Create Every Day

Dore, on researching articles for her dissertation:

“What?! A summary and a conclusion? You can’t do that, you long-winded bastard!”

Saw this randomly yesterday, and I absolutely love it.  Not sure if it’s an original source, but that’s where I first saw it.  Plus, the site is from New Zealand!  Go Kiwis!

September 27, 2009

The sky burned the light baby blue of the tropics, the sand a blinding white. The shimmering sea was an artist’s pallet of turquoise and aquamarine. Waves lapped playfully on the shore as birds ran along its edge, combing the sand for tidbits. A gentle breeze whispered and rustled its way through the dense palms along the edge of the sand, complementing the cacophony of the birds and the rhythmic crash of the waves.

Beyond the first few palms a line of denser grass and thick underbrush, seemingly unbroken for as far as the eye could see, clearly demarcated the end of the beach and the beginning of the jungle. It was dark under the thick cover of leaves, and the swaying grass played tricks with the light. Easy to miss two dark eyes peering out from under the broad leaves of a banana tree.

Harrod, to whom the eyes belonged, watched the shore unblinkingly, as he had for some time. He remained motionless, staring at the small knot of men struggling to bring something — a wooden craft of some kind, it seemed — farther up the beach, above where the tide would come. Harrod did not know these men. He did not know any such men. But Harrod did know trouble when he saw it, and these men with their glinting mantles and strange trappings looked like trouble.

Harrod silently and suddenly faded back into the darkness along hidden paths known only to him. He sighed quietly as he jogged through the jungle. It was going to be one of those days.

August 15, 2009

There’s nowhere to run, Cheryl’s mind screamed as she frantically glanced around the hotel room. Her heart raced. Her breathing came in short, clipped gasps. The bedroom.

She ran toward the bedroom of the penthouse suite, her stiletto heels left silent divots across the thick, new carpet. The heels cut into her ankles.

Through the door and into the room. Look right, look left. Nowhere to hide. The room was sparse, as all hotel rooms are. There was a pile of Italian luggage in the corner, open and strewn about the bed. The door to the balcony was open. The curtains billowed.

Cheryl felt a sudden jolt of fear as she hear a noise behind her, and her head whipped around of its own accord. He was almost there. She rushed toward the open glass door and slipped outside. Her heels sounded painfully loud on the concrete. The air was hot after the air conditioned interior. There was nowhere to go now. Nothing but a couple of chairs and a glass table shared the balcony with Cheryl. The door from the main room was latched from inside. Cheryl gasped for breath.

She could hear him in the main room now. He was drunk, and noisy. There was a crashing sound as something – a vase, she thought – was overturned.

“Where you at?” He bellowed. The speech was slurred. Cheryl shrank back against the side of the hotel, wrapping the dark around her like a protective shield. “I know you’re in here. I know you’re in here and I know what you did with Len. I know every goddamn thing.” There was another crashing sound as the door of the room was shoved open and slammed into the wall.

“You’re gonna pay, Cheryl. I’m going to take every cent of it out of you.” He was in the room now.

Cheryl knew he meant it. Kane wasn’t a man of restraint, or forgiveness. She cowered outside, biting her lip in fear. Tears streamed down her face now, and her body tensed against the thought of impending pain. Everything was quiet in the room for a moment. He was walking across the room toward the balcony. Terror welled up in Cheryl’s chest.

She screamed as he crashed into the frame of the sliding glass door, almost knocking it off its track.

Time slowed to a crawl. Cheryl’s heartbeat slowed to a dull thud. Her ragged breathing spread billowing fire in her lungs. Every nerve in her body screamed with a sudden rush of adrenaline. Instinctively, her body prepared to lash out in a last-ditch effort of self preservation.

Silence.

Painful seconds dragged on, an eternity in Cheryl’s distorted world.

Slowly, achingly, the chemicals flooding Cheryl’s veins receded and time accelerated. She suddenly felt weak and vulnerable. Her skin was clammy, and she involuntarily shivered despite the heat. Her eyes darted around warily.

Slowly, a dark, crumpled shape against the inside of the door resolved itself into a man. It was Kane. His arm hung limply out of the door.

Cheryl heaved a ragged and shaky breath. After a second she mustered her courage and edged closer timidly. Suddenly she lashed out and kicked the prostrate hand. Hard. It bounced off the door frame and fell back to the floor. She watched for a second for any sign of motion. There was none. Another second, and Cheryl slid the door open a bit more and peeked inside. Kane lay on his front across the doorway, his face toward Cheryl. There was a fine white froth around his lips. He was dead.

About damn time, Cheryl thought to herself. Len had assured her that the drugs would take effect faster.

