Booked time off work tonight so that I could get things done. My three priorities are the third short story, preparing for the presentation tomorrow, and the group assignment for Technical Writing. Really, I want to focus on the story; I have a good beginning to a scene with Alexei, and I know how I want the story to end - which is always the best part, that moment where I figure out where the story's going.
While we argued over the timeline in a story today, seagulls screamed outside. It felt too much like that scene in Citizen Kane where Kane and Susan argue and a woman screams in the background. And then a cookbook fell out of the sky (the top of the shelf) and landed on my head (on the ground behind me) while someone's story was being introduced. The title? "Smell that Bread."
Otherwise, things seem standoffish in my head. That robotic sensation at the back of my skull clicks away. Time moves forward (or is it backwards? Or is it sideways) to my birthday party, and then my birthday, and being twenty-four. Will it be as good? Probably. I feel trapped in a perpetual Now, the scenery and happenings shift around me like bumper cars - and there I am in the middle, not moving a foot.
In other news, a whole stack of comics. I think the hot pick for the week is Rick Veitch's The Question, with art by Tommy Lee Edwards. The book is simply amazing, and is a clear example of something Christian was talking about maybe a week ago, the whole comic books as hyper-compressed poetry. This first issue makes me chomp at the bit to get into Tim Lillburn's poetry workshop next semester. Counting down the days.
How do I explain it? The art is so messy and halfway between cartoon and photo-realism or straight photograph, the words swim in oceans of white space masquerading as speech balloons (or thought balloons). There is a complicated poetry to how the Question goes about solving a mystery by listening to its heartbeat or its rhythm like other writers talk about listening to the city.
Whole pages where we see everything from Vic Sage's perspective, the secret identity, without even seeing Sage's face. Which is thematic because the Question's mask is blank and makes him look faceless. Edwards does something interesting to make you have a faint impression of Sage's face underneath. It felt - crystalline. I breathed out a lot while I read through it on the bus with Underworld beating down the doors to my eardrums. The story is cut up in time and space and we get a good idea of who Sage is and who the Question might be, a play on the reasons for the blank mask and the lure of anonymity.
Delight. I'm going to go work on the story now.