My Very Short Absurdist Story/Vignette

[Guttersnipe]

I've been interested in absurdism in media of late, and wanted to write a story in the genre--something Kafkaesque. The working title is "Sisyphus Shrugged," but I am open to other title ideas. I fear it might be a bit boring, so let me know if and how I can "spice it up" while maintaining the main idea. Tbh, it's so short because I didn't know how to continue. I'm not sure whether the length is a hindrance.

STORY
My room is my world. There is a bigger world on the outside, but it may as not exist for me, for I cannot view it. I know my room as well as I know myself, for I have been here for eternity, or close to it. There is a dent in the ceiling. There is a cobweb in one corner, but no spider to tend to it, nor insects to be trapped in it. I am quite alone. I do not feel lonely, for I've never had company to begin with. There is a bed that I don't use. When I sleep, which is seldom, I use the floor.

I paint the walls with images that come into my mind, seemingly without cause. I am not sure whether I'm very good, but, then again, I do not paint for a living. Rather, it is my raison d'être. The room would be forever white without a painter. I have an overbearing feeling of duty to paint. There is a bucket I use, one that is forever filled. It is, quite inexplicably, full of all the colors I use. It gives me blue when I paint the hyalines, green when I paint flora. Mostly, I create scenes in which the sun is shining.

After a time (which is difficult to measure in eternity), the walls become white again. No one paints it white; it just returns to its natural state. I am not bothered or disturbed by this in any way. I care deeply for my room. It needs me--and I, it.

No creation of mine is the same, although they are all very similar. As I've said, there are many day scenes, and I think that they represent a very small part in the vast outside world. They are all done in the impressionist style, with no clear-cut images.

The walls revert to their whiteness at irregular intervals. So, when I do sleep, it is only because I am waiting.

The outside world has given my room and I a name. We are called Memory, and the phenomenon of reversion to whiteness has been termed Amnesia.

Finis

@BT Jones @Joshua Jones

 

[Grimnebulin]

Hi Guttersnipe,

Very short piece. The notion of a scene rather than a story.

There's currently no conflict or potential conflict.

Instead with a view to how you might continue, some questions/thinking points:

1. Where does the narrator gather information from the outside? "The outside has given my room and I a name." , "There is a bigger world on the outside." "They're done in the impressionist style."

How does the narrator know this? How has the narrator come to understand that the pictures they paint represent something outside the room? Where has the narrator learned of the impressionist style and why have they latched onto it?

2. There's some factoid about when you recall a memory it's altered since the last time you recalled it. So every time you recall something it degrades the original image/memory. You could play around with that.

Maybe the walls don't always become white again. Maybe dark patches linger. Muddy, incoherent swathes that prevent the next picture from being everything it could be. Maybe The patch roves around the wall, eating into clean spaces and obscuring details.

3. Is there space to play with "glory days"? Cherished memories/paintings that remain on one of the walls, that struggle for space against each other? That gradually meld and blur? The narrator could struggle to keep them distinct and readable. All whilst having to throw up new paints elsewhere. A spinning plates type scenario.


4. Suggestions for taking it further: If you're going for Amnesia, then perhaps the narrator is called upon time and time again to recall some scene, but never get's it right, and perhaps each time they try the dark patch grows, the space in which they can paint diminishes. The colours available could mix and coagulate and become less. The painting tools themselves could begin to degrade? A tremor in the hand, a flick of the wrist, the bristles fall away like rotten teeth?

You could go for dementia, with strange scenes and shapes and distortions entering into the paintings, the narrator could become fearful of their own work but compelled to continue regardless?

You could play with the conflict of memory and reality? So perhaps some documentation of a memory (a photo, a film, a transcript) that's at odds with what the narrator is asked to paint?

Go for all three if you're feeling it.

Happy to clarify any of the above if parts of it (or all of it) doesn't make sense.

