Belly of the Whale

From now on, this blog is not only my online journal, but also a project, or assignment for my 310 class. Really it is of no consequence - it is the same thing. But what is happening is that I am writing most of this at nome and I copy it and put it online once a week or something. I don't know yet - at least I am keeping it all alive...

WRITING JOURNAL
For Fiction 310


9-15-03
4 CHARACTERS:

1. Yoni –
-----
The streets were dark and heavy as I made my way home. The wine sat awkwardly in my stomach and felt like it was going to my head. I didn’t want to trip on the curb or fall in a puddle so close to home – I wanted to try and end the night with no scars to remind me of it. So I tried to put the night’s drama behind me and focus on getting back to my apartment without incident.

I don’t much enjoy heels, but at night with the assistance of streetlights seldom they are a hindrance to my wellbeing. Why the hell was Brauque making such an ass of himself? Why did Sheryll take his outburst so personally? And all of this in spite of Jared’s accident? Were they intentionally ignoring him or are they really so vain?

For once the emptiness of my part of town was a welcome change. I was too tired and confused to worry about being mugged. Likely, I would only need to explain my night and he would let me go understandingly, maybe walk me the rest of the way home. I hope I fed Ginger before I left. I wonder if I have to go in to work tomorrow……

2. Gerald -
-----
Gerald hauled in the sail and reefed it as well as he could. It would hold. What was more important was staying on course. The wind was whipping around, circling back around him – it seemed to come from everywhere.

The storm came on so fast that Gerald hadn’t even been able to get his fowl weather gear on. Now he was soaked through; he was cold, but he hadn’t the time to notice or pay it any attention if he did. He loved his boat and was not about to lose it – or his life – in this tricky storm.

He kept saying that he’s seen worse, but there was something unusual, precariously vicious about this one. How did it drop so fast? Why was the wind swirling and turning like that? – he had nearly jibed twice while perfectly on course.

He would be a liar if he said he wasn’t concerned. He had been sailing for the last twenty years and most of it alone. It had been a long time since he had seen anything that surprised him.

But he knew that nothing was impossible here. He had never entertained the idea of safety at sea. From the first Gerald had submitted and given himself up; he would be the student and vassal. But it had been years since he had last been called into servitude and his mind was hard at work to figure out what it was that he was facing.

He was down in the south Pacific, south east of Samoa. It was January. What was going on? The winds were still increasing and light dwindled fainter behind the swelling clouds. “I’ve got to reef the jib or bring it in altogether,” he thought with surprise. This was totally out of the ordinary for this time and place.

3. Mose
-----
“Hey man, grab that 44 and lets get in there after it.”
“Are you crazy Mose, I ain’t goin in after that thing. Put the bulls on it or something. Man, it don’t want to die – look what it did to Tam and Gin.”
“Get off your ass and lets go. The dogs’ve done there part. They ain’t seen many pig like that. But they ain’t gonna hold it long. Come on.”
“Shit, alright. Where’s Allan and Deas?”
“They’ll be here. They had t’ look out for Tam and Gin. It’s just one hog, now come‘on.”
They walked out from the bean field into the thicket lining the field. After about ten yards it opened up with the shade of the southern hardwoods. The dogs could be heard balling in the distance. With each steps they got louder and louder…

4. Addie -
-----
Who is Addie….

9-12-03

Today is the day that Johnny Cash died. All day I have listened to his music – over and over again, over and over in my head. I have four versions of “Fulsome Prison Blues.” They play over and over and over.

I want to be sad, to be shocked that he is gone. I want to feel that sweet suffering of justifiable loss. But to me he has always had that eternal nature. His music could be a century old, its dusty and simple. Yet I know that last year he was up for a Grammy. How can this be? How could he be alive, still?

But he was. He was until today. I want to go and buy his new cd. Last week a friend was telling me about music he made with Bob Dylan. I love Bob Dylan so I’ll buy that one too. I want to catch up. I want a glimpse of the contemporary life of this man who to me has always seemed the grandpa of American music.

