Ywrighting: February 2014

Interconnected

Lee woke up to the smell of bacon and egg, and saw that the sun had came up and shone its soft light through the windows. The day was young but his job couldn't wait. He went in to the bathroom and came out to the kitchen table where the plate of breakfast laid. He ate the scrambled eggs and chew on the oily bacon, and drank the warm milk. He put his shoes and went out.

Outside was a zoo, full of animals. He walked past a cage and saw that the golden tail monkey had already woken and was eating fleas as snacks. He turned on the third cross road.

Up front stood the giant in the forest with a piece of wood, thick and round in his hand, roaring with a bad smell and grumbling something unintelligible to himself while feasting on the roasting goats hanging on a rack above a fire. The giant pissed on the fire and it went into a great smoke and engulfed Lee.

When the smoke came off gradually, Lee found himself standing on a raft and drifting in a stream where a mist blinded the sight and covered the path before him. The current seemed so fast Lee could feel the tension on his feet and he knelt down on the vessel and clung on the ropes and prepared for anything unfortunate to happen to him. Then the raft rushed through a waterfall.

As Lee fell, he felt the burden on his feet disappeared, instead there was something strapped on his bag. When he eventually came through the mist, he saw that he was actually up in the sky and had just dived through a thick white cloud and the thing that was strapped on his back was a parachute. He chanted hurrah and glided in the sky, until he came much nearer to the ground did he deployed the parachute and landed safely on land.

The landing was successful but the wind was messing with him when the end of the parachute came around him and buried him inside the clothes.

When Lee did struggled through the parachute, he saw that he was not on that big and green meadow he landed anymore but in a circus, where everyone was laughing and yelling and the smell of candy and soda. A lion came out from the back and jumped a few fire loops, but then sudden it let out a cry and sprinted toward Lee, and before Lee could react to it, the lion snapped his head off and his blood was coming out of his neck and spilling everywhere.

SumFought: What The Eye

So, apparently people's been making an educated guess and blaming the TV and computer screen for causing near-sighted in children.

But the scientific findings explained to us on the above video is quite a shocker.

And the truth is that none of our parents had the slightest idea of what and why we were near-sighted, thus creating this big fat web of lie about the harmfulness of the TV and computer screen on us. Just like they lied to us about great many other things. Such as [fill in the blank].

So, happy? Now you can spend all your time watching TV and staring at your computer screen without feeling guilty that you are the one ruining your eyes. But isn't it why our parents lied to us in the first place, so that we could get away from the electronics and run into the nature's embrace?

Afloat

Thomas lay face up on the salty water and peddled his hands and legs with the sun above him gleamed like the dentist light.

How beautiful the day had been, how clear the water had been, how pleasant the weather had been. He wished he could stay on the island forever, but no, the ocean is waiting for him, the crew is waiting for him. He had a task to do, he had to fulfill that task before returning to his homeland, before marrying the girl he promised to return to.

He lay flat on the water and closed his eyes, letting the current to decide the direction.

And then he was washed to the sandy beach again.

Finding a Needle in a Barn Full of Haystack

To find a needle in a haystack is considerably easy, as our good ole pale, the Mythbusters partially busted this one ole saying.

But to find a needle in a barn full of haystack, is like finding a rock in a pool of dirt and water. One could not possible have the idea as to where to begin with, less when would they find it. Luck is essential, but what is luck to us other than hoping and anticipating to the moment when the sheer chance happened that we found the needle?

Such strange task is not unusual. As we can see in the law enforcement to private detective, they all have to carry out such a task every once in a while. It is not unusual at all, considering how many people are trying to reconnect on social media these days.

How easy did the social media helped finding another person, tracking their life and conversations.

If one was to stay offline, went complete off the digital grid, left no digital footprint, then he or she would of course, harder to track. It may take much longer at a time, but there's always a way to find someone, just as there's always a way to hide.

Les Dance

Katy walked over to the rack and reached a box of matches and lighted the pool candle wax and switched off the fluorescent light overhead, which was buzzing constantly. Then she picked up an album labelled 'Love Hits 101' from the rack and inserted it into the CD player. And soon the room was filled with the sound of the vintage romance vibe like those in any romantic movie scene.

With the soft melody going, Katy sat down on the edge of the bed and then lie down staring at the ceiling. Nothing stirred except the flickering candle light, which brightened the room where everything in pink turned into a mellow gold, and somehow strengthened the candy smell that was previously circulating around the room.

She rolled to her left and rested her palm on Nancy's cold shoulder, who's dilated pupils pierced into the depth of her eyes.

