I try and pry open my eyes, but they’re viscous, like two dead moths stuck to a window. I look for a line, the silhouette of the curtain, but the glow of winter is different to the bloom of warmer months. I haven’t really slept in two weeks. Sure I’ve “slept” but only when my brain has reached the point of exhaustion. And I wouldn’t call it sleep, 2–3 hours a night is not sleep — it’s a kind of incubation.
Originally published in Dumbo Feather. Courage might just mean discovering the lost and hidden parts of ourselves […]
If Nils Frahm Can Do It, So Can I I woke up this morning to a newsletter from one […]
In ‘Home, Like Dying Embers’ part 3 we meet Parker – a trumpet player with a troubled soul and a love for his instrument. Parker is a man who believes his life is full of intangible things, even his girlfriend seems intangible, but perhaps it is full of mysteries waiting to be revealed.
Arc of the Meridian is a poem I wrote earlier this year. It has finally found a home at Drunk Moneys and will be published in early 2019.
In part 2 of ‘Home, Like Embers’ Hannah sets out on her journey to show her sick father the old photograph of the family. But along the way she follows the sound of jazz and meets an exotic stranger.
Home, Like Dying Embers is a weekly – fortnightly story series and bit of an experiment in self discipline. One of the problems many writers face is the inability to finish what they begin, including me. And while I don’t believe in lumping all your stories onto your blog, I do believe in sprinkling them out like fairy dust … let them exist … breathe or eventually splutter and die. Live and learn. But let them exist. Another reason I began this story is to play with prose. You can map out a story (called plotting and not overly recommended) or you can let your characters follow their feet. This is what Home, Like Embers is all about, seeing where my characters will go next; inspired by a recent writing workshop with the wonderful Claire Keegan. Some of the characters are also based on my experiences while living in Berlin, and they are rarely exaggerated, merely reshaped. The story begins with Hannah and her life in Berlin as she decides to return a family photograph to her dying father. I hope you enjoy this series. – Jakob
