Jon Ureña's Blog, page 23
February 11, 2024
Love of My Life, Pt. 5 (Poetry)
Check out this poem on my personal page, where it looks better
If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short(ish) story from the beginning (link here). The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn’t want to go radio silent for about a month (or two).
---
Regarding the last echoes of my teenage years,
Followed by the dawn of adulthood,
I remember feeling encased in a plastic bubble
Whose smoky-gray membrane dimmed the world
And muffled every sound and scent.
Inside, the air was stripped of oxygen,
Leaving me gasping for whispers of life.
The warmth in my chest had disappeared,
Replaced with a yawning, frigid void
That threatened to collapse my ribcage.
A squirming, screeching anguish,
Like myriad critters drowning
In a pool of poison,
Seared through my innards,
Corroding every fiber that once bound me,
Exposing my raw nerves to the wind.
During that years-long nightmare,
I was trudging through the indifferent city
When I turned a corner on Cipriano Larrañaga Street.
Shambling down that narrow, grimy sidewalk
Lined with multicolored trash bins,
Your father, a relic of another life, headed my way.
The imaginary sutures that struggled
To keep my copious gashes closed
Unraveled at once.
The rush of blood to my head
Rendered the world's clamor mute,
And I stood paralyzed.
I pictured myself lunging at your father
And wrapping my hands around his neck.
The more he wheezed and spluttered,
The more his eyes bulged,
The tighter my grip would squeeze,
Making the tendons in his neck creak.
As his face shifted from crimson to purple,
His last light would be spent
Staring into my wrath-contorted face.
I had known your father as a volatile man
Who dared to threaten you, his own daughter,
Before the eyes of the boyfriend who loved her;
He knew that, if pushed, he could overpower me.
Yet, that lingering image of him
Contrasted with his present, slumped self:
The deep wrinkles carved into his features
Spoke of decades aged prematurely;
His mouth hung slack in a silent gasp;
His hair, gone gray, was disheveled,
With strands splayed erratically;
Dark circles ringed his vacant eyes;
A once-white T-shirt, sweat-soiled,
Clung to a protruding belly.
Your father lumbered toward me
As if he failed to register my presence.
A sour stench of filthy skin and clothes
Emanated from him like a black flame.
I stepped aside, letting your old man pass.
His footfalls and ragged breath faded away.
My rage had melted into tears;
He already looked like he'd been killed.
About a week after you died,
My mother, turned activist overnight,
Drove me to the spot of the accident:
Grassy, uneven terrain that sloped up
From a curve of the GI-636 highway.
A succession of vehicles whooshed by,
And the wind tugged at the placard
That my mother held in her intimate protest.
Before a television crew, she ranted
About the treacherous curve
That had reaped many young lives.
As the reporter nodded, the camera captured
The stillness of the roadside memorial,
Adorned with bouquets of wildflowers and a cross
Beside which rested a framed photograph
From a birthday celebrated in our home:
Your ponytailed self seated at the kitchen table,
Your chocolate eyes aglow with a joie de vivre,
And you showing off those crooked front teeth
As if they would never burn up in a furnace
And their fragments be ground to ash.
The cameraman aimed at the metal guardrail,
Its silver gleam patinated by rain and wind,
That your Aprilia had crumpled.
Then he panned over to the spot of the slope
Where your eyes had gone dull and lifeless,
Where your blood had drenched the grass
And seeped into the earth.
My mother kept me high on sedatives
That sapped the marrow from my bones;
Otherwise, if my lungs still drew breath,
I would have knelt before that spot
Packed with your blood,
And with my hands, I would have dug a hole
To crawl into and disappear.
I know you, Izar:
You were anguished,
And speeding in the rain.
That night in nineteen ninety-nine,
After you left me at my doorstep,
You told me you would head home.
Why did you end up in a highway?
Where were you going, Izar?
Did you even know?
My mother crowdfunded a memorial stone
To commemorate you, who had dreamed
Of becoming a motocross pro.
They installed it in a wooded lane,
Surrounded by the whisper of leaves.
Whether my mother bothered out of guilt,
Seeking the spotlight in a play of mourning,
Or to bridge the chasm between me and her,
I couldn't say.
I guess it doesn't matter.
Nightly, you visited me in dreams
To gift me the warmth of your presence
Along with your wild laughter.
I woke up reaching for you,
Only to clutch at emptiness.
A respite from the agony,
As my mind forgot for a moment,
Then I remembered anew.
In a numb, sunless haze,
I sleepwalked as if summoned
To locations we had frequented.
I stood unsteadily at a park near my home
While blurred people passed by,
My gaze fixed on the traffic,
Anticipating the sight of a Telepizza scooter,
Of you clad in the scarlet cap and polo shirt.
At the ecological park of Plaiaundi,
In the twilight glow of the setting sun,
I followed a tapering dirt path
Covered with needles, leaves, and twigs,
Ending at the staircase of an observation post.
I was clambering the weathered steps
When I looked up and there you were,
Leaning on the wooden balustrade,
Your caramel waves tossed by the breeze,
And you smiling down as if welcoming me.
At Aingura Park, near the marina of Hondarribia,
The humid air of an overcast day filled my lungs.
On the lush-green grass, I searched for our spot
Where we had lain to stare at the stars.
Beyond a row of maritime pine trees,
Absent fishermen's rods leaned against
The rocky barricade of the shoreline barrier.
A lone man cast a line into the slate-gray sea.
You had always seemed to me
Too large for the world to contain,
But now, if I let go of your memory,
I would never find you again.
With each passing month, going outside
Felt more like venturing into a foreign country
Where I couldn't make myself understood.
I languished for hours in the dark,
Lying in bed, covered up to my forehead.
Through headphones, I listened to the tapes
In which your middle-schooler self
Played the energetic radio host,
Riffing on manga series we enjoyed
And video games we tried to beat,
Pausing only to munch on snacks.
Your bubbly giggles echoed through the years
While tears streamed down my temples.
Who were these carefree souls
That dared to laugh and joke around
As if taunting the universe that waited
To punish them for their joy and hope?
On my cluttered desk, papers lay blank
Beside pencils and pens, markers and erasers.
Drawing and writing had come naturally to me,
Like a baby grasping for their mother's breast.
Why draw? Why concoct stories?
What were my dreams worth
If you wouldn't see them realized?
I felt it as achingly as a knife stuck in my eye:
I wouldn't get over you.
In this life, if you're lucky,
You meet one precious person.
I had found mine. I had lost her.
I was condemned to continue
Long after my Izar disappeared,
While the world spun on.
Where would I go after you?
Without a say, I merged with the voiceless
That had been rendered unfit for society.
How many people out there,
From the profoundly autistic
To those whose hearts shattered irreparably,
Vanish from the lives of friends and acquaintances,
Sequestered away in some psychiatric hospital,
Or the rooms of their childhood homes?
Breath by breath, they would wear away,
And fade further from the memories
Of even those who had promised to remember.
Decades on, a once-close friend
Might stumble upon that person's obituary
And wonder what untold stories had been lost.
One afternoon, my parents had left
To wherever they went,
And I had armored myself in human garb
To shuffle through the post-apocalypse,
But when I grabbed the front door handle,
A revulsion shook my spine;
I refused to withstand again the glare
Of that traitorous sun.
Instead, I retreated to my bedroom,
To the sanctuary of its walls
And a door locked shut
That protected and isolated me
From a meaningless world.
A day became two,
Became a week,
A month,
A year.
The sounds and sights of that alien world,
A film projected onto the wall of a cave,
Tormented me through the windowpanes:
Beams of sunlight slicing up the shadows,
The muffled laughter of children,
A couple strolling hand-in-hand.
In the gloom inside, a shrine to the dead,
I worshipped the mementos of our shared past:
Your EVA figurines,
The comic strips I drew for you,
Your motorcycle gloves,
Your handwritten letters,
Mixtapes of your favorite songs.
I spoke softly to your photographs,
Like a penitent monk conferring
With the images of his saints.
I befriended spiders.
I stashed piss bottles under the bed.
In one hand, I held that picture of you
Astride your Aprilia Red Rose at night,
Your luminous face resting on your palm,
Your chocolate eyes crinkled in a grin.
On that photograph's flip side,
A note in your chicken-scratch read,
"To my beloved artist,
Please sign the comic strip I enclosed,
To sell at some fan convention
Once you've become famous!
Love forever, Izar Lizarraga."
In my other hand, I held a knife,
Its sharp tip pressing against my carotid.
I wasn't strong enough to kill myself,
So I would stay within those four walls
Through every sunrise and sunset,
Through the ages of this world,
Forgotten and gathering dust,
Waiting patiently for my self to rot.
---
Author's note: the songs for today are "Lonesome Town" by Ricky Nelson, "The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis, and "The Scientist" by Coldplay.
If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.
If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short(ish) story from the beginning (link here). The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn’t want to go radio silent for about a month (or two).
---
Regarding the last echoes of my teenage years,
Followed by the dawn of adulthood,
I remember feeling encased in a plastic bubble
Whose smoky-gray membrane dimmed the world
And muffled every sound and scent.
Inside, the air was stripped of oxygen,
Leaving me gasping for whispers of life.
The warmth in my chest had disappeared,
Replaced with a yawning, frigid void
That threatened to collapse my ribcage.
A squirming, screeching anguish,
Like myriad critters drowning
In a pool of poison,
Seared through my innards,
Corroding every fiber that once bound me,
Exposing my raw nerves to the wind.
During that years-long nightmare,
I was trudging through the indifferent city
When I turned a corner on Cipriano Larrañaga Street.
Shambling down that narrow, grimy sidewalk
Lined with multicolored trash bins,
Your father, a relic of another life, headed my way.
The imaginary sutures that struggled
To keep my copious gashes closed
Unraveled at once.
The rush of blood to my head
Rendered the world's clamor mute,
And I stood paralyzed.
I pictured myself lunging at your father
And wrapping my hands around his neck.
The more he wheezed and spluttered,
The more his eyes bulged,
The tighter my grip would squeeze,
Making the tendons in his neck creak.
As his face shifted from crimson to purple,
His last light would be spent
Staring into my wrath-contorted face.
I had known your father as a volatile man
Who dared to threaten you, his own daughter,
Before the eyes of the boyfriend who loved her;
He knew that, if pushed, he could overpower me.
Yet, that lingering image of him
Contrasted with his present, slumped self:
The deep wrinkles carved into his features
Spoke of decades aged prematurely;
His mouth hung slack in a silent gasp;
His hair, gone gray, was disheveled,
With strands splayed erratically;
Dark circles ringed his vacant eyes;
A once-white T-shirt, sweat-soiled,
Clung to a protruding belly.
Your father lumbered toward me
As if he failed to register my presence.
A sour stench of filthy skin and clothes
Emanated from him like a black flame.
I stepped aside, letting your old man pass.
His footfalls and ragged breath faded away.
My rage had melted into tears;
He already looked like he'd been killed.
About a week after you died,
My mother, turned activist overnight,
Drove me to the spot of the accident:
Grassy, uneven terrain that sloped up
From a curve of the GI-636 highway.
A succession of vehicles whooshed by,
And the wind tugged at the placard
That my mother held in her intimate protest.
Before a television crew, she ranted
About the treacherous curve
That had reaped many young lives.
As the reporter nodded, the camera captured
The stillness of the roadside memorial,
Adorned with bouquets of wildflowers and a cross
Beside which rested a framed photograph
From a birthday celebrated in our home:
Your ponytailed self seated at the kitchen table,
Your chocolate eyes aglow with a joie de vivre,
And you showing off those crooked front teeth
As if they would never burn up in a furnace
And their fragments be ground to ash.
The cameraman aimed at the metal guardrail,
Its silver gleam patinated by rain and wind,
That your Aprilia had crumpled.
Then he panned over to the spot of the slope
Where your eyes had gone dull and lifeless,
Where your blood had drenched the grass
And seeped into the earth.
My mother kept me high on sedatives
That sapped the marrow from my bones;
Otherwise, if my lungs still drew breath,
I would have knelt before that spot
Packed with your blood,
And with my hands, I would have dug a hole
To crawl into and disappear.
I know you, Izar:
You were anguished,
And speeding in the rain.
That night in nineteen ninety-nine,
After you left me at my doorstep,
You told me you would head home.
Why did you end up in a highway?
Where were you going, Izar?
Did you even know?
My mother crowdfunded a memorial stone
To commemorate you, who had dreamed
Of becoming a motocross pro.
They installed it in a wooded lane,
Surrounded by the whisper of leaves.
Whether my mother bothered out of guilt,
Seeking the spotlight in a play of mourning,
Or to bridge the chasm between me and her,
I couldn't say.
I guess it doesn't matter.
Nightly, you visited me in dreams
To gift me the warmth of your presence
Along with your wild laughter.
I woke up reaching for you,
Only to clutch at emptiness.
A respite from the agony,
As my mind forgot for a moment,
Then I remembered anew.
In a numb, sunless haze,
I sleepwalked as if summoned
To locations we had frequented.
I stood unsteadily at a park near my home
While blurred people passed by,
My gaze fixed on the traffic,
Anticipating the sight of a Telepizza scooter,
Of you clad in the scarlet cap and polo shirt.
At the ecological park of Plaiaundi,
In the twilight glow of the setting sun,
I followed a tapering dirt path
Covered with needles, leaves, and twigs,
Ending at the staircase of an observation post.
I was clambering the weathered steps
When I looked up and there you were,
Leaning on the wooden balustrade,
Your caramel waves tossed by the breeze,
And you smiling down as if welcoming me.
At Aingura Park, near the marina of Hondarribia,
The humid air of an overcast day filled my lungs.
On the lush-green grass, I searched for our spot
Where we had lain to stare at the stars.
Beyond a row of maritime pine trees,
Absent fishermen's rods leaned against
The rocky barricade of the shoreline barrier.
A lone man cast a line into the slate-gray sea.
You had always seemed to me
Too large for the world to contain,
But now, if I let go of your memory,
I would never find you again.
With each passing month, going outside
Felt more like venturing into a foreign country
Where I couldn't make myself understood.
I languished for hours in the dark,
Lying in bed, covered up to my forehead.
Through headphones, I listened to the tapes
In which your middle-schooler self
Played the energetic radio host,
Riffing on manga series we enjoyed
And video games we tried to beat,
Pausing only to munch on snacks.
Your bubbly giggles echoed through the years
While tears streamed down my temples.
Who were these carefree souls
That dared to laugh and joke around
As if taunting the universe that waited
To punish them for their joy and hope?
On my cluttered desk, papers lay blank
Beside pencils and pens, markers and erasers.
Drawing and writing had come naturally to me,
Like a baby grasping for their mother's breast.
Why draw? Why concoct stories?
What were my dreams worth
If you wouldn't see them realized?
I felt it as achingly as a knife stuck in my eye:
I wouldn't get over you.
In this life, if you're lucky,
You meet one precious person.
I had found mine. I had lost her.
I was condemned to continue
Long after my Izar disappeared,
While the world spun on.
Where would I go after you?
Without a say, I merged with the voiceless
That had been rendered unfit for society.
How many people out there,
From the profoundly autistic
To those whose hearts shattered irreparably,
Vanish from the lives of friends and acquaintances,
Sequestered away in some psychiatric hospital,
Or the rooms of their childhood homes?
Breath by breath, they would wear away,
And fade further from the memories
Of even those who had promised to remember.
Decades on, a once-close friend
Might stumble upon that person's obituary
And wonder what untold stories had been lost.
One afternoon, my parents had left
To wherever they went,
And I had armored myself in human garb
To shuffle through the post-apocalypse,
But when I grabbed the front door handle,
A revulsion shook my spine;
I refused to withstand again the glare
Of that traitorous sun.
Instead, I retreated to my bedroom,
To the sanctuary of its walls
And a door locked shut
That protected and isolated me
From a meaningless world.
A day became two,
Became a week,
A month,
A year.
The sounds and sights of that alien world,
A film projected onto the wall of a cave,
Tormented me through the windowpanes:
Beams of sunlight slicing up the shadows,
The muffled laughter of children,
A couple strolling hand-in-hand.
In the gloom inside, a shrine to the dead,
I worshipped the mementos of our shared past:
Your EVA figurines,
The comic strips I drew for you,
Your motorcycle gloves,
Your handwritten letters,
Mixtapes of your favorite songs.
I spoke softly to your photographs,
Like a penitent monk conferring
With the images of his saints.
I befriended spiders.
I stashed piss bottles under the bed.
In one hand, I held that picture of you
Astride your Aprilia Red Rose at night,
Your luminous face resting on your palm,
Your chocolate eyes crinkled in a grin.
