Day 63.

Quest Story
We had to pull four things out of a bag: two characters, an object, and a setting, and make it into a quest with yknow traditional dramatic structure. And stuff!

Characters: Younger brother; Retail manager
Object: A beat up guitar
Setting: Rural community
It took Jimi Hendrix twenty years to reach the stereo in the bedroom of a small house in Middleton, Tennessee. Sam Jones did not care about how many years; he was playing wild air guitar and singing like a banshee, howling until he forgot the words and had to adlib shrieks.
His brother was trying to sleep on that particular Saturday morning, so he couldn't appreciate Sam's efforts to be more unpredictable in movement than anyone had ever been. Sam gyrated. Sam headbanged. Sam laid back and pretended he was stoned, though he didn't quite know what that meant, because he was seven.
" Hendrix didn't get famous without his Fender Strat. Go get a real guitar," his brother mumbled. "And then play it somewhere else."
"A Flender Trat?" Sam was breathless with wonder. His brother said something muffled that could have been "you freak." Sam crept around, excavating all the change from the crannies of his room, then his parent's room, then the living room couch, which was especially fruitful. As he was gathering the coins into his shirt, his mom stood behind him looking—well, looking like a mom.
"Hi mom," Sam quavered. "Just being an archeologist." She smiled.
"Find any bones?" He held up a wishbone he'd found under one of the sofa cushions.
"Ewww! Go throw that out!"
Sam figured it was time to go before she got up the energy to clean. He put all his pennies and all his nickels and all his dimes and all his quarters in a big jar (dumping out the oil and vegetables that had been in there before) and started walking the long, dusty path to town and the town's only music store.
"Flender Trat," he repeated to himself, "flender trap, flendner trap, slender trap, slender trap." He was pretty sure he had it right. Almost.
He reached up to open the door of the music store. It tinkled as he walked in, drawing the attention of the store manager.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"I would like Jimi Hendrix's slender trap," Sam said, practiced from rehearsing on the way over.
"Excuse me?" The retail manager, Albert, had not been trained on dealing with children. His general policy was to lean over and smile at them until they spoke coherently. In fact, it was partly why his wife had divorced him. Albert leaned and smiled.
"I would like Jimi Hendrix's slender trap, please." Sam held up his heavy, still oily jar of money. Albert's smile became painful. Sam tried again.
"Please, do you have the slender trap guitar? The one that Jimi Hendrix used? Thank you." It was as polite as he could manage. Albert's smile reminded him of the cat in Alice in Wonderland. Then Albert's face lit up.
"A Fender Strat? You mean a Strat" He felt like a miracle worker.
"Yes. A slender trap."
"Young man, I'm guessing you don't have a thousand dollars?"
"I have a billion pennies."
"I'm not sure that's quite true."
"It is."
Albert looked around. The store was completely empty, aside from the one guy who permanently sat at the in-store drum set, staring woefully at the cymbals and the toms.
"How can you not have a Fender Trap?"
"We do, bu—" Albert stopped himself. He was having a moment. Inside his head, it was 1969 and he was sitting in his dark bedroom, hearing his crappy radio blast Hendrix at full volume.
Sam Jones was staring around the store. Drumset Guy was so pleased to have someone watch him he tried a cymbal crash. Albert turned.
"Drumset G—I mean Fred?"
"Yeah man, what's up?"
"Do you have a guitar you don't want anymore?"
"I mean sure, I guess. It's at Debbie's house though." Drumset Guy shuddered but put down the sticks. "Debbie is my violent ex-wife. Alright, let's bail." He swung his backpack in a giant arc, landing on his shoulder. "Albert, come on, man!"
Albert checked the store again. No one. "O-okay, I guess. Where's your car?"
"Don't have one. Girl dropped me off here."
"Well what are we going to do with--." Albert gestured to Sam.
"Bring him!"
"Is that even vaguely lega—"
Sam realized they were talking about him. "I'm coming with you guys!" He ran out to the parking lot. "SHOTGUN!" he yelled, and jumped in the back. Albert and Drumset guy stared at each other.
"Uh kid that's not really how shotgun works…"
"Hey does he have his seatbelt on?" Drumset Guy asked.
"Do you have your seatbelt on?" Albert had to ask back.
"Maybe."
Albert started driving.
"Okay right now left. You missed it. That's okay. Make a left up here—oh you missed that one too. Uhhhh just turn around."
"I can't turn around, there's no U-turns on roads this small."
"Dude, it's just grass on the sides. You're in a car."
"Yeah well."
Sam piped up. "Will Debbie have a Fender Strat?"
"If she doesn't eat me first kid, I will give you the Fender Strat I inherited from my grandpa. I'm a drummer anyway."
Albert fell silent and then tried a heroic wheel wrenching that put the car diagonal on the bumpy dirt road. Ten minutes later, they were at Debbie's house, ringing the doorbell triumphantly. Debbie answered the door, surveyed all three of them, and punched Drumset Guy in the gut.
"And just what do you think you're doing here at my house at ten in the morning? You think you can just show up for a fucking tea party, hmmmmm?"
Drumset Guy winced. "Debbie, please, there's children!"
Debbie whacked him across the arm this time. "Oh, you and this deadbeat clerk? Yeah, children all right. No consideration, no manners, both of you raised in a barn and conceived on a tractor I'm sure—"
Drumset Guy interrupted, somehow, over the deluge of punches and kicks Debbie was aiming at him. "Debbie I just need the guitar. Can I please, please go get it. Your MAJESTY."
Debbie stared him down, and finally looked at Sam.
"I sold it." A look that might almost be regretful creeps over her face. 'Times were rough."
Drumset Guy swayed. This was below the belt.
"But… then I felt guilty and bought a cheap one."
Drumset Guy opened his mouth and closed it, and opened it again. It was clear he was trying to articulate something, rage or confusion or hurt. But then he closed it, and nodded, and went in to get it. He came out with a guitar scratched, gouged, marked up, but loved, and handed it to Sam.
Debbie watched from the doorway, looking abashed, and Albert felt like a forty-year old male Mother Teresa, miracle worker.
Sam took it as a priest takes a relic, a holy shroud, and then remembered. "Here are my moneys, Drumset Guy."
"My name is Fred," he said, and smiled.

Day 62. inspired by casey's stories about her mom.

ANNE
Do you have all your stuff? Don't forget to look under the seat, because sometimes small things can slide, I lost a pack of floss last month and it's just gone forever now--

JASON
(carrying two heavy suitcases)
I got it, Mom.

ANNE
Okay well do you want to take that pack of waters? It's very easy to get dehydrated in college…. No one looking out for you…

JASON
Yeah, cool, I'll carry it with my third arm. Aw mom, I'll be fine… I'll call a lot….

ANNE
I just wish I could move you in…. I'm so sorry about the timing, honey.

