The candle was quite annoyed with the man’s ramblings, yet listened nonetheless for there were no means of escape, besides how would it do so even if there were, being naught more than a candle…Thus it listened to the man’s words:
To what evil do I owe this darkness inside? How have I become so different from those with whom I once dwelt the earth? We once looked alike, they and I, but now my inner self has stained my corporeal shell. Like feelings flowing from a wound, my inner shadows claim all colors as their own. Black rose, perchance sprinkled with tear shaped stars, longing for the memory of the vivid red that once was there.. now thornless, never to be seen again. Where has the life light gone? Ah, yes… It was snuffed by the darkness my inner self exuded, extinguishing all things bright…
At this point the candle died (of boredom surely), leaving the melodramatic man all alone in obscurity where he slowly melted away, dissolving into darkness…
Awww sad but beautifully written! I guess he didn't look on the bright side!
ReplyDeleteLoL, I guess not.
ReplyDeleteHe probably should have taken up Brian's worldview (The life of Brian). but I reckon that would have been out of character.
The candle died of boredom. Great line. But I wonder sometimes at your intentions when you write. The style is...what is it? Epic fantasy mixed with modern-day sarcasm? Some of it seems more like a poem:
ReplyDeleteshort stubbly candle -
pale unsteady cold yellow light (pared down, would be poetic - perhaps, pale, unsteady light?) -
feelings flowing from a wound (if you were more specific about which feeling - just so it isn't sadness or grief - think of a whacky one)
tear-shaped stars - this is good.
...like I said, I think you're aiming at a Tolkien-influenced medieval style. The stuff that influenced Dungeons and Dragons. Have you read the origins for this kind of writing? The Icelandic sagas? Norse-influenced stuff? Snori Sturluson? Welsh myths? Mabinogion texts? the Völsunga Saga?
If you're going for a mix, may I suggest going all out? My son won a contest once, where the goal was to write an opening sentence to a bad novel, as inspired by Bulwer-Lytton, the man from San Jose State who penned the famous, "...it was a dark and stormy night." My son's entry was in the fantasy category. It read, "As Frythwyrr espied the dark legions of Myshgallyth marching forth upon the fens of Fylnyeth riding upon their ferocious Tyffleth, his Yontish heart sank to the depths of Trygashyrr with a sorrow and fear seldom known to the realm of Falmachyrr on the northern slopes of the Myrnadyth Mountains."
I'm not suggesting your writing is along these lines, but from what you write in comments, I sense a wild sense of humor and a huge stockpile of references from which to draw. I know you're intelligent. I know you can write. Again, what are your intentions?
"Madam, I assure you, my intentions are entirely disreputable." Hahaha...
ReplyDeleteWow what a whammy of a comment, I can dig it! Thanks.
I agree there are too many adjectives there (in the pale cold unfriendly yellow deceitful light enumeration) thanks for pointing that out.
In the original version it was blood flowing from a wound staining through layers of deceitful appearance echoing that shed on a thorn (or something like that). The emotion can't be wacky; the whole point here is that the man embodies the worst of where the "emo" and the "goth" stereotypes meet. Selfpity, long-windedness, and superficial but strong emotion... it would have to be grief or sorrow, but that would be giving it too much credit. This is more along the lines of feeling a nebulous undefined quantity because one feels that they must.
Admittedly, I do sometimes go for epic fantasy, or the lighter urban fantasy, or flat out fairy tales. I have happily slept through a classical education in literature; I read (all I could find of them at the time) about half of the references you've listed, and studied excerpts from most of the ones I haven't flat out read... And many others. But I wasn't calling on those voices for this piece.
The style here Sartrian existentialism meeting Dadaist surrealism, with a sprinkling of oulipo, and a side of personal outlook.
I like mixing everything, which reflects my personality and personal history closely.
Please, you are free to suggest what you will here. How would you have me go "all out" in mixing?
All right, I'll spoil this story for you. This is a huis clos (in camera), a conceptual space for a character or characters to interact intimately... (btw have you seen "man from earth"? lovely movie) It serves as social commentary and mild self derision. It is a joke. One that could well have started with an emogoth and a candle walked into a doorless room. My intention is, as ever, to firstly entertain myself and secondly to entertain a potential reader.
Oh....
ReplyDeleteI can't do the huis clos.
ReplyDelete...can't put my characters all in the same square.
ReplyDeleteI was entertained.
ReplyDelete...especially liked the play on words: casual/causal...
ReplyDeleteI now realize that if you're reading this through your email, you're getting it backwards.
