[Note: I decided to adapt the 'flashback' style associated with Pere Callahan's story in Stephen King's Wolves of the Calla. Let me know if it works.]
2
It begins with a whisper.
As though her lips were placed gently against his ear, a warm moist breath floating past his lobe as it crawls deep into the nape of his neck. There's no time to react, and so he reacts as we all would.
His eyes shoot open, while his breath suddenly halts with a gasping whimper. He feels the hair on his arm stand on end, soldiers at attention welcoming a high ranking official.
Someone important. Please enter, and come and go as you please. Make yourself at home.
Jake lays frozen in bed, while an idea makes itself cozy deep within his mind. Though he's sure this has all been a dream, or apparition, he knows where he must go. And so he rises, shaking off his slumber as he dresses himself. Old jeans, grey t-shirt, and a white sweater.
And he goes, as he must.
It was but a dream, of that he is certain.
But if he's right, something really is different this time.
Something wonderful.
3
The hungry hustle of pattering feet on a rocky hill. Boys running faster and harder. Eager to become the men they assume life intends. Peach fuzz on their upper lips and chins, deep breaths rising along broadening shoulders, the newfound feeling of pure testosterone fleeting through their veins.
It began with a promise. This, he remembers.
As one boy falls to his backside, informally requesting a rest, his bookbag shakes against against the terrain of reeds and leaves. Two glass bottles shake lightly against one another.
The other boy plants himself down alongside his pal. As they both gasp deep to catch their winded breath, two bottles of beer are produced and Dean can feel their condensation drip to the ground beneath as he passes one along.
It has been almost six years since this moment, and still Jake can recall the serenity he experienced in isolation from the cares of a waking world.
The grass beneath them, dry and crunching beneath their feet. A cold front has brought an early autumn to their corner of the world, and with it the looming fear of change and all that is to come.
The unknown. A never-ending abyss of seeking direction, pivotal choices, the terror of taking unsuitable routes. And more gravely, being forced to live and die by the route one chose.
One way in, one way only.
One way out.
"The storm is coming," uttered one of the boys, and a silence hung in the air like a hollow knock in the dark. Neither could truly be sure who had uttered those haunting words.
Dean, in a desperate scramble to break the unnerving silence, took a loose cigarette from his ear and searched his pockets for a light. He was greeted by Jake's open palm presenting his father's Zippo. Engraved with care, it showcased two nude ladies sitting back to back in that scandalous pose you recognize from skin magazines and the mud-flaps of eighteen wheelers. Real greasy shit.
As Dean brings its flame towards the cheap dart between his lips, Jake felt an urge to speak. He looked at the beer, resting upon his knee.
"Even the worst storm couldn't take this away," he began to speak, "and you fuckin' believe that. Let it do its worst."
A soft and ominous wind shuffled the reeds against their backs, a tender reminder that this was the most luxurious of views. Dean thought, upon reflection, that he may have even seen the Lower Battery through the low fog bank. One could never be truly sure in this harbour.
"Time'll try and change who we become," Jake added, unsure from where this sudden insight was coming, "but it can't take who we are. You're my buddy, and I've got your back."
The neck of his beer was extended almost simultaneously towards Dean, who returned the gesture with considerable gratitude. As the conversation delved into matter of less significance, Jake knew he would be forever grateful to have a brother blowing life off and grabbing a beer instead. Years later, it would remind him of reading the last line in a novel before you start. It may spoil where you end up, but it's easier to face what's to come when you know where you stand in this world. Or where you will stand.
And Jake enjoyed the comfort of a lifelong friend, entertaining the idea in his head as he sipped cold beer and smoked loose tobacco under a calm aurora sky.
Every star was out, each one brighter than the last.
11.16.2010
5.17.2010
a start to my writing.
Though he has seen the sun rise over many of the world’s beautiful cities, there was something particularly unique about this.
