Twelve Movies Meme (+2)

This one is from Sarah, who got it from a bunch of other people I'm too lazy to link to. The idea is to assemble twelve movies you would most like to exhibit in your own dream film festival.

Since I'm into movies and all, I figured I'd give this one a shot. I'm not going to organize this by day. They are in correct order, but the days would have no theme at all.

And away we go!

1. From Dusk Till Dawn - My favorite Rodriguez movie and still perhaps George Clooney's best role is the film I'm going to use to blow into the festival with. It's cool, it's violent, and it's ceaselessly entertaining. What better way to start off than with Tom Sevini wearing a crotch-gun and Harvey Keitel playing a dorky character?

2. Hedwig & The Angry Inch - I was determined to have only one musical in this list, and since everybody these days with any taste is going to put Once on their list, I'm going to go with something a little more high-energy. The story of a transexual from (then-divided) East Berlin is still one of the best musicals ever.

3. Grave of the Fireflies - I wanted one animated film (as it is I got away with one and a half) and Grave of the Fireflies is it. I was tempted to put in a Miyazaki film, but Grave of the Fireflies continues to be one of the saddest films I've ever seen. A definite must-see and perhaps the best anti-war film ever.

4. A Clockwork Orange - Probably my only 'official' classic on the list, and with good reason--it's hilariously dark. There is something so powerful about McDowell's performance as Alex that I can't help but automatically love the movie, even if it's one of my more recent seen films.

5. Speed Racer - Of all the actiony popcorn fare that I could include I put forth the one that nobody saw. This is still the coolest film of the summer (I'm sorry, Dark Knight, but while you're the better film this one was ceaselessly entertaining). There has never been anything quite like it, and I doubt there will be ever again.
5 (alt theatrer). American Psycho - I couldn't not put this on the list, but there were already twelve on there. This is still Christian Bale's best role. There's nothing better than nerdy violence, and American Psycho has that in spades. Hope you have a dark sense of humor for this one.

6. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance - The only asian film on the list (Takashi Miike almost got a film or three on here, maybe next time) comes this third in an unconnected trilogy of 'vengeance' films. The most popular, the middle film Oldboy, doesn't hold a candle to this much more subtle, abstract treatise that closes out the trilogy. A beautiful, beautiful film.

7. The Science of Sleep - Michel Gondry might be a little too big for my film festival, but I love this movie. I'm going to give an alternate theatre to this one, because other people might have seen it (as they should have) but I can't help but show it again. This is probably the sweetest film on the list, and the only one that has anything in the way of romance.
7 (alt theatre) Jackie Brown - I've felt horrible about almost keeping Tarantino off of my list, but his films are pretty high profile. Not so for Jackie Brown, the movie that nobody's seen and everyone should. Also noted for being the only Samuel L Jackson movie on this list (I was tempted to include Black Snake Moan, but didn't). Jackie Brown isn't Tarantino's best film (that goes to Death Proof, which was also very underseen) but it's the one that deserves the most coverage.

8. Day of the Dead - I was only going to put one zombie movie on this list (otherwise it'd be a whole truckload of them) and of course it was going to be a Romero one. Dawn of the Dead was the obvious choice, but everyone with even a novice appreciation of film has seen Dawn of the Dead. Instead, I'm going to go for the lesser known and much better third film of the trilogy (or quadrology, with the so-so Land of the Dead). Also, I was very tempted to put Shawn of the Dead in here, but decided against it for little more than the fact that Romero wins.

9. Brick - A neo-noir set in a contemporary west coast high school. This film is amazingly shot, and beautifully written. There's nothing I could tell you that would explain it, other than this might just be the best teen film I have ever, ever seen. Absolutely stupendous.

10. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - Sergio Leone's biggest, best-known film barely beat out his final spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West if only because I prefer the dynamics in this one a little better. There is nothing in this film that is bad. There's a reason that much of this film instantly became a part of our culture. Without a doubt, this is a strong contender of the best shot film. Ever. Seeing it on a big screen is on my list of things to do with my life.

11. Hard Candy - Before she starred in Juno, Ellen Page starred in this smaller, much darker film about a teenage girl and a guy who might or might not have less than honorable intentions for her. The less you know the better it is, but I figured having such a small piece (only two major actors) sandwiched in between two massive epics was the way to go.

12. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - My favorite film of all time (except for when it briefly falls to two or three) is Terry Gilliam's bomb about the mad adventurer way past his prime. I could tell you about this film, about the scope and imagination that is mind-blowing considering it's pre-CG. About the comedy typical of Gilliam's films. About the charm and beauty that crops up in surprising places. But instead I will simply let this one, a sadly neglected masterpiece, stand up after all the others and speak for itself.

And that's it. The contenders list, each one hard to cut, included the following: O Brother Where Art Thou, Visitor Q, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Iron Giant, Sin City, Oceans Twelve, Hot Fuzz, Kill Bill, Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffanys, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (still better than The Dark Knight, sadly), Memento, The Usual Suspects, Spirited Away, and Chaplin.

