The Januariad

Every year a rotating cast of reckless writers undertake the challenge of crafting and making public one complete piece of prose — any form, any style, any length, so long as it’s complete — for each weekday in the month of January.  The rules are simple: each piece must be written entirely on the day it’s posted, with the deadline falling at midnight of the writer’s local time zone.

This tradition originated in the observation that most of us spend so much time thinking up excuses not to create, whether through procrastination or relentless self-censorship, that we miss out on a great deal of our potential.  The Januariad provides a framework to push through all that and just get the work done.  The daily writing requirement removes the opportunity for procrastination, and by posting the work we receive the support of our peers — and relentless hazing when deadlines are missed.
This year’s contestants:

This is the second year in which every player will use a Tumblog for the work.  I intend to follow all of them, but we’ll tag every Januariad post with a #Januariad tag to make it easy to follow Januariad updates.

Wish us luck!

PHOTO: © Matt Schwartz, She Pressed Pause Studios.

A Clarification

The Januariad posts won’t start in earnest until Monday.  We tried posting every day of the month for the first couple of years, but it resulted in one divorce, two arrests and several nervous breakdowns.  Now we get weekends off.

Two of the contestants went ahead, though, and wrote today.  In admiration of their efforts, I’ll post a re-worked older piece of mine as well.

Strays

1.

Half-past midnight on New Year’s Eve, after anticipation had given way to the inevitable champagne cork and mirror ball money shot, Hector was still standing outside, waiting to check IDs, warming himself against Miami’s nightwinter halfcold with coffee, donuts and an old leather jacket.

Hector was thinking of The Girl Who Drives Past With Dogs, wondering whether he’d see her tonight.  She’d been driving by so long that he’d started to dream of her.  To get her out of his head, he lit a cigarette and went over his resolutions:

  • drop a few pounds
  • get a haircut
  • buy better clothes
  • maybe take some classes at the community college
  • finally figure out how to talk to girls

Getting an early start on his resolutions, he was rehearsing what he’d say to The Girl Who Drives Past With Dogs when her convertible pulled up at the stoplight by the club.  Looking through a tangle of blonde hair, she smiled at him, turned to the dog in the passenger seat, and whispered something.  The dog cocked its head, listened intently for a moment, then jumped over the windowsill and ran.

He dropped his coffee, tripped over his stool, and sent his flashlight skittering over the pavement, forgetting himself as he chased after the dog.  Running, panting, calling after it.  Finally, he coaxed the dog into his arms and carrying it back to the crying girl’s car, but big, shy Hector couldn’t say a word as the light changed and she drove away.

2.

Jen led the dog to her car, put him in the passenger seat, gave him a treat.  She sat down behind the wheel, moved a scrunchy from her hair to her wrist, and started the car.

Three years.  She’d made this drive so many times, and it was always the same.  Still, somehow it was easier afterwards, like they’d given her permission by staying.

The dog hung his head over the door, drinking fast air.

“Everyone deserves a chance,” she said aloud to the night.

She pulled up in front of the Latin nightclub by the park.  When her car stopped, the dog turned and licked her hand, nuzzling her.

“Go,” she whispered.  “I love you, but you can’t stay with me.”

He looked at her for a moment as if he understood, licked her face once, then jumped out of the car and ran.  It was the happiest she could remember being, tears welling up in her eyes, until that fat bouncer caught the dog and brought it back to her.

She cried harder as she took the dog back to the shelter to put him down, just like the rest.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

1.

Fast bright fire under the new moon, they strove west with kettle-crack and caravan cumber, woven carpets and wooly beasts aboard and about.  Hope and longing leading onward, memory giving chase.

“The only paradise is paradise lost,” he said, and began to pluck the lute.

She listened carefully for a moment, holding the reins, driving the horses as they were bounced and jostled along the roughhewn track (beginnings — whether joyful or tragic — are seldom gentle).

“Music is only love looking for words.”

Gloaming ghosts followed, harmonizing every chord until the last note faded, finished.  She told him he’d played that tune a thousand times, a thousand times, a thousand times.

“Life itself is a quotation,” he said, “but the original is unfaithful to the translation.”

MUSIC: Bosphorus, composed and performed by Jack Rusher © 2008.

Dingy yellow street lights barely pierced the foggy, autumnal nightgloom as he hauled himself to yet another obligatory Left Bank ex-pat soiree populated with the usual drab grey ensemble of poets-who-might, poets-who-almost and poets-who-never-will mixed with a freshly baked batch of starstruck Stendhal-syndromed students, eyes agog at la plus belle ville du monde. The poets talked their usual talk. — Me, me, me. The students listened, occasionally interjecting. — O, you! He spent the evening as usual: standing alone, drinking, looking without seeing, until the glint of green eyes hovering over claret held in rosé fingers outshone the room and the night. Aurora, she said her name was, and they lost themselves for hours in a kaleidoscope of talk. — You. — You? — You! — You… They were the last in that empty café, until green-suited, yellow-vested street sweepers sluiced the stone grey gutters with clear water and scrubbed the nightgloom from every cobble. At last, he stole a kiss and with new eyes glided home beneath the first rays of gilt-edged morningsun. PHOTO: L’église Saint-Eustache at dawn.  © Jack Rusher, 2001.

Dingy yellow street lights barely pierced the foggy, autumnal nightgloom as he hauled himself to yet another obligatory Left Bank ex-pat soiree populated with the usual drab grey ensemble of poets-who-might, poets-who-almost and poets-who-never-will mixed with a freshly baked batch of starstruck Stendhal-syndromed students, eyes agog at la plus belle ville du monde.

