inreaction

This is all I’ve typed so far, more to come as the week progresses. Critiques appreciated. Are the characters dynamic? Does the voice come through? Is it ambiguous what the narrator knows / feels (I hope so)? UPDATED BELOW with parts III – V

Guy’s Life

I.

Guy’s body is growing old. Each day he wakes up, pours coarsely ground Italian roast into his one-cup French press, almost scalding himself as he pours the boiling water from the kettle over the grinds. ‘Just off the boil.’ What does that even mean?

He’s out the door now, heading on his Schwinn to the Los Angeles University Undergraduate Library. From 10:00 to 4:45 (the terms of his schedule – an hour later than the students and fifteen minutes less than even the insane boss – are a note of great pride fo Guy) he sits behind a slightly outdated white iMac and does as little as possible.

But as he maneuvers his mornings and days, his body grows increasingly fatigued. His wrist cracks audible as he tilts the morning’s whistling kettle. His back clenches as he leans over the bike, knees harmonizing with each jarring gearshift. I really need a car, each morning as he throws one hip over the ball-bashing seat.

So Guy – a symphony of discomforts at just 44 –sits at his white Mac and drifts from one manufacturer to another. Ford? Not what it used to be. Kia? Never buy Korean.

He has been pooling his library paychecks for 12 years now, and though his TV set him back, he is ready to pull the trigger.

But he can’t. Like a young man eyeing the object of his clandestine affection, he approaches the very idea of owning a with such a sense of intimidation that it is unclear if he will ever feel the ownership that a new automobile’s mere aroma imparts upon its proud driver.

The late 70’s Schwinn was not so bad. Biking was, after all, making quite a hipster return to LA’s streets. But its steel frame is too much for Guy. Last week, he was crossing Wilshire when a shiny black BMW decided it needed to make a right before Guy’s red rocket could pass (this happens in many places – Santa Monica’s behemoth parking lot exits become honker’s havens at the first sight of delay). Guy tried to turn to the right as the Bavarian beauty cut him off. The remaining forward momentum he had built up did not yield, and he was thrust into the car as the bike’s chain tore. The driver kept going on its busy path, leaving a humiliated and scratched Guy to hitch a ride from a Korean LAU student. Read the rest of this entry »

going to be typing up the five chapters i’ve written thus far on the life of guy.

new story idea!

guy, who is not french, is on a search for…perhaps a new car.

but…everyone he comes into contact with is on an epic quest. morty (mortimer) is searching for his long-lost biological father. sophie (sophia) is trying to be the first in her family to graduate from high school or college. and leah is attempting to conceive a child. tentatively, morty is a car salesman. sophie is a co-worker of guy’s, and leah is a real estate agent.

all the action takes place in los angeles.

let’s try this all summer long.

Perhaps the weaver of her fates could not think of a clever name for her, for she was onomastically ungifted. A sort of fuzziness plagued her vision when she thought of her name, so instead she thought of her grandfather’s. Mobius. A fine name, a fine German. Her mother’s dad’s dad had an affinity for Mobius, as in August Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868), the German mathematician most associated with the idea of a one-sided surface (as though surfaces did not have two sides, like stories). Regardless, her grandfather was similarly one-sided: he was enigmatic at all times.

When he died she was not really sure what else to do. It struck her that a temporal appreciation of familial comforts was certainly ineffectual – she needed something more. It then occurred to her that the generations must continue, string like, twisting through time on the heels of tradition and family and Culture. So she went to his house.

The home was to be cleared out that afternoon but she did not really think much of this plan. To her, Mobius would always be this place. She would come here and hear her grandfather’s voice when she was young, though she never really understood what he said – his thick Bavarian tones oppressing her American, childish ears with their heaviness. She was always tired, but he would give her push-pops.

The first place she went was his closet, where she came upon a brown corduroy coat with the elbow patches still intact (brown suede). It was clunky, but with great effort she lost herself in it. Her hands parely passed the sewn on ovals, but she was Mobius and that was all she knew. Slid her feet into worn slippers, walked to the bedroom. Through the light blue sheets she stumbled, white pillows seemingly ominous – turned grey through the years. She felt wetness on her hair, and went damp to the study.

Mobius’s closet of a study was not the Holmesian vision of wall to wall bookcases with leatherbound volumes. There was leather, but only on the handle of a stained iron letter opener and on the covers of thin notebooks. She opened one. The year was 68. She read Mobius’s script as though it was hers, the jacket still obtuse on her frame. She wanted to get inside of the text and be read by him – she despaired her ignorance of his interpretation; why did he underline here – what causal justification for this bracketing? this star? Mobius was awake now, and she decided the new energy should not be wasted.

She felt less fuzzy when she put the pad back, as though the roundness of his cursive reppelled her cursed focus back into sharp. Perhaps tonight she would use his toothbrush.

once i wrote: i have floundered around playing time’s jester for a company of fools. i have been foolish enough to interpret little–fleeting–gestures of kindness as earmarks of affection. what bothers me is that i always feel as though the only way to reach people is to engage their insecurities. love the ignorant. a world of ignorants would not make us scream for understanding a world of unsight would have no blindness. a world of callousness would know no brokenness. a paper being torn into two seems so simple until you realize that this simple sound emitted as minimal effort halves an inconsequential entity and doubles your assets have frayed edges that show an infinite number of separate incidents occuring at once.

also: this is nothing but callous and ridiculous flattery but flattery for one as you is understatement at all times

worst of all: tonight tore at every frame – my throat is warm with blood scratched out of screams, my eyes sting from not crying, and my head has been deafened by the current silence as my pen taps morse code messages to no one who reads. and too: i find myself feeling as though i’ve just jumped off of a building–and frozen. i feel the anticipation and that first moment of sickening fear but i feel it for weeks; there are no tears, no screams, no breakdowns, but i wonder if this instantaneous yet infinite knowledge of impending, present, and passing hurt is worse than the pain i see others display. perhaps these words are best kept between these lines but truth is like the wick in the candle; you won’t be able to find it until you’ve burned everything around it.

2006 was fun.