Classmate Response: Week of 1/24/11

Yeeva Cheng: Random Impulse Week 2 (January 29, 2011)


This really caught and held my attention from the first paragraph. I thought it blended movement (action) and imagery (scenery) perfectly to give the reader a specific sense of time and place from the get-go, as well as an instant emotional investment in the characters of the story. I felt the build-up to the scene in the school, the revelation of the photographs, and the quiet gap between the narrator's realization and the final lines was beautifully done, with a very solid grasp of pacing. It was a very concise scene, yet it expressed a great depth of emotion and for the narrator, a great range of emotion, too. That's very hard to do well, and you nailed it! In fact, I think you have such a well-balanced delivery of time and place that you could strip it down a little, use less descriptions, and build an even stronger atmosphere. I felt a few times in the third and fourth paragraphs that some of the imagery was veering a little into "poesy" prose. I felt perhaps the final line of the fifth paragraph could be trimmed, too, as it felt a little redundant. The imagery and symbolism had already been delivered so well that I felt this line wasn't necessary anymore.

This was a beautiful read!

Reading Response 2: Week of 1/24/11

Writing Poetry
Form and Structure
The Q&A, pg. 29

I really enjoyed this exercise, although I am finding it hard to utilize in my own writing. Self-edit has always been my stumbling block, and without anyone else to bounce this exercise off of, I find myself thinking too much of how I should answer and not letting my imagination run free. This seems like a wonderful exercise to loosen the mind, so to speak, and let the ideas pop out and expand, but even putting myself in the mind of someone else (a character of mine, or some celebrity) is proving difficult. I would love to do this in small groups in class, maybe when we get into prose. I have a feeling, though, that self-editing will be my downfall no matter what I'm writing. I'm such a slow writer!

Reading Response 1: Week of 1/24/11

Writing Poetry
Form and Structure
Susan's Poem, pg. 42

I have to disagree with the final verdict on the sonnet version of this poem. It felt jarringly stilted in comparison to the earlier drafts and completely diminished for me the original impulse, so much so that it was as if written by someone who was watching a documentary on Susan rather than feeling her dreams from the inside out. Even the fact that it was given such an expositional title took me out of the moment before I even dipped into it. The newly structured poem stumbled into form, whereas the earlier drafts flowed naturally and, by the very lack of structured design, took me with Susan to her imagined worlds. It had a lack of self-awareness that led me to see as she saw, whereas the new form felt like receiving an engraved invitation to a sleepover party. When we discussed the issue of form in class, and David brought up the point of how it challenges the poet to use phrases that he or she might not otherwise have played with, I felt in agreement with him but viewed this particular experiment with Susan’s poem as one such attempt where the poet failed the challenge. I’m a little disconcerted to find the sonnet structure of Susan’s poem labeled “enhanced” by the text, with particular attention given to the “chatting at work” (one of the changes I disliked the most), but I suppose these are the areas in which it’s clear that the impact of poetry is nothing if not subjective. I wonder how I would have responded to it had I not seen the editing process at work. I doubt I would have been moved by Susan’s poem in sonnet-form, but I don’t think I would have wanted to see it in unstructured form, either. I think I probably would have just passed it by as a poem that didn’t do much for me one way or another, which would have been a shame. I love how evocative of childhood dreams this poem is.

Random Freewrite 2, Week of 1/24/11

Game

some frenzied meat

caterwauls

its sweetness to its own

on crusted wind

and battered brawn

while judiciously

in placid nips

a stork is gorging

on simmered wits

and frozen stone

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 1/24/11

1)

"They don't want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish the force of their arguments."

–Wislawa Szymborska

A co-worker of mine repeated the subject argument of Szymborska's statement, almost verbatim and without irony. We were discussing religion. It was one of our many discussions on religion, which I have learned to try to avoid but he remains intent on discussing it, with a critical eye on anything contrary to Christianity in other world religions. I’ve tried to express my opinion that learning about is not the same as subscribing to, but it doesn’t go anywhere, and I don’t know how to express without rudeness that, in my opinion, willful blindness is not the same as faith. I don’t think it will ever end between us.

