Writing : Post a Paragraph

So you've also read In The Lake of the Woods? I have not. Yet. Will read it someday. I have fished Lake of the Woods a lot, mostly for walleyes to eat, muskies for sport (catch & release). I've always had a deep connection to LotWs. If my wife could handle serious winter I'd live in a cabin on an island in that lake. But alas, she's a thin-blooded California girl now. She can't even handle Chicago's winters anymore.  

Thanks, Kedzie! I used to go up there quite a lot several years ago and was fascinated by it.

@Kedzie. So nice to read your work this morning. I love(d) trains. We didn't have the yards where I grew up, only the one long snake of rail that we walked along picking up pieces of sulphur or coal, and laying pennies on the track and putting our ears on the hot rail to see if we could feel the train coming. Love your work Kedzie. I would have given an arm and a leg to eavesdrop on all you little rot monsters in your leathers and tee shirts, drinking warm beer and being juvenile. Happy Saturday. Write me some more....please sir. gsr

Or, was the beer cold?

Not much time for writing or reading anything non-school related lately (or even sleep, really). :'( Here's a little something.

In Florida, it was already summer. My flight got in early afternoon at Fort Lauderdale. Uncle Joey came alone to get me. We met around the baggage claim. No smiles, no hugs, no helping with my suitcase. Just a few moments of silent observation, a quizzical look like he was staring at some new species of insect, and then the slow, southern-drawled remark that I still hear in my head sometimes: “You don’t act like a queer.” Fuck if I know why, but this became a nearly pathological source of anxiety for Uncle Joey. Sometimes I think maybe it was like if you knew you had mice in your house but never saw them in action. You’d obsess, think they were behind every noise, worry about them crawling over you at night. He never saw the gay in action. It freaked him out.

Uncle Joey thought, as long as the weather didn’t hit above 90, lowered windows and a retracted sunroof were a reasonable alternative to gas-guzzling A/C. He had shaggy hair, a permanent farmer’s tan, and he took to the heat like a reptile. It was 90 that day, not above. I was in the backseat ‘cause he said, “Your dad ‘prolly wants you stayin’ far away from men.” He and Aunt Eva were property managers for a bunch of houses and apartments down in Miami. He still had all his garden shears, manure fertilizer, pesticides, paint buckets, and a lawnmower in  the trunk and backseat from work, so I sat behind the passenger seat, breathing in hot paint fumes and cow shit, pouring sweat with two suitcases on top of me and my backpack full of books at my feet. The whole way, I hooked one arm over the window—my skin cooking on the hot aluminum of his Chevy—so I could rest my head there in the wind. Coral Springs is maybe a half hour from Fort Lauderdale, if even, but the heat made it feel longer. At the end of the journey, whether it was back from the airport or back from therapy, the road to Aunt Eva’s house uncoiled always in these two big loops that went on forever, first going left around the fishing pond, and then right around the Green Island rec center, until the pavement narrowed and the path went parallel to the main road outside the community gates. From there, it was a straight shot of two blocks flanked by the expensive homes of retired geezers from up north.

Gail,

That's from a old post I made to a blog once.

It's an OK piece but has several clumsy sections. Also, people like to argue with the George Gershwin reference. Yes, GG was mainly a pianist. But he also played the organ, and when he did it was a Hammond B3. He even made commercials for Hammond back in the day; mostly photos with a quote that were made into posters placed in music store windows.

Anywho...here's the article. It could be a lot better, I've just never taken the time to tweak it.

But since ya like trains, this whistle's a blowin'.  

http://reliablerascal.com/avondale/2013/09/up-on-the-avondale-tracks/

(Note to Admin. If this post goes againt the rules of this forum kindly delete it and I'll send it to Gail via PM)

^ delete one of the "sound"s 

otherwise i like that paragraph, concise but patinted a picture.

Enjoy the random.

We’re driving down the road toward my sister’s home. The car is silent. Headlights of oncoming cars zoom by. The radio is turned low, just in case someone wants to talk. My mother gets a call. She drops the phone. I can hear someone screaming. I pick it up. It’s one of the mothers of one of my nephews. “They killed my baby. The fucking killed my baby,” she’s crying into the phone, she’s screaming into the phone. My brother’s oldest, he’s been killed in that other fucking place with those other fundamentalists. The place we call Afghanistan. He idolized my ability to get away from our family and followed in my footsteps and joined as soon as he could. Like I said he should. Like my sister said he should, and my mother. Now he’s dead. My sister stops the car and takes the phone from me. My stepfather keeps saying, “Ah Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, ah Jesus Christ. He’s only twelve. What’s he doing in Afghanistan? Ah Jesus Christ.” My brother-in-law is silent. I’m silent. My sister is crying and saying it’s all her fault for pushing him to join, and my mother is crying and saying it’s all her fault and she pushed him to join.

And I all I can think is, I think I’d like to die now.

I didn't think I'd fall in love with a parricidal girl.

The lust, it crushes all overpowering self. It smiles weakly simmering. Lustless, the sex drive withers into fine dust. Weeping, weeping, and weeping.

Danse, rhythm of death. The twist and turns then, the final epitaph of the damned. Her smile weakly burning into my mind as her severed head becomes lifeless.

I here the sound of my father screaming, and then jerking me to the side. My final chance at being reunited, now gone.

We were separated in death.