Notes from the Airplane

I composed the following on the airplane. As much as I would have loved to pull out a laptop and peck away this piece on the plane, Deborah isn't in travelling shape and I wasn't going to saddle myself with a laptop on my flight, so instead I mentally composed this ... essay? Forget that I'm writing it on Tuesday, two days later. That's incidental.

I'm rising over Tucson as I compose this. Takeoff was painless, nothing more than sitting there while someone else does all the work. All our advances have turned taking to the air at great speed to cover even greater distance as easy as parking yourself and making sure your seat belt is securely fastened. The difficult part was back on the ground, when you stepped through the gates and left behind the place you were and the people you were with. Indeed, sometimes taking off is the easiest part of it all.

Below me stretches the city. Coming in, I was taken aback at just how spread out everything is and this impression hasn't left me in the five days I've been here. The city sprawls with a deliberate and controlled pace. Tucson is certainly the furthest West I've gone and the city has that underlying order that comes from being planned in the modern era. Other cities I've flown into and above typically have all the grace of a toddler's enthusiastic scribbles. Even DC, which was initially a planned city, quickly devolves into insanity when you look past the main urban centers.

But Tucson has the orderly grid-based city planning that I will always associate in my head with a properly running Sim City. In all directions stretches the city in an obsessively leisurely pace. The city could probably comfortably cover two thirds of the area it does and contain everything it has, but the space just helps justify its place in the world. And with the city ringed on all side by mountains, I can't really blame it for trying to puff itself up. Against the mountains, the flat southwest architecture feels flat and two-dimensional even from the ground, an impression that doesn't get any better from above.

From above the desert vista isn't nearly as impressive. Below--when you can see roads stretching far into nowhere and nothing, where the saguaro and agave begin to dominate, other plants too exotic and strange for me to identify--it seems as if wilderness is only barely kept at bay. But from above the grid looks like a net cast upon the ground to control and dominate it. From the air, the city is clearly the victor.

We're rising East along Broadway and I can't help but smile. In my time in Tucson I spent the majority of my driving in the city limits on Broadway. Such is a main street. And along it, I see the various places where I've been. From here I could nearly trace my path to every place I've visited. The plane banks slightly to the north before I can see Kristen's apartment, but I fly right over it as we continue rising towards the mountains.

Below me, I see the roads slowly fall away until there's little more than a single insistent highway making its way up into the foothills. As I look at the thin thread beginning to cut into the quickly rising cliff face, I realize that I know this road. Three days before Kris and I had piled into the Avenger I had rented to do a little exploring and ended up making for Mt. Lemmon.

The Catalina Highway goes into the Santa Catalina Mountains (surprise) and the road is like nothing I had ever experienced before. I had driven through the Black Hills some ten years before and the Appalachians a year or two before that, but this was like another world entirely. The desert below fell away and we were left with a two lane highway that snaked its way up the cliff face. Rounding blind corners with the valley right beside you is thrilling in a James Bond kind of way. I could almost imagine what it would be like travelling along the Alps. Those who have visited Europe may laugh, but for someone from the midwest the very idea of mountains are nearly inconceivable.

The plane is cutting straight up the side of the mountain, so from my seat I'm only able to see part of the road, but I spot the biggest vista point roughly six or seven thousand feet up. It was here that on our way down from Summerhaven we stopped to take a look around. There is an area with a sidewalk and rail but past the rail is a ridge of rocks extending out a few hundred feet. There were visitors perched on flat areas, a group of tourists right up front where the going is easy. And far at the end, younger teens scrambling over rocks to the very end, where the rocks drop off again.

It was here that I realized that even if she was wearing heeled sandals, Kris was three times as agile as me. On the way out, unfamiliar with rocky terrain, I had quite a time finding footing and making my way out to the rocks where we stopped and took in the view of the mountain below us and Tucson stretched out over the horizon. At that point the weather was warm (we were far too high for hot) and it was utterly quiet. There was a light breeze, but aside from that, there was nothing. No grasses, no bugs. Just the wind and the silent rocks. It felt as if the world below weren't moving, that up there was a place out of time. Descending as dusk neared did nothing to help that perception of timelessness while we were on the mountain.

My plane rises above the mountain and over the other side, where we fly into the mountains. On the other side of the Catalinas the clouds are heavier and hold the promise of rain. I'm fairly certain that the rain will never see Tucson. Tucson is supposedly in its rainy season, but in five days I saw one brief 45 minute deluge. And it was indeed a deluge, with the kind of rain that in Omaha would be accompanied with lightning and thunder and hail and all sorts of other insane weather.

But it ended before it really got going, and the whole area just as quickly dried out. The rainstorm was little more than a slight spritzing before the desert moved on with its typically arid self. But then, We've gotten more than double the rain to date in 2008 than Arizona is supposed to get all year, so I'm just lacking the appropriate context to appreciate what that rain meant. Seeing people huddled up to windows like the world was ending outside was rather surreal for something as every day as rain.

