What I Assume

Nearly a year ago, at a peak of mental anxiety, I decided to cease flitting around and write an ambitious novel based on a 10-minute dream. Let me be completely candid and communicate the importance of this particular challenge: while my love of the art of good fiction contributed to my desire, the critical motivation to embark on this challenge was far more personal, centering on nightmares of high school reunions (which I won’t attend) and the fear of mortal obliteration.

I started on this project in the early autumn of 2007, and have been working on it with good regularity in the mornings before work, trudging through outlines, character sketches, chapters, and half-chapters.

But as this summer rolled in I knew I was far behind my own expectations. I was revising chapter after chapter of the first third of the novel incessantly. I knew there was something wrong.

Being an English grad and a lover of literature, I have a comfortable knowledge of how to write, what a storyline looks like, and why character development happens. I’ve read and benefited from Adam Sexton’s Master Class in Fiction Writing. But pulling off the writing of a complete novel was more of a struggle than I had expected, and I began to wonder:

• Would this be a book that I as a reader would want to read?
• Could I keep the increasingly disparate events and characters cohesive for the second and third “acts”?
• Would this novel be a book I would want to have my name on, or if I would try to disassociate myself with a tricked-out nom de plume?

It was then that I stumbled upon Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method , which oriented me to perceive my idea as if I were a reader picking the book up off the shelf. I began by writing a single-sentence synopsis. That went well; however, at step 2 I froze: I could not write a summary of my novel in 5 cohesive sentences. There was just too much going on, and it was all over the map.

I forced myself to step back and said, OK, you have your main character, you have your scenario, you know the climax of the novel. Now write a 5 sentence summary around that, and make it intriguing.

My end result was not perfect, and it left most of my work on the first third of the novel unusable. But it is something I would want to read, and I am finally confident that I have planted the right seeds. I can now see how my summary fits into the traditional 3-act storyline that Peder Hill elaborates on in this diagram:

Very exciting.

I mean this to be neither “stream of consciousness” nor surrealist. And so while I think a lot of the lines are right, the structure or order is subject to on-going revision. To illustrate this, the original has color-coded lines, which I would use if I thought it wouldn’t be distracting.

How Bad You Want It

someday you might have time to learn to paint
it may be Spring when your son is embarrassed sick of you
air travel and it's thundering take-offs
fast is how it will grow boring
know by heart
her bare feet pressed the glove box
it was you who loosed each embrace
a winter morning too cold to buckle a seatbelt
acrid strings of spittle cling
alone in a public restroom and reading anything
will you call me she asked
young man
waited to shave, want now to stop
the surgeon tugs another bright-eyed insect light overhead
speak up
stay or go, just make up your mind
some in-flight turbulence, and it was a bumpy landing
thousands of unread titles have been written
you didn't build wings let alone melt them
as always, the librarian is turning off lights
there will be time
you can't always be the last to leave
the tv on all day
white noise helps you avoid hearing
music of an untranslated song still makes sense
change from a ten, two ones, two dimes, one penny
fibs chalk-mark the walls
perspirant halos from her perfect ten toes
is sleep black or beige
you have no idea
if the universe has a definite size and shape
blistered and rainbow-swirled
blow more bubbles
uncontrollable
variations within the species
where have you been
where were you when she wore that black dress
the living will never outnumber
a surprise of snowflakes
some February night or morning the newly dead dog froze stiff
know by touch
turning off the alarm that you yourself set
will you please shut the door
weep in the closet
nobody sees
it was the monkey who killed
with two open hands smacking temples
you didn't see it coming
look at this, look at this, dad, look at this
you'll appreciate sunshine and the smell of cut grass when you're feeling better
now it's too late
social behavior within packs condemns the weak and injured
so shut your mouth
despite the language barrier
I saw Darwin on the savanna chased by baboons and hyenas
don't let sleep take you
in bed her back turned against you
the space between stars
the scars will be small
another tattoo that didn't turn out right
no obvious branding of six-sixty-six
stitches will disintegrate
counting from one to ten, you fail at five
and now mother owl won't wake the sun
o, omnipotent
all-ending anesthetic
du kannst fliegen
we'll be there when you wake up
will you be
dreamless like the dead
perchance
one in a million typing monkeys
try your luck and roll the dice
if you can’t say something nice
call it dark matter

I had nearly a full day open following the MoodleMoot SFo, and with @kenwoodward claiming the rental car, I decided to visit one of my favorite museum’s at The Palace of the Legion of Honor.

