Freshly Frozen Grass - 3rd rewrite

I'm trying to make this longer and more eventful. I have many things to add but this is what I have so far concretely written. Please write as much feedback as you can, it helps me move forward :D

The iconic landscape of Manhattan was greyed out by the clouds, it was raining heavily and all I remember thinking of was how everyone seemed to fear being soaked, everyone was so afraid of the inexistent droplets of water that hit harder than concrete when walking past the meatpacking district. Before I knew it, my daydreams had thrown me back into reality with such harshness that I felt nauseated. The night was still as I walked out onto the porch, smoking a hand-rolled lucky strike. I remember thinking the smoke was thicker than it usually was, perhaps the dampness in the air was to blame for it but it made me feel particularly different. Looking back at it, nothing he had seen was ever so orchestrated and so paradoxical; Life and Death were battling each other in his head as the collection of rain drops settled on freshly frozen grass. He was young and full of imagination at the time, feeding on the pap of life and the glamorous sights of the city, but now it just seemed all so empty. You could see the difference between his charisma and his emotions just by glancing at his eyes, they always say the eyes are the windows to your soul but perhaps his eyes had more to tell, but only time will reveal the obscurity in his mind. People usually evoke emotions towards others, or a personality, but he evoked something deeper and more enigmatic… 

He evoked the thought that goes through everyone’s head, the thought that there once was a time in life when nothing ever meant anything, things could just be what they were, a peaceful childhood of roaming in Nature with no worries or negative thoughts. His enigmatic attention to detail, his particular attire and his slick back dark black hair that made him ceaselessly blend with the environment and the people he worked with always made me question his thoughts. I remember the first time I saw his empty eyes, the refined circles of constant emotion, yet as blank and empty as the abyss of the waters of the ocean. If you knew what to look at and look through, they would appear to hold the universe’s greatest questions and answers but no one would ever know. The reverberating sound of waves crashing and cleaning past footsteps put his mind elsewhere, whether it was above the portrait of the unknown made up of gleaming stars or the Californian beach with the sun settling; his mind was elsewhere. The strangest thing about him regardless of his features, was his attitude towards the world. He was too aware. Too aware of life and its silky pleasures and burning sins and to plunge into the windows of his soul was to be caressed by the Gods and angelic voices; his awareness of it all, was ineffable… Something I could never understand but understood nonetheless. He had a permanent hatred against the actuality of things, the way the world had ‘turned out to be’ and yet, he was still young and acrobatic of all things but his liveliness was only a mask. It is only now that I look back onto this enigmatic character that I realise his awareness of life was a portrait of the universe, of the inevitability of chaos in humanity. He would always say “we’re all fucked, f**k it all” yet his intellectual capabilities were among the most supreme. The irony in all of this is that him of all people was never given a chance to change the world, since he was born he was discarded for not being a follower of the masses. He had fallen under the rule of the very ones he sought to overthrow. There was no way of escaping it and there was no way of proving it. The only way I had ever found to settle him of his restless thoughts was to sit down and stare at the moving clouds as we both consumed endless whisky bottles and smoked tobacco fields worth of lucky strike. He was always running away from something but he never ran away from anything, he was afraid of the truth, the same truth he had discovered the day he had become a man, the truth that everything in this world is puppeteer work. There is no thing that is untouched by the rule of the supreme and there is no thought that is not made or manipulated by them. I guess I understand why all of this happened. He was only 21 and he had chosen that his destiny would end with him jumping off the highest sky scraper in New York’s Manhattan and it is only the other day that I realised what predicament he had been fighting since he was born. The predicament of reality, of the very reality we think we know but do not. Life’s silky pleasures were not enough to keep his mind in line with the common man’s desire, he always wanted more, he always wanted the unattainable desires of life but those were the very desires that existed outside this universe, outside the whole system. 

