Annie Dillard

I did consider writing a long and intriguing post on Annie Dillard, but I've found that long posts are not necessarily better than short ones and bullet points are more direct and unlike Dillard, I enjoy being direct. So here's what I think.
1. Why does the beginning of chapter four say "Sorry to tell you a dream!" in all caps? Super random.
2. Too. Many. Metaphors. I'm a poet, I love extended metaphors. But a whole book of them? Holy cow.
3. I agree that it is crucial to have a place without distraction. By this, I mean it is probably also crucial to have a place without internet, since that's a pretty significant distraction for me. Dillard has a point because it's so easy for our minds to wander when we're frustrated and we really need to work. HOWEVER the thing about creative writing is that sometimes we live off of distractions. When I was little, I'd think up stories while playing solitaire or make up songs in my head while riding the bus, and I still do that. I walk downtown (about an hour and a half walk, depending on where exactly I'm going) and I observe the entertaining ads on metro busses and the pretty mini-parks by those rivers I never realized existed and cute old couples with ridiculous jackets they probably bought thirty years ago, and then I find a random bench (or just sit down on the sidewalk/grass if a bench is not to be found) and I think of things. I guess this works better in poetry because you can write a poem in a sitting, but I'd say it's important for stories too because stories require creativity and creativity generally requires inspiration. I guess what's important is that you're not in a place that is mundane to you, which is kind of the opposite of what Dillard says. My laptop at home is on a desk, and it is always a mess and there are Hamomi flyers for internship and sheet music for solo ensemble and my journal from spain and lip balm and a nail file and orange sapphire lotion but mostly lots and lots of papers, and even though each of them has a significance to me, the place is mundane because I am here every day, any time I use a computer, which is a lot. If I am at a park or inside a mall or sitting on the sidewalk, even if it's a place I go frequently, it's always changing and the people and items there are not just my possessions, they are not things I get bored of seeing.
4. She moved from Virginia to Washington. Like my parents/me. But not my siblings. Also my parents are not from Roanoke.
5. I don't understand why she has to detach herself from EVERYTHING to write. Writing is not about solitude unless you are Thoreau, and even then it has at least a backing of mankind. Dillard is not Thoreau and it seems like you must have to have some terribly dreadful disease to be so easily distracted that you move into a cabin and freeze because that's the only way you can write. I've been suspected of having ADD, but this seems a bit over the top. I guess people always go over the top for the things they love, but if you're really that bad at focusing, your mind will wander no matter where you are. If your attention span is only twenty minutes, it just means living in a semi-isolated cabin will be extremely unnerving. I think living in a busy world would be good because, as mentioned earlier, writing demands inspiration.
6. "Why people want to be writers I will never know, unless it is that their lives lack a material footing." People should not try to convince me that their jobs are the hardest jobs in the world, and they should definitely not say that they are unsensible. If it is unsensible to be a writer, stop. Find something else. Sorry professor Cross. I don't actually think writers are dumb or that they should choose a different profession, but if you're going to do something, don't try to convince people you chose the harder path or your life is really difficult. I don't like whiners or self-pityers

Character

“I'm hoooooooooooooooooome!” Jenny swings the door open and drops her backpack on the floor with a thump.

Great, I think. Sound the trumpets.

And so she does. “Amyamyamyamyamy! Guess what happened in chem today!”

“You... set something on fire?” I suggest, only half kidding.

She runs up to my room. “Yeah, something. Man was there chemistry today. Whatever, you won’t guess it so I'll just tell you. I was sitting there doing my ionic compounds worksheet and Mrs. Jenkins passed by and told me my work looked good because she always says that because my work is always good. Anyway, right as she said that, plaid shirt boy walked in because his teacher wanted the computer cart from Mrs. Jenkins and AMY HE SMILED AT ME.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t just smiling because he was happy?” I ask, continuing my trigonometry homework.

“No! People don’t smile because they’re getting the computer cart. People smile because they see other people, like me! Amy, he smiled when he saw me! And then—I'm not done yet! This is the best part! Aren’t you paying attention?—He winked at me! Amy he winked!”

“So,” I say, “This relationship is really going somewhere. Have you figured out his name?”

Jenny frowns. “No,” she admits, “No, but I will. Just you wait.”

“Yes, Jenny. I'm waiting.” I go back to my work and she skips across the hall, tripping on a stair as she goes down.

Five minutes later I hear a call from downstairs. “Amy I'm hungryyyyyyyyyyy.”

“It’s four o’clock, haven’t you already eaten?”

“Yeah but that was a long time ago. FOUR HOURS? Are you trying to kill me? Will you make me something pleeeeeeeeeeeeeese?” She whines.

“You’re fourteen, you can make your own food.”

“Pretty please? I'll love you forever darling sister. I'm too busy to make myself food.”

“You’re too lazy to make yourself food. I have to work in an hour, I'm sure you can f—”

“What? I can’t hear you, guess you’re gonna have to come down here to talk to me. And while you’re at it, want to make me a grilled cheese sandwich? I like mine...”

I shut the door and stop listening. It’s an acquired talent, this ability to ignore loud noises for extended periods of time.

Jenny stomps up the stairs as loudly as humanly possible, sometimes jumping on a stair for added volume. “Amy [stomp] are [stomp] you [stomp] even [stomp] listeningggg?” She runs up and down for a few minutes and I wonder how she has the time and energy to do this but not to grill two pieces of bread and a slice of cheese. I pretend to ignore her and eventually she goes down to the piano. A loud siren sound emerges, not once, not twice, but three times, just in case shouting across the house wasn’t a sufficient warm up. “Do re mi fa so la ti do, Do di re ri mi fa fi sol si la li ti do...” Major scale, half note scale, next is minor scale… I’ve never had much interest in music but Jenny loves it and never hesitates to tell me all about it. She begins singing a French aria. “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix...” My heart opens to your voice… Is this a hint? Her attempt to call me down to get me to listen to her sing just because the song’s in French? My heart does not open to her voice, I wonder how I can portray this more clearly. “Aaaah, réponnnds à maaaa tendresse!” Respond to my tenderness. Nice try, I think. Now be quiet.

Half an hour later, Jenny stops singing. “Amyyyyyy my throat hurts,” she calls up. Yeah, I'll bet. “Will you make me tea? Pleeeease? Or something cold? Don’t you want to help your dear little sister?” No, not particularly. Amy runs up to my room. “Jenny could you hear me? I asked if you’d make me tea, I have a sore throat. Please? For meeee?”

“I'm busy and I have to leave soon,” I say.

Amy sighs. “I have to do everything for this family.” What’ll she be like when I go off to college? She walks downstairs, whimpering as if this will help her case.

Twenty minutes later I hear a shriek. “Amy come here! Amy! Amy are you coming?” This is not the same Jenny who was whining twenty minutes ago, she sounds genuinely terrified.

“I'm changing for work, be there in a second,” I call down.

“Amy quicklyyyy!”

Good God what happened? My mind races with all the things that could have gone wrong. Did she burn herself? Spill boiling water? Did she put metal in the microwave? Was there some kind of toaster fire? Do those even exist? I finish buttoning my shirt as I run downstairs. Grilled cheese cooks on the hot stove while Jenny is balled up in a corner in her Disney princess apron. “It’s over there,” she says, pointing at the other side of the room.”

“What’s over there? Is there a rat? Did you trip on something? Broken glass?”

“No, on the ceiling.”

I look up to where she’s pointing to see a spider half the size of my fingernail scrambling across the ceiling. Are you kidding me?

“Is it a black widow?”

“No.”

“What is it then?”

“Jenny, you were screaming about that?”

“Yes! Think of what it could have done!”

“There I was thinking you were dying and that I was going to have to call an ambulance and it was a spider? Not even a daddy long legs but a tiny little spider?”

“I could have died! Imagine if it had bitten me!”

