Wednesday, April 02, 2014

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW YZ... a story. (A to Z Challenge Day 2)(Also Insecure Writers Support Group!


SECOND, It's Insecure Writers Support Group Day, and because I don't have time for a whole post I have broken my insecurities down into a handy pie chart/graph:




THIRD, here is the SECOND installment of my story of the alphabet, and when things went wrong:



Because X did what he did, people want to remove him?

I don't know much about much and I don't know about kicking letters out. I don't know what that would do, to a letter. Would it be over? Would it be the end? Would it be death?

"What is death?" I ask you all that, now.  What is death? Are you even listening?

Letters don't pay attention as easily there as you think.

I don't anyway.

Too much clinging to me there, memories and dreams and old jobs, old jobs that I can't stop thinking about.

Broken 

Bad 

Bane 

Bitch 

Bitch 

Bitch

Because

because.

because.

I can't stop thinking about them, you know?

Yeah, Beauty 

Yeah Bright, 

But...

But.

And Bastard Broken Bent Beast.

It's the bad ones that stick with me, when we come back.

Bad.

So I was bleary, a bit bewildered, when A started in and to be honest I didn't understand what he meant.

One of us has to go? Why? I thought.

Oh, the looks I got from, maybe from others, but I was looking at A.

X, 

X could've been me, you know.

We all get our existences from the things people use us for, from meanings they give us. Most of us alone don't stand for nothing. There're I, sure, and A but the rest of us need others all the time more or less.

So we wouldn't be anything really if people didn't make us part of stuiff, pull us out and down to real...

...and then send us back full of Bad, full of Black, full of Brine, Blues Bogs Bullies...

Sorry.

So it could've been me, or anyone, who hardly ever got used, who wasn't much, who hung around hoping but was sent back again and again and again.

X could've been me and he knows it and I could've been him and he knows it.

But he wasn’t me and I wasn’t him.

One day, X says to me:

“I’m going to try to be…”

And I mistook him, at first: I thought he was pausing, saying about me, an aside, but I realized quickly enough what he was talking about, I guess, and he never noticed.
One thing with being so much in the abstract: everything means everything, more and more and more. If you live in the concrete, things mean one thing, or sometimes a few things. A Building is a Building, and you have to layer it with symbolism before it  becomes more than that, and even then a Building is always a Building; with the symbolism it's still a Building, but now it just helps you think of other things instead of just a Building.

But abstract, that’s different, things are not things at all, not meanings, they just hover in between.

Between

Betwixt

Be

Think about Between: Be Tween. Be Two. Be This and Be That.

That’s how we are. We are Between, although I suppose others might argue that we are Abstract or Inchoate or Unrefined. Whatever it is, it makes it difficult to always know what others are saying, doing, being.

“I’m going to try to be,” X said, that time, and paused, “… unique. A standalone.”

We were shortly thereafter pulled into the dance, before I could say “What?”

It was a slow one, barely a dance at all. It was a dreamlike trance in which we barely moved and I was next to X, the two of us, the 26 of us, swaying side by side, almost not, though, hypnotic, really, all in time. A little lean this way, a little lean that way, almost imperceptible.

We do not control what kind of dance we are called to but they are all beautiful, because in all of them we are all us.

Because.

Be Cause.

Be the Cause.

X was next to me, no longer abstract, not yet real, next to me.

“How?” I asked.

I understood the yearning. Of late, I at times had been a standalone.

B home soon.

B right back.

I understood the yearning.

X must have had it worse, because X had so little.

“Kisses,” said X.

In the dance, there was no mistaking that. In the abstract I might have thought of breathing and bedrooms and boys, beauties, all the associations I have with kisses: beneath the covers, beside each other on a couch, bottom lips, blow jobs, but here, I understood X right away.

“Kisses,” he said again.

Who am I to tell him not to try?

So little Beauty anyway all around, so little.

I was sent home from that dance, unneeded. I don’t remember if X was or not.

But I understand X and I believed that he wanted to be more.

Believe, you may want to know, comes from the word gelyfan a Saxon word that transformed into gelefa and from there into the old English belyfan. In old English, it meant hold dear, love.

The only reason I can believe, that I can hold dear, love, is that one day I was picked to replace G.

Belief now clings to me wherever I go.

“I believe in X,” I say now to the meeting.

Privately, I think: I believe X always meant to be more than just the beginning of love.

So many bad things.

We should hold dearly to the good.

Belief cannot be bad.

Can it?



8 comments:

Robin said...

I am going to be honest. Yesterday's post was too long and I didn't read it all. I had a gadzillion A to Z posts to read and not enough time. I got the idea that it was a thing about letters and X being left out, but I am not sure that I ever made it to the point of yesterday's story.

When I saw that today's was a continuation, I scrolled down to see how long it was. I decided it was doable, so I read it.

All of that said, I think this is a great concept. I would keep them short and maybe create some sort of "overall theme of the story" as a header on every post, so that if someone doesn't discover this blog until the letter "P" they can still hang with it. I would have had no idea what was going on here today if I hadn't read yesterday's post.

This is good stuff. I don't want you to lose people because they can't follow what is happening here.

Robin said...

Two more things... I read enough of yesterday's story to follow along. I realize that my comment was somewhat contradictory.

There is no Google Friend Connect button on this blog. I had luck with one person today and that button (for the first time in a month) so I think that they might have it fixed. I would add it so that people can follow here...

Briane said...

Those are good points. As always. No wonder your blog is so great.

I suspect that people popping by on Day P wouldn't stick with it anyway, but we'll see. I'll try to do that.

Eventually, it's going to be a book, anyway, so if people don't follow the serialized story, they'll be able to get the whole thing.

Most of the entries (I'm about halfway through) are between yesterday's and today's in length.

Briane said...

This occurred to me only after some thought. The thing is, I write long posts. I know they're long, and I understand when you or another person can't read them because they're long.

There's a great site called "Martian Lit" that had a serialized story on it, "The Many Lives of Yelena Moulin," I think it was. I used to read a segment every Saturday, because they were long. So what I wish people would do is what you did -- come back, or set aside time when they CAN read stuff.

I from time to time offer pdf downloads through Scribd, for example, so people could download the story to their Kindle (TM) and read it whenever they want. So your excuse was valid -- "I didn't have time," and I appreciate that you came back. If anyone ever said "I can't read this in this format can you send it to me, etc." I'd happily do that.

(Actually, I get emailed every day a short segment from a serialized story. Kind of neat.)

Anyway, that's my ongoing complaint, that people use "too long" as an excuse to never read, as opposed to read later.

Andrew Leon said...

You know, sometimes, I will leave one of your posts up all day (or hours, at any rate) and just read a bit at a time.

Which has nothing to do with the story.
I like B. He seems like a good guy.

Liz A. said...

What is existence? Yeah, I've got nothing today. Sorry.

Unknown said...

Andrew:

I'm changing it up tomorrow.

Liz:

I understand. Some days are like that.

Glenda Cates said...

I enjoyed the graph thanks for putting it together.