A Walk to Remember

Tonight was my official last class at Flying Object. This week's prompt was a continuation of an in class exercise we did last week. We were to take the first page of a piece of fiction and continue on with it. Only three of us completed the assignment this week. One of my classmates chose a Eudora Welty story while the other picked The Dog of the South by Charles Portis.

And I... I also went the southern route. But as they chose fine, upstanding writers, I selected what I might least likely want to read. As I saw it, I was to put my spin on someone else's beginning. Perhaps it was serendipitous that I saw the collection of softcover Nicholas Sparks novels in the lunch room at work. I grabbed at the lot and came up with A Walk to Remember, a book which I believe was made into a movie starring Mandy Moore. If that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is.

And so it begins:

In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the coast near Morehead City, was a place like many other small southern towns. It was the kind of place where the humidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefoot from April through October beneath oak trees draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their cars whenever they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to the Carolinas. For many of the people there, fishing...

And which I continued:

...was both recreation and livelihood. The innumerable salt marshes and brackish creeks provided an abundance of shrimp and crab and in late Fall, six dead prostitutes as well.

The first one was found by Billy Swanson, out in his father’s motorboat without permission. He was fishing for reds and came across the body, or what was left of it, of a young, blonde girl hung up in the mangroves where the high tide had left her. The crabs had done a pretty good job on the body, but her dress was pulled up over her head and Billy lingered, at once repulsed at her condition and aroused by her nakedness.

Sheriff Thompson was eating a chicken salad sandwich from Pearl’s when Billy flung open the door.

“I found a dead lady out near Wells’ Creek,” Billy said.

The Sheriff put down the sandwich and looked at the boy, with his obvious erection, and decided that he’d have to keep an eye on him in the future.

“Don’t fool around, son,” said the Sheriff.

“Honest, Sheriff, she’s dead and the crabs have been eatin’ on her.”

“Boy, if you’re havin’ me on, I’m gonna nail your hide to a tree.”

Billy told the Sheriff where he’d seen the body and convinced him that the story was real. He grabbed Billy by the arm and dragged him out to his car, a black Dodge, and threw him in the front seat. He got on the radio and called his deputy, who’d been hiding behind the Piggly Wiggly sign on highway 21 catching speeders all morning.

“John, get your ass down to the dock at the marina. Billy Swanson found a body out in the marsh.”

“Sure thing, Sheriff,” crackled Deputy Paul’s voice over the radio.

After Billy showed them where the body was and they’d returned to town, Sheriff Thompson called the County Medical Examiner’s office and arranged a larger boat to go retrieve the body. There was no doubt she was dead, but the marks around her neck indicated she’d been strangled. It didn’t take the Medical Examiner to prove that. They brought the body back to the morgue and put her in the cooler until they could do the autopsy.

That was the beginning. Over the next several months, they found more bodies in the marsh. The first one turned out to be Charlene Walsh, who worked in Savannah. Ten days later a shrimp boat crew found the body of another girl, blonde, but not enough left of her to identify. Three days later an oysterman found the third, another prostitute from Savannah, named Jenny Shoemaker. That was when they decided they had a serial killer on their hands.

I'm fairly certain that I went in a different direction than Mr. Sparks. I don't believe there are dead hookers floating in any of his other books, but I haven't read Message in a Bottle, so I could be mistaken.

Rachel gave us all books and I received, in a cosmic joke sort of way that would only mean something to me, a book called Letters to Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth. Fucking hilarious, universe... I see what you did there.

As I said, it is my official last class, but there will be one more meeting, on Monday, November 21st from 5:30 - 7:30 where we will be giving readings of our work. So if you'd like to come out and see me possibly (undoubtedly) make an ass out of myself in public, feel free. The address is 42 West Street, Hadley, MA.

Our Past Future

I need your help. I really, really need your help.

I'm working on a project that involves creating some objects representative of the future that we thought we'd be living now, when seen through the eyes of 1930-1960's society. I don't want to go into a lot of detail, because I want to keep it slightly secret agent, but I need some assistance getting started and this is where you can help.

The first thing I need... Drills. Old electric drills. A lot of them. They don't have to work. What I had in mind were these:

I also need old vacuum tubes.

If you see something like this in your basement and you want to get rid of it, or you're out someplace like an antique store, yard sale or flea market, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! You'll be a part of making a cool art project.

email me at bugman82773atgmail.com or text me at 413.271.4041 and let me know what you have or where you saw it. I will greatly appreciate it.

