Hikari

Free-write for short story "A Perfect Circle", end scene:

His breath had frozen in his throat, and he threw the branch aside. There it was. A glowing ring floating just a few feet off the ground in midair, with a step made out of earth leading up to it. The ring was a blarring, yellow light, with a blue film outlining it. The ring contained a window, as if a window bathed or stained in a color similar to the golden red sunsets he had grown up with. It was a strange window contrasted to the gray sky around him, debris still flying around in a frenzy after the battle.

Cautiously, he stepped closer and closer. As he stepped, some kind of light broke forth from within the window of the ring. It got brighter and brighter and brigher, and by the time he got to the step, it was nearly blinding him. He could feel its heat. He stepped up.

Then suddenly, he panicked. No. I can't, I cannot do this. I can't. There is no longer strength within me to take this. I cannot. Please, do not make me. He thought of running away, back to the village, back to Shatin. He would teach me his ways, I would become his apprentice just like he promised, and I will be happy.

But he knew this was a lie. Shatin's influence and skill with antrax was just as strong outside the Aeterna as it would be in the great Beyond. Stepping through the Aeterna would mean nothing. What would change would be that time now had power, and he would no longer fight anymore. There would be only choice.

He knew that if he did not let go now off everything behind him, as the elders said, he would be destoyed by his own madness even now after the battle. He would have to take everything behind it, squeeze from it all feeling until only memoy remained, and then move forward with only that. He could no longer cling to the past.

His chest heaved upward as he breathed deeply. Then, he stepped into Aeterna.
The light enveloped and consumed him.


*****

He opened his eyes. He was on a mountain side, in a field lush with fresh, green grass. The sky was an eternal sunset above him, and yet it seems also like a sunrise. The breeze caressed his face.

Suddenly, Jarith appeared from the bottom of the hill he was standing on, running towards him. People started following. Jarith grasped him firmly in a great hug. "Welcome, brother. You did it. We did it!"

Amaya was there, too. She smiled and cocked her head sideways as she grinned at him. He hugged her. Then Xergart, Baxir, Geoff, Nakina, Lithur, Sukana...they were all here! Not back in the village, but here! He was overjoyed beyond words. He had been so scared that he would be the only one. That he would be alone. But here they all were, those that he feared he would never see again.

They would never leave him. He knew that now.

Then, he saw a bright light just ahead. There was a silouette. A girl, her hair flowing in the breeze.

He knew it was her.


The ending is...

Tour de force
Coup de grace
End credits
Finale
Curtain call
Fade out
Black out
Track end
Rewind
Fin
Stop
Zero
Forever. The ending is forever.

The Fifth Meltdown

Cold
Empty room
Bright lights
Smelling
Rot
Decay
Lust
Rubber
Mouth
Choking
Smooth
Hurt
Bleed
Dying
Doctor
Skin
Skin
Skin
Doctor
Dying
Bleed
Tongue
Bumps
Rough
Bitter
Desert
Faster
Pressing
Coughing
Blood
Smell
Dripping
Die
Die
Tube
Lust
Mouth
More
More
Dying
Dying
Dying
Dying
Dead
Dead DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEA DA D ED A DA EA D DEA D DE A D D E A D.

Requiem Review

A long time ago, people spoke of a legendary paradise on earth. It was a place where you would never have troubles. You would be surrounded by your loved ones. You would have complete freedom from the horrible things in this world. Nothing would ever harm you. You would fall in love “the one”, and have a magical, perfect marriage. Your children would grow up in that perfect house, with that perfect yard and that perfect fence. There would be no sorrows, only peace and happiness. There would be a happy ending.

As Ernst Hemingway said, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Everyone at some point has experienced the mythical vision of the Great American Dream. At the core of every human being is a passionate desire and longing to be happy. Some will go to great lengths to find this everlasting happiness. They will fall asleep inside the Great American Dream. They will do what they have to do in order to have the Dream become a reality. Some will go so far as to sell their very souls to a hell they never saw coming in order to continue sleeping…until they realize that the Dream has kept them in a permanent slumber, and it is too late to wake up.

This is the genius and central theme of Hubert Selby, Jr. Selby’s novel, Requiem for a Dream is the tale of four people in search of the Dream, and the discovery of unspeakable horrors. It is a masterpiece that, as the title suggests, mourns the daily passing of thousands of Americans as they strive for that Great American Dream. And on a universal scale, it is a voice of warning to those who allow an imaginary light to guide their lives.

