Incompleat Iconoclast » Resistance

Exercise #27: Evasion

Edward F. Gumnick — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:21:54 +0000

Jeremy woke up one morning, sat up in bed, looked at Boot—perched on the pile of Newsweeks under the window—and said out loud, “Today is the day.” He swung his legs off the side of the bed, careful to place his feet in the narrow path that led to the bathroom.

He said it again, louder this time: “Today is the day.” At the sound of Jeremy’s voice, Boot sprang from the stack of magazines to the bed. Some papers fluttered to the floor.

He thought about picking them up, but he didn’t want to get distracted by the small task. Today was going to be about big progress.

He followed the path to the bathroom. On his left were columns of newspapers. On the right, pages printed from the Internet, stapled in the upper-left corners, and sorted into dozens of manila folders. A sheaf of recipes caught his eye. Maybe he would cook something later. He carried the folder to the bathroom and placed it on top of the overflowing basket of news magazines between the toilet and the bathtub. He let the tub fill while he brushed his teeth and shaved.

As soon as he was dry and dressed, Jeremy navigated to the front hallway. A good place to start. He surveyed the stacks of boxes lining the walls. A silverfish crawled out from between two cartons, but by the time he’d fetched a tissue from the bathroom, it had disappeared again. He would need to clean and dust as he cleared away some of this mess, so he made his way to the kitchen.

He opened the cabinets under the sink and contemplated the crusty rags and dozens of open bottles of cleaning products. He picked up an empty Windex bottle, then put it back down.

Maybe he should fix himself something to eat. Then he would be ready to work.

Note: The prompt was to write about a character who is evading something.

This post is an exercise that I wrote as part of the Fall 2008 50/50 Workshop, on which I began work in September 2008. (I’m still—again—working on it as of August 2010.) Read a description of the 50/50 workshop, or view all of the Fall 2008 50/50 posts.

Exercise #26: Not Wearing It

Edward F. Gumnick — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 04:43:54 +0000

Dr. Schollman says it doesn’t matter if I wear my hat or not, and that the important thing is that I take the pills, take all the pills, take the pills every day, the blue pills that the pharmacist counts with big steel tweezers on a white tray into the bottle one two three four five and so on until there is one for every day of the month and then I am supposed to come back for more, But it’s very important, Billy, says the pharmacist—this is the pharmacist talking to me now, not Dr. S—It’s very important, Billy, that you take your pill every day.

But I know that the pills are like the hat in the way Dr. S and the pharmacist see the world, the pills are like my hat for not having to see the men without eyes who sit on benches, the men with glasses but no eyes who ride the subway, standing just behind someone, standing out of sight when I look again to see if what I saw the first time was right, that there is a man without eyes who follows me onto the subway, who sits in the park, who sits by the carousel like he is waiting for someone, but I know that it is me that he is waiting for.

Dr. S says, In any case, if these men are real, which I do not concede that they are, mind you, but if these men are real, Billy, do you see any reason to believe that they mean you any harm? And I think I am being very clever when I say that what I see isn’t as important as what they see, since they are the men with no eyes, and when I leave his office, there is one of them using the ATM across the street, I can see the bare smooth eyeless skin of his face reflected in the stainless steel panel above the machine, and I know that he is watching me, though he doesn’t know I know.

I know because I am not wearing my hat. I always see better when I am not wearing it.

Note: The prompt was to write about a piece of clothing that your character refused to wear. Sometimes I like an opportunity to go to a crazy place. Makes me appreciate my sanity, such as it is.

Exercise #14: Lead Line: “I cannot help noticing all the things that…”

Edward F. Gumnick — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:58:54 +0000

I cannot help noticing all the things that I let get in the way of writing. I came in here more than an hour ago, and my agenda was clear: to write for another half hour, including coming up with something in response to this prompt, and then to get my ass to bed at a reasonable hour. But no. I had to have a quick look at Facebook. And then I had to see what was going on over at two or three other “social networking” sites (read: places to meet guys). Nothing was going on, but I didn’t let that stop me from distracting myself there for a while. Then back to Facebook, because I was thinking about what I’d said to my young cousin, Michelle, about maybe setting up a fan page for the Gumnick family. But then I determined that they don’t really accommodate family sites in the “fan page” model, so I had to figure out where to go to set up a group, and then I had to nose around to figure out which category a family group gets filed into. And then I had to figure out a name and description for the group. And then I had to find jussssst the right photo for the group page. And then I had to tweak some of the wording a little. And send an invitation to all of the family members who are on Facebook. And then remember a few in-laws I’d forgotten. Then I had to go back to one of those other sites to reply to a couple of messages that had come in while I was tinkering on Facebook.

