Scrum Outline

Now that I no longer have to write for any classes, I decided (at the prompting of a friend) to once again begin to write in my free time. Which is something I used to do sometimes when my head was feeling big enough and I believed I might not be a terrible writer, but that stopped once I began taking creative writing classes. Because really, what kind of loser does extra schoolwork in addition to their normal amount, am I right?

The problem was that, since this is not a school assignment I'm scrambling to complete three hours before the deadline, there was no pressure and heat to forge my scattered wisps of ideas into a semisolid reality. Instead, I decided on the very time-inefficient method of writing an outline of what I knew I wanted to have in the story first, and proceed from there.

Since I didn't have many ideas fully-formed yet, however, and as I do have just so much time available, I ended up turning the outline into a story itself, sorta. I knew I wanted to make the story first-person, but after i thought through the history of the setting and what the reader might need to know I realized this could end up being a very, very long story indeed. So to get the general plot and several details squared away beforehand, I ended up working on an outline written in a fairy-tale style. It uses repetition and simple language and really just serves as a kind of proto-draft, so I can see what's happening and where changes need to be made.

I'm not finished, but I needed to update the blog and thought this might interest some people. Or not. I will say that I enjoy the fairy-tale format and think it still holds a place in fiction, and can be used to tell certain stories in a uniquely effective way. This post might also help me to finally finish the outline, since I've left it languishing for a week or two now. As always, chalk the crudity of the writing and story up to a pre-first-draft and a bad storyteller.

Scrum (very much a working title)

Once, in a time like now or maybe before, there was a beautiful woman chained atop a great marble pillar. This pillar sat in a cave, its roof open to let the sky in, and for forever she could only see the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave. Near that cave was a spring, single and lonely in the desert. In time a group of travelers found the spring, losing many people, and established a town. In their tongue they named it Scrum, and though living was hard, their ingenuity and the crystalline spring allowed their village to thrive.

It wasn’t long before a group of young villagers found the cave with the beautiful woman, chained atop the great marble pillar. They shouted up at her and asked her questions; she spoke in return, and the sound traveled down to the villagers as clearly as if they were next to her. They asked who she was, and why on Earth she was up on that pillar, and if she would like it if they got her down. She said she would very much like to come down, and that she had been up there so long that she had forgotten why she was there or who she was; the only things she knew were the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave. She knew a great deal of these things, however, and the villagers learned much from her.

Every man and woman who left that cave did so under the woman’s enchantment. Whether that was her intention or not, I cannot say; in any event, I do not believe it was magic or slyness that had bound the villagers so tightly, but rather her knowledge and her naiveté, her vulnerability and her strength. Each one made a vow to themselves to rescue her from that pillar, to be the one who freed her from a life of only the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave.

So they worked, each alone. I cannot say why they worked alone; perhaps the young villagers felt they were in competition, or perhaps they knew that this was something each must do of their own strength. Either way, each made a valiant attempt to reach the woman: some constructed wooden ladders which rose for hundreds of feet; others cut stone from the quarry and stacked them atop each other; still others attempted to climb over the mountain and reach her through the great opening at the top of the cave. The woman spoke to each, encouraging each one in their efforts, and this made the villagers work even harder. And while they spoke the villagers learned much of what she had seen of the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave.

One by one the ladders broke; one by one shoulders spent lifting and stacking stones gave out; one by one those who sought the mountain skylight did not return. And one by one the villagers abandoned their quest, leaving their tools and their failed attempts. The woman saw this happening, but did not despair; for though she had dared to hope, she had never truly believed she would be free. She had just been happy to, for a brief (to her) time, she had gotten to know more than the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave.

As the young villagers returned to their lives in the village, the knowledge the woman atop the marble pillar had given them - and the skills they had developed trying to reach her - enabled them to live better lives, provide more for their families and the other villagers alike. Soon their children were of an age to wander, and discover, and once more found the cave of the woman chained atop the marble pillar. And they also spoke to the woman, and were spoken to, and fell under her enchantment, and vowed to rescue her. And so the story went, and the village of Scrum obtained knowledge known to no one else about the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave, and so became profitable and wealthy and comfortable.

