Random Freewrite 2: Week of 4/10/11

This is part of that story I've been re-writing over and over. Some parts are becoming clearer, but this particular section feels too expositional, although (hopefully) not as melodramatic as the second draft was. I'm not sure if this is going in the final draft (that is, of the third draft) or not. I still have a lot to work on. I have a feeling this story is going to be a long-term project, but I'm really feeling it and I hope I get a complete draft done at least by Fall semester.

==========

She had tried all that she knew to try, from tactics she’d happily embraced and those she’d believed were closeted deep away when she had married woman, not man. She had spoken directly, saying, “I’m not happy here,” and spent hours with Blair roadside in silence that could be taken as admonishment or consent, but Blair had never sought to discover which. She had helped Blair search the shrine’s archives and question any passengers that spent the night if they knew the secrets of the ghost; she had withheld nothing from Blair, yet Blair had yet to notice her hand on pages turned or her voice on stories shared. She had worn gorgeous dresses—such as she had—that a year ago would have held Blair’s eyes enticed, and in anger at her want, she had spent hours wearing even less, to catch if only a single glimpse. Blair only seemed aware on nights like these, and for scant days after, on the high of a sighting. But aware only of skin and form, it seemed, having lost translation of Harlow’s voice and face.

“I am more fully a woman now than I was ever before allowed to be,” Harlow had written her sister a year and two months ago. “Tell me everything about it,” her sister had replied. “Let me live through you!” But Harlow had kept silent now for eight months, saving her sister’s continued letters in a small lock box beneath the bed, which she and Blair shared every night but barely touched and only after Blair had been satisfied elsewhere, by books or stories or ghosts in the sky. “I am more specifically a woman now than I had ever before allowed myself to be.” She kept the unsent letters in the box, where Blair would never even guess to look. Some she destroyed in the hearth as soon as she’d written them, revolted by her tears. She could not bring herself to record in ink, “I was wrong about our sex.”

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 4/10/11

(Yes, I'm still doing this. Don't ask me why. I don't know why. It's silly, and I know it's silly.)

Two Tails

an episode

(4)

(Some time later.)

Night had fallen. It was raining, too. Little more than a drizzle.

The house seemed quite tiny, with some windows glowing orange and some windows quite dark.

They could see it from where they were, on the faint slope of the schoolyard.

The Sheep sat on eir rump, resting eir aching feet. The Dog stood next to em, slightly in front. Alert. Eir tail was a stiff line curling slightly over eir back. Eir ears twitched. Eir eyes were set wide and staring, however, down at the house with the tree.

Somehow, it seemed a little wrong. Blocky and hard.

Home had called em all along, but now that they had made it there, ey couldn't find its scent.

The Sheep was very still. Slumping. Eir wool drooped over eir eyes and across eir hooves. Eir head hung low. Ey looked weary and wet.

Very quietly, the Dog sidled up to em and slid down on eir own rump. Eir hip brushed along the Sheep's shoulder, and when ey sat, ey sat on a hoof. The hoof didn't move or seem to mind. The Dog's shoulder nudged into the Sheep's side, and the Sheep bleated once, softly. A lonely sound. But the Sheep didn't move. Ey just sat there with a Dog on eir hoof and stared at the house.

The Dog knew the Sheep was hungry. Ey could hear the soft stomach noises beneath the hum of night.

Ey shifted eir weight and, leaning close, tucked eir chin across the back of the Sheep's neck. It was very soft there. And warm, down deep in the wool. The scent of grass and rain was very strong, but the scent of the Sheep was stronger. The Dog pressed eir nose in tighter against the wool.

The night air was very thick. Sounds and smells and cold wet rain. It felt too big for them. The sounds were too many, the smells too close. Ey was whining very faintly, high-pitched and helpless, as ey breathed out a sigh. It hurt when ey choked it out; it caught in eir throat, but the Dog swallowed over it. That's what Dogs do when Sheep depend on them, and ey was a very good Dog. Ey knew ey was. Ey was very well trained.

The Sheep hadn't made a sound. But something felt different. Calmer. Heavier. The Dog felt the weight against eir chest, and the press of damp, grass-stained wool against eir muzzle.

The Sheep was leaning back.

Just a little.

They were both dirty and matted. And itchy, too. Ey felt the Sheep's skin twitch deep within the wool. So ey dug eir nose in and nibbled there with gentle teeth. The Sheep's muscles jumped, then stilled as the Dog found itch after itch. Gradually, the Sheep calmed underneath the Dog's care, folding eir legs under eir chest to relax on the ground. And although the Fleas were still there, somewhere, ey seemed to become a little calmer.

So had the Dog. Ey draped emself over the Sheep, chin over back, keeping watch for an itch.

And if the Fleas decided to feed on em instead, well, the Dog was content with that.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 4/3/11

(This is the second draft of the first story I submitted for class. I didn't change the structure or point of view, but tried to clarify it just a bit, since it's second person and might be somewhat confusing. It needs a lot of work!)

ANONYMOUS 

It’s nearing five. Almost suppertime. You know by the roofed carts with roofed trays and the RNA’s with white-knit hair in buns and white-capped hands. Something smells good, something held in plastic and stainless steel. Lasagna, maybe, or country fried steak.

