DANCE OF PROGRESS, updated 3/10/11

I was COMMANDED BY THE EDUCATIONAL FORCES THAT BE to write as short a story as possible based on images that came to me while listening to music during classtime. I completely disregarded the length and created a hopelessly confusing portion of the triumphant tale my Etherea and Ephraim piece was also derived from. Inspired by… an American Idol winner and some piece that only had toy pianos and vibraphones… (Slick me some slack, it was my classmates’ music, not mine!) I pieced together this… rather choreographed piece of fiction. Despite the fact it’s impossible to understand or even keep track of anything that’s going on, I love it to death for the fact that it’s incomprehensible. Even though the two people in my reading group didn’t like because of that. But I thought I gave it nice surreal atmosphere to ground it in un-reality. In-fact, I might just put this at the beginning of the story in order to confuse people before going into something a bit more along the lines of… exposition. But everyone will probably still be confused. Oh, well.

Dance of Progress

 

Plainfield, Indiana was a nearly perfect square with an uneven, rectangular acreage jutting out from its side. And Plainfield wanted to get rid of it. It wanted to expel it–sweat it out like baby fat. Remove it like a pair of Groucho Marx glasses. It never ceased in dreaming of when some politician would finally make it as rectangular as Colorado. But all of this, of course, was for naught, considering that at this point, it had become nothing greater than an uneven square hole.

And on the precipice above this lack of being, they still were. Were being. Kneeling, huddling together, hoping to find some comfort in each other. Silent tears were mingling on the ground, grasping onto each other in empathetic harmony.

Bentley was cradled in Margaret’s arms.

Her sons had long since grown up,

and she was terrified, too, but seeing the fear

so insecurely quaking in a child’s eyes, she held him close.

Etherea and Ephraim were sprawled,

with crosshatches of red upon their knees and elbows.

For once, the two communed,

as if they were the same kind of twenty-something.

They had seen their disunity single-handedly demolish every single life in Plainfield. More devastatingly, every dream built high had crumbled apart. But it wouldn’t be in vain. They weren’t going to allow it to happen again, and they were all one in purpose now.

Except for Stan.

Plainfield had been in his brain, all along, and yet he was standing still, bent a hairline downwards, with the ends of his now-scuffed business shoes perpendicular to the cliff-side. The now-frayed ends of his khaki slacks billowed backwards against his ankles.

“Do you see what they made us do?” Stan turned back to the other four. “The government is always messing up, but couldn’t they at least have left me out of it?”

“Stan, they were real people. You killed real people that WE KNEW. Or that we could’ve known! Margaret’s husband is DEAD now!” Etherea grabbed Ephraim by the shoulders, hobbling, as her own legs gave way. They kept each other from falling over again. Their hands were apart, and yet, they were together.

“Marcus was already dead. They all were.” Stan spoke, and that’s about all that he did. Anything more would’ve been in poor taste. “They haven’t been alive since Plainville turned into THIS on the Earth.” He panned an open palm towards the open non-existence. “They were only memories of what they used to be.”

“But…” Bentley, who was huddled up in Margaret’s arms, hesitated to speak further. His voice was strained, as clear as he could muster through the subsiding tears. “But, Marcus is still alive. Margaret told me that he never really died… she told me he was always with her, every day, all year, whenever she really missed him.”

Stan was silent. He lost his level eye contact. He started to do anything he could to keep his eyes away from Bentley. “Bentley, you aren’t facing the reality of the matter. Marcus was alive once, but he isn’t alive anymore. Margaret didn’t mean that literally.” His hands went into his coat pockets, though they continued to feel colder, the claws of air from the void yanking at him.

“No, Stanley. I did.” Margaret held Bentley tighter. “I did, and I do, and you have serious issues to deal with before you even begin to fathom why that is.”

“Margaret, you’re deluding the kid. Doesn’t anyone see this for what it is?” Stan’s voice level suddenly began to rise. It took even him by surprise.

“Stanley, hush.” Margaret said. “You’re an absolute mess, and you have no right to speak of things you don’t even know yourself.”

