**A narrator keeps giving his protagonist the perfect opportunities to make his life into a great story, but the protagonist keeps messing it up. The narrator is slowly getting desperate. **
Author Note: I wrote this in less than an hour after hearing the prompt in an attempt to try writing more “extemporaneously”. It was an extremely grueling endeavor, but something I’ll try again.
I said, “She smiled. As she passed, Jake nervously walked up to the woman and blocked her path. She stopped. She was wearing a violet button up blouse. She shifted, revealing a slender figure accentuated by a black skirt.” I leaned in, metaphorically. He needs more. “He felt a sudden pressure at his side. He looked down. A small, beige purse with a lettered pattern was under his arm. Confused, he looked up at the woman and begin to speak, ‘Hello …’. He hesitated. The woman looked at him. He could see the increased agitation on her face. She looked under his shoulder and then at her waist. Her agitation turned to anger. She snatched the purse from under his arm and smacked him with it, before cursing and walking away.” I sat back, exasperated. I thought for sure that would work. “Jake stood for several seconds before running toward a nearby awning.”
“Rita regains consciousness after a motorcycle accident. She has received skin grafts covered in tattoos from an anonymous organ donor. The tattoos provide Rita with clues to the donor’s dark proclivities.”
“He’s going to kill you,” a voice said. The car stank. Knowing a chain-smoker guarantees an intimacy with futility and death. It’s not always the cigarettes that kill them, though.
“You were always my friend,” the driver replied. His hands rubbed back and forth on a small tin container. The metal was old and the printing faded. He stopped, then turned his hands to lay them on the box. Upturned wrists exposed two identical, yet aged tattoos. After taking a deep breath, he opened the box and stroked the photo behind the mess of trinkets and knick-knacks.
**
He felt a brisk wind on his cheek as he stared into rolling grasslands. The world was an empty place. He suppressed his confusion as he held out his right hand to reveal a bloodied axe. A beating drum entered his awareness. As it increased in volume he turned to see its approach behind him. Time slowed down. He struggled to look, but something resisted his movement. His anxiety howled as the beating drum grew louder and finally became deafening. Just as he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye, all became black.
“Hmm,” the mischievous man said as he lifted the brick to his face to inspect the quality. Like all other fired clay bricks, it was red and sturdy. Except this one was different. He had added a little something extra to its edge before baking it. The man spent a few more seconds examining the brick, perhaps to wonder about the small chip at the side, before placing it in the wagon. The day was sunny and bright. The men quickly laid layer after layer. When one of the men got to Chip, he stared at it for a second before giving a wide grin and heavily laying it in the next spot.
The pinky is emotion. It is a dream. It is a white’s white, a blue’s blue, and a black’s black. It is a train traveling a rail that cannot be seen. It is a ringing anthem to explore the rough texture that hides behind our smooth skin. It always seems like a painting made up of a thousand kernels of sand with an improbable placement.
The ring finger is commitment. It rings of the hymns sung from every church on Sunday. It is a large sky with complex clouds as far as the eye can see, but it is also a giant ocean of which only I am entrusted the charts. It is glass willingly shattered that will never again be whole. It is a song that must be written over and over.
I saw Beauty and the Beast last night, and it moved me more than I expected. It wasn’t the cinematography, the beautifully decorated sets, Emma Watson, or the hopeful story of love that did it for me. If I’d seen the same movie six months ago, I’d still have felt something, but nothing quite as beautiful as what I felt for an entire hour after seeing this movie. I was so inspired that I came home and immediately wrote the outline to this blog post. I felt this warm, beautiful glow in my chest. A peaceful feeling, like the one you feel right before you easily fall asleep after a particularly rewarding and exhausting day’s work. I’ve changed, somehow. The past several months have probably been the most emotionally engaged of my life. Both my brother and sister have noticed it in their own ways and told me as much. But how did it happen?
Emotional writing is different from intellectual writing. As I’ve moved forward in life, I’ve come to acknowledge a fundamental flaw in my writing ability. It’s been there, masked in the imperceptible shadow of my psyche, for at least a decade. This hidden part of myself reared its head as if born from a button I felt compelled to press as the critical clock of my life spun toward midnight. The only regret I have is that I wish I could have done it sooner. I continue to feel tortured by the unbidden consequences of this action, but I would do it over and over again if it could mean that I would feel complete someday. What it has given me is the realization that emotional writing is only effective if the reader emphasizes with a character’s feelings or situation.
