The joys of freewriting.

[killthenet]

There is plenty of real life drama behind it, but it is mostly an amalgamation of two dreams I had. One in which I was premiering some composition or other and an old flame that never was turned up. The other in which I was in curled up in bed with Audrey Horne, while David Lynch and some of the cast of 'Twin Peaks' sat around the bed and we discussed my desire to put on a stage version. Lynch was thrilled.

 

I think 'but' is in there because it flows better in my eyes, and it's all meant to be very contradictory and complicated because I really don't know if I like her, or if I ever really did like her.

 

And the pregnancy never happened because we never got together, but it happened in another dream of mine where we discussed what she should do and how on earth I could be the father when I smoked so much and had never even held her hand.

[jayseven]

Spelling mistakes, bad punctuation, poor grammar, leftover http... job of jobs! I keep hitting walls.

 

It's Never Just A Holiday

 

I have a good friend who is going on holiday soon. He wants me to look after his fish while he goes away, but while he was convincing me we divulged into a discussion about the difference between what we perceive to be controlled changes in our lives and those factors of which we don’t feel we have any control over.

 

I started writing this about ten minutes ago, because of the conversation we had. I always sit down and want to write ever-so-badly, but all the points and things I want to mention swarm around in my mind. The unfinished stuff I squeezed below here is a concoction of a few sources.

 

First was just the idea of each thought being a fish, following-but-not-really-following each other in a flow that doesn’t seem to have a beginning or an end. Then the meta-narrative part of me recognised that each fish is a separate entry made by my subconscious. Some of them eat up others, some swim away, but most just float around aimlessly. But the recognition that to some extent, the thoughts in my head aren’t my<./i> ideas led to me imagining that someone, somewhere, knows what the thoughts mean.

 

So that’s the basis; a guy is about to look after another guy’s fish, but an off-hand comment about it being a holiday for the fish, too, is just another excuse for the duo to act out a rhetoric charade that, of course, occurs in all our minds zippity-zappidly fast but also, primarily, is an idea my subconscious pinched from plato/aristotle.

 

The fish owner knows the answers. He knows the route to get there and he enjoys steering a conversation, or perhaps just reacting with the right criterion needed to keep the discussion going until, eventually, it hits the spot he had aimed at all along.

 

So I needed to create a winding story that should hopefully mislead the narrator enough so that he forgets what the original opening was, which usually acts as a nice surprise pay-off for the reader who may think “hey, I remember wondering about that!”, which leads to them thinking they r smurt. Durr.

 

Not my point – my point is that even that ‘idea’ was taken from elsewhere. Like, for instance, I just watched Taken, where something arbitrary at the start recurs at the end just to tie it up, when in actual fact this ‘bookending’ structure was entirely unnecessary to the plot.

 

Returning to the start of my tangent; fish. I was having a discussion with a good friend the other day about his fish.

 

The fish, he said, were supposed to be a calming influence. I was about to retort by saying “ah, but you’re the calmest person I know!” before I did the maths.

 

Instead, I chose to say “ah, so why do you need a holiday, then?” gleefully hoping I’d have him stumped.

 

Just like with the flick of a coin, or whether the sun will actually rise tomorrow, with chess you go on past assumptions, on proof or theory. What makes chess so great is that the victor is the one who paid more attention to their opponent’s moves than the opponent did. Because it isn’t an exact science there is a puzzle to be solved, but the puzzle isn’t necessarily what would the best move be for them to make?, instead, most crucially, it is what is the best move that they can think of? The game progresses from the simplsitic rules laid out before all into a game of whom knows whom better. Is it cheating if you know how to defy your best friend?

 

But he was unstumpable. Never off guard. Ever the wit ready-weilded. Conversations to him, I am sure, were like games of chess. While routine small-talk about the weather or a gentle interrogation about the night before the morning after were jovial pleasantries, you could tell he was always prepared for the quick shift away from the obvious. I think this is why he asked me to look after his fish.

 

“Well, is it just a holiday for me, or for the fish as well?” he mused. I wondered how far ahead he had thought this one through.

 

So I pondered, cleverly, besides his pond. In the summer months he always raked what I called “willies and leeds”—the scum off the top of the water. I always thought it was the wrong season for that.

 

“It depends on what you define a holiday as, I think. Is it just a literal change of scenery, or is it actually the actual change itself?”

 

“Some people do spend their paid holiday simply at home, catching up on all the fun stuff they never get to do.”

 

“True, but I mean, like… Ok. It’s about change, isn’t it?” He nods. I was on the right track. “A holiday is where you take control of teh change in your life and you choose what new experiences you will encounter. But your fish don’t get to choose.”

 

“You do have a point.” He balanced his coffee on the palm of his hand in between sips; little flakes of undissolved columbian finest instant jostled and jeered back at him. “But the fish, unlike us, is not mistaken in its control over its regular life.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

He smiled, and turned back to the pond. “What do you think they do in there all day?”

 

“Hm. Eat? Sleep? Uh, swim? I know this isn’t going to be about their memory—”

 

“Correct. For instance; they recognise Kasper.”

 

“What, your brother? How!?”

 

“You remember last summer he needed a summer job to help pay his way through uni? I paid him to water my grass. Now, I never water my grass, but the poor sucker needed all the money he could get and he wouldn’t take a loan, or a gift, even. I remembered when we were kids he would go and water our grandparent’s grass every weekend, while I stayed at home and ate cereal and watched cartoons.”

 

“Yeah. He ahem fixed my perfectly good bike so well that I had to pay £50 at the bike shop the next day.”

 

“Yeah, well… He had that sort of habit. Kid’s watch hasn’t worked in five years and he still wears it everyday.” We both nodded, knowing the quote without either of us having to say it aloud. A broken clock is still right twice a day.

 

“So he watered your grass. Big deal. How does that equate to your fish recognising him?”

 

“Well there were a few things Kasper never told me about the sunday mornings he spent at our grandparents. He probably never would have done if I hadn’t come home and found three of my fish flailing around in the middle of the grass…”

 

“Ah, I think I’ve heard this one before,” I discerned. I pulled out a piece of paper from my pocket, and showed him. “I started writing this about 10 minutes ago.”

 

He took it from me and had a look. I had him stumped.

 

“But how does it end?” He asked, rather uncharacteristically.

 

“I thought you were about to tell me about how a holiday is specifically just a break from normalcy, and its inherant value is from knowing that the change is not permanent; if it was permanent we wouldn’t be able to prevent the stress from becoming overbearing. I also thought you were going to go on about how it’s not where the fish go, but where they think they are? If where we are is only the next step after where we were, then we’re going… to be just fine not knowing.”

 

“Well I thought I was going to reveal some interesting anecdotes about my past that could be generalised broadly in order to strengthen this crazy Zen idea that I had.”

 

He stopped balancing the coffee cup. I folded the paper up and put it in my back pocket, uttering apologies, for having ruined his ending.