14 - A Canticle for Leibowitz

Exercise 14: Patterns/Used Literature/A Canticle for Leibowitz: "Write about a shopping list, as if this shopping list had much more meaning than it could possibly hold [...]500 words."

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The hotel was abandoned. 40 stories tall, the structure stood as a reminder of the city before the economic collapse, before the financial institutions were invalid, before the sun turned to black. The sheet of paper was found beneath the bed of a room on the 35th floor. The text, evenly spaced, held the aesthetics of concrete poetry, an ordered sense of space explored by a typewriter. The text was a list.


0. [Nothing]
1. An ordered sense of valance, colors shifting between red and gray
2. The corner of a room.
3. A sinkhole, endlessly deep, the blackest black imaginable
4. Pre[text disturbed by dirt and age]ncy
5. The discrepancy between the image and its title
6. A collection of notes on the Fold
7. Gender, indicative of cinematic excess
8. The time R[xxx] had nothing to say
9. Prismatic glass

It has been reassuring to find that there are ten items on the list, and the strange numbering can be assumed to be an eccentricity by its author, or perhaps simply a desire for numerical symmetry. After the list had been bandied around the institute for three weeks, a small manual of explanation was offered for all interested parties:


0. [Nothing]
The author of the note begins his list by offering a textual approximation of the void, here represented by an absence of content demarcated by a number "zero." The zero presents the violence of the white page as a subject, and thus establishes the tone of the entire list. For references on the objective nature of the performative page, refer to Mallarmé & Anne-Marie Albiach, 19th and 20th century French poets, respectively.

1. An ordered sense of valance, colors shifting between red and gray
Initially this caused the most dispute among researchers at the institute. But when an archaic dictionary revealed that valance refers to drapes on a bed's canopy, a new suggest was presented. The idea presents the sentence as a stage for an event, and the event, in this instance, is as follows:

An individual lies on his or her bed. Upon waking, the first material object that the eyes catch sight of is the drapes hanging off the edge of the bed's metallic shell. As the individual rubs his or her eyes, the colors of the drapes shift from somewhere between red (the actual color of the drapes) and gray (the value presented to an eye that cannot see color, thus seeing the world in a more limited palate of black and white. The impact of this event is carried throughout the day. A constantly applied (and then denied) desaturation of the natural environment creates an extremely delicate mental state. This mental state is an ideal position to be in should the individual subject his or herself to hypnosis. \

2. The corner of a room
The acclaimed author of speculative fiction H.P. Lovecraft, in a story entitled Dreams in the Witch's House presents the idea that the intersection of angles found at the corner of a room can be exploited to create a quantum portal to a parallel universe, allowing things to both access and escape from the waking world. Considering the momentum of our list so far, it can be assumed that combinatory effects are heading towards some sort of textual ritual.

3. A sinkhole, endlessly deep, the blackest black imaginable
By now there seems to be some indication that the list is serving as generative tool. An invocation of the sink hole creates a permanence in the earth, but posits the location as unknown and mysterious (the blackness). The sinkhole is also a structure that is neither man-made nor intentional. It is the earth acting autonomously, the earth loving cold bodies.

4. Pre[text disturbed by dirt and age]ncy
The fourth item on the list, after much discussion, has been determined to be "preternatural fluency." A familiarity with the paranormal (and even the paratextual) is clearly a necessity for using the text. Perhaps it is included on the list as a reminded to the author to stay on top of his or her "game," so to speak.

5. The discrepancy between the image and its title
There is no image on the sheet shared by the list itself, so we can assume in this case the "image" being referred to is the idea of the image. A discrepancy between image and title creates a distance for the viewer, an experiential sense of space. This seems to echo item 0., the presentation of the page as a space in and of itself. We now have an idea of both physical and mental space established via the list.

6. A collection of notes on the Fold
Whether the list is referring to the mechanics of a black hole or the theories of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze is uncertain. | "The upper chamber of the baroque house is closed in on itself, without window or opening. It ‘contains’ innate ideas, the folds of the soul - or what we might call, following Guattari, the incorporeal aspect of our subjectivity." | Either idea fits within the context established so far, elaborating concepts in unique ways.

