Tag: creative writing

Bahamian Prism (Eleuthera. Summer 2013)

Jaclyn18 Comments

The day started lazily enough, perched on a cliff overlooking a rainbow bay.  From the shore the water reached out in gemstone tones: amber to emerald, jade to aquamarine, turquoise to lapis lazuli, sapphire to amethyst.  All shining in mid-morning light.  The progression of treasures made me wonder if just over the horizon amaranthine gave way to garnet and ruby: a hidden red ocean just further than my eyes could reach.

But before long, the sun was gone and the colors muted. In Hatchet Bay Caves, we became explorers.  Bats hung in the mouth of the cave, twitching as we disturbed their sleep.  The guano on the ground flagged the territory as theirs.  Along the walls of the caves, visitors before us also marked their places as well: in guano, in spray paint, in mud, in tar, letting us know who “wuz here” in a desperate attempt at immortality.

We pushed further into the cave, where even bats and tourists did not go.  Stalactites cried tears at their separation from their partners, as the stalagmites reached up to caress and comfort them.  Ribbons of rock adorned the walls and mimicked the waves of the ocean above.

In the silent darkness, skulls and bones hid.  Lucayan remains playfully ducked out of sight, snooping around corners for a better look, but not wanting to scare off the livers.  Femurs shushed collar bones and trails of spines lined up to take a peek.

Above our explorations, brittle stars hugged tightly to the sea bed, feeling the rumblings from underneath.  A large, maroon crab scuttled out of its own cave, afraid it had woken something beneath.  Scallops jiggled on the sea grass and tulip shells paused in the sand, listening to the tremors below.

A lightless sunset of golden lines, tawny rays, tangerine grooves, copper streaks, and crimson stripes gave way to amber.  In these caves, the rainbow was complete.  As we made our way out, our eyes were shocked with all the colors at once: a hot white light in a cloud white sky.

 

First Day of Freedom (Eleuthera. June 2013)

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 We headed north, or ‘down island’  as it’s called on account of the flow of the Gulf Stream along the Atlantic coast of this giant sand bar.  We floated in the direction of the current, along the lone road, over 100 miles from whale’s tail to sea horse head.  We stopped to ogle an out-of-place-out-of-time limestone castle in Tarpum Bay.  Its white, bleached surface reflected the sun and shells of thousands of years, so different than the grey-stone castles of kings.  Instead it was brittle and crumbling in the tropical sun, as if the rays had been laying siege to it since time could remember. The ghosts of junkanoos past and funeral processions marched silently by.

Further up or down, depending on how you looked at it, we ran into a farm stand.  The passion fruit swung languidly and low, heavy but still green with expectation.  The passion flowers had fallen away and left pregnant sweetness in their wake.  Guava jams nestled up to spicy jerk on the shelves and rocket leaves poked their heads from farm baskets to watch the sweet and spicy tryst.  It was too hot for cilantro.

We passed airport after airport after airport, past cars and boats and planes.  With luggage strapped to the roof, we passed miles of aquamarine waters.  Atop Glass Window Bridge, we paused on limestone cliffs to say hello.  To our left, the Caribbean frolicked, a playful turquoise-peacock-chartreuse.  On the right, the Atlantic deepened to a cobalt-navy storm.

We pressed on, bent on finding a beach that would rival the southern tip of the island.  Lighthouse Beach had always been an old family favorite, but we were greedy for more: for pinker sands, and clearer waves, for brighter fish, and palms that sashayed to the beat of breezier winds. “The one that looks least like a road,” were the instructions we had been given and we found the reddest, most fertile dirt on an island of sand.  Mango and avocado trees pushed up against fences to see what the intrusion was all about.

Hidden behind the orchard, we found our prize.  It was nestled in a tiny cove, carved out of coral skeletons.  It was as if the land were looking back at itself, marveling at the way its body contrasted with that of its lover, the sea.  Along the beach were the remains of island barbecues and romantic sunsets, chairs and tables set as if the ghosts of explorers past still sat in them, soaking up the sun and caressed by sands in the breeze.  A steady parade of yachts sauntered by, en route to Harbour Island, oblivious to our splashes in the waves.

Thundering clouds winked lightning as they passed and left us to swim.  Beneath the waves, the island began.  Amongst grass and trees, baby sergeant majors were schooled.  Damsel fish picked daintily at their dishes of afternoon coral and bait crowded around, clouding the water.  Further on, shallow forests of fluorescent sea fans undulated in unison, enticing the waves to grow.  It wasn’t long before the afternoon sun had us beat and the heat of the air overpowered the once-were-iceberg waters of the Atlantic.

We left five sets of footprints in coral-pink sand and five shadows of sitters-on-stumps.  Like those who came before us, we became ghosts on the shore. 

