This Lonely Climb

The Void

She stood looking at blonde tones of the polished spruce on her guitar resting in its stand. Not feeling, not wanting, but needing to give it more yet the late hour and the dull throbbing of her knuckles would not let her.  She cast her glance away feeling unworthy of the instrument in her possession, the most expensive item she owned costing her far more than the considerable money spent on it.

She rested her eyes on the tiny slate slab floating on a milky white sea of bedsheets. Crashing into the wave of blankets, she landed within reach of the object and grasped it in her hand like an unfamiliar artifact. With a press of a button, the smooth slate surface glowed faintly with the only information present on the screen; little white numbers broadcasting the time of 11:11 pm.

She could find no missed notifications on her social media, no new email besides the usual spam, and no missed texts on her phone. She long ago gave up anything that remotely resembled a social life when she moved to the city to state her truth that she held in the strings of her vessel, her guitar. Here she was, another anonymous face of hope in a sea full of other anonymous faces. Would her voice matter? Would anyone listen to it?

She clicked the top button of her phone, sending it back into its cryostatic sleep wishing that she could relax enough to do the same. These same four white walls choked whatever air and life came through the outside window.  She knew she must get out into the open air of night to breath again.

Looking towards her keys on the night stand, she spied a long neglected book she had meant to start reading. She picked it up studying the words on the jacket with care for a brief moment before placing the book inside her purse. The words of the spine mirrored the truth of her life. Those words, “This Lonely Climb.”

The Spine

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Adam Buker is a freelance author living in Springfield, MO. When he’s not writing he’s usually cooking, playing with his kids, making music, taking photos, or otherwise pondering the mysteries of life.

A Project in the Works Part 1

So the last two posts were just little off-the-cuff pieces that I wrote. I started off by just wanting to capture that same helpless feeling of desperation that most creative artists and professionals face as they struggle. Now, that I’ve read both blog posts, I’m debating on expanding on the two respective stories. There are concrete touches like the cigarette smoke that help connect the two stories together and make it plausible that there could be something there.

Unlike the sci-fi novel I’ve been working on, writing this has just been kind of a shoot-from-the-hip and see what happens endeavor.

Now, I’ve not mentioned the novel so far as there is a lot of work to be done on it, but it would be very remiss to start a writer’s blog without giving a little mention of it as well as updates.

The tentative title of the novel is called Organon: Daughter of Two Worlds. It centers on  14-year-old artistic, timid, intelligent Victoria Sparc. In the wake of her mother’s death, she copes with moving with her step-father far away from the only home she’s ever known. Like her mother, she has no knowledge of her mother’s past or relatives or even of her actual father, until a package with no known origin arrives on her doorstep. What it contains leads her to discover her connection to an unfamiliar world of advanced ideas, culture, and technology that has chosen to remain hidden for thousands of years.

I started making my first notes on this novel six years ago this month. Back in October of 2010, I learned that I was going to become a father for the first time in my life. A few months later, my wife and I learned that we were going to welcome a baby girl into our lives. At the time I didn’t know what I really wanted to pursue as a profession, but I knew I did not want to pursue a career in music. I began thinking very intently about the world in which my kid(s) were going to grow up. I knew I disagreed with most of the values our culture instills in our children, and so I wanted to create a different narrative that would inspire my children. I also knew I could not continue to work pointless day jobs that brought little pay and even less purpose.

In the midst of this storm of ideas and emotions, the concept for Organon was born.

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Adam Buker is a freelance author living in Springfield, MO. When he’s not writing he’s usually cooking, playing with his kids, making music, taking photos, or otherwise pondering the mysteries of life.

The Void

Struggle

“Just start, damn you!” he cursed himself while staring at a void of white space. He set his fingertips on the surface of keycaps worn by the friction of sweat, time, and the desperate movements of joints and muscles desperate to transmit his truth directly to the screen.

Yet, tonight, there was nothing.

Nothing but him, his coffee, the screen, and his last cigarette. He drew one last drag deep into his lungs holding it there for a moment before letting it go. He cast it away into the old coffee tin sitting on his window sill watching as the last bit of smoke gently wafted upwards into the night air.

He winced at the harsh light of the screen. The white void seemed to already know his mind’s first move. Again he set his fingers to the keys like eager horses waiting for that instant where the gun fires and the gates open, waiting to run.

Still, there was nothing.

He rose from his chair, lumbering over his desk. The pale white of the fluorescent light cast a shadow on his desk, on his unfinished work. He picked up the cup that was now as empty as he seemed to be. He held it in his hands studying the inside where its obsidian surface hid under the cover of amber patina.

He pivoted on one foot to face the kitchen behind his desk when a sequence of notes crept through the crisp night air of the windowsill. He poked his head out the window turning upwards to listen. The faint notes of the guitar spoke of a silent war between passion and frustration.

“This was something,” he thought. This was struggle.

This Lonely Climb

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Adam Buker is a freelance author living in Springfield, MO. When he’s not writing he’s usually cooking, playing with his kids, making music, taking photos, or otherwise pondering the mysteries of life.

 

Struggle

The smell of acrid smoke faintly rising from a spent cigarette butt from the floor below wafted over the crisp air of night outside her room. The callouses on her spent fingertips threatened to ruin her focus and concentration as they split and cracked and scraped against the nylon strings.  A lonely bead of sweat trickled off of her temple faintly cooling the tension within the muscles of her face. She grimaced, frustrated. The notes clumped together without distinction, without direction, without purpose. She could not have been less pleased with how her 35th attempt of the day at the Albeniz piece progressed.

The thwack of the string against the side of her cheek forced her weary fingers to stop playing. The sting quickly subsided into a dull throbbing pain of a reprimand. Down to her last set of strings again, she dreaded deciding between getting another set or eating anything besides ramen noodles for the next week.

Placing her guitar carefully in its stand, she paced around the tiny square of her studio apartment trying not to wonder what she was doing with her life. She wondered why she kept torturing herself performing empty venues for no money playing music of a time long forgotten. Nobody came to listen to her. They came for food, they came for coffee, they came for booze, but would anybody come for her? Why was it so painful, she wondered, to feel like she had something to truly offer this world and yet no one to offer it to?

To be continued…

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Adam Buker is a freelance author living in Springfield, MO. When he’s not writing he’s usually cooking, playing with his kids, making music, taking photos, or otherwise pondering the mysteries of life.

Here goes nothing…

So in my 33+ years of life I’ve had my fair share of personal ups and downs. I’ve lost and loved several times before marrying my wife. I had small triumphs and the glimmer of promise in my would-be career as a musician and composer, and I’ve had to deal with the fallout when I realized that I didn’t deeply want that career. I’ve had more philosophical and moral doubts about myself than I care to remember, and it seems like I’ve had to rethink the direction of my life and its purpose more times than I can count.

Yet now I’m finding within myself an odd place of unfamiliar peace as I write these very words as I simultaneously contemplate my past and look toward my future.

I’m starting this blog to document my journey as I struggle, grow, and learn at my chosen craft as a writer. The bulk of my postings will revolve around my craft, anything that inspires me, progress I’ve made in my business, short original fiction, and posts that touch upon my philosophy of life. I may write about other things from time to time, but one rule I’m setting purposefully for this blog is that I will not discuss politics. There are other people who share my political positions that advocate more effectively than I would be able to. More importantly, I want this blog to be positive. I want this blog to be a source of encouragement to anyone who is struggling with the same kinds of issues that I’m struggling with.  I don’t yet know what this new venture of mine will evolve into, but I definitely want my readers to come away feeling refreshed, pumped, and ready to take on the world.

So to kick this new thing off, I’m challenging myself to write five to seven posts per week for the next six months so I can make this thing a habit, plus at least one original short piece of fiction each month if not each week.

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Adam Buker is a freelance author living in Springfield, MO. When he’s not writing he’s usually cooking, playing with his kids, making music, taking photos, or otherwise pondering the mysteries of life.