On that photograph's flip side,
A note in your chicken-scratch read,
"To my beloved artist,
Please sign the comic strip I enclosed,
To sell at some fan convention
Once you've become famous!
Love forever, Izar Lizarraga."
In my other hand, I held a knife,
Its sharp tip pressing against my carotid.
I wasn't strong enough to kill myself,
So I would stay within those four walls
Through every sunrise and sunset,
Through the ages of this world,
Forgotten and gathering dust,
Waiting patiently for my self to rot.
---
Author's note: the songs for today are "Lonesome Town" by Ricky Nelson, "The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis, and "The Scientist" by Coldplay.
If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.
February 5, 2024
Love of My Life, Pt. 4 (Poetry)
Check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better
If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short(ish) story from the beginning (link here). The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn’t want to go radio silent for about a month (or two).
---
The twenty-seventh of April.
With each year's circle back to the beginning,
I accumulate a fresh pile of website designs,
Churned out at the office in exchange for pay,
And my kids hit every milestone
That most children reach at the same age.
But when the twenty-seventh of April approaches,
In my dreams, and whenever I close my eyes,
I'm yanked to that date in nineteen ninety-nine,
Like a ghost doomed to start again
From the spot where his heart gave up.
Dinner had settled in my stomach.
I was yawning on my way to the bathroom
When the landline rang.
My father's footsteps padded to the entryway.
Seconds after the ringing ceased,
He forced his voice into a strained assertiveness,
Like a woodland critter facing a wolf,
Telling the caller that she shouldn't have called.
As I clenched my jaw, I crept to the entryway.
The lamp's glow glared on my father's bald crown.
His stooped figure gesticulated
While he peered hesitantly at his wife,
Who, arms crossed, presented her back to me.
Inside the receiver, your voice sounded trapped,
Demanding to be freed.
Trying to talk over you, my father stammered,
And that disgusted my mother enough
To seize the phone
And command you to stop bothering her son.
How could anyone direct such a barbed tone
Toward you, Izar, my personal sun?
This meddling crone threatened
To sever your light from my life.
I barked an indignant "Hey!"
That made my parents whirl around
As if I had lobbed a stone.
I ordered my mother to give me the fucking phone.
When she complained about my language,
I snatched the receiver from her grasp.
Your voice was a tinny, thin string
Coated with tears.
"I need to see you. My father..."
"Where, Izar? Where are we meeting?"
"I'm calling from the nearest payphone.
I'll park by the candy shop."
After I hung up, I spun to confront my parents
And seethed through gritted teeth,
Punctuating my words with a jabbing finger.
"Izar didn't call you, nor you.
She wanted to speak with me.
Don't ever, and I mean ever,
Interfere with our relationship again."
I stomped off to my bedroom,
Where I scrambled into some clothes,
My fingers trembling as I buttoned and zipped.
I had expected my mother to pursue me
While threatening to ground me for a month,
But I only heard my heart's wild gallop.
My mother stood stiffly by the front door,
Her eyes welling up with tears.
She frowned like she resented life
For insisting on abusing her.
"Don't you dare let that girl give you a ride,"
She said as I wrestled into my rain jacket.
I grabbed my keys and flung the door open.
My mother's last words echoed through me.
"Are you going to throw away your life like her?"
That night itself, a cloak of frigid air,
Still makes me shiver.
The streetlights lit streaking raindrops
That resembled scratches on film.
The intermittent ripples on pooled water
Reminded me of piranhas at feeding time.
Down the gutters, rainwater meandered,
Churning like a serpent with reflective skin.
Sheets of rain cascaded around
A solitary figure flanked by bollards.
Raindrops drummed against your helmet,
Its visor a slab of opaque.
You were wearing your sleek red jacket,
Now adorned with a glossy layer of water.
Your soaked jeans clung to your legs.
In your gloved hand, you held my half-helmet.
When you noticed my presence,
You hurried to me,
Splashing puddles in the one-lane road,
And engulfed me with your wet embrace.
I had wrapped my arms around your waist,
I had closed my eyes as if waiting to slip into dreams.
Your Aprilia Red Rose rumbled between my legs.
The cold rain lashed my eyelids, cheeks, and lips
Through the gap in my half-helmet,
While the whipping wind threaded through
Every crevice of my clothes.
You always drove me away
From the bitter prison where I grew up.
The grip around my chest eased,
And at last I could breathe.
I imagined we were drifting through space
In a ramshackle starship,
Away from all constraints, from every society
Other than our society of two.
We were riding on a rain-drenched freeway,
Immersed in the growling of your Aprilia's engine
Amid the rain's patter, cars' whooshing,
And swish-swash of wiper blades.
The scarlet smudges of taillights
Glided across the slick tarmac
As if I were peering into an ethereal world
Through tinted and warped glass.
I wished to end up stuck in a loop of then,
Plunging through the enveloping darkness
While smears of streetlight flew by.
I longed to never again see another face,
Nor be anywhere else,
Nor do or know anything else
But your presence pressed against mine.
In my embrace, your body trembled;
You were crying, or at least on the verge,
And you channeled that anguish
Igniting your steel beast's roar
With a wrench of the throttle.
Jettison your worries to the wind,
Let speed drown out the pain,
And in this state of euphoric nothing,
Feel yourself drift into eternity.
The wind buffeted our clothes
As the downpour assaulted us
Like a barrage of liquid arrows.
I pictured the bike flipping,
You thrown and rolling,
Your helmet shattered,
Your skull crushed.
I raised my voice over the cacophony
To plead with you to slow down.
Where were we? On our left,
A navigable stretch of the Bidasoa River
Separated us from the city of Hendaye.
The haloes of streetlights revealed
Terracotta-roofed white dwellings.
"Where are we going, Izar?"
You said you didn't know.
Maybe for me, you pulled up
By an open, desolate sports court
With faded lines,
Encroached by patches of grass.
At each narrow edge of the pitch
Stood a netless goal.
You pulled me by the hand
Toward a storage or utility building
Close to a rusted basketball hoop,
Seeking shelter from the rain
Under the eaves of the gable roof.
We plopped down beside each other
On the gritty, wet, cold asphalt.
You hugged your knees,
I draped an arm around your back.
Our breaths fogged in the night air.
Rainwater streamed from the roof.
An unseen metal fence kept clinking.
Built on a hillside past the sports court,
Rural-style, two-story houses
Stood silhouetted against the dark.
Their windows, like low-burning embers,
Glowed through the swaying foliage of oaks
While their branches rustled and creaked.
Did that place even exist?
Like a couple of astral travelers,
Maybe you and I rode out of reality,
Slipped into some liminal space.
I have never dared
To return there.
You slowly rose, turned toward me,
And lifted off your helmet.
Your face emerged, flushed, tear-streaked,
Strands sticking to your forehead.
A stark, mottled mark contrasted
The light-beige of your cheek.
Within the bruise, that bore the imprint of fingers,
Red pinpoints indicated ruptured capillaries.
I clenched my fists. The tendons creaked.
I ached to kick down the door of your house,
And bash in the teeth of that bastard
Who must have felt so mighty and untouchable
While hurting you, his own daughter.
But only through blind rage
Would I have overpowered your father,
And afterwards, how would you return home?
To calm myself down,
I took a deep, turbulent breath
Of that night's cold, damp air.
Then, with my trembling fingers,
I pulled off my half-helmet.
"What was it this time?" I asked, my voice hollow.
You recounted that after returning home from training,
As you were cleaning the mud off your motocross bike,
Your father, on his way home, frowned at you,
Then waited at the apartment, ready to argue.
He refused to let you waste your life, as he put it,
Chasing a mirage that would never materialize,
So you would need to look into trade schools.
You matched his tone with equal fire.
After he slapped you hard,
He stood there shocked, his hand still raised.
You stormed off into the pouring rain,
And hopped on your Aprilia.
You recognized the frustration in his eyes,
And that bothered you the most.
The ever-present itch for perpetual motion
Coursed through your shared blood,
But instead of striving for a life akin to his urges,
He settled for that of a fish caught in a bucket,
Seated at a desk for eight hours a day,
Shuffling papers and answering calls,
Enduring a meaningless routine
That would drive any decent soul insane.
When the pressure mounted to an extent
That numbing it with booze failed,
Rather than delve within for elusive answers,
He cast his gaze outward for targets
To blame, to accuse, to hold responsible
For his damnable existence.
"Our parents doomed us
With their own demons.
Unless we break free,
We'll end up the same."
You stepped into the downpour
And paced up to the basketball hoop.
While the wind tugged at your ponytail,
You scratched flakes of paint off the pole,
Revealing the metallic core underneath.
Raindrops shone on your skin,
Linked together in a twinkling lace,
And droplets tipped off
The limp, wet waves of your hair,
When you spoke the words I had dreaded
As if you had come with a deadline:
You were set to leave the city.
My chest clenched in a visceral ache.
"Let's go far, far away from Irún,
Where nobody will find us,
Where we will be left alone
To live and love freely.
We don't need to follow their map, you know?
Did you ever want to become a doctor, an engineer?
Do you think we should waste our lives
Obediently conforming to our parents' wishes?
You were born to create stories,
And I was born to ride."
You had decided to sell your beloved Aprilia Red Rose,
And spend the money, along with your savings,
To travel on your bright-yellow Suzuki RM125.
You wanted to hit the trails at Sierra de las Nieves,
Near Marbella, whose tourism industry offered odd jobs.
You hoped to compete in the Ponts track, near Lleida.
At Jeréz de la Frontera, with its own world-famous track,
You wished to meet other riders, maybe find a mentor.
If we yearned for a secluded life,
We could buy a rundown cottage at Sierra Nevada,
Itself excellent training grounds for motocross.
Your dreamy smile dropped,
Tinged with a sudden sadness.
"I'm sorry for mom,
But one day she'll understand."
I pictured myself furtively stuffing
A travel backpack with necessary items,
Expecting to rough it in the wild:
Food, water, flashlights, sleeping bags,
First aid kits, maps, rain gear, spare clothes,
My sketchbook, a ream of paper, and pencils.
You and I would sneak out at night,
Leaving goodbye letters behind.
Your Suzuki would rumble through Spain
Under the weight of two reckless people,
Winding over hills and through vales,
Over bridges and through tunnels,
Past vineyards, olive groves, and orchards,
The sun's warmth settled on our shoulders.
In a secluded forest clearing veiled by wildflowers,
We would unfold our sleeping bags over the grass
And lie embraced under the stars.
We would stroll along a rocky beach
Wearing nothing but our underwear.
In the dappled shade of an olive tree,
We would sip sangria and make love.
Seated beside a crackling campfire, hunched over,
I would sketch scenes from our adventures.
You and I would share an apartment,
A poky, one-room affair
With dusty windows and screeching plumbing.
We would cover the floor in clothes,
Pizza boxes, and video games.
We would cook noodles with seasoning packets,
Wash our underwear in the sink,
And listen to music while dancing haphazardly,
Bumping into each other and laughing.
Every memory of our love
Would hang suspended in time,
To glitter like dust particles
Spinning and spinning in the light.
My ribcage had become a butterfly trap;
Its captive fluttered, trying to escape.
You were asking me to choose
Between you and a predictable future.
Could I really leave my family,
And every expectation thrust upon me,
To throw myself into the wild with you?
On my own, would I have ever known adventure?
What if I missed the train? What if I lost my way?
What if I failed to locate a shelter before the sun vanished?
How could anyone dare to camp in the wilderness,
Engulfed by a nightmare-laden darkness?
Beyond the walls of my parents' home,
The world awaited patiently to hurt me,
And behind every smile hid a monster.
An umbilical cord, ropelike, gnarled,
Pulsated as it fed into my abdomen.
Despite the wrenching pain,
I yanked and twisted the cord
Until it ruptured with a wet snap.
The torn end spewed a torrent
Of viscous, tar-black sludge
That befouled and corroded the ground.
Let us travel to the farthest corners of Spain,
Let us witness the edge of this world.
As long as you were with me,
I was home.
When I pushed to my feet, I met a pleading gaze:
Your chocolate eyes shimmered with tears.
Raindrops trickled down your cheeks,
And dripped from your nose and chin.
In a faltering voice, you told me to consider your plan;
You could wait the two months left until I graduated.
"For now, in this moment, please, will you hold me?"
I held your shivering form,
I inhaled the ozone of your soaked hair,
While the rain pelted down,
While your chest heaved against mine.
If making such a vow
Still means anything,
Let me promise this, Izar:
I would have chosen you.
One day I would find myself squeezed into a seat
Overlooking a dust-churned motocross track
Where a throng of racers garbed in colorful jerseys,
Helmeted like avant-garde gladiators,
Jostled and swerved for control.
Dirt bike after dirt bike, sunlit mirages, raced by,
Their frames adorned with sponsorship decals,
Their tires flinging up sprays of dirt.
The bikes would bellow and scream
Like barbarians taunting each other
As their riders crested bumps,
Skidded around tight turns,
And launched off ramps.
I would hear the thud and crunch
Of bikes landing after a jump,
And the rapid-fire crackle of debris
Striking the underbelly of the beasts.
A fine cloud of dust would hang
In that dry, sun-scorched air,
Mixed with the acrid tang of motor oil
And the earthy scent of disturbed soil.
Once again, you raced into sight:
Izar Lizarraga, renowned motocross pro,
Astride your bright-yellow beast,
Its wheels ripping through the track.
Approaching a ramp, you gunned up the Suzuki
And leaned forward, bracing for a jump.
At the peak, your bike pounced like a predator,
Soaring through the air.
A moment of suspended flight,
A full-body shot captured in posters:
The tire treads of your Suzuki packed with earth;
Your gloved hands gripping the handlebars;
And behind your visor, your chocolate eyes,
Speed-spellbound,
Fixed on the distant finish line.
---
Author's note: the songs for today are "Ladies and Gentlemen We're Floating in Space" by Spiritualized, and "Lau Teilatu" by Itoiz.
If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.
If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short(ish) story from the beginning (link here). The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn’t want to go radio silent for about a month (or two).
---
The twenty-seventh of April.
With each year's circle back to the beginning,
I accumulate a fresh pile of website designs,
Churned out at the office in exchange for pay,
And my kids hit every milestone
That most children reach at the same age.
But when the twenty-seventh of April approaches,
In my dreams, and whenever I close my eyes,
I'm yanked to that date in nineteen ninety-nine,
Like a ghost doomed to start again
From the spot where his heart gave up.
Dinner had settled in my stomach.
I was yawning on my way to the bathroom
When the landline rang.
My father's footsteps padded to the entryway.
Seconds after the ringing ceased,
He forced his voice into a strained assertiveness,
Like a woodland critter facing a wolf,
Telling the caller that she shouldn't have called.
As I clenched my jaw, I crept to the entryway.
The lamp's glow glared on my father's bald crown.
His stooped figure gesticulated
While he peered hesitantly at his wife,
Who, arms crossed, presented her back to me.
Inside the receiver, your voice sounded trapped,
Demanding to be freed.
Trying to talk over you, my father stammered,
And that disgusted my mother enough
To seize the phone
And command you to stop bothering her son.
How could anyone direct such a barbed tone
Toward you, Izar, my personal sun?
This meddling crone threatened
To sever your light from my life.
I barked an indignant "Hey!"
That made my parents whirl around
As if I had lobbed a stone.
I ordered my mother to give me the fucking phone.
When she complained about my language,
I snatched the receiver from her grasp.
Your voice was a tinny, thin string
Coated with tears.
"I need to see you. My father..."
"Where, Izar? Where are we meeting?"
"I'm calling from the nearest payphone.
I'll park by the candy shop."
After I hung up, I spun to confront my parents
And seethed through gritted teeth,
Punctuating my words with a jabbing finger.
"Izar didn't call you, nor you.
She wanted to speak with me.
Don't ever, and I mean ever,
Interfere with our relationship again."
I stomped off to my bedroom,
Where I scrambled into some clothes,
My fingers trembling as I buttoned and zipped.
I had expected my mother to pursue me
While threatening to ground me for a month,
But I only heard my heart's wild gallop.
My mother stood stiffly by the front door,
Her eyes welling up with tears.
She frowned like she resented life
For insisting on abusing her.
"Don't you dare let that girl give you a ride,"
She said as I wrestled into my rain jacket.
I grabbed my keys and flung the door open.
My mother's last words echoed through me.
"Are you going to throw away your life like her?"
That night itself, a cloak of frigid air,
Still makes me shiver.
The streetlights lit streaking raindrops
That resembled scratches on film.
The intermittent ripples on pooled water
Reminded me of piranhas at feeding time.
Down the gutters, rainwater meandered,
Churning like a serpent with reflective skin.
