Week 3, Theme 5

Prompt: Go back to the “sentence-sounds” you collected in the first assignment and write a narrative in which one or more of them appear.

“Hey, you there? I’m in one of the bedrooms waiting for you.”

The text message bathed the middle of my phone’s screen in a translucent aqua blue. It was a hot night, and pools of warm water remaining from an evening shower stagnated on the asphalt. My feet, suctioned to rubber Havaianas sandals, went where they wanted to. They frolicked from one pool to the other, dirtying themselves and their rubber vessels. They danced into both the puddles reflecting the bright waxing moon and those sheathed from the light by the tall buildings stretching up either side of the canyon. Leaping from water to more water, my toes whistled in delight at their simultaneous cleansing and sullying.

384 East Eighty-Fourth Street. My brown-streaked feet met the shocked glare of the doorman, red-breasted and boot-clad. After my initially hostile exchange with him, the rubber carried my feet to the elevator bank marked “penthouse.” Feeling heavier as the elevator rose, my feet shot toward the top of the canyon by way of the gold-plated floor.

All of the feet in the penthouse were sheathed in oxfords or stilettos. The advance of my rubbery, grimy appendages precipitated a general parting in the crowd of polished leather and sometimes, shiny plastic. The sight of my toes went rejected in the averted eyes of the middle-aged women and men in the acceptable shoes. Undeterred, my feet advanced in a diagonal line from the elevator bank.

Entering the door and seeing the sandy floor with Christina sitting, smiling, in the middle, my toes sighed in relief. They shed themselves of the rubber and, sinking into the sand, moved toward her.

Week 3, Theme 4

Prompt: a) Create an exchange between two people in which one or the other misunderstands what is said on the basis of sound-confusions or punning. Or, b) Describe a scene by creating a particular aural environment, using (but sparingly) onomatopoeia.

Mrs. Primmel sighed and paced in front of the whiteboard lodged on a wall in the library. Sometimes she wondered why she took the time with these coddled delinquents. If it were up to them they would use these pages as toilet paper, or, have a book-shredding party set to the tune of Nirvana or whatever God-awful clanging they were obsessed with these days. As communications and public relations manager of the Worcester Library Cooperative Learning Association Foundation, Mrs. Primmel was in charge of wasting the district’s fine resources on exposing these students, if you deign to call them that, to a real research environment. This was the third visit of a class from P.S. 139 over on Briarbush Ave., and Mrs. Primmel had already had enough of their intellectual lethargy for a lifetime. She approached a problem child from previous sessions, ready for a confrontation in defense of academia.

Arriving at the table, Mrs. Primmel decided to just launch into it: “Sabine, I’ve read your previous essay on, ahem, Frederick the Great’s clothing choices, and would like to discuss it with you.”

Sabine, who had been drawing black and blue hearts on her forearm skin, looked up. “Good morning to you too, Mrs. Primmel,” she said with a mischievous smile burbling up from her teeth and mouth.

Unfazed, the old librarian went on, “Ahem. Aside from the fact that the King’s clothing choices were at best only tangentially related to his reign, you also failed completely to cite any of your sources. Did you even open any of the books at the library sessions?”

Sabine looked around her, confused but not letting the old bag on to it. She had sighted all of her sources; she only had to rotate her stare the library to see that. She gazed up at the intimidating, frumpy form standing over her and asked to be excused.

Week 3, Theme 3

Prompt: With Joyce’s Portrait or Alvarez’s “My English” as models, write a theme about an early experience of sound. You might choose an experience in which you were perhaps unsure what the sound meant or what made it, and had to interpret the sense of it on the basis of sound alone. You might choose a song, or the sound of a particular word, or someone’s speech. The sound you choose need not be linguistic---it can be anything that you heard and paid attention to---but you will want to suggest nonetheless what it was saying to you, the sense you made of it, in short, and how that sense was conveyed through sound. Decide what point of view you wish to take---that of your younger self, your self today, or some combination. Use your heightened sense of sound in this theme to bring other senses, also, to the foreground. As you reflect on sound, think about the sound of your own writing.

