at a loss for words, part one.

Why don't you write when you're happy?

I can't, really.

Have you tried?

'Course I have, but pretty soon it gets frustrating, then I'm not happy anymore.

Why?

When I am happy I find I have nothing to write about, or speak of.  The moment I feel as if everything is alright, I cease being a storyteller.

My sadness is my elixir, in that sense.  It is necessary for me to be sad so that I can write about it and twist and stitch it into poetry or slightly luxurious narratives.  The last time my heart was broken, I wrote a hundred poems: that was three years ago.  Maybe even more.  Enough to publish a book, one day.  They lie inside my wooden chest of drawers with golden - not gold - handles.  The handles themselves have an exceedingly exquisite appearance; they look a bit like peacocks, though not exactly.  It is quite puzzling.  Why would you make something look a little like a peacock when you can make it look exactly like a peacock?  Peacocks are quite pretty. Then again, perhaps the maker of that chest of drawers didn't think that.  Or maybe he wanted to save money.  Or maybe he forgot he was supposed to make peacocks and not abominations in the name of aesthetics.  I don't know.  I don't know anything.  

You never published the book, did you?

No.  I didn't want to see her on my bookshelf every morning.  My bed faces the bookshelf.  Some might argue that arrangement releases some sort of negative energy into my home, but really, I can't see how it could get any worse.  A writer would probably do well not to pay attention to any superstitions.  Of course, perhaps the greatest superstition any writer of (dis)repute has fallen prey to would be that if they write every day, sooner or later they will be paid for it.

You don't sell any of your writings?

I show some of them to a friend.  Our meetings are every Saturday at six o' clock in the evening, under a tree where there are no crows, so we are not disturbed.  We sit in silence and read each other's writings.  Sometimes the silence becomes deafening, though.  It rings in my ears, at which point I am forced to bid my dear friend adieu, and retreat to my not-so-safe haven, a cocoon of bricks and wood and cement and artificial light and sunlight and rain and quite a bit of sadness.  I write to give my melancholiness a form, a figure.  Traumatizing words inside your head are a little better than traumatizing half-formed pictures inside your head.  

What is your name?

I'd rather not say.  Let us, for the time being, call me The Lamenter, as lamentation is what I have the most time for, being alone and quite set in my ways - unless, of course, someone else came along - which I would not advise in my present state, frankly.  Speaking of lamentation, I regret greatly that one time my phone was ringing and I didn't take the call.  But to be fair, my phone rings very loudly - if not in real life, then at least inside my head - and it scares me.  That was the last time she would have spoken to me.  Instead, the last time I spoke to her, I cursed her for not being able to understand me, I cursed myself for not understanding who I was.  I slammed all my doors and shut myself in my room and I wrote, and wrote, and didn't properly stop writing until three months later.  Time snatched her away from me.

Where is she now?

Up there, where all the angels go.  She was an angel.  Not a very brilliant one, mind you, but if there were a test, she would ace it.  She used to be mine.  Of course, she did very much belong to herself, too.  She used to paint the skies.  She invited me to watch, once.  I never went.  

Look up, do you see the sunset?  

It's orange, pink, and purple.  And a bit of green, there, in the corner.  The sky looks like a mattress of cotton.

Hell, you could be a writer, too, someday.  

I am one.  

~

Jack of All vs. Master of One (Survival Showdown)

Disclaimer: No offence is intended to any individual, community, religion, or profession.  Any resemblance to the person(s) and/or objects mentioned in this post is purely coincidental.

I woke up this morning and was meditating upon (amongst some of my other morbid and ghastlier thoughts) what would happen if the zombie apocalypse came a little earlier than expected.  (If you were wondering, if it does happen tomorrow, we're all fried, of course, because you wouldn't have had a chance to actually think about the things I've written about in this post.)

And then, I thought about my chances of surviving (close to 0.1 percent; don't ask me how I know that).  If I were a different kind of person, would I have better chances of surviving?  Then again, in the end, would it really matter what kind of person you are if you have to survive the zombie apocalypse?

'Cause when the zombies come, they won't come in bits and pieces, first in one city, then a state, a country--when the zombies come, all of them will come.

No second chances.  It's either us, or them.  (Although I fail to understand why zombies would want to take over the world anyway, seeing as how they're already dead, and they have graves to live in.)

In the midst of all this chaos inside my brain, one question stuck with me: would it be better if I knew a little bit about everything, or a whole lot about one thing?

Instead of making this just about me, let's make this about everybody.

Case in Point: Jack of All Trades (A Little Bit of Everything)

Let's say you can sew, cook, read, write, juggle, shoot (a gun), program stuff (only a bit, pun intended), solve algebraic inequations (but not the hard ones), know a little Spanish (uno dos tres quatro--that kinda stuff), throw an axe (or knife, whichever you prefer), play basketball (but you're not on the team), and just know a little bit about everything else in general.

