Borges has a short story about a labyrinth of words; a mammoth novel with the chapters scrambled in order. It's your job as reader to piece together the narrative, and take whatever you will from it. But since the narrative itself can go in multiple paths, different readers will read it very differently.
The idea of a novella or novel which defied order has really intrigued me. In its simplest case, imagine a novel that you could read either forwards or backwards. I would love for this to be a murder mystery. In one direction, it is the story of the detective figuring out what happened. You start with an unsolvable case, and talk to people and go bit by bit until you know what happened. In the other, it is the story of the criminal erasing clues and evading detection. You start with the crime, and visit each scene to ensure your safety, ending with an unsolvable case. I don't know if it's doable, but it's a cool idea nonetheless.
Things are certainly interesting when you want two paths through a novel, but even so you can determine an interior order suitable for either. Making a novel in which any chapter can be read in any order, without having it devolve into a series of short stories, that seems even more difficult. A novel, by definition, it seems, has to have a unifying thread that runs through all of it. It isn't mix-and-match. How can you have character development, large-scale themes, climax and resolution if you need to be able to take any chapter out of its place and put it anywhere else?
My first idea was to write a novel like an essay, or at least vaguely. My idea was that in most of my essays for class, slight alterations in the first and last paragraphs mean that each interior, supporting paragraph, can be displaced and rearranged at will. Of course, I generally think there is a good way and a few bad ways to rearrange the paragraphs, but the point of the essay would still come across no matter the order. Extrapolating this, if I work from a first and last chapter idea, I can introduce an idea in the first/last chapters, and have each other chapter pull and tug at the idea, flesh it out in interesting ways. They have a common thread, which is the idea, but each chapter is a unit unto itself and can be rearranged at will. The idea could be anything. It could be a murder mystery again, with the first and last chapters being the detective saying what happened and/or the crime itself, and each intermediate chapter being one piece of evidence that leads on the path from one to the other. It could be simpler, the description of a world or the different things that happen in a specific building.
But that feels too much like a short story anthology, not enough like a real novel.
Another idea I had was based on Italo Calvino's "If on a winter's night a traveller" (I think), a novel which is in effect the start of 14 or so different novels. In that structure, order doesn't matter because the novel is about the experience of reading, of writing, and of creation -- not about the plot of any of the 14 or so different novels begun in the book. However, even here, Calvino has a narrative plot with two readers that strings all of the works together, to keep it from being too much of a short-story anthology. But the idea is there: If the novel is about the creative experience, writing and reading and so forth, then the thread can exist between stories and not necessarily need a linear plot?
Which brings me back to something I have always enjoyed (and those of you who read my earliest writings will attest to this), which is the difference between fantasy and reality, and how stories mediate this gap. The first long story that I remember writing (I've been writing since I could read), was full of that surreal stuff. First we (my cousin and I) wrote a story, and then we wrote a story about the story, and then we wrote the combination and resolution of the two. And then we realized that we still had a lot of loose ends, so we tied all of them up. The point of it (for me) was how imagination works in the world, how the creative process works, how characters become real to an author and how the story threatens to swallow you whole - for better or for worse. It was a really cool story. What I liked best about it was the recusive aspect, the self-referential aspect, and it meant that you could, in principle, read the first two stories in either order and it would make just as much sense either way.
So it seems to me that writing about the experience of reading and writing is probably the best way to do away with the linear quality of stories. The scheme works this way:
1) Simple story, within the paradigm: brilliant inspector solves murder mystery
2) Meta-story: brilliant murder mystery writer solves murder mystery
3) Alternate Meta-story: clever murder mystery writer commits murder, is caught OR murderer is caught by murder mystery writer
4) Self-referential Meta-story: murder mystery writer sees murder mystery going on around him and writes it
5) Surreal self-referential Meta-story: murder mystery writer writes murder mystery and sees it going on around him
6) Alternate surreal self-referential Meta-story: Criminal writes murder mystey which leads to his own arrest
etcetera etcetera etcetera. You could use any plot/paradigm. The structure, the iteration, and so forth, draw attention away from the similarities (the paradigm itself) and point out how each story is different, i.e. how the story itself effects each iteration. You can even keep names the same - or very similar - between iterations (i.e. Gene, Jem, Jim, James, John, Jon, Jonas, Jonah, Jonathan, etc.)
So. Yeah. Recursion makes stories better, and seems like the best way to make an unordered story (at least to me).
