Week 13, Theme 5

Prompt: Sentence theme. Use the sentence “she woke up outside with leaves in her mouth.”

Father would die soon. The doctors said six months at most. Karen felt the urge to make his twilight memorable; for herself, at least. She had planned for them a four-day canoe trip.

They started at Source Lake, where Father had spent the summers of his youth at camp. The family had been famous at Camp Pathfinder; Father’s uncle had made all of the cedar canvas canoes with which the campers had navigated on ambitious canoe trips through the Canadian wilderness. On that first day they had paddled by the island where the camp had been located. Karen could make out the ruins of a few of the cabins and of a larger building. She supposed that that was the dining hall, the site of the fabulous summer-end banquets that Father had so often described to her. Karen was relieved that she was in the back of the canoe and could not see her father’s face as they passed the remains of the camp.

They spent the second night on Joe Lake. Joe was the Las Vegas of Algonquin Provincial Park—that is, populated with annoying tourists and relatively dirty—but they had been forced to stop because of fatigue. During the night, Father began to scream and writhe in his sleep, like he had so many times before. Karen exited the tent and went to sit on a rock by the dark lake.

She woke up outside with leaves in her mouth. She wiped herself off and sat up to watch the water spiders skirt over the still glass of the water’s surface. “Ka…Kar…Karen?”

Karen started. How could she have left Father alone for so long? She ran in the direction of his call. When she made it to the tent and campfire, though, she found not an old man in need of her help but instead saw, for one last time, the person she had known for all of her life. Father was sitting on a log, holding out to her a metal plate with a pancake. It was formed in the shape of a heart.

Week 13, Theme 4

Prompt: Free Theme

Bineesh Daadi hung up the phone and shook his head, sighing. Another disappointing article. It was hard to get good press for a regime that bans chewing gum and still espouses corporal punishment for minor offenses. But that was Bineesh’s job. The phone rang again. Bineesh listened and hung up. The wire transfer from Frankfurt had come in already. For Germans, these journalists were acting pretty French. What had happened to the days where one could simply pay a journalist or promise him a favor and then have a glowing article on one’s desk the next morning?

This was probably it for Bineesh. The regime had fired three Travel Bureau chiefs in as many years, and there was no reason to think that he would survive this scandal. There had been perks: the car and driver, weekends in Vietnam, the job at the airline for Preetha. All of that would be gone now. But so would the pressure.

Bineesh heard the door click in the foyer. He left his office to see Preetha standing on the threshold, her floral skirt ruffled and face muddied with runny mascara. She should have been on her way back to Newark by now. She barely got out, “Dad, I quit. I hate that place,” before she ran through the apartment and slammed the door to her room.

Bineesh stood in the foyer, holding the door to the apartment with his hand. It seemed that both of the Daadis had been under a lot of pressure since they had moved here. Singapore was odd: there was this oppressive sense of untouchable perfection, impossibly created on a tropical island that should have been covered with kimono dragons and poisonous spiders, a perfection that was impossible to live up to. Maybe it was time, Bineesh thought, to go back to their place in Kuala Lumpur.

Bineesh moved over to the window and glanced at the glass windows of the skyscrapers across the street. Singapore was the worst city he knew.

Week 13, Theme 3

Prompt: Free Theme

Hans’ alarm woke him at five. He searched for his Blackberry on the bedside table; Anders muttered something about going back to sleep. Phone in hand, Hans brought it to this face. There was an email from Christian. “Subject: ARTIKEL.” Finally. Hans opened the attachment. Sinapur ist die schrecklichste Stadt…

Oh God. Hans started at the email for a bit longer. He realized that his alarm was still ringing. He hit it absentmindedly, knocking it off the table in the process. It broke, but that was of no matter to Hans, who was already at the dark closet fumbling for clothes. In place of a shower he applied a quick spritz of cologne. Cursing the Welt am Sonntag, he gave Anders a peck on the forehead, wished him a happy anniversary, and hurried to his car.

Hans wasn’t surprised to see the Autobahn empty at this hour. For a capital of world finance, Frankfurt-am-Main was a surprisingly empty place. There were the bankers, the people serving the bankers, and that was mostly it. The glass towers of the city’s core had sprung up from a place with no history, replicating the urban canyons of New York or Tokyo but without any of the meaning. There were no Pulitzers for a journalist like Hans to win here. The Welt had assigned him here to oversee “human-interest stories related to finance,” the inane scope from which the Singapore assignment for Christian had had its inception.

Half of an hour later, in front of his laptop in his office, Hans sat back in his chair. Christian’s was a gutsy and well-written piece, certainly of more merit than what he would have produced had he followed the assignment. Against his better judgment, Hans decided to publish it. There was only the matter of wiring the bribe money back to the Singapore Travel Bureau. Hans picked up his phone and waited for a moment. “Yes, hello, Mr. Daadi, this is Hans at the Welt am Sonntag. I’m sorry if it’s a little late over there, I just needed to call you. Listen, about the travel article your Bureau was expecting…”

Week 13, Theme 2

Prompt: Free Theme

Christian awoke with a start as the cabin lights flickered on in preparation for landing. He was surprised that he’d been able to sleep. When his editor had told him that he would be on Flight 21, he had resigned himself to eighteen hours of torture. He looked out the window and saw a bright grid of yellow light.

As he left the plane he gave a nod to the pretty flight attendant with the sad eyes. He had not checked a bag—God willing, he would not be here for long. He went to the hotel, and slept…

He awoke to the sound of his mobile ringing. His editor was calling, asking about his progress so far. Christian looked at the clock. “Gut, gut,” he mumbled into the phone. Yes, he would have a draft sent tomorrow. Yes, he would remember what they talked about. The Welt am Sonntag wanted a travel piece about Singapore. A really dumb travel piece: so many bankers had to do business in the Oriental these days that the Welt decided to run an article to cater to those banker’s spouses who might be interested in traveling along. Christian suspected that the Singapore Travel Bureau had kicked a nice sum over to the paper in exchange for the puff piece.

Needless to say, Christian felt a little used. He had decided to do something different even before the plane had left Newark. Now, all he needed were stories. He hopped in the elevator and walked outside. People (robots?) marched in suits passed him. Christian decided to walk a few blocks, and within five minutes passed two Prada outlets and a billboard reminding residents about the ban on chewing gum in the country. Perfect. Trashing this spotless city was going to be easier than he had thought.

Christian went promptly back to his hotel room and began his piece. “Singapur ist die schrecklichste Stadt, die ich kenne.”

Singapore is the worst city I know.

Week 13, Theme 1

Prompt: Free Theme


Preetha Daadi threw on a bright tunic and a floral-print dress in the airport lounge bathroom. She was late. She hurried through the concourse with her small suitcase tumbling behind her. When she reached the gate, she flashed the pass at the attendant, opened the door, and, not slowing her pace, continued down the jetway. Stepping on the plane and heading to the galley, she avoided the disapproving looks of the other flight attendants. As she was storing her bag in the closet, Musa approached her.

“Where have you been?” His Malaysian accent was thick. “We’re boarding now and three more batches of hot towels need to be…” He stopped. Preetha was sobbing silently. Musa softened his tone. “It’s…um…okay, just straighten your badge. And…stop…crying.”

Singapore Airlines Flight 21 redefines long haul. Newark to Singapore nonstop, an all-business class Airbus A340 and an attractive, accommodating flight crew provide its moneyed passengers with every possible convenience. Competition for the positions on the flight is intense; it is an unsaid rule that bone structure matters as much as one’s emergency response competence. Selection of the flight crew is conducted by committee; pilots, executives, and human resource managers all have a say.