Sheets of rain cascaded around
A solitary figure flanked by bollards.
Raindrops drummed against your helmet,
Its visor a slab of opaque.
You were wearing your sleek red jacket,
Now adorned with a glossy layer of water.
Your soaked jeans clung to your legs.
In your gloved hand, you held my half-helmet.
When you noticed my presence,
You hurried to me,
Splashing puddles in the one-lane road,
And engulfed me with your wet embrace.
I had wrapped my arms around your waist,
I had closed my eyes as if waiting to slip into dreams.
Your Aprilia Red Rose rumbled between my legs.
The cold rain lashed my eyelids, cheeks, and lips
Through the gap in my half-helmet,
While the whipping wind threaded through
Every crevice of my clothes.
You always drove me away
From the bitter prison where I grew up.
The grip around my chest eased,
And at last I could breathe.
I imagined we were drifting through space
In a ramshackle starship,
Away from all constraints, from every society
Other than our society of two.
We were riding on a rain-drenched freeway,
Immersed in the growling of your Aprilia's engine
Amid the rain's patter, cars' whooshing,
And swish-swash of wiper blades.
The scarlet smudges of taillights
Glided across the slick tarmac
As if I were peering into an ethereal world
Through tinted and warped glass.
I wished to end up stuck in a loop of then,
Plunging through the enveloping darkness
While smears of streetlight flew by.
I longed to never again see another face,
Nor be anywhere else,
Nor do or know anything else
But your presence pressed against mine.
In my embrace, your body trembled;
You were crying, or at least on the verge,
And you channeled that anguish
Igniting your steel beast's roar
With a wrench of the throttle.
Jettison your worries to the wind,
Let speed drown out the pain,
And in this state of euphoric nothing,
Feel yourself drift into eternity.
The wind buffeted our clothes
As the downpour assaulted us
Like a barrage of liquid arrows.
I pictured the bike flipping,
You thrown and rolling,
Your helmet shattered,
Your skull crushed.
I raised my voice over the cacophony
To plead with you to slow down.
Where were we? On our left,
A navigable stretch of the Bidasoa River
Separated us from the city of Hendaye.
The haloes of streetlights revealed
Terracotta-roofed white dwellings.
"Where are we going, Izar?"
You said you didn't know.
Maybe for me, you pulled up
By an open, desolate sports court
With faded lines,
Encroached by patches of grass.
At each narrow edge of the pitch
Stood a netless goal.
You pulled me by the hand
Toward a storage or utility building
Close to a rusted basketball hoop,
Seeking shelter from the rain
Under the eaves of the gable roof.
We plopped down beside each other
On the gritty, wet, cold asphalt.
You hugged your knees,
I draped an arm around your back.
Our breaths fogged in the night air.
Rainwater streamed from the roof.
An unseen metal fence kept clinking.
Built on a hillside past the sports court,
Rural-style, two-story houses
Stood silhouetted against the dark.
Their windows, like low-burning embers,
Glowed through the swaying foliage of oaks
While their branches rustled and creaked.
Did that place even exist?
Like a couple of astral travelers,
Maybe you and I rode out of reality,
Slipped into some liminal space.
I have never dared
To return there.
You slowly rose, turned toward me,
And lifted off your helmet.
Your face emerged, flushed, tear-streaked,
Strands sticking to your forehead.
A stark, mottled mark contrasted
The light-beige of your cheek.
Within the bruise, that bore the imprint of fingers,
Red pinpoints indicated ruptured capillaries.
I clenched my fists. The tendons creaked.
I ached to kick down the door of your house,
And bash in the teeth of that bastard
Who must have felt so mighty and untouchable
While hurting you, his own daughter.
But only through blind rage
Would I have overpowered your father,
And afterwards, how would you return home?
To calm myself down,
I took a deep, turbulent breath
Of that night's cold, damp air.
Then, with my trembling fingers,
I pulled off my half-helmet.
"What was it this time?" I asked, my voice hollow.
You recounted that after returning home from training,
As you were cleaning the mud off your motocross bike,
Your father, on his way home, frowned at you,
Then waited at the apartment, ready to argue.
He refused to let you waste your life, as he put it,
Chasing a mirage that would never materialize,
So you would need to look into trade schools.
You matched his tone with equal fire.
After he slapped you hard,
He stood there shocked, his hand still raised.
You stormed off into the pouring rain,
And hopped on your Aprilia.
You recognized the frustration in his eyes,
And that bothered you the most.
The ever-present itch for perpetual motion
Coursed through your shared blood,
But instead of striving for a life akin to his urges,
He settled for that of a fish caught in a bucket,
Seated at a desk for eight hours a day,
Shuffling papers and answering calls,
Enduring a meaningless routine
That would drive any decent soul insane.
When the pressure mounted to an extent
That numbing it with booze failed,
Rather than delve within for elusive answers,
He cast his gaze outward for targets
To blame, to accuse, to hold responsible
For his damnable existence.
"Our parents doomed us
With their own demons.
Unless we break free,
We'll end up the same."
You stepped into the downpour
And paced up to the basketball hoop.
While the wind tugged at your ponytail,
You scratched flakes of paint off the pole,
Revealing the metallic core underneath.
Raindrops shone on your skin,
Linked together in a twinkling lace,
And droplets tipped off
The limp, wet waves of your hair,
When you spoke the words I had dreaded
As if you had come with a deadline:
You were set to leave the city.
My chest clenched in a visceral ache.
"Let's go far, far away from Irún,
Where nobody will find us,
Where we will be left alone
To live and love freely.
We don't need to follow their map, you know?
Did you ever want to become a doctor, an engineer?
Do you think we should waste our lives
Obediently conforming to our parents' wishes?
You were born to create stories,
And I was born to ride."
You had decided to sell your beloved Aprilia Red Rose,
And spend the money, along with your savings,
To travel on your bright-yellow Suzuki RM125.
You wanted to hit the trails at Sierra de las Nieves,
Near Marbella, whose tourism industry offered odd jobs.
You hoped to compete in the Ponts track, near Lleida.
At Jeréz de la Frontera, with its own world-famous track,
You wished to meet other riders, maybe find a mentor.
If we yearned for a secluded life,
We could buy a rundown cottage at Sierra Nevada,
Itself excellent training grounds for motocross.
Your dreamy smile dropped,
Tinged with a sudden sadness.
"I'm sorry for mom,
But one day she'll understand."
I pictured myself furtively stuffing
A travel backpack with necessary items,
Expecting to rough it in the wild:
Food, water, flashlights, sleeping bags,
First aid kits, maps, rain gear, spare clothes,
My sketchbook, a ream of paper, and pencils.
You and I would sneak out at night,
Leaving goodbye letters behind.
Your Suzuki would rumble through Spain
Under the weight of two reckless people,
Winding over hills and through vales,
Over bridges and through tunnels,
Past vineyards, olive groves, and orchards,
The sun's warmth settled on our shoulders.
In a secluded forest clearing veiled by wildflowers,
We would unfold our sleeping bags over the grass
And lie embraced under the stars.
We would stroll along a rocky beach
Wearing nothing but our underwear.
In the dappled shade of an olive tree,
We would sip sangria and make love.
Seated beside a crackling campfire, hunched over,
I would sketch scenes from our adventures.
You and I would share an apartment,
A poky, one-room affair
With dusty windows and screeching plumbing.
We would cover the floor in clothes,
Pizza boxes, and video games.
We would cook noodles with seasoning packets,
Wash our underwear in the sink,
And listen to music while dancing haphazardly,
Bumping into each other and laughing.
Every memory of our love
Would hang suspended in time,
To glitter like dust particles
Spinning and spinning in the light.
My ribcage had become a butterfly trap;
Its captive fluttered, trying to escape.
You were asking me to choose
Between you and a predictable future.
Could I really leave my family,
And every expectation thrust upon me,
To throw myself into the wild with you?
On my own, would I have ever known adventure?
What if I missed the train? What if I lost my way?
What if I failed to locate a shelter before the sun vanished?
How could anyone dare to camp in the wilderness,
Engulfed by a nightmare-laden darkness?
Beyond the walls of my parents' home,
The world awaited patiently to hurt me,
And behind every smile hid a monster.
An umbilical cord, ropelike, gnarled,
Pulsated as it fed into my abdomen.
Despite the wrenching pain,
I yanked and twisted the cord
Until it ruptured with a wet snap.
The torn end spewed a torrent
Of viscous, tar-black sludge
That befouled and corroded the ground.
Let us travel to the farthest corners of Spain,
Let us witness the edge of this world.
As long as you were with me,
I was home.
When I pushed to my feet, I met a pleading gaze:
Your chocolate eyes shimmered with tears.
Raindrops trickled down your cheeks,
And dripped from your nose and chin.
In a faltering voice, you told me to consider your plan;
You could wait the two months left until I graduated.
"For now, in this moment, please, will you hold me?"
I held your shivering form,
I inhaled the ozone of your soaked hair,
While the rain pelted down,
While your chest heaved against mine.
If making such a vow
Still means anything,
Let me promise this, Izar:
I would have chosen you.
One day I would find myself squeezed into a seat
Overlooking a dust-churned motocross track
Where a throng of racers garbed in colorful jerseys,
Helmeted like avant-garde gladiators,
Jostled and swerved for control.
Dirt bike after dirt bike, sunlit mirages, raced by,
Their frames adorned with sponsorship decals,
Their tires flinging up sprays of dirt.
The bikes would bellow and scream
Like barbarians taunting each other
As their riders crested bumps,
Skidded around tight turns,
And launched off ramps.
I would hear the thud and crunch
Of bikes landing after a jump,
And the rapid-fire crackle of debris
Striking the underbelly of the beasts.
A fine cloud of dust would hang
In that dry, sun-scorched air,
Mixed with the acrid tang of motor oil
And the earthy scent of disturbed soil.
Once again, you raced into sight:
Izar Lizarraga, renowned motocross pro,
Astride your bright-yellow beast,
Its wheels ripping through the track.
Approaching a ramp, you gunned up the Suzuki
And leaned forward, bracing for a jump.
At the peak, your bike pounced like a predator,
Soaring through the air.
A moment of suspended flight,
A full-body shot captured in posters:
The tire treads of your Suzuki packed with earth;
Your gloved hands gripping the handlebars;
And behind your visor, your chocolate eyes,
Speed-spellbound,
Fixed on the distant finish line.
---
Author's note: the songs for today are "Ladies and Gentlemen We're Floating in Space" by Spiritualized, and "Lau Teilatu" by Itoiz.
If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.
January 28, 2024
Love of My Life, Pt. 3 (Poetry)
Check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better
If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short(ish) story from the beginning (link here). The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn’t want to go radio silent for about a month.
---
My mind often revisits, perhaps as punishment,
My mother's face dominated by a scowl
That deepened the creases long etched
Through years of worry and resentment.
Her lips were pursed as if holding herself
From unleashing a hellish rebuke,
And her eyes, intense and narrowed,
Assured that wherever her gaze landed,
She would find some detail to fault.
As damning evidence,
My mother showed a tied-up condom:
A limp and deflated rubbery sheath,
Its head filled with creamy-yellow fluid.
My mother ordered me to explain this gift
I had left for her to find while cleaning my room.
I wanted to shake my head and spit out bitterly,
"Sure, Mother. After my girlfriend and I made love,
I tossed the condom aside and forgot about it
To screw with your persecution complex,
To express contempt for your brand of parenthood,
Your desire to control every facet of my life,
To mold me into the perfect son you wish me to be."
I apologized, but suggested she could appreciate
That my girlfriend and I use protection.
My mother scrunched up her nose
Like she had stumbled upon a pile of dung.
Her voice rose in pitch and volume as she said
I shouldn't be having sex with "that girl,"
Whom she had welcomed into our home for years.
"No wonder your grades are slipping
If you focus on pursuing vices instead of studying.
Think of your future, think of your career!"
She had called your mother to inform her
Of the grievous sin we were committing,
But your mother already knew
Because she had heard us going at it.
"How could that girl throw away her potential,
Squander the sacrifices made by her parents?
Her mother gave birth to her, nursed her,
Stood at her crib every morning,
And hoped that she would grow into a good girl,
Only for her child to become a disgrace."
My mother referred to you as a bad influence,
A rotten soul going nowhere fast,
A walking advertisement of aimlessness
Who would end up pregnant and homeless.
She forbid me from bringing you to the house,
And added that if I were mature enough,
I'd know that I should stay away from you.
Had I foreseen such a confrontation,
I would have imagined myself yelling,
But I saw my mother for the first time:
An aging woman who followed a script,
Who needed to straighten every life's crooked lines,
Who met my father and shortly after got hitched
Because that's what people are supposed to do,
And ever since, they argued as often
As loving couples exchange smiles.
My parents, my life's givers, lived trapped inside
Something too awful and intractable to escape.
Still simmering from the confrontation,
I accompanied you and your mother
To a bike dealership in Astigarraga
That smelled of leather and new rubber.
The polished frames of motocross bikes,
In screaming colors like red, blue, and yellow,
Gleamed in a line-up,
Resembling museum exhibits.
Those knobs in the bikes' tire treads
Would dig into the dirt for maximum grip.
You fell in love with a Suzuki RM125,
Its bodywork clad in bright yellow,
Its mechanical heart laid bare
And ready to be flecked with dirt,
Its front suspension forks
Like the limbs of a seasoned athlete.
The high-mounted guard would prevent
Mud from splattering your lovely face.
At the counter, when time came to pay
And your mother pulled out her credit card,
You grinned, clasped your hands,
Let out a squeal of delight,
And bounced on your tiptoes.
You had dreaded surrendering your Aprilia
To fill the void in your hard-earned savings,
And found yourself marveling at your luck
When your mother offered to chip in.
Bless that woman, bless her heart
That beat with love for you, her little star.
I will be forever grateful
She kept opening the door of her home
Despite knowing how you and I spent our time
Whenever the adults left us alone.
Her words echo in my mind,
As clear as if spoken yesterday:
"I've never seen Izar this serious about anything,
And even if I tried to stop her, I know I can't,
Because she'd just pack up and leave.
She was always the wild one:
Uncaring for the rules,
Unafraid to do whatever she wanted.
Nobody had to teach her how to be free."
For encouraging a "ridiculous dream,"
As your father called it,
Your mother's support opened a rift,
And now they argued more often than not,
As most couples are destined to do.
During my lunch break, you and I met
At the restaurant that faced my high school.
In a dining space that smelled of garlic and olive oil,
Surrounded by the clink of cutlery
And the chatter of youth unfolding,
You were savoring a potato omelette sandwich,
And dropping breadcrumbs on a motocross magazine.
You charted the steps to conquer the racing world:
Seek out the motocross tracks in Gipuzkoa;
Immerse yourself in racing clubs, your gateways
To structured training and expert instruction;
Compete in races and secure victories
So local scribes would ink your triumphs,
Drawing to you sponsors willing to invest.
From there, ascend to regional championships
With prize money and notoriety at stake.
You had brought a bulky backpack
Although you had the day off from work;
You needed to refine your riding technique,
So once I returned to my classroom,
To that monotony of chalk and textbooks,
You would head to the trails at Mount Jaizkibel.
I envisioned you astride your Suzuki RM125,
Navigating those winding, weathered paths
Lined with prickly shrubs,
Skirting cliff edges,
Your bike kicking up clumps of soil,
The distant roar of waves crashing on rocks
As your sole company.
In my mind, your front wheel caught
On a deceptive patch of loose dirt, twisting viciously.
Your world turned into a blur of sky, sea, and earth
As the ground vanished,
And you and your bike hung weightless
Until the rocky outcroppings below
Rushed up to meet you.
I asked you to bring me along;
I could stand around and watch you train.
If you suffered any injury,
I would run to your side and patch you up.
You told me to rest easy: you'd be careful.
Besides, you refused to let me skip class, arguing
That I shouldn't sacrifice my grades for your sake.
You brought up my mother's disdain,
Which whispered to me of never again
Holding you tight while lying on the bed
That my parents chose for their son,
Nor smelling your lingering scent on my sheets
As if you were sleeping beside me.
You inquired about my sudden glumness,
And after I confessed, you smirked and assured
That our love wasn't tethered to any room.
At night, we rode in your Aprilia to Plaiaundi,
And ventured into the deserted ecological park.
In that moonlit, forest-like gloom,
Fireflies meandered like drifting candle flames.
After the rain, the earth exhaled a damp scent.
We ascended the steps of an observation deck
That rose on sturdy wooden stilts
Above the embracing wildness of foliage.
I settled upon the moist boards of the deck.
You nestled into my lap, straddling me,
And draped your arms around my neck.
Leaves whispered, rustling in the breeze,
And crickets chirred in the undergrowth.
