We Are

So I started with writing prompts searched out online. I only had to read a couple to feel as if I was in a class for cranking out forgettable paperbacks that sell to tasteless housewives. None of them really represented or appealed to my style. I understand they were just meant to be provoking ideas to get my mind working but they felt two dimensional. 

"Buddhist shrine on a rainy day in urban area" - I wrote this and a few other sentences while listening to sound/music art at EMPAC. I'm choosing to build on this.

Rain in the city. Any old city. Or new one, for that matter. When we conceive of rain in our minds, I'm sure most of us associate the image and the sound with peace and tranquility. Rain is reminiscent of a kind of silence, despite the fact that it is an unceasing noise. No pauses. In fact, a slow drip with true silence between each drop is generally felt to be more distracting than the continuous pitter patter of rain. We love the monotonous droning of rain so much that we record and recreate it to help us sleep. Rain in a city, any city, does not have the same effect on our senses. Or is it just me? It's raining today. Looking out from my window, looking back at me is a sea of cloud with the tops of buildings like boats upon it. Sure, there is a dreariness about it that inspires a kind of film noir themed catharsis in the soul, but it doesn't remove me from my present reality. It doesn't take away the stress of responsibility that comes with being a self-sufficient adult in the twenty-first century. I'm late. Umbrella in hand, I take the stairs down eleven floors, out the double doors of the complex's entryway and stand under the awning. If it weren't for their own umbrellas, I would suspect the passersby to be completely unaware of the unseasonal winter downpour. No one pauses to avoid puddles or gazes up at the hazy sky between the buildings. No hands stretch from beneath parasols to catch a cold drop in the air before it hits the sidewalk. There is no smell of petrichor in the city to arouse our nostalgia or excite our primitive senses; just a lingering, heavy stench of souring garbage on every curb and corner. Perhaps this is why we rush from one indoor space to another; we simply move our bodies through the uncontrolled, unpleasant scents of the urban outdoors to the artificially sweetened ones trapped inside our concrete boxes. Sighing, I too push my umbrella open with a whoosh, shielding myself, and briskly walk into the deluge. 

Let it scab

I haven't posted publicly in almost a year. Not for lack of writing... I've written close to a hundred pages since in emotional ramblings and daily journaling.

I haven't posted out of fear of communication. Even if it's communicating via an unacknowledged drifting space on the interwebs... even that was more than I could bear. Ultimately I felt defeated by my own negativity. The way I let it seep into all my writing became embarrassing and private. I suppose it still is... I won't be airing any deeply personal grievances now, either, despite being justifiably weighed down by many.

But it's time to make ripples again. I want to have a voice.
To my mother, thanks to and for whom I lived, I hope you wouldn't have minded me using our last months together as kindling for my work. My time with you was precious and I never knew it. Fortunately I will also never forget it, and I suspect if I don't recount your last months as a kind of biography, the experiences will give life to my wildest fantasies as well.
I love you, I miss you. As always, síochán leat.

A Spark

My senior year of high school our English teacher asked our class to write a story based on three pictures he gave us. I cannot now remember what was depicted in these pictures, but those six years ago, this was the short story I came up with. Nagging and unpolished, it's not much to bark at, but I could cultivate it...

     “Susan Baker” appears on the screen one letter at a time. The well manicured hands continue to clack away at the keyboard as the editorial on Cher’s wardrobe unfolds. She has always been responsible for the one or two actual articles in her brother’s magazine. She had formerly referred to fashion as the envy based, long-legged tramp displaying, money mongering industry, but her grandparents had founded the magazine and created it from the dust of the Depression for their future generations to inherit and run. So she had hopped on the family band wagon, and the job now consumed her life. It paid well, and she was part of the elite in Manhattan. One of the best apartments money could buy was hers, the most eligible bachelors craved to make her acquaintance, and if she could not purchase the most contemporary designer outfits and jewelry, they were hers to borrow from the company’s stocks. Yes, the world was at her fingertips, she thought, and with a little maneuvering it would be eating out of the palm of her hand.



