In-class writing; prompt: describe a walk through your hometown.
You’d hate it. It would be loud, noisy, uncomfortable, claustrophobic. You’d feel lost. You’d feel alone. The population density in the city is horrific. There’s no sense of personal space or community; everyone is kinda on their own trip.
But you’d keep walking because it makes no sense to you, and you want to understand it. You’ll want to understand how their can be such rampant poverty yet such flashy cards. You’ll want to understand how there can exist so much order and chaos at the same time. You’ll want to understand all of it, and in doing that, you will fall in love.
One road to follow. One way in. One way out. Towering balconies scattered with potted plants and wet clothes hanging, flapping in the inconsistent breeze under the hot and dry Mediterranean Sun. The piazza. The meeting place. I lay down and look up at the night sky; the stars have gathered for me.
They counted stacks by the bundle. Ran through green like an unbroken promise and kept it close (until something better showed up.) Babes, babies, a wife, a mistress… got it all from the toy maker. He loves kids, he swears, why else would he make toys?
He missed lacrosse games, work dinners, cancer treatments, dinner dates–all for the tried and true run of the green. It fell from the sky, took up restless dreams. Sunday to Sunday, he kept rolling with the winding agenda. Took some heat from the Bigs, but still kept the change. He lived for the pining, especially when he couldn’t seem to stop winning.
He resented the daytime more than he did the night, when the work got bad and he would come back to a kid crying. Even the sunny days, he couldn’t see. Especially the one when “Your honor, I just ask for some time to find a lawyer.”
She didn’t mean to hurt him; it had simply happened that way. She really, really thought she’d liked him, liked boys in general but especially him. So she’d said yes, to the dances, to the hugs, to the kissing. She’d heard so many things about love, she thought at first that she had found it.
Until he kissed her, and she had felt…
Nothing. You place your lips on mine and I try so, so hard to feel the same way that I know you do. I can still taste your breath on mine, feel your hand graze my cheek as it brushed my hair from your lips. We were tangled in each other, your arms clasped on my lower spine and mine around your waist and I felt…
Nothing. If anything, I felt wrong, you felt wrong, it all felt wrong. It was as if whatever spark I’d hoped to feel was absent, no matter how hard I tried to conjure it. It wasn’t because he was him, I later realized; it was because he was a him.
I wish I could ask her, was it all me? Like, did she just not like me and take that as a representative experience of dating guys in general? Was I a bad kisser? Was I a bad boyfriend?
The slab of salmon has been dead for some time. Caught in the nets of an Alaskan commercial fishery, hauled back to land with all of its brothers and sisters, passed across the country from rubber gloves to freezer trucks, and half-buried under chunks of ice in the seafood aisle of a Costco branch in Texas. Glassy eyes see nothing as it’s picked up and tossed into the shopping cart with a dull rattle.
Now it sits in Mom’s kitchen (sliced down the middle, salted, peppered, dressed in lemon and thyme) and patiently waits on the counter-top for the soft hands to come and finish the job. The oven beeps. Preheated to 450. Mom walks into the kitchen. She picks up the tray and slides the salmon into the oven. From water to ice to fire, its purpose in the world re-configuring, sizzling, sliding, shifting to a preordained plan.
Mom calculates the time she has left.
She opens the fridge, takes out the scallions, closes the fridge. She walks to the sink, turns on the faucet, washes the scallions. She holds the green stalks under running water and cleans them in a squeezing motion from head to toe, until they start to squeak like little kids protesting when parents lick their thumbs and rub the grime off their cheek. She turns off the faucet, shakes off the droplets, picks up her knife. She lays down their bodies on the cutting board and dices them into pinky-nail pieces. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. A rhythmic rearrangement of atoms.
Some in-class writing from this past week:
(exercise with drawing, rules/requirements)
Late afternoon sun creeps thinly through the kitchen window, crawls feebly toward the shiny steel of the oven on the other side. An oval of bread sleeps patiently on the grate inside, flour hanging weightless in the shaft of light. Mark strides in with purpose, holds a paper bag extended away from his face and frowns at it. He peers inside at the crumpled forms of three Japanese Beetles and shakes his head. Into the bin they go–never to wreak havoc on his tomatoes again.
Outside, July has done wonders to his crop of ruby reds, their green arms spiraling around and around rows of carefully placed metal cages. A warm breeze, the ripples of uncut grass, the greenhouse walls.
“What do you think, Red? Quite a summer.”
The cat has padded into the room and slinks a figure eight around Mark’s ankles. Quite a year, he agrees.
Prompt: Write to some you have not written to yet in class:
We talk all the time, and I’m always in you ear, but there’s just not way I’m. going to stop. I’m going to have to lose my ability to communicate for that to happen. I’d say die, but I know that if I died, there would be a permanent residence set up in your head where I would reside.
To get to where you need to be you must lose everything to gain it all. Sounds odd, but it’s the only way. You must reinvent yourself to perfection. And once you have completed this task, scrap everything, and start all over, using all the knowledge you have acquired. You must never become satisfied.
If you feel like this is too hard, look to me. I’ll be doing the same thing, we’ll push limits together. Plato says “a man should have his brother on his side.” I’m right here bro, no sweat.
I kinda get it. To reach your full potential, you must believe in the process of growth. Trust the process.
Right, but also knowing you have faults and nurturing them with intentions of flourishing.
Ok, I got you, nobody’s perfect.
Exactly!
Will we ever attain our goals then?
I don’t think so, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
In-class writing; prompt: describe a walk through your hometown.
