Clothes

Use a particular and fairly vivid piece of clothing to tell a story. What does clothing say about us? How does it select us, as opposed to being selected by us? What do clothes hide? What do they reveal?
(from prompt #21 in The 3 AM Epiphany)


Read my response:

"Heavenly Blue" by tata aka T



I am blue and two pieces. My stitching shows, the thread is a contrasting shade of blue on blue. A tiny bird, mid-flight, is on my left side, just above the heart.

I am all about tits and ass; I am a collection of strings to tie the two, or three, together. The four if you want to be honest.

He bought me for $40 just before going to Mexico. He picked me out, ran his fingers along the back of the ass and checked the size. XS stands for extra small, he was told if he found that to get it, and so he did. I was his as much as I'd ever be. I don’t know how much thought went it all, into purchasing me, because it was all taken care of quickly and without a lot of talk. The important thing was that I fit, and I did.

That’s why I was kept, even after he left. I go well with lots of things. I look good with a white skirt on a hot summer day. As subdued as I am, a dark navy, I do not go unnoticed. I turn heads, I am small but hardy, I cover what’s to be covered without letting go. I do not get loosed no matter how strong the wave. But I am best and most effective in the sun.

Since that spring, four or five years ago, I’ve been to Mexico a few more times. I’ve been to San Francisco, I spent a little time in Colorado and Arizona. I’ve been taken off by different hands, quickly pushed about, slowly unknotted, mischievously pulled from behind. The same two hands always put me back, always tie me up with a bow.

The first time I was used, I didn’t get wet. I was put on, and he—the guy that bought me—smiled appreciatively, said I looked great, asked if I was okay. He was nervous: he’d never done that for a girl before. Lucky I worked out, otherwise there’d have been some trouble in Mexico, and not just at the beach. But he did a good job with me. When I did eventually get in the water, it was supremely satisfying; I’d had some time to adjust, being worn about town under clothes and by myself, sunbathing. So when I went all the way in, at the beach, I was already comfortable; I could enjoy body-surfing in the waves without concern for how I looked, without wondering if I’d fall off or come undone.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been in the water now, hot tubs and hotel pools and lakes and even river rafting. I’m surprised I’ve held up this long, but I guess that’s the test of quality: I’ve gotten better, more adaptable without losing any of my strength. I’m cut simply, but well. Like I said, I hold up well. Especially the tits.

As long as I’ve been around—relatively speaking, as my kind don’t last long, four or five years is an eternity—I know that I’ll be done soon. There’ve been good times, I’ve had fun, but soon I’ll be replaced with something more demure, a little thicker; bands and straps instead of strings. I go out less as it is, and I’m stretched out.

If I’ve been provocative yet tasteful, functional yet fun and all the rest, then I can retire proudly, with my stitches showing and with wings spread over the heart.

Colors Commentary

"Yellow and Red" by lrargerich

Two things: colors, and a situation with which I am already very frustrated. I first thought of red and blue as my colors, and situations with which I am already frustrated seemed initially to be out of the question as fodder for fiction. I didn't want to invite speculation about who or what I was writing about, or why. So it was sort of surprising to sit down and start writing and within like, three words use yellow as a color and my own frustrations as the character's.

The frustrating situation is not moving, not rising to action, feeling blocked in and limited. Red, interestingly, has several connotations in popular culture, and a lot of them are opposite. One implication is passion: you burn with passion, it lights you up, there is inspiration, movement, action, fueled by passion. Another implication is stop: red light, stop sign, access denied. Meanwhile, yellow is mellow: it can spring up lightly like a flower or piss away slowly like piss. Strong emotions aren't connected to yellow, but a lot of other things are. So for this exercise, red was always connected to the girl: on her lips, on her feet, in her hands. Her passion, her lust for life, showed up chapped, scuffed up, fading out like the flame in a cigarette. Yellow isn't a strong color, but if it keeps popping up in little ways it can create an overwhelming effect, like a yellow car with yellow lights driven by yellow hair. What kept the girl trapped, getting in and out of her car, starting her engine multiple times without going anywhere, was her own stupidity. (Stop parking there if you are getting parking tickets!) Finally what keeps her from leaving is red, and its her own lack of fuel, the last of which she probably burned starting and restarting her engine.

