ClumsyMonkey.net

myownsatellite's writing

Show off your art.
A pop-up book of flowers from grade 4 are driving her insane...

myownsatellite's writing

Postby Johnny » 4/15/2006, 11:38 pm

All right folks, the point of this thread is to get some feedback on this piece of writing that my friend wrote. My friend, lets call them Revan for time being, is a regular user on here and wishes to remain anonymous at the moment. In time and when comfortable enough, Revan will come forward and reveal themselves. So, I ask you kindly to please check this piece of writing out and let Revan know how you like it.



Her Whole

She had a hole in her belly - I liked to put my ear up to it while she laid on her back, her shirt pulled up to just below her breasts, her hands resting lightly in the crease of flesh between her breasts and the rest of her torso. Pale blue skin gave way to blackness - the hole.

I used to walk my fingers over the skin around the dark abyss in her belly, my chin resting on her knees. I would trace the lines that steadily grew from the edge of the hole. I imagined they were caterpillars without the fuzz, crawling their way upward to her neck, downward to her feet.

I loved listening to the hole in her belly - with my ear next to it I could hear city traffic and the singing of the spheres. Sometimes I thought I heard Beatrice urging her Pilgrim onward through the heavens. Hearing the hole made me think of her as my Beatrice, urging this Pilgrim onward through traffic jams and lonely side streets.

There were times when I flirted with the idea of putting a finger inside the hole in her belly - I wanted to know what nothing felt like. She could see my finger itching to push inside her and she would stop me. Nothing is nothing, she would say every time. Nothing feels like nothing. She would guide my head back down to the abyss and tell me to listen, Beatrice of mine.

One day I had my chin on her knees and my fingers on her caterpillar lines. Her hands were folded across her breasts and her hole was gaping. She shivered and sighed, and her hole grew larger. I sat up and saw the blackness absorb her chest, her knees, her neck and her feet.

Her hole had become her whole, and she had passed into nothingness. I touched her then, and concluded that she had been right. Despite caterpillar lines and traffic noises, despite my Beatrice, nothing felt like nothing.

And I was whole.
Professional Canadian.
User avatar
Johnny
Oskar Lifetime Achievement Award: 2007
Oskar Lifetime Achievement Award: 2007
 
Posts: 31096
Joined: 8/21/2002, 5:35 pm
Location: Edmonton

Postby saman » 4/16/2006, 12:30 pm

that's really well written. the only thing i can think of changing is the phrase "hearing the hole" at the end of the third paragraph - it sounds a little awkward. even something as simple as "listening to the hole" might have a better ring to it.

your friend is a very good writer. :)
User avatar
saman
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 4651
Joined: 3/16/2002, 1:05 pm
Location: Perth, ON

Postby crustine » 4/16/2006, 7:59 pm

I really like the imagery and in particular like the line
Hearing the hole made me think of her as my Beatrice, urging this Pilgrim onward through traffic jams and lonely side streets.


I am still toying with how i feel about putting a finger in the hole. I like the concept of nothingness but am unsure how i feel about how it feels. There is a sexuality to it that feels somehow misplaced. I will let it gel and see how it feels later.

overall i really liked the piece
<center>~Hope Matters~</center>
<center>Her beauty was disarming, but she had no other resources for dealing with the world.
<center>Image</center>
User avatar
crustine
Oskar Winner: 2007
Oskar Winner: 2007
 
Posts: 1965
Joined: 11/22/2005, 8:16 am
Location: Ontario Canada

Postby myownsatellite » 4/18/2006, 9:48 pm

Okay it was me, I admit it.

Since no one's very willing to comment on the fiction, maybe a poem? I seriously need feedback.


<b>MUSE</b>

I.

The sky is my poetic canvas
where I can paint stick-figure faces
and letters of you.
I have no muse.
But tonight the stars shine bright over my landscape
and bless it with words,
spelling out your eyes in colors that letters and numbers
could never possibly combine:
colors disguised as the language of the spheres.

II.

