Guest Book

I was browsing old websites from the early 2000's and was fascinated by looking through the guest book pages. People left messages that have survived decades untouched like hieroglyphs on the walls of digital pyramids. So let's add one to The Silent Page! If you visit this site, leave a comment on this page with your name, a note, or anything else you want to save for the future! Cheers to us a few decades from now!

The Apartment (From the Cutting Room Floor)

Hello dear readers, welcome to a new format for posts here on the Silent Page! The Cutting Room Floor series will be pieces that are unfinished and probably won't ever be finished but I think are worth sharing. This first one is saved under the name "The Apartment" and tells the story of a young man cleaning out his grandfather's apartment after he passed away. 

As part of this series I will also analyze the piece to explain what I was going for, elucidate the writing process, and hopefully make it make sense.

This was my grandfather’s apartment. He lived here in the city for almost his entire retirement. In the past he had worked as a technician, repairing high tech simulators for pilots. His knowledge of applied electronics was beyond that of even the best grad students at the local university. The apartment reflected this. Technical books and drawings on tables, scopes and meters on the walls, a workbench messy with projects only he understood. The faint smell of warm solder still hung in the air.

As you can tell these sentences are pretty rough, but I was trying to setup the grandfather to be similar to my own who was a big inspiration to me. I was sort of shooting for the old "skilled technician who shows that experience outweighs knowledge" stereotype.

I stand at the threshold to his world, a manila envelope of paperwork in hand.

I personally really really like the imagery of this line. Our narrator is both literally at the threshold to the apartment but is also figuratively at the threshold to his grandfather's life as he steps into the task of organizing his things. The idea was for this story to revolve around the process of packing and labelling someone's life after they passed away - a task I was privy to with my late grandfather and one I found both disturbing and strangely beautiful. 

It was a cold day in October when I got the call. My grandfather was in the hospital, cancer, aggressive, nothing they could do. I sat down on a bench outside the building with my head in my hands. People passed by, no one said anything. Here was my inspiration in life, dying on the other side of town. I had always wanted to be like him, he had inspired me to pursue these studies and now he wouldn’t see their completion. I don’t know how long I was like that for, but I was snapped out of my rumination by the old math professor leaving to his next class. “Are you ok?” he had asked but I didn’t respond. He sat next to me in the silence. Eventually he left me to my own melancholy.

I started this project on a cold day in early October. Decided it was thematic enough of a season to base the story's exposition in. The character's sadness over his grandfather not getting to see where he ends up after being inspired by him is a personal experience I had and one I wanted to capture in the story. I think the professor's actions are a little strange and I needed to do a rewrite of the ending of the paragraph to make it less disjoint.

A few days later an envelope arrived in my mailbox. Apparently, I had been put down in the will as the one responsible for cleaning out my grandfather’s apartment. Evidently, my extended family had more important matters to attend to.

Here is where I started tying the exposition back to the story. From here it was going to be established that the narrator was the only one in the family who would handle the task of cleaning the apartment and we would follow him as he reflects on what he knew of his grandfather's life. I had little vignettes for a few different mementos he finds that were going to explore the story of his late grandfather and their relationship. I may still explore these concepts in future work but for now this is the station where the train of thought stops.

Overall, its definitely a rough, unfinished draft but I see potential in the ideas and general story outline. What do you, dear readers, think of this style of post? Yay or nay? I kind of like the idea of taking things I'll never finish and exploring them in this manner. I, personally, like seeing how authors/song writers/poets break down their works and expose their inner thought process but that may just be me. Proper pieces soon to come, stay tuned!

(Also, as an aside, if anyone has a knack for being artsy I would love to collaborate on images for these posts. I want to move away from stock images and towards lovely, original work. Reach out at the contact email if interested! - Silent Partner)

You Don't Wanna

This is an excerpt from a larger piece I'm working on. Some of you may know where it came from. Obviously, memory and imagination have filtered the experience. Thanks for reading!

