Category: Elevententeen

The Homeless Men

Hi everyone! Sometimes you just have to use  an expert’s voice!

I shall embark on this challenge to pull myself out of slumber…yet again, my God I know.

(Seth Godin’s challenge consisted of 100 blog posts a day – this story is a post about x amount of homeless men having one conversation with me the expert. Can you identify them?)

TODAY

My vigor is lost and it must be reinstated. So, here goes two months-ish of creative and technical credit. Perhaps some continuation of Daisy’s adventures in. Or should I say, at Elevententeen? Some free photos, you know. For days when I’m feeling too lazy. And what about samples of graphic art? Is there anything else worth more? I’ve been developing at the rate of a rabbit, gosh darn it!

I’ve been introduced to a multitude of applications, which seem to be more about bunnies reproducing. Interesting? Practice. And concepts (of principles and ideations). It’s effective. This is the glory of creation! Making things to build things; systems to make duties simpler (they do that though). I will also be throwing in my work (templates, sales documents and the sort), which I may add, are becoming more and more succinct every day. La la. So keep working, they’re supposed to evolve and eventually become fit!

2 DAYS PRIOR

I am still testing things out and I’m not really sure insight selling is working. Or maybe it’s eating eggs Benedict and strawberry covered waffles 4 x per week. But maybe it is? I will give it another year or so to see. Theoretically, it should take minutes to develop. Sort of like walking away. If you are telling me you’re in, that’s what I’m saying! And, I’m sorry if I come across negatively, it’s my army suit and optimism. Let’s start one thing, here goes something! It all dissolved as soon as I weighed myself and saw the dreaded number I was ever so in denial about.

MAKE SOMETHING EVERYDAY does not equal to EAT WHATEVER YOU PLEASE. Seriously though, it’s funny but it’s not.

The outcome of this assignment will be –

  • Improved voice in messaging
  • Happier disposition
  • Greater appreciation of my worth

PS – My intention with this post was to work on said skills above, but it is now (August 15, 2019) to express the right in the right should the right come through. What I mean to say is: Universe, you sure throw a lot of coincidences and happy lookin’ faces my way. Is there a proprietary patent pending that I’ve developed, developing? Sunshine and 80s music all the way? Ya expert, that’s the outcome/result of you going on a diet!

It commenced on December 4, 2019. I had crashed. Tired and done with my STEEZ. I just wanted to change absolutely everything about my life. It had felt like everything that could have possibly went wrong did. And everything about myself and my surroundings was suffering. Failing relationships. Wandering marriage. So, on that fateful day I told my husband of said suffering and he booked an appointment with my doctor and specialist. In the specialist appointment I was instructed to start a chart, so he built one for me in Excel and put it on my phone. The next step was the one I had been dreading for the past year – you have to weigh yourself Chon. And that was it. The end of it. The end of my demise. The end of my ignorance and futility. So, since then I am now on a lifelong mission, to actually commit to the most important thing anyone can do – to be happy and healthy.

This is, creative writing. Delving into the unknown, because you know it like the back of your hand. It’s confusing, but works well for developing a screenplay!

Ta-ta for now!

Preface to Elevententeen

Hi everyone! My aim is to develop Elevententeen into a movie script. Think Alice in Wonderland/Being John Malkovich/Harry Potter. Feel lost in my words? Close your eyes and imagine the characters in context. This is a great exercise for reading comprehension!  

In a fictive story, we follow Daisy, our protagonist and an offshoot of author Chona Fe Canlas. Daisy is humbly inappropriate and disillusioned. She deals with the transitions of her environment while trying to succeed as a social media specialist. Her role is futuristic, because she lives in a different time, within a different time frame called Elevententeen.

She takes adventures throughout this realm, as she tries to comprehend her reasons for being. She is an individual facing an array of identities, positioned to question new technologies and variations in time and space.

Intermingled with Daisy’s adventures are the author’s personal anecdotes, commenting on a career change and her attempt to comprehend the complexities of communication and the human brain. The author uses her own writing to cure a plethora of falsehoods, habituated over years of resisting Western culture, process & medicine.

Throughout it all, the characters must defend humanism and learn to praise their metaphysical accomplishments in a purely logical, but theoretical landscape.

A note from Chona –

I hope you can follow the wild ride! Linearity is scarce, because the story is intended to be read from varying angles (literally and conceptually). You will be following an infinite number of perspectives, while becoming aware of language’s transformative effects. Some important elements to consider – how do we (Daisy and Chona Fe) end up in the same place? Why don’t things change? What is considered to be change? What is the standpoint of time and space from the inside? And from the outside? What is real or constructed by our minds? How do we relate this to other living or non-living entities like animals, colours or feelings? What does the dual dialogue signify? What will be the ultimate outcome? Good, bad, happy?

Let’s figure it out everybody, enjoy the story! 

3 – A Day

“Dude, I’m not coming up yet.”, “I’m not ready.”