Preetha gathered herself in the airplane’s restroom. She would have rinsed her face with water had makeup not been so oppressively applied, as per airline specification, all over her face. She exited, took the basket with the hot towels, and doled them out to passengers with tongs as they began to take their seats. As she approached the front of the plane, Captain Lionel Henry emerged from behind the cockpit door. Preetha tried to avert her eyes but was not quick enough to avoid his predatory glare.

He whispered in her ear. “That was great, babe. Let’s do it again in Singapore.”

Quotation #12

"Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or not getting a divorce from her husband. All that did not matter. The only thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured out her usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy that she began musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would be too late."

-Anna Karenina

Quotation #11

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

Quotation #10

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

-Oscar Wilde

Quotation #9

"Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there."

-Will Rogers

Quotation #8

"That's the difference. You're talking about the letter of the law. I'm talking about the spirit of the law."

Quotation #7

"The difference between participation and commitment is the same difference between scrambled eggs and bacon. With the eggs, the chicken participates. With the bacon, the pig commits."

Quotation #6

"Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."

-Aristotle

Quotation #5

"I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it."

-Mark Twain

Week 12, Theme 5

Prompt: Free theme

When I was a high school kid in Buffalo, I often searched for ways to convince, or to remind, myself that I had not become just another flake in the Rust Belt. Whether it was pretending to understand the emotional complexity of Almodóvar films or “liking” calamari, I wanted to be the guy who didn’t fit in a Podunk city. I refused to be a nowhere-going sophomore in a going-nowhere town.

On Christmas Day when I was fifteen, my mother gave me a CD. I’d resisted her previous attempts to get me to listen to new music; she just bought whatever was recommended for young adults in Time anyways, and I doubted that recommendations from Time were going to free me from the boilerplate bonds of Buffalo. This CD was different, though. It was called “Gimme Fiction,” from a band named Spoon, and had a single image of a red-hooded figure on the front cover.

Taking my confusion at the imagery and name of the album as mystery and taking mystery as something not ordinary and knowing ordinary was Buffalo, I decided to listen to Spoon. I got what I wanted: veiled references to cross-dressers, pared-down beats, tales about midnight walks and seeing “someone doing something not right.” I imbued each of Spoon’s lyrics with what I came to realize was future meaning; someday, things that I did would merit the cryptic references splashed across all of their songs.

My favorite track was the last one. It was called “Merchants of Soul” and had an upbeat drum background and a simple progression of piano strokes. The lyrics, though, were what, I guess…sang, to me. Someday, I knew, one of these merchants would take my soul, too, leaving me “mixed up and lonely on the danger side.” And that, let me tell you, would not in any way be boilerplate.

Week 12, Theme 3

Prompt: Now choose another memory to work with, this one from some time in the past year. You might choose a memory of some particularly pleasurable or painful event. Or you might choose a memory that is powerful for you, but you are as yet unsure why. In any case, let your writing about this memory be an act of reconstruction, detection, recreation. Think about how and why you remember this memory in the particular way that you do. Pay attention, as always, to the choices you are making as a writer. What sort of diction do you need to represent this memory? What rhythm of sentences? How will you define your point of view, and what does your way of handling it imply?

It’s just a little birthday pregame.

I’m doing a joint one with Manolis and Nina. It’ll throw some of the spotlight and the pressure off of me. Birthdays are always so stressful. Freshman year: what a disaster. No one had fun at the party. True, I’d been here for only a month and no one really knew each other that well, but it should have been fun. Sophomore year? A boring little cake party on a Sunday. I’d told Rene to get red velvet cake. He got chocolate. People were bored.

But this one? This will hit the sweet spot. It’s not a party in the traditional sense so people won’t feel obligated to stay and no one will count how many people come (how many people will come?) but they can still drink so maybe they will have fun. On the fifth try I get my tie right it’s a skinny black silk one. It shows that this thing matters for me, but it’s not formal. Good.

I’m there two minutes early. Oh god. I hope no one comes. The Greeks try to get me to drink some Uzo but its licorice stench makes me woozy. Carina comes soon, but so does Grant. Great: awkward mixing of my myriad friend groups that would never talk to each other for any other reason – commence!

A few other people stray in. High school friends Heeseung and Kevin come in, of course they do, they’ve always been on time to each of my parties it’s because Buffalo produces good people I see Carina and Grant bonding over the smell of the Uzo Tyler finally gets there some roommate he is and tells me he’s fighting with Alf Great even my friends who normally like each other are awkwardly forced together by my birthdaypregamedisaster.

Fastforwardthirtyminutes. Hey, there’s sort of a lot of people here. They’re talking and a little drunk and so am I. Fun! I stop worrying. They start singing Happy Birthday to you Happy Birthday dear Patrick. Tyler and Alf bring in a cake. It’s red velvet.

Week 12, Theme 2

Prompt: Write a second theme that builds on the first. This time, find a frame for the memory you’ve chosen to work with, a context in which to place it. You might, for example, reflect, in framing paragraphs like those in Anne Fadiman’s “Under Water,” on the place of this memory in your life. How does it fit in with who you were and who you have become? Or, you might do some kind of research to fill out what was happening in that particular time and place: if you are writing about something that occurred in your family, you could ask family members about the memory or you could reflect on what was going on in their lives at the time; or you could go to news sources to learn about events that may well give you information about the period or place you are remembering, the world in which your memory is set. Check facts. Consider how the framing context that you choose confirms, challenges, deepens, or otherwise complicates your memory. This theme may incorporate the previous one, revised or not, into a single, longer theme; it may simply be a second theme, responding to the first.

When I was young, airplanes enchanted me. Whether flying in them or looking at them or pretending I was one of them, arms outstretched and puttering through the house, I could not get enough of airplanes.

This is not a story about airplanes.

When I was seven, my father decided to take us to the Chem Ed conference with him. Held in Minnesota that year, the gathering of high school chemistry teachers from around North America was famous for having the largest periodic table ice sculpture in the world.

This is not a story about the Chem Ed conference.

This is a story about my family’s journey by car through the plains of Ohio, the streets of Chicago, the fields of Wisconsin, making our pilgrimage from Buffalo to the Mecca of chemistry. I was delighted at the time that my older half-sisters were joining us – they had never accompanied us on a road trip before. Looking back, I feel sorry for them; I can see that travelling by car to a chemistry conference in Minneapolis with your father, your stepmother, and you two rascally brothers is possibly not the coolest thing that a high-schooler can do.

Around Toledo, Conor started to complain of itching under the cast covering his arm. Katie, always a gentle soul, offered to scratch it for him. She scratched it for all of Indiana. Finally, the red and gold Ford Windstar puttered into Chicago. Dad, frugal as ever, put us up in a ratty motor hotel on the edge of the city. Mom talked about crime and gangs as we drove through the wide boulevards by Lake Michigan. At Conor’s behest, “I Believe I Can Fly” had been playing on repeat for a few hours; Meghan was contemplating methods to destroy the tape.

I don’t remember what we did in Chicago that day. There’s a picture of us four siblings, looking miserable, standing in front of a statue of Michael Jordan. The hotel rooms were so disgusting that Mom forced us to leave the city early the next day. We forgot my favorite blanket under the bed in the hotel. We drove an hour further up to Rockford, Illinois and checked into a Holiday Inn. Conor and I were thrilled to at last find a hotel with a swimming pool. We spent hours there splashing each other while Dad fell asleep on the hotel bed watching basketball. I can still remember the dark wood ceiling of the pool and the musty smell that it brought to the space.

