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THE CEILING

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THE CEILING

Under "final scene"

This is the end, my only friend, the end.

Under "Interlude" - final

That was the last interlude.

Under "scene three"

I've noticed that I formatted these posts differently. That's what happens when you work on something piecemeal over the course of a few months and yet post it as you work on it. If I just wrote the whole thing and edited it in one file as I went, it might not have happened... But I think posting it on the blog has been as much a reason for writing this play as anything else. If I didn't post it, I might not have stuck with it. Now I can see the end and I plan to have it all wrapped up within a few days. I watched the first episode of Horace and Pete a couple weeks back and the way that Louis CK describes creating and posting that show up on the internet makes me think of this play. The medium is the message (or massage) and all that.

Under "interlude"

Hello again. As you might be able to tell from the dates of the posts, I wrote the last interlude partially in response to Hurricane Irma hitting us in Florida. We didn't get much damage, but Tampa seems to finally have been hit by a hurricane, which hadn't happened for nearly a hundred years. What did happen was that my house lost power for a day and a half and it made me reflect on how much I take for granted what electricity allows us in the first world. Now let's dig into the interlude!

Under "feature"

"I still feel like episode 8 of TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN set a challenge." Warren Ellis, talking about the weirdest episode of David Lynch's magnum opus. Ellis's working on a revamp of a whole '90s comix universe in The Wild Storm, so it's fitting that he should reference Twin Peaks which itself has returned this year from its truncated end in the early nineties. I've watched the first part of the finale now and will be putting on the second in a minute. I said to a friend, "This show started when I was 1." Then I realized I was wrong about that--I'd confused the year of the prequel movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me with the original show. It's actually a few months older than I am, falling in that weird almost a year between the days Taylor Swift and I were born. There's a reference you probably didn't expect! Well, let's get to the autopsy...

Under "interlude"

Back when I first wrote the monologue of "interlude," I had recently shaved my head, so no wonder Pompo would do so. I initially scrapped this consideration of hair as too specific for Pompo's introduction into the play and rewrote the initial interlude, always knowing I would return to this one. That's why now, as I've posted it, my hair has grown back considerably. A co-worker asked me one day this week if her memory was right and I had all my hair cut off in May--when I replied in the affirmative, she said "Your hair grows fast!" I'm still processing that comment. I guess some or most people can tell if hair grows fast, but the awareness, day in and day out, that such an observation requires is beyond me. It's like someone saying "that paint dries fast!" and thinking, did they sit there and watch it dry? Or I could say the same with the grass growing. Let's get to the jump here...

Under "scene two"

You all know the drill. We're doing a post of play--either a scene or an interlude--followed by a post of reflection on that scene.

under interlude

Well, I just saw Wonder Woman. It was a solid movie, but falls under the usual strains of superhero fiction (and film in particular). I had a conversation with my friend after about how one problem with the film could be tied to a glorification of violence, but unfortunately that's par for the course with the genre and action films a bit more generally (and yet we both liked John Wick). It's a war movie with a woman who can stop bullets--it makes it a bit harder to make the film distinctly anti-war. There's some irony there since (spoiler) Wonder Woman literally kills the god of war in the film. Still, a good superhero movie with some particularly intriguing moments. I'm interested to see where this Wonder Woman/Batman romance or whatever it is goes in Justice League, but to be honest, I'm not all that invested in superhero movies. (I'm going to read some Dan Clowes tonight to distance myself from it. :P)

under scene one

As Carl mentions in scene one, I am currently reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. "I have been thinking about Tomas for many years," Milan Kundera says of one of his main characters near the beginning of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and I wanted to begin the play with Carl thinking about Wonder Woman in that way.

Covfefe

Hello! Long time, no see (he says to no one but the blog). Life has happened over the last few years, but I have wanted to do a bit of writing for some time now, and a few circumstances, like planets, aligned to form the perfect motivation.

Family Puzzles

Searching my computer I found a story/nonfiction piece from my fiction writing class that I had actually saved. My brain was apparently working to some extent that semester. I'm not sure I even turned this one in or if I wrote another one. I haven't reread it yet, which is why I don't know if it's fiction--the first paragraph is all real. I might edit in an affirmation after I publish the post. Not sure my opinion on the piece as a whole: as I mentioned, I haven't read it all the way through. Just found it and decided that I should just throw it up here since I've been somewhat absent lately. No worse than usual I guess, but change always has to start somewhere, am I right?