 

[Wayne Mack]

For me, first person doesn't work when telling things the character does not know. Perhaps third person? Or if in first person, only describe actions taken by the main character. Let the character sleep and repeat and leave it up to the reader to notice what has been lost or changed in the world. I felt I was left hanging after the big reveal, could that be moved earlier in the story?

I think this is an interesting idea that would create a solemn moody feel.

 

[CTRandall]

I like your idea but, oddly enough, I think you are too direct at points. Telling us that the room is memory and the white walls are amnesia takes some of the challenge out of the piece--and, for me, that challenge is a prime source of drama and tension.

I've put a few comments in red below. I think you could expand this a little simply by describing one or two "days" (or the periods between a couple of sleeps). The conflict might be man vs. himself as the narrator struggles with incomplete or hazy images and forgetfulness.

My room is my world. There is a bigger world on the outside, but it may as not exist for me, for I cannot view it (I don't think you need this--too direct). I know my room as well as I know myself, for I have been here for eternity, or close to it (not needed). There is a dent in the ceiling. There is a cobweb in one corner, but no spider to tend to it, nor insects to be trapped in it. I am quite alone. I do not feel lonely, for I've never had company to begin with. There is a bed that I don't use. When I sleep, which is seldom, I use the floor.

I paint the walls with images that come into my mind, seemingly without cause (not needed). I am not sure whether I'm very good, but, then again, I do not paint for a living (perhaps something like "I've nothing/no one to compare it to"). Rather, it is my raison d'être (word choice doesn't fit with the simple language used everywhere else). The room would be forever white without a painter. I have an overbearing feeling of duty to paint. There is a bucket I use, one that is forever filled. It is, quite inexplicably (no need to say this), full of all the colors I use. It gives me blue when I paint the hyalines (doesn't fit style), green when I paint flora(same again). Mostly, I create scenes in which the sun is shining.

After a time (which is difficult to measure in eternity), the walls become white again. No one paints it white; it just returns to its natural state. I am not bothered or disturbed by this in any way. I care deeply for my room. It needs me (not clear why--this might be a point for expanding the story)--and I, it.

No creation of mine is the same, although they are all very similar. As I've said, there are many day scenes, and I think that they represent a very small part in the vast outside world (mentioning outside world strikes me as too direct==maybe hint at other kinds of scenes, maybe fragments, incomplete images). They are all done in the impressionist style(describe them, rather than simply attaching a label), with no clear-cut images.

The walls revert to their whiteness at irregular intervals. So, when I do sleep, it is only because I am waiting.

The outside world has given my room and I a name. We are called Memory, and the phenomenon of reversion to whiteness has been termed Amnesia.

 

[BT Jones]

I really like this, @Guttersnipe. I like the 1st person. I think I am still a little inexperienced in purist terms to recognise typical pratfalls, especially as I struggle to read fiction myself. But I like the essence of it and I like the style. As it's a short story and, by the sounds of it, a speculative piece to begin with, it's obviously lacking a core story or plot. But I think the process of you trying to find within yourself could be very interesting.

There is unlimited potential for who this might be and what it all represents. Without wanting to drown out any of your ideas with my own, this could be:

• God, trapped inside some strange spiritual bubble, trying to reconnect with the human race. The back story being that he/she/they had long yearned for human emancipation to stop all the unecessary suffering, waste and destruction (i.e. 20th century Human), and when it finally came - when mankind finally reached adulthood, perhaps in 2150, or something - the result was his ideological destruction, on the basis that religion was determined to be the root cause for all the conservatism holding humanity back. The secondary story could be a couple of people in the new world order perhaps trying to reconnect with what they'd lost and find a happy medium, amidst dealing with environmental issues that WE caused.
• An incredibly gifted individual set in the modern era that can see and hear everything; the future, the past, the human consciousness. And this could be their awakening ahead of an attempt to enlighten the human race. On its own, it would be nothing spectacular, but if you cast this individual in a strange location (Murmansk, Russia, for instance, or Rio Gallegos, Argentina, or Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands.
• Or the entity that is the human brain, and it transpires that human brains are separate organisms with a symbiotic relationship with human beings. They are memory because they carry the memories of all our ancestors in their cells, and when the host (people) dies, they transfer their synaptic energy to the earth and it gets passed into human children, hence the recurring thread of reincarnation.

