Ice Cream Castles in the Air

Wouldn't that be fabulous? Ah this whole song makes me smile :)

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air, and feather canyons everywhere- I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone. So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow it's cloud illusions I recall. I really don't know clouds at all

It's odd how we can spend so much time around something and still be entirely confounded by it. The other day a friend asked me to describe my sister to him and I didn't even know what to say. My sister and I are very close (though it's taken us plenty of arguing to get there) but she's also nothing like me. Is she nice? Sometimes. Is she a jerk? She absolutely can be. She's the loudest person I know, but her teachers and new friends say she keeps to herself. It's funny how I can spend so much of my life with a person and still find her completely indescribable.

Isn't that odd? I like getting into characters (though not the ones I've described so far) but in any story you can't describe every asset of a character. Even in a movie, where you can see their mannerisms and hear the way they talk aned see them completely, you certainly don't know all of a character. I guess I have to get used to the idea that it's not about portraying the entirety of a person, it's about portraying a couple aspects of them. Don't mention that comment he made that day in the diner unless it actually affects the story. Don't discuss her hobbies or relationships unless they actually move the story forward or shows a significant aspect of her personality. Must learn this. Characters shouldn't be boring or one-dimensional, but it's also impossible to describe the entirety of a person's character. Nobody is only made up of their favorite quotes or two minute introduction or college essay. Nobody's senior photo or list of hobbies actually describes who they are. And with dialogue or imagery or whatever devices we may employ in our stories, the best we can do is try to get one or two aspects of a person really down, because trying to fit a person into a short story is hard enough, but trying to cram multiple people and create plot and setting and everything with complete detail is impossible. A veces, less is more.

Please Come to Boston for the Springtime

By Boston I mean Carrillon Point. Obviously. This is my "Put me in, coach!" assignment. Also my character is the opposite of me and woud probably bug the crap out of me in real life. Fortunately, this class is about fiction.

Macy Jones was, and always had been, a Houston girl. Not from one of its myriad suburbs, but a girl straight out of the big city itself. The gulf was the only water she'd ever known and she saw no reason to leave. Some people go out searching for adventure, she'd say, but she knew her place and she'd found contentment right in her hometown. Macy only let the boundaries of the city for the occasional convention for work or a visit with an old acquaintance--and even then she only went a couple miles out.

However, Macy could find no legitimate reasonto avoid her sister Laura's wedding in Carrillon Point, Massachusetts, and even a big Texas family knows better than to skip a wedding. Never having been a fan of tight quarters, Macy made the 2000 mile trip in her '06 civic instead of a plane, stopping only for gas and the occasional hot dog stand. Three days and 500 dollars later, Macy found herself in the smallest, most uptight town she'd ever seen. Nobody walked around Carrillon Point in sweatpants, the bride-to-be pointed out when Macy got out of the car. Yes, Macy had noticed. For Laura's information, she did not drive in skirts or even designer jeans. Laura rolled her eyes and asked if her lip gloss was a tad too dark for the occasion. There was a reason Macy had not visited her little sister once in the nine years they'd been apart, and that about summed it up.

The next few days passed in a blur of stale congratulations and hair spray complications, and by the end of the week Macy was entirely ready to leave. She checked out of the Rosebush Inn on Thursday around noon only to find her car totaled in the parking lot...

Assigned Blog Post #5: Athlete

I don't like labels, really I don't. And while this could factually refer to me, make no assumptions that the persona is mine.

Stop doing your homework and go to practice, don't forget your water bottle the way you always do, don't be self conscious in the locker room-it's not like they're looking at you anyways, get to practice early, socialize with the underclassmen so that someone will remember you when you're gone, do your laps, no don't think about the workout later today, don't stress yourself out, just stretch, look at the flagpole to keep from falling over, Nadia's more flexible- don't mind her, count accurately during abs, pray it will be a full set becaus short abs mean long workout, elbows to your knees, drills, straight back, on your toes, ignore Grace when she asks if you have a six pack (you don't), two mile warm up, run the whole thing- you may not be the fastest but you have integrity, right? Don't you? Don't think about the workout that's in twenty minutes, remember to breathe, should have taken ibuprofen, do build ups back on the track, don't start out too fast, this isn't a competition, though if it were, you might do pretty well, run the tempo workout, remember to eat lunch earlier next time, don't worry about it too much because the good runners aren't watching you anyway, keep it up, this is still not a competition, remember to breathe, you're a singer- you should know how to breathe, push with your arms, head up, only a minute rest, did you forget to start your watch again, don't be the pretentious senior who pushes ahead of underclassmen, don't the the slow senior who's behind all the underclassmen, keep your pace up, two years ago you would have been lapping this time, don't worry about that, don't worry about anything, get out of lane one, get back in lane one, run on your toes, do not think about your calves, do not think about your sides, push ahead of this girl, you haven't really lost count have you? Remember to get to sleep earlier, straight back, eyes up, don't tell them you had cramps before practice even began- gender is never an excuse for weakness, run the cooldown, don't talk about workouts once they're over, don't do hills on a cooldown- nobody likes hills, be on time for the pasta feed, sit with the younger runners so that maybe someone will remember you, try to get to bed early tonight so you'll be well rested when you show up at the track at six in the morning tomorrow...