I have managed to avoid being high my entire life. I’ve never even been buzzed. Why would I subject myself to this? I’m obviously insane. When I was younger, I typically did what my parents told me to do if I found it rational. “You shouldn’t drink or smoke,” they said. “Okay!” I said back. And that was that for decades. Little did they expect (and much to their dismay), I kept that habit through college and into my professional life. When people asked me why, I typically said it was for health reasons. At my age and with that excuse, I start to wonder if people think I used to be an alcoholic. “Cranberry juice, please!” When I got my wisdom teeth out, they put me on Vicodin. I called my father and asked when I would start to feel high. His response? “Do you feel any pain?” And of course I responded, “No.” He cheekily replied: “Then you’re high!” Nowadays, I like to tell people that I want to experience the world in its entirety, pain and all. Those discomforting signals, I tell them, let you know that you’re dissatisfied with the world and that you need to make a change. Drinking, in my view, was a self-applied control mechanism to make you docile.
I’ve always struggled with the question of which I’d rather do in my career: would I like to always write new code, or am I happy fixing and extending older code (aka maintenance)? Some people may say it’s never that black and white, “Projects usually have sprinklings of both!”. In my career, though, it has typically followed that trend. So what makes the dichotomy between “writing new code” and “maintaining old” so important in my life as a software engineer, and why am I writing about this?
What makes me so passionate about the words I write? Perhaps it’s a little of the perfectionist in me shining through. I want to create the perfect sentence–one that conveys exactly as much as needed to evoke a thought or emotion, but nothing more. Much in the way that Kurt Vonnegut crafts his sentences, I wish to craft my own. But most of all, I see it as an art form. It’s a creative release for me. Like all things, however, it takes more than a single sentence to create a story. Putting them all together in such a way to make us feel something when we read it is where the real artistry comes in.
I’ve made an important life decision. And now that I’ve done so, I’m letting it absorb. Do I truly feel as though that’s the direction my life should go? I haven’t rejected it outright at least, so no buyer’s remorse yet.
I had to make it real though. That’s the only way you’ll know if you truly want it or not. I told my parents and one coworker. Now that I’ve done so, I’m anxious. Am I anxious about my unknown future, or about whether it’s something I truly want to do? I am definitely apprehensive about investing years into something that might not work out. That won’t happen though. I know my strengths and I know I can make it work.
I recently experienced my first date. The date went well, and we had fun, but it seemed to fall apart after that. The timing wasn’t good. I still haven’t quite gotten over her, so I wrote this unsent letter to express my feelings to myself. I did not know that a human being could feel such positive emotions as the two weeks I had with her, or the ongoing pain of rejection that I experience in the weeks after. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I hope that I can move on someday. The names and dates have been changed to protect the innocent.
When people ask you what you believe in, do you immediately go towards political or religious beliefs? For instance, you could say you are pro-life or pro-choice. You could say you believe in high taxes or low taxes. You could also say you believe in God. According to Google, belief is defined thusly:
**belief - “an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists”
After some recent experiences that I’ve had, I find this definition to be somewhat weak. I feel as though the definition needs to be expanded to encompass something that I can only call “true belief”. I would define it as follows:
When I was thirteen, I had your stereotypical “thirteen year-old” experience. Nowadays, they call that the “hasn’t quite finished puberty” but is “owning you and swearing badly on COD4” phase. Back in the 90s, there were these online forums called bulletin-board systems (or BBS). You wouldn’t connect to them through the Internet, but through a modem and a text-based terminal software. On one such BBS was a game called Legend of the Red Dragon. Now, if you’ve never heard of it (which I assume you haven’t), it was a text based multiplayer RPG. The goal was to get strong enough to fight a dragon. Once someone defeated the dragon ten total times, they won the game and everything reset.
