A change this way comes

This isn’t working. I’ve been writing a whole bunch these past months but Storyrules requires additional time and effort that I haven’t been able to give.

I’m going to be thinking about how I can rework this blog so that I can actually post things regularly. As it stands, when life gets busy (which is pretty darned regular) Storyrules gets ignored. So I need a blog that is sufficiently broad in focus and easy enough to update so that I don’t need to set aside at least an hour just to write a post.

This could take awhile.

Keeping it simple and honest

Whiskey is a friend
In a room with cold floors, bare walls
And compelling reasons to leave.

It keeps strange company.
The ice it mingles with tinkles against the glass,
Crying out like a child with a loose bladder .

And I listen.
And I drink.
It leaves me with nothing.
Just the small understanding
That a word of truth saves a page of bullshit.

Story Philosophies

Backstory is overlooked way too often in fiction writing. For Aleria, the alternate reality cartoon series I’m developing, it has been a major challenge to provide a reasonable foundation for every character, action, setting and plot arc. Its more than just coming up with interesting backstories for characters and places. When you’re writing fiction, you’ve got to thoroughly understand the philosophical point of view of your characters and settings. And if your fiction invents new creatures, places or things, the word to really do this justice is PURPOSE. Here is where I went today as I thought about the reality of the universe Aleria is a part of. This is entirely off-the-cuff and is merely a brainstorming tool to develop deeper plots and settings.

Who is God to these people? Who is God to the ‘gods’ of Aleria, who have created all living things on the planet Gaul? Would these gods need or seek a God? Eventually it will all perish and there should be something else. That’s what the Aquitani sought out. There should be a supreme creator. Because that’s what honest and reasoning beings seek. Why live forever though? How can I understand this perspective? There needs to be some great resting place where all living things exist forever. Doing what though? Am I restricting my understanding to a human perspective? The idea of time is crucial to this problem. What I need to do is ‘feel’ the eternal in order to understand it.

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Busted Imagination

I think I’ll step into the rain that isn’t falling and wallow in the mud that isn’t there.
I think I’ll fly in the sky to the rainbow that has the little man who is never really there.

I’ll fold my wings on blue and lay my head on red like a bed and talk to the little man.

He said, “As true as you are on blue, none of this is here.
And there!? There is where your careless mind entreats you to retreat. To here!
So, that you hear this is neither nearly there nor here but merely in your head.

It’s a bit of fun for a while though non-existent all the while.
Denial in a file left behind reality in the mind.”

Gaining in Age

Something happened and its too late for me to fix it.
Time moved and I was too stuck in the future to see the present

How was I to know that my best chance to experience new things would be so short?I look back to see who I was and I’m surprised.
I was young and I didn’t know it.
I was less than I thought in many ways and more than I expected in others

The events of a lifetime happened while I stayed inside
A mind working too hard to prepare for a life that could be
While the bits and pieces of people around would have made everything more

Where is the lesson and the new life?
Where is the chance to change it?
Even now it’s not apparent
Mine is a perspective ten thousand miles above
Looking down at the many paths that I won’t walk.

When you’ve got writer’s block…be stupid.

Prompt: Time

Clock, watch, time telling device, waiting, rushing, stressed, wasting, watching, holding, feeling, unleashing, tracking, stopping, understanding, managing…

Can one wash time? Does it get old? Does it get dirty? Is time a person, being, condition or setting? Is time a physical place? Is it an object? Is it quantifiable? Is time a beast? If time were a beast, would it be a carnivore or herbivore? Would it hunt or forage? What would be the effects of its hunting? Would time need to hibernate? What happens when it sleeps? Can time travel through space? Does it use mass transit? Is it eco-friendly? Where else does time go?

Time goes to the sports bars on Thursday nights because that’s the new Friday and Friday’s the new Saturday and Saturdays the new day of rest. But he takes the bus because he doesn’t have money for carbon credits. Time likes to hang out with his pals on Thursday because his beatches won’t bother him when he’s with the crew and they’re all beasts anyways who eat whatever is around when they get hungry. So the beatches don’t bother him on Thursdays and he like Killians because its red. And on Friday he knits to get action from the gorgons.

Does time have a girlfriend? Some being who is in the same time gentrificus classification? No, after-all, have you ever heard of a beast that was a girl? Of course not, wooly mammoths are the only girls around here and they died millions of years ago along with the cockroaches and the faeries. So, time is an eco-friendly boy without a girlfriend because all the wooly mammoths died a long time ago and there’s no use lingering on the past. Time has to live in the present. Didn’t you hear, there’s no time like the present? And it’s Valentine’s Day and Time won’t get a present from his girlfriend because she died shivering in her massive knickers a long time ago. Poor girl.