Grandma and I waited in our place in line at the bank. My eyes, in line with the middle of her skirt, stretched up toward her face as she continued to look forward. A tug from above on my fingers let me know it was time to see the bank lady. As Grandma sorted through papers on the wooden desk, the lady looked at me and asked if I wanted a lollipop. Oh, did I. “Hein!” The woman gave me a bemused stare and then laughed to my grandmother, “That’s so cute! Your grandson speaks German!” Grandma did not have the same smile on her face. As we walked out of the bank a while later, she looked down at me and said “Patrick, ‘hein’ is not a word, ok?” “Hein,” I replied. Frustrated, she strapped me into my car seat and drove me home.

And so it was that hein and I entered into a torrid affair. Whether at birthday parties or bakeries or at the pediatrician, hein would ring out loudly and proudly from my little mouth. The relationship was confusing to my family, especially my mother, who came to think that she had at some point errantly pronounced a word in my presence only to spark this dreadful tryst. She even considered delaying enrolling me in Pre-K because of hein, among other reasons (food issues, attention problems, rejection of clothing standards…). But, alas. Happy affairs are, well, happy, only when they’re secret. My sister Meghan, who had found my linguistic-rebel-without-a-cause air amusing, had a hand in ending it. As she played with me on the slide, she beckoned me toward her at the bottom. “Want to slide down, Patrick?” From my mouth, mid-slide came, “Hein!” Meghan started. “Patrick, does ‘hein’ mean ‘yes?’”

“Hein!”

Week 3, Theme 2

Prompt: Spoken language is, uh, filled with “fillers”: words like “like”---or simply sounds like “uh”---that serve complex functions in like ordinary discourse, or something. They exist, you know, somewhere between language and physical gesture. Take time to listen carefully to other people’s speech and to your own. Note how and when fillers enter, and with, um, what effects. Then create a dialogue or a monologue in which fillers are used suggestively (you can simply present the dialogue or monologue on its own, or provide a narrative frame). The point is not to make fun of a particular form of speech or speaker (although you may have fun with this assignment), but to highlight and make intelligent use of dimensions of speech that we seldom think about or acknowledge, even while we register and respond to them. Think of this as a chance to notice and explore the expressive noise that is part of speech.

1: Well Joe is now single. So I was like should I friend him and she was like “yeah go for it” whatever, but then, in like the middle of the class, she turns to me and is like “Victor, you practice safe sex, right? I just want to know because AIDS is really prevalent in the gay male community. I just want you to be safe.”

2: Sherry! As, for like, for real?

1: And I didn’t talk to her for the rest of the class.

2: Wait was she like joking? Is that part of the improv thing she does?

1: No, not at all. Not at all! She was like being such a jerk!

2: Uh, she has AIDS, probably.

1: Literally I didn’t know what to say. She’s a piece of shit.

2: There’s like, remember…

1: I got so mad at her.

2: YUHG or whatever did…remember there’s that article about STDs or whatever, and the health guy said he couldn’t say how many people here had AIDS? And he said, it was like, around 10 or 20.

1: That’s a lot.

2: That’s not that much.

1: Well, it’s not like, ehh, it’s like, you can only get AIDS from like…and it’s like, whatever. Like, Sherry’s such a dolt…I hate her.

2: Wait Sherry said that?

1: Yeah!

2: I can’t believe she’s for real.

1: It’s like continuing her thing of always acting like she knows better…

2: Watch her get AIDS…

1: So then I was like oh does Joe think I’m cute, and she was like “yeah, definitely, but I also told him you’re crazy” or whatever and I was like “seriously?”

2: Wait she told him that? That’s for him to decide…or, like, find out. But that’s like, half the joy of a relationship.

1: I know right?

(pause)

2: Ok, I, uh, have to do reading.

1: Yeah I’m gonna nap.

(pause)

2: But Joe is short! He’s shorter than Sherry!

1: No, he’s not!

