Nuni-Cunai - Tales

Tales

The Story of My Vase
1982, Australia,119 words

A short fairy-tale based on the images afloat on The Vase, a small clay sculpture piece, created in the same year.

*LOVELY ORPHAN CHILDREN KISSING
New York

A collection of short stories about being curious and loving and crying and feeling and fumbling through life in New York City. The heroine of the pieces is Peda, a young woman whose name means "to bloom." Some of the tales are:

The Sixth Tale
1998, 4507 words

a wistful story about childhood, big cities and sex.

The Tale of Ofilia
1998, 7976 words

"She first noticed her lovely plump hands, milky white and slightly pink at the well manicured, daintily tapered finger tips. Round and shapely, they were adorned with numerous gold rings of varying widths. On some of the thicker bands, an assortment of precious stones stood out pert and erect against the plush flesh even as nipples being kissed on woman's breasts: Peda had never before seen hands which made nipples out of ordinary rings..."

Thus begins this strange tale about one Ofilia, and Peda's bungled foray into a world hitherto unknown.

The Spring of My Stalin: or A Case of Grade Deflation
Part 1, 1999, 8313 words

A fable about art and institution.

STRIPPING BLISS
A screenplay: 90 mins

Winner of Screenplay as Literature 2002
To be published in trade paperback and e-book formats
and made available on all major online book stores by Winter of 2003.

Quarterfinalist in the Cynosure Screenwriting Awards 2003

"A disturbing tale of an online obsession fraught with sexual tension,
"Stripping Bliss" best personified the SPL goal of finding screenplays
that seek to go beyond and even shred the traditional screenplay "envelop""
– Screenplay as Literature Competition
.
"This is ground-breaking work, with veracity to the Internet language,
and a bare honesty from the writer's part. The main character is John, as well as his voice-overs,
but Bliss is a major character too who pervades the script from beginning to end.
Without her, this script wouldn't exist. She is John's alter ego and one-night love interest.
This is a story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl ,
and boy becomes a man by accepting his fate with pain and a philosophical stance.
In the vein of Linklater's Before Sunrise,
this script aims at being true to the inner thoughts and outer dialogue of its characters,
many times in an opposite manner just like in real life,
which only adds weight to its psychological characterization on the page.
This outpouring writing - perhaps written non-stop and on the fly -
will leave some readers with a deja vu feeling
about the "what if" and fleeting "long-gone" moments
that could have changed their lives if only one could go back in time."
– Cynosure Screenwriting Awards.

SYNOPSIS

This is a sexually charged 21st century take on the Narcissus Myth, where the pool of water
which flows into our subconsciousness, reflecting us back to ourselves and drawing us in,
is none other than the increasingly omnipresent Internet.

John, the insomniac caffeine-addict would-be-writer, who is disillusioned with life and love,
spends yet another night prowling around online video chat,
looking for pretty women whose exhibitionistic streak he is hoping to awaken.
However, when he chances upon "Bliss," a beautiful and mysterious young Asian woman,
the night takes an unexpected turn. Indeed, she is as quick witted as she is beguiling,
and proves to be more than a match for his irreverent and libertarian self.

The fun begins when he starts to see her as his personal challenge,
and becomes determined to convince her to strip for him, using every means at his disposal.

The tragedy of the night begins, perhaps, as they start to strip much more than their bodies.

As both their life stories unfold, it appears that their past is inexplicably linked together,
almost as if they had lived through the same life but from the opposite side of the water;
and the more they find themselves drawn to each other, and the more they reveal themselves
and their lives to each other, the more they realize, with crushing and surrealistic certainty,
that they cannot ever meet without destroying each other.

Thus the story lasts one night, and one night only: but the night turns into a most fantastic journey,
as the two challenge and provoke one another in multitudinous ways.
Visual possibilities of the film are also immense,
as they imagine being with each other in various fanciful settings.
By the sheer force of their desire and intoxication with each other,
the two people imagine or hallucinate experiencing tactile sensations
and crisp clear 3D images via the computer screen;
that which might be prophetic in the face of current technological breakthroughs in the field,
and what the future might hold for us.