JASON
It's okay mom. Tell you what, I'll go out and get some waters from VONS or something, first thing.

ANNE
Yeah, okay.
(in a deep, mocking voice)
I'm gonna Mom! In a second!

JASON
Harsh. I'm mature now, remember? The whole college thing?

ANNE
I'll call you as soon as the plane lands and we can gossip about your roommates.

JASON
We'll have to use codenames.

ANNE
Pink power ranger and green power range?

JASON
Subtle. I like it. Okay, welll…..

ANNE
Wait! Did you remember to poop?

JASON
Mom, you can't just yell that in public! There are people everywhere!

ANNE
Well maybe some of them forgot to!

JASON
I'm leaving now.

ANNE
Jason. Wait. I need to tell you something.

JASON
Bye Mom!!!

ANNE
JASON I WILL YELL IF NECESSARY

JASON
Okay okay okay. Jesus. What?

ANNE
Did you?

JASON
What?

ANNE
Remember to poop?

JASON
YES I DID, OKAY?

ANNE
Okay, just checking. Wait! One more thing. (pause) I'll miss you, honey.

JASON
You just want to come… I bet you lived it up in your college years, I bet Gramma and Grampa were weeping and you just skipped off to party.

ANNE
Not on my life. Try the other way around! They sent me pictures of their travels and I'd sit in my dorm room and cry.

JASON
Well if you want to get your revenge, I'll understand I guess, but you'll have to ship me loads of tissues.

ANNE
No, you're going to have so much fun!

JASON
(interrupting)
And Slimfast! Geez. You had some fun though right?

ANNE
Lots! I met your dad, for one thing….

JASON
Gross. (pause) I'll miss you too, as soon as you drive away.

ANNE
I love you, Jason.

JASON
Yeah yeah yeah. Did you forget how to drive, or what?

ANNE
(smiling)
You know what, yeah. Can you drive me back home? And then stay there?

JASON
Does that mean the car is mine?

ANNE
No, I would never do that to our neighborhood.

JASON
Hey, I haven't crashed since August!

ANNE
Which was yesterday.

JASON
Bye Mom.

ANNE
Bye, chipmunk!

A couple of girls look over, smiling at the nickname. Anne starts the car. Jason looks back and waves.

day 61.

Maybe In Other Languages

there are words for a
rain that is low-voiced and turns
on itself like this.

DAY 60. partner poem!

This is my collaborative project, read by two people. (Holly's half and Tim's slideshow of hands are missing so I'm putting pictures that Alfred Steiglitz took of Georgia O'Keefe's hands. love love love)

Both: What's up?
Holly: You know
Emily: Like um I guess
H: i mean
E: Maybe
H: Sort of
E: Whatever
H: I don't know
Both: We need to talk
H: What's wrong?
E: Nothing's wrong, I say
and think about how not-false, not-true it is
Right now my cells are grating against each other
My synapses fire wrong
Right now stars, ragged holes in the sky, galaxies of stars are
imploding and exploding at once
like wrapped-up angriness.
And we stand here, mouths moving, nervous wolf smiles,
laughing because not laughing would involve fetal positional crying because
"I understand" can't even begin to apply to us, not humans--
I can't see anything from the dark of my thirty cubic centimeters of skull.
Are you hearing the words behind my words? Seeing the face right behind my eyes?
Everything is wrong, because
we are writers in a world where communication doesn't really happen in words.
It happens in a flash of eyes that means "please don't break any more plates" or a twitch of hands that says
"i will never be able to tell you that i love you"
Words are the wild, hopeful thrashing of a wounded animal--
words are the rocks we hopped to cross rivers when we were young--
but how frequently we fall into the spaces between them.
Spaces full of humans where words cannot go.
We're falling into a gap,
We're so far from all right
that people now believe they need their minds altered to be real,
to speak what they long to speak, even if
the side effects leave them stumbling over their emptiness in the heavy hollow morning.
I'm telling you that even trees talk-- sending chemical signals into the air and letting them drift
never knowing
if they were received right or at all.
When we were babies we communicated through blood.
by flesh connected with our mothers
We're amputees now, all missing pieces, but nothing's wrong--
we can't keep physical and emotional conversations straight,
these connections we confuse, indistinct and painful--
but nothing's wrong.
How are you?

(cue holly: i'm fine & her poem)
(nevermind)
(say it)
(repeat beginning up til "We need to talk")

Day 59. Aniramble.

We were supposed to turn facts about an animal into a story or an impression.... and of course, i'm an aquarium nerd. i'm not sure about this one. it feels random and disconnected. Blah.

Sea hares are basically big, weird sea slugs. Not a lot of people have heard of them, and sea hares definitely haven't heard of us. They smell things, mostly. They slumber and clamber over things, and maybe, if they're in a life-or-death situation, they ink, this dark purple cloud. They have these tiny beady eyes at the base of their "ears," but I get the feeling they're for show by the way sea hares move without regards to anything in their way.
They are the whales of the slug world: up to a foot of squishy, slimeless, sea slug, a purple Flubber. Once a year, they lay eggs like spaghetti, long trailing strands left over everything, like confetti the day after a party. They lay so many because eggs get eaten in a snap in the ocean. Sometimes, if you are patient and put your finger next to kelp they are eating, they will nibble you with their rough tongue.
At the aquarium where I volunteer, there are touch tanks, and the sea hare is my favorite thing to show people. They have no idea what to expect from the giant, purple thing that feels sort of like baby skin. Once, a girl touched it and stayed by the tank for a good fifteen minutes, saying "It likes me petting it. It likes it." People want the sea hare to like them. Once, a small boy stroked its back and said to me, "It feels like free will."
The sea hare is anything you want it to be. It is not quite slug, not quite squid, and a quite a long way from hare. It is a hermaphrodite. It would never question that, it just is. In its amorphous, lazy ways, I have seen it both stretched over its world and curled into a dark ball, where it loses all features. I imagine it is hiding from us, the traits we assign it. It could be. Their brains' nerve cells have very large axons, meandering axons, and I wonder what their thoughts would be if we could understand. They are used for human neurology research, and sometimes I hope that from that they will discover that humans and sea hares are not so different; that their internal shell that guards their organs hides more than guts. But for now, they are oblivious and kind and soft in a stuffed-animal-from-when-you-were-young way.
Ten years ago, there was an unexplained explosion in the sea hare population. They crowded the waters and everywhere you looked, they were there. Until one day, they weren't. They died off in the same way all populations that suddenly explode do.
That year I found a dead sea hare, on a beach in central California. I saw one washed up after the highest tide in months. It was soft and something was wrong; part of its flesh had turned green and spongy. I knew it was dead, but I scooped it up in my hands when my parents weren't looking and carried it into the sea. I like to think that in a tsunami, if all humans washed into the ocean, sea hares would go to our floating bodies and carry us ashore.

