Quietness Renamed

Ho hum, oh look, a new story that's completely unedited and unfinished and weird and YEAH it's goin' up. I hope it doesn't suck, guys. 

"Quietness Renamed"


The power lines were sharply dark and dangled loosely in the pink sky. The pair held hands and her black flip flops slapped the wet pavement quietly with each step.

He wanted to tell her that the sky looked like cotton candy, or roses, or the finger nail polish he would imagine his mother might have worn. He scratched his nose with his free hand instead, and said quietly, “I have to be home by seven, or seven thirty, or something.”

“Okay.” She squeezed his hand tighter.

Lights came on in the houses and over their heads as the sky faded slowly from cotton candy pink to a fiery orange, then blushing red, then bruised purple until entirely deadened black. There were no clouds to break or crowd the expansive air.

She took her hand with its painted nails back for a second and wiped the clamminess off her palms onto her worn blue jeans. They threaded their fingers back together seamlessly, and kept walking, on and away from his house of hollowed sobbing and pain.

“Is your dad okay?” It was a tentative, gentle question.

He didn’t answer.

She felt an aching tiredness for him, through her bones and her toes. She saw behind the black, pressed pants of this morning and the wrinkled white shirt that had been clean, and the tie loosened and sagging from his throat. She saw it all twisting around his brain, worms of thought that wriggled and squirmed unpleasantly when prodded.

After a few moments, she realized the laces on his left shoe were hitting the ground like dull plastic rain drops, thudding quietly, and she squeezed his hand in hers again. He turned to her, and blinked before she saw the blank, hopeless expression in his eyes, and stopped.

“What?”

“Your shoelaces...”

She sat on the ground heavily, not caring if her jeans got soaked through, and took the sopping laces into her fingers, threading them quickly back together in her long pale fingers. He looked up and around at everything as she was sitting on the ground, with eyes that felt huge and dry in his head. He did not squint when a car’s headlights flashed in his face.

He wanted to tell her everything had changed, everything had been skewed into pain from what it had been, and he felt a quietness that had not been there before, and he saw it with a blankness that he didn’t recognize, and everything he saw was dulled.

But he thought she already knew. Because she said quietly, sitting very still and doe-like, looking at the bow tied on his shoe, “I don’t hate anyone.”

And his voice broke when he said “I know.”

He remembered people who did hate though. The woman who had rat poisoning in a coffee mug, and a shotgun just in case, and a Bible from her mother with worn pages. She had been questioned about her whereabouts Wednesday morning, between 6 and 8:30 P.M, and Angeline had yelled at his father, while she was bodily carried from the room. His father, whose face was puffy and red and there were purple bruises under his bloodshot eyes, and he had clutched at his ring, staring at it. She yelled that he deserved it, and you do too you disgusting excuse for a human being, how dare you insult the natural order of life, you faggot.

Faggot, faggot, faggot. His dad had broken then at that word from his father and his childhood and high school and now Angeline.

And the boy sitting close to him paled, eyes saucer-wide, nails digging into his palms from clutching his fists together so tightly, knuckles white.

He watched one of the few people he loved break on that worn, splintery bench. His father’s other half was already gone, somewhere else, but not where Angeline was convinced she would go, oh no, never there. Somewhere else. But it wasn’t with them, back in their clean white house, making blueberry pancakes early Saturday mornings when the light filling the kitchen was orange and yellow, and asking how his day was after he came home from baseball practice, and singing badly to Queen on the radio, and kissing his father lightly, holding his hands, and grinning and dancing in the living room when they didn’t think he noticed, just quiet private love, and happiness and happiness and happiness seemed to be always, but now he was somewhere else. Bright intelligent eyes closed forever and fingers tight and cold and mouth in a straight line on his starkly white face.

And now he was somewhere else. And his father had lost half of himself, and Angeline was going to jail, and their house was a mess, and his grades were slipping, and his father sat most nights and stared at nothing, noticed nothing. But she was here.

And when she stood up and took his hand again, silent, he pulled her to him tightly, wrapping his arms around her shorter frame.

The thought came over and over, why won’t he come home, circling around his brain, a bird squawking loudly and over everything else that was dulled.

He heard distantly “be okay, be okay, please breathe, be okay.” And that was all she said until she went quiet again, and he fingers dug into his wrinkled white shirt almost painfully. Her face turned to his neck and she pressed a kiss there, dry and chapped lips. He hadn’t cried, he never cried, but he choked at this moment, feeling her there with him and he knew she wouldn’t leave. She smelled like her laundry detergent she used, and rain, barely there from hours ago. And she smelled like turpentine that always seemed to linger around her eternally paint-stained hands and face and hair, clinging to her like a tiny fuzzy animal that warmed her and clutched her with small pudgy fingers and smiling like a child.

