Sleeping Lions

This story is Escrisal 2, and if you’re not familiar with the phrase, click on the tag for this post and it will take you to the first entry that explains what (and why) it exists.

I broke the 300 word rule.  In fact, I broke it for #1.  So let’s call that one more of a suggestion than a guideline.  :)  Everything’s coming in around 380.

*   *   *

The hills were sleeping lions, tawny flanks baking in the California sun.  To Walter Groves, they felt more alive than his passengers.   His Greyhound was weaving through the torpor of high noon at fifty miles an hour, a hurtling gray pill filled with ten sleeping bodies.  In the oversized mirror hanging above his head Walter could watch them with their backs flattened to their seats and their heads nodding and swinging with the curves of the coastal highway.  They seemed more like ragdolls than human beings.  And meanwhile the hills were flashing their golden manes of wheat at every turn and dabbling rocky paws in the Pacific, as if only moments away from the hunt, as if the right scent or the right sound would muster them into wakefulness, and only Walter would see them stir. 

                The bus made an odd rumbling noise; Walter heard it as a growl that shook the cabin.  The highway before him was a long black line; a lion’s soot covered tail, ending in a tuft of willows.  He looked up and as startled to see eyes blinking in the hills.  They were emerald and slit like a cat’s.  A mouth opened beneath them—rows of long white teeth, like sun-bleached logs strung together with barbed wire.  A red carpet emerged from a lion’s yawning face and found no parable in nature.  Walter stood stricken by the vision, found his hands in the wheat, in the feline fur.  Where should they be?  Surely not stroking these soft golden stalks that sprouted from the sides of lions.  He heard the beast growl again, felt it through the seat of his pants.  It jogged loose urgent thoughts that had been growing in the slow corners of his brain.  

                He was not alone.  He was not on safari. He was Walter Groves.  He was not driving his bus.

                His head jerked up off his chest.  He looked up, saw a flashing field of blue and white.  In the mirror all his passengers were astronauts, floating up out of their seats.  A nickel passed before his eyes, moving strangely, right to left.  He followed its movement with his head and saw the cliffs, the rocky paws of lions.  They lunged parallel to the bus, past his window, into a wall of water.  That, and the hideous silence, tore a scream from his throat.  From the part of him that remained an observer came the thought that it was a primal, jungle sound.

Escrita de Salão

Brazil is well-known for being a global soccer factory.  One reason some of the best players in the world come from Brazil is related to a national obsession: Futbol de Salão.  The name of the game is translated, from Portuguese, as “Football in the Hall.”  The game is played with a smaller and less bouncy ball than normal soccer, and is played indoors, in rooms much smaller than your traditional grass pitch.  Because of the smaller dimensions and more frenetic pace, players touch the ball some six hundred percent more than in your standard soccer match, and soccer skills are developed much more quickly as a result. 

When I learned this, the first thing I thought was, “how do I apply this to writing?”  The answer is the following experiment.  I call it “Escrita de Salão.”  Writing in the Hall.  The name of this game is imitation of the Brazilian game, the art of condensed repetition.  The rules: each escrisal (the Brazilians similarly smoosh the name together) must tell a complete story.  This story must be under 300 words and have a distinct story arc.  The arc itself is somewhat loosely defined; though it might consist of the classic storytelling elements of beginning, conflict, climax, and resolution, the arc might eschew these in favor of a more narrowly focused story.  Dynamism.  Change.  Metamorphosis.  

As a writer who wants to tell epic stories spanning a wide variety of genres and concepts, I intuitively think this is nuts.  But it’s worth a go, if it worked for Brazilian soccer.  Maybe next week I’ll try a writing exercise inspired by the Netherlands.  If you watched the World Cup this year, you know what I mean.

*     *     *

Escrisal 1

On his way out he looked down at precisely the wrong moment and saw her wedding ring sitting on the kitchen table.  The reminder was a warm wet shock, an internal mechanism flopping loose and hanging obscenely.  He willed his hand to the doorknob and blinked back the sting.  In the car he fumbled to plug his cell phone into the car charger with cold fingers.  He watched the tiny battery in the corner of the screen fill up as the car idled and smoked, and the windshield slowly changed from frost to glass. On a whim he paged over to text messaging.  Stared at her name. 

There had been a trip to Tahoe, in the first years of their marriage, when they had seen a truck hit a deer at fifty miles an hour.  In that instant before the impact she had reached out and grabbed his hand, barked “Ron!” as if somehow he could pause the frame with the deer unharmed, and change the terrible course of physics.  Later, much later, with their second son hours away from being born, he’d called her from Minnesota and wept while she’d listened.  Her voice had been a too-taut violin string on the other end of the line.  “You’ll make it,” she’d said. 