By analysis of the story’s structure itself, it is clear that no character is the hero, nor are the characters heroes themselves. Instead, the hero of the story is Addiction. In the words of Darren Aronofsky, director of the movie adaptation, the entire work is “a manifesto on Addiction’s triumph over the Human Spirit.” The enemy, a nemesis that lives in the minds of the characters, serves as the dreadful monster in a heart-stopping horror story.

Beginning the book requires some strenuous reading, for the grammatical syntax of the novel is extremely jarred. There are no chapter headings nor dialogue indentations and quote marks. Words such as “I’ll” and “we’re” read as “I/ll” and “we/re”. It is sometimes difficult to tell who is talking in the beginning, though you eventually get used to sensing the different personalities and voices of each character. Sentences run on for miles; one sentence went for a paragraph (if there were paragraphs…), another went for a whole page. The longest sentence in the book was approximately four pages long. The scenes are marked in vivid, hardcore detail. The events seem to flash and jump off the page sparatically in living and breathing color. Sometimes there are broken-down descriptions of common things, such as when evening is described as “the sun was down which made it night time.” The whole book reads as if you are in an altered state of mind like a junkie, and some breathers from reading the text may be required for some. For others, it will be difficult to get over the language, and the arresting nature of the narrative itself. Reading this book is not for the faint of heart. The reading in and of itself is an experience.

Requiem for a Dream traces the lives of an elderly widow named Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, Marion, who is his girlfriend, and his best friend Tyrone. Out of loneliness, Sara wants to feel loved. She feels she can achieve such attention and love if she was on television. It is her dream to be a guest star on one of the game shows she spends her entire day watching. From sun up to sun down, Sara does nothing but watch television and overeat. Her son Harry is a heroin addict, along with the rest of his friends. He spends his time getting hits, but his goal is to open up a coffee house shop with Marion, happily married and eventually off the drugs. Marion hopes to eventually become a best-selling artist with her artwork. Tyrone desires to escape his terrible past and live a peaceful life somewhere quiet where there are, as he says, “no hassles.”

Over the course of the novel, each person goes through incredible means to obtain their dreams. When Sara receives a call to appear on a game show, she immediately invests in diet books and dying her hair. As the story progresses, the dreamers get worse. Harry, Marion and Tyrone find a get-rich-quick scheme by scoring some uncut heroin to begin trafficking to the masses. Sara indulges in diet pills in order to lose weight faster. Each character experiences haunting, dreamlike realities where they convince themselves that each wrong turn will eventually turn out right. Sara’s reality seems the worst: “…Her face started to squeeze itself into a grin and she decided…to tell the ladies about how good her Harry was doing with his own business and a fiancée and how she/ll soon be a grandmother. It was a happy ending.” Slowly but quickly, each character is blindly led to one horrific tragedy after another that only the reader can see. By the end of the novel, each character has found a fate worse than death itself; a hellhole to rot in for the rest of their lives.

The ending, frequently foreshadowed throughout the story, is tragedy at its best. The full implications are realized as the narrative describes, “Whatever chances they had to take they took automatically as their disease ordered and they obeyed, a small part of tem wanting to try to resist, but that part shoved so far down that it was no more than an ancient dream from a previous life. Only the insatiable and insane need of the moment had any bearing on their lives, and it was that need that gave the orders.”

The lessons learned from the doomed characters will stay with the reader forever. A teenager who reads this book will have the living daylights scared out of ever taking pills or drugs, or being addicted to television, eating, sleeping, or anything else that can become addictive. If it were up to me, I would personally edit the book down to a reader’s edition and make it required reading for every high school student. No teenager should be without this story or its vital message.

And what is that message? That the Great American Dream has quickly become the Great American Nightmare. In his novel Go Now, Richard Hell writes:

“You take for granted what you have and you can't take it with you when you die. There is never enough and you will always want more. No matter how much you learn, no matter how much you earn, you are still yourself and exactly as close to the edge as where you began. And all you can ever learn is what you already know. You will always want to know what the ending is, but you can't because you're dead.”

This is what Selby writes about in his prophetic vision of a future America where Harrys, Marions, Saras and Tyrones abound in an existence we shudder to even think about. Yet everyday the news is a testament to the rising casuality rates in this Great American Disease. It is a calamity and an impending doom that is taking America by storm, and soon the world. If we do not stop it, no one will. Requiem for a Dream is not just a moral lesson to never take drugs. It is a powerful reminder of how much destruction a fake dream can have, and the importance of having the right dream, and not just a good one.