Work Stories

This week Rachel gave us a prompt to write eight stories, each comprised of only fifty words. 

I haven't really felt like writing. As easy as all of the other assignments have been, this one was difficult. It wasn't a difficult assignment, but the act of sitting down and writing was hard. There's so much going on right now and none of it seems like it's turning out right. Trying to be creative under these circumstances is nearly impossible. I don't play the tortured artist well.

So if writing is going to be work, I decided to make them all about work. Some are real... some are fiction... some are a mix. All I know is that I want to fling my macbook into the river right now so I'm not reminded of things.

I'm tired. I'm glad I don't write about my personal life in my blog any more. My life doesn't need any more editing.

Work Stories

Tim pulled on the gorilla suit and mask in the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror through the eye holes and wondered how much longer the “Going Out of Business Sale” would continue. Feeling his hot breath reflected at him, he picked up his sign and went to work.

A lady came up to the front desk and told me her friend hurt her finger in a deck chair at the pool. She had her hand wrapped in a towel and when she unwrapped it, the tip of her index finger was snapped off at the first knuckle.

Everything Ted touched turned to shit. We asked him to help unload the bronze sculpture from the truck. When we placed it, the pedestal collapsed like a house of cards. The rest of us just looked at one another and knew we could only blame ourselves for bringing him along.

The sun beat down on me and I picked up the sports bottle and took a large swallow. The Seagram’s Seven and Seven was the only thing that made calling BINGO on the pool deck tolerable. Their vacations to the beach were my misery, but they never discovered my secret.

There is a certain look to back roads in the south, where asphalt fades to a unique light grey. By day you count remains of the previous night’s armadillo casualties and note the occasional snake or gopher turtle. Once he’d even seen an alligator belly up in the hot sun.

“You’ve got a long row to hoe.” doesn’t make sense to anyone that has never had to do it. He gripped the rough wooden handle, conscious of the blisters forming at the crook of his thumb. From this vantage, bent over at the waist, the foreshortened rows stretched on forever.

Mornings before work he’d go for a swim. He wasn’t a strong swimmer, but he’d continue through the waves until they became slow swells and he couldn’t make out people on the beach. And on some mornings, it was all he could do not to swim to the rising sun.

Dad chopped that tree all day. It was a huge sweetgum, with big branches that liked to snap off in a windstorm. He cut it with an axe, as though a chainsaw was an insult to either him or the tree. With a final squeal of protest, it crashed down.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy _ _th Birthday, Mom!


Best mom EVAR!

Welpa

The prompt for this week was a little unusual. Rachel gave us a choice of two options. The first was to use the same word in each sentence of the exercise. The second was to make up a word and write about it, but never overtly define it.

I took a while to decide which direction I wanted to go. I was leaning toward the first option, but the idea of making up a word fascinated me. I read an article about the unit of measurement called the smoot today, and that made the decision for me. It seems that one Oliver R. Smoot, while performing a fraternity pledge prank at MIT in 1958, used the length of his prone body as a measuring stick. He and his fellow pledges proceeded to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge by picking him up and laying him down across the entire span. Each smoot was duly marked on the bridge. The marks are repainted to this day by MIT students. Incidentally, the smoot is 5'7" or 1.7018 meters and the bridge measures 364.4 smoots. MIT grads are wont to utilize the smoot anywhere they can and the smoot is a unit of measurement for both Google Calculator and Google Earth.

With the smoot as my guide, I decided to invent a word. I thought about making up a unit of length or time, but neither seemed to work for me. Then I recalled something that Superbomba Lucy Diamond-Philips posted on Facebook one time. It was just two words, but brought back all sorts of memories and the kind of universal good feeling that I ascribe to very few things in this world.

So I had the definition, just not the word. I wrote the entire piece out, but struggled for a while on the word. I translated the English into several languages, looking for words that looked authentic. I finally found something that I modified a bit and it sounded... real... to me. It had the soft, round, earthy sound that I was looking for. I had welpa, a word to describe something everyone knows, something that is fleeting, but unmistakable, something that stays with you your entire life.

Welpa

    “Some people can’t stand it, you know,” Stacey said. “Welpa. Some people hate it.”

    “Nobody I know,” he said. “It reminds me of the beginning of things.”

    “I hate welpa.”

