Fictionalize Yourself

Pathless

Pathless

Fiercely Interdependent
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In a farmhouse, on a farm. With goats.
I was looking for the hot tub party. Someone told me I'd find it in the lounge. Is it lounge or longue? Lounge, I think.

Anyhow, I got to thinking about the fact that we don't talk too much about what we do--you know the kind of work we do--in these forums. And then my mind, miraculous tool that it is, followed up those thoughts with another: "Why is that?" To which I replied, "Well, you know, in their profiles people have a tagline that they can fill out about their career/job." And then I thought (I know--they just keep coming, these thoughts!) maybe people don't talk about it because there's not much to talk about.

I've always dreaded jobs. I realize now, only several months before my magical 31st birthday, that it's the imposed job that I dread and not actually work. When I say work I mean play, in a sense. I mean the kind of work that fulfills me, connects me to people around me, connects me to my environment and communities, blossoms me, keeps me thriving and alive. And I've not yet gotten that from punching a clock or pulling in a salary, although there are a couple of jobs that came close.

This whole time is money thing is whack. You know, like the kids say--totally whack. Are the kids still saying that? Somebody give me some feedback on my hipness.

And I had another thought. One that asked a question: "If people could write stories about their lives, about how their lives would be, given no limits, what would those stories be like? What would my story be like?" And then I had a thread to post on CR.

And here you are. No limits. All theories of gravity, God, all your ideas about Greek myths, faeries, pink aliens in tuxedos carrying fishing pools--all your preconcieved notions about your conditioned self and the world that conditioned you, it's time to put those aside. Imagine the aforementioned pink alien, but then put that aside too. Now really stretch your imagination. Think in terms of multiple universes, multiple layers of reality.

Who are you? What's your story? Who or what do you aspire to be? Who do you want to be, given no limits? That's what the space in this thread is for. The page is blank and you have a box of paints, a can of pastels, a stack of old newspapers and crisp history books, all the worlds' mythologies to draw from--on one condition. You process them through your heart and imagination and come up with a good story about a you who is not you, who is some idealized, stylized you. Come into yourself. Make yourself.

Who's first?
 
I'm a stranger to this planet having originated in the Antares region. I don't remember much of home. We live as a collective there. My only memory of home is the sense of being surrounded by a viscous (for I know no other adequately descriptive word) golden light in the presence of other consciousnesses. And I have an urge within me to complete my mission and go home.

I came to this rock approximately 32645 years ago VOLUNTARILY, believe it or not! And first experience a culture similar to what you call "Atlantis". I've asked many times and although I hear the name in my head, I'm unable consciously to repeat it.

I was a shepherd boy with white skin, living on a small rocky island dotted with scrub brush. The ships came unexpectedly one day and I was removed for my own good (the top of my head prickles as I write this) to a dusty place that smelled funny.

As I remember, it seems as though the light was a darker, almost dingy yellow, but it may be the tinge of absent years. The landscape was punctuated by pyramid structures and I was given the task of helping the workers place and shape blocks. The labor was apparently difficult for them as they tugged the rough blocks from the riverbanks to the rising monolith ahead. As the heavy blocks were brought to the site several of us, positioned at various intervals, shaped and placed them using knowledge of which I may not speak.

My companions and I completed our task and the ships arrived again for the long-awaited return. For some reason, lost to this self, one had to remain behind to secure the "opening" and I volunteered. A decision which I would have many, many years to regret...

(more later)
 
Thanks, Prober, for starting us off. And a nice start it is. I look forward to watching the story unflold.

I'll be back in a bit to post my own contribution, but now I'm off to eat a deicious buttery pita, drink some Yerba Mate, and watch a movie called Walkabout.

For those of you watching the Obama president thread--I know, I know:
Movie? You painted your TV opaque! Well :eek: I haven't actually gotten around to that yet. I like movies too much. But it has been blacked out to crap television and "news" for years--metaphorically speaking at least.

And thanks everyone for the welcome backs. It's nice to be hanging around here again. It's hard to stay away from this place--and it only gets harder once I start posting.

Peace...
 
Yerba Mate. Watch out for those silver straws. And enjoy.

InPeace,
InLove
 
No silver straw in my mate. Those are cool though.

