Mud-shot eyes...

Peter Markos writes in an interesting fashion. I think that his writing style is refreshing because it is different than anything I have seen before. I like how Markos' style communicates effectively even though it is not part of the norm. There are so many creative ways to interpret language and regurgitate it through the written word. In reading, "The Singing Fish", I felt like I plunged into Markos' mind. It is interesting to see how he sees the world. His writing style brings up questions like : Why did he choose to write that way? Does he think that way? What point is he trying to make through writing the way he does? I like writing that makes me think. Writing that asks my mind to open up a little more and to take on a new perspective that expands and broadens me as a thinker.
I like the description that Markos uses and the way that he is kind of jumpy as he writes his stories. For example, he writes, "At night, when we look up from the mud with our mud-shot eyes, we see that the sky, it has floating up in it not one, but two, moons. These moons, they are what Girl uses to look at the world through. When Girl looks down to see the mud that she is made from, us brothers, we look up into Girl's eyes to see that each moon, it is a mirror. Inside each mirror, we see a girl, other than Girl, gazing back at us." (p. 6) Here Markos jumps around from "mud-shot eyes" to the two moons. Then all of a sudden the moons are mirrors as well as eyes. The description is all over the place and I feel like I am seeing a bunch of different images at once. I think that this is okay, however, because everything still ties together and I can still follow Markos' story. I still don't quite understand what the point of his story is, but I love the theme of mud throughout the story and the way that he manipulates the word mud and uses it in many creative ways. Like when he says, "mud-shot eyes" or, "our hands mittened with mud."
I also love how Markos compares the stars to fire fish. I don't know what stars and fire and fish have in common, but it interesting how he pulls these things together. I love the lines, "

What GREAT imagery here! I love it! I can see them pulling the fire from inside the fish-stars. And then Markos says, "until our hands explode in our face." That is a cool line. I can see their hands set afire and I can see the fire becoming too much for them to control. I love this part.

I thought that "The Falling Girl" by Dino Buzzati was also an intriguing story. Buzzati shows a girl who jumps off a skyscraper to her eminent death, but everything is in slow motion. She passes the rich people and then she goes by the working people and finally we see her interacting with old people. This is an interesting story because it slows down the girl's fall. You would think that she would just fall to her death in a matter of seconds, but this girl has plenty of time to talk and interact along the way. She talks with the rich people at first and then, later on, she spends an amount of time contemplating whether or not she will make it to a ball. I was especially interested in the part where the girl is joined by many others who had also jumped to their deaths. Everyone was doing it I guess. What was really interesting was that the most important thing to the girl in that moment was her dress. She was concerned with the fact that see was not as fancy as the other girls falling beside her. I believe that this story is a picture of life. By time the girl gets to the ground she is an old woman. In the beginning she was young and by the end she was old and she finally died. I think this story makes an excellent point: we are all going to die. I don't think that death is a bad thing it is simply inevitable. These girls falling from the sky were going to die just as much as I am eventually going to die. 

I like the vivid imagery that Buzzati uses. Buzzati writes, "And since the veils of night were advancing from the east, the city became a sweet abyss burning with pulsating lights." (p. 29) I love Buzzati's writing because the imagery is so elegant. The words, "veils", "sweet abyss", and "advancing" are all elegant words that make me think of Shakespeare; Romeo and Juliet. It is also good imagery because it paints a vivid image. I can the city below in my mind's eye. Buzzati writes with beautiful words and it makes her whole piece feel like a fairy tale!