[x]

sunrise, yulethis was the year of traditions begun. the world still dark, the morning still early, i climbed into my uncle's car. we drove out to the ocean, where the rippling sea fuses with the sky. white-headed eagles were perched still in trees. they cocked back their heads, opened their hooked mouths and screamed.

across an empty parking lot where once a cat had followed us. over driftwood pale with frost and sand hardened by the cold, we walked. our breath came out of us in thin plumes. it rose above us and hung there like smoke signals to the gods.

there were gulls on the water, gulls sifting through sand, gulls with their grey backs and fa

StillHe was waking or he was falling asleep, neither, both at once. This was a dream. This was the only thing he had ever known. It made no difference, he trailed his own body like ripples after a rock, smoothing and breaking and smoothing again.

His feet moved tirelessly, without thought. No longer human, only the Walk was real. For minutes, or for months; time was fluid and distant. Walk.

He broke and a low mountain pulled him forward. Smoothed. Broke into flatlands, into shallow water. Into the evening, into the weak dawn.

Smoothed, back into the soft yellow lights behind his eyes. Walk.

****

He was not alone. This thought came from his bo

The Finest Casket (Complete Story)The chandlers, grocers, butchers, clothiers, and every other merchant in Chantsville was yelling in the streets outside the shop where I was studiously working. Their ruckus combined with the bleats and squawks of livestock wandering underfoot, creating a bustling racket that would drive the unfamiliar ear to distraction.

I was used to the noise, however, and I was so engrossed in my work that I would have sworn the world was silent save for the sound of my chisel biting into the oak box before me. Delicate curls fell from my worktable, collecting in small drifts upon the dirt floor.

I stopped to wipe sweat from my face. The pause gave me a

cosmic background radiationThey say that the big bang was not an actual "bang". It was really just static. Static, like the interference of radio waves. Of course, the universe did not happen instantaneously. The big bang took 760,000 years to happen. 760,000 years of static, and bang, the universe happened.

I get myself together and actually go out. I go to see the New York Philharmonic perform the works of John Cage at Lincoln Center. I walk out during the second movement of 4'33". There's a very small difference between life and death. I walk home, my chin pulled down against my neck. I hum a constant note, providing myself with my own tinnitus.

I focus on this no

rootslike drowned men who have lost their
clothes and faces, they lay suspended
facing the sun and grinning without
eyes through the ripples of the water.

those passing by wonder how they got here,
these homeless men without fingers or toes
long spindly stumps twisting into lost roots:

reaching to the east, to the south,
to the homes they have forgotten.

Renew

The pig carcass filled most of the stainless tub where the delivery men had laid it. Freshly slaughtered, but not butchered, it had taken four of them to lift it there. None of them spoke to Rinnovi, only pausing for him to sign for the animal before they left.

On the way to the door, one of the men pointed at the stickers affixed to virtually every item in the house; black typewritten names and addresses on white shipping labels. The leader of the group nudged him and shook his head 'no', before hurrying him out the door.

Rinnovi poured a scotch, and turned on the kitchen vid display, his own visage peering back at him with a smile. He fro

Christmas on the Border of England and Over ThereIt's snowing on Christmas Eve, and half the men I've ever known in my life are dead. But that was in the war, supposedly a long way away from Oxfordshire, where I am standing outside my brother-in-law's beautiful brownstone house watching the snow quietly cover the hillside beyond. The daylight is dying and it casts the once-white ground in pink, and the pine trees are black against the hillsides, and the truth of it is that the war is not far away because it has followed me here. I am smoking a cigarette, watching the hill, and my mind is slowly counting down the list of men that I once knew, now buried under hills and snow, all of the way f

SouvenirsWhen her mom went to check the mail at breakfast, she returned with a thin box in her arms.

It was a package from her father.

Her dad was sort of like a traveler... at least, that was what she assumed he was. His job always had him jumping from city to city, country to country. He'd been to almost everywhere around the world, and every few weeks, he would send her a letter with a little souvenir from his stay. This time, it was a miniature Eiffel Tower.

So he's in France again, she mused, studying the two-foot tall replica. A small chuckle escaped her lips. It was about time he remembered to get it for her! He really should've thought of b

YellowMy parents bought a little two-bedroom house when they first got married. It was run down, falling apart, but most importantly: cheap.

Two years later, my mother fell pregnant with me. She immediately abandoned her job for some plaster and paint and set about decorating the untouched spare room. She splashed pastel yellow across the walls, replaced the dingy carpet and kitted out the room with furniture.

Sixteen years after my birth, and the yellow paint is flaking off the walls revealing the kiwi green beneath. I can peel back the corners of the carpet to reveal the worn underlay and half rotten floorboards. I can examine the fringe of my

Across the Sea and Around the KotatsuSpring

Taco Rice

Mom starts with rice. Japanese rice, one, two, three Japanese cup-fulls of rice grains into the cooker, because Sis eats a lot of this stuff. It's one of her favorite dishes, taco rice, and Mom's always happy to make it for her because it's the only way Sis will eat her tomatoes. But back to the rice. "You want to rinse at least three or four times, until the water's kind of clear," Mom says as she cups her hand under the cooker pot, letting the cloudy water wash over her hand.