Outside, the sun blends out. Moon curving crescent. Sunset around the corner, sometime after supper, making autumn stretch-marks in the sky.

She’s sitting with the rest, in a chair like any other, though it’s hers, where there’s comfort. Sitting with others. Some were speaking, most were silent. Thinking. Maybe. Maybe seeing. In a teal blue sweater and pink cotton pants, and her hair brushed pretty, she sits and waits for consideration. Someone’s tied her shoes and clipped her nails but left her face untouched. She knows it, maybe. Touching her lips once now, and later, again. Maybe it hurts. Maybe she’s shy. Ducking her head, smiling shy.

“Mom?”

It takes a moment, and the RNA who likes her saying loudly, “Your daughter’s here.”

Slow take in her eyes. Slow gaining smile. Like doors that open, swinging wide.

“Oh.”

As if you’re walking close from far, walking real.

“Hi, Mom.”

You speak louder for no reason, really, but that she’s far apart. Her eyes following you, reading close. You’re speaking but she’s only saying, “Oh.” Some days, she can’t but cry. Those days are hardest, but not today. Today is laughter.

Her hand is tugged up, the RNA saying, “Come along.” She folds off the chair and holds the hand you reach for her.

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

She nods, hesitantly, but when she holds your hands, her grip is strong. You walk together, face-to-face. She watches you walk backwards holding both her hands out in front; she walks catawampus through the white-made walls, past shadow frames of paper echoes etched on stranger faces. Leaning backwards off from you, smiling shy, uncertain scuffled feet in green-laced walking shoes with her name marked in clean black lines. When you danced a little, she does, too. This game she knows. She bounces, too, and sings a buoyant chanting line over and over with smiling eyes.

For minutes however long you stroll in sidesteps and playful bobbing knees until at last you’ve gone full circle around back to her single room. She hesitates at the door, shyly smiling. You say, “It’s okay,” but it’s better out. Her eyes are speaking aloud. Some days, you’ve an answer, and some days, you don’t. Some days, it’s just better out.

   There’s no one there at the front door, as you walk outside with her. Outside to the plastic chairs, once white, on red brick and cooling floors. It’s quiet without the rain. People are leaving in ones and twos, unparking cars and blending out. You’re allowed to sit here with her, but not too long.

She’s sleepy, growing remote. She stares a while, and smiles a bit, at scattered butterflies. You wonder if she remembers, years ago, back when she could, she’d painted splendor onto simple canvas for the first time in her life, signing backwards D’s brushing displaced N’s for months before she stopped. Her journal had been a thread of prayers only God might understand. Years ago, back when she knew. Scrap papered under photographs, elapsed from mind in closet clans of keepsake boxes labeled plainly or not at all.

Of all the arts, she’d liked singing best, and with her, you sometimes sing. Where no one knows and you can be, just be between you and her. She sometimes laughs at that a little, and makes faces as you sing. You get her back, though, gentle tickles that make her start and glare. Just like your father, you. Her eyes are smiling as she glares, just like years ago, back when she knew.

Now on the porch here, on the phone—the best device you ever bought, for these moments above all other thoughts—you find Frank Sinatra, and he begins to sing. Blue Moon, he sings, in ricochets of sweet scattered sound. Blue Moon for her, the song she sang famously and wondrous well, years ago, back in her youth.

By and by, she picks it up. A little sluggishly. An echo off his canter, almost wordless and remote. She follows as she’d followed your face, latching clear and dogged onto sound, the hum of likeness in her mind, of time and place familiar. And in her pauses, she cries. Scattered. Like maybe she knows and maybe she doesn’t, that he’s gone and gone is where she’s turning. She doesn’t stop when he does, singing on a minute longer. Her eyes let go of memory last, after the fade of sound. Staring, like tracing paper faces in her mind.

   “That sounded nice, Mom.”

She glances over. She smiles. Maybe. Like maybe you’re not even there.

Some minutes pass. You don’t play him again, and she doesn’t sing. You speak of other things, a little cheery and a little forced, bringing present back from past, sifting memories back to ground that was more of here and less of then. Back to where you know and stand. Back to her right now with you.

A nurse walks in. Some family heading out: father, mother, with their children waist-high waving arms and fighting mother as she rubs their hand with cleansing gel. Wasps are sending shivers in your ear, now too close, then thankful far. She pays no mind but watches butterflies float over green, frail wisps of dappled yellow stark against discolored bush too dry and needing rain.

“Aren’t they pretty?”

“Yes,” she says.

Sometimes, it clicks.

Back in the ward, you lead her to her private room and brush her hair pretty. RNA’s dealing dinner trays to supplicants crying “Mom,” and “Wait,” and one who cries unendingly, “Someone get me out of here.” It’s suppertime. And work for you. Tomorrow, next, and day after that. These moments are too few.

   She leans in as you wash her face, cold paper cloth in hand. You leave your hand there, lingering, but when it’s gone, she’s gone, as well, back to where she’s been.

