Oh dear, I’ve started this story in entirely the wrong place! Well, I guess we’re so far in now, going on is as good as going back. And, as you’ll soon discover, I do like to go on. And what does going back mean anyway? Especially these days. There’s only this word and then the next. Which, granted, isn’t much. Sure, but if I were to stop right now there’d be less. Arguably.
Look, I’m just trying to be honest up front. Cards on the table, and all that. We’re not familiar, you and I. But let’s at least acknowledge, best we can, what all the wily words are up to. Me saying you don’t know me may, of course, be true and it may not be, but we both know that’s not the point, don’t we? Like this question, it’s really a play. With something purposeful hidden in the piffle. See, there he goes hoping language will save him from a fatal plotlessness; that pretty words won’t always be plot’s poorer cousin. And inexplicably expressed in the third person. What pretence! As transparent as a pane. And as big a one.
So let’s not take any of my words at face value, is what I’m saying. Including these ones. I’m a storysmith after all, and given to ornamentation. Always hammering something. I’ve convinced myself of the nobility of the craft but, between you and me, its futility grows more unbearable with each passing day. Listen to me, I said before I started I wouldn’t get maudlin. On such a sunny day too. Here I am tapping away in the freedom of my kitchen words of my own choosing, or as close as it gets. That’s the dream, no? Yet we both know that any or all of that may or may not be literally true and that it really doesn’t matter either way. Pinch of salt. Culinary metaphors etc.
It isn’t my intention to bore you any more than usual and I’m conscious we haven’t yet put words to wing, so to speak. Let’s not get conversationally sidetracked, then; all that suspension of disbelief back-and-forth. And please don’t think for a minute I’m trying to convince you of anything. But, also, conversely, that I’m some mere bubble in the brew. I’m here alright. It’s just that neither of us knows exactly what that means. But, equally, I’ve nothing to prove. If you want to argue the toss on that you’ll get no argument from me. Anyway, you likely stopped reading at the end of the first paragraph. See, games. I mean to say, I’m not here for your entertainment. We perhaps lose sight of this nowadays. I blame Robbie Williams.1 Though apparently that was irony. Yes, but also entertaining so…
Am I going to sit here and try to convince you that stories aren’t infantile? You didn’t make it to the fifth paragraph only to confuse me with a functioning adult. It’s too late for me. I was trying save you! Okay, okay, entertainment of sorts. But you’ll surely need a little something more for the weekend. At least let me pretend to be a grown up. Here are some first class openers, then, for getting us started post-haste:
Conventional:
Sunlight streamed into the kitchen through a large roof lantern, illuminating the page on which he wrote.
Or quirky:
The fluffy summer sycamore set in the back yard fizzed in the breeze like the synapses of his brain.
Sexily international?:
Estaba soleada pero un poco frío, también.
Ironic, maybe:
The plan was to start enjoying his writing once he was sure he was dead.
Or, finally, something highly acclaimed by my post-doctoral creative writing group:
In a world astir within and without, providentially circumscribed by an inexpressible infinitude suffused in the word pangs cauterised upon this page: so. story. I.
Whilst we’re all making up our minds (pretending it isn’t obviously that last one), I’m going to continue making up for the lack of anything resembling a story here. I’ve literarily lost the plot, as you know, but there’s not much of character or setting either, to say nothing of mystery. So I’m hardly going to blame you for bailing. Jumping off the stage and into the audience has a quaintly comical if by now somewhat clichéd feel in theatre, but is it even possible or desirable in prose? Kitchens aside, it’s just my voice here really isn’t it? Sort of inside you. The words are just the tease, (forgive), the negligee. I don’t take this unstaged intimacy lightly; the sensuality of silent words rescued from the tyranny of tooth and tongue. We’re caught, you and I, in this silent snatch of time. Our wall-less inner circle.
We all know what we expect or want or demand of a story, then. Know when we’ve be cheated. Turned off. Mid-lit. Under-written and over-sold. But do we always know what a story might want from us? In the headlong rush to discover new stories pretending and failing not to be scarily like the last one, might we mistakenly dismiss those calling us to reconsider what even counts as story? Patience, then, is my plea. Tenderness toward meaning, intended or otherwise, stated or implied, muddled or clarion. Misunderstanding to be expected. Forgiveness prerequisite. To err is human, as our Pope reminds.
Having extruded the guts, so to speak, put the worst foot forward, foregrounded myself as writer in the most terrible of hammy postmodernist manors (sic), it remains to be seen how now to redress the emperor. I, of course, mean re-dress. Or, if you will: how to put Humpty together again? Someone’s taken a giant dump in the dreamscape. Yanking us out at every opportunity. Dummy fiction. Drowning us in words when all we ever desired was to get lost in them. I fully understand. Life’s traumatic enough without linguistic autopsies masquerading as tales. Go build thy worlds of recycled glass! But, equally, spare me the bloody bromides. Pandora’s box is open, people, and it’s time to wake up and smell the coffin.
Before beginning, then, a personal note of inflection. These faltering truncated tales spring from, well, yes, who knows where, but, then again, also, this thing inside that I can’t seem to dislodge. It rather defies description but that hasn’t stopped me trying: lead lungs, marmalised soul, heart splinter, shredded chilli being, mule-kicked gonads. Basically, full length sheepskin in the pouring rain hung upon one’s shivering skeleton. Why would something like that even exist? Did I fail to notice the bodies beneath the patio? That circling flock of broken birds? Maybe Karma really is a bitch? Alas, in absence of answers, all I ask is a little forbearance.
Other than that, (it’s becoming all too painfully clear), I got nothing.
The End, Is Nigh
Word count: c 1,101 words and falling
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Artwork: Ben East
I guess sometimes even nothing is something :-)
We've all been there--and you've expressed this place of trying with humor, irony and, may I say, empathy. xx