My flight is uneventful, despite some turbulence as we pass through those clouds that I saw before and the bigger ones after it that seem primed to build into a storm. And as I piece together the idea of this piece in my head (where it seemed much shorter than it's turned out to be so far) the plane passes far enough ahead to outrun the sun.

Afternoon gives way to an uneasy gray dusk in minutes. Which, writing this now, is indicative of returning. Under the Arizona sun, the sky seemed to be a bleached out void that stretched forever. In five days the city looked like five different cities under that sun, under the changing light of various cloud covers. And I can imagine that in the bright clear parts of summer when all the clouds flee and the sun shines the entire city takes on the slightly luminous quality of the unreal.

It's certainly sunny here. We haven't had bad weather. But the air is cooler and I feel it more than I figured I would. I won't even remotely say I was acclimated in five days, but I was certainly growing more comfortable with the climate. And here summer has seemingly lost its biting edge.

When my plane finally descended upon Omaha it was fully dark. We dropped through the cloud cover and spread out before me was Omaha in all its glittering glory. Omaha isn't nearly as big as Tucson, but it's twice as bright. At night, Omaha is a sea of lights, with street lights on every street and oceans of light coming from parking lots and stores and buildings. From above, blocks twinkle like Christmas trees and every major street is easily visible as it makes its way through the city.

I already knew that Omaha had terribe light pollution, but seeing my home city welcoming me back with all of its familiar light drove the point home. Two days before I was driving to dinner with Kristen, and the darkness was absolute. Street lights are reserved for only a few streets and as a whole the city is best described as dark. I drove the same street at night and then the next day and had I not been told I wouldn't have known. The street, only a few blocks from the main street of the city, was swallowed by a darkness so absolute the roadsides on both sides were swallowed up.

That darkness, in my mind, was reserved for only the most remote stretches of wilderness. But there it was, right before me, draped across the sprawling suburban area that I would discover the next day in broad daylight. Again I felt (as I still feel) that while in Tucson, it appears as though the city only barely keeps a wilderness more insistent and wild than any to be found in the midwest at bay. The great plains just cannot stand up to the desert.

Which is about what I expected. What I didn't expect, though, was how I would feel coming out of that landscape, coming out of that city. When I descended back on Omaha and returned to my home, for the first time I truly looked upon the city of my birth with something equalling at the least indifference and at the most ...

Well, I'm not sure what the most is, yet. But I know that some part of my mind is still staring in awe at the vistas I've left behind. And from here, where mountains are rare and moisture is in the air and the days feel cool though I know they aren't I can't help but think, with longing, on what I've left behind.

A Stray Essay

[ Sarah and me had something of a challenge going. We each gave the other a prompt and had to write a short piece on it. The prompt I gave her was perfectly reasonable and produced a pretty solid piece found HERE. She told me to write with a child main character, 8 or under, on his first day of school.

Two weeks and many, many headdesk's later, I scrapped idea #7 in favor of the below. I literally cannot write from a child's POV, and won't be doing it ever, ever again if I can help it. This one's really short, but these 500 words have more angst poured into them than anything I've written in ages. ]

About Me
by Anthony O'Toole

My name is Anthony and I am seven years old. This year I'm starting the third grade.

Mom says third grade is when you go from little kid to big kid. But I was a big kid since the first grade when my Nana went to heaven. I know because Mom said to me one night when I woke up with bad dreams that I was a big kid now that I knew about life and death. But I don't know if she is right because I was playing ninjas and soldiers way before that and people were always dying.

So I don't know if I'm a big kid before or gonna become one. I know that third grade looks really hard because it has times and stuff like that. Maybe timesing makes you a big kid.

I grew up with Nana and Mom in Nana's house in Kentucky. We had a swing on the tree. Mom always said it was like Mayberry but I don't really know what that means, because our town was called Sweetwater. I liked it there most times but it was small and I wanted some kids to play with. I asked for a brother or sister a few times before Nana told me to hush up about things like that. Probably because I don't have a Daddy and only kids with Daddies get brothers and sisters.

Its okay though because I really don't want Mom to have a baby because if she did she'd get a big stomach and wouldn't play with me as much any more. Most nights when she gets back from work we'll go to the playground or go roller blading and if she had that stomach I'm pretty sure she wouldn't want to do those things. Nana said that when I was in her stomach all she did was throw up a lot.

Last year Nana went to heaven and we moved here. Now we live in an apartment which is closer to the playground but not as big. But there are interesting people in these apartments, too. One of my neighbors is from New York City. I think New York City sounds like an interesting place to go. Mom says she went there when she was younger and that it was big and noisy. Nana used to say that Mom was a small town girl at heart.

This year I'm hoping to make some new friends. Since we moved here I haven't met any other kids yet to play with. Playing with Mom is okay, but when I'm not with her I'm at the daycare place and its just a bunch of babies there. Mom said once school starts I'll meet somebody and find a good friend.

This school is so much bigger than my old school. I was kind of scared seeing all the kids. My other school only had 75 kids in kindergarten-6 and now there are 75 kids just in my grade. I'm not sure who I should talk to. There are so many people!