David sat alone, taking painful gulps from an emptying bottle of gin, on a hillside overlooking the St. John’s harbour. The sun caught the glass highrises, reflecting into his eyes and intensifying the dull ache across his brow. He had stumbled as far as he could before his body and brain ceased to grip onto consciousness nearly simultaneously, and suddenly David found himself tumbling from a gravel train making the ascent into Kilbride. He recalled flailing his arms around his delicate skull in his final rational thought.
And so he remained, until the rising heat (no such effort had been made to remove his sweater or coat) pushed him to the brink of dehydration.
He jolted awake to the sounds of a silent Sunday morning.
The familiar fear and sense of panic swept over him as he planted his weathered palms against the rugged earth below, realigning himself with the horizon. He felt worn and dizzy, thinking incomprehensible thoughts at an nonsensical hour. Time, throughout his night, had taken a backseat to extravagant trays of shooters, cover at nearly four different bars (for himself and two particular ladies, it must be noted), the type of nightlife that one believes only exists in Jazz-era literature.
That is, until one consumes the proper amount of spirit or swill to see things in such a light, dimmed and intimate but still hopeful. It shines without purpose, and yet it remains important that one finds such a light to live under, even if only for a few moments each lifetime. It had been nine-and-a-half hours since David had felt the glow for the first time, and less than three since he lost all sense of his self and fell into a ditch accompanying a high-traffic intersection.
David’s eyes were drawn to the empty streets below and then farther north towards the waterfront. No roaring vehicles, no clicking and turning of cogs and wheels, and even considerably less foot traffic given the nature of this morning. This day was so unequivocally beautiful that it may have been worth the regret to miss such a glimmering dawn.
And it was, as David repeatedly remarked with all of the energy his recovering vitals could muster up, particularly unique. For though the ocean seemed so close one could open their mouth and taste the bittersweet salts against their tongue and teeth, there was no hint of wind in the air. No gust, no sudden woosh of fresh air against his tired eyes, not even a simple breeze to sway the nestles beneath his feet.
Though a rock just large enough to provide shelter and solace from the now blistering sun lay only feet away, he could find no bone in his body nor ounce of his being that would forgive him for shying away from such a once-in-a-lifetime day. Instead, he used it as leverage to take the strain off of his bum left knee, a childhood injury that seemed to have been severely aggravated by the debauchery of the night before. It remained to this day as a reminder to keep one’s wits about them at all times, and as an indicator that moist air and precipitations were on the horizon.
As he slung his body over the large soft stone standing lone on a grassy knoll and pulled himself up to a sitting position, he felt an inflammation in his knee, a subtle swelling. He recalled the warm tingling he would get as storm clouds raced towards him from miles away, and the sudden clusters of sharp pain that would rise from shin to hamstring as he sat waiting for the year’s first snowfall. The subtle drops in atmospheric pressure, the way clouds settled in over his small coastal community; in a way, these were the only things David considered truly constant in his life, tragically familiar and still utterly humbling. His own personal second-nature.
The recurring throb in his left knee this morning, similar to the one across his forehead, was anything but familiar. It was as heavy as a heartbeat and persisted, refusing to be ignored, like a set of knuckles against the oak door of a summerhouse. He pushed the hair out of his eyes, attempting to give himself both a better view and a distraction. Instead, he found a King-sized cigarette mashed in behind his ear. A lingering ghost of the night before, a reminder of his outlandish behavior. At this hour, it remained difficult to recreate any major events of the evening, though awakening on a hillside alone told him something had diverged from all he considered to be the norm only hours earlier.
In his pocket, he found his first clue to understanding where intoxication transcended into the inexcusable. A matchbook, half empty, bearing the words, “Rocky Isle Pub – cheap drinks, no cover, live music”. Reading it gave him a sickly sweet taste in his mouth, reminding him of shot glasses filled with sugary liquors and palate-cleansing whiskeys.
He did not wish to spend this early start to his day regurgitating, and so he looked down in his left hand at the cigarette he held. It was slightly broken in the middle, which was remedied by removing the half he would not be able to smoke without the doctoring aid of rolling papers. He put the remaining half in the corner of his mouth, and lit a match. Watching the burst of flame slowly climb the shaft towards his fingertips, he marveled at its sheer existence.