Here's the start of my fiction. Thanks, Ciel for the Tears of a Clown thread... I think that weaved its way in here somehow:
:)

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The rainbow bowl, full of morning brew, was being tended by Anaka. Having awakened again early to the percussive rhythms within her own being, she began simmering eucalyptus leaves and cinnamon sticks even before the coyotes had begun their early morning singing and yipping. This was good though, to her mind. Today the boy Han-chi would return from his walkabout. This she knew from her dreams and not from any schedule.

Anaka and her kin kept few schedules and the ones they did use to regulate their activities were the sighs, cries, laughter, and bellyaches of the Earth. A few of the more adventurous knew intimately the movements of the stars and moon, having journeyed at different times to the west, where the Keepers of Time danced in their groves of bees--among other activities.

Anaka looked down at her belly, the osier, mossy green, and lavendar paints still sticking with their clay, creating a mandala of rings around her swollen belly. Letting her hand touch the little life sleeping there, she squatted down, smiling, small chants and prayers pouring from her lips. The big wooden spoon, let go, swirled of its own accord in the currents that she had set in motion in the cauldron.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Watching the rabbit. Watching, watching. Watching in the moonlight.

"Bunny, why are you not asleep?" A whisper, hoarse and cracked, from broken lips. Those lips, intentionally caked with mud, could now speak as never before.

The rabbit perked. With a peak, it hopped, landed, held its head to one side. It never looked directly at the boy.

"Haha, I connect with you. I connect. We connect." The boy, his dark skin absorbed and nearly invisible in the darkness of deep night, made quick motions with his arm between himself and the rabbit. It was enough to startle the animal, as he knew it would be. And off the rabbit darted.

"Heh. You go now." Chuckling. Patting the ground. "Ground, I love you. Father Ground, Mother Ground, Sister Ground, Brother Ground." He stood up, stretched for a long minute, and began to let the sound out.

The sound was grief. It began as a sigh, became a cry, hurtled itself as a scream and a shout, alive, raw, and primed with energy. A scream unhinged from language, from literal and linear expression. It said so much more. Decibels upon decibels. And as he released grief and rage, Han-chi called up more from the solid ground below him. His kin, the Earth, his parent, brother, sister, animal, vegetable, mineral Earth, filled him and flowed out of him. A conduit, a channel, is what he became. He became the heat lightning on the horizon, and all the coyotes began singing with him this song of grief, of death and rebirth and suffering in ignorance again and again. It went on like that for some time.

Much later, or perhaps not so much later, the raw voice gave in and broke through to laughter. Not far away, the coyotes yipped. These amplified sounds ascended, spiraled into more joy. Rooted in the ground and flowing over it like water, Han-chi danced.

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I'm a little teapot short and stout....tip me over and pour me out.

We gather experience from fields far away, separate out the twigs and nonessentials...ferment and dry the essential ingredients, add some suptle spices for accents...and steep till the water is so infused the thought escapes into the air...

I'm poured into a cup, the aroma tempts others..to try, to test, to ingest, and add it to their experiences...ahhhhh.
 
I've been working on something since last year this time. A lot has happened in my life this past year in addition to 50 hour workweeks, but I've managed six chapters in fair shape I think. Think of this as a gift to all of you for being so sincere and understanding here.


Ready...Set...Go... and who knows where it will all end ? I'll feed you a page or so every once in a while...since that's my style.

flow....:)
ONE
It Begins

Los Angeles Times...Times Past.... 2-25-06
<<Jittery Nerves in the ‘Battle of L.A.’
Radar stations picked up an unindentified object over Santa Monica Bay at 2:25 a.m. The region’s antiaircraft batteries - the largest at Ft. Macarthur in San Pedro - went into action, firing nearly 1,500 rounds into the suddenly well-lighted sky. Air raid sirens wailed, waking thousands of people; some grabbed guns and ran outside in their pajamas. The city was blacked out for neartly five hours. In the resulting panic, five people died - three in car crashes and two of heart attacks. The event became known as the “Battle of Los Angeles.” To this day it is unclear what happened. The Japanese deny that their warplanes ever flew over Los Angeles. Official wartime records are inconclusive. Although some residents later claimed that they had seen a globular or triangular craft in the sky, and UFO buffs still make much of the episode, military officials blamed it all on jittery nerves and a wayward meteorological balloon. There is no evidence that any bombs were dropped or any shots fired from the air.>>

It was a tme of war. Not the war to end all wars, but an important one on Earth nonetheless. For in this war it was to be decided just who were to be the children of darkness, and who were to be the children of light.
Looking back on that night, it could reasonably be said that it was the night that God came to Earth in the form of a human being. Well... maybe so. But it could never be proven. And even if that happened, how did He or She or Sh/He do it ? Where did Sh/he come from ? Why didn’t Sh/He just leave the miserable Human Beings on Earth alone to be led into death by their more miserable leaders ?
Simply because that was never meant to be. Simply because Sh/He never had the choice.