Friday, April 27, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
There is nothing more peaceful, more solid, than sitting by a window or on a porch and watching it rain, listening to the far-off thunder. You revel in your safety, your security, dry in the face of a storm. You smell teh rain in teh air and on the ground, the smell of the world's promise not to disappear on you - where there is water, there is life. When it's raining and you're inside, it feels certain that everything will work out, everything will be okay. The sun brings ecstatic joy, maybe, adventure, the warmth of laughter, but with adventure comes danger and laughter often sounds like crying. The sun can burn. A light rainstorm brings only calm, cool, it washes the tension out of the air and leaves the world freshly washed, crisp, ready for the sun, the light of joy, and adventure. But rain regenerates, it solidifies, it serves as a desmonstration of teh promise that everything will work out, the grass will grow and the trees will turn green, every winter will warm up eventually and every summer will cool down eventually and you are left with the in-between, the cool crisp spring day and rain. There's nothing more comforting than a spring rainstorm.
Which is odd because there is nothing so impetuous as running out in the rain. Nothing so childlike as jumping in a puddle. After all, it doesn't do to go out in the rain, get wet and muddy and dishevelled. We're civilized people, and even animals take shelter from the rain. But every time it rains, I hear the promise in every drop, and I want to go out and play. It's my farmer's blood, or something, saying - It's raining! We won't starve! Everything will be okay!. I want to dance for joy, splash in every puddle, add the percussion of my laughter to the rhythm of the rain, let the water pour down my face and the thunder ring in my ears. The sun hides behind a cloud and my own joy shines brighter in comparison. Like a bright pink or yellow raincoat, bringing some of the fierce joy of the sun into a rainy day.
Which is odd because there is nothing so impetuous as running out in the rain. Nothing so childlike as jumping in a puddle. After all, it doesn't do to go out in the rain, get wet and muddy and dishevelled. We're civilized people, and even animals take shelter from the rain. But every time it rains, I hear the promise in every drop, and I want to go out and play. It's my farmer's blood, or something, saying - It's raining! We won't starve! Everything will be okay!. I want to dance for joy, splash in every puddle, add the percussion of my laughter to the rhythm of the rain, let the water pour down my face and the thunder ring in my ears. The sun hides behind a cloud and my own joy shines brighter in comparison. Like a bright pink or yellow raincoat, bringing some of the fierce joy of the sun into a rainy day.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
If you can read the links on the side bar, thank a Biochemistry professor.
Or maybe a geneticist.
They're codons when they can be, and letters when they can't. The only problem is that this alphabet doesn't have a "B", "J", "O", "U", "X", or "Z". It's a shame about the two vowels. And B is a fairly common letter. I'll use DNA instead of RNA because then you don't have to be confused about a "U" that needs to be translated versus one that doesn't. And because I like DNA better.
Translations for the non-geneticist (from the top): Ayn, Emily, Duff.
I wish I was synesthetic. It would be really awesome to be able to live a metaphor. Like, something that actually tastes blue or green or round or something other than sweet, salty, bitter, spicy, etc. Normal taste things. I was reading something on synesthesia, this neuropsych guy who thinks that synesthesia is the root of language - phonemes and the movement of your mouth mimicking various elements of the object/representation/whatever to be symbolized by the word. And of course then variations on that theme. But then he talks about poets and artists as being half-synesthetic, as in, their senses aren't unitary but all messed together, and so they see in metaphors and similies and things, they think of the world not as a place that can be rigourously and accurately described but in imagery and metaphor. It's all separated up for me, and maybe that's good in the field I'm in; precise and accurate physical descriptions are more useful to scientists than evocative imagery. But I was thinking about the other things I do, and I realized that part of the reason I hate poetry is because you have to think in that fuzzy way, and I can't do it. I actually sat at my computer for about an hour trying to find a metaphor because I could tell that there should be a metaphor for me to use in a certain spot in a story, and I couldn't. Just out and out couldn't, and in the end settled for a precise description instead. Maybe that's why my writing always takes up more words, because when I could use a metaphor I instead use a description, and it takes up more space.
So I would like to be a little bit synesthetic. I think it would be cool, in a fuzzy, artsy sort of way. And by synesthetic, maybe I just mean able to come up with really cool metaphors. So maybe I just want to be artsy.
But that would be silly, because if I was artsy I wouldn't know what the hell the links on my sidebar meant without being clued in, and I certainly wouldn't have thought to put them there.
They're codons when they can be, and letters when they can't. The only problem is that this alphabet doesn't have a "B", "J", "O", "U", "X", or "Z". It's a shame about the two vowels. And B is a fairly common letter. I'll use DNA instead of RNA because then you don't have to be confused about a "U" that needs to be translated versus one that doesn't. And because I like DNA better.
Translations for the non-geneticist (from the top): Ayn, Emily, Duff.
