Hello, all. We’ll keep this snappy. Thank you, as always, for reading.
This week I am trying something new for Imperfect Prose. Like any good hipster/bohemian/failure at life I’ve been working on a novel for a few years now (haven’t we all). What I’m sharing today is a few paragraphs torn from that effort. I am almost always opposed to bloggers dropping fiction bombs on their unsuspecting readers, but these paragraphs really don’t read much like fiction. You’re welcome to pretend they aren’t. Besides, I think it’s time for some of these sentances to get out and stretch their legs in the sun.
The bare minimum you need to know to read what follows: young guy is raising his daughter alone because his wife died several years before. They got pregnant in high school, got married, and she died in a car accident when their daughter was very young. She is 12 now. He is writing in these paragraphs to his wife now gone.
You might want to be listening to The Smiths while you read this, or at least be drunk and alone or something. I’m just saying. Enjoy.
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And does your night sky stretch across the floor of that grand space, looking like a photograph in negative, all you see a blistering white with pinpricks of black where the stars block the glory, the moon like a greasy thumbnail pressed into the floor? Or are you allowed to see anything? Is turning one’s eyes away from the Governor of that high state a type of treachery, a treason? All tears being wiped away has always struck me as a violent act. Will he take also a great eraser to our memories, wipe them clean to the point that our glory will have no context against the ghastly recollection of mortality?
If you are in some sorrowless place, whether you are looking down on me as it were from the basket of a balloon or through the small end of a celestial telescope, or whether you are near, looking out from a two sided mirror through which I cannot see and you cannot speak, or whether the dimensions and measurements of your place would be nonsense to me, like the shape of blue or the width of light, regardless, I would not have you forget me, not for all the peace of eternity. I may be a selfish bastard still dear, but there it is. I would not have you forget me.
It occurs to me the milky way must be the only thing that looks the same to both of us; a whisp of smoke that swallowed the stars and wept our baby in response. God is she beautiful, Jenny. You can’t even imagine.
And so life is a breath that is never full. I go long stretches not thinking about it at all, then it gets punched out of me and I lie gasping like a fish on the grass. Will I ever be free of this weight on my heart that makes every new day feel like God’s weakest apology?
I do not miss you.
I can’t believe I’m saying that, but as you’ve become something like the awareness of God to me I assume you know it anyway. I think of you. I talk of you. I wish you were here. But I do not miss you any longer. I try, but that fire has burned and reverted to dust. This is its own form of sorrow, this guilt and the absence of pain that wed into a patient fear when I look at our girl. I do not miss you.
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And we’ll call that a day here. Thanks for stopping by.
David this is beautiful, powerful and beautiful. I was reading as your reply to my post came in. Grief is such an interesting dance… this missing/not missing because on some level she (Jenny) or whoever we are missing/not missing is ever present in our memories…in the simple acts of our daily lives. Never really gone.
love this. you have done well. and don’t you worry, the smiths are always playing here… at least in my mind.
i can definitely hear the longing in his voice…and imagine myself much the same still talking to her as if she was there…
from a writing stand point, his voice gets a bit flowery, leaving me to wonder if someone would really talk that poetically…its good it just opens the door to doubt the story…just saying.
I get what you’re saying, Brian. Honestly though, most of the story is not like this at all. Most of it is normal prose and narrative and dialogue. There are just sections of reflection like this at various parts.
My initial response was one of pain. I think you made me feel what the narrator was feeling, but unlike him, I hadn’t been feeling it for a while so I think it hurt me more than him. The fact that you have me thinking about your character as if he’s a real person says a lot.
You introduce and close your piece like a manager at a meeting giving bad news. Your writing is not bad news, sir.
Thanks for sharing.
You make a good point of the letting-go thing…no guilt here. As natural as living and dying.
This reminds me a lot of C.S. Lewis in “A Grief Observed.” Which you should take as a compliment, since he was writing a journal of his grieving process after losing his beloved wife, Joy. (Have you ever read it?) Anyway, I’m trying to say that your character’s thoughts, his figuring things out, his grief over not grieving, all seem real.
And to comment on Brian’s critique, I personally didn’t think the voice was over-flowery. It was emotional. Again, reminiscent of Lewis’ journals, which were often highly emotional and slightly “irreverent.” Ramblings of a man in grief. Perhaps, though, your character’s emotions were more raw than they would be for someone 12 years down the line. Perhaps the grief over “not missing” would be a little less emotional, a little more distant. Very interesting to contemplate…
Feel free to drop fiction bombs whenever you like. I love reading them.
Good thoughts, thanks. It’s actually about 7-8 years later, but your point still applies. Interesting. I’ll have to think about that.
I read A Grief Observed years and years ago. One of my favorite of his.
The Smiths it is…”Will I ever be free of this weight on my heart that makes every new day feel like God’s weakest apology?”
In one sentence you nailed how I have felt all week. I really needed to hear these words, even when I don’t believe them, they aptly describe my feelings. Odd to have a heart at such war. Anway, thanks. Sorry, no literary critique today.
I really like it. I actually don’t think the language is flowery at all. But maybe I’m flowery and thus can’t see it. The second paragraph is my favorite. It’s painful and true, and my it made my heart achy.
I really like the first two paragraphs and the questions posed regarding the everafter. The language grabbed me.
It occurs to me the milky way must be the only thing that looks the same to both of us; a whisp of smoke that swallowed the stars and wept our baby in response. God is she beautiful, Jenny. You can’t even imagine.
i didn’t need the smiths, even though i love them… this was music in and of itself. keep writing david. and let us know when this novel is finished!
Thanks for sharing. I just read everyone else’s comments, too, and they all had such productive things to say! So I’ll just stick with thanking you for sharing this, really.
This is wonderfully powerful. Thank you so much for sharing. I will be reading your blog now. Your writing is VERY inspiring. This one reminds me of a piece I wrote once about a man whose wife died. I will have to find it again.
Julie
I am intrigued by what you have shared.
The style appeals to me.
Thank you for sharing, for the images, the way your words swirled around just so.