Sky to Ourselves (short story)

I am not tired and I am not quite awake. In the distance, the buildings look faint like the remaining traces of an erased drawing. Fabi and Jonte walk silently around the plane, muttering to each other.

The fog lingers, as it always does. Fog is never in a hurry. It hides the beauty of the surrounding mountain peaks, and it doesn’t care.

Fabi stands under a wing and reaches up to unscrew something, I don’t know what. Anyway, it’s limited how long I can stare at Fabi’s plane before it starts resembling a toy, and the leap is short, in my mind, between toy and broken toy. Before I know it, I imagine the airplane tossed aside, like a dead bird with its neck and wings in odd angles.

But there is no way from here to anywhere, except through the air.

“Lilja! Are you keeping warm?”

It’s Jonte calling.

I try to sit up a bit straighter on my suitcase, and I try to smile, because I know I look haggard. The most important thing is that it’s clear that I’ve made up my mind.

“That’s good,” Jonte mutters, but he looks worried.

My body hates the raw, clawing cold. My lungs are crumbled up paper bags filled with rocks. I wrap my arms around my skinny legs. Around us, the fog has lifted ever so slightly. I can see a little further now, and I realize I’ve been absentmindedly looking for birch trees, and the outline of a boathouse, close to the summerhouse.

Inside my stomach, something turns over. No baby – I’m not pregnant, I never will be. But something, nonetheless, almost like another person, another and more sensible me, who wants to let me know I should have never left. I shuffle my feet a little, and dig my chin into my collar. I’m wearing my dad’s old bomber jacket, the one he had when he was a teenager and looked like James Dean. We look nothing alike, he and I, except we’re both blonde and blue-eyed, but that’s Sweden for you. Besides our colouring, we’re very different, not least when it comes to our views on the world. My dad is a small-town guy, not one for adventure. I know I’ve broken his heart.

The bomber jacket doesn’t smell like him anymore, but I’m still glad I stole it. It makes me feel like I have him with me, when the homesickness kicks in with waves of nausea, and I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. Sometimes it’s almost unbearable, how much I miss my family and common everyday things in familiar surroundings, back at our old, whitewashed brick house, in its unkempt garden, or in the summerhouse.

I’ve somehow managed to not give in. I know that when I return, my dad will never take their eyes off me again, or leave me unguarded by an assistant – not for a second.

The brick house where I grew up, back in Sweden, was the only brick house in the street. It always looked slightly weird in amongst all the brightly painted wooden houses. We lived there because my mom was afraid of fire. We had a fireplace, but it was only used if it was so cold there were ice crystals forming on the floorboards – we used gas heating instead.

I remember feeling I’d reached the apex of my teenage rebellion when I snuck a candle into the bathroom and lit it, with my unsteady hands, and then showered without keeping an eye on it. My heart was pounding so hard black dots started floating around in my vision, and I felt the room spinning. But I held out, finished my shower, and then blew out the candle. And I never confessed my crime.

Jonte, or Jonatan, as the non-Swedes call him, was the one who taught me to exchange the word “fear” with the word “respect”. It has taken me a long time, but slowly, I learned no longer to fear fire, but to respect it; to treat it as the wild thing it really is.

I suppose Jonte would be surprised if he heard I learned it from him. He probably doesn’t even recall the conversation. Although he thinks more than anyone I know, he’s not an opinionated person, and he’s notoriously reluctant about giving any kind of advice. When you bring up a topic with him, most often, he’ll give you a broad, rambling, sometimes poetic, sometimes nonsensical reply – and by the time he reaches a conclusion, he’s normally long forgotten what actually started his monologue. But somehow the phrase came up, which has now become my personal anthem that I repeat in my mind when I’m afraid. “Don’t fear the fire – respect it.”

I’ve since started thinking about many other things in the same way. Heights, for example. The ocean. Speed. I prefer when Fabi drives, rather than speed-crazy Jonte. Fabi embodies the same sort of healthy respect for engines and traffic accident statistics and weather forecasts as I do. Well – as I normally do. The fog is an exception. We cannot respectfully go flying on a foggy day such as this, in a rackety little toy plane. The only respectful option was the one that recognized the danger the fog represented, and acted accordingly – by staying on the ground.

