mjk

The lines must be drawn somewhere.

This isn’t what I wanted to tell you. I was hoping for some story about the interconnectedness of life, how it all blends into itself and becomes a circle. I never wanted an ending. But this story is not a circle and although there might not appear to be any straight lines, they are everywhere... if you look for them, but you haven’t yet opened your eyes. I’ve been drawing them for you as you’ve been drawing them for me.

The truth of all this is, there was never a point. No beginning, no middle, no end, nothing to grab onto to make it cohesive. There is nothing to lend it a bit of reality to make the meanings emerge lucid. Such is life, this moment which passes into another. But in one of these moments, there must be an end! I must establish it, so I can rest.

I suppose you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, and I wish I had an answer for you. But with such a direct question, there is no possibility of a direct answer. Everything is conjecture here, nothing proves solid, and there is no firm ground. This is what it is and there’s no label, no category, no name by which to call it. I wish I was telling you something different. I wish I was making you laugh.

This whole thing started with a sound and everything you’ve heard since is but an echo. That sound was a giggle escaping from your mouth before you knew better than to emit, before you understood all the repercussions which followed from that one eruption. But I wouldn’t have it any other way, as I fell in love with your laugh, knowing nothing but the silence that came before. You broke the stasis of my ears. I never even knew I had them.

So we find ourselves here, in this moment, and we can look back upon the history we’ve recorded and find traces of your laughter throughout. And each time it was something new, something delighted or repressed, something fresh and unclaimed, a never-ending echo. Yet I sought to arrest it and herein lies our suffrage.

Forgive me, my sweetest love, for letting the effect follow the cause, for not reversing the course of time back to that first utterance from your mouth to halt all that has ensued. I just wanted to hear you laugh once more - but then, again and again, as it is sweet like addiction. It’s impossible to deny that it is beyond this desolate self, that your echoes ring true to this isolated mind, that you are more than I could ever have imagined.

But the time has come for the laughter to end, for the echoes to cease their bouncing, for the otherness of you to halt. It pains me, more than you could comprehend with your finite mind, but I have delayed too long and I must fix what should have been nothing.

I must conclude you, but I hope it will come as solace and you’ll find somewhere for your laughter to continue. At the very least we’ll both know where the circle ends, and that is enough for me.

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"Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality." -Edgar Allan Poe
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Creative Scribblings - a collection of odds and ends

character1_Caitlin

That was beautiful. I feel I have an unfair advantage on this piece but thats beside the point.

This is about strength to do what you need to do even though it is difficult.

I need to find this myself.

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I know I need a sig, I have not come up with anything profound enough so until then....

mike z.

This is thought provoking material, so I shall return in time after consuming no less than two cadbury cream eggs. To please you until then; Good Job.

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It was all a misunderstanding - honest - God was not The Smiths' fan I thought she would be.

J.R. MacLean

mjk: There are some beautiful moments here, some undercurrents of genuine sadness and loss. This piece does seem to be way more about the internal life of the writer, rather than about a relationship. As if the writer has had an insight about herself that may effect someone else, but what's really at stake is internal.
Does it work as a short story? I would say no. Nothing much happens and it is more of an explanation than a narrative. Some verbiage is expended more or less beating around the bush. It only really came alive for me after "I wish I was making you laugh." A most interesting piece which, dare I say it, would make a far better poem. Hope this is helpful.
sniggering donkey appendages.

gohn67

hey mjk,
I checked to make sure all your commas were in the right place and sure enough they were...

This is a very interesting piece and I enjoyed reading. I read it twice.

The first paragraph - The lines must be drawn somewhere - created immediate interest and drew me in.

It made my head spin though because I hard time comprehending some of the meaning. It's a very abstract piece with the stuff about circles and ellipses.

The reader doesn't really know what the circumstances are between the narrator and the mysterious "you" - who I suspect is female.

I think there's something important about "laughter" in this piece also, which is mentioned numerous times. I think even more than the stuff about circles and ellipses.

J.R. Maclean, brings up an interestin question - Does it work as a short story?

Well since this is under 1000 words it could be considered flash fiction, which has the same definition as a short story.

Here's an excerpt about flash fiction from Wikipedia:

So going with that. This piece does have a protagonist, a conflict, complication and resolution. At least in my opinion.

It certainly reads differently than something more traditional and I don't have a problem with that. I think experimentation is the way to go and the only way to keep evolving I guess.

Nice work, mjk.

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The Frowning Dog Blog

kalibantre

Quite simply I adored it.