The next day seemed easier than the first long day of driving. It was seven hours through Wisconsin before we saw the glistening waters of the Mississippi from the bridge in Minneapolis. Conor’s arm still itched during the ride, but this time Katie joined Meghan alternating between sleeping in the back row and eating licorice rather than scratching. We went to a clinic in the city almost as an afterthought; turns out Conor had a pretty bad rash under the cast. He shrugged it off – after you trip over a bubble machine and break your arm, not much fazes you, I guess. But that’s a different story.

Thirty-two hours in a car with your family can get you in a bit of a sour mood. I think that when we got back to Buffalo we all gave each other a bit of a wide berth for a while – we were happy to have our space back. We were all a little winded by the trip, the Windstar included: it only lasted a year longer before it broke down for good. I still think that it was the dust from the fields in Indiana that did it in – the same dust that probably got in under Conor’s cast and made that rash. Now, when we take family trips, we usually fly. I just wish that I was still young enough to run up and down the aisles of the plane, making noises and acting crazy.

Week 12, Theme 1

Prompt: Go back in time. Close your eyes. Search through early memories for one that holds your attention at this point in your life, at this moment. It can be a fragment of some kind---as little as an image or a sound that somehow mattered and goes on mattering. Or it might be an anecdote or a narrative, a story that sticks out. But it should be a memory of yours from more than ten years ago. Try to render it as fully as possible in prose, deciding how you want to represent it. For example, you might do it in the present tense, like a dream, or in the past; in the first person, in the third person, or without a pronoun reference, or in some other form; but consider how the form you choose interacts with the memory, perhaps imitating it in some way or resisting it, providing an alternative texture or perspective. In any case, your goal should be to render the memory with detail and accuracy and vividness, to make it present for your reader as it is for you. Do not editorialize about it or interpret it, except as may be implied by your rendering of it.

Around Toledo, Conor started to complain of itching under the cast covering his arm. Katie, always a gentle soul, offered to scratch it for him. She scratched it for all of Indiana. Finally, the red and gold Ford Windstar puttered into Chicago. Dad, frugal as ever, put us up in a ratty motor hotel on the edge of the city. Mom talked about crime and gangs as we drove through the wide boulevards by Lake Michigan. At Conor’s behest, “I Believe I Can Fly” had been playing on repeat for a few hours; Meghan was contemplating methods to destroy the tape.

I don’t remember what we did in Chicago that day. There’s a picture of us four siblings, looking miserable, standing in front of a statue of Michael Jordan. The hotel rooms were so disgusting that Mom forced us to leave the city early the next day. We forgot my favorite blanket under the bed in the hotel. We drove an hour further up to Rockford, Illinois and checked into a Holiday Inn. Conor and I were thrilled to at last find a hotel with a swimming pool. We spent hours there splashing each other while Dad fell asleep on the hotel bed watching basketball. I can still remember the dark wood ceiling of the pool and the musty smell that it brought to the space.

The next day seemed easier than the first long day of driving. It was seven hours through Wisconsin before we saw the glistening waters of the Mississippi from the bridge in Minneapolis. Conor’s arm still itched during the ride, but this time Katie joined Meghan alternating between sleeping in the back row and eating licorice rather than scratching. We went to a clinic in the city almost as an afterthought; turns out Conor had a pretty bad rash under the cast. He shrugged it off – after you trip over a bubble machine and break your arm, not much fazes you, I guess. But that’s a different story.

Week 11, Theme 5 - Wildcard #2 Day Off

I didn't have any good dreams this week, and my dream journals are all unintelligible scribbles anyways. So, I'm not going to write the dream journal that was assigned as the first theme this week.

Week 11, Theme 4

JMW Turner. “Staffa: Fingal’s Cave.” 1832

Prompt: Write a theme in which one character tried to describe a dream to another (perhaps the other person doesn’t dream, or doesn’t take dreams seriously, or perhaps she or he takes them very seriously and is ready to interpret or otherwise appropriate the dram and its meaning).

Delphine sat at the breakfast nook using her knife to shift the tides of jelly on her bread from one crust to the other. Aleksy, fetching yogurt from the fridge, looked over at her with some concern. “What’s up, babe? That jelly isn’t going to go anywhere, you know.” Delphine looked up at him in surprise, as if she had just noticed he was in the kitchen. Regaining her composure, she returned to her work with the bread. “Aleksy, do you remember at the museum yesterday? The Turner painting?” Aleksy’s bowl landed with a thud across from Delphine as he slumped into his chair at the head of the nook. “Honey, which Turner painting? You looked at them all like they were Mona Lisas or something.” Delphine glared at him. “‘Staffa: Fingal’s Cave.’ Well, I had a dream about it last night.” Aleksy rolled his eyes, thinking how he should have just bought her that Indian dream catcher thing on their holiday to New Mexico. Maybe it would listen to her dream stories.

“I was naked. I felt the cool mist of the saltwater spray up on my legs. I looked down and saw the deck of a boat. Soon I smelt this acrid fume – it was from the steam engine. I was on the boat in the painting, put-put-puttering away from the cave. I looked back at the square rock formations that outlined the shore, but they were hard to make out because of the ocean mist and the waves crashing against them. Just like in the painting.”

During the retelling, Aleksy had finished his yogurt and arisen to busy himself with the dishwasher. He had remembered to put the “uh-huhs” in at the right places during Delphine’s oral dream diary, but suspected that there was more. He let out a silent groan as she began to speak again.

“There was a moment of blackness. Then, regaining awareness, I found myself in oppressively damp air. I was still naked, but now I was warm. The sounds of the waves seemed far away. Realizing that I had somehow gotten into the cave, I looked out of the opening towards the glint of the setting sun. The horizon through the keyhole opening of the cave was revealed and obscured continuously by the ebb and flow of the waves. Then, I woke up.”

Aleksy let out a sigh of relief. “Honey, could you bring your plate over? I want to start the dishes.”

Delphine hadn’t heard him. Instead, she continued to sit, directing the waves of jelly back and forth on the bread.

Week 11, Theme 3

Prompt: In one sentence, describe an important life-decision facing a character. Then write a dream for that character that explores the complexity of the decision (i.e. avoid a merely schematic treatment of the problem and pay attention to ambivalence and competing pressures). You can invent a character or take a character from a book or a movie. If you like, frame the dream narrative by describing the character falling asleep or waking up: some setting that perhaps makes an appearance in direct or displaced form in the dream.

Was living with Evangeline for a summer worth one thousand dollars in savings?

Greta slipped off her nightgown and climbed into bed. The cool air trapped under the sheet blew out over her face. She needed to sign the sublease agreement tomorrow; Evie was either going to be in, or she was going to be out. Better to sleep on it. Greta closed her eyes and fell asleep.

~~~~

The summer afternoon heat drifted through the slats in the window. A bamboo fan levitating above Greta’s head cooled her as she navigated to the Bank of America website on a computer that appeared just as she decided to check her balance. Ah yes, there it was. That extra $1000 was there (minus the $350 that she had dropped for those cute yellow pump shoes, of course). One grand. It was the protective blubber lining her fat little baby seal of a checking account. Financial security gave Greta a swagger, a glow – as she thought about checking her complexion, a mirror appeared in her hand. Acne scars evaporated as she lifted the mirror to her face. The money really did make her glow.

THUMP

Greta started. What was that?

CLANK

The light drained out of Greta’s room. She glanced around in horror. Satin slippers appeared on her feet; she padded silently across the room and cracked the door to peer into the kitchen.

Evie.

A dark, brooding figure wearing black robes stood in the corner by the food processor, breathing in and out slowly. Oily black hair spilled out from her cape. The figure turned to Greta. It said Hi Greta do you want to make some unhealthy, oily food for dinner and then have to clean it up yourself since I am messy?

Greta screamed.