"Isn't this nice?" said Katy.
"I know, right." said Katy as if in reply.
"Are you sure?" said Katy, yet again.
"Okay, here I come," Katy giggled and leaned toward Nancy.

Theme Song

I woke up to this song

singing it in my thong

justifying the hallucination of my dream

but ain't it enough just to sing it out loud and moan

what am I feeling

why am I suffocating

who am I thinking

where am I going

kill the witch and I am going to be free

murder the switch and I am going to be me

lessen the guilt

here I go on the boulevard to a Misty land

looking for a fresh start

how it all become a big fat lie at last

what am I feeling

why am I suffocating

who am I thinking

where am I going

Now I come out

searching for the far lands

lands with promising signs

lands with destiny awaits

and here I go again

what am I feeling

why am I suffocating

who am I thinking

where am I going

I am going keep searching

till I found that place

a place for you and me

a place for everybody

a place

a place

a place

a place of peace

The Blade, The Glade, The Clade

Under the cover of a misty smoke, mystical and almost translucent at glance, hid a bottomless cave with an entrance blocked by the vegetation.

From somewhere to the south east came the sound of an ox horn, deep and low and reverberating in the forest. A group of bird leaped off from the trees and gathered beyond like some kind of immediate would fall on them if they did not take the leap of faith. So flew they did, all over the sky, like a cloud of foamy white.

A human was walking through the wild tangles with his hands extended to keep his balance, she had took her chances at crossing and was eventually rewarded handsomely when she arrived before the cave.

She produced a lighter from her pocket and flung it toward the cover of grass and plants. The fire started instantly and burned like a stack of dry hay, with the sparkles and gray smoke that slowly climbing their way to the clear sky.

For a while it burned and soon the hole to the cave revealed itself nakedly before her eyes. Inside, the cave gave away its darkness to the flashlight of the adventurer and presented a seemingly endless tunnel.

In she went.

Terrorizing Bear

The cold afternoon in the city had painted a layer of emptiness on it, people in great coat, down coat, over coat, anything that kept them warm from the chilling weather. Those who clung on to fashion wore thin, like a rag doll, incapable of control. Manipulation, mass distribution, cost and effect not in session.

Sunday, a good day for the street performers and all sort of clowns, because almost everyone had the day off in some way or another, to enjoy the complimentary entertainment programs provided by poverty and class struggle and stardom and the great american dream.

A group of people thought it would be great fun to have one of theirs dressed in a fur, a costume that perfectly resemble the features of a black bear, though its skin shone in an oily dark brown.

They sent this bear away to stood around a corner leaning against the stone surface of a building, and what the bear did was terrorizing people when they came around him. The bear did its job and had a few people worried at first, but the crowd soon realized the intended gesture from the bear and had some fun with it.

Then, out of no where came this guy, all black and serious, covering his real identity behind the masses of garments and glasses.

What happened next was that he declared war on this bear, a fake costume with a living human in it, which was doing his best act by showing his pointy claws and bloody mouth.

The man came near and reached into the inner pocket of his coat and drew a pistol, confronting the bear at about five steps away.

He delivered five fatal point blank shots at the guy inside the bear costume and fled the scene before the cops showed minutes later.

From the initial report, some claimed that the man in black had said something like 'justice baby', other said it was a saying with the country accent.

Sunset or Dusk

Earth spin around Sun,

We spin around Earth,

Life spin around Us,

Dawn or Dusk.

Ah, the sun is here, at last. How I've yearned to bath under the divine, ethereal solar ray and immerse in its embrace like a child #writing
— Stephen Y (@writeryuii) February 20, 2014

Inside A Container

I felt kind of offended when that Umos lady from the estate agency called me about the place she had just for the kind of people like me. Maybe partly because I wasn't expecting to hear such judgmental thought from her, and partly because she had half yelled at me throughout our conversations. Maybe her monthly target had been raised after the new year, or maybe she was just pissed about what I had to say about the owner during our last visit.

Apartment hunting, as the name disguised under the camouflaged good will of the word hunt, I knew it would not be an easy task but require a lot of planning and calculation. The prey out there were limited, and many had high demands. To find the one that matches and fits, that was the hardest part. Too many variables at the end ruined the prefect space of a loner's home.

Anyway, I told the lady that I would be available on the alternate scheduled date, which was a Sunday, and wrote down the details about when and where to meet up. After that she just hissed a goodbye like a civilized and educated person and hung up on me.

Truth to be told, I had got nothing going on the first scheduled date, but I wanted to make myself look really busy and knee deep in what I told Umos I was doing, which was a translator for some giant corporations in the city. I had to be consistent with my story, my life.

