Rather Funny

It wasn't that I'm a great writer.  It wasn't that I had become irrevocably wrapped in my characters' emotions and feelings.  It was merely the effect of a new semester which gets me out of bed at seven in the morning Monday through Friday.  But, in truth, I fell asleep on the keyboard while writing this.  

We had been quiet a while, enjoying the clean and clear weather, when through habit I glanced at my friend.  Upon seeing him I turned quickly away, then guided my head by inches back toward him.  He was falling asleep.  Throughout months of sitting beside him each night not once had I seen him sleep.  Whether he took twenty minute naps in the library or in his room while it was empty or however he got the minimal amount of rest survival requires I don’t know.  Now his head slackened to one side, his eyelids loosening and fingers unfurling over his legs.  By impulse I nearly stopped the car to lower his seat, cover him with my sweater.  But I bit my lip and drove.  Continued making our slow, winding way.  Living hills.  Diamond sky.  A beautiful world where my friend could sleep.  The car keeping us in constant low rumble, and I remembered how he would fold closer to his instrument whenever the notes came strong and rolling and made his chest quiver with their resonance.  For a great time he wandered, knowing nothing but that he was warm and comfortable and safe; then the eyes closed, and his breath came soft.

Afton on That Which is Strange

I just read a poem on Wayward Fancies, a blog I follow.  Its theme was so exactly like a theme of Fogspill that I had to post the comparison.  Here's the link to the poem: http://waywardfancies.blogspot.com/2013/01/if-life-is-enjoyed.html

And here's my scene:


       “You’re so strange,” she said, stepping forward until I cut into her path.  She’d not touch him.  The greetings had ended, and now no one would touch him.

        "Is that a bad thing?” he asked.

“I should say so.”

“Oh.  I shouldn’t, at least not all the time.”

“When is strange good?”

“Anything inexplicable is strange, and it would be a sad world without the inexplicable.”

“There aren’t any inexplicable good things.”

“Night and day are good.”

“But I can explain that.”  

He furrowed his brow.

“The earth spins.  When it spins toward the sun there is day; when it spins away from the sun there is night.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, that’s why there’s night and day.”

“No it’s not.”

“It is!”

“It’s not.  That’s how, not why.”

“Fine!  Why do you think we have night and day?”

“I don’t think anything of why.  I know that day and night and the change between are wonderful.  Wonderful and strange.”

My sister twirled her hair around a spiteful finger, then turned and left.

I looked at my friend.  He’d closed his eyes, as if trying to renew some of the strength my sister stole.  I took his hand.  His fingers encircled mine tightly.

“Maybe that’s it,” he said.  “You’re strange, Kiva.  Maybe it was your strangeness that brought you to me.”

Little, in need of revision, and without context; but there you go.

Caleb's Store

        It was on one of those streets women keep away from after three o’clock.  Just a few blocks from our apartment but seeming much further, and our apartment wasn’t exactly on Russian Hill.  Two black-windowed bars, a tobacco and friends supplier, something which called itself a café but brandished a ‘No Minors’ sign on the door, an empty site which once tried to be coffeehouse, two other shamelessly vacant fronts, and an ugly store called ‘Liu’s Records and Strings.’  The exterior of this nasty little shop was covered with assorted gang names and imperfect words written in bulging script, rather like the ‘bubble letters’ beloved by junior high girls except that these had eaten too much and were, therefore, nearly or entirely illegible.  The windows were dingy to the point of sin, and from the inside covered with pink fabric.  I say ‘fabric’ because every self-respecting curtain would require formal apology if compared to anything as greasy, pilled, give-you-a-rash-by-its-very-sight scrap of garbage as whatever hung in that window.  The viewing space left between this outrage to the textile world was minuscule  and through it could be seen bins of vinyls, a few fire-licked guitars, and posters of every rocker who turned stomachs between 60- and 75.  Yet my friend always wanted to stroll by this shop.  “It says ‘strings,’” he’d say.  “That means ‘violins.’”  Each time we detoured down that hideous, pin-breadth street I tried to push him through the door.  But he backed away like a timid child.
“I’ve nothing to buy.”
“A shoulder rest.”

        “I’ve never used one.”

“Every other violinist does.”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“Some new rosin, then.”

He shook his head.  “I have plenty.  Maybe another time.”