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.

Quotation #4

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."

Week 5, Theme 4

Prompt: You’re a reporter. Take time to talk to someone you would like to write about in the form of a brief profile. This is best done in person---so that you can incorporate a physical sense of the person you’re describing, and perhaps elements of the setting in which you talk. But it’s also possible to work from a phone interview or email. It will be useful to have a specific topic in mind in advance---how, for example, this person came to live where she does, or to do work where he does. You may cast the theme as a monologue, intersperse quotation, or use indirect discourse. This time, think back to your “Voice/s” themes.

Grant sits in a red chair at the end of the converted shuffleboard table, sipping a hot chocolate. In front of him is the Valentine’s Day issue of a local paper; the stains from his burrito streak speckled brown lines through the hearts on the page. Tall, dark-haired, and classically handsome, he sits slumped and unassuming.

“There are a few reasons why I’m writing an autobiography. First, I think that my life is more interesting than that of most other people. I mean, I’m sure that many people think this, but I really do believe it. The second reason is that I want to publish a book is so that other people think that I have profound thoughts, that I live a varied life. I don’t want people to think that I am just focused on my career and nothing else. Finally, I think that the topic of the book is something that will actually help people when they read it.

“Writing a book isn’t easy. I first tried to write this when I was ten years old, right after I had finished with the cancer thing, but I wasn’t able to go through with it. I think one of the things I learned from that was that before I could write about the experience I first needed to reject it and to relegate it to the back of my mind. Also, I now know that the interesting aspects of my disease have only revealed themselves later in life. And, obviously, as a ten year old I did not have the writing skills I needed to do this. Do I think I’ll finish it? No. But writing this isn’t just about the process, either.”

It’s time for Grant’s train to Princeton. Prompted for a summary, he thinks for a while, staring at the gray outside the panel window.

“Okay, I’ve thought of a way to describe my book in one ten-word sentence – it has a semicolon. You don’t overcome cancer; it haunts you throughout your life. Nobody thinks this now, but that’s what people need to know.”

Week 5, Theme 3

Prompt: Metaphor or synecdoche. This time you might, again, work with someone you know or you might invent a character. In any case, concentrate on an object, event, or place that tells us something important about your subject. Let your reader learn about this person through the lens you choose. Think back to your “Things” themes. What can things tell us about a person?

Bagel and lox brunch. Sunny Sunday. Pierson College.

I sit with a few friends and discuss Saturday night, homework, life, the normal things. Tyler was so drunk he didn’t recognize Robert – ha ha! The economics problem set for tomorrow is so hard. As Catherine gets up to refill her orange juice, we hear the sound of empty plastic hitting wood. Catherine, so shocked that she had dropped her glass, sits down and tells us to look right.

Sarah. At the door to the dining hall. In the green shirt.

Crisis mode. Two semesters ago, this shirt had destroyed Sarah. Flannel-y, forest green, button-up, and way too big, Sarah’s shirt had attached itself to her at brunches, in classes, even going out. Sure, the girl had been having a hard semester: bad grades, no idea what her major was, uninteresting prospects in the boy department. She had probably just wanted to wear a comfy shirt to weather her frazzled existence. We were, no, are convinced, though, that once the shirt went on it amplified rather than ameliorated all of its owners problems. Gone was preppy Sarah doused in J. Crew pastels, here was sad Sarah smothered in…hiker chic? Eventually, we decided to stage an intervention: barging into her bedroom, we hid the shirt under her bed and told her that she just had to start faking it till she made it by dressing normally. This was the first re-appearance of the forest green monster since then.

Sarah. Walking over to us. Act natural.

“Hey guys! SUCH a gorgeous day. Let’s eat outside!”

“Hey, Sarah. Um…?”

So much for acting natural. Sarah looks down.

“Right, the shirt. I thought that it would be…edgy for me to try this out again? You know, like old times?”

Sarah – edgy? No way. Time for another intervention. Off with the shirt!

Week 5, Theme 2

Prompt: Biography. Use personal history to bring a person to life, and to comment on character and its sources. You may choose someone you know as a subject, or you can choose someone you don’t know personally but whom you are interested in. Consider bringing in documentary evidence of some kind---quotation, a photograph, a recording.

