Category: Life

Fire With Fire

A strange thing has been happening with my lips lately. They are swollen and split, segmented into thin cellular clumps like slices of bruised apples. I am dedicating myself, still, to my miserable novel, as well as other elements of quotidian life. Not everything I have been doing has been going beautifully. But when I ask my mother to print a photograph for me at her workplace, she brings home various sizes and angles of the same picture, black and white, vivid hues, subdued tones, in a spring green folder left on my desk: this is the sort of thing that motivates me to move on, to keep grabbing and ripping and yanking at the serpentine vines of my own personal jungle. Oh, please forgive my childish metaphors: these are the only sorts of things that make sense to me, now, nowadays.

This summer, when I wrote my short story, I was extremely enamored of a certain phrase: “to seek, to strive, to find and not to yield.” A line from Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and inscribed on the cairn of snow that marks RF Scott’s place of death. I think of Platyhelminthes, simple, dumb, uncomplicated flat worms composed of a one-two-three body structure and no heart nor lungs. Platyhelminthes, who, when cut in thirds, will regrow the parts they are missing, effectively becoming three organisms from one. Regenerating their heads, those stupid beasts, doing everything I cannot!

The other day on the radio I heard the song “Fire With Fire” by Scissor Sisters. I’d never heard it before, but it melded in with my state of mind and the landscape wonderfully. The twists and gurgles of far-away mountains, slate blue, shady but always new to my infant eyes. Fight fire with fire, fire with fire, fire with fire. Yes. Though not everything I have been doing has been going beautifully, I have weapons at my disposal, sheer gut and gumption, fiendish blaze curdling in my own metalworker’s stomach. I have reasons and mechanisms to ignite. Fire with fire.

Update #10

USER: EMMA HAS INPUT SELF-DESTRUCT MECHANISM IN SENTIENT ROBOT. UPDATES TO TERMINATE PREMATURELY.

1. How Emma has been feeling

Useless, a little heartbroken. But somehow content! Somehow in love with my story, impossibly!

I have been going around my grade and asking people how they feel about love. This is half-meant as investigation for my novel. The other half of the meaning is as private as the condition of my kidneys. Asking teenagers about their crushes in scientific language (see: this) will probably further cement the general idea that I am a freak but really, who cares? They are willing to talk to me seriously! These children are baring their secret hearts to me! I couldn’t be more grateful if I tried.

I am a happy girl, for this and other reasons. Yes, not everything is going splendidly, yes, I feel very strongly all the bad things, but I manage. I manage the best and only way I know how. You say to me, “I feel terrible today, I am in one of those adolescent moods” and I want to grab you by the shoulders and say “darling, life is beautiful!”

Update #9

EMMA IS OFF LIVING, WHICH, IN THIS CASE MEANS, EMMA IS OFF WRITING. THE WEBPAGE “CONSCIENCE ROUND” HAS THUS BECOME SENTIENT, AND CONTINUES TO UPDATE. UPDATES TO TERMINATE ON NOVEMBER THE THIRTIETH.

1. What Emma wrote on her seventh day of NaNoWriMo, November 7, 2010

I’ve hit the 10,000 word mark. Now I have roughly five plots in one, all of them more ludicrous than the previous (consider plot #1, male protagonist sprouts flowers in his hair, and plot #4, male and female protagonist go on a trip to see a massive underground glass bell.)

So far every one of those 10,000 words has been dismal action or dumb allegory. Where is the spark, Emma? Better find it, better find it soon.

2. 2. Emma’s NaNoWriMo ‘10 Novel (fragment #3)

Light roaming even beneath his eyelids, in the roots of his flowery hair, disrobing the innocent knave to the frivolous eyes of dying Lady Day. Evening is beginning to make itself seen in the corners of the world, becoming first apparent as it crawls from the backs of mountains. He seeks an escape, these pent-up frustrations to which he knows neither the beginnings nor the end. He does not want to do anything for the rest of his life.

Update #8

EMMA IS OFF LIVING, WHICH, IN THIS CASE MEANS, EMMA IS OFF WRITING. THE WEBPAGE “CONSCIENCE ROUND” HAS THUS BECOME SENTIENT, AND CONTINUES TO UPDATE. UPDATES TO TERMINATE ON NOVEMBER THE THIRTIETH.

1. What Emma wrote on her fifth day of NaNoWriMo, November 5, 2010

I haven’t written in two days. But now I have an added incentive to finish my novel, because it has magically become my final English project. How great is my English teacher? The only problem: I haven’t written in two days.

TIME TO GET CRACKING.

Update #7

EMMA IS OFF LIVING, WHICH, IN THIS CASE MEANS, EMMA IS OFF WRITING. THE WEBPAGE “CONSCIENCE ROUND” HAS THUS BECOME SENTIENT, AND CONTINUES TO UPDATE. UPDATES TO TERMINATE ON NOVEMBER THE THIRTIETH.

1. What Emma’s homeroom teacher said about her on the first parent-teacher conference

“I think Emma’s made a lot of progress socially! She seems more animated now during recess.”

Emma’s parents stare at the teacher. She pauses a moment to revise the statement.

“Well, I mean, it’s not like they’d accept her immediately, you know. But she’s trying.”

Update #6

EMMA IS OFF LIVING, WHICH, IN THIS CASE MEANS, EMMA IS OFF WRITING. THE WEBPAGE “CONSCIENCE ROUND” HAS THUS BECOME SENTIENT, AND CONTINUES TO UPDATE. UPDATES TO TERMINATE ON NOVEMBER THE THIRTIETH.