2)

Metaphors We Live By

This is a book title that struck me a few months ago, and I had to buy it. It's has been an excellent read so far.

3)

Driving home the other day, I saw a wooden sign alongside a fence on one of the back roads that read, simply, "WHO PAID?" It was just a random sign along the road, but I couldn't stop thinking about it and all of the different directions it could go, how very different an interpretation it could have depending on who was reading it.

4)

“But that's where Big Ben gets off the hook, because it's our fault for believing that how well star athletes do their jobs somehow equates to the person they are off the field. … En route to being great again, by association you are somehow seen as a good person.”

Hearing over and over how Ben Roethlisberger is redeeming himself of his off-field "misfortune" by on-field play made me feel a lot of things, primarily negative, but specifically from a writing standpoint, it reminded me of the irritatingly prevalent theme of a character who commits some grave wrong in one area only to be forgiven in the narrative by doing something entirely unrelated on a much, much smaller scale. A frequent offender is the show Supernatural, which I used to watch religiously but can't even stomach now. It's common to see one of the appointed heroes kill an innocent person or otherwise cause severe harm to an innocent entirely without remorse or even any hint of attentiveness, only to be given a sympathetic pat on the back in the script, which resolves him of having to atone in any productive way and furthermore allows him to continue on in this manner. That he feels bad and is misunderstood is apparently atonement enough. Making deals that damn the world is easily pardoned because the poor hero had a bout of insecurity and felt bad about lying to his brother that one time. Or something. There are a lot of four letter words for how I feel about that. It's a million times worse in real life. But then, it also makes me think of how we paint sports heroes, other celebrities and politicians in a certain light and are married to that light, and anything contrary to it is given hardly any attention at all. So Roethlisberger is a triumph of perseverance while Michael Vick is lower than slime, Rudy is the inspirational hero of millions while Joe Montana is a dick, George W. Bush was Satan 2.0 and Obama is now Satan 3.0, and Johnny Depp is always and forever some kind of sex god. (I'm okay with that last one. Now I feel like watching Ed Wood again.) I love Elton John's “Candle In The Wind,” but that he wrote and recorded that song sort of embodies the view he was ostensibly putting to shame. We love our icons to remain as we imagine them, for better or worse. We hardly ever allow them any texture. I would hate to do that to a character of mine. I would consider it the ultimate crime against realistic characterization.

5) The last word goes to Soundgarden again:

"One day this guy from another label walks up to me and says, 'I really like that song 'Seasons'. You should write more songs like that.' I just wanted to punch this guy. What a stupid thing to say. If I wrote more songs like that, who would care about that song? 'You should write more songs like that because I like it.' You should fuck off because I hate you. Probably why people would single out a particular song they like on this record is because it's the only song like that on the record. And if there were 15 songs like that on the record, it would be a lame-ass record. It would suck."

-Chris Cornell, in Guitar Player (June 1994)

Random Freewrite 1, Week of 1/24/11: draft

Wasting

The trees pour down.

The leaves bleed out.

Scrap paper.

I wish I was the way I were.

Classmate Response: Week of 1/17/11 (late!)

Lucas Chance: Random Writing Week 1

when the hunter came back from hunting

without a drop to eat

the starvers went to starving

and took to chewing wheat

==========

I adored the whimsy of this piece. The brevity was the perfect match for the snappy nature of its humor. I half-expected it to be a playful ode to cannibalism, with the final word being "meat," so enjoyably nonchalant was the attitude. I have no criticism, really, other than to say that you show a terrific potential for black humor, and I'd love to see where you could go with this if you gave your imagination free reign.

Random Freewrite 2, Week of 1/17/11 (late): Prose 2

This is a vignette I wrote a couple of years ago. I edited the names and some of the nouns. I also edited the pronouns for the characters, going with my original concept for the scene. I left the rest of it as is, to show where my writing has come from and what I still have to try to improve.


==========

Summer night. Close and slick. Sweat sliding down skin. Window's open, but there's no breeze. 

The crickets are calling. Owls, too. Dogs in the distance, howling at the quarter moon. Night's rich with sound, swallowing the car. 

Lee sits there. Sprawled loose and low, head against the rest. 

