"There is something sad about him, for, unlike Basil and Dorian, he fails to commit himself. His life is vicarious."
~Alex Ross, Deceptive Picture, a piece about Oscar Wilde from the Aug. 8, 2011 issue of The New Yorker.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

#28, fiction- turning signals


One day. They got out of the car and drank from the icy stream. The water was cold and sweet. Across the road was an endless field with acres and acres of tall sunflowers staring at the sun.

Dear friends,

Have you ever had this sort of panicking realization, that you’ve reached a certain age, but all that you’ve accomplished is nothing but circling around, aimlessly, fruitlessly and pointlessly?
I haven’t finish anything in two months. At first, I felt kinda nervous about it. But then, I just felt plain exhausted. At certain point, I just stopped thinking about it. But that’s not entirely true, for something is always stirring, itchy deep down and on my skin.
            This piece is short, incomplete in a way, but it progressed really slowly when I was writing it. I started it on April 24, didn’t finish it till June 6, and it’s only a couple thousand words!
            I was working at a translation company at the time. The workload and exhaustion must have affected the way I expressed my ideas. Ironically, I had long since stopped working for the company, but now I’m not writing anything at all.
            Don’t you wish that you could just catch a break? Just finally, entitled not to care any more? “What you own ends up owning you.” How convenient would it be, if there were a more minute way to self-liberation, so the dramatic freedom could be experienced and shared without burning down the house.
            But don’t you mind me. I’m just saying.

Preview- Fish
Scott climbed out of the car, still breathing heavily. When he tried to put on his pants, he realized there’s blood over his lower body. When he looked up. He saw a girl killed, head twisted, limps twisted, all covered in blood, another crawling away on the ground, naked, except a piece of cloth around her waist that’s to be her cheerleading skirt, real or not. And three blood stained monsters looking straight back at him, before zooming out to be his death-taking brothers, thicker than blood.

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