THE .38 by Ted Joans

THE .38

I hear the man downstairs slapping the hell out of his stupid wife again
I hear him push and shove her around the overcrowded room
I hear his wife scream and beg for mercy
I hear him tell her there is no mercy
I hear the blows as they land on her beautiful body
I hear glasses and pots and pans falling
I hear her fleeing from the room
I hear them running up the stairs
I hear her outside my door
I hear him coming towards her outside my door
I hear her banging on my door
I hear him bang her head on my door
I hear him trying to drag her away from my door
I hear her hands desperate on my doorknob
I hear the blows of her head on my door
I hear him drag her down the stairs
I hear her head bounce from step to step
I hear them again in their room
I hear a loud smack across her face (I guess)
I hear her groan—then
I hear the eerie silence
I hear him open the top draw of his bureau (the .38 lives there)
I hear the fast beat of my heart
I hear the drops of perspiration fall from my brow
I hear him yell I warned you
I hear him say damn you I warned toy and now it’s too late
I hear the loud report of the thirty eight calibre revolver then
I hear it again and again the Smith and Western
I hear the bang bang bang of four death dealing bullets
I hear my heart beat faster and louder—then again
I hear the eerie silence

I hear him come toward my door
I hear his hand on the doorknob
I hear the doorknob click
I hear the door slowly open
I hear him step into my room
I hear the click of the thirty eight before the firing pin hits the bullet
I hear the loud blast of powder exploding in the chamber of the .38
I hear the heavy lead noise of the bullet swiftly cutting its way through the
barrel of the .38
I hear it emerge into space from the .38
I hear the bullet of death flying towards my head the .38
I hear it coming faster than sound the .38
I hear it coming closer to my sweaty forehead the .38
I hear its weird whistle the .38
I hear it give off a steamlike noise when it cuts through my sweat the .38
I hear it singe my skin as it enters my hear the .38 and
I hear death saying, Hello, I’m here!

Ted Joans (b.1928)

Everything should taste this good

Heat up your frying pan and put in plenty of olive oil and a little butter. When the butter is melted and it all looks nice and sizzley add one big clove of garlic, diced finely. Let that fry for a short time and don’t forget to smell it.

Then add a bunch of mushrooms, cut in diagonals with the stalks left on.

Add rosemary, you don’t need loads.

Fry until the mushrooms are nice and soft, add more olive oil if you need to.

Serve on buttered toast with a cup of tea.

Fatigue and vigor

I sat in starbucks toady with chapter 4 in front of me. Already started, planed in rough. I got up and left, warm tea tasted, enjoyed, unfinished, Powerfully Metaphorical.

I think I’m starting to get fatigued. I’m basically not thinking about anything else and haven’t done for the last few weeks. Even when I’m doing other things I’m thinking about it.

I think I might write and submit something to theescapist.com. Yes, the Yahtzee one. They have what is called a “fiction issue” in their editorial calendar. Something to do with gaming but, I presume, not fan-fiction.

It should be fun, and I can get back to the book afterwards with renewed vigour.

This is how it is going

Chapter two was finished this afternoon. I think my favourite part about writing a book, at least so far, is finding out what happens. It’s a great feeling when you go to bed looking forward to waking up and discovering how the story progresses.

Finishing chapters is fun as well because at the end of each so far, and probably at the end of all of them, I have a little interlude about characters that haven’t really entered the story yet. One is a bit of back story, and the other is a set up for something that happens in Chapter 3. I think I said before that I’m wary of rushing ahead to get to “payoffs” from some of the setups, and having the interludes to skip back or forth or sideways in the story is enormous fun. Hopefully they should make people really excited about what’s coming next, as well.

I’m not ready to put anything up on here yet, but I think the first interlude will be one of the first things to get shown off.

I might be wrong

Well I went back to Starbucks because I was sitting at my desk until 11 looking at the rain. I think I need The Routine more than it needs me.