    Ben stared at her for a moment. “You don’t like welpa?” he asked.

    There were things about her that he would never understand. In all the time that he’d known her, she’d never once shown any sense of nostalgia... any evidence that she’d ever lost something or someone she’d cared for.

    “It’s filthy and gross. It makes me want to vomit,” she said.

    It was plain to see that she was telling the truth. She did hate welpa. This wasn’t just her being contrary or trying to pick a fight. She did that at times. It was usually late at night when he was too tired to think. They would go around and around, Stacey growing more angry and Ben losing steam, but knowing that he couldn’t actually sleep until the disagreement had been resolved.

    Stacey sat back on the bench and folded her arms over her chest. Ben sat quietly beside her, unsure of what to say.

    They’d had this dog, Angie, when Ben was a kid. She’d been named after the Rolling Stones song, which was strange, because he never recalled his parents actually listening to the Stones. Angie got pregnant by some dog roaming the neighborhood and had three puppies. The first two were stillborn, but the third came out healthy. Angie nursed that pup and he grew fat.

On Sunday afternoon, Ben cleaned the box in the corner of the porch where Angie kept the yet unnamed pup. He ripped up the week’s newspapers into long strips and used them for bedding. He removed the puppy and lifted him up to his face. Its tongue curled in the shape of a “U” that seemed more natural than anything he’d ever seen. His eyes, just starting to crack open, were blue like the ocean and the ears were just flaps and wrinkles. The welpa enveloped him. He set the pup in a small cardboard box and removed the old newspaper, smeared with puppy poop, and put it in a big plastic garbage bag. He then wiped the floor of the box with a soapy rag and let it dry, before putting the newspaper and puppy back inside.

    Sunday night he came back and found Angie curled up with her legs hanging out of the box and the pup dead on the floor. She had eaten the top of his head, leaving intact the lower jaw and the tongue... the tongue that had been a perfect U, but was now flat.

    Sitting there beside Stacey, he recalled the welpa and the smell of the newspaper and the soap. And he remembered the way Angie jumped up and wagged her tail when she saw him, having already forgotten her pup.

Female Marines in Afghanistan

Via Pictures: A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

As much as I hate the thought of our military being used in "the war on terror", I can't help but hope that an image such as this one make some of the oppressed women in these countries wake up. Seeing a woman not only as an individual, not just chattel that passes from her father to her husband, not someone to be covered up because of male shame, not someone subject to the backward, superstitious nonsense of a misogynistic religion,  but a human being that will carry a rifle and will fight to keep from being any of those things.

Maybe one day there will be an "Arab Spring" of sorts for women and they will stand up and refuse to be treated like this any more.

Jack... in progress.

I'm of two minds posting this piece. It's my workshop piece and rough, but I think the process is just as important and interesting to see. It's an idea that's been running around in my head for a couple of months, but I haven't been able to get it on paper until now. I decided the class was the best place to work on it, as it isn't the kind of writing I normally do. It needs to be fleshed out a bit, but I'm getting down the bones here.

Jack

    The vidscreen pinged and Will slid across the desk to face it. He touched a button on the screen to activate the transmission and a face appeared. It was like looking at a younger version of himself in the mirror.

    “Hi,” he said, “You’re going to be a little disoriented for a while. Don’t worry, it will pass. My name is Will.”

    The face on the screen looked puzzled. “Where am I?” he asked.

    “You’re in a hospital, of sorts.”

    Will had known all along how hard this would be. That’s why they selected a relative to be a part of the awakening process. The ideal match was the grandfather-grandson pairing. What a family member might lack in the psychology department, they made up for with the ability to assist the patient with their sense of identity.

    “Was I in an accident? I can’t remember anything. I can’t even remember my name. It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

    “It’s John, but everyone called... calls you Jack,” replied Will.

    “Jack... yeah. I don’t remember the accident. Was I hurt badly?”

    “It was pretty bad, yes. You were in a hospital for a while,” said Will.

    Jack’s eyes dropped and he looked at his body. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He examined his body for evidence of injury. “I don’t seem hurt.”

    “They fixed you up as best they could.”

    “I feel fine now,” said Jack. “Am I allowed to have visitors?”

    “For now, they want you to remain isolated and keep communication just between us,” replied Will.

    It was then that Jack noticed Will’s eyes. There was a golden ring where the iris would normally be. He started to speak and then halted.

    “My eyes?” asked Will.

