Sunday, November 30, 2014
...the night will always win...Elbow...
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying of the sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
- Francis William Bourdillon
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying of the sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
- Francis William Bourdillon
'Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight' - Vachel Lindsay
It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down, Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play, Or through the market, on the well-worn
stones He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away. A bronzed, lank man! His suit of
ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. He is among us: as in times before! And we who
toss and lie awake for long, Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door. His head is
bowed. He thinks of men and kings. Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why; Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn Shall come; the shining hope of Europe free: A league of
sober folk, the Workers’ Earth, Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that things must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace That he may sleep upon his hill again?
Saturday, November 29, 2014
25,000!
To put an optimistic spin on things, this month started out rough and remained that way through half of it. Despite the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, I have been able to push out of my aching fingers 25,000 words right before midnight. The math not being too difficult, that means I have to push out another 25k in two days! No, it's not going to happen unless I can sit in front of the computer with my eyes pulled open like young Alex from A Clockwork Orange and type like a monkey on cocaine...like that movie about the monkeys on cocaine.
Being a bit thoughtful about it, I will definitely strive to hit another 7k by Sunday night. This novel is not meant to be 50k to begin with. It may eventually reach 40k at the very end. But it's meant as a potboiler, more in the style of dime drug store novellas of the 1940s. On average, I understand they would reach 40k. It's a ham-fisted fast affair and not derived on exposition but action (like the titular Jackson).
Being a bit thoughtful about it, I will definitely strive to hit another 7k by Sunday night. This novel is not meant to be 50k to begin with. It may eventually reach 40k at the very end. But it's meant as a potboiler, more in the style of dime drug store novellas of the 1940s. On average, I understand they would reach 40k. It's a ham-fisted fast affair and not derived on exposition but action (like the titular Jackson).
Thursday, November 27, 2014
NaNoWriMo "Freeway 1979"
Here's an excerpt from the novel I'm using as part of NaNoWriMo by 11/30, "Freeway 1979". It was a script several years ago that was far from being fully fleshed out, so this has been a lesson in how to turn a script into narrative form.
The story follows an illegal street race on Highway 5 in California, extending from south LA to Tijuana Mexico. Fourteen hopefuls vie for an opportunity in a time where gas and jobs are hard to come by. Trevor Bogues puts his vagrant father's '69 GTO up in the race along with his friend Carey as his navigator. It's a deadly race but with a substantial kitty for the winner. It'll be the step for Trevor to turn his world of crap around, if he can out race and out think the competitors and the underworld organization that finds the race and the lives of its hopefuls mere toys.
...
Carey keyed the radio again, “How do you copy for that Duster?” Vincent was staying out of it, he must be
loving watching the drivers squirm. Carey was getting pissed at the crew. He hated the
boss and all of his minions for that reason: they’re waiting for them to fuck up for their own
enjoyment. “Haze, any idea on the pig
chatter? Anything we need to worry
about?” Make them do some fucking work.
He looked over at Trevor, “For all we know this could be some big fucking
dragnet for their own pleasure.” He
shouldn’t have said it now, but he was lit like a torch.
“You’re saying that now?”
Carey put his
finger up to answer so what. He lit a cig and lit one for Trevor too, “One thing I kept in mind, and you can too,
we can leave anytime. This is a big
freeway, we only need to pull off and go home.
Any sign of them dicking us in the ass, and trust me, I’ll call it
before you.” He handed over the cigarette and leaned back in his seat, "I know these guys too well."
Trevor felt more
confidence at this. They were in this together, that’s for sure.
Pete came up on the radio [from the Duster], “We’re taking
the Euros advice.”
“Copy that,” Carey put
the radio down. “That’s good, we can’t
have their stink on the rest of us. It’s
been smooth sailing so far. Better for them to figure it out so we can continue."
“I worry about
[Cindy].” Trevor squirmed in his seat,
“She’s too reckless.”
“That’s what makes
the boys like her.”
“Yeah, too many
boys. Too many toys. Too many times she plays with fire.”
“She’s a big girl.”