I wish I was synesthetic. It would be really awesome to be able to live a metaphor. Like, something that actually tastes blue or green or round or something other than sweet, salty, bitter, spicy, etc. Normal taste things. I was reading something on synesthesia, this neuropsych guy who thinks that synesthesia is the root of language - phonemes and the movement of your mouth mimicking various elements of the object/representation/whatever to be symbolized by the word. And of course then variations on that theme. But then he talks about poets and artists as being half-synesthetic, as in, their senses aren't unitary but all messed together, and so they see in metaphors and similies and things, they think of the world not as a place that can be rigourously and accurately described but in imagery and metaphor. It's all separated up for me, and maybe that's good in the field I'm in; precise and accurate physical descriptions are more useful to scientists than evocative imagery. But I was thinking about the other things I do, and I realized that part of the reason I hate poetry is because you have to think in that fuzzy way, and I can't do it. I actually sat at my computer for about an hour trying to find a metaphor because I could tell that there should be a metaphor for me to use in a certain spot in a story, and I couldn't. Just out and out couldn't, and in the end settled for a precise description instead. Maybe that's why my writing always takes up more words, because when I could use a metaphor I instead use a description, and it takes up more space.
So I would like to be a little bit synesthetic. I think it would be cool, in a fuzzy, artsy sort of way. And by synesthetic, maybe I just mean able to come up with really cool metaphors. So maybe I just want to be artsy.
But that would be silly, because if I was artsy I wouldn't know what the hell the links on my sidebar meant without being clued in, and I certainly wouldn't have thought to put them there.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
They wrote an article about her
It's been a year. It's been a year and the one thing that I promised myself a year ago was that I would sort myself out and be in a better place now than I was then. And I am, I guess. Maybe I'm just in a different place. It probably doesn't matter one way or another. I still feel sick to the stomach thinking about what might have been, if I hadn't been injured. Thinking about my name still being up on that goddamned record board, thinking about what life would be like without migraines, without depression, without any of this crap. Thinking that I would have liked to be a varsity athlete these past two years, I would have liked that a lot. Thinking that I would have liked to have dove at my last divisionals, and allstars, and all of those meets.
I think about Sandra a lot, too, and Krista. Sandra can still dive but doesn't, Krista left the sport because of a knee injury. I remember all the times that Krista would be sitting on the side of the pool with a knee brace because she needed corrective surgery. All that and she still kept coaching. I wish I could have been that strong. Or maybe I am, but I haven't found the right place to coach. Maybe I'll pick it up again in graduate school. Maybe I'll go back to the sport I love.
Nothing has been able to replace it. Even though I get headaches just being in a pool for more than an hour or two, even though it's terrifying and heartbreaking at the same time, the only thing that even came close to replacing it was circus, and only that because of the pain and the fear and the stress, and the wonderful, warm, strong women who made it through all of that. I was constantly in awe, and it kept me coming back. But it was too far away, maybe too painful, maybe too much a lifestyle. I didn't have the guts to go in for the whole lifestyle, I wanted to still be a diver on the inside, long, naturally colored hair and no tattoos - don't scare the judges, they're really prudish old men on the inside - and that wasn't what they were. They were rebellious, dangerous, scary. Exciting.
There's a story there, I keep telling myself. I know there's a story there, about someone tempted by rebellion and danger but never quite getting there, someone who desperately wants to fly but not to run away from home. It's Peter Pan, really. Teach me to fly? Adventures? Mermaids? Pirates? Sure, but I need to be home by midnight, or my parents will be furious. I need to be home and study and work and get into a good graduate school and...
They wrote an article about her, about how wonderful she is. They mentioned me - I got her into the sport, after all, and it was my records she broke, but it's irrelevant why I wasn't around to keep the records, why she was the one the article was about and not me. And in general, the injury and the aftermath and everything that happened that year is irrelevant, it's the part of my life I want to look back on the least, it's the part everyone wants to forget, to pretend didn't happen. It would be easier for everyone if I had just decided I didn't much like diving, if I had just decided I needed more time for my studies or something. It might have been easier if it was just that I hated her, hated her with every bone in my body, and couldn't stand being near her enough to make the team worth it. The pain, in my head and my gut and just about everywhere, is too much. I feel like an exile, forced from a place and a life that should have, by all rights, been mine. It was stolen, and what do I have instead? Memories, migraines, and almost epileptic fits.
I don't like thinking about it anymore. I like pretending that I had a choice, that I know this is all for the best, that I decided I didn't want to dive. I like pretending I had control, that I could go back anytime and there would be no risk, no danger, no pain, just the normal fear and standard woes of returning to a sport. But it's not true.
I remember the look on my high school coach's face when he heard. He checks up with my parents now, regularly, to make sure that I'm doing okay. The man took us on a trip to Cuba (it was a trip that defined me, so much of it) and I like to pretend that the reason he could was because he was a CIA spook. He had a friend high up, and could get one of the last visas, or maybe he needed cover for a covert op. It was supposed to be a trip for comparative government students, and everyone else was in AP comparative government, but they were my friends and I knew the coach and so even though I didn't speak spanish and even though I wasn't particularly interested in politics and history, I tagged along. I visit him whenever I go home. He checks with my parents to make sure I'm doing okay, to make sure I'm dealing with the loss.