Beside em, eir twin is sleeping. Or maybe not. Resting, at least. Head propped on arms folded over the wheel. Can't see eir face for eir hair. Quiet. Not a word in a while. 

Ey's tired, too, but still awake. Head throbbing from the wound. Staring across the road to the pasture on the other side, at fireflies melting in and out, cattle huddled snug under the shelter of trees, and stars embossing the sky. 

They're well over sixty miles from the old town now. Hadn't stopped until they'd crossed the state line. Now they sit parked on the shoulder, near the scraggy neck of old AL-35. It’s another fifty miles to US-72 W, and the road to Gurley. 

The tiny golden beetle is cool in eir hand. Ey fingers it absently, gently. 

There's a brush against eir face. Feather-light and warm. It's the summer breeze stirring, but outside the trees remain calm. Their leaves are silent and dense. And the dogs are quiet now. 

For a moment, ey sees a reflection of home in eir mind. White against the deepest black. Hazy and frail, caught in eir mind like the trail of a plane, fading fast into a formless mist. 

Eir hand stills. Eyes close. Switching everything off, but that. Willing the dials of time to slow. 

There is no sound now. No warmth. 

Yesterday remains a time now past, and home does not reappear. A thousand careful echoes dying there in the barren well ey's left to climb.

It's hard to breathe. Head feels dizzy, and ey can feel eirself frowning.

Ey gives it a few minutes, then reopens eir eyes. They're burning dry. Ey blinks hard and rubs eir hand over eir face. Breathes in deep over the pressing weight. Glances across at eir twin. 

Kit is awake. Ey's looking this way, and in eir eyes, a curious expression. Something Lee can see but not define, an exhausted sort of peace hovering over the emptiness there. As if ey's seen the anchor pass em by and marked its name. As if ey knows it will stop one day and wait for em. 

There is something alive here, in the air between them. It's beating delicately against the tempered rocks of Lee's shore. 

Eir lips move stiffly, twisting. Not a smile, not really. But close enough. 

It's Kit who breaks the silence. 

"All right?" Eir soft voice is hoarse but calm. 

Lee offers a nod, of sorts. Jerky and strange. Feels too much like a tremble. 

Kit is quiet, watching eir twin's eyes. At length, eir lips twitch a little, and ey clears eir throat, looking down and away at eir hands on the steering wheel. Ey's smiling. It’s fragile and messy, but there. And just as Lee opens eir mouth to speak, Kit releases the wheel with a sigh and leans back against the seat. Shifts eir body around for comfort. Eir eyes are half-open for a moment, staring down as if ey studies the pattern of the seat between them. Then they close. Ey breathes out slow, surrendering eirself to sleep. 

Unannounced and gentle, the summer breeze stirs once more. It passes over them, soft and balmy, with just enough strength to nudge the hair out of Kit's eyes. Hair that's too long, and looks greasy, besides. Unwashed in these several days. It falls across Kit's forehead in ragged clumps and curls out wildly over eir ears. 

The road stretches out for a tapered mile towards the foot of a hill. It's shadowed. Hollow through yet oppressively close. A gauntlet. Forest on either side like a bulwark against them. 

Lee's weary, still, but wide awake. Eyes open, unfocused. Waiting for movement, for a light in the woods. 

Night's rustling. Crickets with their steady hum, the dogs starting up again, and a siren now from some miles away. Headache's a dim throbbing at eir temple. Sweat's gathering at the small of eir back. It glints as it slides down Kit's neck. Hours to go before the dawn. The car is hard, but it's solid. An engine in sync with em. Old leather molded to eir frame. Sleek, yet artless. And swift.

It is swept like driftwood, this ship, in the slender black current half-lit by moon. 

There's no anchor, but the walls are strong.

Random Freewrite 1, Week of 1/17/11 (late): Prose 1

There is some elasticity to the brain, and I can’t ever seem to record the stretching, only the snap that brings me back. Isolated moments I relive wishing my future held something of my past. There’s guilt and there’s loss, and those who counsel honestly say it never grows easier, only more familiar.