Harold Uggins was a very old man. His coffee-colored parchment-like skin was stretched tightly over his long and graceful facial structure. His face was entirely surrounded by a glistening, silver-white halo of spiralling kinky short hairs that covered his head from front to back and crawled down his sideburns to cover his chin and lower jaw.
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The window shades were drawn down to keep out the blazing sunlight, and the floor lamp in his modest rooms above the neighborhood market on Chicago’s North side illuminated the scene of our conversations that had lasted since the first warming days of June. His golden hazel eyes shone with a desperate longing not to answer my questions. He knew the harm that his story might bring to others. But he had told me in the tavern down the street that he had to open up on this to someone. It was time, he had chosen me, and now I was to be responsible
 
I don't remember how long I was alone. It must have been a very long time. I have only a feeling of being consciously blank. I remember a faint humming sound and a dim red light as if it was generated from someplace behind me. My consciousness reached out, grasping the faint cord from home. I never doubted that they would return to release me from my self-imposed martyrdom and bestow proper recognition upon me for my pains. That I should retire to expansive pastures to fullfill the smallest requirements possible and live in peace. But I have no memory of freedom.
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We are dancers, dreamers, lovers of Earth, trippers to the center of Earth, wild children of the brushlands, my Family. We are visionaries, walkers along the many branches of our Beauty Ways, fresh and awake in the warming sun. We view the stars on a clear night with amazement. Our elders and some parents of children, even some brilliant youths, tell stories about the ways of Mother Sun and the Distant Suns of Night, about the Mirror Bowl Moon, the cracks in Time that are the pathways to Other Places among the stars.

We are a group of hundreds, sheltered and nurtured by grain, fruit, bulbs, tubers, roots, lettuce. We grow and harvest vegetables. When the fruit dies and goes underground, when the vegetables sleep for the Autumn and Winter and no longer respond to our evocations of their growing, we hunt. Out of necessity, we hunt small animals as well as our Sister Deer and Brother Elk. They and the bulbs of the Earth, the roots we are able to store against Winter--these sustain us when Mother Sun's influence wanes, when she shines brighter on Other Worlds, not ours. In the cold times, when white snow of many shapes sprinkles and dusts over the land, our people huddle long hours in houses insulated with Earth, Tree, and Deerskin. In these shelters, surrounded by the raw beauty of Elk bone, wrapped in the warm smoke of wood, Sage, and coal, we sing, tell stories, and dance the rituals that sustain us.

Today is the Day of Mother Sun's blossoming. Warm rays bless us. Trees are waking up for their next life season. Beauty in the form of wandering animals, curious, in the form of smells gone into hiding all Winter, begins to take hold once again. And so we will dance in the open on this day. We will sing with abandon and joy.

In the coming months, a contingent of our more adventuresome people will scatter in different directions, to meet the different Families. New unions may take place, new bonds form, and some of our Family may leave to stay with different people: The Sun Turtles, Black Wings, or Undertree Dreamings. And some people from those Families may come to stay with us--for a season, several seasons, or a lifetime. In this way our lives are made rich.

Today we will dance the power of Mother Sun into our spirits and bones.

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InLove has question, please? We are all making our different stories--this is not a chain story, right? Some of it seems to be, and some of it doesn't. I just want to know, in case I might jump in somewhere in the near future. :)

I love this, by the way. Great reading!

InPeace,
InLove
 
It's ANARCHY!!!!!! :D

No. Some of us are crafting ongoing tales. Some people may tell their story in one post. The stories aren't likely to link together, but there's no rule against that. Just the general exhortation to paint an imaganitive story of a fictionalized "you." However you choose to define that.

With mine, I'm choosing to at this point identify myself with the "Family" story I am crafting, rather than any one of the individuals. As the story progresses, "I" as the writer of the story may inhabit the consciousnesses of varioius characters, and I may also zoom out to third-person omniscient. For me, this story is about exploration of inner space on a canvas of an externalized, "other" world, and immersing myself in multiple perspectives, seeing what grows out of that.

Everyone is free to approach their story in whatever way they see fit.

Peace,
P-Diddy
 
Anarchy? I'm in!