Day 58. How I Saved My Brother From the Giants

he plucks up the blade of grass, aligns it with his thumbs and blows. it sounds like an angry elephant. like this, he says. he tells me that this sound will bring the king and queen of the field to us, a secret call.
he teaches me to listen to things. i hear them, i say. coming up behind me, i say, like footsteps, like a heavy rock being set down and picked up again.
good, he says. this is the first step.
do you hear it? i ask.
Always, he says, and swings me around.
hear how the steps are getting faster? see how the ants are scurrying off their path? that means the giants are coming.
the giants? i whisper.
the giants. they put you to sleep and you forget to breathe and you drown in your own spit.
how soon?
very, very soon. his raspy voice stays quiet, calm.
i cling to his sides.
Run run run! he coughs.
we do, we run, we go. into the open field.
perfect, he says, and collapses.
i wait for him to breathe and whistle grass blades, tickling his mouth with them. King and Queen! i yell. the giants have my brother, make them give him back!
my brother opens his eyes and springs up and we whistle and whistle until the grass touches the edge of the sun.

Day 57. Ants.

our assignment was to sit alone, completely alone, for forty-five minutes, and then write for ten. most people wrote deep reflections about childhood, or individuality, or aloneness. I wrote mine on ants. (like a pro)

I'm sitting on the curb of an empty parking lot. I'm thinking that empty parking lots are pretty good metaphors for waste. Unfulfillment. Land razed. Raw ground stamped down with asphalt. Just a waiting wasteland. Life pulls at the edges. The fallen leaves ferment into soil, and there are always ants.
Oh fuck, I just sat on like thirty of them. They are going in a line all along the curb but right where i sat they're scattering, milling around in frenetic circles. I'm their natural disaster. Maybe some of them will question their ant religion.
Fuck. Now I have to move again, for like the sixth time, which makes me feel like one of the frantic ants instead of a person trying to write. I wish i was the kind of person that loved ants. Not even ants in particular-- just everything. The kind of person who can talk about your spirit animal and interconnectedness in the same breath as humming the Lion King. The kind of person who lets bugs scurry over them like raindrops, or snowflakes, like ants are the unavoidable weather of the insect world. But there is currently a prickling sensation all over my body, so, you know, I'm not quite there yet. No matter how much I tell myself that every living thing has value, ants piss me off. They're limitless, for one thing. There are just too many per square inch. Kinda like us. My theory is that ants remind us of us. Our shadows are made of their dark bodies. Here, they seem to say in their winding trails, here is where laws and civilizations have brought us.
Once, I hid an Easter egg in the garage. Bright pink. It didn't get found, not that day anyway. I guess it was a week later that I saw it, cracked and rotting, imprinted with the tire tread of our car. The ants swarmed. They radiated out from the yellow-brown-pink fragments like the egg was a sun, or a god.

Day 56.

Almost done with February!!
Anyway this is a short-short story (under 500 words) for Mike's class that was supposed to be based on an overheard conversation. So... Zoe told me something she overheard him say. I'm a creeper. :D
"Anyways, Tim, the shirtless guy? He loved her for like ten years."


An Overheard Short Short

Tim the shirtless guy wasn't always shirtless. He used to have shirts. They just always got lost, somehow. Partly it was because he was a runner, who didn't need to be bothered with things rubbing in tender places or friction or chafing or worrying about sweat stains. He wore a t-shirt to the trailhead and then tied it to a nearby tree during his run, and was it his fault people treated things left in trees as cosmic gifts?
Somewhere along the line, he just plain ran out of shirts. There were drawbacks: he couldn't go to fancy restaurants, obviously, and his mother fretted over what society would think. But he found that, with enough confidence, he could pretty much go anywhere. Mostly he went to the smoothie place two blocks from home. The first day he'd gone in, the barista nodded at him and said, "You know, we usually don't allow shirtless people in Blend Over."
"I have a shirt on!" he says. She gives him a skeptical look. "Only the worthy can see it." He notices that she's on a footstool, and that her smile threatens to take over her face.
"Ohh," she says, "that shirt." He beams.
He went to the smoothie place every day, at first under the pretense of ordering one of everything. They were his excuse: the strawberry-banana, the mango-peach, the raspberry-lime. But when he tilted the Styrofoam cup to his lips and drank, he tasted the focused look on her face before she looked up and saw him; the practiced, graceful way she moved her stool around so she could see over the counter; the way her hair shone in the sun; the meandering of her hands.
What she never told him was that she had given her two weeks notice the day he came in, and retracted it the day after, when he came in again and looked at her over his drink menu and asked how she was, and waited to hear a real answer. Once he invited her on a run. It was like racing a child. She accused him of trying to lose (she was right) and blamed it on her short stature (she was half-right.) She invented new flavors for him, smoothies without name.
She started drawing again. She scrawled portraits on the ordering pad; she drew on napkins and stared enviously at the artists with their sketchbooks in Blend Over. She went to art college, something she'd been meaning to do for ages, and bought Tim a shirt she decorated herself: it read "I am a Cursed Shirt and if you Steal me you Die a Thousand Fiery Deaths." Sometimes he even wore it. She was gone for a long time.
Tim ran to her college once, but the way their eyes met wasn't the same, and they both agreed, in a stilted, awkward conversation, that it would be better if he kept running.
Tim the shirtless guy loved her for ten years.

Day 55.

To Break Them

Spiderwebs: stronger
than steel because you
only need courage.

Day 54.

(An active monologue about someone who is pissed about something)

It's morning. A woman leans over the recycling bin, about to toss the day's newspaper.

Woman: This is such fucking bullshit. Honestly, look at this. Weather today: Mostly sunny; some afternoon wind. High: 95 Low: 58.
That could be anything. Why don't they just print 'I have no fucking idea and I'm an overpaid, incompetent waste of space who whacks off in the break room instead of doing work.' I would volunteer to have that guy's job. High 95 Low 58. Thanks a lot, now I know exactly what's going on. I could have pulled that out of my tits. Look outside and put some random bullshit like mostly sunny. What if I did that on my job? Oh hey kids, so to work out this calculus problem we're just going to stare at it and guess answers. 72? Five thousand? Equally valid! No, I'm not overreacting. You know these kids are expected to know exactly what they're going to do in life? But no one expects a weatherman to know anything. What do you mean meteorology is a precise science? It's not about--No, I won't just 'go outside and see'! It's not about the weather!

Day 53.

Six Word Novels!
we had like two minutes to write these in class.
Apparently Hemingway's was: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
oh hemingway.