ReplyDelete...and now further see that it doesn't make any difference.
ReplyDeleteI guess I want you to be whackier. That's how I see you. Maybe if you formatted it differently...Maybe setting it up so the reader sees more obviously that you've invited disparate characters to a surreal world. Have one character talk in the middle english way and the other be a rap-type, hip-hop type. Maybe set it up in script format. I don't know. Your 'commenting' voice is so different than your writing style. I really like your 'all-out-there' approach when you comment. It gets obscured for me when you post. Maybe it's just me. One of the reasons I like you is that you tell it like it is - told me when you didn't like something or didn't understand something. And you did it in a way that made me want to know you better.
ReplyDeleteActually, While I do read them by email, I don't see why I'd be getting them in inverse order? Oooh, right, because you are thinking regular email... Gmail groups email back and forth from the same person, or indeed several emails from the same sender (in this case the automated blogger email service), into grouped "conversations" that are chronologically organised. And had I been using a regular email service for blogmail, I would merely have sorted my mail by chronological order, they pretty much all do that.
ReplyDelete--
Haha.. Wackier? Maybe some other time... Half of my posts are from my archives, maybe my past self wasn't as wacky as my current self... All of my comments are fresh (yet polite... I hope). My stuff comes in many flavours, ranging from the maudlin to the depressive. Indeed some of it is light and silly but this piece is not.
It's a bitter joke. Too wry for catchers to hide in... But a good place for Sartre's boozy ghost to stop by, pout, puff on his pipe, and say, "c'est de la merde" (It's crap), and fall comfortably asleep in.
Maybe you get that impression of disparity because I'm not an honest writer, not a writer at all really. I'm just one of the fey playing games with lords, erm I mean with words of course.
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I welcome and value your input. Certainly, I won't always agree with it, who can claim to always agree with anything or anyone? But I do appreciate it.
Diversity is often acclaimed but rarely lived by. Circumstantially, the appreciation of diversity was bred into me and further developed by life and life-choices. I appreciate the diversity of peoples, cultures and, yes, of opinions (provided that they carried out in an enlightened (or at least intelligent) manner); as it seems do you.
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By the way, who has "a huge stockpile of references from which to draw"? You do: thanks for explaining the poem. It didn't spoil the poem for me at all. Quite the opposite, it made it a bit more real for me. I had gotten most the vignettes, maybe not in quite the detail your explanation gave, but I had gotten them. The thing I hadn't gotten was "The woman, being crazed by abandonment, thinks these things are whacky, but true, so she creates something as whacky which she believes is true" I saw no reason to make that leap in my reasoning as I read it... It felt to me like a handful of metaphoric beads, unstrung and loose, between the beginning and the ending of the yarn.
This is kinda looping back into a conversation I'm having with Eryl in another post here. About appreciating poetry viscerally or intellectually... About finding the balance between the two. Clearly, I read and experience prose or verse mostly with my head, so when I can't relate image to their roots, I can't appreciate the poem, even if I do understand what it is saying.
Someone said, and crap if I can't remember who, that your view of the universe changes when you come face to face with a darkness you though could never find you. Your poem meant something to me, although from the comments it seems to be rather tongue in cheek. But this darkness I have know, and this cold candle has surely witnessed it.
ReplyDeleteHa! I've been that man! Luckily my candle didn't quite go out so I'm still here.
ReplyDeleteTongue in cheek and tongue in mouth.
ReplyDeleteI also said it was self derisive... The man in that room is a part of me. As is the candle.
The grimmest truths make for the most bitter japes. Add tonic and gin you have a gin&tonic, you won't need lime.
I'd rather laugh at my own melodramatics rather than indulge in them...
But that has nothing to do with how you experience it, nor should it. Chances are, without our melodramatic sides, we'd write a good deal less.
@Eryl: Heh. So, who or what was your candle?
ReplyDeleteI suspect most people have been that man... at one point or another.
The question is how do they deal with it.
An anthropomorphic candle. I love that many of your posts give us a unique perspective. I've engaged in conversations where I thought I'd die of boredom.
ReplyDeleteHa, thanks Theresa... It's a lot easier to get new perspectives when you indulge in surrealism. Everyday objects get their say. ; j
ReplyDeleteI've rarely enough been in that situation, I usually find something interesting to discuss with anyone if I'm forced to talk to them, and that failing, it's fun studying mannerisms and predicting them... And likewise, I do my best to try not to bore whoever I'm addressing.
So what do you do in such conversation? Visibly you've found ways of surviving them thus far. ; j