Stan looked from Margaret to Bentley, and then he proceeded, without regard. “This is a demented experiment some desperate innovators decided was a good idea. The world didn’t have enough space for everyone, they made way, and the people that didn’t budge with it were turned into anti-matter and the leftover dust was brushed off into our brains.”

“Stan, is that all you have to say for yourself?” Ephraim’s eyes suddenly shot up, riveted to him, for once unabashedly. “You know, she SAVED you. She tried to save them ALL. What did you do?”

“Well, I TRIED to go back in for her.”

“That wasn’t FOR them! OR Star!” Ephraim stepped away from Etherea, who was stunned that Ephraim’s opinions were, for once, not being resorted to the restraint of a notebook. “You just thought her voice was meant for that stupid song!”

“Well, isn’t that what all this is, anyway? They used my brain. Star was just an occupant of my brain, like a neuron, or a synapse. Why shouldn’t I have used her? Ephraim, they weren’t alive.”

“NO, you know who isn’t alive?!” Ephraim screamed, wrenching the notebook in one hand like it was his own heart, and jostling Stan by the shoulders with the other. “YOU have NEVER felt the slightest MIGRAINE HEADACHE of what it’s like being alive! And neither did I or any of us before we took on two-thousand individual lives into our heads! We didn’t ask for this, and you’ve told us that a MILLION TIMES. If you make some STUPID slight right now about how you never said it even CLOSE to a million times, I swear, I will take that stupid barf-colored tie and wring the FAT out of your neck! We didn’t ask for this, no, but we need to take it upon ourselves… because we aren’t just ourselves anymore… we’re…”

Ephraim lost his voice, starting to softly sob. He put the fistful of his notepad up to his heart and tried to keep himself from crying. Etherea bridged the distance between them with her footsteps, took his head in her hand and tilted it up to meet hers. She smiled directly into his face. And Ephraim didn’t stop looking. Her smile grew.

“Stan… no matter how real things are, that doesn’t mean they’ll satisfy you.” Etherea spoke with heavy, pensive thoughts, with a smile of light regret. She and Ephraim began to trail off together, out of Stan’s mind. “Sometimes, the most real things… are so close to not being real… you could blink… and think they were dreams all your life…”

As Etherea and Ephraim, Margaret and Bentley trailed off into the curtain of nothing, Stan remarked silently that it almost seemed like a dance… of movement, of change, of rebirth, and of sorrow. They spun around each other with ease like toy ballet dancers in a porcelain box of memories. They blew out in all directions with the natural grace of dandelion florets, their smiles of acceptance too much for him for handle. But Stan continued to look on in pain, and as he did, he almost thought he could make out a third person dancing with Margaret, as Bentley held tight to her… and Stan almost thought he felt someone’s hand touch his shoulder. And it wasn’t the cold claws of the void. It was… warm. Just as he was about to reach back to touch the hand… the dance was over.

—

September 19

From the Desk of Prof. Trexlesle

To Whom It May Concern:

I regrettably inform the rest of the board that the State-of-Mind relocation project is more of a failure than any of us could’ve previously surmised. Earlier this morning, one of our subjects in the Plainfield division, Stanley Dettpik, suffered a devastating mental breakdown for reasons still unclear. I use the word “devastating” less to describe the repercussions it left on him and more to describe what effects it had on the inhabitants of his mind. Our team recalled all five subjects in the division, and as we had planned in the case of such an emergency, they were placed into a vegetative state in chambers that would maintain their physical bodies in a permanent stasis.

Unfortunately, while this was considered by most to be the extent of a worst-case scenario, we did not suppose that the mind would then be free to fully explore the sub-conscious, wherein the city was stored. Instead of the base instincts of the body taking over the processes of nature within Plainfield, the individual mind still persisted. Plainfield was revealed to the subjects and overtaken by them, and these minds were now masters of all the forces of creation and, equally so, destruction.