I want to buy Johnny a beer. I want to hear about all the places that he sings about – I think I’ve been to my share of them. Me and Johnny both used to live in Tennessee after all – there’s a start.

But he’s dead now. What’s more, I never knew him. He was a famous man that I know scant about except through his music. Isn’t that enough?

Music, isn’t it an expression of the soul, a true pouring out of something either conscious or subconscious, something that may be more truly ourselves than either our talk or our walk? Isn’t that art. Isn’t it an upwelling of creative forces unidentifiable by science or psychology?

So if I love the music do I love the man? Do I then have to agree with his politics as well? I don’t agree with my girlfriends politics, or my father’s for that matter. But I like Marilyn Manson’s politics…

Well Johnny is gone. Perhaps I don’t feel like I appreciated him. I appreciate, and always will, his music; but what about the man? I never knew him. I hardly knew he existed. Is this so strange really? Or is it in death that these existential questions rise in out throats and want to be mulled over.

9-11-03

Was it really the look on her face that gave away the gravity of the grave reality that was unfolding? Carla looked at me, or through me, past me – some sort of empty gaze. She struggled and stumbled on her words like an out-of-breath child, excited. But she wasn’t excited; to the contrary, she was shocked and breathy. She was slow with her words, fumbling with them, not really believing them. She half seemed like she self-accusing herself for lying, that what she was trying to say was not real but some trick that she herself could not readily identify. But it was of such magnitude and precedent that she was compelled the same. Was it a validation? Did she seek me out because by sharing with me the experience could become more real, she could be more sure, she could see in my eyes my acknowledgement of what she herself could not comprehend.

She stood there at the very edge of the driveway looking toward me. When I here my name murmured, I look into her with grave timeless anticipation. I lean toward her on my shovel awaiting her precious shattering words: “a plane, an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center.”


9-10-03

Willie Nelson softly strums as I look toward the computer for the first time this evening. What is a Writing Journal? What will it become? What will it mean to me? I already have a journal, and a dream journal as well – What will become of them? How different will this be?

Well there is little since in pondering. Tomorrow and the days coming will inevitably explain and revel, color and deepen these mysteries. What does it matter anyhow?

I am back in school. I have been sick, not the return to Montana I expected. At least I have been able to sleep well and not fall so far behind. My mind is slowly, slowly reawaking and regaining some of its old sense of this academia, this place and life I love so well.

For me, my classes are sparkling, glimmering opportunities, mysteries that I know can only enliven and invigorate my life and days. I get to study Blake and writing – fiction and nonfiction. My classes are all huddled together during the middle of the week offering me great leisure time to study as I will.

Bob, my neighbor to the north, has offered me a circular glass picnic table with a great green umbrella – it is sturdy and broad, and the wind hardly bothers it. Bob wants to use his porch for his new puppy and needed to store the thing and thought I might enjoy it.

Now I take all my meals into the yard. I have a lap-desk that I take out with me and I read the Bible and drink chai. The weather has been such a blessing – good healing weather!

So is this what a writing journal is? This isn’t fiction, but my life, my love affair with things that surround me. Cheesy, maybe, but I feel it, I feel so alive and excited; it is hard not to write floridly.

But I am writing with intention, with poise and a sense of focus and intensity. I am not venting so much as I am creating with that flow that naturally comes forth. But I shape it, naturally but with a stylistic curve and arc. It is a gushing forth, a spurting, an eruption! I am carving “the uncarved block.”

I am in love with writing, with journaling; for me, more natural, more free than fiction. This is true on more levels than solely the metaphysical. Journaling is factual but god willing it delves, our experiences delve, into the metaphysic, into the transcendental, into Jung’s “collective unconscious.” Hopefully our lives are imbued with the same glory as myth – heroic, tragic, romantic. Aren’t we the hero of our own stories? And what story could we ever tell better? What story could we know better, with more vivid description or imagery, passion and energy? I think my life is my story. I want to live it like a story, wild, reckless, always on the brink of utter disaster, always balancing between the great and the catastrophic? Does that make me brave? I think not – I think I am greedy for a good story to write, to live, and to remember.

So is this a Writing Journal? If it is I like it..