Michael assigned a prompt; Emily blanked.
He kicked the robot. It died.
90% of communication is nonverbal. See?
Her eyes were a powerful portal.
(Zombie Apocalypse:) i lived, i died, i lived.
The stars are ragged sky holes.
It is not impossible to fly.
Smoke on the hills: apocalypse now?
(Twilight:) He twinkles, i love him, blah
(Harry Potter:) Magic doesn't solve problems, Harry does
(Cat's Cradle:) There is no cat, just string.
Broken, he leaped off the cliff.
Wanted: one criminal, did nothing wrong.
No packing: run run run fire.

Day 52.

@casey: can this be incorporated into your musical? :D

You Are My Love Handle

You are my love handle
Babe, handle with care
I try to get rid of you
But you're always there

I came to love you
Cause you're part of me
Flesh and blood, too
You're the branches to my tree

I've learned to love my lady junk
Cause who wants just a trunk

day 51.

total rough draft, response to musics!

second piece:
tom waits cover of hi ho

prison. she walks past inmates in stilettos. th eir tinny radio music bends and blurs as she walks. strange screams from distant, belowground maybe. dingy walls the color of phlegm, the floor made of scuffs and stains. she swears the bars of the inmates cells are chewed in some places.
the thumping of the manic inmates who tap or shake or bufds their world, the tiny window like a mirage of oasis in the desert. growly, deep voices emanate from someplace below the stomach. their voices strained through years of smoking, poured in syrup, call out to her as she passes. in the striped shadows of inmates breaking cement, she sees what she needs.

third piece:

final fantasy -- arcade fire spinoff better than worse

it's dark out, and they can't see each other as more than lumps, but they hear the guitar as if it were right next to them. one voice, alone in the dark, strumming and singing. his voice like the stick holding up the blanket fort of darkness. then it is as if they are all children again, asking for a back rub, a lullaby, some water. he likes being needed, likes the quiet calm of complete content.
above, the stars shine what light they can, the best of audiences.
the ground sweats for him. becomes cold and damp, but he plays on, taking his melodies from crickets, the rustle of small animals in the poplar trees.

Day 50.

i realized i posted the same thing twice! but i don't have anything to fill this with... so this counts as me starring in valencia's Awkwardest Movie on Earth movie. (it's called balls to the wall, look for it in theaters near you)

Day 49. nonfiction

Family Story

In the summer, my family goes to my grandparents' house often. Summer in Whittier is dry, brown, and hot, too hot to even sweat. We bake, and we hang around the pool, the kids swimming and the parents pretending that just being near the Barbie blue of the water cools them down. One summer, one day stands out for me: I had just finished seventh grade, my sister, tenth.
The sun ducked behind the hill. Connie, my sister, and I reluctantly got out and laid on the still-hot grainy cement, leaving wet shadows of us. We stared at the pruney canyons in our fingers and my dad joked like he always did about throwing us in, jostling Connie and me near the edge.
I'd been thrown in before. My dad pretended to be sorry about it, and I pretended to care, making a big show of wringing out my t-shirt. But Connie was a monkey-- he'd try to throw her over and she'd hang on his arm, terrified and delighted when it worked. It was like watching stage wrestling: I cheered for both of them, and my mom half-averted her eyes, sighing, but smiling. And she wasn't just a monkey-- she was a strong monkey, a super monkey. Even after I grew six inches in two years she would seize me and swing me around, or pick me up like she was bringing the bride over the threshold, or lift me like I was jumping a fence, grabbing me around my thighs. Sometimes I liked it, and closed my eyes and flew. Most of the time it drove me batshit insane.
This time, Connie seized Dad, and for a beautiful moment we watched as his six feet two inches left the ground, and almost touched the water, and then did, and then he plunged in to his waist, and then, Connie, still on land somehow, tried to pull him out, but from her angle, it was a sideways pull, not an upwards one.
He slammed into the side of the pool. I told you she was a strong monkey.
Connie burst into tears as my dad clambered out and started placing all the items in his pockets on the pavement. Phone. Keys. Then the wallet, which in six seconds had become completely soaked through. He pulled out card after card, receipts, to-do lists, all looking like they had been lost in a flood, or in the Titanic. My grandpa went for the hair dryer.
Later we found out my dad had broken two ribs. They jangled when he laughed. For months, we heard "don't make me laugh!" whenever we were making a joke or spilling our milk or tripping down stairs. Even after his ribs had to have knitted together, he said it, a habit.

Day 48.

story from three different perspectives about a thief. i realized later all the voices sounded the same, but haaayyy.

Stealing Molly Lamone

I. The Thief

There you are, watching some dick with a body attached take your girl. The one you've loved for years now. The one you were planning to tell. You had your speech all worked out; she would have laughed if she had seen the thought you put into it, the post-its strewn over the floor.
You had told her everything except the most important thing on the day Bill asked her out. She said yes, but then, no girl said no to Bill.
You had a theory: girls actually judged boys based on what other girls thought. After all, they walked to the bathroom in packs; why not pick their dates the same way? But when you told her this she accused you of sexism, rudeness. Then she threw you a massive curveball: you're jealous, she said.
What? you said, not dense or deaf, just stalling. She thought you were in love with Bill. You swallowed the remaining crumb of your dignity and walked away, your hair in your eyes. But the two of you were best-best friends. You don't just forget about your best-best friend after some dumb comment. And soon enough she was telling you everything, things you only half wanted to know: about Bill's explosive chest hair (you furtively checked your own,) about Bill's annoying habit of saying, "I understand" after everything she said.
She watched as you self-consciously flirted with other girls, whose names you could never remember afterwards. And when you ran into each other at the city pool, both about to jump in the deep end, you lost your senses and grabbed her hand, seeing Bill out of the corner of your eye and feeling so triumphant you forgot to hold your breath. You came up spluttering, still holding Molly Lamone's left hand.

II. The Boyfriend

Bill had a habit of biting the side of his thumb when he was nervous. Once, in math class, during a derivation problem, he thought he saw that Molly girl staring at it, but he wasn't really sure. His friends, who apparently watched his love life like a hawk, elbowed him and said her name a lot, usually right as she was passing him in the hallway, her long brown braid almost swinging into his face.
It's easy to talk to someone you don't really know who likes you, he thought. If you don't fuck it up, hey, they like you, and if you do, well it didn't matter. He had friends already. But he didn't fuck it up, and sometimes now he bit his thumb when he wasn't nervous, just to watch her watch him.
But lately she'd seemed quiet. Bill filled the time thinking about Jenna. She'd nixed his plans for hanging out yesterday, but he could have sworn she smiled, and Bill was pretty sure he knew what that meant. He knew what to expect from girls: neatly folded notes with curly writing and more hearts than an organ bank. Philosophical "conversations" that consisted of him talking about Fight Club or his views on Nietzsche, lifted straight from the Wikipedia page, with the girl contributing only "Mm" or "that's so deep." Girls fixing their hair or reapplying lip gloss around him. Girls cutting their food into tiny pieces and eating none of them.
What he didn't expect to see was Molly Lamone, his girlfriend, holding Tom Kirby's hand and jumping into the pool, after he went for drinks. Was she trying to make him jealous? The soda cans he was holding crashed onto the pavement and burst, fizzing joyfully.

