Damn, but if I need to learn about life all I need do is go out in the backyard morning.
The clouds are stratus far above in static streaks like still is still moving to me (Willie) while another layer puffy, grey, floats underneath and even lower still a wispy net like chimney smoke is bookin’ with the breeze.
Cloud events, happening parallel in time yet moving through it in separate sequencing of pace.
Still struggling with discovering a method to the madness of this hyperfiction novel by Shelley Jackson and it’s mainly because I’m so damn stubborn about learning the controls. I’ve gotten just a few pages into it, but am reluctant to make a mess. Today or tomorrow I’ve got to put some serious time into it and start moving along.
The story, from what I see, looks intriguing. Being the human epitomy of an oxymoron, I’m anxious to rush ahead without taking the time to consult the compass and thus find myself racing to stand still.
For the first page and a half of this short story by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, we are in the mind (third person omniscient) of a long-married woman who is both watching a fly and thinking about her husband. While it is somewhat stream of consciousness it is in proper sentence structure and form.
Notwithstanding the long time spent in what appears to be a rather mundane daily routine, there is a metaphorical balance between the fly–which is trying to desperately seek freedom–and the woman’s evident feeling of being trapped in the marriage.
The technique can either be cliche or very good and I’m anxious to see how it plays out.
I suppose this should be momentous and of deep meaning somehow, but it’s not. Read further down the page for the more inspired intelligence.
But time again, I think, to reconsider; the content, the design, the little problem I created with the book list on the right and left looking like I’ve read three books in my life instead of near forty in the last few months.
Yeah; the design.
Not the content surely. It cracks me up that readers sometimes gasp and never do return I think, perhaps in great offense of something such as my chipmunk offering of yesterday. But then, who knows what’s real about a writer and what is not? And for the writer, the readers are almost never real at all.
And yes, I’m slowly working to fix the book listings in the sidebar. I’ve created a new headline code in the stylesheet and voila! Still working on the rest.
I have seen the sacristies of blood and lit the votive that incinerated decades of mankind. (Gibb)
Huh? No I haven’t.
So where do these ideas come from then? Mine come to me in phrases such as the above which lit my morning rather than some great pile of burning bodies. Neither murderer nor arsonist then, and certainly never even in a war or lover of such movie or book-made images, yet there it was: "sacristies of blood."
The creative mind is rather amazing, don’t you think?
And with a thundering voice that seeks to penetrate my soul: Let go of that which you cannot possess, but subject to the whims of Fate that wears the mask of others. And let the riches draw you that are timeproof, theftproof; those of knowledge and of seeking good that nourishes with everlasting bounty.
I’ve always been a rulebreaker–operating just this side of the law. But there are three things one must understand about rules and flaunting them before they open themselves up to the breaking:
One should understand the purpose of the rule and live it a while; one should see the flaw in the rule, even in its sense of restriction; one should seek a path that coincides with purpose yet does achieves it in a different–maybe even better–way, and follow it with pizzazz.
McCarthy’s disdain for punctuation, Marquez’s interception of reality by the mind, Faulkner’s stream of consciousness that mimics more the nature of thinking, and hyperfiction that brings freedom from the jail of bookcovers.
In life as well: Being discovered by the HR man working late–to his dismay because he thought I was on overtime, though it was my practice to go and punchout at five and return because I had to follow protocol. The rules were changed for all executive secretaries in answer to this problem I’d presented and we were all given promotions and raises in answer–and taken off the timeclock.
Rules don’t always open up to accommodate the changer, but sometimes if we’re lucky, it will open its doors to the change. Recently, to produce something good by flying in the face of convention: a project for an institution. Then to its benefit the law flies in to accommodate it. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose; but if something good has come of it, the mission has been accomplished. In competitive archery, I’ve shot against the men in their division rather than take home a dumb trophy every time since there were so few women archers. I came in second once in Pennsylvania then and was I proud!
In Ethics we find that morals may change with society and generation. But there is a crossroads where the savage nature undergoes a tempering that is well, unnatural to that nature. In firming down, writing up and publishing laws to prohibit, for example, the hunting of your meal in your backyard, there is a tradeoff offered by the packaging and selling of meat by others–and only they are allowed to hunt (?!?) exclusively for mass distribution to the un-hunters. But that’s against man’s very instinct–although it serves its purpose by providing meat in a more convenient and ensured manner. All you need instead of bow and arrow or a club now is slim green sheets of paper known as "money."
Something like hyperfiction breaks established rules of writing and reading; and yet, it follows man’s more natural instincts in seeking information or entertainment in reading.
