typeface tales

2013-06-19 5 notes

Portrait

He imagined her in pointillism like Seurat.

All dots and little bits of color. The green of her eyes not quite green. The darkness of her hair at battle with the light, such that it made her change entirely. She became different in changing lights, he noticed this, if nobody else did.
They probably did.
She was pretty.

On a palette, he mixed up the glow of her cheek and chin, a troublesome affair depending on how much she had been drinking, as it is likely to affect her hues. He decided on a warm summer day, when he had seen her once, a lace parasol casting dappled patterns on her face.
That means he had to change the colors again, but no matter. That’s what paint is for.

It suited her, this constant flux of color, the way she changed from foot to face, and his inspiration colored each the way he liked it best. In little dots he recreated her in front of him, on a large canvas, with no background whatsoever. Not yet. His interest was in the way her elbows met her arms, and how her dress fell across her hips and down to the floor. Minutiae was powerful in pointillism. Every little dot counted to the overall idea.

What color might her lips be on this day?
Where might the light fall upon her lovely blue dress?
The painting was made not to create realism, but to move the world to flatter her all the more. In this way, he might be able to prove that he could move the world for her.
Not just in his art.

2013-06-03 12 notes

A Glitch In Time

And to think.
Things might have been different.
That I wouldn’t be here with tears in my eyes
And you wouldn’t stand in your pressed shirt and audacity
Staring at me through eyes I don’t know anymore.
We were the same person once. Bound and bedded.
We held each other, in arms and body,
And I was not at fault.
Though it is my fault.
I was not the problem.

I thought you would stand by me
but it turns out what we said was lies.
Strictest complacent comments whispered on easy lips.
“I love you”
“I’ll support you.”
But the moment I call that in
Everything changes.

I thought we were made for each other
Perhaps not sickness and health
Or richer and poorer
But what we had was worth so much more. Or so I’d hoped?
Or so I’d thought.
Until I saw the eyes I didn’t understand at all.

You listened to someone else.
And I don’t know what you think is right anymore.

I’m not the bad one.
I’m not to blame for things going wrong.
The world is a problem, but we are pure.
Individually we are just human.
Together, we were more, and always were.

But now you see me as just a person.
A weak one at that.
I do not look lovely with tears on my face.
Raw red rivulets of grief on my cheeks.
And you don’t look handsome with steely eyes.
You look better when you care.

If everything was different
Tomorrow
I’d never see that face.
The face that made a decision not to love anymore.
And I’d never feel so terrible
For something I didn’t do or earn.

If things were the same
We wouldn’t be different.

2013-04-25 7 notes

Admiration Pains

I sign my letters with a P.H.D. notation, to make the world know I’m serious.

Someday they’ll read these letters, which are now private. In the future, nothing I do will be private anymore. My world will be open and traceable, because my world will be the only one there is. Such is the life of a visionary.

Everything needs to look good in retrospect. I’m thinking towards the future, FOR the future, for mankind. For us all. As if Noah’s Ark could come again but through my hands.
Not with, like, floods or anything, but I mean…

So let’s talk about freezing time. That’s what I’m really getting at here.

I mean, if I just had TIME to… organize things.

I could rule with a gloved fist of titanium. I could press against humanity and let the juices run out until there’s a husk… a salvageable husk… for us to breathe life into. This… is where you come into play. Not that I mean to frighten you with so much responsibility.

Anything you want, really, I’m not here to pressure you. I just have this idea.

I could utilize you. You have such a pure spark of kindness in you, a real melody that you can weave into this new world that needs to hear it. You can rebuild, with me; we can soar over the tops of heads that listen to our every whim, and you? You will be like an angel to show them what beauty is. What goodness can be. You will stand at the head of our campaign and shine your light on them.

I can make the world turn from darkness, from the rot they are inflicting upon themselves. I want a hard-reset. The kind you have to hold the button on a long time and wait and get impatient about and THEN it reboots and…

Well. That’s a lot of you, then.

You see, I’m an action guy. I make things happen, I change it all up and I’m not willing to take no for an answer. Not from him, not from the law, not from any adversaries.

I mean I’ll totally listen if you say no, because I respect you and that’s all great and I mean if this doesn’t sound good to you then that’s ok I’m just saying…

I am the hand that forces the world to change. I am the clock’s ticking arms that swing into a new era, challenging them to abandon all that they know and accept their new master. Nothing is too much, for my rule will last as long as darkness sets and light stretches. I have… ideas, and, well.
All I’m saying is that.
Maybe.
You’re a part of it?

Well let me try this again.

In a world sown with change…. I need someone to cultivate…

Well what I REALLY mean is…

I need you.

2013-04-18 2 notes

?RAGUS

The hardest part was trusting herself, as she wrote with small bits of coal or dirt all along the light stone walls. As far as imprisonment goes, this was a lesser variety, a structure built on criminality or challenge and she did too much of the latter.
She was young in a time when girls could not be smart without being witches or royalty and it didn’t seem like she could easily be either.

