NaNoWriMo part I

As promised, here is a first chunk of what I've written for NaNoWriMo. Mistakes may abound. I have been doing minimal proofreading. I wrote 5800 words today and all I can think about is how I am NEVER writing again... Until tomorrow.

Without further ado, enjoy this first installment! I'll try posting more or less every day until I'm done.


-CD

It was late afternoon by the time Ambrosia Froid finally looked out the window of the bus.

            There was a delicate array of stripes on the road, perhaps from the trees, the shadows they cast in the mature November afternoon. It may have been dark already for all she cared, but the long shadows were like tick marks in her journey. They gave her assurance that she was really moving, that she was really leaving at long last.

            I couldn’t understand why she was so keen on staring at the carpeted seat in front of her. I told her that she should look out, acknowledge the voyage, savor the commute. But she wouldn’t. I implored her to at least admire the skeletal trees basking in the stingy clarity of the mid autumn sunshine. It was jarring but completely objective. This is what autumn really looks like. She should take lessons from it.

            Froid was not going to look without a fight though. I put her phone in her left pocket, the one nearest to the window. She took it out, checked the time, and put it back in her right. I felt somewhat helpless, but what can you do when she has such a mind of her own?

            Callahan Grossherz texted her at that moment. He was at least cooperative. I gently passed the parting image of her into his head. He saw her deep-set eyes, her diminishing frame, her fingernails dark and stubby and tinted with ash. She was beautiful in her own catastrophic way, and he would have loved to show her how she could be beautiful if only she could feel it in herself. She had left only a few hours before but he already missed her. She hadn’t even thought of him. She was thinking about the corrugated carpet, the coolness of the windowpane on her forehead, the sweetness of her shoes caressing the gray floors.

            Ambrosia stared idly at her phone, not so much reading Callahan’s text but rather admiring how the colors blurred if she let herself go cross-eyed. The orange and yellow, the black text turning into soft dots on the background. It was like a fall day and she knew it. And she let me know that she knew it. She would look out the window once, but not any more.

            She closed her eyes to take a nap. The commute was tiring in of itself, and there was little she wanted to do more than stand up and stretch her bony shoulders and wiry arms.

            At first she was really set on falling asleep. Her eyes felt soft as she was on the verge of a dreamless slumber, a quiet epoch nestled in the back left corner of the bus.

            I frowned. This would not make for a good story, and I was still annoyed at her unwillingness to look out at the scenery, especially when I had made it so enticing and symbolic of her last couple years of life.

            Samuel Tyler Coldridge, I whispered. She tensed at the first syllable.

           

            Quentin the publisher was unhappily occupied with the random charcoal scribbles that Samuel Tyler Coldridge called his poetry. Quentin the publisher could not physically touch the paper that Samuel wrote on because the charcoal would smudge and Samuel’s didactic, God-sent diction would be lost and the human race would lose the most imaginative and progressive linguistic marvel it had ever seen. Quentin the publisher was thus left to indignantly don latex gloves and gently pinch the corners of each sheet with an index finger and thumb. Quentin the publisher.

Many people called Samuel’s poetry poetry. In fact, they even called it good poetry. However, there were only two people in the world that saw Samuel for what he really was: myself, as his older brother, and of course Samuel.

            I decided to send him a text, though I know the bastard never checks his phone. I know “Luke Coldridge” was supposed to flash on the screen and I know he purposely took out his battery because he knew I would bother him. I don’t blame him. I actually do like my brother’s work, but I feel like I have to. I also understand that he is one of the only poets I know that is so unafraid of criticism that the critics are actually afraid of him.

            Quentin the publisher gently set the manuscripts down onto Samuel’s desk in his office in the English department of Murkvein College.  Samuel’s success had so skyrocketed so quickly and dramatically that he was quickly elevated from merely esteemed progeny to full-fledged resident poet laureate of the college. The English department fought bitterly to assure his place in their department, as if they had cultivated this genius by their own pretension.

            Quentin the publisher reshuffled the papers on the desk and reorganized the poetry pamphlets on the desk. Samuel had been already published in four poetry journals in the past year, each one praising a different poem and noting them as editor’s choice or best of the year, doling accolades out to him as if the very concept of praise was a necessity to his survival.

Samuel never read poetry journals or even knew that he was published in them. All he did was give Quentin the publisher poems he wrote each day (four or five on a good one, perhaps only two on a “ponderous” one). Samuel never really cared about showing other people his poetry; Quentin the publisher had to coax him to even publish. It was finally a year ago when he relented and let Quentin the publisher take his poems with him. Quentin the publisher presented them as a breakthrough in western literature as he knew it. Samuel only fed on his own intrinsic pride.

Quentin the publisher amassed publications for Samuel to contemplate submitting poems to, and Samuel more often than not would shred them, wet them, and reuse the pulp as paper for him to write his poems on. Samuel made all of the paper he wrote on and only used charcoal to write with. He did not like pens because he could not feel the ink that he would transmit onto his handmade paper, and he did not care for pencils because the concept of erasing his own beloved words sickened him.

Aside from the neat stack of journals, Samuel’s office would have been a mess, had there been anything else in there. Whereas all the other offices sported framed diplomas, writing samples that had been carefully edited and reedited before finally receiving publication, and fake plants or real wood desks or authentic replicas of busts of favorite writers, Samuel’s office had nothing. He didn’t need anything else aside from a desk and paper for him to take home and make into other paper.