Daisy was so frustrated. Why did he have to control her like that? Why was he in charge and not her? The green tag of her Champion jumper rubbed the back of her neck and she irritatedly scratched, like a black spider would trying to climb a slippery tent. From here on out, she was done being told what to do. “I am going to succeed, if it’s the last thing I’m capable of, dangit, I WILL!” She expired her smoke, while tiny violet pills leapt off her dress making their way down onto pillows marking the street. Today there were no jewels or yams protruding from the earth. Wait, what? Where…am…I? Daisy slapped her forehead feeling silly and stern. “I thought the map was taking me through that way…hmm…I am going to have to reconfigure.” She stuck her finger down her throat to feel the recess between her clavicle and sternum. The bump was still there, and it felt mightier than before. With a giant sigh of relief, Daisy whipped her hand out and quickly rubbed her brow of the pink and yellow sweat trickling downward toward the edge of her puffy orange UVC (never reaches the earth) slippers. The colours were debating with the sunset, arguing in agreeance with this theory: Can we reproduce smells using sight? If only I could see my thoughts, Chona thinks.

“Is it still not working yet or?”, “No.”

Okay, well then…let me think. I have zero capability of calculating the difference between time and space using true visuality AND I have thus far only found value in doing nothing. Everything was trying to pinpoint the exact ‘moment memory’ Chona experienced most frequently while driving. Today, June 24, 2019, she smelled/saw the winter time, the time around Halloween and a few other things. But they came and went so fast, she couldn’t ascertain every detail in time to truly discern the event. And, she most definitely could not determine how in the hell this was working and how she would even begin to explain it. Everything was creating. Everything was putting it together. Everything was adding it up.

Daisy’s mind went blank. She sat solemnly in the imitation art chair wearing a torn out neon pink giant Cotton Ginny t-shirt, and appropriate underwear of course. “To shower or not to shower, that is the key,” she thought. Her boss quipped, “To remember everyone! Cucumber! Coffee! And, no sex please!”

According to the Kama Sutra, a person with the principles of this science, who preserves his virtue, his Artha and his pleasure, will obtain the mastery of Each Other.

“Daisy, are you listening?”, “Yes.”

Seventeen always looked like that, predisposed to sleep, knowing she needed time for rest. Chona Fe yawns and gives up for a bit, then hands the paper over to Alice. She bites into it like a rabid snail, because snails are like tricky people. Alice goes back into hiding and the teen just shrugs again. The adventures have now begun, but where will they take us? Because in this moment, none of this makes sense, right? And, do you truly think it will be a thing? A real, true, regular, normal way of being? Chona thinks, “Probably yes. But, I dunno! I just have to try and will probably die doing it!”

Daisy was listening, darting her eyes toward the light. Alice puffed some letter s’s in the same general direction. Can we begin to read it now, the way to it should read?

2 – The Hiatus

Our explorer has taken a hiatus, she is tired and as she peers across the street, he seems tired as well. She puts on her best coat and slips her feet into some cherry red rain boots. The moment she steps outside, she feels the cold tingle in her bones and her hair sashays as the wind hits her with a warm whisper asking again, “Hey. Are you there?” Flipping your hair in A Day can take you somewhere.

Don’t worry, just keep it as it is, she said. She says these types of things happen to her often, she must partially remain motivated to live and she must secondly rid herself from the despair of The Need. I need my comb, where is it? She reached into her purse, not the one from Vestiaire, but a second-hand Coach made of well-used garbage beige calfskin tin.

A desperate voice in her head urges, “These are the lines, the shapes, the colors, the values, the forms and the textures. There is no SPACE.” Repenting and refusing, Daisy shakes her head vigorously and steps into an oily pink puddle seeing only her reflection for a brief second in time.

“Come to the spot, dabble in delight, peruse my space with wonder and might; question clients A, C and J. Find a way to see, see connections and see separations. Come from away, come from near, be the bearer of untimely cheer.” – The Pause and the solemn inquirer of Where

And with that, Alice from Wonderland appears, presenting Daisy with another conundrum, this time more real: “Where can you gather your answers from? Is it online, has it been written by another? When the answers come, make it right, make it right, make it right.” She takes off in a haste, not really caring about her hair and for some reason this time, she is riding an umbrella as if it were from Life Space.

Hmm. That was somehow puzzling. But onto the next block, still in the rain, the sky still bleak, wet, gray. Daisy just can’t seem to pull up her head. She envisions red and yellow amongst oily pink and purple.

“Why is this taking forever?”, “What has become of the perspective?”

It is all askew and small, but still very vast. Very vast? I used to dream in this perspective, really…well…I was awake, burning my eyeballs trying to fall asleep.

“Somehow, there has been someone toying with this section.”

Elevententeen was just that, a constant slideshow of places that required definition.

There was no consistency or realness.

There was so much dismay.

Her entourage had miniature plastic smiles plastered to their faces and there was still that nagging colour red pinned to each user like a little umbrella badge stitched with tiny banana-shaped thread.

Chona has nowhere to go, although her urge to run, to run uphill…is strong.

