digging or the hole story

[[Write a Q & A between you and your inner voice.]]

Q

What are you doing down there?

A

Huh? Oh I’m digging a hole. Don’t fall in.

Q

I don’t intend to. But why?

A

Because I don’t want you to get hurt!

Q

Thanks, but why the hole?

A

Well that’s a secret. Pah! I can’t believe you’d ask such a dingus question.

ALL titter.

A

I’ll just say, I hope everyone will fit. 

Q

In the hole?

ALL

It’s a secret secret! 
They have to fall in! Us too!

A

G D it y’all. 

ALL

It’s part of the show! 
What a show!

Q

What’s a show? 

A sighs deeply and rests their forehead on the end of the shovel.

ALL

We fly the kite and you can’t help but be dragged along and you laugh and then you fall in the hole and then we all laugh together in the hole.

A removes gloves and lets them drop to the dirt.

Q

Kite? 

ALL

YES we ride on the line like ribbons! 

A

You most certainly do not! Have you ever even seen a kite with ribbons?!

Q

Well, sure, a kite with ribbons!

A

Really?? Or are you just imagining a drawing?

Q is stumped. ALL shuffle their tiny feet and look at the ground from their various perches in and around the hole. At least one is sitting in a tree, gnawing on the same branch they’re sat on. Someone is drawing in the dirt, a picture of a kite with ribbons on the tail.

A

See?? I can’t fly the kite with ALL of you AND the whole audience! 

Q

Audience? 

A scrunches up their face in frustration.

A

Crumbs, I've done it now! 

(to ALL) 

See what you made me do???

ALL

We’re sorry, we’re sorry. We love you, We love, We you, We did together, Sorry. 

A collapses with a thud and sighs even deeper than before. ALL cautiously approach. A rubs their hands over their face, smearing dirt everywhere. It’s unclear whether this is an accident. Meanwhile ALL climb onto A’s lap, shoulders, and head. They sort of soften into each other.

A

It happens every time. I never get that far before they mess it up. (whispering) I know, I know, you don’t mean to.

Q

Can’t they all stay with you, like they are now?

A looks bewildered and miserable.

Q

Instead of on the kite’s tail, I mean. If that’s the trouble. 

A

Like, let them come along when I fly the kite? But the audience would see them.

Q

Nah, they’ll be looking at the kite– 

ALL TOGETHER 

And then they fall in the hole! 

ALL applaud and practice falling into the hole. 

A

Well! This ditch isn’t gonna dig itself you know! 

Q picks up the discarded shovel and gets to it. ALL gather sticks and stuff themselves into the work gloves to carry on with digging. A gazes at them all bemusedly, knowing they’ll never be rid of each other.

A

Might as well let everyone play.

cut scene

For today's prompt, try writing something that elevates the absurd to the obscenely absurd (remember the infant on the chopping block from the lecture).



“So she's on the rope ladder, being lifted up into the spaceship by her crew, and remember this comes after she leaves the sinking clinic in the swamp and she’s walking around planet Chattanooga noticing all the little fuckin weird aliens and they’re singing along with her, yeah the one about cycles of life, yada yada yada. So she's hanging on the ladder, swaying in the wind, what if she actually DOES fulfill the prophecy of blood rains? Do you see what I'm getting at here? The captain’s just had a bortion.. she's in the air... what if we just have some, you know, some fetal tissue or whatever land on somebody's face, like the cult leader or whoever, whoever's watching her take off? Eh?”


I crack myself up sometimes. I convinced the team this was a great idea, real comedic genius this one. Unfortunately I already got rid of the stuff from last time. Well of course I did, I didn't think I needed it anymore! But that's the clown gods for ya. And they already got me good, considering how I'm directing a movie about a spaceship captain getting a bortion, and then I'm a space movie captain getting a bortion. What are the odds!


But to hell with it, if we need a fresh bucket-o-blood, lemme see, if I time it good, I get gut-bugged in a couple months and go in for round two, I mean let's be real, it's all about authenticity, am I right? Once we've finished the alien puppets and tinfoiled the cockpit set in Brett's garage, then I'll get serious about getting busy. Look we only get one shot, we better do it RIGHT!