He felt her heart beat against his chest, and he thought he might love her, maybe. Just for her, in the middle of the rain soaked street.

There was a stinging wetness behind his eyes when he remembered, and felt the quietness touched again by the worm thoughts, and he closed his eyes tightly, and thought about death, and he loved her, and everything with his soul, everything felt sharper.

It was something distant now, to think of goodness, like yelling across a canyon to someone you thought you knew.

He felt a crushing tiredness. She knew, and she knew, and she loved him, just maybe.

The thought fluttered across his mind, a final black bird in the pink sky, of his fading hope, and his new unnamed quietness. That maybe it was new. Something, new.

Some things (Brick, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playlist)

"I believe in human beings absolutely. Sometimes I'm just a little disturbed by how we rule the world." -Marion Cotillard

I adore this quote... She's so intelligent and gorgeous. I've got to watch La Vie En Rose.

(Okay SPOILER ALERT ahead)

So I just watched Brick, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. WHAT. WHAT WHAT WHAT. It was fantastically weird, leaving a dirty taste in your mouth... There was so much symbolism, I really need to watch it again so it can sink in better (I admit, I was completely distracted by how freaking adorable Joseph Gordon-Levitt was. damn that boy is hot.) ...The birds/feathers, the color red, blue, water, black and white, light and dark, blood, his jacket, the football field and why the camera was positioned so the horizon was low on the screen, ETC. There was so much. My little english-analyzing-brain almost exploded in glee.

One of my favorite scenes was in the room where the brick was kept on the floor; the spinning mirror and the light shone around the room and the creaking and the lights broken and scattered. GORGEOUS. I was holding my breath just thinking that a scene as pretty and tragic as that in a movie like this?

And the very last few minutes, when it's just Brendan staring after Laura walking away, you can watch the change in his eyes... That's a sign of really f*cking good acting. It was so subtly done and so realistic. I'm thinking that the kid was his, actually... I really just need to watch it again so I can catch more of the characterization and plot and such.

But really, what an awesome movie. My respect for JGL just shot up even higher than it was already. I mean, the guy can do something darkly artsy like Brick, and a romantic thing of sorts like 500 Days of Summer, and a strange/interesting/complex/action thing like Inception. And he does it all WELL.

 

Be still my heart. He's wearing a John Lennon #9 Dream t-shirt. Too bad he's older.

And today I made a playlist for days when it's snowing so it makes the sky dark, and you feel a happy sort of melancholy, right? Maybe not. Oh well it's good music anyway.

Let It Be - The Beatles       This song is perfect to start because it's perfect anyway, and the strong confident chords at the beginning.. yes.


Three Hours - Nick Drake     This is perhaps one of his best songs? Not that all f them weren't bloody amazing, Day is Done was second to this one, but Three Hours is long, and never gets boring. Nick Drake is a legend.

Quicksand - David Bowie     If you're gonna ask, yeah that's Robert Smith, I adore him and I think this live version of the song is awesome. I love the Cure :)

Shelter From the Storm - Bob Dylan       Okay I dare you to find a video of the album version of this song. That isn't a f*cking cover. Jesus H. Christ people, there are only so many times a song can be covered before it's worn out.

Blue in Green - Miles Davis       Or, you know, the whole freaking album. It's so genius. 

Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd    Yeah I don't really care if it's a cliched song. Those lyrics are mind-blowing, I mean, "we're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year"?? That's just amazing!

Mercy Street - Peter Gabriel     This entire album is perfect, really, but this particular song is ace. And thanks to Mat Devine for finding this gem of a clip with Anne Sexton on it... just listen, it's really great.

Beatrix - Cocteau Twins    I'm not sure if enough people know about them and their awesomeness... Treasure is such an awesome album

In My Life - The Beatles     Yeah I'm such a Beatles fangirl but this song gets to me and the video's pretty sweet.

Hero - Regina Spektor   I got totally into this song and her after watching 500 Days of Summer, I confess. She's so adorable and awesome, gotta see her perform sometime.

Dance On Our Graves - Paper Route      I'm DYING to see them live... I own all the music they've released so far. They utterly fantastic and deserve a lot of attention, really

The Wings - Gustavo Santaolalla     Because it's one of my favorite movies and this song is so bitter sweet and pretty and yes.