Alone the paintbrush will yield no masterpieces.
It takes a hand to hold it and eyes to correct.
Fingers gently guiding hundreds of tiny bristles
over a canvas of blue and black.
Where is your left cheek?
bottom lip?
one tiny missing eyelash?
I'll write it for you
there...

III.

I lied
when I
said I
had no
muse
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby myownsatellite » 4/18/2006, 9:49 pm

saman wrote:that's really well written. the only thing i can think of changing is the phrase "hearing the hole" at the end of the third paragraph - it sounds a little awkward. even something as simple as "listening to the hole" might have a better ring to it.

your friend is a very good writer. :)


Thank you for the feedback Saman, :oops:
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby saman » 4/18/2006, 10:05 pm

awwww that's such a nice poem. the end works really well

and i so knew it was you :P
User avatar
saman
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 4651
Joined: 3/16/2002, 1:05 pm
Location: Perth, ON

Postby myownsatellite » 4/18/2006, 10:06 pm

:P
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby Johnny » 4/18/2006, 10:06 pm

Show the other one!
Professional Canadian.
User avatar
Johnny
Oskar Lifetime Achievement Award: 2007
Oskar Lifetime Achievement Award: 2007
 
Posts: 31096
Joined: 8/21/2002, 5:35 pm
Location: Edmonton

Postby myownsatellite » 4/18/2006, 10:07 pm

What other one??

(And to Saman, thank you :love:)
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby myownsatellite » 5/18/2006, 7:23 pm

I wanted feedback on this one.
Anyone up for it?




Salt

How often do our parents weep while we children are not watching? Our little eyes and ears are buried in pillows or electronic entertainment while soft puddles drip themselves onto faces, clothes, blankets. I am twenty years old now. Not once have my growing eyes ever seen my father cry.

It is always hard to say goodbye to a close friend, someone you have grown with, loved with, vacationed with, held while she cried. A beautiful service and many others to share grief with do not make the loss any easier to carry.

A white shroud had been draped over the white and pink casket, a cross stitched in separate fabric covering the length and breadth of the shroud. It sat in front of the altar, in the middle of the church. I felt unable to contain tears or heartbreak as I stared at the lack of her. Spilling my sorrow was inevitable, but I was determined to keep it in. She would tell me to shut the hell up.

We were singing. Well, that’s not exactly true. I wasn’t singing. My parents weren’t singing. I looked around and saw many other people weren’t singing with us. The family was following the example of the choir, singing their grief and hope for her soul.

I didn’t know the words.

The silence of the hymn was broken by short bursts of people sucking in air. The space between we mourners was taken up by the holding-in of sorrow, loud sobs that no one wanted to release for fear of breaking the peaceful torment we were all feeling.

To my left, my tan overcoat father sniffed lightly. I did not look over at him; I wanted to give him that much privacy in his vulnerability. It is something he never gave me, but something he deserved right at that moment. Instead, I felt a deeper ache in my breast. It was the feeling one gets when seeing a sanctified glimpse of a parent's most private emotion. I felt like a child peering through a crack in an accidentally open door, not sure whether to enter and break the moment, or turn her back and close the door to her own room.

As a little girl, when I would yell at my mother and call her names and stomp my way to my room, slamming the door behind me, I would come out moments later to see her door almost shut. I would press my ear to the floor where the wood never quite touched the carpet, and listen. Just the simple sound of a breath among a waterfall was enough to set me to it myself, and I would tip-toe on tiny feet back to my own room, shut the door, and soak my stuffed bunny rabbit I never named with my regret.

Except this time I could not leave the pew I was glued to, could not leave the side of my now sniveling father. I watched out of the corner of my left eye as he reached up a hand and swiped in futility at his own left eye. My mother had not given him a tissue.

I could feel that wet release of composure as the tears fell first from my right eye and then my left, and I reached over to touch, hold, love my father. His giant hand closed around my not-so-giant fingers, squeezing gently. I tried so hard not to sniffle, not to let him see me crying -- What are you crying for? I was imagining he'd say -- but he was now sniffling and crying himself. My mother was on the other side of me, face red, eyes bleeding tears.