There in the tiny hospital room of some years past, my great aunt took a breath and let it out so slowly, so completely, that I had thought for a moment that she wouldn’t take another. I had sat there silently, watching her, and these things grow on us less sluggishly than doctors might suggest. I knew it then. We were essentially alone. Her roommate hadn’t the awareness to be mindful of us, and my parents were in the hallway, discussing my great aunt with her doctor. I can still sense their nearness. I can hear their voices dimly. I recall myself sitting there frozen. Do I tell them or do I wait? What snaps me to is what came almost an hour later. My mother’s words, as if she knew, telling my father and I, “I don’t want to die like this.”

My mother isn’t dead. She’s here, in this ashen memory, and she’s here, in frightening dreams. She’s bent over a counter we never owned in a room I don’t recognize, struggling to breathe and to speak, and her face is twisted and grey and hollowed out like the ghouls they show to scare us on television, and I’m entering the room coming from somewhere unimportant to find her like that. Her face is exaggerated, a horror beyond recognition, and I can’t find my voice for the shock of it. Somehow I hold her and I struggle for my phone and she’s saying something I can’t hear anymore, something gurgled and wrong, and she can’t stand at all. She’s leaning. I can’t let her fall. The ambulance will never arrive in time. “I don’t want to die like this,” she had said. She told us years ago, as if she knew.

Where does the horror come from?

Some nights I don’t sleep at all.

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 1/17/11

I'm going to try to be a little more concise from now on, unless I feel powerfully inspired to ramble on about something.


1. This quote jumped out at me as I was reading 21st Century Astronomy for another class.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." -Albert Einstein


2. Reading the quote above reminded me of a quote by Oscar Wilde.

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

I think we are sometimes in danger of grouping all dead writers and poets under the same umbrella of humorlessness, and I feel it's somewhat unfair, as they weren't all consistent with the two extremes: melodramatic or painfully dry. I think Oscar Wilde, for instance, would have loved to hate bad emo poetry just as much as anyone alive today. There is a distinct sarcasm and self-awareness in much of what he wrote. ("All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.")


3. About six minutes into this video, Jamie Bamber responds to a fan's question, echoing the theme of some of my favorite works of fiction. Great powers of today seem as if they'll never fall, and I think sometimes it's difficult for people to put their own experience into a broader context across time and space. Whether it's Astronomy class or history class or political science, the theme remains the same: we have seen this before, and we will see it again. The world is greater than our perception of it. Part of that is how we die, specifically how we kill ourselves in our time and space, and Jamie Bamber (of all people) lays it out pretty bluntly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yX1f8APSaA


4. More from Battlestar Galactica:

 "I'm a scientist. And as a scientist, I believe if God exists, our knowledge of him is imperfect. Why? Because the stories and myths we have are the products of men, the passage of time. The religion you practice is based on a theory, impossible to prove. Yet you bestow it with absolutes like, "There is no such thing as coincidence." Absolute belief in God's will means there's a reason for everything. Everything! And yet you can't help ask yourself how God can allow death and destruction. And then despise yourself for asking. But the truth is, if we knew God's will, we'd all be gods, wouldn't we?"


5. Watching an NFL Films special the other day, I was struck by what Otto Graham said during a segment on greatest players. It's a pretty straightforward statement, but what stayed with me was how easily defeated I regularly am by the latter half of it. The first half is why I feel I should write, in addition to the deep need to write, but the second half is why I have taken so long to place myself in a creative writing class. I have loved to write for so long, and spent so many hours nurturing that dream in private, that the fear of failure freezes me as I step into the greater world.

"You have to have the confidence that you will do good, but at the same time, inside, you have to have the fear that you might fail."


I leave the final word to Soundgarden.

Kerrang: Why did you want to play the guitar?
Kim Thayil: Because it was louder than I could scream.

1/18/11 Junkyard: then how is it a religion?

The discussion of ethnocentrism vs. cultural relativism in today's Anthropology class brought to mind a conversation I had with a co-worker late last week, during which I was asked about Shinto in relation to Christianity and explained that Shinto has no central "god" as strictly defined by various other religions.

Before I could continue, the response from my co-worker was: "Then how is it a religion?"