Here is something I have been a bit stuck about for a while. I am thinking that "P-Diddy's" method of various perspectives within the story might help me work this one out. The original draft was more wordy and in third person. But I like it better in first. So I guess I'll throw out the first part and see where I go with it from there. This is cool.

Disclaimer: I have been told that the first paragraph sounds a bit seedy. I submit that it is only that way if you see it that way. :eek: I leave it this way because I like it.

Also--I noticed that Prober, I think, wrote about an unremembered name. Great minds, huh, Prober? (I had mine first). ;) :D

Alrighty then...to the task at hand.

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Dancing on the davenport is more delicious than the butter pecan ice cream and the silent movie. I have been seduced into imposing the will of calloused gardner’s feet upon the haughty brocade which refuses to stay clean. I wonder if anyone would actually believe me if I told them it is likely the guiltiest pleasure I have experienced in a year or more? But I dream.

It isn’t exactly fog, but more of a thick mist. Here and there the rays of a pale sun peek through, inciting shadows of leaves to dance upon the greening earth. There, the slip figure of a woman also dances, her snow white tufts of hair like unruly cotton candy, little wayward strings of it escaping from some hidden barrette to ride the random breezes. She wears a floursack shift, something I’m pretty sure I would not be able to identify in the humdrum vision of daily familiarity.

She dances with her broom. Is she singing? I think so, but no sound escapes her lips. Around her feet, a small dark creature weaves in and out like a ribbon of silk. She opens her palm and sprinkles something over a garden, and wherever it lands, the buds of plants open and close, like a kaleidoscope changing colors in moving light and overwhelming bursts of incense. And then gone.

There is an unrelenting urge to call out to her--to speak her name--but I cannot remember it. I know that the mere whisper of it would prompt her to look my way and acknowledge my presence. I know she is aware of her observer, but has no intention of interrupting the rhythm of her business for someone who cannot or will not attempt a decent introduction. I am so disappointed. I close my eyes within my dream, the name I know so well desperately clinging to my unwilling tongue, never escaping.

********************************************************************************************************
 
Alright now this whole introspective thing is pissin me off. And what's the idea workin overtime not only on concepts to toss into the forum, but actual posts?

Workin, fine tunin, developin themes and thoughts, gathering information, input from others prior to posting, its hogwash. It's all about the here and now, on the front, up front responses. Yeah ok, I can understand lookin up a word here or there, grabbin a book off the shelves to insure yur not to fer off base but to go and compose in preparation, I just don't like it.

Is that enough of a fictionalized character...or is there still too much truth?
 
wil--don't be mad! I misspelled "gardener" on purpose! (Too late to edit). :D

InPeace,
InLove
 
Continuing the story, KNOWING, chapter one....... The beginning is 2-25-42, but the narrative takes place in the recent past.


“ Yessir, they’s knew what’s they be wantin’. An’ I knowed when I sees dem thet nothin’ anyone said to them wuz gonna’ change their minds, even though they never did ast’ me nothin’. Alls I ever was to them was some gimped-up collud guy what swep’ up the floors, emptied out their trash, and spiffed up the johns when they be needin that.”
His parched lower lip quivered as he asked me if I wanted something from the ancient Frigidaire. I told him I didn’t. Pulling himself up on the knobby old cane that was his constant companion, he shuffled across the maple floorboards, and brought a bottle of Donald Duck orange juice back to his overstuffed chair with a pristine doily pinned to the back, popped the top and sipped contentedly at its cool contents, smacking his lips into a smile of contentment as he sank back into the nubbed maroon fabric of the cushions.
“Dis here heat saps my marrow. I jus’ sweat when I thinks, let alone talkin’ a story to someone I shouldn’t be tellin’ in the firs’ place.”
“Well, anyways I was stuck in Los Angeles after they patched me up and mustered me outta the Army. But I jes didn’t have a home to go to ‘cept fo’ dis gal I met up with by ‘Frisco outsida place called Port Chicago. You know, dat’s the place what blowed up and killed all those brothers that be loadin’ ammo on the warships. She liked me well enough and we came down to LA ‘cause her brother there’d heard of a defense plant thet was willin’ to hire vets that wasn’t hurtin’ too badly. She was such a sweet thing. Family from N‘Orleans, an’ she had lots of music in her, so I ended up marryin’ her for a lot of years. Died of a stroke four, no five years back. Only one kid, a boychild. He died when he was only ten of the polio. Real bad stuff.”
“It be a strange place to work. The whole place was camouflaged on some bluffs above the Pacific next to an airport. They’s be buildin’ planes there for the aircraft carriers and bigger ones for haulin’ freight an’ troops wherever they be needed aroun’ the worl’. Transports and torpedo planes. All shiny and painted pretty when they be rolled out of the plant. An’ then the

