Not moving, but expanding

As you may have noticed, this blog got off to a slow start, and then capped it off by falling by the wayside. This is because a) I'm not working as hard as I could to rewrite my novel; b) I have the courage of a chicken and I'm perhaps afraid that if my friends read my work they would not love it as I do. And c)no, that about sums it up. So...someday, I hope, I will finish this story. Other than in my head, that is. In the meantime, it is off to exciting new pastures for me. My new blog will be about the other thing I do, and far more often, than writing: reading. I invite you all to come and check it out at http://tomorrowannie.blogspot.com. There will be awesome book reviews, book discussion, and maybe even book giveaways, hosted by me. I look forward to seeing you. And as for this blog - I'll be back. Leave the light on for me.

The Inscrutability of the Internet

Apparently, the last reader who visited was referred from teeth-whitening.com. Huh? Sorry guys, I have no awesome tricks for whitening your teeth. Isn't eating lots of strawberries supposed to help? I read that somewhere. I will post more later, but in the meantime, had to take a few minutes to wish you all sparkling smiles and minty fresh breath.

Explanation

Not sure if I will stay awake long enough to post story tonight - the charm of posting only by iPhone is beginning to wear thin. But I hate to let the day go by without posting anything, so I thought I'd explain the name. So here goes: I'm a big fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Ok, that didn't actually take long. But for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, perhaps a little more explanation is in order. The human instrumentality project was the big secret goal behind the creation of the Evas (um, big robots of varying degrees of psychological stability piloted by kids - didn't say anime always makes a lot of sense, but then, many things don't, and are fun nonetheless). Eventually, instrumentality caused all the world's consciousnesses to blend into one, as the barriers between people dissolved (at least until Rei Ayanami stepped in and saved the day, but that's another story for another time). So, my calling my blog "Instrumentality Project" came out of my thinking about the Internet, and blogging in particular, as a less lethal H.I.P. Like the original, it breaks down the barriers between people and gives you a glimpse into someone else's life, someone else's head, if only for a few minutes. Besides which, I enjoy paying tribute to Evangelion, on account of its general awesomeness.

And now, because I hate to leave you kids without a bedtime story:

Quintessence, Part 4

It felt like walking under a sprinkler. All around was warm and wet, and somehow tingly. It was a shock to the system, every part of her suspended, submerged...and then it was over, and she was dry, and the field looked the same. Or almost the same. There had been a group of kids playing Frisbee by the volleyball net, about five or six of them, but they had disappeared, utterly. How much time had passed?, thought Tessa. Enough time for them to pack up and leave without her noticing? If she had been daydreaming, they could have slipped away. 12:17, said her watch. It had been 12:03 the last time she looked at it. Possible yes, but was it probable? With the noise they were making, she should have noticed their departure. And it was so still, so terribly still. Expectant.
She started to walk through the cool grass, uncertain of what lay ahead. She wanted to stay where she was, savor the moment, but she was equally eager to find out – she was through the looking glass now. What lay on the other side?
For some reason she wasn't very eager to find out. It had been an adventure up to this point. But what if this was a parallel dimension filled with purple aliens with long tentacled heads, eyeballs on the end of each spindly, slimy tentacle?
Ten minutes later, the world had failed to yield any slimy-tentacled inhabitants. In fact, it looked just the same as it had when she had sat down to eat lunch.