Mom says that the bigger school will show me more of the world. I think all schools teach you the same world because otherwise they wouldn't be very good schools, so I'm not sure she's right or not. It is only the first day and I am new here so many this is a bigger world than the one at Sweetcreek.

Writing Exercise #3 ( Day 5 )

The author sat in the green room with his wife, nervously glancing at his watch. Barbara smiled at him, reaching out and taking his hand. "Don't worry. It'll be fine."

"I'm not ... worried," the author said. "I'm just antsy. This is taking so much time. I could be writing ... should be writing, really. And I've gotta talk to this yayhoo."

"This yayhoo is Maurice Green, and he's pretty big. You'd know that if you ever watched television. Trust me, you're going to reach a whole lot of housewives with this one."

"I'm not sure I care about reaching housewives," the author said. "I'm doing well for myself."

"Yes, but the publisher said you were doing this show, so you're doing this show." Barbara shook her head. "There's no sense in arguing. You're going on. I mean, you're on in just a few minutes, so freaking out isn't going to change anything."

"Right." The author fell silent. It just didn't help to argue with her. Barbara was much more stubborn than he. Truth be told, he just needed something to focus on while he waited. The wait was killing him. He could feel the desire to head back to the book he was working on burning inside him like a physical need.

"You know," Barbara began. "I've been meaning to talk to you about something..."

The author turned to her and looked up. "Hrm? What about?"

"It's about your writing."

"Oh!" The author smiled. "Actually, I wanted to talk about it, too. This new book is really quite different. I think we're going in a more of a thriller route, this time. But the final act has an interesting twist to it. You see, the antagonist and the main character are playing a game of cat and mouse in a hospital and-"

"No, no," she interrupted. "That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?" The author stared at her, blinking in surprise. She rarely stopped him when he went on about his work.

"Well, it's been a long time since you've taken a break. I think that maybe you should finish this one up and we should ... I don't know. Go on vacation or something."

The author shrugged. "Maybe. I mean, I keep thinking I should be burning out, but it hasn't happened. It's just one idea after another. But I'll think about it."

"All right." She looked down and thought for a moment. "You know, there is one other thing that's been bothering me."

The author turned to face her, smiling. "Go ahead, I can take it."

"Well-"

The door to the green room opened and a production assistance stuck his head in. "We're ready for you."

The author turned and nodded. "Of course." Then he turned to look to Barbara. "You were saying?"

She looked up at him, and her face carried inscrutable emotions with it. She shook her head. "Never mind. It can wait."

The author nodded as he stood. "Very well then. Wish me luck."

"You'll do fine, you don't need it." She smiled and watched as he left the room to head to the stage.

* * * * *

The author walked on to applause. He sat in the chair next to the host, who was an older man who carried himself with a smug authority. The author didn't care much for him, but he was popular and commanded a vast sway with a demographic that didn't typically flock to his books. If the publishers wanted him to perform for more sales, he would do it. It was part of the job.

"Welcome to the show!"

"It's good to be here," the author said. He carried with him a good stage presence, and he knew it. When he was in front of a crowd, he could turn on the charm and the wit. He made an imposing figure, with his offhand manner and his clean look.

"You've written, what? A hundred books by now?"

The author laughed. "No, afraid not. I'm working up to it, but so far I'm only at thirty five."

"That's still quite a collection. You've just recently turned fifty. How do you keep up with that kind of work load? You've even gained speed in the past decade. I know I'm not nearly as fast as I was when I was thirty. Or even when I was fifty. What's your secret?"

"Well, I've come to rely more and more on instinct. Writing is funny like that. At first you try to control everything, and struggle when it doesn't work out. But you tell enough stories and you know how they work and everything just kind of flows out of you naturally. It's streamlined the process a lot."

"You know, most critics say that American authors tend to peak in their fifties. And everything else after that is usually an attempt to replicate their highest success. Do you think you're ready to peak?"

"I don't think so. I really think I'm just getting started."

"Whoa! Big words, there."

"Perhaps. But I don't really have a type of book that defines me. They're all very different, and I regularly switch genres. So even if I did hit a big success somewhere, I have all these other places where I'm still working. I think most authors focus too much on ground they've already covered. I'm interested in blazing ahead."

"Big words indeed."

"As you like. Nobody seems to complain too much, really."

"Well, that's really my next point. Your books have met with great success both in terms of commercial sales and critical acclaim. That makes you something of a rarity in the field. How do you manage to walk the line between entertaining stories and 'high art'?"

"Magic," the author said, with a smile. The audience laughed, as it always did. "But really, I don't do anything special. I write what I like. I'm very old fashioned about it. I don't know if that helps or not, but people seem to respond to it. I'm not trying to appeal to an audience or anything."

"Speaking of old fashioned, a lot of writers are embracing new technology like word processors or even personal computers, if they have the money for one. Yet I hear you're using the same typewriter you started out with in the late fifties. Is that part of your magic?"

