| Tilly Comes 'Round (Final) |
[May. 27th, 2008|03:20 pm] |
Gapp’s Basement: Tilly Comes ‘Round
By Natanya Ann
Jacob always says things come ‘round. This time he means The Foxes and the tavern gets quiet.
“Gapp, they’ve come ‘round again,” he says to me.
When I think of things that come round, I think of people, the weather, and the mail coming ‘round just as much as I do. Sometimes I picture in my head a confetti parade stuffed full of oohs and aahs as a sugar-cake float comes ‘round the block. Sometimes I think of tears, ones that come ‘round like melting snow, taking their time.
But this is a different come ‘round. This an eerie come ‘round, eerie as thick as that dream-fog that settles in your head and shuffles the words you hear all day.
“I saw one yesterday,” Stank says while drying steins.
( Read more... ) |
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| Another dialogue |
[Apr. 16th, 2006|11:14 am] |
"They come right before it?"
"Not always right before, Gapp. But always before."
"Four Shadows?"
"Yeah"
"And then, and then IT comes?"
"Ya- you know, I really shouldn't be talking about this stuff."
"But how do I know things if people won't tell me?"
"I- well, no one knows things. You just-- learn 'em. Now I got stuff to do. Important stuff. You just-- well, you just go talk to your friends and don't worry about The Underworld. It's back there, way back there, remember? It won't ever come after you all at once. It's just the small things that get loose."
"Like the Four Shadows?"
"Well, yeah. And you won't find them if you look for them."
"I don't wanna be blind no more, Ratfink. No more."
"I- I can't help you. They'll pull me back if I do. Don't ask--"
"Then tell me in the sky"
"What?"
"What is it you do here Ratfink? In my basement, what is your job?"
"Well, I work at the tavern and somedays I separate junk in the junk yard. I dunno. Sleep."
"And work the sky Ratfink. You'll work the sky. It's been broken. New shades and cloudtalk. You will talk to me with the sky."
"Oh- I dunno. I ... I can try, but if they catch on-- Oh, I don't want to go back, Gapp. Never going back."
"No worries, Skykeep. They'll never know. I'll never tell." |
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| The headchange |
[Mar. 28th, 2006|01:55 pm] |
I'm just trying to fix the spacing on the stories I've added to my GB pages for my site, and my head is shifting. The mindset is so different from my everyday sober somewhat linear thought. It tends to be the nausea of the tides. Anyway, I want these pages up before Aprils end. I hope I can get through them. I'm only finding pieces for the right categories and cutting and pasting-- editing all line spacing and justifications, but still it is so much and as i read through stories or glance at them, I am taken away. My body resists always. It knows I have to snap out of it in time to get to class.
I look forward to my summer of writing (which has turned into two months instead of four unless some money comes in). I look forward to not worrying about where I am after hours of writing and editing. Not worrying about presenting myself or speaking the language of now. At the same time, I hope I don't turn into the creatures I am always writing about .. adrift and fractured and fantastical and bubbling over in neurosis and psychoanalytic terms personified.
I should take a break before getting back to it. Clothes from yesterday need to be put away ... and yet even now that sentence means more in the world of the basement and sets my people on stories and lore and chatter oblivious of their very real meaning. Gapp and friends, in the very real world I must put my clothes away ... and the metaphorical meaning it provides you with must last another day without record.
le sigh. they don't listen. |
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| Accepted submission! |
[Mar. 15th, 2006|12:05 am] |
Coming to the April 2006 ed. of Enormous Rooms ... Gapp’s Basement: Lovermoon!!
(It is actually a little more daring of a piece than I thought I would have submitted. However, it stood on its own well, but included enough references to other characters to get a reaction of "WTF?" I am hoping for. I hope more people read it though. I think both my crit theory and gender/horror profs will enjoy it).
( Read more... ) |
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| Freud |
[Feb. 17th, 2006|04:56 pm] |
We went over some basic Freudian models in class today. Specifically unconscious vs. conscious and the translation of desires/wishes/fantasies into dreams/symbols/jokes.
My prof kept calling the unconscious the "basement".
QUIT CALLING IT THAT! I kept thinking. I do know what Gapp and his friends are in these terms, I really do. But I don't want to hear about it. We don't want to hear about it. Dwindling down my little friends into the simple. Losing their peculiaritiesas we go along? Oh no no no. No.
Leave the magic be. I hate to see it scraped away like scum.
It was a bit traumatic for the folk. I'll have to find out what has become of them as I imagine they have all scattered to corners of their world-- away from the large metal scraper coming after them. Tsk. |
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| distant |
[Jan. 29th, 2006|12:20 am] |
I miss my friends. I have no idea what anyone in the basement is doing these days. I've deserted them. They try to tackle me on some days and let me know they are around, but for the most part ... are the streets there empty? Have they taken to the hills? Has Tatel found his way over? And The Commission? The Shadow Master? What are they doing these days?