I'll be printing it off later, to read again and again. It was beautiful and you know I can talk little of grammar or punctuation (I am reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves so maybe soon) but as for content I think it was near perfect. I flt like a was agining insight into how a mother felt for a child and I may be utterly wrong but that was the strong connection I felt.

You've made me want to go out and seize the day or at least enjoy what little I can o with the day.

thank you so much for posting this, I don't think i've said that before but I truly mean it. I love this and I love you more than you'll know. I'll give you something new to read soon, I promise.

always,

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~kitty

mike z.

From all of this I took home the sense that the narratar was talking to themselves, or a past self, looking back on what they used to be, how they used to act, and lamenting the loss of that or starting fresh again to correct mistakes or accept the difficulty of moving on from one life-phase to another. I thought that this was referenceing the segmented nature of our selves through time, each circle being a cycle, and no carefully drawn delineations made in the 'chain-link' connected cycles of life to help one understand. I thought of overlap in that regard.

Somebody broken? Somebody saying goodbye to a part of themself that is lost? I don't know, I'm guessing.

Ultimately I thought while reading this of Morgan Freeman from The Shawshank Redemption;

"There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. And not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then. A young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone. This old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that."

This story had well established mood. In the end I decided for myself that this was about regret, as far as my interpretation could possibly tell me (which really makes this quite a good story, being as subtly ambiguous as it can be without betraying itself).

My favourite lines;
This is what it is and there’s no label, no category, no name by which to call it. I wish I was telling you something different. I wish I was making you laugh.

As firm an answer as any to a question that wasn't specified or couldn't be asked.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way, as I fell in love with your laugh, knowing nothing but the silence that came before. You broke the stasis of my ears. I never even knew I had them.

This is a great line that really, for me, brought into focus the magic of first dicovery and insight.

But the time has come for the laughter to end, for the echoes to cease their bouncing, for the otherness of you to halt.

That's just some fine poeticism.

...

There was one stop for me;

This whole thing started with a sound, and everything you’ve heard since is but an echo.

For some reason I tripped on that line because I wanted to pause, but the way it is now is correct. Other than that I found it possible to find a mistake in your writing.

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It was all a misunderstanding - honest - God was not The Smiths' fan I thought she would be.

Black Riven

I didn't like all the parts about circles and lines because a) it was cliched philosophy, and b) I'm very suspicious of prose that starts with "first I'll talk vaguely about something for a few paragraphs and only then explain what I mean". You either write something brilliant with this trick or you make the reader read something pompous, and cliched philosophy doesn't deliver here. But what followed was very touching and sounded sincere, and made me forget about the first part. You have some really great lines that were already pointed out and I will not repeat here. The only thing I had a problem with was at the end, here:

I just wanted to hear you laugh once more, but then again and again, as it is sweet like addiction, impossible to deny that it is more than silence, that it rings harmonious to this isolated mind, [here]that is beyond this desolate self, that it is more than all I ever thought I knew.[/here]

The words are great, it's the structure that I found problematic. This multiple descriptions style is nice when you want to emphasize something, but if you use it too often, or in a too lengthy fashion, it becomes something that gets in the reader's way, who needs to go through a bundle of descriptions to get to the point that the author wanted to make. Here you just went too long with it.

I just wanted to hear you laugh once more, but then again and again, as it is sweet like addiction, ok here I know to expect this descriptive mass to vent into the peak point impossible to deny that it is more than silence, alright, you added more to it, that's fine that it rings harmonious to this isolated mind, here you begin to stumble, this is the third time I expect a finito and it doesn't come, if you ended it now it would've been fine, yet... that is beyond this desolate self, that it is more than all I ever thought I knew.

Anyway, the second part ws overall very nice, I didn't care much for the first though.
Keep writing.

mjk

thank you to everyone who came to read, and even more so to everyone who left me a bit of their thoughts and feedback for this. i've taken it into account and made some changes.

i woke up in the middle of the night to compose this, the first line echoing in my head, and i have my own interpretations about who the narrator is and who "you" is, but i'll refrain, as i'd like to see more of what others think without hazing it with my thoughts. it is the greatest satisfaction to know this piece has provoked thought and feeling in others.

in regards to the short story/poem comments: a great deal of what i write these days comes out like this. it's not quite a story and not quite a poem. i should start my own genre! but the fact remains, it is what it is and to change it to conform to a particular style would kill the piece. i've attempted to do just that with a few other pieces like this and have usually lost so much in the process. it is true that some pieces have benefited from being strictly one or the other, but i know that won't work for this one.

maria: thank you. i'm happy you liked it and intrigued by what you saw in this. thanks for sharing your thoughts.