"I’ve gotta go now, Mom. I’ll be back in a minute."

You’re lying now. Maybe she knows. Maybe it works. Tomorrow, soonest. Maybe days.

She smiles a little. Sheepish. “Yes, probably,” she says. As if you’re asking an opinion, she says. Casually. You reach for that with your smile. She ricochets off your warming face and giggles some while with you. Laughter’s the same, sounding good.

Some days, it’s easy leaving. Some days, it matters less and less. These days that come less and less.

The RNA sees you. The RNA who likes her, nodding goodbye. This is when you can leave. It’s okay.

The door to her room stands open. Patchwork paper faces collage the wall. Bed is railed, ready. Blue-wrapped mattress in disposable sheaths. Rocker with a clan of bears. White stuffed tiger at window sentry. Offwhite blinds tilt catawampus. Sunset on discolored grass past the common porch. Outside, the trees pour down. Leaves bleeding out. Scrap paper.

“I wish I were the way I was," she’d said.

Years ago, back when she knew.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 4/3/11

Two Tails

an episode

(3)

[Some weeks later.]

The Sheep was hungry.

Starving, in fact.

Ey vaguely recalled previous thoughts about grass. About eating grass (or was it leaves?) instead of meat. Ey hadn't minded much, either way, but ey remembered a feeling of sympathy for Meaty Things, like the old Cow that had stared at them from across the pasture some miles back and had listlessly ignored the Dog's yappy curiosity. This patch of weeds, however, seemed quite different from what eir image of Grassy Things had been. It was quite a depressing thing, indeed, to think that this was it. Eir diet for the next… Just how long did Sheep live, anyway?

Ey didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Thankfully, ey could do neither, so ey bleated, instead. It was a lonely bleat. More lamb than ram or outraged ewe. It felt weak in eir throat, but nobody was listening, not even the Dog.

There was a daisy among the weeds, bright yellow and cheery. The Sheep knew this color meant something to em. Something happy, something that felt far away. Something that ey knew should have a face and a name, but eir brain could not make the connection. Perhaps from the time spent in a strange body. Perhaps from lack of food. Somehow, eir brain had lost its way. Despite the hunger pangs that cramped eir belly, ey did not eat the daisy. Ey looked down at it with eir slit-eyed gaze and bleated again, softly.

Another bleat answered em, loud and harsh. The Sheep instinctively scurried away off of the highway, and realized what that sound was the moment eir hooves hit the lumpy gravel of the shoulder.

Sure enough, a Car passed by seconds after ey got out of its path. And good thing ey did, for the Dog would have bowled em over had ey been standing there. Legs churning, ears back and tail flashing, the Dog looked like a rounded lump of muscle, struggling vainly to keep up with the Car. Ey was barking fiercely. The Sheep could hear em crying something about "sib" and "kill," but the bark was too hoarse, too wild, to make out the rest.

Another Car rounded the corner in the distance, headed swiftly towards them, swifter than the last. The Dog pulled up ever so slightly in eir mad run and bunched eir hind end to make ready to pounce. The Sheep grew panicked and called out eir first word in two long days: the Dog's name.

The Dog heard eir bleat, and, as Dogs do when they have abruptly become slightly Sheepish, broke down to a trot before nonchalantly heading back eir way. Ey stopped to sniff at the ground, leisurely, as if this chase and the Sheep's agitated reaction to it had all been part of some mischievous plan. Or perhaps the Dog really was sniffing at another Dog's scent on the ground. The Sheep could no longer tell what was acted and what was real.

Sheep were followers, as the Dog had long teased em, and panic was too ready to claim em now. The Sheep knew this. Ey anxiously shifted on eir hooves, glancing back between the Dog and the road behind them. There was someone else in eir brain, someone ey used to be. Someone not a Sheep. Someone who'd gone to sleep.

Ey tried very hard to think.

Very few words remained clear in eir brain, and only two that ey was certain were important to know. One was the Dog's name. The other was for something ey could no longer picture. The Dog had spoken it many times with an air of trust, and it felt, now, like a guiding post for the Sheep on their quest.

Mom.

The Sheep remembered what the Dog had said, the last time ey had mentioned this word.

Mom will know what to do.

The Sheep couldn't remember what "Mom" was or what type of animal it might be, but it seemed as if the Dog considered it a Safe Thing. As if ey felt this "Mom" thing was even more powerful than emself. And the Sheep thought that must make it very powerful, indeed. For the Dog had fought off the hungered wild Dog and its mate in the first night they'd found themselves stranded. Ey had guided the Sheep around the Snake near the creek, and kept watch all night against the Car with blue lights.

"Mom" can save us, the Sheep thought, and watched the Dog roll on the ground.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 3/28/11

(This is from our classroom exercise. I don't know how good these are, but it was a lot of fun to go over the top with it.)

ORIGINAL

When it rained today, I had two thoughts: of starving lions overseas and people drowned where I once lived. It was cold, and I took a jacket, and I had two thoughts: of polar bears on thinning ice and people homeless in the snow. I didn't speak of cold or wet again, but I'm sure to forget this feeling weeks from now, or months. I wish I could staple memory to my mind or set my brain to vibrate an alarm once or twice a week to remind me: "Today is someone else's hell."