       She awoke to the buzzing of a black fly against the canvas of her hastily pitched tent. The night air had crept in while she slept, and a fine layer of dew now coated her sleeping bag. Rorek still slept soundlessly beside her, his ginger beard shining with little rainbows as the rising sun slipped between the flaps of the tent onto the beads of dew. A feeling of utter contentedness and ease washed over Susan, and she lay back down and watched the sun slowly dry the contents of their humble shelter. The black fly came to land upon her arm, and she looked on quietly as it took its breakfast. She felt the pinch of the bite, then the throbbing, itching sensation, but still she did not move. As a breeze blew in and opened the front of the tent, Susan peered out lazily at the breathtaking landscape, full of the dips of valleys and peaks of mountains. She and her husband had settled not far from the sheer face of a cliff that shadowed miles of the valley below at both sunset and sunrise. Husband. Husband? She blinked rapidly.

Corns on a Cob

Corns on a Cob

An original play by A.L.Martin

4/13

CHARACTERS

DORA: a sixteen year old vegetarian, teenage girl. First child of Serra. 

SERRA: a late thirties, early forties year old woman married to her second husband, Seth. A people pleaser.

SETH: a man in his early forties. A prestigious car salesman/advertiser. Overweight, abusive. Has type two diabetes. Married to Serra.

SELMA: a woman in her late seventies to eighties. Seemingly senile, playful, taking advantage of the privileges of old age. Likely to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

CHILD: (alive) a seven to ten year old child. Speech impediment, poorly educated, lacking in emotional expression or depth (autistic?). Correct spelling of his mispronounced words placed in brackets   [ ] (dead) a Ghost, no longer linguistically challenged, would go so far to say he’s even intellectual.

CHICKEN: a Ghost played by a man in a chicken suit, preferably one with a full chicken head, however the face of the man should be visible, but only the face. He is sarcastic, arrogant, casual, and flaky. Like a lucky, charming, handsome gambler. Like the other Ghosts, he is “invisible.”

PIG: a Ghost played by a man in a pig suit, again fully depicting the exterior appearance of a pig but allowing the face of the actor to be visible in its entirety. He is skittish and self conscious. He is by all means a “stereotypical gay pig”, whatever that may mean to the actor in the role.

PEANUT: a Ghost played by a woman in a cow suit, similarly crafted so the whole of the cows physical appearance is intact, but the face of the actor is visible. Udders should be plain for any to see. She is a sassy, proud female, a feminist and PETA advocate combined. But intelligent.

Janitors: a collection of men or women, no less than five, no more than ten, who perform a wide variety of tasks. They are stagehands, they play the Janitors, they play the Hobos, they play all the various characters seen in T.V. show reenactments onstage. If there is a minor role to be filled, they will be substituted freely.

Gran, Lunch Lady, Game Host, Unknown Man, Young Dora, Young Serra, Infant Dora, Elderly Minister &etc.: this vast collection of brief or one time roles can either be given to those casted as “janitors” or can be individually casted. The infant must be of infantile size, a doll maybe, but no larger.

*Note, when a forward slash / is placed within dialogue, an interruption by the following / ensues.

Ch. 2

Chapter 2.

            Books spill out from the trunk of my car onto the pavement as if jumping to their deaths after the torment of being locked up in ninety degree weather. Covers flipped open, pages press into the depressions of dried up mud puddles, failing to find a drop of cool respite in the heat wave. I groan and stoop over the curb to pack them back into crumbling cardboard boxes.
Louann comes jogging out of the dusty, vintage general store we had invested in mere months ago, “Jesus christ, Lea, no one is going to want to purchase books in this condition.”

I examine a dog eared calculus textbook, glance at her, and throw it haphazardly into the pile. “No one was about to purchase underlined, creased college texts anyway. Used bookstore or no, we’ll need a lot more variety than this before we’re even able to draw in a single customer.”

Louann’s face was creased with years of judgment. At thirty years of age, no woman should look as worry worn as she did. It’s true that joy crimped her face with lines in all the areas unmarred by anxiety, but the wrinkles revealed the vast contrast in her day to day emotions, an observation that always affected me. Was it more of a hindrance or an advantage to experience such a wide range of intense emotions?