Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 55

Writing Practice, May 27 2015

The Letter, Variant 1

Sid thumbed the envelope he'd just picked up after having dropped it in a violent panic, the sort of reaction you can't help but make when they've found you, they've really found you, and there's no more running, no way to escape it now because they've got you, oh man have they got you. Even if you're an honest man, the most honest man on your block, and other honest men come to you for advice on how to be even more honest, you still know this feeling. The hair on the back of your neck is there for this purpose. They have no other worldly function but to raise and thereby alert you of the great danger, of the men who have found you and are approaching.

Sid picked up the letter and reexamined the seal. He'd heard of the feel of the thing, hot and charred, as if branded by a previous generations' hot poker. The simple circle imprinted on a rectangle. Ominous as all get out. Life changing. Some people called it the duty. Some people called it the thing your country did to you. But Sid never called it anything out of fear it would find him.

Writing Practice, May 26 2015

We decided to install a room in our house. It seems selfish, but a lot of couples are doing it these days. The standard apartment of today is around 300 square feet, which doesn't leave a lot of room for privacy, you know. You're really in each others space a lot. So we bought the thing. You know, oh, what's it called? The time box? Yeah. It, um, it looks like a futuristic coffin, all shiny copper. No, it might not be real copper, but that's what it looks like. The box looks incredibly ahead of its time and also a thousand years old. It doesn't look like there's a lot of room in there, but it has a sort of isolation chamber effect where the mind makes it seem limitless. And when you're in there, that's the real kicker. It's like time stops. You go in and tap the button to seal it, and the clocks stop turning. You can stay in there as long as you want, and not only will you not age or tire or anything, neither will anyone else. You can go in there and take an hour or two, and when you come out everything in the world is absolutely the same. That way, there's no fomo. You can get away without the world moving on without you. Oh, yes, it was expensive. We had to give up quite a lot of our childhood memories to pay for it. But I couldn't live without it, now.

Writing Practice, May 24 2015

How many dates before you can expect a kiss?

This question leaves out so many elements about personal agency and context that there's no civilized way to answer it.

How many dates before I can show them my apartment?

The answer is either no dates or a million. Is showing them your belongings something you even want to do? Are you sure? These are your things we're talking about. Have you considered throwing out everything you own and furnishing anew for this hypothetical person?

Hide the lamp.

How many dates before I can introduce them to my parents?

Your parents will love your new hypothetical to-be, and vice versa. People are nicer than you give them credit for. There's almost no chance the encounter will end in bloodshed or in the two Dakota's merging.

Ten dates.

How many dates before I can expect sex?

This question is poorly written.

How many dates before I can get sex?

Worse.

But sex tho

Come on.

okay, okay. I've heard three dates. That's the standard.

If you know so much about this, why are you asking me?

Because I have no idea where I got that information. You're real. I can cite you.

If you show this advice column to your hypothetical to-be after three dates while asking for expected three-date sex, I'm never giving you advice again.

Okay, so help me out!

Honestly, see question 1. There's no way to answer this hypothetically. It all hinges on chemistry and agency. They have to like you, and you have to like them, and then you both have to say yes many, many times.

How many times do they have to say yes before I know it's okay

Until they are annoyed with you asking. Until you have spoiled the mood by being too careful.

How many dates before I can buy them an Apple watch so I know their location and heartbeat all the time?

Bring them one on the first date. Everybody loves me.

Writing practice, May 22 2015

It hits you. You stand before the same memory castle where you store, among other relics, bands you used to like. In the rooms of one drowned memory, a light goes on and a woman appears. You can't make out her face. You were never good at faces. But you were good at hands so you see her hands. They hold two things: No Doubt's first tape and a letter. She hands you the letter, and you open it while wondering what she's going to do with the tape. As you wonder, she puts metal wire headphones with torn mesh coverings over her ponytail and hits play on the waterproof Walkman you got for Christmas in 1994. You see her red cross-red nail polish glisten in the... sun? Is that a sun? She stands outside your memory mansion in the sun. You didn't realize you'd come back outside. The castle is so far away now, but she is still there. You can't see her face, she is listening to your old things, and she has handed you a letter. You feel the only way you can.

