Here you go, Aaron!

A continuation of a story I started on set...

“What should I write?” she asked, becoming frustrated.  “I’m not a writer for God’s sake!”  If this were a kitchen counter with a big metal bowl, a bag of flour, some eggs, milk, butter, oil, maybe some basil and thyme, then she would know what to do.

“Oh, great, now you’ve lost it,” Madeleine said to herself with a laugh.  “You’re all alone and shouting at no one.”

She calmed herself.

Then came the voice again.

“Write about…the last things…you remember,” it said.

That was the first thing the voice had said to her that made any sense.  She picked up the pen, immediately feeling spent and weak.  If only they would give her something to eat, something with some sugar, maybe she would be able to concentrate.

Seeing nothing else to be done, Madeleine used all of her strength to put her pen to paper and then she started to write, but as her pen made the faintest mark of black ink on the white lined paper, a familiar melody crept into her consciousness from somewhere in her subconscious.

“And in the valley of the deep,” she softly sang, “is where your secrets I shall forever keep.”

Where did that come from? she wondered.

It certainly wasn’t anything easily accessible to her recent memory.  And yet those two lines seemed engraved in her brain.

“And in the valley of the deep is where your secrets I shall forever keep,” she repeated, this time without singing it.  “But what’s the next verse?” she asked.

After a moment more Madeleine dismissed it as a song or nursery rhyme she had learned as a child.  “Nonsense,” she said aloud, again to nobody.  She went back to the task a hand.  She wrote:

The last things I remember are being warm, hot actually…from the sun.  Yes, I was outside in a park somewhere.  I remember because there were children laughing and dogs running.  And green grass.  Yes, I remember the grass because I had taken off my shoes and the grass felt wet and wonderful beneath my feet, in between my toes.  It had been freshly cut because I remember the smell of it.

Just thinking about it caused Madeleine to forget for a moment that she was locked in a cement room.  She felt free again, so she continued to write.

I remember a hand on my shoulder.  I remember turning around and seeing a police officer.  He was speaking words to me, but I couldn’t hear them.  And the words I could not hear were causing tears to run down my face.  Despite being hot in the sun for so long, my veins ran ice cold.  I shivered.

Madeleine shivered in her cell.  And again came that melody.  She wrote:

And in the valley of the deep…is where your secrets I shall forever keep.

To be continued/what now?? 

Time to Write.

I've heard in talks given by wise writers like Elizabeth Gilbert and Wayne Dyer that art and inspiration can sometimes be something the writer or artist channels from another source, something that does not belong to us, therefore, something we are not responsible for how it turns out.  That is how I feel about this piece.  I wrote it while on a set, waiting in holding.  I don't know what it's about or if I will continue it, but it came through me and now here it is:

She looked around her cell.  It was cold.  Since regaining consciousness she’d been allowed a notebook and pen, but had been denied food and water.

“What do they want from me?” she wondered. 

“Write!” shouted a voice in a hushed whisper after a long silence.

She looked around her suddenly, trying to decipher where this strange instruction could have come from.  Her cell was floor to ceiling cement with no windows.  The door was made of cold steel and locked up tight.

“Hello?” she said meekly.  “Is someone else…there?” 

Nothing. 

“I must really be losing it,” she thought to herself.  “Your name is Madeleine Hillcrest,” she said.  “You live at 5211 Riverside Dr.”

Madeleine closed her heavy eyelids.  She welcomed sleep although she had slept for most of the time she’d been locked away.  She hadn’t the slightest idea how long that could have possibly been either.  Hours?  Days?  Weeks?  She suspected they had given her something that kept her so drowsy.  Madeleine felt her mind and body start to drift away.

“Write!!” came the voice again, more insistent this time and most obviously a female’s.

Madeleine’s eyes flew open.

“What should I write?” she asked, becoming frustrated.  “I’m not even a writer for God’s sake!”