She got up, and walked back toward the school building, noticing as she did so the complete absence of other students. Or teachers. Or anybody. There were no cars in the parking lot. After a brief struggle, curiosity won out against fear of the unknown, and Tessa continued past the front of the school, through the empty parking lot, into the streets beyond. The town was just as empty. There were no cars, no people. The air was full of stillness. She thought about saying something like, “Hello?”, but decided that if there were people here, walking around calling out for them would make her look utterly ridiculous. So she walked. And walked. Not a soul remained. Everyone had vanished. Houses were still standing. The coffee shop message board read 'Special of the Day – Turkey Club and Chips $5.95, but there was no one to buy the turkey and no one to sell it. 'Somewhere a sign ought to swing in the breeze, or an abandoned swing in a park. Put the right post-apocalyptic movie stamp on it'. The thought almost made her smile, but it was really too eerie. What if there had been a horrible apocalypse of some kind? Was she next for a mysterious plague? But she didn't think so. Piles of dead bodies were also notably absent. Tired of running scenarios
through her mind, and no closer to an answer, she decided to take advantage of the situation as it had presented itself. She walked into the Java Hut and up to the counter. “Hello?” she called, just in case. But of course, nobody answered. Satisfied, she walked around the counter. The food was still there. Shrugging, Tessa considered the innate advantages of being the only survivor in a post-apocalyptic scenario. She stepped around the counter, wondering just how hard it would be to work the cappuccino machine.

Quintessence, Part 3

Hello again, um, me. I'm not quite sure who reads my blog at this point. I haven't told my friends it exists because it's the first time in years I've felt brave enough to publish my work, and either approbation or condemnation from strangers both feel so much safer than laying my soul bare to friends. Or notebook bare, at any rate. Sometimes it feels the same. But as a consequence, I feel a little like I'm writing a story in bottles and casting it out into the ocean. Ah, well. I hope someday this washes up on friendly shores.

I thought I'd continue the big tale today. And so we have:

Quintessence, Part 3

The house was still silent as Tessa got ready for school. She wasn't surprised by that in the least. Gavin usually slept late when he'd been up the night before composing, and Tessa knew he'd still been up when she had gone to bed at 11. He was working on a new project, and he usually lost track of time when he started something new.

Tessa packed her own lunch. Of the two of them, she was usually the responsible one -or at least the domestic one, who remembered things like the need for sleep and regular mealtimes. Luckily, he was still good about buying groceries. She put a sandwich together with some lunchmeat and cheese she found in the refrigerator, then threw in a few Oreos and an apple to round it out, pleased to see that her dad had bought Honeycrisp apples again - her favorite.

Something was different today, and Tessa couldn't put her finger on it. There was a feeling in the air that followed her all the way to school and through her classes. An expectant feeling. An aura of not-quite-realness hung over the day, as though get dream had never really dissipated, and Tessa kept looking over her shoulder or out the window, expecting - well, she didn't know what she was expecting. Something out of the ordinary. It seemed like an out-of-the-ordinary day, even as the Pledge was said, and announcements were heard, and French verbs conjugated, and geometry proofs drawn on the dusty green chalkboard, and the whole world moved inexorably in its steady pace toward lunchtime.

In English class, she stared out of the classroom window, listening with one ear to the class "discussion". Mr. Brink did his best to get 28 students to tell him what was so symbolic about Banquo's ghost, while 28 students did their best to look like they were staying awake, without making eye contact so he might think they knew the answer. Tessa's attention was drawn to a little brown bird on the windowsill. A sparrow. Not unusual - sparrows were everywhere. And yet, she could swear she'd seen him somewhere before. He was so still. Didn't those birds usually hop around a lot? It was like he was watching her too.

There was something strange about him, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. It nagged at her, at the edges of her mind. Something...The bird flew away and she started to turn back to the chalkboard, before she sat up straighter with a startled intake of breath. His eyes. The bird's eyes had been blue.


The rest of the morning was almost anticlimactic after that. Tessa wandered outside with her lunch, opting to eat alone under a sparse little tree next to the football practice field. After the odd morning, she wasn't particularly up to company today. Tessa started to bite into her sandwich then stopped, sandwich halfway to her lips. Then she remembered that people in stories always stop with the sandwich halfway to their lips and took a large bite, looking around her at the park. It was different somehow. It had started to rain, a light, misty rain, more pleasant than not, a rain like dew all around.
Tessa looked around her, not at the air exactly, but at the space in between. The oddest feeling had come over her, as if she could see it - something that lay between the raindrops – a feeling that the universe was deep, the air was deep, and time was infinitely shallow, an illusion stretched over the wholeness within. Tessa thought of eastern philosophies, of how they say everything in the world is connected, all part of the same cosmic fabric. In a moment like this it was possible to feel it, the universe as a whole, and time as an illusion, shallow river that bends and twists around, a veil through which it was possible to step. Truth lay on the other side of the raindrops, ripe for the taking. The air shimmered. Tessa stepped through.