Cicadas (Thailand. Rewrite)

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She could hear his abdomen, even from eight stories above. She knew he waited for her, dressed in new skin holding the bark of a mango tree. For thirteen years, she had dug and hid, dug and hid, a pale pearl of a nymph sheltered in flooding clay. Prematurely buried. She had fed on rootjuice and waited.

And now, the time for burying herself had gone. She no longer wore the tough soil skin of the past. The brightness of being was nearly unbearable. She was green and larger than herself.

She sat exposed, mesmerized by the equatorial sunlight and the sound of his clicking ribs. She could see him from here, just a speck, but she could tell even at this distance that he looked back at her. Through her ten eyes, he was a kaleidoscope of rounded cicada flecks, mirrored and moving in unison, calling her to the ground.

And then a closer sound. Behind her, ten of the same dark-haired girls with lightning eyes and cloud-colored skin reached a catastrophic finger in her direction.

She heard him again, dry-fly ribs rubbing together to blot out the sounds of metropolitan traffic and children. The vibrations called to her.

She looked down at the expectant mango tree and imagined the future she would create: millions of shimmery nymphs sprinkling from the branches, raining onto the soil below, christening the ground with their sparkling selves.

There was nothing for her to do now, except let go.

 

 

Back in the day, I wrote about submitting some of my flash fiction to Flash Frontier.  This rewrite of my original post was published in Flash Frontier’s November Issue, Eye Contact.

 

Also, I’d like to reiterate my Creative Commons love to Flickr user Roger Smith for the amazing photo!

Arachne

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I don’t remember a time before I wove. I grew up in the fields, alongside my father and sheep.  There was never a mother around to birth me, nor was there any explanation given. My father had only the wool of his sheep to keep his bed warm at night.  He was known far and wide as the man with the purple flock, but this was a myth.  The truth was much stranger. 

Our sheep were the same muddied grey as the neighbors’.  The difference in the wool came from my father.  Alone at night, he would sit over the wool, refining and spinning it.  With his hands on the spinning wheel, tears would begin to fall, as if summoned by the whirring of the wheel.  As his feet pressed down, my father cried amethysts: tiny, shimmering mulberry tears which landed perfectly every time onto the rough yarn, turning it the color of violets and royalty, of pomegranates and jewels.  It was a color nature couldn’t keep and man wanted to grasp.

It was in this house that I learned to weave.  It seems I must have learned and yet… My father does not touch the loom.  He avoids it with a deathly fear.  I sometimes wonder if in playing with it as a toddler, I intuited how to use it.  Maybe it’s a skill deep in my blood that I inherited from my absent mother. Perhaps it’s older than that.

My days were always the same growing up, and yet they were never boring.  In the mornings, I would wake my father and we would tend to our dingy-cloud sheep, me, frolicking with the animals and him napping under trees.  He would cook us dinner and put me to bed and then begin his nightly ritual.  He would sob purple until piles and piles of luxuriant yarn lay in our kitchen.

It’s no wonder that he raised a daughter with amaranthine hair and orchid eyes.  It’s as if I were woven from the amethyst yarn.  And I always thought of myself that way, not born of a mortal, but as if I wove myself from magical tear-stained wool of my father.  Related to him, but not his.

It wasn’t long before I was using his salty, brilliant strands to weave intricate textiles. Each tapestry was a story I’d never heard, the detailed faces of goddesses and men looking out from it, caught in action.  More than just patterns or fractals, my weaving created whole worlds.  And being the daughter of a shepherd whose wool was already the talk of the town, it did not go unnoticed.  Merchants came to marvel. Princes came to purchase. Even nymphs took notice.  I will admit, with my father’s tinted tears and my nimble fingers, I felt that I was a god.

So I was not surprised when She showed up.  She came with a motherly demeanor and a proposal of competition.  I was stunned by Her, taken with Her owl eyes and glowing hair.  Though I knew it could not be true, I felt drawn to Her, as if She were the mother I’d been missing.  I saw myself in the creases of Her fingers and protrusion of Her chin.

“You’ve grown haughty, my child,” and I knew it was true.  But I wanted to show Her what I could do.  I wanted to make Her swell with pride at the fabric I spun.

She had brought Her own loom, and it sat immaculate in our sooty shepherd’s shack.  It seemed to shine and quiver, like everything She touched.  I yearned to tremble and sparkle in that way.  She sat and plucked at the strings, as if playing an instrument. She nodded at me to take my place behind my own loom and follow in suit. I started on my tapestry.  I could hear the strands under Her fingers sing as She strummed them wildly.   I dared not look up.  My eight fingers crawled over the loom, savagely spinning stories.  I worked faster and harder than ever before, until sweat dripped from my face, tiny black diamonds falling from my forehead into the pupils of characters I did not know, bringing them to life.  I could hear Her beside me, making Her loom cry out in a frenzied chant.  The narratives I wove became more detailed, more real, worlds within themselves.  Each thread held the vibrations of a universe and I could feel them all beneath my fingers, until I could no longer take the sensations: the sounds, the sights, the reverberations.  As I pushed the last strand into place, everything stopped.