“The bigger they are…”
“The bigger they are…”
Trevor pushed the GTO forward once he was able to come around to civilians that were running neck and neck, well below the 55 mph speed limit. Why be on the freeway if you can't go the bare minimum speed?
"Stand-by for it, Trev. That Camaro is up ahead there somewhere."
But can I get the lead again?
...
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Saturday, November 8, 2014
A Most Curious Case of Folding [Story Extract]
Where the Doctor Scientist Conquered the Electrical Park at Menlo
1889.
Doctor Ida Bartholomew was forced to complete a fair amount of work to the structures around Menlo Park in the weeks prior to experiment No. 11. Edison had abandoned the Park a year prior, but structures had already fallen into disrepair years before. Squatters had overrun a few of the buildings. She did not need the sheds or the main residence, she did insist on the main laboratory. It was here that power still existed in a capacity to continue her experimentation. To insure its security for the following weeks, she had purchased a questionably functioning shotgun so that a group of vagrants saw the need to vacant the premises and not return.
"This building is still the property of Edison and the National Government, so if you return, you will be duly persecuted [she realized the mistake later] and sent to Federal Prison!"
The Doctor felt no guilt for the escapade, only hating that she was forced to deal with the dregs of society. This was not Allston/Brighton, the laboratory not Boston University. She carried the shotgun on a sling when dusk came.
During the day, she worked feverishly, awaking at dawn after only a few hours of sleep. She was building two transformers according to her colleague, Nikola's [Tesla] specifications. The coil required was perfectly manufactured by a steel producer in Pittsburgh. It was the coil threading that took the bulk of her energies. She wanted the coil structure to maintain the appropriate tensile strength. The electrical power that would flow through these would easily greater than any experiments that were performed here.
At night, she locked every door and window and shut herself into a room that allowed her protection. She sat against the far wall from the door, shotgun in hand. She awoke in the morning, having fallen over sometime over the night. The lack of adequate grooming had taken its toll: Ida would have appeared to any person to be one of the very vagrants she expelled from the lab three weeks prior. Her eyes twitched uncontrollably and she felt that spirits inhabited the structure. They whispered at her while she focused on her work.
Then, without pomp or circumstance: completion. Ida finished the last of the copper finery that induced energy according to the calculation she had made before. The copper filament, the large iron coils, the ceramic capacitors that topped the towering structure: all were in place. She walked around it with an introspection few of her gender possessed [at this time].
She walked about the building, closing up the windows and latching the doors. She blew each candle out and fell against the caster-wheeled chair.
She swung the shotgun to the back of the chair and put her hands to her eyes. They smelled of metal and scoring. Her eyes burned from exhaustion, her body sore from hours and days slumped over the structure. She took in a breath. It felt as if she were born anew.
Moonlight fell through the slats of blinds. She could hear a night bird singing, but from far away. There was a world out there and five weeks had gone by without her in it. She didn't remember the last time she ate. Hunger fell upon her like a ravenous, black cloud. But exhaustion ran the better of her and she fell into a deep sleep.
...
She dreams of Paris. Nikola was there, as was Edison. They were pulling conduit through the streets. The black clouds roiled over the sky, promising a catastrophic lightening storm. She reveled in it, but it did not come. She wandered the dark streets. Shadows whispered to her. An orchestra played under the cobblestone of the Rue Laurent. She stood in the middle of the Rue hoping for the electricity to come. It never did. A locomotive screeched instead, pounding out of the ground, thundering toward her and she awoke.
It took time to realize that two days had passed. The danger of malnutrition threatened her: she had no energy and her body was convulsing from within.
...
1889.
Doctor Ida Bartholomew was forced to complete a fair amount of work to the structures around Menlo Park in the weeks prior to experiment No. 11. Edison had abandoned the Park a year prior, but structures had already fallen into disrepair years before. Squatters had overrun a few of the buildings. She did not need the sheds or the main residence, she did insist on the main laboratory. It was here that power still existed in a capacity to continue her experimentation. To insure its security for the following weeks, she had purchased a questionably functioning shotgun so that a group of vagrants saw the need to vacant the premises and not return.
"This building is still the property of Edison and the National Government, so if you return, you will be duly persecuted [she realized the mistake later] and sent to Federal Prison!"