1/17/11 Junkyard: weirdness

I read this in a football forum following the Jets/Patriots game:

Professional athletes are very unusual people. If they weren't, they wouldn't excel to that extent. One aspect of their weirdness is that they care a lot about what is just a game. If they weren't weird in that way, they wouldn't be all that good.


So many of my favorite authors were also very "weird in that way." They cared very much about something fictional that had no direct impact on the world around them or their own private lives, but lived entirely in their imagination until they recorded it onto paper and spread their concentrated weirdness to the world at large. This world seems so preoccupied at times with normality. How often I hear in conversation, "That's not normal!" I used to think that was a compliment; now I'm convinced it's simply a flawed standard of measure. How can I determine weirdness? What measure do I use? My understanding of normal is not the same as that of someone across the world. Judge it against what is familiar, and I fall easily into the trap of dismissing another viewpoint. How often I read and hear, "You missed the point." But there isn't just one point to any viewpoint; the world isn't so small.

It reminds me of a common theme in speculative fiction: the worth of life and culture, specifically that of aliens. It comes up so often: "They're just like us." So the common denominator restores peace and goodwill, and the humans take one step further towards enlightenment. But why must worth be tied to similarity? This came up in Battlestar Galactica and was argued poorly, I feel, the argument against the genocide of the Cylon race being that some of them are friendly, that some of them are "just like us." And I thought, "Why does that matter? What if they all hated humans? What if they were completely alien in nature, like the original Cylons? Would their lives and culture be worth less for being alien?" It seems to me that this is one of the deepest roots of war in our history, that we so often dismiss the dissimilar as being worth less and, at the extreme, being a direct threat to what is similar and therefore intimate and passionately defended. So it can become as easy to dismiss another culture's religion as it is to drive over the remains of a dead animal in the road. This approaches generalities, and I don't mean to, but the trend across history appears tried and true. I'm speaking a little from my experience as a translator and as someone who grew up in one culture though born to parents of another. It seems we haven't yet reached the point where being as concerned with or open to the dissimilar is as "normal" as to be focused primarily on the similar. The harder it is to recognize myself, the less likely I am to give time and effort to understand it. Few people (scientists, artists, poets, musicians, etc.) seem to have that certain concentrated weirdness to seek understanding across all barriers.

William Blake once wrote the following, and although it is just one part of a monumental work that contains far more thought and expression than I've been pondering here, this section still lingers with me since I first read it years ago. I never feel so small, nor so capable of soaring.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

I'm so grateful for concentrated weirdness.

1/13/11 Junkyard: Poetry in Lyrics

And I'm lost, behind
Words I'll never find

I felt so compelled to bring up Soundgarden's Chris Cornell during Wednesday's discussion of lyrics and poetry, but shyness kept me from speaking. He has written some of my favorite pieces of musical poetry, if such a genre exists. Below is "Seasons" in its entirety, the song from which I've taken my junkyard quote, along with a link to the music. It is just a sample of his voice.

SEASONS

Summer nights and long warm days
Are stolen as the old moon falls
My mirror shows another face
Another place to hide it all
Another place to hide it all

And I'm lost, behind
The words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by

Sleeping with a full moon blanket
Sand and feathers for my head
Dreams have never been the answer
And dreams have never made my bed
Dreams have never made my bed

And I'm lost, behind
The words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by

Now I wanna fly above the storm
But you can't grow feathers in the rain
And the naked floor is cold as hell
This naked floor reminds me
Oh the naked floor reminds me

And I'm lost, behind
Words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by

If I should be short on words
And long on things to say
Could you crawl into my world
And take me worlds away
Should I be beside myself
And not even stay

And I'm lost, behind
Words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by

Music

1/13/11 Class Reaction: on reading aloud

During the class discussion on Wednesday, January 5th, I was struck by the statement that (to paraphrase) what is written should also be read aloud, or why else do we write? I couldn’t have disagreed more, but I found it hard at the time to articulate exactly why.

