Big Building (Experimental Text)

This narrative was inspired by a book quote (Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest). The only relation that quote has to this text was from its comparison between humans and ants’ different experiences. 

My main goal was to create imagery that’s difficult to imagine and concepts that seem impossible to exist. I tried achieving this by combining sensory adjectives with senses that they’re incompatible with, and writing concepts/ideas that may prompt the readers to think about things that humans can’t experience or know. 

This short narrative was more explorative of human experiences and limitations, and focused on emotion/thoughts rather than action. I tended to add a lot of repetition to emphasise these ideas. 

“The ant climbed out of the basin and up onto the formation’s peak, but it felt no sense of towering above its surroundings because it had no fear of falling. [...] Without the fear of heights, there can be no appreciation for the beauty of high places.”

From The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (2008)

The building of sandstone reached for the stars and stretched to the horizon
And the traveling woman did not want to go inside.
The desert was relentless. The sun scorched. The traveller sought refuge.
With no other choice, her tired legs walked timidly in the building’s direction.

Neon Disasters (Experimental Text)

I chose to experiment with multimodality. Before this text was written, I drew abstract shapes inside of a circle, intending to represent nothing. After its completion, I observed it from different rotations and found images from the shapes and colours. With those findings, I decided to write a narrative that followed along what I saw while rotating the circle anti-clockwise.

My writing process was a mixture of describing the first ideas that came to mind, while also trying to keep them consistent with each other. Because I wrote primarily from feeling, the imagery, world and narrative all became surreal and dream-like. I was especially fond of my use of personification of objects like the moon, the sun and the sky.

Despite the text’s surrealness and nonsensicality, it vaguely explores some of the consequences of curiosity and the unknown.

And then a rock from outer space struck the eye of the atmosphere. The sky cried until its colour faded from blue to pink – an uninviting kind of pink that the sky should never be the colour of. The world shook like zig-zags and spirals. 

Drabble: Purpose

Written from a prompt: Frame the absence of something

When does a building know its purpose?

Does it know from the moment its foundation is built? Does it see its blueprints, or is it one with the minds of those who invented its concept? 

Perhaps, a building waits until its completion. Then, does it only know its purpose the moment its last brick has been fixed into place; when its roof is fit to shield its precious interiors? Or, is it not until those strange little people make use of the space that it holds, does the building only discover that purpose?

There was a tower that dominated a small island, located nowhere in the vast ocean. If it could think, it would have been asking these questions for as long as it could remember. See, while its top marked halfway between the ground and the clouds, it had been left  behind – left unfinished by those who created it.