The Best Portfolio, Better than the Rest

8/3/2019 The Best Portfolio, Better than the Rest

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Khari Thompson

Mr. Craddock

Writing Across Cultures

16 January 2012

Reflecting on Hard Things/Changes

This marking period has been a toughie. College stuff unfinished and desperately

needing to be finished, midterms to study for, work, obligations, homework. Ive had to make

some sacrifices for the sake of time, and not having enough of it. Mainly my writing portfolio is

not bulky in the least, and Ive had to skimp on some physics assignments (cant say Im too

upset about that).

Honestly, my hearts not in it these days. My plate feels so full that dedicating large

amounts of brain processes to the creation of stories seems tedious and out of my line of sight. I

dont feel much like a writer, as I hone my portfolio for presentation to my art schools, and I think

Im feeling the weight of that statement. My brain has been largely geared towards illustration,

forms, lines, colors, and the concise statement of ideas and representation of characters. Its

tough to put it on a totally different creative track, dealing with plot, dialogue, thoughts,

emotions, development. Its interesting, throughout the years I feel like Ive been sort of driving

through to this point of creative minimalism, where the things I write I want to be half a page

long.

But this isnt to say that I havent had ideas of things to write. After finishing 100 Years of

Solitude, I can sense the cycles in my life, the archetypes, the way things work. Id love to write

a story similar in style but it feels so far out of my grasp right now. I feel like my command over

the English language and its conventions in regards to storytelling, and even poetry, have

dwindled over the years. I started trying to write a story about what Ive mentioned, but I couldnt


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find the proper voice. The proper connections from thought to thought. Its like those elusive

powers of language take an even greater leap to elude me. and its pretty frustrating. I know

with practice comes everything, but honestly, I dont think Im going to end up in any careers

writing stories.

Now, for my actual reflection. Im including two stories and a bunch of drawings, just to

show you what Im working on. The first story, On Not Existing; The Cloud Pepole of the

Andean Region was really really tough for me to write. The essay basically starts off and ends

how I feel--non-existence seems so much better than existence. I feel like non-existing would be

fantastic, and I look at us humans and all the crap we constantly create and really wish I could

build a device to do the opposite of make things, to create voids wherein everythings natural

and unchanging. Originally the story was going to be about this technology, but it was

impossibly for me to do it. Like I wrote, a story was very difficult for me to pull off. An essay was

easier.

The end of it kind of came out of nowhere, as I was trying to make it make sense to

someone who wasnt me. I thought it was nicely ironic, kind of giving a different light to this

whole global warming business. The speaker of the story was perhaps the orchestrator of it,

trying to bring about the extinction of the human race.

The other story I wrote was something that I started a while ago, based onA Clockwork

Orange, but didnt finish, and still havent finished. Im very fond of dystopian novels, and I

thought itd be fun to write one of my own. The voice comes almost directly from Alex in the

movie, so dont be surprised if the whole thing sounds kind of overly familiar.

The drawings Im including to show you some examples of what Im working on for my

portfolio. Ive also got some animation ideas that, given time, I wouldve at least storyboarded. In

fact, Im including an example of an unfinished script Im writing for one (Sometimes, Spirits

Go) and a clip of the animation that sprung that.


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On Not Existing; The Cloud People of the Andean Region

I wanted to write a story about the cloud people of South America, who dont exist. I

wanted to write a story about them because Im thoroughly intrigued by the idea of not existing,and I wonder how they accomplished it. The only way to do that would be through a story, since

theres no tomes or history books detailing them, and Im not all that great at stories. So Ill write

a essay on the cloud people, and explore their non-existence.The cloud people are a secluded people in the South American mountains. No one knows

which, particularly, only that the air surrounding them is large and as heavy as a bear and as

warm as its fur. An explorer, Dr. R. Harvey, details in his bookOn Mountains and Walking

Them his search for this particular mountain range, using a number of wonderful contraptions(like the walking four-fingered hitch trap) to feel the air. His writing becomes rather

unintelligible after the 600th page, though not due to any damage to his sanity. His writing

becomes less attached to this world, pressed into the pages and translucent, which makes it seem

that they might be those extremely valuable clauses heralding the discovery of the heavymountains. Of course, well never know, as rumor has it that he faded away.

