Reflection

It was very inspiring to hear these writers read from their works. What stuck out the most to me was what someone in the audience asked about at the end of the session: their rhythm.  When they were reading it’s all I could pick up on.  With Robert Kloss, the repetition of “remember” was done fantastically.  It did not mar the work as repetition tends to do.  It was crafted so well that it encouraged me to try repetition more in my own work.  I am usually a huge fan of it in my poetry but I know that he used it a lot—almost every sentence.  I wish I could have seen how it was formed—if it was in prose form or verse.  My gut tells me it was a mix, but who knows.

I noticed that they all had very intense, meaningful, colorful images.  With Himmer’s office scene, the image that is so very clear and well-constructed in my head at the moment, four days after, is the image of the desk fountain and the forlorn man that owned it.  Kloss’s mourning Lincoln is still haunting. And Bell’s cartographer was fabulous on all levels.  With Bell’s, though, I wish I had it in front of me to get the full effect of the symbols. 

I, like some others, enjoyed the Q&A at the end of the reading.  Now more than ever I enjoy hearing about people’s writing process.  It was extremely encouraging to hear that these three ordinary men can devote their time to their writing.  It seemed so easy—write when you can and be devoted.  Very encouraging.

Short Story Draft

Cream of wheat snow. Cinnamon sand.  The wind is blustery—trying to make me fall on my knees.  I am defiant.  Already the ocean water is a dark gray.  The sky and the water melt into each other.  Snowflakes melt in my eye lashes and skate down my face, collect and lingering a little.

            Behind me is the house Roy and I bought for our retirement.  Its brown siding is a a piece of drift wood among the sand and grass.  He’s still sleeping, warm.  Didn’t even feel me get up and shiver.  Didn’t hear me sigh and slink toward the backdoor which I slid closed, not wanting any snow or cold to seep into the house. 

            The walk from the house to the edge of the beach was treacherous.  The snow melted right through my robe.  Then it just started to settle like a shawl across my shoulders, weighing me down.  Clutching the robe at my chest, I navigate the slick wooden walk in my slippers.  There is no thought to my walk.  Just pure survival.

            The walk ends in sand, a tiny cliff to jump off into hardened sand.  Instead I stand and watch the water, melting all over.  I remember when the sky was this gray in Nevada before a thunderstorm.  When Roy and I would move the couch to the sliding doors and watch the rain splat, spatter and run like my makeup.  Thankfully, now my eyes won’t sting. Roy hasn’t bothered to move the couch to the sliding doors since we moved to New England. 

            “It’s too cold over there.  We’ll get a cold,” his excuse.  Then we’d sit on the couch.  I’d be wrapped in a blanket we both could have shared.

            Roy missed the heat of Nevada.  You could tell by the way he always had the fire lit and the heat on as if the cold were seeping to his bones freezing his marrow. 

            “Come under the blanket,” I would say, “We can make each other warm.”

            Then he’d put the corner over his lap and continue watching TV.  As sweltering as the house got we never shared a blanket unless it was in bed.  Thirty years in the desert.  And now, confronted with cold and water, he is the perpetual iceberg.

            I close my eyes against the wind.  The snow dries as soon as it melts on my cheeks.  I am frigid.  The ocean holds no more interest for me—it is just frothy clay at this point in the storm.  It would be exhilarating to get lost in that deep gray, I think.  Roy must still be asleep.  He always was on one to sleep in on his days off and now, in retirement, it is everyday where he greets the sun hours after I already had breakfast and tea with the sun, enjoying the ocean breeze, discussing the shape of clouds.  He’s lost in his own gray of the morning—this half-light is only more of an excuse to waste in sleep.

            I kick off my slipper into the sand before me and set my barefoot on the wooden walk.  It’s refreshingly cold.  Tightening my grip on the robe, I step off the cliff of the walk and dip my toes into the snowy sand.  Beach sand was never like desert sand.  Here it’s coarse with shell remains and smooth rocks.  Roy would complain and never walk the beach with me.

            “I’ll set my chair up here,” he’d say unfolding his chair at the edge of the walk, “Perfect view of the water and it’s still warm!”  I would look up to him with a slanted head from the sand, toes wiggling, tickled by the sand between them.  With an ever-so-slight shake of the head I’d turn and walk straight to the edge of the water.

            Now I am chattering like Roy on a cold morning before the Sun is out.  I would be up, robe on, sitting at the kitchen counter sipping tea staring at the water and listening.  I always wanted to spend retirement by the sea.  Years in the desert surrounded by sand and no water was depressing.  I longed for the salt and for the razor-sand of my preteen summers.  Before Roy.

            Since May we have been here in the timber-wood-brown house at the top of the shore.  Looking back at it from the water, it is tiny, insignificant.  We haven’t had friends over yet because I’m ashamed of it’s time-share cleanliness.  There is no mess of a home.  It’s like a tidy, sterile death bed.  Lonely.

            Cream of wheat snow.  Cinnamon sand. Like a nice cup of hot chocolate with a lump of whipped cream and some sprinkled cinnamon.  Fancy, but warm.  Roy would like waking up to that.  Then I would stay in the kitchen, looking out the door and enjoying the fact I was inside and warm and loved.  He would be on the couch, watching the news he missed. Doesn’t deserve it.