“You would have spider bites for... I don’t know, a week maybe. I'm going to be partially deaf for a lot longer than that.”

“Amy it’s still there. Look it’s moving!” Jenny is actually crying. Really? REALLY? “Get it off. Kill it, Amy!”

I take a paper towel and stand on the chair to reach the spider. Gently pulling it off, I get down off the chair and let it outside.

“You didn’t even kill it?”

“No, but your screaming may have.”

“IT’S STILL ALIVE?”

“Listen, Jenny, I have to go to work,” I say. Anything to change the subject.

“Nooooo! Amy don’t leave in my time of crisis!”

“Your crisis is over. I need to work so I can pay for gas to drive you places. This whole deal works in your benefit.”

“Amy I'm dyinggggg.”

“Get up and recuperate. You’re not dying  and your grilled cheese is blackening.”

Jenny stays in the corner so I flip the sandwich and head out the door. Do I have to do everything in this family?

Assigned Blog Post #7: Grocery Shopping

Firstly, my apologies for not blogging much lately, I've been working on my story. On that note, I replaced the two scenes I deleted so Lourdes stil exists but in a pretty different form, and there is another recipe, for Puchero. You will see them when my final story comes out, and hopefully you will notice them. The rest of the scenes have been rearranged a bit for continuity, and Monica's birth is no longer the result of sangria.

In any case, here's my metaphor.

You go grocery shopping because you want to make something (I use cooking metaphors a ton, can you tell?) and you're dabbling through different recipes. Maybe it's your best friend's 18th birthday or... yeah I don't know why you would be cooking a feast, but I also don't know why you need an excuse to spend all day cooking. Well, maybe you're going up to Kayla's cabin for the week and you aren't quite sure what you're going to make and perhaps you've forgotten that Austin is allergic to everything and Kayla's vegetarian and Erin thinks rice is gross, so you buy noodles and tomatoes and bell peppers and flour and salmon and steak and money is not an issue and time is also not an issue and so you just buy ridiculous amounts of delectible ingredients just in case. And then you get up there and you set up meals and you realize you have all these extra ingredients, these literary devices that you would have loved to use in your story but that don't fit. So you try to put coconut in your chocolate cake and people eat it and they tell you "erm... this would be really good if you hadn't randomly put coconut in it," or you try to add an alcoholic father and people read it and they're like "erm... that was super random and unexpected and didn't contribute to the story" and you want to tell them THAT IS THE BEST COCONUT EVER I HAD TO FIND A USE FOR IT or I WANTED TO WRITE A STORY ABOUT DAMAGED RELATIONSHIPS WITH FATHERS but... your story has turned into something completely different and it just doesn't fit. So then you end up with these leftovers, and here is where the Kayla's cabin example starts to fail because we are all underage and at our 5 year reunion Derek and Alisia will probably still be underage, but my grandmother once bought a bottle of wine and she saved it for a perfect occasion. "It's wine," she said, "it'll just get better with age, wine doesn't go bad" but she kept waiting and waiting for the perfect occasion and when she finally opened it a decade or two later, it had turned to vinegar and nobody would touch it. My mother says granny should have just opened it earlier, found a time to use it at home, maybe brought it to a bridge party or something, but I always feel awkward eating good food alone. If you're not going to use it, don't buy it. I have a notes page on onenote for my story and on it are quite a few quotes and anecdotes that my story was supposed to use, some that I included in the first draft and some that I didn't, but that just didn't seem to fit. When I started writing I smushed some of them in there, crammed them into the awkward transitions in my story in hopes that they would distract the reader from the awkwardness (they didn't), and some I never managed to put in. Don't buy something you're not going to use.

 

P.S. Nathan, I do NOT find deleting to be like eating my children. How dreadful. Get your butt off my blog. Just kidding, you can comment. But really. Was that necessary?

When I Grow Up

Attempt at dialogue. Just dialogue.

"I'm going to be a nurse when I grow up!"
"Not a doctor?"
"No, doctors are boys. Nurses are girls."
"Doctors can be girls, and they get paid better than nurses."
"I don't want to be a doctor, I don't want to be rich, I want to be a nurse."
"Okay sweetie."
"How do I start?"
"Well you've gotta wait for college and then you can go to medical school..."
"COLLEGE? That's so far away! I want to start now!"
"Honey, you're still very young. What if you change your mind?"
"I won't change my mind. I'm going to be a nurse."
"Okay, sweetie. Wait til you're older."

"I'm going to live at the farm when I grow up!"
"There's nothing to do at the farm. How will you make money?"
"I won't have to! I'll grow my own food."
"It's not very good land for growing vegetables."
"I'll do it! It'll work!"
"Okay honey, but don't set yourself up for disappointment."
"Let's learn to grow vegetables here so I can learn!"
"I really don't like gardening..."
"Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?"
"Maybe when you're older"

"I'm going to be an opera star when I grow up!"
"Opera careers are very competitive, sweetie."
"I love competition! I'm going to be in the opera!"
"They don't pay too well, you could be months without work."
"You know I don't want to be  rich snob like you."
"There is a lot of drug usage in the opera world because there's so much pressure and competition."
"I'll be an honest opera singer. Can I take voice lessons?"
"Those are expensive"
"You're rich, I'm pursuing my dreams."
"It won't be until about ten years after conservatory that your voice will mature enough for you to be able to perform."
"TEN YEARS?"
"Sorry dear. Still want to be in the opera?"

"I'm going to be a chef when I grow up."
"If you say so..."
"I'll move to San Francisco and own a restaurant and be the best chef in town!"
"San Francisco? With all the hippies? What are you going to make, pot brownies?"
"Stop being so judgmental! I'm going to make all sorts of foods, and they're going to love them!"
"Honey, you can't just make an 'all sorts of food' restaurant."
"Sure I can! How do I start?"
Well if you want to own a restaurant you'll probably need a business degree."
"Business? I hate business! Well... how long will it take?"
"Four years of undergrad and then two getting an MBA, plus however long you're in cullinary school..."
"So long? I wish there were something I could find and start now."

"You know what I'd love to be? A dancer."
"Like... a hip hop dancer?"
"No, like a ballerina."
"That's so much work."
"Everything you want to be good at is a ton of work."
"And it definitely doesn't pay well."
"I don't have to do it as a career, I just want to take ballet classes."
"Ballerinas get injured more than any other sort of athlete."
"Except for runners..."
"Are you sure you're into this? I think you're being a bit unreasonable."
"Yes, I'm sure. Where can I take classes?"
"You're too old to start ballet. If you wanted to be a ballerina, you should have figured that out years ago."

So yeah, that's the story of my life. Now I'm supposed to be figuring out a college major and... I don't have the slightest idea. Darn.

Artistic License

I enjoy editing other people's work, but I am less than thrilled about editing my own.

Who told you you could change my story that way? What kind of a God do you think you are, telling me Monica and her dad shouldn't be in conflict? How dare you say the mention of dementia was abrupt? Finding out your mother has dementia is a pretty abrupt discovery. Sure, tell me to cut that grocery store scene, I didn't like it much anyway, but no I'm not cutting the end! That's the whole point of the story! Too bad more than half of you didn't like it... But those who did like it said it was fantastic and... no. I cannot cut what is fantastic. I don't want to turn the American characters into the same person! Deanna and Lisa are supposed to blend together, Monica is supposed to become a little annoyed that they're so clueless, but weren't you paying attention? Annette is different! No, don't tell me I wouldn't think like that when I was seven! I was a precocious seven-year-old, you underestimate children.

Then I realize I sound like Monica's little kid self. ["No lo quieres, mi niña," she'd tell me. You don't want it. Of course I wanted it! Who was she to know what I did and didn't want?] I am stubborn about my story; I do not want to believe it has the potential to be improved by cutting my hard work. I do not want to think that I should replace a scene or-heaven forbid-just cut a couple scenes altogether and make it shorter. Perhaps you are right, like Mama in that scene. Most people did not tell me to cut the grocery store scene, or that I am wordy. In fact, some said I was succinct and that every scene seemed necessary. I'm pretty sure I have never been called succinct before.

