Another odd piece of writing from my writing box.  This piece was written on February 1, 1999. I think I was trying my hand at stream of conscious writing because the piece is full of fragments, like I was riffing on a musical phrase.

Writing in a box - all angular - black and white - parralel stories - endings have to end - no ambiguities - has to make sense - sense to me - not to any one else - writing flows like a stream of light - a single light - a bright light - with an equational light - not a pastel light - but a bright in your face color - no subtlety - it hits right between the eyes - and rocking - like driving along a brightly lit country road and BOOM, a summer thunder storm - unexpected and frightening - dark mood and dark light - to hit your sunny day - bright square of color like a modern American painting - it makes no sense but if you stare at it long enough - it starts to make sense - only because your mind has to have it make sense - uncertainty is like death - the mind can only handle uncertainty for so long - before it cracks - stories must make sense - somebody's sense - from a point of view - whose point of view? - my point of view - a character's point of view - but all characters are me - in one way or another - different facets unexplored - dark valleys - dark visions - never plundered - never dared to go - characters speak words I can never say, never want to say - whose world do they inhabit? - harsh landscapes with harsh lightning - no pink light to hide the wires, the cracks, the wrinkles - no rose colored lighting to smooth out the way - but harsh, harsh light - studio lights - light so hot your makeup melts - melting slowly off revealing someting yet unknown - magic, my story - more light and less light - inherent darkness - valleys of no return - signs that say no trespassing, dark and windy twisted roads - roads that go nowhere, everywhere, round and round, never ending - roads that you to home, from home - roads that take you away, away from harsh, harsh light and even the sense of scrutinity - roads that comfort and soothe you on your journey.

In the midst of all this creation, you need to find a place to live. You have to inhabit that which you create.

Here's something else I found in my writing box.

These sentences were written on February 23, 2004, and I think these sentences look like writing prompts where the writing teacher gives you a phrase and you are supposed to construct a sentence out of the phrase.

These sentences are very intriguing and I want to keep them, so I am posting them here.

• Two Alaskan Kodiak Bears joined a small circus where the pair appeared in a nightly parade pulling a small covered wagon. (WTF is this?)
• Once I had a vision of being a general.
• I found a knife under the refrigerator while the man I love and I were cleaning our house.
• Rachel is the one whose hair is golden like her mother's.
• Once upon a time during the reign of terror, mass arrests become the order of the day.
• Here at the bottom of our country, our windows drip with summer.
• Even when she was very little, her hunger was worth something; hunger tougher her to dance.

It's been awhile since I have posted. Lots of stuff going on at work, but I think it will be resolved in the next few weeks.

Anyway, I was going through a box of writing notes and I found an email I wrote to a friend in June  2000. That friend named Amy H incidentally passed away two years later, which still makes me sad. I had written to my dear friend that I wanted to write a book of short stories called "Isn't it a Jupiter moment and other short stories of modern girl's life." I think that Jupiter reference must come from that Train song that I don't even know that I really like, and I have no idea what that story wouldn't have been about. But here are the titles to the short stories in this book that I wanted to write:

• Isn't it a Jupiter moment?
• My thing with Steve
• Putting up the Sun Shade
• His Tenses freak me out (this title makes me laugh)
• Art is scary
• The Bat Mobile Car
• Loking through a big glass ball
• The Blue Haired Buddah on Union Street
• We were just chatting online
• Dreaming of Texas (I turned this story into a novel)
• Watch out for the Gnats
• It's way to deep for me
• Flashbacks at the produce section
• Tall and white from Detroit
• Sundown on the Bay Bridge
• Four California Girls in a Car

I read the titles and I sort of remember why I wanted to write the story. But then there are some titles that I have no idea what story was supposed to go with that title.

As a friend would say, if you can't remember why you wanted to write the story, then it must not have been that important.

I am thinking it might be fun to do free writes on these titles just to see what comes out. And I can see myself doing that on a day when I can't work on the writing I am supposed to be working on, and I want to write something.