We're always told that before exercising that we should stretch. Which makes perfect sense, especially if you plan on going for a long run or lifting weights, etc. Really, it applies to any form of exercise. I remember when I took Karate as a teenager (I should get back into Karate, it is something that I enjoyed and did well.)how our Sensei made great emphasis on the need to stretch. The first thirty minutes of class consisted of nothing but stretching of one sort or another. Let's face it, whether we like it or not, stretching is an important part of exercise.
Is stretching any less important for the mind? Of course not, puzzles are great exercise for the brain, reading is an excellent mental calisthenic too. But what about exercises for writers. Me, personally, I like to listen to audio books in the car or on a Walkman when I'm doing my custodial gig. The only time I do not listen to an audio book is when I am driving somewhere to do my own creative writing. I do not want to be influenced by the author's style of the book I am listening to when I am about to work on my own stuff. It is easy for me to emulate an author's voice and not even be aware that I am doing it. When I'm writing book reviews or some journalism or essay piece that rule doesn't seem to apply. Besides listening to audio books, I read something every day, not just review books, but poetry, drama, fiction, philosophy...anything, even if I just dip into something for a few minutes, a piece here a piece there. I try very hard to to read something for me between book reviews, for example, I am now reading for me, Kraken by China Mieville, Piers Anthony's autobiographies, Bio of and Ogre and How Precious Was That While and few other things.
So where am I going with this?
My buddy the excellent and prolific writer Jake Sullivan told me that he is now doing a type of fiction exercise he calls Words from a Fool on his weebly website Jake Sullivan's Pen http://jakesullivanspen.weebly.com/the-lowdown.html Which if you think about it, the whole premise is nothing but stretching. Jake has provided a little disclaimer apologizing for the mistakes, whether they are spelling, grammar or otherwise because the idea is just to write to get the engines going. I dig that idea and asked him if he would mind if I created my own version. He told me to go for it.
Starting today, I am going to try to do what I'm going to call the Daily Improv
stretching man, total stretching. Where Jake is doing mostly fiction, I going to write whatever the hell comes to my stretching mind, be it poetry, fiction, drama, ideas or just a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
Stay tuned for my first Daily Improv
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Saturday, March 7, 2009
An Excerpt from my novel: The Uncertainty of Knowing
22.
A smell of steak cooking distracted Lisa from her thoughts. She and Jon sat across from one another at a picnic table in the park. The sun just setting resembled the top of someone’s head slowly traversing down a hill.
Pine and fir branches provided them with an ample cover of shadows. To their right on a dirt knoll was the play ground with a twisted helix of a slide, a beaten chipped "paint jungle gym and a geodesic dome constructed of a woven metal lattices like a spider web and children hung from the bars like happy blond spiders.
They held hands. The faded red pressure treated wood was cool against their skin. Hair on their arms stood up on goose pimples regardless of the summer. She pulled his hand to her lips. Her kiss was moist and gentle where the bones and veins joined and stood out like Japanese calligraphy on parchment.
Jon shivered.
No woman had ever done that to him before. He reciprocated by lifting her chin with the tips of his fingers with his other hand, loops, arcs, whorls and whirls that made his fingerprints unique connected to the matrix of her face.
Lisa quivered.
They reeled from a joining that probably should have happened a long time ago. He leaned across the table and kissed her. She kissed back. For an instant nothing existed except the wet fire where their lips met.
They didn’t say “I love you.”
No talking meant, no yes’s or no no’s. No words meant no confusion, no miscommunication, no misinterpretation, no hurt, no pain.
Night stalked the earth quietly and slid around the day like a satin sheet as they watched the sunset. Lisa spoke and broke the moment into tiny pieces. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you something; been turning it around in my mind, examining it from one direction and then another.”
“Just say it.”
Lisa scratched her arm and rubbed her hand through her hair. “I wasn’t…I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“What?”
"This…you, me, it wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I’m glad it happened.”
“I’m not.”
Jon stood abruptly to leave. “Okay, sure, I understand…”
"No, don’t go, you don’t get it. You and me…”
“I get it, I get it. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Interfered with your plans.”
"No Jon, please don’t be hurt. You and me are great, wonderful…”
“But?”
“But it wasn’t supposed to happen because I’m being transferred to San Salvador.”
“Central America?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of extreme.”
“I’m kinda an extreme girl.”
“Yes you are.”
They looked at each other. Their eyes were inflamed with power and hunger they absorbed from the ether, from the residual energy of dormant elementals of the sky, water, fire and earth. Their appetite was fueled by their own abstinence and the ideas of consummations across time of couples loving secretly in the bushes, behind the closed eyes of curtained windows and the muzzled mouth’s of closed doors. The energy was frenzied and thick, like touching throbbing and humming wires.