How do you know whether to take a certain action? If you’re anything like me, then you consider all the evidence and alternatives and then try to decide objectively. If you’re not like me, then you probably think about how you feel at the time and then choose the best feeling option. Unfortunately, neither of these methods are guaranteed to lead to the best decision, even in ideal circumstances. Human beings, it turns out, are a complex grouping of experiences and emotions.
My mother calls me just about every day. I have decided that this is weird. Of course, it’s expected that she will call you occasionally, that’s what mom’s do. However, I am decidedly less inclined to return the favor.
Our conversations always start in the same, engaging way: She’s driving from somewhere to somewhere else (typically home from work), and she asks me “Hey son! What are you doing?” The conversations then go from meaningless topic to topic, ultimately culminating when she reaches her destination and says she’s hanging up. I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s just using me to fill dead air time. It really gives off this desperate clingy feeling.
My name is Jacob, and I am a procrastinator.
This sounds like an introduction to an AA meeting doesn’t it? To be frank, I feel as though there should be a support group for people like me. The feeling of denial was overwhelming. You find that you’re very productive at work or on other things in your life and all of a sudden, you’re not a procrastinator. You’ve shown yourself that since you can operate normally in one facet of your life, that’s proof that you don’t have a problem.
From Reddit: Humanity is the only race in the galaxy with such a massive lack of common sense that we’re the only species that requires laws to form societies. Other races just form naturally and are shocked when confronted with humanities laws and regulations.
“But that doesn’t make any sense!”
“Speak clearly, child.”
Arcturi sighed in frustration. It is difficult to learn when one is being chided. He scowled at the floating tablet. There were several other children in the room, each regarding their tablets with varying emotions. The goal was learning, exercise for the mind. However, the pre-programming often left a lot to be desired. “Nevermind. Tell me about the Mimetic wars again?”
What forms the foundation of effort in a creative endeavor?
If I make a creative art, is there an obvious vertical hierarchy of capital goods that went into producing the final product? When a physical structure is erected or a technological marvel crafted, there is an obvious assembly of materials, research and engineering needed to turn imagination into realization. However, it seems as though the foundation of creativity is internalized within the mind, and is more of a horizontal rather than vertical process.
A bird landed on the tallest branch of a tree. The tree, being the tallest in the land, was home to several other wild creatures, two of which were the black squirrels and the yellow bees. The bird eyed the nuts of the squirrels and the honey of the bees. All the riches of the world are laid out before me, he thought to himself.
Quietly, he approached the squirrels nest and creeped inside. Suddenly, the squirrel appeared and bared his sharp claws. ‘Don’t take my nuts,’ he said, ‘If you do, I will die when the winter comes, and the other squirrels of the tree will remember.’ ‘I care not,’ said the bird, ‘as easily as I came to this tree, there are many trees, and I shall never step here again.’ ‘Wait!’ said the squirrel. ‘If you let me, I will help you steal the bee’s honey. There lies a rich reward more tantalizing than any nut.’
The first few months were filled with uncertainty. Since the discovery of the infinite resource generation device, people no longer had to work to support themselves. Land as far out and as cheap as Siberia could be used to craft a home. Basic necessities such as food and water were then created without incident or cost using the IRGD.
It was a wondrous time. People no longer needed to go to work to support themselves. It was complete chaos at first. Pirated plans were widely distributed on the Internet and 3D printers were used to easily craft the device. Within a few days, enough of them existed that friends were using them to craft them for their friends. Within a mere week, every family on the entire planet had an IRGD.
I realized something today. When you’re younger, you know that there will always be time in the future to do things.
- Want to write a book? Don’t have to do it now … Don’t know enough anyway, I’ll do that eventually
- Want to learn how to play an instrument?* You can learn that later on when you’re in a different stage of life.*
- Want to visit other countries? *You’ll do that when you have money and vacation time. *
- Want to get married? You’ll meet someone, you’ll see. It will just happen someday.
- Want to get in shape or build your body? I’ll start that eventually, just not today. Too many video games to play.
- Want to get to know your parents & grandparents better? I’ll talk to them in a year or two, once that stuff becomes important to me.
As children, we put off all the things we are powerless to do because we have a good excuse-we don’t have the money, experience or resources to do them. We put off the things we don’t want to do because we just don’t see the point. And, perhaps most importantly, we realize that we have plenty of time to accomplish any goal we please once we’ve decided what to do with our lives.