caitlin: is it what you think it's about? thanks for coming to read and leaving your thoughts.

j.r.- your feedback is priceless to me. i think you may have come very close to the mark for what i intended about this piece... the internal conflict of the writer, although i would change writer to creator... as far as turning it into a poem, i'll go with no, but i definitely see your point and i do believe a poem came out of me the other day very similar to this. when i get it to where i like it, i'll send it to you. thanks so much for coming to read and lending me your thoughts. uterine jupiters

gohn: thanks for keeping my commas in check (they can get a little out of control if they've had too much to drink.) i agree with your assessment that it is a piece of flash, although it's so close to the borderline that it should just be left up to interpretation by the reader. it's always a pleasure to have you read and comment on my work. i'm very happy to hear you liked it. as far as ambiguity is concerned, that's essential to this piece. it does not matter what the dynamic between the narrator and the "you" is, as each reader will make their own interpretation, attaching significance where they see fit and relating it to their own personal struggles. at least, that's what i was aiming for. and yes, the laughter is the most important part to this, afterall, that is how it all began...

kitty: eternal gratitude and love from me to you. i'm glad you liked this. your interpretation is quite interesting, and somewhat different than anyone else's, so i thank you wholeheartedly for sharing your thoughts with me. i'm even happier to hear this made you want to "carpe diem" and i hope lots of good stuff came out of your day. and yes, reading material is much needed. i'll be looking forward to it.

mike z: can i have a cadbury cream egg? very intriguing interpretation, very close to the mark of what i intended for this, but actually took me a bit further. i re-read it with your perspective in mind and saw how it all fits. thanks for letting me see that. what an excellent line from shawshank, one of my favorite novellas (and movies). thanks for highlighting your favorite lines... they're my favorites too. i'm not going to go with your comma suggestion unfortunately, as i believe the "and" gives the reader all the break they need. thank you for coming to read, lending your time and giving me your thoughts. it is much appreciated.

black riven: thanks for coming to read and getting into this story with your feedback. you pinpointed the exact trip-ups i had with this story. your feedback has been taken into account and changes have been made. i'm not all that clear what you mean by the cliched philosophy of circles. is it cliche merely because it has been reiterated so much? nevertheless, i think the beginning gave off more of a philosophical tone than i intended, so it has been slightly altered. if you've got more time, please let me know if it works better. the structure of the sentence did trip me up a lot and i remember while writing it that i just kept adding to it. thanks for pointing it out. it's much better now, in my opinion at least. your thoughts are very much appreciated. and never fear, i'll only stop writing when i'm dead.

again, you all are wonderful and marvelous for coming to read and leaving your thoughts. i wanted this story to connect with others and wanted to know how it connected and you all have let me see that. so thank you greatly.

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"Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality." -Edgar Allan Poe
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Creative Scribblings - a collection of odds and ends

character1_Caitlin

This is a perfect example of letting some things be up to the reader, based on our conversations , yes I read it a certain way. It was the way I wanted to take it. Your gift of a writer is knowing when to give it to me and explain everything and knowing when you just give me things to figure out on my own. This was one of those I think, everyone has their own ideas about what you are saying.

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I know I need a sig, I have not come up with anything profound enough so until then....

Jefe

I love this. So much so that I bothered to log in and leave a message here to tell you that much. It positively fascinates me how you're work is not quite poetry and not quite prose... Its that flow thing that I'm completely obsessed with. It goes beyond sounding good or looking good it just plain feels good. And yet its more like a feeling of wholeness or completeness. I would argue that this is indeed a short story even if it is a bit untraditional. I myself am sort of struggling with the same sort of problem where I want to write prose as if it were poetry and am having trouble defining my result.

Honestly this stands out from a lot of your work mostly because its so like those Dwarves only far longer. And thus I shall call this... are you ready for it? A Tall Dwarf. Granted the creativity centers of my brain are turned off at the moment... Anyways I can't really say much that hasn't been said besides that...
These are of course not corrections as what you have is perfect, these are just a few places where I think it would move a hair smoother with a different word. For the record, I hate doing this because I feel like I'm dumbing down your work so please, PLEASE feel free to tell me to stop trying to ruin your vision.
And that's it. I refuse to sully your work's magnificence with another utterance from an unworthy moron. I suppose smacking down idiots is part of the editing process.

