Awaiting The "Jane Doe" Denouement
I have not looked at my book for a week. Tonight I have been rereading much of it. I am trying to encourage myself to keep working on it and not lose faith. So I copied a few of my favorite bits to share with you. Bits that, should it ever be published, will not spoil your enjoyment of it. You know, if you happen to read it. (God, writing is such an expectant business!)
I've got the whole story to a place of quiet and am now asking my story where it is meant to go? The only thing I know for sure is that it isn't done yet. It hasn't finished where I thought it would finish. Now I'm afraid it may never finish. Not because I don't want to, or can't finish writing it. More that I'm not sure, I'm not clear, where it needs to go now. So I spent the evening reading passages and trying to talk to the spirit of the story to find out what I am supposed to do for it now? You think writers are the masters, and in some degree they are, but in others they are nothing more than sad musicians plucking on the notes of sheet music that has lived already a thousand years in the ether. I know that I will not allow my story to be without hope, because hope is the most elemental reason I am not dead already, but aside from having a slim limitation on my work, it is for the work to speak to me. I wait. I think this is not uncommon. However, I read it, and will continue to read it over and over until the solution, the ending, the denouement will arrive in my heart and ask to be transcribed. We are conduits, (writers), to the life all around us.
So here, my friends, are some little snippets for your enjoyment, edification, or derision: as you choose.
************
Yet, like the tiniest grain of wheat, there is nourishment in hope, however spare it may be. Someday there will be an answer to the winter hush of my spirit and my bones will heal. I will untie the effigies from their strings and I will lay them tenderly to rest in the soil of my own choosing, where those dead eyes cannot follow to spoil this gorgeous rest.
Then I will know my own name.
I will remove the tag from my toe.
Walk out of the morgue, into the light.
It is not agreeable to be caught waiting out Armageddon in filthy panties no matter how many shotguns you have to rest on your knees.
There they sit for what feels like a hundred years of bleeding; Isaac is cold in his undershirt, but he doesn't move because he would never leave a person to bleed to death. He doesn't question. He has no thoughts right now. Checks pulses, scans the Laundromat, sees that they are completely alone, and off in the distance, cutting the city fugue into ribbons of light is the sound of approaching mercy.
Homeless people may not have walls to shut you out but you must treat them as though they do. The streets are their home and every time you walk outside, you walk through their rooms.
********************************
It came down to a night, a point of last light, an apex of anger, frustration, and the slurring of degraded expectations with cheap single malt that smells like smoky piss and lingers on the breath like road kill
********************************
A better more ironic weapon God could not devise than the body of a man...
********************************
Yet the cathedral is so beautiful and she believes it holds under its roof the perfect expression of human ardor, longing, hope, and despair. She believes it must be thick with prayer and there are few things more beautiful than the supplicant spirit of mankind.
*******************************
"Yes Stallone Pantone, we're alright. You smell so clean. Can I inhale you for a minute before I go?" she asked teasingly, yet secretly completely seriously.
******************************
She didn't speak because he stole her voice.
**********************************
It fed the rage; it was right that he should have the prey by the neck here and be able to strip it, gut it, eat it, lick it, and satisfy his musky hunger; the great open never-satisfied demanding hunger that ate away at his own flesh when he didn't feed it prey. Blood. Drugs. Violence. Virgins.
**********************
It was all a silent opera now.
***********************************
******************************
I want to be your skin; holding all your scent in like the bark that protects the phloem and the xylem from marauders, from weather, from preachers scouring all that is luscious and living away from the pith of your heart.
*****************************
She looked at him with her sleepy eyes and there she was: eight years old, disheveled braids flying, pale Jane throwing punches.
*****************************
Violence loves itself. It loves to tangle with those people it has touched before.
*****************
I would drape myself funereally if I could know if he was coming for me. Not my love, but the animal. I would say my last rights, for no one else will know to do it, if I could only tell for sure that the sugar of summer was finally finished for the dry vermouth of fall.
*****************
While Isaac walked the couple of blocks to the Cafe des Croissants to meet a stranger named "Tim" who seemed to be Jane's watchdog friend, he wondered why he had agreed to come. What shade of fool was he to agree to meet a person who required him to bring picture ID, proof of address, and his worker's badge just to tell him if Jane had been run over by a Muni?
***************************
We are polite, we smile, we engage in small talk which you quickly observe that I'm shit at after I ask you if you've ever had jock itch. Even though I barely know you. And now you wonder if I have jock itch, which embarrasses you, which makes you wonder why you talked to me in the first place. You forgive me temporarily because I am so friendly and open and I am so obviously madly worried about having offended you and in your flusterment you find yourself engaging in more small talk, which can only end badly since I've had a lot of medical curiosity lately.
