Ancient Ice: my bad side excerpt

I was cold and afraid. It was too big or I was. I leaned forward to get my sense back and banged my cast against the gunwale. IMG_3389The sound echoed back, low, like the closing of a door, and the white wall went out of focus and I blinked to make it clear and it was broken, the spires gone, what looked so small and distant, and dissolved like a monster into the water, splintering in a massive rush, dissolved like snow. Part of the other side slipped off too and another shelf, each part vanishing into the water. IMG_3391It spat back up in a lurch of bright blue and ice, rushing out of the darkness right at us. My head was empty, my hands balled tight. Ray ran in a short heavy stride to the cabin.

“Take that, b’ys.” Charlie slid the oars to Fitz and Tommy, and they dug them through the water, hardly moving the boat. Another section of the iceberg rose up out of the water, dripping, and collapsed. cropped-IMG_3380.jpgThe vibration of it came up through the water into the boat’s floorboards, a humming, hollow and deep, a pure force, and then a rising in the water, a vast dark thing, coming toward the boat. Ray couldn’t get the boat to start, and as much as everyone was doing, scrambling and pushing and turning, banging, no one spoke. IMG_3127The silence was louder as the wave rolled up to the bow, Apollo and I there, and pulled us up, higher, steadily to the top and back down again. The second wave was bigger. We couldn’t see what was left of the iceberg now, everything gone, and I was almost panicked, thinking it was too high and we would go under. We rose up, the stern coming up past us, shards of ice at the bottom of the next wave. I stepped back with it, thinking it was easy now, and lost my balance as the third wave came, almost as big, and my foot was sliding out and I was fine with that, and would have hit my head against the bench if Fitz hadn’t caught my arm and put me back on the bench. cropped-IMG_3221.jpg“That’s 10,000 years old,” he said. “It was snowing 10,000 years back and then it got all packed and floated down here. 10,000 years of history that is, before the Vikings, before the Romans, before the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Incas, the Mayans, everybody. People had just got out of the caves and begun the farming then.”

my bad side: Manhattan by boat

The boat circled below the island with the sun setting over the broken horizon, the clouds going after it, pulling each other together in the red and blue. Manhattan skyline (6)There was a pool with bright blue chlorinated water like in Florida, so square and odd in the back of the boat, the river water gushing past. I sat in the corner looking at Crystal with her back to everyone, looking at the city, her elbows poking out, under the 59th Street Bridge and looking up at the dark mass, the dirt and cables, the shadows of the cars and trucks, and sank into how almost safe and eerie it was.Phone 200 Lisa was in the pool and singing to Chumbawamba, delighted in herself, drinking shots, and laughing convulsively, doubling over and then trying to get out of the pool and throwing up and almost going over, and then crying, Ian holding her and then their mother, and it was sad and worse how separated I was from it and didn’t care. OooooI watched the boat turning the corner, going into the Harlem River and seeing the city, the steep hill up into the Harlem, how green and wild it looked, and then the Bronx on the other side, flat dull and grey, highways and warehouses and nothing else and then Yankee Stadium, as dull and grey as everything else.

Another “Bad Side” film

I have written the first draft of a second Bad Side script. It follows Dee on the train with Apollo north out of the city.

The train inches past the soot and cables, the decrepit buildings, twisted rust jutting out, bottles and shards, an animal skull on an electrical box, and then is on a bridge. DEE wraps her hand, stiff and fat, in a sweatshirt. The conductor approaches, his hat pushed forward; he is older with a thin face and empty eyes.

 CONDUCTOR: Ticket?conductorDEE: I gave it to the other guy, the one before you.

CONDUCTOR (Looking at Dee’s cleavage): Where’s your receipt?cleavageDEE: I must have thrown it away.

CONDUCTOR: Which is it? You threw it away or you gave it to the other guy?

DEE pulls her dress out from her legs. There is a stain on the waist. It looks like blood.

 DEE: I didn’t think I needed it.