Writing this was fun, because of the challenge of repeating two colors almost to the point of inanity, of finding multiple ways to inject these colors, of figuring out synonyms when what I mean is red and yellow. I had to stop in the middle of writing it, and during that pause, driving around, EVERYTHING in the whole world was red and yellow. Everything, I saw red and yellow everywhere. So that was fun; I kept thinking, and then the girl can go to McDonalds! And get in the exit only lane! And yield! And also stop! At stop signs! And stop lights! And brake lights! And then she can get pizza! It was interesting to get back to writing it, because I felt like there wasn't enough of these two colors. I thought, while she is stuck in a parking garage, there is a world of yellow to interact with. I felt bad about every sentence I wrote for this that didn't include a primary color, which explains the extended sentences. It was also interesting to symbolize my frustrations, and to think about them in the abstract.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one overall; in some ways I am thinking that not much happened, in some ways I am thinking that was the whole point.

Colors

Write an exercise in which you repeatedly use two different primary colors. Describe these colors without naming them too often—and try to find effective synonyms for the colors without being too obvious about this disguise. Repetition of anything alien to the human elements of a story is bound to influence the way the story sinks into the reader's mind. How would red and yellow, appearing over and over again in drapes, carpets, clothes, handmade ashtrays, or toilet bowls, affect you as a reader? If you know anything about the meaning or symbolism of colors, choose your pair of hues well to play off emotions against each other. Apply this exercise to a situation with which you are already very frustrated.

(from prompt #20 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

"icetea fantasy" by shikeroku





She took the yellow envelope off her windshield and tossed it in her glove compartment without opening it. Two more manila envelopes already sat in there. She mentally added and subtracted money from her life and then, biting her lip and tasting flakes of chapping Devilicious lipstick, she took out her cell phone and went to the bouncing, sunny calculator icon. The keys lit up a dim gold in the cab of her car and she jumped a bit at the light reflected in the rearview mirror. She added and subtracted and started delving into fantasy holding down the glowing yellow zero. After a minute, with the phone still flipped open, she put her head down on her steering wheel and stared at the black skids on her red heels. She tried to muster up energy but didn’t move her forehead, even putting her keys in the ignition and letting the radio play while she stared down at her scuffed up ruby slippers; there’s no place like home, even when home is the last place you want to be, she thought. Until she realized that she had tears in her eyes listening to “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” then she sat up, wiped her eyes, pushed herself out of her stupid mood, and started her car.

Suddenly motivated to get going, she put the car into reverse and backed out without looking behind her, where a little VW Beetle, bright as an egg yolk, was double-parked with blinking piss-colored warning lights. She slammed on her brakes and the brake light glared angry red at the Beetle less than an inch away. She did not miss the irony of her predicament as she eased her car back into the spot and reached for her fire engine lighter and a cigarette. She got out of her car, slammed the door behind her, and leaned against the fender watching the warning lights blink on and off. The dim fire at the end of her cigarette inched closer to the filter; she flicked it, stamped it out, lit another.

Three Devilicious tinged butts lay around her feet when she reached for her phone to call a tow truck. Instead she half wrote a text message twice, then got back in her car and turned on the dome light, illuminating the interior with enough of an amber glow to reapply her Devilicious lipstick and to notice her bloodshot eyes peering back from the vanity mirror. She took out the three manila envelopes and thought about putting them on the blinking Beetle and maybe getting a beer. Adding it up in her head, she accepted that she could not afford a beer, but rationalized this thought against the fact that she was stuck and might as well knock herself out while down, so she got out of the car again, clutching her saffron purse. Hell, why not just get a Bloody Mary, she thought. She could just taste it, thick spicy tomato juice, when the blonde came running towards her, keys in hand, calling out apologies. She waved it off and got back in her car for what felt like the hundredth time, started her engine, and realized, thanks to a pulsing red icon, that she was out of gas.