She suddenly turned away from the body and grabbed her purse from where it had fallen to the ground. She dug around inside and found a pack of cigarettes and a worn Zippo. She lit up a cigarette and took a long drag as she leaned over the banister and looked out on the night. The smoke burned her lungs. It felt good. The smoke trailing up from the cigarette curled straight into the still air.

Twelve stories below the lights and the noise of the Las Vegas strip hurtled on uncaring. Just another hot night in the desert.

Well, it’s been a very long time since I updated my blog.  Sigh.  Such high hopes for my resolutions, such mediocre results.  Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk.  I have at least been up to some creative writing lately, so my plan is to stop keeping those all to myself and start putting them up here for all to share.  Hooray for you, dear readers!

I’m thinking that I”m going to have to change the blog theme, though, to better facilitate reading.  So that’s first on the agenda.

See you in the future…

“Hold on… I’m gonna feng shui this place!”

Recently I got my hands on a Linhof Color Kardan 4×5 camera on the cheap.  I’ve been wanting to try my hand at large format for a while now, and it was a case of the right price at the right time, so I took the plunge.  Unfortunately the camera was just that, however: just the camera.  What I didn’t really appreciate at the time (but I do now) is how much else you need to put together a full large format kit.  After weeks of scrounging, however, I finally have a more or less complete setup and am ready to take some pictures. :-)  Here’s the full accounting to date:

Linhof Color Kardan 45s monorail camera body (c. 1975 or so): $50
Bogen/Manfrotto 3021 tripod with 3030 pan/tilt head: $60
Film holders, darkroom supplies, and various odds and ends: $70
Caltar II-N 135mm f/5.6 lens + shipping: $350
Ilford HP5+ 4×5 film (25 pack): $25

Grand total to date: $535

Ouch.

So it got a bit more expensive than I originally planned.  But on the bright side, I had a lot of fun doing the scavenger hunt for all of the parts (and I could have spent a TON more money buying everything new).  Craigslist is awesome like that.

So tonight I did my best to block off all of the light coming into my bathroom and loaded up my film holders.  It was actually quite a bit easier than I had anticipated.  The film loading that is.  Darkening up the backroom not so much.  I was amazed how much light leaked in though my flimsy brown-paper-bag-over-the-window job.  There was also a bit of light leaking in through the door jam (I did block the bottom with a towel).  So yeah… I’m hoping it didn’t fog my 400-speed film too much….  Well, I’ll find out soon enough. 🙂

Now all I have to do is get my butt up in the morning and find some subjects to shoot.

[RKL: Note no Chapter 1 title.  No one needs to a title to identify Chapter 1.  And I’ll leave the mystery of whether this is a “chapters” book for a little while.  Everyone loves a good mystery.  Not that this is actually a mystery story.  Or is it….  (It isn’t — seriously†).]

Come with me, dear readers, to a country where freedom of speech is hampered.  The citizens are governed — nay Protected — by the People.  But the the People are harsh protectors.  Communication is an Enemy of the citizens, say the People, and so the citizens must be protected, even if that means, “our dear citizens, that we, the People, must limit communications about anything that might harm the System. And so the citizens live under a cloud of oppression and fear that if they complain too often or too loudly they make may be perceived as harming the System, and be dealt with by the People.

But there is a gaping hole called the Network. There are numerous portals into the network, much like our phone booths. But these portals are monitored — watched — by the People. They may be used, but the Watchers are always there, viewing the conversation.  But slowly the citizens have found those portals that have not been watched yet or have had their Watchers fall asleep or break.  The citizens communicate between those few portals, spreading the locations of the other open portals at odd hours in encrypted files with passcodes passed covert channels.  Such “Open Portals” — or ops in slang; their rogue maintainers known as Ops — are often shut down, however, with those citizens closest to them “disappearing” (as the papers said).  But the Ops keep finding more portals to open.  The back and forth battle has been going on for years, with advances in technique on both sides refining the field.  But the battle is far from over.  Both sides are too strong to be stopped in one blow.  It will take time to whittle away or dismantle either side, and both sides are comfortable in that fact.  For now the stalemate draws on.

[RKL:†  This is a dagger sign.  It’s like an asterisk, but better.  It usually means, roughly, “I already used the asterisk, and I’m too lazy and/or elitist to go back and change my footnotes to numerals so you get to deal with funny typographical symbols, nya nya nya.”  But I didn’t use an asterisk.  Hmm… why didn’t I use an asterisk?  Perhaps that’s part of the mystery.  Or perhaps I’ve just never used one before and wanted to skip ahead in the “Teach Yourself Editing” textbook.  You’ll have to read on to find out.  To be continued… Bum! Bum! Bahhh!!!]