III. The Girl

I'm not some piece of meat, okay? You don't own any of this. I'm not your baby, and don't ever describe me with any of these words: pretty, nice, beautiful. I'd rather be called whore, or slut, or even slore: dirty words that mean something. I don't dress for you, or put my hair in a ponytail for you, and I definitely don't play games for you. I wasn't trying to make you jealous, so just stop pretending that I'm some predictable paper girl in your doll world. When Tom grabbed my hand, I held on because he holds it like a person holds a hand, not like a trash compactor holds trash. I held on because he's my best friend, and that's what you do with best friends. I held on because you macked on Jenna Flowers when you were coming back with sodas and you didn't think I saw. I held on because when I threw up on him that one time he took pictures to blackmail me with later but cleaned me up right after. I held on because you weren't there to hold on to, but I also held on because Tom is Tom, and I am Molly Lamone, and I cannot be stolen but I can be lost.

Day 47.

First Person: A character that dreads something

I paced the shrunken room. There wasn't enough space for my head so I sort of slumped over, tossing my phone between my hands, which weren't working quite right. When I finally picked up the nerve to call, it dialed, rang, and Mama's voice came through like thick flannel sheets.
"Hello?" she said, and I near put my head through the ceiling of the trailer.
I couldn't do it. Six blocks away from the house I grew up in, and I couldn't do it. Through the paper-thin walls, I heard Andrew practicing his whip routine, and Suzy and Mary arguing while getting into their Siamese twin freak show costume. The show was in one hour, so why was I wasting so much time with pacing?
Roy, my complete asshole of a boss came in and threw my makeup bag at my face. "Where's the sword?" he demanded.
I pointed under the bed, trying to breathe like a normal person instead of a water buffalo. Would my family come to the show? Would they recognize me? Did I want them to? I transformed from Sarah, the small-town runaway, to Lulu the Sheath, trusty knight's sidekick. The joke was that Joey (stage name Gregorio) had lost his scabbard and had to use me, the sword swallower. Joey/Gregorio would toss the sword to me; I'd swallow and walk around. Sometimes, I bent over and he slowly inserted it; a lot of the audience liked that, although I did get several phone calls that were not approving.
It was a living, and in twenty years, I pictured myself using it as an icebreaker. Fun fact about myself? Well, when I was nineteen, I ran away and joined the circus, does that count?
The show started with me not even thinking. I batted my eyes out of habit, posturing with hands on hips.
It looked like everyone from town was in the crowd, milling around, killing time under the uneven stripes of light and accordion music. The air tasted of salt and smoke.
"Joey," I whispered, "this is my hometown."
"No shit?" His eyes widen, in sympathy, but he's a pro. "Just flaunt it girl, they see what they see. Remember how you rehearse." He winks, like a slick bastard.
I pictured my father coming in to talk to Roy, looking around at the campy circus scandalousness, heard him shouting "my daughter, biggest slut in North America," as my mother wailed.

It's funny, I read a book on great burglars once, and in all the heists that went wrong, the thief does everything right—up to one point. They get cocky, right, and they forget about the guard in this corridor, or the security camera there, and it all goes to infamous, glorious pieces.

I was thinking about what I'd left behind, not the sword. I was thinking about the time I stayed out late and my parents stayed up to wait for me, drinking the neglected liquor in our cabinet and talking about me. They were more than tipsy as I crept up the porch and listened to them.
"Remember when," my mom hiccupped, "she spit out everything you fed her except green beans?"
"I was about ready to stop feeding her," he laughed. "You were a saint."
"I was a bottled-up-emotions kind of saint though."
"That's the only kind of saint there is."

I was only half brought back to reality when Joey tossed me the sword. I hoped they were there to see how easy I made it look. And then the sword slit the inside of my throat.
And in the brief second before shock set in I thought: who's going to know I'm not faking? It's like getting a heart attack during charades.
A woman rushed up from the audience, I couldn't see who through the strange haze. My daughter, she yelled. That's her. And then my mother's familiar skirt was swishing over my legs, my arms, and I was remembering how she used to sweep the hair off my forehead and tell me to call her when I would inevitably run away, how abruptly her contemplative and loving moods came on.

Day 46. (i went back to may and numbered some...)

we had to start with an ordinary sentence and then make it weird. :3
Everyday Story

Hal stroked his eyebrow thoughtfully. It was a nervous habit, a simple action he'd done a thousand times, but this time his fingers tangled in his bushy unibrow. He pulled, at first gently and then harder, panicking when they remained firmly stuck. "Danny! DANNY, I need you!" Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that his brother was probably lying on his bed, zoning out to Rachmanioff and Mahler. He ran out of the room with his hands still trapped, running like a streaker covering their genitals, except he was covering his eyebrows. He ran to Danny's room, not caring about the strange look his brother gave him: "Danny, look, look at me!"
And then the eyebrows disconnected from his face, not like a pluck but a separation. He felt other things peeling off; was that a layer of skin off his nose, thick like rubber. His weirdly dense mustache came off too; he kept pulling, guiltily, like one plays with sunburned skin. His glasses, the big black thick ones he'd had since before he could remember, were connected to the eyebrows and the nose and the mustache—how had he never noticed that he had a face on top of his face? It was almost all off now, his facial features—or what he thought were his facial features—attached into some sort of mask. Danny watched in horror, scooted all the way to the headboard of his bed.
With one final pull, the mask was off.
Hal blinked with new eyes, crumpled his new nose, felt the raw new eyebrows. Or, rather, the old eyes, the old nose: these were his real features. Neater eyebrows,
Danny was still speechless.
Hal turned to go, feeling strangely free.
"Mom?" He walked down the stairs.
"Mom, are you there?" He was holding the mask up. She turned from her book, then dropped it on the kitchen table.
"Oh honey, why'd you take it off?"
"Wait, you knew about this? Did you put it on me? Did you or did you not glue a Groucho Marx disguise on my face?"
She looked uncomfortable, then nodded sadly.
"We had to, honey. Witness Protection doesn't do shit."