A Comment

I find the stories behind stories interesting; looking at a photograph, thinking about what it shows, and how, but also why was it taken? Why did the photographer stop and pose this, structure that, capture anything? Was she trying to demonstrate the bleakness of American life in the midst of the dust bowl? Trying to draw a parallel between dust and human mortality? Or just take a picture of a striking woman, because she's there, and her image, in whatever way she is interpreted, has meaning, and seeing it, the photographer had an inclination, obligation even, to share her image? And in music: where did that line come from? How did that particular sound come about?

It's partly curiousity, a genuine wonder about the artistic process: simple luck, 10,000 hours of practice, a concscious effort to create this effect or emotion, a mindful manipulation of expectation? And it's partly knowledge, a history with creating, a shared experience; I know that sometimes things come about in unlikely ways, from the stories I've heard and from the stories I have myself.

But in starting this blog, initially I took the opposite approach: here are circumstances, and you can see the result. Like Jeopardy, a little bit. "These things: don't use first person pronouns in a first person narrative" and I say "What is The Reluctant I?" by writing and posting. Which is interesting, at least to me, because it's my writing, but there isn't any dialogue. We need Alex Trebek to mediate between answer and question and we like to know who these people are that are providing the questions. And while the question they provide relates to the answer, it isn't the only answer for a question like "Who is Theodore Geisel?" or "What is Honduras?" And of course, while the question relates to the answer, there are still more questions that have meaning.

So, while I will continue to respond, in order, to the prompts provided by Brian Kiteley in his book The 3 AM Epiphany, I will also post my thoughts on the process, to share how I approached the prompt, what I was trying to do in my response, etc., when it seems relevant.

Canned Film Commentary

"'The Blind Assassin'--Margaret Atwood" by Karol M

Lately, it seems like every book I've read is about to be made into a movie. (Well, I read the "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!" edition of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, so that's on me, I guess.) Some of them, like Blindness and Memoirs of a Geisha, I had read and loved long before they had a page on IMDB. But with some of them, production details seemed to be springing up just as I was delving into the fictional world of the novel. Like The History of Love, and King Dork, which may not ever be made into films, anyway.

At any rate, and on a somewhat separate note, with certain books I read I can't help but cast the film. Sometimes, after I've put down an especially engrossing book for the evening, and I'm trying to fall asleep, I'll direct the film version in my head. Even before finishing the book; its a hobby of mine, in a way. I imagine the sets, and the scenes left out, and what technique the director could use to convey some abstract character quality.

I recently finished reading The Blind Assassin, and as I was reading I tried to imagine how the three different stories that are layered within the book would be conveyed. There is the present day character, an old lady, remembering her youth, the novel within the book, also called The Blind Assassin, and the story told between the two main characters.

For this prompt, even though it said "an imaginary film," I wanted to write what I imagined when I read The Blind Assassin instead of creating a wholly original film. I tried writing it several times, and kept using too many words. Also, I kept relying on an imaginary director magically telling the viewer that something happened, rather than on images, which is the whole point of this prompt. So I simplified the plot of the book, took some liberties manipulating the characters, and focused more on images.

It was still a struggle, and I'm not entirely happy with the end result. I wasted a lot of words with the main characters, and I sacrificed a lot of the plot for the introduction. Also, I found it difficult to conjure an animated world, a specific time period, and the effect of alternating scenes. Writing an abridged version of a very complex novel was hard too, and I worry that I cheapened the book by reducing it to the romance.

I do think the book would make a really cool movie, and I think it would be neat to use different film styles for the separate plots.

Canned Film

Write a very short synopsis of an imaginary film, as if writing for one of those video analogies—perhaps 10,000 Films in a Nutshell. Concentrate on images as much as you can in this summary of a plot or an interesting combination of images and time.
(from prompt #19 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

"the headless lovers" by Cane Ludico Rosso



The film opens in black and white, with stock footage of the two main characters in their daily life, just before they meet. The woman, played by the ubiquitous leading lady of period pieces, Keira Knightley, is shown wearing pristine white gloves and dining with company at a banquet table, attended to by servants, which is neatly juxtaposed by the man (played by underrated Ben McKenzie), with dirty fingernails, jumping out of view of two slovenly matrons to eat an apple in a busted door frame.

