Is it spring where you are? I waited all winter.
The first day of spring always makes me think of you--the day you stop wearing jackets and scarves and start wearing summer clothes, and remind me how beautiful you are in a whole different way. Even now, even since you're long gone. The chaos of the changing seasons is on us now, and yesterday the sky was clear and the temperature was perfect for jackets and scarves, and I found myself in the park with the sun on my face and I said, "I'd be happy if spring never comes, if it just stays like this forever." It was a prayer to the sky, and the sky said nothing in return.
But that night I slept and I dreamt that my words had stilled the change of the seasons, that I had forever solidified the weather of that day. Every day will be perfect for jackets and scarves, the streets bright with cherry blossoms and the promise of leaves that will never come. There will be no spring, no burning summer sun, no dying autumn leaves, no bitter winter winds. Just today, that perfect day before spring. And you will be banished from my thoughts like a ghost.
I woke feeling refreshed and alive and hopeful, but the wind today felt dead, and the rustling of the wind seemed to have the taint of the grave about it. The sun shone wanly in a sky of a dull and listless blue. I sat in the park and watched the clouds, and I swear I saw your silhouette, just for a moment, before the wind picked up and blew all the clouds into fingers pointing south.
Did you end up going south when you left? Will you bring the springtime if I come and find you? Because I recant. I will not invoke the sky again. I want to see you smiling in the perfect endless light of the summer sun, to see you play in a pile of freshly raked autumn leaves or make sculptures from snowdrifts blown by the winter winds. And I will wait for April, if I must, if you return the spring to me.
20120324
an eternity till april
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3 comments:
(let's get it out of the way: I have a tendency to be inappropriately fanboyish/stalky, but I AM A DUDE)
I was reading xkcdsucks, clicked your name and was curious enough to check this blog. I am glad I did. I'll be honest, I'm very picky about style. Yours didn't blow my mind -- by that, I mean that there's no single sentence that I could read over and over again and find something new about it every time (as opposed to, say, Victor Hugo's works). But there's a different kind of beauty, that I can't exactly pinpoint. When I try to hunt it down (analyze the words you use, the situations you describe, the characters, etc.), it goes away, so I'm not sure where it comes from exactly. This may sound weird to you, but your stories evoke a pretty specific emotion in me, that I've kinda been feeling since a long time ago (heck, I think I might have been feeling it since elementary school; it was a bit different at the time, but I think that's what it evolved from). Hmm ah. This is a very elusive emotion. It's pretty fuzzy. Though really, it's not that far away from depression I think. But it's also nostalgia (for nothing in particular), loss/lack, nihilism. And a bunch of other stuffs. To me at least, and you know what, your opinion on your own work isn't more valuable than mine! I think art is mostly about projection.
Meta: I find it fascinating that you've been maintaining this blog for 6 years. Seriously. I assume you're in your twenties? (like me and everyone on the internet probably) 6 years is a very long time when you're young. I'm a writer too, and I know there's no way I'd be that constant for that long. It seems like you've found a frame that gives you enough freedom to write what you feel like writing, while at the same time providing some sort of guidelines.
Also, I like your About. I am obsessed with dreams. As in, more than I should, and this is actually a fact. Escapism etc. And I fairly often mix up dreams and reality. You can usually tell because France doesn't experience earthquakes in reality, contrary to what you have been thinking for years, for instance.
Random: had never heard of Death Cab for Cutie; when I saw this name in your profile the other day, I youtubed it and liked You Are a Tourist a whole lot dammit. IDK if it's representative of their style (listened to another song which was pretty good, but haven't gotten back to this band since then, but I shall do it soon enough) or of your tastes, but I'm gonna assume the latter are good. I'm pretty much an alt rock guy in fact. Not a huge fan of punk, but I love its derivatives, close or distant. Pretty much all of my favourite bands owe a lot to punk (hardcore or post-punk to be more precise), something which I've come to notice only pretty recently.
Oh god, I need to stop or else it might get very long. I'm pretty sure that's not what the comment section of your posts is for. But yeah, to get back to my original point, great work, I hope you will continue!
If it helps, at least in this blog I go for (for lack of a better word) a sort of vague writing style. Artfully avoiding actually describin Or, to steal from Stoppard, "All your life you live so close to truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it's like being ambushed by a grotesque."
I like to say this blog is about times when the world doesn't work the way it's supposed to. (And coffee, cigarettes, and apocalypses.) I think that's been the overarching theme for a while. Honesty, absurdity, fiction, dreams.
If you are interested in stalking my musical tastes further my last.fm is http://www.last.fm/user/drcello but it hasn't updated in a while since my laptop died and I don't have it set up on this machine.
anyway, thanks for commenting! always appreciated.
Oh damn, now that you say it, vague writing style indeed. Getting rid of the specifics leaves more room for the actual events and emotions you describe. Also, I feel it has an effect on how time flows in your stories, they're kinda timeless? This story is even more twisted, in a sense: it revolves around the change of seasons, time does seem to exist and impose itself to the world, but the guy would "be happy if spring never comes, if it just stays like this forever", and even manages to "forever solidify the weather of that day" in his dream. I think it is consistent with the microfiction format itself (or at least with how you use it): to me, it's not like a short and fast-paced movie; on the contrary, it's more like a photograph. We're catching the characters in the act; we don't really know where they come from or where they will go. I like constraint-based writing; conciseness can bring pretty interesting things! I'd like to read tweet-sized stories.
"Honesty, absurdity, fiction, dreams." Sounds good. Kind of makes me think of post-modernism, a movement that I like very much. Well, obviously there are differences eg. from what I've read, you don't break the fourth wall, you aren't that cynical, etc. Then again, you wrote quite a lot, and I have only read a few stories, so it's not like I can really judge your work as a whole.
Thanks for the link! I checked your last.fm, and knew I was in for something interesting when I saw GYBE, A Silver Mount Zion and Tom Waits. If it didn't sound weirdly narcisstic at the same time, I'd probably tell you that you have awesome tastes. Been listening to the bands I didn't know, some pretty good surprises! FWIW, I'd personally recommend Luna Sea, a Japanese band. (style evolved a lot over the years)
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