In time visiting the beautiful woman chained atop the great marble pillar became a rite of passage for the children of the village. They would see, speak, build, and, eventually, destroy their attempts to reach her. She did not mind this cycle; it was something new to her, events which served to punctuate her conception of time much better than the stars, or the sun, or the rain or the clouds or the walls of the cave. The woman knew that no one would ever reach her, yet still remained hopeful that someone would.

There was a child born to the village called Mok. He was quiet, and thoughtful, and adults often said he had an ‘old soul.’ He grew up, like all children did, hearing the stories of the beautiful woman atop the marble pillar. But Mok was also rebellious, and stubborn, and when the time came for him to travel to the cave, he refused. Mok saw the wasted years spent pursuing the woman on the pillar, and heard the adults talk of the enlightening but painful memories of their own youth.

The elders resolved that, if Mok would not go to the woman on the pillar to learn strength, and commitment, and knowledge of the stars, the sun, the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave, then he would spend his time learning in the village. And so he did. Mok was a voracious learner, and the first true student the village of Scrum had ever seen.

When his friends returned from their days spent at the cave, Mok would listen to their stories and think them fools. He would tell them, in turn, of his own days, spent learning and building, creating works of engineering mastery and intellectual creativity, but they seemed unimpressed, occupied by their own endeavors to reach the beautiful woman atop the marble pillar.

Finally his friends grew tired of their efforts, and returned to their lives in Scrum. With their quests finished, they were amazed and envious of the things that Mok had done while they had worked and talked to the beautiful woman atop the marble pillar. Mok not only knew almost as much as they about the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave - though he had never seen the walls of the cave, of course - but he had pursued other knowledge as well, the knowledge which the villagers of Scrum had created once they had learned from the beautiful woman atop the marble pillar. He was acquainted with science, and theology, and medicine and mathematics and literature.

Mok’s friends had learned also, though, and while they praised Mok for his vast stores of knowledge and marveled at the numerous ways he excelled, they also looked at him the same way the other villagers had for all those years: with pity. He had learned to recognize that gaze from his instructors; it’s what drove him to work so hard for so long, and he hated it. Yet now he recognized it on the face of his colleagues, his friends, whose own achievements were far inferior to his. At first he tried to ignore the looks, yet they pressed upon him each day, pressing in and smothering him until he could no longer stand it and he exploded. He demanded to know what made them look at him in such a way, what right they had to place themselves above him, Mok, who had surpassed so many so quickly.

Those he demanded answers from could give none. They only replied that his accomplishments were truly amazing, and averted their gazes and whispered in corners where he could not hear. Mok, who had never belonged while those of his age were at the cave, still did not belong now that they had returned. And he grew hateful, and suspicious, and bitter. He stopped speaking to his friends, and locked himself away from his teachers, and remained alone all day and night.

Until one night, when Mok was granted a flash of inspiration. In his dreams he saw Scrum as it once stood a small, impoverished village. Slowly the village began to expand, and grow, and the tiny hovels were replaced with larger homes, the few rows of struggling vegetation with vast fields, the crooked people with villagers tall and strong. And amidst all of this change, a monument was begun. And as the homes become larger, and the fields expanded, and the people became stronger and more beautiful until they seemed almost as the gods, the monument grew, and revealed itself to be a statue. Mok had never seen the woman it portrayed, but he knew who she was, for she sat atop a great marble pillar.

However, just as the great monument was finished, so large that it seemed to dwarf even the great constructions of the future, it began to shake. It was blown in the wind, and waved from side to side, and began to swing so violently that Mok was sure that it must fall. Which it did. And as it fell, it crashed into the buildings of Scrum, and the fields, and the people, and by the end not a person or place remained in Scrum that was not reduced to rubble, to its component parts.