When the two meet up at a greasy café, the woman looks to the man, who ignores her and in fact walks out of the diner. After a beat, the woman gets up and follows the man to a closet-like room in a tenement building with laundry hanging out the windows. In the next scene, we see the two damp with sweat and half-clothed, and the woman is begging the man to tell her a story. As he talks about aliens living in a highly developed industrial society on an arid planet, haunted by ruby-lipped Zombie women and hunted by a nomad army, the camera pans out to the night sky and zooms into a full color, animated planet. McKenzie and Knightley’s voices interrupt each other, changing details in the animated cast. When she is offended by something, the animation pauses while an appropriate substitution is created collaboratively with McKenzie.

As the lovers continue to meet amid poverty and squalor, adding to the story the viewer sees literally animated, the man struggles to avoid imprisonment for arson, which the woman’s father framed the man for in order to collect insurance on his least profitable factory. Tension simultaneously builds between the nomad army and the insulated alien society, but before the woman is ready to leave her life of privilege for her lover, WWII claims the man, which we see amid the devastation in the science fiction story. Years pass, and the animated world begins to fade away, until finally, the animated priestess voiced by Knightley defies the Father figure, and begins to rebuild.

TV

Write a short interior scene during which a TV is on. Let the words and images on the screen interact interestingly with the activity going on in the room. Your characters can be watching TV, or it can be background noise. Choose your TV show carefully to reflect an interesting aspect of the human situation you're also describing. TV is omnipresent in most of our lives. Write about how people talk around it, over it, or with the judicious use of the mute button. This is a subversive exercise—an attempt to make writers come to terms with the hypnotic, all-powerful medium fiction must take into account.
(from prompt #18 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

That Smashing Pumpkins' song, how does it go? Dead eyes, are you just like me? “By Starlight.” Cause her eyes were as vacant as the seas. I can't help thinking of it every time I see her.

"Doesn't she have dead eyes?" I say out loud.

"She does! You are so right!" Ashley says, laughing like I'm Jim Gaffigan and she's just inhaled nitrous oxide. I am not that funny.

"And Justin Bobby, Bobby Justin, whatever his..."

"Justin Bobby."

"Justin Bobby, then. What is his deal?”

“He is such a player! But Audrina keeps going back to him!”

“Well. Okay. Yes, he is an asshole, sure, but. He is not attractive, either. Like at all.”

“I know, right!”

“Does he have like, a golden penis? What is happening that more than one girl wants him so bad?”

“Like, I don’t know, that’s just how it is. Audrina loves him. But she tries to make him jealous, too, you know?”

Sometimes I feel out of the loop. Not in the way that I don’t know what’s going on. Just that I don’t react the right way, or the normal way. Also Ashley makes me feel old.

“What are you girls watching?” James comes back from the liquor store with a six pack of Hefeweizen, a six pack of Diet Coke, and some off brand of Vanilla Vodka.

Ashley springs up to hug James and to help unpack the groceries and make drinks and all of that. From the kitchen she yells out to me “Do you want a beer or a cocktail? I can make you what I’m drinking!”

I look over at James to roll my eyes, and he’s already looking at me with a smirk. I hate choosing sides. “Um. Yes. I’ll have what you are having.”

“Do you want a straw too? I have bendy straws!” She giggles, of course, after almost everything she says. James is having too much fun with this, he can see me tensing up, so I giggle too and sit up a little straighter.

“Yes! I love bendy straws!” I do, actually. Its just how often does that come up?

“So, what happened this week? Was a boy mean to some girls? Did Lauren cry?” James nudges Ashley. We settle back down on the couch, and Ashley and I balance the scene by sitting exactly the same, holding our diet and vodka cocktails with bendy straws (although hers is pink and mine is yellow) on either side of James, who messes up the balance immediately by leaning over and scooping Ashley closer to him. She rights her drink, which almost spilled, and adjusts, folding her body into his.

“Lauren didn’t cry. Audrina keeps saying how mean Justin Bobby is but she seems like she might actually get over him.” I say, surprising everyone.

“See, she likes it too. You’re the only one who doesn’t get it.” Ashley giggles adorably and looks over at me and holds up her glass; in unison, we say “Cheers!”

And all along, we knew we’d carry on, just to belong. It’s a really good song.