For the first time in many months I have run out of scheduled posts here on the touchonian. It is not because I have run out of things to post from a lack of writing, just the opposite, I have been working on writing and editing so much I have not been taking the time for scheduling anything!
The latest thing I have been obsessed with is seeing what I can do with making a novel out of a previous post.
This is developing into a story written from within the Exquisite Family Records Archives (EFRA) where the above story becomes an unaccounted for scrap of paper found in EFRA and it turns into an archival investigation in the Correspondence Hall. The Creative Intelligence Agency (CIA) is called in to find the missing plot. At the same time, strangely, an Exquisite Corpse game starts playing out in the Hall. Is it a clue? Below is a draft Exquisite Corpse entry for the opening of Chapter 1
THE CASE OF THE MISSING PLOT
Chapter 1 - The Fragment Enters
From the Desk of Murasaki Shikibu
On the morning they became aware, a sheet of paper lay between them on the table.
It was not of imposing size, resting as it did upon the low lacquered surface, yet it occupied the center of the chamber with a composure entirely its own. The room had been arranged in the customary manner. Screens painted with pale autumn grasses stood partly drawn, and beyond them the garden’s maples had only just begun to relinquish their green. A faint breeze stirred the blinds, carrying the scent of damp earth and the lingering sweetness of chrysanthemums set out earlier that week for viewing.
Light entered obliquely through a narrow aperture in the shutters, falling across the paper in a long, restrained band.
The two gentlemen did not immediately look at one another. Each was aware of the other’s presence as one senses a figure behind a screen, close enough to alter the air, distant enough to remain undefined. Their sleeves, layered according to rank and season, brushed softly against the tatami as they adjusted their posture. Neither spoke. To speak prematurely, in such a circumstance, would have betrayed impatience unbefitting their station.
The paper had been folded once and then reopened and laid flat upon the surface with the evidence of the crease still visible.
Upon the crease lay a small bud, tightly furled, its outer petals pressed close in quiet discipline. It bore the faint bruising of having traveled, as though carried within a sleeve. Perhaps it had been gathered at dawn from the eastern garden but that could not be determined from observation. It possessed no urgency. It rested, and in resting it seemed to suggest that whatever it was, it would become only what it already was.
One of the gentlemen, though he did not yet know what it meant to initiate such an act, felt his attention drawn toward the fold. His hand moved slightly from within his sleeve, then made a subtle gesture as if inviting his companion to take up the brush and write a poem. The other, who seemed to understand that watching may, in certain moments, be more exact than acting, attended instead to the bud’s edge, where a petal had thinned almost to translucence.
The paper lay without impatience indifferent to their presence as it bathed in the morning rays of the sun.
There were no visible marks upon it. Yet both men sensed, without turning their heads, without the smallest alteration of expression, that the page was not empty. Its stillness suggested prior contact, as though it had once received words that now lingered beyond the reach of sight.
Outside, a single leaf loosened itself from a branch and fell, brushing briefly against the veranda before coming to rest.
They were aware of their breathing.
They were aware of time passing, though no drum from the watch announced it.
Neither spoke.
Beside it rested a writing implement neither of them remembered placing there.
And then, what happens? A promising, intriguing Chapter 1.