1 – The Pen

How do you write anew? How do you continue to post after a long weekend of stuffing your face with turkey and cranberry sauce, to the point where, by holiday Monday you’re lost in a hazy misconstruction of football episodes, your daughter’s Super Monsters Halloween edition and extra pumpkin pie/pumpkin coffee cake streaming through your veins?

I drove into work this morning feeling like I took a 5 month mental hiatus and that it would take another 5 years to get back to where I was last Friday in terms of thought processes and drive. But this sobering feeling, is it better than the former? Which should I be chasing?

I finally arrived and tried my best to ignore CBC and Stephen Quinn. Parked and ready to nap, Daisy thought frustratedly, “If I don’t get to my desk, I will fall further and further away into this sluggish slump. It will impact the rest of my week in a very negative way. I can’t be doing it this way!”

Dang it. “It’s starting already,” quipped a voice on the radio, when suddenly two of them proclaimed, “I’m not ready to travel! Dang you, dang it, DANG YOU!”

Are YOU ready?

I’ve fallen! This will last for 2 hours, then the clock will stop ticking on October 21st. I only have so much time to regroup and reiterate my success using succinct words and a logical progression of content.

She’s gone again. Don’t worry, she will return!

Daisy looked upward, toward the roof and saw a glowing star leaning on its edge, skirts away from abandoning friends and arriving onto a dust covered pillow. Puffy like an oyster, she rolled over in bed, drawing her arms over her face and pushing down to feel that cozy, cold feeling she longed for throughout the day. Today was bright and sunny. Bold rays peered through large windows, allowing light to enter her Brooklyn studio apartment. The girl was ready for A Day, ready to do the job she did best – ‘social media marketing’ for an up-and-coming TED startup company in the SoHo district of Elevententeen.

Elevententeen was a designated area for a group of bright communications pupils. They had three things in common. One – they were all Bipolar Type 10. Two – they had recently quit ‘drinking’. And three – they lived with the intent to impact the digital landscape, as no previous humans could have done it before them.

Daisy grabbed her pillow and immediately clicked on Instagram. That nagging suspicion to see The Need fed her like a rich, decadent chocolate drink costing tons more than a third-hand Prada bag nabbed off Vestiaire (for Seventeen). She quickly clicked, but then something else happened. It did not open, she did not see the grace of her favorite celebrity and his infantry women. She just heard a sound, a long-drawn, slowly creeping vibration of ‘digital air’. The only thing she could think of was, “The content has become redundant however, I can see the validity in re-writing and re-working the same concept several times. That way it will not become null and void. The success that emerged from it originally will still be there. That’s editing!”

“It’s locked!”, “Were you able to get back in?”

No. So, I decide to just write. Write down your thoughts Chona, write them down and write them down again. Get back to your spot on the list, get back to you, this new you. But sadly, I have already developed a headache from the idea of it. Will she be able to leave the content as it is? Will she usurp the value of its flow by editing it down, editing it all out to make complacent sense? Can you back away and still smile and feel success? That is something Alice from Wonderland would say, “Things aren’t worth that much once you start editing out the originality Miss Chona Fe, but I think this is what you think then isn’t that the way?”

Chona looks inward at her periphery, flips her hair, then walks away.

Night

Hi everyone!

It’s weird how important points in life can become permanent as art. I took this photo (Glenbrook Middle School, New Westminster, BC) while on a jog. It captures one interpretation of Simpler & Larger quite accurately. In words, I would describe this photo like the feeling I had as a child with a high fever. It felt like the universe had swallowed me up and I became a planet. So big, my sight became distorted. I would look at my bedroom door and it’s imposition startled me. I tried to comfort myself by huddling underneath the blankets, but they too swallowed me whole. It was and still is, the scariest thing I have ever experienced.

“Life is a never-ending story with no plot, because it has been eaten. The depths of me. When will we forgive what has become of them? When is she thinking too deep that she cannot leave without men? Woe is becoming, not free.” – Chona Fe Canlas

Talk about the things that bother you, even if they seem too weird. This is the first step to creating a partnership.

We deserve to know!

A Wicked Rant

Hi everyone! We have the right to write and speak as we desire. This is a rant, have fun reading it!

I know. I have a lot of opinions and you may not like what you hear. I have a lot of creativity stirring up inside of me that you might find offensive. But you know what? I care.

We can define it. The artist’s grace. For example, look at the letters and sentences in this post, as if they were abstract soldiers from a symbolic world, marching along together or apart, in infinite permutations or combinations. They are terms and teams of ideas, but together, they have not yet been defined. Destinations are cut short, not by the words, but by the soldiers themselves. They have become controllers and they control everything, not just the outcome of the battle, but of the very meaning of what they are battling for. So, how many controllers do we need? And again, who is the controller on this team? Why is there a need for control? What? Why would the impact be the action? Would the sentences be marching? Heading towards…? Now do you see what I mean?

A slice of my day looks like this…

…just a slice…

🙂