Stephen's Quintet by Guido Martini

My dad occasionally sends me emails of the "Astronomy Picture of the Day"
A sort of cosmic money-shot taken of the orgy of our forming universe.
The thought of it embarrasses me, just like how you felt when your parents embarrassed you in front of your schoolmates
That flushed feeling passing from your head to your toes.

Hold on...how many other parents send out really cool emails?
I mean meaningful, deep, totally enlightening?
Not a viral joke email or a funny picture of a cat
He's sending me pictures of GALAXIES! CONSTELLATIONS! COSMIC DUST!
It's as is he's stating: look up there my son.
Wonder. Why you are here.
Wonder.

And so it was, as I observed "Stephen's Quintet,
It all made sense:
Life is pure energy.
It burns brighter than any sun
Impossible temperatures
But not enough for 37.5°

My Name is Blue Van Meer by Aylma Pessl

Diary Entry 2009 70.3

This is the third time I have swept away course work assignment (see ‘controlled yet passionate arm, sweeping my work off my desk while he passionately heaves me onto the desk, ready to have his way with me’. Think all this without the passion or desk or boy).

How does one effectively use one word, or even several words, that come close to capturing the beautiful, short and sweet sadness of a sigh. A sigh. It’s not even a breath. Something escapes one’s lips (dry because Chanel’s Scintillantes Glossimer, Paillettess, shines more than it moisturises), but not enough to consider it an exhalation. A sigh, a slight sound, barely perceptible except in the most uncomfortable of situations (see Diary Entry 2008 311.2/312.1). Rod in the car, sitting behind the ridiculously large wheel, before telling me he was still fornicating with his ex-sweet-heart, the cruel hearted, bosomy Clarice, and that they would be re-emerging into the college limelight a couple once more at the Dewell-Stanford Dorm House ball that following week).

A sigh escaped me.

Today Anna Lee decided to tell me, yet again, that I needed to relax, be nicer, maybe “get drunk and just snog someone” (see Chapter 3 of How to Meet a Young Man, Ladies. John Parsol, 1997) rather than be “aloof, cold, calculating and down right emotion-less” (the latest quotation from One Tree Hill, her favourite re-ran TV show. Sorry, I don’t recall the season or episode). I hate it when she says these things to me (there Anna Lee, can you feel that emotion? Hate is emotive. Detest. Odium, ha- good one!).

I am not aloof. I may be many things, but I am not aloof. And I do try, just not around her. I could tell from the first time we meet (Diary Entry 2008 158.4, 217.2) that we would not be the ‘best of friends’, close or even remotely interested in each other.

1) Safe sex: It was only because she felt she needed to scrawl her crude, southern moniker onto, yes ONTO the front covers of her school books that they were liberated from the prophylactic-tight plastic to breathe in the learned, collegian air.

2) Cousteau does Harvard: her ridiculously large, all-boxed shoe collection, which she would sift through every Saturday afternoon before a date, leaving the worthy-less ones lying in their tissue prisons like hundreds of uneaten oysters, strewn around the dorm room. I broke several heels by accident I broke several with great deliberation (see Episode 6: Territory Markings of the Siberian Tiger of Canal Plus’ Columbian Award winning six episode series on the rare Siberian Tiger called 6 Hours in the Life of a Fading White Royal).

Another sigh.

I had finally mustered (see Eli Cash’s unpopular WildCat, 1999) the courage to speak to Rudolph Thomas Valisse today when Rod decided he needed to ruin my day and week and life (Dad, you can see that without you around, my dramas are ever more melodramatic and adolescent) by interrupting our budding conversation, like a cruel child stamps on a little, growing daisy (my God, I am becoming so damn sentimental). I had been keeping an eye on Rudolph, like a young, female Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window sans binoculars (I will never stun like Grace), and had developed the following theory: we had had different authors (parents) but we were of similar ilk. His novel may not have been as complex or well travelled as mine (in my own humble opinion) but I think he could be an interesting read. If you could purchase me for $29.95 on Amazon, then he would pop up in the “If you liked this then click here” section.

I think.

I had several things ready to throw out, should the conversation get past the initial greeting.

Potential Topics: Harvard, Dad, local football.
1) “My father went here, and spoke so fondly….”
2) “Of course Dad wrote, but if he had ever decided to attack the non-fiction world, I believe his writing would have been unashamedly Nabokovian…”
3) “Dad really disliked the college teams…”

Instead: Rod. He pecked me on my cheek and gave me an overly affectionate hug. It was more contact than during our two dates.

I was furious, but neither gentleman had a chance to see my disgusted reaction: Rudolph disappeared and Rod stared triumphantly at his departed back. By the time he had turned around, I was gone.

Bastard. Oh Dad, what would you say to all this? That I am too young to be wasting my time with such frivolities? I would argue sternly against that. Your first June Bug was at the tender age of 16. Why can’t I explore the many uncharted channels of my heart?

Oh Dad, sometimes I feel these are nothing more than sad, silent soliloquies to you (Ha! Try saying that Christian Bale).

Stoker’s Horror Blog: Thoughts and Critiques by Steven Rogers - Part 13: It’s Not Just the Name by Sebastien de Robillard

“The slow, creeping, dark cloak of death slowly encircled us, clouding our vision. We couldn’t see, and it felt like we couldn’t breath. My heart slowed down, and I could feel the hearts of my friends slowing too. Death was here for us. Death was here for us...”