So here's what I'll do.

I'm cutting two scenes. I switch back and forth between Spain and the US the whole time, so I can’t just cut one. I'm cutting the grocery store scene and I need to figure out a way to show more of what she thinks of America, but the scene adds a character (Maggie, most of you entirely ignored her and I didn’t characterize her much) and it really doesn’t help progress the story so I don’t think anyone will miss it. However, the Spain scene that I'm deleting is the one with Lourdes. Her character is still in the story a bit because mamá borrows vanilla from her and she writes letters because mamá has dementia, but the interesting aspects of Lourdes’ character have been removed. This also means that there is not huge back story about Monica’s father. I always tell people in my critiques that they should either completely develop something or not develop it at all, but here is a case when I think half-developing it makes sense, that Monica’s parents don’t have to have married out of necessity but that the reader can be aware that her father is not necessarily the most devoted or considerate man around. So now my story is just over 12 pages (originally it was 17) and I have room to bring in mamá’s disease a little more, to explain myself better, to expand on the present action because you all said that was lacking. I don’t like cutting but maybe Annie Dillard is right, that sometimes you have to learn to delete.

Explanations and Edits

I'm glad I was one of the first to have a workshop because now I have time to edit, and because I was able to spend some time not looking at the story so that now that I come back to it, I can see it with somewhat fresh eyes.

First, a few explanations.

Apologies for what seemed to be mistakes-- the accent on Cordoba was actually intentionally there at the beginning of the story and then taken away later as a part of her becoming more American, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Spanish place names are pronounced differently in English, but the intent was that she actually started thinking of them in an American light. Didn't work, though, so I'll change that. More apologies for tense shifts. They were gramatically correct because it bugs me to death when people use tenses incorrectly, but I understand it is confusing to discuss a flashback in the present tense (I can still remember...) so I am changing that. And sorry I forget to put periods on the ends of my paragraphs.

I was actually surprised that you guys saw Monica as disliking the USA-- I didn't mean for her to adore it the way she did when she first moved here, but I meant for her to accept it as a country with its eccentricities and faults, not some dream land that would solve all of her problems in Spain. You guys caught on to that, but I think I overdid it because I didn't really mean for her to dislike it and her comments about foods like ramen and twinkies were more of a play on college life than on the US in general. Something else that wasn't quite my intention was the flashbacks-- I didn't mean for them to be things the remembered in the moment when the story was taking place, or to symbolize an idea that Monica was constantly thinking back on Spain. She came to the US with no intention of turning back, and while she does come to grips with her past, she never decides to return and she doesn't think about it all too often. That was significant in the story in showing the reader where she was coming from, but it was not meant to be a memory in itself. I ought to put more emphasis on the present.

Also, not all the Americans are the same. They are all women because if I added a man then the reader might anticipate romance and I meant no such thing, and because Monica is more comfortable with women. However, Annette (her coworker, the one at the work party) is more educated than Deanna, the interior decorator friend, and Lisa, the neighbor. I have merged those two into Lisa and have deleted the entire scene with grocery shopping, which also means that Maggie, her college roomate, is gone. We'll see how I replace it. I'm also considering cutting the scene with Lourdes (in which we learn about Monica's father), but my initial intention with the story was to have some kind of back story with her dad (which I decreased significantly just in writing the first draft), so the scene needs to be replaced by something similar, but still probably rewritten. Also I like Lourdes, and I'm just the writer that Annie Dillard talks about in that I really don't like cutting things. And I need a scene that explains her dad (granted, I need a much better explanation than what I had), so I will find a new way to discuss Lourdes and tell some of her back story.

The deal with Mama--I did research dementia, and what I decided was that her mother developed Huntington's disease when Monica was fifteen and it turned into senile dementia by the time she was seventeen. This is where Deanna's comment about senile old ladies comes into play, because Mama is senile in the literal definition of the word. I realize I didn't clarify very well that Huntington's and dementia are different and set in at different points. What is also out of place is that we know Mama was twenty when Monica was born, making her only 35 when she became sick.

I'm having trouble editing, though, because commenters conflict.

• Julia loves that it has my voice, Shanyi and Alisia said my narrator should be more original.
• Caitlin said the gazpacho metaphor worked perfectly, Kevin said it didn't actually fit her life the way I meant it to.
• Ben says I need more Spanish, Julia and Richard say I have too much of it.
• Yanjin filled my page of description about gazpacho with comments on how she adored the description, Rick told me it was too long and tedious to read.
• Alisia and Kayla like my exclamations in describing vegetables for gazpacho, Erica and Andrea say they are unnecessary
• Peter likes how I introduce American characters, Alisia says they need to be introduced better
• Victor and Alex love my ending, David and Julia say it's too long and direct, Rick says it's too short

Crossroads

Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Charles is home for spring break and he begs me to take him to Gamestop. We walk down to the mall and find a group of guys I know at the food court.
"Who's that?" Derek asks.
"Derek, this is my brother Charles," I say. "Charles, this is Derek."
"You have a brother?" he asks. I've known Derek for what, six years? Good heavens.
"Oh, he exists!" Alex says, "I believe you now!"
Charles looks around awkwardly.
"He's not as cute as you said he was," Calvin says. I wonder if they realize he's actually standing there, that he can hear what they say.
Eugene turns around. "So this is Charles?"
"Yeah."
He addresses Charles. "I hear you're pretty smart."
Charles smiles awkwardly. "Yeah, I hear that too."
"Oh so you know you're smart? Don't get a big head about it like this guy," he motions toward Akash. "This guy thinks he's the shit, but he--"
"Eugene!" I do not like interrupting people, but he should watch his language around Charles.
"Sorry-- this guy thinks he's better than everyone and it's hell- hecka annoying."
Charles laughs.
"Why are you guys here?" Alex asks. Eugene keeps talking to Charles and I try to moniter him bt I do not split my attention very well.
"I'm taking him to Gamestop," I explain.
"Ohhhh. Can he play video games at his school?"
I wonder about this. He can't, and we don't have a game consul at home... I think Charles just likes watching other people play. Or looking at games. Or mybe gameboy games, we do have a gameboy. I tell Alex I don't think so, but I'm not sure. I am bad at explaining things.
Now Alex turns to Charles. "Is she a good sister?"
Charles looks at me like he should say something very mean, but instead he pauses for a second as if this is a truly difficult question and says "yeah, most of the time."
Eugene and Alex laugh. I wonder if they believe him.
Eugene looks at his phone. "We should go soon."
Alex agrees. "Derek, you need a ride?"
Derek looks up. "What? Where?"
"To school... sports..."
Derek also checks his phone. "Oh shoot, it's late!"
Alex asks if Charles wants to run. "I run at my school," Charles says.
"You should come run with us!" Alex tells him.
Charles looks uncomfortable. "Maybe tomorrow..."
Half of the boys leave and the other half continue to sit and do homework, so Charles and I go to Gamestop.

I wonder what it is to be Charles in this situation, what my 12-year-old self would do if my hypothetical big brother were to introduce me to his friends. I would probably be much more awkward than Charles, and resent my brother for bringing me there. Hmmmm

Our House in the Middle of Our Street

Our house it has a crowd
There's always something happening
And it's usually quite loud
Our mum she's so house-proud
Nothing ever slows her down
And a mess is not allowed

Mrs. Taylor loves our house. She walks in and tells us how she adores the carpet in the foyer and the dark red walls in our dining room and the skylights in the kitchen. Mom loves it too, because it's exactly the way she wanted it. Daddy says he loves it, but it's hard to believe him when he's so insistent on moving 3000 miles away to a house that's falling apart.