~~~

Back in her own bed, Greta awoke with a start. Morning. Putting on the satin slippers laying at the foot of her bed, she padded over to her desk and opened her computer. She began an email.

“Dear Mr. Holt: Thank you for waiting. Yes, I will sublease your apartment. I will make use of both bedrooms. I will be the sole sublettor and will pay the full price, including the extra $1000. Regards, Greta.”

Week 11, Theme 2

Prompt: Choose an actual or an imaginary creature, like Bishop’s “Man-moth,” and describe it in a way that suggests both human and non-human qualities. This theme could take the form of another fable, or naturalistic description or meditation, or some combination of these modes, as in Sebold’s excursus on moths from Austerlitz, or Woolf’s essay “The Death of the Moth.”

There once lived in the mind of an Advertising Director a furry white rabbit. The rabbit hopped around the brain, munching on ideas, carrots, and the like. One day, the Advertising Director was commissioned to construct a campaign to market a tasteless, “fruit flavored,” cereal sold by General Mills. “Trix” was selling poorly and needed to capture the coveted 3-7 year old demographic. As thoughts of the cereal began to circulate around the Director’s brain, the rabbit became obsessed. He was sure that the luscious fruit cereal would taste most savory, certainly better than the bland mind carrots he had been munching on lately.

The rabbit began to make quite a ruckus in demand of this new cereal. Noticing this, the Director thought, “If every Caucasian child from ages three to seven were to be as obsessed with this middling cereal as my mind rabbit is, why, I’d be rich!” He fetched the rabbit from his mind, described the creature to an Art Director, and thus gave the Trix-crazed bunny life in an advertising campaign. The Advertising Director, being a cruel, greedy man, decided to perpetually deprive the rabbit of any taste of the actual cereal, so as not to dampen the bunny’s loud and desirous proclamations. Instead, animated children would hold large bowls of Trix within arm’s length of the rabbit, taunting him and yelling, “Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!”

Years passed and the cereal became more and more popular. Times change, though, and soon futuristic robots chasing bowls of sugary cereal became more in vogue than their fluffy animal predecessors. One evening, on his last advertising legs, the old rabbit shuffled toward the now-wealthy Advertising Director and made one last appeal to taste the cereal he had made a hit. The Director, feeling sorry for the old furball, gave him a bowl and spoon and a box of the cereal.

Hands shaking out of excitement and arthritis, the rabbit lifted the cereal to his lips. He chewed for a bit, and then spat the foul-tasting mush out in disgust. Maybe Trix were for kids.

Week 11, Theme 1

Prompt: Choose a fable from Aesop, Brer Rabbit, or another folklore tradition, or perhaps from a favorite childhood story, and re-tell it. Gain power from concision. Characterize the animals or people that you represent through a few well-chosen words of description or dialogue. Try to make your language plain and memorable. Allow the moral to be implicit or ambiguous.

One sunny morning, an aged wet Nurse threw open the windows to her house so that she could eavesdrop on the conversations of the birds as she tended to her work. She tidied and dusted until it was time to feed the child. She fetched the child and, taking him on her lap, began to move his head to her bosom. But the child began to cry, as he had in the morning, and the day before that. In a flash of anger, the Nurse warned him, “If you make noise like this again I will throw you out the window to the hungry Wolf.”

Just as this was uttered, the Wolf happened to be stalking outside the house. As the Nurse’s words carried through the open window, the Wolf became excited at the prospect of his meal. He was sure the child would cry again, and at this time he would be ready. He ran fast through the woods to fetch Mother Wolf and the Pups, told them of their upcoming feast, brought them to the Nurse’s home, and positioned them, open-mouthed, underneath the bay window.

Later in the day, the Nurse readied anew to feed the child. The Wolf family waited in anticipation of their fleshy meal as they watched the child’s mouth near the Nurse’s bosom. When he started to cry, they all made howls of joy. The Wolf looked in the window at the Nurse, waiting for her to throw him the child. Instead, the woman screamed when she saw the furry creature and set her Dogs on the Wolf family. They were able to scatter away safely, but the Wolf was forced to endure for many days after the exasperated glare of Mother Wolf and the hungry howls of the Pups.

Week 10, Theme 5

Prompt: Choose a subject--like Auster's Petit--who seems to you daring in an unusual and admirable way, and explain why. Pay attention to what sorts of technique, including constraints and tools, are involved in your subject's daring If you see an analogy to the work of writing, explain or imply it, perhaps as your prose embodies it.

Beverly Lacey has a job, a steady boyfriend, and just moved into new digs right on the waterfront. She has a glass, or four, of brandy every Friday and hasn’t missed a Sunday service at St. John’s in as long as anyone can remember. Every three years, she buys a new, top-of-the-line Lincoln, and spends the next thirty six months lead-footedly, joyously violating the speed limits on the empty highways of Buffalo. The sales clerks at Nordstrom all know her by name, and present to her with grimly embarrassed faces when she arrives and they have not yet received the newest pantsuit in her preferred size, 00.

Weekday mornings at 3:30am, Bev wakes up, showers, applies makeup, tidies, and then sits down to plain oatmeal and black coffee to take in the morning news. She’s speeding away from downtown in the Lincoln by 5:30, off to the suburban headquarters of People, Incorporated. She’s always the first one there, and spends an hour opening up shop and tidying her desk. By 8, when the “kids” come in, she’s ready to administer morning medications. A daycare center for violent, developmentally disabled adults, People, Inc. does the tough job of caring for people who just can’t fit into daily life. The work is difficult and sometimes dangerous, and has scared more than one nurse away during Bev’s tenure. Beverly likes the challenge.

By four, Bev is back at home, pumping away on her exercise bike while keeping up with the “silly” goings on at General Hospital. Usually, Frank will come over to join her for dinner. He’s asked Bev to marry him four times, but each time she has politely declined. One marriage was enough – Beverly likes her freedom.

I’ve got to say it: for 82, my grandma is a badass.

Week 10, Theme 4

Prompt: Describe and reflect on a risk you’ve taken.

Guten Morgen, Klasse. Sind alles von Ihnen bereit?

When I started taking German, all the other pre-meds were shocked. The only reason to take a language class (besides Latinm, if you wanted to get a jump on medical school terms) was to finish the language requirement. Otherwise, it was a big waste of time and one and a half credits. One and a half credits equals three labs equals three more pre-med classes out of the way. It does not equal Freizeit to take whatever reeking-of-humanities classes you want.

I do a lot of things to surprise other pre-meds, just for kicks (being social, going out, having friends…), but German – this one was for me. A summer in Berlin and Switzerland and a few German Mann romances (ok, flings) were all it took to leave me enthralled by the German people, their troubled history, and their underappreciated Muttersprache. I saw a beauty and an organization in the language that charmed me in the exact opposite of the way the supposedly attractive but actually amorphous and un-learnable feeling of the romance languages had confused me.

