more writing, less structure

time blends together, so that I don't know what was when
I sit here and puzzle, with my conceited ojectives, but cannot figure out when that was, where were you, why this or that

don't live in the past, it's the only thing more confusing than the present


I enjoy free writing. I'm sitting here, hidden, not even looking at the screen, just relaxing. I'm typing and flowing, it's good. I like Zoot Woman. I like to sleep a lot. There are no labs for the graphics course. Calvert thinks that students can find their own way around a computer by the time they've hit 4th year. That makes sense. I'm going to take Graphics and Compilers next semester, instead of going back to Microsoft. I'd planned to go back in the winter, but I never really worked to make that happen. Oh well - it means I get to be here and see the people I like to see, for longer. I will hopefully be able to go back there and do something really interesting. Pause. I stopped to breath - just to sit here and exhale, inhale,exhale, inhale. It's nice. I have a lot of work to do -- why aren't I working? I don't really want to at the moment - nah.

Stopped to read.

Turned some music on. It's so easy to question, to sit here and feel down for no reason. There's an easy answer though: don't. So I won't. I'll sit here and be positive. I'm just a tiny cog in a great big unchanging system, and that makes me very goddamned happy. THat brings me the kind of infinite joy that one could normally only extend to the likes of big brother.

Hours pass, I eat and sit. The whole village walks by. Then I sleep, in the home away from home. And now I'm back. To be finished.


--enh, that didn't work quite as well as I'd like.

Let's write something during networking

A little man went running westward down the path, his tiny feet made hollow noises against the plastic earth.

This wasn't a rare sight here. Day in and out, week on and off, miniature men skittered back and forth on artificial, well maintained terrain, fighting out battles and working together in ways real men only wished they could. They fought for valour, for honour, and for victory. The fate of the little plastic world hung in the balance - until the next day and the next battle. Unless this was a multiday campaign or something, then it might hang until the game is reset.

That's pretty much how you play with Army Men. You slap 'em down and shuffle them around, shoot and kick and jump and run (at a tiny plastic scale) and it all works out in the end. The good guys (you) win, and the bad guys (your friend Jimmy) lose, and the greatest tales of brotherly love, sacrifice, and heroism are played out in a child's mind. This is a great game. But it's not always just a game.

This tiny plastic man knew something. Something very, very big. What Rifleman Three knew could change the whole big outer (not plastic) world. And he was about to be killed.


---yeah that`s a good enough place to stop

From a while back

Gonna post a few that I found in a notebook from a year or so ago. As usual, they're unfinished and short. See how quick you guess what this one is about?

Swoosh, swish, flip, flick, flap, flop, whoop, slap, swoosh, flip, flick, flap, flop -

I'm next.

Air bursts onto my face and my eyes are filled with the dim distant ceiling bulbs on a failed of black. A blur of motion replaces them in an instant and resolves into the faces of my friends.

Every day, my friends change. I sometimes see the same friend twice, three times rarely, but they're often quite glad to see me.

(hint: it's about gambling) - ultra short but hey, I like it.

Looking back over the few things I put here, I'm kind of disappointed by the lack of quality. Then I look at this thing I wrote just now, and it's just more of the same.

But I'll still post it. Why destroy the fruits of even a small bit of effort?



Whenever we left the park, my little sister would cry. Mom would soothe her and tell her we'd come back, that everything would be here next time, and that we had exciting things ahead of us. She would cry, and cry, and then be better. All she needed to know was that she had something to look forward to.

I wish I had something to look forward to.

I'm sitting here, closer to morning's light than evening's dark, drearily awaiting the time when I'm required to move. Staring into the blank space of the computer monitor - another wasted night. Another lost sleep.

something really short and crummy and incomplete

hmmmm... story

short.. story.. hm. Sci fi?

Rapid footfalls echoed loudly inside the stone and metal Grand Observatory. This evening the most important, momentous, and exciting event in all history had occurred.

Young Jian was manning the controls when it happened. A simple click. That was only the

rapid footfalls made
hollow echoes throughout the
Observatory


well I'll post this. It's been open for about a hundred hours and it's got fewer total words. About halfway through writing that sentence I decided I was being maybe too verbose, so I thought about how I could tell the same story more economically. Thus you have the first sentence remade into a haiku. From here it was going to some form of contact; I don't really remember where I was writing. I've got a very loose-cut different idea in mind now, so I'll start up on that.

Flash Forward

While this isn't my fiction, I just wanted to commment that Robert J. Sawyer's book Flash Forward is being really enthralling and has kept me up past my bedtime the last few nights. I'll be done it soon and then I think I'll be back to rereading the Wheel of Time.

Gonna maybe write a bit tonight.

Life on a Mountain

Okay, let's just free write.


Time passed so quickly there.

At approximately 7,000ft, I'd moved rocks back and forth for days on end. Sleeping with a blanket wrapped around myself and a tiny fire by my side, I knew. What I was building would let me live.

On the fourth day or so was when it really took form - a shape borne of necessity and hope. This would be my home. Over a thousand of the loose-fit rocks plucked and placed made my abode, squat and holey, but thickset enough to block the harsh wind that battered my soul. How I miss it -- the rock house.

I mostly ate the berries during that time. I don't think it occurred to me that I'd run out of berries. When I did run out, I tried to start hunting marmots. That's a much harder task than it sounds! Running along a rock outcropping beside a thousand foot drop, after a foot high creature born to these lands and built for them, hastily throwing rocks at it and trying to trap it up? It's nearly impossible. I caught one once. It was gamey - I ate it regardless. Best meal I'd had in months. I tended to eat the grasses, boiled up in a disgusting sort of tea. Gave me enough to keep going - you don't use a lot of energy up there, when you don't have to.

I explored every day I felt up to it. He must've known I was looking for him - but there was nothing that that would change. I knew I'd eventually find a way in, work my way down, and kill him.

When I found the door, it was over a thousand feet above my house and across a particularly unstable feeling glacier. I felt an odd wind on a rock patch - seemed to pull into the ground. I pulled a few large stones aside, and the pull only grew. I knew it then - not having seen it, but feeling the way. Just a few days' work and I'd be in. Nothing compared to the last two years I'd lived on that mountain.

The nights are what I'll remember about life there. What I'll remember the strongest. The howling wind tearing at you. No matter the house you build, the blanket you're in. The fire you huddle beside. That wind will take you up and ruin you. There was -- is -- no respite. I've certainly lost a fair piece of my mind to that wailing, screaming, unending icy blast. I think that helped motivate me, to find the door and get inside.

Once the door was visible, I knew I wasn't going back home. That I'd have to press on and finish, and that I could leave the forsaken place when I was done. I pried it up with thinned fingers and sinewy strength. It came free, exposing the tunnel beneath. Descending to black.

..eh, don't feel like writing more.