The vulnerability of the human mind has brought to pass annihilation of Plainfield and its inhabitants. We are unsure of what step to take next to ensure nothing more is harmed. This wasn’t the path to less pain and more space that our dream team had once envisioned it to be. I, as head of the operation, cannot begin to express how ashamed I am for ever having taken on this project. Apologies will make no difference, as I will never be able to remedy what I have done.

42 / Bing Storyboards

Guess what? I’ve made it. 42 entire entries by this guy with one eye and two thumbs on Yes, ThatAweSomeBlog. (Although, right now, it’s more just like… AweSome. Most of the time, even just Some.) To think the initial goal I had when starting up a blog all those years ago in 8th Grade has finally been fulfilled by 12th Grade me in a little over a year is BING-moggling-mogrificating. So, considering my most popular post in all 41 previous entries has been the Bing-related bunkum-tomfoolery… (No bowd’a doubt it!) … here’s something related to such interests that I’m SURELY sure none of you thought I actually did before editing Bing. SO’TRYboards. (The intentional typo was directed towards Madame B, wherever she may B now.)

Pay no attention to the scribbles at the top! You'd better still give me full credits, Mrs. Deatherson.

That's right-- environmental consciousness. This right here... the BACK-SIDE. THE SAME. CONSARN'IT. SHEET O' PAPER.

Since I Left You, Music Video Interpretation (Guest-starring B)

I adore the inventive, fresh-retro aesthetic and artistic messages this video and song harbor so entirely. The proof is in the pudding. And by pudding, I obviously, totally meant the fact that I over-analyze ev’ry image in it. This is made all the more hilarious by noting a very minute sum even give the video a second thought. They peg it down to its outer shell of surrealism and cute, catchy quirkiness. Here’s where I’d blow up verbally, but it’s time for bedtime time. So, to compensate, here be’ a time I went on a raging rant-page about it while B somehow listened to it.

Skye

Okay– basically, I thought that the miners represented the people in the world that look for something amazing in all the wrong places– trying hard to find success or happiness where it cannot be found. For such a long time, they were stuck DIRECTLY under “Paradise”, as the song says.

B

Oooh, I see what you’re saying!

Skye

So– when they get there, there’s a judge panel. The panel represents the pivotal moments in one’s life in which one has to show exactly what you’re made of or go back into the slum from whence you came.  To live the dream or get buried in the avalanche of wasted time by not trying.

B

Aaahh!

Skye

– So– the first miner, of course, ditches the hat and comes right up and gets into the beat of life without regret– shows up the judges and is, thusly, accepted to stay– and finds his true love in the process, who likes him for what’s within him– his dance.

– The second miner stays on the sidelines the whole time and plays it safe– and when the other dancer leaves his side to go up and dance, he stays and misses his chance to show the panel.

– And to dance with her, for that matter.

Then by the time he gets up to play the tambourine with the troupe, it’s too late– and thusly, is sent back to the miner-49er land beneath.

B

Aaahh… Ya know, that makes a lot of sense now.

Skye

Also, I may be misinterpreting this, but I think Arthur (the first miner)’s friend who gets forced back in the caverns– I think his caged bird that he kept in the mines and still has with at the end represents the talent he refused to show– and how he lived the rest of his life in the exact same way.

B

Ooh, good idea…

Skye

I look too deeply into things, but hey, it’s how my mind works naturally.

B

LAWL, I do too sometimes!

Skye

We funny people– we think funny.

That we does, funny person. That we does!

Art for Your Suffering

Just in time for having posted an ancient anecdotal essay, here’s my newest brainchild– at the tender age of one day.

My skin isn’t thick, around my brain, heart, or as the case is here, my fingers. I’m prone to getting tiny temporary nicks on the surface or the occasional calamity of a thunderous bruise, but what I’m definitely unused to doing is telling stories about them, even more-so unused to telling GOOD stories. The little slights of mortality pass by too quickly for me, and, oddly enough, so do the fearful, felt-near-death ones. So it is that it doesn’t particularly matter which story I choose to tell, but rather, how I choose to tell it.  The players at work in this vignette are one kid present, one kid absent, one piece of paper, and a whole militant myriad of fierce, freshly sharpened pencils in the lazy front pocket of a worn-out backpack from the eighties.

