{blurry honeysuckles in the yard + nose of bryna} If I were actually able to write things that are not poems, & actually create these chimerical, elusive creatures called "characters", I already have a plethora of names for them. They're names I've stolen from various sources, e.g. the travel study research, or random concerts I haven't attended. For example, 'Stella Pink' is my favourite name for a female sort of character. She's a writer, or performance artist, or spy.... & her partner-in-adventures is called 'Johnny Eden'. Now, Johnny Eden is a real person too, a singer-songwriter Bryna saw perform yesterday at the Black Dog, who sang about lost socks & sharks & his distaste for 'fake-tan girls'. If only I could write "The Adventures of Stella Pink & Johnny Eden." They sound so charismatic! But it could never be prose. It might have to be an epic poem, if anything. But I already tried that.
I am really not sure why I can't write story-prose. I suppose I just don't think that way very naturally, in that I can't fully embody any characters. (& my characters certainly don't seem to want to write themselves.) I think perhaps there is only room in my head for my own 'self' (however nebulous a concept), & so if I were to write about Stella & Johnny, they would only be permutations of myself. & that would be rather boring. & redundant. I could just use them as aliases in poetry, if I wanted.
But really, they are such charismatic names. I don't really know 'who' they are, but they could be people.
I've also thought that maybe I am writing in the wrong language when I attempt narrative prose. Maybe I could do better in my Ukrainian, because I feel I have the license to be more fantastical then. I'll probably make Shevchenko roll about in his tomb, but he might appreciate someone having respectful, imaginative, Björk-esque fun with his native syntax. Also, Ukrainian uses the instrumental case, & I really do love the semantic relations that can entail -- it allows for such relationality to be expressed, that would be awkward & run-on in English, but is so smooth po-ukraïnskomu. & Stella could be 'Zoria Rosichuk' & Johnny, 'Ivan Rai'... Hmmm.... It's good...
However, regardless of language, I have a horrible, wretched time with plot. I know that plot isn't always necessary -- or at least not plot in the conventional sense -- but things still have to happen. I know how to make characters have experiences. I know how to make them feel & think, have little poems sprout in their heads, but I can't make them 'act'. It is a problem.
Inspired by Anne Carson's 'Autobiography of Red' and Nicole Brossard's 'Hier', I tried last August to make a 'story' in short poem-y bits. But it's failing . Some of the bits are pretty, but that's all. Maybe too pretty-ish. But I'll save them, because maybe some day, Stella &/or Johnny could use them.
* * *
Random excerpts from Realis/Irrealis:
which is about moths, perception, de/creation, brains & anxiety, & the blurry lines between this & that.
1.
he last saw you
standing in the doorway,
when everything was
happening three minutes slow –
dust motes & stray moths caught
in quick amber, the swift sunset
sparking & haloing about your head.
your skin, lit intermittently,
appearing fluid,
and the whole forest behind you moving
like light over water,
the trembling aspen flickering
in soft shadowy waves.
he was thinking of something to say,
but his mouth – already paralysed,
tongue gone soft as silt.
you turned to go, & he –
soon the sun went out.
2.
halia is not into
hallucinogens.
her mother’s best friend
died jumping
in front of a train
in saskatchewan, because
lysergic acid lied, told him
god might save him.
how divine.
& her own mind
(slightly complacent
under sadness pills)
once rejected the lazy lull
of cannabis so violently
she could not stop
shaking.
twitching in the cold.
she walks over to the firepit
where small sparks are still rising
up like reverse meteors
before falling
back into an atmosphere of ash.
grey moth wings, brushing her legs.
across the clearing
the tent shines
like a small silver lung,
glittering in the dark,
the walls shaking & sighing heavily.
she almost feels
the unsettling urgency of their breath
on the tight canvas,
& it is too close,
too near in the darkness.
& she feels strange then,
restless, sad, alien.
why did they invite her,
why did she come anyway,
why did it matter.
tonight, no kisses.
& no mind-altering substances.
so
stumbling for shoes in the darkness,
she heads down to where the path leads to the lake.
3.
beside the stones the creek flows
on unsleeping
it will flow on even as the snow
comes, singing under the
ice
halia’s grandmother told her
that the spirits of the dead
sound like that, dwelling
under the streams; their
voices echoing
in the frozen amphitheatre
of the riverbed,
on just the other side –
frosty patterns, a
mavka’s hieroglyphs
ethereal as halia’s breath
in early october air
everything is so close.
a living herd of elk
moves soft
as their ghosts around
the bones she disturbed –
we can hear in their
slight hoofprints
a trail of yearning
to slip through the river
to feel their way
blindly
to the other side --
* * *
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