    “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ve just never seen anything like them.”

    Will leaned closer to the vidscreen and the golden irises contracted. “It’s early 21st century technology. I had them done when I was about eighteen. They grow them in the lab now. Too much of a hassle to have them replaced now with bioprosthetics. I’ve gotten used to them.
    “Bioprosthetics?” asked Jack.

    “Prosthetics made from human stem cells. It took a long time for the ethical considerations to be worked out. They debated it for years in Congress until it became less of a moral issue,” explained Will.

    Jack paused for a moment. “Did they use bioprosthetics on me?”

    “No. You were a... special case,” said Will.

    “Tell me about the accident.”

    Will knew that this moment was why he had been chosen to do the awakening. He was to deliver the news that could only come from family. “It was a car accident. You were driving home for Christmas and a car lost control going the opposite direction on the interstate. It crossed the median and hit your car.”

    “I remember,” said Jack. “I remember hearing somebody crying. Were there other people in the car?

    Will looked at Jack’s face in the vidscreen, struggling to remember. “Your wife and boy, David were in the car.”

    “Are they ok?” asked Jack, growing frustrated.

    “David was in the car seat and didn’t get hurt. Your wife...” Will swallowed hard. “Your wife, Ann... she didn’t survive.”

    Jack remembered Ann. He recalled her voice, but not what she looked like. “Why the hell can’t I remember?” he yelled at the screen.

    “Like I said, it was a bad accident. You’ll remember more in time,” said Will.

* * *

    The vidscreen pinged and Jack rose from his bed to answer it. He’d still had no visitors. Two meals had been delivered by the small hatch in the wall. He’d taken a wholly unsatisfying shit on what he’d hoped was the toilet. There was no water in the bowl, but there was a button that, when depressed, eliminated his waste with a suction sound like an airplane lavatory. The vidscreen pinged again and he touched the button to answer.  He saw Will’s face, his mouth smiling, but forehead creased with concern. Since their first conversation, he’d begun to recall bits and pieces of his life.

    “Why can’t I see my parents? Why are you the only person I’m allowed to talk to?” asked Jack.

    “Jack, there’s a lot you don’t know... a lot I need to explain to you,” said Will.

    “So start explaining,” demanded Jack.

    “After your accident, something happened. A lot of people died. Most people died.”

    “What do you mean, ‘most’?” asked Jack. “Was there some kind of nuclear thing? Terrorists? No, wait... let me guess. A meteor?”

    “No, Jack. No terrorists... no dirty bombs or meteors. It was germs. And not even bioterroism. It was plain old germs. It boiled down to overuse of antibiotics. There was a superstrain of bacteria that was resistant to antibiotics. There wasn’t much to do but watch people die.”

    “My parents? What about David?” asked Jack.

    “Your father survived and so did David. Your mother wasn’t so lucky.”

    “And you... You survived,” said Jack.

    “Yes. I survived. It affected my heart at the time. They replaced my heart with a continuous flow artificial unit. I don’t have a heartbeat. It was experimental then, but given the circumstances, many people got them. There were unbelievable advances in mechanical and electronic prosthetics. I ended up with an artificial pancreas, cochlear implants, a plastic colon, and replacement knees and hips as well as the eyes. Even my hair isn’t real. There are times when I wonder how much of me is really me.”

    “And I lived,” said Jack.

    “Yes,” said Will. “You did. You were in a coma when it happened.”

    “How do you know so much about me? Are you family?” asked Jack.

    “Yes, I am,” he said. “David was my father.”

* * *

    The vidscreen pinged and Will pressed the button. He had attempted communicating with Jack for two days, but Jack had refused to answer. They had monitored him and noted that he’d not eaten or even risen from his bed.

    Jack had dark rings under his eyes. “There are no mirrors in here,” he said.

    Will knew that the contradictions were starting to pile up in Jack’s mind. It was at this point that there was no script and he was unsure of how to proceed.
    “Why are there no mirrors? And how can I be your grandfather?”

    “Jack... I told you that you were in a coma for a long time, right?” said Will.

    “That doesn’t explain this. I can’t see my face, but I can sure as hell see my body. It isn’t the body of a grandfather. And it certainly isn’t the body of someone who is the grandfather of someone old enough to be someone’s grandfather.” Jack exclaimed.