Week 3, Theme 1

Prompt: Write a page of “sentence-sounds,” like the examples Robert Frost gives in his letter to John Bartlett. Don’t try to connect them all, although you may use two or three in a brief exchange. Try carrying a notebook to get down instances you hear in the course of a day. Ideally, your “sentence-sounds” should suggest the contexts they come from, so that your reader can imagine the situations in which they are spoken. Experiment with different contexts: informal exchanges between friends or strangers; speech on the radio or tv, or in the classroom, or some other public setting; the phone. Can text messages constitute “sentence-sounds”? No question. How about artificial voices? Maybe, but maybe not by Frost’s definition. Try to express the implied “postures” and “tones” of your speakers.

Hi hot stuff. I’m in my room reading. I’m hopeful that the word investment really isn’t meaning more stimulus spending and a bigger government here in Washington. Yesterday, my headphones weren’t working, so I put them in the washer with my clothes and now I can hear everything! The last time I came here, I had spicy sake that set my tongue on fire – how do I get that again? What's sad is that Ford used to own Jaguar so that was on the list of cars that my family was allowed to drive...no longer. I’m so bored, look at me – I’m making my bed. On January 1^st, Jansen finished building a replica of the Ohio State football stadium, called the Horseshoe; it is made entirely of legos, a million of them. Oh my god, that email thread is so funny! I just had the best meeting ever with an SOM professor about Hong Kong this summer; he deals with profits and stuff so it will be interesting to incorporate a totally different perspective into my interview. Yes. If we don’t align the text on this thing, we’re gonna look like amateurs here. My god, it’s the new me! I’m so excited for this reading. How many drinks is binge drinking – fifteen? The crunchy rolls are my favorites. I don’t care. Achtung auf der Wortstellung. We’re making an exception for you – you can have it again right now. We were competitive! I’m working on an orgo problem set haha. Ready when you are! Tonight, 9:30. Was a disaster - almost went to bed with Ramya – you? That’s a first for me. Hey you there? I’m in one of the bedrooms waiting for you.

Goals for the semester

1. To eliminate (or reduce) the "blank page feeling" that comes with starting a new assignment and not knowing how to just start writing a narrative or an outline.

2. To improve stylistically with my writing - by this I mean to say that I'd like to be able to be more subtle while still conveying equal meaning, to more artfully use techniques such as metaphor, and to make my writing more lyrically pleasing.

3. To develop meaningful and memorable characters in my themes - ones that are believable and not cliched.

That's all I can think of right now! I might add more later as I continue to mull this.

Quotation #2

"Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees."

-Fortune cookie message from Ivy Noodle sometime this weekend

Week 2, Theme 5

Prompt: Free theme that engages in some way with things. Or, revision of one of last week’s things in such a way as to add objects to a scene you described, or elaborate their role in the theme.

I was in the packages office. Alone. The packages, the racks, the light, and me. The light: late afternoon rays of sun, a mix of yellow and orange peculiar to this time of day and season, found their way into the metal-barred slits lining the top of the room that masqueraded as windows.

I stopped. Where was Beatrice? If the UPS dragon lady found me here after not specifically instructing me by email to come, I would be at the receiving end of a diatribe about “ghost packages” laced with epithets about privileged Yale students.

Ghost packages. I looked around the racks, surveying the room. The light bounced off the plastic covering the names and addresses of the students whom the ghosts sought. Was an address even necessary? The labels should read “To: UPS office. For: eternity.”

A Swiss army knife. In my hand. I knew my responsibility; I tore open all of the ghosts that I could get my hands on. Turns out Yale students didn’t get many interesting shipments: mostly books about economics and The North Face jackets.

A small package. Addressed to me. It fell on my hand as I was snatching at another pair of Burberry boots. To: Anton Marakov. A package for me! I was confused – the dragon lady hadn’t messaged me. The size of a watch case, the nondescript box looked like all the others. As I tore open its tape, there flew pieces of dust from the cracks. I opened the flap; dust flew out unimpeded, eliminating the room and obliterating me. I screamed…

When I awoke to my phone’s alarm, I checked my inbox. I had an email from Beatrice, subject “YOUR PACKAGE HAS ARRIVED.” Maybe my economics textbook had come.