Poetry Monday

For a change, I thought I'd post this poem. I wrote it a long while ago, but still like it, though I don't think I'm usually this disgruntled:

What 25 says to 20

Understand that to give, you get,
To get, you give.
Understand that giving is human,
And waiting makes you stronger.
Beautiful things are forged from patience.
The slow drip of water becomes the icicle reaching to the ground,
The stalactite in the hidden cave.
Nothing gold can stay... is this the truth?
Do I try to capture a golden hour in a lost youth,
Or accept that past is past?

So he asked, "How can you tell that I'm twenty?"
Well-

Twenty blames others for mistakes, for imagined slights,
And does not see the valiant struggle that led to those transgressions.
Truly, we know not what we do.
Twenty wants to be Gandhi.
But only for the colorful robe, and all the rice one can nobly pass up.
Twenty is the humanitarian who does not see that it is worth much more to sit with a present drunk over his coffee cup,
Than all the tea that one could ship to China.
In these times, a hunger strike will not change the world -
Only its opinion of you.
Twenty wants to be Jack Black, Hunter Thompson, and Gandhi all at the same time.
Twenty says he reads biographies.
He wants to follow in the footsteps of great men.

To read another's life is to study the whole world in a single being, or to miss that universe in drawing a map for your own ambition.
Twenty is ambitious. He has dreams.

When oil and automobile emissions melt the last of the polar ice caps,
When seas rise to cover the Hollywood sign,
Humanity will be nothing but an epitaph,
And no one will care
That you were once compared to Ernest Hemingway
Or that your stepfather called you a fucking fag.

What matters is here, is now,
Is the last of the light shining in through the picture window as we sit watching films,
The warmth of your hand on mine.
It is the sweet taste of the cookies we made in the kitchen.
You insisted on snickerdoodles.

Cookies matter. Conversation matters. The warm smoke of a cigarette trailing rings to heaven like an altar candle.
Life matters here
And now.
Please treat it with gentleness.

Quintessence, part 2

Here we are again - another weekend night, another scene. This is a long story, and a story that's been sorting itself out in my head for quite some time. One of these nights, I promise to tell a smaller story, one that's more complete in itself, but as this one keeps trying to coalesce properly lately, it's still very much ripe for the telling.

Quintessence, chapter 2:

