Letting Go

by Christina Koh

It all started when Sam Kelly gave us a lecture on Lyotard and introduced the concept of language games. It moved on to the Oulipo and the intriguing constraints its members imposed on themselves when creating works.

She then asked each of us what we would like for Christmas (I asked for a Sony reader!), then proceeded to show us the S+7 constraint. This involves replacing every noun (our individual Christmas gift) with the next noun seven entries after it in a dictionary. Then she showed us how our Xmas List looked like at S+1 to S+15. We would get hilarious phrases like “a fifty prat nuance, a grapefruit piddle, some perjury, the paperboys of Daniel Craig, braggart gnomes, and an isolation with a license”.

A few weeks later we were supposed to submit flash fiction for the mid-term assignment, and an idea struck me about that game. What if I chose one of those Christmas lists…and constructed a narrative from the words? I decided on the S+8 one, because I KNEW I had to write something about papayas. It went:

+8A carbon, a Sony e-ream, a finder, a plasma tempest, a fifty practitioner noun, a householder, some periscope, a kneecap, a baguette, wraith pear, a keira knightly calm, a canard variety, a manufacturing, bracket gnats, the papayas of daniel craig, a pope, an isthmus with a licking, a theology, a catacomb, booksellers, calibre, a grandson pick-me-up, an ellipse.

I decided my flash fiction couldn’t be a nonsense story, however. It had to have a beginning, middle and end, and it had to make sense. For days I sweated, wondering if I was taking too big a risk. I threw away numerous mundane tries before always going back to that Oulipo constraint. One day I bit the bullet, gave myself a challenge to use at least 17 of those 34 nouns, and wrote something. Sam loved it. Granted, it wasn’t perfect. A phrase here and there was awkward, she said, but hooray! I was so relieved.

Letting Go

Arvin couldn’t lose her.

Hadn’t he given everything? They’d held hands strolling the Ellipse, explored catacombs, giggled sneaking wine and baguettes to a Bollywood movie. Went fifty countries for her. Now here she was, manufacturing canards to try a pope’s patience. I’ve better calibre men you useless limp…

He tried for calm, but he was a gnat in her tempest, a bookseller with kneecaps shot out. He felt sick, craved that pick-me-up

She spat, You’re no Daniel Craig—

You’re no bloody Keira Knightley! he finally roared.

He turned his back, eyes tearing.

Never should’ve dated someone who hated Mummy’s papayas.

Nipple on Glass – Spotted on Psychogeography Trip

Christina Koh threw away a perfectly good journalistic career in Malaysia to pursue her mad dream of becoming a published writer. She unashamedly loves fantasy and scifi novels, enjoys torturing her characters, and plans to write the first (or at least a halfway decent) Malaysian urban fantasy about three dysfunctional ghostbusters who still have some things to learn about life, love and liversucking demons in the night. She will defend genre to the death, if need be. Choose thy blade, sirrah.