~sigh~

I should probably comment on readings. Like a lot of them. But I am not focused enough to do that without context so you'll just have to read

There was a short period during my trip to Spain this summer during which my host sister and I didn't talk much. It wasn't that we actually disliked each other, but when you spend too much time in close quarters with someone, there's an inevitable period of needing to breathe, and because I was ten thousand miles from home and on the 8th floor of a locked apartment building, I sat on the balcony and looked out on the Mediterranean sea and journaled all day. This is good- everyone needs time to be alone and to journal, and I think a lot of us get so caught up in doing things for others or working on things we think necessary like summer classes or sports or lo que sea that we don't leave time for ourselves. In any case, I'd finished Joy Luck Club and decided to read it again in a different order (those who have read it may understand why I did this- it's in vignettes about 4 different mother-daughter pairs and the first time I read it straight through, the second was pair by pair) and this time, I took notes. This is fortunate, as I have now returned the book to Julia but my journal has quotes that I like. One of the quotes I put in my journal refers to an unsatisfactory piano recital I believe, but it may refer to a chess match or a divorce. I forget.

The quote is "to each person I told a different story. Yet each version was true... at least at the moment I told it" (210). I had a race yesterday and it went about as well as most of my races have been going this year, which is to say I was over two minutes slower than most of my meets last year. Only Alex and Derek will understand the significance of that and both of them are busy enough that they better not be sitting around reading other people's blogs, but suffice it to say that nobody likes spending 14 hours a week on something and getting progressively worse at it. So the Joy Luck Club quote applied yesterday because I found that each time I talked to someone new, I came to a different conclusion about my race. To Cory I said I started too fast, to Grace I said I should have trained in the summer, to Derek and Alex I said I train better than I race. I think I do that a lot- any time I feel like I need to make excuses for myself.

It's odd how much the way you say something affects its meaning. I had a conversation with a host mom in Spain during which she told me I ought to be more outgoing, that people who don't stick up for themselves have a hard time getting around in the world and that it's important to be an extrovert and put yourself out there. I'm sure she meant no harm in what she was saying- the woman is a radio announcer who lives in a city of about 10,000 people and she literally knew more than half of the people in the town. Not just knew them- we'd walk down the beach or to the carnería or an ice cream shop and she'd stop and have a good conversation with every other person, waving to the rest of them as they passed by and called "¿Qué tal, Carmeli? ¡Buenos días, Carmeli!" On the one hand, it was nice to be in such a friendly environment. On the other hand, I don't think I could stand to be that extroverted. Sin embargo, when I got back to the US I found myself describing the conversation as her scolding me for being an introvert, or telling me I would not be successful if I did not change to become outgoing. That's not what she meant, and I'm sure if I'd described it in a different way in English that people would have taken it differently. We are very quick to judge, all of us.

NYAH. About the readings. I am silly- I generally don't like stories if they don't end happily or don't teach a deep and cliche message of perseverence and appreciation. In other words, I oughn't to have liked a single story we've read this year. I do like musicals, though, and quite a bit. And I do not like hearing about relationships that don't work out, so A Temporary Matter depressed me a bit. There were two particular quotes in it that struck me as wow-I-hope-this-is-never-me; "looking, at thirty-three, like the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble" (321), and "the cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now" (329). I was slightly impressed at the writer for saying things like that because they give the reader a pretty good image of what has become of both the relationship itself and the people in it, but mostly it depressed me. I don't like reading things that depress me. Half Skinned Steer was something of the opposite- I didn't enjoy A Temporary Matter because if that ever became of my life I would... I don't know what I'd do. It would not be a good day. But I did understand the story and it used explanations that are easy to relate to even if we'd rather not have them come true. I had a much harder time understanding Half Skinned Steer and it's not something I can imagine relating to. The narrator's voice comes out a lot in that one, which is cool, but none of the characters were very likeable. I guess that's not really a bad thing- a story with one likeable character who comes into conflict with only characters who deserve to be beaten up is neither realistic nor interesting, but the characters seemed so far distanced from people I would ever encounter that the story just seemed random to me. And I didn't like the idea of the actual half skinned steer. How terribly creepy and grotesque. I read We Didn't as well because I forgot which one we were supposed to read, and I was quite impressed by the descriptions; "in the backseat of my father's rusted Rambler, which smelled of the smoked chubs and kielbasa he delivered on weekends from my uncle Vincent's meat market" (181). That story was also interesting in just how much it's set in the past (or, really, imperfect) tense; not just the events are in the past, but the narrator and the girl to whom the story is directed seem to have changed from the time the story is supposed to have taken place, and the narrator describes both of their personalities as how they were rather than how they are. Girl was interesting to me, and like a lot of these stories it definitely broadened my idea of what a story can be. For as much as it seems to lack in plot, it gives a pretty clear idea of both the girl and her mother and the relationship between them. I don't think I would have been able to do half as good of a job if given a page and a half to explain two people in so much detail. But I do like both Girl and We Didn't. How to Become a Writer was not what I'd expected and was also a little depressing, especially since we're about to enter college and I don't know that any of us are very secure in what we want to do with our lives. I'm still not sure what to think of You're Ugly, Too but that I'm glad I spend so much time around people who are outrageously blunt and all too honest. I don't like superficiality. Ever. Sigh.

~This post wasn't actually about writing that much... Sorry about thattt~