stuck to the lower streets. The darker alleys. And the narrower tunnels on his approach to the castle. There was no need to draw attention to his person or purpose. If e
• Cold rain splashed the lower half of the cottage walls with mud and dung. Growing flash-streams
• The sun chattered through the passing trees as they road. The patternless bursts gave Conner a headache.
• A bird called distantly and cliché-ingly in the forest. And then I looked at the timer in hopes that it would soon run out and I’d not have to continue with this sentence at all. Certainly it will ding any time now. This HAS to
• Vapor rose from the sun warmed trunks like they were on fire, but without flame. In patches, the wet Spring snow melted into the earth.
• “How many fucking times do I have to tell you to get off my land.” Carson raised the shotgun to his shoulder. This time it didn’t feel like a bluff. My heart chugged and my feet spun. I
• Night slipped under the door and into the low-roofed home. What had been bright and sharp sunset shadows became indistinct
• Varn felt the city swallow him up. Felt the greatness of the sea laugh at his smallness. He knew he’d be changing this all soon
• “It’s a little more like a demon look. And rough up the horns a little more.” Josh tread as carefully as he could with the artist. This was his first comic and he wanted it all just so. “I
• She stepped to the microphone with no plan to back her next move. She could sing or speak or fumble around, but none of the regular options seemed effective. What else could
• Angel’s blue skin tingled at the thought of warmth. Outside in the snow all he could imagine was the comfort and quality of the c
• Seriously, a blue skinned dude named Angel? and in the snow? What the heck was that all about? Let’s see if we can up the quality around here. Maybe you could have some leaves fall or something like that. Wow this minute seems so much longer
• Leaves battered to the ground like dead bodies being pushed into a mass grave. Donovan imagined each hitting the forest floor with a wet thump. They made nearly no noise though
• A grey cat trotted up to me from the bushes. Out here I’d have expected less attention and more slinking. I wiggled my finger in my ear to coat it with wax and offered it to the cat. I’ve used this trick
• The first thing that strikes a new gun owner about their weapon is it’s weight. Doesn’t matter how many they’ve owned before this next one always feel a little heavier than they expected. The closer they get to guessing the weight though
• Green. The mountains shone with bright verdant life. A hundred feet up from the the river Agone a dragonfly colored castle began it’s
• I think that ought to do for now. I need to get on to some other stuff as well as work. I would like an earlier start on both. Plus this Mountain Dew is getting progressively warmer. That’s not good.

Word count: 597
Day 235

Ok.

This week has sucked for writing and posting. I have written. I just never got anything finished enough to post. I suppose it’s hard for you to tel the difference between me being done enough and me not being done enough. Trust me, I haven’t been done enough.

This isn’t done either but that twinge of guilt for not keeping you in the loop forces me to get something out there. I suspect I should not have spent as much time at this site as I did before composing what follows…

Moana smeared purple paint on the canvas with her thumbs. She focused on the buttery feel of the oil paint giving way to the coarse weave of the stretched canvas more than the shape of either stroke.

With this much virgin white space before her she felt playful and inventive and bold.

Word count: 141
Day 234