ACADEMIC

Upon observing the heavy precipitation that overcast the day, I considered, in turn, malnourishment among lions in the sub-Saharan region and the death toll of the recent earthquake in Northeast Asia. By and by, the temperature dropped and upon gathering my jacket, I considered, in turn, global warming as it concerns the survival of wildlife in the Arctic and Asians suffering hypothermia. I refrained from further discussion on the manner of my discomfort; however, it is certain that I shall lose this transient thought to less remote concerns, be it a fortnight or two, or even several rotations of the moon from this hour forth. Given the capability to do so, I would attach this knowledge to my brow, or, that excluding, set the mechanism of my brain to sound its alarm of remembrance at select hours throughout the week. To say just this: "My fortune should not exclude me from the realization that others are less privileged today."

ROMANTIC

The downpour drenched its wretchedness into my very soul, and I was overwhelmed by the tragedy of lions hungering in rags of bone, and the poor people of Asia swept away by ferocious tides of windswept Earth. My room grew chill, and I reached shivering to my soul for the gentle embrace of my dearest husbands gift to me, my sweet mink canopy. Oh! The terrible anguish I endured in that moment for the polar bears walking winter's last march, and those poor Asians huddling together without the tender comfort of their mother's roof. I could not speak again of suffering, no, my throat was swollen shut. I knew I shall forget this pitiful hour and turn again to my own life's sheltered wants. But if I could, I would stab this fleeting charity into my bosom, and brandish the bells of mercy like a siren in my brain. That I might never forget: "I am blessed. Alas, poor world!"

12-YEAR-OLD

It was soooo wet outside, like whoa. I didn't wanna go to school. I mean, c'mon! But Mom was like, "Think of the starving lions" and "There are people in Asia dying" like she always does. So. Friggin'. Random. And I was like, "So?" But of course she got mad and pushed me out anyway. And it was freezing cold, too! But she was like, "Think of the polar bears dying!" and "There are people in Asia freezing!" Seriously? Like, she's not even joking. Like, totally hardcore. Over bears and some dudes in China or whatever! So I was like, "Yeah, that really makes me want to go to school. NOT." And she loses it, like, "Why do I bother? You'll forget it tomorrow." (Duh.) But I wouldn't, 'cuz she'd take Dad's staple gun to my head with it or something, or, like, put an alarm clock in my pillow to give me nightmares, just to tell me: "You got it easy!" Yeah, right.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 3/28/11

(I apologize for copious use of adjectives and adverbs.)

Two Tails

an episode

(2)

[Some days later.]

They lounged silently in the overgrown pasture under the large oak. It had been three hours since they had last stopped, and the Dog finally relented to the Sheep's request for a moment to rest. The Sheep sat with eir head drooping low, breathing quieter now than minutes ago. Ey spoke rarely in the course of a day, though when ey spoke, it came out in a clear and easy bleat. The Dog fretted over em, just a little bit. Ey emself had so far had plenty to eat, playing Lassie for the crowds at Burger Kings and KFCs, but the Sheep hadn't eaten at all. The Dog was sure the monstrous blob of wool hid very bony ribs.

The Dog decided that now was the time to play Parent. Pep and cheer.

"Eat, drink, rest," ey announced. "Those are Big Things. Very important. Okay?"

It sounded very inspirational to em, but the Sheep only stared. A glob of wool with shuttered eyes. The Dog continued, struggling to recall the speech they'd heard when they had first left home some months ago. "Stay sharp and alert. Be ready to run and fight and… and stuff. Very important stuff. Sleep when--um, sleep in turns. Be--"

"Why are you having such trouble remembering what Mom taught us?" the Sheep asked suddenly. "It's only been a few weeks since we turned. Dogs are supposed to have better brains than Sheep."

Put like that, the Dog didn't quite know how to answer the question, so ey confronted the insult, instead.

"I am smarter."

"You're losing it," came the bleat.

Now, it was true that the Dog's vocabulary was slipping. Somewhat. Just a little bit. Hardly enough to notice, really. A rough bark could blur the edge nicely. A steady whine could completely cover the gaps by inducing a temporary deafness in eir audience. Ey was growing quite good at that. But what the Sheep perhaps forgot was that Dogs are excellent judges of tone and mood. And the Dog clearly heard that this bleat jiggled in the Sheep's throat more than it had previously.

Eir own bark became sharper in response.

"I'm using mine more!"

The quip didn't turn out to be quite the witty retort that the Dog had planned. Ey wanted to say something far more demoralizing, but ey could only stare blankly as seconds ticked by. Eir brain could no longer recall how to phrase snark in compound sentences. Ey'd never realized what a gift it had been. Ey doubted the Sheep would appreciate the loss.

No, of course not. Sheep had no patience for fun. The Dog was being frowned at. Familiar sibling eyes were made further alien and vaguely sinister by the Sheepish slits. With layer upon unkempt layer of once-white wool now corded with dirt and grass, the Sheep looked like a glob of grey matter left out in the rain.

I can't believe we're related.