CONDUCTOR: Where are you going?

DEE: Providence.

CONDUCTOR: Got on at Penn? (He looks down the aisle and then back at DEE) I have to write you up,

DEE: What does that mean?

CONDUCTOR (Opening his ticket book): What’s your name?TicketDEE (Pulling a hoodie from her bag): Crystal Sinclair.

There is a long pause as CONDUCTOR writes out the slip and then hands it to DEE.

 CONDUCTOR: You mail it back to the address at the bottom.

DEE: Mail it?

CONDUCTOR: The fine.

DEE: Can I get a water from you?

CONDUCTOR (Leaving): The cart will be through.The snack cart & woman on the train.

Nothing

I am nothing, a shadow. Less than that. I am negative, never here. There was moment, a thought, and it is gone, badly spent. There is only hollowness. It is bad. I think it is better to not have been.  I cannot move. I cannot speak. I sit and wait. And think about nothing.

Travels of an Arctic Hare, Part Three: Dling Makes Haste

Dling wanted to stretch out his legs, but he didn’t. He held himself tight. He was going to stay just as he was until he sorted everything out in his head. IMAG2902He remembered his search for Gigo. He had climbed up to Gigo’s special place for watching the ice fall but he wasn’t there. Dling climbed higher and sideways and then down again. That was when he saw the gray-tinged paw sticking out from the ice. IMAG2882 Gigo had been crushed. Dling rushed down to tell the others and was shocked to see an eagle towering over Piff. Dling was about to kick rocks at it when he saw that Piff was feeding the bird with the red berries and sticky branches. And then Stub was behind him, kicking him down. This was where it became very difficult to remember. Dling jumped up the rocks. Stub punched his paws at him and Kijo was there too, her eyes red and crazy. The bird whirled up, swinging its great wings around and tore straight at Dling. A tame golden eagle swoops down on a hare during a traditional hunting contest near the town of KarkaralinskDling’s paws barely touched the rocks and ice as the claws caught his ears and shoulder and spun him upside down and down in fluffy, bumpy ball. hare rollingHe went around and around until he crashed into this place and stayed still, hunched and quiet. The shadows swirled over his head and the thumping of feet thundered all around, and then it was quiet. And he waited. IMG_3398He finally stretched out his legs and stood up on his hind legs. There was no one. No bird or hare to be seen. And the Great Water was just down below, an iceberg too. IMAG2865He went down to that and waited for the water to carry him off to a better place.

Travels of an Arctic Hare, Part Two: Not As it Seems

Dling didn’t sleep. IMAG2902There was a moment when he thought he might but his leg was tight and he had to stretch it out. And then it was the other one. And there was something wrong with his stomach. There was the constant light too. It seemed to get darker for a moment, but that was only a cloud. IMG_3190There was no dark in this land. He liked the idea of that, but he couldn’t sleep. He just couldn’t. He thought back to Piff. She had seemed kind. But there was something else about how she was always in the same place, in her corner, somehow scared, staring out, distant. Their first session of wiggling had went well. The little ones liked it. Stub and Kijo seemed happy. They shared their red berries with Dling and wiggled their noses crazily. The next session didn’t go as well. Kijo didn’t like Dling’s wiggling any more. She thought it wasn’t wiggling at all. She called it twitching. Stub had lost interest in wiggling and played with a young hare’s ears instead, who sighed nervously at being touched like that. arctic_hare5Piff stayed in her corner. The next session was worse. Dling showed his nose wiggling to a young hare near Kigo, who then stamped her foot and jumped away. Piff sat in her corner, and Stub was gone. Dling jumped up the moraine and found Gigo looking over the glacier. Dling tried to explain his concerns to Gigo, but Gigo only wiggled his nose. He loved his view of the glacier and waited for a piece of ice to fall off. IMG_3389He was very happy when he did that. Dling told him about Piff and Kijo, and most of all Stub, but Gigo only watched the glacier, waiting for another piece to fall. Dling returned to find Piff, Kijo and Stub in a tight huddle. They broke apart, bits of sticky red flowers falling from their mouths. Piff’s paws shook badly as she explained that Dlng’s wiggling wasn’t wiggling but twitching and couldn’t be taught anymore. The little ones came to Dling the next day and asked to be taught how to wiggle their noses, which he did. And that’s when everything went very bad. Kijo bit him and Stub stomped on his tail. arctic-hares-fightingAnd Piff watched from her corner. Dling knew that he should leave but he liked the young ones. He decided to visit Gigo one more time.