Mok awoke gasping and trembling. He told himself that it was just a dream; that it meant nothing; that it was only a result of his fears and insecurities about the shared experience the others had had, one which he could no longer participate in. He even told himself he believed that. But he spent the next day restless, unable to focus; he would begin daydreaming and find himself facing towards the cave, and the woman sitting on the marble pillar inside. Or so he figured.

Three days of this and Mok was ready to do whatever it took to regain his peace of mind. He attacked the problem from every angle, analyzed what exactly he had seen in his dream and how likely it was to come to pass. He made this discovery: the woman in the cave atop the marble pillar had too much power over Scrum. She was, he realized, the one thing everyone in the village had in common. This singular experience, this singular source of knowledge, was what bound Scrum together and made it strong. Yet it was also Scrum’s greatest weakness. Mok had been to other towns before, had seen the disorder and lack of cohesion there. But he had also seen the camaraderie, and the unity, and although it was not nearly to the extent of Scrum, it was free from reliance on any one person or thing. Mok feared what might happen if the woman atop the marble pillar in the cave ever decided to wield this power; the damage done to Scrum could be irreversible. She hadn’t yet - or had she? Mok tried to put a stop to those thoughts - but to all appearances the woman was immortal. Who could know the mind of such a being? Had Scrum been merely a puppet the woman caused to move as she willed? These thoughts filled Mok, filled him to the very top of himself, until he finally decided that the woman in the cave atop the marble pillar had to be dealt with. He didn’t want to harm her - he wasn’t sure if she could even be harmed - but removing her from the cave seemed a fine first step to limit her continued influence on Scrum.

So Mok set off for the cave, where the woman chained atop the pillar sat. The younger members who were on their own, mandated quest stopped and stared the first time he stepped into that chamber, with the marble pillar and the roof open to the sky. Even the beautiful woman, who was in the middle of a friendly dialogue with one of the youngsters, felt the force of that hush and followed along in its wake. Mok was not much older than they were, and yet they knew - they all knew - that he was too old to be one of them, and yet too young to be one of the elders in charge of hauling the failed experiments away.

Mok stood in front of the pillar and looked up, to where the beautiful woman chained to the marble pillar was. And he looked at her face and she looked at his; and what he saw was what he had expected, and yet not. He had grown up hearing the stories of the woman; her beauty and wisdom was legendary in Scrum. And Mok found himself… disappointed. All this obsession and ritual over her? he mused.

Mok spent the rest of the day - as the youths were made to leave at night - studying the chamber, the marble pillar, the roof open to the sky, and everything in the cave which was not the woman, who was, after all, the last part of his plan which needed thinking about. He estimated lengths and widths, and sketched the pillar and the walls from multiple angles. Lastly, as the light overhead was growing dim and the other villagers in the cave, having quickly overcome their shock at Mok, began to head home, he brainstormed a few ideas. It was going to be tricky, he admitted; the slenderness of the pillar relative to its height made constructing any time of ramp or ladder questionable at best, and he had long ago discarded the notion of finding a way over the mountains and down into the cave from the top. He stood up from the small boulder he had been using as a seat, stretched painfully, and began to the trip home.

All this day the woman chained atop the pillar had watched him, without stopping her conversations with the others in the cave. She had addressed Mok (though she did not know that was his name) directly a handful of times, but he had paid no heed, and listened only to the dark thoughts inside his head. When he began to hobble home, away from the woman chained atop the marble pillar, the woman exhaled a tension she did not know she had; there was something about Mok that disturbed her, though her conscious mind did not yet know it, it’s as though she could feel he was an agent of change, and both hated and loved him for it.

What Gaia taught me about grief

I've mentioned several times on this blog that emotions and I have not been super pals throughout most of my life. Everyone remembers that great (terrible?) cave and wall metaphor - something which now certainly is reminiscent of the Cask of Amontillado - and I like to think that I was at least somewhat clear in that post. Particularly when talking about the positives and negatives of opening yourself up. Most of the people who have commented on it to me have said how happy they are that, for me, the wall lies in a pile of rubble.