Week 2, Theme 4

Prompt: a) The list as a means of analysis. Compose a shopping list, or a catalogue of objects, or use a found list of some kind. Then explain the list’s implications, exploring the meaning of the objects listed and the logic of the order of the list. Use Didion as a model if you wish. Or, b) Create an imaginary Google search. Enjoy the incongruities. What does the resulting list suggest about the structure of things in our world? Pay attention to the ways in which language organizes objects and defines their meaning for us.

For Jacob:

· Formula

· Diapers

· Carrot mush

· Pacifier

· Bib

· Highchair

· Action figure

· Picture book

For Chris:

· Filet Mingon

· Stella Artois

· Cheesecake

· Gillette Mach-7 Ultra-Close Shave Razor

· Browns football jersey

· GQ

For Kerri:

· Slimfast

· Prevention

Kerri wandered through the supercenter, looking down the aisles. Produce, bread, meat, frozen, sweets, cleaning, toys. Three weeks ago she was in bed, recovering from her C-section. Chris had been doing the shopping for a while. But September had arrived, and with that football had started – Chris and Jacob had ceased to emerge from the den since then. It was for the best; in those three weeks Kerri had not shrunk from the hippopotamus she had become, but had instead embraced the transformation. It was time for her to retake the helm of the household and herself.

The morning after she returned to the house, Chris had served Kerri heavy cream and toast for breakfast. Kerri had slathered the cream on the bread and devoured it. Now, look at her waddling in front of the cheese aisle. And what of Jacob? Well, that monster – no, angel – that angel had refused to suckle her of the fat she had been storing for him those nine months. She retched as she threw the formula mix into her cart.

Horror upon horrors: Nancy, president of the coop board, approached as Kerri stood in a trance before the ice cream freezer. Her eyes on Stella and the cheesecake, Nancy said, “Kerri! You look, well, healthy.”

Minutes later, Kerri lashed herself over the embarrassment. This wasn’t working. But, how could she continue to justify her ballooned existence? Might as well get pregnant, pop another one out, and try again after that.

Week 2, Theme 3

Prompt: Write a narrative that has the form of a list embedded in it. It might be the story of a particular day, or a series of errands or some other simple actions or events. Suggest but do not explain the implications of the order of the items in your “list.” Push the sequence toward a surprising conclusion that illuminates the list’s secret coherence---or possibly that undermines the expectations you have built up.


Had Jess sat down at her desk in 1998 rather than 2008, it would have been colored with pale yellow sticky notes, climbing up the walls in the corner of the room until they mirrored the ivy tangles outside her window. Instead, one piece of clean, perfect aluminum sat alone on her spotless desktop, gleaming in the late afternoon light. With some trepidation, Jess opened her laptop only to see virtual post-its, with the same yellow pallor as those real-life monsters, spill everywhere on her screen.

Professor Reisenbach had emailed her two – no, now three – days ago asking her to rewrite the footnotes of her paper. A snippet of the message with the words “very disappointed” bolded and underlined glared at Jess from the first note on the screen.

Jess’ flatmate had four days ago left a real-life post-it on her door reminding Jess that it was her turn to buy groceries for the week. Jess had taken the note, transcribed it into a pixilated sticky, and then shredded the paper promptly.

Mother had called yesterday, and with the help of the voicemail Jess had typed a note about old Dottie’s operation. It was now thirty-four hours since Dottie had left surgery; a patient might be sleeping thirty-four hours after operation, no? Best not to call and disturb her.

This morning Seth had tried to stop by the house. Upon finding the door locked, he had slipped a long note with something to the tune of “let’s get back together” under her door. Jess had bullet-pointed the letter in a sticky to summarize for herself and then shredded.

Jess’ iPhone lit up and diverted her attention from the screen. It was Marcie; she wanted to get takeout margaritas. Looking once more at the screen, Jess navigated to write a new note. “Get to all of this tomorrow. Really this time.”

Week 2, Theme 2

Prompt: Narrate an incident in which an object appears at the beginning, ideally in the first sentence, and then assumes a critical function by the end of the theme. Think Chekhov. (Decide whether or not the gun, so to speak, should go off.)