    “Jack... coma wasn’t exactly the right word. You were in, what they called at the time, a vegetative state. You didn’t respond to stimulus and they were unable to record brain function. But you were special. You weren’t affected by the bacteria. And that made you very valuable scientifically,” said Will.

    “So they experimented on me?”

    “Yes... and no,” replied Will.

    “Well, did they or didn’t they?”

    “Do you remember how I said that there was a debate that lasted for years in Congress? It was finally solved by you, or rather, your case. When the bacteria began killing people, they decided to move those deemed “expendable” out of the hospitals. It was the early stages of the epidemic and they assumed that you would just die anyway. But before they could move you out, the bacteria swept through the hospital and you survived. They didn’t know why, but you did, so they took you to a research facility in Boston to study you.’

    “That still doesn’t explain things,” said Jack.

    “They discovered that you had a genetic mutation that had allowed you to survive. But the problem was, in order to isolate the mutation and be able to synthesize it... you might not survive the process. It went all the way to the Supreme Court until finally, a resolution was found. They digitized you.”

    “What do you mean, they digitized me? How is that possible?” asked Jack.

    “It wasn’t, or rather, they weren’t sure until they tried,” replied Will. The morality of utilizing someone who was in a vegetative state, that legally could be taken off life support and allowed to die, was a question that was only answered by making an electronic copy of your brain and storing it on a computer. David refused to let them use your body, so it became a matter of national security and they essentially commandeered your body for science. But you were saved here. They reconciled their decision to terminate your biological body by making an artificial intelligence proxy of you. You could live on.”

    Will turned off the vidscreen and went back to bed.
* * *

    Over the next few days, Jack refused to eat or answer the vidscreen. The first day, he flung the food against the wall. The second, he let it remain in the wall hatch. He didn’t really need to eat, nor was the food real. But the act of eating was part of the illusion. It was required to maintain that illusion. Everything, the room, the food, the airplane lavatory toilet, even Jack, were electrons flitting around in a server somewhere.

    Will watched on, dismayed.

    “Again?” asked the doctor?

    “Yes, although he came a lot farther this time.”

    “Give it another day,” said the doctor. “If he doesn’t respond or eat...”

    “I know,” said Will. “I know.”

    Jack stayed in bed. Will watched over the next day as his grandfather became hazy around the edges, like a dead fish that has been left in a fishtank. He wondered what his father would think of this. If, given this knowledge, he would rather have just let them strip mine him for his DNA and leave a shell behind. A shell certainly, but one that could be buried and returned to the earth. Will pulled up the other vidscreen. He called up the program “Jack in the Box” and hit a few keys.

Cancel       Restart       Delete

    He tapped the screen and it went dark. His golden irises opened wide and his heart continued it’s steady hum. And somewhere in the large server, the electrons rearranged themselves.

* * *

    The vidscreen pinged and Will slid across the desk to face it. He touched a button on the screen to activate the transmission and a face appeared. It was like looking at a younger version of himself in the mirror.

    “Hi,” he said, “You’re going to be a little disoriented for a while. Don’t worry, it will pass. My name is Will.”
   

The Turn

Last week's class went well. It's a good mix of people and everybody seems to have a fair amount of talent and education. I didn't make an ass of myself, either... at least as far as I can tell. I read my assignment and everybody laughed in the right places and not at me. Success!

In class we reviewed a piece by Robert Coover in a recent issue of the New Yorker that was a pretty challenging piece to follow. It was definitely nothing close to a linear narrative... it felt kind of like being between two mirrors facing each other and seeing yourself reflected to infinity, except every third reflection was a stranger.

This week's assignment was even more difficult than last. Rachel gave us the task of writing something that, at some point, turns. There is a flashback, tangent... something... that leads us away from the main narrative, and then comes back again. Or at least, that's how I interpreted her direction. And this was supposed to be in one page, which I failed miserably doing. It's hard enough for me to get a cohesive idea going in one page, much less put some kind of departure in it.

So I did my best... and somehow it involved food again. The last three pieces I've written have featured food prominently. Perhaps I have a problem.

Pecan Pie

    The waitress stopped in front of the booth and whipped out her pen and order pad. “Know what you’d like?” she asked.

    “Just coffee,” said Jeff.

    “And you, sugar?”

    “I’ll have a coffee too, and a slice of pie,” said Andy.

    “Sure. We got apple, cherry, peach, pecan, (she pronounced it PEE-can) blueberry, rhub...”