I remember the remodel. I even remember the house before the remodel. Allison doesn't. I remember the architects coming over when I was four and talking with my parents about different kinds of windows and walls and how to expand the kitchen and if it was safe to build a room above the garage. I remember the sticky blue wallpaper with white flowers that used to be in the kitchen, and the dirty white carpets that used to cover our entire house. I remember mom prying up the carpets, telling us not to step because we'd hurt our bare feet on the splinters and staples on the floor. I remember sharing a room with Allison, and having comforters that were yellow on one side and blue on the other, and beds that stacked on top of each other if we wanted them to be bunk beds, but mom wouldn't let us because we were too little and whoever was on top would surely fall off. And I remember going into that room for a time out, together with Allison because we'd both done something wrong, and Allison was so mad about being in time out that she started peeling the Sesame Street wallpaper off of the walls, and I remember telling her not to, not because I wanted to be a good kid but because I loved that wallpaper, and I remember mom coming in to tell us we were done with  time out and seeing all the wallpaper on the ground and becoming furious, and of course not believing that I had nothing to do with it, and saying we would never have wallpaper again. Boy was I angry. I also remember the playroom, just a bit. I remember that yellow ball we used to have with neon pink and orange and green spikes that stuck out, that made noises as Allison and I threw it to each other. I remember playing with it in the carpeted playroom, with the TV on top of some tall piece of furniture, some nights watching Bill Nye the Science Guy with dad and mom and Allison. I remember being really excited about the show, but Allison didn't like Bill Nye and she was sooooo boredddddd and Erin will you please come play with me? Erin you're such a mean sister. Erin this is a grown up show. Erin you're so boring. Erin Erin Erin and taking my favorite favorite blankey so I had to get off of daddy's lap and chase after her.

Anyway, I remember the remodel. I remember moving into that little house on the same street, and the builders saying it would only take six months and then mom becoming frustrated as they increased it to eight... ten... twelve... and finally finished the house fifteen months later. I remember the tall chairs in that house, how the whole thing was dark and brown and the kitchen was tiny and the backyard didn't fit a swingset. I remember how we put those beds together into a bunk bed in that house because they barely fit in our room when we put them side by side. I remember how we found out that Allison was allergic to dust mites so she got to get her own room with special pillows and blankets and I had to share with Charles, and he was still in diapers. I remember how then I was always on the top bunk because of course Charles would fall off, and that once Allison and I got Charles up there when Lizzie was babysitting and she told us that if we got him up there, we'd have to get him down, and how my parents never asked her to babysit after that. I remember watching the remodel, watching as our nice front lawn turned into a huge pile of dirt, and walking through the house a year into it, seeing the framework for the second floor and wondering how it could ever be turned back into a house again.
But now it is a house, and that was twelve years ago and it is hard to imagine it looking any different. It's not that our house is that big, but it's big enough to fit us and we love it because it's so us, so ours. It's this nice piece of art work-- the mural in the dining room that was supposed to be a painting of the farm in maryland? You know it because it's where we always take pictures before dances, but that mural took our family friend a whole summer to paint. It has rolling hills and bright blue sky and a pretty tire swing and other aspects with little resemblance the the hot, flat, buggy Maryland that I know. It shows a successful Christmas tree farm, one that in real life has never sold very many trees, and the tiny beginnings of a vineyard that has grown tremendously in the seven or so years since the mural was painted. There's a piece of art in the living room too, a more unique piece that can't quite be classified under any one medium, squares of texture stick out from it and I look at it differently every time I see it. It matches the big, light brown sofa with the green and red pillows and the white blanket. Our baby grand piano is also in that room and it doesn't match anything, but I never notice that because it's a piano and that's where it works best, and to whine about such an istrument would be a sin. And the backyard, I love the backyard. We have those two identical houses, the playhouse and the shed, and I remember that summer when dad painted them yellow and orange and green and used the extra paint to draw on the fence; circles and squares and triangles, the word BIG in big block letters and below it little in smaller lettering. The fence facing it has names of aunts and uncles and cousins, still in extra paint from the playhouses. But that was a decade ago and dad repainted the playhouse and the shed five years ago so the fences don't match anything, and Allison and her friends have spent the last two summers painting random names and inside jokes in pink and purple over the yellow and green on the fences so it's hard to tell what anything says anymore. People always ask about it, why our fence says "Kitaly" and "This is not my shirt" and under them "Big" and "Aunt Karen." They looked alright when we had a swingset in our yard, but we gave that away when Charles came home for break and now we have a nice yard and colorful fences. And to me, there is nothing wrong with that.
The rooms, they took a little more getting used to. Mine is the littlest, which offended me when we moved back because I'm the oldest, but daddy said they made the room especially for me. Of course I didn't like it, it was too small to fit the desk and the bed so Allison got my desk, and it had a random area in the corner that was supposed to be for a second closet but why would I need two closets? So there were no doors put on that area and it stuck out uncomfortably, irritably, as we tried to find wallpaper and bedding that might work. I used by grandmother's old dresser for a couple years and then one day daddy came out of the garage with a big grid of wood, all put together and painted, and asked if I could help him take it upstairs. MY DRESSER! Drawers taken out of course, but daddy had built me a dresser! And later a bookshelf, and repainted the bed...
We have a guest living with us for the next two weeks, a family friend from Australia. She's Allison's age and she'll be in my room, and I have trouble permitting that. I don't mind sleeping on the couch, but that's my dresser and my book shelf and I picked the wall paper. Really we're sharing it and she just happens to be the one sleeping in it, but will she be okay with it, will she like the little jewelry box from San Francisco and the 12x18 inch painting of a dragon flying through the sky, a gift from Charles last Christmas? How can she appreciate the drawing of my grandmother or the plastic horse that my parents call clutter? Then again, how could she appreciate the clutter in the play room either? Or all the games in the living room, and the advent calendar in the dining room? I do not think it is clutter, I think it is a home. I think it is a house that has been lived in and loved in, and it would not make sense to take out the piano or my book shelf or the patriotic carpet in the playroom. Even wth the remodel of my parents' dreams, it has funny places that stick out and clutter everywhere and it is never clean enough for guests--no house is ever clean enough for guests--but it is big enough for us and clean enough for us and colorful enough for us and that's the way I love it.

A clean house is a sign of a wasted life.

Lightening

Julia has been telling me to post for a couple weeks now and I keep starting posts and not finishing them. Well here's a finished one. It's funny how easy it is to think of things to write about when you have a stats project due the next day...

Fifteen-year-old girl struck by lightening, the NBC news banner says, killed instantly. The announcer discusses the story with an expected amount of distance--a girl she has never met hit by lightening, probably being ignorant, doing something she shouldn't have, just like every other death she discusses on local news. Within 90 seconds she's moved on to a local car robbery, but I stare at the screen, as if by gazing at it long enough I can pull back the lightening story, maybe even bring back the girl in it. Jenna always wanted to be on TV, I think, how tragically ironic that her time should come in this way. Chance of being struck by lightening? One in 280,000. That's 0.000357%. My statistics teacher, Mr. Moncada, calls numbers like this insignificant-- so small that we don't even bother to mention they exist. Round to zero, because it's basically the same thing. I know better. This is not zero. Chance of getting my sister back? That's zero. Getting struck my lightening cannot be insignificant, statistically or otherwise. It happened, I don't care how unlikely that is to have occurred, and Jenna was anything but insignificant.

How fitting, I think, that she should go like this. A burst of electricity. A shock. Too much energy even for her. It doesn't seem right to wonder, to want to know just how she died, but I do. I wonder if she did a split jump like she always does at home when something really excites her. Always did. Past tense. Did she somehow realize it was coming? Was she even worried about the storm overhead as she walked home from the bus stop in the rain? I doubt it, not Jenna. I'll bet she was dancing in the rain, practicing spins and turns and... maybe not. Maybe I'm already romanticizing the past. Maybe her hips hurt and her feet were blistered the way they always were and she was all too aware of the rain and the cold and she just kept thinking to herself how much it sucked, how much she just wanted to get home, sit by the fire with us... with me...