The desk that sat near the rear of the oval-shaped room supported a red telephone, some notes with scribbling, a fountain pen and holder, and a silver half-dollar coin. Across the coin’s surface strode Lady Liberty toward the rising sun, IN GOD WE TRUST behind her and the year 1941 etched underneath her feet. Sitting down at the desk, Harry caught a glint from the coin in the corner of his eye and reached for it. He thought: Liberty provided a fine example; soon we would all follow her to the land of the rising sun with open arms rather than open fire.

Harry’s musings were interrupted as a group of suits blustered in through the side door. The gray lines of their clothing were replicated in the dark bags under their eyes, and three or four sported unshaven shadows of faces, indecorous in any time other than this. Their untamed hair replicated, if unintentionally, Lady Liberty’s as it swayed in the warm wind etched into the coin.

“It’s time, sir.” Hearing this, Harry swung around in his chair and looked the suit in the center, Byrnes, in the eye and nodded, almost imperceptibly. Still in Harry’s hand, Liberty twirled from one finger to another, dancing furiously over his skin. In a flash, Harry flicked her up to the ceiling. As she reached the apex of her journey and started to turn over and over herself, she faced woodwork and then windows then Harry then desk then Byrnes then couches and then woodwork again. She landed on the mahogany of Harry’s desk looking toward the ceiling. Heads. “Bomb.” The single word slipped through Harry’s teeth as he swung back toward the window.

And thus, one last time, Lady Liberty opened fire on the land of the rising sun.

Week 2, Theme 1

Prompt: This theme is a still life: a painting---in words---of a set of objects. The arrangement can be found or composed. Bring these things to life with precise description. Describe rather than analyze (or rather, analyze by describing). Do not use the first person. You don’t have to be Cézanne. Remember Dylan Thomas’s used furniture store.


The puke green and off-white tiled wall framed a scene in which water droplets stuck to every surface. Like worker ants amassing, the droplets had gathered together on the kickboards, on the tiles, and on the garish red and white plastic pieces of the beached lane line. Some combined to form rivulets, tiny highways that careened down every slanted surface, furiously and mindlessly moving water from one wet place to another.

The lane line was heaped in a tangled pile, splaying out of the floor and wall on which it lay. The snaking undulations that the rope-like material wound in its disarray recalled Medusa’s devilish hair, except for the coloring; the red and white and red and white and red red red, at the end, plastic pieces that surrounded the rope lent the snakes a certain candy-cane quality that obviated any threat they could pose.

The sides of the plastic pile were buried in the alternating yellow and blue of kickboards. Some were propped up while some lay flat, suctioned to the slick floor by shared droplets and rivulets of the chlorinated water. The kickboards had a gummy surface. Their material was difficult to place: not quite plastic, but not of earthen materials either. Perhaps prehistoric swimmers had taken play dough-like material and formed it into the bullet-shaped sheet of gummy, stuck it over the fire to harden for a few hours, and then started kicking exercises.

Reigning on top of the pile of amiable snakes was a single, half-deflated, fading yellow-green inner tube. Why this object had reached the zenith of the scene could not be known; perhaps the misfit materials had crowned it their leader in the frantic confusion surrounding their exit from Mother Pool, the only place where they could ever fit.

Quotation #1

"Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress."

-Albert Camus, The Plague, Vintage Press, pg. 73

Week 1, Theme 5

Prompt: Return either to the scene in assignment 1 or to the scene in assignment 3 and use it as the setting for an incident. How is the scene affected by what happens? How does the scene affect what happens?

Note: This piece connects to that from Week 1, Theme 3.

