Tuesday
Tuesday Focus: Flash's Singular Momentum
Desire, I’ve read somewhere, drives narratives into existence.
I think of Dorothy’s desire in Kansas. When her desire arrives full-blown into the world, it twists itself into that cyclone that sends Auntie Em and Uncle Henry and all those farmhands underground and her elsewhere.
But things happens before and after this moment—and the world twists into something that can give her a hard-earned epiphany, hard-earned because she must survive that drawn-out middle, all those iterations of her acting and failing.
When I write flash, I sometimes want to focus on that singular moment of the cyclone, the desire finally made visible, finally out in the world, wreaking its havoc. And other times, while Dorothy is confronted and attacked by her own desires, I want to focus my attention elsewhere, the moment before, the moment after, or some other moment altogether, something just out of the frame, the boy in the next farmhouse, maybe, running to save the chickens.
I think of Dorothy’s desire in Kansas. When her desire arrives full-blown into the world, it twists itself into that cyclone that sends Auntie Em and Uncle Henry and all those farmhands underground and her elsewhere.
But things happens before and after this moment—and the world twists into something that can give her a hard-earned epiphany, hard-earned because she must survive that drawn-out middle, all those iterations of her acting and failing.
When I write flash, I sometimes want to focus on that singular moment of the cyclone, the desire finally made visible, finally out in the world, wreaking its havoc. And other times, while Dorothy is confronted and attacked by her own desires, I want to focus my attention elsewhere, the moment before, the moment after, or some other moment altogether, something just out of the frame, the boy in the next farmhouse, maybe, running to save the chickens.
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