“How long do we have?” Jon asked and they trudged up the hill into a grassy clearing. The moon was a wedge of pie above their heads, alamode with vanilla clouds.
“About three weeks.”
Jon nodded slightly and slipped his arm around Lisa’s waist.
No one spoke. No one dared…words…words that were more than simple sentences consumed too much time. Communication between lovers, or soon to be lovers take place deep in the roots, and bypass models of romances we have learned to fear, emulate and be ashamed,. When every successful relationship is somebody else’s failure, why speak? Why ruin the moment with giant incomplete thoughts and even bigger emotions compressed into grunts and groans, inept ramblings that fail to express the vast universes of love and hate? It might be easier to grasp water in one’s cupped hands than to try to verbally articulate around a mouthful of toes. As the feet are extricated from a throat already choking on unsaid words, that fire-thief time ticks away beneath all the baggage…the shoe trees and carry-ons and suitcases that are depositories for solitary confinement and the rationalized reasons of why endings must be endings.
“Three weeks?”
"Yeah.”
“Okay, three weeks then.”
A smell of steak cooking distracted Lisa from her thoughts. She and Jon sat across from one another at a picnic table in the park. The sun just setting resembled the top of someone’s head slowly traversing down a hill.
Pine and fir branches provided them with an ample cover of shadows. To their right on a dirt knoll was the play ground with a twisted helix of a slide, a beaten chipped "paint jungle gym and a geodesic dome constructed of a woven metal lattices like a spider web and children hung from the bars like happy blond spiders.
They held hands. The faded red pressure treated wood was cool against their skin. Hair on their arms stood up on goose pimples regardless of the summer. She pulled his hand to her lips. Her kiss was moist and gentle where the bones and veins joined and stood out like Japanese calligraphy on parchment.
Jon shivered.
No woman had ever done that to him before. He reciprocated by lifting her chin with the tips of his fingers with his other hand, loops, arcs, whorls and whirls that made his fingerprints unique connected to the matrix of her face.
Lisa quivered.
They reeled from a joining that probably should have happened a long time ago. He leaned across the table and kissed her. She kissed back. For an instant nothing existed except the wet fire where their lips met.
They didn’t say “I love you.”
No talking meant, no yes’s or no no’s. No words meant no confusion, no miscommunication, no misinterpretation, no hurt, no pain.
Night stalked the earth quietly and slid around the day like a satin sheet as they watched the sunset. Lisa spoke and broke the moment into tiny pieces. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you something; been turning it around in my mind, examining it from one direction and then another.”
“Just say it.”
Lisa scratched her arm and rubbed her hand through her hair. “I wasn’t…I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“What?”
"This…you, me, it wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I’m glad it happened.”
“I’m not.”
Jon stood abruptly to leave. “Okay, sure, I understand…”
"No, don’t go, you don’t get it. You and me…”
“I get it, I get it. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Interfered with your plans.”
"No Jon, please don’t be hurt. You and me are great, wonderful…”
“But?”
“But it wasn’t supposed to happen because I’m being transferred to San Salvador.”
“Central America?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of extreme.”
“I’m kinda an extreme girl.”
“Yes you are.”
They looked at each other. Their eyes were inflamed with power and hunger they absorbed from the ether, from the residual energy of dormant elementals of the sky, water, fire and earth. Their appetite was fueled by their own abstinence and the ideas of consummations across time of couples loving secretly in the bushes, behind the closed eyes of curtained windows and the muzzled mouth’s of closed doors. The energy was frenzied and thick, like touching throbbing and humming wires.
“How long do we have?” Jon asked and they trudged up the hill into a grassy clearing. The moon was a wedge of pie above their heads, alamode with vanilla clouds.
“About three weeks.”
Jon nodded slightly and slipped his arm around Lisa’s waist.
No one spoke. No one dared…words…words that were more than simple sentences consumed too much time. Communication between lovers, or soon to be lovers take place deep in the roots, and bypass models of romances we have learned to fear, emulate and be ashamed,. When every successful relationship is somebody else’s failure, why speak? Why ruin the moment with giant incomplete thoughts and even bigger emotions compressed into grunts and groans, inept ramblings that fail to express the vast universes of love and hate? It might be easier to grasp water in one’s cupped hands than to try to verbally articulate around a mouthful of toes. As the feet are extricated from a throat already choking on unsaid words, that fire-thief time ticks away beneath all the baggage…the shoe trees and carry-ons and suitcases that are depositories for solitary confinement and the rationalized reasons of why endings must be endings.
“Three weeks?”
"Yeah.”
“Okay, three weeks then.”
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