“So the guts fall out of the sky, land on Jesse’s face, and what if, stick with me here, what if he eats it! Eh?”

new edits of these old awful things

 [[here are two pieces i wrote several years ago, condensed from their original length.  i thought i might be able to combine them somehow but i haven't been able to work that out. maybe connect them with some statistics or more of a big-picture view somehow? any insight about that would be great. and even though this writing is old, it still feels vulnerable and i've had to work myself up to feeling like it's worth sharing and not just emo navelgazing journals. so really any feedback is appreciated!  content warning: substance use + nonconsensual sex]]

shapes that pass in the night

we drank half a 30 rack and smoked at least a half pack between the late liquor store walk and the sun coming up.

 

when we sat on the bench where we'd painted the bedroom trim, i was wallowing and you said you wanted to help, held me, till your lips pressed my mouth free of words.

 

(in what moment did this become inevitable? this last beer, or the first? meeting your gaze in the warehouse kitchen? your drunk flirting, the night you don't remember?)

 

this night too is only pieces: chainsmoking and natty bo in my unfinished room, top floor of middle house, perched on the roof to watch dawn creep over the highway, wearing just jeans and a hoodie. i don't know how i lost my shirt.

 

we were too many beers in to be doing what we did. we crashed to the mattress tangled kissing and i fell into a dream: walking to a job interview at the neighborhood grocery. to apply i had to get fingered. 

 

your hard soft body on mine, the sweetness of skin on skin, how we ache for this dance. suddenly your soft hard cock inside. if i wanted it, i hadn't said so, i wasn't ready and no protection. (you're lovely but i don't want your babies or infections.) what stops me from stopping you? caught in old patterns–drunken jumbles, wanting without understanding, not safe enough to speak.

 

they have said: cmon. please. you're nothing special. just hold still. shhh.

and they have said nothing as they put themselves inside me.

and they have said how much they missed me, how they love my squishy softness, i'm not like the other girls, i'm good enough, i deserve it.

 

and i’m disgusted with myself but i want and i want and i want to break myself apart and unlearn all the untruths they pressed upon me.

---

sometimes i think i ought to charge

lately, everywhere i go, all these men's eyes.

at east wind, there's a male majority, and the closest bar is 20 miles away. commies in the ozarks get lonely too. from out of the autumn night rain, i shuffled into the cramped sunnyside commons, bumbling with my bags and beer and too many coats, sloppy smiling, and i became meat. the freshest sort, from one or two communes over, but as yet unclaimed. a dozen people crammed in this smoky room, and i felt them mentally undress me, i saw them puff up against each other for a piece. but it was so far under the surface that maybe i'm the only one who saw, because they were really all so kind, not creepy at all, just starving.

could i blame them?

i don't know what to do with men's interest in me. i guess i'm a little flattered but mostly confused by it. they all like my dimpled smile, they like that i “think” and it's cute that i'm awkward, they always like it when i'm nervous.

do you think your presence caused this? your power?

my confusion takes the lead in the dance of the flirt. i don’t understand what’s happening, i thought we were friends. i didn't expect him to take it there.

how did i end up again against some him?

his room is its own circular structure, right by the dribbling creek, falling down, half whole, mysterious, broken. is this how you saw me? how did you see me at all?

i will entertain the conversation, i will drink his dandelion wine. i'm a sucker for the bottom of the barrel, let me keep going till i find it. finally i'll stop my babbling long enough for him to ask to kiss me.

thank you for asking.

for a moment everything feels sweet and giddy, almost innocent.

why not say yes? why not anything? why not see if i feel?

the first kiss is always the best. (maybe i am better nervous.)

start on the couch with our mouths until his hands start to wander, why not? he will want to move to the bed or turn out the light, why not? he will squeeze my tits like lemons, kiss suck pinch pull push hard harder hurts.

most of this will be uncomfortable.

i will go into a certain type of subspace: silent, riding, object, use me.

some things feel good but others i will just let happen.

what's the point in trying to correct his too tongued kissing, his hard hands?

what am i doing here, where have i gone?

what can i ask for that i will get?

he won't know whether i like pain or what kind. he will have already had his hands in me and will have bitten my meat until the blood vessels pop and the bruises flower up.

week 7 friday prompt

Today's prompt is adapted from a book called Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. This collection of 'tips' from assorted authors includes a chapter on revision, and though we're focusing on micro editing this week, I think John Smolens' contribution "On the Wheel: Revising the Personal Essay" fits our needs nicely.

