Tagged: creative writing
Self-Reflective Letter for English 201 (Really, This Is College Today.)
Dear Professor E–:
I’ve been thinking about our relationship a lot lately. Do you remember how we first met? You, the professor–the gatekeeper; me, the seeker? I remember it like it was yesterday. You lectured me on the importance of listening. Always the professional, you wouldn’t fudge my grade just because I made really good arguments why I didn’t turn in my work on time. Didn’t you understand that I was just coming out of another relationship and didn’t have time for you yet?
Without you, I would’ve never experienced growth. Of course, I’m referring to how you led me from veritable darkness to light in the areas of critical reading, argument analysis, and revision.
Like a dream, you asked me to explore anything I wanted. You challenged me to research a body of work in a way I never before had. You even allowed me to use webpages. More than that, you loosed the first-person-perspective that I had bottled up inside for all these years. Specifically, I told you I wanted to go to Mars. Like a good friend, you encouraged this dream, while subtly encouraging me to do a little research before packing. Now, neither of us were greenhorns when we met, but it is because of your relentless attention that I discovered how to improve my ability to read for understanding and then communicate my findings via the written word. The only pity is that, according to my research, there is a great chance that after I’m selected to move to Mars, our relationship will be forced to end. I hope you’ll write.
Next, I wanted to thank you for the invaluable lessons in argument analysis. Before we met, I always thought I won my arguments using “the right way.” Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to learn that I could be right using several different methods of argumentation. Formal logic is difficult to defeat, but with your help I learned that it isn’t the only kind. You taught me The Toulmin Model, which comes in most handy when reading an argument that is so shameful that the writer hides what they really have to say. Just the same, I want to be good at everything, so learning how to be forgiving during a debate proved invaluable. And then, do you remember how you kept me up late reading about Rogerian analysis? You know, when you apply the time-tested art of flattery to win over dissenters? The whole, “Let me outline your argument for you, praise it, but then subtly recommend that my way is still better.” It’s really touching how it works. If you ever get sick of me, I just may use it to win you back—watch out!
Finally, and really through everything—thick and thin—you taught me how to keep an every-watchful eye on my own writing. Revise, revise, revise. Over the last several months, you asked me to do a lot of things. Sometimes I was uncomfortable, yet you always required that I take it a step at a time. It was here where I learned that the process is as important as the product.
So here we sit—you and me—in this crazy, crazy world. Who can know what the future holds? All I can hope is that you’ll stay in mine. It’s been wonderful thus far Professor E–. You’re the best.
Yours sincerely,
//signed//
Pete, Favorite Student
Review of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami
Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World continues the post-modernistic tradition that aware readers have come to love. Upon completing the second chapter, it is clear that something different, something unfamiliar is occurring. The story is rife with metaphors and characters that work enough to keep us engaged, but it is really the storytelling’s style itself that causes our fingers to seek an instantaneous transition from one page to the next.
The story’s feint is that it’s about a detective. Of course, no tale worth its salt is ever about what it portends. Some authors make their points directly. For Murakami, who convincingly communicates that he is well-read, however, it is simply no longer interesting to tell the reader what to think.
As with other post-modern and fabulistic works, this book is a reaction. It is a plea to cause readers to never forget that no one should be taken for granted. In using these artistic movements, Murakami firmly plants his feet and announces to the world that he is not to be trifled with.
In the end, there is certainly nothing new under the sun. Yet Murakami has found a way to take his readers on a journey that is fun, difficult to predict, challenging and finally, rewarding. If you’ve been in a reading rut and need a book to shake things up, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover that you can’t put this one down.
****
Murakami, Haruki. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel. New York: Vintage, 1991. Print.
Lights Out
Here’s the preamble: I once read a story about a Coast Guard rescue swimmer who was being lowered onto a ship to rescue the crew. The rescue swimmer was being lowered from a helicopter and the sea was angry. Next thing the guy knows, it is pitch black and very hot. He recalls that he thought maybe he had died and gone to hell. He was joking of course. Turns out they lowered him directly into a smokestack on accident. Very funny. Now that you know this story is forever in my head, we can continue.
So there I was–pulling cars out of the wash tunnel and driving them into the dry/vac stations as if I was Jeff Gordon pulling into the pits. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that I drive with precision. Back wheel at the vacuum every time.