“Oh, great, now you’ve lost it,” Madeleine said to herself with a laugh.  “You’re all alone and shouting at no one.”

She calmed herself.

Then came the voice again.

“Write about…the last things…you remember,” it said.

That was the first thing the voice had said to her that made any sense.  She picked up the pen and immediately felt weak.  If only they would give her something to eat, something with some sugar, maybe she would be able to concentrate.

Seeing nothing else to be done, Madeleine used all of her strength to put her pen to paper and then she started to write.

If anyone has any hunches as to what comes next, leave them in my comments :)

The Beach

I went to  the beach yesterday.  I was hoping despite the 100+ degree weather in NoHo, it would be much cooler by the water.  Technically it was, but it was hard to tell.  The water felt amazing though and the sound of the waves and being outside always refreshes me.  

As I got in and out of the ocean I started to write this piece.  It's the first short story I've written in as long as I can remember.  Sometimes the stories don't come to me that easily.  This one did.

Untitled - 8.28.2015

I came out to the ocean today.  I let the water wash over me, cleansing me, reminding me of the last time we were here together and how you looked with the sunlight reflecting off of your sunglasses.  You were always so cool, just always someone who represented something I was always trying so desperately to be, but never quite could be.  And that coolness came to you with such ease.  And I envied you for it.

You weren’t sad back then and neither was I.  That was before everything changed, before the hourglass that measured our happiness was so inconspicuously turned on its head.  Back then I could still laugh without the fear of knowing it would all abruptly end as it all eventually did.  I didn’t know then that the sand castle we lived in would come crumbling down around us.  If I had, maybe I would have had time to save something more than just myself. 

Do you remember the day you found that sand dollar?  And you said if only that were a real dollar and if only you had a million more of those to give to me, then we could sail off into the horizon.  And we laughed.  But sometimes I think that’s why you left, because you felt you could not give me everything you felt so strongly that I wanted and deserved.  But I want you to know that none of that ever mattered to me.  It was always them who expected so much of you while I just liked being beside you, feeling your chest rise and fall as we fell asleep at night and then slowly roused in the mornings. 

Well, I suppose none of that matters now.  It’s been years since I’ve seen you and ages since anyone has spoken your name to me.  And I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for you even if I had the nerve.  I just wanted you to know I still have that sand dollar.  It’s at the bottom of the drawer beside my bed.  I like knowing that it’s here.  I like knowing that a part of us is still here.

And you'll never believe it.  After I wrote this I went back into the water for the last time and I found this...

I won't let you let me down so easily.

Newest rough-draft of a chapter I wrote today.  Jessa is having a hard time filtering through all of the love and dating advice she is offered.  Will she be able to find her own voice?

“I won’t let you let me down so easily.”

            Jessa suddenly felt uncomfortable sitting in the passenger seat of Jared’s car. They were on their way to a birthday dinner for one of her friends downtown.  She and Jared had been seeing each other for months.  She thought the next natural step was to make it official, which is why she had asked him the question in the first place. 

            “I just don’t know how to introduce you to my friends,” Jessa tried to explain.

            “Just say, ‘This is Jared,’” he replied with a laugh.

            Jessa felt herself getting upset.  “I just feel like I must be doing something wrong,” she said more to herself than to him.

            Jared made a left-hand turn.  “What do you mean?” he asked.

            “I mean, I don’t know what else I can do, Jared.  We see each other 2-3 times a week, we stay over at each other’s apartments, we cook each other dinner and breakfast.  Why can’t I just say you’re my boyfriend?”

            Jared pulled into a metered parking spot and cut the engine off.  He turned to her.  “I’m just not ready for that yet, Jess.”  He put his hand to the side of her face.  “And it has nothing to do with you.  This is my shit, so please don’t take any of it personally, okay?”

            Jessa nodded, biting her lip to stave off the tears now welling in her eyes.  “Okay,” she replied.