    “The pecan, (he pronounced it pe-CAHN)” Andy replied, and the waitress squinted at him a second and wrote on her pad. He wasn’t sure if she was irritated at his interruption or the way he pronounced it. She ripped off their order and stuffed the rest of the pad in her apron and the pen behind her ear.

    “I don’t believe she likes you,” said Jeff. “I try not to annoy people with access to my food when I can’t see them.”

    “All the same, it’s pe-CAHN where I’m from.”

    Then Andy found himself sitting at a card table with his two cousins from Michigan and a kid from church that they’d brought home because they were Christians and didn’t like to see people go without on holidays. A plate sat before him with a bit of dry, white meat, (mom had given one leg to the kid from church and the other to Uncle George), a small mound of mashed potatoes and a larger mound of stuffing. Stuck over on the side was a tiny portion of canned cranberries, which he never ate, but was put on his plate anyway. They were on the porch and it was hot. A fan spun noncommittally above them. The unusually warm weather made the typically non-seasonal Florida Thanksgiving even less so.

    The kid from church had already eaten all the meat off the bone and was gnawing at the cartilage on the end. In fact, everything was gone from the plate. Even the cranberries were gone, with only a pink smear to indicate they had ever been there. He didn’t say much, and Andy didn’t want to start a conversation with him.

    Andy ate the stuffing and mashed potatoes and enough turkey that he knew he wouldn’t get hollered at for wasting food while people were starving in Armenia. The cranberries remained. The kid from church kept his head down and tried not to make eye contact with the Andy or his cousins.

    “Mom... I’m done. Can I have some pie?”

    Andy’s mom brought over four plates and set them in front of the kids. There were three slices of pumpkin and one pecan, which she placed in front of the kid from church.
    “There was only one slice of pecan left, so it will go to our guest” she said, smiling. “He told me how much he just loves pecan pie.”

    The kid from church smiled and thanked her. Andy hated him a little for getting the pie, which he’d wanted, and for eating the cranberries, which he didn’t.

    Then Andy picked up his fork and cut off the point of his pecan pie, 1200 miles and thirty years away from that hot Thanksgiving at the kids’ table on Grandma’s porch.

    “How’s the pie, sugar?” said the waitress, pulling her hair back behind her ear.

    “It’s great... just like mom’s,” Andy replied.

    “Get you boys anything else?”

    “No,” they replied in unison.

    “Here’s the check then,” she said, placing the bill on the table with a smiley face and her name, “Pearl”, written in large, looping script.

    A streetlight flicked on low and slowly brightened as it warmed up and illuminated the snow which had just begun falling outside.

    “I think she’s forgiven you,” said Jeff.

Creative Endeavors

I haven't written much in a long, long time. I did a small piece, entitled Suckered, for Meat for Tea: The Valley Review. It wasn't exactly a short story... more of a vignette. Suckered was a little heavy handed and the dialogue was... well, the dialogue was not its strong point. Dialogue is something I've always struggled to write. So I decided to make it almost all dialogue as an exercise... for the most part, just a couple speaking over dinner. You can find it in Vol. 5, Issue 2 if you're really interested.

I recently decided to do something to spur me to write more. I enrolled in a creative writing workshop at Flying Object in Hadley, MA with Rachel B. Glaser. I figured if I paid money, that I would be compelled to actually write something. It will be good to get some feedback from other writers... good, honest feedback.

That said, I'm a little concerned as well. I'm concerned that my writing won't be that good. I'm concerned I'll be "that guy" in the class that is hopelessly clueless and the other students mentally groan over when having to read or hear his work.

I've decided to follow the class here on the blog. If anything, it will just give me some material and you something to laugh at, whether intended or not, I suppose.

The first writing assignment was "Bad Writing". Well HO-leee hell. That should be a no-brainer. Except when you actually try to write badly... on purpose... it's not that easy.

I took a couple of days to think about it after getting the assignment. It was to be no more than a page, in any form. I tried to think about what makes writing bad. For me, I hate repetition of words or phrases. I try to avoid writing which adds nothing to the story. Run on sentences and bad metaphor are always a sure sign of terrible prose. Finally, a single image came into my mind... that of a sunset. I figured I would start with a cliché and would make it as over the top as I could. I would take all of those things that I normally avoid and lay it on thick... like peanut butter... and jelly.

So here it is:

The sunset looked like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Not the outside, but the inside, once it’s been squished together and then pulled apart again. It met the ocean and was reflected in its imperfect mirror. Being low tide, the air smelled of dead, salty things from the ocean.