Not much is known about their society, other than whats been observed by airplanepilots. The occasional pilot who has been able to see the cloud people on their high terrace

observe that theres nothing there. Theres a winding path to the summit of the mountain (which

the pilots admit is guesswork, since they say the atmosphere about the mountain has the

consistency of very thick syrup), thick with columns and hanging terraces and beautiful towersand proud obelisks. They claim that theyve seen things from every culture; Lamassu from

Sumeria, smaller versions of the Louvre and the MOMA, images of the Buddha, great

greenhouses the size of the Colosseum. Each pilot reports something new and special andProfessor R. Harvey, an expert on the cloud people, makes sure to chronicle the sightings in his

twenty-one hundred paged ledger. He purports that the fact that there are so many sightings, and

many of them overlapping, reveals that this society of cloud people must be so advanced, sowonderfully detached from our time and its development, that theyre able to pick and choose

and era, and utilize it as they please. The evidence is all in the book, he says, and if it were to be

wrong then it would mean that all of science is wrong, and that the basic laws of physics need tobe rethought. Its currently on display at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

The actual people, however--who are they? Well, excavator Rod Harley, upon trying to

clear the mountains of their tops to mine a new vein of pig hearts, says he had the experience of

meeting a young woman from the tribe. He calls her Holly-Susan, because the first time he sawher thats what she looked like to him. Later, his colleagues would debunk his theory, testifying

that she was actually Patricia-Jackson, or Campman, or, not a girl, but a seven foot tall bear.

Confusion abounds on this point, but the real interesting meat comes from Mr. Harleys accountof his time with her. He said it spanned about seven years, in all, and that he stood in the same

place the whole time. Originally, when he was surveying the mountain, she managed to sneak up

behind him and tack him on to what he describes as realitys weird mine cart and drag him upthe mountain with her. They entered the village and Mr. Harley saw nothing but shit sticks and

poor people. He was disgusted, immediately, and stormed back down the mountain. This is the

part, he says, where he got stuck for seven years. It was like walking through molasses, and the

girl just stood by him the whole time, not existing. Everything was kinda shimmery, kinda


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weird he said. Most of the scientific community doesnt accept his testimonial, but his account

has given a you get what you see, reputation for the cloud people on the heavy mountain.

Now, what Im most interested in is how exactly it is that they dont exist. Its simpleenough to speculate and study the fact that they dont exist, but to know how it is that they seem

to rise above this earth and relinquish the bonds of existence is where science should really be

going. My hypothesis is simple. They were most likely born into families of four by ancient birdswho then left them, muddling their gene pool and severing any kind of ancestral grounding these

people were to have. Of course, this explains why theyre on a heavy mountain. To stop their

wings from growing, the birds came back over decades with sweet honey and bits of bear fur andregurgitated them all over the mountain, until the air was thick as molasses. This soldered them

to the land, ensuring that theyd either sink in or suffocate, a better alternative to flying to and fro

like their forebears and creating more children (although their forebears, most likely Argentavis

Magnificens [or, the Thunderbird], were all eroded into tiny particles of space dust).Further, I postulate that these people, like Rod Harley illustrated, are a people connected

to the very threads of reality, riding along its mine cart, if you will. According to Mr. R.

Harveys bookVibrating Against Reality, its possible for one to fade away into the world by

involving oneself in it so aptly, with such a hunger, that one looses oneself in the heat of it all.Optimal conditions are warmth, inner coldness, longing, forlorn spirits, etc., all of which sound

like they apply perfectly to the situation of the cloud people, the bastards on top of a heavymountain.