7. Gender, indicative of cinematic excess
A poll done by the top researchers of the institution have come up with the following list of films to illustration this item:
- In a Year With 13 Moons, RW Fassbinder
- La Femme Publique, Andrzej Zulawski
- The Trois Coleurs Trilogy, Kryzstof Kieslowski
- Funeral Procession of Roses, Toshio Matsumoto
- Black Lizard, Kenji Fukasaku
- The Cement Garden, Andrew Birkin

8. The time R[xxx] had nothing to say
Narrative absence. This introduces the idea of dialog without actually having to create dialog. Characters (though the name of the character in this case is obscured) are introduced and we are met with a potential conversation.

9. Prismatic glass
The pyramid is a crystal, and as we know from historical research, the pyramid is an essential structure when considering occulted architecture. The prismatic glass of a crystal separates the world into a spectrum of light, breaking everything down individually, splitting the whole. Once we can gather the essential parts of a whole we can begin to understand the way things (the world, ontology) works, exists.

13 - Big Two-Hearted River

Exercise 13: Patterns/Used Literature/Big Two-Hearted River: "Write another version of this great story originally published in the collection In Our Time. [...] Be faithful to the Hemingway original, but you will clearly want to make this story your own [...] 750 words."

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So I read this story once back in like... March. I don't really remember it, just bits.

On the train the man slept, light through windows new shadows and faces. The compartment suffered a slight scent, and when he woke up he thought it might be his own body. The train stopped and he grabbed his luggage. Standing on the platform he looked ahead of him.

He saw:
a lake, long dirt roads, dead trees, a forest, slight hills, a complete lack of people or commerce, no cars, a struggling dog in the train's parking lot, a couple empty packs of cigarettes (he bent over to check), a broken 40, and a stop sign.

Later, walking down the road, birds didn't chirp and the air smelled like chemicals. He wondered if he'd be able to catch anything to eat in the lake. He had a few ph-level strips left in his pack and knew that that was all he had to count on for a while. He could risk only testing once a week, but if the radiation came late he'd have no way to tell (the phosphorous glow would only appear in affected bodies of water a week and a half after infection).

The dead sun beating down on the road was giving him a headache, so he decided to cut into the trees. He could reach the lake by following the breeze he expected to find. Once he got closer he would be able to smell the dead life on the shore.

* * *

He pitched his tent in a clearing in the forest a dozen meters from the lake. The mosquitoes were all dead. The sweat dripping from his body pooled in a shallow divot the tarp of the tent's bottom pushed. Even though the sky was pushing the heat of 99+ degrees, he lit a fire to heat up his canned goods. His beans tasted like beans.

He gathered a collection of heavy rocks. He surrounded himself with the rocks, locating himself at the exact center of the circle. He jerked off thinking about rimjobs and hairy assholes. His dick throbbed in the heat. Come spilled into the dust. Flies swarmed the wet and buzzed with the air. He pulled his pants up and walked to the river. [...............................
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
...........................................]

* * *

He had only six testing strips left and was afraid of snakes. He had seen a whole near the beach where he waded to find what he was eating. Since the ocean had flooded the land all bodies of water were salt. He ate a sea urchin, saving the black spines to prick his blood later, knowing that his idea of the poison would save him from toxic breath. When he broke the shell he heard a scream.

He couldn't decide if he were actually afraid of the snake or not. He hadn't seen it yet, and wasn't even sure that it was around. It could be a hole from before the sky melted, he thought out loud. I should do a system of exercises to prepare.

And so he ran around the forest counting bee hives, lusting for honey. He did pull ups on steady tree branches and his hands bled with thorns. A set of crunches found his back covered in dirt.

He washed himself off in the lake, leaving his underwear on for protection, fearing the disposal of his genitalia.

At night he slept.

* * *

[[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]the man floated about the ground on his tent //// floatedintotheskyhelddownbytarp /// theskytheskyitself burns green and blue floatingfloating [krafataglabch].......................................................................heheardtheshoutingfromthesky///notheground///he heard the shouts from near by///////saw the outline of figures no////[alone]xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[insearchofanelusivesecretWHATEVER]...........................................................................................................................................................hecouldfeelitthelight///but not by himself, could feel Another///nojusthimself[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]///////whatistheshapeofyourbody//////.....................................willlitfitordoesitfloat.......................[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]/////sunburn,fallen///"iknowwhatnothingis"///[xxxxxxx]........................................................[xxxxxxxxxxxxx]///[maintaining]aloveof...................secret[xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]//............................................................................................................................................]