I wish I could share their enthusiasm, but as I also said in that post, it's a double-edged sword at the best of times. I recently ran into a situation where, again, I reacted quite differently than I have in the past. And while I feel like a large part of that is the different factors involved in this scenario, I can't deny that the wall-shaped hole in my brain may have something to do with it.

I don't want to spend too much setting the scene. At my step-mother's house there are many cats. Or at least there used to be; it seems like that number is shrinking almost daily now. I lived there from summer 2008 to winter of 2013, so a fair amount of time spent in one place. And in that time I got to know all the cats and dogs, like you do. Gaia was one of these: a rescue together with her daughter, Luna, she was a tortoiseshell who was pretty round, kind of like a meatball, and had a real attitude. It used to lead to some stand-offs with her and one of the cats we brought, Ricky, a Scottish Fold who was just super-awesome (and also had a real attitude).

Gaia was nuuuuuuuuts about me. This was often annoying, as cats so frequently are: she would hear my voice in the kitchen and come running, then lay over my feet/in the middle of the kitchen and attack me (playfully, but still) as I tried to walk by; she would follow me around meowing with this urgent cry that made you wanna shake her; she liked to go into the basement (where I spent most of my time) and then refuse to get off the steps, either deciding she wanted to leave immediately or just generally getting in the way of everyone trying to get up and down the stairs all the time. You know - annoying.

But she was also adorable and lovely, and a little nuts (as all torties are). She would lay on my feet, as I already mentioned, and I'd pet her rough and she'd make hilarious noises and rub against my shoes so hard she fell over. She would then attack the shoe, often clinging to it as I tried to walk away so I would be half-dragging her across the floor. Among many other awesome and excellent things she did, but that's the most immediate one. Oh, sometimes after getting her all worked up she would scratch her face/neck and go "mrow-row-row-row-row" VERY loudly. Hilarious.

In the past year or two, however she's been looking worse. She lost a lot of weight, and last year she was in real bad shape - in fact some people already wanted to dismiss her as 'old and dying' and put her to sleep - but through the intercession of my sister she was taken to the vet, they looked her over and helped her out and she was back to her old self. More-or-less, anyway; she never quite regained that lost weight, and Meatball Cat became more of a parody name than a truism.

Fast-forward to this past weekend. I hear from my brother (who is the only sibling at the house right now - my sister is pet-sitting for another family) that she's in bad shape, and will probably be put down soon, so I get ready and I go over there to see her one last time. We spent some time at the pet-sitting house hoping that my sister would get the green-light to come over and leave the pets there for a while, but that never came so my brother and I went home without her.

I can't really describe what it was like. She was in my brother's room; she had crawled under his desk, as cats are wont to do, and was laying there. Stretched out, arms and legs straight out, like she had just fallen over sideways. Her eyes couldn't close, and there was a large amount of liquid issuing from the one, which didn't stop while I was there. She couldn't move or focus the eyeballs themselves. There was a dish of water next to her which she had not touched because she couldn't. I put some water on a finger and tried to get her to drink at least a little, but to no avail. Her breathing was shallow and labored.

But she was still alive, and as I spoke to her and pet her and tried to reassure her however I could over the next two hours and change, I would see glimmers that she was at least somewhat conscious of what was going on. Her face would twitch, the muscles around her eyes moving slightly. Sometimes her paws would twitch. They were cold, so I asked my brother to provide a shirt to throw on over her. It was a small gesture but at least it made me feel like I could do something.

Now, this isn't a post about anger. Anger comes much easier to me than grief, and I right now recalling events I'm feeling a pretty even mixture of both. I learned that she had been virtually unable to walk since Friday - this was on a Sunday evening, I should mention - and that no effort - none, zip, nothing - had been made to get her to a vet. Nothing. So she had laid there, slowly starving and/or thirsting to death, if whatever had happened to her brain wouldn't kill her first, for literally days, with those who could have done something waved it away with, frankly, ridiculous and self-deluding assurances.