Im jealous. This has been an objective essay, but I cant help adding my personal

sentiments to this. Im very jealous of the cloud people, Im very interested in not existing. It

seems so surreal and natural to not exist. Feeling myself fall against the fabric of clouds and skyis something that lights up my world at night, before I go to bed. Would I be trapped in an eternal

negative? I wonder what that realm would feel like.

Im also tired of existing. Life is heavy, and I myself am part of the problem, along witheveryone on this planet. Unfortunately, we have no huge teratorn to trap us where we are and

force us to lose our hands scraping against a hard, sweet substance, until theyre not nubs but

nothing. This is why I propose we begin warming the earth, and filling the air with pollutants.We cant go to space, and underwater is a very difficult place to populate. Therefore wed be

stuck. With enough carbon dioxide in the air we could trap the sun here, and use it to solidify

those pollutants into a huge covering, a blanket of desperation and beauty. With that, wed clawto escape, feel around the earth, trying to find a bit of loose thread in the cosmic array, and our

senses would become so acute that theyd get larger and larger until they were the things that

theyre sensing. It would be the most spiritual, beautiful, and not to mention beneficial thing for

the planet. Wed be peacefully gone into one another and everything else, without thoroughlyharming the earth (which itself has cycles, and can do away with any man-made issues within a

few centuries).

Though the cloud people are the resident authorities on not existing, there is no reasonwhy science cant catch up to these ancient wonders. We can break through the barrier of our

world and become one with the various fabrics and natural laws of all that we see here. Perhaps

one day, when extraterrestrials descend, they will see us as Rod Harley saw the cloud people,except instead theyll see reflected a beautiful model society wherein everyone lives in peace.

Perhaps theyll take this earthbound discovery with them and free it across the universe,

becoming the Thunderbirds of the cosmos until all living creatures cease to exist.


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Valentines Day

Dear diary. They call me Fella, and I do believe that I am wholly satisfied with my life.Every day I go to work at a nice, easy job, working at being a law-ist, with right and proper co-

wies, and on the usual day, straight from there I visit the darkness-- a "very" prominent scare-fest

with a delightful atmosphere; a delightful atmosphere and "very" radiant staffing. At nights I amaccompanied by a lovely lady with the name My Miss-- a lady long since taken from public

domain and plopped, quite nicely, into a grand empty house with an almost impressive number

of exotic shiny and new collars. I believe you would like it, my dear Diary, if you were likewisea fine lady. Our domestic life is "quite" nice, and she is "quite" content as well. We have a rotor-

motor, and an automatic shutter-cleaner. Quite nice, easy living, indeed.

The reason why I do turn to you at this time, my Diary, is because, as it happens, mycontentment and well-being is well at risk of being so sadly and viciously ripped to unfortunate

shreds that I myself may fall to pieces. Yes, my Diary, this little life of contentment and possible

perfection that I lead is quite nearly, and might I add not-of-the-humanly, threatened, what

with this being My Miss and Is four set ani-verse. At this do I have nothing but complete terror;I practically broke the relations in two when I fraught the thing up! and Im sure, my Diary, that

deep beneath your bindings and green-slate pages is a dreaded and gut-wrenching sick-feeling

for my future, and O what a powerfully painful resentment and truly empathetic sorrow you havefor my circumstances! I have to thank you for your concern, my Diary; this amount of human

emotion is the exact reason Ive come to you for asylum and shelter. You, my Diary, have been

charged with the great toll of seeing me through this vancing valentines day.

Oh but not to bring our spirits down too far (or, at least, to lift them up a tart higher sothat they have more room to fall), I think I shall give you a teasey-jab into just how perfect my

life is. As follows, my Diary, is my schedule as it runs, on, say, a sparkled, brilliantly tin-

kestreled and ringy-ding day, from beginningtimes to the end:In the morningtimes I go to the speakers, to work at being a law-ist, with my co-wies.