But I have always flown in the fog. Ever since I was born. Ever since my mother realized something about me wasn’t quite right, when I was about three months old. I try not to use medical language; it estranges people from me, and goodness knows I am isolated enough as it is. I have a speech impediment that makes it impossible to pronounce even the simplest thing fully. I was born this way, with a lack control over my voice, my tongue and my mouth. I’ll never talk like a normal person. That’s why I love Jonte so much. He’s one of a very small number of people I’ve met who initially understood that despite the way I talk, my mind is perfectly sound.

I can walk and move almost normally, but sometimes my head will roll over, and I easily loose my balance. And I have to sit still, mostly, like now, to make sure my heart rate doesn’t rise dangerously, which it does all too easily. My heart has always been like a ticking bomb – so I’ve overheard it said. (I’ve overheard a great many incredible things, too, because often people talk very freely around me, thinking I can’t understand what they’re saying.) It was flawed metaphor, “ticking bomb”. My heart will never explode. It will simply stop. Maybe when I’m twenty-three. Maybe when I’m twenty-five. Doctor Lindström didn’t think I’d live past five years of age, initially, so I know I’m living on borrowed time.

Jonte and Fabi’s flight checks are finally done. I get up from the suitcase and wrap my arms around myself, as if my dad is here to comfort me. Jonte comes over, asking if I’m ready, which I am.

“Are you cold?”

“A little,” I reply. “And your nose is pink.”

“Is it?” Jonte mumbles. “Lilja, are you sure you want to do this?”

I’ve thought about it very thoroughly. Firstly, I know we must leave from here, because I want to see more of the world – I am terrified that the harsh winter up in the mountain will be more than my body can handle. Secondly, we all know there are no legal options open to us. We can’t fill in forms and write our names down. I am reported missing, and my parents and the Swedish police are working hard to track me down so that I can be kept safe. I’ll live the rest of my life in a cushioned cage, surrounded by guards twenty-four seven.

But that’s far too much to say right now. I lock eyes with Jonte, hoping he can see some of the things on my mind, regardless of how ill I must look.

“Yes, I’m ready,” I say.

Jonte helps me into the plane, and soon we are ready for take-off. Fabi turns on the engine and starts flicking switches. I am sitting in the back, unable to see his face, but I assume he’s rather worried. Being the way he is, though, right now I think he’s more concerned about breaking rules, than about the chance that we might soon be smashed against a mountainside.

When the tower realizes we’re about to leave the ground, they’ll shout at us. So far, they haven’t noticed that we weren’t just checking out the plane, but actually preparing for take-off. Nobody is allowed to fly in this weather, with a storm so close. But, as I argued to Jonte: If we don’t leave now, we could be stuck here for three months. When the snow has fallen, flight traffic all but ceases.

“We’ll be flying blind!” Fabi protested yesterday, when I told him that I wanted to leave the mountains behind. “You realize we could crash into another plane mid-air?”

“She realizes that,” said Jonte, whom I had already convinced. “But she says no other pilots will be stupid enough to fly now. We’ll have the sky to ourselves.”

“You’re insane!” Fabi exclaimed, stomping off in anger.

But he came back a few hours later, muttering, “So where would you wanna go?”

The engine roars, making the airplane rattle. I imagine Tuscany, wondering if it can possibly be sunny or golden at this time of the year. Through the scratched window, the sky seems to loom over us, enormous and heavy. Soon we will be in the midst of it.

Rats (behind the scenes)

I posted the short story Rats a little while back, and now I’d like to share some of the “behind the scenes” stuff behind it. My motivation for doing this is because I find it interesting, and so maybe you will too, and maybe we can inspire each other.

Rats is a short story responding to the prompt “you are the victim of injustice” on TheProse.com, where I originally posted the story. Not for the first time, I was inspired by the amazing Kazuo Ishiguro, and specifially, by the notion of approaching the concept an alternative world a little bit differently.

So that was the first impulse, or piece of inspiration, if you like.

The second was a video I’ve seen where the experience of a refugee child is portrayed using a white child actress, thereby brilliantly confronting the idea of “us” and “them”, forcing Westerners to take in a) that all humans are alike, and b) that it could so easily have been us. The world could have looked different. Indeed, the world might look different in the future.