It dawned on me as I watched Tron that perhaps the right person was sitting in Encom’s EVP chair all along. Now don’t get me wrong. He was a ruthless, immoral bastard by any sense of the archetype. But consider the following:
It started out with this guy who wrote a couple basic video games. Great, right? Then along comes this guy who steals the video games and sets himself in motion to become an EVP. You know the whole saying, good artists copy, great artists steal, yada yada. Then he invents artificial intelligence.
So, I decided to check this movie out again. Believe it or not, I haven’t seen it since I was fairly young. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I actually saw it.
As it played, I realized that as a child I created several conceptions of the people, scenes and events that exist within the movie. As strange as it sounds, I am somehow able to remember the feelings and understanding I had of the movie when I was young.
The vast oceans and bright shades of thought,
In broad streams do incessantly flow for naught.
Steeled with willing mind and kindred choice,
On committed course I move with lonely voice.
A stream flows and life’s water it will bring,
Sometimes murky or turbulent from its spring.
Slave to dams unknown its passage flounders,
A crowded prison awaits with endless wanders.
With time’s aid canyons and valleys are shaped,
And what was dry is wet and bears the escaped.
A granted path spares rocks but yields no fish,
But the vast ocean’s promise fulfills my wish.
I was walking through one of the smallest malls I’ve ever been in today. I was on my way back from picking up a new pair of running shoes when I thought to myself, “What the hell, why not.” I doubled back to the entrance and walked around. I saw the familiar assembly of establishments which define human creativity and culture: Claire’s, Victoria’s Secret, Game Stop, etc. All of those stores were quite expected. What I didn’t expect was the mix of feelings I’d have as I walked past this store called Pottery Barn.
I believe that my mind has been compromised.
Not in any way you could possibly imagine, mind you.
I have done some thinking, and came to the conclusion that I am getting old. I find it more and more difficult to pick up new things—it takes a hell of a lot longer. Maybe this is what neuroplasticity is… it’s the fact that when you’re younger, it feels like the days are longer, meaning you have high neuroplasticity, but when you get older, the days are shorter, meaning it has diminished. Your capability to learn new items has decreased literally because it seems as though you have no time to do it.
Some ways I thought to express tension:
The tension in the room was sufficating.
I sat in silence, woefully aware of the thickness in the surrounding air.
All of a sudden, I could not breath with surprising effectiveness, the room felt much more enclosed, and I found even myself experiencing the rushing panic of claustrophobia.
Breathing was always something I took for granted. And yet I found myself struggling to breath when the air was as clear as a cool autum breeze, to inhale when the nearest toxin was thousands of miles of away.
I have nothing inspiring to say.
I am still alive today.
My memory seems to be getting worse as time goes on. At times I wonder if this is why time seems to be speeding up for me.
I have an 18 mile run tomorrow. I am determined to make this run work. I’m trying a few new things tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens.
I am installing the armv7 cross compiler for the hp touchpad. I want to try to install a linux remote desktop client called ‘rdesktop’ on the touchpad.
The Knot
The walls rise high above, the tension palpable. Before me lies my goal, the reason for my existence, what I must do in order to survive. I remember to focus, before I lose sight of my reason for being here. As I progress towards to center, I think of all those who are counting on me, all those who cheer for me in their own way, and of course my family. If everything goes right, I can play a key role in furthering their amibitions today. The ground is rough. I must consider my moves as I approach. One false step and I will face a great fall. One, two, three steps, slowly but steady, I follow the path that has been laid out for me. As I reach the end, I feel all around me, allowing my senses to take in the surroundings. The liquid before me appears almost jewel-like. I find that as I take it, it coalesces around my mandibles and I find it easier to carry. Slowly, I continue along the densly trodden path back to my colony, back to my home and to my queen. As I leave the knot, I realize I will return some day, but when that may be is something I shall only know on that day.
