Revisiting memories as concept archives. · 4:18pm Oct 10th, 2014
A number of us take story ideas from our own experiences. Things which happen to us become events in the lives of the characters.
What I'm pasting below was written a few years ago. I have edited nothing for content.
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Call it a promise rain, but it's not a promise you want to see kept. It's cold and bitter and driven by just enough wind to let it act as a liquid guided missile unerringly striking any access area between clothing and skin. I will be snow soon, it whispers, and if not me, then lots of my friends, and all of us hate you...
I don't want to listen. It's speaking of icy roads and buried cars and people whose idea of a suitable shovel bribe starts with sex, slippery sidewalks plus inevitable spills and a week spent trying to move in such a way that no one knows I have a bone bruise until the moment I finally scream. But it continues to whisper, letting me know it's waiting for me the instant I step outside the car, it's already gone to snow in the northwest of the state and while the kids there may be thinking snowmen or, more likely, iceball fights that don't stop until the first fatality kicks in, all we have here right now is a promise that will be kept. Please stand by.
The day begs for a distraction, anything at all to get my mind off this and the rest of the looming weekend which contains a Sunday lurking under the weight of foolish promise, and it makes the cardboard sign clumsily planted in the corner grass jump out in sharp relief. Estate Sale, it claims, adds a weak arrow pointing out a right turn that needs to cross the curb plus a stoplight, and asks for attention before the rain completes another promise and soaks it into a puddle of brown mush.
It's something. It's anything. I turn the car.
I've never been to an estate sale, don't know how these things are done. I'm not even sure what's on sale here. Maybe it's real estate. They're going to give me a paddle, I'll stand in the back of the room as the bids mount higher, then I'll yell 'Forty million dollars!' and get the hell out of Dodge before my ownership of the overpriced rock garden can be confirmed. But it's probably not that, because forty million dollars in property would probably be sold using something more than drooping cardboard indicating more crazy-quilt directions which only vaguely line up with any given street. I finally reach the point where I think I have the right road because there's a sort-of inwards-pointing arrow at each end, and I have to drive up and down it twice before I finally see the final cardboard sign taped to the back of a car.
Find a place to park. Look around. It's a residential neighborhood, lots of little houses which are legally permitted to express just as much individuality as the other people on the street will allow: none. You must have a lawn, you must put up decorations for every holiday, and you must not argue with any of this. This one is two stories up, one down: the driveway and ground slant back enough to let me see a separate garage at the far end with just a hint of an open door, and the drop is sufficiently steep to reveal a full basement level.
A disappointed-seeming woman comes out through the front door, wanders off to her car. A male goes inside. People are just wandering in and out. Indoor garage sale? I don't like walking into a stranger's house uninvited, especially in a neighborhood possessing a level of internal lockdown great enough to pass a law against my hair color as a starter. But that seems to be where the action is, so...
...vertical wood paneling here in the living room, what I suspect would normally be a warm brown but the light is far too harsh on it as it fails to fight off the grey outside, everything here has been lit and what it reveals is a old couch, aspects of a proto-futon, no hidden bed waiting to unfold but you could spend ten uninstructive minutes looking for one, and it has a two boxes on it and a paper sign taped on the upper right reading '$50 dollars', because there's a chance someone might not speak $.
There's a box next to the door. It's filled with linens, shawls. Some of them look as if they might have been hand-woven. A few are heavily fringed, looking like an Angora rabbit had a full-speed collision with a shop window.
People wander through here. They look at the couch, at the box, at the little table, at a television whose best days were a shout of power and technological progress. I have a color picture within this wooden frame, I have this new thing called a remote control, you'll never have to get up to change the channel again! Silent now, sitting in patience to see if anyone will ask it to do the job it's still so capable of -- but no one looks at it. They glance at the clock on the wall, the one which says it's only twenty-five dollars and that's much more important than knowing the time.
None of them look at me. I am not for sale.
