Wednesday 7 January 2009

Four completely unrelated paragraphs

My first Sunday of creativity didn't go so well and I was left feeling depressed, frightened and questioning why it is I want to write in the first place. So I'm going back to something I love to do, which is to write to music. I find I am less likely to block myself and can just let the images and feelings move through me. There is no pressure; just pleasure. The following pieces are courtesy of (in order) Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Rokia Traoré, Moris Tepper and The Warsaw Village Band. My favourite is the second one. Yours?

He dressed like he had escaped from a film set, in a tight white wife-beater, black jeans and greased back hair. He leaned against the wall next to where the sun was trying to burn through the blinds, a row of rust-coloured teeth all the way to the sill. She tried to force her gaze through the tiny spaces and thought of how she had always liked like word slit.
****************************************************************************
She dreamed the dust was sinking into her hands. The grains ran like streams along her life line, heart line, head line, and the dozens of tiny rivulets she thought of as the final scraps of her spirit that the gods tried to etch into her at the last minute when she was travelling here, to be born. The dust was the colour of ochre mixed with goat’s blood and as she stared into her palms she saw each granule bulge slightly before descending softly into her skin, the way an animal will eventually stop struggling against its killer and let itself dissolve into death. In her dream she was slowly filled up until her body shed itself in one instant, spreading and mixing her in the air before scattering her wide along the cracked belly of the riverbed. She woke shivering, the prayer for rain already leaving her lips.

******************************************************************************
When you tilt your head back and laugh I stare into the back of your throat and think about if my hand were really small I could thrust it in there and flick that little flesh widget like it was a tether ball. I imagine your eyes going all huge and the look of shock and fear taking over your face because your body is screaming INTRUDER! INTRUDER! and trying to protect you from dying. And I wonder whether it would actually be you that your body was trying to protect, or itself. Maybe your body doesn’t care about you at all. Maybe it’s just here for curiosity’s sake.

*********************************************************************************
Three women crawl on all fours toward the edge of the fire pit, lean hard over the embers and pant in unison against the coals as a meagre line of smoke escapes and climbs past leafless branches towards the full moon. The women can feel their eyelashes peeling back like thin ribbon curling against the fast friction of thumb and knife edge. The skin on their faces starts to burn and the heat is pouring into their lungs. Their panting deepens; the countdown begins. Four breaths…heave…burn. Three breaths heave…burn. Two…burn..burn. One…breathe. Now quick they are up together and running to the field and throwing themselves onto the long grass where the very first drops of dew are forming, clear bellies glowing in the moonlight, pregnant with the cool promise of relief.

5 comments:

C.S. Perry said...

Excellent. I love to read things like this and then ask myself: "How the hell do you come up with something like that?"
I wish there was away to make love with words. (As the primary implement, I mean.)

I wrote my novel in the dead of night while listening to "Whip Smart" by Liz Phair over and over.
It's such a solitary vocation that it requires the seeming companionship of disembodied voices ad the jangle of invisible instruments.

Jacqui said...

I have a joint favourite. The second because I want to read on and find out more about her. The third because I like the philisophical tone and again wonder where it would take me.

Anonymous said...

my anger directs me to #3. they are all quite interesting & worthy of many a re-read

PurestGreen said...

C.S. - thanks for this. I'm listening to Whip Smart now and I'm in a fair ground. Why these images and not others? What about this song grows these thoughts in my head? I don't understand, and that's why it always feels like magic.

I wonder what this "primary implement" would look like.

J: I want to know more about her, too. Especially her name. For some reason I want to know her name.

PurestGreen said...

Moe - you were commenting at the same time as me. Despite the time difference I love that you can still be "here."

Anger? Why anger?