Actually taking Deutsch, though, was another matter. The disparaging remarks of ex-boyfriend and language connoisseur Rene in mind (“You’re just not a language person. Keep working on orgo”), I was a little afraid of what the Yale German department was going to throw at me. Turns out, though, that I already knew a lot of terms and didn’t have trouble memorizing the rest. Being pre-med has taught me to stuff information in my brain, and the Germans dominated chemistry in the 1800s, so I knew words like “together,” “opposite,” and “both,” already. This is all to say: easy A, with intellectual interest in the bag. Biochemistry? Yeah right – I’ve found the best class for pre-meds at Yale.

Week 10, Theme 3

Prompt: Use Joe Brainard’s I Remember as a model. Let the phrase “I remember” work as an anaphora (the opening phrase), creating a formula, or a kind of container, for your writing, a mould to pour your prose into. Write twenty or more “I remember”s. Experiment with the length of sentences and memories you include; think about the series they make. Where do your “I remember”s begin, and where do they end?

I remember last night.

I remember choosing the orange pants.

I remember remembering how they didn’t fit before the illness.

I remember showing my room to freshmen as I ran out the door.

I remember wondering if they were intimidated by me.

I remember the bus ride to the bowling alley.

I remember ordering a gin and tonic.

I remember telling Sarah that I got “so into gin and tonics during my recent holiday in London.”

I remember spilling a whiskey sour on my orange pants. No stain.

I remember spilling a whiskey sour on a white dress. No shame.

I remember the hurried flurry of napkin patter to the lace of the dress.

I remember bowling a 34.

I remember spilling a drink in the gutter.

I remember choosing the pink bowling ball and laughing.

I remember not taking any photos with the birthday girl.

I don’t remember the bus ride home.

I don’t remember texting him.

I don’t remember taking off the whiskey orange pants.

I remember staring at the dim screen at 3am, scrolling through photos of people I’d seen at the alley, judging them.

I don’t want to remember crawling into bed, alone.

Week 10, Theme 2

Prompt: Try a version of Perec’s vowel experiment. Write a theme in which you use the words that include the vowels on only one side of the keyboard: “a,” “e,” and “y,” or “u,” “i,” “o.” This will be difficult, and the theme can be quite short. See if you can write sentences that make some sense, or, see what sense the sentences you’ve written make. Can you think of a good title?

IOU

I look down on thou. Thus so, I sow rough troughs of puny insults, on your un-won points in school, on your untrustworthy mind. You will not miss this kicking I thrust on you, if you go. Or, if you will, if you grow. You must know, I point this out to you, out of worry for you. If you will hold on to good, you will not know of this wondrous pity I hold for you for long. No, if you grow, you will, point out to yours truly, humbly, “IOU.”

Week 10, Theme 1

Prompt: Your tutor will provide you with a sentence, without context of any kind. Use it as the first sentence of this theme. Recommendation: approach the prompt as the occasion for a free-writing exercise; take the sentence and spend twelve minutes (use your cell phone alarm) writing in response without a plan (or, a net to catch you). Then see what you have. Maybe you will be done already. Or maybe you will see a direction in which you want to revise.

I hadn’t expected this. The message from Inge had woken me a few hours earlier than I had planned; after showering, I threw on my heavy Barbour jacket, greeted the Berlin winter air, hopped on the U-Bahn at Rosenthaler Platz, and rode to Alexanderplantz. There, I caught the S-Bahn heading to Westkreuz. Sitting on the train as it passed the Reichstag, I looked at my phone again. Peter: komm doch gleich. Greta ist die Geburt eines Sohnes. Es gibt ein Problem.

“Peter: come immediately. Greta is giving birth to a son. There’s a problem.” I thought: what could be wrong? The preparations had been in place for weeks now. Yes, it had been a high-risk situation, but Greta had been presenting well in recent days and all seemed as if it was proceeding normally. We had all put so much into Greta; this birth was going to make us famous. After all, such a complicated procedure, such a special circumstance…

Lost in my visions of recognition and fame, I almost missed my stop. The speakers screamed: “Zoologisher Garten!” I rushed out of the train just as the doors were closing.

As I ran through the gates and to the polar bear enclosure, the din grew louder and louder. Hitting the boundary of the space just as the weak December sun peaked over the rock formation lining Greta’s living space, I saw the mother bear staring at a ball of fur ten feet away from her. Inge ran to me. Peter, du bist die einzige Person, die helfen kann!

“Peter, you’re the only person who can help.” I knew. I leaped over the railing and ran between Greta and her son. I had been Greta’s keeper for years; she didn’t attack. Instead, our eyes met for what seemed like seconds. The big brown circles looked at me with sadness before the bear turned and retreated to the rocks.