You live in a cottage in the countryside that has only the bare minimum supplies: wood, ropes, an axe, water, a bathroom (can't see how that's very useful, 'cause when the zombies come, we'll all pee in our pants anyway), some bread, blueberries, and an iPhone (just kidding).  Also, your cottage has a fireplace.

You hear the zombies knock on your door.  You are taken by surprise (or not).  You look out the window, and you see five of 'em ruddy creatures.  You can't run, there's no back door.

The zombies enter your room.

You're a moderately good actor, so you act all friendly with the zombies--

"Yo, wassup, dude? You want some sandwiches?"

"Man, we came here for you, not yer stupid sandwiches."  The zombies step towards you, sneering menacingly.  You still haven't peed in your pants, which is a good sign (and very favourable), since zombies are most likely to be attracted to the scent of pee.

You realize you have ten seconds to act (because zombies aren't Edward from Twilight and probably won't be ultra-fast).

You grab a burning log of wood from the hearth and swing it all around yourself.  In the process, you accidentally on purpose set fire to one zombie.  The remaining zombies step away from you.  You throw an axe at one, chopping something off, pour water over another (she literally melts).  Now one zombie has your axe and is pursuing you but you quickly step behind the other zombie so he gets hurt instead.

The one zombie who made the mistake of taking your axe from you runs away.

Then, you take everything and run away because you realize he's probably gone to get reinforcements.


Ergo: You survive, mission accomplished.


Case in Point: Master of One (A Lot of One Thing)

Let's say you are very extraordinary at music, and you play the cello every day.  You are moderately good, bordering on bad, at nearly everything else.  You have wood, ropes, an axe, water, a bathroom, some bread, and blueberries.

You see five zombies outside your window.  You start playing Pachelbel's Canon.  The zombies fall asleep.  You sneak out the front door, leaving your cello behind and taking only those supplies that will keep you alive.

Take another case.  You are extraordinary at science, this time.  I think it's a given you'll survive, since you're able to think logically and find a solution to every problem.

(Ergo: You survive.)

Suppose you are extraordinary at writing.


Now somebody tell me what the hell I should do, because I see five zombies outside my window.

Carnival: Part Two

Hello everyone, this is the second part of the short story I'd started writing.  For Part One of Carnival, please click here.

Part Two



Robin chuckled to himself as he remembered his plan; he'd almost forgotten it for a few minutes there.  He'd left the painting in his studio in plain sight: heck, you could even see it from the roof of the Carnival Tower if you wanted to. Of course, she hadn't known that. She probably thought she'd stolen it.

He wondered if she herself would recognize the signs she kept talking about: signs someone is lying to you, signs someone is feeling uncomfortable, signs someone is in love with you--he smiled and grabbed her diary off of his desk, and turned to the last story.

It was called “Carnival".

Nice story--I've read it once, he thought, but I'd still like to read it again.  It was about two people, Jason and Rita, and each was madly in love with the other, but neither could work up the courage to share the way they felt.

Kind of like us, he thought--and corrected himself-- like me.  He still didn't know if she loved him.  He read on.

Rita was a writer, and Jason was a painter. Rita liked rainbows and starry nights and dreamed of falling in love one day (with one particular person), while Jason loved watching the sunsets, and generally busied himself with thoughts about weaving the things she liked into one of his own paintings: nothing too conspicuous, just a faint rainbow with daisies in the foreground, the sun still hiding behind the puffy white clouds.

They had met on a park bench on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and just when neither of them had felt the day could get any better, it did.  

And after that, of course, there was the usual exchange of phone numbers and the phone calls that went long into the starry nights, and secret meeting places, too.  The rocky patch near the creek in the forest was their favourite.  After Jason finished art school and Rita, her degree in English Literature, they would spend a large part of their days together, him painting, and her conjuring a story out of what she saw and believed.  



Robin sighed.  Jason and Rita--although they were characters in a story--had found happiness in each other, a kind of happiness he would, possibly, never find, and he didn't know if it--

That's it, he thought, and stopped himself.

To hell with this 'what if she doesn't love me' nonsense!  If she does, excellent, and if she doesn't, I can always move on.  No big deal.

He carefully placed the diary back on the table, wrote out a note for Laura, and grabbed his bike and sped off to the candy store.

*

(To be continued...)

Carnival: Part One

Part One

 

“If you have even one solitary light guiding you, remember, you are not alone in the tunnel of darkness. But even if you have no candles to light your path, look skyward, and rebehold the stars.  They will be your companions."

He remembered the words Laura had written in her little black book. 

Laura.

The girl with hair as dark as black coffee, who wore the same shirt every morning she opened the candy store at eight in the morning. 

Laura, with her beautiful stories and her pretty, sad smile.

“Believe in yourself!" the sea-blue coloured shirt read. A powerful message worn by a not-so-powerful woman.