Her stringy hair played into her eyes as she plucked another bit of burnt detritus from the torch that glowed above her. It would hurt her fingers, but any chance to write.
One wall was diagrams and drawings.
One was words of weight.
The other two she had not filled yet, on account of being intelligent enough to know she would be there for a long time, and space would eventually be limited. These tiny, charred markings were her only connection with herself, other than vacant muttering as the sunlight moved from side to side in her cell, intersected by bars.

The code she wrote was backwards, the math she did was negatives. She sketches she did in space of her mind and wrote just the shadow of them. They trapped her to stop her creating heresy, but the silence left her only that.
She kissed each grit of oily char that she could make into new markings that would stay, and she was kind to her keepers no matter how she was treated, because they can take any freedoms from her, but they could not take her mind.
Not yet.

No colors accentuated her palette, and no new words broke into her mind, unless they were her creation.
And shockingly, how accurate those could be.
If she made new shapes and created new things and discovered new language, it a all behind the closed, solid doors of incarceration, and she would remain undisturbed in her cell until it was too late.

The moment they entered was the moment they would wash the walls and be rid of her memory, and nobody would be any the wiser.

That humans can FLY!
That the world revolves in a micro scale
That planets exist and are larger than we ever imagine.

And she had all of these notions, yet little canvas, and no ears to spread it. She wrote it as she could. She only had witchery, only, it wasn’t something she subscribed to. Perhaps someday she will be noted as a witch, who paid her dues and burnt in the fires of the pariah.

But maybe she would be remembered for being right.

2013-04-15 6 notes

What You Want

I will give you anything you want if you just let me.

I will make your name in lights and bring eyes to you.
I will pad your bed with compliments and kiss your doubts to sleep.
I will break the jaws of dissenters, I will whisper your virtue into the crowds, I will show you as a frightfully strong being that none shall open their mouths to.
I will cast the faerie glamour, I will weave the clothes of gentility, I will enshroud you in the colors that people will notice. I will make them see.

I will make the heavens sing your name, with syllables I teach to them one by one.
I will make them capture your figure in stone, far bigger than life and not as far as impact, as you charge above the crowd, immortal.

I will speak you to the world and they will translate for themselves.

I will do those things,
If you only knew what you wanted.

2013-04-14 7 notes

Emoticons O_O

Lavinia had tried to explain the concept of emoticons but… she just wasn’t getting through.

“So you’re using letters, to make faces?”
“Yes, and they’re not words,” she said patiently, “they’re like… letter art.”
Her best friends face alternated between blank and doubtful.
“You see,” Lavinia continued, “like if I wanted to make one of how you look, maybe I’d use an equal sign and a diagonal slash. Or a capital B because of those stupid glasses you wear.”
“I don’t look like that.”
“Well, to me you do!”

They had reached a technological impasse, and it was nothing new. Meleney had never been great shakes with computers and Lavinia was constantly trying to explain the concepts to her because so much of her life was built upon it. Meleney at least understood the idea of talking to someone through writing in real time, but the idea of making little faces out of letters were foreign.

“It’s a lot like when you use your notebook,” Lavinia tried, “you draw a lot of things in there. And so do we! We just work with what we have.”
“But I actually DRAW in mine. Like when I want a duck, I can just draw a duck.” Meleney wrinkled her nose at this blatant inefficiency.
“Yeah, but, it’s kind of fun! Like that heart thing I showed you.”
“Not a heart, Vinny. You made sideways liney things.”
“It’s a heart, If you tip your head and-“
“It’s an equation.”
“A LOVE equation,” Lavinia corrected, hands once again snapping at the keys. She had spent so much of her life around computers, it was difficult to imagine that someone didn’t understand when she mentioned she was “AFK.” She had been Meleney’s best friend for five years, it was astounding that none of it had rubbed off on her by osmosis. Lavinia wore her geek on her sleeve, and oftentimes her shirt. Contrary to popular concern, it was clearly not infectious.

“Is this how you and Curtis talk all the time?” Meleney waved her finger at the screen, “In your made-up art language?”
“Yeah but we do it in a game.”
“So you make gibberish symbols at each other, dressed as elves.”
“Orcs.”
“Gross.”
“Nah, mine’s pretty.”

Some things will never make sense to an outsider. Q_Q

2013-04-07 2 notes

The lights were set.
She was just an understudy.
It was minutes til the show.
She was wringing her hands.
The curtain was drawn.
She was rehearsing her lines.

The orchestra played.
She was cursing her big moment.
And the actors were onstage.
God, they thought it was so easy.
And the audience cheered.
Yeah they seem like a good crowd.
And the cues were all met.
Like everyone was a fucking professional.
And they checked her makeup
But you can’t erase the look of fear.

And the lights set on her
It’s the time for my big opening
Then the orchestra blared
Those are the starting keys
Now, sing us a song!
And I’m singing my heart out
So the audience stares
Yeah, I’m not in the booklet.

But she gave it her all
In a voice of high-toned Alto
And her actors were proud
“Say, ya did a bang up job!”
Then she went home that night
My hands just won’t stop shaking.
The next day will come
Understudy yet again.

3 notes

Legends Writ

His quill scratched the parchment faster than he could believe recording each moment, each thing he noticed.