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The night was still as he walked out onto the porch, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. I remember thinking he let off more smoke than a fire. He was young and bright, but held no intention to live in a world where most things were unknown. His facial features respectfully mirrored his emotions, as though they were the only true thing he ever had, and the obscure and lugubrious night had reminded him of how there once was a time when humanity was ceaselessly beating to the past, but to him the past had become the future. The mysterious dark haired character had abruptly passed the porch and sat down on the last step. That was the first time I had properly seen his empty eyes, as hollow as the dying trees that were in our midst.  His presence was somewhat post apocalyptic to what I perceived as a nihilistic painting of life, the dying trees, the reverberating sound of waves crashing upon past footsteps and the gleaming moon that set the atmosphere of a horror novel. My description of him is to be understood as flawed, in the sense that his paradoxical ontology was so futuristic, that my world had no way of defining it. He was too aware. Something I could never understand but understood it nonetheless. The driving force that man had was the most powerful I had ever seen. He happily threw himself at a challenge and asked for more, just as an excuse to spend hours working instead of sleeping. Sleeping had become a curse for him, an activity that wasted time; that stopped him from doing things. He was full of life but over enthusiastic about death at the same time, paradoxically he was driven towards life but for him,

 Life was Death and death was life.

Author's Note

Feel free to comment and say how you felt while reading it. Any feedback helps. Many thanks :D

Reviews

[TheSweet]

I feel, first and foremost, you need to clean up the aesthetic of the text. The huge blocks of writing makes readers sense monotony. Paragraphs, indents, sharp sentences, line breaks - they all assist the reader in processing the information given, and can really help in making certain lines significantly more powerful. I say this is the main issue because there is a bunch of good writing in there that I overlooked or forgot straight away because you have to continue and so on.

Secondly, I would try to find a way to emphasise the specific characters so that we're always aware the same person is being spoken about. No particular thing I can point out, just helps for a 3D feeling of the character - might just be me though, this isn't a huge issue.

Finally, I think your narrative voice as the character is really strong, by perhaps there is a couple of lines that falls too much into exposition that could be made more effective without spelling the thoughts out so plainly.

Other than that I would say this has some great potential and you have your own style breaking through. To me, I think the story has a very 'noir' feel to it at the moment, and your use of words is a pleasure to the eye. So, good job on this piece thus far - keep up the work :) Thanks for sharing.

[Sammi]

Wow. You really not only have a way with words but how you use them is impressive. You have used description but not too much that it overwhelms the reader to the point where they cannot actually take in what is happening. You have managed to captivate readers from start to finish. I not only started to see the characters' appearance but also their emotions and start to gain a basic understanding of their personality.
You managed to pull it off this time having longish sections where the character is churning over thoughts. It works for the section you have wrote but if you are carrying on with this I would suggest continually adding these mix of emotions and thoughts along with everyday movement or at least some kind of events that would cause the character to interact with other characters and force them to use dialogue.
This helps a reader to connect with characters, understand them better and allows them to form their own conclusions and opinions about them. It also allows you to be able to highlight certain aspects of your character that you want them to be familiar with for example, a characters speech by choosing what words they say and how they say it this can change depending on whether the character is happy, frustrated or upset.
You need to keep describing parts of the atmosphere to add a sense of realism as the five senses are something that readers can relate to which you will need if you are planning on writing a characters' memories. Atmosphere is a way to help keep moving the story forward as well.

I hope you find this helpful and not negative as I really enjoyed reading this and cannot wait to read more if you are planning to do so :D

[Coyote Poetry]

The story is perfect. I like how you allowed the reader into the internal thoughts and the life the main character held in the city. I like you gave some basic history and background. I like the part of him wanting to jump off the a building. You held my attention to the last words. I did like the ending. Some sort of hope was holding. Thank you for sharing the amazing story.
Coyote

[Dayran]

Lucid and coherent as always Victor ... examining issues that are often convoluted to view.

Urbanization ... and its experience by man is not yet fully understood ... its one of the key influences on a young man growing up who feels he is losing control of his dream ... in relation to how ... the world turned out. And that is normally the beginning of a thousand new issues. Well written ...

[wordman]

I really enjoyed this story I could see newyork in the winter as it poured down rain on a hazy and cloudy day I could see you on the porch looking out on the city thinking as thoughts of life and death sept through your mind and smoking a rolled cigarette great job