Then I run back to the tunnel, not quite a full sprint–though faster than I ever thought I’d have to move on the clock–and wait for the next car to make it past the blowers so I can climb in. Over and over again. Then it happened. (Oh, here you should know that I get my kicks out of trying to time pulling open the driver’s door precisely with the door clearing the last blower). I think the particular vehicle in this case was a Land Rover. I pull the handle and jump in. Darkness. Lights out. I can still hear, but I can’t see shit. What the hell?
Of course, my first thought is a reassuring one. I immediately think of the rescue swimmer being lowered into the hot darkness. That calms me as, like it turned out for him, I seriously doubt that the lack of light means I died. Near simultaneous to realizing what happened, a second–more pressing–thought develops: “Is anybody watching me?”
You see, I wear a stocking cap. (First, its winter. Second, I lost my hair in the war and don’t want skin cancer). It isn’t the beanie kind that when pulled on requires no fold, but the kind that when pulled all the way on almost covers your whole face. To remedy this problem, you fold a couple inches of it up. As it turns out, there is no longer any doubt that the blower is strong enough to blow the folded part of a stocking cap down. Please, really, just picture the scene. Don’t stop with picturing a grown-ass man sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle with a stocking cap covering his entire face. Actually attempt to see through the fabric and picture my face. The confused look. Then, pure unadulterated joy. I’m still grinning ear-to-ear now. I can’t even remember anything else that happened after that.
How To Make Blogging Thrilling
(If you’re short on time, skip to the bottom for numbered instructions).
Clicking away at the keyboard, he suddenly found himself grabbing the mouse, about to highlight and delete everything. He couldn’t possibly publish it. He was a good dude; what would people think?
He sometimes wanted to write some horror posts–he wanted to graphically describe the most gruesome paths out of this life.
He sometimes wanted to write some posts from a women’s perspective–he wanted to have some fun exploring how the female human navigates this world.
He wanted to write without abandon. He wanted to swear, he wanted to be passionate. More times than not he wanted to cause people who knew him to say, “I can’t believe he wrote that.”
But as soon as the words manifested themselves on the screen, he’d hesitate. “What if they don’t like it? What if they think I went too far?” he’d ask himself. “Ah, fuck it,” he’d answer, clicking the publish button. And then he’d feel it–a rush like no other.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”
He’d then laugh out loud thinking, “If people only knew how much energy I put into each post…they’d think I was nnnuts.”
And there was something more. Behind all of this he would tell himself that his daughter might someday read his posts. And if he guessed correctly, by that time she would be fascinated that he wasn’t quite the man she’d taken him for all those years. He’d hope that if she wasn’t there yet, this realization would be the weight that would finally and forever tilt the scales of how she’d live the rest of her life towards courageously, without fear, without worry, and without anxiety. Just the way he strove to.
Instructions for How To Make Blogging Thrilling
Step 1 — WRITE what you think.
Step 2 — DO NOT DELETE what you wrote.
Step 3 — PUBLISH what you wrote.
Review of “The Babysitter”–by Robert Coover
In Robert Coover’s “The Babysitter,” the experimental application of chronology renders it a textbook example of how post-modernistic writing can be a welcome return to storytelling as an end in itself. While clearly based in a very familiar late-twentieth century suburban neighborhood, the short story’s delivery of information elicits a most visceral reaction from the reader. Babies, toddlers, children, teenagers, adults, television characters and pinball machines are manipulated by men, women, boys and girls in a sequence that screams to be silenced. Not wanting to discover our worst fears, we read on.
More than simply a description of a Friday night gone wrong, “The Babysitter” uses a seemingly unorganized sequence of events (which incidentally can be organized if enough time is given to it—though doing so falls in the category of crime, I think) to simply affect the reader. The successful employment of this technique results in a victorious argument for the joy of reading.
Did a father molest a girl? Did that girl sleep with those evil boys? What the heck happened in the bathroom? Those questions are only asked by readers who just recently finished Aesop’s Fables. For Coover there is no moral. There is no guiding principle. There is no lesson. And this real-time affect the story has on the reader? It dissipates in the same amount of time it takes to read from the opening paragraph to the second paragraph’s first line.