Into the dining room. Everything here is marked with a price, most of these visible on little stickers, nearly all bits of glass with some planter pots plus a table, chairs, a hutch holding most of the glassware and that's fifty dollars, glass not included. Two people are talking about some of that glass. One of them is male, Pakistani from the look and sound of him, and he is angry. The woman is trying to explain that the glass he's looking at is something called molt glass, that it's very old and somewhat special and can't be expected to sell for the same price as the other things on the table, and he's angry and refusing to care about anything she says. All he wants is that piece at a matching price, because origin doesn't matter, manufacture doesn't matter, all that matters is getting what he wants for fifty cents instead of three dollars and anyone who doesn't understand that is a fool, he'd rather see the piece broken than sold at full price...
I retreat a little, find myself near the stairs. Two people coming down, very carefully: the steps wind about in a wooden treachery spiral which would send anyone not intimately familiar with its grooves into a fast and final descent. They're talking, perhaps to take their minds off the potential plunge. Two years ago that he passed, wasn't it? Yes, two years, she outlived him by that much. Early eighties, wasn't she? Yes, that sounds about right. And wasn't she in retail too for a while? He sold tools and she sold linens, something like that. One of the local flea markets, wasn't it? Oh, who can keep track of all of them? Probably retired...
Wait for the staircase to clear, then slowly, too slowly, I go up.
The room on my immediate right is carpeted in Christmas decorations. Some of them are broken. A doll with a half-inch gap between head and body, angels with crooked wings. A tiny painting of a solitary flower wants me to know it's only a quarter. Many of the decorations are face-down, their holiday intent only visible through their colors. Anything with eyes is looking at the floor...
...no, not everything. In the darkest corner is a toy Scottie, all soft knots of gentle yarn, surely hand-woven, plush and cozy and looking at me with bright little button eyes. I need someone to play with!, it calls, and I think about the children I know who would love to have something this dear in their stocking, so I walk over, kneel down, reach out, grasp an ear --
-- the head comes off, and the grey near-light adds its own low-cast to the liquor bottle inside.
I recoil. I nearly go off my heels, get one hand back against the wall in time as the eternal observer in my mind softly says not horror, not shock, but grotesquery -- then realize the other hand is still holding the yarn head. It takes more than it should to replace it.
The Scottie eyes watch me all the way out. Don't you want to play?, they beg, and they don't stop.
Grotesque. Is it peeling back the ordinary to reveal the rot underneath, or just the way I feel about what I'm doing right now? Did I really think I was going to an extra-fancy garage sale, or a real estate auction which would serve a fine selection of cheeses and wines that I'd have no interest in? You had to know what this was, says the observer. On some level...
Backstage after the show has closed. A successful run of eighty-plus years, but now the actors have retired and we're striking the set. Come take your pick of many fine props, everything must go because everyone has gone --
-- this is a bedroom, and the total furnishings pretty much amount to one bed, very low to the ground: knee-killer to get up every morning. Double-occupancy, two years with a single occupant. There are more small, singular pictures of flowers here, some of which go as high as fifty cents, and they all hang above the bed instead of on the wall facing it, because the wall facing it is caught in a frozen inward fall. The slant is probably thirty degrees, maybe a little more, and any picture hung there would just silently swing forward to create something more suited to a high-minded Village exhibit...
'We can't put anything there!', she would have laughed with the humor of youth that can't see the long haul ahead just yet. 'Where are we going to find furniture that ends in a triangle!' And he would have laughed too, and promised to make some because he was so good with tools, but he never got around to it and eventually, the main craft in the house was the knitting of Scotties...
...blink.
A bedroom good for sleeping in, little more.
Sleeping and talking and wondering and dreaming and lovemaking and waiting and loneliness and --
-- there are no handrails in the bathroom, none of the guides and protective devices so frequently seen in the homes of those in their eighties. Think about the staircase: she lived dangerously, this one. Closet at the side of the bathroom: bedroom structure won't allow it, so this is where you dress. Clothing still there. Lots of shoes, still in their original boxes, many still with the store price tags. This was nine dollars once, back when nine dollars really meant something. Clean and polished and not worn in years.