“No limit to the limit – I thought I told ya. You don’t wanna go to war with a soldier” the drill sergeant calls out into the morning air, cutting like a bayonet through the marching boots. Soldiers go to war. That’s nothing new. Its another day of training for Alpha Company – a company of engineers in training. Not the six-figure salary kind. The kind who clear minefields and demolish bunkers. The kind with an eighty percent casualty rate. The kind who die.

The faces of the marching troops are as diverse as the reasons they signed up. Immigrants looking for citizenship. White kids from the midwest with nothing left. College students earning their tuition – swapping books for boots. A grown man hoping to provide both an example and some money for his kids. Ideological zealots with a desire to become dangerous. The list goes on. Today they all march to the same cadence. “Hooh – Haah – I wanna slap somebody! Hooh – Haah – I wanna leave them bloody!”

It’s a violent place by nature. Every day and every action is accompanied by violent imagery. These trainees will be the next set of bodies on the tip of the spear. “Engineers – lead the way!” they’d shout while spacing themselves to march. For all their pride, the bleeding edge is what makes their task so fatal.

I’m stuck in a small formation behind them. They call us “holdovers” – a group just as varied as the company we fell out from. Some of us had discipline problems. A few couldn’t take the stress. Others realized they made the wrong choice. One of us, a grown woman, is losing her mother. An unlucky few of us are injured to the point of becoming non-trainers. All of us walk – out of step – together. Following the main company to wherever it travels. Right now that happens to be towards breakfast.

I fall into the realization category. I had joined as a Guardsman – with a desire to be a first responder during disasters in my community. I chose to be an engineer because they told me that I would be first into the disaster zone. I wanted to pull people from rubble – not make it. I wanted the adventure. I wanted to be a hero when heroes were needed. I wanted to save people.

But, the reality of training is death – not saving lives but taking them. Potentially, losing yours in the process. A heroic sacrifice? Sure, in the right circumstances. But I see nothing heroic in dying in the desert far away from the community I took an oath to protect.

“Motivated – Dedicated – I thought I told ya. You don’t wanna go to war with a soldier.”

My only motivation is to go home. My only dedication is getting out. And I sure don’t want to go to war as a soldier.

“Company – Halt!” and the boots fall for the last time in front of the dining facility. “The order of chow is – One – Three – Two – What's the order of chow?” each platoon in the company calls back in order. It’s like something out of an educational cartoon. “Ready – Shift!” and the neatly formed platoons shift themselves into two ordered columns. Us holdovers loosely form up behind them. We barely dress right dress or cover down – and it shows. What use do we have for the almost theatrical discipline of the main company? We're quitters. Our only focus is home.

Freshman Works

My freshman year of high-school was my first introduction to publishing writing online for others to read. To celebrate one year of The Silent Page lets look back on some of the better examples of my work from nearly five whole years ago.

The first is this story that I thought was very clever when I wrote it. Not entirely sure what I was shooting for but I titled it "A Peculiar Dream". I think you can see some of the dances with the strange that have continued to feature in my works as time has gone on.