Using the first draft of an essay (or a previous response to a prompt) you've already finished, write a second draft without going any longer than eighty percent of the number of words used in the first draft. "The intention is to provide the reader with the same experience as in the first draft, only in a more concise fashion."

He suggests eliminating modifiers, of course, and using the active vs. passive voice and also to edit one paragraph, "...distilling it until you've said the same thing in one sentence."



[[i turned in the first half of what i posted on saturday]]

hungry scene draft 2

[[Experiment with punctuation today. Not usually a fan of commas, semicolons, colons, or dashes? Find a way to make them an interesting/artistic part of a new or old piece. Comma crazy and dash happy? Find a way to remove them from your work by shortening sentence lengths or using a different tone or point of view. Let us see two versions, (one with punc. and one without or vice versa).]]




No one would diagnose “trauma.” Not at intake. Not when discharged. Maybe acknowledging it would’ve kept me there longer and they had to keep the doors revolving.

I’ll never know if my therapist lied on purpose. She said they’d let me keep my phone. My paper and pens. Zines and herbal tinctures.

Nope. My bag of goodies turned out to be full of danger. Pens could be used as weapons. I might self-harm with the staples in the zine, apparently. And they do take your shoes. The best part of the loony bin is wearing socks and pajamas all day. I couldn’t believe I got free underwear. Two pairs! Blue and pink.

I didn’t recognize my hypervigilance. One of the aids convinced me to take a shower. It would be safe. What a relief to finally be alone! I would’ve stood forever under running water. Count my veins and scars. Blue and pink.

I learned which staff members would give me pens, and which would take them away again. But I couldn’t argue back my tinctures. I’d been using them for months to regulate my mental health. St. John’s Wort and Valerian root. The alcohol base rendered them illegal. So they kept my botanicals and put me on pharmaceuticals.



When you’ve been depressed for decades, you can’t know what you look like on the other side. How it would even feel. You try SSRIs and MAOIs and the whole gauntlet, always reporting back to your doctor, “I guess they’re helping?”



This time, the little fuckers worked. Maybe too well. I hardly recognized this energetic person. The ward turned bright and hard. I used the hospital phone to quit my job. Instead of sleeping, I read YA novels and made up plays. I’d been resigned to spend the rest of my sorry life here, but now I burned for freedom.

bit from "witness" draft 2

[[Revisit a paragraph or two from a piece you are feeling good about. Search for your verbs. How many of them are state of being vs. active? Swap out as many is am are was were words with mood setting active verbs as possible. Then, go back and look at your nouns. Are there any you could make more concrete and less abstract? Lastly, search out all adjectives and adverbs. If you remove them, does the meaning of the sentence change? Usually once I edit out the static verbs and swap in the concrete nouns, the need for modifiers disappears. Please post the before and after results.]]







At the reception, Tyler's relatives unloaded gag gifts and toasts that drooped like eulogies–all past tense, they released him to a life of sin before an eternity of hellfire. We did not witness the same flame.




Honest to goodness, I couldn’t believe so many conservatives showed up, anti-vaxxers and Mormons, their love expressed as presence. Cousin Mary offers a plastic pail and shovel, with a memory of playing on the beach as kids puncutated by the unspoken, "Before you made us bury you." Before the waves engulfed the castle.




Brock's father had terrified teenage-me with his half-empty mansion, grill pit tongs, and his god's judging eyes. A rigid man, sure of his status, followed straight the path laid before him, unaware of who bent to build it. That night in the Eureka Springs Community Center, he uncoiled just slightly, the tiniest detour.

performance review

[[Yesterday we attempted the six-word memoir. Today we take on the six sentence paragraph. Here's the catch: you must not repeat any words in all of these six sentences--not even a, and, or the.

I have found that this exercise is easier when approaching it as a painter might. Find a subject to study and draw inspiration from it (a bowl of fruit, a melting mountain of snow, a nude model, etc. :).]]



