Author Archives: pelicaneel

I am not a walrus.

Daily Prompt: I Believe

by Krista on March 16, 2014

For today’s prompt, tell us three things that you believe in your heart to be true. Tell us three things you believe in your heart to be false.

 

true:

  • Eleven AM.
  • Coffee.
  • Beer. 

false:

  • I am not Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • I am not a walrus.
  • I lie all the time.
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More Lesson Planning, More

Work that keyboard:
until your fingers
are little
bald peppers.
Screaming!
chunks-full of 
vocabulary:
Nightmare-mapping,
job-prospecting,
present-passive,
dirt mine. Rest.
Twenty-dash-four hours.
Cyclic wastage;
“What do you do?”
Silence. Can’t quite
cut off
the umbilical tongue;
the waft of
‘it is’ instead of ‘is’.

Birthdays

Daily Prompt: Shake it Up

You’re 12 years old. It’s your birthday. Write for ten minutes on that memory. GO.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us RECKLESS.

 

Fast times. Pizza Hut, or Aroma, one of the two – or somewhere in-between. Friends; some friends. Family. People. Luton-town, grey and bleak, that town with an airport – but this is in Town, where the shopping centre is – and the cinema – and the train station – and that kebab shop next to the kebab shop. This town should be joyless, but I’m okay with food in my mouth and people around me. It’s a warm day – or it was a warm day. Then – right then – it was creeping dark, but I don’t notice. Food is the great blockade. 

Birthdays don’t change much, besides the alcohol. These days, drink – eat – be merry. Have a laugh, but make sure to allow yourself time to mourn your former age. Say goodbye. Have a funeral. A small one. Five minutes maximum. Maybe ten if you’re past thirty. A silent vigil. A respectful farewell. Then – back to the present. Snap back. No dawdling. No sad songs. Hello, one more year of living. Snakes and ladders without the snakes or ladders. You’re taking the slow route forward, one year at a time, and there’s no changing that. 

Dear Hyperlink: Pouring Rice

I’ve fallen into the rabbit hole of interactive fiction lately, or to be more specific, I’ve become curious about Twine. I’ve dabbled and lost myself in the hyperlink jungle, exploring and half-finishing interactions. I’ve finished one, and I’d like to show it to you. I called it Pouring Rice, and it’s a self-repeating dream tour that I finished in a day.

I intend this experiment to be the first of many interactive spots that will grace this slow-building blog.

Sitting and Spinning

Ignore the title. 

It has nothing to do with anything. 

It’s Saturday, right? Woke up this morning and had a fry-up. I’ve reached the seventh circle of Inferno in Dante’s Comedy. Have you ever walked on hot sand? It’s not fun. Sprint as fast as you can, Dante, before you burn the soles of your feet!

Or wear sandals. 

Dante was a… vengeful writer. If you so much as brushed shoulders with him, straight to Hell you go. Hope you’ve packed! The weather’s warm all year round. 

Writing with Apes

I’m not actually writing with apes, but now the image is planted, I wouldn’t mind it so much. I’ll consider it as a future editing process. They will sit around me with their twigs and rocks and minds, with a copy of the draft in their pudgy, pink fingers, and point out the glaring errors in the narrative and style, such as: “Why are you using an adverb?” and “I don’t agree with your view on the human condition”. I think apes know the meaning to everything – they just communicate it by copious love-making sessions. 

Though, on that note, I’ve never been comfortable with the concept of an internal muse. Don’t you think it’s a little sinister? Imagine a grotesque hobgoblin perching on your shoulders with a laser pointer. That is a muse, and I don’t want it. I’ll do my own damn writing, you hideous devil-thing.

If I struggle with my writing, then it’s my own fault and I’d like to take responsibility for my lack of imagination. Just wait right here while I bash my head in with a blank wall until the words fall out. Or a cup of coffee, a night out, or a good sleep will do. 

Lesson Plan

Café regulars, we are. Living on coffee and sandwiches. The slot machine by the door is giggling. Thinking of topics for classes is an impenetrable wall. I couldn’t sleep last night so I watched the opening scene to Tokyo Drifter, a 1966 yakuza film directed by Seijun Suzuki. I don’t remember what I watched, but there was a man walking down a train-yard. Closer and closer to the camera he came; then I tried to sleep again. Read through violence of Dante’s Inferno, and all he wanted was Beatrice. He’ll see her soon. 

Lost and Never Found

I lost my wallet.

“What a disaster,” said somebody I never talked to, but I’ve created just for conversation. “What happened?”

I lost it and I don’t know how. It’s gone on its way down one-way highway to Lost and Never Found. It’s a lost cause, isn’t it? It was brown, small, like other wallets, nothing special. It could hold notes, but never coins – the coins would spill out and feed the floor. I kept coins in my pocket. Away.

“What are you going to do?”

Nothing. It held very little – nothing that can’t be fixed.