I was living life too fast, and never taking time for myself. It seemed to be a habitual habit of humans, this onward rush into oblivion. A drink would be nice right about now, I thought. Though I'm not likely to get one in this stupid desert. Surrounded by condominiums and fantastically expensive houses, and not one kind, stupid, rich wife to give me a glass of water. Rich people know how to live. Seriously, just kick back and let life pass you by. I seem to have the opposite problem. I live life too fast because I try to hold onto all of it and keep every bit that I can. However, after the economy collapse, all the expansion of the planned city shut down faster than a dissident in a loyalist gin joint. There were no more rich people to speak of, but all the poor people weren't allowed to live in rich people homes. It was the perfect system: continual squalor, perpetuated by people with no money. Poor people keeping poor people down.
I stopped, stooped, and stirred myself from my reverie. Real-life problems were bearing down on me. I had been walking to another district based on my innate sense of direction. Sadly, my innate sense of direction had never led me to the place where I wanted to go before, and this seemed a bad time to start blindly trusting it. Surely, these condominiums mean I'm out of the slums. But do they build condos closer to the citycenter or farther away? Do rich people prefer quiet or convenience? Or do they just go whole hog and put it directly in citycenter but erect multi-million dollar sound barriers? I had to come to terms with myself. I was lost.
I pulled out a coin and wiped the grime of my well-soiled pocket from its face. I smiled. It wouldn't help me, but it would be interesting to see if my Luck had grown back yet. I flipped the coin as high above my head as I could toss. It floated lazily in the air, rotating as slowly as falling asleep in the rain. It hit, bounced twice, and landed directly on its edge.
I left the coin to fate and jogged off in a direction I felt was dead wrong. Hopefully, I wouldn't die before I got there.
Half of me read this as a continuation of your Arbiter set, and half of me read it as something completely different. I liked both readings.
ReplyDeleteI love that the coin landed on its edge.
I'm glad you miss fewer days these days. :-)
This is really interesting. Your writing has become much more specific and more focused recently. And you've started writing about more than sadness and love--I like it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I most always come away from your writing feeling like I have been inside your characters and understand a piece of them, because you let us hear their thoughts.
I think it's both, too, Janelle. I didn't want to keep writing the Arbiter set because I dislike it. I have no idea why. I like the ideas and the characters and I like reading it, but I hate writing it. It pains me.
ReplyDeleteWeird? Yes.
Thanks, Brooke. I don't feel more focused. I feel like I have lost focus. Nothing happened! My stories should be plot-driven! But I suppose if somebody thinks they have focus, that's something, right?
Sorry about the themes of sadness and love and sadlove. It will likely continue to be the bulk of my writing, but look for more apathy in the future. I'm so cheery.
Holy cow janelle, me too lol. I definately got the 'arbiter' vibe from it, but it wasn't all there. Still, good work Robby. And robby, it's okay to write depressing stuff. Someone has to counter all of my happiness/optimism :P
ReplyDeleteI think I understand what you're saying about Arbiter and how hard it is to write. Lately, I feel as though everything I write is tearing, but I do it anyway.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. I'm tempted to beg for more Sherlock, but that totally isn't my style . . . :-S
Just don't stop writing, please.
Maybe I should clarify focused: You focus on one person for one moment of their lives. In that moment we see them, hear them, feel them, know them. I like it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I should say that I don't mind at all your common themes of sadness and love. Everyone has themes that they default to--themes that they care about, that matter most to them. We write about these things without really noticing or thinking about why, it just happens. (I've noticed this in Approaches papers too.) It's a good thing. I'm just glad to see you expanding, which I know takes thought and effort. It's a good thing.
Yes, I too have been so indecisive that I've done the dead opposite of what all my instincts are telling me to do. The results were...varied.
ReplyDeleteI also think this new trend where you shadow people's thoughts is quite good. Continue.
Thanks, guys.
ReplyDeleteI think I'll keep re-working the character, trying to find a starting point into his life, until I finally flesh him out and actually want to write about him.
So expect to see more? I guess.
Themes . . . Hm. Sadness is my theme because it feels more real than happiness to me.
Love is my theme because . . . well. We're all young adults here. We can admit the truth.
"Sadness is my theme because it feels more real than happiness to me."
ReplyDeleteWhat? WHAT? WHAAAATTTT?
My soul recoils at this.
I agree that sadness feels real and all, but so does happiness. So does joy. So does contentment. I am very, very, very tired of people thinking hell is well-drawn and heaven is unrealistic.
I know we can't understand perfect happiness here on earth, since everything here is imperfect, and we tend to think of perfection as static, which is another thing I would rant about if I wasn't so upset about you feeling that sadness is more real than happiness.
But you know what? I don't have an argument that will change your mind (as if I ever do). Finding proof that happiness exists and is real is like trying to catch a very smart butterfly. You search and search and destroy and maim and net countless things without ever catching the real butterfly, but then . . . if you're quiet, and you go to a garden, and you wait . . . it comes to you, lights on your finger.
Let me just say that I sincerely hope that you find out how wrong you are about happiness. I sincerely hope that you live a happy, content, fulfilled life that makes you wonder if sadness is real, after all.
Sadness just has a more real taint to it. It lasts longer for me. I remember it more vividly.
ReplyDeleteI can remember being happy. I can't remember details.
I can remember being sad, but I can remember things. The faces I made, the color of the grass, the feel of the thing . . . not everything. Just the important things.
Happiness is good. But it's like a popsicle. It doesn't last, even if you don't take it for yourself. Sadness is more permanent, like the smell of a bad toilet. It seeps into everything, and it will never go away.
This makes sense. Looking back on my childhood, most of the things I remember are me being sad or angry or scared or just downright miserable. Granted, I spent a lot of my childhood like that, but still . . . I must have been happy sometime? I do have some exuberantly happy memories about which I remember all the details, but all of them are from age six or younger or are very recent.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's about sadness, though. I think we tend to fall asleep when we're happy. We don't want anything to change. So we stop paying attention to the details because they aren't details we want to rewrite. It reminds me a bit of this song by Buddy Houghtaling (is that how you spell it? You'd think I'd know after all these years) about how we never talk to God when we're happy-- we just complain at Him when we're miserable and then don't even thank Him when He fixes things.
I think maybe, just maybe, I should just pay more attention in the happy times. I might also want to invest in a new house.