God, what kind of a self-centered sister am I? Why would she be thinking of me? Maybe she was thinking of the next episode of House, or whether or not to apply to Duke, or that cute guy in chem class... Was Jenna even taking chemistry? Did she have any guys in her life? Any almosts? How much I don't know about the girl I lived with for almost all of my life within memory... And now I'll never know. I'll hear what her friends tell me, maybe I'll know a bit more about her love life or her babysitting jobs, or maybe people will think it's disrespectful to talk about her and won't tell me anything. Maybe everyone else will romanticize the past just like me and all I'll hear are those generic clichés like "she could make the best out of any situation" or "she really put her best effort into all aspects of her life." These are lies. I must remind myself now of the actual truth because five years from now I won't be able to tell right from wrong. Jenna may or may not have been able to make the best of every situation, but she certainly didn't put much effort into doing so. Countless times I've left the house long past dark to go on a late night walk because I'd rather be outside on streets that my mother calls unsafe than inside hearing my mother and sister screaming, hearing them detest each other, watching my family fall apart. Or that one time when I made mom a birthday cake and before we ate it mom and Jenna had such a big argument that she threw my masterpiece at our mother in big, messy chunks of over sweet yellow cake and bright green frosting.

What if I only remember her like that, remember all the times she switched schools because she was intolerant of one or the other, remember her begging for expensive presents and then discarding them within a month, remember her whining and screaming and ignoring and lying and stealing and all those times she told our parents it was me who did it when really it was her? What if in my attempt at honesty, I forget the girl who brought home flowers just to remind us that spring had come? Will I forget her love for design, for art and architecture, how she used to spend hours drawing ideas for dresses and patterns on her binders even when she knew it would come to nothing? Will I forget all the people she was, the gymnast, the excellent student, the dancer, the artist, the model, the photographer, the flirt, the baker, the unforgettable sister? God, I hope she'll live up to that. Unforgettable, I mean. Will I forget how she used to make animal noises when she was stressed, or when she was excited, or just when the house was too quiet? Won't I remember all those school nights when she'd put a romantic comedy into the dvd player and insist that I watch it with her even if we both had tests the next day? Will I remember how some days she'd tell me everything about her life, put off everything else to talk to me, and then half an hour later act like she didn't know me, like I was just in the way? Do I want to remember that? Is it wrong of me to remember only what I want to remember?

And what if I see this five years from now, this random selection of goods and bads and in betweens, and I wonder to myself if she was actually bipolar, if somehow we'd never diagnosed her being actually insane? What if in my memory I exaggerate the past, only remember the extremes, the defining moments, the semi-random photo albums that are supposed to constitute an entire life, and the test scores and accomplishments that can be written down? What if I lose my memories of her, one by one, until some day, sixty years down the road, my granddaughter asks me about my sister and I ask her "what sister?"

Professor Cross was talking about truth in fiction early on... my sister has not been struck by lightening and I don't think she's ever brought home flowers, but you have no idea how much truth is in this story.

Spanish Foods

Professor Cross was talking today about how we need to do research for our stories, and I definitely spent a good week looking up different Spanish foods. I did eat gazpacho, paella, and tortilla in Spain (and not to ruin the story for you, but I actually don't care for rice and raw tomatoes hurt my stomach, so I avoided gazpacho and paella most of the time), but I never had alfajor (the Moroccan Christmas cookie), jamon serrano, rice pudding, or of course Sangria. Hence, a large part of the story was based on research. I intentionally picked foods that are common in Andalucia, the autonomous community (Spain's version of states or provinces) that takes up all of Spain's southern coast and goes pretty far inland as well. Part of this was because it's the region I'm familiar with, but another part was because there is a lot of food that is specific to Andalucia, and there are Moroccan influences and unique aspects of the culture that you don't find in Madrid or Barcelona. So here are the dishes from a more American standpoint:
Gazpacho: a tomato-based sort of soup served cold. Claire interpreted it as a guacamole, which concerned me because I did say that it was peach colored, but it's also a different texture. I've only seen it served in cups or mugs, and in that light it's more of a vegetable juice than a soup, though I think of a juice as something refreshing and thirst quenching, and gazpacho is much more significant for its flavor than for any sort of relief from the heat. It's served cold because it would be silly to heat it up in Spain, but not because it is a refreshment. Gazpacho varies a ton in different regions and the one I described was a more Andalucian variety, though some aspects were more typical of Valencia or other parts of Spain. It did, however, surprise me that gazpacho was made of so many different ingredients, and that something made entirely of fresh vegetables (or less-than-fresh tomatoes and bread) would be that texture.

Alfajor: I did not have alfajor in Spain (partially because I was not around for Christmas), but my host family was good friends with quite a few Moroccan families and I got plenty of other Moroccan breads and cookies. There is a tremendous Moroccan influence on Andalucia and I felt I would be doing an injustice to the culture if I failed to mention any Moroccan food in my story.

Arroz con leche (rice pudding): This is the one I have the least explanation for; it is also a Christmas dish and a food common in Andalucia, and I thought I'd be overdoing it with metaphors if every food I included had some symbolism to it. I initially had the pudding splatter on mama's painting, but that created unnecessary conflict (conflict? Or just messynessss) so I cut it and then... there wasn't any reason to change rice pudding to another food and I thought it was mundane enough that the reader would not be overwhelmed with foodyness, but it was still Spanish.

Jamon serrano: Braised ham? Is that the English word? Braised? Spain has delicious meats and they are especially good with pork, which is surprising because Morocco has such a strong influence on their cuisine and Muslims don't eat pork. My host family actually went to a Moroccan butcher so I never had jamon, but I felt I ought to include some kind of a meat. Now that I look at it, though, it seems silly to have included it because it is in a scene that already has tortilla and it doesn't add anything to the scene. *Cuts from story*

Tortilla: It is simple. Lourdes doesn't like to cook, and this is meant to show Mama as someone who really enjoyed cooking, not just that all Spanish people cook delicious meals all the time. [Nearly] anyone can make an omlette, and this is a food that is different enough to make it distinctly Spanish and something she remembers, but it's also a basic egg and potato dish that tastes good without being a ton of work.

Sangria: Because of my vast knowledge of wines (yeah, you think I'm kidding) and the significance of various alcoholic drinks in Spanish culture, I thought I ought to include something alcoholic. However, Monica went to Boston for college and by the time she was old enough to have been drinking alcohol on any sort of a regular basis (around thirteen, I was surprised by how young this was but maybe I'm a naive prism child and there are people in the US who do the same thing), her mom had Parkinson's. In any case, it wouldn't have made sense to write a flashback about drinking wine with her mother, but Sangria is very Spanish and alcohol is a pretty significant part of Spanish culture, so the fact that Monica is unwilling to touch it after talking to Lourdes (a point that I don't think I emphasized as much as I would have liked to) is both a part of her avoiding Spanish culture and on a more personal level an attempt to avoid her parents' mistakes.

Paella: Pie-eh-yuh. Double L is a y sound, like in tortilla. I definitely have a lot more memories of paella than I do of gazpacho. As in the story, Sunday is paella day for quite a bit of Southern Spain. It does tend to have seafood-- ours had mostly shrimp and snail but it varies-- and it does take all day to cook. I was surprised to find that I initially liked paella despite not liking rice, and it was because of the mixture of flavors and because it didn't really taste like rice. I did eventually get annoyed with the peppers and the fact that shrimp retained their eyes when cooked, but it is a dish for which I can find no equivalent and it's a huge part of Andalucian cuisine.