But now, he had not seen her in a week. He wondered where she was--he missed her, and although they hadn't talked much, he had guessed everything about her, because of the little black book she'd left on the counter by mistake--or had it been intentional? As far as he knew from the book, Laura was not the kind of person who'd leave her things lying around, unless, of course, she had wanted someone to see them. Maybe she had left it for someone else? Mr. Marlon, perhaps?  The idea puzzled him. Mr. Marlon was reserved, unwilling to share his thoughts with even the closest of his acquaintances. Were Laura and Marlon friends of some sort? No, they couldn't be.

Could she have left it for a customer? He discarded the idea, it had too many variables.

She must have left it for him.

He shook his head, not wanting to distract himself from his painting of the end of a dark tunnel. He would have time to think about it later.

He looked around the room, feeling something was amiss, but maybe it was just because he'd been thinking of Laura.

                                                                       

   *

She sat on the hard, wooden chair she had got from the old lady across the street.  Stealing the painting had been easy--(what kind of artist keeps his studio unlocked when he's going to be outside for the whole day?)--the hard part was looking at it. She examined the masterpiece in her hands. Every stroke, every colour was perfect, just as she had imagined it. The snow, a grayish pearly white, the trees, bare, the sun, nonexistent within the painting, and her heart, broken.

No, he doesn't know about that.... Or does he? He could have found out from Mr. Marlon, for all she knew. 

But then he never talked to the old man except if he wanted him to pose for a portrait. Even then, the exchanges had been minimal.

The only question now was if he'd been clever enough to take her diary off the counter that day.

She noticed he had signed his name--Robin--in the corner of the painting, in black.

Every story she had ever written was about him, every last one. He was not mentioned in the most obvious of ways--by his name--but she had made sure all of them included things he liked-- the sunset, snow, children ice skating, shafts of sunlight cutting through the gaps in the leaves in autumn. She had been daring enough to make two of her characters, Jason and Rita--very similar to herself and Robin--fall in love.  That was the last story she'd written in the book.

She'd called it "Carnival".

To be continued....

Follow Your Heart.

So this guy got one of the top two places in a short story writing contest last year!  Hope y'all like it!

 

 

FOLLOW YOUR HEART

 

WHAM!

 

Amelia slammed on her brakes with a screech; her blue Honda Fit swerved violently before it finally came to a stop in front of the green traffic light. People honked behind her as she got out of the car. She ran to the spot where the cyclist she had just hit sat rubbing his forehead. A police officer stood next to him with a bottle of water.

 

“We’re letting you off this time, ma’am, but if it happens again, you’re gonna get a sure trip to jail,” the officer said, handing her a speeding ticket. Amelia fumbled in her purse for her wallet.

 

She frowned; she’d left it on the dresser. Again. She looked apologetically at the officer, who shook his head and turned away. She glanced at her watch: half past ten already?! She bolted to her car (which was pretty difficult considering her attire consisted of a floral skirt and a purple-and-green plaid coat), slammed the door, and stepped on the gas. Her boss was going to get really angry. She was certain he was going to fire her.

 

Over the past year, Amelia had been trying her hand at writing. One of her articles, titled ‘The Bush Effect', which was about the problems the former U.S. President’s ‘trickle-down’ policy had on the economy, had gone absolutely viral. It was so popular she even thought about leaving her job and devoting all of her time to writing. After that, she wrote a particularly provocative article about the White House travel office controversy; it was not well received, and editor after editor turned it down. Not one magazine wanted to publish her articles because they were afraid of getting kicked out of business. Gradually, she lost interest in writing, and after a few months she stopped altogether. Amelia was devastated.

She’d lit a matchstick in the fireplace and torn and burnt all of her manuscripts one by one—she could still remember the crackling sound that had ensued as they were reduced to ashes. Her brain told her to pay attention to her work, but her heart told her to get back to writing.

 

She had listened to her brain, and she regretted it, even now.

 

Amelia turned left. She could hear a cardinal whistling and the rustling of leaves. She stopped and looked long at the majestic red bird strutting across the branch of the tree, and suddenly in her heart she knew that what she had been doing all these days was simply out of fear. She’d stuck to what she was comfortable with, even though she knew it wasn’t right—for her. And now the universe was making her pay for it.

 

She parked her car in the lot and got out. She knew what she had to do. She walked

towards her boss’s office and waited until he opened the door for her.

 

“Amelia—”

 

“I know; I’m resigning.”

 

“What?” he looked shocked; he’d wanted to do the honours. “Why?”

 

“It’s too stressful in here for me....especially after last year. I’ve just realized I like writing more than sitting around worrying about money and credit. I’m not into this anymore.”

 

“Well, it’s your choice. Good luck.”

 

Two weeks later, Amelia was driving her Honda with the windows rolled down and the sun on her cheeks. She was finally back on track.

 

She smiled. She just had the coolest idea for an article!

*

 

Thank you for reading!  Please comment/ like/ share if you liked it.

Hasta la vista, amigos!

 



Two-Word Poem #2

My second two-word poem. I'm a fan of these; so much can be said in just two words.
It's what you don't say that matters in this kind of poetry more than what you do say. The rest is up to the imagination of the reader.

“She laughed."