But like I said, that's not what this entry is about. I don't mean to offend anyone; that's my interpretation of events, which I feel strongly about and which I believe is justified, but that's another post for another time. See how easy it was for me to distract myself from writing about grief - I don't want to deny I was tearing up while writing those paragraphs describing her last day, because I was - by focusing on anger?

The grief is what hit me the hardest at the time. I couldn't even summon the fire to be angry during those two hours, while I was watching her lay there, so far removed from the animal I once knew. I want to put it out there that I have felt grief. Good God have I felt grief. Our family hasn't been the luckiest in the past few years, and I can't deny that I felt grief when Ricky, our excellent cat we'd had for about 13 years, wandered down to the basement one day, laid down under a desk, made a sickening meowing noise, and then went limp. I was petting him and trying to coax him, but it wasn't working; I then took my dead cat and laid him in a box, to be buried the next morning. Or when I learned our other amazing cat (received all the way back in 2000/2001), Leo, who was Ricky's half-brother (but a straight-eared fold), developed serious issues with his breathing. My brother's girlfriend was handling it at the time, and towards the end it was truly horrendeous - his sinuses had partially collapsed and he just.... I mean I can't imagine. I can't imagine how hard it was for her. Mallory, if you're reading this, I... I mean I thanked you at the time, but I don't think I understood fully. Because it is awful.

Or when our other cats died. Or when we showed up, literally penniless, at a house in New York, rented for the next month, which was coated in mold and was essentially unlivable; a house where we spent the next month, what items we could fit in all thrown into the living room, where we all slept on mattresses and tried to stay out of the other rooms (which always gave me a headache if I spent too long there). Or when we came back from the beach one day in Ocean City to learn that our mother had died in New York. Or at the wake. Or other, also-very-bad things which I probably shouldn't share in a public blog.

The point is, I've felt grief before this. But it had always been like pulling off a band-aid: a quick sting which fades. Some stings take longer to fade than others, it's true, but all fade. That's life, and while I'm not quite sure if Time heals all wounds, it can at least reduce them to festering scabs which sometimes burst open again during heavy exertion or changes in barometric pressure.

But a big part of those moments of grief is that the causes were instant. When Ricky died, he seemed fine, came downstairs, and died. Instant. When we learned our mother had died, it had already been several hours. Instant. When other relatives have died, or pets, or any other horrible thing has happened to us, it's either been at a distance or instant. Or, in the case of the Mold House, as we call it, a long (and difficult) present that we hope will get better.

But with Gaia it was different. I had never sat by and watched something suffer before, with no possibility of recovery. I know that humans are the only animal cursed with their own mortality, but something in the animal mind tells it when it's about to die; elephants have graveyards, gulls have the sea, and cats - well, cats are known for crawling under hard-to-reach places to die, so no one can see them. They don't like revealing weakness, which is maybe another reason why I get along with them so well.

What happens when that instinct goes off, and leads an animal to choose its final place... and then it doesn't quite happen? What if instead of an instant death they suffer slowly, locked in a state between both life and death? In that moment when the instinct fires off, do they realize what's happening? Do they lay there, feeling their breaths become shorter and shorter, their vitals weakening and shutting down, their body losing its heat? Do they know what's happening?

Maybe they don't; I don't know. But it's given me a lot to think about over the last few days, and it was a whole lot to think about Sunday night. The immensity of what was happening was clear, at least to me, though it seemed like most others were either blind to it or numb to it. Which is how I would have been, before, I think. Trying not to feel anything.

Because it was fucking terrible. I was crying for about two hours straight, and while I am not the most masculine man in the world, I don't like crying and I don't cry easily or often. But for two hours I sat there, blowing my nose as the tears fell, and I really thought about all this stuff. And I even recorded a video; I don't know why, but I just began talking to myself and thought this might be a good opportunity to have for future reference. I'll never let anyone see it, I'm sure; though I speak to a third party, it's waaaay too personal. And cheesy: in that moment I was not my most articulate or witty, I'm sorry to say. But I felt like it was important, because it shows me myself grieving, something I have experienced before, but tightly-reined and as brief as I could make it. It shows my reaction to an ongoing incident, one happening right before me, and though I'm mostly incoherent throughout it, or silent, I guess it doesn't really matter.