Rice cooking's easy though – just fill enough water to the point the rice's covered, punch in a time (or set it to "Quick Cook," which with our cre

Yet Another Christmas CarolIt was Christmas, celebrated all around Earth - and in Heaven, of course. As for elsewhere...

If you believe for a single second that the devils don't celebrate Christmas, you are, well, right, actually. They keep very quiet about it. Not even a mouse would dare speak about it to the Almighty Fiend, Lucifer. The sole exception to this unspoken rule had happened a few years back on the occasion of a Satanically spiked MTV "Merry Christmas" video which had seemed like a good idea for a few hours. Until it became obvious that it had been a pointless endeavor – those who watched MTV regularly had been mostly unaffected, those who didn't had

Ottumwa ShamanIn Iowa, weeping willows dream of
Tigers, born in pagan fog, their
Coat of stripes singing shaman
Songs; shrill symphonies of grief.
Heaven tilts, crashes, and we race
The dirt to get away. We drink the
Earth with bullets of air and grow
Dizzy, light-headed from breathing
Some far off flame. Perhaps a poet
Who braved the fog of Ottumwa, and
Caught fire. Every cowboy has his
Six chances before high noon, before
The fog forms wispy jackals to take
Them home again. Every son inherits
An empty gun, six voids to fill with
Answers, skimmed and guessed from the
Covers of books their fathers used
To read. There is no other way.
In s

A Name You Can Trust Indignant? Disgruntled? Need an attorney who won't back down (no matter how many mafia hit men are on your trail)? Need to sue the smirk off that jerk who dared to diagnose you with anger issues? Tired of “justice” getting in the way of the benefits that you deserve? If you want passionate, aggressive, and ruthlessly persistent legal representation, it’s time you called Winier Trust, an attorney who will stop at nothing (nothing!) to insure you win your case.

Winier Trust is more than just an attorney; he's your personal advocate. Trust works beside you not only as a legal representative, but as a close and c

tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.

relearning i. stardust scatters with the
direction of my pupils –
maybe secretly i am an
astrology teacher, waiting
for a sign to wink
happily at me.

ii. excuse the rambling
nature of forgotten question
marks, but tell me:
would you like to be the
object of handwritten clichés
would you like to whisper
secrets in my palm
and would you
like to be the possibility

iii. air brushes against my
skin like the torn petals
of a flower still standing.
[ hold your head up high, honey,
and tell tomorrow to wait just
a while,

iv. so you can figure out
the difference between
patience and having all the

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A Sunrise Sceneby ~pinballwitch

Literature / Scripts & Screenplays / Screenplays & Teleplays / Drama

Made in fall 2011 for my undergraduate application to SCA @ USC.

Prompt for the piece was something like this:
_{5-page scene in screenplay format about two people who live together, one of whom wants to go out, while the other wants the first person to stay in. Emphasize visual elements.}

After doing this, I started using these two characters (at an earlier point in their relationship) for other little scenes and sketches for class.

Feedback is loved

especially comments!

critiqued [link]
Possible areas for feedback:
_{- Do the visuals contribute to the story in a meaningful way for you? (Or do they seem like filling?) How so? Other visual-related feedback?
- How is the pace? (Keep in mind that in some parts you're reading information consecutively that would be processed audiovisually and simultaneously.) Particularly: pace of plot development via dialogue?
- Please let me know if I've screwed up on formatting, etc. Still pretty new to screenplays!}

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Given 2012-12-23

A Sunrise Scene by ~pinballwitch ( Suggested by ^neurotype and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

~Cortanna117 Dec 23, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

This is really well done, I could clearly understand what their goals were and what their past was. And it was also really good in the sense that you really used the prompt well.

~pinballwitch Dec 23, 2012

gah your sig makes me so happy

~Cortanna117 Dec 23, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Yay!!! I'm so glad to brighten someone's day!!

~pinballwitch Dec 23, 2012

thank you!! I was throwing ideas around for this prompt and all of the sudden I was like--outlaws. With smoke in a pink sunrise. And then I was off on a roll

...the other prompt for this application? eh, not quite as inspired

glad you enjoyed!

~Cortanna117 Dec 23, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I always enjoy a good read, or a good scene (I'm a theater student as well)

~pinballwitch Dec 23, 2012

(I actually am not a film student...I considered it, applied, got in, was absolutely amazed by the program BUT...not sure if I really want to do film, and I really dislike L.A. as a place to live--to visit is fun, but it's missing so many of my favorite parts about living in a West Coast city ironically...

good luck with your studies! theater acting, production, both?)

~Cortanna117 Dec 24, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Well....I'll put it this way, I'm in highschool still...so a bit of everything. I hope all f your endeavors turn out favorably

^neurotype Dec 23, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Oh look, I failed to comment before

I enjoyed the personality and the western atmosphere in this—it was easy to picture. I'm not well versed in scripts/screenplay formatting at all, but I found the story elements (pacing, visuals) satisfying.

~pinballwitch Dec 23, 2012

super duper thank you!! & thanks for coming back to comment

^neurotype Dec 23, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

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