Day 39.

fuck, we were supposed to write a story about a theft and i wrote this, which is basically... based on this image (and a year late therefore obsolete):



Kurt stared through his translucent-blue water bottle, watching the people turn blue as they passed by his desk. He was trying not to panic. Every Thursday, James Cameron had his lackeys pitch him at least four ideas for movies. He believed the children, or at least the college graduates desperate for an in to the business, were the future, and he tried to listen to them.
Kurt now dreaded Wednesday every week, the endless nights of tapping his foot to a blank mind. The bags under his eyes were becoming serious. When he went home, his little sister pinched and poked them, as if that would make them disappear.
Someone paused in front of his desk, talking to the person in the adjacent cubicle. Kurt studied them, a sky-colored copy of themselves, and shot up from his spinny chair.
"I know what to pitch!" he mumbled triumphantly as he ran down the hall. "Sir, I'm ready for my appointment!"
James Cameron folded his hands behind his head.
Kurt launched into excited gestures. "So there's this land of blue people, right? And there's this one boy, he's an orphan because his parents were killed by the evil blue person, right? So he grows up in his aunt's house, but then he discovers he can do magic, and he goes to the magic blue person school--"
"Hold on, hold on. Is this just Harry Potter?"
"Well yes but with blue people!"
"Son, you can't just change the skin tone of the actors in a movie and keep everything else. That's called plagiarism."
"Wait, I have another one."
James Cameron sighs. "Okay"
"Okay, there's this guy, right? And he's not exactly popular, but he's in love with this really smart, kinda uptight girl, and he asks her out and she says yes but her father, who's this dick who steals from old people, disapproves and so she breaks up with him and--"
"Kid. That's been made. God, what a waste of my valuable time."
"But you didn't let me finish the most important part!"
"And what's that?"
"All the characters," Kurt paused for effect, "are blue."
"You know what I am a very busy man, who directed the motherfucking Titanic, all right, so I do not need to REMAKE 'SAY ANYTHING' WITH BLUE PEOPLE."
"But it's a completely fresh take!"
James Cameron glared at Kurt.
"Okay okay, sorry. I guess I need to add a little more pizazz. Okay, how about this. There's this really small rural town in the South, right, and there's these two sisters. They have really rough childhoods, right. One of them gets pregnant by her father at like 14, and the other runs away and goes to Africa as a missionary-- but the first one, she stays in the town because she's married to this horrible guy who treats her like a maid and a slave. She hates him, obviously, but one day this woman comes to live with them, and she and the girl get really close and then the girl finds these letters from her sister--"
"No. No, no, no, no. Fucking no."
"Wait, at least hear the title."
"What is the fucking title, then?"
"The Color Blue."
"Get the fuck out of my office."
"Okay, I will, but I just have one more, and I'm sorry about the others but this is the one. This one you'll like"
A vein pulsed in James Cameron's forehead. "One more?"
"That's it."
"Be quick."
"Okay, so a ship's carrying this guy to this new place. The guy is with this company that's planning to mine this new place but then he falls in love with one of the natives, and they obviously don't want him to mine their home, and then she goes to Grandmother Willow, this tree, for advice, and she tells Poca--"
James Cameron put a finger up to stop him, lost in thought. "I love it."
Kurt figured that was a good moment to say it. "Oh, and it's all made with blue people."
James Cameron said, "Perfect."

Day 38.

The second thing i wrote here.
Fucking, the only thing we had to go on was "present yourself to an audience." WAAAAAT. helpz?

I wear this one shirt a lot: Teal, with a picture of Wonder Woman. Her curves erupt from spandex. Her fists are unquenchable in their thirst for righteousness. I know nothing about her. Not her stories-- my mom bought the shirt-- not even why I like it. I am glad she is a mystery.
It makes it easier to mythologize her. Make no mistake, i know the consequences. People crush under the weight of idealistic expectations; they run away or let their dreams be corrupted.
So don't do it. Not to me, not to yourself.
I'll start this way-- I'm a rambler. Tangential. Continually wading in the stream of consciousness, which may or may not resemble the Merced River, which either cuts or joins the two halves of Yosemite Valley, I can't decide. Both.
Who I am is steeped in its snowmelt water, which makes a sound as it runs over rocks, leaping around bends: it sounds like this. Be wild.
Maybe I'm Wonder Woman's cousin-- Ponder Woman? Self-consciously contemplating the smallest observations, immersed in her bubble world of narcissism, she *would* fight action except that would involve actual, well, action. She would fight with a shield made of terrible jokes. Sometimes she would think the shield allows her to deal and sometimes she thinks the perfect opposite.
Ponder Woman deals in absurdities, trades in technicalities, in the business of isolation.
Okay, so I'm no superhero.
For one thing, i have no nemesis, and where is a superhero without a nemesis?
Out of business.
I am a composition of cells, the strange coincidence of a universe where things fall apart like gravity pulls on all sides, not just one. And every day my cells stick it out is a vast cosmic improbability.
It's true, but it's not fact.

Day 37.

Blerp.
The only thing michael told us for this one was "picture yourself in a place." not really sure where it's gooooing per se. percy weasely. eva marie tells me "don't be cute." ahh self hatred, hello there.

I'm standing in a redwood tree. A giant sequoia, so there's room for you and me and so much else. I look up and see light through the blackened edges at the very top of this fire-scarred behemoth. From where I squint, the top of the tree is shaped like lips, straining to eat up the sun, the sky, the rain.
It's raining now, but the spongy bark expands in a welcome for the rain.
Below me, the sunken pieces of bark, the littered leaves that grew useless and coddled the tree when it was only a sapling, these now disintegrate under my feet.
There you are, beside me, and you're wearing that face, the one I love.
You're untangling the spiderwebs from your hair, guiltily trying to rehang them like you're in someone's home instead of a tree.
I listen to the rain hitting our tree in a muffled rush, like it's sneaking up on us. A couple drops find their way to the hollow above my lip, drift into my mouth. It tastes of forest blood, sweet and tangy, like a thrown punch.
The last punch you threw ruined everything. I can feel you avoiding the subject of return,.
The rain slows, becoming the occasional drip of our conversation. And you duck out, whistling the tunes our parents sang us. I look for the next sign. You're putting a green pine cone in your mouth, either to feel the contours or to taste the sap, and i tug at the skin on the back of your hands.
Move on, move on.

Day 36.

Tanka!