The main think I think I’ve learnt so far about writing is about what it takes to do a first draft. I mostly write a first draft for a short story in one or two sittings, pretty much blind. I might know the kind of thing I’m writing, and what has to be in it, but I’ll find out what is going on as I write, and it’s only when I get to the second draft that I really fit it together. Really, the first draft of something so short you can write it in one sitting is based on your own ignorance of what you are doing.
The problem is, I can’t rely on ignorance to get me through a novel. You have to be aware of the bits that need to happen, and that they might not get written for ages; you have to make them possible, to keep them in the realm potential.
I’ve written that in the past tense, but I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m still setting up and haven’t begun to knock down. These are just things that I’m acutely aware of.

Strrarrbrrucks

Progress is constant, creeping, even. I don’t want to rush these early stages of it though. But I am moving forward every day, including today, in spite of a break with The Routine.
The Routine was basically to go to starbucks in the morning, drink Chai tea and write. It was going well, and without going out on the second morning of writing the book may well of stalled stock still. So thank you, Starbucks, I appreciate your ability to create enough different noises so that no one noise dominates and becomes distracting. Yesterday, however, I was told that I was ordering my tea wrong. There are two types of chai tea you can get in starbucks; a hot water and tea bag affair that is spiced and very slightly bitter. The other is a chai latte, that is about 20% froth and 70% milk. The spiced taste is faint, like it is being remembered rather than experienced and instead of being slightly bitter it is sweet, like a kitten’s vomit.
I’d been given the latter latte once before and after trying to drink it for a few minuets I went back and asked for a normal one, which they did very politely and it was fine. I don’t mind that, it was ok.
The problem I have was that when I ordered a tea yesterday the staff member scribbled on the bit of paper (like they do in starbucks) and passed it to her co-worker by the milk frothing machine that is no where near the hot water and teabags machine, so I said quickly that that was the wrong sort and I wanted the other one, to which I was told that to get access to a tea bag and hot water I shouldn’t ask for a chi tea, but I should just ask for a tea, and then wait to be asked what sort of tea bag I would like.
It’s like inputting commands into a computer – that’s what she wanted as her preferred system of ordering.
I told her I’d remember to do so in future and I have no intention of returning.
So The Routine is broken, but I cleaned up my desk and have been getting on with it with my own tea quite nicely.

Machine's Poems

Here are my binary poems for Dan.

They were originally be part of the first thing I wrote since deciding I wanted to be a writer. I had no idea what I was doing, but these are a nice thing to get out of it. I suspect most writers' first attempts don't even yield this much.

Machine's Poems

English:

When atoms of our world do collide,
and pools of chemicals start to divide.
There is the secret answer you cannot find,
of what is love and energy combined.

Binary:

01010111 01101000 01100101 01101110 00100000 01100001 01110100 01101111 01101101 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101100 01101100 01101001 01100100 01100101 00101100 00001101 00001010 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110000 01101111 01101111 01101100 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100101 01101101 01101001 01100011 01100001 01101100 01110011 00100000 01110011 01110100 01100001 01110010 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110110 01101001 01100100 01100101 00101110 00001101 00001010 01010100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100011 01110010 01100101 01110100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01110011 01110111 01100101 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01100100 00101100 00001101 00001010 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100101 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100111 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100101 01100100 00101110

English:

The lamb's lion you profess to know
held none of the qualities you will ever show.
Your emptiness is as bleak as text
with no passion from one word to the next.


Binary:

01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100001 01101101 01100010 00100111 01110011 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100110 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 00001101 00001010 01101000 01100101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01101110 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110001 01110101 01100001 01101100 01101001 01110100 01101001 01100101 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110111 00101110 00001101 00001010 01011001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100101 01101101 01110000 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01101100 01100101 01100001 01101011 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01100101 01111000 01110100 00001101 00001010 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01110000 01100001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101110 01100101 01111000 01110100 00101110