A bronze sailing ship is embedded in the closet wall. Metal rectangles swivel on pivot points. The sails refuse to unfurl.
I don't touch the clothing. I don't want to touch anything. I would levitate if I could, float through the house and breathe only air brought to me from outside. But I can't leave yet either. I have violated this place: the crime is already on my permanent record. Fleeing will not erase the crime. Start and you have to finish: the sentence will be the same either way.
...did anyone ever live in these other bedrooms? Were they bedrooms at all? Carpet here, little else. Are there marks on the door frames to indicate the increasing height of children? Were there ever? Shampoo bottles peek out at me from the bathroom doorway: on sale at the supermarket, but so much less here, partially used. The lead actress liked to do her own makeup before a performance: don't we all?
Downstairs. The Pakistani man is now arguing about a planter pot and what good it could possibly be. The woman, late fifties, Caucasian, starting to run to fashionably skeletal, is trying to explain how plants might find it suitable. Fifty cents may be involved here again. An entire life comes down to fifty cents for each piece of detritus if you scream about it long enough.
I want to hit him. I go into the kitchen.
This on the counter? It made julienne fries. No, really. You loaded it up here and you mashed down really hard with this flat plate and then nothing happened because all the sharp blades are gone 'I'll take these out to sharpen them, honey,' and he died the next day, but at one time, it was the wonder of the age, all the commercials said so, and those warm celebrities would never lie to anyone.
There are linens in the basement, closets full of them. Two men stand near the water heater (radiating, desperately chugging along so all these intruders will be set only by internal chills). They're talking about wiring. Run this, check that. The house is for sale, or may have been sold, or perhaps they're interested in buying it. Maybe they're coming back for copper later.
More shelves down here. Knick-knacks. Bits of glass, but nothing that declares itself to be from anywhere, no signs of travel and geegaws brought back as proof of having been somewhere. And there, on a small table, the first books. A green-covered paperback -- all green -- that declares itself to be a first aid manual. It could be Army field issue. It could be sixty years old or more. A askew Bible on top of that. And another yarn Scottie atop them both.
Off to the side, on a small reading chair, a picture of the virgin Mary. Light halo. And near there...
...how old does the picture have to be to look like that? Not so much whites and blacks as tans and browns. Wood frame, glass covering both halves, the two pictures not quite touching within. Dark-haired man with a wide jaw and far too serious eyes, woman with her hair pulled back and cheekbones cast into sharp relief, looking as if someone was about to present her as false proof of fae existence. No one smiles.
Who am I looking at? Eighties, in her eighties... Would a picture still look like that sixty years ago? If it was done by a professional photographer as a portrait? Is it older, a keepsake passed down? Am I looking at parents, grandparents?
This was a show that ran for over eighty years. I should know something about the actors. But it played on a small stage with limited tours, and while it could be a passionate play, a comedy, a tragedy, an infinite jest, the curtain came down without letting anyone take a bow. All that's left now comes down to --
-- props.
I've been to that flea market, haven't I? Did I see her? Him? I know I'll never remember. I wonder how much I should hate myself for that...
...back upstairs, into the living room. There's a new box here on a small table. We're still striking the set: stand by and fabulous new bits will become available. This one contains --
-- eggs.
Glass eggs with little windows in them.
I stare at them for a while. People pass me, people argue in the background, no one comes near or tries to look at what I'm seeing. I have staked a virtual claim: this box is as invisible as I am. We are the ghosts among the dead, and the dead may ask favors of each other.
May I?, I send out to the air. No reply comes, but no protest either. Carefully, I pick up out of the eggs, hold it to the harsh light, look through the little window into spring in the country.
Delicate meadows, fresh-blooming flowers, trees just starting to show leaves at the border, a promise of renewal to be kept...
