04 - Language is Always an Abbreviation

Exercise 04: Patterns/Style/Language is Always an Abbreviation:
"Take these five words, 'Language is always an abbreviation.' Replace each word with the next closest (and most interesting) word in an imaginary dictionary. Don't use an actual dictionary [...] Next, find five new words from these replacement words, using only the letters of each new replacement word [...] You will have three five-word sentences now. These will be the titles of three paragraphs. Write the paragraphs with these five-word sentences in mind. [...] 250 words."

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Language is always an abbreviation

Storytelling in lieu of a television drunk that night, we sat and sat and sat and sometimes considered the metonymy of our surroundings. "That couch delivers." I wondered aloud whether or not the stories we told could amount to anything. The answer proved to be "maybe" as another story was told and it was then that I understood why I felt as hungry as I did. As the words fell out of a mouth I thought about Rene Daumal's "A Night of Serious Drinking" even though I haven't read it yet. I wanted to tell a story in the first-person present but realized that I wasn't actually there so the second-or-third-person past would be better. I told two short stories between sips of whiskey, my throat burning with eagerness and satisfaction and want of water.


Lentils's isthmus almonds: anterior accidents

You knew a girl named Lentils when you were in 5th grade and she was very confusing. One time you asked her where she came from but her only answer was "the island." You lived in the Midwest and there wasn't a body of water around for miles, so you assumed that she was lying. About everything. One day at recess she handed you an almond. "It is from the isthmus," she said, looking you in the eyes with an intensity that was unfamiliar at the age of 12. You considered the almond for a while, rolling it in your hands, letting its unfamiliar surface scrape your skin before biting into the nut. Of course, in all of your eagerness you neglected to chew in a comprehensive manner and found yourself choking on the damn thing within seconds. Lentils turned pale-white and ran away to find a teacher. You could hear her insisting, over and over again, "It was an accident, it was an accident!"


Tiles must damn terror'd acids

Grace Jones was looking for a contractor to install new tiles for her kitchen floor. Despite her fame, despite the fact that she was shot in A View to a Kill, she lived in a modest house overlooking the sea. At nights she occasionally became terrified by the sounds from under her floorboards; terrible moans and a hissing that sounded like acid reflux after a tomato-heavy dish. "I am terrified!" she would scream while striking the poses that made her record art notorious. Her dark body against the empty walls of her modern surroundings. "The tiles!" screaming again, "the tiles! They must save me!" while the synthetic sounds of an organ would populate the air of her humble abode. One morning she woke up, discovered that the acid that terrified her had seeped into her kitchen, and cried for hours until her holy tears diffused the acidity of the material slowly taking over her home. The day was saved.