Aldous, whose wide mouth wears many flavors, entrances enchants inspires with each waving sound. Falling effortless into clown, queen, prince, voice of a kiss finds its meandering way through almost-honesty, closest thing to true. See how meaning clothes her body? Intentions become actualized as gesture, squint, breath, weighted vibrations, spun song. She straddles beauty and terror; we adore this – held captive like the towered princess reaching toward mother horizon, untouchable.

I try writing about music but can’t not be floated away; you just must listen.

6 word memoir(s)

pale blistered changeling, birthmarks still itch.


come out bloom whisper worlds awake.

UNCENSORED OUTTAKES, WHICH I DID NOT POST IN CLASS BUT HERE YOU GO.

• born blistered, brown birthmarks still itch. 
  
  
  mama said i was a changeling.
  
  
  come quick, you gotta see this. 
  
  
  wake up, ghost, burn this ship. 
  
  
  fight for the labels you deserve.
  
  
  hush puppy, dirt dobber, bloom sideways. 
  
  
  crawl through mud, swell onto shore. 
  
  
  see the world worth fighting for. 
  
  
  look toward the So Much More. 
  
  
  
  
  see the affiliate link for details.
  
  
  see more through my affiliate links. 
  
  
  
  
  selling labor is hiding the clown.
  
  
  hide the clown, sell your labor. 
  
  
  
  
  money is salt to my slug. 
  
  
  a slug in a salty sea. 
  
  
  
  
  sorry, my cat did my homework. 
  
  
  well, I don't see why not!
  
  
  tickle me Elmo, end of days. 
  
  
  that rat crawled over my foot. 
  
  
  my head is a bone brick. 
  
  
  head my head a bone brick 
  
  
  
  
  love as often is safely possible. 
  
  
  out for smokes, gone for good. 
  
  
  
  
  come out, bloom, whisper worlds awake. 
  come out. bloom. whisper. worlds awake.
  come out, bloom. whisper, "worlds awake"
  come out. bloom, whisper worlds. awake!  
  
  
  
  
  
• honey's ideas
  

  - born on a Friday! what's today? 

  - you never do know, do you? 

  - who packed all this bean dip? 

  - join me round these flickering sticks

  - feed each other, eat each other. 

Temporary Resistance to Abnormal State

 [[Okay I dug up this old thing from May 2020, about 8 weeks into COVID lockdown. It is a ramble that I lost the reigns on and never finished but I thought it might be informative to get feedback on a piece that is 1) an extremely rough draft and 2) a different style from my other submissions. I never really figured out who the audience was supposed to be, so sometimes I use gamer speak and sometimes I translate. Could be fun to write a version with a glossary. But also this little guy prob lost all relevance a long time ago and has no home in this world anymore, so maybe this is just a death rattle. But it's all I've got this week so... read at your own risk / enjoy!]]

TEMPORARY RESISTANCE TO ABNORMAL STATE

In battle, character is temporarily immune to all status effects (ex. poison, slow, blindness, silence, confusion, etc.)

 

CONFESSION: Other than Super Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country series, I had absolutely zero interest in video games until my partner and I started living together a year and a half ago. At first my interests were incredibly specific -- I want good dialogue and interesting characters, I want my choices to have an impact on the story, and I don't want to feel like I am battling a machine hellbent on making me seasick as I drunk-walk through a 3D nightmare world. We started with narrative driven, queer or queer-adjacent, indie titles like Gone Home, 2064, and Life is Strange. Night in the Woods, be still my heart, rekindled my love of "JUMPING ACROSS THE SCREEN!" (otherwise known as a side-scrolling platformer) and meanwhile held my queer, adult-adjacent attention with clever, poignant storytelling and all the NPC dialogue a pal could ask for. 

 

HOWEVER. 