Mad World - Michael Andrews & Gary Jules       DONNIE DARKO. Is so awesome. And this song is SO PERFECT for the story it's like it was written for it (even though it was originally Tears for Fears... the cover is better.) and the video is awesome, and the whole thing is just so gorgeous. And so it's at the end of the playlist.

So. Yeah! Some of my favorite music.

Some little bitty things

I just want to say. After watching Doctor Who, I will officially be terrified of angel statues. Never again will I go in a church and not kind of fear for my life. Although I've been wanting to just sit in on a few churches, not because I'm looking for a religion, just because I'm curious. I might be able to take a World Religions class next year, that and psychology... It'll be great :)
 
I wrote a few little bitty things... And here they are I guess x]

He liked New York City a lot when it was just starting to buzz in the early morning; when the dawn started creeping down the tops of buildings lazily, orange and yellow winking off high windows and taxis rumbling through the not yet crowded streets, cafes with their open signs turned out to the awakening world, early risers rubbing their eyes and sipping hot coffee.

He liked it just as much as he liked England. New York just had that dirty romanticism that London also had, the feeling of murder and sex and darkly loyal killers and money and drugs. And it also had the feeling of opportunity laced throughout, in the hearts of so many who were gone and so many who had come, all those people who might have starved and lived on the dirty streets in anonymity, hoping for the day of sparkling champagne, women in sparkling dresses, late nights of laughter and theater, and money spilling out of their pockets. 

This one underneath, is sort of based on Native American stories. It's been on my mind a while, and I'm thinking of doing watercolor pictures to go with the story... It could be pretty cool :)

The mountains were not always mountains.

The trees used to control and shape the world, with their long-reaching branches and roots and their endless ideas of things to grow.

But there were other creatures who liked to change things, to destroy things. They were the dragons.

They had sloping bodies with big shoulders and long necks, and jaws that snapped with razor teeth.

The dragons kept growing and growing, and more came into being, and the trees could not control their fire and destruction any more.

The trees did not understand why the dragons wanted to burn and tear apart all they had grown, and it made them sad and distressed.

And so the trees from over every continent, all kinds of trees, met in secret to discuss the burning of the world they loved. But they did not want to kill the dragons, because they loved all life.

They decided to ask the wind, the sweet presence that swept lazily over the land, to help them.

One night, in the pure, starlit darkness, the wind and the trees waited until the dragons were sleeping in the groups they lived with.

The trees quietly threw branches and roots and dirt and water over the dragons, but the beasts started to wake up.

The wind started blowing over their bodies, to hold them to the earth that the trees so loved.

And the dragons grew tired of straining at the deep power that held them down, and they slept.

And the dragons continue to sleep spread across the continents. They are covered in snow and ice and dirt, but they remain alive, until the day they wake.

Well... I hope that's not too weird x]

I might post a story I've been writing a bit later, it's a weird one but oh well. 

Exit Through the Gift Shop and Doctor Who

I recently got around to watching this... Banksy, you are one bad ass mother f*cker. Mr. Brainwash, I really loved your endearing qualities until you sold out the anti-business...? I guess? Anyway. I don't really care about the Oscar buzz, the movie is good, even with it's unfinished and incomplete feeling at the end. It doesn't need an award to confirm its awesomeness.

I don't really care about the idea about the whole thing being fake... It's still an awesome film.

And it says quite a bit about the modern art world and its patrons... No one does anything without technology anymore; the traditional ways are dying... It makes me sad, really. I learned how to paint with a local teacher, and the first thing I learned was how to use the style of the Renaissance painters and their process... There's a lot to be said for the old processes. It teaches patience and it teaches you your style and it helps you love your tools. Loving your paintbrushes and paints and canvas is important, because if they frustrate you then your art will suffer. And impatience in art can be your ruin, really. That's why modern art suffers, I think, people take things like portraits of Marilyn Monroe, for example, and change the color, and then sell it... It's sad, how there is less imagination... There's always limitless opportunity in imagination, and I get the feeling that people have become lazy with the influence of modern technology (not to sound like a freaking 80 year old or anything... oops too late). Turning off your cell phone, closing yourself in a room, and putting on a jazz or classical record really quietly,

I've also been watching Doctor Who. Obsessively. I'm at the beginning of season three, and dear god I dislike Martha. I very much want the Doctor to have his Rose again D': With Rose, he never had to tell her or ask her to do anything, fighting, saving someone's life, anything. Martha always needs instruction and it bothers me.

IF MARTHA AND THE DOCTOR ARE A LOVE INTEREST I WILL BE ANGRY.

Uh.

