Progress Report/Story musing--O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? · 5:46am Jun 29th, 2015
Well, that was unexpected.
I released a little doodle I have worked on here and there for a month or two after finishing it. It's rough and unedited and I expected about 100 views, actually. My oneshots haven't done so hot recently (if you call that recently!) But I get off for my lunchbreak and get a test from my buddy RazedRainbow that I'm in the box. Little miracles, I guess. Nice, but unexpected. I feel a bit embarassed. I would have put a lot more work into it had I thought people were actually gonna read it! Maybe.
First, a little hello to the followers I picked up. Thank you. I'm really honored, and I'm glad you liked what you read. I used to publish oneshots a lot more frequently, but my energy has been absorbed by my epic story thing, The Night is Passing, which is in the third act and sort of on the home stretch. I do plan to do more, so watch in the next month.
Progress on chapter 31: very little. I have like a paragraph, seriously. However, I have a bit of planning in the doc as well so that's nice. I'm actually about to work on it a little bit, so I'll probably go to sleep tonight with another few hundred words written. All in all, I'm hoping I can get another chapter done by the fifth. Wish me luck! Chapters are going to get longer, I think. I'm struggling more to restrain them now than to fill them.
On the new story, because it's late and I'm chatty:
The title is actually from Romans 7, if you're curious. Didn't make that one up! I did, however, change the line slightly. The original (Authorized King James):
but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
I found that the word translated deliver could be translated just as easily as "save" and like nobody has translated it that way and I am quite surprised. I think it goes better as saved, but that's me. The passage in question has long been one of my favorites. The philosopher Paul is wiped away and the whole thing becomes almost childish, a frustrated man pouring his heart out. I started listening to an old Caedmon's Call CD and it had that bit in it, and that's what got me to go back to the story. Originally, it was kind of different. The story as it is I had in mind... well, addiction, kind of. But also isolation. The old title was "An Inarticulate Sunlight" which makes no sense but sounds pretty. I was thinking about the man coming out of Plato's cave trying to understand the sun, or how after spending all my daytime hours in the dorms I would emerge to forage for food in the caf and be blinded, squinting my eyes tightly shut, trying to protect my eyes from the harsh reality of day. But as I got used to it, I realized that the daytime wasn't so bad. It was not the world that had changed but myself, locked up in my freezing little room in my nest of comfy blankets, only leaving to smoke on the hill and lounge in my friend/neighbor's room.
I'm pretty hardcore addicted to nicotine. I'm (half-heartedly) trying to quit. Also mostly failing to quit. When you smoke, you have to go away to do it. In college, we all smoked and we had pipes and it was a social affair. But I'm not in College anymore and it's a sordid thing that isolates me from everyone. You have to shower and find new clothes and hide the butts and it's unpleasant at best. You don't like it anymore, but you keep doing it because without it you're irritable and unhappy and you hurt people's feelings without meaning to. It may seem kind of tame, and to some people it is tame, but to me its a big deal. Those stupid little tubes are the fences that mark out my days and ways. I plan my life around obtaining and maintaining my supply of them. I panic when I run low. I have opinions on the qualities of their manufacture (I am very salty about American Spirit's reworking of their Perique blend because it's WAY harsher now and it lost a lot of the spicy perique charm [As a tobacco snob I know about things like periquing you should ask I like explaining it I have a spiel])
I thought of Twilight being like Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, the haggr'd, shaggyhaired, unkempt scholar emerging from a dirty room to explore the outside in an act of necessity. Leaving the little womb of dependence just for a moment.
As for the book... I thought very little about it's nature. I find amusement in the fact that what I was thinking mostly amounted to "vaguely defined Hawethorne-esque scary macguffin". The last time I wanted to pull a Hawethorne I wrote Memento Mori and people were salty about that one. And loved it too, apparently.
Anyway. If you got this far: What have you been reading? I've been reading the Sword Art Online books. Did you know he went back and rebooted the Aincrad arc as Sword Art Online: Progressive? BN sold their copy of the first volume, alas, but in my little look at it it seemed markedly improved from the first Aincrad arc both in quality of prose and in pacing. (I read the first like thirty pages or something, so I'm also a bit quick to judge!)
Been reading Pillars of the earth. It's pretty good. A lot of passionate people trying to get by. A lot of the villains are unsophisticated, and I have to remind myself that that's what most villians are. TV and pony fics have spoiled me with nuanced grey areas, but there were actually just bad people in medieval england, not just fair tales.
that story with triwlight was very good. a complicated and ark situation but not without hope of recovery. she was saved from the book, and even though she wants it back, she won't forever.
also i would try those steam cigarrets. my sister used to use them. only reason she doesn't anymore is because she once used them to make herself throw up, had an upset stomach, and her brain thinks nausea when she smokes em now.
3191365 you mean vaping?
3191325 most real world villains have reasons. Even the darkest hearts do! But yes often they really do just want to rampage
3191499 i think so.
3191499
I used to, but rationalization was too much work.
3191499 yes, come to the light side! We have such rich nicotine flavors you wouldn't possibly give up. Cherry custard? Cuban tobacco hazelnut coffee caramel blend? The endless search for a more perfect and bigger vape? The sheer tech geek factor over new mods and coils and drippers?