I'm a bad friend to them. I did find some lovely pieces this morning while building my site pages ... Here are a few:
"It seems little girls must always be trapped cuz that's what Little Girl June was. Trapped in her shoes, trapped in her speak, and one day trapped in a cupboard."
"If you were a person of very many things you would think you would have a trip-wire, which is EXACTLY what I needed. But instead Pocket, who is someone of very many things only had jump ropes and being Mr. Right today he assured me they were one in the same."
"There's chatter in the basement. Not the clucking or chipper kind, this chatter is crisp. Almost crisp enough to eat, Pocket said. But Jimbo says it's just people talking ... talking about what they see. What they know. I asked him what they see and what they know and he said that it doesn't really matter. All in good time, is what he really said and I think a good time is on Thursdays so I asked if Thursday is when we will all know."
"Jacob suffers from Grumpface lately. He sees the ground going dry and the fruits aren't so good anymore. He studies up on nutrients and vitamins and such and I haven't the heart to tell him yet that it must be something more. If I knew what Something More was then maybe I'd let him know. But it is useless to talk to Jacob unless you know what you are saying which is why we don't talk much at all." |
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| Hallucinations and Delusions |
[Oct. 25th, 2005|10:56 am] |
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I also realize ... realize when I talk to Gapp, I close my eyes and make sure not to turn my head to far to see him. Sometimes I know I will see him and sometimes I know I will not. Neither option is my favorite. |
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| Yesterday's appointment |
[Oct. 25th, 2005|10:49 am] |
The Doc's office has a maze in front of it. It's in the ass of a building with a face of trendy shops. You wouldn't know it is back there, but it is. A side door near the garage opens to a snake of a corridor. Insurance companies, Real Estate Agencies ... the like. And then some "intermountain" "creek" "source" wording for the doctors' suite. And then another maze of lobbies. How do you walk into a lobby to find another lobby right after it and a glimpse of another upstairs. And yesterday as I flipped through a zine in the 2nd lobby ... tucked away to the far right was another. Always leather. Always cremes and fountains and wood beams above. Pretentious.
The doc's office teeters when I am in it. It travels up high, but its short from wall to wall. I sometimes wonder what is right outside the door. We talk of the things I see and the things I believe. We don't talk the way Gina and I talk ... we don't chat and smile and laugh and cry and say "ah ha". No. I talk of the things I see and the things I believe. I tell him it is one way, but that I know that is not true. I know what is true, but that doesn't stop that it is one way. He scribbles and acts me silly questions: On a scale of blah blah blah.
I try to answer truthfully. I try to answer with my own truth and not the truth I know applies. And always I wonder, just what is outside that door. What and who. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 22nd, 2005|10:43 am] |
It began with a mask, a wood mask with absent eyes and a triangle for a nose and a slit of a mouth. The bottom of the mask balanced on the top shelf of the dr.’s office. A fishing line attached the top of the mask to the ceiling. The dr. left when the door knocked and the mask said, “No” as it pivoted one way and then the next. “No,” it said with the shake of its head.
I knew I was in trouble. I had said too much.
By the time I got home, the migraine medicine was working and the cold and black of my bedroom was as safe as it could be. Until my husband came home and rubbed my back and gave me a muscle relaxer. I explained the encounter with the mask.
“Why does it say ‘No’? Could it just be a mask held by a string that sways sometimes?”
I shook my own head. He didn’t understand. Things are never as they seem … though he did have a point. The next few days, I wondered … why is it a mask saying no and not a mask on a string? I know it is not a mask on a string; I know the truth. Why is my truth so different than another’s?
It took a few days but … well, I realize now. The Mask says no because I am saying no. I was uncomfortable talking to the psychiatrist and am unable to acknowledge it. Instead, the mask says no for me.
Here is the key. The Key Gapp has told me about. The answer that will unlock the doors and dissolve the walls between his world and Tatel's. Originally, dear reader, I thought I would tell you about the worlds and let them stand on their own. Someone even told me once I need a "gimmick" something to wrap the stories into. I thought that was cheating. People should like the basement for what it is, not for what it is to me. However ... I hold the key and it is all happening now, in real time.
So. I am the gimmick, but it is the only way. Where or where to begin? I've been searching the Basement for the beginning for years ... going on ten years now. Perhaps the beginning is where I began. The first Gapp's Basement story I heard kept me awake for two days. The lines kept streaming in my head. I buried myself in my sheets. I listened to music, but it was always there. So I got up and wrote the first few lines. Then the next few. And then I was up for days until it was complete.
I had no idea what it was.
