Thursday, January 22, 2015

Trippy Short Story Time

My last blog post was lacking.  Andrew said that it was really good until it suddenly ended, which is how I felt writing it.  I'm a terrible writer almost all the time; sometimes a beautiful moment strikes and I write something that I like, and that happened in the woody when I started writing that last post.  But the bubble burst before I was finished articulating my thoughts, and instead of try really hard to get that mood back I gave up and posted half a post.  I also LOVE compound-complex sentences ~ which may be why I love reading The Hobbit!

I figured why not share something embarrassing from high school?  My last post sucked, so maybe nobody will read this.  Or maybe this will draw whoever reads my blog back in…

I wrote this confusing, half-formed story full of lyrics in a creative writing class the last semester of my senior year of high school, and I have no idea what it's about, maybe you know:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Conor Made me Write This

“Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees, they’re singing with the dead, overhead…”

The trees spun past him in a never-ending conga line as the leaves pulled Dave into the underbrush with them.  All the colors of autumn danced around his foggy head, and the dirt found his calloused hands before his sight disappeared completely. 
           
When he opened his eyes he was alone.  No more sighing moss or sleeping logs.  He was drowning in powder.  The desert was melting out from the heat of his heart, and the emptiness of the arctic was collapsing his lungs.  He’d never been in a place so white; the cleanliness of nature was awe-inspiring.  He didn’t belong in the pristine wonderland he’d somehow woken up in.  Dave watched the ocean rise and fall three feet below his cheek in time with the rushing sound of waves somewhere to his left. 
He peeled his cheek off the pack ice and tried to stand up.  Stars popped in front of his eyes and his knees cracked.  When his feet were finally under him, Dave started walking. 
He walked for miles and for years.  His footprints in the snow disappeared as soon as he lifted his other foot.  He watched polar bears drown and baby seals get eaten.  He watched arctic foxes steal across the permafrost and birds flap and squawk in vein twenty yards away as their nests were raided and their eggs dropped. 
He watched the "sunrise and the sunset; there is no way to escape".  He watched the circle of time and space and light and air swirl around him as he walked.  He lost his mind in the darkness of winter searching for the golden band of horizon that should have been to the east.  Whenever he closed his eyes green wisps of smoke burned his eyelids open again and he kept walking.  He forgot he was alive.

“Fare thee well, fare thee well, I love you more than words can tell,
Listen to the river sing sweet songs, to rock my soul.”

The vines brushed his arms and cheeks as he kept walking.  Each pond in the Amazon has more species of fish in its crystal depths than the entire Pacific Ocean.  Dave wandered through the maze of one tree’s roots forever.  The world was upside down.  The sky was full of life and the ground was lonely.  Dave’s eyes glinted off bright frogs and dark cats; he touched mushrooms that looked like clouds.  Monkeys swung above him and crocodiles followed him along the second longest river in the world.  Dave breathed in scents no one had ever smelled before; he stumbled across the cure for cancer, but passed it by.  It rained in circles from the trees themselves, and leaves tickled his head. 
Every second, earthmovers and loggers slashed one and a half acres closer to Dave, stealing the nutrients of an entire world and leaving the ground barren, scared, and lifeless.

Dave’s eyelashes were still sticky when he woke up.  His hands were outstretched, digging into the earth.  When he stood up leaves fell out of his hair.  He looked at me in amazement and said, “Have you ever felt the world around you?"


My breath caught in my throat and my hands tingled.  I wanted to open my eyes but they were already open.  I didn’t want anything anymore; everything was here, and nothing was here.  I could feel the river of sound pouring over my ears and into my soul, filling my feet with heavy perfection.  My hair was blowing over my cheeks and around my shoulders as though birds were carrying me away.  The grass kept me with the earth as my mind and body flew away with the notes.

                        "Did she make you cry
                        make you break down
                        shatter your illusions of love
                        is it over now- do you know how

                        to pick up the pieces and go home"

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