Thinking of how she’d smiled at him, propped up in the hospital bed with their son in her arms, he let go of the breath he’d been holding and looked up through the sweating windshield into leafless branches.  Up past the tangle of gray limbs, up into the second story window where her orchid was blooming.  She’d cooed at the plant all winter long, right up until the end.  The flower had grown sickly beneath the antiseptic glare of the hospital fluorescents, but she’d reassured it during its long sojourn.  “Soon you’ll be right back in your spot,” she’d said, “right back in that East window.  Okay?  You’ll make it.”  Her frail hand had patted the leaves reassuringly. 

He glanced down at the phone, paused.  Her lovely name.  He opened the last message.  “We’ll make a greenthumb of you yet,” it read. 

The engine shuddered to a stop as he turned the key, slipped back out into the cold.  He would be late.  But at least he’d remembered to water the plants.

Truly not a Whitman. Eh, Whatever.

Look—

The distance between you and me is either

The fibrous white wall of a paper coffee cup,

Name-thin and opaque, but

Warm.  Or,

Transparent plastic, filled with

A form of liquid that changes over time until

It dissolves into murky water and

Sloshes in the cup holder.

In the latter case, what was inside

Has lost its form, its brilliance over time

And rides along with us until we have a chance

To dump it out.

And neither of us want that.

That’s how I justify putting this into the microwave,

After the first kiss of the wand has worn off and

The coffee’s a bit tepid.

It isn’t ideal.  But the budget was your idea.

Consider this a romantic gesture.

Alright?

Don’t harass me about it.

Morning Pages 1

My friend Wayne explained to me that ecologists can tell the health of a river by digging a meter-cubed sample out of the bank and counting all the critters, the invertebrates, that inhabit it.  If a river is stressed, there will be fewer creatures rummaging around in the silt. 

I read in a book that a good way to stimulate creativity is to just create, three full pages every morning.  The rule is no self-criticism.  Nothing edited, or changed.  Just what floats through the mind.  Faithful.

So this is my meter cubed, my sample.  Just don’t jump to too many conclusions about my mental health based on how many creatures are crawling through the silt.  Deal?

*   *   *

Now he sits, his hat on a little crooked.  Didn’t bother to wash his hair.  A gray hood over the hat.  His legs are twisted around the table leg, jeans running into beaten tennis shoes.  He hasn’t played tennis in two years.  The computer in front of him is small.  He doesn’t move as he types, just flicks his eyes up and down, from time to time and from face to screen, to take in the line of customers whom he observes, making little observations of his own.  Little stories.  Trying to force himself out of his own, crowd himself out so that he can see what’s really happening here.  All his life he has been convinced that there was more to the story.  He has been a fly on the wall, on the window.  Wandering along the glass of his life, a portal stiff and sterile, seeing colors and branches moved by the wind, but buzzing. Trapped. Resisting the newspaper.  Stupid fly—get out of the sill and fly—up, up!—and you won’t wander anymore.  Glass deserts.  How many fly corpses line the sill? 

John taught the bible.  He would have fit in a TV show about ancient rome.  He’s wearing a dark gray jacket, a mountain-ready conglomeration of fabric.  He’s found his purpose.  One hand holds the bible open towards the end.  The index.  It’s best to know the context of this term in other books, he is saying.  Gestures with his coffee-cup.  The young man in the red shirt opens his bible and points something out, eager.  The roman grins.  Be humble Caesar, he is thinking to himself, but don’t let this opportunity pass.  Let the wise sit at the gate and make their proclamations.  The young are so.  Poor Stacy.  She’s working, like a dog right now.  Not my fault she hates her job.  Doesn’t claim to have time for this.  For giving back.  I made my money, and I don’t need to make any more.  Don’t need to prove anything to anybody.  I’ve got Jesus now.  So, look at this passage.  What does it mean to you?  I’ll help.  Why don’t you let me?  She never lets me help.  Shoulders the world, and takes it all out on me on the sailboat.  Stresses me.  There’s a reason we bought the damn thing.  I imagined white wine and waves.  I should drive to the marina when the kids leave.  Nice day to scrape the hull.