On any other day, he thought, there wouldn’t be enough shelter in this whole city to keep a match lit. But there was, after all, something different about this day, perhaps even this whole city. It seemed to have expanded and appeared more grand, more complex than he had ever considered.
He breathed inwards, drawing flame to the broken tip of his smoke. David was not a smoker. But if a whole city could change overnight, so could he. And although he knew not where this busted cowboy killer had come from, it was his to smoke and smoke it he did.
As he felt the first rushes of nicotine flowing through his veins, the ache in his leg intensified for a few moments, seeming to call to him as if someone was willing him to see what he simply could not. It finally subsided, leaving him alone on a hill with his thoughts. But at this hour, he had only one thought. A shallow drag of smoke masked his face as his eyes began to change from disillusion to a simple fear of the unknown. Without even noticing, he began to mutter a single phrase beneath his breath.
“The storm is coming.”
David sat alone, taking painful gulps from an emptying bottle of gin, on a hillside overlooking the St. John’s harbour. The sun caught the glass highrises, reflecting into his eyes and intensifying the dull ache across his brow. He had stumbled as far as he could before his body and brain ceased to grip onto consciousness nearly simultaneously, and suddenly David found himself tumbling from a gravel train making the ascent into Kilbride. He recalled flailing his arms around his delicate skull in his final rational thought.
And so he remained, until the rising heat (no such effort had been made to remove his sweater or coat) pushed him to the brink of dehydration.
He jolted awake to the sounds of a silent Sunday morning.
The familiar fear and sense of panic swept over him as he planted his weathered palms against the rugged earth below, realigning himself with the horizon. He felt worn and dizzy, thinking incomprehensible thoughts at an nonsensical hour. Time, throughout his night, had taken a backseat to extravagant trays of shooters, cover at nearly four different bars (for himself and two particular ladies, it must be noted), the type of nightlife that one believes only exists in Jazz-era literature.
That is, until one consumes the proper amount of spirit or swill to see things in such a light, dimmed and intimate but still hopeful. It shines without purpose, and yet it remains important that one finds such a light to live under, even if only for a few moments each lifetime. It had been nine-and-a-half hours since David had felt the glow for the first time, and less than three since he lost all sense of his self and fell into a ditch accompanying a high-traffic intersection.
David’s eyes were drawn to the empty streets below and then farther north towards the waterfront. No roaring vehicles, no clicking and turning of cogs and wheels, and even considerably less foot traffic given the nature of this morning. This day was so unequivocally beautiful that it may have been worth the regret to miss such a glimmering dawn.
And it was, as David repeatedly remarked with all of the energy his recovering vitals could muster up, particularly unique. For though the ocean seemed so close one could open their mouth and taste the bittersweet salts against their tongue and teeth, there was no hint of wind in the air. No gust, no sudden woosh of fresh air against his tired eyes, not even a simple breeze to sway the nestles beneath his feet.
Though a rock just large enough to provide shelter and solace from the now blistering sun lay only feet away, he could find no bone in his body nor ounce of his being that would forgive him for shying away from such a once-in-a-lifetime day. Instead, he used it as leverage to take the strain off of his bum left knee, a childhood injury that seemed to have been severely aggravated by the debauchery of the night before. It remained to this day as a reminder to keep one’s wits about them at all times, and as an indicator that moist air and precipitations were on the horizon.
As he slung his body over the large soft stone standing lone on a grassy knoll and pulled himself up to a sitting position, he felt an inflammation in his knee, a subtle swelling. He recalled the warm tingling he would get as storm clouds raced towards him from miles away, and the sudden clusters of sharp pain that would rise from shin to hamstring as he sat waiting for the year’s first snowfall. The subtle drops in atmospheric pressure, the way clouds settled in over his small coastal community; in a way, these were the only things David considered truly constant in his life, tragically familiar and still utterly humbling. His own personal second-nature.