This idea fascinated me. It may not surprise you to hear that I support the statement “Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.”

And so I decided to go with the idea that the East grows to become the new super power, whereas the West diminishes and becomes poor, factories now being built in the West just like right now, they are in the East, because that’s where cheap labour is.

There is also a historical reference within Rats, namely the factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh in 2013. I have visited Bangladesh once, and met the people there, and I have Bangla friends. They might as well have been Westerners, in some senses, but they live in a country which is extremely poor, which has an incredibly corrupt government, and which is exploited by international organizations. A large number of people lost their lives or were fatally wounded in that building collapse. But who talks about it now? And though “conscious fashion” is a growing trend I wholeheartedly support, it remains true that most people go shopping without it even crossing their minds who made these clothes, and whether they were exploited, or what we can do to better their working conditions and pay.

I am by no means a very structured writer who has a strict plan and writes from the beginning to the end making no detours. Indeed, I am a very messy writer who constantly shuffles things about and tweaks them, thinking of stories as pieces of clay that I can mould into whatever shape I like. What I’ve been talking about before, then, is not so much the short story itself, but the impulses behind the idea. In summary: they are these three:

• The idea of approaching an alternative world differently
• The refugee child video campaign challenging the “them/us” idea
• The factory collpase in Bangladesh i 2013

Now we get to the short story, about which I don’t have that much to say. I wrote it quickly – those of you who are writers will know that some stories seem to write themselves.

The factory collapse in Rats happen right by the Thames in London, which was my attempt at turning things on their head, enganging with the idea “them” and “us”, by actually swapping the geographical locations and cultures that provided the setting for the factory collapse. But I didn’t want to linger on this for too long. Inspired by Ishiguro, I wanted the world of the story to simply be, and to focus on what was happening with my characters and in their lives – as they experienced it, not as you or I would.

The protagonist is a regular woman, in most ways. A Londoner recognizable in some ways, but whose world is in many aspects strikingly different from the way we know it. When catastrophe happens, she becames the newspaper cover girl, the face of the disaster, who has to deal with exactly the same problems as we do, in the real world, except from an opposite point of view.

She wants and desires change, but history’s message is not encouraging, and she fears that the Westerner’s roles as “rats” will mean that the disaster will soon be forgotten in the East. But in the woman’s own life, the disaster will in all probability cripple the entire family, because the media and the wealthy people of the world, only care for as long as their attention span lasts.

I wonder if some people might accuse me of writing for the sake of a “moral message”. Actually, I don’t, certainly not on purpose. I think my inclination is to attempt to get people to think more, and to step out of their own shoes and into somebody else’s.

Movie of the Day

About ten years ago, I invented a creative writing exercise called “Movie of the Day”.

Well, I say “invented”. Really, I don’t remember quite how it started, and I dare say there are many variations of this exercise round and about. What I remember is why it started: with the fear of running out of ideas, or forgetting how to make up stories. Or, more precisely, fear of ever becoming intimidated at the prospect of starting a new story.

My creative writing exercise is not intended to produce great things. I think that’s important to stress, because the pressure we put on ourselves to create amazing things can become so much we don’t even start. This exercise, then, is simply intended to keep the imagination at work, making you actively engaging in creating a story.

I’m a picky movie-watcher known to walk out from family movie nights – for the simple reason that some idea had popped into my mind, that interested me much more than the movie. Numerous times I’d be scanning the shelves of DVD’s in my parents’ house (how sad to think the era of DVD’s might be fast approaching an end), finding nothing at all that I wanted to watch. And that, I think, is where this exercise really started – as I asked myself: What are the ingredients of a movie I would want to watch?

In periods, I’d do this once a day, minimum. I’d open my notebook, and write down any and all elements I’d like to see in a movie.

An example of a page like this would be:

Old china cutlery. Loft. Dusty caught in sunlight. Raspy voice. Maybe someone who’s lost their voice (why would that matter? why is her voice important.) No squeaky clean, unrealistic apartments – mess, life, the oddness of the ordinary. The real world-ish, but not quite. Something’s off. What could that be? Also: Drums. A really good, riveting beat, like enormous drums.

And then I’d work from there.