The other day I started wondering about the continuing relevancy of Superman (the DC comic hero, not the Übermensch) as an American cultural icon. Historically, the character was first realized in a 1938 comic magazine immediately following the brunt of the Great Depression. He was seen as having a “strong moral compass,” and as “someone who could fight the crooked politicians and businessmen.” The character in itself is fairly generic, representing the desire for power and vanity typical of the male sex. The genre is paralleled with great monetary effect by a focus on the ‘shounen’ demographic in the Japanese anime and manga industry:
So, it appears that the government is going to shut down tomorrow. Apparently, the powers that be have decided they can’t come to an agreement on how to fund the government for the rest of the year.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that not everyone involved with this situation has thought it through. In the end, life must go on and this country must move forward. However, the pending process seems a bit counter-intuitive as eventually someone will have to back down and compromise. Obviously, we’d save a whole lot of time and money if they just did it now instead of two weeks from now.
My head hurts. Today marks the first time in a long time that I’ve had a migraine with visual aura. Just my luck, I suppose—another in a long line of gifts from my parents. There isn’t a lot you can do in this situation to alleviate the pain other than sleep. I guess there’s probably some medication, or even some spiritual meditation that I could do, but I’m a bit too ignorant for those. I’m also fairly anti-medication unless you absolutely need it. So, what do I choose to do instead? Write. Yup, that’s correct. I choose to write when my head feels like I’ve been listening to loud music all day. Though, I suppose I can’t blame it all on my parents. They say that stress can cause all sorts of problems like migraines and headaches. Well that’s a relief; perhaps I’m not actually defective. If you just figured out via implication that I’m under a bit of stress, then two points for you.
Well, it turns out that Feb. 11 was the big day.
After about 18 days of protests, they finally got what they wanted. Mubarak has stepped down, and given control of the country to the “supreme military council”. However, I find it interesting to note how the regime has acted as we got to this point. What follows below is strictly my own recall of the events as they unfolded over the past two weeks. I want to write my thoughts here so that I can remember them for the future.
I’ve been watching fairly intently the recent protests in Egypt. It seemed (for me) that the earlier uprising in Tunisia was out of the blue. Granted, I don’t exactly pay very close attention to domestic issues inside other countries…
Regardless, I find revolution to be an interesting topic. Given that the U.S. was borne from revolution, its citizens tend to take an extreme interest in similar events around the world. We all decry autocratic regimes and call for revolt at the first sounds of corruption or grievance, and then love to point out conspiracies by those in power at the first sounds of revolution. It’s all great fun.
After watching Obama’s SOTU, I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about regulation. Specifically, I wanted to point out to him that I can understand the argument that regulations can be bad in certain cases.
One of the problems is that regulation is slow to change. It’s meant specifically to handle one set of problems. During the evolution of any system, the regulation continues to only solve that one problem. The only way to fix this is to update the regulation. Here is where it got a bit interesting. I compared writing regulation to writing software.
I might as well pose this question, as it has been on my mind for a while now. Sure, the answer is not necessarily cut and dry. However, there are definitely specific characteristics which could be considered necessary.
Of course, we’ve studied ad infinitum governmental aspects. Countries run by monarchies and despots don’t typically last forever, as our history has shown. Tentatively, it appears that we’re on to something with this (actually age-old) concept of democracy. This aside, however, I come to the real purpose for this post, and that is …
Humility. Some say that it is necessary for enlightenment. I wonder though; many people in this world live very one dimensional lives. They go to work, do their jobs, come home, take care of their children, and repeat the next day. They don’t have any money to live out their dreams. Better yet, they may have in fact belonged to families where superfluous thought wasn’t encouraged.
I don’t necessarily see the acquisition of humility in our society encouraged, but I wonder if it would really even make a difference if it was. I think that the need arises when people undergo some forms of mental exercise which benefit from its presence. We always forget though, that “normal” in our world usually involves leading fairly boring lives, where half of it is spent suffering, and the other half trying to make it better.
A homeless man appears with a very interesting skill. He becomes popular on the web, and his story drives companies to try to recruit him. He claims he has been sober for two years. Two weeks after his rise to fame, and employment by some known organizations, he admits to drinking and goes to rehab.
This makes the people who spoke for him, and were inspired about his story, look weak and naive. It definitely hurts the image of the products he promoted.
I have found that I can sort out my thoughts better if I place them in written format. It is so easy to convey incorrect or mistaken thoughts when using the spoken word. I will use this online journal to state my current thoughts.