The recurring throb in his left knee this morning, similar to the one across his forehead, was anything but familiar. It was as heavy as a heartbeat and persisted, refusing to be ignored, like a set of knuckles against the oak door of a summerhouse. He pushed the hair out of his eyes, attempting to give himself both a better view and a distraction. Instead, he found a King-sized cigarette mashed in behind his ear. A lingering ghost of the night before, a reminder of his outlandish behavior. At this hour, it remained difficult to recreate any major events of the evening, though awakening on a hillside alone told him something had diverged from all he considered to be the norm only hours earlier.
In his pocket, he found his first clue to understanding where intoxication transcended into the inexcusable. A matchbook, half empty, bearing the words, “Rocky Isle Pub – cheap drinks, no cover, live music”. Reading it gave him a sickly sweet taste in his mouth, reminding him of shot glasses filled with sugary liquors and palate-cleansing whiskeys.
He did not wish to spend this early start to his day regurgitating, and so he looked down in his left hand at the cigarette he held. It was slightly broken in the middle, which was remedied by removing the half he would not be able to smoke without the doctoring aid of rolling papers. He put the remaining half in the corner of his mouth, and lit a match. Watching the burst of flame slowly climb the shaft towards his fingertips, he marveled at its sheer existence.
On any other day, he thought, there wouldn’t be enough shelter in this whole city to keep a match lit. But there was, after all, something different about this day, perhaps even this whole city. It seemed to have expanded and appeared more grand, more complex than he had ever considered.
He breathed inwards, drawing flame to the broken tip of his smoke. David was not a smoker. But if a whole city could change overnight, so could he. And although he knew not where this busted cowboy killer had come from, it was his to smoke and smoke it he did.
As he felt the first rushes of nicotine flowing through his veins, the ache in his leg intensified for a few moments, seeming to call to him as if someone was willing him to see what he simply could not. It finally subsided, leaving him alone on a hill with his thoughts. But at this hour, he had only one thought. A shallow drag of smoke masked his face as his eyes began to change from disillusion to a simple fear of the unknown. Without even noticing, he began to mutter a single phrase beneath his breath.
“The storm is coming.”
4.30.2010
my rushmore.
When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.
- Jacques-Yves Cousteau
I just heard this quote, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. Although, considering I'm writing this blog, I guess I'm not above sharing what I feel to be my extraordinary life, haha.
I've continued my explorations into reading by trying to accomplish something I've never attempted (successfully) before: reading multiple books at once. This seems as though it would turn out a little muddled, but I've put some minor thought into it. I feel as though .. if I choose three or four books of very different styles/genres, it will be easier to differentiate the plots and characters of each respective piece.
So right now I've started the second part of Stephen King's Dark Tower series entitled The Drawing of the Three. Then there's Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, a hardboiled crime novel set in Los Angeles some sixty odd years ago. And THEN, there's this crazy Crichton novel named Sphere which I haven't read enough to properly assess where things are heading. And finally, I'm tackling a novel recommended just over a year ago to me by a good friend entitled Travels with my Aunt, which is a beautiful contemporary British story about two estranged relatives.
All in all, I'm making my way through them at a steady pace. Drawing of the Three is moving along a little faster since I'm hoping to advance a little further in the Dark Tower series. The slowest paced read at this point is Sphere, but only because I feel I might need to dedicate a significant amount of time to it in order to truly appreciate it in its entirety.
School is starting again in ten days, and to be honest I'm a weird mixture between nervous and excited. But with nine courses and nine months left to my undergrad, this will be interesting to say the least.
- Jacques-Yves Cousteau
I just heard this quote, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. Although, considering I'm writing this blog, I guess I'm not above sharing what I feel to be my extraordinary life, haha.
I've continued my explorations into reading by trying to accomplish something I've never attempted (successfully) before: reading multiple books at once. This seems as though it would turn out a little muddled, but I've put some minor thought into it. I feel as though .. if I choose three or four books of very different styles/genres, it will be easier to differentiate the plots and characters of each respective piece.
