Cemetery Seekers

(A part of a short story collection of mine titled Ambiance. This is simply one of many that I wanted to share with the growing views of this blog.)

gravescaper@launchpad.com

<19 September 2007>

aaaaah junior yeaaaaar – all the work’s going to cut into my cemetery-time for sure… ugh. but hey on the bright side you’re finally getting skype so i'll finally get to see that ugly face of yours (don’t deny it, that’s your only viable excuse for avoiding video chat for all this time).

god, who knows if i've been talking about graves to a serial killer for three years.

oh and btw i lost that email with your address. are you serious about this pen pal thing? it just sounds like a crapload of work to me.

tm_wake@vmail.org

<September 20, 2007>

First of all, I’ll say this now: if you complain about your workload while I’m working on my extended essay, I will hunt you down in that frozen wasteland you call a country just to punch you in the face.

Cemetery Seekers

December 22^nd, 2010

It’s gotten cold. Makes sense, since it’s winter and all, but it’s even colder here than it is back at home. Probably isn’t as cold as where you are, though. How you survive so far up north, I’ll never know. And before you start, I don’t want to know. I like my temperate climate just fine.

Still, I guess a change in environment isn’t too bad once in a while. Even though the winter here is so dry and frigid, even though they’re all wearing mantles of snow, the trees here are still green. That’s why they call them ‘evergreens’, I suppose. The forest is astoundingly dense, as if they’re all huddling together to brace against the wind like penguins. If you’re laughing, shut up and let me attempt to be poetic for just three damn minutes.

Here, it’s different from the cemetery back home.

The Color of Darkness

It isn't black.

The color of darkness, that is.

That nameless shade of darker grey that blankets our vision in the absence of light - it isn't nameless at after all. The German have a word for it: eigengrau

'Intrinsic Grey'.That's what it means. That's what it is. Simple as that.

Yet, nowadays, most people do not know the word, do not recognize the darkness as a color. They give the color other titles instead, unfeeling ones meant to offer a degree of explanation, such as 'visual noise' or 'background adaptation' or some other and scientists grasp for some proper explanation for why such a phenomenon exists.

Science is advancement. Something positive, but...

... isn't it nice to think that the color of nothing has a name as well?

Imagine it in a storybook, a word in a description of some person or a feeling.

"His eyes weren't black. It was a softer sort of darkness, the kind that seemed to fade into the shadows when you turn off the lights. Eigengrau - that was the word for it, for the softer, gentler sort of darkness that envelops you before you sleep. His eyes were that very shade.

Maybe that's how he made people feel so at ease."

It isn't bad, once in a while, to unplug everything that glows, draw the curtains, kill the lights, and just stare into that lightless expanse of grey.

Eigengrau

Once in a while

It isn’t bad

To just unplug the glows

Draw the drapes

Kill the lights

And stare into

That dark and endless

Nothingness

That vast expanse of grey

Writing Isn't Easy

http://allwritefictionadvice.blogspot.kr/2014/01/writing-isnt-easy.html

Like the blog post linked above says, it is a very common misconception that writing is something 'easy'. This is a phrase I take with a great amount of amusement and my muse takes with a passionate tirade at the ready. That being said, please grant me a minute to take some... preemptive measures.

Alright, now that I've sorted out that little mess, time to get serious with this blog post.

Yes, writing is hard. I might have misled some people around me with my ramblings of stories and fawning over my own characters and the sheer number of embarrassing, obsessive moments they have caught me in, but enjoyment does not mean that writing is easy.

Writing most certainly is not easy.

It is anything but easy, and moments that they are easy are normally either on a caffeine high or a new stage of sleep deprivation. Most of the time, I end up frustrated and leaning head into hands in internal agony, silenced by the fact that I am supposed to be doing other work and screaming in aggravation would draw attention to the fact that I am not in fact doing said other work.

Sometimes I end up slamming Tico closed or chucking away the pen (only if it's cheap), and walking away for a good hour or two. Sometimes days. More than once, I've fallen into insecurity about my writing style or story ideas or characterization, how my thoughts are too immature, too narrow-minded, too unfocused, etc. etc. etc. I could fill a whole hard drive with a list of the negative thoughts I have about my writing at times.

All that drama and I'm not even trying to get published yet.

Ah, the stress once I start trying, now that is a terrifying thought.

However, despite the additional stress that writing as a craft may give me, I cannot imagine giving it up. Ever. Writing is hard. It is the only thing I have ever done with my life that requires this much diligence and determination from me. People who think of writing as a pastime is another shade of passion, but the people actively seeking publication devote so much of themselves to the act that I find it amazing. I find all published authors, even if subject content is met with disapproval or notoriety, worthy of respect simply because they survived the process.

Writing is hard, and somehow that fulfills me. I want to finish my first novel of quality. I want to mail that first manuscript. I want to get that first rejection letter. Writing is hard, but that's part of the charm. The amount of heart I have to put into the words I scribe, the stories I tell, in hopes that I'll be able to make another person, even just one person just feel something, is extraordinary. I sometimes don't think I have it in me.

That's when I sit with a cup of tea and fresh strawberries or yogurt and have a long chat with my muse. That usually sorts me out and clears my head. Ah, it seems I've veered off topic. Here I was trying to elaborate on how and why writing is hard, but it's turned into a blog post about me instead.

My sincerest apologies for that.