He was and is often present, if not slightly inclined to be absent of the mind. She was and is often absent, if not disquietingly used to it and, in unrelated detail, used to be being quiet. They were two people on a slightly lonesome four-chair table. She would speak softly with loud opinions, and he would speak loud with loud yet congruent opinions. He would listen, though she could hear far better than he, for at least she heard herself the first time she’d say something. But when he finally did hear, he would listen and greatly enjoy the sound of someone who was actually thinking. They developed some semblance of a quirky camaraderie, as they were incidentally paired up–and paired up–and paired up. Who else could they possibly pair up with on the table? The incandescent imitation sunlight shown from above as their shadows mingled in tandem upon the surface of the plastic tabletops. And then, one week, the four-chair table was more lonesome than ever.  Foreign, unfamiliar, unnecessary, unwanted light hit the tabletops for the first time in months that day in the Honors English class. Three chairs were empty. One was filled. Or half-filled, if that could be considered optimistic in this scenario.

Somewhere else, he pictured her in a room white with even more light than was now brazenly, so shamelessly burning a hole in her desk. The light he imagined was there was even more empty—more vacant. Somewhere else, she was present, in a class without students or teachers or even desks or chairs. She was reclined in a bed indefinitely put upon the linoleum tiles which equally resembled the tiles on the ceiling. Her neck was nestled up in some pillows tilted up against the bedpost while skitters and scatters echoed off down hallways she couldn’t turn to see. The small comfort of the pillows was to balance the pain of an appendix desperately wanting out. And as soon as the strong smell and chill of rubbing alcohol and the scrubbing of gauze against flesh came up, the kid realized his imagination wasn’t doing him good. He knew she’d be back, but that was utterly beside the point for both he and his imagination. She could surely use some friendly figure in such a room overcrowded in emptiness. For she had been his only company in class. His imagination bent at the knee and bade him to command it. Returning the favor was a no-brainer. For he could send her his company easily on a sheet of paper. Make her laugh. Make her smile. Make them both think that they were still in class on the same table that wasn’t quite as lonesome as first pictured.

A quick riffle noise of paper rustled like the crisp sound of falling leafs against grass or like the first footsteps on the grass in the cool, early-morning air. It felt like tangible inspiration had been born from the noise. With an ease of sway, at the whimsy of the wind (or rather, the air conditioning), the paper slid onto his desk top. He smiled, shifted his direction to the other desk and noticed how the white paper appealing let off a kind of sheen onto its edges. It was white, but it was the kind of white that color was made from. The kind of white that the paper was, filled with empty, infinite possibility. The kind of possibilities that could only be when two people actually sit, talk, and listen, and then he yelled. He yelled out, and searing white-hot pain went through his fingertips all the way down through the varicose veins in the back of his hands. It was a blind kind of pain, as he couldn’t see what in the world had caused it. He pulled his hand out from his initial rummaging through the darkness of his backpack he’d lugged around since seventh grade. And he was shocked to see his own loyal, trusty, somewhat crusty backpack had betrayed him. His previous thoughts of rubbing alcohol and gauze were finally accompanied by… the injection.

His index finger on his right hand was far more black with led than it was red with blood. Paper towels were desperately groped out for, ripped without much care for tidiness, then woven around and around and around the one unfortunate finger. He let all his fingers on his injured hand undulate down and up over each other, in a wave of blood circulation. He stared at his lopsided, beastly backpack’s cavernous mouth only to see its teeth, the very thing he desired to apply to paper, bared viciously in his direction. He winced, feeling the same lightning-white sting of pain, noticing that an inkblot of both red and black were intermingling on the outside of the paper towel tourniquet.