I looked at my new son. I’ll call you Knut.

~~~

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_the_Bear

Week 9 - Week off!

There's a lot to do for Patrick after break, so this is the week that this blog will be silent. Till next week!

Week 8, Theme 5

Prompt: A journal entry describing a journey. What can---or can’t---you see along the way? How does your perspective change with the change of place?

I grabbed the black plastic trash bag as I stumbled from the lobby bathroom to meet Geraldo. Her shepherded me into el Taxi as I emptied out the contents of my stomach into my new bag. Frantic Spanish and a haggling over the price – always, the haggling in this country, always – eventually gave way to a four-block ride to the hospital.

The emergency room had the kind of puke green walls that hospitals are infamous for. I lied on a bed behind the curtain staring at the ceiling as the nurses muttered among themselves and at Geraldo in that dirty Dominican Spanish that I had so quickly come to hate in the last week. I needed pruebas – tests – done, and lots of them.

I shuffled to the bathroom, where I succeeded in producing the needed…samples. When I returned to my bed more needles and an IV, my first ever, found their ways into my arms. Staring at the fluorescent light above my eyes, I drifted into a daze. I wished that I had been able to go out with the group last night, that I had thought of somewhere better than the Dominican Republic to go for Spring Break, that I had some water. I really needed water.

In less than an hour a wrinkled man wheeled me up through the hospital’s bowels to the third floor. Inexplicably, I had been placed in the pediatric ward, with an image of Barney painted on the door to my private room. I thought of the framed Barney Fan Club membership certificate still hanging on the wall of my childhood room.

For the next fifty hours, it was just me, Barney, and the millions of cholera bacilli inhabiting my bowels hanging out in the pediatric ward of a hospital in Santo Domingo. Traveling sure has provided me with some strange bedfellows.

Week 8, Theme 4

Prompt: A journal entry that explores a memory that surfaced during the course of your day, and connects the memory to the situation in which it arose.

Batey Libertad, western Dominican Republic. Early afternoon. I sit in a thatched gazebo constructed by some church group in the middle of this impoverished community. As I read, a small Haitian girl, no more than one and a half years old, spins around with her back on the concrete floor. Her eyes are crossed. Her sullied swaddling clothes have stains from dirt and what looks like blood, and she wears no pants. Lying in a pool of her own waste and sucking on whatever she can fit in her mouth, she makes odd sounds. Ahh, ehh, gurgle, ehh! She sounds, to my horror, happy.

Swaddling clothes? My mind races back to my red rain jumpsuit. I recall the countless pictures of me as a toddler, my bright pink face and a few blonde locks spilling out of the hole in the suit, frolicking in street-side puddles. In these pictures, I sported a look of wide-eyed, open-mouthed, missing-toothed delight. Like the Haitian girl, I had no control over my clothing or my actions or the blabber coming from my mouth. Like the Haitian girl, I was exploring my environment, taking in the world around me, being a kid.

A Haitian woman whips the dirtied girl up by the arm to give her the bucket bath that she so sorely needs. I am sure that after my puddle exploring I, too, was taken to a bath by my mother. The only difference between the end of my puddle period and the end of the Haitian girl’s was that my bath was in a porcelain tub in Buffalo and hers was in a black plastic tub underneath the hot Caribbean sun. The only difference, but one that makes her so much farther away from me than the twenty feet that separate us.

Week 8, Theme 3

Prompt: Read some entries from a notebook, diary, or some kind of journal---either unpublished or in print, and possibly a diary of your own from the past. Then describe how the writer uses the journal, and the sense of self created in it.

The guy that I deified my Freshman Fall (and, oh, did I fall) was one for writing things down. His room in Morse was decorated with drawings from when he was five, snippets of thoughts he’d written down on napkins at a cousin’s bar mitzvah when he was nine, lyrics of a song from his trip to Jamaica years back. When things went south (our relationship, not Jamaica), I had a hard time letting him go. I missed him physically, but I also missed his influence – telling me what classes to take, what movies to see, what to do with my life.

And so I went home from the sadness of New Haven to the dark, cold confines of Buffalo. Still miserable on New Year’s Day, and missing Him, I thought of ways to bring Him to me in my personal tundra. I decided to start writing daily in a Word document. I named it “Diary.” I wrote about Him but also about the guy who I’d replaced Him with, and the guy from Buffalo that I’d substituted that guy for, the girls with whom I went out with for dinners and to art galleries but who, after four short months, already seemed so different. I wrote about revenge and Kobe beef and “self-indulgent poppycock.” In five days I covered a lot of ground.

And then, after January 5^th – silence. It made me wonder what had happened on the 6^th, the Day of Three Kings; had I been too drunk that night to come home and write? Had I convinced myself that there was more to life than Him simply by writing about my other goings on? Whatever the reason, my project abruptly stopped, as could be expected from the failed New Years Resolution that it turned out to be.

Today, I wrote a new entry in “Diary.” There’s a new boy and a new plan, but, somehow, the link between the Freshman and the Junior is stronger than one might expect.

Week 8, Theme 2

Prompt: A journal entry about your habits or rituals of writing.

Star-words

I write the best pieces when I get there before 8. Most of the winter this meant that the windows were still frosty but now, as New Haven warms, they are already crystal clear when I arrive. Anthony greets me curtly – I’ve never been friendly to him and he has no reason to pretend we’re buds – and takes my order for a medium (God help me if I ever say the word “grande”) coffee. No room for milk. It’s $2.07 with tax, but I usually don’t have enough energy to unfold the cash so I pull out Visa instead. I walk over to the sugar station and empty one and a half brown packets of “sugar in the raw” into my cup.

I’ve been told that the store on High and Chapel is a “high priority” Starbucks franchise for corporate; makes sense based on the revenue that must come from all of the rich blonde girls ordering Venti Skim No Foam Extra Hot Caramel Macchiato Lattes. Certainly not a medium black coffee. But to each her own, I guess. Anyways, the high priority status affords the location a new design: two imitation vintage converted shuffleboard tables, large expanses of varnished wood, dominate half of the room. They are flanked with heavy red chairs and lend the place a cafeteria feel, with everyone and their laptops sitting at the same table.

Usually, when I get there, no one is sitting at the first long table. I take my place in the third red chair from the left facing away from the window (must not be distracted) and pull out a nice, inky pen and a piece of plain computer paper. Writing in the raw. What goes on the page is always different – sometimes words, sometimes equations, sometimes German words. Whatever it is, though, is always completed by 10:20. Productivity in the raw.

When I think of myself as the formidable, unfriendly undergrad drinking black coffee and writing furiously on computer paper, I smile. I’m a character just like the flower lady, or the guy who always brings trash bags in. I don’t mind if they all think I’m crazy – it works for me.

Week 8, Theme 1

Prompt: A journal entry describing a single day written by another person actual or imagined, contemporary or historical. (This might take the form of an imitation or parody of a famous diarist like Woolf or Boswell.)

Jamesday

Today was normal. I woke up at 4 and grabbed an orange, then started in on a few books of Chaucer. Vince – best agent ever – called me at 5 and told me that Dior Homme wanted to do another shoot, that the sweat on my forehead was “beading up oddly” in the first set of photos. Shrugging, I maintained concentration on Chaucer’s use of onomatopoeia. I decided to do an art project in which pages of books that use onomatopoeia would be suspended in a wind tunnel into which would be piped classical music. Refocus: at 6:30, I woke up the blond still sleeping in my bed and told her to shoo. Throwing on my heavy, patched cotton jacket and making sure that my eyes looked tired but not exhausted, my hair messy but not greasy, I walked out of the Study and to Starbucks and ordered hot water. I caught a cab to Union station and took a quick train over to RISD to check on my paper-mâché project. I remembered that I had a flight out of Logan at 10. Ahh, commercial aviation: the airline companies had repeatedly rejected my requests to conduct a live-art project where I arrange their schedules to fit my daily routine. By 1pm Pacific time (4pm James Franco time) I was at LAX. Vince picked me up and reminded me that I had to practice my lines for the Oscars. I ran them over once in the car but soon lost interest. I put on a tux that Vince gave me and then hosted the Oscars with this non-blond girl. Midway through the show Perez let me know that people didn’t really like my performance. I decided that I wasn’t feeling LA, so instead of going to the afterparty I’d been planning, I hopped on a United flight on standby. I fell asleep in seat 19B in the company of little pretzels and Chaucer.

