AUTHOR'S NOTE: Unfinished story fragment I started in my online journal back in 2002. The image, by necessity, has been removed. It's an infrared picture of some sort of trellised enclosure entryway looking out toward greenery or woods; sunlight is filtering down through the wooden slats, making everything striped. I only just now noticed, years later, that something dark (clothing?--a rug?--rocks?) seems to be lying on the ground within it; on looking at the story I realize I noticed it back then too and had forgotten it until now. I still have the image saved to my hard drive but I believe the site it's from, http://inkblot.vurtified.com/, is defunct.
Shards
06/11/02
7:22 am EDT
Still stuck. Ggghhhrr. And still owing a lot. I've been staring at visual writing prompts for the past few days with no luck. I used to be able to do it in school. I KNOW I would be able to if I had a teacher looming over me. So why not anymore? Stories don't have to be deep if I write them just for the sake of writing, but that doesn't seem to help me...
I like the photos on the Inkblot writing site. Especially the ones with the strange infrared haze to them. I have a Time-Life book about ghosts that has some infrared pictures and they always spooked me. There's just something...I dunno...strange about them. And I'm usually not one to be spooked by pictures.
For some reason, the picture below, in particular, gets to me.
There's just something very ominous about that picture...I tried and tried to write, but my thoughts all keep shifting back to Kristeva. For just about every one! Gah I wish I could create new characters and then do away with them. My mind has been on him a lot lately.
Should I try to write anyway? Free associate? I've never been good with that because it's so patternless, and I'm the anal one, needing order in everything. I'll try anyway, with just what comes to my mind...
Light. Bands and lines of it, all parallel, intersecting at curves. Where is that coming from? You open your eyes just a little bit because it's so blinding. If it's sunlight, it has a haze to it which only makes your eyes tear up faster. You have to blink the sting away. Where is this?
You lift your gaze and find yourself looking not up, but backwards. Behind you. The lines are there too, dark against light. Your head is as hazy as the light is so nothing can connect, at first. After a moment your eyes adjust a bit more and things start to make sense. A trellis? It looks like a trellis, but you cannot be certain. You don't have a trellis. You never needed one. Why is it here and what are you doing in it...?
Now, instead of just vision, other senses start coming to as well. Hearing...birds are singing. Just beyond your sight, outside the banded walls. Every so often one of them flits over the trellis (or whatever it is), and you think, a nest must be nearby. Smell...you can smell grass. Mown grass. With the faint tinge of gasoline. It's a familiar smell which brings back summer. And now you can feel things as well...the air is warm and heavy, especially under the banded roof, yet something cool presses against your back. Cool. Hard and yet soft at once. You move your fingers and feel a few strands of dried-up grass, yet that's not it. You move your hand further and it brushes into dust. Soil. You're lying on the ground in here.
Ground...?
Whatever, wherever it is, you've been lying here long enough.
You try lifting your head, and the bands of light and dark grow hazy again, shift, overlap. Blink. They straighten themselves out. You put out one hand and slowly push yourself up with a wince, because as soon as you do the whole banded room starts bucking and whirling around you. Your head feels like it's cracked in half--not a pain, so much as a disjointed feeling. One half sliding one way, the other half sliding the other way. You have to put one hand up to try to make it stop, and open your eyes only tentatively, lest the banded room still be spinning.
It appears to have straightened out. Mostly. It's still blurry, but at least it's stopped moving.
You drop your gaze and look around you now, careful not to move too quickly. The trellis (trellis?) appears to have been left untended for ages. Flowers do not climb its sides in orderly fashion as they should. Instead you can make out wild bushy masses blocking one wall, and can see sky and a climbing weed or two above. The other side is mostly clear, but the light is too bright for you to see what lies outside. The inside is just as neglected. The grass is dead and sparse, the earth dry and powdery. Something lies just ahead of you...cloth? It's dark, and shapeless...you're not sure what it is. You start to reach out to touch it and then see your own arm before you. Pale, smudged with dirt and grass, bruised a little. You hold it up and stare at it in wonder, then look yourself over.
Why are you out here like this, and not even dressed...?
You don't feel shock or embarrassment. More like puzzlement, as if your mind hasn't fully woken up yet. Suffice it to say that this is puzzling. You're not the type of person who would go out to lie down under someone else's trellis, without your clothes on. This is strange.
(...I have to continue this later, if ever. Gotta log off. Man! What a weird story THAT turned out to be!! o_O )
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