Times are good, times are nice. If youre wondering, as you are an infant, my sweet sweet Diary,

what a law-ist does, I think I shall be as good as a loving parent to tell you. What a law-ist is, my

dear, is a man who sits at a desk and reads aloud from the large book as its printed. You must

know what the large book is, its infamous in our community, from westerly to easterly, and its

me and my co-wies own jobs to read the laws as theyre printed across its pages. Its an honor,

but more is it a leisure, as me and my co-wies (or budbuds, as I most usually like to callthem), play very vorastrovous games and pranks on our fellow budbuds. Why, just last set,

while at the speakers, my budbud Smalls was sitting on one of the jelly-making good-seats,

swinging fullways backways and fullways frontways with the inability of falling, and all of us?

we were made very jelly indeed. Now, Smalls is not as the brightest of chops, and we call him

Smalls as so for his assumed very small mingly-centre And so, my budbud Larkstry (an odd

name, yes, but he is Parish, the thing cant be helped) decided to get the great roman that we use


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to slice our food for the lunches, and place it behind the swinging (and unsuspecting) Smalls, for

some nice old rev-enge. We all, the knowing budbuds and me, sniggered a fal-goofed, and made

eye-contact with one and the other, and watched with great mirthies as Smalls went up! and then,

with our mouths a-gape, and our hearts a-whole, he went down again, mistaking dumbly our

obvious devi-evi pleasure for happiness and jelly in his laughable galumphing around, and

unsuspectingly, he leaned back right onto and into the great roman! Oh Diary, at this we lost it!

How we laughed and laughed, each of us in our caddersnackers and yellow and blue over-coats,

with our stomachs near to falling off. We had the small things in our eyes that drip. drop. and

Smalls loud wails and shouts Fella o Larkstry o any a me good co-wies, help ur brother!

and his loud rattling gasps, and oh the blood! oh the blood!-- these things made us laugh all the

harder and all the harder! oh and we could not hear him, Diary, we could not hear him moan. But

the large book started a-reeling once again, and we gathered up our composure, and we set to

work again.

What it is that we do, my Diary, is read from the large book directly into the speakers, for

the people to hear. You see, the batons are nowhere around during the morningtimes, usually tilthe nights, and the people do surely all need to know about their ever-changing laws, you see, in

order that they not break them, due solely to the movements of their own volitions. This is how

we here in ogrdens set order to our things, my Diary, and for the most part, it works so very well.

It is a beautiful process, really, such that our booms trigger such avid discipleship, such hemmingbuzzes and right-worthies to the king! Yes, my dear, it is beautiful, and O how I love it, my job,

so so so! But thats not to say that there exist not times when the laws are, indeed, halved and

quartered by our, usually, most beautiful and mallow-fallow people, but of course, my dear, ofcourse-- this is not often. Or so it is this that I think, since from mass-tongue only I have heard it

said so; I would be wary, however, of what Ive told you, my dear Diary, since it is quite true

that most all the people I associate with do... in fact... work in the very same source-government light-tower as myself... and it is true, also... that most accompany me to the

darkness... or otherwise... and return to their nice ladys in the nights, or otherwise lurk about the

statues... waiting for a personality to awake and meet them... Come fraught it up, Im not all thesure that anyone lurks outdoors. Never have I thought of this. Never at all. Im very sure, never

at all.

Do hold on, diary. Let me turn my music-box.

Against-likeways, all that is arbitrary, my Diary, and I do not plan to dwindle on it and

bore you half to morgue.Next, after work, I do usually take a visit to the darkness, a wonderful nights-club, and a

very large light-tower indeed, probably several light-towers worth of light-towers, come fraught

it up. I find it in the line of my fancy to take the bar-train directly from the source-governmentlight-tower, because that way, its not needed to have to go rounda-bouts those awful-awful gray-

lands, with the added bonus of the terrific accompaniment of my budbuds. O how fun! Oh what

fun. Were usually in a sort of tanned and readied mood, all quite glad to be out of work, yet

none quite vorastrovous yet (yet!), but fie knows, just about-so. Our saster-jims are so flurriedon that bar-train, helped up with some fine apple-sour, and fresh outfits from the bar-trains

depart-store; in essence, on drive to the darkness, were just a few trialed yet child-like jims, my

budbuds and I. That be, my Diary, in case you were curious, Fella (myself), Smalls (before we


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reason is there to worry about small mechanics in the midst of such great-in-fun? None, I say, to

answer my own quiz. There is none.