Midlife Crisis

I’m sending emails to everyone I know in the business. Anyone who owes me a favor. It’s a message from a once corporate zombie. I gave up myself for the sake of a secure future. And now the illusion has been stripped away. My security was unceremoniously cracked last week when the company dropped a third of its workforce. Ten years bought me one-month severance. And now I have to face the person inside me.

I can’t type these emails anymore; these coward’s requests for a lifeboat that I don’t deserve. It makes me sick to see myself. I can’t imagine what my wife thinks. But I guess she gave up wanting years ago. Sacrificed just like I did.

God, I feel like I’m staring into a black hole. It’s just waiting for me.

I turn at the sound of the door creaking open. My wife is home with the groceries. I pretend I don’t notice and shuffle over to the refrigerator to grab a distraction. I begin to pour a glass of orange juice as she arrives in the room.

She doesn’t know yet. I can’t face her with it.

“Hi honey,” she says.

I respond satisfactorily. She unpacks dry goods. I continue pouring the juice. The skin on my arms changes to a reddish color with the heat of the truth that is weighing on me. The monster is pushing through my façade. The room begins to blur and I can feel the cold orange juice spilling from the glass over my fingers. I can’t hold this up. I brace myself against the counter and breathe to regain composure. But I fall apart instead in a fit of coughs and gasps for air.

I wake up to the sterile white of hospital walls.

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The Dumbest Thing I Ever…

The dumbest thing I ever saw was a bike commuter get hit by a vehicle at 14th and 3rd. I woke to sounds of skids and screams escaping in through my third floor window. I’m used to the whirl of ambulance sirens since my building is near a hospital but they never whine on for minutes like this.

Curiosity excused me from my bed, half asleep, to peer out a crack in the blinds. The first thing I saw was the helmet teetering listlessly between lanes. A creek of thick blood trickled slowly across the pavement, seeking the city sewers. I opened the window to see more of the scene and shivered from the rush of early morning air. Leaning in further, I took in what I’m calling an anti-miracle. A bike commuter had somehow slipped on something in the street and slid into an oncoming sedan. He had lost his helmet in the process and cracked his skull.

I stood, staring stupidly. I was in shock because I had never witnessed death firsthand, especially not one so impossible. This everyman’s ride up whatever ladder he was on was stopped without notice. And now the EMS crew was at the scene, taking him off the market for good.

Several paces back, corporate onlookers rushed to a central point, stumbling over each other to feign offers of help before artfully pushing through the crowd to the L train.

This was enough. I stepped back, tripping over my alarm’s cord. I reached to move it back to its place on my bedside table. It read 6:05am in deep red LEDs and I thought of Newton’s law about actions and reactions and deep red blood. The implication is that there is purpose to everything. But what purpose for Bob the bike-riding businessman is there in this accidental death? If God makes the miracles, does Satan make these?

FEAR

Caught, covered and carefully carried;
The thief of my dreams appeared.
Can I contain this, a carriage for my fears?
How long will I remain a victim of inaction;
Paralyzed by thought; deprived of my satisfaction?

Analysis Paralysis

“Sort it out,” they said.
“We leave you two to sort it out.”
But it’s not like we were even. He wouldn’t let it be even. Dammit. They are supposed to be my arbitrators, brokering fairness and enforcing equality where it doesn’t yet exist naturally. My chance to get out of the hallway quietly left when they did.

And here he comes. The tears he had faked dried up almost as soon as our new arrangement became clear.

I need to escape. But at this point in the encounter the walls move in and the ground closes up on the ceiling. I can’t squeeze by or wiggle out of the spot. I’m rooted to the ground even as it prepares to fall out below me. I just know what’s going to happen. Except it’s useless. I have a refined sensibility for danger but my reaction matrix is a spore so the Seer in me is useless. They call this analysis paralysis.

The pressure is building even more as he approaches and everything is magnified. The people everywhere are stopping what they’re doing to stare right at me. I can hear it. The sounds of feet stopping to watch enhance the steadily building momentum as it pounds in my ears second by second. I can hear the cracks in my neck turning to follow him approaching my right side. Chubby fingers curl up and launch at my face. I feel the skin of my right cheek scrunching up in my eye socket only for a moment before I’m out cold.

The bell brings me back from the blackout minutes later. I push myself up to stand. An art junkie is painting me. Great. It couldn’t much worse. As though the universe were listening to my every thought though, I fell. Tripped actually, over my own pants which were down around my ankles. The universe was listening alright. And laughing. He had pants’d me while I was down. That is real neat. I’ll be out sick for a few days…