Thirteen periods of the tightly clad men alternating holding a stick and striking a ball with the tight men of the other color occurred until one could detect a recognizable break. A tribal chant about “rooting” and “home teams” was projected in an announcement, and the worshipers rose from their seats. Most of the deacons-in-training lifted their arms above their head or rubbed their large middle regions in apparent satisfaction. A different group of similarly clad men sitting on the edge of the enclosure remained still. Their dispositions conveyed a certain sense of mourning. One of the men wore, along with a headdress that had two red foot pieces depicted on it, a cloth on his mid-section that read “Ford Motor Company Metalworkers Legion #13.” Another of the men wore a headdress with similar language and styling. Many rows of benches down, directly below where the Metal Men sat, was located a Special Room containing worshipers clad in blue neck-fabric. The men held up transparent, hollow cylinders with a dark liquid in it and then quaffed the material in unison. The ritual conveyed the high spirits of the men. On a surface behind the men sat stacks of thin grayish material with words. Many of the words were related to the Company of the Metal Men. One sentence with large letters read “Ford cuts 10,000 jobs; Returns to profitability.” Rows above, as the Post-Thirteenth Sticking Period Activity Break concluded, the ashen faces of the Metal Men turned again towards the ritual as it resumed. I felt their alienation, and wanted them to forget.

Week 1, Theme 4

Prompt: Start with a place-name. It may be a place you know, or one you have never visited, like Proust's Parma. In either case, it should be a place-name you find evocative. This assignment is about the power of the name: you are writing about the names as much as, or possible more than, the place. Think about how you encountered the name, and how it became resonant for you. You make make the name prominent in your theme, or barely mention it.

“Unsere Familie kommt aus Baden-Baden. Vergess es nie!”¹

Beverly Bertha Thompson is the type of woman who will never let you forget anything in which she believes. Dress to impress the people around you, not to match them. Always wash your hands after going to the bathroom or touching raw meat. It is not chicken noodle soup but vegetable beef soup, mostly the beef, which will cure a nasty cold. And, above all, we are of good German stock and are bound make Baden-Baden proud. I have always admired my grandmother’s bedrock opinions, but despite her hearty German endorsement I have remained weary of my ancestral Heimstadt. The name of the town rolls off Beverly’s tongue as easily as an admonition for an un-tucked shirt; throughout my youth I had heard it muttered thousands of times in connection with all things holy. But the black-and-white morality taught to young children is limited to a discussion of good and bad – thus by age four the name Baden-Baden was for me, the best efforts of Bev notwithstanding, closely connected to images of strange men offering candy to vulnerable children, pets getting run over by cars, and Republicans. That the town is located on the edge of the ominous-sounding Schwarzwald² did not help. As I learned from my grandmother-mandated Deutsch lessons that the town’s name literally meant “Bath-Bath,” a once-is-too-many word for a dirt-loving rascal like me, my distrust for this suspicious place only deepened. Beverly, always tolerant if not approving of her first grandchild’s whims, has accepted my superstitions toward the town that is for her the wellspring of all things gut but has made me promise one thing: that I visit before I make a final judgment. I have made a promise to myself as well: to stop in Munich to pick up some good beer to calm my nerves before my trip through the Black Forest to the town of strange men and tax-cutters.

¹ “Our family comes from Baden-Baden. Never forget it!”
² Black Forest

Week 1, Theme 3

Prompt: Describe a sacred place. It need not be, although it can be, a place designated as sacred by custom and purpose, and you may or may not view it as sacred yourself.

Worshippers filtered in streams into the hollow enclosure. There was a flurry of activity in preparation for the seasonal ritual in the wedge-shaped opening that was the centerpiece of the space. The opening had both curved and straight edges, and was surrounded by green walls of various height, each decorated with symbols. Men, presumably deacons, clad in the red and blue holy colors, moved in the opening with rakes to arrange dirt into careful patterns essential for the proper progression of the ritual. Brightly, tightly clad men, the participants in the ritual, appeared occasionally in the opening for preparatory activities. Disembodied announcements, most dedicated to the two gods Goods and Services, echoed through the space to remind worshippers of their spiritual obligations for the day. The announcements fell on mostly deaf ears – those in attendance, accustomed to the style and even wording of most of the messages, continued with their own pre-ritual preparations. Most consumed a pungent liquid that elevated them to a state of euphoria. Those sitting toward the edges of the space on long benches looked like deacons-in-training, judging by the flamboyant colors and headdresses they wore to match the men tending dirt in the opening. Other worshippers sat behind transparent slates in Special Rooms – these men more often than not had tied multicolored pieces of fabric around their necks. The connection of the neck-fabric men to the ritual was less clear, but their attendance did appear to generate a strong fraternity among them. Presently a general hush was followed by howls from the benches as the tightly clad men took to the opening en masse. A louder announcement followed: “Fans, welcome YOUR 2010 Boston Red Sox. Sponsored by Pepsi.”