Consider, for a moment, a boy, medium build, brown hair, torn black t-shirt. This boy is fourteen years old. He carries a gray backpack, which contains, at the moment, an assortment of schoolbooks (math and social studies) and a battered red notebook, occasionally used to take notes, never used to pass notes, for who would he give them to? More often it is used to make drawings, dragons and battles and complicated geometric shapes, a bit rough, but meticulously rendered in dark, heavy ballpoint pen. The boy's name is Nicholas, although no one uses it but his teacher. His mother, who never leaves that room at the top of the stairs calls him Nick, or actually, “NIIIIICK!” at the top of her lungs, usually when she wants him to bring her something, like another can of pop (she drinks Cherry Coke, always Cherry Coke, by the truckful, about a case a day – that's $25 a week. He once added it up, when he was bored in social
 studies.). The kids at school don't call him anything, because to do that you'd have to talk to him, and then the other kids would tease you, say you're his best friend or his boyfriend or something, except for the jocks, who call him “Stewie” lately, because they say he reminds them of some stupid kid on a stupid cartoon show.
    He is in the woods right now, because if he is in the woods, he will not hear his mother, and he cannot be called to get a pop, or to make some supper (usually ramen noodles and tv dinners. He doesn't want to cook, but his mom won't, and they have to eat something. It used to make her really happy when he cooked something. Five, no even three years ago she would've hugged him and said, “Nicky, you're such a big boy!” but now it's “NIIIIIICK, what's for dinner tonight?” Nothing, he'd like to say. Starve. Stop watching tv and fix yourself something, you lazy bitch. But he won't say that. Of course he won't. Because she's his mother and he loves her. Or he's supposed to. He remembers doing that once. And also there's the fact that if he said something like that, she'd probably throw something at him.
    So now he's in the woods. Watching birds. He rather likes birds. This area is full of cardinals and blue jays, and closer to home, outside his window, he can almost always see crows and sparrows. Sparrows are probably his favorite, small and unassuming, but smart. He'd swear that one he sees every day at the feeder he made in the backyard would probably talk if it got a chance. Maybe they do talk. Maybe people treat birds the way they treat him, and they talk all the time, to themselves, only no one listens. He sits and watches the birds for a few minutes, hidden in the tall grass, when he notices something deeper in the woods. It sparkles, just a little. It's probably a piece of foil. People are always throwing trash in the woods. If they don't have to see it later, they don't care what happens to it. He lays back and notices a squirrel in a tree. It's one of those stupid gray squirrels. They outnumber the red squirrels, and they won't let them
 eat the nuts or the food he puts out for them. He starts to throw rocks at it, and doesn't stop until one hits it square on the nose and it goes off to cower on an upper branch. Dumb animal.
    He starts to lay back down, when the sparkle catches his eye again. It's not a piece of foil. It's too big to be a piece of foil. It could be a mirror maybe, old shards of mirror that someone's discarded in the woods as their own personal trash heap. But it doesn't exactly look like a mirror. It glows, almost. giving the leaves around a faintly blue tinge. Curious now, he gets up and walks into the far circle of trees to have a closer look. It's a stone, a large round one about the size of a bowling ball. Underneath it looks to be a shade of grey, but it's giving off a pale blue light. It glows in the way that the underbelly of a firefly glows, only about twenty times brighter, and as he approaches it throws blue light on his hands, lighting him up like a child in a dark room sitting in front of the tv. He reaches out to touch it. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake.

Greetings and salutations

Hello to all of you fellow blog-readers, having so much time and so little to do on a Saturday night. Or a Thursday night in the middle of December, as the case may be. Time is always so fluid on the Internet, where you can read the news as it breaks, or wade forever in the shallows of 2003, as the mood strikes you and where the Archive button takes you. As I've mentioned in my description above, I plan to post fiction here - my own original fiction, probably largely unedited, because at this point in my life, it seems like the greatest problem I have with writing is the act of coaxing the stories out of my head and onto the paper - er - computer screen, and anything that helps with this process is bound to pay off sooner or later. I don't promise that these stories are good, but only that they're mine, and that sometimes to tell your own stories is the best you can hope for.

So, without further ado, a section of a much longer work I like to call Quintessence:

The sound of the bells blotted out everything else. They were tinny, and yet not incredibly so – like carousel bells. If Tessa had but known it, they were carillon bells – but she had no idea of the name, only that they sounded like memory, and like childhood. The music was coming from a large van, like an ice cream truck that had eaten a pipe organ – it had a hundred different bells inside, just visible through a sheet of glass. The little boy sat at the keyboard and played inexpertly. He had short dark hair, and was no more than four years old. His playing was better than you'd think, for that. It filled up the edges of the world in Tessa's head, til there was no room for anything else, not the bright park, or the swans swimming nearby, just the sound of the carillon. Then he LOOKED at her.