He had the unenviable position of noticing things, and needing to transcribe them by himself. He was the eyes and the mouth of the world, and it was often exhausting if he wasn’t so interested in it. He worked alone, bag of ink at his side and multiple quills at the ready so he looked as an archer did with feathers jutting out his back. It was his courtly duty, and he was not only privileged, but fascinated.

This had lasted many years, as he saw the drama unfold. The eyes that did not cross, or crossed too often. The gazes that moved around places, the circular table that was pure in its right and withered at the seams. He knew the King had much to worry about, and he held him no grudge. He watched as the world fell down around him, in small bits here and there.

He knew the King did so as well. His eyes may not have touched those things, but only because he already knew they were there. The treacheries and successes were not invisible to his gaze. He found it the fairest to go with it.

It was painful, but the scribe wore his colors and watched the court with an eye of the eagle. He watched the colors of the court fly in pride. Others wore them in jest.

Well, their end was near as well as his. He quietly sat as the banners above him grew dim and old, as the stories around him turned from rumour to true. He watched as people brought about their own end, by pain or by success. His job was to write it all.

As his hair grew whiter, as his tales went out of fashion, he spoke to those around him just a bit more. They laughed with his familiar face, their hair growing as mink-white as his own, and sat him down to regale them on their own glories.

“He said it!” they proclaimed through aged mugs of ale, “It’s true! It happened nigh before ye were borne!”

And he told them more, and embellished a bit. A luxurious stead he never kept, but for when he took their eye. It was towards a time that he would like one.

He was the shine in many eyes, for he told them well.
He was the bane of very few, who figured him a disruptor to their plans, while he was merely aware of them.

All along, he had picked a new one, a new youth to carry along his plans. And he copied and entrusted his stories to the youth, dressed in fresh new colors of the court that was likely to fall in on his ears as the large hat fell about his head, and he said: Be careful with them, lad.

They are an ecology and we work within them.
We show what they do but do not interfere. We are quietly ourselves.

When you are my age, you may mingle. I hope t’God ye be my age someday.

And the ale flowed
and for the first night, he slept in a mattress made of feathers, and was celebrated as a bard instead of ignored as a scribe.

It was not long after he ceased to be either.

But his legacy was writ in the young man before him, with letters unwritten and stories untold.

The downfall was beginning. The youth would be there for it all.

2013-04-06 2 notes

London Calling

London is not a place for poetry.

It is a place for many things
and poets are not one of them.

It made him very lonely
wandering familiar roads
for the hint of a notebook
or knitted hat.

Maybe that meant something.

He browsed faces as one would browse a bookshop
reading what he could
looking for color
and was often met with sunglasses
or tourist stares.
But maybe one day…

The names were not important
so he did not ask.
What he asked was what they were reading
or if they could abide by a compliment
or if they liked the arts.
He heard many replies
and wrote words about them.
Coated,
disjointed
words.
And he had none to share them with,
not yet.

And so the story goes,
he hummed to himself,
the music of masters that he based himself upon,
and he trod looking for interesting footwear
or people who knew where they were going
in life if not in location
and he would ask them if they were interesting.

It came about strangely
when he sang a song under his breath
in a voice unmade for singing
that he was in the shadow of another
who looked at him and smiled
and went along his way.

He did not have to ask if this person was interesting.

He had caught up
and foolishly left his pen behind
but with his eyes locked onto broad shoulders
he moved closer to ask
Excuse me
how are you doing today?

Which started a conversation.

Which quickly led to the art of living and why they might appreciate it
in so many words
or often in none.

And, which eventually led
to a cool linen bed
in a hotel room
littered with scraps of paper they had torn from notebooks
so many notebooks
with their new friendship and beyond
written on each leaf.

London is not a place for poetry.

But the best poetry is based upon things which others never see.

2013-04-02 2 notes

Rooted

So long as they’d been living, the tree had been there. It kept the sky aloft on its bristly branches so it would not fall on them. It struggled upward in defiance of gravity, for inches at a time, piercing into the clouds as far as it could go. From their small position, it was tall, so tall that it cloaked the whole ground in mottled shade as the sun spun around. The grass knelt at its legs. The creatures ran up and down its spine. It was patient.

It bathed in the rain, letting drops clean the sweat and dirt off the leaves, and shuddering in the chill wind. It creaked in the storm and sighed in the gentle breeze. It was a friend, a protector, a savior, a source, and above all, it was taken for granted.

Sure, there were no others around…

Petal tears fell and coated the ground in white droplets when the blossoms had fluttered their last. Leaves tumbled into piles and nests, giving themselves up to moss or tiny insect bites. The spindly frame transformed yearly, shrill and skeletal when the world tried to rip it from the ground, then flush with vigor when the sunshine flirted from far above. It didn’t ask much, it was focused on something else.

The base grew deep, as much as the tree itself was tall. They would rest beneath it, and they were lain to rest beneath it, while the roots curled through the crevices of their bones. They would fade into the ground, and the tree would remain to provide the ground to them. It hefted the soil, it shouldered the sky. It played a game of patience with the world, and nothing else was still enough to listen.