Writing Practice, May 21 2015

The things you want cost more now. The things you don't even think about cost more now. There isn't anything, from widget to stern (though who buys sterns?) that isn't more now than it used to be. The air is more expensive. The air is canned. What isn't bottled, will be. What is a simple pleasure today will be rarified upper class luxury in a generation. That fishing trip your dad took you on fifteen years ago costs fifteen thousand dollars now, and won't even be a thing you can do fifteen years from now. That lake will be drained. Another lake will go in. Then a condo. Then another lake. Then a bunch of graves. Then a lake. That area might be just thirty lakes. It depends a lot on zoning.

But the thing is, these things go away and you only miss them because they were yours, or at least yours for the moment you stood there in that space. They might not have been good. But you don't think about that. You only think about you, and your memory, and whatever lake as fake as pro wrestling you might take your kid (who hates you, and lakes, and will grow up to be the exact type of lawyer that gets rid of these things, rezoning them as Republican parking lots).

Don't look into the future. Don't look under the rug. Don't open the door. Don't ask about my real name.

Writing practice, May 20 2015

Fine, here are the things I like about you.

You don't look like any other people.

Cassandra Truth

From TV Tropes:

The title comes from the mythical seer Cassandra, whose prophecies were always accurate but never believed due to a curse from the god Apollo, thus making this Older Than Feudalism.

From the final episode of Mad Men. Transcript from Bustle:

“I messed everything up. I’m not the man you think I am,” Don whispers to Peggy, and it’s time he came clean to her about what he’s done so far in his life. Peggy, though, doesn’t realize what’s happening. She doesn’t know another Don Draper — she’s never met Dick Whitman. Don presses on, trying to explain to her who he really is. ”I broke all my vows. I scandalized my child. I took another man’s name. and made  nothing of it.” 

“That’s not true,” Peggy says back. 

Writing Practice, May 19 2015

Wet flecks of sweat and water. Bodies brushing and pushing, arms, feet stomping on feet, on crushed cans, on the cement floor of the earth. Muscles work, calories burned, cell phones dropped and smashed, memories lost, hopefully backed up. Feet hurt because they're old. Hands feel like lightning turned cold. Hopefully the grid holds. Signing up has advantages. Darkness, then light, then new rainbows of color, so quick a camera loses it. How do they do that with the beat and the lights? Technology, they would think, if they thought about it. Technology. That, and rock and roll. You gotta have rock and roll.

What's the most beautiful paragraph or sentence you've ever read?

Sometimes the internet can be the best place in the world. A few favourites from the list: 

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh?" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

― A.A. Milne

“She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”

― J.D. Salinger

"And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back."

― Hunter S. Thompson

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Writing practice, may 18 2015

Leaves caught in the wind hit their faces and bodies. They stood in an electric field, the kind that bisecs suburbs. It was hot out, and dark, and the wind came out of nowhere. Harris and Georgette were exhausted, but she wouldn't budge. She was going home, and it was only a mile away, but she couldn't walk and argue.

He didn't understand. She said, again, for the third time and in a third tone, "I don't care. I just need five minutes. I just need to be in a room alone for five minutes."

This fight was a rerun. Georgette had drawers of this argument in her memory. She'd had it with everyone who'd ever found out. The wind picked up, grew violent. Trees bent and somewhere close, buckled enough to make a thunder.

He responded with a fist sentence. "Why can't I know everything about you?"

Georgette held one arm with another. She hadn't brought a jacket and was freezing. Harris offered her his, and she took it. She wrapped the thick boy thing around her like a fire blanket.

"Can't it be enough that I tell you everything but this thing?"

"It's just strange," he said, trying to quantify it in the realm of normal behavior. The sky darkened around them. In a few minutes, a newsworthy rain would find them. "It's not that I don't trust you, or want you to have privacy. It would just be better if I knew what the hell it was you did on your own every day in that room."

Georgette walked and said nothing. Harris balked, but she blew by him. She had an alarming stride. He caught up to her, and grabbed her arm. She roared her reply. "I ask you for one thing. One thing! But I can't have that. I give you and let you and abide you. Abide me! Abide me this tiny alice of time, and don't think about it, and don't worry about it, and don't ask me. Other people, normal people, do that all the time. They let their partner have just a little bit."

The relationship was over by the beginning of the storm.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It's just too weird. I'd never be totally comfortable." Georgette heard the words before he said it. She'd heard them half a dozen times before. He didn't even have to say them. He just had to walk back through the electrical field, back to his side of the suburb.