    His eyes were dark brown, but it wasn't their color that had such an impression. It was the look that he gave her – a shared secret between them. He was asking her something with those eyes, “you know it was like this,” they said. Tessa racked her brain, trying to understand what they meant. Then the bottom dropped out, as it always did, and instead of the carillon and the park, and the people, moving in and out on the fringes of the picture, she was alone with the boy. He was still giving her that searching, questioning gaze, but she looked down...
    And wished she hadn't. The bottom had dropped out of the world. There was nothing below but eternity, and it stretched on and on. Tessa had never known the meaning of the word 'void' until this moment. If you fell, you would never hit the bottom. They were standing somehow, and not falling, but she knew it wouldn't last. Maybe if she reached the boy? She could? What? Save him? Save herself? She knew she had to reach him, in any case, and reached out, but the space in between them, though less awesome, was no less un-spannable. 
    
    She woke up with a sharp intake of breath, staring at the ceiling. That wasn't the first time she'd had that particular dream, by a longshot. Probably, she had it about once every six months, and had as long as she could remember. Tessa was a reader, and lately she'd been dipping into the occasional psychology book. Dream analysis was a popular subject in those books, and she wondered, what could it all mean? Probably nothing, but you never know, do you? And it was just weird that she would continue to have the same dream, over and over again, year after year. Then there was the void. It seemed so real. It was one of those dreams that has so much substance that it's the waking that seems like an illusion. Reality was there, in the dream. She thought if she ever met the little boy, someday, that she'd know him instantly. He hadn't changed at all over the years, and he was so vivid, she half expected to meet him. Maybe it was a precognitive dream. She wasn't sure how much of that kind of stuff she believed - about the paranormal, and ESP. But she wouldn't like to rule it out, and hadn't yet stopped hoping that it would happen to her someday, something really exciting, and a boy straight out of a precognitive dream would fill the bill admirably. He seemed so real. Why shouldn't he BE real? And every day she had that dream, she gave each face she passed a second glance, half expecting that one of them would be him. 
    She thought about this now, getting up out of bed and looking out the window at the quiet street below. It was a typical suburban neighborhood, the kind that was built before the unwritten law was passed that said all the houses had to match each other, planted in rows like large, ugly mushrooms, with rooms called things like 'the great room', and an overabundance of ceiling space. This was a street of the last century, where most of the houses were probably around fifty years old. They were kept in good condition - no peeling siding, or toy-strewn yards. Tessa's own house was a forest shade of green with brown trim, a little old-fashioned, but it seemed like home to her. She'd lived there all her life, alone with her father, who composed symphonies for electronic synthesizers and instruments. Gavin Quint had achieved some measure of local fame, having once had a piece played at the Bicentennial of the state capitol building, and they lived fairly comfortably off of the proceeds from his compositions, and the lessons he taught on the side. Tessa had never known her mother, who had died in childbirth, having Tessa, a thing that was rare in the 21st century, but unfortunately still not inconceivable. Tessa hadn't minded growing up with just her father. She had fun with him, and in some ways she enjoyed being the only woman of the house, with fewer rules than many of her friends had. She and her father confided in each other – they were friends, against all conventional child-raising advice. And it had worked for them. Tessa got good grades, was well-adjusted – she had fewer friends than a lot of kids her age, mostly because she preferred her own company. But right now, she wasn't thinking about all that. She was thinking about her dream.
    The largest part of her, though, knew the dream for what it was - a dream. And not very likely to have any bearing upon her real life. She sighed as she realized this fact, and brushed away a small bird feather that was stuck to outside of the windowsill. It drifted to the ground below – about twelve feet down from her second story window, unobserved by Tessa, who had turned and was now making her way across the bedroom, but seen by another, a bystander slouching against a tree three houses down the lane. It was only a little before 7. Tessa might as well start getting ready for school. The young man in the black leather aviator jacket watched her window for a while, smoking and blowing rings that drifted in neat little Cheerio o's up toward the treetops. When she didn't return, he stubbed out his cigarette and began to walk down the street, in between the trees lining the sidewalk. If anyone had been observing him, they would have noticed his disappearance about ten steps onward. But the street was silent at this hour, and Sparrow went entirely unobserved.