Week 1, Theme 2

Prompt: Adopt a roving point of view, like the one Dickens creates with his fog, and make a moving picture. You will need to decide how to establish the point of view. What does moving allow you to see that standing still doesn't? What does it keep you from seeing?

“I've got a mule, her name is Sal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal
She's a good old worker and a good old pal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal
We've hauled some barges in our day
filled with lumber, coal and hay
and we know every inch of the way from
Albany to Buffalo.” 1

The two mules tugging my barge huffed under the weight attached to their collars. The going had been slow for a beautiful day like this, but it was hot and I imagined that Billy and Jack were loath to break a sweat. Thus the shipment would be late to Buffalo, but the beating sun and my growing reverie allowed me to forget momentarily any profit motives. As we lowered in the lock at Lancaster, I noticed a heifer gazing in the direction of my barge. Her eyes seemed to follow mine as the water level fell. The stare telegraphed a life of pastoral monotony that rendered even my barge going down the lock an event to be scrutinized. Catching myself, I thought: perhaps it was the other way around – my so-called-life on the barge was so boring that I’d started to think for animals. After the lock, the landscape began to shift as we approached Buffalo’s harbor. As we passed the grain silos and machine workshops, the mules were just as likely to step over discarded tin cans as they were to tread on dirt. The bright sun became obscured by the cloud of soot thrown up in the air in the course of the fledgling city’s industrial activities, and the rank smell of the dirty water drew me back from my musings. As we lowered in the last lock, in the heart of downtown, a pair of eyes again followed my barge. This time the weathered stare came from a little boy in rags. I tried to follow his gaze as I had imagined I had done with the cow, but our eyes did not meet. I looked to my side and realized that he was fixated upon my satchel. I took from it an apple and threw it to him as we floated away.

Notes:
1. Excerpted from “Low Bridge,” (1915) by Thomas S. Allen

Week 1, Theme 1

Prompt: Set a scene in which something will happen---or in which something has happened (or, just as likely, both). But don't say what has happened or what will: allow that to be implied as part of the scene you evoke. If you like, choose a scene that entails some deliberate preparation: a meal, a ceremony (official and institutional or improvised and individual), a game, a job. The type of scene, actual or imagined, is up to you. From what point of view is it seen? Who sees it? What are the limits of that point of view?

November rays of sun peeked in through my window as I rotated the slats of the venetian blinds, light blue with spots of white and navy paint from the many careless paintings of my childhood room. The patches of snow in the front yard stood as reminders of the “unseasonably” cold weather that, contrary to its name, seemed to hit Evanston every November. The oak-lined street, dappled in leaf-pattered shade every summer, was now fully soaked by the November rays save the outlines of barren branches stretching across the black pavement, like crevasses interrupting the snowy landscape stretching below my window. It was Tuesday. Trash day. Hulking blue plastic garbage cans, CITY OF EVANSTON COLLECTION SERVICES blazed across every surface, were strewn to and fro in front of each house. The ones directly in front of me covered three or four slats worth of blind-space, while those at the far end of the street, closer to Walgreens, were closer to blue pixels surrounded by the white, brown, and rarely green patches of ground. Some of the bins were placed neatly in front of the square houses, but most were on their sides, their thin plastic hinges open, with forgotten pieces of cardboard or spent bubble wrap spilling out to the damp ground. Their wheels rotated when the strong, cold winds blew by. Looking at the scene, I would not have been surprised to see tumbleweed blow down the street, treading over the crevasses as it made its way through the spent Winter’s landscape. In front of a few of the houses sat small, half-filled royal blue recycling bins, waiting their turn for collection. I closed the slats of the blinds imagining the smaller affair that was soon to follow – the recycling trucks always came a few hours after the trash men.