You’d hate it. It would be loud, noisy, uncomfortable, claustrophobic. You’d feel lost. You’d feel alone. The population density in the city is horrific. There’s no sense of personal space or community; everyone is kinda on their own trip.
But you’d keep walking because it makes no sense to you, and you want to understand it. You’ll want to understand how their can be such rampant poverty yet such flashy cards. You’ll want to understand how there can exist so much order and chaos at the same time. You’ll want to understand all of it, and in doing that, you will fall in love.
Prompt: Draw a place and write about it.
One road to follow. One way in. One way out. Towering balconies scattered with potted plants and wet clothes hanging, flapping in the inconsistent breeze under the hot and dry Mediterranean Sun. The piazza. The meeting place. I lay down and look up at the night sky; the stars have gathered for me.
They counted stacks by the bundle. Ran through green like an unbroken promise and kept it close (until something better showed up.) Babes, babies, a wife, a mistress… got it all from the toy maker. He loves kids, he swears, why else would he make toys?
He missed lacrosse games, work dinners, cancer treatments, dinner dates–all for the tried and true run of the green. It fell from the sky, took up restless dreams. Sunday to Sunday, he kept rolling with the winding agenda. Took some heat from the Bigs, but still kept the change. He lived for the pining, especially when he couldn’t seem to stop winning.
He resented the daytime more than he did the night, when the work got bad and he would come back to a kid crying. Even the sunny days, he couldn’t see. Especially the one when “Your honor, I just ask for some time to find a lawyer.”
Changing POV prompt response:
She didn’t mean to hurt him; it had simply happened that way. She really, really thought she’d liked him, liked boys in general but especially him. So she’d said yes, to the dances, to the hugs, to the kissing. She’d heard so many things about love, she thought at first that she had found it.
Until he kissed her, and she had felt…
Nothing. You place your lips on mine and I try so, so hard to feel the same way that I know you do. I can still taste your breath on mine, feel your hand graze my cheek as it brushed my hair from your lips. We were tangled in each other, your arms clasped on my lower spine and mine around your waist and I felt…
Nothing. If anything, I felt wrong, you felt wrong, it all felt wrong. It was as if whatever spark I’d hoped to feel was absent, no matter how hard I tried to conjure it. It wasn’t because he was him, I later realized; it was because he was a him.
I wish I could ask her, was it all me? Like, did she just not like me and take that as a representative experience of dating guys in general? Was I a bad kisser? Was I a bad boyfriend?
The slab of salmon has been dead for some time. Caught in the nets of an Alaskan commercial fishery, hauled back to land with all of its brothers and sisters, passed across the country from rubber gloves to freezer trucks, and half-buried under chunks of ice in the seafood aisle of a Costco branch in Texas. Glassy eyes see nothing as it’s picked up and tossed into the shopping cart with a dull rattle.
Now it sits in Mom’s kitchen (sliced down the middle, salted, peppered, dressed in lemon and thyme) and patiently waits on the counter-top for the soft hands to come and finish the job. The oven beeps. Preheated to 450. Mom walks into the kitchen. She picks up the tray and slides the salmon into the oven. From water to ice to fire, its purpose in the world re-configuring, sizzling, sliding, shifting to a preordained plan.
Mom calculates the time she has left.
She opens the fridge, takes out the scallions, closes the fridge. She walks to the sink, turns on the faucet, washes the scallions. She holds the green stalks under running water and cleans them in a squeezing motion from head to toe, until they start to squeak like little kids protesting when parents lick their thumbs and rub the grime off their cheek. She turns off the faucet, shakes off the droplets, picks up her knife. She lays down their bodies on the cutting board and dices them into pinky-nail pieces. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. A rhythmic rearrangement of atoms.
“Cooking can be a kind of therapy,” she says.
Some in-class writing from this past week:
(exercise with drawing, rules/requirements)
Late afternoon sun creeps thinly through the kitchen window, crawls feebly toward the shiny steel of the oven on the other side. An oval of bread sleeps patiently on the grate inside, flour hanging weightless in the shaft of light. Mark strides in with purpose, holds a paper bag extended away from his face and frowns at it. He peers inside at the crumpled forms of three Japanese Beetles and shakes his head. Into the bin they go–never to wreak havoc on his tomatoes again.
Outside, July has done wonders to his crop of ruby reds, their green arms spiraling around and around rows of carefully placed metal cages. A warm breeze, the ripples of uncut grass, the greenhouse walls.
“What do you think, Red? Quite a summer.”
The cat has padded into the room and slinks a figure eight around Mark’s ankles. Quite a year, he agrees.
Prompt: Write to some you have not written to yet in class:
We talk all the time, and I’m always in you ear, but there’s just not way I’m. going to stop. I’m going to have to lose my ability to communicate for that to happen. I’d say die, but I know that if I died, there would be a permanent residence set up in your head where I would reside.
To get to where you need to be you must lose everything to gain it all. Sounds odd, but it’s the only way. You must reinvent yourself to perfection. And once you have completed this task, scrap everything, and start all over, using all the knowledge you have acquired. You must never become satisfied.
If you feel like this is too hard, look to me. I’ll be doing the same thing, we’ll push limits together. Plato says “a man should have his brother on his side.” I’m right here bro, no sweat.
I kinda get it. To reach your full potential, you must believe in the process of growth. Trust the process.
Right, but also knowing you have faults and nurturing them with intentions of flourishing.
Ok, I got you, nobody’s perfect.
Exactly!
Will we ever attain our goals then?
I don’t think so, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.