I myself run a box mod set up with a delightful fluid called Puff, which is a light and almost ephemeral blend of kiwi and marshmallow.
Also you can do it inside and people will only get hungry for desert
But... then it wouldn't have been in the box. That's how it works, right?
Also, as a Catholic, I grew up used to the word 'deliver' being used in the context of saving people (e.g. The Our Father: "...and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."). I guess I can agree that I've never really thought to say 'hey, this means this,' but the understanding had always been there.
Well, I am quite fascinated by your allusions (sometimes I feel that my hardcoded postmodernism suffocates without sufficient quantity of well-injected quotes); and while your Auta i Lomë is quite refreshing, being macerated within writings I respect, your newest one-shot got me to notice quite a speck of sawdust in my own eyes, for this story of Twilight reminds me of my current state of digesting fiction (and fanfiction, of course) instead of doing things, speaking with people etc.
However, this directs me to the books I've been reading these days - ones by Olaf Stapledon - quite strange (and I'm not even sure they fit into usual fiction category), but good, I'd say - and those are, according to a good acquaintance of mine, narrating the story of humanity's learning disabilities. Errare humanum est, as the saying goes.
But frankly, I am disappointed with that property of sapient creatures (including myself, of course).
However, as far as I have four semesters more of undergrad, I haven't ever even thought about quitting my nicotine addition (even though my caffeine rush had somehow dulled during last years); smoking at least makes me talk with people about random things, and I can't even care about my money or health, slowly burning out with each of those hand-made volcanos. I'm only sad that my pipe got broken a month ago, and cigarettes here in Russia are becoming more and more expensive and disgusting.
3195087 broken pipes now that is a sad, sad thing. I grieve for your loss :(
Yeah smoking in college was a social activity for me as well
Lit major?
3195563
Quite an unexpected supposition - even though some of my friends assured me that would be a great path for me to walk. I'm taking Information Security these days (and they've got a cool european summer school on Lesvos this year, that I'm going to visit).
3196622 :D Lesbos! I have been to Greece, but the only island I have visited was Santorini/Thira. Loved it. Beautiful. The island that would not bow to Athens.
I assume anyone that uses the word postmodern and seems to understand even a little of what that entails is a Literature person. In Mississippi, unless they're my piping friends that's a rare conversation.
What kind of cigarettes do they have in Eastern Europe and do they have any kind of variety? The foreign students at my college from the Arabian peninsula all smoked those Kamelz so I wonder about how far the brands I know extend. Probably don't have American Spirits overses, obvs, but do they have Parliaments?
3198734
Well, that would be my first trip abroad and I guess I'm not going to have lots of time for sightseeing between lectures and hacking practice.
And I strive to amass and apply the knowledge in any discipline; I'm quite upset that these days no one may grasp all the knowledge that humanity had already grinded out of universe and itself.
And, well, here in Russia we surely have Camel. I oscillate between Parliament, Marlboro and Dunhill these days. Unfortunately, Russian "Lucky Strike" had suffered re-design and something else, thus it's almost complete horseapples nowadays; Ukrainian "Lucky Strike" was much better (and I have no idea, why so), but my friends from there haven't visited Moscow for a year due to that hell of a circus you probably could have heard about.
3199719 !! Dunhill! The fabled tobacco that Faulkner smoked. I found out they made cigs recently and I've always wanted to try one.
Parliaments! Yay I would survive cruel northern winters (no I wouldnt)
3201093
Well, I'd say that for me Parliament tastes best when it's under -20 Fahrenheit (-30 Celsius) and the blizzard envelopes my emptily and senselessly wandering soul on the shores of Yenisey, on which my hometown is built; but I'm taking my undergrad in Moscow, and it's much warmer here, and the temperature difference steers my perception in some strange ways, and for the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets of Moscow down the dizzy stairs of my dormitory Marlboro suits better.
And hey, our winters are not so cruel as they may look like! We do have a saying in Russia, something like "A Siberian is not one who does not feel the cold, but one who wraps oneself" (hm, I've never seen this phrase before. Probably, "wears warm clothes" would be better? I blame my bad English, if it is the case, but the meaning should be clear, I hope).
And I hope that my ambitious plans of getting PhD in USA will come to fruition, and some two years later I may share with you my opinions of American cigarettes and pipe tobacco.
3201151 Actually I understand that. I wondered if it was just me, but cigs taste different in the cold.
Jesu H. Christo on a pogo stick -20 degrees? Holy cow. Cold here is 30. I mean, it gets as cold as like 10-15 when it really gets cold but I'm from the land of summer and rain. Of course, we don't think its hot until its about 85 Farenheit or hotter. It gets (using the little google calculator) like 36-38 Celsius here every summer without fail, usually about two weeks worth of days minimum, with high humidity. It's always wet. I don't really know what dry heat is like. I only know what it is like to swim through the air.
If you make it here, know that prices will vary wildly from state to state. Here, a pack of good marlboros is like $4.50. In Maryland/Virginia/Massachusetts its like $10.50. Every state's a little country! kinda.
also wow that's Siberia are there trees there?