**************************
He had a shirt, underwear, and socks on without any pants. You need to just visualize that for a moment. The complete and utter wrongness of it makes me want to do some violence to a wall or a shoe. No, it's not just painful, it's sick! It's sicker than playing "Send In The Clowns" without giving a person warning. It's sicker than using the word "rump" as though it wasn't the worst word in the universe ever. It's almost as bad as ripping the heads off of kittens, because they weren't just ordinary socks. No, they were the worst socks that man has ever ill-designed and plagued the feet of men with: white tube socks!
I've got the whole story to a place of quiet and am now asking my story where it is meant to go? The only thing I know for sure is that it isn't done yet. It hasn't finished where I thought it would finish. Now I'm afraid it may never finish. Not because I don't want to, or can't finish writing it. More that I'm not sure, I'm not clear, where it needs to go now. So I spent the evening reading passages and trying to talk to the spirit of the story to find out what I am supposed to do for it now? You think writers are the masters, and in some degree they are, but in others they are nothing more than sad musicians plucking on the notes of sheet music that has lived already a thousand years in the ether. I know that I will not allow my story to be without hope, because hope is the most elemental reason I am not dead already, but aside from having a slim limitation on my work, it is for the work to speak to me. I wait. I think this is not uncommon. However, I read it, and will continue to read it over and over until the solution, the ending, the denouement will arrive in my heart and ask to be transcribed. We are conduits, (writers), to the life all around us.
So here, my friends, are some little snippets for your enjoyment, edification, or derision: as you choose.
************
Yet, like the tiniest grain of wheat, there is nourishment in hope, however spare it may be. Someday there will be an answer to the winter hush of my spirit and my bones will heal. I will untie the effigies from their strings and I will lay them tenderly to rest in the soil of my own choosing, where those dead eyes cannot follow to spoil this gorgeous rest.
Then I will know my own name.
I will remove the tag from my toe.
Walk out of the morgue, into the light.
*****************************
It is not agreeable to be caught waiting out Armageddon in filthy panties no matter how many shotguns you have to rest on your knees.
*******************************
There they sit for what feels like a hundred years of bleeding; Isaac is cold in his undershirt, but he doesn't move because he would never leave a person to bleed to death. He doesn't question. He has no thoughts right now. Checks pulses, scans the Laundromat, sees that they are completely alone, and off in the distance, cutting the city fugue into ribbons of light is the sound of approaching mercy.
*******************************
Homeless people may not have walls to shut you out but you must treat them as though they do. The streets are their home and every time you walk outside, you walk through their rooms.
********************************
It came down to a night, a point of last light, an apex of anger, frustration, and the slurring of degraded expectations with cheap single malt that smells like smoky piss and lingers on the breath like road kill
********************************
A better more ironic weapon God could not devise than the body of a man...
********************************
Yet the cathedral is so beautiful and she believes it holds under its roof the perfect expression of human ardor, longing, hope, and despair. She believes it must be thick with prayer and there are few things more beautiful than the supplicant spirit of mankind.
*******************************
"Yes Stallone Pantone, we're alright. You smell so clean. Can I inhale you for a minute before I go?" she asked teasingly, yet secretly completely seriously.
******************************
She didn't speak because he stole her voice.
**********************************
It fed the rage; it was right that he should have the prey by the neck here and be able to strip it, gut it, eat it, lick it, and satisfy his musky hunger; the great open never-satisfied demanding hunger that ate away at his own flesh when he didn't feed it prey. Blood. Drugs. Violence. Virgins.
**********************
It was all a silent opera now.
***********************************
The more I reach
out, the more I touch you, grab you, inhale you, the less of you there is and
the hungrier I feel. Loneliness and
hunger are the diseases of my spirit and there's no medicine to fix it, no food
to fill it, no amount of love that will bring me into the circle of the
living.
*********************
I have sat next to you when you dreamed of others. I have sat next to you when you said their names and I wanted to put my heart into you so that you would rise and take courage and reach again and find everything you ever wanted. I am peripheral. I wanted to be wanted like you wanted them.
******************************
I want to be your skin; holding all your scent in like the bark that protects the phloem and the xylem from marauders, from weather, from preachers scouring all that is luscious and living away from the pith of your heart.
*****************************
She looked at him with her sleepy eyes and there she was: eight years old, disheveled braids flying, pale Jane throwing punches.
*****************************
Violence loves itself. It loves to tangle with those people it has touched before.
*****************
I would drape myself funereally if I could know if he was coming for me. Not my love, but the animal. I would say my last rights, for no one else will know to do it, if I could only tell for sure that the sugar of summer was finally finished for the dry vermouth of fall.