Just sitting there and being sad is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I really, really, really really really wanted to leave, go distract myself with something, stop thinking about it. Because that would have been easy, at least for me; I've gotten extremely good at compartmentalizing and dissembling. And it's gotten easier the further it's gotten from Sunday, too. I try to think about it at least once or twice a day, just to keep it in my mind, but it is of course a sad memory and my unconscious tries to not dwell on it. Soon, I'm sure, I won't think about it much unless reminded of it by some outside factor.

But I didn't leave, and that's the point. I didn't distract myself, because I wanted to spend the time with her, and be with her. And I don't even know if she knew I was there, or if she felt anything at all. I hope she did, but in the end it doesn't really matter, because I was mostly there for Me. I felt like she deserved, what, at least two hours of my time, after all the years I spent with her. I watched over her because I actually hated the thought of leaving her alone, which I told to my brother (who wasn't sure if he could sleep in a room with a dying cat - and I totally understand that). He eventually decided to stay, otherwise I would have volunteered to sleep there that night. The thought of her in that condition, in a dark room, alone, slowly dying... I hated it. I hated it. I'm not being overly-dramatic; it was anathema to me. I was not going to let that happen, even if she didn't know I was there, even if she was feeling no pain and wasn't aware of anything around her. Couldn't do it. Wouldn't do it.

The next morning she was taken to the vet and put to sleep. My brother said she had begun twitching more violently, so it's for the best. And he not only slept in the room, but slept next to her on the floor, the whole night. Which... I mean, I know it's pathetic, but I'm crying a bit about right now. Lame, lame, I know. But for some reason that meant - and still means - so much to me.

So that's where I am with grief, now. I let it in; or at least, there was no barrier there to keep it out. And it was about as horrible as I expected, and since very few people enjoy feeling grief and sadness, on some level I wish that the wall was still up, that I could have been affected in the moment and quickly scrubbed it from the emotional receptors of my mind instead of tearing up at just the thought of it half a week later. But I'm also happy, because that wouldn't have been fair to Gaia, or my relationship with her, or how much happiness she brought me during a pretty miserable period of my life. Or even the annoyances when I'd trip over her in the dark and she'd meow in reproach at me and I'd shout back "what do you expect you're laying in the middle of the kitchen in the dark!"

As much as I wish it, life can't be just about the good times. Scratch that, because good times for me are in extremely short supply - it can't even be just about the non-terrible times. A lot of it is about the terrible times, the awful experiences, the waist-high lake of excrement I wade through to get to the opposite bank, though the bank keeps getting further and further away, and the lake gets deeper and deeper, and there's something in here with me, and now that I think about it I'm not sure that even is another bank, it could just be an optical illusion of the boiling sunlight reflecting off of the shit that is my life.

And now that I've engaged in my self-inflicted misery, it's time to watch a video or play a game or talk to someone, anything to get my mind off of things. Just because my life is an ocean of loss and pain, and I'm fully committed to acknowledging that, it doesn't mean I can't have a daydream of thunderstorms and northern lights and crisp mountain air, does it?

Lame Poetry Detected

For the record: I don't like or respect most contemporary poetry. I've taken a class or two, and dealt with poetry a lot in an academic setting, but I am not a poet by any stretch. Sometimes, it's soothing/fun to write a poem though, so that's what I'm doing right now. It's something I wrote on my way to work and 'edited' during a break. It is not good. But it is bad, and that can be entertaining too!

Internal Combustion


A stormcloud engine drives me
Can you hear the crash of heat lightning from inside?
Can you taste the metal and oil on my tongue?
Can you smell the ozone in my speech?
It drives me, uses myself to power myself
(self-consumption)
The purer the fuel,
the hotter the burn,
the brighter the flame
Now, the fire burns white
How long can I endure
Until nothing but cinders remain?