My tongue laved over your pebbled areola.
I caressed your nipple with my lips,
Teasing and tugging on the turgid peak,
Gradually drawing it into my wet mouth.
I savored the silky texture of your skin
As it pressed against my taste buds.
Whenever you met me in the evening
Wearing your pleated, knee-length skirt,
You made the wordless promise
That our date would find us heading
To a building with a rustic stone façade,
That back then may have been a minor college.
We wound our way to the building's rear.
It faced a desolate park and the highway.
In a shadowed colonnade, I claimed a stone bench.
You climbed into my lap, your favorite spot,
Then unzipped me and eased down my boxers.
After your panties joined my keys in my pocket,
You curtained your hips and my legs with the skirt.
I remember what it felt like in the night breeze
When you lowered your hips and slid me inside,
Engulfing me with your slick, velvety depths:
The warmth of a hearth in wintertime.
The same dude used to show up;
He stood in the light cone
Of the sole street lamp,
Drawing puffs from his cigarette
And waiting for his dog to poop.
You and I kept still, embraced,
Your inner walls gripping my length
While our hearts beat as one.
Shoulder-deep in the cool waters of Hendaye Beach,
My bare feet digging into the soaked sand,
I shut my eyes and basked in the warmth
Of the sun's rays dancing on my face,
And of your tongue, that tasted of salt.
My fingers roamed the skin of your back,
Over the bumps and ridges of your vertebrae.
The sea rolled and receded around us.
The rhythmic lapping of waves against the shore
Blended with the cawing of gulls overhead
And snippets of conversations in French
As if coming from a gramophone in the next room.
Dark strands of your slicked-back hair
Stuck to your cheeks and neck.
Droplets scattered across your smooth skin
Caught the sunlight and glistened.
Your eyelids drooped to a half-lidded stare
As you broke into a mischievous grin.
When you leaned in, I inhaled
The coconut aroma of your sunscreen.
Your thumbs hooked inside my swim shorts.
While your wet lips brushed the shell of my ear,
You asked me to pull down your bikini bottom.
With the spandex garment bunched up mid-calf,
I cupped your firm and fleshy ass cheeks,
And you wrapped your legs around my waist.
As the tip of my member nudged your folds,
I worried about the lack of lubrication.
I wish I could remember how it felt
To make love to you in the sea,
But that memory cuts to a bald old man
Who swam in our orbit
While gawking with a smile spread wide
As if partaking in a private show,
Even though you kept glaring at him.
"What the fuck is that idiot doing?"
Beyond the scrubland at Mount Arburu,
The undulating hills were blanketed in patches
Of dark evergreens and deciduous trees,
Whose trunks had withstood storms
And decades of growth.
Seated at the rear, I clutched at the rider
While your Suzuki shuddered and jolted
Over bumps, rocking us back and forth,
While you wrenched the handlebars
To dodge rocks and bristly bushes
Dotted with yellow flowers.
We lay supine on eroded, sloping bedrock
Beside the feathery fronds of ferns.
Birds chirped in the nearby woods.
My lungs filled with crisp mountain air
That carried the scents of pine and grass,
And the sweet rot of decomposing vegetation.
The sun stretched the shadows of trees
And bathed the scrubland in gold.
Soon enough, our god would hide.
Under that ungraspable, azure dome,
Each succesive hump of the far-off mountains
Became lighter and lighter,
Watercolor washes on a canvas.
---
Author's note: today's song is "Hey Jane" by Spiritualized.
If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.
If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short(ish) story from the beginning (link here). The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn’t want to go radio silent for about a month.
---
My mind often revisits, perhaps as punishment,
My mother's face dominated by a scowl
That deepened the creases long etched
Through years of worry and resentment.
Her lips were pursed as if holding herself
From unleashing a hellish rebuke,
And her eyes, intense and narrowed,
Assured that wherever her gaze landed,
She would find some detail to fault.
As damning evidence,
My mother showed a tied-up condom:
A limp and deflated rubbery sheath,
Its head filled with creamy-yellow fluid.
My mother ordered me to explain this gift
I had left for her to find while cleaning my room.
I wanted to shake my head and spit out bitterly,
"Sure, Mother. After my girlfriend and I made love,
I tossed the condom aside and forgot about it
To screw with your persecution complex,
To express contempt for your brand of parenthood,
Your desire to control every facet of my life,
To mold me into the perfect son you wish me to be."
I apologized, but suggested she could appreciate
That my girlfriend and I use protection.
My mother scrunched up her nose
Like she had stumbled upon a pile of dung.
Her voice rose in pitch and volume as she said
I shouldn't be having sex with "that girl,"
Whom she had welcomed into our home for years.
"No wonder your grades are slipping
If you focus on pursuing vices instead of studying.
Think of your future, think of your career!"
She had called your mother to inform her
Of the grievous sin we were committing,
But your mother already knew
Because she had heard us going at it.
"How could that girl throw away her potential,
Squander the sacrifices made by her parents?
Her mother gave birth to her, nursed her,
Stood at her crib every morning,
And hoped that she would grow into a good girl,
Only for her child to become a disgrace."
My mother referred to you as a bad influence,
A rotten soul going nowhere fast,
A walking advertisement of aimlessness
Who would end up pregnant and homeless.
She forbid me from bringing you to the house,
And added that if I were mature enough,
I'd know that I should stay away from you.
Had I foreseen such a confrontation,
I would have imagined myself yelling,
But I saw my mother for the first time:
An aging woman who followed a script,
Who needed to straighten every life's crooked lines,
Who met my father and shortly after got hitched
Because that's what people are supposed to do,
And ever since, they argued as often
As loving couples exchange smiles.
My parents, my life's givers, lived trapped inside
Something too awful and intractable to escape.
Still simmering from the confrontation,
I accompanied you and your mother
To a bike dealership in Astigarraga
That smelled of leather and new rubber.
The polished frames of motocross bikes,
In screaming colors like red, blue, and yellow,
Gleamed in a line-up,
Resembling museum exhibits.
Those knobs in the bikes' tire treads
Would dig into the dirt for maximum grip.
You fell in love with a Suzuki RM125,
Its bodywork clad in bright yellow,
Its mechanical heart laid bare
And ready to be flecked with dirt,
Its front suspension forks
Like the limbs of a seasoned athlete.
The high-mounted guard would prevent
Mud from splattering your lovely face.
At the counter, when time came to pay
And your mother pulled out her credit card,
You grinned, clasped your hands,
Let out a squeal of delight,
And bounced on your tiptoes.
You had dreaded surrendering your Aprilia
To fill the void in your hard-earned savings,
And found yourself marveling at your luck
When your mother offered to chip in.
Bless that woman, bless her heart
That beat with love for you, her little star.
I will be forever grateful
She kept opening the door of her home
Despite knowing how you and I spent our time
Whenever the adults left us alone.
Her words echo in my mind,
As clear as if spoken yesterday:
"I've never seen Izar this serious about anything,
And even if I tried to stop her, I know I can't,
Because she'd just pack up and leave.
She was always the wild one:
Uncaring for the rules,
Unafraid to do whatever she wanted.
Nobody had to teach her how to be free."
For encouraging a "ridiculous dream,"
As your father called it,
Your mother's support opened a rift,
And now they argued more often than not,
As most couples are destined to do.
During my lunch break, you and I met
At the restaurant that faced my high school.
In a dining space that smelled of garlic and olive oil,
Surrounded by the clink of cutlery
And the chatter of youth unfolding,
You were savoring a potato omelette sandwich,
And dropping breadcrumbs on a motocross magazine.
You charted the steps to conquer the racing world:
Seek out the motocross tracks in Gipuzkoa;
Immerse yourself in racing clubs, your gateways
To structured training and expert instruction;
Compete in races and secure victories
So local scribes would ink your triumphs,
Drawing to you sponsors willing to invest.
From there, ascend to regional championships
With prize money and notoriety at stake.
You had brought a bulky backpack
Although you had the day off from work;
You needed to refine your riding technique,
So once I returned to my classroom,
To that monotony of chalk and textbooks,
You would head to the trails at Mount Jaizkibel.
I envisioned you astride your Suzuki RM125,
Navigating those winding, weathered paths
Lined with prickly shrubs,
Skirting cliff edges,
Your bike kicking up clumps of soil,
The distant roar of waves crashing on rocks
As your sole company.
In my mind, your front wheel caught
On a deceptive patch of loose dirt, twisting viciously.
Your world turned into a blur of sky, sea, and earth
As the ground vanished,
And you and your bike hung weightless
Until the rocky outcroppings below
Rushed up to meet you.
I asked you to bring me along;
I could stand around and watch you train.
If you suffered any injury,
I would run to your side and patch you up.
You told me to rest easy: you'd be careful.
Besides, you refused to let me skip class, arguing
That I shouldn't sacrifice my grades for your sake.
You brought up my mother's disdain,
Which whispered to me of never again
Holding you tight while lying on the bed
That my parents chose for their son,
Nor smelling your lingering scent on my sheets
As if you were sleeping beside me.
You inquired about my sudden glumness,
And after I confessed, you smirked and assured
That our love wasn't tethered to any room.
At night, we rode in your Aprilia to Plaiaundi,
And ventured into the deserted ecological park.
In that moonlit, forest-like gloom,
Fireflies meandered like drifting candle flames.
After the rain, the earth exhaled a damp scent.
We ascended the steps of an observation deck
That rose on sturdy wooden stilts
Above the embracing wildness of foliage.
I settled upon the moist boards of the deck.
You nestled into my lap, straddling me,
And draped your arms around my neck.
Leaves whispered, rustling in the breeze,
And crickets chirred in the undergrowth.
My tongue laved over your pebbled areola.
I caressed your nipple with my lips,
Teasing and tugging on the turgid peak,
Gradually drawing it into my wet mouth.
I savored the silky texture of your skin
As it pressed against my taste buds.
Whenever you met me in the evening
Wearing your pleated, knee-length skirt,
You made the wordless promise
That our date would find us heading
To a building with a rustic stone façade,
That back then may have been a minor college.
We wound our way to the building's rear.
It faced a desolate park and the highway.
In a shadowed colonnade, I claimed a stone bench.
You climbed into my lap, your favorite spot,
Then unzipped me and eased down my boxers.
After your panties joined my keys in my pocket,
You curtained your hips and my legs with the skirt.
I remember what it felt like in the night breeze
When you lowered your hips and slid me inside,
Engulfing me with your slick, velvety depths:
The warmth of a hearth in wintertime.
The same dude used to show up;
He stood in the light cone
Of the sole street lamp,
Drawing puffs from his cigarette
And waiting for his dog to poop.
You and I kept still, embraced,
Your inner walls gripping my length
While our hearts beat as one.
Shoulder-deep in the cool waters of Hendaye Beach,
My bare feet digging into the soaked sand,
I shut my eyes and basked in the warmth
Of the sun's rays dancing on my face,
And of your tongue, that tasted of salt.
My fingers roamed the skin of your back,
Over the bumps and ridges of your vertebrae.
The sea rolled and receded around us.
The rhythmic lapping of waves against the shore
Blended with the cawing of gulls overhead
And snippets of conversations in French
As if coming from a gramophone in the next room.
Dark strands of your slicked-back hair
Stuck to your cheeks and neck.
Droplets scattered across your smooth skin
Caught the sunlight and glistened.
Your eyelids drooped to a half-lidded stare
As you broke into a mischievous grin.
When you leaned in, I inhaled
The coconut aroma of your sunscreen.
Your thumbs hooked inside my swim shorts.
While your wet lips brushed the shell of my ear,
You asked me to pull down your bikini bottom.
With the spandex garment bunched up mid-calf,
I cupped your firm and fleshy ass cheeks,
And you wrapped your legs around my waist.
As the tip of my member nudged your folds,
I worried about the lack of lubrication.
I wish I could remember how it felt
To make love to you in the sea,
But that memory cuts to a bald old man
Who swam in our orbit
While gawking with a smile spread wide
As if partaking in a private show,
Even though you kept glaring at him.
"What the fuck is that idiot doing?"
Beyond the scrubland at Mount Arburu,
The undulating hills were blanketed in patches
Of dark evergreens and deciduous trees,
Whose trunks had withstood storms
And decades of growth.
Seated at the rear, I clutched at the rider
While your Suzuki shuddered and jolted
Over bumps, rocking us back and forth,
While you wrenched the handlebars
To dodge rocks and bristly bushes
Dotted with yellow flowers.
We lay supine on eroded, sloping bedrock
Beside the feathery fronds of ferns.
Birds chirped in the nearby woods.
My lungs filled with crisp mountain air
That carried the scents of pine and grass,
And the sweet rot of decomposing vegetation.
The sun stretched the shadows of trees
And bathed the scrubland in gold.
Soon enough, our god would hide.
Under that ungraspable, azure dome,
Each succesive hump of the far-off mountains
Became lighter and lighter,
Watercolor washes on a canvas.
---
Author's note: today's song is "Hey Jane" by Spiritualized.
If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.
January 24, 2024
On writing: My general rules
[Check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
This post will include the rules I wished I had followed since I started writing seriously when I was sixteen years old. I will emphasize some points that my younger self resisted.
I shall update this post whenever I come up with something else valuable.
---
If your subconscious nudges you with some idea or imagery that feels important, determine if it falls into a piece you’re working on or that you intend to work on at some point. Pay special attention to the “seed ideas” that the subconscious rarely provides, and that emerge with such strength that you know in your bones they will sprout a full story. In those cases, stop whatever you’re doing and write down all the details that linger in your mind. Do not let those ideas go: they’re the best ones you will ever get. If you don’t write them down, you will end up forgetting them. Most of the favorite parts of my stories come from notes that I don’t remember having come up with nor written down.
If your mind presents you with some idea or imagery that feels important but can’t be assigned to any project, it’s not necessary to write it down. Plenty of these rogue suggestions resurface later, sometimes years later, tangled with other ideas or imagery that could be categorized. Let them simmer.
Your subconscious is the one entity in this world that you can fully trust. Like Cormac McCarthy put it, “[It has] been on its own for a long time. Of course it has no access to the world except through your own sensorium. Otherwise it would just labor in the dark. Like your liver. For historical reasons it’s loath to speak to you. It prefers drama, metaphor, pictures. But it understands you very well. And it has no other cause save yours.” Always pay attention to its advice.
As you work on a project, go through your notes for it with the goal of reordering them chronologically. If you aren’t sure about where in your story an event is supposed to take place, arrange them in order of escalating tension. Do this from time to time, because some notes will end up moving around significantly.
When you’re working on a scene or a chapter, go through your notes and isolate them in logical blocks that you should be able to coalesce in about five to ten minutes of freewriting. Add as many notes as necessary to that block so that you won’t need to know anything else about the rest of your story while you’re busy rendering that part of the scene.
Once that next block of the scene or chapter you’re working contains all the necessary elements, render the block through freewriting. Do not ever sit down in front of your keyboard and try to come up with one word after another; that puts your conscious mind in control, the part of your brain that should only be in charge of putting together coherent sentences from raw material, and of revision. It will also end up making you hate the act of writing, which should be a labor of joy.
The way you force your subconscious to produce the raw material is through freewriting. Put on some mood-setting music, open videos and/or photos relevant to the block you will work on. I usually change the size of my windows in the PC to ensure that all the necessary parts fit on the screen at once. Then, while you play the notes in your mind as if they were part of a movie, type as fast as you can, coalescing what you’re sensing and feeling into a mass of raw material.
By “as fast as you can,” I literally mean it: banging your keys or repeating nonsense in case your brain can’t come up with some particular word, making enough grammatical and syntactic mistakes to make a teacher cry. Do not allow your fingers to stop. The goal is to bypass the slower conscious mind to access the much faster subconscious, the same way as you would while playing an instrument. You do not stop in the middle of playing a song because you don’t remember a specific note, or because you have just played the wrong one. If the end product of your freewriting session resembles the verbal diarrhea of a complete lunatic, then you’ve done it right: your subconscious isn’t sane, but it has survived for much, much longer than human beings have existed.
Once you end up with the raw material of a session of freewriting, let your conscious mind sieve through the outrageous nonsense, then arrange the fished-out meaningful words into coherent sentences.
Freewriting is also invaluable when you aren’t sure what details to produce out of a moment, or what feelings your point of view character would experience. Freewrite about it for a set amount of time, usually five minutes. In the process you will get the obvious out of the way, and your subconscious will provide some gems.
Beware the ladder of meaning. For example: entity > object > building > house > cottage > an English cottage with thatched roofs, a sprawling garden, and stone walls covered in ivy. Always try to include in your texts elements from the highest rung of the ladder of meaning. If you intend to include an element from lower rungs, justify its presence in the piece. Why would you mention an element that doesn’t warrant detailing?