I remember the travesty that is Samuel’s apartment. After he published I scolded him for not using the payments towards new clothes or bed sheets or anything that wasn’t milk, bread, bok choy, or spam. Samuel was always a picky eater. He only ate because he had to, and he never enjoyed anything he ate, as if food itself was not good enough for him. When I was in my first year of residence, I was tempted by my lab assistants to bring my fourteen-year-old brother in for a physical, curious about how malnourished he could possibly be. I of course knew Samuel well enough to decline. My brother is more malnourished in his soul than in his body.

I have met Quentin the publisher once. He couldn’t believe we were related. I told him I looked forward to learning more about him and had him drop a sheet of Samuel’s poetry on the stairs after I had headed home. I may not hold a sway over Samuel quite like I have Quentin the publisher, but I knew that after this ordeal Quentin the publisher would not have a Prius sitting pristinely and uncharred in the parking lot. I know he had paid a lot for that car, but I was not disinclined to testing the limitations of my little brother’s patience. I may not hold sway over him directly, but it’s always nice to alter those around him.

Callahan Grossherz texted Froid again. I had replaced her phone in her left pocket, and she knew this. She ignored the incessant buzzing as she had ignored the scenery. It was dusk now, and there was very little to see outside. Her nap had been futile after I had mentioned Samuel’s name, and all she could think about was obsolete happiness like lilies, a dead turtle, her smudged name in charcoal, the one moment of humanity she saw in Samuel’s eyes. It weakened her resolve. She was going to change her route, and I knew it. She would not be going home to Maine as planned.

She would be coming straight to me.

Callahan Grossherz missed the ten minutes he had spent with Froid that afternoon. He caressed his phone as if it were her, longing for her to respond or acknowledge him in any way. She had come to pack some of her things before transferring schools. I had coerced her subconscious into picking a school so far away from Massachussets and Murkvein that she would never dream of seeing Samuel or Callahan ever again. Her life at the University of Washington would be a haven for her that I created. Her future would be this: a major in physics instead of English to distance herself so dramatically from what causes her pain, the comforts of my penthouse downtown instead of sleeping on Samuel’s naked mattress in a Spartan dorm room, the security that Samuel could and would never come anywhere near me.

I feel bad for Callahan. He had set aside his entire afternoon to spend with her, to heal her, to give her food and gently hide her cigarettes, but she wouldn’t have it. I can’t blame myself in the matter; I had given him many suggestions, which he had all followed diligently, even though he doesn’t know who I am. I would say he is my favorite character in all of this. He’s kindhearted and listens to me and allows me to create what I want. The other two are obstacles, though Samuel is far worse. I blame Froid for Callahan’s unhappiness. I blame Samuel for hers. Samuel doesn’t have unhappiness. He has nothing but poetry.

Callahan is the only person that calls Froid “Ambrosia.” I don't even call her that, though I’d love to. He loves how her name flows through his thoughts; he loves the delicate features of the sounds. He loves it because it is everything she is and is not at the same time.

I made a suggestion to Callahan: write a poem, right then. A poem about her while she was still somewhat alive in the present.

This was when Callahan slowly lifted himself off of his floor. He dropped his phone under his bed, and I helped the phone slide deeper under. No need for Froid to interrupt his writing.

Callahan sat down at his desk and let his emotions flow. I tried not to laugh. Callahan is not a reputable poet. He’s a jock that has a strange sensitivity to language and wants to recreate the passion he feels when he reads beauty. To me this is all comic relief.

Ambrosia, your name is soft

Like the rain in Spain.

You smell like a Yankee candle in November

Not because you smoke

But because you’re sweet even if you don’t know it.

And I wish you wouldn’t cough

Because of your smoking. Which is bad for you.

If you get pneumonia I will die with you

Not because I smoke too

But because I love you too much.

I wish God could make you love me

(I snorted at that line and Callahan looked outside his window sharply.)

Because if you ever smiled he would see

How precious you are. Though not as much as I do.

Callahan took one look at his painstaking creation and frowned. He felt like he could do better, especially with all of the Keats and Milton and Dickinson that he read before college. He even wrote it with a fountain pen in a notebook, his chubby fingers ten sausage-like obstacles to a clean, smudge-free creation.

Maybe you’re not cut out for this, I whispered to him, hoping for a nod and a sincere endeavor to go outside and forget all of this. But to my surprise he hit himself on the head with his fist and turned over the paper, set on starting a new draft of a terrible poem that I had willed him to write.

It is late in the afternoon here in Seattle, and I begin to pack up my things and begin my commute home. I’m not completely sure what will become of Callahan’s disastrous hilarity, or if Froid will really take a nap, or if Quentin the publisher will have his new Prius set on fire like the old one. I can only blame one thing for this uncertainty. And I have no idea what he’s up to right now, be it sleeping on his bare mattress or grinding up paper into pulp, or eating uncooked, unwashed bok choy surrounded by nothing but his art.

I arrive home to my empty apartment. It won’t be empty like this for long, thank goodness. I take out some guava juice from the fridge and drink it. Some of it misses my mouth and trickles down my chin, bright orange like blood mixed with brain that I have seen so much of in the ER. It’s the color of people whose mind rejects them. The color of self-deceit and smarmy living and defective master hardware. It’s nice to know that in the wake of God so failing to make people’s brains work that I’m charged to fix it.

The guava juice slips down my neck and down my chest under my shirt. I keep drinking, thirsty and exhausted from today. It’s tiring to save people from their own brains.

Samuel’s face jumps into my head and I nearly drop my glass. I aspirate some guava juice and it sputters out everywhere on the kitchen floor, on my shirt, dribbling down my chin from my mouth. I’m drenched in guava juice.

Unpublisher material, Copyright 2012 Cali Digre