Sam watches and he just doesn’t get it.  He has a headache.  He hates Starbucks.  He sits in the chair and fills it, just with his knees and elbows.  The core of him is somewhere else.  It’s thinking about the argument he had with his roommate.  He’s reminded how much he hates to read.  Swipe a hand beneath the old  ball cap.  God, my head.  Stop with the Word.  No more words.  Sam doesn’t want to get it.  Sam hates his name.  Mom named him Samuel because she was told she couldn’t have children.  Along came the miracle baby.  Miracle baby grew up and developed a love for Copenhagen.  Went adrift.  Sits in Starbucks and thinks about playing Call of Duty.  No room for anything else.  Sam is not permeable.  He does not permit osmosis.  He does not read his bible.  He had a conversion experience, once, but it was a pull-myself-up-by-the-bootstraps conversion, a do it yourself.  He worked on his Dad’s deck last summer, thought maybe this was what it was about—a day of splinters, nails, hot sun on your back.  Honest punishment.  Sitting with his Dad, swapping stories over a Pepsi.  Thought maybe he would move in, get the dirtbike running.  Dad, you could come to church with me.  But then the winter came, and Dad had to cancel, flew to New York.  He’ll be back in the spring.  Rain check.

Elementary

Is it wrong that I sometimes

Sit back and look out my window at the world

And find it incomprehensible?

Me, who glories in meanings and mysteries.

Who sniffs out patterns and possibilities like a

Bloodhound roots through fallen leaves.

Believes.  Catches the scent of hidden things.

Is it wrong that today I am weary of the scent of earth?

Is it a sin that I look through the rain on the glass

And see the chaos there as elementary,

Better than me, more honest than I am even

On my best day?

If only we more rational creatures would

Follow the advice of those prone to instinct.

Roll over.  Paw the sky.  Expose our bellies.

Naked beneath the teeth of our adversary, but

Willing to hope in the gentle hand.

He Needs to Live in This Story

Some people have asked about the reading I wrote for Good Friday.  I’m publishing it here on the blog, so that you can read it for yourself.  The evening was based on the stations of the cross; this particular reading focuses on Jesus as he carries the instrument of his death. 

By way of commentary–how often have we pulled back from the full humanity of Christ, and why?  Are we afraid of ourselves, afraid of what it means to pretend at civilization, and insert Jesus into that charade?  I’ll tell you there are beautiful moments in life, and darkness, too.  And in between, there are the glassy-eyed hours, the dumb beast hours, the stuff that never makes it off the cutting-room floor of the stories we tell about ourselves.  Moments of rage between moments of hopelessness.  We are fickle, uncertain, flightless birds.  To put Jesus into that story, the story of the mob, feels abhorrent. 

But it’s necessary.

It was that thought that motivated the passage below.

*   *   *

We watch as Jesus carries his cross through the crowded, sun baked streets of Jerusalem.  We are the faces in the mob.  We kick up the dust with our shuffling, our jostling for a better view.  It coats our throats and clogs our nostrils, we taste it on our tongue, smell it mixed into the feral scent of blood and sweat and the hot air sweeping down like hell’s breath off of Skull Hill. 

Behold the wretch, the would-be king, a spectacle.

The din of the crowd is staggering.  The women wail in his wake.  The gloating priests pour their laughter like stones down upon his head.  The sound is like the pounding of the waves on Galilee, the rush of blood in our ears as we watch helplessly, the maddening gale-force bluster of gossips and jesters who jape and jeer—and we would shout, scream into the empty sky: where now is the still small voice that calms this terrible sea?    

Behold the silent man, whose bloody grip slips on the timber. 

He was supposed to be more than this.  So much more than 75 trillion cells that compose, like ours, his human frame, cells that even now leak alarmingly into the fibers on his back, the grain of the wood, the hot pebbled soil beneath his feet.  He is so like us—afflicted by the whims of our urgings: satiation and satisfaction, waste and want.  Disturbingly animal.  Still enthralled to the powers of death and those that deal death.  Dog eat dog.

Behold the lamb, the brute led to slaughter.

What story do you carry with you, Jesus?  Is it called Justice?  Mercy?  These are the myths of a kingdom that we have never seen, whose halls are figments of our fairy-tales.  How can we hope to see them now?  When last we lined this path, we waved palms at you, and called it a Triumph.  What will we call this day?  What will we call this day, when reality in Technicolor killed the story-teller, the meaning-maker, the one who made it all make sense?  What do I do with my story, Jesus? 

Is it there, in those blood soaked beams laid across your back?  Tell me you take it all with you.  Tell me you saw this, you knew this was coming.  That all the heat and the noise and the blood and the dust, the anger and pride and misery and lust that I know so well go with you now.  Because if there is more to this story that what meets our eyes now, Jesus—more than just dumb slaughter—we will call this day a miracle.  We will call this day blessed.

We will call this day good.

Revealed: My Late Night Obsession

I’m including a screenshot of the project that has had me up at nights, working at odd hours, oftentimes with a few cursewords held poised, like small nuclear missiles, on the tip of my tongue, ready to inflict scathing shock and awe at the Mac, at Pages, at the fact that an hour ago at ten-thirty, I had told my wife I would be home in ten minutes.   For the better, Steve Jobs has yet to invent a computer whose feelings can be bruised.  For now, there’s no app for iEgo.