* * *

I don't remember how the story ends.

The man will continue to sleep and fish and survive until he runs out of testing strips. He will then fear the river and move on. He will find himself standing on the platform at the train station struck by the absence of wind. After several days of waiting the train will come. He will spend $7 on a train ticket and ride until he arrives at a town. He will work in the town for money and when he has an amount of money he will return to a forest by a lake which holds the ocean. Until the sun comes too close.

12 - The Systems Novel

Exercise 12: Patterns/Used Literature/The Systems Novel: "Write a very short systems story. By definition, this is impossible. A systems novel takes on a huge system and pretends to (or occasionally actually does) explain the system [...] You have only 500 words to make this work--a ridiculously small frame to pour out such a large topic. But that's the point of this exercise."

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I don't think I quite understand this prompt, but whatever, it got me writing something at least.

The factory was a box, and the box was a machine. A series of internal mechanisms guided the production of the mysterious objects that the men who worked for the factory handled every morning. It was a simple enough job, but there were rules. There were very specific rules.

THE RULES:

1) The objects that come out of the box come out of the box clean and they must remain clean.
Your fingers, when touching the objects that come out of the box must remain grease and dirt free.
You may wear gloves, but the gloves must be clothe and free of dirt or sweat.

2) You may not inquire into as to what the objects that come out of the box are.
Your job is to take the objects as they come out of the box and put them in packing boxes for shipment.

3) You may not steal any of the objects.
The objects have a specific use that you are forbidden from learning of.
The use-value of the objects depends on this secrecy.

4) If you are discovered trying to decode the shipping labels, you will be terminated.

5) Any unplanned absence from your position will result in a termination.

6) You may not ask any questions, the penalty for this offense being termination.

7) You must not speak to your co-workers about the objects that come out of the box that is the factory.
Gossip about the objects will result in termination.

Three men were employed by the factory that was a box, and these three men were responsible for taking the objects that came from the box that was a factory and putting them in other boxes for the purpose of shipping them to other places. The first man's name is Brant.

Brant is a single man who lives in a one-bedroom apartment in an apartment complex near the factory that is a box that the objects that he packages and ships come out of. Brant has no friends and does little more than sleep at his apartment and work at the factory that is a box. One day Brant cuts his finger on the side of a box and blood begins to pour out of the wound. The next day he is fired.

The second man's name is Roland. Roland has a wife and two children. At night his wife presses him for details about his job. He tells her that it is a job that is paying the family's bills, and that is all she needs to know. He has gotten accustomed to falling asleep while his wife cries with her face thrown into her pillow. One day, after years of internalizing his wife's sadness and his own ignorance towards his own accomplishments, Roland turns to his coworker and shouts "I just wish I knew what we were doing." The next day he is fired.

The third man who works at the factory that is a box that produces objects is named Eric. Eric has just started working at the factory after graduating from high school in a nearby town. He found the job listed with vague details in his local newspaper. Due to his lack of real interest in anything the world has to offer, and his utter absence of curiosity about existence, he applied for the job and was quickly assigned his position. He will work at the factory until he retires sixty years later. He will die soon after that, rich, without any one to tell his lack of secrets to.

The factory will hire three more men once these three are gone, and three more after that. The factory that is a box will continue to produce objects with no discernible use until one day a bomb will fall and destroy the factory. A team of experts will come and remove all evidence that the factory ever existed, and the factory that was a box and the objects that came out of it will never be seen again.

11 - Your Swann

Exercise 11: Patterns/Used-Literature/Your Swann: "Write a letter from one of your fictional characters to another. In this letter, tell a brief history of another (third) character over many years who plays at least three significantly different roles over the letter writer's lifetime [...] 500 words."

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Letter from an unnamed secondary character in one unnamed story to an unnamed objective character in another unnamed story.



