(Original fiction protected under the U.S. copyright laws and may not be reproduced, copied, including electronic copies, distributed or exhibited without the prior written consent of Sarah Walko.)
A young man named Ells sets out from New York on a trip to Berlin with plans to attend an international film festival. He is prepared for the trip however, his mind is heavy and preoccupied as his younger sister was recently committed to a psychiatric hospital. His odyssey turns into a four-day sleepless adventure in a city previously unknown to him. He finds himself confronting the plethora of thoughts and emotions surrounding the situation with his sister through the many characters he meets, places he visits and the history of the city. This journey continually confronts him with his family, his past and finally himself until it drastically alters his present and future.
Excerpt 1:
Arriving at Grand Central Station, he walks to the center near the information booth. The ceiling in the terminal is a map of constellations, gold leaf on cerulean blue oil covers the 80,000 square-foot concourse, the Mediterranean sky with October to March zodiac and 2,500 stars. The zodiac is depicted backwards, imitating a medieval manuscript published in an era when painters and cartographers depicted the heavens as they would have been seen from outside the celestial sphere. Just because it is daylight, does not mean that lights shine with indifference. He thinks to himself. Sweet Samantha, I’d like to buy you a bright star catalog, so you can study shine. He reaches into his pocket, feeling the edges of the letter he has saved to read for the trip. It is one of many he hasn’t responded to. They are like fiction, he decides. They are someone else’s history, someone else’s present, the untogether of others. They were sent to him on accident and he now just eavesdrops into other lives, like reading a letter from another century.
His traveling partner Morgan arrives and greets him with a hello and firm handshake. They walk to the bus stop on 51st and Park Avenue and he observes the hurrying all around him, wondering what each person he walks by would do with seventeen hours of nothing everyday. That is her reality now. Tis drab your departure. To slip can be slow, anticlimactic, boring. They travel on the bus in silence and he watches the New Jersey landscape. As they slide away from the city he silently speaks to its gray walls. From where I live, I see the backs of stars. Mist between mountains, is the reverse view of the galaxy.
Excerpt 2:
There’s a lot down time on sets. There are lot of pauses between the action. There’s a lot of boredom between the drama. So, I read.
They giggled. The dark haired girl nudged the other. We have to go. She said. They stood and gathered their bags and winter coats. You should eat, she told him. They giggled once more and left him alone.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter he had been carrying. He knew he was finally ready to read it.
Dear Ells,
Its not like these new times are new times. I need something to restimulate my mind from such bleakness. There is always much to do but I often am often very slow too much time alone. There’s been a few bright spots but I often can’t quite wrap my head or heart around all that was lost and just go on as if its alright to be where I’m at. Isolated, tired of rejection, puzzlement or blame tired of feeling like there isn’t a single thing that wants me here. I need to be close to goodness and compassion. I need safety, very much. Where are they? This is not really living life either. I am left with myself. What I remember strongest about me, is that I dreamed . I dream now, but it’s a different kind of dreaming. There’s something that keeps surrounding me. That I just can’t grab a hold of. I miss you and me. I hope you have a good night whatever you are doing. Please gaze out over all the beautiful lights. The energy, electricity. And think of me. Someday this will all be well, I think.
Love
Sam
He paid five euro on his way out, despite the fact that he hadn’t had any wine or food. He walked out into the cold with no idea where the theatres were from here. He knew he should probably ask but he just wanted to walk. To think. When writing dialogue, be sure to write stage directions. So we know, how while acting, which direction to go, he remembered one of his professors telling the class. He wished someone would write him stage directions at this moment. As he walked he recalled a poster on the wall of his bedroom that used to scare Sam when she was little. It was a poster of birds of prey and owls. She always asked that he keep his door shut because she could see it from her room.The owls look mean she used to say.
Which ones?
She pointed to the eagle owl.
Why?
It has fire eyes. And the great gray owl too because it has a big head. It looks like a mutant. Or an alien owl.
Which ones do you like Sam? he had asked her.
The tawny owl, she said.
Strix aluco, he’d reply, reading off its scientific name.
And the osprey, she said.
Pandion haliaetus. Why do you like those ones?
Because I like that blue marking on it’s face.
Which ones do you like Ells? she asked.
All of them.
Why?
Because they’re wise. And you can’t tell anything about them just by the way they look.
They look like they’re frowning.
Not all of them. Some of them look like they’re smiling. Like a grin.
Like which ones?
The red footed falcon.
No it doesn’t Ells. That’s not a smile.
When she left he had looked at the poster for a long time. He liked the barn owl, and the sparrow hawk. And the red footed falcon. Tyto alba, Accipiter nisus, falco vespertinun. His favorite, was Merlin. Flaco columbarius. On the very bottom of that poster there were big block letters printed which just said, The Guardian. He thought about that now, that word. He was supposed to have been her guardian.
He walked by a book store. It was closed but the front light was still on. He stopped and looked inside. The books in the window were The Marvels of Science, Atlas of the Difficult World, Basic Thoughts on Existentialism, the Electric Michelangelo, Cold Mountain, the Reader, Dreams, the Air Conditioned Nightmare, One Man’s Bible, the Rumi collection, the Space of Encounter, Infinite Jest, Routes, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Macbeth.
He could see his reflection in the glass. He started talking to himself, aloud this time in the vacant street. I’d like a tall shot of Johnny Walker green that I could look through with rose-colored glasses. I’d like a full moon, a lake that manufactures diamonds and a bath full of girls with dark hair. I’d like a compass not an atlas. A logic not a marvel. An electric shock to go up my right arm so I could harness lightning. I’d like to climb a cold mountain just for perspective and a Reader at the top to make sure my view is not skewed due to altitude effects on the brain. I’d like air without conditions, blank books so thoughts can encounter my space. I’d like a map into placelessness, a game of chess with a joker and strong fociles of hair, black roots that attached to a living breathing scalp next to me every morning. I’ll paste a picture of stone steel gray inside the great empty Square in the sky so the double double toil and caldron bubble won’t be hero speared and in an instant pop and shake the whole god damn earth and make the mountain of Crete echo.
A man walked by him, looking at him but kept going. He had been breathing heavy and leaned in against the glass, letting his breath slow and feeling its cold surface. It felt cold but only for a moment. Then it began to warm against his skin. Perhaps it is true if you lay down on ice long enough it will be warm. Perhaps so because when you get that numb, when you feel that nothingness, everything washes into a room temperature, a closed door, a closed room. He closed his eyes.
Ells?
He woke startled and hit his head against the glass. He had been dozing on his feet leaning against the glass window of the book store. And now Ann was standing there with a puzzled look on her face.