If some sentence, or a whole paragraph, feels awkward, improve it until it doesn’t. If you can’t improve that element further and it still feels awkward, try to remove it from the text. If the text doesn’t start creaking, threatening to fall apart, leave that element out. If you have improved it to the best of your abilities and still feels awkward but you can’t take it out of the piece, forgive yourself and move on.
Do not ever leave in your story a sentence, or even a word, that’s not pulling its weight. Whatever you leave in that doesn’t need to be there detracts from the whole.
Base your sentences around specific nouns and vigorous verbs, both of which should generate imagery in your mind. Try to avoid forms of “to be” and “to have,” unless the alternative sounds more awkward.
Avoid clichés. A cliché is every single expression you have heard before. I don’t recall which books on writing said it, but it’s been proven that your brain doesn’t engage meaningfully with sentences it has read or heard a million times, the same way you don’t truly look at stuff you see every day. Your brain mainly reacts to surprise, in case it needs to fend off an attack. Your goal is to create something new with every sentence.
Show, don’t tell. What does that mean? When in doubt, ask “What’s the evidence of that?” If asking that question of a sentence or paragraph makes sense, then you’re telling. If it doesn’t, you’re showing. For example: “The woman was beautiful.” What’s the evidence that she’s beautiful? You’d go into specific details of her allure that would make your point of view character (important: not you) feel that she’s beautiful. And once you’ve added that explanation in, remove the sentence “The woman was beautiful.” You don’t need it.
You can violate any of the above rules if you’re going for a specific effect. For example, it’s not uncommon to use clichés (meaning any expression you’ve read or heard before) as part of your characters’ speech, because that’s what people do. You can also violate any of the above rules if the result would be funny.
Number one rule: offer the most meaning with the least amount of words. Don’t waste people’s time, starting with your own.
This post will include the rules I wished I had followed since I started writing seriously when I was sixteen years old. I will emphasize some points that my younger self resisted.
I shall update this post whenever I come up with something else valuable.
---
If your subconscious nudges you with some idea or imagery that feels important, determine if it falls into a piece you’re working on or that you intend to work on at some point. Pay special attention to the “seed ideas” that the subconscious rarely provides, and that emerge with such strength that you know in your bones they will sprout a full story. In those cases, stop whatever you’re doing and write down all the details that linger in your mind. Do not let those ideas go: they’re the best ones you will ever get. If you don’t write them down, you will end up forgetting them. Most of the favorite parts of my stories come from notes that I don’t remember having come up with nor written down.
If your mind presents you with some idea or imagery that feels important but can’t be assigned to any project, it’s not necessary to write it down. Plenty of these rogue suggestions resurface later, sometimes years later, tangled with other ideas or imagery that could be categorized. Let them simmer.
Your subconscious is the one entity in this world that you can fully trust. Like Cormac McCarthy put it, “[It has] been on its own for a long time. Of course it has no access to the world except through your own sensorium. Otherwise it would just labor in the dark. Like your liver. For historical reasons it’s loath to speak to you. It prefers drama, metaphor, pictures. But it understands you very well. And it has no other cause save yours.” Always pay attention to its advice.
As you work on a project, go through your notes for it with the goal of reordering them chronologically. If you aren’t sure about where in your story an event is supposed to take place, arrange them in order of escalating tension. Do this from time to time, because some notes will end up moving around significantly.
When you’re working on a scene or a chapter, go through your notes and isolate them in logical blocks that you should be able to coalesce in about five to ten minutes of freewriting. Add as many notes as necessary to that block so that you won’t need to know anything else about the rest of your story while you’re busy rendering that part of the scene.
Once that next block of the scene or chapter you’re working contains all the necessary elements, render the block through freewriting. Do not ever sit down in front of your keyboard and try to come up with one word after another; that puts your conscious mind in control, the part of your brain that should only be in charge of putting together coherent sentences from raw material, and of revision. It will also end up making you hate the act of writing, which should be a labor of joy.
The way you force your subconscious to produce the raw material is through freewriting. Put on some mood-setting music, open videos and/or photos relevant to the block you will work on. I usually change the size of my windows in the PC to ensure that all the necessary parts fit on the screen at once. Then, while you play the notes in your mind as if they were part of a movie, type as fast as you can, coalescing what you’re sensing and feeling into a mass of raw material.
By “as fast as you can,” I literally mean it: banging your keys or repeating nonsense in case your brain can’t come up with some particular word, making enough grammatical and syntactic mistakes to make a teacher cry. Do not allow your fingers to stop. The goal is to bypass the slower conscious mind to access the much faster subconscious, the same way as you would while playing an instrument. You do not stop in the middle of playing a song because you don’t remember a specific note, or because you have just played the wrong one. If the end product of your freewriting session resembles the verbal diarrhea of a complete lunatic, then you’ve done it right: your subconscious isn’t sane, but it has survived for much, much longer than human beings have existed.
Once you end up with the raw material of a session of freewriting, let your conscious mind sieve through the outrageous nonsense, then arrange the fished-out meaningful words into coherent sentences.
Freewriting is also invaluable when you aren’t sure what details to produce out of a moment, or what feelings your point of view character would experience. Freewrite about it for a set amount of time, usually five minutes. In the process you will get the obvious out of the way, and your subconscious will provide some gems.
Beware the ladder of meaning. For example: entity > object > building > house > cottage > an English cottage with thatched roofs, a sprawling garden, and stone walls covered in ivy. Always try to include in your texts elements from the highest rung of the ladder of meaning. If you intend to include an element from lower rungs, justify its presence in the piece. Why would you mention an element that doesn’t warrant detailing?
If some sentence, or a whole paragraph, feels awkward, improve it until it doesn’t. If you can’t improve that element further and it still feels awkward, try to remove it from the text. If the text doesn’t start creaking, threatening to fall apart, leave that element out. If you have improved it to the best of your abilities and still feels awkward but you can’t take it out of the piece, forgive yourself and move on.
Do not ever leave in your story a sentence, or even a word, that’s not pulling its weight. Whatever you leave in that doesn’t need to be there detracts from the whole.
Base your sentences around specific nouns and vigorous verbs, both of which should generate imagery in your mind. Try to avoid forms of “to be” and “to have,” unless the alternative sounds more awkward.
Avoid clichés. A cliché is every single expression you have heard before. I don’t recall which books on writing said it, but it’s been proven that your brain doesn’t engage meaningfully with sentences it has read or heard a million times, the same way you don’t truly look at stuff you see every day. Your brain mainly reacts to surprise, in case it needs to fend off an attack. Your goal is to create something new with every sentence.
Show, don’t tell. What does that mean? When in doubt, ask “What’s the evidence of that?” If asking that question of a sentence or paragraph makes sense, then you’re telling. If it doesn’t, you’re showing. For example: “The woman was beautiful.” What’s the evidence that she’s beautiful? You’d go into specific details of her allure that would make your point of view character (important: not you) feel that she’s beautiful. And once you’ve added that explanation in, remove the sentence “The woman was beautiful.” You don’t need it.
You can violate any of the above rules if you’re going for a specific effect. For example, it’s not uncommon to use clichés (meaning any expression you’ve read or heard before) as part of your characters’ speech, because that’s what people do. You can also violate any of the above rules if the result would be funny.
Number one rule: offer the most meaning with the least amount of words. Don’t waste people’s time, starting with your own.
January 22, 2024
On writing: Desire line #2
You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.
Do you have a killer concept, a promising premise, and a protagonist worth a damn? Then you should determine the goal that your characters will pursue, and that will result in the plot of your story.
-How is the story about this one problem that complicates everything else?
-Though your heroes might initially perceive this challenge as an unwelcome crisis, it will often prove to be a crisis that ironically provides just the opportunity your heroes need, directly or indirectly, to address their longstanding social problems and/or internal flaws.
-Does this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear?
-Your protagonist’s goal should inspire some kind of emotion. Anything relating to food, violence, sex or chaos is inclined to stimulate emotions at the base level. The most compelling emotion to evoke in writing is anger, so if you can include a bit of outrage, give it a try.
-How specific can you make the desire? Is there a specific moment in the story when the audience knows whether your hero has accomplished his goal or not? You should be able to photograph the moment.
-Are you sure the choices for the objects of desire aren’t wishy-washy? It shouldn’t be too nebulous, too intangible. Can you embody the desire in an object?
-How is the desire a visible one, something substantial, not esoteric or emotional or spiritual? You should be able to describe your hero’s goal to someone in a way that they can see it played out in their mind as if on the silver screen.
-How can you center the goal in the concept of your story?
-See if it could be a story that plays more gradually as the hero realizes the unforeseen true nature of the conflict. This only works if the hero seizes what seems like a positive (albeit intimidating) opportunity in the beginning, without realizing how much conflict it will cause.
-How do you make sure you have a single desire line that builds steadily in importance and intensity?
-How is at the beginning the desire at a low level, so the importance of the desire increases as the story progresses?
-How is it a single, escalating problem that your characters can’t avoid?
-Are you sure the problem has a power to grow, intensify and complicate?
-What prevents your protagonist from achieving his goal easily? Try to explain how the goal is difficult to achieve.
-You want to convey to the audience just how big and important and impossible your hero’s goal is. The reason for this is that the more impossible the audience finds the task, the more doubtful they become that the hero will succeed.
-Are you sure your chosen goal can sustain the entire novel from the first page to the last?
-See if you can make the obstacle goal something hard to want to do. For example, defeating your sister instead of a random person.
-How will your chosen goal explore the themes you want to include in the story?
-The desire should be accomplished, if at all, near the end of the story. If the hero reaches the goal in the middle of the story, you must either end the story right there or create a new desire line, in which case you’ve stuck two stories together.
-Decide whether or not, in detail, your protagonist succeeds in his external goal, and how either the character overcomes the external flaw or not.
Do you have a killer concept, a promising premise, and a protagonist worth a damn? Then you should determine the goal that your characters will pursue, and that will result in the plot of your story.
-How is the story about this one problem that complicates everything else?
-Though your heroes might initially perceive this challenge as an unwelcome crisis, it will often prove to be a crisis that ironically provides just the opportunity your heroes need, directly or indirectly, to address their longstanding social problems and/or internal flaws.
-Does this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear?
-Your protagonist’s goal should inspire some kind of emotion. Anything relating to food, violence, sex or chaos is inclined to stimulate emotions at the base level. The most compelling emotion to evoke in writing is anger, so if you can include a bit of outrage, give it a try.
-How specific can you make the desire? Is there a specific moment in the story when the audience knows whether your hero has accomplished his goal or not? You should be able to photograph the moment.
-Are you sure the choices for the objects of desire aren’t wishy-washy? It shouldn’t be too nebulous, too intangible. Can you embody the desire in an object?
-How is the desire a visible one, something substantial, not esoteric or emotional or spiritual? You should be able to describe your hero’s goal to someone in a way that they can see it played out in their mind as if on the silver screen.
-How can you center the goal in the concept of your story?
-See if it could be a story that plays more gradually as the hero realizes the unforeseen true nature of the conflict. This only works if the hero seizes what seems like a positive (albeit intimidating) opportunity in the beginning, without realizing how much conflict it will cause.
-How do you make sure you have a single desire line that builds steadily in importance and intensity?
-How is at the beginning the desire at a low level, so the importance of the desire increases as the story progresses?
-How is it a single, escalating problem that your characters can’t avoid?
-Are you sure the problem has a power to grow, intensify and complicate?
-What prevents your protagonist from achieving his goal easily? Try to explain how the goal is difficult to achieve.
-You want to convey to the audience just how big and important and impossible your hero’s goal is. The reason for this is that the more impossible the audience finds the task, the more doubtful they become that the hero will succeed.
-Are you sure your chosen goal can sustain the entire novel from the first page to the last?
-See if you can make the obstacle goal something hard to want to do. For example, defeating your sister instead of a random person.
-How will your chosen goal explore the themes you want to include in the story?
-The desire should be accomplished, if at all, near the end of the story. If the hero reaches the goal in the middle of the story, you must either end the story right there or create a new desire line, in which case you’ve stuck two stories together.
-Decide whether or not, in detail, your protagonist succeeds in his external goal, and how either the character overcomes the external flaw or not.
Review: All My Neighbors are Convinced the Female Knight from My Rice Field Is My Wife, by Saori Otoha
Four stars, four and a half for its genre.
This manga series with a characteristically long title attempts to answer the question of what would happen if a female knight from a ruthless fantasy world got isekai-d into ours, specifically the isolated countryside of Japan. According to this author, the experience would turn into a wholesome show of how beautiful and peaceful the life in the countryside can be, at least as long as you have some money.
The story follows a twenty-nine-year-old dude who bought some big house in his hometown, set in the Japanese countryside, and has spent the last few years growing produce and selling it to wholesalers. He’s a loner who ended up avoiding even his childhood friends. He doesn’t want to get involved with other people’s troubles. Then, one day, a young woman wearing elaborate armor shows up unconscious in his paddy field. She’s a blonde, emerald-eyed beauty of European descent, but she’s also too quick to draw her sword at the slightest mockery. The protagonist first takes her for a devoted cosplayer, until her physical feats and clear ignorance about the world she’s found herself in convinces him that he’s dealing with a stranded outworlder who probably will never return home. Therefore, he offers her to live together.
[Check out the rest of this review on my personal page, where it looks better]
January 21, 2024
Love of My Life, Pt. 2 (Poetry)
[Check out this entry on my personal page, where it looks better]
---
For the millionth time, I cast my memory
Back to your bedroom, my '90s haven:
Jeans-blue walls plastered with posters
Of motorcycle idols in riding gear;
Dream bikes, like your Aprilia;
Misato Katsuragi making a V sign;
Pictures of faraway places that beckoned:
Mount Fuji rising up from the plains,
The Eiffel Tower's wrought iron lattice,
Lady Liberty's green patina,
A sunburnt desert stretching into oblivion;
Alongside drawings I created for you.
Worn wooden shelves covered in stickers,
Overflowing with manga volumes
And pricey figurines of EVA units.
On your desk rested your black helmet
Next to piles of VHS cassettes.
Perched on a corner of your CRT television,
A single sock.
Nestled side by side on the carpeted floor
Among a scattering of your clothes,
Facing your plugged-in Playstation,
You were guiding Jill Valentine frantically
Through a shadow-laced, pixelated attic
Of that mansion infested with zombies
As you primed and fired your grenade launcher
At a slithering, grotesque serpent
That chased Jill with nefarious intent.
But lost in a sensory trance, I kept drifting
To the scent of your strawberry body spray,
And every shift of your bare arm against mine
Ignited a tingling trail of shivers down my spine.
Once the serpent fled through a hole,
You spun towards me with a victorious grin,
Flashing your wet, crooked teeth.
What did you say? I didn't hear anything;
That face had kindled a spark inside me,
Made me feel like a flame
Dancing in a fireplace.
I leaned in and molded my lips to yours.
They tasted of cherry chapstick.
When I pulled away, you were frozen,
Your chocolate eyes wide and unblinking.
Had I gone too far? Had I ruined us?
Blood rushed to my cheeks
And words tangled in my throat
As I tried to apologize,
But you exhaled, bit your lip,
Then tossed the controller aside.
"About time," you said
While climbing into my lap.
Our tongues wrestled,
Our breaths mingled,
Our teeth clicked,
Our noses bumped.
Your fingers raked through my hair.
I gripped your hips,
Then slid my hands under your T-shirt
To stroke the warm curve of your back.
My thoughts dissolved in a bath-like heat.
My self, that I thought forever isolated
Inside airtight boundaries,
Seeped out to meld with you.
I don't know when we stopped,
But I remember holding onto you,
Feeling your heart calming down
As it beat against my chest.
Your wet lips rested against my neck,
Your hot breath tickled my skin.
To your annoyance, your father had removed
The privacy lock from your bedroom door,
And that brooding overseer of yours
Invaded your space whenever he pleased,
So if we ached for some privacy,
We had to make out in public.
During your shifts as a pizza delivery driver,
Each time your rounds hinted
You might grace my area of Irún,
You called me so I would wait at a nearby park.
I stared anxiously at the traffic,
Eager to spot your scarlet polo shirt.
After you pulled up on the company scooter,
We sat on a bench, you took off your cap,
And our tongues played like two puppies
As your soft ponytail brushed my hand.
The scent of melted cheese and oregano
Still returns me to those days.
One evening, in the solace of my bedroom,
While my parents argued somewhere outside,
And the last light streaming through the curtain
Bathed our lying forms in a dusk-touched hue,
You explored my naked chest and stomach,
Mapping them with your fingertips.