A Light Matter

One of something like three letters I wrote in class on the theme of converting an Amish family to at least a slightly more electric life. No intentions to offend and no actual views on religion expressed, but my professor appeared to like the original and I've briefly touched it up here. This time I'll hide my changes. I'm not really sure how interesting this particular letter is, but there's some solace in the fact that when you make your URL an apology you can get away with quite a lot.

Testing, testing

Hello. Here's a little piece of anger and good thinking (for myself...) I wrote for a GRE Practice Exam question asking whether it would be a good idea to create a national curriculum for the schools of a nation. I'm somewhat fond of it, but I'm telling you what it is because, well, because it's schoolwork, about as unrelated to this blog as anything I've posted here before. Enter after the jump at your own risk. Before I cut off on the homepage, I'll say this: we are experiencing regimen change (like the pun?); ideas for "etymology," and pieces for "autopsy" are still very much at hand, as well as others. The new type of "regular" posting may or may not begin soon. You will not see since you aren't here but were that not true you might. Diving board, you've climbed thus far with me, would you care to jump?

From my abandoned NaNoWriMo

Autopsy is over for the first season. You'll hear more about that in the next day's post, methinks, but for this post I'm going to put up a few cuts out from the novel I wrote back, I don't even know anymore, two, three years ago? Many different narrators, so not all the sections are in the same voice or at least spoken by the same character. I'm not sure I can handle writing in multiple voices; I'm not sure I'm that talented. These are mostly from towards the end of the book. For the first time, I think, I'm simply going to be cutting and pasting for this post, but I think it's worth it. As opposed to what else I could put up here, I think this is a good, solid offering.

"Originally written as a horror story..."

I ordered Pictures That Tick for mad cheap thru someone on Amazon a few days back and am still wondering why there's such a discretion there, but I'm happy to have paid what I did. In looking at the book now for the link there seems to be none available new/used anymore which I find odd. But Amazon also appears to have dropped their price so you wouldn't be getting it for much more than I did if you get the free shipping on plus $25. But enough advertising. Sigh. I might write something about comix and poetry later on tumblr and link it here. It came in the mail today and I've read thru the first few shorts. I have all of the normal "autopsy" posts stapled together into two "season" packets. The next story is originally called "Lumberjack Reincarnated in Form of Tree." Ash, a story in the McKean book, also investigates the idea of becoming a tree, but in a very different way. The synchronicity of the tales caught me though making me write of it here. The title of this post is the beginning of Dave's own words on Ash in the book.

We're back to football.

Sort of a choppy one. I'm not at all happy with what it ultimately says about well, first women, second relationships, and third the way we interact with sports. So...to avoid the problems I see happening from reading for these things, I will point them out to you and then say "don't read for these things." Especially anything it says about women. It's not trying to, it's just like the good-natured grandfather who says the wrong things, or should I say believes the wrong things. Anyway hopefully no one actually does read it that way, but I am saying that you can get the wrong impression of me if you read it without the disclaimer. This was straight writing in class, not a finished product, and I wouldn't write like this any other way. But besides, I think it's fun. Perhaps the worst of it is the original title, the terrible "Getting her way." The new title is a riff on the fact that we actually have football, and that I watched parts of the nationally televised season opener a few hours back. Typing it, I realized that I knew the characters and they were one of two couples I've written before, so the plan now would be to figure out which one. Well, if my story-voice is somehow different than my non-story-voice, than the latter one will stop blabbering for now...

Autopsy Presents: CHASING VICTOR

Autopsy Presents is a new feature which brings new stories to light, rather than investigating the inner workings of old stories. The following is in honor of comics week.

"The pot is full; let me take control."

These introductions are influenced both by the sort of "I'm still here" posts from Warren Ellis where he often announces the name of the location you've found on the web. I'm really into that. And also the bumps that Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1 gets on [adult swim]. The sort of inside view given to this season with little snippets from the creators before every new episode. Huh, using this intro as a reflection on my attempts to change my own intro writing ways, it seems I've mucked up the chances to actually introduce this piece. Oh pooh! I will only just add that this post is helluva long one, quite the doozy, do not start it if you're off to bed in five minutes or suchlike.