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"We've got a date with destiny and it looks like she's ordered the lobster."
-Mystery Men

mjk

caitlin- you should see the smile on my face. you came to this page with yourself, as i came to this page with myself and we've connected to each other. that is absolutely priceless. thank you more than i could ever express.

el jefe- stop it with the self deprecation. i'm taking your ideas into account, but i will tell you it's looking grim that i'll revise this with them, especially your first suggestion, but the second and third have a bit of merit to them. i'll need to stew on it for awhile. your compliments are making me glow, so thank you dearly. also, thank you for coming to read and leaving your thoughts. it is much appreciated. and why haven't i read any of this prose/poetry you've been coming up with? hop to it!

it's funny because while i'm reveling in this feeling of satisfaction and gloating in this praise, i also feel a bit guilty as it feels like i didn't even write this. it just came and i acted as the medium. this story has a lot of personal significance to me, as a reader of it, as opposed to the composer. very odd feeling, indeed. but i'm very glad that i can experience the connection with all of you. priceless.

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"Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality." -Edgar Allan Poe
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Creative Scribblings - a collection of odds and ends

Jefe

Laying it on a bit thick was I? I'll try to tone down my attempts at modesty a bit :p

Oh and you'll get it once its done and not a moment before so there!

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"We've got a date with destiny and it looks like she's ordered the lobster."
-Mystery Men

strangedaze

So I read it through and made comments during the reading. Some are nitpicks, some are praise, some, well, who knows. My general comments follow.

- The location of 'yet' in this sentence kind of puts me off. Consider going with the usual (but more natural sounding) 'yet' after 'eyes'.

- A bit awkward sounding, I think. I like the idea, though.

- Well-timed; at this point your reader would have put the piece away without some sense of a narrative.

- Two things. The use of emit seems a bit excessive, first. Second, you've got a kick ass extended metaphor waiting to happen. What erupts? A volcano comes to my mind, but you could probably find something more creative. A giggle escaping from the mouth like a geyser? I don't know, but eruption is such a potent PHYSICAL image that I think you owe it to yourself to connect it something equally physical. Na' mean?

- I'm ambivalent about this chunk. On one hand, I love how you string off the ways in which your characters' history has been traced (delighted, repressed, fresh, and my fave, unclaimed). On the other hand, you might be milking the oft-wrought echo metaphor a bit too much, and the last sentence (particularly 'sought' and 'suffrage') seem a bit too verbose. When I think suffrage I think the Women's Movement. Might you mean suffering?

- Nice line. Potent.

- It is sweet like addiction? I think you can get away with mixing tense here, but I wouldn't recommend it.

- Cease = stop? And you've mentioned 'halt' once or twice already. In such a short space, with a word like that, it stands out.

- Interesting ending, especially 'I must conclude you.'

What you have here is an extended metaphor, I think I think. This circle represents something greater, more concrete. The problem is that while your circle is amply developed, the world to which it's tied is pretty impotent. You regress into abstractions about laughter, for example, but don't tie that laughter to anything concrete. You repeat Wordsworthian faux-pas (plural), like 'echos.' I call them faux-pas because they are either overwrought (especially in that ooey gooey genre of fluffy puff poetry) or don't really point to anything.

On the other hand, you have a lot going on in this that's worth mentioning. You language, at times, is breathtaking. You read like a poet writing prose, and that's by no means a bad thing (the reverse is true for me - A VERY BAD THING ). You can pack a punch in such a small space.

Here's what I would suggest, and I haven't read any of the other comments, so sorry if it's been said: Tie this to something we can relate to. Like I said, you've got a fantastic extended metaphor going on here, the circle speaking for the relationship between your narrator and her (his) intended audience. Don't be afraid to be more rooted in the empirical world: give us people, not abstractions. Emotions told mean so much less than emotions shown vis-a-via good characterization.

As an aside, I might have came into this with a bias, since a gal in my workshop perpetually turns in prose-poetry, similar to this, with a narrator that longingly addresses some third party, and last class we had an intervention, so to speak. I think you (or your narrator) is addressing someone who he or she or you know intimately and thus don't feel the need to characterize, but your readers lack access to that and get lost in the shuffle.

Or something. Take me with a grain of salt and some tequila. And a lemon. And a worm. And I digress into incoherence

Hope I helped.

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His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

mjk

strangedaze- your feedback is priceless... everything's been taken into account and i'm pleased to say that i posted an unfinished story and the revised edition will be up soon. i knew i was walking a fine line with this one due to the ambiguous nature and due to the response, i know exactly where i'm going with this now. thank you so much for your critique... it inspired the perfect story (well, it's perfect right now, as it is still floating around in my head and i haven't had the chance to butcher it with my words.) and i'll let you know when the circle's been completed.

another shot bar keep!

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"Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality." -Edgar Allan Poe
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Creative Scribblings - a collection of odds and ends