Really, it was a love hate relationship.

For every one of those moments of impending and private techno-cold-war, there were three moments where something clicked into place, or the computer surprised me with its cleverness and foresite (thank you again, Mr. Jobs) and I raised my arms in exultation.  I even made several wordless ululating cries.  In the night, in the pool of lamplight that kept my eyes from burning out of their sockets. 

I guess what I’m saying is, I had a blast writing Journey Magazine.

So though it will be revealed in person (or, in paper) on Sunday, I have to just give you a quick glance at the table of contents.  Not the cover, because it’s too cool to really show off yet before it’s in people’s hands.  But the table of contents, yes.  It’s like the magazine’s profile on eHarmony.  Hopefully it will make you want to see the rest.

As a point of interest, that red line at the top of the page is a cut mark.  It’s how the printer knows where to cut the page to the appropriate size.  You won’t see that in the final copy.

You know, it’s funny–in this edition I wrote articles about cafes and theologiants (that was misspelled, originally, but then I realized it was appropriate for A.B. Simpson), and then realized that they would represent the first material I’ve ever written that would be read by more than a handful of people.  That’s strange to me, kind of a like a hitchcock twist.  That’s how my dreams become realized, in increments, and never as I imagined them.  When I thought of my future self as a writer, in my teens, it was always as the kid who would write the great American novel.  And my first step towards the world of being a published writer is as a magazine editor, working at my local church.  Maybe easy to dismiss, but guess what… I get paid to do this.

I’m going to sit back and enjoy the moment. 

*   *   *

Journey Magazine, Spring 2010, Contents

A Writing Prompt

I don’t suppose you have the time to jam on this, but if you find yourself up at midnight like me with a creative impulse, maybe you can create a story out of this writing prompt, submitted to our writers’ group by Steve Matlock.  My entry follows after the break.  If the other writers are interested, I hope they’ll post their own.  We all got on the train at the same stop, but we ended up in very different places.  I love that.

Oh, did I mention there’s a time limit?  Ten minutes.  Go!

The prompt…

Eleven.  Eleven people.  What was so terrifying about eleven people?

*   *   *

Eleven.  Eleven people.  What was so terrifying about eleven people?

You have no idea.  Let’s break it down.

The math, okay?  The math was terrifying.  Ten million bullets, if one counted mutation.  Ten million forms of bacteria, viral time-bombs, parasitic opportunists.  Let’s see—ten million ways to die, multiplied by eleven.  Eleven people.  Eleven breeding grounds.  Probably sneezing all over their hands and touching door knobs and pushing…

Elevator buttons.

Yeah, I know.  I only had to be in there with them for thirty seconds.  What was so terrifying about eleven people?

One hundred and ten million tiny creatures swam through the air in that tiny box.

I was petrified.  So what did I do?

I mostly looked down at my white shoes and tried not to breathe the entire ride.  The woman in front of me reeked of cigarette smoke.  Can you get second-hand smoke from smelling it on someone’s clothes?  Maybe you can–I felt a tickle in my throat.  A headache blossomed between my temples. 

Three more floors to go.

And look at this guy.  Neck like a bull’s.  Leaning on the handrail, sweating all over it.  Did he run to the hospital, maybe jump on a bike to come visit his buddy?  Like a pig, this guy.  Greasy.  The shirt he was sweating through had a corporate logo on it.  Two diamonds connected by a lightning bolt.  I remembered that later, looked it up on google.  He worked for a consulting firm specializing in restaurants.  I made a mental note.  I haven’t eaten at a restaurant in this city since then. 

Two more floors.

I looked down at my watch.  I couldn’t read the time.  My glasses were fogging up in the jungle air.  Perfect: an incubator, a petri-dish metal box biohazard.  Why had the stair doors been locked?  I called the hospital afterwards, found out they don’t use them unless there’s an emergency.  Funny, I said, because I was kind of in a hurry.  You know, I consider it an emergency when a life is on the line.  She said the kind of emergency she was talking about was like a fire, or an earthquake.  A general sort of emergency.

One more floor.

There was a kid.  He was breathing really loud.

Ding.

Out into the cool air, the sweet air, the dirty-filthy-lung-coating air of LA.  Smog is better than Pestilence.  Back on my bike.  I reflected on the experience.  I decided I didn’t get paid enough to deliver to Hospitals.  Not without hazard pay.

Maybe I should have checked myself into the Emergency Room, had them look me over.  It counts, doesn’t it, when you run out of Purell?  Doesn’t matter if you use a whole bottle while you’re there, I mean I was liberal, but that was warranted.  Those places are infested. 

And eleven people?  Eleven chances to play bacterial roulette?

Terrifying.