So we met up, at the east side of the Columbus Circle at ten in the morning. Sunday in the summer was sunny yet sour to the skin, and someone should really stop smoking.

"How's it going?" I tried to converse.

Umos threw me a stare and exhaled the mist through her wrinkled lips. "Follow me," she ditched the cigarette butt on the sidewalk so casually among the crowd, and skillfully rubbed the life of the flame away with the tip of her high heel.

We traveled seven floors upward and when she opened the door to the apartment, I felt dead inside my head.

I felt dead so that I could felt reborn.

"Now, we've got companies backing up on this project and the city is also betting on this, so this unit is free for you to live for a year, see it as a complimentary gift from me. But the people behind this will need to collect your opinions about living in here every single month, that sounds like something you would be willing to do?" said Umos.

"Sure," I replied.

"Alright, I'll put you on the list then."

***

I moved in about a week later. It had me dazed for a while with its merely 160 square feet of space like a standard freight container, except it had everything from bed to kitchen. Unlike those illegal immigrants that was shipped from oversea inside a real container, mine was way better.

Space didn't matter, the price did.

And while I enjoyed the free meal, there were a certain restrictions and duties that I had to follow when I signed the contract and the non-disclosure agreement.

Besides the no roommates nonsense, and the mandatory monthly interrogation by two corporate dummies and maybe another freak from the marketing department, everything went just as smoothly as one could get when living in a pseudo container environment.

And the view beat every other place I lived, along with the sound, the beat, the vibe of the city, it was at last, perfect.

Though I had reserved opinion about the wall, which they had painted it with a thin layer of pink. Not that I could not live without the traditional white, but seriously, who would paint their wall pink anyway? And when I tried to convince them to let me, or the worker to paint it white, they refused my request. And I soon gave up on the idea because I knew, I was obliged to keep the apartment at its original state as per the contract.

Just Rambling, Nothing Serious

The begin is not the end
the end is not the end

the begin of the end is not the end
the end of the end is also not the end

so while all these drama and tragic go on and on for an infinitive amount of time
why do we have to mourn over the existent of our being
why can't we embrace it and turn it into something beautiful and joyful
but of course, it is easier said than done
not everyone had the same opinion

do you want a piece of me
or do you just want to wrack me

me, you mean me, motherf*ucking me
I knew it
it all ended with sadness and stillness
never moving again beyond your imagination
all these post production that would not continue if you were not thinking about it

so there is that dog
never come back or I will tear you apart n-word

'cuz you know what
it was not even about how sad it is
it was about what I cannot accept but to respect upon
and when I respect something
then that thing is going down

The Commissioner

Commissioner George Gordon woke up with the sudden jerk of his head that it almost felt like the plane had exploded in midair, just as he wished. The violent dream to die painlessly had never, ever found a way to escape since he witnessed a person's dreadful death at a very young age. Sometimes he compared himself to the like of the superheroes, and the like of the superheroes' sidekicks. And he believed there was a strength inside him waiting to come alive in the proper moment. Until then, his destiny remained unknown.

He lifted the window cover and feasted on the view outside of his private jet, where the sun was fading away in its final stage, orange and red and a mixture of purple and blue had painted the sky gay and almost transparent.

It had been a long holiday, too long. For two weeks he stayed offshore on an evergreen island with his wife and teenage daughter. Not receiving news, or reports from the city. If not for his family, he would undeniably refrain from the vacation and continue on the pursuit of the unjust cases piled up on his desk with blind rage and ignorant vigor.

How time had accelerated the evolution of human but limited their thinking for ages, Commissioner Gordon thought. How tiny he seemed to those devilish defendants and nightmare crimes.

The Old Detective

Phil Olsen, veteran sergeant detective swore on the 12 precinct, stepped out of the Victoria Crown with a stone heart and a grave mood. His back straight as razor but shoulder hunched forward, and his short, bleached hair, too, swayed impossibly in the Autumn wind. And as he brushed the hair backward and held his hands over his head while squinting at the distance, the hot air blew by to chill the souls.

The mountain was burning and roaring with the crackles of splinters and trunks. Horror spread across the bleak land with dark, black smokes, going up and above, covering the whole glaring sun in the form of a flame monster. Its mouth opened and seemed just enough to engulf everything on its way.

Olsen had no hope in retrieving any useful evidences from the crime scene inside the field of fire. His luck had long abandoned him the moment he decided to join the division, and at the same time, broke off from the family business.

He was cursed but not of natural occurrence, rather man-made manipulation.

The heat rushed and darted in the air, mixing with the breeze and slowly brewing the town to a perfect cup of sweat. The firefighters swarmed into the fire, shouting and yelling; helicopters panning back and forth in the sky, dropping water to relieve as much help as they could offer. It was a chaos, totally preventable though.