There are so many places you can go with this. I think the crunch in making it compelling is to have a plot, and then characters the reader can care about. The character described above would work as an observer, or a supplement to 'human' characters in the subplot.

Sorry, I'm going off on tangents here. It's Wednesday night here and I've had a few red wines.

Anyway, keep it up. You've also made me wonder whether to post another piece of my first story, which has a similar first person perspective, but a different tone and mood. I will have to ruminate on it!

Good luck! And sorry for being so slack in responding. Please, keep tagging me in anything you post.

 

[tinkerdan]

I enjoyed this so much it inspired me to write my own.

...which I sent to you privately, so as not to draw away from the comments here.

I think this is one of those things that each person might have their own take on things and have a different way of addressing the issue.

Doesn't mean anyone is better than the other.

Thanks for the inspiration.

 

[Guttersnipe]

I enjoyed this so much it inspired me to write my own.

...which I sent to you privately, so as not to draw away from the comments here.

I think this is one of those things that each person might have their own take on things and have a different way of addressing the issue.

Doesn't mean anyone is better than the other.

Thanks for the inspiration.

Brilliant story!

 

[msstice]

You are possibly going for a Allegory of the cave - Wikipedia type narrative? This is always a fun way to explore deep philosophical questions. I like the scene you have painted. I like that the narrator questions the phsyics of his world, even if to shrug and say, well the bucket fills up, I do not know how. What I think is a hole that needs to be patched is how the narrator knows what to draw and what it is.

An interesting twist might be to have the first part narrated as you have done, and then add a second part where we see the POV of someone looking in, perhaps a doctor in a psychiatric hospital, or a god, or something, and they they basically describe the meaningless squiggles the 1st narrator is making (or whatever direction you want to take it).

 

[Joshua Jones]

Ok, so let me preface everything I say with saying I'm a complete novice regarding absurdism, and my preference is against 1st person except in very limited contexts. So, my comments are going to be of quite limited utility. Please invest in at least one shipping barge of salt with which to take these comments.

It's an interesting piece. I agree with the previous comment that it is a little on the nose, but I'm also not sure how to approach this in a more subtle way which still leads to the reveal. Although, that may be one of the central challenges of absurdism... conveying the intended meaning without being direct.

I like the idea of anthropomorphizing/room-morphizing memory, but I'm curious about your decision to make the erasure amnesia. I feel like amnesia, while portrayed in media as an occurrence as common as Tuesday, is pretty rare. What I feel is more common is memory degradation, dementia, and Alzheimer's, which seem like they may have a similar effect but also touch on a broader experience.

My biggest critique (remember that barge of salt? It may come in handy here) is that I feel nothing is actually happening in the story. To me, it reads more as a setting in which something may happen rather than a happening itself. Now, this could well be a feature rather than a bug, based on the proposed title, but for me this makes the piece harder to dig into. That said, I feel absurdism is a literary art form rather than necessarily a narrative process, so it may work in that context. I honestly am not well read enough in absurdism to pontificate on the matter.

This is your story, of course, so feel free to completely ignore my suggestion, but were I writing this I think I would probably shift things around, having the narrator/protagonist being able to paint vividly, but this slowly goes away until eventually the walls either refuse to be painted or randomly paint themselves, chaotically and out of any sequence. Or perhaps have the room be a long wall the narrator is painting as a mural, but that perpetually erases chunks, reorders the scenes, etc. Of course, it's more an artistic expression, so there's no real wrong way... but looking at this strictly from a layman's perspective as someone who searches for narratives, I think there could be an advantage to having more actually happening.

So, overall, I like the idea, but I'm left wanting more happening in this happening. Sorry I couldn't be more enthusiastic about the present form.