That jumpy bug bit me. The whole deal bit me. Sick in bed after a bizarre fainting episode last year, I played my first RPGa cloyingly sweet (the whole thing was written in RHYMING POETRY help me) E-for-Everyone game called Child of Light. At first I was confounded by the turn-based battle sequences, which produced in me an enormous amount of stress, until my honey finally convinced me that I could consider about my choices rather than my THE WORLD WILL ALL EXPLODE IF I AM NOT MASHING BUTTONS approach. The bug bit me bigger when I won the final battle (the titular character vs. a shapeshifting DRAGON) with next to no health and only one ally still standing by the end, ENTIRELY DISMANTLING my honey's expectations. "This doesn't look good, Baba. You might want to...." Of course they gave me some reasonable advice, of which I took no notice, and rather ploughed ahead on my course to TOTAL VICTORY. 

The bug had won. I was got.

Still, until recently, I felt like I had pretty specific tastes for what would actually engage my interest enough to play. Certainly I can't handle any kind of blatant racism or sexism, let alone cis-heteronormativity, and I couldn't care less about a gun or a punch. In fact, any kind of violence would make my skin crawl, and the one time I tried to play a "horror" game, I shrieked and threw the controller across the room... So that was never going to happen again. 

 

HOWEVER. 

 

You may recall that currently we, all of humanity, are attempting to survive a global shutdown due to a deadly virus, of which we know next to nothing about, full stop. Like I suspect you might be, I am fully boxed up, a sardine in its tin, stewing in its juices and growing ever stinkier. At the start of this thing, I was full of plans to "make the most of it." Or even, to attempt my flailing, artist-adjacent version of "helping." Ho ho wouldn't it be fun to post a video to the instant internet every day. Oh ho ho no it would not you could not be more wrong. 

 

So we are gonna play games. We even splurged on a second controller (aka PS4 DualShock aka that buttons thing) and purchased some games from a suspiciously timed "spring!" sale. We are gonna play some games and listen to some new music and hear some people talk on podcasts and watch some shows and try to make the best of it, and maybe even do some productive stuff with the time, why not. 

 

And then I come in there and honey says "Hey honey I downloaded a couple new games and thought you might like to check them out, and this one is free and probably bad lol but w/e we can check it out or not, it's w/e we can also just delete it, but idk, what do you wanna play honey?" I'm looking at it–you know, the menu picture, basically a VHS box cover, and it's some blonde anime lady in an armor shirt and idk i'm like, let's just see, let's just get it overwith now and then we can move onto the next one, i am genuinely curious about this multitude of new games we have to try out!

 

The beginning is not promising. Is this a phone game? we think aloud to each other. Ha look at these cheap graphics. What is this long narrated “world building” history lesson at the start, that is our least favorite thing in all of storytelling. Now I have to pick what "race" I want to be? Orc, obviously, because obviously all I want to be is someone who gets to see a giant woman, a giant woman. And so it starts with fighting and it's boring and bad but for some reason we are sticking it out because we want to see what the gameplay is like.

 

I don't know about y'all, but this is how it went for me–over a week or two, my normals were disappeared one by one, roughly in this order: public-facing job, seeing friends, seeing family, gigging job, regular check, leaving the house at all, wearing anything other than pajamas, not turning very nearly fully feral. (I mean, who wasn't at least slightly excited for that part?)

 

It's not like it came out of nowhere. I had gotten back in the habit of listening to Democracy Now! every day, which always feels very smart and politically important at first, but after awhile ends up making me feel helpless and small.

 

My anxiety was becoming unbearable. Even though I was no longer going to work, I could not shake the feeling of being constantly at risk. Every time I left the house, to walk a dog for a client, or pick up prescriptions, I spiraled into a sea of unshakeable panic. Shallow breath, tight chest, prickly skin, out of body experience of daily living. I felt like I couldn't leave the house anymore at all, not in a safe way. I was afraid for myself, but I was more afraid for everyone else–what if I've already got the bug, and I'm bringing it wherever I go? There were fewer and fewer reasons to leave the house. 

 

I never expected this outcome. I'm fully addicted to a real dumb MMORPG. What started out as a 5-minute "okay let's see what it is, have a laugh, and never think about it again" joke has turned into an all day every day habit. And I have no intention of stopping. In normal circumstances, this would be a problem for me. Then again, in normal circumstances, this wouldn't happen. But in this reality, this timeline, Caravan Stories is the only thing staving off a constant state of panic and anxiety, and I will thank the gods that I am lucky enough to have access to such silliness in my increasingly tiny world. (And increasingly embiggening on-screen world!)