When I felt the connection of grief between my parents and myself, the rest of the church disappeared. I was no longer listening to the incantations and intonations of the priests who were praying for the soul of my dear departed. Nothing existed outside the three of us and the coffin, holding each other, and in holding, comforting.

An eon later, we were in the car. Hands had been shaken, our love had been given, and it was time to put flowers on the casket and say goodbye. I climbed in the back seat as my parents climbed in the front, my mother still teary-eyed and my father not quite sucking in tears and snot. He sighed as he shut his door, That was a hard one. All I could do was nod. Twenty years have passed without this child seeing her daddy cry; she wished it would never happen again.

How often as children are we exposed to death? How much more often as adults. We lose close friends, acquaintances, people we barely know. When I lost someone special, someone loved, I watched my father cry. Things are different now. There is no more smile, no more purple hair, no more loud laughter.
Darkness breeds silence and inside that coffin there was a whole hell of a lot of darkness. She has been silenced, and through her silence comes the noise of tears, of sobbing, of my father sniffling quietly to himself. He hopes no one notices.
But I do.
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby myownsatellite » 5/18/2006, 7:30 pm

*cough* by the way, is there any way to edit this thread's title?
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby Random Name » 5/19/2006, 4:30 am

to what?
-Sarah

Goodbye you liar,
Well you sipped from the cup but you don't own up to anything
Then you think you will inspire
Take apart your head
(and I wish I could inspire)
Take apart your demons, then you add it to the list.

Random Name
Oskar Winner: 2007
Oskar Winner: 2007
 
Posts: 10134
Joined: 8/16/2003, 2:57 pm
Location: New Finland

Postby myownsatellite » 5/19/2006, 7:25 am

To something like myownsatellite's writing. Not that anyone reads it anyway.
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby Random Name » 5/19/2006, 2:54 pm

Done. I have found that 'round this place, a lot of people read and not so many comment.
-Sarah

Goodbye you liar,
Well you sipped from the cup but you don't own up to anything
Then you think you will inspire
Take apart your head
(and I wish I could inspire)
Take apart your demons, then you add it to the list.

Random Name
Oskar Winner: 2007
Oskar Winner: 2007
 
Posts: 10134
Joined: 8/16/2003, 2:57 pm
Location: New Finland

Postby myownsatellite » 5/19/2006, 4:48 pm

Thanks babe.
I didn't know you were a mod :D
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby Random Name » 5/19/2006, 5:26 pm

I POSSESS UNSEEN POWERS THAT SHALL DESTROY YOU ALL.



srsly. 8-)
-Sarah

Goodbye you liar,
Well you sipped from the cup but you don't own up to anything
Then you think you will inspire
Take apart your head
(and I wish I could inspire)
Take apart your demons, then you add it to the list.

Random Name
Oskar Winner: 2007
Oskar Winner: 2007
 
Posts: 10134
Joined: 8/16/2003, 2:57 pm
Location: New Finland

Postby myownsatellite » 5/19/2006, 6:02 pm

*hides*


*cough* back on topic...ANYONE?
~*Megan*~

"Wow, nice to meet you. Nine years huh? That's a really long time. Are you going to stab me or something? Because if you are, can we get it over with?" ~Jer
Image

You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair. ~Zadie Smith, White Teeth
User avatar
myownsatellite
Oskar Winner: 2009
Oskar Winner: 2009
 
Posts: 5045
Joined: 10/20/2005, 9:20 pm
Location: MA, USA

Postby Johnny » 5/19/2006, 6:03 pm

I could change it back you know! :evil:
Professional Canadian.
User avatar
Johnny
Oskar Lifetime Achievement Award: 2007
Oskar Lifetime Achievement Award: 2007
 
Posts: 31096
Joined: 8/21/2002, 5:35 pm
Location: Edmonton


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests

Delete all board cookies • All times are UTC - 6 hours • PHPBB Powered

Serving Our Lady Peace fans since 2002. Oskar Twitch thanks you for tasting the monkey brains.