In case you're wondering, I'm back! Oh, and in case you're wondering the relevance of that statement, I was on holiday for two weeks down in the Devonshire area. But I'm back! YAY!
So, now that that's all cleared up, how about seeing some of the stuff I wrote on said holiday?
Now, before I go on, I feel like I should alert you on the sudden change in layout. Seen as how the pieces I'm posting are rather short and so easy to phase in, I've decided to fit them between the overflowing dross of my commentary/digression. I realise that some of you may just scroll down past all this yackity-yack, but I do feel that I bring up some interesting points occasionally. Anyway, this is by no means permenant. We'll just see what happens, eh?
First and foremost is "A View on Freedom". This is an amateur philosophical musing that I thought might be interesting to put to you. Believe it or not, I spend the majority of my 'creative time' coming up with ridiculous character names and strange (though still possibly accidentally plagiarised) thoughts on life and stuff. This is one of the few I'd feel relatively comfortable releasing into the big wide interweb. Make of it what you will, I was on a pensive roll that day.
A VIEW OF FREEDOM
FREEDOM is:
1) Total. It owes little to order or chaos, for these are the measily measures of Man.
2) Scattered. It lives in every eye of all beholders but lies, kneels and stands in every other space also.
3) Eternal. It is even beyond eternity. Freedom sighs life, freedom coughs death.
Now, aren't I deep? Anyway, the next piece, "A Rather Sensual Run-on Sentence", is a poem (or at least I think it is) playing with interesting and, obviously, sensual sounds. Interestingly I've found that everyday words, if said in the right tone of voice, can be very much delectable to the ears. I'd let you hear my verison of the reading, but it just won't transfer (sorry). Oh, and it's rather silly as well...
A RATHER SENSUAL RUN-ON SENTENCE
Robert clasped the apricot,
slaked the juice and flavours,
wound it round the cellar door,
draped it on the basket;
lisped a humble whisper
for the waste on the paper
whet the silence lightly
then glanced out for the crisps.
The final piece is prose fiction, currently my favoured type. However the genre of choice here is something I have little practice in - chiller and/or suspense. One lazy morning I thought of the phrase "The Other Eyes" in an armchair and wondered just what it would be about. I've always had a phobia about eyes; even the movements they make, but that's when I REALLY focus on them. So I thought I'd try making a short story about a fellow phobic whom I put through a rather nightmarish experience. Eventually this character turned into a girl and then just about everything fell into place. It turned out that I was overthinking the layout of the story when all I needed was to play around with the well-known insecurity of the teenage girl's mind. But I'm not a psychotic or anything, writing this even gave me the willies. And now I'll pass them all on to you.
THE OTHER EYES
She wept at it. That moment when you clearly see another’s eyes resting on you, landing upon your shoulders. And not just the weight of it, she loathed the movements too; those tiny little twitches and flickers of the roving eye. She noticed them all.
And it hurt; it really burnt whenever she met with a mirror. To see herself, her very own eyes darting about her reflection was always too much. With every start and every slide she’d find the two of them following her and begged them away. At the point of yielding, she would always move aside to the shadow on the wall. That glass, that reflector - all those windows were so cold in their delivery.
She saw no soul in those eyes, no wisdom; just a lifetime of reception and surveillance. She felt watched at every crossing, knowing her own vision was not to be trusted. But they weren’t the gullible ones; they were the tricksters, the traitors to her very freedom.
And no-one else saw this. They stared at her in disbelief whenever she'd recount her fears, they laughed and winked as if she was kidding them as well as herself. Everyone had blinked, everyone had missed and she alone knew the glaring truth.
And then it progressed. One morning she awoke, rose to the sight of herself from a greater perspective. This was not philosophical, this was not hypothetical, this was all too physical. She spotted herself from across the room, as if she had suddenly parted from her body to linger in the far right corner. And there she was, just in her own peripheral. The fleshy shapes were blurred at first but then she froze and saw it all so plainly.
The details horrified her. Her hands were so pale, her legs were so thin, her smile so weary. And her eyes...oh, her eyes...such devils. She could feel the black scorn in those pupils as they glared daggers at her hollow consciousness. She lost herself in the great blank canvases of her whites, shrank back at the acidic green of her irises. Such vicious beauty. Such a way to introspection. She tried turning aside but found her gaze rigid. She curved left, she wound right. She could not shake it. Herself and herself alone.
She watched and watched back for the rest of the morning and maybe ever since. Such things were conveyed in that tidy little room, such sharp and closing things. No-one could open the door after; it was sealed as tight as a reflection to its mirror. No light fled, no shade arrived. She was held and the space was lost. The world moved on with eyes to the earth. It's colours cared little.
So, that's about it. I'll just finish by saying that the holiday break was delightful and much-needed, but now it's back to the grind. Or whatever else it is that I do with my time, besides writing. Which isn't much. Not really. Still, off I go...
Thanks for reading,
Mr. Pondersome
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