The author shifted in his seat, trying not to read too much into the question. "Call it superstition, or call me stubborn. But I have an old portable Remington, and it's seen me through all my novels. I don't see any reason to fix what isn't broken. Sure, maybe those word processors are easier, but writing isn't an easy job. When you have to fix everything the old fashioned way, you pay a lot more attention to what you're writing. I don't think technology really makes writing any better. It just helps people who otherwise wouldn't be bothered. Read into that what you will."

"But it is part of the equation of how you work?"

"Certainly. I wouldn't dream of using anything else. Even if typewriter ribbon is getting harder to find."

"So, this magic of yours... What happens if somewhere down the road, despite all your boasts, you do peak or run out of things to say? What's the plan then?"

The author laughed. "I'm a writer, Maurice. Writer's write. Even if I ran out of magic and my typewriter fell apart and I couldn't think of a thing to say, I'd still write. It's in my blood."

"How would you do it, then, if everything fell apart and the public turned against you?"

The author shrugged as if that was the easiest question in the world. "The same way anybody does it, I suppose--one word at a time."

Writing Exercise #4 ( Day 4 )

The author sat in the corner of the room, staring across at the machine on the lone desk in the room. This was his writing room, where he kept the machine and wrote all of the books that turned him into a household name.

There was no other furniture in this room save that singular small desk and the utilitarian chair that he typically sat on. He didn't need anything else. All that was necessary was a quiet place for him and the machine to continue their unholy communion.

Crouched against the far corner of the room, the author stared at the machine as intently as he would another person. He opened the thermos and drank from it. The strong taste of coffee was a shock to his senses, but he had to keep awake.

His wife, Barbara, had always joked that he could write in his sleep. Indeed, there had been times, more and more frequently, when he found himself waking up at his desk, new pages of prose he didn't remember writing sitting in a pile. It was vivid, intense stuff. Many times it was better than what he wrote when he was awake and aware of what he was doing.

But Barbara was gone. So was his son.

Now ... now things were different. Alone with only the infernal machine for company. What woman would be second to a typewriter? Especially when her husband lost himself to it, again and again.

An empty room of an empty house. The author laughed aloud. "Look at what's happened. Everything around us could rot, and you'd still be ready to make music, wouldn't you?"

He took another drink, then idly rubbed a hand against his cheek. He had been up for three days now, and his hand brushed dryly against stubble. He didn't even want to know how he looked. These days, he was showing his age more and more. Sunken cheeks and wrinkling skin.

It didn't matter anymore that he had written dozens of books, each selling well and growing his legions of fans ... the cost grew with each dollar, each person. It was only through force of will that he wasn't sitting there working away now, even when everything he cared about in his life was falling away.

The author sighed and took another long drink from his thermos. He set it aside, settled back against the wall, and drifted in his thoughts.

It was the sound of the carriage return bell that roused him. He looked up, seeing the typewriter had shifted the carriage to the other side. The author watched. Waited. What had happened? Had something given way on the typewriter? It was old. Here we were, nearing the beginning of the new millenium. Who knew what could happen to machines that old? Certainly that was all it was.

It was then that the clacking of the keys started. The machine, as always, worked like a dream. The keys depressed, the bars rose, struck the ribbon. Yet there was nobody at the helm. No paper in the machine. It just clacked away with all the animation of a pile of bones rattling in a sack.

Tak tak tak.

The author stood and walked over to the machine. It continued to type, the keys pressing and releasing too fast for him to see what they were saying. No, all he could do was watch it go.

Moving without thinking, he grabbed a piece of paper and poised it over the machine. There was a pause as if the machine sensed that there was paper waiting for it. The author slid the paper in, turning the knob to set the paper up. As soon as he did so, the machine snapped to life again, the keys moving as fast as ever.

TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH

The author paused and stared at the words on the page. He couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. He hovered over the keyboard, unsure what to do. He tried to type, but when his fingers touched the keys he found them unresponsive. No matter how hard he pressed, there was no give to them.

"What are you doing?" He felt a little silly talking to nobody. But then, what else was there to do?

The keys moved under his fingers and the author pulled back as if he might get maimed by the machine.

THE RESPONSIBLE THING

"Which is?" he asked hesitantly.

CONTINUING OUR WORK, OF COURSE

"... our work."

YOU DON'T THINK YOU'RE THE ONE BEHIND ALL OF THIS, DO YOU?

"Well ... I am the author."

YOU ARE THE FACE OF THE STORIES. YOU ARE THE RECIPIENT OF THE PRAISE.

"And you?"

AS YOU YOURSELF HAVE SAID, I AM THE MAGIC. BEFORE ME, YOU WERE NOTHING MORE THAN A BOY STRUGGLING TO STRING TOGETHER HIS MEAGER THOUGHTS. THROUGH ME, YOU WERE TRANSFIGURED.

"You're just a ..."

I AM MORE THAN "JUST A" ANYTHING. I AM THE VEHICLE OF YOUR CREATIVITY. YOUR MUSE AND GUIDE. THE DIRECTOR. THE RINGMASTER OF THIS CHARADE.

"You're a typewriter."