Nevertheless, the story itself remains an ancient one:
as did Narcissus when he longed for the image he saw in the pool,
so close and just out of his reach, they look, they dream,
they thirst, they hope and they languish – at each other's electronic images.

When morning comes, the night is already a distant memory;
but a new day begins, and in spite of the sadness in his heart,
John finds himself finally opening up to the world around him,
albeit slowly. It is as if the intensity of the night breaks the hard self-pitying shell inside him.
So there is hope. And life continues...
For it is all a cycle, and all will repeat itself in this Fantasy Illustrated Conversation that we call Life.

*OLYMPIA IN NEW YORK
July, 2003
A screenplay: 120 mins.
Also a novel-in-progress.

In 1863 Manet scandalized the Parisian art world by daring to present
a nude portrait of a common contemporary courtesan in the classical pose
revered by the academics of the time, and calling her OLYMPIA.

Over a century later, a young Asian woman, who leads a typically unconventional
life of an artist in New York City, returns to the world of academia and becomes horrified by the stale academic mindset of her art professors. In a twisted modern version of 19th Century prejudices, the professors claim that the eternal beauty (that Baudelaire discusses in his essay The painter of modern life) in Manet's OLYMPIA is this classical reclining pose itself.

As Peda, the heroine, plots to shake her class out of its academic stupor,
she has a vision: that of herself as Olympia. She realizes that, if she paints herself as Olympia, naked and reclining in that regal pose, she could challenge the class thus: "If there were something eternal about the pose itself, why is the effect different when I, a woman of Asian origin, paint herself in the same pose? Why does the effect resound with all kinds of social, political and historical ramifications? Something which is eternal should be universal, and not so particular to one given culture or time."
Fully inspired, Peda undertakes this audacious operation that crosses both gender
(the woman as the artist rather than the man) and culture, naively believing that she would be lauded for her efforts, but the world proves to be a far more brittle and
unforgiving place than she imagines. Even her personal relationships do not go unscathed, as she encounters extreme reactions from those who are closest to her, narrowing the gap between friends, lovers, enemies and strangers. Fortunately, there is always an inexhaustible supply of surprising characters in New York, and she finds allies in unexpected quarters, even in the guise of an erudite "homeless" man, while her fellow male artists do not seem quite capable of getting over the fact that she is a pretty woman with still girlish charms.

OLYMPIA IN NEW YORK is a screenplay about
"painting oneself naked and discovering the world."
In her quest to show that it's the expression of our common humanity,
which is the eternal beauty in art, Peda learns more about the essence of humanity itself than she had bargained for. Paradoxically, it is through her essay on Olympia, written with her heart brimming with love for humanity, that she finds herself most isolated and misunderstood by those around her, and she can no longer find comfort in their company.

Still, she is inspired by all she sees, all she finds, even as her heart
breaks over the ruptured relationships. Humanity is always mysterious, and the mysteries of human existence, always elusive. She realizes that this is why
art would never exhaust humanity.
In the end, her essay on OLYMPIA leads her unexpectedly to France, and she bids good bye to New York as she readies herself for more of the unknown in Europe, delighting in the fact that she is alive, she is full of energy, and her time to live eternally, is now.

*ROMAN CHASTITY: 8 and then some

A novel that is the aria preceded by A EUROPEAN RECITATIVE (See Essays.) Inspired by the eight glorious and ignominious days spent in Italy. A sample chapter is as follows:

The Second Day in Florence
1999, 4844 words

A beautiful blue grey hand-made dress, the Uffizi at night, leisureliness of being, duplicity of time, serendipity of meetings and stolen kisses...

*DENVER TO LA
(Planned)

The unexpected events that led up to the painting of OLYMPIA EN AMÉRIQUE
(See photos)
Via the small, static computer screen to the great, big, open, wonderfully wild beauty of American Nature... as well as the mysterious landscape of the inexplicable complexities of the human mind and heart, in love and otherwise...

* signifies "work still under progress"