The Doctor felt no guilt for the escapade, only hating that she was forced to deal with the dregs of society. This was not Allston/Brighton, the laboratory not Boston University. She carried the shotgun on a sling when dusk came.
During the day, she worked feverishly, awaking at dawn after only a few hours of sleep. She was building two transformers according to her colleague, Nikola's [Tesla] specifications. The coil required was perfectly manufactured by a steel producer in Pittsburgh. It was the coil threading that took the bulk of her energies. She wanted the coil structure to maintain the appropriate tensile strength. The electrical power that would flow through these would easily greater than any experiments that were performed here.
At night, she locked every door and window and shut herself into a room that allowed her protection. She sat against the far wall from the door, shotgun in hand. She awoke in the morning, having fallen over sometime over the night. The lack of adequate grooming had taken its toll: Ida would have appeared to any person to be one of the very vagrants she expelled from the lab three weeks prior. Her eyes twitched uncontrollably and she felt that spirits inhabited the structure. They whispered at her while she focused on her work.
Then, without pomp or circumstance: completion. Ida finished the last of the copper finery that induced energy according to the calculation she had made before. The copper filament, the large iron coils, the ceramic capacitors that topped the towering structure: all were in place. She walked around it with an introspection few of her gender possessed [at this time].
She walked about the building, closing up the windows and latching the doors. She blew each candle out and fell against the caster-wheeled chair.
She swung the shotgun to the back of the chair and put her hands to her eyes. They smelled of metal and scoring. Her eyes burned from exhaustion, her body sore from hours and days slumped over the structure. She took in a breath. It felt as if she were born anew.
Moonlight fell through the slats of blinds. She could hear a night bird singing, but from far away. There was a world out there and five weeks had gone by without her in it. She didn't remember the last time she ate. Hunger fell upon her like a ravenous, black cloud. But exhaustion ran the better of her and she fell into a deep sleep.
...
She dreams of Paris. Nikola was there, as was Edison. They were pulling conduit through the streets. The black clouds roiled over the sky, promising a catastrophic lightening storm. She reveled in it, but it did not come. She wandered the dark streets. Shadows whispered to her. An orchestra played under the cobblestone of the Rue Laurent. She stood in the middle of the Rue hoping for the electricity to come. It never did. A locomotive screeched instead, pounding out of the ground, thundering toward her and she awoke.
It took time to realize that two days had passed. The danger of malnutrition threatened her: she had no energy and her body was convulsing from within.
...
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Juntos Nosotros ~ Nov 2014
Pablo Neruda ~ Juntos Nosotros
Qué pura eres de sol o de noche caída,qué triunfal desmedida tu órbita de blanco,
y tu pecho de pan, alto de clima,
tu corona de árboles negros, bienamada,
y tu nariz de animal solitario, de oveja salvaje
que huele a sombra y a precipitada fuga titánica.
Ahora, qué armas espléndidas mis manos,
digna su pala de hueso y su lirio de uñas,
y el puesto de mi rostro, y el arriendo de mi alma
están situados en lo justo de la fuerza terrestre.
How pure you are by sunlight or by fallen night,
how triumphal and boundless your orbit of white,
and your bosom of bread, high in climate,
your crown of black trees, beloved,
and your lone-animal nose, nose of a wild sheep
that smells of shadow and of precipitous,
tyrannical flight.
And there are things that we think we dream
And there is darkness from which we never wake
Why pretend and separate the two?
For to wake from its comfort is a pitiable mistake.
NaNoWriMo 2014: "Freeway 1979"
While I polish up the second draft of "A Filipino Cookbook", I'm pulling double duty and writing my second novel, Freeway 1979. I'll be tracking it at the NaNoWriMo dashboard here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/edwardianjackal/novels/freeway-1979/stats.
The story finds a young Trevor Bogues working his fingers to the bone for his family and scrapping by. He learns of a yearly race to Mexico in an attempt of an underworld boss seeking new drivers for border crossings. One day, a few hours, free gas and three hours to Mexico. The winnings are a purge of $500 and everything to lose.
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