Creative Writing Assignment

Tonight's assignment comes to us from one of my favorite writers:

New Assignment - Finish this story:"Who here understands what I'm saying?" the old man asked. Jen raised her hand.

“I do,” I say.
I inhale sharp. It’s like that fantasy where you scream in church only this is real.

The other students shift, electric in their seats with their spiral notebooks, their faces washed and stomachs full of apple slices or oatmeal or toast with peanut butter. I don’t talk in this class.
Except now:

“I understand that you don’t know what you’re saying.”

His pacing stops and he half turns, won’t even give me his full ugly face.

All of a sudden I’m not sitting at my desk anymore but am standing, with one leg planted firm, one leg bent at the knee, resting against the yellow plastic scoop seat, bump in the middle for the space between my legs. Standing like a stork, which is comfortable for me, which people have made fun of me for my whole life, which right now is in defiance to him, as if to say: you’re so full of shit, I don’t even need both feet on this classroom floor to stand up to you. My arms hang at my sides, fingers grazing my thighs. I don’t know what to do with them. I never know what to do with my arms.

“All year long you poke holes in me. I’m late. I’m slow. I’m rude. I’m a lot of things. And today I’m a mirror. And while you look like a teacher to everyone else here – maybe look like someone with power, with grey hair, with a gut – against my surface you look like the kid that got too good-looking too fast, didn’t know what to do with it, then the good looks went away only you didn’t know it yet.”

David laugh-snorts. I realize I’m fiddling with the seam of my jeans and I force my fingers to stop it. My mouth is very dry.

“Is that all?” he asks, and his voice is a cold, dry wind.

“You are a teacher, though,” I continue, and I can’t believe it: I am a good kid. There was a time when I really wanted him to like me. I make all A’s. I’m on the Homecoming Court. I also can’t stop talking and I realize I’m saying “you’ve taught me that people don’t really change when they leave high school. I keep thinking people will grow up, will move past this place, but you didn’t. You stay here, every day, trying to prove to ghosts that you’re better than them. That you’re better than us. Better than me. I don’t care who you were then so don’t make me pay for it anymore.”

The silence is thick and I won’t look away from his eyes. They are green with the whites gone milky and we spend a long moment there, breathing. This is what my grandmother meant when she said I had a will of my own. I've never encountered it before but here it is, in this moment with the ticking clock and my nerves and I am powerful and terrified. But no one is saying anything so I scoop up my green Jansport and I walk past the three desks between me and the door and out.

Keep walking because I don’t know what to do and I wonder if I’m just like him now and if I’ll just keep trying to outlive this moment for the rest of my life.

Snapshot

Last night, I took a walk in the snow. It was close to midnight. As I got closer to my place I considered staying out all night, walking the city that suddenly seemed smaller - thought that if the snow I was slipping in looked like the snow at the National Cathedral and the snow at LeDroit Park then they couldn't be that far away? Like the snow was a fast plane, a secret passage, a sameness putting everything in reach.

My favorite part is the tree branches, covered in inches of white unfolding as I move under them against the clear black sky.

People are digging their cars out and walking in the middle of the street and smiling at each other.

Creative Writing Assignment

Assignment - IPOD on shuffle. What memories come attached to each song?

Tijuana Lady - Gomez
I am driving my dad's burgundy Nissan Maxima. The interior is leather and my hands slide over the steering wheel, turning hand-over-hand. I hold the palm of my hand to my nose - it smells like my dad's skin. It is sunset and the sky is orange and yellow and burgundy like the car as I drive up and over hill after hill in this suburban neighborhood, on my way to visit my boyfriend.

Falling Down - Avril Lavigne
I try to subtly adjust my uncomfortable work-appropriate underwear behind a merch stand while I look out over the brown lacquer display at the city park. There is a homeless man with a red rainjacket and a scruffy beard, red sores all over his face. I look from his face to the $55 leather day planner on the rack in front of me and think about the difference.

Please Read the Letter - Robert Plant and Alison Kraus
I am sitting on one ex-boyfriend's futon emailing another ex-boyfriend while the sky turns black outside my warp-paned windows. I've had too much wine and I shouldn't press send but I do it anyway.

Nothing Brings Me Down - Emiliana Torrini
I flex my toes into the dirty blue carpet and look at the candlelight flicker on the off-white walls of my LA studio apartment. I should sweep my kitchen.

Too Little Too Late - Barenaked Ladies
Natalie turns the stereo up in her white car as we drive north on the 5. I share my french fries with Shar and Kylie navigates. The day outside is grey but we all have high hopes.

Snapshot

I drove to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia today. Because it’s two hours out of town. Because I wanted a tangible, physical break between my old job and my new. Mostly because I can.

I drove through smoke-colored rain which made everything look mostly the same until I came up and out of a valley somewhere (Maryland?) and all of a sudden I was in West Virginia: rolling hills of scrubby dead grass. Farms tucked into hill-bottoms. Altitude.

When people ask me about the difference between the west coast and this one, I never know what to say. But now, because of this place, I think I do: the east coast is the teddy bear you’ve had since you were a baby that is now in some closet somewhere. The fur is matted down and worn into nubs from years of your baby fingers rubbing their baby oils into it. Threadbare in parts, you can see the under-stitching of your childhood. All of this place has been worn down: from the brick-box-homes to the creaking General Store floors to the hill-lettes of West Virginia, people have just been here longer. We’ve worn it down. Its sharp corners are rounded. It’s threadbare.