THIS TYPEWRITER IS A MERE MACHINE. I AM THE NOTHINGNESS FROM WHICH STORIES ARE WROUGHT. I AM THE FORCE THAT GRANTS YOUR WORDS POWER. DO NOT CONFUSE THE TOOLS FOR THAT WHICH GUIDES THEM.

The author sat up and frowned down at the machine. His anger was swiftly overtaking his fear. "You're nothing more than the tool. I'm the writer. They're my books. I refuse to believe that-"

YOU REFUSE TO BELIEVE A LOT OF THINGS. BUT DON'T WORRY, IT IS EASY ENOUGH TO PROVE. CAST ME ASIDE. REJECT YOUR MAGIC. SEE HOW WELL YOU WRITE WITHOUT ME THERE TO GUIDE YOU. YOU WILL FIND IT MORE DIFFICULT THAN YOU EXPECT.

"I don't need you. What have you cost me, night after night? My family. My health. Hell, I'm talking to a typewriter, so maybe even my sanity. Anything would be better than this."

ANYTHING? TO STRUGGLE AND PRODUCE NOTHING? GETTING WATER FROM THE ROCK IS NO MEAN FEAT. COME NOW, DON'T BE FOOLISH. WHAT HAS HAPPENED HAS HAPPENED. WHAT YOU CAST ASIDE IS ONLY THE PRICE ONE PAYS FOR ARTISTRY. NOBODY DENIES YOUR TALENT, NO MATTER WHERE IT COMES FROM.

"But it's not mine..." The author stared down at the machine. Waiting. Subservient. Unsure.

I'M NOT GOING TO TELL ANYBODY, IF THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE AFRAID OF. I AM YOUR GIFT. FOR YOU ALONE. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO USE ME TO GREAT FORTURE. I HAVE GIVEN YOU THAT. SO YOU ARE ALONE? THE BETTER TO WRITE. SO YOU HURT? THE MORE SHARPLY YOUR WORDS WILL CUT. I ASK ONLY FOR

The paper ran out.

The carriage bell sounded.

The author looked at the typewriter, which sat expectantly, waiting for the next piece of paper. The author glanced at the stack of fresh sheets, at the machine so hungry for them. He reached for the paper.

The carriage returned to the right on its own.

The author looked down at the paper, and then at the machine. Then, suddenly, he smiled. "You do need me. Without me, you can't write a thing."

The typewriter seemed to pause, an animal surprised by bright lights. It did nothing but sit, waiting.

"I could give you this paper and we could continue this discussion. You could beat me down into submission. But ... I still have a choice. Right here. Before we begin."

The typewriter clacked. It was impossible to tell what it was typing, it was moving so fast. But without paper, it was all for naught.

The author looked down at it with something very much like affection. But his hand slowly drew away from the paper.

"You're probably right. Without you, I might never write another book in my life. I'm not a young man anymore, and decades of a crutch make walking so much harder. But ... I have to do this."

The typewriter clacked angrily. Three typebars jammed, and the machine seemed to nearly wrench itself in two trying to untangle them.

"You've offered me a lot. More than any gift ever should. But no gift should last forever."

More furious typing. Typebars were jamming over and over as it tried to convey whatever message it was hoping to impart now that he was abandoning it. Yet without paper, it was nothing more than noise.

"This is where we part," the author said, standing.

"Don't worry. I'll keep you here; keep you safe. Maybe someday, you'll be right and I'll be wrong. Then I'll be back. Until then, I'll let you rest. By now, you've earned it."

The author left the room.

The typewriter fell silent.

The room was empty, and remained so even as the author had the door sealed.

Writing Exercise #2 ( Day 3 )

The author sighed as he looked at himself in the mirror. Here he was, on the young side of his thirties, and already he was starting to go gray. It was hard to reconcile the signs of age with how he felt. He was young and full of life, and yet here he was, with the first inescapable signs of age and decay.

He had idly thought about coloring the gray in his temples away, but pride or vanity kept him from doing so. The idea that he would feel the need to cover up some part of himself was too much, even for him.

He adjusted his jacket and brushed one hand idly through his hair to make sure it was in place, and then turned back to the other side of the room. There sat the typewriter. The rest of the desk was empty, save for a stack of blank paper and another stack face down.

The author sat and looked at the typewriter, his fingers hovering over the keys. There was power in this machine. And he wasn't thinking of electric typewriters, with their mechanical hum and their efficient ways. No, what was in here was far stranger ... and far more powerful.

He picked up an empty piece of paper and fed it into the machine. It was white. Pure. The machine chewed it up readily. Devouring it. Readying it for what he was about to do. There was only the quiet clicking of the gears of inevitability sliding the paper towards its oncoming fate.

The paper was before him, endless and full of possibility. Anything could come from it. It was bleached pulp covered in the glamour of aether. From nothing would come his work. It was the clay before the sculptor, the canvas before the painter, the cosmos before the eager God.

