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.

This is a more current past life memory.

She watched him sit down at table, and briefly noted what was on his plate. The food at the hotel buffet was not the greatest, and one had to pick and choose what to eat, so his plate was bits of food. He was sitting a few people away from her on the opposite side of the table, but close enough where she could still see him. The people at her table were greeting him excitedly, since it was always a thrill when a lecturer at a seminar sat down to talk to participants. People seemed to really like this man and respect him, and were eager to talk to him.

Her own reaction to him had been strange.  When he walked on stage, he looked so familiar to her which was odd because she had never heard him lecture before. He was attractive in that college professor type of way, which was amusing since he taught college classes. She wondered if they had had a past life connection, which might have explained why he seemed so familiar. And then without thinking, she tried to read him.  That was when the high strangeness started.

As soon as she tried to read his past lives, the alarm bells started going off in her head. She heard a voice start saying, “This is a psy-op, he is part of the psy-op. This is dangerous.” So she stopped immediately, but not before she felt that she was now hyper-aware of him.

And now at dinner, she still  felt so aware of him, every turn of his head, every word that came out of his mouth. He looked at her and she smiled, and it was then she heard him in her mind the phrase. She looked down at her plate, unsure of what just happened. The only other person who could talk in her mind like that had been that trained super soldier that she had heard speak a few months ago.

This man was not a super soldier by any means. He was a college professor who was lecturing at the seminar she was attending in Las Vegas. She looked up again because she felt him staring at her. She looked into his eyes and said to his mind “But I don’t want you.” That was a lie. Of course she wanted him, but something inside of her screamed “NO, this is a psy-op. He is part of the psy-op. Resist, resist, resist.” And so she resisted mentally, but for the first time she felt like she was not in control of her body. Her body was turned out to the nth degree. She knew that if they were alone and he mind-talked to her, she would have walked up to him and started kissing him, rubbing against him. She would have found herself on her knees and doing the thing that she was trained for, which was to bring sexual pleasure to the person who had uttered that phrase.

She looked down at her plate, confused about the thoughts that were going through her head. Training? What training? She looked at him again, but he was chatting with someone else now, but he glanced at her. She took a bite of food, trying to calm her heart down which was now beating rapidly. Her body felt hot and bothered, and took a deep breath to try and control her body. She looked around at her dining companions to see if anyone had noticed anything, but she saw that there were too busy talking to take notice of her.

When she looked at him again, he was getting up from the table.  He had barely eaten any of his food. He looked at her and she half-expected him to mind-talk to her again, but he just looked at her. He said goodbye to everyone at the table.

She was disappointed that he was leaving, but some part of her was glad. She knew he was dangerous to her, but she didn’t know why. All she knew was that no man should be able to mind-talk to her and turn her sexually on with one phrase. The whole situation smacked of control, of training, of things that might have happened to her that was not aware of, of things that she was afraid to delve into because of what it might mean.

She felt someone staring at her and she turned around, and she saw him staring at her before he left the buffet room. She felt a sudden urge to go after him and find him, and demand to know why he was able to mind-talk to her. But she didn’t. Instead she sat there and spoke to her dinner companions, and finished her dinner. She knew she had avoided a potentially dangerous situation, but she also knew that the situation wasn’t over yet.

He knew her code. He knew her phrase. He could potentially her sexually. Someone had given it to him and then taught him to mind-talk. She knew he really couldn't mind-talk to her, because if he really did have that skill he would have continued talking to her, but he did not. The super soldier guy kept mind-talking to her, but the college professor guy did not. He had only been taught how to mind-talk to her that one phrase. But that one phrase was key, her key. The question was who had given him the key and why was he using it, and most importantly why did she feel it was part of her training to please him sexually