*****************
While Isaac walked the couple of blocks to the Cafe des Croissants to meet a stranger named "Tim" who seemed to be Jane's watchdog friend, he wondered why he had agreed to come. What shade of fool was he to agree to meet a person who required him to bring picture ID, proof of address, and his worker's badge just to tell him if Jane had been run over by a Muni?
***************************
We are polite, we smile, we engage in small talk which you quickly observe that I'm shit at after I ask you if you've ever had jock itch. Even though I barely know you. And now you wonder if I have jock itch, which embarrasses you, which makes you wonder why you talked to me in the first place. You forgive me temporarily because I am so friendly and open and I am so obviously madly worried about having offended you and in your flusterment you find yourself engaging in more small talk, which can only end badly since I've had a lot of medical curiosity lately.
**************************
He had a shirt, underwear, and socks on without any pants. You need to just visualize that for a moment. The complete and utter wrongness of it makes me want to do some violence to a wall or a shoe. No, it's not just painful, it's sick! It's sicker than playing "Send In The Clowns" without giving a person warning. It's sicker than using the word "rump" as though it wasn't the worst word in the universe ever. It's almost as bad as ripping the heads off of kittens, because they weren't just ordinary socks. No, they were the worst socks that man has ever ill-designed and plagued the feet of men with: white tube socks!
Comments (8)
Hi, Angelina,
I've got to say, I'm really really impressed. Not that I didn't think that you could write like this, but more that a person can't REALLY know what another person is capable of until it's done - you know what I mean? So I'm impressed.
You turn little words and phrases in a way that is both completely unexpected and also sound exactly right. My favorite is "and off in the distance, cutting the city fugue into ribbons of light is the sound of approaching mercy", which was so beautiful that I had to read it twice. Even in just these little snippets, I was transported away from my computer and into your world.
I'm serious when I say that I can't wait to read the whole thing.
Posted by EmmaC | July 19, 2009 7:43 AM
Posted on July 19, 2009 07:43
Hi Emma!! Oh man, I'm so happy you liked that snippet best because it is one of my favorite bits I've ever written. Do you know it came into my head and I had to look it up to make sure I was using it appropriately and there are basically two meanings of "fugue" one is musical and one describes a psychological state of mind and it made me unbelievably THRILLED to find that both uses worked here as metaphors and that will tell you what a word geek I really am!! Thank you so much for your encouragement.
Posted by Angelina | July 19, 2009 9:29 AM
Posted on July 19, 2009 09:29
Wow, Angelina. Wow.
Posted by Tonia | July 19, 2009 1:53 PM
Posted on July 19, 2009 13:53
Wonderful, with this sample of what you are writing I can't wait to read it all someday... please, let me read it all someday.
Good luck.. I hope your next connection to the flow happens soon.
Kind Regards
Belinda
Posted by simply.belinda | July 19, 2009 3:26 PM
Posted on July 19, 2009 15:26
Thanks Tonia and Belinda! Well, if no one publishes it I will copy you up a hand made version for you to read. Never fear! It freaks me out how long it takes to get a book published even after someone agrees to do it. In rereading it I feel like a kid who has a present to share and can't wait...hence the snippets.
Slap my hand! Must work on finishing it and also polishing up a couple of chapters to send to 500 editors and agents. I don't even want to think about that!!
Posted by Angelina | July 19, 2009 5:18 PM
Posted on July 19, 2009 17:18
Yikes! How awesome is that? And all this time, you were holding out on us.
Posted by Ann | July 20, 2009 9:28 AM
Posted on July 20, 2009 09:28
You are a wonderful writer. It is a gift.
But the theme seems to be "belly button gazing", and makes me want to scream: Get a life. Volunteer to clean pots at the local homeless shelter. Plant a tree. Adopt a puppy. Smile at a kid and play hop scotch with her. Help the crotchty old broad next door to go grocery shopping.
Or even: Take an EMT course and spend a few days a week saving lives.
oh yes: Lamisil works great for jock itch.
Posted by Boinkie | July 20, 2009 3:40 PM
Posted on July 20, 2009 15:40
I would have to argue that all storytelling is "belly button gazing" and so is all reflection which causes us to turn inwards. I also have to say that I've been meaning to do a post on the term "navel gazing" which I think is pretty odious. It implies narcissism rather than developing self awareness. In order to see outwards you must also see inwards. navel gazing is dismissive and impatiently calls for action.
I am not offended by the comment but I do think it's funny- we would have no stories to tell if we always knew what action to take. The last thing I want to point out is that these are merely little disconnected bits from a much larger story and I have left all the action and solutions and telling details out so as not to ruin anything should this thing ever reach the light of day. You might be surprised at it as a whole work.
Anyway- thanks for the comment and also for the medical advice.
And hello Ann! Thanks for the encouragement.
Posted by Angelina | July 20, 2009 4:26 PM
Posted on July 20, 2009 16:26