August 25th - Exercise #2: Passages

In today's published exercise, I wrote short blurbs experimenting with different tones.

Today, it's around the time of noon, and the sun is high and its beams are strong. The air is as dry as the dust of the earth. The heat is oppressive and inescapable. We are resting in the shade of a tree, but it gives little relief. Nature, at times, bids man to suffer; suffering is as holy and pure as God's will. Our chests are heaving with long, parched breaths. A crown of sweat builds on the dome of our foreheads and over the squinting eyes gazing out at the field. The field: there is work to be done. But the bodies are tired from the extinguishing effects of the heat. Chapped lips open revealing dry mouths that utter low groans at the idea of labor in these conditions. The work must be done, however; the field must be maintained. If not, then the sun will turn it to dust. “So let us move beyond the shade and into the field.” At this command, we stagger out from the shelter of the tree and we sweat and we moan amongst the crop like beasts...

An ominous chord from the belly of a rummy organ coupled with the click clack of industrial percussion – this is the sound of the phantom train heard, but never seen, miles away, following its predestined route through the track near Los Feliz, gliding past dilapidated warehouses and sketchy strip joints, and skimming the rusty fringe of downtown Los Angeles. I hear it howling through my window only at nighttime, never during the day. It is because during the daytime, the space is crowded with the noises of daily life: the rumbling and roaring of cars streaking down the street, the chirping of old Armenian women taking their healthy walks, the buzzing lawnmower, the chit chitting of sprinklers. All these sounds, evidence of the day's vitality, reverberate through the hours. Eventually, the sun retires folding itself gradually beneath the veil of the horizon and then the day noises filter out. And as the beginning of the day brings awakening to one world, the coming of the night is followed by its own set of creatures and designs. Time enters the realm behind the closed eyelid. Things of the night operate in the negative space – the unseen, the stillness. Like the howl of the phantom train, spirits float through the shadows like hallucinatory echoes. Dreams emanate out from profound pits. And in the realm of the night, I am often visited by dim images from a life I once had. These ruminations of the past are obscured by their own shadows so I can never recall them to completion, but only in fragments...

George exits the apartment and fumbles for the set of keys in his pocket. Now this action would be simply done with and disposed of in the narration of more usual lives with more usual people and would not give way to the extensive description that proceeds, but George is not making this a banal act, rather, he is executing a strenuously long scene that reveals many things about this classic buffoon of a man as if he were engaged in a silent monologue. The keys are deep inside the large left pocket of his oversized khaki pants; he always keeps the right pocket empty, finding a peculiar comfort in keeping his right hand within it while he promenades. The passage to his keys are impeded by the various other objects that are always attached to him like a habit wherever he goes: four Werther's Original caramel drops, a swiss army knife, a small package of soft tissues, and loose change. Now the abnormally long time it takes for George while he grunts and sweats to get to his keys should not only be attributed to the obstacle course of objects in his left pocket, but also to his very physical build. His fingers are like knobs and clumsy in functions that are simple to the sleek and elegant fingers of whom he refers to boorishly as the “snobbish bourgeoisie intellectuals.” There is a certain absence of grace, not only in his bulbous fingers, but in his whole figure. Firstly, he is of a disadvantageous weight, a result of all the rich and hefty meals his mom serves him lovingly, three times a day (he still lives with her, and at the age of thirty-two, can you believe it?). The second thing one would notice about him is his terrible posture, which his mother tries to correct by smacking the center of his back and screeching, “Stand up straight like a proud man! Oh your father wouldn't have this at all, no, not at all!” - but to no avail, for George continues to sink his shoulders and hunch over, which produces the unfortunate effect of emphasizing the rotund shape of his body, and gives him the appearance of a round ball. His short torso and legs are another addition to this living, breathing caricature...