I cupped the nape of your neck
And brought your mouth to mine.
I wished I could merge with you,
To live within your heart,
To breathe from your lungs,
To laugh with your voice.
One afternoon, you called from a payphone
To tell me, breathless, of an accident:
After some dickhead veered into your lane,
You swerved, but your Aprilia skidded
And bucked viciously, throwing you off.
As you slid over asphalt, it clawed at your leg,
Tearing through your jeans,
Grating against your flesh.
I had never felt such a panic surge in my gut;
I pictured your leg flayed to shreds.
While you complained that the accident
Had marred your bike with scrapes and scuffs,
I urged you to call an ambulance.
You refused; if your father found out,
He would attempt to take the Aprilia away.
However, your leg seared with pain,
So you needed me to patch you up.
I grabbed a bottle of water and a soap squirter,
Then rushed out toward the nearest pharmacy
To buy gauze, bandages, and antibiotic ointment.
When you opened the front door,
You greeted me quietly.
We had lucked out, you said:
Your father wouldn't return for hours,
And your mother was nursing a migraine.
But that left leg of yours belied our luck:
A jagged tear in your jeans
Revealed the raw red of road rash
Caked with blood and grime.
My heart lurched.
After washing my hands thoroughly, I found you
Lying pantless on your hot-pink bedspread.
I knelt by your bedside and inhaled
The coppery tang of your life essence
Mixed with adrenaline-induced sweat.
I soaked gauze in soapy water
And dabbed it on the raw red of your flesh
To clean off the dried blood and grime.
The white gauze bloomed crimson.
You winced, your eyes watered,
But you gritted through the pain.
I squeezed a glob of antibiotic ointment
And smeared it gently on your road rash.
After I climbed onto the bed,
I started wrapping the bandage
Around your injured leg,
Unwinding the roll and draping it snug.
My throat had closed up;
I felt your pain like it was mine.
You were right, we had been lucky:
Instead of swerving,
You could have crashed headfirst
And broken your neck.
Next time I saw you, you'd be lying in a coffin,
And I would never hear your laughter again.
I leaned forward, hugged your legs
And pressed my lips against your inner thigh,
Planting wet, lingering kisses,
Longing to feel the steady thrum of your life.
In the silence, your breathing grew heavier.
You propped yourself up on your elbows,
With your caramel waves cascading to the pillows.
Your eyes were glazed over, your cheeks flushed pink.
Your sunny-yellow panties,
Their stretchy cotton material
Featuring a pattern of fern-like imprints,
Contoured to your pubic mound,
And over the cleft, the fabric was soaked.
Wordlessly, I nuzzled your vulva,
Warming my face with the heat,
And inhaled the hint of laundry detergent
Mingled with a mouthwatering musk.
Your dampness clung to my tongue
As I lapped up the salty tang,
Which made you grip the bedspread.
You arched your back and wiggled your hips,
Grinding against my face,
To slide your panties down my nose and lips.
Behold a lush, dripping flower.
Our hands were clenched together,
My face buried in your muff,
Your pubes tickling my nose,
My tongue teasing, tracing, flicking
Your moist labia and turgid nub
While you gasped and mewed.
Even if your father's words stabbed through you,
Or school made you want to jump down a well,
I could offer my warm hands and mouth
To make you forget.
I would always be your refuge
Where you could let go and be yourself.
You pulled my hands toward you
And whispered, "Come here."
I crawled, skin to skin, over your body
So your tongue could thank mine.
We peeled off each other's shirts.
I unhooked your bra and kneaded your breasts.
Your fingers unbuttoned and unzipped,
Then tugged down my boxers.
You gripped me, stroked me up and down.
Pleasure settled in my groin like solid heat
As you wrapped your thighs around my waist
And guided me into your warmth.
While your bedsprings squeaked,
We breathed shallow gasps in and out,
And you dug your fingertips into my back.
The rhythm of our bodies synced together.
Something inside me cracked wide open.
If your mother had opened the door,
Ready to complain about the noise,
She would be outraged about more
Than our clothes strewn about the floor,
But any shouts, I'd boldly dismiss;
What we did and what we were
Was a cause to celebrate.
My heart pulsed with an aching joy
At the miracle of finding you, Izar,
And of being found by you.
From the day we made each other adults,
In the sanctuary of your bedroom or mine,
We spent our time huddled together,
Playing games, reading manga, watching shows,
Anticipating a knock on the door
And one of our parents to speak of some errand.
You and I would drown in silence, listening
To the sounds of our guardians leaving.
My body stirred with an electric tension.
Your eyes glittered, starlit with yearning.
Your nipples poked through the top.
Once the front door closed with a thump,
And the key turned once, twice in the lock,
We would allow a brief eternity to pass,
Counting heartbeats and hushed breaths,
Then our clothes would fly off.
When we lay in each other's arms
On a tangle of sweat-smeared sheets,
The room melted away
To the slick friction of skin on skin.
We became the only people in the world,
Talking and laughing and making love.
Hand in hand, we strolled to the end of Meaka
On a gravel path speckled with moss
Past the hydroelectric plant of Irugurutzeta.
Shadowed by the massive wall
Made of layers of weathered, lichen-clad stones,
We came across wandering chickens
And a dog that glanced at us from its kennel.
I breathed in the rich, loamy scent
Of damp earth and decaying leaves.
We nestled on the bank of a meandering creek
That babbled as it flowed over riverstone.
A stockade of skeletal trees obscured the horizon.
To our left stood the ruins of Roman furnaces.
On the opposite bank, stacks of blackened logs
Loomed like burned tombstones.
Here, where human activity had ceased,
Leaving behind only traces,
Life sprouted, grew, and died untroubled.
Your mood hung heavy like the overcast sky,
But I knew you'd open up when you were ready.
Turns out your parents had found out
About your disastrous grades,
And lost their shit when you declared
That you were dropping out of school altogether.
I remembered how my mother scolded me
For bringing home sevens and eights
When I could, she said, easily ace tests;
Thus, if I chose to drop out,
She would probably drop dead.
I asked if you had rushed to this decision,
But your mind had known for weeks.
Algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry;
They were rusty spanners in a junkyard
To you, who had dreamed of riding a bike
On undulating dirt tracks
Through jumps, berms, and whoops.
So instead of surrendering your youth
To the hands of glorified babysitters,
You chose to chase the road forward
Before the mirror showed a stranger.
---
Author's note: the song for today is "Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky.
I urge you to read the previous part of this short(ish) story, located here. The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn't want to go radio silent for about a month.
If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.
---
For the millionth time, I cast my memory
Back to your bedroom, my '90s haven:
Jeans-blue walls plastered with posters
Of motorcycle idols in riding gear;
Dream bikes, like your Aprilia;
Misato Katsuragi making a V sign;
Pictures of faraway places that beckoned:
Mount Fuji rising up from the plains,
The Eiffel Tower's wrought iron lattice,
Lady Liberty's green patina,
A sunburnt desert stretching into oblivion;
Alongside drawings I created for you.
Worn wooden shelves covered in stickers,
Overflowing with manga volumes
And pricey figurines of EVA units.
On your desk rested your black helmet
Next to piles of VHS cassettes.
Perched on a corner of your CRT television,
A single sock.
Nestled side by side on the carpeted floor
Among a scattering of your clothes,
Facing your plugged-in Playstation,
You were guiding Jill Valentine frantically
Through a shadow-laced, pixelated attic
Of that mansion infested with zombies
As you primed and fired your grenade launcher
At a slithering, grotesque serpent
That chased Jill with nefarious intent.
But lost in a sensory trance, I kept drifting
To the scent of your strawberry body spray,
And every shift of your bare arm against mine
Ignited a tingling trail of shivers down my spine.
Once the serpent fled through a hole,
You spun towards me with a victorious grin,
Flashing your wet, crooked teeth.
What did you say? I didn't hear anything;
That face had kindled a spark inside me,
Made me feel like a flame
Dancing in a fireplace.
I leaned in and molded my lips to yours.
They tasted of cherry chapstick.
When I pulled away, you were frozen,
Your chocolate eyes wide and unblinking.
Had I gone too far? Had I ruined us?
Blood rushed to my cheeks
And words tangled in my throat
As I tried to apologize,
But you exhaled, bit your lip,
Then tossed the controller aside.
"About time," you said
While climbing into my lap.
Our tongues wrestled,
Our breaths mingled,
Our teeth clicked,
Our noses bumped.
Your fingers raked through my hair.
I gripped your hips,
Then slid my hands under your T-shirt
To stroke the warm curve of your back.
My thoughts dissolved in a bath-like heat.
My self, that I thought forever isolated
Inside airtight boundaries,
Seeped out to meld with you.
I don't know when we stopped,
But I remember holding onto you,
Feeling your heart calming down
As it beat against my chest.
Your wet lips rested against my neck,
Your hot breath tickled my skin.
To your annoyance, your father had removed
The privacy lock from your bedroom door,
And that brooding overseer of yours
Invaded your space whenever he pleased,
So if we ached for some privacy,
We had to make out in public.
During your shifts as a pizza delivery driver,
Each time your rounds hinted
You might grace my area of Irún,
You called me so I would wait at a nearby park.
I stared anxiously at the traffic,
Eager to spot your scarlet polo shirt.
After you pulled up on the company scooter,
We sat on a bench, you took off your cap,
And our tongues played like two puppies
As your soft ponytail brushed my hand.
The scent of melted cheese and oregano
Still returns me to those days.
One evening, in the solace of my bedroom,
While my parents argued somewhere outside,
And the last light streaming through the curtain
Bathed our lying forms in a dusk-touched hue,
You explored my naked chest and stomach,
Mapping them with your fingertips.
I cupped the nape of your neck
And brought your mouth to mine.
I wished I could merge with you,
To live within your heart,
To breathe from your lungs,
To laugh with your voice.
One afternoon, you called from a payphone
To tell me, breathless, of an accident:
After some dickhead veered into your lane,
You swerved, but your Aprilia skidded
And bucked viciously, throwing you off.
As you slid over asphalt, it clawed at your leg,
Tearing through your jeans,
Grating against your flesh.
I had never felt such a panic surge in my gut;
I pictured your leg flayed to shreds.
While you complained that the accident
Had marred your bike with scrapes and scuffs,
I urged you to call an ambulance.
You refused; if your father found out,
He would attempt to take the Aprilia away.
However, your leg seared with pain,
So you needed me to patch you up.
I grabbed a bottle of water and a soap squirter,
Then rushed out toward the nearest pharmacy
To buy gauze, bandages, and antibiotic ointment.
When you opened the front door,
You greeted me quietly.
We had lucked out, you said:
Your father wouldn't return for hours,
And your mother was nursing a migraine.
But that left leg of yours belied our luck:
A jagged tear in your jeans
Revealed the raw red of road rash
Caked with blood and grime.
My heart lurched.
After washing my hands thoroughly, I found you
Lying pantless on your hot-pink bedspread.
I knelt by your bedside and inhaled
The coppery tang of your life essence
Mixed with adrenaline-induced sweat.
I soaked gauze in soapy water
And dabbed it on the raw red of your flesh
To clean off the dried blood and grime.
The white gauze bloomed crimson.
You winced, your eyes watered,
But you gritted through the pain.
I squeezed a glob of antibiotic ointment
And smeared it gently on your road rash.
After I climbed onto the bed,
I started wrapping the bandage
Around your injured leg,
Unwinding the roll and draping it snug.
My throat had closed up;
I felt your pain like it was mine.
You were right, we had been lucky:
Instead of swerving,
You could have crashed headfirst
And broken your neck.
Next time I saw you, you'd be lying in a coffin,
And I would never hear your laughter again.
I leaned forward, hugged your legs
And pressed my lips against your inner thigh,
Planting wet, lingering kisses,
Longing to feel the steady thrum of your life.
In the silence, your breathing grew heavier.
You propped yourself up on your elbows,
With your caramel waves cascading to the pillows.
Your eyes were glazed over, your cheeks flushed pink.
Your sunny-yellow panties,
Their stretchy cotton material
Featuring a pattern of fern-like imprints,
Contoured to your pubic mound,
And over the cleft, the fabric was soaked.
Wordlessly, I nuzzled your vulva,
Warming my face with the heat,
And inhaled the hint of laundry detergent
Mingled with a mouthwatering musk.
Your dampness clung to my tongue
As I lapped up the salty tang,
Which made you grip the bedspread.
You arched your back and wiggled your hips,
Grinding against my face,
To slide your panties down my nose and lips.
Behold a lush, dripping flower.
Our hands were clenched together,
My face buried in your muff,
Your pubes tickling my nose,
My tongue teasing, tracing, flicking
Your moist labia and turgid nub
While you gasped and mewed.
Even if your father's words stabbed through you,
Or school made you want to jump down a well,
I could offer my warm hands and mouth
To make you forget.
I would always be your refuge
Where you could let go and be yourself.
You pulled my hands toward you
And whispered, "Come here."
I crawled, skin to skin, over your body
So your tongue could thank mine.
We peeled off each other's shirts.
I unhooked your bra and kneaded your breasts.
Your fingers unbuttoned and unzipped,
Then tugged down my boxers.
You gripped me, stroked me up and down.
Pleasure settled in my groin like solid heat
As you wrapped your thighs around my waist
And guided me into your warmth.
While your bedsprings squeaked,
We breathed shallow gasps in and out,
And you dug your fingertips into my back.
The rhythm of our bodies synced together.
Something inside me cracked wide open.
If your mother had opened the door,
Ready to complain about the noise,
She would be outraged about more
Than our clothes strewn about the floor,
But any shouts, I'd boldly dismiss;
What we did and what we were
Was a cause to celebrate.
My heart pulsed with an aching joy
At the miracle of finding you, Izar,
And of being found by you.
From the day we made each other adults,
In the sanctuary of your bedroom or mine,
We spent our time huddled together,
Playing games, reading manga, watching shows,
Anticipating a knock on the door
And one of our parents to speak of some errand.
You and I would drown in silence, listening
To the sounds of our guardians leaving.
My body stirred with an electric tension.
Your eyes glittered, starlit with yearning.
Your nipples poked through the top.
Once the front door closed with a thump,
And the key turned once, twice in the lock,
We would allow a brief eternity to pass,
Counting heartbeats and hushed breaths,
Then our clothes would fly off.
When we lay in each other's arms
On a tangle of sweat-smeared sheets,
The room melted away
To the slick friction of skin on skin.
We became the only people in the world,
Talking and laughing and making love.
Hand in hand, we strolled to the end of Meaka
On a gravel path speckled with moss
Past the hydroelectric plant of Irugurutzeta.
Shadowed by the massive wall
Made of layers of weathered, lichen-clad stones,
We came across wandering chickens
And a dog that glanced at us from its kennel.
I breathed in the rich, loamy scent
Of damp earth and decaying leaves.
We nestled on the bank of a meandering creek
That babbled as it flowed over riverstone.
A stockade of skeletal trees obscured the horizon.
To our left stood the ruins of Roman furnaces.
On the opposite bank, stacks of blackened logs
Loomed like burned tombstones.
Here, where human activity had ceased,
Leaving behind only traces,
Life sprouted, grew, and died untroubled.
Your mood hung heavy like the overcast sky,
But I knew you'd open up when you were ready.
Turns out your parents had found out
About your disastrous grades,
And lost their shit when you declared
That you were dropping out of school altogether.
I remembered how my mother scolded me
For bringing home sevens and eights
When I could, she said, easily ace tests;
Thus, if I chose to drop out,
She would probably drop dead.
I asked if you had rushed to this decision,
But your mind had known for weeks.
Algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry;
They were rusty spanners in a junkyard
To you, who had dreamed of riding a bike
On undulating dirt tracks
Through jumps, berms, and whoops.
So instead of surrendering your youth
To the hands of glorified babysitters,
You chose to chase the road forward
Before the mirror showed a stranger.
---
Author's note: the song for today is "Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky.
I urge you to read the previous part of this short(ish) story, located here. The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn't want to go radio silent for about a month.
If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.
January 16, 2024
Love of My Life, Pt. 1 (Poetry)
Check out this free verse poem on my personal page, where it looks better
---
Wide awake at midnight,
As I lie in the oppressive dark,
I stretch my arm into the abyss of my mind,
Seeking the warmth of your hand.
I imagine the apartment's buzzer ringing;
You've come to take me away.
I put on clothes, kiss my sleeping kids goodbye,
And rush downstairs to join you.
Garbed in your sleek red jacket,
You're straddling the leather seat
And resting your elbows on the handlebars
Of your nineteen ninety-four Aprilia Red Rose.
Its lemon-yellow body, streaked with white,
Shimmers in the streetlights' glow.
