Hypercompendia

Off on another idea:

Johnny Walker Red

One by one or in couples they left, filled with ham and chicken sandwiches and coffee or whatever they’d drained from his bar.  Awkward goodbyes were murmured and blended into call me if you need anythings, sizzling out with a sigh as  they walked out through his door and hurried away. As the last car engine rumbled and hummed into silence, he slowly and steadily downed half a fifth of Johnny Walker Red. He somehow found his way up the stairs to their bedroom and crawled crablike under the covers. Oddly, the scotch whiskey made him aware as never before of the tickle of her hair as she rolled over toward him.  The mattress floating as on waves as she settled. When she was alive, he reminded himself.

He smelled her scent on her pillow and pulled it close to him, inhaling her deeply until he felt her overwhelmingly infuse him with herself. His breath caught and halted as she wriggled deeper inside him, filling his lungs leaving no room for air. Freeing herself, she stepped out onto his ribs and punched at his heart like a boxer practicing jabs.  She kicked her way through the tangle of his bowels and planted her feet on his kidneys, the curve of her spine pressing into his own until he barely could stand the pressured pain.

And as he screamed out her name, throwing it into the cold room like a lance, she streamed out of his mouth and escaped.

Just realized that little play on words as I typed the title.  Neat, eh?

Steve’s got some nice imagery here, but hidden within it are some symbols in the setting:

Rooms

Hand in hand, they walked through rooms, some cluttered with books and furniture, others punched through with holes that opened onto instances of life. He watched stars explode, a multitude of births, mountains crumble on worlds other than Earth, masses wander alien streets gasping for disease-less air, small forms fall from windows until he had to turn away and follow her out onto a checkerboard surface that coiled out into blackness. She led him over the edge and onto the opposite side where they found themselves hemmed by a crowd of blue sheep. He followed her over a hill and she offered him coffee from a black cup in a kitchen with a green stove and fridge.

"Have you decided where you’ll, what did you say, bunk up?"

Switched gears here, going into overdrive.  Entering the realm of sci fi maybe, though with my own homey, country girl touch.  All of a sudden I just started writing and had to keep stamping out spaces to keep up with me.

It’s likely obvious that I haven’t really moved much on this project.  Honest, I’m usually much faster than a writing space a day.

What I think is the major holdup here is the story itself.  The topic of a baby boomer generation and what the hell we’re going to do about it is of some importance and concern not just to me but as we enter into this era.  I’ve got loads of ideas on it and possibilities for story.  The problem, I think, is that I don’t feel how I’m going to handle it.  In other words, it’s something I want to write a fictional tale about, but it might be too serious a matter for me to take on in the particular mood I’m in, which is ‘Good’ to ‘Excellent’ (a rare thing after the last four years). 

I’ve also considered taking the humorous edge on this:

Devin was pissed.  He’d bet on the old lady making it curb to curb and now he’d lost $75 that he needed to take Deena out anyplace decent that night.  "Shit," he said, and he handed the bills over to Lee Venom with one more disgusted glance over at the cheery red-coated body lying in the gutter.

Hmm.  That might be better.  That’s more the mood.  But then it feels too Clockwork Orange-y.  So unless I can get moving on this or a sexier side is brought out by some tunes here like Waylon’s smooth as an oiled piston voice drilling deep down into earth, I may come up with something totally different today.

The great thing about writing in the Storyspace environment though is that all the facts and data and ideas can be inserted into the map and even though the creative force isn’t helping any, the basic plots are down there.  Try doing that on paper or in Word without complete loss of organization and inspiration.  In Storyspace, I’m already building a skeleton of story that whether I continue now or step away and come back on another day, just needs the muscle (theme), blood (imagery), and flesh (narrative) added.

Been making my way through the story now of Steve’s project, after having studied his link structure to hopefully learn something from the intricacies of linkage language. 

As always, there are those stop and reread for pure pleasure moments with his writing:

Brimmer found in Freddy a familiarity that can only come with common geography, but in him he also saw all the flaws of Man, which boiled down to the tendency to laugh at inappropriate moments.

Been reading some of the hypertext fictions available at the library and am studying the mapping structures to understand the method behind the madness.  While I’ve gotten away a bit from guard fields, there are some very interesting uses of the tool in these earlier hypertexts.

For example, in (oopsie, I forgot and gotta find it) J. Yellowlees Douglas’ I Have Said Nothing, one of the spaces entitled What? We could also say shows the following link possibilities:

Space Link:              Goes to:                     Guard Field: 

>What?                  If that’s so

>What?                  But does it stop?

   What?                  But does it stop?      "If that’s so"

Great sharing on Steve Ersinghaus’ part in a posting of Map Views that show the progressive changes made in structure and paths of his new work, Brimmer and Death.

I’ve posted many times about Storyspace’s Map View and my own dependence on it exclusively (except when I’d made a changeover in pattern and needed Chart View to show up all the Writing Space Children hiding within the wombs of parental spaces like unborn children). 

As Steve points out, "The structural hypertext view provided information about “when” and “where” the action was happening in relation to another."  There are many such writer’s aids in Storyspace that we are finding play an important part in creating structure of story.  For example, I am once again leaning heavily on color-coding threads.  In Paths, it gave me a clear picture of whose point of view we were reading.  In Gap, I haven’t quite yet decided whether it’s going to be a generational (character) roadsign or a guideline for setting.  But it allows me to see at a glance exactly how these areas are developing and where they can transect or happily meet, mate, and continue to be fruitful and multiply.

There’s been a slow flow of creative force pulsing through my mind, but there have been a few dabblings of fodder for the more down and dirty necessary background bits.

Prescription drugs that promise the possibility of cancer in order to contain the pain of arthritis. Sounds like a good deal, no?  There’s more than butter and cheese at work here.

The twenty and thirty year-olds already bitching about having ‘their’ money pay for an excessive, self-centered generation of the elderly in the next decade to come.  How about the huge sum these bumbling old fools put into the system all the years they’ve worked?

The elderly being told they need to support illegal immigration because they didn’t have enough kids to take care of them and nobody but the unskilled immigrants will be willing to do so for the low wages the positions offer.  What’s wrong with that picture?

And yes, the realization that living longer means a huge burden on society in the amount of old people who, God knows, are slow and rather useless anyway.

Deliberating about which title seems more appropriate now that I’ve introduced the element of what I’ll call magical realism since if I make it a part of the otherwise realistic (though near futuristic) environment and remain verisimilitudinous (heh-heh!) about it, Timesavers is a good title.

New Mapview, showing some little progress–the threads are still waving around in my head and I need learn how to tame them.

And the Writing Space that introduces the timesaving element, though it may be too clinically expressed here and what I might do is simply show it happening.

Today is A Good Day to Write.

Got all hopped up about the project today after a sitdown bull session with Steve Ersinghaus and one of the things he reminded me of was the idea of adding more graphic images and film clips.  All excited about this, I immediately started figuring out what areas could be enhanced by the visuals.  Hmmph.  While it’s not off the stove, the pot sort of boileth over in narrative ideas already and it just might not be a story that needs or wants imagery beyond words.

In Paths, I could definitely picture–and often did, which produced words in response–a scenario  I could see and was moved to write the feel of the scene.  I could feel the summer sun on Chloe’s porch.  This project probably could benefit from being told partially in images.  For example, do I need to describe the scene and seek mood in the slowness of the rocking, the hem of her dress a beat behind the movement, the sound of crickets, the heat of August if a five-second clip would show all this? 

I want to play with audio files and movement (rather than static images) but I think I need to concentrate on developing the Storyspace story space before I know if the enhancement is a better way.