In side this awe-some light-tower, you become affronted by damp air, and a slowbreathing sound. Sometimes theres a males voice mumbling, or little interjections of a baby

ever-so-lightly crying or weeping or sounding small booms on the speak-systems. Or so one

would suppose that they come from the speak-systems. Ive heard things like this flesh, thisflesh, get it off coming from them, things like, youre not meant to be here droning on and on,

like from a recording in a broken and skidding music box. Its always so very overwhelming, and

you never know which way is which. Forever disoriented, you are. Such a scare-fest, my Diary.And to note, as well, the floors, they are always deep, lush, and vroof-y; theyre dark, dark

black-- brown in some places but hardly noticeableand at points when youre walking about,

the floor may come up to your kneesers, or you may drop into the floor until your chest. This sort

of thing happens when you least think it will, when you least expect it, when youre most at riskof being a dare sunder-fool. I like it, Diary, I think theyre right experienced in traps and prats. I

do enjoy traps and prats, Diary. I do enjoy scare-fests. They make me flurried, bumbling,

bristling, brashling, vindicive, vorastrovous, MALINCINTAVEROUS. I feel good, Diary. Even

thinking about it. I feel very good. My saster-jim is almost full-fledged, and with no apple-sour, no fire-fire-forn-and-frost. I must turn my music box, shake this wonderfully affectatious

affectation right off me, so that I may return to you, my diary, with full fie-canner.


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Sometimes, Spirits Go


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His name is Mr. Kitesencan, his friends call him Blood of Peach. Watch as hestands still. His cold heart silently beats.

He's got this thing inside him, that's awfully nice and sweet. He calls it Juicy Spirit,and sits it on a seat.

He also has something opposite.

(Very opposite indeed.)

But Blood Peach never feels, never cries, only sees.Until he gives his spirit a little room to breathe.

Watch, quietly, beautifully, as the beautiful thing is freed:

Forests filled with monsters

Cities filled with bees

Deserts with statues of hawks and lightly dressed trees

But back home, Peach misses his sweet Juicy Spirit. He crawls in his bed and

doesn't know what to do. He puts ear to the ground in hopes that he can hear it.For he dreadsThe Opposite's

Coming.

Juicy spirit,

Out on sea,

Waves

(beat)

Waves

Sea smells right

Flying bees

Waves

(Beat)

Waves

Whales come outSwallow whole

Down the hatch with

Waves

(beat)

Waves

On land dehydrated

Despondent


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Diluted,

Crying and sprawling, Blood of Peach lay drained and staring

Perfectly empty

A shell

Ready for the red clutches

Of chaos and deepDark

Black to fill

Like a well of putrid oil

Stinking

And on fireTwisting turning bone-splitting churning goring and roaring with drool steady

pouring he's off...Clay

In the belly of the whale sits spirit nice and fine

With a flower in its mouth and a breeze on its spineIt greets the nice people and gazes starstruck,

At the skylight above where a heart shape is stuck

It thanks the new flowers for deliciously blooming

And the citizens laud it proudly for its devilish grooming,And thus douse the spirit in sweet cloth and honey,

And give it gracious offerings of bounteous bags of money

And the crowd let out a roar!

And roar through the streets comes Opposite

Banging and bristling, hunched shoulders, sharp claws,

The ground crumples beneath it in frightened shapes;

Stinkhole of bees

Forests of pawns

Deserts full of things that are dying or dead

Empty things

Dont understand

The fullness

Of life


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(work in progress)


14/15

(album cover for this guy)


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