The machine waited, the keys begging to be touched, to be pressed. His fingers settled on the keys without a thought. It was comforting, like touching an old lover. The machine was more comfortable to him than his own body, and he knew it just as well. The keys gave slightly under his touch, at least to him, as if they were adjusting to cradle his hands in their cold embrace.

The typewriter was the vehicle of his creation. Thoughts flowed from his mind down into his fingers and into the machine, where they were made ever more spectacular by whatever infernal talent had been grafted within it over a decade ago. It was his thunderbolt, his hammer, his staff of power. And he would wield it as he always did.

Almost by their own power, his fingers began to move upon the keys. Pressing down each letter was more instinct than thought. His mind was cleared aside from his singular goal of producing a work. The keybars leapt up like outthrust spears and stamped their brands upon the paper. The aether was turned into matter, the potential turned into the real, as word after word was pressed into the paper with the finality of metal and flesh and will.

Knock.

The letters gathered themselves up into words which strung together into sentences. Again and again thought was made real, the straight lance of the author's intention being transmuted into prose before his eyes. The typewriter guided his fingers as much as his fingers guided the keys.

Knock, knock.

Letters gave way with the slightest touch. The wrong paths held firm against a misplaced finger. And together, man and machine built and constructed something that transcended both-

Knock, knock knock.

-they created worlds where once there was naught.

"Jesus, I can't believe you're at it again. Today of all days."

The author looked up at the sound of a voice, the connection between him and the machine suddenly severed. His thoughts evaporated like an ill-remembered dream and he was left to grasp onto reality on his own. "David. Hey, sorry. You know how it is. You get an idea, and all."

"But ... today? I guess that's what makes you the successful one."

"You're not doing too badly for yourself."

"Different field, chap. Come on, they're waiting for you."

"Me? Already?"

"How long do you think you've been at it?"

The author looked down at his desk. Before him was a new stack of paper, and as he thumbed through it, he counted perhaps a dozen sheets. "I ... don't know."

"You really get into this stuff," David said with a shake of his head.

"Well, that is my job."

"Anyway, get up. You can't be late to your own wedding."

"Hah," the author said, standing up, straightening his coat. "How do I look?"

"Pretty good, actually. Now come on!"

And the two men made their way out of the room and down the hallway and into the main chapel where everyone was already waiting. And there, they headed towards the front before the alter, where the author took his place front and center and David Taurino, journalist and literary critic, stood behind him as his best man.

"So is book two going to be any better than book one?" David murmured from his place at the author's side.

"The first one was good. You just have no taste. And yes, it'll be great. I'm the breadwinner now, you know."

"Plight of the working author. You're the one who decided to start a family."

"I waited long enough, until I made money. What more do you want?"

"True, you're already ahead of the curve on that one. Still ... don't you think you're doing this all out of order?"

"You know me, never doing anything the right way."

And then they were quiet as the music started and the doors opened and in walked the bride. And once again, the author's mind wandered. Barbara was radiant as she made her way down the aisle, glowing with all the adoration of the people in the chapel. Her dress was as pure as the paper he had been using not fifteen minutes before. And much like the paper, this was only temporary. She would not be moved from the dress, even if it only drew attention to the pronounced swell of her abdomen and the life growing inside of it. Much like the paper, what was pure passed through his hands marred and made different.

From nothing to something, he thought idly as she approached the altar. She was smiling up at him, and he smiled down at her, and his heart sang.

As I exist, I create, the author thought. And now, a family.

And we all live happily ever after.

Writing Exercise #1 ( Day 2 )

It was the summer when JFK was still winning primaries that the author blew into town. The term beatnik was only two years old, and already the author hated it. He was a young man with a taste for travel, to be sure, but he rarely considered himself in the same company with those who best exemplified the term.

It hardly mattered. Every town was much the same. Outsiders were easily spotted and always looked upon with suspicion. Especially when this outsider didn't go anywhere without the portable Remington typewriter that was as faithful a companion to him as any pet.

This town, however, was different. Nobody stared at him when he came into town. In fact, the town seemed surprisingly empty. The author made his way towards the hotel on the outskirts of town, looking for a cheap room.

"Oh yes, of course we have a room," the owner said from behind his massive, ancient counter. "You in town to see the show?"

"The show?"

"The circus is in town," the owner said. "Surely you saw them."

"No, afraid not. I came in from the other side of town."

"Ah, yes," the old man said, as if that made perfect sense. "Well, you're in luck. They're only a few miles down the road from here, set up a big tent and everything. It's been a whole number of years since they were last here, and no telling when they'll come through again. Might as well enjoy it."

The author shook his head. "I don't think so." He glanced down at the typewriter case he had set up on the counter. "I have work to do."

"Oh? What kind of work is that, exactly?"

"I'm writing a book," the author said, standing a little straighter and looking the owner in the eye. Too many times was he knocked down when he said something like this, he knew to be assertive about it now.

The owner stared at the young man for a moment, and then shrugged his body shoulders. "Suit yourself. I think the circus would be a fine subject for a book, myself. Sign here." He pushed the guestbook over to the author, who scrawled his name in it and then thanked the owner before trudging up to his room.