The poets talked their usual talk.

— Me, me, me.

The students listened, occasionally interjecting.

— O, you!

He spent the evening as usual: standing alone, drinking, looking without seeing, until the glint of green eyes hovering over claret held in rosé fingers outshone the room and the night.

Aurora, she said her name was, and they lost themselves for hours in a kaleidoscope of talk.

— You.

— You?

— You!

— You…

They were the last in that empty café, until green-suited, yellow-vested street sweepers sluiced the stone grey gutters with clear water and scrubbed the nightgloom from every cobble.

At last, he stole a kiss and with new eyes glided home beneath the first rays of gilt-edged morningsun.

PHOTO: L’église Saint-Eustache at dawn.  © Jack Rusher, 2001.

Wind in hair, toes in grass, glass in hand, they recline on a blanket that makes a bed of the Bois de Bologna and feather-float through cloudy skies of memory and anticipation. — I want His eyes linger over sunskin, under sundress, tickle-tingling with each caress. — to do to you Gooseflesh breezes ruffle summer’s composure. — what springtime does with the cherry blossoms. * Alone in the world, they flutter, shudder, tremble and shake. * all apologies to Neruda. PHOTO: © Matt Schwartz, She Pressed Pause Studios.

Wind in hair, toes in grass, glass in hand, they recline on a blanket that makes a bed of the Bois de Bologna and feather-float through cloudy skies of memory and anticipation.

— I want

His eyes linger over sunskin, under sundress, tickle-tingling with each caress.

— to do to you

Gooseflesh breezes ruffle summer’s composure.

— what springtime does with the cherry blossoms. *

Alone in the world, they flutter, shudder, tremble and shake.

* all apologies to Neruda.

PHOTO: © Matt Schwartz, She Pressed Pause Studios.

Gumdrop Mulligan is bleeding.  There’s a hole in his favorite suit, his left shoe is missing and his hair’s soaking wet. He had been at his desk, eating gumdrops, when the assassins came.  Nothing smelled right about those two, gaunt and blue-pale, neither much for smiles.  Bing, bang, boom, a beating was thrown. — Where’s the book, Mulligan? — What book? — Kinch sent us, we know you have it. — I don’t know what you’re talking about. It went like that until they got tired enough to start believing him, after which things went from bad to worse.  The smaller of the two vampires put a silver bullet in his pistol and pointed it at Mulligan’s heart. — This is the last time I’m askin’. Mulligan, still spry even if he was going on two-hundred and seventy doggy years, was halfway out the window when the bullet went through his left shoulder a little wide of the mark.  He howled all the down to the river. Gumdrop Mulligan is bleeding, and that’s just the beginning of the story.

Gumdrop Mulligan is bleeding.  There’s a hole in his favorite suit, his left shoe is missing and his hair’s soaking wet.

He had been at his desk, eating gumdrops, when the assassins came.  Nothing smelled right about those two, gaunt and blue-pale, neither much for smiles.  Bing, bang, boom, a beating was thrown.

— Where’s the book, Mulligan?

— What book?

— Kinch sent us, we know you have it.

— I don’t know what you’re talking about.

It went like that until they got tired enough to start believing him, after which things went from bad to worse.  The smaller of the two vampires put a silver bullet in his pistol and pointed it at Mulligan’s heart.

— This is the last time I’m askin’.

Mulligan, still spry even if he was going on two-hundred and seventy doggy years, was halfway out the window when the bullet went through his left shoulder a little wide of the mark.  He howled all the down to the river.

Gumdrop Mulligan is bleeding, and that’s just the beginning of the story.

Jingle-jangle of jailor’s keys

Fishnet stockings with illegal seams

Gumdrop Mulligan knew that redhead

Would be a pilgrimage to his knees.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

In a dark room in a dark house in a dark land, violet flame heats an alembic as vipers coil on cool cobbles with tongues tasting damp air, and a hand of solitaire is dealt out on the Tarot de Marseille.

A lock of your hair, a few nail parings, your favorite Facebook profile picture, your most popular Tumblr post — into the cauldron they go.  Encircled and ensorcelled, you drift through cyberspace as your friends and followers fade away, one after another, leaving you alone and unliked.

It is only then, in your moment of deepest isolation and weakness, that she peels back the skin of your pomegranate heart and eats the seeds, one by one.

MUSIC: Un Tzigane, Taraf de Haïdouks.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

2.

Languorous beneath a waxing moon, they danced by the parked caravan, animals placidly ruminating as they turned and reeled to unplayed music.  He lifted her high in the air to silently swelling strains, then — gingerly, gently — settled them both to the earth as the song drifted to the heavens.

Later, as they ate a dinner of partridge tajine with preserved lemons, she gnawed on the rind of the past and choked on the pith of memory.  How had the journey begun?  How long ago?  What were they thinking back then, back there?

“All our permanent decisions are made in a state of mind that is only temporary,” she said, having only just then realized it herself.

“We must build as if sand were stone,” he replied.

A few moments later rain began to beat a syncopated tattoo on the caravan’s roof.

“A change in the weather is enough to recreate the world and ourselves,” he said, then played a slow, sad, stately dirge on his lute, nightbirds and river fish harmonizing.

As the last echoes faded, she told him he’d played that tune a thousand times.

“All of life is a quotation,” he said, “but the original is unfaithful to the translation.”

MUSIC: Sadly. © Jack Rusher, 2002.