We drove past mountains
Bones breaking through earth's brown skin
We drove until we
Met the smell of baked asphalt
and the planted palms' sharp teeth

Day 35.

we read this (METAFICTION!!) and then mike told us to write a story where the main character is the man in the rain with a banana, but at some point, he becomes aware that he is a character. Or something. i might have misinterpreted. but uh, i really love stories that explore that angle. (stranger than fiction, city of angels)

A man walks in the rain, eating a banana. He thinks of his mom, the conversation they just had. No son of mine is *gay*, she spits, and slams the door.
Then, she opens it, and gives him a banana. To keep your potassium up, she adds, and her voice cracks on "potassium." He knows later he'll have to go back and negotiate getting his stuff. He thinks about when he will go, when she will be gone. For now, he worries only about catching the bus, because it always comes early on Wednesdays, when the bus driver allows himself a doubleshot espresso. The man waits at the bus stop, tracing with his hand the kind way the raindrops course through the bench slats. A distant screeching, a smell of rubber and motor oil, warns him the bus is approaching. He waves it down and steps up to put his fare in.
"I'm not going to say that," he says, face turned to the sky.
What do you mean you're not going to say it? You're my character. Now shut up and charact.
The bus driver sighs. No food on the bus, sir.
The man again: "I swear to god I'm not being the mouthpiece for your shitty lines. You can't make me!" He yells at some vague point in the distance.
I'm the *author*!!
"My mother would be a better author!"
I WROTE HER!
"I'm not saying it." The man's tone is final.
It's symbolic. Just say it. Say it or the bus runs you over here and now.
The bus driver waits, unsure for once, hand on the accelerator.
"Fine," the man mumbles. He turns to the bus driver-- "I will fight for my right to eat bananas. On this bus, or anywhere!"
The bus driver looks completely lost.
The man looks resigned. "See, you've confused him. A banana is a terrible metaphor for homosexuality."
Stop talking to me and let me have you tell this story already!
"Alright, alright!" The man tosses his banana peel in the sidewalk trashcan and makes his way to the only open seat.
Thank you. Goddamn, was that so hard.

day 34. rough drayuft.

inanimate freewrite: this was the preparation for the inanimate object piece.

Eric's cellphone rang again, right after he had hung up. Hello? he said.
Hey Eric, it's Molly.
His friend's cheerful singsong voice made him smile unconsciously.
Hey, how are you?
Pretty good, pretty good. Hey, i was just wondering--
A robotic voice intruded. Molly, the voice rumbled, I am in love with you.
There was a complete silence.
Wait, what? Eric?
Molly, wait, fucking, holy shit, I didn't say that.
They were both speechless, confused.
Is this a joke?
Molly, I didn't say that. Someone must have cut in--
Are you both slow in the head, the monotone said. I am--
Eric pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at the small piece of metal that was ruining everything.
He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw the lens of the camera close and then open, like a wink. Unthinkingly, he slapped the phone as hard as he could.
He put it back to his ear and heard the click of a hang-up.
Not that he blamed her.
By the time he had gathered his wits to any real degree, he had three new text messages.
Without his doing anything-- in fact, he was trying now to turn it off, but the phone was opening the messages.
The first, from his brother Michael, slyly asked for a vague favor. Second, his mathlete coach told him he was late for rehearsal, and third, Molly had texted him about hanging out so he could explain their strange conversation.
He watched desperately as his phone began typing replies to all of the,:
I can't, sorry.
I'm quitting.
The voice wasn't lying, you know-- i do love you, I always have.

The phone was now dialing Molly again.
He slid off the casing and pried out the battery, which somehow electrocuted him.
Shaken, he turned on the radio: a woman was talking about how technology had taken over her life.

Day 33.

Hey, I think I'm caught up to February now! Shiats, that feels good.
This is for Michael's focus class, we had to bring a collection of inanimate objects to life.
...it's a little disturbing..... and i'm not sure it's coherent.


Later, when things had gotten out of hand, the fourth floor boys tried to pin down who it was that had created Mom.
Freddy swore that he had only found the floor lamp, lipstick and the Maidenform bra in the dumpster, that, first of all, it was Hal that found the apron and second of all, it was Nick who put them all together.
The matron of the Holy Spirit Orphanage For Young Boys did not care; she merely wanted the strange events to stop, and the unfavorable rumors surrounding the place to stop with them.
But she could not stop the boys' discussion. They decided, whether it was truth or fiction, that there was no one creator. Each boy had added something; one had hung the bra and apron on the lamp; another that tied the frayed "Kiss the Cook" apron tight around the lamp's middle; still another had added his pillow to fill out the fragile frame and slept on his jacket for weeks until the matron got him a secondhand pillow and a scolding. They all remembered that the lips had been last, a smear of raw crimson on the cream lampshade that completed the figure: Mom, they called her.
She stood in the middle of their bare room, only hauled under their beds when the matron came in to check that things were sanitary. They imagined that she made the strips of wood glow where she went, and so they took turns having her by their bed.
Like a Buddha statue's belly, in their times of need they rubbed her edges soft and worn, appearing to tan over the years with dirt. A touchstone.
They gave her what they needed, what they found.
A flower might be tied to the lampshade's tassels, just so the boys could touch her face; or a cracked wooden spoon stuck in the pillow's rip, Mom whipping up the most delicious cookies any of them had never tasted. They were proud of her and they let her be proud of them.
New boys came, but they built a different ward. Visitors stopped coming to pinch their cheeks and muss their hair; no one wanted to adopt a teenager, although some came by hoping to drop theirs off. Some of the fourth floor boys ran away, sending messages and hellos whenever they could. But most stayed, and so did Mom.
She grew with them, playing with their toy trucks at first and then reading their comic books over their shoulder, and by the time they were between 14 and 17, she had become necessary to them in a different way. The Maidenform was worn down to nothing, barely hanging on Mom's form anymore.None of them knew who had done it, but the part of the faded message on the apron was marked over one day: it now read Kiss the Cunt.
The matron saw in her limited way what was happening, but followed her ramrod rule that the less she knew, the happier she'd be. Until the baby showed up, squalling and clutching fearfully at the hem of Mom's apron, and the boys fell silent. They stared, shocked, stock-still, until the matron came in.
She looked around suspiciously, waiting for an explanation, becoming frustrated and then resigned. She took the baby to join the others in the infant ward. And when, as was the custom, she picked one of the older boys, the fourth floor boys, to choose the new baby's name, he answered with the others: Ed. Short for Oedipus.

Day 32.

description of a place, written to the song Shut Up And Let Me Go by the Ting Tings

"Shut Up and Let Me Go"

Distracted by the radio, she veers into three lanes to exit the freeway, dancing from the neck down in the seat, smacking the wheel. She glances over her shoulder, the toss of her blond hair a flash of light.
She got out in the parking lot of the town's one gas station, slammed the car door, bumping it off the hinges. The car she left running, music thudding, not trusting the air conditioning to start again in 104-degree weather. This, she thought, was the asshole of the universe. It had to be here from which all heat emanated, rising from the asphalt in dry heaves.
When, four hours ago, she had begun driving, she had pictured stopping in a town big enough to get lost in, find a new beau and forget the old. This was nothing even close, but her body demanded a pee and a stretch break. She had decided to be both Thelma and Louise, and she walked like it. Her walk was something street buskers with voices like cigarettes and honey noticed. They drummed buckets for her, turning heads as she walked by. They saw signs of her as the desert runaway, road-trip vagabond. Her shoes added to this: stilettos so high her heels hit the ground whole minutes before the rest of her feet did. Under them, the asphalt choked and churned, melting and reforming. The town had permanence to its heat: there was a feeling of emptiness, as if the substantial part of the town had evaporated long ago. The mirages have mirages, and lizards watch all from under rocks. On the rare day the clouds emerged, they seemed bleached and desperate, as if the water drops could only survive by sticking together. They did: before a storm, the tone of the wind became irritated. The people of the town could feel it in their belly's belly.
Red filtered their world: red ground, red sunset sky, everywhere red with lipstick, seemingly leaked off the bright mouths of the go-go dancers. It was a good place to pick a fight. Inconsequential, like it could be just another ghost town in a moment.
Yes, she belonged here. For now, she would stay.