I awoke to Her anger.  She stood over me, not with the concern of a mother, but with the fury of a god.

“The insolence…” She began, and my gaze followed Her golden finger to the two tapestries hanging side by side on the wall.  One, gleaming and golden, showed the glory of the pantheon.  Zeus threw thunder.  Poseidon’s trident created the very oceans.  Athena Herself inspired civilizations.  Mortals came from far and wide to leave gifts for the gods.  The other tapestry was beautifully dark with the gems of my sweat.  Zeus was a horny swan.   Dionysus could barely stand up.  And Athena aged a lonely virgin.  Along the edges, mortals glowed with eyes that were alive, that held the promise of death and passionate urgency of life.  They looked stunning and ephemeral and heavenly next to the gods.

I could feel Her boiling next to me and She flew at my tapestry, ripping it to shreds.  It was gone in an instant, tatters flying around the room as if it snowed tiny snippets of the stories I had spun.  Just as quickly, I felt a slap across my face and She was gone.  I was too shocked to cry.

I might have sat there for days, staring at Her weaving and at the tiny scraps of mine.  My father never came back.  I did not feel remorse, or hurt, or sadness.  I felt nothing, and that is why I did what I did.

It was She who found me, swinging from my father’s purple yarn, neck snapped and breathless.  Had She come back for Her masterpiece?  Had She felt remorse? Was She looking for me?  She took me down and cradled me in Her arms, holding me to Her chest, as if I were a babe sleeping.  I suspect She may have even cried.

She laid my limp body on the floor and held Her hands over me. “You’ll spin forever,” She chanted, again and again.  My chest raised up and my body became full and round. My eight spinning fingers grew long, longer than my body, longer than legs.  She kept chanting.  My eyes bulged, doubled and doubled, into iridescent black diamonds.

Now I am the mother I never had.  I call my children to me, black widows and wolves, funnel-webs and jumpers.  They gather round me and keep me company and I teach them to weave.

“You’ll spin forever.”  It was all I’d ever done, what I was born to do.

This post is the first in a series I am working on.

Creative Commons love to shelley1968 from flickr for the awesome photo.

Writing Challenge: When the Goddesses Come Out

Jaclyn12 Comments

 

 

Nymphs, goddesses, apsaras, maenads!  It’s May.  There’s a fresh exhilaration in the air.  Mother’s Day is coming up.  I have been incredibly inspired by all those bloggers who did the A-Z blogging challenge in April.  These things all fit together nicely in a little challenge that I am setting for myself.  This month, I am endeavoring to write about 26 strong, creative women from mythology.  So, the goal is to write 26 short stories, one based on a female mythological figure for each letter of the alphabet.  Feel free to join me, or to set your own goal for this month.  New growth and new beginnings are in the air!

 

A special Creative-Commons “Thanks!” to itjournalist from flickr for the photo!

Full Pink Moon

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It’s the golden hour, and all the plants are glowing as I make my way up the hill.  The sky is shocking, pink and blue and purple, as if suddenly bruising from its collision with the earth.  I want to reach up and comfort its throbbing beauty.  The turning leaves soak up the last bits of sun and radiate as if they were autumnal lanterns.  They light my way as the air turns dark.

The turning of the season and my northern-hemisphere body are at odds.  It’s nearly Beltane.  My blood wants to dance around fires throwing the cozy scarves and mittens of hibernation wantonly to the wind.  My skin is expectant with the warmth of new beginnings, and yet the gusts here are becoming harsher.  I push on.  It’s not fall for me.

As the final rays of the day tuck themselves in behind clouds and hills, I reach the well.  The very sight of the clearing tugs at something inside me.  I finger the stones, making them melt and turn to sand, as if they were an old lover who’d been waiting for my touch.

In response, I remove my shoes and socks.  My toes dig into the dirt and rocks dig back into my soles.  The breeze lifts my shirt and grazes my belly.  It’s all the impetus I need.  The wind keeps nibbling at me, encouraging me, and so I tie my clothes to the hawthorn tree.

It’s cloudy tonight and I know it’s no accident.  The moon is hiding in the shadow of the earth, tucked in the darkness of her cave as if in hibernation.  She’s just waiting for her moment.  It’s an up-side-down celebration here.  The leaves are beginning to saunter away from their branches.   The night is still pregnant with the potential of sprouts and seedlings, even as Antarctic winds raise mountain ranges of goose bumps on my skin.