The taboo subject matter is not taboo—though certainly still intended for adults—when conveyed using this post-modern form. There is a certain genius demonstrated in the ability to make what is become what is not. In “The Babysitter,” we enter a house full of distorting confusions and leave feeling better for it.
This Past Sunday Women Learned There Is A Fourth Species of Spider…Now Wondering, “Are there more?”
Black Widow, Brown Recluse, Daddy Long legs. Until Sunday, women knew of no other spiders. Until Sunday, women would see a spider, then say, “Is it a Black Widow?”
Or, “I think that’s a Brown Recluse…I read that leaving near-empty mayonnaise jars out will act like a trap, if you suspect you have them.”
Or, “Hey, look, a Daddy Long Legs. Did you know that Daddy Long Legs are the most deadly spider in the world? It’s true. They just don’t have big enough teeth to pierce our skin. Kill it anyway, will ya, hon?”
But this past Sunday, a spider had the nerve to bite a woman. The spider didn’t look anything like one of the three, so she did what any reasonable women would do and Google’d it. Using her phone to take a picture, she searched Google Images for the spider. Lo and behold, it was another species of spider altogether. All along she thought there were only three species of spiders.
Words cannot describe the joy she felt as she called her mom to share the news. Naturally, her mom didn’t believe her at first. But then her mom remembered that her father had always said there were more than three types of spiders when she told him what she thought she saw when she was growing up.
Alas, the elated feelings were fleeting as the mother daughter tandem soon realized they unknowingly opened the door to learning. “Are there more species we don’t know about?” they silently wondered to themselves.
How To Be Angry
(If you’re short on time, skip to the bottom for numbered instructions.)
“I’m not going to the dinner tonight!” he foamed.
“But you always go,” she responded.
“Right, but this one is about (insert hot button issue), and I’m not going to sit there and listen to those morons act like they know what they’re talking about!” he retorted furiously.
He knew he was right. He knew what he believed. And he knew they were wrong.
He could destroy their ideas with logic. He could destroy their ideas with evidence. He could destroy their ideas with history. Listen to them? Associate with them? How could he? He didn’t even understand how they could exist. How could he possibly be expected to keep his cool when they were so blatantly wrong? No, he’d made up his mind, he wasn’t going.
Waking up, he saw he had a few more morning emails than normal. Several of his friends wrote that they missed his presence at the dinner. One said they were all looking forward to a dissenting opinion, and without him it was a rather bland evening. Immediately, he felt a pang of regret. He didn’t expect anyone to even notice he wasn’t there, let alone miss him. Kicking himself for forgetting that people are not arguments, people are not ideas, and people are not principles, he stood up and laboriously began his morning. At 55, he thought he’d have learned his lesson by now. Oh well, lucky for him the memories of his friends always welcoming him back with open arms burst through the floodgates.
Instructions for How To Be Angry
Step 1 – Make a decision without all the information.
Step 2 – Cease contact with anyone who disagrees with you.
Public Speaking Is Not Our Biggest Fear
For the last year and a half he had attended a most unique gathering of personalities on Thursday mornings. What began simply as a self-interested attempt to network for employment led him down an entirely different path than expected. More than a job, he found life.
Most groups and organizations he had joined were disappointments. But try as he might, it seemed he couldn’t avoid joining groups altogether. Hypocrisy acting as the evicting agent, he left nearly every organization he ever joined. But this one? This was different. This group offered nothing more than literal time and space to improve a particular life-skill. Each member joined in order to improve their ability to speak publicly. He found that hidden within an improved ability to speak publicly was the ability to communicate. Unexpectedly, he learned that lurking within communication was being.
He didn’t doubt that in the organization someone somewhere hungered selfishly for more and more members–humans-in-group will never satisfy their need to evangelize. Yet, for this group, any recruiting efforts more than admitting existence proved silly. Ultimately, convincing someone that they should face their largest fear and, over time, dis-cover who they actually are–all while in the presence of others–was not possible. Like the horse that can’t be forced to drink, people had to want to join.
While Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” was a chapter essential to telling the story, the time had come to turn the page. Experience illuminated that he ‘was not’ without other people. Therefore, the next chapter began, “I communicate, therefore I am.”
Are you?
The Fruit Paul Didn’t Like (And Why Not)
“But the fruit of the spirit is,” the pastor started, taking a breath, “Love (me), joy (me), peace (me), forbearance, kindness, goodness (me, me, me), faithfulness (me), gentleness (we are talking about a man here, right?), and self-control (me).”