So right now I've started the second part of Stephen King's Dark Tower series entitled The Drawing of the Three. Then there's Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, a hardboiled crime novel set in Los Angeles some sixty odd years ago. And THEN, there's this crazy Crichton novel named Sphere which I haven't read enough to properly assess where things are heading. And finally, I'm tackling a novel recommended just over a year ago to me by a good friend entitled Travels with my Aunt, which is a beautiful contemporary British story about two estranged relatives.
All in all, I'm making my way through them at a steady pace. Drawing of the Three is moving along a little faster since I'm hoping to advance a little further in the Dark Tower series. The slowest paced read at this point is Sphere, but only because I feel I might need to dedicate a significant amount of time to it in order to truly appreciate it in its entirety.
School is starting again in ten days, and to be honest I'm a weird mixture between nervous and excited. But with nine courses and nine months left to my undergrad, this will be interesting to say the least.
4.28.2010
the beginning of the beginning.
I haven't sat down and written anything in too long. Myself and some friends sat around and brainstormed some scenarios for a television series or a screenplay about a month ago.
A couple of round-table discussions was as far as it got. Not that I'm ready to give up on it, though.
The truth is, the last couple of months away from school have brought me around to thinking. Trying to figure out where I'm going to be in a year or maybe five years. I don't have any intention of making a long-term plan of sorts, but I've put a lot more thought into the kinds of things I'm interested in accomplishing. Time is passing, it has occurred to me, and if I don't start becoming the person I want to be right now .. every day from now on end will be a wasted opportunity.
With some pretty serious thought, I've decided that I would like to be able to develop and practice my writing for the coming months. With some experiments into my own expressions of modern poetry, along with devoting a realistic yet significant amount of weekly time to working on my style and consistency, I think I've got a lot of room to grow and all the time in the world to do it.
Whether I'm right or wrong, I've gotten the idea into my head that it would help get my creative juices flowing if I spent a few weeks intensely immersing myself into some novels that I can truly savor and enjoy. Stephen King's The Stand was my most ambitious venture as of yet, considering (and this is embarrassing for the English major in me to admit) I have never finished a book that exceeds 1000 pages. And though it was a slow delve into the first two hundred pages, it quickly changed from an insurmountable task to something I felt couldn't be put down. I was hooked, sucked in, a gravitational pull that I haven't been lucky enough to experience from a book in a long time.
I feel like.. if I absorb enough of the classic narratives that have survived decades and even centuries of academic criticism, then maybe I can start to grasp and understand the existing factors that give them so much relevance in the world I was raised in.
I'll talk more as it occurs to me, but for now, this is a good start at just writing and getting some thoughts out.
A couple of round-table discussions was as far as it got. Not that I'm ready to give up on it, though.
The truth is, the last couple of months away from school have brought me around to thinking. Trying to figure out where I'm going to be in a year or maybe five years. I don't have any intention of making a long-term plan of sorts, but I've put a lot more thought into the kinds of things I'm interested in accomplishing. Time is passing, it has occurred to me, and if I don't start becoming the person I want to be right now .. every day from now on end will be a wasted opportunity.
With some pretty serious thought, I've decided that I would like to be able to develop and practice my writing for the coming months. With some experiments into my own expressions of modern poetry, along with devoting a realistic yet significant amount of weekly time to working on my style and consistency, I think I've got a lot of room to grow and all the time in the world to do it.
Whether I'm right or wrong, I've gotten the idea into my head that it would help get my creative juices flowing if I spent a few weeks intensely immersing myself into some novels that I can truly savor and enjoy. Stephen King's The Stand was my most ambitious venture as of yet, considering (and this is embarrassing for the English major in me to admit) I have never finished a book that exceeds 1000 pages. And though it was a slow delve into the first two hundred pages, it quickly changed from an insurmountable task to something I felt couldn't be put down. I was hooked, sucked in, a gravitational pull that I haven't been lucky enough to experience from a book in a long time.
I feel like.. if I absorb enough of the classic narratives that have survived decades and even centuries of academic criticism, then maybe I can start to grasp and understand the existing factors that give them so much relevance in the world I was raised in.
I'll talk more as it occurs to me, but for now, this is a good start at just writing and getting some thoughts out.
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