"It's no one's fault, you know."

Olsen turned to greet his partner, lieutenant sergeant Kim Coe.

Five Months and Sixth Months Coming Up! Plus Update From My Novel Writing

I am back from the novel writing, which had been a complete overhaul. I did not just rewriting it, but created a new story inside the same universal settings. Since the story I wrote for NaNoWriMo seemed truly amateurish.

For the last 30 days or so, I wrote about 22000 words. It's all new materials and the novel itself relied heavily on conversations between the main characters.

Just today I had complied everything and sent it to Lulu.com for a free first edition hardcover, one of the winners goodies from NaNoWriMo. Though I had to pay about 9 USD for the shipping, it's still worth the money.

At least I could read it on paper, in a more professional book-like format.

How I Write

Staring at the monitor and type anything that came to mind, and let the story flow freely like a kite before dragging it back at the end of the session.Since Google Docs have the lag when the number of pages in one documents excess twenty, I had resided my work into an Chrome App, Writebox. It ran very smoothly and never gave me any trouble, besides I need to manually sync the file to Google Drive (It also supports Dropbox), the experiences has been really positive. It's a minimalist's toy, so, go figures!

What I Worked On

I submitted 2 stories during this period, 1 flash fiction(under 1000 words), 1 short fictions (About 3500 words) (the flash fiction were rejected earlier by others and I submitted to another place, and was rejected again a few days ago, man, flash fiction is a though market!).

Also, the novel. I can still tell it's not a grown-man's book, but it's getting there, especially after reading (am still reading) Moby Dick. It's dominated by conversations, dialogues, and is about life and beyond, and more so about the current society.

Why I Write

Writing send me to places.

I wish I had never left #NYC, even though I haven't been there before. But what's stopping me from saying that anyway? #ibelieve

— Stephen Y (@writeryuii) February 14, 2014

Where I Write

In my own room in front of the Acer C720 Chromebook or in my parent's room because it's warmer. (Freaking weather, below 10 degree Celsius is not funny. I had lost all motivation and have caught a lingering cold, still not yet recovered from it at the time of writing.)

And other imaginary spaces I conjured upon writing, still.

Who Motivated Me This Month

Moby Dick. Read below.

What Am I Reading

Read a lot of books since the beginning of January. For more about what I've read, please visit my reading list.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov[04/01/2014]
Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov[09/01/2014]
APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book[10/01/2014]
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov[14/01/2014]
1984 by George Orwell[24/01/2014]
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway[25/01/2014]
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt[01/02/2014]

Currently reading Moby Dick; or, the White Whale by Herman Melville, and had spent twice amount of the time checking dictionary than actually reading it. But I like how it was composed, so tightly packed with 10 dollar words without lessening the essence of a good story. And it's really interesting, in a way that it covers many things underneath the story itself. I am not trying to write like this, but I am trying to convey my ideas more logically and clearly with words of gold. Before that? I have to write more as to get a hang of it. See what I did there? Still plain and dull writing. How I hate myself for not having a rich mixture of vocabulary inside my tongue so that I could taste the smell of good writing. I am getting by at around 33%, hoping to finish it next week and move on more works by Ernest Heminingway.

P.S. Listened to a few stories in the Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology by Bruce Sterling, getting to know more about Cyberpunk, since I knew nothing about besides a few articles and Wikipedia.

Am I studying

Obviously YES.
I am currently enrolled into 1 MOOC(Massive Open Online Course) provided by edX, and I believe much more to come this year.

Jazz Appreciation

I've also picked up a new language to master this year and is currently advancing my German on Duolingo!

Hallo, Ich bin Stephen.

Continue

It has been five months, and I think I had cut my self some slack, and resorted to the novel writing, which I both love and loaf so much. I have been indulging myself in games and TV shows and movies, since January and February had too many good things to offer (Looking at you, Archer, True Detective, Amazon's Pilot Transparent, Titanfall, Hearthstone) But I am back, maybe it is for the best. Even when I am typing this, I could feel a surge circling around my brain, giving me waves of things to write about, but it's been long, and I don't want to include a too long; didn't read, so tl;dr.

Roughly 25,000 words written this month.

~2200 words Novel, ~3000 words blog and fiction writings.

Currently think about writing a story about what if I had a house of my own for the monthly submission to The New Yorker. It would be quite a dark comedy.

I've also had other ideas, and are starting to use Evernote whenever I've a new ideas stream to mind.

tl;dr : Basically, I am back.

Ywrighting

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