Dear XXXXXX,



I am sending someone else soon. A man. Found him by mistake during one of my shows. He caused a rift under hypnosis, frantically ranting on the inconsequential nature of life. I had lost control, and was afraid of losing my audience for good. It is under control now, you will see him soon.


But this man is not the primary reason I write. You certainly must have noticed that my mother showed up. Or at least, I assume you noticed an older woman. I suppose there was nothing to indicate she was my mother, but maybe you noticed a resemblance. Probably not.


She was losing herself and I couldn't stand to see her just give up. She wanted to see the man with whom she had conceived me again. I think so. I found details in old letters from the attic. She cried nights. I don't think she was desperate, just missing. It was maybe some sort of mental deterioration, what have you, she was certainly delusional. I knew if I sent her to you she could find something that would be temporarily satisfying, perhaps enough to be forgotten.


As a boy I was blind. You know this. She cured this blindness by suggesting I wasn't, refusing to concede to the fact that her only child could not see. It was through her that I learned how to harness the motion of submission. She never had to teach me anything: all I had to do was bask in the power of her refusal, understand that the time my sight returned was after my fall, after she had spent 45 minutes telling me I would see, I would see. She was holding me, asleep in her arms, and her voice crept into my ear: at the final moment, my soft frame collapsed onto carpet, she was raised her voice in screams but continued with the hymn: "You will be able to see when you wake up."


And I did, and I loved her for it. But I was still a bastard, and this was occasionally a source of embarrassment. She couldn't care in the slightest: she loved the man, but he never loved her in return: there was only me. As a teenager I had complete control over her, between being the symbol of all she adored & my rapidly developing talents of hypnosis, she was utterly lost to me. I will admit that I abused my own hold on her, her submission, but the folly of youth prevents considering utter remorse.


She has affected me throughout my life, I mean that. And I hope her transition to the walls was pleasant for all involved. I hope there was a spectacle, passion. I hope you could feel her words, I hope you could see. I hope she lit up and spectraled.



Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXX

10 - Sorrow-Acre

Exercise 10: Patterns/Used Literature/Sorrow-Acre: "Take a story you love [...] Write three different summaries of the story, in 200 words, in 50 words, and in 10 words. Let these three summaries sit [...] for a month [...] add narrative prose [...] between these short pieces of prose. Connect them to each other [...] Slowly turn it into a coherent story. 750 words."


I have chosen to work with Orphea by Jesus Ignacio Aldapuerta.

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I haunt the desert, I walk, I hide beneath sand, I sweat. I find nothing, I see nowhere for entire stretches of movement. I teach myself how to float, hover above the sand so my feet don't burn. I want to find someone but I don't want to find someone but I won't find anyone. I have been here longer than I have been alive but I don't think I'm still alive which would explain that. I shout into the desert "Hello is there anybody there with water," and I think I hear somebody else shout back 'Hello is there anybody there with water." There are no echoes in the desert, I expect that I just reheard myself.

I can see footprints sunk into sand so I follow them, careful to float above and not disrupt the patterns. Shoes that could fit my feet found at the end of a trail, the footsteps change shape at this point. I can see a road, a car parked next to the road. Since I think I am invisible I shout out to the man "Are you available to assist me," and someone shouts back "Are you available to assist me." I know the man is not me but maybe I can only hear myself. Perhaps I'm suffering delusions in the heat or maybe there is a delay in the speed of traveling sound or maybe I'm just confused fucked on desert heat and sleepless bright nights. A coyote sizzles on the highway.

The man's car is parked on the curb of the road and looks like it would work if I turned it on. Inside the car is a reel to reel tape player and an empty bottle of water. The car airs scent. On the other side of the car I see a man. I will follow him:

A man in the desert masturbates in heat reaching 40 degrees Celsius. He wonders if he will die as he comes. He gets into a car and turns on a tape full of static, driving down an empty highway. He stops in a hotel room, drinks a glass of whiskey, drops it on the floor, and dreams of an accident and a woman. He comes on a photograph of the woman from his dream, then sets the photograph ablaze. Before driving the next day, he smashes his tape player with the heel of his shoe. He drives with the windows open, heat sweltering, his head throbbing in the pain of dehydration. He stops only once, pisses in a water bottle, dumps it onto his head, then continues driving. He arrives at another hotel, his final destination, where he books a room, looks out the window and waits. A car crashes and he walks outside, grabs the head of the woman from the photograph who has been decapitated in the wreck, pours gasoline on his body, fucks the disembodied head, and lights himself on fire.