-- The Incernations Of Hemato Tomato And Anna-Marie

A thing from a recent thing:

Towards the end of winter, when the cold had just begun to break, when my weight had just gotten back up to a healthy level, and when Dad had finally let me come home, that was around the time I first started breaking into cars. Three hours was the longest I waited for a reaction. The mean was maybe forty-five minutes to an hour and ten. Even when no one came out to see what I’d done, it didn’t really matter. That wasn’t the point of it. The thing I loved most wasn’t exactly how, at night, the streetlights get this soft, blurry glow to them like the distant beams of a submarine penetrating through dark water, although that was high up on the list. In the rain especially, the texture of the glittery, wet streets gets extra sharp, all ocean surface in a canted world, upside-down and underwater. Up above, starless city sky opens up like the depths of the Mariana Trench. The kicker—one reason I did it—was seeing all that from someone else’s car, through the dappled, pebbled glass with little, fast-writhing, translucent snakes of raindrops rushing down, with the static sound of the rain hitting the windows and the wipers cutting their whining arcs and whatever CD or radio station they had on last at whatever volume they left it filling the silence as my heart leaped marathon hurdles over thoughts of getting caught.

And now I disappear back into the void of ceaseless homework...

@bethwenn That is absolutely beautiful.

Oh wow! :o  I don't even know what to say. Thank you guys!

Bethwenn, great stuff up above!

Yes, it's plagiarism. It's not enough to move words around and find a few synonyms. You're also not just using the same simile; you're using it in the same context. Being inspired would be taking the idea and creating your own thing from that idea. Plagiarising is taking the thing as is and tweaking a couple of parts so that it's not recognizable.

If you really like it, get rid of the menu part and write your own thing based on the idea of someone hungry looking at some sort of food. A banquet. Some specific spread of food. You could compare a part of her anatomy with some sort of food/drink (e.g. the milk-white of her thighs like a man in a desert; something specific, whatever he finds attractive/appetizing). Make it a metaphor instead of a simile. But if you're even worried about it or have to ask, I think you're better off scrapping it and starting over. I'm sure you can come up with something better anyway! :)

When you work nights, you may as well live on the moon. So cut off from the world. So alone in the darkness. Eat your little vacuum sealed meal and wonder about life back on earth.

Then the craziness sets in. The what-if and could've been. But you are so far away from normal that you give in to your fate. After all, these buttons won't push themselves. You go home to your little moon colony apartment with its bleak little moon colony furnishings and stare at the world through a piece of glass. Watching it spin out of control. You wish you could relate. Maybe feel something. But when you are so far away, does it really matter.

One day it's time to go back. Time to pack. Time to return. But a part of you will never leave. A part of you is stuck here forever. The sun shines brighter than before. It has gotten louder here on planet earth. Everything moves so fast. Even a cloudy day is a welcomed sight. But everything moves too fast. So your mind returns. A part of you is stuck there forever.

Just realized I have something new...

“Thought you quit,” I say.
“I save it for special occasions.”
These two lines are from a script we used years ago to indicate that one of us had something important to say in private. If he’d responded with I’m cutting back it would have meant someone might be listening.

Hi everyone...this will be my first post here on litreactor.  Intro paragraph to a story I've been working on.  

This part of the city is a faded and cracking portrait of metropolitan death.  Its inhabitants, encased in rows of broken-down brick buildings three to four stories high, are an industrious yet impoverished lot.  They worship the streets, hanging half-way out of their windows, bellowing into the winter’s air their exaggerated tales of toil while the dregs scatter about under the night’s sky below.  Night after night these scum stumble, trudge through pools of filth, patronizing the neon-illuminated, sinfully-suggestive storefronts.  Illuminated hair, lips, and breasts flash salaciously against the snow.  The wind-muffled wailings of scraggly, disfigured streetwalkers, these diplomats of despair, signal the onset of night and invite the tired and disconsolate to find release in their shadows, comfort in their alleys, salvation in their sin.

@MarcD. Gail here. Ooh I like these scummy people. My kind of folks for sure.We are honored that you chose us to make your first post. That's really great. Just so you know there is also a writer's workshop where you can post and read the work of other's on a regular basis. It's fun. I would invite you to check it out and share some more of the piece. You have a power handle on descriptive language. I think you like it, and it shows. Good work! show us some more in the workshop if you feel so inclined. with regard, gsr. Welcome to litReactor by the way. How did you find it?

Uh oh, a spacebar double-tapper...

I, too, was one of those once.

Anyway, hi, nice to have a fresh avatar around here.

There's a red carpet?

Fuck you Thuggish, I burned your red carpet. Then I spread the ashes in a sewer. 

Boys Boys Boys. Throw something in and see if it floats or circles the drain. You guys all talk such big shit. Show us some stuff...big dudes, tough guys, secret sharers, Foul mouthed seventh graders with a yard full of mean dogs and profanity. Double dare you to post something. Any of you, all of you hot shot potty mouth secret talkers. Which side of the chain link fence are you on, anyway?  Oh. Never mind. Just kidding. What was I thinking? Just give me a minute to check my lipstick. Can you back off a little and let me park? You all be nice now. Christmas is coming. I can smell the gingerbread now.

Neither was I. It's hard to tell in the cyber world. Isn't it?

Me, A brief description:
How the hell do some many people lose the battery cover on their tv remote? Are you a fucking moron? Now you will have a constant reminder that your life is so incomplete. I pick apart everything just to see if it will bleed.

Another from a story I've been working on.  

In open, yet quiet defiance of decency, these men flood nightly Bishop’s Hill and filter directly, in a prurient procession, onto 15th Street.  Penetrating deep its sensual superficiality, these creeps with a calculated curiosity peruse and patronize the sordid establishments and bask in the raunchy radiance of their signage.  Representing the gutter of man, they embody industrial waste.  They are the manifestation of suppression; engaging in the self-dehumanization of submission, they forever dwell in the deepest recesses of the foreskin of existence. They drip silently and steadily, oozing into the bookstores, strip clubs, and peepshows, begging to be chosen, to be wanted, to be used, disposed of, forgotten.

ba-dum-dum.