John Franco Conard finished with a long, long-hanging-in-the-air dot dot dot (visual aid: . . . ) wanker-of-an-arse pause. You could imagine him planning it earlier in the evening, probably with his thin, black beret-wearing, red-spectacled wife.

The crowd broke into applause, some standing ovations. Some and then more. God. What a bunch of idiots.

I leaned over to my right. “Jesus Christ Rec, what a fucking joke.”

She laughed, “He is the newest, brightest darling of the literary elite.” I rolled my eyes and made to throw up. This year’s Writers’ Festival had been ordinary at best, but to “headline” the festival with John Franco Conard (“My Name is John Franco Conard (and yes, he pronounced “name” like a proper noun, like he was so damn special that “name” was just a word but “Name” was his word for him))!? Oh I missed the wit and brilliance and genial nice-guy-ness of Eggers. I miss the good looks of… the other writer, the Australian one. I missed all those smart funny people, those SEXY ladies who had graced the festival stages. Where were they tonight?

“Should we go?” Rec asked. I nodded. “I need some wine,” she said.

“Of course you do, what else would you drink after an event at the ‘Writers’ Festival’?” I said with some level of sarcasm.

We stumbled out, lucky to leave with our satchels in one peace, battering our way through the gagging horde of amazon.com-top 10-most-popular-books-of-the-month-reader/subscribers dying for a little bit of John Franco Conard.

“Fuck, I can hardly breath. What a joke. I am going to rip the fuck out of this tomorrow.” I didn’t see her, but Rec groaned rather audibly, probably on purpose.

“Boring. Tearing apart something on your crappy little blog. What a boring, clichéd joke Steve, seriously.” We stopped at the lights. I wanted to argue, but I chose against it. We started walking across the road, heading towards our usual, little bar without any real conscious inten…

“Well, why the fuck can’t I? We just sat through dribble, absolute dribble?” I couldn’t help myself.

“Of course. Why can’t you? Poor you, I forgot, I forget how you suffer through life. God, you are such a damn cliché of a failed artist. You are like every protagonist in a Hornby novel… No!” She yelled the last part out, which kinda shocked me.

“No. You’re not even good enough to be a Hornby character, you’re that stupid main character in that ridiculous book Alistair loaned you. The one with the shit writer who is jealous of his friend and gets one blow job a year and…” Rec laughed her cute little arse off.

I didn’t move. Can you believe that? Him? That character? I don’t even remember his name, the book: The Information. I think.

‘Rec, wha… what the fuck?” I stammered out. “That is one of the meanest things you have ever said to me? I mean, shit…”

She laughed at this pathetic attempt at my own defence (not doing that again: I paid a fine AND served a three month community service bit and was hopelessly humiliated). She laughed and then stopped abruptly.

“You are so negative, so full of spite. You didn’t even try, yet you bemoan the fact you never got anywhere, or anything done. People like you are everywhere. Wanker intellects with nothing to give the world but sour, sorry, ego-boosting words.” She was furious now. What did I do?

“You know what Steve? I liked Conard’s book. I never wanted to tell you because I knew it would kill you, look at your face, but I did. It was well written, it conjured wonderfully warm images in my head. You? Your blog hurts my eyes. Change the fucking colour of the font!”

Rec stormed off.

Writer’s Block by Kate Barnaby

I sit on the train and think about writing something. I’ve been encouraged to write, to express myself, if I have things to say. Well, I do have things to say, but who’s really going to be interested? And how do I start?

Suddenly, on this particular rainy day on the delayed Werribee line, I had a brainwave. Where’s my pen? Shit. I search through my dilapidated, held-together-with-duct-tape bag, which, when I really need something, seemingly turns into Mary Poppins’ magical endless bag. I pull out my keys three times, thinking each time that I found my pen and getting increasingly frustrated. Eventually my hand grips a long, thin plastic tube but by then, I’ve forgotten what I was going to scribble on the side of my mX.

It doesn’t matter anyway, it seems all I have is the pen cylinder. Where the hell is the ink? A quick drunken flashback reminds me vaguely of mX spitballs and the moving through Melbourne artwork.

But why am I writing about drunken escapades? I need to save those for my Facebook status updates. Favourite song lyrics? TV quotes? Same thing. There’s really nothing to write about.

I sit on the train and try to remember my idea, and different images flood my mind. But mostly I think about the actual writing part, the affluent language needed, sentence structures, and how I should cast off.

One main niggling question is what style should I write in? There’s too much pressure for writers. Short story? Prayer? Analysis of a politically biased opinion piece? Recipe? Creative writing? Maybe I’ll try my hand at poetry:

Self-cut, indie fringe

Bright red tights, she really is

One delicious roll.

Perhaps I could write something that only one other person will understand. Funny for them, but everyone else will tune out. (For reference, see above Haiku. There is only one person who could decipher that.)

I could write about love and loss, but just how do I write that magical tear jerker? I mean, without sounding like a whiny teenager. I could tell you about how guys pine after me but the one I like is a complete ass. Just enough self indulgence to let you in and know you’re thinking of me and want to know more? Enough self indulgence to pour out every tiny little detail? (Incidentally that’s pretty much autobiographical. I’m the former, but I won’t elaborate).

Ideas come in and out of my head. Boring. Already been done. Too self indulgent. Not self indulgent enough. I’m not sure I’m any good at this.

The writer’s block is frustrating. I have (potentially) hundreds of interesting ideas. I just can’t think of them.

There are already so many biro-ink stained fingers in thousands of word-filled pies. Maybe the writer’s block is stopping me from poisoning them?