[RKL: Okay, last note… please ignore these comments if you actually want to read the story.  They’re very much commentary from my inner-Python and will almost certainly severely hamper your ability to enjoy the story.]

Chapter 2

But into this stasis comes a new player.  Into this fray a lone Writer has slipped an innocuous wisp of binary data — bindat — into the latest system software for the portals.  The code is subtle… so subtle that it passes the scrupulous inspection of the People’s Readers, who are said to be rewarded handsomely for finding — and dealing with — such “Bugs”.  His name is Bakh.

Bakh had had a close friend delt with last week.  Kaleel went quietly, without kicking and screaming or crying as they usually did.  He had just hung his head in defeat as he walked away between the uniformed People’s Police.  The walk to the door and out of everyone’s lives had seemed all the more horrific for its absolute and staring silence.  The PPs scared Bakh.  They scared everybody, but Bakh was different.  To Bakh the PPs were the physical embodiment of fear.  His parents had been of the old values, and were that deadly combination of universally strict and unquestioningly loyal to their leaders.  Bakh had been drilled from a boy to follow the instructions of the PPs exactly, without question or hesitation.  Any hint of rebellion was ruthlessly quashed by his father, with his mother looking on in stern approval.  His punishments always ended with a cold admonishment that punishment from the PPs would make his parents’ wrath pale in comparison.

And so Bakh lived with a constant tingling fear of encountering the PPs.  He avoided contact with them whenever possible, but he could not avoid dealing with the PPs entirely.  Their influence was just too pervasive.  Bakh always felt drained after dealing with the PPs from the clinching fear that they would find some fault in him and deal out the punishment his parents had promised.

Kaleel’s departure had terrified Bakh.  He replayed the walk to the door over and over in his mind, the howling silence echoing in this dreams.  In his mind Bakh always screamed for Kaleel, his throat burning with the effort, but no sound penetrated the silence.  Each morning he started awake gasping and drenched in cold sweat.

Bakh had no idea what Kaleel’s plan had been;  just that he had one.  But everyone had one.  Bakh didn’t know Kaleel well, and had no idea how competent a Writer he had been.  But after seeing Kaleel leave a broken man Bakh had had a sinking feeling — now deeply buried beneath layers of fear — that Kaleel’s had been very good.  But it wasn’t good enough.  Almost none of them were.  It was rumored in back rooms in hushed wispers that even those plans did make it almost always didn’t work.  It was not easy to satisfy the three opposing goals of writing something that was invisible, powerful, and functional.  Add to that the requirement that it work in one try.  Because you usually didn’t get a second chance.

Despite the overwhelming sense of terror curling his stomach into knots, Bakh had stayed with his plan.  He had to stay with his plan.  Not because it was noble or right.  It wasn’t for revenge.  He did it because it was time.  Literally.

[RKL: Here’s the horrifically bad first draft of that last paragraph:

Despite the overwhelming sense of terror curling his stomach into knots, Bakh had stayed with his plan.  He had to stay with his plan.  There was not bravado in it.  Neither chivalry, nor honor, nor class.  No purist elitism, no patriotism, no bohemian pizazz.  He didn’t do it for revenge or hate, or to self congratulate.  He did it because… because… because… he did it because it was time.

No, literally.

Yeah… good edit.]

Timing was important to Bakh’s plan.  The Bug depended on the exact time it was activated, and another such chance wouldn’t come for over thirty years.  Bakh had been committed for a long time now.  From the first changes to the bindat Bakh had been on a course that could not be stopped.  If he tried to take the Bug out, the unauthorized change would be noticed.  If he tried to stop or delay the Bug’s deployment it would cause a failure that would be discovered, analyzed and traced back to him.  Bakh went on because that was the only way to go.

Chapter 3

[RKL: To be continued…]

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks.

Two weekends ago, I went up to Mammoth Ski Area with a couple of friends from work.  I had two great days of snowboarding.  After being totally worn out on the first day by the two skiers I was with, I decided to take a couple of runs through the terrain park to work a few different muscles.  I had a couple of pretty good runs – some good jumps, a few spills, but nothing major.  I hit a couple of the boxes and other metal features, and was doing pretty well overall.  On the third (and last) run through the park I decided to do something different on the very last box.  I decided to ride across diagonally from the toe side and drop off the side of the box.  (I usually go heal-side if I’m riding across a box.)  Everything was set and ready to go coming into the jump.  That is, until I forgot to actually hop up onto the box.

Having failed to clear the initial hurdle, my front edge slammed into the side of the box, and I pitched forward over the plastic.  With my toes caught on one side, I my shins smacked into the opposing rail on the way down, leaving a matched pair of cuts right above my boot tops.  Blech.  Finishing the move with a shoulder-first body slam into the ground didn’t help, either.  Luckily, the fall didn’t hurt all that bad, and the cuts are healing well.  I’m going to have some nice scars, but I wasn’t winning no beauty contests to start with.