“I love walking on the beach at sunset,” she said.

“I know. That’s what you said in your online profile,” he grinned.

He loved the way her lips moved when she talked. They were the first thing he noticed about her. Well, actually the second, but in his defense, she was wearing a rather low cut blouse.

There was an electricity in the air. He could feel the sparks between them. It was like humming electric lines or his old Lionel train set that was always short circuiting and leaving scorch marks in the carpet of his room growing up. Mom used to always yell at him for that.

“Stop leaving scorch marks on the carpet in your room!” she’d yell.

But Andrea didn’t yell like his mother, and his mother didn’t particularly look like her and never wore low cut blouses, which tended to reassure him that there was nothing Oedipal about his interest at all.

They walked in silence for a while, neither of them saying anything. It was nice. They walked a bit on the sand and then they walked a bit in the water, which lapped their feet, like a puppy with sweaty feet. Not that puppies’ feet sweat. Neither puppies nor dogs sweat. That’s why they pant, because they can’t sweat. But puppies will sometimes lick your feet when you take your socks off and they are sweaty. I mean, your feet, not the socks. The socks are sweaty too, but the puppies don’t lick the socks, they lick your feet. They sometimes do eat socks, though. Probably because they are sweaty. The water was nice lapping at their feet and not at all ticklish like a puppy licking your feet.

“I love the way the waves lap at your feet when you walk in the water,” she said.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” he laughed.

She smiled at him. Her smile reminded him of his mother. Wait. No it didn’t. That would be weird. No, it was his sister’s smile that it reminded him of and for a moment a frown crossed his face as he wondered which was worse; Andrea reminding him of his mother or his sister. His sister’s hair was just about the same color auburn as Andrea’s, although he was pretty certain that his sister’s color came from a bottle.

“You know what the sky reminds me of?” asked Andrea?

“No, what?”

“A peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Not the sandwich exactly, but when you pull it apart and everything is all squished together.”

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

"There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth; remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them."

If we consider Henry Flagler, the railroad tycoon and real estate developer, as the father of Florida, Marjory Stoneman Douglas must surely be her mother. Where Flagler sought to subdue Florida and civilize her, Douglas protected and nurtured her. She fought Big Sugar and the Big Cypress Jetport. Her book, The Everglades: River of Grass, changed the perception of many Floridians about the Everglades from being a useless swamp to that of the literal and metaphorical heart of the state.

She was seen by many, mostly those intent on using Florida for their own financial gain, as a troublemaker... an old woman with nothing better to do than throw a monkey wrench into their plans. As the population of south Florida grew, the Army Corps of Engineers sought to drain flood prone areas. Douglas was often the lone voice of dissent, speaking up on behalf of the Everglades, whose voice was the croak of bullfrogs, the bellow of gators and the scolding of the red winged blackbirds. Developers, the Army Corps and politicians don't speak their languages, so she translated.

Mrs. Douglas died in 1998 at the age of 108. Without her, the Everglades would most likely be many more thousand square miles of ticky-tacky homes and strip malls. One could not ask for a better mother.

Opening Doors, Reprise

Over the past year I've come to this blog several times with the intention of writing. Each time i would find the dust thicker and more cobwebs in the corners. I would read back a bit, remembering posts that I'd deleted, and close without writing anything.

At first I stopped writing because I couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't depressing as hell. I'd gone through a divorce and then a breakup with the Rebound Girl. I lost close friends. Then, when things started improving, I didn't want to write. I was afraid that if I wrote about my life, that would just fuck things up. I didn't want anyone to see me in that shape again. It became the elephant in the room. The Rebound's face still resided in the "Followers" box and it bothered me to the point that I emailed her and asked if she would remove it.

It just didn't seem like home any more. Or maybe that was just an excuse. I didn't want the blog to be an open window on my life again.

I started an anonymous blog, but couldn't find the motivation to write there either. It languished with a few posts and I orphaned it.

So I've come back. I'm not sure what this will turn out to be or the direction it may take. I may not even continue here, but I've promised myself to do more writing. I recently completed a short piece for Meat for Tea that will be published in the next issue. I'm hoping to take a creative writing course at Flying Object in Hadley, MA this summer.

It's good to be back... and don't lurk. I need some feedback to tell me what's working and what isn't.

Thanks,

J