writing

What a day

/ andyveilleux / Leave a comment

Some mornings began of love and hope, but there were also the disappointments. The sun had risen in a pale yellow, more of diluted urine colour than the orange of fire. The morning shuttered awake, as difficult and uneasy as a young child holding out against the inevitable time they would be forced out of the comfort and warmth of bed.

The sun rose naked. There is an irony in seeing and knowing the sun is a giant bonfire in the stars, and not being able to feel its warmth through the indifferent late February weather. Or maybe it was the Big Smoke. This city always had a way of taking the raw flesh and passion from the living, and leaving only bones.

There was something dead about the over-populated city. It had become a cancer, teeming with bodies still searching for souls. There was never a great divide, it was more likely the souls had slowly begun packing it in when the city started with The Pressure. Hearts pump life through the veins, but who is living?

The lost art of writing

/ andyveilleux / 3 Comments

Writing isn't what it used to be. Blogs have ruined it, some say. Others say my dumb-founded generation, and the generation preceding it ruined it before that. This is too big of an issue to tackle in a blog post, but I wanted to share two prime examples of exceptionally good writing, from the modern era (last thirty years or so). I won't ruin them by explaining why I think they're great piece of writing, so that's up for you to decide. Here they are:

 

"…off to the right of this typewriter, on the floor between the beds, I can see an 8×10 print of Frank Mankiewicz yelling into a telephone at the Democratic Convention in Miami; but that one will never be used, because the god-damn hound put five big claw-holes in the middle of Frank's chest."

– from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

 

"I shaved carefully with an old razor

the man who had once been young and

said to have genius; but

that's the tragedy of the leaves,

the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world has failed us
both"

– from Charles Bukowski's The Tragedy of the Leaves