Week 7, Theme 5

Prompt: Evaluation: use your final theme this week to reflect on the work you’ve done so far this term. What has been particularly rewarding or frustrating? How would you characterize your writing? What goals do you want to establish for the remainder of the semester? Your theme can, of course, embody or otherwise relate to the statements you are making about your writing in some suggestive way.

In going through the themes that I have written for this semester, I have come to a rather obvious but multifaceted conclusion: I write well about what I know. I have always felt a strong connection to my childhood, my hometown, and my family, and I think that some of my strongest themes have been derived from these subjects. I have also found that my social and romantic life as a college student is particularly fertile ground. When I write themes about one of these subjects (usually, I can find a way to make a theme fit one of these things), I have a relatively easy and fun time writing them. It is when I encounter more abstract topics (such as the week centered on style) that I run into difficulties thinking about what to write. The “night sky” theme exemplifies this feeling: I stared at that prompt and procrastinated for a good two hours before putting anything on the page.

One of my stated goals at the beginning of the semester was to improve stylistically. I have found that with more frequent writing turns of phrase such as “Mary’s parents divorced before she moved out of the high chair” are easier for me to come up with. I’m never going to master rhythm or beats in a sentence, but I think that I can continue to create interesting ways in which to frame everyday things.

Looking towards the rest of the semester, I’d like to focus on impact of my pieces. I want, as Cathy has mentioned to us, my pieces to matter in and of themselves rather than just being slices of life. Usually the part that can make the piece “matter” or not is the last few sentences, when the writer is ending the development of an idea that started merely 300 words ago. I’d like to focus on creating forceful, affecting endings.

Week 7, Theme 4

Prompt: Revision: return to and revise a theme with your discussions of your work with your tutor in mind. This might take the form of another Gordon Lish exercise in condensation. But if you go back and revise a theme primarily by cutting it, take the next step and use the space you’ve gained to develop the theme in some new way: for example, by extending the story, or framing with it a new beginning or end.

Original Theme:

Pierce sits at the bottom of the steps in the sun-streaked foyer. Streams of light filter in through the stained glass windows, green and red and pretty.

“Pierce!” Grandma calls from the kitchen. It is time for lunch.

Pierce stares at his shoes. The shoes are white and red and threatening. The two laces for each foot jut out and curl and twist with no set direction. The eight metal-lined holes on each shoe through which the laces are thread glint in the light. The shoes challenge Pierce. Pierce glares at the shoes, but his stare is no match for that of the eight-eyed monsters.

Grandma enters the foyer with a plate of macaroni and cheese and a glass of milk. “Oh, Pierce. You can try after lunch.” Pierce does not look up.

The fumes of the mac and cheese wafting around his head, Pierce frames his battle against the shoes. Not being able to tie one’s shoes - this is one of those things that they kick you out of pre-school for. And if you can’t get through pre-school then you can’t get a job. And if you can’t get a job you disappoint. In a delirious state, Pierce tears at the laces in a fury of activity – crossing them, knotting them, pulling them.

Half an hour after Grandma brought the mac and cheese, she walks in with a cookie for Pierce. As she turns to face the stairs, she sees a smiling Pierce, the look of contentment at a hard-won victory on his face.

All four of the laces of his two shoes were laced together in a single neat, strong knot. Pierce – a shoe-tying innovator.

Revised Theme:

I sat at the bottom of the steps in the sun-streaked foyer. Streams of light filtered in through the stained glass windows, green and red and penetrating.

“Pierce! Lunch!” Grandma called from the kitchen.

I stared at my shoes. They were white and red and threatening. The two laces for each foot jutted out and curled and twisted with no set direction. The eight metal-lined lace holes on each shoe glinted in the light. The shoes challenged me. I glared at the shoes, and the shiny eight-eyed monsters returned my glare.

Grandma entered the foyer with a plate of macaroni and cheese and a glass of milk. “Oh, Pierce. You can try after lunch.” I did not look up as she set the plate on the steps and walked away.

The tempting odor of the mac and cheese wafted around my head as I framed my battle against the shoes. Not being able to tie one’s shoes - this is one of those things that they kick you out of pre-school for. And if I don’t get through pre-school then I won’t get a job. And if I don’t get a job then I’ll disappoint mom and grandma. In a delirious state, I teared at the laces in a fury of activity – crossing them, knotting them, pulling them.

Half an hour after Grandma brought the mac and cheese, she walked in with a cookie for me. As she turned to face me, I flashed her a big smile, the look of contentment at a hard-won victory plastered on my face.

All four of the laces of his two shoes were laced together in a single neat, strong knot. I was a shoe-tying innovator.

Week 7, Theme 3

Prompt: Explicitly in “Grammar Questions” and “French Lesson I: Le Meurtre,” but almost always in some manner, Lydia Davis’s stories meditate not only on experience but on how we talk and write about it. Use this approach in a theme to explore what is odd or revealing about our ways of framing and describing some aspect of our lives. Consider casting the theme as an essay taking this approach, or as a story illustrating it. Your theme might be a parody or pastiche of some official discourse or discipline, or some form of genre writing (the detective story, the romance).

Art: Facebook

All of the socially relevant kids know about it. Unless you’re too cool to have a Facebook (only acceptable for short amounts of time before social suicide inevitably sets in), you have looked at a well-done Facebook album and thought more of its maker. Facebook albums crown the sorority princess, install the hipster leader, make the poor kid rich. Conversely, Facebook albums can rule out people from the social “it” list – I know that you wouldn’t want to be seen lunching in Berkeley with the girl who just uploaded 200 unedited, repetitive Photobooth pictures of her making funny faces; I certainly wouldn’t be caught dead with her either.

So how do you do it, while avoiding missteps, kitsch, and pitfalls? It’s simple, really. Go through the photos you’ve taken recently (you should be taking photos at all socially meaningful events) and find a theme. A winter adventure to East Rock with certain A-list Theta girls and a few cute guys? Perfect – as long as there was a flask involved. No one wants to be caught doing something fully wholesome for an entire album. No more than a 1:3 ratio of non-people to people-containing photos; remember, this album is about who you’re with, not what you’re doing. It goes without saying that you’ve de-red-eyed and blemish-removed, unless you want the cool kids to untag themselves faster than you can say “pimple.” No repeat poses, unless something embarrassing or funny happens: if someone falls in the snow, you better have at least a six-shot sequence of her tumble. End the album with a darkened shot of the prettiest girl in the group, looking away from the photo, sipping something out of a mug with a mysterious smile on her face. And finally, the title – something that says nothing significant about what you’ve done, but is a witty wordplay. How about “Perils of the Tundra?”

There – simple. Now, enjoy your rising social caché. Don’t get sloppy, though. One album slip up and you’ll be right down where you started.

Week 7, Theme 2

Prompt: Choose one of your titles from the day before and make it the starting place for a story (or essay, parable, parody, monologue, etc.)

Squeezed Watermelon

My feet stood on the edge of the fountain at Seattle Catholic University. No idea how I had ended up here; Belltown had morphed into Capital Hill, which merged into a campus littered with recycling receptacles emblazoned with “SCU” and statues of Jesus scattered amongst wilted flowers, looking just as dead in their crucified neighbor in the hot, dry August noon.

Sweat soaked through my deep V-neck, staining the pink fabric of the armpits and pectoral areas a wet, darker pink. Shoot – my body was producing more wetness during this trip than was the famous Pacific Northwest rain, which apparently was on holiday. That the visit had failed to live up to Katie’s promises was not so surprising; her lawyerly trade had lately transformed her into quite the pronouncer. But this – Katie’s “unexpected” 12-hour shifts on the Pepsi case that had been running for ten months now, my resultant aimless wandering around an unknown city full of granola people and biofeul ads for the last four days – this was shit. Seattle was devoid of big-city charms, I said to myself. Even the homeless people were uncreative; the sign “give me money so I can buy beer” is just so 2009. The buildings were generic, the environmentalists were annoying, and the cultural legacy was lagging (it used to be a logging town).