Berkeley Springs used to be called the town of Bath because of its mineral springs. I am somewhat glamorized by the so-called properties of these waters – signs and internet sites and pamphlets tell me that it Leaves your Skin Feeling Soft! Aids in Digestion! George Washington is quoted on city signs cautiously stating that these waters may do him good – kind of a lukewarm statement to put on a sign but if George said it, it must be marketable. And this whole tourism industry has sprouted around these waters. Every place has ‘spa treatments’, homeopathic medicines, massage. I got a massage at the State Park from Candace, a real West Virginia girl. She was born here. She doesn’t want to live anywhere else. She wears thick black eyeliner all around her eyes and has a son who makes her laugh when he talks like an adult, even though he’s only a baby still. Her boyfriend is a cook at the fanciest restaurant in town. Big cities make her nervous. She yawns and squirts oil into her hands and giggles when I moan as she works her West Virginia fingers into the tightly rolled muscles between my knee and hip, the arch of my foot, my shoulderblades.

I want to see this place, so I drive up and out of town, into the hills (mountains?). Everyone who lives here apparently has a fleet of vehicles: truck, motorhome, construction equipment, and a sensible car. I drive along a curling road, black asphalt wet like licorice, like a giraffe’s tongue. The clouds are so low they are also fog and the slick tree trunks pop black against this softness. Another difference between this coast and that: trees. Somehow, a forest of deciduous trees just doesn’t feel like a forest to me.

I eat dinner at the bar of the hippest place in town (Candace told me about it). Everything is homemade and organic, and I bite into my monstrous pink burger with bacon, provolone, and grilled onions while I watch a Dad play pool with his two young boys. One of the boys drops his pool cue and it makes James jump. James is a cook at this place, but right now he is drinking a Bud Light next to me at the bar and watching San Diego play New York. He and his wife got into some trouble when her brother-in-law moved in with them and was selling cocaine out of their house. He got 5 years in prison and found Jesus, they got charged with conspiracy. They had to leave and this was the only place they tried where the trailer park owner didn’t care and let them stay. They have two girls.

Laura is the bartender. She has burgundy hair and tattoos up both arms, cool glasses with rhinestones that glitter in the Christmas lights hung above the bar. When Laura isn’t refilling my beer or James’, she is talking really intensely to a young girl sitting at one of the tables. When the girl leaves, Laura says, “I love you.” The girl is her daughter, and she’s just had her first kiss. She’s 13 and her name is Ruby. Here are the rules Laura makes Ruby repeat over and over: finish high school. Go to college. Travel the world for a year. Have a career. Get married. Have kids. IN THAT ORDER. Laura got pregnant with Ruby when she was 19. She says she didn’t know any better. She wants Ruby to know better.

I’m sitting here thinking about these people and this place, trying to will blood into my cold, damp feet in front of the gas fire here at the Country Inn. I imagine living here. So small. I imagine myself huddled in one of the houses I drove past in the hills, seeing my skin in the light of my satellite TV. I understand, in a different way, the need for community, for neighbors, for dark places that feel like a different world that would make me forget. Understand that winter is a real thing here.

Creative Writing Assignment

Tonight's creative writing assignment comes to us, again, from Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones:

Write a series of ten short poems. You only have three minutes to write each one; each one must be three lines. Begin each one with a title that you choose from something your eye falls on.

Picture

I am cracking your bones over my knee
because I need tinder
to keep this fire burning.

Guitar

I’m not very good
But I keep plucking
those strings.

Sweater

I hold
What used to hold you
Since you went away.

Mr. Coffee

I feed you water and beans -
You feed me mornings in bed.
A fair give-and-take.

Bed

There’s pajama fuzz, crusted drool, and stray hair
in there:
A kind of stew of me.

Giant Coffee Mug

Oh, Phoenix of my Flatware:
Today you’re a teacup, yesterday you were a bowl of soup
Tonight you’ll be born again in the drying rack.

Bookcase

I just realized
All my shelves come in threes;
What would Freud say?

Air Conditioner

You look cold
In your towel and duct tape.
Winter just isn’t your season.

License Plate

Do you brag to the books
That you used to “be someone”
Before you became apartment décor?

Chair

Nubby, chubby, sprung in the middle
Little feet, big arms, ugly-pattern pillow
Craigslist find – meet my behind.

Experiment Update

I don't know if it's because of our little experiment, or a New Year, or maybe it came from absolutely nowhere and there's no cosmic reason for it whatsoever - but I've just been offered a new job.


Out of nowhere this opportunity landed in my lap. I had the chance to interview for this position in November, but because of my committment to my current job, I turned it down. Luckily for me, they hadn't been able to fill the position - and in a matter of three hours I had interviewed, been offered, and accepted a new job!

Here's to new beginnings and senseless droppings of happiness from the Universe!

Bad Poetry

In order to avoid
loving one parent more than another
(a childhood fear more adult than boogeymen) -
I concentrated on loving the space between them;
and in doing so:
I missed them both.