Elphyon
01-16-2008, 04:34 AM
Hi. This is my third post here, and second thread posted.
I have a couple of passages from a novel I'm working on that I would like to be looked at. I could go on forever introducing them, but your time's probably just as valuable-if not more than-mine, so here it goes. I would greatly appreciate your input- in a written form please! :)
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Time passes, as it always does. Now on his back, the night sky so close to his eyes, Juan feels himself to be blank, almost lost in the overwhelming weariness of being. For a moment, for a small blissful fragment in time he forgets himself. The world without I seem strange, inconceivable yet familiar to his unthinking mind, his absent being. He cannot summon a word for it. Strange, so strange… But even those formless words bubbling in his mind dispels the selfless world. He is again himself, Juan, Juan, poor, poor Juan—yes that’s who I am how could I forget I am Juan. From the subterranean abyss of his soul, names and faces and voices erupt. He remembers and forgets. But they sink again, again vanish into that far and unreachable depths of his mind where, as in a lone and ancient grove, dwell the sorrowful shadows of memories forgone, darkly, so darkly.
And as these faces and names and voices disappear from his consciousness, his tears are utterly changed: they are now empty, each one nothing but a shell of the mourning he felt and so readily lost, those sad, sad crocodile tears.
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Now Juan sleeps, dreams as he sleeps. He dreams of her, of that fateful evening of their encounter. He feels through a dreamdusted window; he remembers in sad faded colors the dancing, the scent of her neck, the sweatdrops and the incense. He remembers too her teeth, the two chipped ones front and low, and how she pulled away from a kiss and laughed when he felt them. That laughter, the memory of it, though soft and distant, makes a crack in the shady window of our dreamer’s mind. It is but a crack, but through it the colors of his senses come alive, slowly seeping, now flowing, as he remembers her voice with a strange clarity: a goblin tried to take them one night, she tells him. I knocked it away with an olive branch, like this. She smacks him on the forehead, playful. He remembers, even in a dream he tells himself: that’s why. That shysly grin she... She pulls him toward a carriage. He follows, hesitant because of the new and strange rhythm in his chest, but not scared, not feeling himself, nor the world, just trying to dance to the new beat, letting her lead, following.
I have a couple of passages from a novel I'm working on that I would like to be looked at. I could go on forever introducing them, but your time's probably just as valuable-if not more than-mine, so here it goes. I would greatly appreciate your input- in a written form please! :)
--------------
Time passes, as it always does. Now on his back, the night sky so close to his eyes, Juan feels himself to be blank, almost lost in the overwhelming weariness of being. For a moment, for a small blissful fragment in time he forgets himself. The world without I seem strange, inconceivable yet familiar to his unthinking mind, his absent being. He cannot summon a word for it. Strange, so strange… But even those formless words bubbling in his mind dispels the selfless world. He is again himself, Juan, Juan, poor, poor Juan—yes that’s who I am how could I forget I am Juan. From the subterranean abyss of his soul, names and faces and voices erupt. He remembers and forgets. But they sink again, again vanish into that far and unreachable depths of his mind where, as in a lone and ancient grove, dwell the sorrowful shadows of memories forgone, darkly, so darkly.
And as these faces and names and voices disappear from his consciousness, his tears are utterly changed: they are now empty, each one nothing but a shell of the mourning he felt and so readily lost, those sad, sad crocodile tears.
-------------------
Now Juan sleeps, dreams as he sleeps. He dreams of her, of that fateful evening of their encounter. He feels through a dreamdusted window; he remembers in sad faded colors the dancing, the scent of her neck, the sweatdrops and the incense. He remembers too her teeth, the two chipped ones front and low, and how she pulled away from a kiss and laughed when he felt them. That laughter, the memory of it, though soft and distant, makes a crack in the shady window of our dreamer’s mind. It is but a crack, but through it the colors of his senses come alive, slowly seeping, now flowing, as he remembers her voice with a strange clarity: a goblin tried to take them one night, she tells him. I knocked it away with an olive branch, like this. She smacks him on the forehead, playful. He remembers, even in a dream he tells himself: that’s why. That shysly grin she... She pulls him toward a carriage. He follows, hesitant because of the new and strange rhythm in his chest, but not scared, not feeling himself, nor the world, just trying to dance to the new beat, letting her lead, following.