            I inch into the icy water, wobbling because my chatter has spread from my teeth to my legs and arms as the snow seeps into every thread of my robe.  I stand and wait.

Just some tidbits

I thought I'd share my favorite definition from last night and perhaps a few other things.

Shadow--Absence of: consciousness; conscience.  Shell. Wraith of a man smoking a cigarette, walking. Absorbing Sun. Diverting looks.  Forget he's there. Smoke.

Cerulean--Her hair. Misty blue as the sky in Kanto.  Her hair we with sea, glinting the sun as people turn to stare because her eyes are not cerulean and neither are her eyebrows.  But, it's okay--it's as natural as the iridescent sheen of a perfect shell you almost destroyed.


And here are a few beginnings and endings.  Couldn't really decide where to go with them.  Maybe one of you can become inspired!
She capped her ginger ale and walked.
He always had the nicest ass.
Our kiss wasn't the greatest. 
Slipped and fell hard on my ass.  He chuckled and gasped--hand out to help.


have fun!

Ana Castillo and Epistolaries

I found Castillo's Letters to be amusing and powerful. Just like we noted last week in the class, her use of diction and concise words is what really brought it home for me.  It is her succinct diction that made these two women come to life.  They are humorous, clever, sweet and poetic.  In fact, it is their poetic prose that I most connected with—they speak with such eloquence that it made their stories more than just images in my head.  It was a full on movie.  Castillo’s descriptions were unique and thoughtful and that is something that needs practice in my own writing.  To be able to describe something with such unique clarity it leaves the reader saying “Huh, that’s such a great image.  Looks like a painting.”

            I simultaneously admire and was not a fan of the epistolary format of the novel.  I think it’s a great, unique, fantastic way to share and tell a story.  However, I felt confused on more than one occasion.  Although these two women were completely different, their diction sometimes would not allow me to tell them apart.  However, I enjoyed Teresa’s poignant poetry over Alicia’s rambling letters.  I have often toyed with the thought of writing a novel through poems because I have seen it done well so many times.  I have never once thought of combining an epistolary with poetry.  I think that’s what makes Castillo’s Letters so wonderful.  In having her characters write poetry in their letters and write earnestly and honestly, she has created them wholly for the reader.  That creation is sometimes lost even in the best novels that use poetry as their format.  It is also difficult for me to establish a voice for my characters, a tone.  I would love to be able to flesh out such wonderful characters as Alicia and Teresa.

            If anything The Mixiquahuala Letters inspired me to break the bonds of normal story telling and prose and to combine, morph and create new ways to share a story.  Can’t wait!

flash fiction?!

Sleeping in my shoddy sleeping bag, eyes sore from the dusty ground around me, I bent my arm at an uncomfortable angle to make it reach my neck.  Fingers crawling over my chest to feel the cold chain that led to a slightly heavy silver locket. Following the smooth chain between my first two fingers, I follow the weight ‘til I reach the locket.  I sigh as its cold is enveloped by my fist.

                With my eyes closed and my heavy hair held up in one hand, Isaac moves to sit behind me on the bed.  Legs crossed, he brings the dangling necklace down to my chest.  It thuds and is cold against my bare skin, nestling messily at the top of my cleavage.  I shiver.  He gets closer as he brings the ends together around my neck.  All I can do is feel him—his weight shifting as he leans toward my neck, his breath tickling the few hairs not held up by my hand.  I can almost picture his fumbling thumbs trying to secure the tiny catch.  Finally, his thumbs secure the necklace and he lets it fall against my neck.  Putting my arm down, he swings both arms around me and buries his face in my hair.  He breathes and whispers that this is from the bottom of his heart so it can rest against the bottom of mine.  My eyes are still closed as he fixes his legs and wraps them around me and he brings me back with him down on the bed.  He sighs.

                The locket is warm now as I let it fall against my arm.  Eyes closed, I can feel myself slipping into dream memory.  Tonight will be bearable; my pulse beats to the locket.  Yes.

Flash fiction

This is somewhat fiction.  This is based off "Girl" and is inspired (and mostly lifted) from directions I give my fourth graders throughout the day.  It's rough and barely has the subtlety that "Girl" but it's mostly what happens.

Sit down. Be quiet. No more talking.  In your own desks, please.  No get off your desk—you know I meant chair.  Use your brain. Don’t be smart.  Okay, we won’t be. Stay focused—don’t get off topic. Don’t talk to your neighbors.  These are all skills you will need when you’re older.  Tell him to be quiet.  You need to learn to work together and be nice to each other.  I’m nice to people I don’t like all the time.  Be like me.  Clean up the area around your desks, we’ll get mice again.  Show me you’re ready to go to lunch.  Line up boys and girls.  It’s just a line. But he cut me! It’s just a line.  Walk with me.  Stop at the end of the hall.  Keep walking. Stop. Eat lunch. Line up.  Walk quietly down the hall. Start recess.  Use your own markers for the board if you want to draw on it.  Respect each other.  Don’t help people play checkers.  You’re obviously bothering them.  Listen to someone when they ask you to stop.  Clean up.  Sit down.  Take out your work. Take out your work. Take out your work.  Eyes on me.  Ears open.  This is why this answer is right.  Agree? Agreed.  Start your homework.  Be less noisy.  Desks up. I mean chairs on desks.  Line up. Hats off until outside.  Put your hat on.  Good bye.