"Swimmer" Flashback

Wow, I'm having a hard time remembering the story because we've read so many stories in between then and now [Guys, this is interference and decay. Yes, I am learning something in psych =P]. Well I'm posting it anyway. As a refresher, Ned is the protagonist and Lucinda is his wife. Other characters are daughters whose names I made up

Page 403: "Japanese lanterns that Mrs. Levy had bought in Kyoto the year before last, or the year before that?"

It was going to be a long storm. Ned sat in the gazebo and entertained himself with his dreams. Once he swam the Lucinda River, he could show it to his daughter, Marie. Ne let his mind wander to the summers when he used to take her out to the beach. Marie loved the water-- she'd swim far, far out until Lucinda worried she'd never make it back. Ned thought of Lucinda calling out to Marie as Hayley and Emma built sand castles. Even at five months pregnant and shouting to Marie, Lucinda was so beautiul. "You get back here, Marie!" she'd called. "It's not safe out there!" In his mind's ear, Ned could hear Marie's childish giggle. Who was her mother to say what was safe and what wasn't? He recalled her swimming back, little head bobbing up and down. He recalled Hayley and Emma carving out a moat for their masterpiece. He recalled Lucinda worrying each time Mare's head went under water and then... the memory stopped there. He didn't remember her making it back to the shore. He didn't remember the drive home. He couldn't conjure up any more memoris of taking her to the beach. Certainly everything had turned out fine... right?

"He stayed in the Levy's gazebo until the storm passed"

Sharon Creech

Our exchange student recently asked me what my favorite book was. I told her To Kill a Mockingbird, which is accurate, but she was looking for a book to read and I realized that it requires way too much understanding of American history and of context for her to be ale to read it without asking a lot of questions. Not that she shouldn't ask questions, just that she'd probably be very confused. So I went to my second favorite book, Walk Two Moons. If you haven't read it, put down your Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo (yeah, I'm getting through Les Miserables. I started it three years ago...) and read just a little Sharon Creech. The conversation inspired me to reread Heartbeat, which is a book in poem form. Like Dante, except not about hell (or purgatory. Or heaven.), and not with a specific rhyme and rhythm, and not using grotesque imagery, and not written to spite anyone, and not in Italian. So basically not like Dante at all. I enjoy reading Heartbeat, but I'm becoming suspicious that part of why I like Sharon Creech so much is because she writes about things I enjoy, like cooking, and running, and poetry, and travelling to Europe. Then I realize her books are also about dealing with death and spending summers on farms and that these are things I have a particular aversion to, so maybe I just really like Sharon Creech. ~Researches~ There is a sequel to Love That Dog called Hate That Cat. Wow I am so impressed. Except she's probably kidding about hating cats.

This is why I enjoy it:

one l-e-a-p over to the bank

up the hill

past the old barn faded red

one side curved inward

like a big dimple

around the pasture

newly mown

smell of growing grass

slim green blades sticking

to our feet bare and brown

until we reach the red bench

beside the sycamore tree

with its mottled trunk

and wide yellow leaves

while Max checks his time

on his grandpa's pocket watch

and he looks displeased

and says we will have to

pick up the pace on the way back

and I tell him

he can pick up his own pace

but my pace is fine

thank you very much

and he says I will never get anywhere

if I don't pick up my pace

and I tell him

I don't need to go anywhere

She has good detail. And good voice. And good everything. And it makes me smile. And I realize this blog is not about book recommendations, but it is about creative writing and I felt this was something you (plural-vosotros form :P) could benefit from.

But you don't know me

Whenever people ask about my brother, they seem worried that it's a touchy subject. I guess I can appreciate this, that people are sensitive and they don't want to seem intrusive, but my brother is a human being and a pretty fantastic one at that, and it doesn't bother me to talk about him at all. It bothers me more to talk about Maryland, or my relationship with my mom, or my dad's entire side of the family, or our finances, or... it's funny. My family on the surface is so different from what we are on a deeper level, but it's not that I think I have a particularly odd family, or that I would label myself as someone who's been put in any sort of difficult situation. I haven't, and my family is completely normal... in an entirely abnormal sort of way.

My dad is smart. Not just bright, but smart. Very intelligent. You guys are prism kids, you know the difference. My dad got a 14 something on the SAT when it was out of 1600, which is not all that impressive unless you consider the fact that he fell asleep in the middle due to a hangover. Yeah. That kind of smart. It's okay, I've never seen him drunk, a fact that is probably as impressive as his SAT score when you consider that our family owns a vineyard, but we'll get to that. My parents are from the East coast, by all those fantastic monuments that look way cooler on postcards than they do in person. I guess some people get a thrill out of the National Mall, out of walking around the nation's capital and thinking how spectacularly lucky they are to be able to go there. For me, it is a place of heat and humidity, a place where in August when I was seven (and my sister and brother were six and three, respectively), my parents took us out to telll us all they knew about Washington DC and all three of us thought we were going to die of heat stroke. It is a place of yucky water and humidity and mosquitoes. It is a place of myriad arguments within my immediate and extended family. It is uncomfortable conversations with grandparents and unwanted work on an unwanted farm.

Daddy loves the DC area and actually, I can appreciate it when I'm just with him. I can enjoy taking the subway from the Vienna station to the one right by the Mall and walking around on July 4th and talking about how he used to do this every year on July 4th and watching as everyone else runs away when a little rain hits but daddy says "We're from Seattle, we're not afraid of rain," and so we stay and the rain goes away and we get a great spot for fireworks. I can enjoy sitting on the porch at the farm, eating lunch with daddy and grandpa and Great Uncle Pete and the two mennonite boys who help out, and talking about business in Southern Maryland and whether the Sangiovese will be ripe in two weeks or three, and how to mend that hole in the netting in lot four, and who said they could put a Charles Lollar campaign poster on our property? Don't you know we don't support Republicans? I'll appreciate driving down to Virginia in grandpa's truck, hearing Sam tell grandpa he's a redneck even though she has no right because he practically raised her and she turned out alright, laughing as she complains every time he forgets to turn on his turn signal, asking if the two of us can sit in the bed of the truck instead of crammed in the back, just this once grandpa, just for ten minutes on the freeway. There aren't any police in Southern Maryland, nobody would even notice. "No, Sam, your mother would kill me," and the argument ends at that. And even though I despise the fact that dad's gonna move back out there as soon as my sister graduates and take mom with him and that he'd rather spend September and October harvesting grapes than being a good father to his daughters, not to mention his son, I have too much respect for him to let that get in the way of anything. Funny how I'm so quick to forgive him...

I won't discuss my mom or my sister. Not here, not now. Maybe because I'm not as quick to forgive them, or because I know that there's still plenty that will happen in those relationships for which I'll need to be forgiven, or because talking about them feels like gossip, or because many of you actually know my sister, or because I really am trying to avoid making too many mistakes in my relationship with my mom, but maybe I'll still be writing on this blog in a few years and we'll talk about it then.