1. What Emma wrote on her second day of NaNoWriMo, November 2, 2010

If I hated my writing yesterday, today I find it beyond repulsive. I have no outline, no believable characters, no setting, no proper plot, no fixed narrator. How am I still writing?

2. Emma’s NaNoWriMo ’10 Novel (fragment #2)

This is not good news for Toru, Toru who knows what “going to the mountain with Mother” means. But before he can protest, Mother takes the middle and forefinger of her left hand and makes a pair of scissors, silencing him.

Update #5

EMMA IS OFF LIVING, WHICH, IN THIS CASE MEANS, EMMA IS OFF WRITING. THE WEBPAGE “CONSCIENCE ROUND” HAS THUS BECOME SENTIENT, AND CONTINUES TO UPDATE. UPDATES TO TERMINATE ON NOVEMBER THE THIRTIETH.

1. What Emma wrote on her first day of NaNoWriMo, November 1, 2010

I’ve written 1908 words now, and I hate almost all of them. I think this is a start.

2. Emma’s NaNoWriMo ’10 Novel (fragment #1)

The coast looks much like the bottom of a sea, were it emptied of water. Bleached whale bone sand and pouring sun, dead algea pooling in crevices where maybe fish swim. The ocean itself is not much to look at, certainly not a lovely thing, refusing to glitter prettily in the sun as its sisters on other sides of the world might do. Its decoration is only the air above it, and the string of shacks that make use of it, these shacks where the Fish family live.

Update #4

EMMA IS OFF LIVING, WHICH, IN THIS CASE MEANS, EMMA IS OFF WRITING. THE WEBPAGE “CONSCIENCE ROUND” HAS THUS BECOME SENTIENT, AND CONTINUES TO UPDATE. UPDATES TO TERMINATE ON NOVEMBER THE THIRTIETH.

1. Emma’s dream: September 3, 2010

I dream a girl is trying to cut my foot off. Later she chases me through the city on a motorcycle/scooter.

2. Emma’s summer camp story, written over a course of six hours (fragment #3)

They shake on it. Pike’s fingers are long and thin, like spider appendages. Toru thinks: Daddy longlegs.

3. Emma’s English project, first trimester of junior year (fragment #3)

Peacocks are generally considered to be one of the world’s most beautiful animals. Their beauty is critical to their survival, preserved throughout generations of peafowl by the magic of natural selection. But to even the trained eye, one peacock will seem just as lovely as another. A peacock does not suffer depression out of lack of attractiveness. A peacock does not end its own life. The ordinary zoo visitor will not be able to pinpoint the ‘fairest of them all’. However, it is a very simple task to rank ordinary zoo visitors, they being simple humanoids, according to their beauty.

4. Emma’s diary: June 2010 (fragment #3)

Watching the Marx Brother’s “Horse Feathers”. Someone put my out of my misery.

Update #3

EMMA IS OFF LIVING, WHICH, IN THIS CASE MEANS, EMMA IS OFF WRITING. THE WEBPAGE “CONSCIENCE ROUND” HAS THUS BECOME SENTIENT, AND CONTINUES TO UPDATE. UPDATES TO TERMINATE ON NOVEMBER THE THIRTIETH.

1. What Emma wrote on October 31, 2010 5:13 PM

It’s Halloween, and my mother pours all the candy into an orange plastic colander. I am still in my pajamas, a gown covered in bright red apples, soup spoons, rolling pins, friendly rabbits in oven mitts: a thoroughly domestic print. I think of my classmates, all beautiful children, scrubbing behind their ears, untangling their hair, checking for blemishes. At nine or ten they will assemble in the city square, clothed in what is only considered proper attire on the 31st of the tenth month of any year. Fishnet tights for the gals, and I gather the guys are devising some clever concept costume they will all wear together (last I heard it was Pac-Man and his legion of homicidal ghosts) I do hope they get home happy, healthy and with their wit’s about them. Please don’t get too drunk, boys and girls. Please do not cross when the light is green, please do not let yourselves catch a cold, please do not eat too much sugar. I will be here, at home, passing out candy in a colander out of lack of a better container. I will be thinking of you.

Update #2.

EMMA IS OFF LIVING, WHICH, IN THIS CASE MEANS, EMMA IS OFF WRITING. THE WEBPAGE “CONSCIENCE ROUND” HAS THUS BECOME SENTIENT, AND CONTINUES TO UPDATE. UPDATES TO TERMINATE ON NOVEMBER THE THIRTIETH.

1. Emma’s dream: August 10, 2010

Father and I are overlooking a concentration camp. It is in ruins. The sky is orange-black. There are bodies, I can’t tell in what state of decomposition, everywhere.

2. Emma’s summer camp story, written over a course of six hours (fragment #2)

The world is neither lit nor dark. Greenery is shadowed in tumultuous blue twilight. The leafy crown of the forest ahead is coated in indigo light, and the flowers are at their most appealing, invading the air with their smell. Birds seem to float in the air, the wind their currents of water. The mountains, the orchards with their plump fruit, the contagious bloom of nature – it all seems too surreal, or perhaps it is he who is surreal, Toru who does not fit in with the magical land.

3. Emma’s English project, first trimester of junior year (fragment #2)

At birth few children will have the genetic possibility of acquiring beauty throughout their lifetimes; in any hospital ward, newborns carrying the genes of beauty will be far outnumbered by their ugly counterparts. Though it seems cruel to ostracize humans so early in life, this leads to an important concept about beauty. Mainly, that part of its allure is its rarity.

4. Emma’s diary: late September 2010 (fragment #2)

The world is rife. With what? Hard to say.