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!"