Another way I do it is I pick five interesting images with no obvious correlation, and force myself to somehow create a story using those elements.

Or I’d draw.

I’ve always drawn freehand. Before I ever fell in love with words, I loved storytelling through imagery. My gateway into loving stories was actually cartoons drawn by old masters, such as Hal Foster and André Franquin. I’ve always drawn people, wondering who they are and what their stories are, approaching it a bit like people-watching, really.

I might be writing into an empty void right now, but I hope that with time, more and more writers and story-lovers will happen upon my little corner of the internet. But anyway, I drew this drawing in order for others to participate in exactly what I have just described: to make up a new story.

Within this piece of art, there are numerous elements for you to explain, explore, and piece together. There is the three girls. Who are they? Where are they from and what is their background? Have they known each other for a long time? What has happened to them? Where are they? Are they far from home, or close? What’s going on outside the frames of this picture? What are they talking about? Do they agree or disagree with one another?

And please, please let me know in the comments what you come up with – I’d love to know.

On a final note: Personally, I don’t know what this drawing really portrays. I don’t know if it’s a beginning, middle or end, and there is no “right answer” here. But I definitely have a skeleton of a story that has started to take shape.

Wounded Panther

“She locked herself in her room, refused to eat or drink, and when at last he persuaded her to open the door, first with threats and then with poorly dissimulated pleading, he found a wounded panther who would never be fifteen years old again.”

Quote from “Love in the Time of Cholera” (Original title: “El amor en los tiempos del cólera”) by Gabriel García Márquez.

I read this book in Norwegian, and could not find the quote in English with a corresponding page number. In the Norwegian version it was on page 99.

The Panther & the Almond Tree

About a year ago, I came across a fantastic podcast called “A Writer’s Life”. I would recommend it to any serious writer, especially if you have a sarcastic sense of humour and don’t mind being offended at times. This podcast is actually so good I’ve listened to several of the episodes twice, some even three times, and I’ve actually cried with laughter listening to podcast host Dan Black’s fantastic rants and ramblings.

One of the things I have to thank Dan Black for, was that he did something to rekindle my interest in the classics. I’ve struggled for a long time with overcoming the notion “old books are boring”, because for so many of them, that’s absolutely not the case. Besides, as I’ve matured and gotten a bit older, my own tastes have changed to, and I’ve grown used to styles that I found too dry when I was fourteen.

The list of classical authors I had never read, goes on for miles. Even the most famous ones I had barely touched, certainly not since reading simplified excerpts at school. Authors like Dickens, Tolstoy, Austen, the Brontë sisters, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway. A favourite of Dan Black’s was Gabriel García Márquez.

And so it was with great joy that I, a couple of months ago, discovered my parents actually owned a García Márquez novel, namely the famed “Love in the Time of Cholera” (“El amor en los tiempos del cólera”) from 1985.

Life got a bit busy after that, as life does, but now I’ve finished it, and oh my. What a wordsmith.

We’re all unique, of course, and we prefer different things. I have a distinct weakness for rich details and imagery, and striking metaphors, such as the quote in the post “wounded panther”, which uses exactly this as a most striking metaphor. It’s used nowhere else in the book, and yet it is so clear, so striking, exactly what is meant. I went around for days after reading that line, chewing on the words, tasting them.

Oh, the beauty. Oh, that I might learn to write like that. Oh, that more people would strive to write like that, employing precise and original imagery to convey their meaning – not getting caught up in cliches, nor in sugary “literary” language which is so caught up in being literary, that it becomes exhausting or even boring to read. (Will I be mauled by trolls for saying something like that? Oh, come on. We’re writers. We can we should we must do better!)

I did wonder for a while what to draw for this post. I realized that drawing a panther here would work against the very thing that I think the metaphor does so brilliantly – that that thing is something which really can’t be done with imagery. Metaphores are a treasure of writing and storytelling, communicating on a different level than lines drawn with a pencil. So I drew some blossoming almond tree branches; the almond tree being another, but much more concrete, image in the book.
PS: The last episode of “A Writer’s Life” was put up on November 11th, 2015, but nonetheless, the 34 that are up are amazing. You can find them here: http://awlshow.com/ or wherever you get your podcasts (probably).