Mackison and Jackison
OK people, here it is--the first installment in what I'm hoping will be a long-lived ongoing collective fictional blog here on the website, which means any one of us can add to it whenever we want to and write in whatever adventures we want for the protags. When I had this idea, I thought, "Yeah, I'll just post the first entry, then whoever adds to it can join the same thread of text," but that may or may not be possible...and at the moment I don't think it is--but maybe it is! (I don't have any experience with collective blogs.) Anyway, here's that, and I think it's a pretty good first entry. I tried to keep the theme wide-open and provide a good diving-board for whoever adds the next one...see what you think, and please set me straight on A) whether or not you all think this is a worthwhile project and B) the best way to format, if so. Okay.
Here's to you and the force you rode in on,
Zack
"WORDS WERE WORDS"
Marcy Mackison and Jerry Jackison were writers...
Beyond that, it was unclear to either of them exactly what their relationship to one another really was. It ran the whole gamut of human interaction. Sometimes they were lovers, and sometimes just friends. Sometimes bitter enemies or siblings or wisecracking co-workers. Whatever made the best story. More than anything else, they were writers...sometimes poetry, sometimes prose. It was all the same to them. Words were words. If language was really a virus, like William S. Burroughs once said, these two were sick as dogs.
They'd been out late the night before gathering material for their work, coming up with strange new metaphors and just trying to boil down perception enough so they could say a whole paragraph's worth of info in just three or four words like magicians. Jerry Jackison, he'd recently been experimenting with the vaunted haiku form of the ancient Japanese Zen masters and monks, all the great Zen drunks like Li Po, and he really felt like he was on to something. "William Blake once said this bit about seeing existence in a grain of sand," he said, "Marcy, that's just what I'm trying to do in my writing!"
Jackison was always showing off. Marcy Mackison had spent years writing haiku already, and she felt she'd already learned that making-the-most-of-the-best thing and solidly installed it in her writing. She no longer felt obligated to adhere to that 7-5-7 form. It was just too strict. "Jerry Jackison, you act like you INVENTED haiku! Don't you know I'm writing a GHOST STORY right now!"
"Well, Marcy, all I'm saying is that haiku really helps you make the most of all the best little bits, if you get my drift. Even in a ghost story."
"Oh I get your 'drift' alright," said Mackison. Jackison was always hanging out at the late-night coffeehouse and picking up all the new hipster expressions. In a way he wanted to be a 'Beat' writer, but he wasn't really a retrospectivist or a regressionist or retroactivist or--you know--whatever the right word would be. He was afraid to admit this to Mackison, but Jackison often had trouble finding the right word, which sometimes made him feel like he wasn't a 'real' writer, just another stowaway. He'd written a whole book about it called The Stowaway, which helped him not to feel so bad about it, but the coffeehouse was still his favorite place. Or maybe the bar next door.
"We've got another meeting with Crinkler today!" said Marcy Mackison. "He says he's got some good news about some kind of developing--what was it, oh I'm not sure--some kind of developing situation--a political situation perhaps, or a cultural one, you know--he says we can write about that and really make our MARK in the reading public's eyes!"
Jerry Jackison lowered his newspaper. "Well, which one was it?" he demanded. "Political or cultural?"
"Oh I can't remember," sighed Mackison. "You know how Crinkler's always got some new idea up his sleeve." It was true. Mr. Crinkler was their agent, and he was always coming up with some crazy new thing for them to write about. He lived in a very strange dilapidated seventeen-story old mansion way out in the gray scrub-brush outside town. Jerry Jackison hated to go there. Crinkler's mansion alone defied the very laws of physics that kept us all mortal and magnetized to the ground. But he'd gotten them published before...
"Oh, Marcy," he moaned. "You know how I hate to go there..."
"I know you do, but it's not really all that bad. I mean, I'm sure you 'll be able to WRITE about it! I mean political or cultural, what's the difference?"
"Well," he thought about it for a moment. She had a point. "You're right. Often my best ideas come to me after facing some kind of hardship. Let's go!"
They threw on their overcoats and raced out of their apartment, carefully noting all the details as they went, every crack in the sidewalk, every invisible flake of dust they felt in the air. They were writers, after all.
Here's to you and the force you rode in on,
Zack
"WORDS WERE WORDS"
Marcy Mackison and Jerry Jackison were writers...
Beyond that, it was unclear to either of them exactly what their relationship to one another really was. It ran the whole gamut of human interaction. Sometimes they were lovers, and sometimes just friends. Sometimes bitter enemies or siblings or wisecracking co-workers. Whatever made the best story. More than anything else, they were writers...sometimes poetry, sometimes prose. It was all the same to them. Words were words. If language was really a virus, like William S. Burroughs once said, these two were sick as dogs.
They'd been out late the night before gathering material for their work, coming up with strange new metaphors and just trying to boil down perception enough so they could say a whole paragraph's worth of info in just three or four words like magicians. Jerry Jackison, he'd recently been experimenting with the vaunted haiku form of the ancient Japanese Zen masters and monks, all the great Zen drunks like Li Po, and he really felt like he was on to something. "William Blake once said this bit about seeing existence in a grain of sand," he said, "Marcy, that's just what I'm trying to do in my writing!"
Jackison was always showing off. Marcy Mackison had spent years writing haiku already, and she felt she'd already learned that making-the-most-of-the-best thing and solidly installed it in her writing. She no longer felt obligated to adhere to that 7-5-7 form. It was just too strict. "Jerry Jackison, you act like you INVENTED haiku! Don't you know I'm writing a GHOST STORY right now!"
"Well, Marcy, all I'm saying is that haiku really helps you make the most of all the best little bits, if you get my drift. Even in a ghost story."
"Oh I get your 'drift' alright," said Mackison. Jackison was always hanging out at the late-night coffeehouse and picking up all the new hipster expressions. In a way he wanted to be a 'Beat' writer, but he wasn't really a retrospectivist or a regressionist or retroactivist or--you know--whatever the right word would be. He was afraid to admit this to Mackison, but Jackison often had trouble finding the right word, which sometimes made him feel like he wasn't a 'real' writer, just another stowaway. He'd written a whole book about it called The Stowaway, which helped him not to feel so bad about it, but the coffeehouse was still his favorite place. Or maybe the bar next door.
"We've got another meeting with Crinkler today!" said Marcy Mackison. "He says he's got some good news about some kind of developing--what was it, oh I'm not sure--some kind of developing situation--a political situation perhaps, or a cultural one, you know--he says we can write about that and really make our MARK in the reading public's eyes!"
Jerry Jackison lowered his newspaper. "Well, which one was it?" he demanded. "Political or cultural?"
"Oh I can't remember," sighed Mackison. "You know how Crinkler's always got some new idea up his sleeve." It was true. Mr. Crinkler was their agent, and he was always coming up with some crazy new thing for them to write about. He lived in a very strange dilapidated seventeen-story old mansion way out in the gray scrub-brush outside town. Jerry Jackison hated to go there. Crinkler's mansion alone defied the very laws of physics that kept us all mortal and magnetized to the ground. But he'd gotten them published before...
"Oh, Marcy," he moaned. "You know how I hate to go there..."
"I know you do, but it's not really all that bad. I mean, I'm sure you 'll be able to WRITE about it! I mean political or cultural, what's the difference?"
"Well," he thought about it for a moment. She had a point. "You're right. Often my best ideas come to me after facing some kind of hardship. Let's go!"
They threw on their overcoats and raced out of their apartment, carefully noting all the details as they went, every crack in the sidewalk, every invisible flake of dust they felt in the air. They were writers, after all.
posted by Zack Kopp at 4:32 PM
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