Writer Wednesday
Character.
I’m a little late today, as I’ve been traveling, first to Chicago and now in Louisville to visit family. I spent a good stretch of time with writer extraordinaire, Jimmy Yoshimura, of HLOTS fame, and his wife, Mary Lin. He regaled me with some wild stories that I’d never heard before, and a perspective on well-known stories from a wildly different perspective! Oh, yes, there will be an article about him, and Jimmy will be on the HLOR podcast this season.
PROMPT: Pick someone. Even yourself. Or an animal, or some kind of being. Choose an explicit action, a piece of clothing, or a personality trait. It may even be a thought that sets this character apart from any others.
We’ll build on this character for the next 2-3 weeks and bring them together with some other prompts we’ve worked on. Perhaps by doing that, you’ll craft a workable short story, script, or what have you.
My take:
We had stopped mid-game, the basketball rolled away from us. We watched as Benny emerged in a sort of squat-run from a hallway leading to the free weight room. He stopped in front of raquetball court #2, his hulking frame filling the doorway. He had been working out, and he was sweaty.
One of the EMTs barred the doorway, trying to calm him, as Benny strained to see the figure on the floor, who, from our vantage point, still held a racquet in his hand.
“Dad!” he screamed. Benny hadn’t said Dad in a long time. When he was thirteen, he began to call his Dad, Stuart. It was more natural. His father stopped minding it; besides he never felt comfortable being called ‘dad’ since divorcing his wife, so it would be Stuart.
Now, Stuart lay on the floor, the crash cart posed uselessly beside him. A massive heart attack while attempting to return an impossible wallpaper shot in the third set killed him instantly.
But, the EMTs continued to work on him.
The tension in Benny’s body gave way to a collapse, his meaty hands grabbing at the wall, his legs wobbling. He turned his body away and lumbered, numbly, between all of us, across the basketball floor. We watched and heard, “Oh no. Oh no”. His white YMCA shirt, soaked through, clung to his fleshy body. His upper body drooped forward; he held his head in his hands and desperately wiped tears from his eyes.
As he walked across the floor, you could hear his short, labored breaths, distinct from our own. He glanced back only once at the racquetball court now filled with medical people and firemen.
When he reached the end of the building, he seemed surprised. He put his hand against the wall, as if it didn’t belong there, as if he had never seen it before, as if there must be a way through.
He stood for an instant, body shaking. Then weakly swung his foot and kicked the floorboard.
We watched. We looked at each other.
He didn’t move for a long while.
Dude how in hell do you get into the detail so fast with your storytelling ? It's like in I'm back in high school English class trying to keep up with homework. Witch is funny because I flunked out of that class but I do remember discovering Poe for the very first time. The story where a guy buried himself in a wall. I will never forget that memory of reading that. I can even now recall sitting in class reading it and the world around me just melted away. Just me and the book,no class and no problems. It took me days to finish it because of being a slow reader but I still have a love of Poe. I even remember back in the day the Homicide episode of the man bricking himself in the wall and the never-ending heartbeat that can still be heard to this day. The first time I saw that episode, I went back in my mind to the English class and remember what it felt like to discover Poe. I was 16 at the time when that happened. What a hell of a memory to feel again and the added bonus a few years later of a great writer who put a Poe story on a TV show. You really can't make life up sometimes and now all these years later to maybe finally have the background on that episode adds to the heartbeat I still hear. Waiting is slow and the anticipation is agney but I know the end will come with a new breath of life but will the heartbeat continuing to beat new life into the old one. I often think of that actor putting the final brick into place with glowing candle light as he recites Poe and that long lasting heartbeat fading into black. That is still here with a beautiful memory of a lonely English class that I hated so much but with one moment of discovery a new door opened that day into the dark world of Poe. I will never forget. Stay the Course. Life is raw.
This will be a challenge for me, but I will attempt it. Have fun in “Looavul” Kyle!