He woke up. The glow from the computer bathed the room in a blue glow. To the left of him the door stood like a monolith to a forgotten realm. He wished to never know what hid behind the door as he looked out the one open wall into the purple void. The void looked friendly. He stood up. The computer was speaking in a foreign language. He understood it. It told him of a time of heroes and legends. He listened. Then sat down. The door was watching and he wished not to anger it. The computer told him of a boat. The boat had come to take him to a land from which he could never return. He got on the boat. The door was annoyed. He looked back as the boat floated on and saw only his room in the void. The red purple clouds were swirling in the distance. The door starred on with unbridled glee. The reckoning had come. The boat continued until it hit a cloud. He got off and began to walk towards the man who stood watching him. The man had the face of a book and began to speak. The man told a story of heroes who had fought a great battle. The door was intently listening. He turned to see the door. The door was watching him from the boat. He told the door a story of myths and legends. The door began to smile and then creaked open. Inside of the door was a land of myths and legends. He ran into the door and looked behind him. The door closed and stared on. He sat next to a river that was running through the land. He saw the glow. It spoke to him of a time when men travelled the stars. He listened intently. The door looked at the river with a longing. He thought of the time when men travelled the stars. He stood and walked through the river. He looked down and saw a miniature castle. The castle seemed to speak. It spoke to him of a time when men travelled the stars. He picked the castle up and examined it’s immaculate marble surface. It was marked with the stamp of an artisan from long ago. He thought of the flavor of marble. He bit into the castle and a large egg fell out. The egg was made of gold and echoed a long forgotten chant that spoke of a long forgotten land. He picked up the egg and held it in his head. The door spoke softly to him. The door had known the artisan in a time before time. It told him of the artisans store and so He walked in. The artisan stood behind a counter. His face was blurred. He inquired as to his business. The artisan told him of his craft. The artisan made sculptures out of stone and wood. The artisan told of the difficulty of gathering enough beetles to make the stone to craft with. He had never heard of such a thing.

Light streamed in through the one window in Sean’s bedroom. How long had he been asleep for? He looked out and saw the road in front of his apartment building. Sean walked into his kitchen and poured some milk into a glass. He thought back to what he had dreamt but couldn’t remember much more than a computer. He looked to his right and saw the marble castle that he had received from his grandfather who had carved it for many years. Suddenly the dream came back. Sean took his glass and sat down in front of his computer and began to write the tale of the dream with the door. He stared at his screen. The first sentence was complete. “He woke up”

I remember writing this next one. I was sitting in church and decided to take the time to create something. Its short, not particularly clever, but it addresses the idea of legacies which has interested me for a long time. It is titled "The River".

I sit on the banks of the dried out river.

Water hasn't graced this land in eons

yet the remains of a river still exist,

the remains of a hard life's work continuing.

Will I have that same effect?

Will my life's works continue,

like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond?

I can only hope that they will.

Perhaps that is the hope of all men.

To live forever, even if only in memory.

Will these words leave ripples?

Or will they sink without a trace?

I look out into the distance

and see the sun setting far away.

I wish I could have seen this river

when the waters still flowed.

This next one is one of many prose pieces that I wrote on stack of note cards I would keep in my jacket. Again, another dance with the strange, twisted, and deranged. It is titled "The Valley of Faces".

The traveler speaks of a valley far away.

A valley carved in stone.

A valley that rarely sees the light of day.

A valley he walked alone.

The ground is made of faces

carved into the stone itself.

The faces have the same calm expression

staring into the sky above.

Their calm expression is fixed forever,

their countenance never swaying.

Faces created with unknown purpose,

forever watching the sky.

Strange rumors are spread about the valley

Where the faces are as far as the eye can see.

Rumors of their speaking have spread far and wide.

What do they say? Who knows except the gods themselves?

Let's do another one off the cards. This was the first in the series and was titled "Land of the Broken". There used to be a pencil sketch that went before it to illustrate what this world looked like but it is long gone. 

Staring off into the distance

The land of the faded star

Rises like a tombstone

garnishing the land.

Where once there was life

there is now sand

and the faded echoes of strife

like the distant playing of a band.

Upon the distant horizon

rises the dome

a monument of a land forgotten

by time and the ages.

The great pillars of eternity remain.

Sentinels guarding the land forever

until their creator returns

bearing the gift of destruction.

Yet even with all the dilapidation

some still call it home.

A fire here.

A cabin there.

Markers of life continuing

Ad infinitum.

Even if forgotten.

Amen.

It was kind of cool to see these old works again. I can see elements of them that have carried over into other things I've written over the years. Especially the stories off the cards. They were largely inspired by Adam Poots' Kingdom Death universe and T.S. Elliot's The Waste Land. Here's to another five years of writing! Hopefully I can look back on what I've written on this page with the same nostalgia some day!