And then I have a brother. The other day I was at church choir rehearsal and Katie, who believes that her sister and my brother are destined to fall in love and live happily ever after, asked me when Charles comes home. "Who's Charles?" Ryan asked. "Her little brotherrrrr!" Katie answered. "He's gonna marry Becky and they're going to fall in lovvvvvve and we're gonna call them Beckles because they'll be celebrities and you know how celebrity couples always have those names... we considered Checky but Beckles sounded better—" Ryan cut her off, "you have a brother?" I get that a lot. Everyone knows I have a sister. She's pretty good at making her presence known, and since I was about two years old people have been pointing out that she's the extrovert, and isn't that funny, that the younger sister would be more outgoing, that she would be the bossy one, the one to tell the older sister what to do, the one who gets all the attention—it's like their roles are switched! How odd! Yeah, I guess it is, but I don't need attention to be secure in who I am so I don't really mind anymore. In any case, everyone knows I have a sister, even people like Ryan who probably haven't met her before, but a brother? Really? Yeah, he's off at school. Most people assume this is college, but Ryan has just heard Katie talk about Beckles and Becky is Katie's little sister so he knows better. "Off at school? Where?" "The worst place in the worlddddd," Katie interjects, "because he's not here with Becky!" Needless to say, Charles and Becky have never actually spoken and probably never will. "It's a boarding school a few hours away," I explain. Here's the sensitivity that I was talking about. Ryan pauses before asking, rather awkwardly, why my brother goes to a boarding school. In my head there are a thousand reasons, most of them untrue. Because my parents would rather pay for his middle school than my college. Because he can manage to stay just disobedient enough that they think the school's doing him some good and would rather not have him at home. Because my parents used to have way too much money on their hands and now they can't bring themselves to take him out. Because they want to keep me from singing at every Thanksgiving service so that we can visit him and eat a boarding school feast instead. Because he thinks he's Harry Potter and just deserves to go to a school like this. Because Allison wanted to get rid of him... "My brother's a smart kid," I try to explain. This isn't a touchy subject or some kind of scarred past, but it's still hard for me to put into words. There's a certain kind of judgment that passes subconsciously when you hear that someone goes to a "special" school. Often there's an assumption that there's a mental or physical handicap that explains why. "There's nothing wrong with him, medically or psychologically or anything else. He just... doesn't listen. Ever." I don't know how far to go. Ryan is a good person and he asked an innocent question, but what kind of a judgment will he make if I tell him, for example, that my brother left his WASL blank? Not because he was incompetent, of course, but because he saw no reason to do it. If he'd been thirty years older they would have called it a dignified protest, but in fourth grade it was disobedience to authority and cause for him to be sent to the principal's office, where he went at least biweekly for a majority of his elementary school years. Can I tell Ryan this? That my brother has spent countless afternoons in the principal's office refusing to do simple assignments? Will he think of my brother as that kid? I don't. Charles has friends, he gets along with people well, he's a good leader, he's the fastest middle school mathematician his school has ever seen, and you could spend a week with him and still not understand why my parents would send him hours away at such a young age. Or you could spend an hour with him as a teacher or instructor and understand completely.


Look at us on the surface. Grace has been asking to see my house for months so at the informal practice today we stopped by my house on our run and she just kept saying how nice it was, how it was just the right size, how the house matches our cars, how my family is flawless, how the walls are painted just right and the kitchen is big enough to get lots of use and it just seems so homey and... Grace should know better too. That part in my story where Deanna-or-whatever-I'll-call-her makes a comment about senile mothers wanting to hear from their daughters, not realizing that Monica's mother has dementia? I don't pretend that my family deals with anything as serious as dementia, but it always interests me to see how choatic life is for even the most seemingly put together people. I think short stories (well, and long stories too) are about digging deeper, finding an aspect of a character that you wouldn't learn about them in the first week or month of your acquaintance and then seizing that deeper, more valuable part of them and figuring out how it defines a character.

Spikes

Okay so this one isn't fiction. Sorry. It is creative writing though?

Just so you know, spikes are racing shoes with spikes on the front. They make you run on your toes and sometimes not slip in the mud. Like these but mine are prettier. And the actual spikes are detachable so you can put in quarter inch or 3/8ths inch or whatever size spikes are appropriate for the occasion. I think this is all the background info you need.

Sitting on my bed, cleaning out my spikes. I've been avoiding this for a few weeks, avoiding even taking them out of their bag. It's a nice drawstring bag, with blue and white curls all over it. They set it apart from everyone else's black Nike or Adidas bags, and the bag looks much better than the spikes. I take them out, turning the bag inside out to air. It needs it. I consider opening a window to let the air in, but it's raining so I'll deal with the smell. I hit the shoes against each other and dirt falls all over my—crap. No no no no no, I wipe it off as quickly as possible. The sheet is gold, and far too valuable to touch my old spike dust. "Congratulations Erin! You are admitted to Whitworth University for Fall 2011." Of course the sheet only has sentimental value, but it's pretty significant in that. Oh and it's so pretty! I open the card that came with it for what is at least the tenth time. It's so professional, so well done, just so exciting...

Spikes, Erin. Focus. I put the card on my shelf to avoid getting more dirt on it. I find a broken pen and try to clean the dirt out with that. The mud is caked in and there are pieces of grass knotted around each spike. I clean the area around each spike with the pen and shake my shoes over the trash, hitting them together as before. They smell so bad. They used to smell so nice, I remember showing one to Dominique the day after I bought them, insisting that she smell it, smell it, don't you love the smell of new shoe? No, she didn't, and she thought it was pretty weird that I would smell a shoe, even if it hadn't been worn. I remember putting them on for last year's first race, glad to be rid of my old, smelly spikes. Now these are the old, smelly spikes and I am considering getting new ones. No, I won't spend that kind of money for just one season. Keep cleaning grass out. There is dirt caked over grass caked over dirt, and some of it has tiny rocks too. I don't like the rocks- you can't get them out with a pen or with a safety pin, which is what I end up using. Why are there rocks? There weren't rocks at the last race, my last race ever. How weird- ever? Will I never race again? Will I even do track? And what a disappointment that in my last race of high school, I was one place off going to state. Not running there, mind you, but still going. If only I had... No. It's in the past. I can't learn from it and say that this summer I will go to practice every day, that would be a lie. I don't know if I'll run and I can't make that kind of a rule for myself. I don't know if I'll run in college, if only I could... Spikes. I try to take just the individual spikes out using the spike wrench, but they won't budge. They've been stuck in there for too long, caked in with too much mud. Like me last year. Stuck in commitment to the sport, to the team, to the label, caked in with the threat of losing fitness, losing respect, losing that season on a college application. I look up at the gold paper on the shelf- apparently it didn't matter that much. Maybe I should soak the spikes- would that loosen the mud? I think I did that before, but I forget. Professor Wales says we don't forget things, that they just go to a part of the mind that's harder to access. Then again, she says, it's hard to test long term memory. I think she's wrong. I think modern psychology is wrong. I forget things all the time. I forget things I should remember, experiences that I do remember for a few days, that just disappear from my mind after that. But I think I soaked the shoes before and it must have worked. Did I soak them in the sink? How rude of me, people use that to brush their teeth and faces and hands. Well then where did I soak them, if I soaked them? Where should I soak them, if I soak them now? Maybe I shouldn't. They smell terrible... can I put them in the laundry machine? With the spikes still in? What kind of trouble will I get in if I scratch the inside of the laundry machine? My mother and I do not get along, probably a lot of trouble. I do everything I can to clean the shoes, to go through the lines with the safety pin, to shake and hit the tiny rocks out, to apply just the right amount of pressure so the spike wrench doesn't slip, but it's no use. Maybe these shoes are past their time anyway. Maybe I won't do track after all. The shoes shouldn't be the deciding factor though- I don't have to clean them do they? I'll just never change the spikes, leave them caked in forever...

I am Not a Stranger to the Rain

I think you should look up the lyrics to that song.