And mixed in with all of that, there was a fair amount of staring blankly at the screen and thinking, “I should stop messing around and get to writing, or I’m going to be up half the night. But first, let me see what this thing over here is.” [Sound of mouse click.]

But now I’m here, and I’m writing. So get off my back already.

Note: The title of this assignment is self-explanatory, I think. It didn’t inspire any flashes of creative brilliance (or even dull glows thereof), but I’m sticking to a “warts and all” policy of posting everything I write in this workshop.

Exercise #12: Fear of Water

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:39:39 +0000

Tomorrow the god will show his face in the shadow of the big temple. Then the priests will feed us a meal of corn and beans and give us a drink from a gold cup, wash us, paint our faces with the signs of Kukulkan in red and blue, and dress us in gold and feathers. And then they will lead us to the cenote.

I want to believe I will have the courage walk on my own legs and that they will not have to drag me, as I have seen them drag others. At the edge of the great well, they will say prayers to ask the god to accept us and bring an end to the drought. And then we will jump into the cenote, or we will lose our nerve, and the priests will pick us up and throw us in. If we survive the fall, they will pull us out of the well, and the god will give us the gift of prophecy.

I want to be brave. I want to make this sacrifice for the sake of our people, but especially for my parents and for my little sister. But I am not sure that giving up my life will bring the rain. I am young, but I am not too young to remember last year and the year before that. The priests gave victims to the gods, but the rain still hasn’t come. Why do they think that this year will be different?

Once my father was gone for eight days, scouting with a party of warriors. When he came back, he told me about a man that they met in the jungle to the west. The man was tall, with long limbs, and he told them of a place many days’ march to the north where rain falls nearly every day, and of places far away where the gods make rain flow across the ground in a kind of roadway of water.

I don’t want to die. I want to escape to a place where the gods don’t ask so much of their people.

Note: The prompt was to write about “a time you were afraid of water.” I didn’t feel like writing a hurricane story, so I tried something else.

50/50 Exercise #34: Lead Line: “Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking…”

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:49:36 +0000

Tonight his comrades are patrolling up near the logging camp. They haven’t taken Klein along because it’s a dangerous assignment, and he’s still worth too much to them as a hostage, even though they—and he—have long since stopped thinking of him primarily as a hostage.

He stays in the camp and cooks a bland meal of corn cakes and red beans to keep himself busy, and so his captors will have something warm to eat when they return from their reconnaissance mission in the cold, damp hills. He warms the canned beans a little over a propane stove and cooks the corn barely long enough to get rid of the raw taste. They can’t spare the gas for more than one hot meal a day.

The captain has assigned Miguel to guard him tonight. Miguel is the youngest of the fighters, smooth-skinned and timid and, Klein suspects, somewhat mentally challenged as a result of either inbreeding or malnutrition, both of which are common among the mountain tribes. At regular intervals, the teen swaggers into the tent with his rifle gripped tightly in both hands, but when the white man makes eye contact, he sees a mixture of admiration and confusion. When Klein offers him a plate, Miguel leans his gun against a crate, sits cross-legged on the bare dirt, and shovels the food into his mouth with his filthy fingers. Between mouthfuls, the boy grins up at Klein and nods with appreciation.

They hear a muffled shout from the direction of the uphill trail. Miguel jumps to his feet, snatches up his rifle in one hand, and holds the plate of food in the other. As Klein takes the plate from the boy, he notices that the hand that holds it is trembling. He tucks the dirty dish out of sight among the cartons of supplies. Miguel composes himself and pushes aside the flap of the tent.

Note: The assignment was to use as a starting point the line, “Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking…,” which is the first line of the poem “This Hour and What Is Dead” by Li-Young Lee. I didn’t know what to do with that line, but it inspired my own first line and this beginning of a story about a kidnap victim who is coming to sympathize with his captors.

See also Exercise #35 and Exercise #48.

50/50 Exercise #24: Siblings

Edward F. Gumnick — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:26:46 +0000

My brother calls me a collaborator, a traitor—and worse. I ask him what he would do if he were the one responsible for our mother’s care. But he’s not responsible. What good are his principles when she is near starving and I don’t have the money to buy the medicine that might quiet her pain?

I take responsibility for the choices I have made. I accept the rations that they give me, although it is not enough for three of us. My brother lectures me on the subject of sacrifice. When he comes to visit us on a moonless night, he invokes the name of our father. I don’t need to be reminded of what was taken from both of us. I don’t want to hear his stories of heroism.

