He came in the night. His arrival was marked by silence. The creatures of the darkness cease their somber serenading at his passing. The moon blankets herself behind the clouds to hide herself from his coming. A wind, chilly even for autumn, heralds his arrival with its low mournful song. My nostrils fill with the smell of sulphur, and I see him. His destrier is as black as coal. It's eyes are red and seem to glow like the embers of a dying fire. Its mane is ethereal, wisps of smoke writhing in death throes, rising from the beasts neck. The other worldy creature paws and stamps the ground with iron shod hooves, and the earth beneath it shudders and bleeds.
The thing borne upon the beasts back is more unworldy and terrifying than his mount. He is cloaked not in cloth, but in darkness and smoke. Around his waist sits a braided belt that writhes and wriggles as thought it were alive. Clutched in his bony right hand is a wicked scythe. From its haft hang wragged strips of parchment, yellowed with time. They wave silently in the unnatural breeze, trying futilely to escape their master. The scythes blade is as black as a starless midnight sky. The blade is etched in runes, somehow visible in the darkness. I try to focus on them, but they make my eyes ache and my head throb. From his back jut two wings, like an angels. Yet, unlike an angels, his wings are skeletal, as though the flesh and feathers have been flensed off, leaving behind two twisted looking things more aken to claws than wings.
More unsettling is the hourglass carried in his left hand. Unlike the hand that wields his scythe, his left hand is sheathed in an iron gauntlet. The hour glass is an angry bronze. I watch, transfixed, as the sand drains from the top to the bottom of the hourglass with an agonizing slowness.
The hood of his cloak turns slowly, I can feel his gaze upon me. My heart drops and I shiver. I pull my cloak tighter around me but it does nothing to block out the cold. I force my eyes away from his hour glass and with trepidation, attempt to return his scrutinous examination. I am met with more darkness. His face is hidden by the hood of his cloak, I can see no features, and to stare into his hood is to stare into oblivion, a vast nothingness filled with the cold wisdom of eternity and a disdain that only an ageless aberration amongst mortals may know. I feel like a lowly insect upon a crawling across a dinner table, spared not out of compassion or worthiness, but cold disinterest. Yet, even without seeing his eyes, I know he is looking at me. Rather, looking into me, into my heart and soul. Neither clothing nor armor can abate his gaze.
My knees begin to tremble and my lip begins to quiver. I want to turn and run, but that eyeless, sightless, all seeing gaze, transfixes me. I want to scream, but as I open my mouth, the air seems to be stolen from my lungs. I am helpless, like a spring pig, my ultimate fate is not my own. I will be weighed and deemed ready for the slaughter, or not. I would offer my wealth and the wealth of my family yet I know no riches will satisfy him, only my soul.
I squeeze my eyes shut and begin to pray for mercy, yet before I can form a word, my eyes shoot open seemingly of their own volition, and he addresses me. He speaks not with words but with a whisper that resonates within my mind, "God is not here child, and I know no mercy. And though you already know the answer, I shall tell you anyway. My name is Death, and the end is here."

Trust Yourself

     This reading was in a way profound to me. The author discusses what I think is the most daunting yet appealing thing about writing poetr; the intimacy of opening yourself up on paper. Goldberg is write, writing poetry often means opening yourself up and being intimate on paper. The intimacy of that alone is a daunting concept, and even more so because I believe that knowing someone may be critical of your work makes it all the worse. You feel scrutinized and in a way, vulnerable.
     As Goldberg said, you leave yourself naked, and forfeit a level of control. I believe to create something truly worth reading, it has to have truth to it. I dont necissarily mean truth in the sense of truth and lies, but truth in the sense of something being real. The truth is often a hard thing to see, especially within ourselves. Ego, self conciousness, and confidence or lack there of can often get in the way of that truth. To bring that truth out of ourselves and put it on paper, you have to be honest with yourself first, then be honest to anyone who might pick up what youve written. The truth is already almost always hard to get to anyway but it needs to be in what you do.
     I also believe Goldberg is saying to get ready for the fact that even once you leave yourself vulnerable, some people are still going to kick you. It makes me think of relationships and love. In love, ideally, one should be open, honest, and vulnerable. Even though you know theyre probably going to hurt you in the long run, you still have to do it becuase if you dont, you may shut out that one person thats right for you. In the same way, when you write something, dont expect everyone to appreciate it. Some things just dont resonate for some people. So, when you write, I think Goldberge is saying write for yourself, and know that even if almost everyone thinks your work is shit, just know that if you wrote with truth, it will mean something, maybe everything, to somebody.

Bird by Bird

     "...if your intuition says that your story sucks, make sure it really is your intuition and not your mother."