Replace it, so carefully. Raise the next and look into a trellised Easter garden...
...stop.
I set it down. They are not my visions to have.
The rain is still outside, the temperature dips with sinister intent as the liquid tries to shift into flakes. But people are marching down the path to the garage regardless, and as the last current part of my self-punishment for the act of violation, I follow them.
The garage is open, men pawing at the contents, the prizes of a long life held back for two extra years. The good stuff is in the garage: they know that with an instinct that goes past primal. But outside, between house and garage -- that's where the rain still falls, but it comes down in localized rivers, sliding off the folds and corners of a badly-strung giant blue tarp. People move under there, taking their drenchings as they enter and exit, and what they are there for are boxes and boxes of tools, some rusted, some patinaed with age alone, all from generations before. Hammers await one more round of use, sawblades need only a place to be loaded before they can release another spray of blood, vise the wound to temporarily seal it, and somewhere here might be blades with which to make julienne fries.
There are thousands of these tools.
Two men speak, their eyes too bright. They don't see the tools. They are seeing money. Offer to buy them as a lot, one says. We'll take them out to one of the markets, rent a big space, throw them on the ground and ask a dollar each. People eat that crap up. That's right, they just eat that crap up. And the other smiles and agrees and dreams of dollar stickers on what he can only see as crap sandwiches, his to serve and make people choke on as they pay him for the honor.
I make my way back up the driveway, look at the inward-slanting walls of the second floor. Someone may move in soon. Wonder how they'll ever hang pictures. Another day, another actor, another show, and dreams of nationwide reviews which will almost surely never come.
Was this a scenelet from my play, deep with meaning and rife with symbolism? Do I want it to be? Should I look at it that way to keep it from being the act of violation it truly was?
What will they think when they strike my set? Will they think at all? Will there be bright-eyed men pawing through my things, laughing at the profit potential on each box, because people are just going to eat that crap up. Or will there be windows into other worlds which no one can stand to look through?
The last thing I hear before I head back to my car is a Pakistani accent. He cares about none of this. He may be incapable of thinking about it. All he still wishes to know is why everything in existence is not fifty cents, now and forever, even less for bulk. Someone will walk through his backstage one day, and they may want to pay a quarter.
He's not thinking about that either.
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I came within inches of giving this experience to Spike.
That was chilling on a number of levels. Excellently crafted. Thank you for it.
I want to show appreciation for this, but it feels like words could only be distasteful. So I will post silence.
...
Thank you for that.
I'm just gonna sit here and applaud for a while.
That was really powerful. I was really getting an echo of that same self-inflicted punishment: you get sucked in by the morbid fascination and then you can't just leave halfway through; this is all there is now to mark two lives now gone.
That having been said, I think it would have needed some tweaking to work in Spike's claws. It's a little melancholy to work as-is coming from a child, and if we're aging Spike up then we start running into the weirdness of his draconic lifespan versus the eyeblink lives of ponies. Not that that wouldn't be interesting, but it would take some thought in the adaptation …
… You're getting my mind going now. Dangerous stuff.
2523551
As applied to Spike, it would have been set fairly early in S1: just a few moons after he and Twilight moved to Ponyville. He's being asked to serve as librarian's assistant, which is boring and ridiculously underpaid and means he spends a lot of time dealing with pones who don't quite look at him yet because he hasn't been around long enough to be fully treated as citizen instead of curiosity or worse, threat. It's one of those crazy variable weather late autumn days which just might be warm enough to enjoy by late afternoon, one of the last before winter ruins everything, and he's stuck inside handing out and taking back books while Twilight sorts out some old Late Fee notices which go back to the day of her library takeover, plus a few which were inherited and Must Be Cleared Up Immediately.
So sort books, shelve books, find books, all for ponies who generally don't speak to him as an equal, or sometimes at all. For pretty much no salary, on a day which is begging him to go outside. Disgruntled, he's not talking to much of anypony either. If they can't take the first step, then why should he?