The sharp beam of its headlight pierces the night.
Amber radiance outlines your caramel-brown hair,
But your face is lit by an unrestrained smile
That creases the corners of your chocolate eyes,
That shows off your crooked front teeth.
Once I climb onto the pillion behind you,
I wrap my arms around your slim waist.
You start up the beast, making it rumble,
And we roll down the road.
Streetlights blur to yellow streaks
As we rocket through the streets,
Zooming past cars and trucks,
Past darkened houses and shops.
The mechanical purring of the engine
Ebbs and flows through my bones.
The crisp wind of autumn stings my cheeks;
It smells like wet pavement and gasoline.
Your jacket and wavy hair rustle,
Your laughter rings in the night.
Life is a wild and beautiful sickness.
In this universe of racing colors,
We are invincible.
Through the darkness we soar
Like two lonesome shooting stars
Tearing across the heavens.
We reach our park by the Bidasoa River,
Where freshwater meets saltwater,
And the salty scent of the sea mingles
With the aroma of pine trees and earth.
Lonely benches line the path, facing the water,
But we sit side by side on the cool, dewy grass.
Pine trees etch their silhouettes against a night sky
Bathed in the silvery glow of a full moon.
You ask me if I'm living the life I dreamed of.
I confess that things didn't pan out like I wished:
I never became a comic book artist.
But through designing websites for corporations,
I employ what little creativity I have left,
Or at least that's what I'd like to believe.
You ask me if I still remember us.
I tell you all the ways I do.
I was drawing my comic strip,
Sitting at the base of an oak tree
In my favorite spot of our school grounds.
The rough ridges of the bark dug into my back,
And the sunlight streamed through the leaves,
Falling in pools of amber-orange on the grass,
Bouncing off the paper in my lap.
Suddenly, there you were, towering over me
With your wild brown waves down your shoulders,
A carefree smile playing on your lips.
You asked what I was always drawing
That kept me alone and with my head down.
I tried to hide the pages, but you snatched them.
As your eyes darted over ink and graphite,
I tensed up, bracing myself for your mockery
Of the tale through which I lived vicariously.
It tracked the adventures
Of a team of heroes for hire
That drifted through the cosmos
In their ramshackle starship.
Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate,
Charted stars as their cunning captain;
Redheaded terror Asuka Langley
Was their fierce-eyed, unyielding gunner;
Ranma Saotome, fluid as water,
Their covert infiltration specialist.
The rest of their motley crew was filled
With characters from games, manga, and anime
That in days of solitude and sorrow
Had brought comfort and distraction.
While you flipped through the pages,
My pulse quickened, anxiety gripped me,
But you laughed out of delight.
Seated beside me, you kept reading.
Under the canopy of leaves,
Your chocolate eyes glittered
As you pointed out jokes and references
That I thought nobody but me would get.
Days later, you asked me how come
I used characters created by others.
I didn't dare come up with my own;
What if they were stupid and lame?
Wouldn't that mean I was talentless?
You told me I was a special kind of idiot;
Of course my first tries would suck.
Greatness takes effort, perseverance,
And a willingness to make mistakes.
If I kept working hard and learning
From the masters we both admired,
I too would one day create art
That moved hearts and minds,
That inspired others to dream and do,
But if I gave up, wallowing in fear,
I would end up like those pathetic adults
Who believed their dreams never came true
Because they didn't wish hard enough.
That couldn't be right, could it?
My mother always told me
That I was an intelligent boy,
Her bright, shining star,
Who'd nail every challenge
In the first try.
You invited me to your parents' place.
I spent my, until then, best afternoon
Playing Super Metroid on your SNES
And munching on barbecue fritos.
We recorded mock radio shows
On your dad's tape recorder.
You acted as the host
Interviewing me, your guest.
"Hello, citizens of Irún!
It's me, Izar Lizarraga,
Your one and only radio DJ,
Bringing you a special edition
Of 'Izar's Takeover,' coming live
From the studios of Channel 52.
Great lineup today, folks!
Our very own Guybrush Threepwood,
Bonafide pirate and space pioneer
Admired by millions, loved by all,
Reports to us from the ninth dimension.
How are you doing out there, Threepwood?"
"Well, it's been quite the thrill.
I've been trying to find the source
Of this mysterious pink goop
That's been popping up everywhere.
So far, it's led to a lot of shootin',
Scoopin' and lootin' in this cosmic void."
You showed me motocross races
From your collection of videocassettes
Nestled beside your bulky TV.
Dozens of racers clad in protective gear
Darted and wove amidst the pack
Astride dirt bikes with coil spring shocks,
Their knobby tires kicking up plumes of dust.
The racers zoomed and skidded,
They surged up series of steep ramps
And vaulted in graceful arcs
Before crashing back down to earth.
The races blurred before me,
A storm of dust, noise, and fury,
But that flickering screen illuminated
Your childlike grin.
Before I met you, I wasted entire days
Secluded in my darkened bedroom.
Now that you summoned me to your side,
We made memories out of our adventures.
At the arcade, we fed coins into Bubble Bobble.
You picked the green chubby dragon, I picked blue.
Like maniacs we jumped on 2D platforms
And trapped our foes inside colorful bubbles.
As we clutched the joysticks and punched buttons,
The warmth of your arm grazed my skin.
We hit every wooded area in the city,
Where we climbed trees
And swung from low-hanging branches
Although we kept landing on our asses.
We sneaked into construction sites
To slide downhill on cardboard.
At night, we climbed the chain-link fence
Of the primary school we had attended.
Here's where we played hopscotch,
Here's where I drew cartoons with chalk.
We rested our plastic buckets and shovels
Inside this little square filled with sand.
That night, we shot some hoops in the shadows
Until the custodian chased us off.
How often in comic book stores
Did I distract the cashier while you slid
A volume of manga down your pants,
Securing it with the waistband of your panties?
Remember when you lit firecrackers
In one of the toilets at our middle school?
That porcelain bowl burst like a grenade.
As we lay prone on gravel,
Your lighter's flame kissed
The tip of a hapless leaf,
That blackened and curled.
As an orange flame rippled
Like a flag in the breeze,
A white, incandescent band
Glided down the blade,
Leaving behind ashes.
One time you brought me to your home,
Your father picked a fight, I don't recall why.
He spoke to you like scum,
Like you were no daughter of his,
And threatened to go beyond words.
After he slammed the bedroom door,
You burst into tears. I hugged you tightly.
Your warm tears soaked my shirt
As I stroked your soft hair.
You whispered that you couldn't wait
To move far, far away.
I had also come to distrust my parents.
How many times did I hold my breath
While I pressed my ear against the door,
Eavesdropping on one of their quarrels
In case they decided to break apart my world?
I learnt how it felt to miss you for days;
You filled your afternoons after school
Studying for your motorbike license
Or working part-time as a cook at Telepizza.
One evening, lying on the grass at Aingura Park,
As the setting sun poured molten gold upon the river
And stray cats padded over our bellies,
You confessed, your eyes alight with dreams,
That you were saving up for a bike and riding gear,
That you intended to pursue your childhood dream
Of becoming a professional motocross rider,
Traveling the globe, competing at the highest level.
You made me board a bus
To an industrial park west of town.
As I meandered aimlessly
In front of workshops and warehouses,
A solitary figure emerged
Wearing white sneakers, jeans,
Padded polyester gloves,
A black motorbike helmet
With a tinted visor,
And a sleek red jacket.
You took off your carbon fiber helmet,
Freeing your caramel-brown waves.
Your eyes crinkled into half-moons
As you let out a hearty laugh.
After I met your beloved Aprilia Red Rose,
A treasure made yours from another's hands,
You tossed me a half-helmet;
You wanted to take me on my first ride.
Weren't you searching for a motocross bike?
Why choose this one instead?
You couldn't resist such a bargain, you said,
And you could save up then trade the Aprilia in.
You slipped your helmet over your face,
Visor down to shield against the bugs.
The half-helmet's padding hugged my head
As I fastened the strap under my chin.
Once I swung onto the bike behind you,
I clung to you like a koala.
You turned the ignition key
And twisted the throttle.
The engine growled and sputtered,
The exhaust let out raspy rattles.
As we raced toward an invisible finish line,
The roar of the engine echoed down
That sun-drenched industrial thoroughfare.
The bike's rumbling quivered through me,
From my feet braced against the foot pegs
To my fingertips curled around your waist.
Spilling out the sides of your helmet,
Wind-whipped hair danced against my face.
I found the ride exhilarating, terrifying,
Like a rollercoaster, like flying.
My heart pounded, my mouth dried up.
I wanted to scream into the void
And let the thrill consume me.
What happened to that poster-size picture
I drew of you, that you hung on your wall?
Against a backdrop of blurred lines,
There you were, an anime-style Izar,
Riding your yellow-and-white motorbike,
Your caramel-brown hair flowing behind you,
Your favorite Evangelion T-shirt rippling in the wind.
Your face beamed with an open-mouthed smile,
And your chocolate eyes stared straight ahead
To wherever the road would take you.
---
Author's note: the song for today is "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison.
Now that I have determined all the plot points and imagery that I want to include in the narrative, this side project of mine will likely take up to a month.
---
Wide awake at midnight,
As I lie in the oppressive dark,
I stretch my arm into the abyss of my mind,
Seeking the warmth of your hand.
I imagine the apartment's buzzer ringing;
You've come to take me away.
I put on clothes, kiss my sleeping kids goodbye,
And rush downstairs to join you.
Garbed in your sleek red jacket,
You're straddling the leather seat
And resting your elbows on the handlebars
Of your nineteen ninety-four Aprilia Red Rose.
Its lemon-yellow body, streaked with white,
Shimmers in the streetlights' glow.
The sharp beam of its headlight pierces the night.
Amber radiance outlines your caramel-brown hair,
But your face is lit by an unrestrained smile
That creases the corners of your chocolate eyes,
That shows off your crooked front teeth.
Once I climb onto the pillion behind you,
I wrap my arms around your slim waist.
You start up the beast, making it rumble,
And we roll down the road.
Streetlights blur to yellow streaks
As we rocket through the streets,
Zooming past cars and trucks,
Past darkened houses and shops.
The mechanical purring of the engine
Ebbs and flows through my bones.
The crisp wind of autumn stings my cheeks;
It smells like wet pavement and gasoline.
Your jacket and wavy hair rustle,
Your laughter rings in the night.
Life is a wild and beautiful sickness.
In this universe of racing colors,
We are invincible.
Through the darkness we soar
Like two lonesome shooting stars
Tearing across the heavens.
We reach our park by the Bidasoa River,
Where freshwater meets saltwater,
And the salty scent of the sea mingles
With the aroma of pine trees and earth.
Lonely benches line the path, facing the water,
But we sit side by side on the cool, dewy grass.
Pine trees etch their silhouettes against a night sky
Bathed in the silvery glow of a full moon.
You ask me if I'm living the life I dreamed of.
I confess that things didn't pan out like I wished:
I never became a comic book artist.
But through designing websites for corporations,
I employ what little creativity I have left,
Or at least that's what I'd like to believe.
You ask me if I still remember us.
I tell you all the ways I do.
I was drawing my comic strip,
Sitting at the base of an oak tree
In my favorite spot of our school grounds.
The rough ridges of the bark dug into my back,
And the sunlight streamed through the leaves,
Falling in pools of amber-orange on the grass,
Bouncing off the paper in my lap.
Suddenly, there you were, towering over me
With your wild brown waves down your shoulders,
A carefree smile playing on your lips.
You asked what I was always drawing
That kept me alone and with my head down.
I tried to hide the pages, but you snatched them.
As your eyes darted over ink and graphite,
I tensed up, bracing myself for your mockery
Of the tale through which I lived vicariously.
It tracked the adventures
Of a team of heroes for hire
That drifted through the cosmos
In their ramshackle starship.
Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate,
Charted stars as their cunning captain;
Redheaded terror Asuka Langley
Was their fierce-eyed, unyielding gunner;
Ranma Saotome, fluid as water,
Their covert infiltration specialist.
The rest of their motley crew was filled
With characters from games, manga, and anime
That in days of solitude and sorrow
Had brought comfort and distraction.
While you flipped through the pages,
My pulse quickened, anxiety gripped me,
But you laughed out of delight.
Seated beside me, you kept reading.
Under the canopy of leaves,
Your chocolate eyes glittered
As you pointed out jokes and references
That I thought nobody but me would get.
Days later, you asked me how come
I used characters created by others.
I didn't dare come up with my own;
What if they were stupid and lame?
Wouldn't that mean I was talentless?
You told me I was a special kind of idiot;
Of course my first tries would suck.
Greatness takes effort, perseverance,
And a willingness to make mistakes.
If I kept working hard and learning
From the masters we both admired,
I too would one day create art
That moved hearts and minds,
That inspired others to dream and do,
But if I gave up, wallowing in fear,
I would end up like those pathetic adults
Who believed their dreams never came true
Because they didn't wish hard enough.
That couldn't be right, could it?
My mother always told me
That I was an intelligent boy,
Her bright, shining star,
Who'd nail every challenge
In the first try.
You invited me to your parents' place.
I spent my, until then, best afternoon
Playing Super Metroid on your SNES
And munching on barbecue fritos.
We recorded mock radio shows
On your dad's tape recorder.
You acted as the host
Interviewing me, your guest.
"Hello, citizens of Irún!
It's me, Izar Lizarraga,
Your one and only radio DJ,
Bringing you a special edition
Of 'Izar's Takeover,' coming live
From the studios of Channel 52.
Great lineup today, folks!
Our very own Guybrush Threepwood,
Bonafide pirate and space pioneer
Admired by millions, loved by all,
Reports to us from the ninth dimension.
How are you doing out there, Threepwood?"
"Well, it's been quite the thrill.
I've been trying to find the source
Of this mysterious pink goop
That's been popping up everywhere.
So far, it's led to a lot of shootin',
Scoopin' and lootin' in this cosmic void."
You showed me motocross races
From your collection of videocassettes
Nestled beside your bulky TV.
Dozens of racers clad in protective gear
Darted and wove amidst the pack
Astride dirt bikes with coil spring shocks,
Their knobby tires kicking up plumes of dust.
The racers zoomed and skidded,
They surged up series of steep ramps
And vaulted in graceful arcs
Before crashing back down to earth.
The races blurred before me,
A storm of dust, noise, and fury,
But that flickering screen illuminated
Your childlike grin.
Before I met you, I wasted entire days
Secluded in my darkened bedroom.
Now that you summoned me to your side,
We made memories out of our adventures.
At the arcade, we fed coins into Bubble Bobble.
You picked the green chubby dragon, I picked blue.
Like maniacs we jumped on 2D platforms
And trapped our foes inside colorful bubbles.
As we clutched the joysticks and punched buttons,
The warmth of your arm grazed my skin.
We hit every wooded area in the city,
Where we climbed trees
And swung from low-hanging branches
Although we kept landing on our asses.
We sneaked into construction sites
To slide downhill on cardboard.
At night, we climbed the chain-link fence
Of the primary school we had attended.
Here's where we played hopscotch,
Here's where I drew cartoons with chalk.
We rested our plastic buckets and shovels
Inside this little square filled with sand.
That night, we shot some hoops in the shadows
Until the custodian chased us off.
How often in comic book stores
Did I distract the cashier while you slid
A volume of manga down your pants,
Securing it with the waistband of your panties?
Remember when you lit firecrackers
In one of the toilets at our middle school?
That porcelain bowl burst like a grenade.
As we lay prone on gravel,
Your lighter's flame kissed
The tip of a hapless leaf,
That blackened and curled.
As an orange flame rippled
Like a flag in the breeze,
A white, incandescent band
Glided down the blade,
Leaving behind ashes.
One time you brought me to your home,
Your father picked a fight, I don't recall why.
He spoke to you like scum,
Like you were no daughter of his,
And threatened to go beyond words.
After he slammed the bedroom door,
You burst into tears. I hugged you tightly.
Your warm tears soaked my shirt
As I stroked your soft hair.
You whispered that you couldn't wait
To move far, far away.
I had also come to distrust my parents.
How many times did I hold my breath
While I pressed my ear against the door,
Eavesdropping on one of their quarrels
In case they decided to break apart my world?
I learnt how it felt to miss you for days;
You filled your afternoons after school
Studying for your motorbike license
Or working part-time as a cook at Telepizza.
One evening, lying on the grass at Aingura Park,
As the setting sun poured molten gold upon the river
And stray cats padded over our bellies,
You confessed, your eyes alight with dreams,
That you were saving up for a bike and riding gear,
That you intended to pursue your childhood dream
Of becoming a professional motocross rider,
Traveling the globe, competing at the highest level.