I remember a time when my brother still admired me. He would follow us everywhere, my friends and me—down to the bend in the creek, where we fished for perch from the mud bank. When I brought him home soaked nearly to his waist in muddy water, my mother, her face a mask of fatigue, asked me, “Jesse, what have you done to your brother? I told you to keep Marco out of trouble.”

Or when we rode our bikes under the highway overpass to the abandoned mill, he pedaled as hard as he could, trying to keep pace. I would hang back to give him a chance to catch up. My friends raced ahead to throw rocks at the unbroken windows along the crest of the roof. They had no younger brothers.

I can’t fight my brother’s battles. I can’t fight my brother. I have only so much strength. There is only so far that I can stretch our meager resources.

It is a matter of time until they find the man I have hidden behind the pantry wall. But my brother doesn’t know about our guest. He can’t know that I have sworn to keep this man from harm.

Note: The assignment was to write about siblings, either birth-siblings or chosen-siblings. My last foray into sibling memoir is still a sore spot with the sib in question, so I decided to go with fiction this time.

50/50 Exercise #9: Resistance

Edward F. Gumnick — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:02:50 +0000

When I am 18, I will go up on the surface to fight beside my brothers. My mother says that she needs me too much to let me go sooner. She says that she cannot tend the plot of hydroponics beds by herself. Every day she tells me what a good worker I am. She wants me to believe that she could not produce our quota without my help.

I know what she is afraid of. She knows that most of our people who go out there never come back down below.

I cannot wait until I am 18, so I fight in the ways that I have found to fight. It is not much. But I have read about the ancient wars, when our people lived on the surface, when humans fought against other humans over resources and beliefs and economic systems. Sometimes one faction was so much stronger than another that the only option for the weaker faction was to hide, to break things. I have read that even women and children kept as slaves could steal power in tiny portions.

I want to be like those weak humans who gathered together many little victories. I try to remember that sometimes our ancestors won impossible wars that way.

Yesterday, when I was carrying water from the pump to our plot, I came upon an unattended vehicle loaded with jugs of chemicals. I knew that the foremen account for every bottle. I have seen them looking carefully over the paperwork when they bring us nutrients for the beds. Once I saw them beating the boy who unloads the truck when they thought that the count was wrong.

I knew I would not get away with stealing any chemicals. Where would I hide them? There is nowhere that the foremen are not allowed to go. Two or three times a week, they search the room that my mother and I share with 10 other women.

So when I found the vehicle unattended, I took out the nail that I keep inside the hem of the right leg of my pants. I got down on my knees, and I pressed the point of the nail against the base of the little stick where they put air in the tire. When I heard air hissing out, I pulled out the nail. I leaned close to the tire to make sure that the leak did not stop.

Then I put away the nail. I must be patient until my next battle.

Author’s note: The assignment was to write a story that emerges from consideration of the word “resistance.” My young freedom fighter is living on an Earth that’s fallen to alien invaders. (Is that obvious?)

(Lame) Excuses

Edward F. Gumnick — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:06:07 +0000

[None of the writing projects I’ve been working on lately are in good enough shape yet to go on the blog, so I thought I’d post something I wrote a while back (January 25, 2006) in the interest of having something fresh for anyone who might be keeping an eye on the site. This piece has been well received by most of the writers with whom I’ve shared it.]

Why I don’t spend more time writing:

Because it’s too hard to do anything when I first get out of bed in the morning, and then I’m too busy for the rest of the day.
Because by the time I’m winding down after all of the day’s activities, I’m too tired.
Because even though there’s nothing (whatsoever) worth watching on television, I park myself in front of the TV for at least five or six hours a week.
Because I’m too busy trying to get laid.
Because even though I’m thoroughly bored with my ordinary work, while I’m doing that work, I know what I’m supposed to be doing.

Because no one is breathing down my neck waiting for me to write something—usually.
Because I’m having too much fun.
Because I’m not having enough fun, so the idea of sitting down at my writing desk is depressing.
Because I have no good ideas.
Because when I have good ideas, it’s never a convenient time to stop and write them down.
Because when I have a good idea and I happen to have my Palm with me, it stops being a good idea as soon as I make myself a note about it.
Because I ignore all of the good ideas that I’ve saved in my Palm.
Because most of the other writers I know are much better than I am.
Because some of the other writers I know are dismally bad.
Because I spend too much time reading.
Because I spend too much time thinking about writing.
Because it might turn out that I have nothing of value to say.
Because there are so many good writers.
Because I have no secrets that would interest anybody else.
Because I have too much to hide.
Because it’s hard.