A Small Excerpt (from my own writing)
This little excerpt is from my own imagination. I like to write fiction in a choppy style, similar to how Colum McCann writes his novels. I try to pack a lot of detail in short little bursts on the page; I feel like it’s easier to grasp the atmosphere of the scene. Details might seem supplemental but I believe they help bring an entire story together. [Le Mort de Socrate by Jacque-Louis David is stunning as a whole, but the details — Crito intently listening to Socrates while clutching his knee, Plato sitting distraught at his teacher’s feet, a distressed and already dismissed Xanthippe being whisked away in the background — are what stirs the heart and draws you in deeper.]
Anyways, the following excerpt is about a man named Carmen, a city dweller, travelling west through Texas to visit his grandmother’s grave. I haven’t really nailed down how I want the story to unfold, but I started writing to get a feel of what I wanted the setting to be. I hope you enjoy.
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Carmen brought his car back up to speed and could see the checkpoint slowly dissolving behind him in the rearview mirror, until all that remained were the distortions of air caused by the heat on the asphalt. He could hear the sunbaked road crackle underneath the tires as he merged back onto the interstate, the ground begging to be alleviated from the sun’s inferno, which certainly damned all who wished to rest in it. But the road had not wished to be there. It was sentenced there for eternity, or at least until the stress of the cars and trucks and vans had torn up the solid surface, freeing up particles and chunks to be blown away by the wind, releasing them from the hell of the desert sun. The road had no say in the matter, for as humanity has deduced since its very origin that they must see the world and conquer it for themselves, the establishment of each and every cog in the expeditionary machine must take place. The wheel, the chariot, the stone roads of Rome, the saddle, the caravans, the carriage, the automobile, the interstate. All created by man, all to serve a purpose; to bring humanity from one point to another, to spread wealth, ideology, science, disease, joy, grief, darkness, light, manifestos, arrogance, hope, despair, destruction, their gods, their posterity, their virtues. And the road must lay down, shackled since the hardening of its asphalt, burdened by the weight of carrying their ideals, and subjected to all of human ignorance and nature’s wrath, with no hope of salvation, until humanity has neglected it, deeming it unfit for its purpose, and promptly replaced once more.
But if the road was indeed crying out to Carmen, he hadn’t acknowledged it, for when the checkpoint was out of sight, he reached for the radio and raised the volume to 17. Some local outlaw station. Van Zandt, The Highwaymen, Willie. Always Willie. A weighty step on the throttle, the burst of gasoline through the valves, the violent reaction of the pistons, and Carmen was off and away.
[…]
[…]
Thundering down the road, the Honda rattled against the once steady wind, which now gusted. The sky above remained a cloudless blue. Carmen wasn’t exactly certain where he was along the 500 mile stretch between San Antonio and El Paso, but he did make note that he had just passed Sonora a few minutes ago, still over 4 hours from New Mexico’s border with Texas. Rolling hills had turned into grassland. Grassland had now turned into dirt. There were hardly any human structures to speak of, except for the occasional gas station, oil derrick, and natural gas rig. He imagined the burly contractors who filled up the cheap hotel rooms in each of the small West Texas towns every few weeks. Hardhats, Chevrolets, Fords, Dodges, denim, boots (of both the cowboy and working style), pocketknives, belt clip cellphone holders, God, guns, guts, glory, Ram. A hundred thousand dollars a year to come out to the wastelands and tune up these nature-wrecking, moneymaking machines once a month.
Carmen envied them. Not for the work, nor for the kind of people they were, but for the simplicity of it all. For the city is crowded and no matter how big the metropolis sprawls, one feels trapped inside the bubble of the career and the home. A pig in a cage. Lonely, redundant, mundane. Hundreds of thousands of other beings within an arm’s length. But alone all the same. The robberies, the rapes, the shootings, the poverty, the fucked-up streets littered with potholes, the smog, the traffic jams. All of it was dull. There’s no sensationalism apportioned for what happens every day. But here, the only sprawl is the Chihuahuan desert. No other soul begging for your attention. Quiet mornings, calm evenings. Dry desert air. No sirens at two in the morning. Fitter, happier, more productive. A hard week of work during the days. But no diversions or distractions. And when one returns home, there has been refreshment found in the week of solitude.