As if straight out of Bill Murray’s classic Groundhog Day, he initially believed he possessed most of the fruits of the spirit Paul highlighted. “Initially believed” might not be entirely true. He didn’t ever actually believe that he possessed the fruits of the spirit, noble as they were, but he wanted to believe he did. Truth be told, he just wanted others to believe he embodied them. However, time, forever stationed at the front of the classroom, taught him that when he wanted to believe he possessed some good quality, the ‘wanting’ indicated that he didn’t possess the quality. This case was no different.
Distressed, he longed for his morning slice of humble pie to be as effective as his late night bowl of ice cream. At his age, the used-to-be-surprising feel that came with knowing that he wouldn’t get it right in this lifetime had worn off. Now, he simply felt the distinct feeling of resignation. If he constantly put such effort into life, and perpetually failed, what was the point of all that trying? Just then, a story he’d heard as a child thrust its hand out in aid.
Once a mentor tasked his student to push an enormous stone up a hill. Struggling daily, the man persisted to no avail. Not wanting to let down his mentor, he woke daily with more resolve than before. Still he failed. Finally he gave in to anger. “Why?!” he shouted. The mentor spoke, “Do you not see the muscles that have formed in your arms? In your legs? On your back and chest?”
The desired moment of clarity came just within reach. He wondered if maybe certainty was left off the list above because you just never know. What was arrogance after all, but a more certain form of certainty? He knew both were clearly opposite humility on their continuum. Humility–the genus under which the species labeled above as fruits of the spirit fall–being the eternal victor. Humility–that special ingredient required in order to love; required in order to say, “I don’t know, but I know that knowing is not what’s important. What’s important is that I’m here with you now.”
The only way to get there is together.
A Letter to Racism
Dear Racism,
I’m writing this letter to you to give you notice that I’m coming after you. You’re toxic. Every time I think you’re finally gone, you pop right back up again. Over the years, I’ve learned to cope with your appearances in private capacities, but apparently some inner reservoir of boldness has caused you to gain an increasing amount of state sponsorship.
Do you even know what I’m referring to? No? Two weeks ago, we were required to read Paul Kivel’s The Culture of Power at work. How in the hell did you convince a public school district in 2013 that you deserve an audience?
Hiding between the lines of that article, you entered the room to remind us of some challenges that lay ahead. As it turned out, no amount of wishful thinking on my part would hide the fact that you were just getting started. Once you focused our attention on our differences, you became the predominant theme of the day.
Let me me clear: I have always despised you. In the past, however, I thought if I ignored you that you would go away. That day, you showed me the error of my ways. I now know that my choice to not give you the attention you so desperately desired caused you to misunderstand me. You misunderstood my thoughts about being in the “culture of power.” Allow me to state them plainly: I know that I should be in the “culture of power.” Two of your further attempts to infect me that day illustrate your weakness and will help demonstrate how I know that I’m better than you.
First, you said, “You’re going to be dealing with kids whose parents taught them to never trust white people.” My father never–not ever–taught me such a thing. On the “Things to Teach Children” continuum “Never Trust (fill in the culture) People” is close-minded and weak. Ever read Thucydides? Heard of the US Civil War? Cultures who think like you die out.
Second, you said, “To motivate them, I say to my students, ‘Are you telling me you always want a white president?'” Never have I, nor anyone else I know in the “culture of power,” ever considered skin tone when voting. A worthy candidate is difficult enough to find as it is. What possible good could come from adding clearly irrelevant, meaningless criteria?
I guess the mistake is probably mine. For some reason I projected that because I wanted you to die, you also wanted you to die. Now that I’ve had the time to think about it for a second, I realize that that would be suicide. And not many things willingly commit suicide. But die you must. So no more will I idly ignore you. Beginning now, I’m going on the offensive. I’m coming to kill you. My weapon is constant, consistent correction.
If you want to survive, grow eyes in the back of your head. Avoid public places. If you care for your friends, avoid them. Don’t stay in any one place too long. Get comfortable wearing a different size shoe. I really hope you think I’m joking. I’m begging you to test my resolve. Do it.
Your sworn enemy,
Love
Captain’s Log 