Selby remarks at the end of his forward, "Ultimatly, I don't think there will ever be a requiem for the Dream because it will destroy us before we have a chance to mourn its passing. But perhaps time will prove me wrong. As Mr. Hemingway says, 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'"

No Such Thing

Perfect.

"No Such Thing"--John Mayer, from "Room for Squares", 2001

"Welcome to the real world", she said to me
Condescendingly
Take a seat, take your life
Plot it out in black and white
Well, I never lived the dreams of the prom kings
And the drama queens
I'd like to think the best of me is still hiding
Up my sleeve
They love to tell you stay inside the lines
But something's better on the other side.

So the good boys and girls take the so-called right track
Faded white hats, grabbing credits and maybe transfers
They read all the books but they can't find the answers.
And all of our parents, they're getting older
I wonder if they've wished for anything better
While in their memories,
Tiny tragedies,
They love to tell you stay inside the lines
But something's better on the other side.

I am invincible,
I am invincible,
I am invincible as long as I'm alive...


I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world,
Just a lie you've got to rise above.

I just can't wait for my ten-year reunion
I'm gonna bust down the double doors
And when I stand on these tables before you
You will know what all this time was for.

"Eight of Nine" Analysis

From an email to Amaya:

I LOVE THE ATARIS! AND KRISTOPHER ROE IS A GENIUS!!!

Okay, first the lyric itself. For your reference and guide throughout my analysis.

These hospital walls are the palest of white
Here in this desert they're reciting my last rites
The smell of these halls
Brings temporary comfort
As the oxygen flows through my blood
"El Corazon" was poisoned tonight...
She's on her eight of nine.

When half of all your prayers are insincere,
The other half are lies.
Here is this watermark under this bridge.
The point where it all crested,
Rolled back and drifted into the sea.
A climb from this wreckage
As the smoke begins to clear from my lungs.
The closest of close calls has happened tonight.

It's time that I made things right
For the first time since the last time.
Let this moment of clarity
Lift this curse that has been cast upon me.

Appreciate the good times, but don't take the worst for granted.
'Cause you only get so many second chances.

Now, I actually found a different version of the excerpt from Richard Hell (I almost put excerpt from Hell...interesting in context, eh?) which reads as follows:

"You take for granted what you have and you can't take it with you when you die. There is never enough and you will always want more. No matter how much you learn, no matter how much you earn, you are still yourself and exactly as close to the edge as where you began. And all you can ever learn is what you already know. You will always want to know what the ending is, but you can't because you're dead. Dear God, I'm on my knees before you. The words are on their knees. Ready to go. All the words. All the words. The ending is words."

Kinda different. What is your source? Because I kinda like the "still yourself...close to the edge" part better than the circle thing.

Anyway, I don't really know what to think of this song, other than how sad it is that Kris has a tattoo of the Arizona state flag with a horseshoe that says "Lucky" so that he doesn't die when he goes to Arizona. Heh, yeah, I do my research as well.

But from a more artistic point of view, the beginning of the song shows that the narrator knows that he's/she's about to die, or rather that this latest trial in life is possibly fatal. Recently, I can relate to that more than ever in my life, which is what makes this so interesting. More on that later. Also, the hospital is described as the palest of white. Here in this place (where ever or what ever "here in this place" could be), the narrator is forced to face reality, and see himself/herself as he/she truely is. This face-off is even more eniment in the reference to a desert.

Sorry to reference it, but more "Matrix: Revolutions" conversation with the Oracle. Neo asks why he could control some sentinel machines. She explains, "For a moment you connected with the Source, but you weren't ready for it. You should be dead. But apparently you weren't ready for that, either."

The narrator should be dead, but he's not ready for it. Just like me, for the past while: I connected for a moment to Light. But with all the darkness in me, the way I did it all at once wasn't good, and I wasn't ready for it. Spiritually I should be dead, and physically my mind believes that now, more than ever, is a good time to commit suicide. (THIS IS NOT A SERIOUS CONTEMPLATION; IT IS A RESULT OF THE MECHANICAL PROCESSES MY MIND'S LOGIC HAS BEEN CALCULATING. IT'S JUST THE WAY MY MIND WORKS.) In a way, I should be dead right now. But apparently, I wasn't ready for that either.

