Every week or so, Brandon Brown & I get together, usually on the internet, and write a novella. It has lots of ways of going about it. The basic thing is, we write for one hour and don't look back.
Last week we got together in person instead of on the internet and decided that, instead of an online back and forth, we were to describe, separately, a scene, while together drinking white wine in my living room. Later we would each send our RAW DATA of the one hour to a third person who will mesh them. We will not each see the other's until after our proxy has married them. Here were our rules, as I noted them, exactly:
[[[landscape on a mountain, to which our character, and whoever else, will eventually go. a reflection on geologic time, and the events of the last week in proportion. (oh god). necessary objects: a boulder, a pair of scissors, (that exercise, as an object). no running water, no stream, no waterfall.]]]
Here is my RAW DATA . Generated Aug 13 2009, 834pm til approx 934pm:
One doesn’t describe a mountain one is not seeing. Mountains are often brown. Alternatively, belief is in a green mountain. Steep. Trails always dusty on mountains, and the desire is always to get to the top of one. Or them, depending. On wit, inclination, manliness, gestural affection for objects of nature, plans and pleasures of conquering, snow aptitude, gear readiness, fiction. A mountain is steep. Gentle if white, if fierce. An object for exercise. A tent pitched askew on the trail, asking for entrance. A rock, it could almost be called a boulder, pitching askew the flap, in order to make the object appear it is begging for entrance. At the top of the mountain, a tent, tail pitched askew. Flap folded open. No objects inside it. (The mountain?) No tents know mountaintops ready to ascertain the object of entrance. A rock aside the tip of a flap, holding askew an ask for an entrance. Tent, object, rock, tree, sway, open. Ok. A mountain. If there were one to see it, it could be seen from here. Beyond the tent are the trees, mountains generally have them. Here. Here they’re generally some kind of skinny pine. So, pines, shade, rock, tent, objects with entrance. Entrancing. That’s bad linguist. Wrong introduction. A small metal canteen, in the dirt, at the other side of the tent. Near a tent pole. A stake. Tents are held up by poles and by tension of small metal stakes pounded into the mountain. The canteen set the stakes. The canteen sets the stakes for this scene. Change direction. The mountain. Mountains have vistas. There are two scenes: the shade of the trees, and ‘the vista’. Three: the tent. Nothing moves. The skin of the tent slightly moves. The skin of the tent breathes. The needles shift. The pine shifts. Behind the ocean shifts. The canteen sits. The stake stage left glints. The stake is an upside-down L, with the tip pointing left. It's captured the ring of the tent and by this tension it keeps it taut to counter the boulder’s pull at the flap, it lets the skin tightly shift, in appearance “to breathe”. It takes time in a landscape to shift. The ring in the fold of the tent that encircles the upside-down, left-facing L of the stake is laquered as gray as the tent. Its underside’s unpainted and touches the mountain. The fabric’s rent. The fabric’s rented. A breeze. The canteen angles, it tips, it’s empty. That’s it for event. The vista: a hillock, an ocean, an island. Bridge to the island cuts a vista like an angled third of paper. This time it takes to get from flap to vista: a long time. Back again: frame never shifted. Behind the tent a shade from trees opposite a vista. Of mountains it’s said trees, of trees grove, shade, needles, bed, floor, forest, things, wet, dry, they get said in equal proportion. To slice up the scene: a canteen, a rock, a tip, an L, a multiplicity of angle, of needle, an expression of height, ‘atop’ is implied, a tent, a flap, a ring, a lack, an entrance, an ask, a shift, does anything really ‘breathe’? A tension. Is the envelope implied? the entrance an enclosure? The vista is open. Oh, a road. And it’s been there the whole time. Between the tent, afront the line of trees, and between the tent and the vista, a road. Rough. Rocky. But tame. It’s a tame scene. Flap’s flapping. Canteen’s on its side. “Resting”.
In ancient mythology, Ambrosia is sometimes the food, sometimes the drink, of the Greek gods. The word has generally been derived from Greek a-("not") and mbrotos ("mortal"); hence the food or drink of the immortals. Derivatively, the word Ambrosia (neuter plural) was given to certain festivals in honour of Dionysus, probably because of the predominance of feasting in connection with them. "Ambrosia" is related to the Hindu amrita, a drink which conferred immortality on the ancient Hindu gods. However we know Ambrosia as a fruit dessert, often made of oranges and bananas with shredded coconut.