So I realized today that I've missed the rain. Granted, I realized it while in a car. I certainly did not appreciate it when I was walking around looking for busses earlier in the day, and I'm glad it started raining just as the cross country season ended because usually we have a lot of rainy workouts and those are no fun. In any case, I was coming home and it was raining very hard and there were leaves all over the ground and it was windy and there were umbrellas and something on the radio resembled Love Songs with Delilah and life was good. If you asked me in May what my favorite time of year was, I'd tell you that I love May, that it's getting back to being sunny and the school year is wrapping up and friends go out and play frisbee all the time and we spend time in the sun together and it's just fantastic. In July I'd tell you it was July, in September I'd tell you the beginning of fall, and now I'll say that November and December are my favorite. I'm always cold, but one of the best feelings in the world is being inside when it's cold outside, like running in the rain and the coming in and getting dry and sitting by a warm fire eating... any of the various random foods my family attempts to cook on a fire... and hearing/seeing the rain and the wind and the cold outside and knowing you're safe from it. Also, this time of year has a very distinct smell- a sort of cinnamon-nutmeg-allspice mixture with pumpkin that spreads to include clove and apple as the season progresses. It's the idea of walking outside and smelling pine and smoke from fireplaces, of those nice days when it's windy and cold but not yet and the last leaves from autumn are still on the ground but most of the trees are bare, an idea that doesn't include snow because we are in Seattle, but that does include the increasing excitement that there's that tiny chance of snow, that just maybe sometime this season we'll wake up and look out the window before we even get out of bed and the pink sunrise will be reflected off of a thin layer of white on the ground. For me, this is seeing my neighbor's skylights coated in snow and then walking down to the kitchen only to realize our own skylights are also coated. It's seeing my younger brother and sister run outside to make snowmen and snow angels out of the one or two inches we have, and my own insistence that they at least try to leave a little patch untouched somewhere- on the swingset, by the bare maple tree, in front of the shed... not that it really makes a difference but just so that I can be content in my few square feet of heaven. Of course this doesn't happen every year and it's a memory that won't come again because my little brother lives in Oregon now, but the excitement of it is something that I associate with December much more than with January through March, and the tiny hope for snow contributes to the holiday feeling.

When I get really excited about things, I write long ranty sentences. This is also true when I get angry. They make sense (I think), but they're not gramatically correct/poetic/anything else that you would actually publish. I need to figure out how to transfer that kind of excitement into writing.

Just the Way You Are

If the first song that came to mind was not by Billy Joel, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

This is Erin seeing if she can write a monologue or something. It says things that relate to growing up. If you are uncomfortable with that... yeah I don't think any of you are actually uncomfortable with that. You just pretend to be because society tends to frown upon these sorts of things. Growing up and such.The character is a 17-year-old girl (I know we're working on point of view and I should try someone totally different, but in this particular case the rest don't work) and she is athletic. I'm tempted to make her a runner but then it would be me, and it's not. It's just a girl. Who, like just about all other teenage girls, is sometimes self conscious about the way she looks. And immediately before this scenario, someone (we'll say a rude guy. Boys are the root of many problems in this world) said her shorts were too short. Sorry I am not creative with this scenario...

Are they? It's almost as if I hadn't noticed. It's almost as if in living with myself for seventeen years, I didn't know what looked good on me and what didn't. Like I still need someone to decide for me or something. I agree, even when it's ninety degrees out only the thinnest girls should be allowed to show their legs. That means nobody over the age of fifteen because we wouldn't want girls with hips or legs or, God forbid, chests. That would promote obesity, or even puberty! And that's disgusting.

I used to be that girl, you know. And what I wouldn't give to be five, ten, fifteen pounds lighter. It would be nice to go back to the girl I was in eighth grade, to wear a cute shirt and have people comment on how spectacular it was that I didn't have anything of a stomach, that my legs were so thin, that even though I was pretty modest I knew I could get away with less. You know how they give you all those ridiculous tests at the doctor's office to tell you what percent of the population is superior to you? At thirteen I was in the tenth percentile for weight as compared to height. Tenth! By the time you finish high school, the thinnest ten percent are either ridiculously lucky soccer players or have eating disorders, most of them being the latter. By the time I was fifteen, I'd reached the thirtieth percentile and I tried to lose weight! I was still in the thinnest third of the population! But I'd gained something in two years and people had become thinner than me-yeah. Imagine it. Finding out that other girls can pull that outfit off better than you can. No, you can't imagine it. You're a boy. God, you're never gonna get this are you?

You know Angela? She always manages to run it off. I don't know how she does it because she's not even on any teams, but she can eat whatever she wants and she knows that she excercizes so she'll just stay thin. Heck, I don't even think she has to excercise- it's all her metabolism. Me? I dance six days a week. Do you know how much work that is? No, you're a boy, dancing is for sissies. God, I swear... You wouldn't last thirty minutes in my dance class. And I do this twelve hours a week! And I still have hips! And I still don't lose weight! And I come here and it's ninety degrees out so I wear shorts and jerks like you have the nerve to criticize my legs. Hell, do you think I didn't notice?

Assigned Blog Post #6: Well aren't you fabulous, darling

I use names. I believe anonymity is for the weak. But mostly I use names because if I figured out who you are based on your blog, it can't be that hard.

• So Kayla hasn't posted in a month but I LOVE this post- her National Merit essay.
• Also, Diane talks about how nobody can really know us in this awesome post, which is something that has been in my head a lot lately. This is because we have a telepathic connection, obviously. Just kidding. I think it's especially relevant with parents because we have lived with them for 17 years and if I were a parent, I'd be pretty offended if my daughter or son claimed that I didn't know him/her. On the same token, it bugs the crap out of me when my mom acts like she knows everything about me [and I often disagree just to spite her... I need to stop that] and I think people like feeling somewhat mysterious and of course we all want to be unique. I hope. But I'd say there are people who know certain aspects of me better than I know myself. I guess there is no measure of a person. But we already knew that.
• I like Mira's whole blog. It makes me smile. A lot. So does Erica's.
• Austin's blog keeps my attention. Not that the other ones lose it, but he doesn't post just for the sake of posting (I think) and this makes it interesting. And there is strong voice, which I always respect
• Also this post on Alex's blog. And not because it's about running, I like the detail muchissimo. Muchississimo. I don't think it counts as Spanish when you put that many s's in it :P
• Sorry I'm appreciating things so much. I wasn't going to mention Julia's blog because I feel like I am always telling people how awesome she is but... isn't she awesome? Yeah, she is. So I like this post. YEAH.

I was going to apologize for a lot of these being close friends and then I realized we're in prism and any random blog sample I take is going to have a lot of close friends. Well if this is extraordinarilly Erinny, know that it wasn't intentional. I've tried not to be myself- turns out I'm not very good at it, and it's a silly thing to do anyway

My baddd

So I realized I haven't posted in two weeks. If you think this is bad, consider that I haven't posted on my poetry blog in six weeks. Last november I tried to post every single day. That is not going to happen.

On the other hand, my free time just increased by 14 hours a week. Why I chose to do my workshop on the last week of cross country instead of any of the following weeks, I do not know. Sometimes I don't think things through. That's a pretty significant problem in my life. That and inability to focus...

Yeah. My brain is in a thousand different places at once. This season I learned to run alone (this may not be a good thing...) which meant I was not always talking to someone or listening to someone else talk. Which meant I was thinking about a thousand different things. It's actually pretty convenient- if I had better memory and focus, I could have done my homework in my head on those runs and then just written it down when I got back. WOW it's really weird to talk about the season in past tense. IN ANY CASE I come back from a run and realize what a random assortments of thoughts I've had, and how very few of them will have any impact on my life whatsoever. Like this blog post.

Spanish? Sorry about that. Some things actually come to my head in Spanish (granted, in the story it was intentional) so then I say them and people tell me to SPEAK IN ENGLISH DARNIT and I realize that some people actually don't know what I'm saying unless I speak English. Funny how that happens. But like when people thank me for things? I can never think of what to tell them in response, so I just kind of... smile and walk away?

A lot of people said that Monica, my protagonist, seemed a lot like me. This was odd because I didn't think she and I had too much in common, but then they'd point it out- she'd make an awkward response and someone would comment "Awkward! Like you!" or there'd be thoughts in italics and people would say "this is something Erin would say" and...I guess everyone meant it as a compliment, that I had strong voice or algo, but I was surprised.

YEAH. My brain is a gazpacho of thoughts and this makes me a not very effective blogger. It also sucks on AP tests. But I guess it makes me an okay person, when I am not an awkward person who keeps things to myself. Oops.

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...