3.



lady pilots would climb in ‘em and rise up into the sky, takin’ them wherever it was in the worl’ they was wanted.”
He drained the last of Mr. Duck and pitched the empty into a blue plastic can in the corner... dead center.
“Dat night wuz sure as hell differn’ ‘cause all hell broke loose in town and down by the beaches. They says lights be in the sky over the water, be goin’ dis way and dat, real fast. The anti-aircraft, they lit up the sky with flak and ‘den the people tell me that the lights they jus’ disappear after a time. It be all over the papers the next mornin’, sayin it was the Japs flyin’ up from some secret air base in Mexico. Even the War secretary, Mistuh Stimson was commentin’ on the thing in the papers. Dunno if dat all make much sense to me. The weather balloon stuff is crazy too. People say dese lights was movin’ aroun’n real fast and zig-zaggy like. Nope, wasn’t no ordinary planes or any balloons neither.”
“There was different areas of the plant that be more dangerous than the others ‘cause of the stuff thet went on dere. You know, puttin’ the wings on the planes, all that cuttin’ an’ weldin’ an’ such. The sparks, they’s sometimes catched trash and such on fire, so’s I have to be scuttlin’ an’ cleanin’ pretty fas’ in those places to keep fires from startin’. So’s I guess you cud’ say that my janitor duties there was as much about safety as ‘bout cleanin’. Anyways there was this part of the place way way down’n under in the back, under the highest part of the bluff where no one be allowed to go ‘cept for some engineers, scientific types, guard types, military guys, and cleanin’ people likes me o’course.”
“Why it be secret, I jus’ don’t know. Nobody ebber tole me why. I jus’ knows that it was definitely off-limits to mos’ people. But on de night of the troubles in da sky, I sure seen me some strange goin’s on. An’ the hell of it is, I wasn’t even tryin’ to see nothin’ or spy on nobody. I was jes’ in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jes’ doin my job.”
Harold leaned his head back against the pristine white doily and closed his beautiful eyes with a raspy sigh. “Getting tired out?” I asked .
“Nope. Jus’ takin’ a break before I tells you the most important part.”
“Do you want for me to leave and come back in the morning when it’s a little cooler? That might be easier for you.” I was concerned for him because


4.


the telling of his life to me over the past month had been a great effort on his part, and this looked to be the episode on which the all of his memories hinged, the moments that brought the most importance to his being here. He wetted his lips from the glass of water that was constantly beside him on the old magazine stand.
 
In writing a story of myself... Things such as your god and such would not be included.... The story is of me... not of religion. I would play more on my darker sides... I would be the uncontrollable freaking psycho that is kept in a padded cell 24/7 in a straight jacket in fear of escaping.... I would be this beast that every man feared. I would tell of my rage, anger frustration of being restrained in this cell.... I can't get out, I can't cause harm, I can't harm myself... no matter how hard I smash my freaking skull against the walls and door, I can cause no pain or violence. You know how annoying and frustrating that is? When you go to slam a door wanting it to slam and smash and cause tension... but it doesn't, it slowly shuts? Or when you randomly grab something just to throw in any direction because you are so p'd off? But it floats away and doesn't hit anything hard??? That creates so much more anger and wish to cause pain..... Becoming nothing but a mere memory to a few… But, that memory is fading… I am dead in the mind of all… I have been put far, far away from civilisation. I am nothing anymore….. I cannot cause chaos or trouble I cannot demand attention, there is no longer anyway for me to do this……. Nothing makes sense, nothing has a point, everything is to simply slow down what is inevitable... All I can do is wait for it to find me. No windows, no communication with others, no day light, only electric light... A small beam at that, which comes through a small eye hole in my door.... They are watching me... They are always freaking watching..... I have never seen them... They simply observe, judge and sneer.... Being so isolated and desolate.... You begin to forget the things that make you human... The only thing to focus on is the small random dust particles that sometimes catch small reflections off the light "source"..... That gives no true light... Living in confusion and darkness... Am I already dead? Is this it? Will it ever come? Has it come? I do not know.... :)
 
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