The work week following was relatively quiet, but on Thursday Dore and I flew to Utah to meet up with my family to go skiing.  (Eric is working at Snowbird Ski Area as one of the tram operators.)  I managed to get through the first day relatively unscathed.  The second day, however, I managed to pull my tricep slightly on one of the few powder runs of the day.  Maybe I shouldn’t try tree runs though heavy tracked powder without being warmed up first.  Maybe.  Fortunately the pull wasn’t bad, and my arm was functional, if very sore, the next day.

On the third day I wasn’t quite so lucky, however.  It was a heavy powder day, and I should have known better than to try a 360 off of a road jump on skis.  (Note to self: seriously, stop trying that…)  I made it around, but the deep, choppy powder grabbed my skis, ripping one off.  I did a three-quarter forward bouncing somersault over the front of my remaining ski and landed flat on on my bum in a soft, poofy pile of powder.  All was well, until I tried to move and realized that my quad was burning.  (My right quad, oddly, just like my tricep.)  Good news: Skiing didn’t seem to affect my leg.  Bad news: Walking does hurt quite a bit.  Guess which one I do more often?  Bummer…

Oh well, it should heal in a couple of weeks, provided I stop running on it (I’m looking at you, kickball).

And speaking of kickball…

Our game this last week didn’t go so well at all.  I did manage to score one run in the first inning, but the other team was good, and got us out fairly quickly.  When they got to kick it was obvious that they were not just good, but really good.  We finally got two outs, and I was just waiting to get the third out to finish out the inning.  I finally got my chance on a short fly ball right up the middle of the field.  I ran as hard as I could, and all I could think about was getting that out.  As I dove for the ball, it crossed my mind that it was odd that the pitcher wasn’t turning away from his attempt to catch the ball.  And then came the stars.

In the grand scheme of things, there are some great truths.  E = mc^2.  Paper covers rock.  Knee is harder than face.  In the name of science, I took on the task of reverifying the latter.  And I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is 100% true. I have the thirteen stitches to prove it.  And a pair of broken glasses.

As I rode to the emergency room with an impromptu friend, I couldn’t help but wonder: Who would have guessed that after seven days of hard skiing and snowboarding that kickball would have been the thing that did me in?  But there you have it.

So yeah… it’s been a rough two weeks.  I’m quite ready to take a break from my vacations and get back to some nice, solid, dependable tedium.

This last weekend was very busy for Dore and I.  On Friday night we had some friends over for a grand Belgian Beer Fest!  We made fresh giant pretzels, potato and sausage stew, and tried out a ton of different Belgian beers.  All in all it was awesome.  I have to brag: I make a mean pretzel (well, Dore made the dough and I cooked the pretzels).

On Saturday we slept in nice and late.  We finally got up and went out to breakfast/lunch at IHOP.  Later in the afternoon we met up with our friend Lauren, who took us to a park out on Ellwood Mesa to see the monarch butterflies.  It is pretty late in the season, but there were still a ton of butterflies in the eucalyptus trees.  The park goes all the way out to the bluffs, so we walked out there and found a path down to the beach.  We arrived on the beach right as the sunlight was getting low and orange.  It was really beautiful.  There was an old weathered wooden breakwater fence on the beach that stretched for hundreds of yards.  The light was hitting it at a low angle, which made the texture of the wood stand out fantastically.  I was really having a good time taking photos.  I posted some of my photos on my Picasa page.

On Sunday, we met up with our friends Maria and Matt and went for a hike on the Jesusita Trail, which goes up into the foothills above Santa Barbara.  We made a couple of wrong turns along the way.  At one point we ended up at a fence with a sign that read, “You are already way too far from the trail.  Please respect private property.” (In case you coudn’t gather, California trails tend to have tons of offshoots with no markings.)  Sadly the sign did not actually tell us how to find the real trail. Finally, after much searching and reproachful looks from Dore we found the right trail and continued on our way.

We stopped after a while and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Oddly, it turned out that Maria and Matt and Dore and I had independently brought the same snack.  Apparently peanut butter and jelly is the perfect trail snack.  Hunger satisfied, we decided that we had had enough hiking for the day, and headed back down to the car.

When we got back to town we decided to reward ourselves with a meal at Dargain’s, an awesome Irish Pub downtown.  It was really nice walking down State street in the sun, and we all had a very nice time.

When Dore and I finally made it home, we were both exhausted, and dropped down for a nap almost immediately.  We got up after a while and lazed around the house for the rest of the evening.