"Brains aren't a non-renewable resource," snooted the Sheep. "Brains don't come with an expiration date. You can't run out of brains."

The Dog glared but could not speak, and in the absence of eir reply, the silence stretched out painfully. That a Glob of Grey Matter should say this to em felt the cruelest cut of all. Ey had never felt so fluffy and small. Ey tapped eir ridiculous tail against the grass as eir mind worked to latch on to something. Anything. Ey was certain ey was using eir brain more, just certain of it. After all, the Sheep just sat and walked and sat again all day long. Ey barely even spoke. Still, the Dog had to wonder why this Brain business seemed so darn easy for the Sheep, because, for pete's sake, weren't Dogs above Sheep on the food chain? That had to count for something. Nobody said, "Just look at that incredibly badass Sheep!"

Then again, this particular Sheep had proven eir brain. Ey had been right about the Bats last night, after all. Not the cool kind that sucked blood--the Dog remembered those--but the everyday kind that were rabid and lived in caves or abandoned barns going bump in the night. The Dog had known that in eir head, ey had, but instinct to eat had overridden eir smarts. It had taken the Sheep to stop em from chasing the Bats. That was becoming a trend.

The Dog stared across the tall grass at the slit-eyed Sheep and felt very fluffy and wrong.

Fugly-eyed smartass.

Defeat made a Dog cranky. And a Dog loaded with Complex Issues will become downright pissy.

So in the absence of a witty retort and in the fine tradition of both Man and Dog, ey took a cue and lifted eir leg.

"Hey!" The Sheep scampered away, eir bleating frenzied and indignant.

The Dog's aim had always been perfect. And the Sheep was trapped in eir woolly sponge. Sucks to be Sheep. Perhaps the Sheep would beg some kind farmer to shave em now and look less like a waterlogged Brain. Two in one triumph. Not bad.

The Dog couldn't laugh, not like ey did before. But eir open-mouthed pant had the same effect on the Sheep, and ey knew it. Ey flaunted it broadly as the Sheep stumbled off, stomping a disgruntled path across the old pasture. The Dog brandished eir tail high over eir back like a flag and trotted forward in a jaunty gait as ey followed after, keeping eir one-Sheep flock ever in front of em.

It wasn't until some minutes later, when a paw landed in something soft and moist and steaming hot, that the Dog remembered their Mom's warnings on karma.

Life wasn't very fair at all.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 3/21/11

Two Tails
an episode
(1)

The Sheep and the Dog sat side by side and gazed down at their reflections on the surface of the lake. There was no denying that they looked quite different, indeed. One of them was horned (but not noticeably, you understand) and shaggy (quite a bit) and gray (or maybe white; it was hard to tell). The other one was quite smaller (but not dainty, of course) and fluffy (despite the muscle underneath) and a uniform mix of black and white. One was a Sheep. One was a Dog. There seemed to be no way around that.

It was a very long moment before either of them spoke.

"This must be a dream," the Sheep bleated in disbelief. "I can't be a Sheep."

The Dog sat silently for a moment. Eir ears twitched. Then: "I win!"

The Sheep already hated the sound of that yip.

For some time, they sat in silence. The Dog wagged eir tail contentedly, just a bit, but also quite nicely. Back behind em, where it was less noticed but for the thump thump of that bony fluff against the Sheep's bald back leg.

The Sheep sulked.

Ey would never laugh at a pumpkin-spinner's song again. Although ey had not been the one to laugh out loud, not ey. That had been eir sib, of course. Always ey. But ey promised very hard that from this day forward ey would never ever so much as smirk again at pumpkin-spinners and their songs.

At length, the Dog stirred.

"Could have been worse," ey yipped, conversationally.

Not likely. The Sheep couldn't imagine a worse thing to be, than to be a Sheep.

"You could have been turned into a peanut," the Dog continued, "and had a chipmunk shell you to death."

It was a long time before the Sheep trusted emself to speak.

(Don't ask. I have no idea. There's this whole saga of Sheep and Dog in my head, and I don't know from where.)

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 3/14/11

My brother and his former wife come, bringing their babies, and my mother, she’s so ecstatic, she runs along the front of the house, along the stone pathway, to call her husband to greet them. She’s running too fast, though, and she trips on the stones. Sits there on the pathway and cries. Childlike. I go to her and see if she’s hurt and tell her she’s okay, it’s nothing, don’t worry about it. I’m treating her like a child because she’s crying like a child, but I think months later, in these moments that linger in the brain months late, that she wasn’t that far yet. Not far enough. Just enough between aware and not. How does the decay of identity feel? No one else can know. Disease eats them alive. By the time she knew, she could no longer say it.

I keep notes from her from that time, when she could still write. I keep those notes here with the rest, her scratched-out misspellings of my name, of milk and cereal and other groceries, of thoughts she had. Scrap paper. Crumbs. She was holding on.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 2/28/11

This is something I wrote randomly in my notebook while I waited for another class to start. I don't know what I'm trying to say or why, but anyway, this is what I wrote down concerning Japan. I wrote more about truly random subjects, but those might be a little too weird, even for me.

I am American, born Christian in Japan. I am Japanese, grown Buddhist in American. I am not biracial but in the brain, I am abnormally infused with scattered perception and pressed on both ends to drift stagnant if not perfectly straight, but I wobble onward in foreign precession. “You take on where you are,” they say; “you become what you eat.” My diet is riceballs tuna-shelled and soy sugar-licked. Flat-fried patties as inches thick as you like and boiled curling beef in mustard dip. Cucumber salads and summer bowls of white-noodled bliss. Smoking crocks of garden yield and deep fried shrimp in batter fields. I’m not raw, not all through, and I don’t twist my knives in testosterone shows. My best meals are home boiled eggs and meat on rice, white rice, plain and sticky. I’ve never seen a dark-skinned face on a woman in Japanese art. Men are drawn honestly if they’re born the same.

(p.s. I have almost completely written myself to a standstill trying to get a plot for the short story.)

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 2/21/11

Trolley and the Ghouls

(Edited, prose version)

Only trolleys promised the ghouls, at night shut down from human touch, a free ride through the town and unregulated belly fills. They run silent from curtained crypts and sewer lanes, the ghouls, somewhat discombobulated. They discard the wilting peel of twice stretched dust in sunset hues and sift through firefly sieves butter-melting soft into the gibbous waning murk. They sweep at last against the lacquered frame of the trolley car, small eager bumps up the patterned steps into the air-fresh and cushioned cab.

With garbled growling, the engine spits on, coaxed by papers weighing coin. Inside the box, light flicks on, fluorescent sunlight without scorn. Disjointed clapping off and on. The ghouls unwind cheerfully as the trolley cab lurches forward on long-forgotten sidewinding tracks through backwoods streets and depot lanes. They jostle on, the trolley and the ghouls, who stretch and stretch resplendently under the fluorescent flecks. From gangling gnarls of fading whine--vague as April morning mist--they bloom to lucid joyous shifts of wail, no longer mist but structured bits of startling brawn, with face and fist and hair like twine.

Now through winding coffin lanes, they rove, where their cousin air weavers rush to and fro, and perchance too late to slow, making circus eyes and circus mouth to see the ghouls alive, up close. They gather ash and scatter dust, from moon's first yawn to moon's last gust. The trolley putters on till night concedes to dawn, when ghouls scatter back to curtained crypts and sewer lanes and trolley yields back to human will. For moon makes more soup than sun, and wails more kin than whine. So trolleys promise ghouls the night, to come to life, to wail in coffin lanes, to harvest the ghosts of the circus-brained, who pass from ash to ash again under the trolley wheels and return to form at night again, as ghouls to join the reaper's throng.

(This still needs a lot of work, clearly. I think it would be better as a short story than a poem or brief prose piece.)

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 2/21/11

Antoine Dodson Doodles in Art Class

(Edited Version)

Today was either cataclysmic or divine. My portrait mugs the Internet, and I reap the pixilation of my face. I’m an overblown meme, a bias breeder. Enunciation spins too fluently, twisting like honey off thorns. Precarious and out of bounds--they say--unaccountable to any dictionary of common cadence. Effeminate, I’m called. Hollywood’s old Sissy back in prime time luminosity. Woman-ish. Sexless sap’s pockmarked sketch, two-toned like an asymmetrical exhibit in a Top Model menagerie, cut loose for time, spectacle and confused design. Boneless face in bent motif. Backdraft hair. Intrepid teeth. A freefall crack binge high collage of limp wrists and neutered face. Biceps curving outside male intent, lips flailing loose of God’s blueprint--they say--like National Enquirer fathers giving milk. Ungainly gesticulations, maiming my father’s configuration. Flapping too much, too slack--they say--freefalling off my mother’s blush. Sexless sap’s self-portrait of gender bent in crayon-wobbled lines. Effeminate, I’m called. I’ve no textbook for a face but pockmarks, flail and gender print like leotards across tongue and dick. Effeminate, I lack title and precision--they say--and action figured me to familiar edge. Effeminate man--they say. Sissy fetters and muscle fail. Instant laugh and sharp recoil. But effeminate is not my name for me.

Paint me a face, Rembrandt, and interpret my cacophony.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 1/31/11

This was what I wrote in class in response to the stream-of-consciousness prompt. I chose the word "blind." Sorry it's so long and hard to read. I wasn't sure how to break it up, so I just left it as I wrote it, in prose form.

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Blind was curtains. Shuttered open shut. Blind made paper curtains open shut. Sliding open shut. Slanting blunt. River islands light and dust. Blind made islands light and dust. Blind kept light and blind kept dust. Curtains blind and curtains shut. Blind bit light and opened shut. Blind kept shut. Blind was bitten. Eaten full. Earth basket weaving full. Earth weaving baskets full. Earth was basket, dust and shut. Earth was basket full. Basket flood. Blind as mud. Blind was mud. Blind had ears. Ears in mud. Blind was years in mud. Blind kept years, years burning fears. Blind had years of burning fears. Blind was bat. Batter bats. Blind had bitter batter bats. Blind kept bats. Blind was bat and open fat. Blind was bat held fatted bat. Blind kept bats in fat. Blind kept bats in vats of fat. Open fat. Blinded bat. Blinded open fatted bat. Blind in vats of battered fat. Blind was rung. Blind was dung. Blind was blood and blood red hung. River red. Blind was blood river red. Blind was floods of river bled. Blind kept bloods in rivers red. Blind was first. Blind was more than born but first. Blind kept first. Kept first the worst. Blind as hearse. Hearse kept first. Fist and worse. Fisted fit. Blind kept blood in fists that fit. Blind kept most in hearse. Blind went boom. Scatter boom. Blind was booming worse than soon. Boomed in hearse. Boomed first and worst. Blind kept booming first and worse. Blind is blooming hearse and first. Blind kept blind in fast and first. Blind has wings. Scatter wings. Fast and first and scattered wings. Fatter wings. Blind is batter casting wings. Blind has legs. Carton legs. Cast and mast and fatter legs. Scatter legs. Blind is legs of rivers red. Blind is minds that scatter red. River red. Livers bled. Blind is found in givers fled. Scattered lead. Scatter minded legs. Blind has mind and wing and leg. Winded leg. Blended red. Blind was rivers bending red. Spatter fled. Blind was Hiroshima booming red. Blind booms red. Blind is blind was battered red. Curtains red. Blind was hearses curtained red. Blind was born of hearse and red. Blind was scattered born and bred. Blind was scattered born to red. Blind was first and fast to red. Blind was broken open first. Blind was born of broken first. Blind held first in burst and worst. Blind was woken first. Woken up and broken first. Woken red and scattered most. Hearse in time of mind the worst. Hearse came first. Not first but worst. Blind begat the worst. Blind was born of conquest first. Not conquest first but bred conflict worst. Blind was Persia, Gaul and worse. Blind held time and place the most. Blind scattered east west south and north. Blind was blind was blind the most. Blind was blind to mind the first. Blind likes blind the most. Scattered mirrors most. Mirrors first and most. Mirrors blind and burst the most. Scattered worse. Carries and spatters most. Blind kept the worst and bred the first. Blind kept blinding most. Blind was never worse than first. Blind came first and lasted most. Blind lasts first and worst. Blind held on the most. Blind slept the worst. Blind sleeps well in first and most in worst. Blind held blind in scatter bursts. Blind made blind of blinded worst. Blind made blinding blinders worse. Blind made blinders first and worst. Blind was blind at birth and blind of birth. Blind was born of blind and worse. Born of hearse the most. Rivers bled the most. Born to first. Beggared first and fast and most. Blind kept beggars blind and worse. Blind was beaten booming beggar hearse. Blind kept blind in bays of blood red hearse. Mind in hearse. Blind kept mind in hearse for most. Blind made minds of hearse the worst. Booming beaten hearse. Mind of rust. Bleeding river rust. Dust of dust of earth. Rusted earth in river hearse. River bled in hearse. Mind of red and mind of hearse. Blinded legs and bended worst. Blind was kept to blind the most. Blind was blinders on in most. Blinders blinding most. Blind was honey chasing first. Blinded blinders honey chasing first. Worse and first. Blind was rich and beggared most. Blind did first to beggar worst. Blind was rich of hearse and rust. Blind was dust of earth and rust. Blind was rust in mud and worse. Blind was battered bats of river rust. Blind kept rivers rusted most. Blind was rivers bleeding rust. Blind kept first. Blind was beggars moving dust. Moving dust to moving dust. Moving rusted crusted earth. Moving rivers bleeding earth. Moving rivers swept the worse. Moving blinded bleeding rust. Moving rivers made of dust. Made of rusted earth for dust. Made in scattered bleeding dust. Blind is scattered bleeding dust. Blind is ash and blind is dust. Beggars often cursed. Beggars cursing blinders most. Blind is binding blind the most. Blinding binders cursing most. Beggars cursing crusted earth. Blind keeps beggars moving dust. Blind as hearse. Blind is broken open first. Broken scattered rusted earth. Blind keeps earth. Blind comes most often first. Blind is first and last and worst. Blind is hearse. Blind is curtains, shutting in. Blind is curtains, shutting end. Blind is dust in paper curtains open shut. Blind is shut.

Random Freewrite 2, Week of 1/17/11 (late): Prose 2

This is a vignette I wrote a couple of years ago. I edited the names and some of the nouns. I also edited the pronouns for the characters, going with my original concept for the scene. I left the rest of it as is, to show where my writing has come from and what I still have to try to improve.


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Summer night. Close and slick. Sweat sliding down skin. Window's open, but there's no breeze. 

The crickets are calling. Owls, too. Dogs in the distance, howling at the quarter moon. Night's rich with sound, swallowing the car. 

Lee sits there. Sprawled loose and low, head against the rest. 

Beside em, eir twin is sleeping. Or maybe not. Resting, at least. Head propped on arms folded over the wheel. Can't see eir face for eir hair. Quiet. Not a word in a while. 

Ey's tired, too, but still awake. Head throbbing from the wound. Staring across the road to the pasture on the other side, at fireflies melting in and out, cattle huddled snug under the shelter of trees, and stars embossing the sky. 

They're well over sixty miles from the old town now. Hadn't stopped until they'd crossed the state line. Now they sit parked on the shoulder, near the scraggy neck of old AL-35. It’s another fifty miles to US-72 W, and the road to Gurley. 

The tiny golden beetle is cool in eir hand. Ey fingers it absently, gently. 

There's a brush against eir face. Feather-light and warm. It's the summer breeze stirring, but outside the trees remain calm. Their leaves are silent and dense. And the dogs are quiet now. 

For a moment, ey sees a reflection of home in eir mind. White against the deepest black. Hazy and frail, caught in eir mind like the trail of a plane, fading fast into a formless mist. 

Eir hand stills. Eyes close. Switching everything off, but that. Willing the dials of time to slow. 

There is no sound now. No warmth. 

Yesterday remains a time now past, and home does not reappear. A thousand careful echoes dying there in the barren well ey's left to climb.

It's hard to breathe. Head feels dizzy, and ey can feel eirself frowning.

Ey gives it a few minutes, then reopens eir eyes. They're burning dry. Ey blinks hard and rubs eir hand over eir face. Breathes in deep over the pressing weight. Glances across at eir twin. 

Kit is awake. Ey's looking this way, and in eir eyes, a curious expression. Something Lee can see but not define, an exhausted sort of peace hovering over the emptiness there. As if ey's seen the anchor pass em by and marked its name. As if ey knows it will stop one day and wait for em. 

There is something alive here, in the air between them. It's beating delicately against the tempered rocks of Lee's shore. 

Eir lips move stiffly, twisting. Not a smile, not really. But close enough. 

It's Kit who breaks the silence. 

"All right?" Eir soft voice is hoarse but calm. 

Lee offers a nod, of sorts. Jerky and strange. Feels too much like a tremble. 

Kit is quiet, watching eir twin's eyes. At length, eir lips twitch a little, and ey clears eir throat, looking down and away at eir hands on the steering wheel. Ey's smiling. It’s fragile and messy, but there. And just as Lee opens eir mouth to speak, Kit releases the wheel with a sigh and leans back against the seat. Shifts eir body around for comfort. Eir eyes are half-open for a moment, staring down as if ey studies the pattern of the seat between them. Then they close. Ey breathes out slow, surrendering eirself to sleep. 

Unannounced and gentle, the summer breeze stirs once more. It passes over them, soft and balmy, with just enough strength to nudge the hair out of Kit's eyes. Hair that's too long, and looks greasy, besides. Unwashed in these several days. It falls across Kit's forehead in ragged clumps and curls out wildly over eir ears. 

The road stretches out for a tapered mile towards the foot of a hill. It's shadowed. Hollow through yet oppressively close. A gauntlet. Forest on either side like a bulwark against them. 

Lee's weary, still, but wide awake. Eyes open, unfocused. Waiting for movement, for a light in the woods. 

Night's rustling. Crickets with their steady hum, the dogs starting up again, and a siren now from some miles away. Headache's a dim throbbing at eir temple. Sweat's gathering at the small of eir back. It glints as it slides down Kit's neck. Hours to go before the dawn. The car is hard, but it's solid. An engine in sync with em. Old leather molded to eir frame. Sleek, yet artless. And swift.

It is swept like driftwood, this ship, in the slender black current half-lit by moon. 

There's no anchor, but the walls are strong.

Random Freewrite 1, Week of 1/17/11 (late): Prose 1

There is some elasticity to the brain, and I can’t ever seem to record the stretching, only the snap that brings me back. Isolated moments I relive wishing my future held something of my past. There’s guilt and there’s loss, and those who counsel honestly say it never grows easier, only more familiar.

There in the tiny hospital room of some years past, my great aunt took a breath and let it out so slowly, so completely, that I had thought for a moment that she wouldn’t take another. I had sat there silently, watching her, and these things grow on us less sluggishly than doctors might suggest. I knew it then. We were essentially alone. Her roommate hadn’t the awareness to be mindful of us, and my parents were in the hallway, discussing my great aunt with her doctor. I can still sense their nearness. I can hear their voices dimly. I recall myself sitting there frozen. Do I tell them or do I wait? What snaps me to is what came almost an hour later. My mother’s words, as if she knew, telling my father and I, “I don’t want to die like this.”

My mother isn’t dead. She’s here, in this ashen memory, and she’s here, in frightening dreams. She’s bent over a counter we never owned in a room I don’t recognize, struggling to breathe and to speak, and her face is twisted and grey and hollowed out like the ghouls they show to scare us on television, and I’m entering the room coming from somewhere unimportant to find her like that. Her face is exaggerated, a horror beyond recognition, and I can’t find my voice for the shock of it. Somehow I hold her and I struggle for my phone and she’s saying something I can’t hear anymore, something gurgled and wrong, and she can’t stand at all. She’s leaning. I can’t let her fall. The ambulance will never arrive in time. “I don’t want to die like this,” she had said. She told us years ago, as if she knew.

Where does the horror come from?

Some nights I don’t sleep at all.