I arrived just before the museum opened, giving me time to stroll the grounds and observe a number of bouncing, velveteen birds amongst the lawns and flowers. After 9:30 I hobbled down to the cafe, where I spun out a couple sudoku puzzles under a hot mug of tea and apple strudel. Then it was on to the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities before heading upstairs to the main galleries.

On the main floor, the first piece that I took notice of was one I’d been curious about before, but never contemplated beyond it’s surface: Gaspere Traversi’s The Fortune Teller, ca. 1760. I’ve not had any training in art history, but offer a short critique with an amateur’s interest:

mharrsch through Creative Commons licensing

Traversi’s The Fortune Teller shows a mirror of two women, one old, the other ostensibly young, but with subtle signs of oncoming age. Though the subjects are distinctly client and reader, wealthy and poor, the women are reflections of each other. One tells what the other wants to hear, and like many psychics, through simple tricks of confidence, they are of one mind; they wear the same greedy smile; and, as we see just below the palm, they posess a common purse.

Traversi has portrayed them in inverted postures, like two sides of the same coin: their heads leaning in together, touching near the crown present a near identical physical arrangement. And though one is rich and the other poor, their clothing shares similar visual connections: the fortune teller’s blue head scarf matches her client’s blue hair ribbons; as the younger woman’s white sleeves press out from beneath her dress, so do the sleeves of the fortune teller, though with less pomp and whiteness, recalling age and use. Similarly, the gray hair of the old woman can find it’s roots in the graying roots of the younger. Finally, curiously, both women wear pearl earrings.

The reflective quality of these women is not so much dichotomous to me as it is foreboding; like a still-life, these women of singular mind incarnate aging and superficiality, and through this I feel a moral warning. Perhaps it is through irony, for as the young woman looks to the future, she looks only to fantasy; whereas the reality of her future is apparent not in her own palm, but in the face, hair, dress, and posture of her counterpart

The old man peering over the fortune teller’s shoulder is something of a mystery, clutching the eerily-eyed bird-head of his cane, but I think this to tells something of the narrative: we might assume he is the fortune teller’s husband, and at the risk of being corrected by other details I’ve overlooked, we might infer that the younger woman is unmarried, and seeking counsel on her prospects for taking a husband. His presence is a conspicuous disparity to what otherwise stands as a strongly symmetrical composition, and so an absence of a “reflection” on the younger woman’s side of the canvas is notable.

Though presumed to be of separate lineage, the women in The Fortune Teller are connected intergenerationally. I see a similar pattern in Traversi’s The Merry Company, where the old, somewhat disheveled man in the foreground grins his gums and lifts his hat, while in the background a younger verdion of the man grins with a younger set of teeth, but the same cheery and hopeful eyes.

Other works of notable impact on this visit:

• Chihuly’s Sea Blue and Green Tower
• Rodin’s The Sculptor and His Muse
• Magical Stele (Egyptian)
• Dandre-Bardon’s Diana and Endymion
• Gerard’s La Comtesse del Morel-Vinde and Her Daughter
• Lear’s Masada on the Dead Sea
• Bazzani’s Temple of Saturn
• Redin’s illustrations for Flaubert’s La tentation de Sainte-Antoine
• Picasso’s illustration (not the etching) Peintre et modèle tricotant
• van Noordt’s Susanna and the Elders
• And, as always, any portrait by Raeburn

Though my visit was cut a bit short by the arrival of my colleague, it was one of my most satisfying visits to this museum, and on several instances I found myself whispering that I’d gladly live another and another lifetime wrapped in the alternating mixture of discipline, reverence, and decadence as a painter.