I start a fire and I know you will be here soon.  I wonder how many logs and how much kindling we will need to last through the night.  The moon is flush and full.  Beneath my feet, the phlox creep further and further from the well.  The pink moss stretches its feelers toward unknown lands, testing whether those grounds hold lives that it can live.  The dainty flowers look up to the moon and howl, reflecting her full, surprised face back in their flushed cheeks.  They beam on a night like tonight.  They gather in such numbers and their blushing blazes so brightly that even the moon blushes back.

You come with logs for the fire and no words.  Before long we have our own sun flickering before us. “Ne’er cast a cloot ‘til Mey’s oot,” they warned us.  It’s not quite May, but it is time to cast our clothes.  The cold of the April wind nibbles at our skin and makes it blush, in brazen mimicry of the pink moon.  The light is deafening, and I am exposed, as are you.  The heat of the fire makes my frontside glow.  The cold of the April wind turns my backside pink.  I am round and glowing, a perfect salmon moon.

We dance in circles, falling into orbit around the fire.  I am drunk on the pollen wafting through the air, and red, yellow, and brown leaves swirl around me.  I can no longer tell whether I am surrounded by flames or trees or both.  Stars leap from the fire, embers fall from the sky.  I collapse into the embrace of the infinite.

Lost in space like this, there is no north and south, no spring or fall, only the endless expanse of new fires being lit.

 

 

Creative Commons love to phil dokas from flickr for the stunning photo!

Fall in the Long White Cloud

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It’s a wet kind of cold, the kind that still allows things to grow.  The cloudy sky and diffused light makes the green of the plants more striking and they glisten with the drops of rain.  Actually, the rain doesn’t quite drop.  The air is so thick with water that it falls in a mist, mot even heavy enough to be a drizzle.  It makes me feel like I am walking through a long, white cloud, as if I am so far above the earth that I am inside the sky.  Only the moss reminds me that I am at sea level.

The tree outside my window has been dying all summer, but now, in the cold of the autumn rain it has begun again to grow.  It also seems confused by these antipodean seasons.  It lost its leaves in the shining sun of the summer drought, and now that it’s fall, it’s sprouting new life.

The koru seem unsure about whether or not to open.  I am sure I’ve seen the ferny tendrils on my path tentatively stretch open, and now they’ve closed again, as if pulling back from the abrupt, damp, winter.  Their spiral fractals seem to contract and breathe, opening timidly and closing again.

It’s on days like this I long to be outside, to feel the growth and life.  The plants and ground feel full with the potential that the rain brings, bursting with possibility and expectant growth.  I want that potential, that possibility, that growth.

 

 

This is a little birthday present from New Zealand for my awesome, amazing, inspiring cousin, Janelle.  

 

Also, Kiwi Creative Commons love to Brenda Anderson for the photo.  Thanks so much!

Inspiration: Look Up More: The Shared Experience of Absurdity

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I’ll just come out and say it, I love the absurd.  There’s something magical and beautiful about frivolity that’s not tied down to reason and rationality.  Absurdity has this detachment from the material world which makes me remember that I am not only a physical body that needs to eat and shit, but also a mind that needs to be stimulated and awed.  There’s some sort of wizardry that the ludicrous possesses which can turn even the most mundane of situations and surroundings into a wonderland.

Take for instance Christo and Jean-Claude’s outdoor art, The Umbrellas.  It instantly turns a brown, barren California landscape into a fairyland. And that’s exactly what’s amazing about absurdity.  It’s play for adults.  It’s a time when we are pulled out of daily routine and everyday life and invited to immerse ourselves in imagination and wonder.  It invites us to see the world around us not as a hard, material setting but as a playground ripe with beauty and ready for exploration.

The magic and wonder of the ridiculous is never so powerful as when it is shared.  In the TED Talk below, Charlie Todd, founder of ImprovEverywhere, discusses the power of sharing absurd experiences.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the video:

“I love this moment in the video, because before it became a share experience, it was maybe a little bit scary, or something that was at least confusing to her.  And then once it became a shared experience, it was something funny and something she could laugh at.”

“There is no point and there doesn’t have to be a point.  We don’t need a reason, as long as it’s fun.”

[ted id=1269]

This video really inspired me because it made me think about how something just a little bit absurd lends itself to an entire story.  The people who witnessed the no-pants subway ride (and all the previous ones that followed!) will forever have that story to tell — and to share.  It will be something to connect over and an experience that they can give to others through the telling of that story for the rest of their lives.

All storytelling should have an element of this.  Stories should leave you wanting to retell them, to share them.  Good stories are instant bridges between people.  They bring us together and link us in common experience.

And for me, I always want a little bit of the absurd.  I want a little bit of play, a little wink at my reader.  I want that moment when my reader and I are both frolicking in the playground of wonder and imagination and beauty that is the world we live in.

Because it’s really fun to play by yourself, but it’s even more fun to play with others.*

*Sexual innuendo absolutely intended.  I’m sorry.  I couldn’t resist.

Creative Commons love to Jon Delorey for the photo and, of course, to TED for the video!