So the narrator realizes, just as I do, that this is really the "last chance". Even though there have been several "last chances" before, this has to be the one. There's been seven previous close-encounters with death. If he doesn't straighten his act, he's dead for sure. I'll come back to this. But for now, think of it as a cat with nine lives...and by the way, I love cats more than just about any other household animal, did you know that?

The narrator notes how all his prayers to God seem fake, forced, etc. They are insincere or lies. The next description seems to be some symbolic/metaphoric way of describing something/someone that attacked the narrator. It has left a scar/“watermark” of sorts. Water, a purifying/cleansing agent, can be a destructive/chaotic agent as well. Which is interesting given how much water I’ve had lately, both the physical and spiritual, trying to cleanse myself. However, the narrator also hints at fire, which is a destructive agent, is a spiritual symbol of rebirth. And lets not forget that the flaming death is a broken “El Corazon”. A broken heart. Perhaps the narrator is describing a spiritual journey or process not unlike a phoenix? And in the past, Preston has called me a phoenix. By the way, there’s no need to point out all my personal allusions to the element of fire, right? But the watermark is interesting. Also, on the subject of water, there is a song called “Flood” by a Christian band called Jar of Clay. (Draw your own conclusions about their name.) Preston may be familiar with it. The first verse withheld, it goes:

Downpour on my soul
Splashing in the ocean, I’m losing control
Dark sky all around
I can’t feel my feet touching the ground

Calm the storms that drench my eyes
Dry the streams still flowing
Cast down all the waves of sin
And guilt that overthrow me

[chorus:]
But if I can’t swim after forty days
And my mind is crushed by the thrashing waves
Lift me up so high that I cannot fall
Lift me up
Lift me up—when I’m falling
Lift me up—I’m weak and I’m dying
Lift me up—I need you to hold me
Lift me up—keep me from drowning again.

One of the best acoustic songs I’ve ever heard. So there's a reference and connection to Roe's waves and ocean. By the way, recall my excerpt from "Les Miserables" about the man overboard? It's on "Blue and Yellow", and I think the post itself is called "You've Gotta Help Me Out" from late November.

The narrator knows that this is the closest call ever yet experienced. Here is the apostrophe (from now on, that's my word for "epiphany") for the narrator summed up in the lines, "It's time that I made things right for the first time...since the last time.") It is time that I made things right for the first time. Also, I need to do it for the first time since the last time. There have been failed attempts before for the narrator, and he/she knows it. He wants this realization/revelation/apostrophe, his "moment of clarity", to "lift this curse". We all have our little gifts and curses, don't we...

*Again, recall that I (almost) called it the excerpt from Hell.

The theme and final lesson for the entire lyric is contained in the final verse, in traditional Ataris/Roe style:

Appreciate the good times, but don't take the worst
[or maybe words, referencing Hell/Richard Hell?] for granted,
'Cause you only get so many second chances.

[untitled]

A New Land, a refuge of saftey
Sanctuary
Dry the rivers that run deel endlessly
Children run with tides and angels
Who pick them up as they soar away
Sanctuary
When the sun begins to set and the night comes
They fly away
I sit upon a snow-capped mountain
And watch the time fall to my worn feet
If I look behind me, will I again see into your eyes?
Sanctuary
Where pain and fear
Turn to tears
And soar away with my eagles and my children.

Evidence (?)

I will fly through the arch in your heel
See to discover, close my eyes to find

Nothing?

That's right, nothing is there
In your eyes.
I never find anything there
I never have before
There is nothing to suggest that I ever will again.

Out of Place

Cold sweaters and the wrinkles in my bed
Just staring at me
Wondering what I am doing here so
Out of place
Crashing through my broken mind
All these thoughts and dreams I wish I did not have
Tasting the darkness, rolling it around in my mouth
Wondering if it tastes as good as they say
Wondering if it tastes as good as I said
And I’m so hungry but I ran out of things to do
I’m so thirsty, but I’ve run out of things to say
To show you how much I care
How much I wish I didn’t come back every time
With this piece of hell in my hand
So why should you come back for me
The failure who will just run out of things to say
In the darkness, rolling it around in my mouth
The things that keep seeping into me, hurting you and
Hurting me,
And moving around where I can’t catch it,
eating and drinking me alive.
It’s there, and it’s in pieces.