Grumpily mumbling my way into an SCU parking lot, I saw a reflective metal food truck glaring in the sun. The Seattle Skillet. “Give me your special,” I sighed as I reached the counter, expecting another organic, bland, hippie concoction. Instead, the pigtailed woman placed into my hands a cup of squeezed watermelon juice. I stepped away from the truck in awe. The juice was the same color of my shirt’s wet pink armpits. Watermelon juice was so the new thing. Maybe the west coast had something to offer.

Week 7, Theme 1

Prompt: Think about the relation between Lydia Davis’ stories and their titles. Make a list of roughly ten to twenty titles that intrigue you as entry points for your short pieces. Give thought to the interest of the titles individually. They don’t have to be especially offbeat or eye-catching; generic titles may be suggestive by implying certain kinds of story and approaches to story-telling. Also give thought to the ensemble of titles. Can you make them interesting not only individually but also in series? See if the titles themselves might imply some sort of story or statement.

“Albrecht and the Ice”

“Cleanliness meets Spirituality”

“Earbuds”

“Squeezed Watermelon”

“Significant Figures”

“Power Ten”

“Melissa’s Tatoo”

“Iowa City Chinatown”

“Die Leben des Gebäudes”

“Park Pool”

“Obstructed Mountain View”

“Mobile Coffeehouse”

“Freshman Single”

“My Crossing Guard”

“Clean Up Before”

“Exit Sign”

“Algerian Ice Cream”

“Valley Mist”

“Vertical Train”

“Alexis’ German Clipboard”

“A coup at the Banana Republic”

Week 6, Theme 4

Prompt: With Firbank, Durrell, Morrison, and Shakespeare in mind, describe a night sky. Use the theme as an occasion for fantasy, for passages of “violet-farded,” “deckle-edged: writing, for impossible perspectives, for mixing the abstract and concrete, for “quibbles” and unfamiliar vocabulary that make your spell check light up. Be sure to use one word you’ve never used before. If you use the sky as a backdrop for some scene or incident, let it be a “luminous vapor” that distracts you and the reader from the action, or takes the place of it, reversing the usual relation between background and foreground. Let your mind and language wander…

Like dots of white on an expansive black sheet, the orbs of light above blinked at me. I lay with Sherry on the blanket, looking up. She tried to catch my attention, but I unhinged my focus from her and instead engaged with the spots in the sky. For what seemed like a quicksand-pace flow of hours, I gazed at the stars as they danced around their apex. Being on a bench in Buffalo rather than somewhere in, perhaps, Greenland, I had to imagine an Aurora Borealis rather than observe one. But, oh, did my imaginary Aurora dance for me among the orbs, ducking here, twisting there, and making her joyful rounds through the creatures of the night sky. She possessed only a nebulous form, but I knew that she was winking at me, flirting with me in an attempt to persuade me to jump into the abyss, the abyss that she had surrendered herself to eons ago. Sherry was a nice girl, I thought, but she was no competition for Aurora, my imaginary sky-lover.

As I watched the stars move and jostle for position in the spaces in close proximity to Aurora, I understood the intense filiopietistic spirit of my native ancestors, those who possessed a closer connection with the land, the earth, the spirits, and, of course, the sky, than I or any of my contemporaries had. Aurora could just as easily be my God as some guy who died in Israel 2,000 years ago; indeed, if Aurora’s purple mist decided to one day send me on a mission to accomplish her night-sky wishes, I would jump to action. But, for now, our love was in the expository phase. I would come to know her even better, perhaps, if I remained in my state for many more impossibly short hours.

*Filiopietistic definition: of or relating to an often excessive veneration of ancestors or tradition (Merriam-Webster)

Wildcard Day Off #1

I have a German test tomorrow and couldn't think of anything to write today!

Week 6, Theme 2

Prompt: Using plain, “ten-center” words, predominantly Anglo-Saxon in origin, write a theme about someone or something you love passionately. Use the tension between strength (and possibly complexity) of feeling and simplicity of expression. Let particularity, precision, understatement, and implication convey emotional power. Do honor Hemingway and Strunk and White.

When I see you over in the corner, you glow. The light from the top of the room hits your white surface and shows no spot. In front of me sit your brothers and sisters and cousins, who want me to work and sweat by tending to them. But you—you will not let me. You care for me like my mother does when I am sick. You want to save me. You hold your place in your corner long after your role there has ended, all for me.

You came to where you are by way of heat and water. I know that someone took care of you so that you could be clean; this makes your rescue of me all the more meaningful. Everyone who came together to make you pure has made my life easier. It is not hard to clean you: one must scrape you, place you in line, pour white crystals, and then press buttons. No, I will not debate that to do this is easy, but to do nothing is even easier.

So, when my mother tells me, “Don’t bother putting your dishes in the dishwasher, there are clean ones still in there,” I praise you and your fight against your coming return to the cupboard. I splash my potatoes and throw my Brussels sprout leaves all over the spotty surface of my plate. And when I finish my food, I place the dirty plate in the sink rather than the dishwasher. If I am lucky, the soiled plate will soon become like you.

Week 6, Theme 1

Prompt: Style involves a way of doing or saying things, which stands apart from the thing that is done or said, and which present the self---the stylist---in a particular light. There are all sorts of styles, and anything we do or say is likely to convey some specific sense of style. Write a theme about a specific style you admire or, at least, find interesting and worthy of definition and reflection. It could be a way of writing, of dressing, of singing, of cooking, of dancing, or skiing. You can focus on one person’s way of doing that thing (in which case it will be a development of last weeks “people” themes) or your focus can be general. Be aware of the style your theme itself conveys. It can be a version of the style you choose as your subject, or it may rub against your subject.

David does dirty. I have spent many a night lying in bed above him wondering how Davie dirtball manages to keep a steady boyfriend while being so…grimy. On days when I feel like not shaving, I still shave‑--propriety must be upkept. On months when David doesn’t feel like shaving, he allows his orange beard to curl and twist in any way it wants---David prefers unkempt. David groans that Americans shower too much, that we scrub and rub at our skin twice a day, morning and night, only to lead to dryness. David showers three, perhaps four, times per week; this notwithstanding his daily running and weight-lifting sessions.

David reeks. Sometimes, I will be in the middle of dousing his bed and closet and harmonica in Febreeze when he will walk in. So I cover him in Febreeze too. Our relationship benefits both: I get to feel clean, and he gets to feel that he is the antithesis of my neuroticism. His grungy ways have even come to amuse me, but only after Febreeze and I have rid my life of his most rank smells.

Last summer, I went to visit Smelly in his home in London. To my shock (and pleasure), his house was spotless, his mother and sisters charming ladies, and his father an upstanding gentleman—the gin and tonic-sipping kind. This vision was of course interrupted by the disaster that was David’s childhood bedroom. I thought: maybe instead of “doing dirty,” David just does the opposite of the people around him. Perhaps if David studied abroad for a semester in somewhere dirty, like Washington, D.C., he would come back to Yale cleaner than I.

Week 5, Theme 5

Prompt: Reflect for a few minutes on your own character, jotting down traits and remembering incidents in which you came to know yourself better. Then create a fictional person who is like you in some significant ways. Place this person in a brief narrative that brings out his or her character. Use third-person narration.

Pierce sits at the bottom of the steps in the sun-streaked foyer. Streams of light filter in through the stained glass windows, green and red and pretty.

“Pierce!” Grandma calls from the kitchen. It is time for lunch.

Pierce stares at his shoes. The shoes are white and red and threatening. The two laces for each foot jut out and curl and twist with no set direction. The eight metal-lined holes on each shoe through which the laces are thread glint in the light. The shoes challenge Pierce. Pierce glares at the shoes, but his stare is no match for that of the eight-eyed monsters.

Grandma enters the foyer with a plate of macaroni and cheese and a glass of milk. “Oh, Pierce. You can try after lunch.” Pierce does not look up.

The fumes of the mac and cheese wafting around his head, Pierce frames his battle against the shoes. Not being able to tie one’s shoes - this is one of those things that they kick you out of pre-school for. And if you can’t get through pre-school then you can’t get a job. And if you can’t get a job you disappoint. In a delirious state, Pierce tears at the laces in a fury of activity – crossing them, knotting them, pulling them.

Half an hour after Grandma brought the mac and cheese, she walks in with a cookie for Pierce. As she turns to face the stairs, she sees a smiling Pierce, the look of contentment at a hard-won victory on his face.

All four of the laces of his two shoes were laced together in a single neat, strong knot. Pierce – a shoe-tying innovator.