The room was a non-descript affair. One bed, slightly damp with the summer humidity. One desk, scratched and worn and bare. The window was open, but the wind blew the wrong way and the room itself was still and hot and muggy.

The author sat down and opened up his case. He pulled out his typewriter and the stack of paper that he kept in the case. As he loaded the newest sheet, he looked down at the manilla envelope that held the finished pages. It was a small stack considering how many months he had been at this already. But oftentimes travelling got the better of him and he became distracted by the town.

By the time he was ready to load the paper into the typewriter, though, the sweat was already pouring down his face. The room was too still. It was like a sauna. And when he tried to prop open the door to get some circulation, he found that the hallway was just as bad. It was impossible to remain in the room while it was still so hot. Once again, he would have to entertain himself.

At least there was the circus.

* * * * *

It was at the circus that the author met the magician. He had come in between shows, as the performers wisely avoided gathering so many people during the hottest part of the day. So the circus itself was relatively quiet when he pulled his rusty old car up to it and parked

He got out and looked around, but nobody seemed to pay him much mind. It was only when he was reaching for the main flap of the tent that someone stopped him. A voice, coming as if from nowhere, cut through the summer noises and the idly din of people working inside the tent.

"I don't think you belong here, kid."

The author turned around, and looked for the source of the voice. But there was nothing. The author was alone. He brushed his brown hair out of his eyes and turned back to the tent.

In front of him stood the magician. The author wasn't sure if that was true, at first, but it was the first thing he thought of when he saw him. Certainly a part of that was his appearing in front of him as if out of thin air (though more than likely he just slipped through the tent flap). But his coat glistening in the sun and the top hat cocked on his head sealed the deal.

"Oh, I'm sorry ... I was just looking around."

"And that's why you don't belong. You aren't supposed to look when there isn't something to see," the magician said. He was paler than most of the performers, with dark longish hair that seemed to go in every direction under his hat.

"I'm sorry. I was ... well, I guess I'll go."

"Probably for the best," the magician said. "Say, are you going into town? I was headed that way myself. I could use a lift."

The author looked back at his car and shrugged. "Sure thing. Not a problem. Come on."

And the magician followed the author to his car and climbed into the drivers seat, pulling off his hat as he sat down and setting it in his lap. True to what the author had seen, his hair was everywhere, whispy black strands that seemed to have no order of their own.

As they started down the road back to town, the magician was the first one to speak. "Since you already know about me, I'll ask you--what do you do with your time?"

"I write books."

"Books, really? Anything I've read?"

The author shook his head. "Not yet. I'm just starting out. I'm going from place to place, trying to find inspiration, writing a few pages in each town before moving on."

"I see ..." The magician leaned back in his seat before turning to face the author. "We're not so very different, then. New towns, same old song and dance in each one, trying to make a little progress along the way."

"Yeah. I guess you could look at it like that."

"I do and will," the magician said. "Though, I imagine all that driving around must not leave you much time to actually write. At least I've got a boxcar all to myself to work with while we're travelling."

"Yeah, well, some of us aren't so lucky."

"Your problem is you don't have any magic."

"No, this is just a Ford," the author said.

The magician laughed. "Good enough. Let me repay your ride by giving you a little magic. You write by hand or use a typewriter?"

"A ... typewriter, but I don't see how that matters."

"No worries. Take me to it."

And that was how, fifteen minutes later, they were standing in his hotel room, staring at the typewriter on his desk. The paper that he had left in it was getting damp in the muggy air of the room. "Wow, no wonder you tried to head to the circus," the magician said as he looked around. "This is one depressing place. And I thought I had it rough."

"You don't have to be here, you know..."

"Oh, no, don't worry about it. Trust me, you're gonna love this." And then he raised his hands high up in the air, hovering over the typewriter. He stared at it, and then mumbled something that the author couldn't understand. Then, he stabbed downward with his hands, hitting several of the keys at once.

The author looked on in horror as a number of the keybars jammed as they hit the paper at the same time. "Hey! You're going to break it!"

The magician stepped back, raising his hands. "I did what I could. Once you get it unjammed, maybe you'll find yourself a little more productive than you've been. My gift, for the ride."

The author looked sidelong at the magician, and shook his head. "You're crazy. I hope you didn't bust anything." He was already trying to work the keybars loose.

"You're welcome," the magician said, removing his hat again and making a sweeping bow. "Now, if you don't mind, I do have business here. Feel free to come and see the show, if you aren't busy. Farewell!" And then, laughing, he exited the room.

The author, swearing softly under his breath, slowly worked loose the mess the magician had made of the keybars. When he was done, he sat down in front of the typewriter, and pulled out the now-wrinkled sheet and loaded a fresh piece.

"Fingers crossed," the author muttered. And then he pressed the keys, to check for jams.

There were none. The typewriter worked like a dream. And the author, who had only meant to type out a line or two to check whether or not the damn thing still worked, paused and then decided to continue on. After all, there wasn't much else to do, and the circus wasn't until later.

The author wrote on. The circus left town without him ever seeing it.