There are some surface reasons, such as the distinct disappointment I feel whenever audio books fail to capture the mood of the original text, similar to the disappointment of seeing a Hollywood star’s face representing a character I’ve long cherished. It’s hard to erase what is seen and heard. Perhaps this is my failing. When asked to read aloud, I find myself reading the work as I would read it in my head, even as I critique myself for failing to perform it as others might expect. As a professional translator, I understand the frustration of not being able to address the source directly. Going through a third party's translation can cause more of a distracting effect than an enriching one. In that, I am too harsh a critic of everyone (including myself), unwilling to surrender my personal connection with the poem to another's expression. Great actors will almost always create a positive effect, but there, too, I distinguish between someone performing a role and someone (during a poetry recital, for instance) expressing the voice of a poem. If I categorize recitals as performances, I have no disconnect and can enjoy the words and the performance as two separate elements only briefly joined to present one flavor of the poem's expression. The disconnect was most severe during a few instances in high school when I was asked to edit my reading or to adopt another's performance in order to best deliver the poem. It was as if they were suggesting the poem's voice should be defined by performance, which felt contrary to poetic expression.

I write often, and have for as long as I can remember, beginning with cartoons as a child, and I’ve rarely shared my work due to shyness or to the work being incomplete. I have never felt any less satisfied for keeping a poem or some odd prose or ramble to myself than I have the few times I’ve shared my work with others. Nor have I ever felt less moved by reading one of Whitman’s poems silently to myself than I do listening to Tennyson or Poe being read aloud. For me, the emotional reward is locked in the words themselves, and I don’t feel the poet’s voice is only or even best captured in sound. The quality of silence and intimate connection with the written word is, I feel, as valid and rewarding as the quality of sound and open demonstration. Either of those extremes (and a great deal in between) can express the poet’s voice, for I feel that “voice” is not restricted to what our ears hear and mouths shape, just as language is not defined by one tongue or limited to one species.

As to why we write if not to also express aloud, I have no real answer but to say that I write for a variety of reasons. I write original stories, which I hope to share with others when they are finished. But I also write to record thought, to take a snapshot of an emotion. These snapshots are no less valuable to me for being kept to me than a picture snapshot of a loved one would be if I kept it hidden away under my pillow. I feel writing itself is expression, whether or not we ever add other forms of expression onto it. In some ways, the writing kept private is the most valuable to me, just as those picture snapshots are. I am less likely to share, not because others may not appreciate it, but because its value is already complete.

I realize I’m drifting off the original statement and perhaps freewrites are meant to be more poetic and less of a ramble, but I had to articulate why I reacted to it the way I did.

1/11/11 Junkyard: Specifics in Character and Language

“If you aim for the general, you hit nothing, but if you aim for the specific, you might hit the universal.”

I first read this as a throwaway statement in a 2004 publicity statement about one of Johnny Depp’s films, but I’ve never been able to forget it, and it has greatly influenced the writing choices I’ve made since reading it. It might help to explain why I remember so many of Johnny Depp’s characters throughout the 90’s and very few characters portrayed by his peers. Or why Soundgarden’s lyrics linger with me as strongly as they do, whereas those of their more mainstream peers fail to linger at all. Or why I was fascinated by the character interplay in Battlestar Galactica until the primary source of drama became romance, and why I was so disappointed by how they failed to realize in fundamental concept and execution their own premise of a gender-blind world. Or why I am drawn to Ellen Ripley far more than to the multitude of stock heroines as presented by Hollywood. Or why characters like Daenerys and Jon and Sansa feel so out of place in George R. R. Martin's world, and why, out of all the hundreds of characters Robert Jordan created, I care about Mat the most.

However, there is a conflict I have with the original statement that involves a significant aspect of my novel. It stems from language itself, the culture and inherent statement of the words we choose, how the language we use both expands and restricts our writing choices, how it can unconsciously reflect perception. There are times that I wish I had enough talent to write my novel entirely in Japanese, which removes certain limitations that English places on me, but Japanese also has its own range of expression. I don’t believe it’s possible or even valid to remove culture from language, for I feel that language is born of culture and feeds back into culture. They are symbiotic elements that take part in shaping our views. Starting my novel, I found that one of the hardest parts was finding a way around certain restrictions of English without limiting range of expression, to aim for something specific and alive in characterization without letting the culture of the language I write in alter my general concept. Perhaps this is one of the banes of the speculative fiction genre. I think the hardest part of sharing my work when it’s finished will be asking others to take that step, too.