The Fantasy of Reality

Luis Bunuel wrote in his autobiography My Last Sigh, “Our imagination, and our dreams, are forever invading our memories; and since we are all apt to believe in the reality of our fantasies, we end up transforming our lies into truths.” The Fantasy of RealityGreenlandic explorer Knud Rasmussen reflected in his journals from the Fifth Thule Expedition, “Here on this lonely spit of land, weary men had toiled along the last stage of their mortal journey. Their tracks are not effaced, as long as others live to follow and carry them farther; their work lives as long as any region of the globe remains for men to find and conquer.” The Fantasy of Reality Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote in The Little Prince, “A geographer is too important to go wandering about. He never leaves his study. But he receives the explorers there. He questions them, and he writes down what they remember. And if the memories of one of the explorers seems interesting to him, then the geographer conducts an inquiry into that explorer’s moral character.”  The Fantasy of RealityAnd finally Italo Svevo offered these musings from Zeno’s Conscience: “Simply, I believed I had made an important scientific discovery. I thought I had been called upon to complete the whole theory of psychological colors. My predecessors, Goethe and Schopenhauer, had never imagined what could have been achieved by deftly handling complementary colors.” The Fantasy of Reality“I should say that I spent my time sprawled on the sofa opposite my study window, from which I had a view of a stretch of sea and horizon.”

Newton’s Laws of Writing

1. A writer at rest remains at rest and a writer in motion continues to write at a constant velocity until the force of the idea is zero. Meditate2. An idea gives the writer force in the direction of the story arc and has magnitude directly proportional to the novel’s theme. IMAG20673. Whenever a character exerts a force on another character, the latter exerts a force of equal magnitude and opposite direction on the former, effecting tension. Assembled fellows

 

June Dialogue on the E Train

 

Canal Pillar“And he was like, you’re such a dummy.” IMAG2742“Dummy? He said that?” IMAG1873“Yeah, you’re such a dummy. Get it?” IMAG2745“I can’t believe he said that.” IMAG2402“He was like, ‘Dummy’!” IMAG2746“Dummy?” IMAG1186“Exactly. Dummy.” IMAG2745“Dummy? You’re serious?” IMAG2701“Yeah, dummy! Get it?” IMAG2742“I would have kneed him in the balls.” IMAG2631“Dummy!” IMAG2745“It isn’t funny.” IMAG2740“Yes, it is.”IMAG2737

Robert Heinlein’s “Orphans of the Sky”

Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky is a most terrible book. robert-heinlein-orphans-of-the-sky

The characters are ridiculous and flat, the setting is barren while the prose are plodding, and that’s putting it nicely. On the few occasions when the scientist priests who ruled the ship under Jordan’s Captain met in full assembly they gathered in a great hall directly above the Ship’s offices on the last civilized deck.(93)

The plot elements and unimaginative prose are indeed so bad as to remind me of my own work as 12-year-old when I concocted the Secret Spitballer’s Society series and for which Mr. Bacon regularly gave me grades of “C” and lower. I only wrote two installments before abandoning ship.

To top it off, there isn’t a single woman in Orphans of the Sky, that is until the final ten pages when the heroes escape to a planet and remember the need for procreation. Hugh’s younger wife bore a fresh swelling on her lip as if someone had persuaded her with a heavy hand. (120) ku-xlargeKeep those damned women out of the way. (122)