Limited by our minds and yet unlimited to the creative corners in them. In literature and in life, know the boundaries well; and if there is good reason to circumnavigate or fly above them, and you can do it well and see a benefit ahead to others, go ahead and fly!
Even within the text format of this book are subtle "hyperlinks" that direct the reader elsewhere and I must order Barthes’ S/Z and perhaps Derrida to fully understand.
I am familiar with the readerly versus writerly concept of Barthes’ "death to authors" theory, in part:
Our literature is characterized by the pitiless divorce which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its consumer, between its author and its reader. This reader is thereby plunged into a kind of idleness–he is intransitive; he is, in short, serious; instead of functioning himself, instead of gaining access to the magic of the signifier, to the pleasure of the writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text; reading is nothing more than a referendum. (Hypertext 3.0, p. 4, S/Z, 4)
How I fought this concept as a writer! For the reader to change my words? Over my dead body!
But the premise is that the reader changes the written word–even static text–by his own perception of what he is reading. Again, he can be allowed further freedom to travel the journey by the opportunity of paths chosen via hyperlinked boxes of either story or backstory or footnote information. This is limitedly possible in books–witness the reference to S/Z brought into Hypertext 3.o. But the medium of digital text and image brings it immediately to the forefront, or, it can be ignored while the reader decides upon a different tactic.
Turn the key and Jerry Mungo springs to life and sings me up the hill and into town. I’m dancin’ in my seat for there are tunes you cannot sit and listen to no matter what. Blast it up and bounce along, teeth biting down on lower lip in "Derby cool." Raised up raisin’ hell in the days of dirty dancing, hips remember how to bump and grind and no, no worries about the high-seated truck drivers here–although way back then I didn’t really care.
Turkey buzzard cutting circles in the morning sky, spirals getting smaller, smaller; moving a degree or two above the trees each cycle. Hungry he is.
I watch and wonder if I can wait his table. Hold up the seed-filled thievin’ chipmunk as an offering. Reach into the sky and fill his breakfast order on this grey day.
The bushes wear their crystal beads of rain
as if today is going to be a party.
Swishing in the wind
their great green tiers of ballgowns
in anxious wait of sun to strike the hour.
But Cinderella lay along the ashes of the hearth
among the books of stories told over and again
in the twists and turns of pages.
The weary sudden nap
turns way too long and
unhearing of the chimes, she sleeps
right through the ball.
So it won’t be so hard to catch up on my short story readings of the literary journals:
Prairie Schooner, Fall 2004: A total of four short stories; 64 pages out of 190.
Ploughshares, Winter, 2004-2005: Six short stories; 84 pages out of 193 (one story is 40 pages long).
Yes, I will read the poems as well–maybe. But as primarily a fiction writer, I’m obviously interested in the short story format much more than the reviews, essays or poetry. I’ve posted on this before and bemoaned the odds against the short story writer gaining publication in a journal of import such as the two above. But more to the point, are these stories going to prove to be the cream of the crop?
They’d better be.
Crof at Writing Fiction has a great commentary on the pros (and side effects!) of reading and more reading for writers: What Writers Read
You know the day’s about to unfold as something unusual when a birthday caller to a radio station requests Nancy Sinatra’s Boots song.
Yesterday was terrific. Sat down with a friend in a casual meeting on his short stories and felt a bit like agent/editor to his writer. Great feeling; to encourage genuine talent and see the progress made when working together towards a goal. The man has an amazing narrative voice; so much so that rereading the stories over and over again is never painful. Far easier than some of the stories I’m forcing myself through in some of the lit journals I’m trying to get caught up on again.
Ordered Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Been away from his magic too long.
Oh, and another game–though I haven’t been as hot as I should be on them.
And a book on Flash8.
And, for inspiration that I sorely need: Willie.
Feeling old and out of it, useless, worn and dopey. Need to kick away the thoughts the words the people that can so easily play upon my own self-doubt. Because I let them.
But the radishi and basil and the lettuce have come up to cheer me on and show the way to new life and new commitments. I need commitment. I need the passion once again for something that may never bear the fruit but offers still the sense of purpose while it lasts.
So to prove the moral, the story follows along to destroy the family of Kino and the pearl is shown to have caused devastation and death.
Hmmph.
This parable is a common one; wealth is the root of all evil. I disagree–though thoroughly wishing to have the opportunity to prove or disprove the theory personally. What I see, and what I still prefer to close my eyes to despite proof in little ways, is that man’s nature may be naturally evil and that good is an accomplished, learned feat that man has tried to breed into his nature over the centuries.
Had everyone left Kino alone to happily turn his pearl into the better things he wanted for his family, there would be no evil in the story.
But the story is about people.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology