Guest post: "Vocal Frying the 2nd POV" by J.A. Pak
"You is not you." - J.A. Pak
Occasionally on “when hope writes” I’ll publish guest posts by brilliant artists and writers. If you want to be a guest blogger on my Substack, please connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, or my website.
Today I’m sharing a transporting flash piece titled “Vocal Frying the 2nd POV” by the phenomenal J.A. Pak. The piece first appeared on Lunch Ticket.
Vocal Frying the 2nd POV
You is not you. It certainly isn’t me, although after the initial shock of being ‘you,’ you think ‘you’ is me. Anyhoo, you take me by the hand and we climb the stairs, taking each step as slowly as if each step was a crossing into another forbidden dimension. BTW, ‘me’ isn’t me but the ‘stairs’ are those concrete stairs that appear out of nowhere in Echo Park and go straight back up to nowhere because they were stairs to a housing estate that never got built way back when LA was still being planned into the LA that never got built. I wish… I wish ‘me’ was me and that you are this person I’ve always felt hovering around the periphery of my consciousness, kind, intelligent, reliable, thoughtful and so damn mature that you shock me out of the ‘me’ story. Wait. Maybe it’s better if the ‘stairs’ isn’t that ‘stairs’ but the one in which feels like Ancient Greece, you know, the one that almost killed us because it was so long and steep, the passageway connecting the cliffside Village of Too Many Tourists to the beach sparking the coast of twilight. I say ‘sparking’ because what’s important in this flash is the restaurant that grilled super fresh fish right on the beach. If you were me, you would know why I use ‘sparking’ and how delicious expertly grilled red mullet tastes and looks and smells and how that was the best meal we had in Greece. At this point I am not me. But you. You are me, the me of this flash, climbing up the stairs that may or may not exist but will always exist here, in this flash, where you are right now, trapped in an insufferable POV. And for that, I thank you.
A Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee, J.A. Pak is the author of Chaos Back to Me. Her writing has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Litro, Lunch Ticket, Joyland, etc. More of her work can be seen at Triple Eight Palace of Dreams & Happiness.
J.A. Pak’s process is “to constantly push language boundaries.” If “Vocal Frying the 2nd POV” resonated with you, then you’ll love J.A.’s book Chaos Back to Me, which you can purchase on Amazon.
Synopsis
A graphic art memoir of dreams, of creativity. Journeys taken and not taken. Narratives destroyed, re-created, destroyed again.
Please leave a comment of appreciation for J.A. Pak’s stunning writing and share the post widely with others.
Thank you!
I LOVE this story. Thus author is a soulmate!