     This short quote from Lamotts "Bird by Bird," (found on page 113) really resonated with me. I am not comfortable or good at writing fiction, and this quote really helped me put the proverbial pen to paper. I am a self concious writer, and remembering what Lamott said helped me work through that. While I don't think anything I wrote was that good, I know it was better than it would have been if I had not read that line first. 
     Quotes like that make the value of this book to anyone who has to write anything. Whether it's fiction, poetry, or a report on the traffic situation in Denver, I think most people always feel at least a little like their work isn't good enough. Sometimes, this feeling is good. It forces you to produce better work, review, re reviewing, rewrite, and re-rewriting work to make it as good as possible. But, when something you have is good, its important to differentiate between self doubt and honest examination of your own work.

Fiction Packet 2: Longer Short Stories

     While last week, I enjoyed all of the short stories, this week, I thoroughly enjoyed the readings. The stories from our second packet were longer, and as such were able to incoporate more "story." I say "story," because I dont know the techincal term.
     I'm not saying the short stories in the first packet weren't equally well written, but because of their short length, I could only "see" the detail. In the stories in the second packet, I was able to more immerse myself in the story. For exmaple, in the short story "All people in hell want..." the author gives characters a nickname.
     So what's in a name? In these fiction stories, a lot (in my opinion). If nothing else, having a character with a nickname instantly adds a level of intimacy between the reader and the story. You feel like you know the character on a more personal level, while simultaneously adding some level of additional mystery to the character. Even if the nickname is immediately explained afterward, for a brief time, you are left pondering his nickname, like Isaac "Ice" Dunmire.
     I have read a lot of stories before, and some of them undoubtedly had characters with nicknames in them, but being forced to examine something I have read has been interesting, if only because its forced me to more closely examine the story and instead of just read the story, I actually have to "listen" to what the author is trying to say, which has also bled over into my personal reading, so thanks CRWT.

Fiction Packet, "Morning News"

     Morning News is an absolutely amazing short story. Firstly, the author is never specific about what the news is. As the story progresses, the author discusses the implications of receiving life altering news. Expertly spinning out the details of the actions the author must now take, the author reveals (by not revealing) that he is being confronted by his own mortality.
     The "morning news," was given to the author by a doctor, and now the author must decide how to put his affairs into order, and say goodbye to those he loves. This resonates strongly with me, and moves me profoundly because the writer so clearly captures and describes their feelings and fears about their impending end. While reading his premonitions about his familys' reactions, it feels very personal and I put myself in the readers shoes.
     Because the author writes in a way that makes the story even more personal and intimate, I find myself more drawn in and more moved by it. This is an excellent example of fiction writing, and why spinning details is so important. Without the details the author uses (his wifes reaction, his own reaction), the story would not have connected with me the way it did.

