Buzzards: a triptych of martyrs

[brigdh]

Alright, by popular demand and because I am a bad person who really enjoys sharing this sort of thing: the opening scene of the organ donation fic. All missing words, absent commas and weird grammar are not typos (well, they're not my typos, at least).


"Ugh. Ever since the operation I've had trouble with these knees." If he'd said my knees, it would mean he claimed them and he didn't. More importantly it would mean he acknowledged my help, my existence, and he didn't.

I was sixteen when I decided to be a donor. I was invincible, smarter than my parents, and idealistic. I went in and passed my test for a driver's license and when they asked if I wanted to donate myself if I died, I said 'Yes,' patting myself on my back for being so generous and helpful. The day I died, well, after I died I should say, I found out what that decision meant.

"Did you have them both replaced?" Most nurses' patience was pretty obviously a part of the uniform and although she tried to be, this nurse was no different. She was helping the old man to his feet to take him to some back room where they would poke and prod at those knees, massaging them, careful to avoid the rigid and swollen scars.

"Yeah. They used some new moon metal." That's what his wife had told him. They used my knees, but she knew he wouldn't have gone for that. They used my knees and he didn't know it. And now she was dead and he doesn't know how I ever existed, much less helped him.

"Wow. My mother had one knee replaced, but they used cadaver parts." She didn't know it yet, but she was testing his reaction, calculating how much sensitivity the doctor would require to break the news of my knees to the old man.

"That some kind of metal too?" His voice and face were graveled.

"No sir," she paused, "It's a body donated by someone so that when they die their parts can help others."

"Ahh. That's a bunch of voodoo shit." That last word actually sounded like he could taste shit in his mouth. But she smiled at him anyways, wearing her patience, allowing him to grab hold of his cane so he cold without her help.

***



But then, I started the second story for today, and it turned out to be just as much fun. This guy can actually write; it's just unfortunate that he sounds like just finished reading the dictionary and is desperate to share the new words he learned. Every single one of them.


The poet wakes again with flies in his throat. It's hot- the sky like a vein scraped clean. A trio of buzzards brood thirty feet beyond, deadpan and apocryphal, each one a separate static genre of infinity. The poet lights his last cigarette and lies smoking in the dusty studying them; they are oneiric, more like silhouettes than actualities, and were it not for the severe unanimity of blinking eyes, a passerby might assume them such. Their fixity is primordial.
***


That's the opening paragraph. It goes on like that for twelve pages of small type.

Comments

[lucifrix.livejournal.com]

oneiric = most pretentious word ever

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Dude, for real. Some of the obscure words he was using, I'd think, "Okay, there's not really a synonym that means exactly the same," so I'd let it go. But there's no real difference between "oneiric" and "dream-like", so that's just being annoying.

I mean, if neither Livejournal's nor Word's spellcheck knows it, you probably don't need to use it.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

infinity has genres? of which buzzards are one?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

But of course. Also, you can call in a "voice archival with descent".

"Genres of infinity" at least makes a kind of poetic sense, if not the logical kind. But "archival with descent"? I can't even begin to figure out what that's supposed to mean.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God.

You're kinder to "The Poet" than I would have been, and that's all I'm saying about that.

But I find a whole new layer of oddity in Kneecap Boy, now that I see an excerpt. Why on earth do you suppose that he doesn't believe that the parts for total knee replacements really are made of metal and/or ceramic?

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's supposed to be some kind of metaphor. For...something.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Knees are deeply symbolic. Unlike, you know, hearts.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Or corneas, you know, because vision is so trivial.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

His story was actually not that bad. It terms of plot and characters, it outstripped by far anything else I've read in the class. If only he would put down the theasurus.

I pointed out the problem with the knee in class to the author, and she claimed that she'd overhead the conversation in the first scene. I still call no way- it seems so weird to think of Knee Donations. Also, I googled it, because hey, I could be wrong, and found that the closest you could get was a donation of ligments for the knee.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Knees don't get diseased, they wear down. It's not like an organ, where it can't be duplicated by a natural process-- it's a piece of bone. The whole point of knee replacement (and joint replacement in general) is to use something more durable than what was there before. Even a teenager's patella is going to have some wear on it, unlike something shiny and new made of...er...moon metal. XD

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I couldn't figure out why she didn't know that. I mean, I knew it, and I know nothing about organ donating.

Plus, knee-donater was at least old enough to have a 13-year-old son, so it's not like he had shiny new knees.

[wildelamassu.livejournal.com]

If you combined these two, you'd have phantasmagorical patellas!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*dies*

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The deadpan apocryphal buzzards remind me of a possibly apocryphal quote from a British writer attempting to write a Western:

"High in the sky, a lonely coyote circled."