Mary’s parents divorced before she moved out of the high chair. Her mother moved to Buffalo, while her father, a hospital administrator, chose to stay in what Mary would later call the “boondocks wasteland of Upstate New York.” Her father quickly remarried, while her mother, scarred by the rocky marriage, did not. This being the fifties, her father easily gained sole custody.

And so Mary grew up as a migrant, moving year-to-year following her father’s promotions to different psychiatric hospitals. Often her house would just be outside the barbed wire of the facility that her father managed; at night, she would hear the screams of the patients. Her father, consumed by his job, exerted little influence on Mary’s home life. She was left with her stepmother, Jean, whom Mary invariably described as “evil.” As soon as Mary was old enough to do her own laundry, Jean would make her walk one mile up and down the hill to the Laundromat in town, even though there was a washer and dryer in her house. Jean always mocked Mary’s fire-red hair – her favorite insult was “clumsy carrot-top.”

When it came time for college, Mary applied to Cortland State, miles and miles away from Jean and her father and the screams. She got in, but her father prevailed upon her to attend the local community college; Mary transferred to Cortland after two years. Upon graduation, she felt the pull of the big city – Buffalo, that is – and soon found a job as a speech therapist. She met a guy, and soon there was another kid in a high chair – me.

Week 4, Theme 5

Prompt: a) Free theme, including the possibility of a revision of an earlier theme in which you give special attention to voice or dialogue. Or b), write a scene of dialogue in which two people meet after some event, known to both, has altered their relations to each other.

Note: I am writing on choice (b) for this prompt.

The October morning haze of the New England town was just lifting as Pierce entered Jack’s Coffee. A local haunt for as long as anyone could remember, Jack’s had been the only independent coffee seller to bat off the advance of Starbucks, mainly because of an innovative filtering process that just made the coffee taste oh so good. Pierce held “office hours” of sorts every morning at Jack’s, where anyone in the town who wanted to talk to the young professor would know where to find him. As he sat down with his vanilla steamer, Jack heard the door slam behind him. Isabelle had come to office hours.

“Isabelle! What a…surprise to see you here.” Pierce knew that Isabelle would normally be working at this time. Pierce knew everything about Isabelle.

“Yeah, I, uh, wanted to talk to you.” Isabelle looked at the floor after she had approached Pierce’s bench in the corner of the dim shop.

“Listen, I…really enjoyed your party on Saturday. You and, uh, Pete must be so happy. A baby boy on the way!” Pierce’s sunken eyes betrayed his best effort at a cheery tone.

“Thank you for coming. I think…Pete really appreciated your gift. He mentioned to me later…that it was nice meeting you.” Isabelle’s eyes were still fixed on the floor, picking out and tracing the lines in the old wood.

“You know, we could…” Pierce knew they couldn’t.

“You know we can’t. It’s not, uh, about us anymore.” Isabelle’s fingers traced lines over her stomach.

Pierce nodded and looked at the table. Before his head rose, he heard the door of Jack’s slam again.

Week 4, Theme 4

Prompt: Write a scene of dialogue in which two speakers rub up against each other. There may be some aggression or erotic excitement or both. Possible topics: confrontation, courtship, catechism, denunciation, cross-examination. Experiment with stichomythia.

A darkened room. A shaded light hangs in the center, illuminating a small circle of the wooden floor with its sodium yellow glare. Two men are present; SMITH stands, pacing, while ADAM sits on a straight-backed chair.

Smith: Don’t play games with me now.

Adam: I’m telling you what happened.

Smith: Where-

Adam: I fucking told you already.

Smith: Well I don’t believe you.

Adam: I didn’t ask you to.

Smith: I’m asking you to tell the truth.

Adam: I always tell the truth.

Smith: Now, there-

Adam: The thing about Sheila’s cat doesn’t count.

Smith: You forgot to feed the thing and it died-

Adam: And instead I told Shelia it got run over. Yeah, I know. Shut up.

Smith: Well-

Adam: I don’t lie about important things, okay?

SMITH moves over to where ADAM sits and places his arm around ADAM’S shoulder.

Smith: Adi, I just want to know where you were.

Adam: I...can’t-

Smith: Exactly! Because you-

SMITH shifts his grip, now holding ADAM’S neck with one hand and ADAM’S arms against his back with the other. ADAM lets out a gasp and coughs.