And then Twilight gets fed up. There's one account here which she's sent notice after notice on and never gotten any response at all. She's sick of just posting paperwork which gets ignored. Clearly physical confrontation is called for!
Of course, this is S1 Twilight, so it ain't gonna be her confrontation.
So she sends Spike out. Here's the address. Collect the late fee and if she claims not to have it, at least get the book back.
Out he goes. And the weather starts to change, the mood begins to shift with it -- and then we get to the estate sale.
I can keep a lot of that as-is. I do have to add Spike speaking to the sale manager (who eventually agrees to let him go inside and hunt for the book), plus the search itself. But the essence of it remains intact. And when Spike leaves, he realizes he has no idea who this pony was. He doesn't even know if any of the pictures there were of her.
He starts to do some research of his own. She made horseshoes, mostly. She knit things in her spare time and once a year or so, she'd open a stall at the market, although she hadn't done that for quite some time. But... nopony really knows much about her. She kept to herself, almost obsessively. She doesn't seem to have any family. Not a single friend can be located. Her former employer recalls her as a series of pay vouchers.
He doesn't know why this is bothering him so much. But he keeps chasing it down. Talks to the Bearers. Pinkie never threw her a single party: the Cakes told her that this one didn't celebrate birthdays, and she respected that. Applejack met her once: escorting the Crusaders on a apology tour for homemade jewelry which turned ears green. There had been laughter, a claim that the ears looked better that way, traces of a foreign accent. Happiness for the contact. That somepony had dropped by at all.
The police won't speak to him. Neither will the hospital. He's not family.
He tracks her checked-out books, takes the entire library apart to find them all. She liked escapist things mostly, until she didn't. Twilight starts to worry, but she doesn't know how to do much about it.
And gradually, Spike realizes that it's partially about the lack of regard for her life. That it's because nopony ever seemed to try and know her. But also that the same was true going the other way. That she never seemed to reach out -- perhaps because if nopony could make the effort towards her, why did she have to bother? Until it seemed as if there was no reason to bother at all, let along any concept of how one should try. Or why.
ETA: On a subconscious level --or higher up -- he may be aware that he's also looking at the future which Twilight missed.
So in the end, he has to let it go. He's never going to have the answers about her life: what happened to her, where things went wrong, why she died. All he can do is go back to the library desk and wait for another pony to approach, one who can't quite look at him.
And then he looks up, straight into that pony's eyes, smiles, and says "Hi! I'm Spike! What's your name?"
2523590
I stand corrected. That would have been awesome.
(So was this, raw.)
2523590
This is the mode of thinking that I have so much trouble with. Themes and things to say come easily, but then I reach "and how do we show that, without using a club?" and the stream of consciousness dries up.
2523590
By the light on Luna's wings, Estee... once again you take my breath away.
The story as told in the journal post was interesting, in a melancholy sort of way, but without context or connection it didn't quite reach me. Then you placed it in a Spike-shaped frame, and its true impact and depth became real to me. What a hard lesson to learn at such an early age!
And yet... because of how it happened, much easier than it could have been.
Well done. And thank you again for sharing your thoughts and stories.
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote
Might want to tinge that a little with the unspoken thought that Spike, as a dragon, will outlive everybody in the entire town, including Twilight (at this time). Also, you may have ponies shunning Spike a little more than I'd expect. I'm from a small town, and having the personal student to a VIP in the capital city move in as our librarian might be interesting, but if she brought an exceptionally odd pet, particularly one who talked, there would be a constant string of 'lookie-loos' visiting just to get a look at and talk to him.
TL;DR I can see your Spike theory inverted easier as follows:
Twilight: Hello, and welcome to the Golden Oak Library. Can I help you pick out a book?
Patron: Um. No, I'm just looking. 'scuse me.
(trots over about ten feet away)
Spike: Hi. Can I help you?
Patron: Yeah, I was wanting to find a book.
