She is in fact thinking about the differences between grace and agility, more specifically about how to express them through ink painting.
The water in her dark hair reminisces about another life, a life it had spent as ink... the sensual feeling of the ink-stone, the intimate binding with the carbon black, and the brush delivering sweet rest on the silken sheets of paper, and then the little death leaving but a print in the world as life moves on to other forms.
Evaporation.
Doodle from 2001
Just letting you know I've been here, and will come back once I've slept to comment properly.
ReplyDeleteHa, Eryl tracks in my blog.
ReplyDeleteLovely.
Sweet dreams then.
Grace and agility with ink and your hair in ink brushing away. Nice images. I just googled ink stone. Didn't even know there was such a thing. There are some beautiful ones. They are sensuous.
ReplyDeleteHello Kass, thanks for nice words.
ReplyDeleteI reckon there wouldn't be much reason to know about them unless you were interested in Asian calligraphy or classical Asian art. I say asian because the use of these tools were widespread... I mostly know about them because of my my Japanese background.
If they look sensuous, just wait until you hear and feel the ink-stick (a stick of carbon black bound together to a plastic like hardness using a water soluble binding agent) as you rub it into the water on the stone... It's quite something as well.
Not unakin to sharpening a knife on the smoothest stone imaginable... getting an edge so fine it's easy to cut paper thin carrot slices with it (handy for decorating dishes, after having been dipped them in rice vinegar for flavour and to preserve the color by preventing oxidation) or delicate tomato roses from cherry tomatoes.
Enjoyed your comment as much as the post. Took me back to a time I wrote calligraphy with an old quill pen...always the re-dipping in india ink that could never smear, would not fade. Something about that permanence and the ritual...pen to paper, pen to ink - me the pen, the world the paper, the ink my words expressed. Funny that your post brought me somehow to the opposite of evaporate.
ReplyDeleteThis is a gem. Very sensual, which is something you are good at. The idea of evaporation as a 'little death' is quite thrilling, especially as the water lives again in the girl's hair. So I am reminded of Dionysus, and by extension Nietzsche, and the phoenix, and so much more.
ReplyDeleteMy only question is about the last sentence of the first paragraph: have the girl and the water developed such an understanding that they are both thinking of the same thing: ink painting? Or, is it just a coincidence? Or, have I missed something crucial? Also, still regarding that sentence, think about tense and who is narrating the story because there seems to be a slight difference in voice there, compared to the rest of the piece. Apart from that, this is about as perfect a short story as I have ever read.
@wine and words: Glad you liked it, though I'm only presuming that you did. That's the kind of tricky word play I love. I liked A as much as X, but not define x.
ReplyDeleteOoh, why were you using a quill? What kind? Metal or natural? I futzed around with goose and raven feathers, but reed, balsa, and rattan were the only ones that worked for me. There was a time way back in highschool when I filled my margins with illuminated uppercase letters using a shaped match and ink from the plastic ink cartridges from my mandatory fountain pen. Sometimes I still slip into those patterns when I write in print.
Evaporation isn't an end, it's step in a cycle... water to vapor, vapor to clouds, clouds to rain, rain to earth, and back to evaporation. Some of the most efficient ways of achieving permanency is by finding an efficient cycle. The evaporation of the water in the ink leaves only the pigment on the paper... So I don't think your thoughts were that far removed if at all, from the title of the poem...
But even if it were, I see fiction, especially poetic prose or flat out verse as open to interpretation. "The duck is symbolic of the character's previous life... Yeah, the stuffing expresses the unpleasant experience it receives at the hands of public education" "Ummm, you do realise you're reading my recipe card for peking style duck?"
@Eryl: Frigimudget. Lost my my reply, spent too much time pondering and then accidentally shut the tab when I got back to it. Starting over.
Maybe, all the water in the universe is connected and while we aren't looking it takes control of our thoughts (cue horror movie sound effect), or at least influences them. Maybe certain kinds of water congregates to like minded people, so water that was once ink finds a person interested in ink. Maybe it has something to do that she is herself mostly made of water and there's a sympathetic resonance going on. Maybe her interest in ink called out to the water that was once ink. Maybe she called out to Calliope, and this water in her hair was Calliope's response. Maybe she is imagining the whole thing. Or maybe it is just a coincidence. I think you need to find your own answer to that one.
We have an omniscient narrator...
The only point of contention I can find with the tense is the shift from past tense to current tense. I can retro justify that by claiming that the action caught up with the narration. Of course the truth is probably that I didn't think of it properly. It's a mistake I make occasionally, I suppose it's the price of not having a formal education in English... Or maybe just being sloppy when I write. That said, I have tried putting everything in past tense, and everything in present tense, but neither sounds quite right. If I had to choose and change something, I'd put the first in past tense and the second in present...
As for a difference in voice, well maybe the narrator went out for a smoke and by the time he/she/it came back the narrator's voice had changed? Joking set aside, I'm not sure what you mean... Sorry, could you spell it out for me?
I've spent more time typing out out this comment than actually writing the original thing, not even counting the time I spent thinking about it as I took apart the original post.
Thanks for the comment and the unexpected strong praise. But how am I supposed to follow up something that got this kind of reception... Oh the torment. Oh the drama. I guess I'll just have to find something silly to act as a buffer... Actually, I guess it doesn't change anything. But I will watch out for tenses a bit more, until I forget to.
When I redraft, as I do endlessly, I have to go through my work line by line asking 'what tense have I used here?' and still I miss discrepancies.
ReplyDeleteAbout the voice thing: I'm not sure. I'll read it a few more times, it may just be the switch to present continuous tense that makes it sound different, to me.
I like the idea that water which was once ink could be drawn to someone who uses ink.
You don't have to actually answer my questions, by the way, I just ask in an attempt to help you think about the work in the hope that may aid development. They are the sort of questions that always help me. I'm not asking you to explain yourself like a bossy teacher/mother/nanny. I hope!
Hahaha!
ReplyDeleteDo I come off as that young (rhetorical)? I hope so. It's the asian blood, it always fools people. If I live to be a hundred, I wont look a day over 85.
I don't have to answer the questions, but I'd rather do so...
I suppose to some extent I'm answering myself as much as I'm answering you... This gives me the added of advantage of possibly getting a laugh. Possibly getting some other points of view. Besides if the piece is well built it should be easy to answer any questions.
I appreciate/welcome/request the input from a most probably more experienced and certainly more serious writer, which I am not (experienced, serious, or a writer). There's nothing bossy about generously offering your time and skills to help me work on a piece.
So thanks for your comments, I really do appreciate it, even if I won't necessarily always agree with them... I have yet to see you write anything I thought was unconsidered or uninteresting.
I like it all except for the first line. It's worrying and unnecessarily preoccupying, so the reader isn't ready enough to plunge into the subsequent images. (The feeling passes, so no permanent worry - but one does waste unnecessary time wondering why her pants are sticking to her thighs...)
ReplyDeleteI like the bit about the water in the hair thinking back of its life as ink - maybe a bit "tiré par les cheveux" har har, but nice nevertheless. Good images and surprises all along.
Heh heh... You crack me up S.
ReplyDeleteFor the non francophone=>
"Tiré par les cheveux" = ("bit of a stretch"+"needlessly complicated")
Literally=> Pulled by the hair
Thanks for your input on the tense issue.
What a better way to teach about the method of this art form instead of just explaining it.
ReplyDeleteLetting people practice it? : j
ReplyDelete