Day 31.

first thing i wrote here. assignment was, my trip to csssa.
I live in L.A., so my trip to CSSSA was fairly uneventful. A thirty minute car ride with my dad, who took the opportunity of having me trapped in the car to tell me about drugs, alcohol, sex, and which of them was permissible in extreme emergency.
My real trip to CSSSA started five months ago, when i scribbled out the application an hour before leaving to see RENT at the high school. (We were fifteen minutes late after the detour to the post office.)
But I guess it really started two years ago, when i first applied. My best friend Chelsea had gone the year before, and come back an incredible writer, powerful and beautiful and scary good. I wrote the pieces early for me-- a month before they were due, and when my rejection letter came I sat on the floor near our mail slot sobbing. Actually, my trip here started in the third grade, when Ms. Mintz, a tiny woman with owl eyes and a triangle puff of hair, told Chelsea and I, in front of our families and friends on the last day of school, that we would have bestsellers next to each other on the shelf.

Day 30.

WOO HAPPY TIMES.
this is only half mine, (the other belongs to chelsea, the most amazing anything there ever could be). we decided to write the perfect college essay together.

In my life, i have snorted many items. Among these have been learning utensils, such as pencils, lined paper, and markers (see I am already preparing for my future!) I feel my future extending in front of me like a red carpet, leading to a dumpster full of cocaine. There's not quite a single person or thing that will barricade these motives to living a more dynamic, interesting lifestyle. On my family's trip, during which my pet died, we learned that even if we have our differences, collectively, when we're high as balls, we get along just fine. So naturally, I would love to pursue a college community that is equally cooperative.

Day 29.

bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop
bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop
bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop

Day 28.

Two sonnets about loneliness. You guys, structured poetry is haaaard. And sucky. Unless you're, you know, good at it.

Part 1: Alone

I swam out to sea when I saw sleek blue-
black fins in the light on the waves: so bright
the sun a wound. i said nothing; heart too
full from the absence of friends and their fights.

My feet only brushed against sand in the
deep negative space a wave left behind.
I was far, chasing seals I could not see
a gift: they left me seclusion to find.

To be alone; to eat and drink the land.
The whole Pacific fit in my cupped palms;
time and the world slow-spun between my hands,
playing cat's cradle on the ocean's calm.

I was a listening island. I heard
only my salt-rough breath and waves' speech slurred.

Part 2: Lonely

i was microscopic, the ocean vast
to be alone is to be paltry lint.
tied in bridal knots each tighter than the last
the water a child locked away by kin.

lonely lasted, in cycles of hurting
distant dots of pixellated masses:
their skim of their eyes so disconcerting
as bone-flesh as it went, so it passes

alone, i am nothing. the smallest swell
could wipe away the fingerprints of years
on my mirror, making me like a shell:
a heavy, hollow reflection of fears.

i am a listening island. i wait
like a wiser embryo: dumb, sedate.

Day 27.

i feel more than a little uncomfortable posting these. my writing has never been more personal than it is here, but at the same time, it's personal about other people, people i don't know if i have ...a right to share. do you know what i mean? it feels almost like i'm using them. but what zay says, is that there is fact, and truth, and writing is about getting at the truth of something. i don't know if that makes it better...

the assignment: write a letter to, or a scene about, someone you loved who is gone.
to give you an idea of what it's like here, people's responses included incredibly moving essays about a father who died in a car crash, cousins who had died in the israeli army......and then a hamster with ginormous testicles who died.


I didn't get a goodbye from you. Probably no one did: they said you had died quietly in your sleep. I didn't like that. The best ways to die, i thought, are executions: public, memorable. I'd rather be hung than drift off to sleep, and I'd rather be guillotined than die by the hands of some guy with a syringe, who goes home without washing his hands. But it was not me, it was you. My dad, with tears running into where his glasses met his nose, told me that it was your time. What did I know about time? I was, I am, the youngest. I knew you by stories, jokes, arguments, your stubbly, wet kisses on my forehead. I was in the shower when my grandmother called my father, and even through the hissing steam, I heard, ran out begging my dad: What happened? What happened?
You had gone. Your tiny bottles of "travel liquor" sat on the shelf above your desk, alongside half-finished Post-its to your daughter and son about books they'd like. Your garden left untended--what did we know about planting times, harvesting times? When you tried to show my sister and me, we were too busy swinging from your arms to watch what they were doing, pulling up potatoes and showing us how to tell when the pineapples from Hawaii were ready. maybe you were thinking about if you'd see us have children of our own as you patted down the soil for us.
Weeks later, we had your ashes, and we took them to the closest place you loved most. You were there, I know it: I think you are in Yosemite often now, not in afterlife but in some kind of spiritual freeze frame. I stood on the rail of the bridge over the Merced River, unsteady but determined; my aunt beside me. To see her toss your ashes into the river dissected my heart and pinned the pieces where the whole had been. Her red hair's careful nest disintegrated into the swirl of the wind, and her eyes were bright, impulsive, grieving. Then, a wind swept the black flakes up, exploding in the sky, blowing past my summer-stubbly legs. Your ashes crisscrossed my calves, fell into the cracks between my toes. First, for a second, I felt horror. Next, a strange guilt that they had not found their place, in the river's rocks. It's funny to me now, some combination of absurd and sad. I got off the bridge, feeling light, and waded into the river and floated, looking up at the sky and wondering about you.
Remember those last few years? It was like you were growing limbs and losing them all at once. The doctors gave you a cane, an oxygen tank. There was no hand left for a shovel or a trowel, but you were out in your garden nonetheless. I imagine that once, we were plants too. A long time back, in some bizarre trick, our legs, our roots, were pulled out of the ground, and we were placed upon the very tips, our feet. These ache for soil most. With your tomatoes, your peppers, your pumpkins, you grew and grew, into the ground of your garden, into the sky above. Sending roots deep.
In the months after you died, I started walking to places, walking for its own sake. Someday soon I will walk to the school you taught at, and the faraway places where you took the photos I saw in a thousand family slideshows. I want to stretch my roots through the world. I'll bring the travel-size liquor bottles that you loved, but I don't need to forget and I don't need to be encouraged by their warmth. I asked for a goodbye-- you gave me your legs.