Twilight (Fumes in silence while another patron comes up)
Patron2: Hi. Can you--
Twilight: He's over there. (points)
Patron2: Thanks!
2523644
And there we have another part of the problem.
...
2523590
...
Keep writing... please.
2523652 Yeah, I can see that too:
Diamond Tiara: Miss Sparkle, how much is your pet?
Twilight: Excuse me?
DT: That... thing over there. Tell me how much he's going to cost and I'll get Daddy to write you a check. Oh, and we'll need something for him to sleep in and some pet food.
Twilight (upset) He's not a pet!
DT: Of course he is. You've got him trained to do some really neat tricks, but my Daddy knows some pet trainers who can really make him shine. I'm going to take him to the Whiinychester pet show next year, and we're going to win first place.
Spike: So are you going to wear a collar and a leash, or do I just need to train you to follow?
2523665
Unfortunately (and painfully), today is for reading. The book I mentioned in this blog post? The five weeks for reading it are up tomorrow and at that time, I am still expected to Say What I Think.
*glances at remaining page count*
I think this is going to hurt.
A lot.
As in 'Hey, John, if you're a little short on suffering this week, have I got a story for you!'
But... I promised. And so I will finish this thing if I have to stay up until two in the morning with it.
(I'm a fairly fast reader and it's not that long a book. It's just the sort of thing where you go two paragraphs, recover, two paragraphs, drink, two paragraphs, longing glance at window...)
2523688
...this wasn't supposed to be a comedy, @#$% it. (Also, upvoted.)
So is that your prequel? Diamond Tiara Buys A Fewmet Generator?
2523590 Go for the story.
Especially keep Spike concious of the fact that this could have been Twilight, all too much.
2523590
At first, i was like, oh no, another fic where Spike outgrows his friends and is sad and depressed, but then I read the actual idea and liked it.
Its just that, there are tons of 'X outlives his or her friends and then dies' fics, and they are all the same: Depressing, and nothing else.
There's a little of that here, but its in a much more constructive manner. Someone else is realizing they are mortal, and applying that lesson to life.
I had a similar experience last month, when I moved, only it was me looking at my own stuff--boxes full of abandoned projects, files full of schedules for events I never attended, boxes full of business cards of people I never called back. The things I had succeeded at seemed pointless, and the things I'd failed at seemed not worth doing anyway. The lives whose after-effects you saw don't seem sad to me; a case full of trophies would be sadder.
2523590
That summary was better than a lot of stories out there.
2523652
It's one way to rationalize away fear of dragons that is entirely justified. That flame is deadly and most dragons are greedy and self-serving. Ponies are either thieves, food, or generally too far below them to care about.
It's not fair to an intelligent being to be treated as a pet, but to treat him otherwise would cause them to worry and try to assess how likely he was to become greedy, self-serving, and/or predatory and in what amount of time.
2524427
Should you base a fic on the experience, I recommend against destroying any pianos. And now I might have to request that you kindly step off the copyright infringement territory because according to a few people, seeing every single action taken as 'wrong' is my shtick.
It's too easy to second-guess everything. The key is to remember that 'second' leads it all off. What was done was done, is done, remains done, and we had no way of knowing how it was going to come out at the time.. We face it down and move on.
You can always find regrets. The key to that is to always be looking.
For the estate sale... part of what struck me was the lack of respect for the performers. 'They're dead. Grab their stuff. But only after you talk it all down.' And some of the rest was that @#$%ing Scottie, which would go into any story without change. That was a touch of horror movie.
2524580
I could point to some rather ugly true stories of humans being used as mascots, good-luck charms, and the like because it was the only way they got into anything...
2524684
Not really sure what you're getting at or how it's comparable.
When I saw this post, I put it to the side for a little while, so I could read it when I had the chance to actually appreciate it. I'm very glad I did. There is nothing I can add to what others have already said in this comment section, so I will just leave you with the fact that this is heartbreakingly good.
2523590
Also, you should most definitely expand upon this.