I did not know that I could see dreams now. I haven't dreamt forever but I haven't slept in as long. I watched the man burn to the ground before anybody else noticed. The car accident kept the attention, I swim in the hotel pool. I swim in the pool for three days and hold conversations with myself underwater until I realize I'm not holding my breath. I must be dead but I don't mind so much because I'm still around. I can still see and feel. The water feels good but after two days it heats with the sun and I feel like if I had real flesh it would be boiling and tender.

I decide to leave the pool, but I don't know where to go, so I sit int he back of a jeep until a man gets in it and drives to another hotel.

A man dreams, follows a photograph, listens to static while his car floats through the desert. He comes regularly, pours piss on himself, checks into hotels. The desert is everywhere. A woman stars in films, he has her photograph, he dreams. He watches her die, fuck her head, and sets himself on fire.

My lightness beging to smell of piss and come but I don't know if that's me or the men I keep following. I have ashes stuck in my lungs and I am not a crematorium. I want to build a machine that will give me a physicality that I can impress upon others. After watching so much death I want to feel my body die again, want to die again. I don't remember the first time. The next man I follow is the same as the others but I try to talk to him. "What is death" I ask him "what is death" he asks himself I ask myself and the is the answer I can come up with seems to be interchangeable with life.


Death: three come shots, two hotels, one woman, and static.

09 - Essay Fiction

Exercise 09: Patterns/Styles/Essay Fiction: "Write a piece of fiction that sounds, most of the time, like an essay, but periodically degrades (or improves) into fictional narrative [...] 500 words."

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I'm skipping this for now, for two reasons: 1, this is a mode of writing I've more or less been doing for a couples years academically, and I'd like to not return to it yet, and 2, I considered this prompt for like 3 weeks without result, so fuck it.

08 - Rhetorical Questions

Exercise 08: Patterns/Style/Rhetorical Questions: "Write a fragment of a story using mostly rhetorical questions [...] 500 words."

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Why does this become a necessary question? If you are going to talk about something, shouldn't you have some idea of what your thesis is? Or is there really nothing you have to say whatsoever? Can you imagine a situation in which you aren't forced to confront the pain that I assume runs your life? There isn't anything that anybody could ever learn about you. Do you really want somebody else to take care of you? Do you really think that would lead to a situation where both you, and another person, would be happy? Is there any reason you deserve to share happiness with someone else? Do you even know what it means to be a happy person?

Sexuality is the last century's codeword for morality. Have you ever even had sex before? Is there any reason why you think you would even enjoy it? There's a reason you don't know the answer to this, right? Can you even fucking consider getting up in the morning and thinking that you serve some sort of ultimate purpose? Is there any reason you haven't killed yourself yet? Do you know what kind of person you need? You need fucking trash; you need someone who values their life even less than you value your own. Do you think there is somebody like that who even exists? Do you think there is a reason for you to float into the sky every time you lay down and try to sleep? Is there any reason why instead of sleeping you float across the hallway, out of your apartment, into your neighbors apartment? How many times has your neighbor awoken with you floating above him? How many times has he screamed or hit you or tried to destroy you? How come you haven't even tried to strap yourself down, or take any sort of measure against what you know is inevitable? Why don't you even lock your doors?

Your neighbor will never love you. Do you think anybody can? Should I believe you if you choose to answer the question? Is there any reason to believe that, given the opportunity, you wouldn't take advantage of your floated position above the man you're in love with? Why can't you just destory your own fucked motives? Why don't you just masturbate? Have you ever considered that your floating is the result of sexual frustration? Nobody will ever fuck you, and you know this, so why don't you hire a fucking whore? Why do birds flock to your window when you look outside of it? Why do geese run away from you when you walk along a lake? Why do your clothes fit so tightly? Why do you bother getting up in the morning.

Why do you have to insist on staring at me when I ask you these questions. Why do you have to insist on the fact that I ask them. Why do you have to be in love with me. Why do you have to float above me. I can never love you back.