I am watching the episode "Blink" at the moment, and it might be the scariest one... This episode competes with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode with the Gentlemen. I had nightmares for ages.

"They let you live to death." That right there. Is a creepy line. This episode is AWESOME. The perfect amount of tension and silent disturbance and the teeth on those angels are ridiculously terrifying...

I mean... dear god.

But the Doctor is like the best character ever... I especially am infatuated with David Tennant x] He's lovely!

And I have to say, I totally understand the statue thing. They've always made me nervous, how still and cold they are all the time and their blank white eyes and yeah... So. This episode will only increase the fear, probably. "Yippee ki-yay muther f*cker!"

Bronson & Kill Hannah (shuddup)

Uhm. Kill Hannah was my favorite band in 7th and part of 8th grade. I still read Mat Devine's blogs and such because he's funny as hell. They've put up a new music video for their newest album Wake Up the Sleepers. Here it is, because I think it's actually a pretty good video...

So. There's that.


I also just finished watching the movie Bronson. Wow. One thing to note before I begin: Tom Hardy, I'm not even into super buff guys, or screwy and disturbed ones either, for that matter. BUT. You seem to be the exception. I mean. I have never thought a shirtless, super ripped man was in any way attractive. Ever. Ahem.

I also have to admit: I am a whore for movies where the protagonist isn't actually good, or something is off kilter in their head, something fundamentally off-base is going on. (Black Swan, The Wall, Inception, Donnie Darko, etc.) So Bronson? Was totally my cup of tea.

This movie was dark to the very core. The moments when the camera stayed on his face just too long, those were the beautifully disturbed moments. You could feel his anger that was always close to the surface, always at the core of his being, and it was incredible. You could almost watch the thoughts turning over and over in his mind, but they were just out of reach. Just as Bronson's character was the entire movie, especially the notable scenes when he is on stage, narrating his life to an imaginary audience. The energy that was conveyed through Hardy and the way he portrayed his character was absolutely amazing.

And one of the things that always makes a movie more realistic, I believe, is the weakness of the "strongest" character. The weakness of Charles Bronson was, of course, his inability to know what he wanted with his life, and his stubbornness, which prevented him from actually being motivated to achieve anything. He resigned himself, admittedly rather whole-heartedly, to a life of blood, bruises, cursing, hate, and anger. It didn't help that when he had been in the "funny farm", they had fried his brain with medicine. He was definitely not as clear-headed as he had been before he was slumped in a chair, drooling all over himself and mumbling incoherently.

The colors red and black were unavoidable in the movie, and the symbolism was artfully done. The curtains in his uncle's place, where he met the girl who broke his heart (who was wearing a tight scarlet dress) were a bright red. The paint all over his body when he was painting his "art teacher" (I guess) was a messy black. And one of the most beautifully scarring moments was in the very last scene, when he is in a small cage, alone, covered in black paint and a sharp red light in the room around him, moaning and grunting and, it might be safe to say, suffering. Red and black are, in so many cases, the colors of war and blood and a darkness in the roots of someone's mind, as they are in Bronson.

Bronson embodies the carnal, human urge to feel pain and make others feel pain. I truly believe that this does exist in everybody, some are just better at suppressing it. And it seems that you nearly want to empathize with the man; his creativity, his unrequited love, and the normal childhood that was simply not enough for him: people understand these issues, they've been through them. But he is extraordinarily different, with his need to be famous and always need to make himself feel his own humanity, through bodily harm inflicted by others.

One thing I think was extremely important that made Bronson who he is, was his home life. The moment in the beginning when his parents are smiling down at him, and he is turned away and clutching at the bars around his crib says so much about his dissatisfaction with his situation and himself.

Okay. I think that's all I have to say about that movie. This looks like more of a geeky, English class analysis than a review anyway. Unless they're the same thing. It's late here, and I've been feeling off. I'm gonna post this, hope it's not too terrible, and try and sleep.

They Were The Living Canvas

Hum. I just wrote this really really fast. It's probably not a good idea to keep posting things unedited, but WHATEVER. I thought of the title and went from there...

"They Were The Living Canvas"

It was early morning. The sun was gold and silver and brightly blue in the turpentine stained air.

She ran her fingers over the blank canvas, feeling its roughness. She could close her eyes and see the outlines and shapes and colors, and then when she opened her eyes it imprinted itself on the whiteness. Their faces and eyebrows and mouths, their essences, their stories.  

What makes paintings come alive, she thought, were the veins already in the canvas. Stitches and lines woven together like a heartbeat. All you had to do was listen to the veins and let them speak and write and paint for you.