            “Thank you,” Jared said and leaned forward to kiss her.

            At dinner, Jessa tried to focus on her friends and their conversations, but her mind kept wandering.  She wanted to believe Jared.  She took a deep breath, trying not take what he’d said in the car personally, but something about him and this whole situation felt just too familiar and absolutely personal to her.

* * *

            Jessa had found dating in the new millennium impossible.  There was enough contradicting advice and reading material to make her head spin.

            “Don’t act too needy or clingy too soon,” one friend advised over coffee.

            “But guys are clueless, so if you don’t tell them you’re interested they will never figure it out on their own,” said another.

            “But play hard to get.  If he asks you out, say you’re busy.”

            Later, Jessa would click on an article on her FaceSpace news feed that more or less read something like this:

           

            You deserve to be treated like a princess and men are human, so you don’t expect them to be perfect and be able to read your mind.  Also, expectation is the first step toward disappointment.  So, know what you’re worth and if you don’t like what he’s giving you, move on, sister.

Men love it when the girl is the one who asks him out, but don’t make him feel emasculated.  You have to let him be the man, but also be an independent woman who doesn’t rely on anyone else because men find that kind of confidence sexy.

            It seemed the gender roles had gotten so mixed up over the last fifty years that being a housewife in the 1950’s almost seemed like a dream to Jessa.  At least back then, people knew what they were supposed to do.

            Jessa was excited about the date she had with Zach.  She had met him a few weeks before and the chemistry between them was off the charts.  Every time he looked into her eyes and kissed her she felt tiny exploding fireworks everywhere in her body.  She had put up with a lot of shit with guys in the past, but she knew meeting Zach was God’s way of making up for all of that.

            “I just feel like things might be moving a little fast, Jess,” said Zach a little later when he called to cancel their date.  “And rest assured it’s not you.  It’s me.  I’m the idiot and I’m just not looking for anything serious right now.”

            Jessa hung up the phone.  This felt like the hundredth guy in a row to tell her he wasn’t interested in a relationship with her.  The first fifty times she took it with a grain of salt, accepting that they were telling the truth and that they just weren’t ready.  But with every following rejection, Jessa found it harder and harder to ignore the fact that the problem might not be with them and that it could possibly lie with her.

* * *

            “I’ll call you when I’m off work tomorrow,” Jared said, dropping her off at her place after dinner.

            “No, don’t,” replied Jessa.  Her brash response startled the both of them.

            “Okay…are you sure?”

            Jessa opened her car door and nodded.  “Yeah, good-bye, Jared.”

            She barely heard him say, “Bye,” as she shut the door.  She heard him drive away.

            Jessa walked into her empty apartment and leaned up against the door.  What was wrong with her?  On nights like this when she was feeling her lowest, all she wanted to do was curl up on the couch with a pint of ice cream and wallow in her own self-pity.  Shaking her head, she made her way to her closet.  She pulled out a sexy piece of red lingerie and put it on.  She stood in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the backside of her bathroom door.

            As she stood there, looking at her two perfect breasts, round hips, and smooth legs she was absolutely dumbfounded.  Why wouldn’t Jared want to claim this beauty for his own? she wondered.  She went to the stereo and turned it on.  The song “2 Wicky” by Hooverphonic came on through the speakers.  Jessa started to moving slowly, seductively.  She ran her hands along the sides of her body, up around her neck, and then up into her beautiful long hair.

Jessa would understand if she were just being shallow.  She knew there was more to a girl than her looks, but she also knew she was a complete package.  Not only on the outside, but on the inside she was sweet, caring, intelligent, had a sense of humour, and she could take care of herself as well as others and still – nothing.  Jessa went to her phone and picked it up.  With a few pushes on the touchscreen, the phone began to ring to another end.  Jessa put the phone to her ear.

“Hello?” said a man’s voice.

“Hello?  Brandon?” she said with a deviant smile.  “It’s been a while.”