But the picture got drawn that day, anyway, and sent off to the absentee, who he hoped at least had some music to listen to in bed. And at having received the picture, the absentee most probably laughed or smiled or both. And while he didn’t hear it, he certainly did listen for it. And pencil punctures heal, especially when wrapped up so nicely in paper towel. But the shrapnel of sharpened pencil remained, earthy yet metallic, just below the nail. Having his desire to put life upon emptiness embedded literally underneath his skin was something… perhaps a bit too appropriately symbolic for him. But there are sacrifices, intentional or unintentional, that every kid goes through to create companionship where there wasn’t one and, through that, create a day that was worthwhile.

That’s actually a very pretty picture.

Tick-Tock The Time Goes

Here’s a paper I wrote a good nine months ago, to celebrate the New Year!

Why I think it’s appropriate for celebrating the New Year, I haven’t the foggiest fog fog.

And the sun is just a slight, finite millimeter off-center, between two obscured tufts of a punctured periwinkle cloud. As I pause briefly (but hardly brief, in truth) to observe its sheen, the yellow glare pushes blue, maroon, hot pink and purple impressions upon my retina. And by the time the description is written, the brilliant yellow ball has set near-completely behind another cloud, their twinges of sherbet-orange retaining the joyous color in remembrance. The one-fifth-and-a-half of paper my essay prompt is written upon is held up to those remaining inklings of light, and the light, bouncing off my hand holding it up, spreads shadows out along its surface.

Since then, the sun, the foundation upon which each day begins and ends, has already set twice. And the prompt I am writing for remains unanswered. (Or have I already made the topic clear?) The idea is to write about obstacles surpassed, which has become a rather ironic obstacle in itself. Obstacles are, by definition, a hassle to overcome. Just when they are targeted smack-dab between the line-thin cross-hairs and blasted like the unregenerate birds-of-prey they are, they reincarnate as an ever bigger pest of the skies. Considering my name is Skye, this metaphor works all too well. It’s almost cruel.

More often than not, my writing has taken on the form of some grandiose, grandiloquent encomium devoted to the act of writing itself. In the words of a very obscure band, “Words don’t work like Webster says”, but unless love or religion is mixed into the fray, words should suffice. That in itself—this basis of functioning communication—is enough to enthrall me to no feasible end. And yet I become far too ensnarled by the words, as I attempt to tame them. The ebb and flow becomes some hypnotizing force—and still I must conduct my way through the pedantic nature of the psychological patter within myself. And just as words on paper are noisy, the spoken word is just as distracting. It’s all one gaudy circus scene of bold polka dots and curling rainbow streamers. My ears, personally, tend to have no volume control—and reception is awfully subjective. I hear what is the loudest—and in a loud world, there’s always something that’s the loudest. And my eyes focus on what’s loud visually—the “look-at-mes!!” that put on their grotesquely magnificent brilliants or brilliantly grotesque magnificents if it garners a look-see or two.

A piece of paper of black and white… and perhaps the slightest highlighted word tend to be capable of being distracted from. Deadlines seem simply to appear as dead signs. Ones with skulls devoid of eyes—but of which would definitely look directly at me if they could, in some skewed warning, more or less translating as, “This is inevitable, and in more ways than you think.” Or perhaps a simple, “You’re dead,” would suffice, so as for depression to sink in before the sun sets entirely, at least. And with obstacles come their creeps and cronies of temptation, joined at the hip like some foul freak-show, to MUCH offense. Perhaps, it is that as the sun goes down, I do, indeed, desire to be distracted by its slightest motion, color or reflection of the light surrounding its clock-faced form. One quick look at a word, and I wish them to be used—the ones that roll off the tongue in sequence and sound both strange and scholarly—ALL of them. Yet, what they actually yearn to be…

… is to be used right.

And so, the words are arranged, and although there aren’t as many as per usual, nor are they quite as sophisticatedly arranged, the author can rest assured they are rightly arranged. And to Failure, wherever Failure might be: While the sun has set—twice—the moon is high enough to meet the glow of the crisp white paper reaching high to greet it, the black font becoming less a part of the paper itself, and every bit more a part of the dark night skies.