Fiction

His heart is pounding in his chest, his breathing shallow and rapid. Doc was going to hyperventilate. "Get a fuckin' grip man," he thought to himself, "slow your fuckin' breathing down and get your fuckin' bearings." Doc quickly scanned his surroundings, unable to fully comprehend the maelstrom of action swirling around him. The young medic found himself totally engulfed in a choking cloud of deep brown dust. The air was thick with sand and grit that blurred his vision and filled his mouth with sand that crunched between his teeth. He couldn't make out faces, but he could see silohouttes moving through the storm of chaos, like the flitting apparitions you sometimes catch in your peripheral vision. Like lightning, realization struck him. There had been another explosion, very close to him. Toth, that had been her name. She was an engineer. The only people in this AO were his guys and some engineers building a school, so Toth must have been on of theirs. Women don't serve in the infantry so she definetly wasn't in Charlie company. The engineers had been working in Jisr Di'yala, a little slice of heaven just north of Sadr City. JD, as it was referred to by C. Co, was a death trap. It was a nightmarish labyrnth whos walls were the high roofed two to three story houses typical to that area, and whos streets were treacherously narrow. So narrow in some places that if a humvee were to drive down it, the sideview mirrors would scrape along the khaki, clay covered brick walls hemming them in. The whole city stank, the whole country stank as far as Doc was concerned, but the streets were especially bad. Outside Baghdad proper and the other major cities, people were lucky to have electricity let alone plumbing. In some towns, the denizens had enough room to build outhouses but not here. Here, you shit in a bucket. Once the bucket was full, you dumped it in the street in one of the two ditches that run parallel along all the roads through the town. The strip the engineers had been ambushed in was thankfully one of the bigger streets. You could fit two humvees down this one if it weren't for the sewer trenches. Docs platoon had been on patrol a few blocks over and heard the explosion. Felt would have been more accurate, Doc had been sitting in the back of one of the humvees marinating in his own sweat when he felt the concussion of the explosion pass through him. Experience told him that it was going to be bad. Experience told him right. From what Doc could tell when they arrived, the improvised explosive device had exploded beneath the lead humvee in the engineers convoy. The explosion had flipped the five ton armored vehivle onto its back and set it ablaze, dark black pillar of smoke rising angrily from the inverted vehicle. Painfully, Doc recalled that there had been survivors in the vehicle. He could hear them screaming as the burned alive, could see the imprint of their kevlar and nomex gloves pressing futiley against the windows. The hands were framed by hazy images of faces, twisted by screams and pain and terror. Doc and a few others rushed forward to help but stopped short as ammunition inside the vehicles began to cook off in the fire. Some dark but realistic part of him had hoped a stray bullet would put an end to the suffering of the men inside. He got his wish as a grenade inside the vehicle exploded, blowing the doors off the vehicle and both silencing the screams and momentarily deafening him. From beyond the burning hulk of ruined metal, Doc heard someone screaming "Medic!" and he was off running. Toth had been in the turret of the second vehicle, she had caught a piece of shrapnel in the neck from the explosion. Her comrades had pulled her out of the turret and laid her on the ground while calling for a medic. Doc rushed up, swiftly shrugging his dusty brown aide bag from his shoulders. With hands tragically skilled in the art of trying to mend broken young peoples sundered bodies, Doc opened his bag and pulled out a scalpel, cutting the chin strap on Toths helmet. While Doc was cutting, his eyes met hers. Her eyes were a haunting grey, and filled with a chilling clarity that caused Doc to hesitate momentarily. She had round, high sitting, tan cheek bones that were speckled with light brown freckles and a peanut nose. Her mouth was big, and coughing up blood. Her lips trembled and her mouth moved spasmodicly, silently trying to mouth words. The shrapnel wound to her neck had missed her arteries but had severed her windpipe. He had been about to insert a breathing tube into the hole when his world turned to light and pain before waking up on his back. Doc felt the second explosion for sure. The concussion had torn through his body, jarring his bones and moving his internal organs. With the thick and heavy ringing in his ears wearing off, Doc hears the chatter of gunfire. Bullets whizz past like angry and deadly wasps. The still thick haze clears a little more and now Doc can make out his guys taking cover behind their vehicles and returning fire. The thunder of the .50 caliber turret mounted machine guns join the cacophony, along with shouted orders and the screams of the wounded. Docs feels dizzy and tries to control his breathing again, feeling for the first time the stabbing pain in his chest. Looking down at his body, he can see has shrapnel wounds. Shards of metal have torn into his left arm and chest, a particualrly large, jagged, fire-blackened, piece jutting obscenely from his side. The digital grey of his uniform are now dripping with his blood. Docs breating is getting harder, tighter. He has tension pneumothorax, meaning his lung has been punctured and now is leaking oxygen into his chest cavity, filling up more and more with no where to go, crushing him from inside. He tries feebly to call out, but barely manages to make a croaking sort of gasp. Toth! The name tears through Doc's agony-wracked mind with searing clarity, temporarly banishing the the pain and fear, replacing them with a sense of duty. Scanning the wreckage-strewn road, Doc finds her. The second explosion had thrown her against the side of a building like a rag doll, leaving her in a heap in a shit ditch on the side of the road. Laying there, every second feels like an eternity, Doc laying there dying in the midst of battle. A lucky shot from a roof top strikes Carter, a Charlie company man in the face. A brief look of shock captured on poor young Carters face as the back of his head explodes out painting a terrible red mural on the building just behind him, before his body crumples like a marionette puppet whos strings suddenly vanish. An enemy fighter wearing khaki pants and a red pinstriped button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up appears in a doorway and raises an AK-47 with a broken butt only to be hit by the .50 cal, his body jerking as his left arm explodes like some nightmarish firework, a second round disintigrating his body, leaving an angry red cloud in its stead. Doc lays his head back slowly, his helmet resting on the ground. The sky begins to break through the stifling dust cloud, and somehow amidst the angry chaos surrounding him, Doc finds peace. Closing his eyes, a smile creasing his face, he comes to terms with the fact he may die, and hes ok with that, a life filled with so much death wouldn't be such a terrible thing to leave behind.

Mystery Stories

     In our fiction packet, I found the section, "Mystery Stories," to be the most interesting. I don't know why these short snippets are my favorite, but they resonate the most with me. I believe it is the very descriptive language that appeals to me the most .
     Each of the stories is only a short paragraph, but each paragraph uses its title and its language to create very strong imagery. Also, each of the short paragraphs almost starts a story in their own right. Its like the mystery stories are actually a series of first-paragraphs to a book or a chapter or some larger story. I would like to know what author Sharon Krinsky was trying to say or do here, but if it was only to be memorable so someone than she succeded.

"An old Japanese man is living alone on the outskirts of town. He feels sad and he is singing loudly about his bad fortune. I dream that I am this Japanese man. I wake up crying in the dream but not in real life."

     Of the short stories in "Myster Stories," my favorite was the  snippet entitled, "The Japanese Man." To me, this story almost seems like a poem. While whats happening in this snippet is clear, the reason behind its penning leaves a lot of question. Why a Japanese old man, why singing loudly about bad fortune, and whats the back story?