Also (furtively checks to make sure this is locked-- please do not unlock this entry!) my ex-boyfriend started a blog that reads very much like the primordial fixity. The best part is the way he comments on his own entries:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/morpheuz7/

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That is journal is possibly the best thing ever. The unreadable entries! The titles! The conversations he has with himself in the comments!

I'd think it was a troll if you didn't know him.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I know! Aren't the conversations with himself the best?

In defense of the fact that I, well, used to date him, I have this to say:

1. He wasn't that pretentious (or nutty) back then.

2. He's really hot.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hotness can make many, many things forgiveable.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

He's still faithfully posting and replying to himself, by the way, sometimes twice daily. He also occasionally posts gnomic comments in the journals of the two people who have friended him.

Here's a photo. Meh, not terribly flattering, but it was the only one I could find. He's second from the right, showing some flesh. I used to have a medium-sized crush on the guy on the far left, incidentally.

http://www.sacredfools.org/CrimeScene/CaseFiles/S2/NocheNegro.htm

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

That's fair.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I too take advantage of the facepalm and the friendslock to say: My father is an organ recipient. The respect and gratitude recipients and the docs and people on the donation teams have toward their donors is so amazing it overwhelms me.

If I ever met this guy, I'd probably slap him in the face.

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

And they're generally made aware that they're getting cadaver parts, you know, before the doctor sticks them inn.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Dude, for real. The excuse about his wife not telling him just makes it more confusing. Why would an adult not talk to his doctors himself?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Part of what made me so upset is that I too signed up to be an organ donor back when I got my first temporary license, and I hardly consider that a decision I made as a stupid child who didn't think things through.

The only thing that kept me from being as mean as I wanted to be was the thought that perhaps it was a case of characters holding different opinions from the author.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I would think that except for the knee thing. For some reason, the sheer randomness of it being knees makes me think it's someone with a grudge.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Well, given the way this class is organized, we also have to turn in a revision of the stories. So I'll get to see if it grows angrier or happier at organ donation when she rewrites things.

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

I can almost guarantee that the second guy roleplays online. I'd lay money on it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Not to be all, "roleplayers are always geeks!", but you know, I could totally see it. He seems like that.

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that roleplayers are always geeks, I mean, I do it myself and I don't write shit like that. But I've seen a hell of a lot of roleplayers who DO write shit like that.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, I know you're weren't saying it, I was saying it. *grins* I meant that this guy is a total geek, and therefore seems like a roleplayer. He's got the whole doesn't-talk-unless-called-on-and-won't-look-people-in-the-eye-when-talking extreme social awkwardness thing going on.

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

Besides, I roleplay gay porn.

Which, you know, makes me cooler than others.

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

A trio of buzzards brood thirty feet beyond, deadpan and apocryphal

Apocryphal? They're not really there? They're only rumoured buzzards? Do you think he means "apocalyptic", or is he just misusing words because it's "cool"?

As for kneecap-person. Erm. Yes. One wonders why it even matters to the narrator given that, yknow, s/he's DEAD...

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I think he's just misusing words. He obviously seems to know every word he used- it's not one of those cases of someone using the theasurasus and picking words they've never heard before- but uh, he doesn't seem to want to make logical sense. Which is really frustrating when it goes on and on and on.

That was my question! If you're going to be a ghost (and there's nothing in the story to suggest it was the organ donation that caused him to be a ghost; in fact, the last paragraph went off into this really aburpt no heaven/hell/god thing), wouldn't you rather be floatign around living people than stuck with your dead body in a coffin?

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

Maybe he was pissed. "What the hell you takin' my knees for when I've got perfectly good kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, skin and eyeballs over here??"

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. Well, later in the story you do find out that other people had his eyes and skin. Still: knees?

[redshoeson.livejournal.com]

You so weren't kidding -- every single one of them.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

For real. There haven't been any as bad as your 'The Nightlight Strikes Back' or whatever that one was called, but the one I had to read this weekend was about a little girl that died, and it was so bad I was howling with laughter. I had to keep stopping to catch my breath.

It featured, among other things, a two-and-a-half page internal monolouge from the girl's sister, who included the line, "You died on a Thursday, Anna. We were supposed to have a party, with ballons and cake and games. All our friends were invited. But, Anna, you died on a Thursday."

[redshoeson.livejournal.com]

I seriously read those lines and snorted water out my nose.

Thank you for that.

ROFLOL!!!!! *dies*

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I was dying of laughter. And there's no way to tell the author, "Uh, you really suck", so in my critque I tried to be all, "You know, this type of thing is very hard to pull off, why don't you try maybe showing these feelings in a scene with a friend or relative instead of having her tell them?"

And then I get to class, and some girl goes, "It was so sad, I almost started crying in the coffeeshop!" Imagine my reaction as I tried not to look, "Bitch, please. What the hell is wrong with you?"