Light and Space

Amazing perception came to him. He felt the four lumps of flesh stump him under the cheekbone, and knew that the third one broke. That sort of insight came with a cost. A flash of pain removed him from the present. He remembered falling off of the swing at age four. He remembered drawing back to gain more height, and then what?

The flash of insight as he fell. That happened many years before. He fell again, now. He recognized the great follow through his opponent put into the punch. He saw a stop motion replay of the moment he dropped his right hand, slid his body sidewise. His opponent dropped the punch over the shoulder immediately. I must have telegraphed, he thought.

He came back to the present. The spectators turned horizontal in unison. The floor hurried to meet him. He hit the concrete and counted three teeth as they drifted by his view of everyone's shoes. Spectacular punch, he admitted. The punk one shot him under the eye. The force rattled his head, threw it back, kinking the bundle of nerves in his upper neck. A chain reaction occurred. For a split second, his body and brain disconnected and rebooted in safe mode.

I can't feel the cold, he thought. Red static hummed in his head. Roll, idiot, he commanded. The kick to his stomach arrived before he moved. Now, motivated, he scrambled like a deer struck by a sedan. His hands slapped the ground in front of him. He pistoned his legs. A second kick caught his hip, but, with his mind almost clear, he turned over with the impact.

He looked up and he saw it, the man's boot. Instinct ignored his desire to stop and die. The boot fit in his hands. He twisted the man's ankle. He pulled the foot. He stuck his ass end out and swept through the other ankle with his legs. The man learned about gravity and balance.

It came down to the ground. He released the boot and grabbed for the arm. They tandled, rolled. Get on him, he thought, get on him. Get on him. Get on him get on him. He mounted and pounded flesh on flesh. Six punches. Someone pulled him off.

He floated, guided by three pair of arms. His opponent rolled face down, gasping and chuckling in the back of his throat. Fuck, stay down. The arms let him go. He wobbled. The man got on his feet and spun to face him.

The circled like two mice under a hawk. Nothing slowed. He pushed the first fist thrown to his right with two pat blocks on the elbow. He jacked his knee into his opponent's lower back. The man went to a knee. He elbowed the back of his neck on his way to a choke out. The man dropped forward, squirmed to his back and launched a kick to the groin. Again, the boot ended up in his hands. He dove forward. The leg went backward. He could feel the pop as the hip dislocated.

The scream barely registered because of the noise of shock from the crowd. Again, the arms pulled him off. Stay down. It's over. The silent sentiment crossed the gap between the two as they locked eyes. Five men jumped between them. It ended. Time cut its way back to normal speed. Space unfolded to hold the entire room. Sound cleared; pain returned.

He felt the cold again.

On Writing

The few responses I get about the work I post seem to be favorable. Sometimes, people ask how to be a better writer. I can only say that writing is like any other craft. The more you work to perfect it, the better you will get. Of course, there are many things to work on and projects to help you learn new ways of expressing things and a few easy rules.

1. Avoid using commonplace descriptions. Find a way to say 'lighter than air' in different words, like 'His mood was like linnen hanging on a line, drying and rising as the warm breeze nudged it.'

2. Don't cram in a fancy word. Talk the simple talk of images. A rose can be beautiful. There's no need for it to go as far as ethereal in its purity.

3. Show it in images. Don't say it. Don't say 'The man was sad.' Show a sad action we've all noticed. "He put his hand to the side of his head, felt his neck slouch." Is he said? Is he tired? We don't know but we also know this is not a man in love with his situation.

4. Avoid passive voice. That's the constant was, were are, did, had, is etc. He was walking should be written with percision and definite time "He walked." Anywhere you see an am was is were (except in dialogue) rip it out and find the verb that shows action.

5. Describe only what is seen in the vision of the characters present. This puts the readers in the character's mind.

Progress in writing is slow. First, you've got a good idea and you hate how it's written. Then you write something you think is good that other people don't seem to like and you can't figure out why. Sooner or later, you write something halfway decent and someone enjoys it.

Then, you stop worrying and write what you see and keep it tight and clean. You read it and you know it's good. You don't wait for the response anymore.

That's when the addiction starts. When your own writing entertains you, that's when itbecomes your art and not an assignment.

En Passe

Philidor once remarked 'Pawns are the soul of chess'. Sixteen pawns - eight on both sides - formed two skirmish lines, declaring the necessity of the miniscule. They stood, unmoving, held in place until the arbiter adjusted the clocks, reviewed the rules and inspected the board.

The clock started with white's first move. A sun tanned hand pinched the head of the pawn in front of the king. The soul stirred. A giant monitor, hung above the opponents, revealed the first move to the bubbling audience. Over thirty languages merged into the voice of a stream. The hard harsh consonants fell into pools of single vowel surprise.

Pardu, white pieces, made a statement. The King's Pawn Opening, rumored to be dead due to obsessive analysis of supercomputers and Grandmasters, said to the world that something had been overlooked. Pardu, ahead by on half a game, did not dare draw the last game. To play for a draw invited disaster, laziness and poor preparation. Dunlave stared at the audacity, but held his face tight. A minute ticked past.

A battery of useful replies existed. Dunlave considered them in turn. Here, in this world, a mild surprize exploded into being. The initial creation costed him time. He guessed that Pardu had prepared for most of the possible lines. He stared at the white pawn. He asked silent questions of the stranger. He needed the right response, the one not prepared for. He chose a sharp line by placing his queen's pawn in the center, diagonal to the white. The monitored reported this to the crowd.

The flow began immediately afterward. Grandmasters long dead crawled from the grave with their notes and novelties. Move after move, for six straight minutes, neither man hesitated. Pardu let a smile slip as he added one small wrinkle of a move that stopped everyone pleasant dead silent. Analysts, players and rows of synchonized IBM Blue S3's fought without word or action. A single player wrote down '!?' after the move. Others followed suit. Dunlave assesed it as all others did. The man, Pardu, was either mad or cunning.

Dunlave checked and rechecked the list of moves to this point and still the mixed expression of admiration and confusion remained. All in the room knew the old myth that the World Champions thought ten moves ahead. In truth, what seemed a supernatural gift for containing millions of moves inside a moment's thought was memorization, pattern recognition, instinct and desire of one will versus another.

Dunlave fought with a lingering misgiving about taking the offered pawn en passe. He scanned the board, looking for ghosts in the wood grain. At last, he ignored the warning voice. He took the pawn.

Pardu leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He absorbed the smell of the room. Small details kept his secret thoughts in check. He concentrated on the whispers. Once settled, he pulled all emotion out of his mannerisms and sent a rook to catch a knight.

Dunlave sat in horror. His composure evaporated. He saw the point. There was no need for him to prolong the game. He tipped his king. The men stood and shook hands. Applause and flashes from the cameras solidified the victory. Dunlave's curiosity overcame his pain.

"Where," he asked Pardu, "did you find that?"

"It appeared in an old corosponence game between my father and his fried," Pardu explained. "The move was difficult. In his notes, my father wrote how unsettled he felt taking the pawn. Then, with the echange following, he refused to retake the rook and mated his friend," he said. Pardu reached down, untipped Dunlave's king and showed a neat and clean queen sacrifice for Black.

"Ho," Dunlave put a hand to his cheek. "I'm a fool. I never saw that. I never looked." The queen sacrifice for Black clearly led to mate in three moves. In that room and across the globe, people politely changed the notation from Pardu's exciting move from '!?' to '??'. Many added a minor note that. at the time the game was played, very few players would have caught the blunder.

Dunlave walked away one and one half games down. The match ended. Pardu had won. Both men felt terrible about how it happened.