( Tilly Comin' Round ) |
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| The Key |
[Oct. 22nd, 2005|10:29 am] |
One thing I never told you: The Key. I found it. The key is me. And when I unlocked one door, the rest followed. Like dominoes down the line ... click click click, they opened and walls dissolved. The Underworld and The Basement are one and it is a free for all.
Tatel must find Gapp. He must tell all ... |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 27th, 2005|12:35 pm] |
Gapp’s Basement was so quiet you could hear a pin drop with its tiny little voice “Weeeee” all the way down. Another came from around the corner … the fastest drop I’d seen all evening and the crowds cranked their shoulders in tight, ready for the next landing. Pink. Pink.
But just before we were loud again, a rainstorm of pins came flying around the corner … the tail of the parade and fell to the ground gliding and shouting all the way.
We applauded and smiled and walked away, talking and laughing. And any remaining pins dropping that didn’t get there on time, were never heard. |
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| Another playground song |
[Sep. 27th, 2005|11:49 am] |
Gapp’s Basement : The Grumpface Playground Song
Hands here we go
All in a row
Let’s pull our frowns to grins.
We skip to the right
We huddle in tight
We roar and shake our chins.
Grumpface! Grumpface!
We all cry
Shout to the sky
Throw our hands in the wind.
Grumpface! Grumpface!
To the hunchback
Give him a smack
And we chase him all over again! |
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| Spoilers |
[Sep. 26th, 2005|06:24 pm] |
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Plot information that I'm still working out ( read more ) |
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| The Commission |
[Sep. 26th, 2005|06:21 pm] |
The commission gurgled and lurched.
It's empty-shapes stomped corridors secret
and infiltrated conversations along the hedges.
Looking. looking. looking. For lizard god. The boyman. Find him. squash him. slit him. each heaved it's own plan. Whatever you do, just get him. Just get him before he ruins us all. Where is the Shadow Master anyway, they ask. He who spills the orders and before they know he is there ... When will we see him? In our eternal chase of Tatel, the Shadow Master never shows his face. |
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| Regarding the mountains |
[Sep. 22nd, 2005|05:22 pm] |
I asked Gapp what makes the basement so much better than The Waking World and he said they have green mountains. "Well, those mountains are green too." He said, "No! Not THAT green ... THIS green" and when the green mountains of Gapp's Basement came to view they were the sloshy paintbrush primary color green of 1st grade. "Green".
All these years, I spent on the complex greens of mountains only to discover the simply Godzilla green is enough. Because for certain the landscape was soaked in them! And as you climbed them, your fingers and palms rubbed kindergreen too! From tilly toes to my eyes in a slick playful green.
I told Gapp his mountains were called "paint" and he shook his head. No No. Your "paint" is our mountains. |
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| Prose |
[Sep. 22nd, 2005|05:10 pm] |
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The trick of the basement is that its light is not light. It gleams and swishes like magic folk do, but it is not liight and do not be fooled. Ever. It is as heavy as the dark. In fact, probably heavier than the dark. Deeper than the dark. For the dark in Gapp's Basement wears itself like a masquerade. Flaunting and howling, you will not be led astray by the dark. The light, on the otherhand, has no ability to see in the brilliance of itself. Thus, it has no self-awareness or perception. It is tangled mirrors of the sun's reflection. It is blind. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 31st, 2005|07:24 pm] |
Here is a not so short story about Fritz' (the mathmatician) arrival in the basement as well as his own debasement. It needs a lot of work. Particularly I think he is suppose to come in with crazy hair but for the most part, all angles and lines. Well kept, sharp. Then he goes messy. But I think I described him as messy a lot in the beginning.
I also need to take a little more time about his eventual change. Perhaps another story in the middle.
Also as much as Fritz is a tool in LGJ's transition, I failed to really represent The Underworld here. The problem is The Underworld to GB's must be creepy, dark, etc. But it must not give itself away as having the entities Tatel or The Commission. The trick of The Underworld is to never see how deeply integrated it really is in GB. So there's that meshing that is sort of a problem.
Let me back up, when Gapp begins to really notice The Underworld moving in ... it is because of a chain of losses to the basement (including LGJ). As well as The Carrot Salesman and eventually Tilly attempts to join it. These stories are so important to the overall idea that The Underworld is more than just a "bad place" but also part of nature itself.
Not to mention the ever stream of concious, too much info writing style that is going on. Anyway, I should probably post and work on some of my "base" stories ... the short stories that introduce the land but do not get too caught up in the huge tragedy that is Gapp's reality.
Anyway, with proper disclaimers and too much introduction, here is a too short story of something too complicated to write about without more gin and chapters.
( Read more... )P.S. I got super lazy tired of spacing it correctly. Sorry folks. |
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