Sandra does too. I have a handful of dive coaches at home who sympathize with me, who invite me to coach with them, who want me to stick with the sport (like they did) even through my exile. It isn't the sport that did it, they say, just a few stupid people and one very stupid coach.
Jenn isn't coaching anymore. She could be. She abandoned the sport.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ashley never sets foot on a diving board again. I think she's only in it for the attention.
They said I wasn't dedicated.
They said I didn't love the sport.
Well, I loved the sport. Just thinking about it makes me cry anymore. I still love the sport.
But they don't write articles about things like that, not when they want to make our athletics department seem good, cool, a fun place to be. And the only amazing thing I've done is survive. If that counts as amazing.
I think about Sandra a lot, too, and Krista. Sandra can still dive but doesn't, Krista left the sport because of a knee injury. I remember all the times that Krista would be sitting on the side of the pool with a knee brace because she needed corrective surgery. All that and she still kept coaching. I wish I could have been that strong. Or maybe I am, but I haven't found the right place to coach. Maybe I'll pick it up again in graduate school. Maybe I'll go back to the sport I love.
Nothing has been able to replace it. Even though I get headaches just being in a pool for more than an hour or two, even though it's terrifying and heartbreaking at the same time, the only thing that even came close to replacing it was circus, and only that because of the pain and the fear and the stress, and the wonderful, warm, strong women who made it through all of that. I was constantly in awe, and it kept me coming back. But it was too far away, maybe too painful, maybe too much a lifestyle. I didn't have the guts to go in for the whole lifestyle, I wanted to still be a diver on the inside, long, naturally colored hair and no tattoos - don't scare the judges, they're really prudish old men on the inside - and that wasn't what they were. They were rebellious, dangerous, scary. Exciting.
There's a story there, I keep telling myself. I know there's a story there, about someone tempted by rebellion and danger but never quite getting there, someone who desperately wants to fly but not to run away from home. It's Peter Pan, really. Teach me to fly? Adventures? Mermaids? Pirates? Sure, but I need to be home by midnight, or my parents will be furious. I need to be home and study and work and get into a good graduate school and...
They wrote an article about her, about how wonderful she is. They mentioned me - I got her into the sport, after all, and it was my records she broke, but it's irrelevant why I wasn't around to keep the records, why she was the one the article was about and not me. And in general, the injury and the aftermath and everything that happened that year is irrelevant, it's the part of my life I want to look back on the least, it's the part everyone wants to forget, to pretend didn't happen. It would be easier for everyone if I had just decided I didn't much like diving, if I had just decided I needed more time for my studies or something. It might have been easier if it was just that I hated her, hated her with every bone in my body, and couldn't stand being near her enough to make the team worth it. The pain, in my head and my gut and just about everywhere, is too much. I feel like an exile, forced from a place and a life that should have, by all rights, been mine. It was stolen, and what do I have instead? Memories, migraines, and almost epileptic fits.
I don't like thinking about it anymore. I like pretending that I had a choice, that I know this is all for the best, that I decided I didn't want to dive. I like pretending I had control, that I could go back anytime and there would be no risk, no danger, no pain, just the normal fear and standard woes of returning to a sport. But it's not true.
I remember the look on my high school coach's face when he heard. He checks up with my parents now, regularly, to make sure that I'm doing okay. The man took us on a trip to Cuba (it was a trip that defined me, so much of it) and I like to pretend that the reason he could was because he was a CIA spook. He had a friend high up, and could get one of the last visas, or maybe he needed cover for a covert op. It was supposed to be a trip for comparative government students, and everyone else was in AP comparative government, but they were my friends and I knew the coach and so even though I didn't speak spanish and even though I wasn't particularly interested in politics and history, I tagged along. I visit him whenever I go home. He checks with my parents to make sure I'm doing okay, to make sure I'm dealing with the loss.
Sandra does too. I have a handful of dive coaches at home who sympathize with me, who invite me to coach with them, who want me to stick with the sport (like they did) even through my exile. It isn't the sport that did it, they say, just a few stupid people and one very stupid coach.
Jenn isn't coaching anymore. She could be. She abandoned the sport.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ashley never sets foot on a diving board again. I think she's only in it for the attention.
They said I wasn't dedicated.
They said I didn't love the sport.
Well, I loved the sport. Just thinking about it makes me cry anymore. I still love the sport.
But they don't write articles about things like that, not when they want to make our athletics department seem good, cool, a fun place to be. And the only amazing thing I've done is survive. If that counts as amazing.
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