LJIdol / LPF: Week 2: My Mount Rushmore
Sunday, 14 October 2018 10:06 amRejecting impossible standards
I am learning how to love myself
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100 words
He is standing beside the caravan holding a flaming torch and working on some gizmo when she approaches with her hood up to hide her unseemly cropped locks.
He nods and turns back to his instrument.
"Of that I have no doubt. Do you believe one can find what they are looking for by running away?" He shakes his head in response to his own question. "You girl do not know what you seek and so you will never know when you have found it."
"I can learn," she says.
Cue Thunder
“I have had a vision mistress that Sir Henry will be lost at sea,” says the young actress crossing to the proscenium.
In the small box on stage left a small towheaded boy watches through a peephole as the drawing room of a town house begins transforming into a scene of the open ocean; a back drop painted to look like a churning sea with white capped waves is lowered and a small replica of a double masted ship is rocked back and forth by unseen stagehands.
A soft but sharp whistle interrupts the boy’s enchantment and he turns to the prompter who is glaring crossly at him.
The call-boy moves away from the peephole and the prompter whispers fiercely at him, “Git to the green room lad and tell the actors there’ll be notes after the rehearsal and to meet in the auditorium.”
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Full text below audio link
This is a story about an MC afflicted with passion.
Who, like the restless needle of a compass,
was forever seeking the Horizon.
< spoiler alert > the ending of this story is already foretold
and is the same for every single being in creation.
It’s been said we’re all just players of some unseen narrator.
A nameless, unknowable, spiteful, narrator
who in the throes of passion
might decide to kill his creation.
So, this MC has a heartbeat like a needle of a spiraling compass.
For as is true for all, inevitably, death has been foretold.
Even for this MC who loves a thing known as, horizon.
They’re forever stupidly longing for that ever distant, damned Horizon.
Yes, damned, is the opinion of this narrator,
Who is actually wondering if there is even a point, if it’s all been foretold?
But I digress and the MC curses the will of my passion
as we drop them on the shore with naught but map and compass.
Do you see, that this MC is a stubborn, monstrous creation?
(I do confess I also find this fixed verse form to be a monstrous creation.)
What would happen if the MC ever reached their figurative horizon?
Perhaps an HEA* is greater than my abilities can compass?
But what good is an MC to a narrator
if they do not have passion?
We must all live with knowing that eventual, ending foretold.
From your very first breath, there being a last has been foretold.
It’s a bargain; the uncanny act of creation.
But back to the MC with all that all-consuming passion.
(Wanting so badly to reach that god damned fucking gosh darn horizon.)
The one who would dare defy the narrator
but is just a feckless wanderer lead by a faulty compass.
There are always dropped stitches and pricked fingers within the compass
of the tapestry woven as it is being foretold.
Does every narrator
hate his creation
for seeking beyond the horizon?
Being able, as the other is not, to fulfill their passion?
In the end the MC lets passion become the compass
and each moment a horizon. The last moment cannot be foretold,
the MC learns, for any man, or his creation, or even a humble narrator.
*HEA stands for Happily Ever After
with much thanks as always to lolaslaughter for being the best cheerleader a gal could have
When I sat down to write this week my Camp NaNoWriMo characters for this session decided to get involved take over.
Sparkie's Story
He doesn’t mind being called Imp. Even though that’s technically not what he is.
He was brought forth from a wisp of smoke and evolved over his journey’s with Tremaine. Though he insists he was made from flame and this led the man to dub him Sparkie. Spark, Sparkle, and sometimes Firestarter.
Names are what you make them, Tremaine tells him.
That was one of his first lessons. They will identify you as what you mean to them.
Good morning sunshine.
Rise and shine super star.
Get some rest now little friend.
Tremaine needed a companion and Sparkie learned that meant growing up quickly; becoming curious about the world around him. Figuring out the important things.
With Tremaine it was easy. He was exuberant in the life he was leading. The great treasure hunter. Notorious.
Their first time aboard an aether ship together made Sparkie understand completely.
________
Sparkie loved Ree from the first. She was the young ward of Tremaine’s benefactor, a man named Claudius, who mostly sent Tremaine to exotic lands searching for rare books.
Ree was the one who taught Sparkie about love and how the heart could ache.
They had tea parties.
He taught her how to play pirates.
She always wanted to wear a cape.
She read out loud to him from great leather bound tomes.
A is for abalone.
B is for bishop.
Their visits were always too short and by the time they returned it was, dancing at balls, curating the library, needlepoint, baking apple pies, card games and chess games.
And then one day during a round of Beggar My Neighbor,
Do you think fairies are real Sparkie?
I am real.
Yes, but you are a dragon.
So dragons exist but not fairies Ree?
Can you truly become fire? Like Trem says.
He wishes to please her. To make her laugh. To be that which she enjoys.
He sighs and feels alight. He com-busts in all directions. Summoning fire hurts, consumes.
He has known he is Wisp. He is soft scents on gentle breezes.
But he had become an actual pirate by then. He had learned to wield.
He was also Weapon.
He was steel and stone. He was pure magic. Born of smoke. Summoned by a lonely man on moonless night in the forest of Everglen.
_____________
Tremaine chooses each piece of wood and lays down incense and herbs. He says words of significance and then tosses a match dipped in sulfur onto the pile.
Nothing happened for a long time,Tremaine would say when telling this story. He went about and made camp. Heated a bit of food and coffee along the edge of the fire. Just as he was about to doze off, a bit of smoke swirled about his shoulder and then hovered before him and dissipated into the air leaving behind the daydream of a cloud of fine particles, an entire life lived in but a single breath.
Sparkie doesn’t call his master by his surname, like most, when they are alone. He is teacher, he is summoner, spell caster…demon catcher.
You are not a demon Sparkie, Tremaine insists but Sparkie is not so sure.
He doesn't mind being called Imp because he secretly wishes it was closer to the truth.