George DePaoli was clearly dying but here’s the thing; it was taking longer than he’d expected. What he felt had been his final hours had dragged out through the night and into the next day and he only wished for one thing now; that his daughter, Marcia, would stop yelling in his ear.
What would be a better exercise in non-linear narrative structure, in intertwining consciousness of space and time, in changing tense and with it, worlds that exist with those that may not.
Obviously inspired a bit by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, but I cannot get past the barriers of time as easily, nor float free among the heads within the room. My use of language still is stilted by the proper form and format, though I beat my hands and head against the walls that hold me in.
How odd, that we must overcome severe restrictions learned in writing and communication, to return to an expression that would be more natural to our minds. I seek this freedom, this letting out of truth regardless of reception. And no, not authorly in that, because in reaching this plateau there is a population to be met on common ground. Though true, their reader’s mind must be as open as the writer’s.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology