I’ve been following a conversation about experimental fiction, which has just been added to over on “The Reading Experience”.
The whole conversation is a good read for a student, like myself, who might be interested in the way novels can sometimes:
jumble the order in which the parts of a prose narrative are expected to be related, each allowing the reader several different ways to put the narrative together in the process of reading it.
“Who’s that in that picture on the back
in the notebook tossed across the floor?
Don’t you like her anymore?”
Oh, she only loves me when I’m best dressed,
when I ride like a white knight savior,
and when I’m on my best behavior.
Can’t do that no more.
So keep your cummerbund double breast,
notebooks, photos, and all the rest.
Fix me so I’m lesser dressed
and kick me out the door
I will ride your white horses no more.
And if I slam my hand or hit my head
on my way out, oh well.
It’s only blood on the wall.
All I have is bread.
Oh, and a toaster,
overheated ‘cause I feed it too much:
old bread, dried crust,
but it’s a machine. It eats its feed.
(It makes dead bread the best of its luck.)
So, toast is what I eat.
It pops up!
It occurs to me.
I don’t have anything to put on the toast.
Feels like I’m the static in the air,
like I’m everywhere, but hanging there.
I keep the song from coming strong.
I know the words, but words come wrong.
Let no one hear nothing.
Let there be static everywhere
Let no one hear nothing
Let static stick sharp songs in the air
I’ll get away, without saying it.
This game, we can quit playing it,
as soon as the words are done.
Or even if they never come.
I fell asleep with my eyes against the sun
and then I waited for the dreams to come
I guess I hoped for strong words said
in my eyes, in the light, behind my head
I’m sure I’ve never seen this shore
these seas, these galaxies, before.
and paroxysms of sound, and shape, of light
in the dreams, that came to me, in that twilight.
Feels like I’m standing on a tilted slide
and all of this life will get wiped aside
by forces of natural gravity
when all you do is stand beside me
and everything will be jilted free
and soon I’ll slide away from here
but why no motion? why this fear?
We have fingerbone trees
Like tangled up hands.
Daduh built a house for us
Outside in the yard.
He’s so hurly-burly.
Up with the headboard.
Down with the clock.
Make a deskdrawer footstool,
By the chair on the sidewalk.
The whole place is playhouse,
Without any walls,
And the winds blow,
So paper snow falls,
And I’m told, “Go,
Outside. Play!”
Daduh built for us a stage,
Outside in the frontyard,
Built out of mamuh’s things,
And on that stage they played a show:
“Go on, get out, go.
Get out in the yard,
And don’t come home.”
Out, in the yard of a house.
Out, of the maze of stacks.
Time to go in now,
And never go back.
When love blossoms, it isn’t a flower
Picked from the earth and ready to wither.
Rather, love gardens to keep its power.
Where blooms wilt or roots rot, love goes thither.
Love plucks the dead parts, brings what’s lacking, mends.
Attend likewise to every living part
That ever, slowly, to the sunlight bends,
Whether it be a limb, a spine, a heart.
Mind petals, but also what thorns they wield
And know that they sting for a good reason.
Mind cultivation over what fruits yield
And so come to know the greenest season.
Love is work, but its done like keeping friends.
Do it right and you’ll find it never ends.
erosion
in backyards
and foreign lands
with ancient camels
and dreaming sands
then backwards
erosion.
what’s the bother
calling this what it is,
when we could be leaving out what it isn’t?
simply by making is with isn’t
what’s the bother with words?
stories are better than words, and an experience
is always better than any story is.
its like every time I think about it, its new
most people don’t understand
everyone else is another universe
where everything boils down to the word
we’re all singing the same song
but we spend time on a different verse
and sing in strange languages
I don’t know, its just, telling you, seems the thing to do
I keep a little boat by the dock
where nobody knows
sometimes i go there, sometimes i sleep
sometimes i dream of seas
well, i get tired
i live in a home full of stones you know
i stack them, rack them, put them away
but those stones only tumble
so i bend down again
i stack those stones, rack those stones, put them away
until i dream of seas
then, when everyone that loves me goes asleep
i crawl down through the weeds
to a place where nobody knows
to the place where my boat keeps
the place i have to go
i must have drifted off
because when i awoke, if i awoke, i was lost
alone in my boat lying down looking up
and down where the water meets the sky
there in the distance, my home full of stones
how long do stones have to stand?
how often do stones really notice?
are they lonely stones with no one to rack them
stack them, put them away
and what about the people who love me?
they’re going to stumble on those stones
and then they’ll look for me
so i’ll wait and see
stare at the little people out there
where the water meets the sky
and dream of seas.
Sailing on the wrong side of the sea,
which is nasty, which is mean.
I keep seein’ snakes slinking away from me.
I seen ‘em swim. Eels I guess they’d be,
like demons bein’ baptized in the murky green.
A snake for treachery, a snake for pain,
a snake with rats eyes, and dollar signs on its hide,
a snake with secret fangs.
Those snakes in the sea, that place supposed to be clean,
they come up in the nets and make bets with fishermen
as to which will meet the quicker end,
and what will be the hour.
the snakes place their bets, and win
through folly, favor or foul.
And which end is best?
The snakes would like to know.
Is is swift, like a blow to the skull
or a slow moan,
alone
on the bottom of a boat .
its a tough step two step
dance, the time we keep,
tick tock and its off.
let me step in the place
where my feet go
forward and around
maybe someday soon enough
we can call this dance
I just wanna roll into a ball,
cower in the corner,
clutching my knees
with you holding me,
with you whispering
its ookaay now,
and cry;
she said.
He said,
be there
and soften me
when I harden
when I go inside
stay in my quiet
I need to be there
and for you to understand.
I have just submitted the bound-and-paper version of my thesis to the library.
You, lucky reader, get to read it in the intended format, online and unbound. It is published online as version 1.1 of To Win, Simply Play.
I feel like it is a long way from finished, so your comments are more than welcome.
Children can remember
all the forgotten things
like oracles and nightmares
and the other name of oranges,
the one from before the color.
And, when they awake,
they eat their breakfast and tie their shoes
(as children are often wont to do)
while sword fighting nightmares in their minds.
Questions without answers
logic on the back of a cereal box.
There was a time last week
when I could remember (why?)
just exactly did my father
make a kitchen to melt into the sky
with not more than blue paint.
the kind from before the color in the morning
things arranged, now splayed
from the door to the wall
and all along the floor
nothing’s where it goes anymore
and these are only the things
but these are only things.
I’ve never been too keen on what the things mean
keys, keys, cant find my keys, cant leave
can never find anything
maybe I should be keen on what the things mean
I wear the bottom of the pile of clothes
and call it clean, call it wardrobe
I sort miles of piles and make new piles
piles of paper, piles of thought, files they’re not
Its time to take the garbage out
I can smell it with my mouth
what if that’s what the things mean
that smell could be the garbage coming out
of my festering head, near-dead
drowned in things
keys, keys, cant find my keys, cant leave.
And my wallet, though all it ever got me was things
damn the money inside and coins across the floor!
Coins in every place I’ve stood naked all week
contents of pockets next to pants
shadow made of clothes, cast from where I stood.
Archeological evidence of the fact that I exist,
or, did.
These things keep telling me I’m crazy
they’re all arranged in the past tense
seemingly without sense, all in a mess,
dropped where they lost meaning,
waiting to be picked up again,
and every bit of it is sifted through
when I cant find my keys
and stared at when I’ve given up,
frustrated, under the covers:
blue jeans and magazines
sleeping.
Dreaming of keys.
Sticks and stones
have all been thrown,
and names will never save me.
I can’t land on open hands forever.
They’re fists.
Sorry, but they drove me to it.
My clothes are torn.
My scars are shown.
I can’t hide them anymore.
From The Mumpsimus:
A question at the end of one of Jeff VanderMeer’s recent posts has been nagging at me — “Do writers of experimental fiction need to prove they can tell a good story before they start experimenting?”
MoorishGirl is a literary weblog that I’ve been following for a while now. I like it because it is full of ideas, while remaining accessible, and interesing, generally. Today’s post is by a new writer for the blog named John Cottle, who joins MoorishGirl on the roster. John writes about Storytelling as a Survival Skill, as an observation, that storytelling is probably hardwired into our instincts as aprt of what helps us survive.
I would be interested to read comments on how or whether today’s storytelling is in keeping with that aspect of it. How is it that storytelling realtes to our survival now, today? My writing professor tells me frequently that storytelling is a survival skill, and he urges me to bring my own writing in line with that, or to write with an awareness of it, but I don’t quite think I’m ready for that jsut yet. I’m still confused about what it means.