You made me board a bus
To an industrial park west of town.
As I meandered aimlessly
In front of workshops and warehouses,
A solitary figure emerged
Wearing white sneakers, jeans,
Padded polyester gloves,
A black motorbike helmet
With a tinted visor,
And a sleek red jacket.
You took off your carbon fiber helmet,
Freeing your caramel-brown waves.
Your eyes crinkled into half-moons
As you let out a hearty laugh.
After I met your beloved Aprilia Red Rose,
A treasure made yours from another's hands,
You tossed me a half-helmet;
You wanted to take me on my first ride.
Weren't you searching for a motocross bike?
Why choose this one instead?
You couldn't resist such a bargain, you said,
And you could save up then trade the Aprilia in.
You slipped your helmet over your face,
Visor down to shield against the bugs.
The half-helmet's padding hugged my head
As I fastened the strap under my chin.
Once I swung onto the bike behind you,
I clung to you like a koala.
You turned the ignition key
And twisted the throttle.
The engine growled and sputtered,
The exhaust let out raspy rattles.
As we raced toward an invisible finish line,
The roar of the engine echoed down
That sun-drenched industrial thoroughfare.
The bike's rumbling quivered through me,
From my feet braced against the foot pegs
To my fingertips curled around your waist.
Spilling out the sides of your helmet,
Wind-whipped hair danced against my face.
I found the ride exhilarating, terrifying,
Like a rollercoaster, like flying.
My heart pounded, my mouth dried up.
I wanted to scream into the void
And let the thrill consume me.
What happened to that poster-size picture
I drew of you, that you hung on your wall?
Against a backdrop of blurred lines,
There you were, an anime-style Izar,
Riding your yellow-and-white motorbike,
Your caramel-brown hair flowing behind you,
Your favorite Evangelion T-shirt rippling in the wind.
Your face beamed with an open-mouthed smile,
And your chocolate eyes stared straight ahead
To wherever the road would take you.
---
Author's note: the song for today is "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison.
Now that I have determined all the plot points and imagery that I want to include in the narrative, this side project of mine will likely take up to a month.
January 11, 2024
On writing: Desire line #1
You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.
Do you have a killer concept, a promising premise, and a protagonist worth a damn? Then you should determine the goal that your characters will pursue, and that will result in the plot of your story.
-Plot, in its simplest manifestation, is all about the protagonist’s thwarted goal. He wants something, and he can’t have it, so he keeps right on trying.
-You need to give your character a quest, a journey to take, a problem to solve, a goal to strive for. In other words, a plot. Something that presents risk, has options, has opposition and stakes hanging in the balance.
-What is the single, overarching question the story would answer? For example, “Will the good guys manage to reach Mordor and destroy the One Ring?”
-Can it be one of these five basic types of goals?
--The need to win (competition, the love of another)
--The need to stop (someone, something bad from happening)
--The need to escape
--The need to deliver (a message, one’s self, an item)
--The need to retrieve (a magic ring, a hidden or lost treasure, a lost love)
-How strong could you make the goal, based on the following Maslow-like hierarchy of needs?
--Survive (escape)
--Take revenge
--Win the battle
--Achieve something
--Explore a world
--Catch a criminal
--Find the truth
--Gain love
--Bring justice and freedom
--Save the nation
--Save the world
-What kind of goal can I give my main character that will seem impossible to reach?
-Every story is defined by what the protagonist wants. This external goal (the Thing He Wants Most) starts out as the story’s manifestation of ultimate pleasure (even if the story’s true source of “pleasure” is really the Thing He Needs Most). Naturally, the character is headed straight toward this font of bliss.
-The protagonist must have a worthy goal (what he needs to accomplish during the story). The goal must be concrete and measurable. He must have a believable motivation to want to carry out his goal (along with a personal need behind the external motivation).
-Do you know what your protagonist’s external goal is, the thing he’s trying to get? What specific goal does his desire catapult him toward? Beware of simply shoving him into a generic “bad situation” just to see what he will do. Remember, achieving his goal must fulfill a longstanding need or desire –and force him to face a deep-seated fear in the process.
-Does your protagonist’s goal force her to face a specific longstanding problem or fear? What secret terror must she face to get there? What deeply held belief will she have to question? What has she spent her whole life avoiding that she now must either look straight in the eye or wave the white flag of defeat?
-It always come back to: what do these events mean to the protagonist? What is her true goal? Knowing this will allow you to make her goal specific to her, rather than leaving it as a surface (read: generic) goal that we all have.
-Is her goal tired up with a core need, a passion, a dream? Is it something she must get, have, stop, reach? Is her emotional nature and spirituality tied to that goal?
-Goals aren’t necessarily straightforward. The ones that matter aren’t so much related to the events of the story, as they are related to the reasons why your protagonist participates in these events. The true objectives of your protagonists are based on their flaws and the things they need to overcome those flaws.
-Is the problem capable of forcing the protagonist to make the inner change that your novel is actually about?
-How will it make things happen that will force the protagonist to make his internal change, or fail at it?
-To intertwine with the character arc, this goal needs to be an extension or reflection of something that matters to the character on a deeper level. How is the lie/flaw at the root of that soul-deep reason?
-How does it bring the protagonist face to face with their worst fear, the force that is going to force them to face up their underlying flaw?
-How does the lie/flaw play out in the character’s life, and the story, through the conflict between the Thing He Needs (the Truth) and the Thing He Wants (the perceived cure for the symptoms of the Lie).
-How is he pursuing a goal or goals that are furthering their enslavement to their lies/flaws? They’re not pursuing happiness and fulfillment holistically by addressing the lie. Rather, they’re trying to get what they want in spite of their refusal to buck up and look deep into the darkness of their own souls.
-Does the protagonist go on this journey to solve the desire line to recognize that what he wants stands in direct opposition to what they need?
-What is the organic, escalating scenario that forces the protagonist to confront her inner issue? How does everything the protagonist faces, beginning on page one, spring specifically from the problem she needs to solve, both internally and externally?
-How does the protagonist think that if he can just have what he wants, all will be well?
-How does the protagonist want to fulfill the goal real bad?
-How could that goal mean everything to the protagonist?
-Does this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear and/or an ironic answer to the hero’s question?
-How does this challenge tell who the protagonist really is?
Do you have a killer concept, a promising premise, and a protagonist worth a damn? Then you should determine the goal that your characters will pursue, and that will result in the plot of your story.
-Plot, in its simplest manifestation, is all about the protagonist’s thwarted goal. He wants something, and he can’t have it, so he keeps right on trying.
-You need to give your character a quest, a journey to take, a problem to solve, a goal to strive for. In other words, a plot. Something that presents risk, has options, has opposition and stakes hanging in the balance.
-What is the single, overarching question the story would answer? For example, “Will the good guys manage to reach Mordor and destroy the One Ring?”
-Can it be one of these five basic types of goals?
--The need to win (competition, the love of another)
--The need to stop (someone, something bad from happening)
--The need to escape
--The need to deliver (a message, one’s self, an item)
--The need to retrieve (a magic ring, a hidden or lost treasure, a lost love)
-How strong could you make the goal, based on the following Maslow-like hierarchy of needs?
--Survive (escape)
--Take revenge
--Win the battle
--Achieve something
--Explore a world
--Catch a criminal
--Find the truth
--Gain love
--Bring justice and freedom
--Save the nation
--Save the world
-What kind of goal can I give my main character that will seem impossible to reach?
-Every story is defined by what the protagonist wants. This external goal (the Thing He Wants Most) starts out as the story’s manifestation of ultimate pleasure (even if the story’s true source of “pleasure” is really the Thing He Needs Most). Naturally, the character is headed straight toward this font of bliss.
-The protagonist must have a worthy goal (what he needs to accomplish during the story). The goal must be concrete and measurable. He must have a believable motivation to want to carry out his goal (along with a personal need behind the external motivation).
-Do you know what your protagonist’s external goal is, the thing he’s trying to get? What specific goal does his desire catapult him toward? Beware of simply shoving him into a generic “bad situation” just to see what he will do. Remember, achieving his goal must fulfill a longstanding need or desire –and force him to face a deep-seated fear in the process.
-Does your protagonist’s goal force her to face a specific longstanding problem or fear? What secret terror must she face to get there? What deeply held belief will she have to question? What has she spent her whole life avoiding that she now must either look straight in the eye or wave the white flag of defeat?
-It always come back to: what do these events mean to the protagonist? What is her true goal? Knowing this will allow you to make her goal specific to her, rather than leaving it as a surface (read: generic) goal that we all have.
-Is her goal tired up with a core need, a passion, a dream? Is it something she must get, have, stop, reach? Is her emotional nature and spirituality tied to that goal?
-Goals aren’t necessarily straightforward. The ones that matter aren’t so much related to the events of the story, as they are related to the reasons why your protagonist participates in these events. The true objectives of your protagonists are based on their flaws and the things they need to overcome those flaws.
-Is the problem capable of forcing the protagonist to make the inner change that your novel is actually about?
-How will it make things happen that will force the protagonist to make his internal change, or fail at it?
-To intertwine with the character arc, this goal needs to be an extension or reflection of something that matters to the character on a deeper level. How is the lie/flaw at the root of that soul-deep reason?
-How does it bring the protagonist face to face with their worst fear, the force that is going to force them to face up their underlying flaw?
-How does the lie/flaw play out in the character’s life, and the story, through the conflict between the Thing He Needs (the Truth) and the Thing He Wants (the perceived cure for the symptoms of the Lie).
-How is he pursuing a goal or goals that are furthering their enslavement to their lies/flaws? They’re not pursuing happiness and fulfillment holistically by addressing the lie. Rather, they’re trying to get what they want in spite of their refusal to buck up and look deep into the darkness of their own souls.
-Does the protagonist go on this journey to solve the desire line to recognize that what he wants stands in direct opposition to what they need?
-What is the organic, escalating scenario that forces the protagonist to confront her inner issue? How does everything the protagonist faces, beginning on page one, spring specifically from the problem she needs to solve, both internally and externally?
-How does the protagonist think that if he can just have what he wants, all will be well?
-How does the protagonist want to fulfill the goal real bad?
-How could that goal mean everything to the protagonist?
-Does this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear and/or an ironic answer to the hero’s question?
-How does this challenge tell who the protagonist really is?
January 10, 2024
On writing: Protagonist #3
You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.
If you’ve been following my posts up to this point and you’ve done the necessary work, you should have ended up with a killer concept and a promising premise. Congraturation! But this story is still far from its happy end. The following notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on creating a worthy protagonist that will endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and that in the end will either emerge victorious or fail spectacularly.
-Try to define specifically what the protagonist would be changing from.
-Who is this person on the inside? What do they believe? What do they want? Where are they in their life, specifically? Your goal, as always, is to infuse what your protagonist has done with the internal reason why they did it. Never lose sight of this simple fact: it’s not just about what your protagonist did, it’s about why.
-What is the fundamental character change of the hero? It’s what your hero experiences by going through his struggle. Weaknesses x Struggle = Change.
-How is this character with certain weaknesses, when being put through the wringer of a particular struggle, is forged and tempered into a changed being?
-You don’t need to know exactly how the story is going to end, but you do need to know what the protagonist will have to learn along the way, what her “aha!” moment will be.
-Possible character arcs:
--Young person challenging and changing basic beliefs and taking new moral action.
--Character goes from being concerned only with finding the right path for himself to realizing he must help others find the right path.
--From caring only about himself to rejoining society as a leader.
--From helping a few others find the right path to forcing others to follow his path.
--From helping a few others to seeing how an entire society should change and live in the future.
-At the beginning of every story these elements are unconscious, then it’s possible to chart how those flaws are brought into the conscious mind, acted on, and finally fully overcome.
-Their unconscious flaw is brought to the surface, exposed to a new world, acted upon; the consequences of overcoming their flaw are explored, doubt and prevarication set in before, finally, they resolve to conquer it and embrace their new selves.
-The protagonist goes on a journey to overcome their flaw. They learn the quality they need to achieve their goal; or, in other words, they change. Change is thus inextricably linked to dramatic desire: if a character wants something, they are going to have to change to get it.
-Start building the arc by starting at the end of the change, with the self-revelation, then go back and determine the starting point of the change, which is the hero’s need and desire.
-What is the preworld / mirror moment / transformation? If you can’t build them from the idea, it’s likely not a good choice.
-How does the key way your protagonist will change by the end of the novel tie in specifically with the premise and kicker?
-If your protagonist would take pretty much the same action at both the beginning and end of the story, you know his Change Arc isn’t strong enough. This holds true for Flat Arcs as well. Although the character’s personal truth and integrity may hold fast throughout the story, he shouldn’t have the motive or understanding to act in the same way at the beginning as he will in the end.
-How does the story, as the hero goes after the goal, challenge his most deep-seated beliefs?
-The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty, and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.
-The protagonist's superficial wants remain unsated; they’re rejected in favour of the more profound unconscious hunger inside. The characters get what they need. Expecting one thing on their quest, they find themselves confronted with another; traditional worldviews aren’t reinforced, prejudices aren’t reaffirmed; instead the protagonists’ worldviews – and thus ours too – are realigned. Both literally and figuratively we are moved.
-How do you keep in the back of the audiences’ mind for as much of the story as you can the question “will the hero do the right thing, and will he do it in time?”.
-If the hero doesn’t change for good, can you heighten the hero’s “might-have-been” factor and lost potential while showing that the hero’s actions are his responsibility?
-Will the world change along with the hero? If so, how?
If you’ve been following my posts up to this point and you’ve done the necessary work, you should have ended up with a killer concept and a promising premise. Congraturation! But this story is still far from its happy end. The following notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on creating a worthy protagonist that will endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and that in the end will either emerge victorious or fail spectacularly.
-Try to define specifically what the protagonist would be changing from.
-Who is this person on the inside? What do they believe? What do they want? Where are they in their life, specifically? Your goal, as always, is to infuse what your protagonist has done with the internal reason why they did it. Never lose sight of this simple fact: it’s not just about what your protagonist did, it’s about why.
-What is the fundamental character change of the hero? It’s what your hero experiences by going through his struggle. Weaknesses x Struggle = Change.
-How is this character with certain weaknesses, when being put through the wringer of a particular struggle, is forged and tempered into a changed being?
-You don’t need to know exactly how the story is going to end, but you do need to know what the protagonist will have to learn along the way, what her “aha!” moment will be.
-Possible character arcs:
--Young person challenging and changing basic beliefs and taking new moral action.
--Character goes from being concerned only with finding the right path for himself to realizing he must help others find the right path.
--From caring only about himself to rejoining society as a leader.
--From helping a few others find the right path to forcing others to follow his path.
--From helping a few others to seeing how an entire society should change and live in the future.
-At the beginning of every story these elements are unconscious, then it’s possible to chart how those flaws are brought into the conscious mind, acted on, and finally fully overcome.
-Their unconscious flaw is brought to the surface, exposed to a new world, acted upon; the consequences of overcoming their flaw are explored, doubt and prevarication set in before, finally, they resolve to conquer it and embrace their new selves.
-The protagonist goes on a journey to overcome their flaw. They learn the quality they need to achieve their goal; or, in other words, they change. Change is thus inextricably linked to dramatic desire: if a character wants something, they are going to have to change to get it.
-Start building the arc by starting at the end of the change, with the self-revelation, then go back and determine the starting point of the change, which is the hero’s need and desire.
-What is the preworld / mirror moment / transformation? If you can’t build them from the idea, it’s likely not a good choice.
-How does the key way your protagonist will change by the end of the novel tie in specifically with the premise and kicker?
-If your protagonist would take pretty much the same action at both the beginning and end of the story, you know his Change Arc isn’t strong enough. This holds true for Flat Arcs as well. Although the character’s personal truth and integrity may hold fast throughout the story, he shouldn’t have the motive or understanding to act in the same way at the beginning as he will in the end.
-How does the story, as the hero goes after the goal, challenge his most deep-seated beliefs?
-The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty, and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.
-The protagonist's superficial wants remain unsated; they’re rejected in favour of the more profound unconscious hunger inside. The characters get what they need. Expecting one thing on their quest, they find themselves confronted with another; traditional worldviews aren’t reinforced, prejudices aren’t reaffirmed; instead the protagonists’ worldviews – and thus ours too – are realigned. Both literally and figuratively we are moved.
-How do you keep in the back of the audiences’ mind for as much of the story as you can the question “will the hero do the right thing, and will he do it in time?”.
-If the hero doesn’t change for good, can you heighten the hero’s “might-have-been” factor and lost potential while showing that the hero’s actions are his responsibility?
-Will the world change along with the hero? If so, how?