Smith: You little slut.

Adam: You’re crazy, you-

Smith: Say it to me. What am I? Apparently not enough for you.

Adam: You’re-

Smith: What!

Adam: You’re gonna be sorry.

ADAM frees his arm and reaches into his coat pocket. He pulls out a small velvet box, flips it open with his finger, revealing a gold Gucci tie clip.

Smith: Oh! Uh-

Adam: I guess - Happy Valentines Day, crazy.

Smith: I-

ADAM stops SMITH from speaking with a peck on the lips. SMITH kicks chair from under ADAM and they fall in embrace on a bed, away from the circle of light.

Fade to black.

Week 4, Theme 3

Prompt: Describe a dream you’ve had that included a resonant voice or conversation. Of course you may embellish, reconfigure, disguise, and if necessary invent all or any elements of your dream.

I opened my eyes and stared at the uneven ceiling of my room. Fine woodwork is one of the underappreciated aspects of Yale; whoever had decided to cover the pipes that would otherwise run across my ceiling with nice, rectangular boxes of drywall was a friend of mine. As I lay in bed, I pulled the comforter high up on my neck and bathed its edge with my warm saliva. The warmth.

I started – it was August. New Haven in August – humid, sticky. Ikea level 6 warmth duck feather down comforter – should not be necessary. Why was my room so chilly. Why was I so cold.

Remembering to protect myself from the ice air with my feathery friend, I shifted from my back to my stomach. Then, as the breaths going into my lungs led my body to rise fall rise fall, I scanned the wall in front of me. Next to my desk sat the window with eighteen frosty panes – the type usually used in bathrooms. Eighteen – seventeen! In the middle of the window one pane had unfrosted itself – this was not possible – and through the newly transparent glass a pair of eyes gazed at me.

As I made out the form of a man’s head in the window, my eyes began to water and pinch pinch, my nose hurt. I got up, ready to run to my door, on the other side of the room. My two feet fell to a floor that was, however, spinning. Each step made for the door brought me closer to the man. I cried as I marched unwillingly toward his glare.

Darkness.

Week 4, Theme 2

Prompt: Create a conversation in which there is one primary speaker and a group of other people responding, perhaps in the manner of a chorus, or call and response. It can be a formal, public occasion of some kind, but it could just as easily be an informal one in which the roles of speaker and audience are not already constituted and people may be jostling for position. How do the other speakers affect the primary one? Think about the play (the dynamic interaction) of the voices of the various speakers you create.

“Do you have enough food?” Bubba strained into the walkie-talkie to listen to the miners’ response.

“This food sucks.” “I hate granola bars.” “Can we have rice crispy treats?” The differing accents of the miners communicated in one tone their frustrations on Day 44 of their imprisonment underground.

Bubba wiped his brow and walked a short distance to the covered tent. Assembled there were women of all ages and a few children, even at this late hour. The families. The women called to Bubba as he pulled back the tent flap. “Do they have enough food?”

“Yes…yes. They seem like they’re holding out fine.” Bubba looked at the dirt floor of the tent. His budget could never stand sustained rice crispy treat purchases.

“Ask them if they need anything to entertain themselves.” As the redheaded girl near the back of the tent chimed in with this, the other women murmured in agreement.

Bubba waddled over to the opening in the ground where a small hole had been drilled to the miners’ lair for communication and supplies transfer. He wheezed into the walkie-talkie, “They want to know if you guys have enough to do down there.”

“Playboy!” “I want Maxim!” “Send Pamela Anderson!”

Bubba took slow steps back to the tent. As he faced the women, he only found the energy to bring up two words. “They’re okay.” He collapsed on his cot and fell fast asleep. As his head hit the pillow, a corner of an old Playboy poked out from under his mattress.

Quotation #3

"As the carcass was dragged off, the glass eyes stared at her with the humble reproach of things that are thrown away, that are being annulled. A few minutes later what remained of Bendicó was flung into a corner of the courtyard visited every day by the dustman. During the flight down front he window his form recomposed itself for an instant; in the air one could have seen dancing a quadruped with long whiskers, and its right foreleg seemed to be raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust."

-"The Leopard" by Guisseppe di Lampedusa. Pantheon. pg. 279