And so she started in the quiet morning.

The faces were different sizes, some huge and foreboding, only to be covered by smaller faces the size of their eyes.

There were small chins and big doe-eyes and fat lips and pink cheeks and bruises and scars and snarls and smiles and hazel eyes and red hair and purple hair and piercings and make-up and glasses and braces.

Every sort of face that came to her mind went to the painting. And they lived and breathed and whispered to her.

And then it was night. The air was blue and grey and coldly distant, and the sun was gone to see the other side of the world.

The faces grew dark.

She collapsed on the cot covered in a blue blanket in the corner of the room. There were three rooms; bathroom, kitchen, and a huge space with a bed and all of her supplies. And one big window that faced more city than she could dream.

She was alone most of the time.

Then there was a dark sleep.

The woman rolled and twisted and cried fitfully in sleep, the blankets damp with sweat and her jaw clenched.

This was usual. Her paintings had so much life, they tried to take hers, she felt. They didn’t want to be left on the canvas like that, they wanted the freedom she felt flowing through her to them. All the faces. She knew all their stories like they were her own.

It was too dangerous.

The sun woke her again, blinding groggy eyes, and of course the pillow did nothing to hide the sun, so she sat up.

Across the room the faces stared at her.

She made a pot of green tea. And hid in the blandly white kitchen, but she wouldn’t admit that to herself. She would have to sell this painting quickly.

She pulled on different paint-stained clothes and purple socks and shoes, and walked outside with a notebook.

There was a park about a mile away, and she found her black bench and sat with the notebook in her lap.

First the names, then their story.  

GREGORY- fat, dissatisfied, English, widowed. Wife (Maryann) died in childbirth. Since then, he gained weight, started helping her garden grow back, raised his son (Leonard). His son is leaving for America, the year is 1739, and Gregory will live soon alone.

ANGELA- lonely, depressive, not good at committing. Lives with her mother, whom she hates. Dropped out of Julliard College, she was a singer. Now works in King Soopers. Sings in the shower when mother isn’t home. Potential love interest in Sean, the cashier with red hair. He’s too shy.

JOLINE- overly happy. Loves going to punk concerts. Social, but bitchy. Changes her appearance often, unsatisfied with everything she was two days ago. Changes boyfriends just as often. Is now dating a girl named Kimberly.

And the list goes on. There are so many people filling her head that never existed. And they haunt her.

The painting is sold a few weeks later from a local gallery which always puts up her work for her. Prudence, who runs it, loves her work but says it scares her a little. For a few thousand dollars Mr. Jerremy Hyde (“Two ‘r’s, don’t forget” he says in a posh voice) will give it to his fiancee, who “adores the grunge of local artists”, for an engagement present. She thinks it would make a great story.

She takes the check to the bank immediately, and splurges some on a bigger canvas. She won’t use it for weeks, but it’s nice with the feeling of it being there in her presence. It’s a good feeling.

The papers with all the pain-stakingly handwritten stories and details that took hours to finish is burned outside the big window with a cheap blue lighter. She almost burns the tips of her fingers, but the ashes blow away in time. 

Lunar Eclipse from weeks ago

This is what I did watching the lunar eclipse, so I wrote about it. God I'm lame. Blargle.

“‘Mad World” would be a great song for this second.”

There was silence. The moon started being swallowed in darkness.

We clutched mugs of hot chocolate tightly, too much heat soaking into cold palms and fingertips.

“It doesn’t look real. It looks unreal.”

“It looks like a clay-mation ball. Just like, hanging in the sky on string.”

I sighed quietly, watching a cloud of breath float and disintegrate its way to the moon.

My sister  snapped a few pictures. “I’m getting five bucks. Then I can pay off my phone.”

“Bitch.” I laughed, then took a long slurp of scalding cocoa.

“I can pay off my phone bill for the month with it. Be jealous.”

A pause. “It’s too cold, I’m going inside.”

She clicked another few pictures.

The door creaked tiredly, then slammed shut. I heard her boots on the stairs behind the door.

I stared up and up and up, and I felt swallowed by the entire sky that didn’t begin or end. A dark red circle outlined with pale silver along an edge.

“I wish I could dance with you!” I sang quietly, feeling small and like I was everywhere.

“I wish I could dance with you, I wish I could sing with you, I wish I could dance with you, but I can’t... So good night!”

I skipped with the empty mug to the back door humming. Later I didn’t know why I sang, I didn’t remember thinking to myself before I opened my mouth. I don’t know why I want to dance with the moon.