Week 5 Reading

Frank Sinatra was sooo good. It encapsulated his need for attention, his stereotypical Italian lifestyle and demeanor. I love that he was like a don, people needed to pay their respects to him when they walked into his bar, the description of him being the town leader cruising down the street, everyone kissing his hand, it was great. And his competition with the Beatles, and the profile of his mom and everybody around him, his marriage to Ava Gardner, it was all so deep and it was incredible how much I know Sinatra now. I don't even listen to his music, I just have a mash-up with him and Biggie, and I've seen Manchurian Candidate, so it was cool getting to know ol' blue eyes. 

Memory was cool too, it was kind of a downer and I thought it meandered a bit, but I like that it settled on the two dudes bro-ing out and telling stories, and all they have is their memories. I guess the disrepair of the structure is to reflect the illusion of life these people are living, but I feel like that realization only comes through conscious analysis of the piece, he didn't make me feel like these people you know? It was a huge bummer too for most of it. 

Week 4 Reading

Trina and Trina was crazy! I almost feel like with this kind of subject matter its hard to go wrong, some of the best stories are about addiction, so a real life depiction is ridiculously dramatic. Her mood swings and the things she does keeps you reading no matter what is going on around you. But beyond the things she says and does, the writing is so descriptive and sad. The narrator as a character really brings you into the story, you feel why her parents ignore her when they drive by, and ignore her letters and her insistence that she's clean. It's an awesome story.

I like that The American Man at Age Ten was about me, and its a very objective and memory-inducing examination of American male childhood. I really like that she even writes how a child would sometimes, I feel like she writes like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes would. It was a lot chiller than Trina and Trina so it was a weird contrast, but still very charming and expository. Cool stuff I look forward to reading more.

Oozing Sores (revised)

A quick hug and my mother turns away from me, not even looking back as she leaves me on my own in a state I’d never been in, with people I’d never met, about to take a twelve hour bus ride and spend three weeks in a Canadian State Park with complete strangers.

            “Hi!” someone exclaims to my right as I catch the last glimpse of my mother’s severely silver head. “I’m Luis! Where are you from? I’m from Texas!”

            Oh Jesus, I thought… Texans. I abandoned the conversation to change into the wilderness garb that had been accrued by my parents for me, based on a list sent by the school. Nylon, mid-thigh length, brown shorts, SmartWool socks, black Tivas, green windbreaker, blue bandana, Aviator sunglasses, I looked like the most expensive homeless person ever.

I felt even more out of place when I returned from the bathroom and realized I was the only person decked out like a fool at this juncture. My eyes welled as the Velcro ankle straps of my dorky shoes stripped a couple of layers of skin from my Achilles. This was going to be terrible.

I wasn’t an away-from home kid. I attended camp once, and by that I mean my mom dropped me off only to get a phone call from her wailing seven-year-old a mere three hours later begging her to come get me. Luckily the camp wasn’t but ten minutes from my house, in Granby as opposed to North Granby, Connecticut, and it wasn’t even an overnight affair. I just didn’t like being away from my familiar house with the familiar people.

With this knowledge of myself, I gritted my teeth, verbally flagellated myself, and entered the Recital Hall in the FAB to be debriefed along with my normally dressed cohorts. I took a seat near the back, and started eavesdropping.

I heard a lot of names of towns I assumed were in Michigan: Troy, Dexter, Detroit… Well the Detroit Area, Ann Arbor, Grosse Pointe, Ann Arbor, and then a throaty voice said, “I’m from Avon, Connecticut.”

Holy crap!

“Dude I’m from Granby!” I blurted. “Oh wow, how are all your cows?” asked Ryan Douglass, my fellow Connecticutian and future semi-close friend.

“I just have chickens thank you,” I replied, “How’s all your money?”

“Just wonderful.”

Well he’s kind of an ass, I thought, but at least he’s relatable. As my comfort zone expanded as slowly and painfully as my oozing Achilles wound, I found myself caring less and less that the people around me were either snarky dicks or complete douche bags.

“I’m Sam, I like Cake!” shouted the four foot, patchy faced kid in the seat in front of me at the beginning of the day long bus ride. “Do you play any sports?” Asked a deep voice to my right. Lunatics and jocks, it was just like high school.

 All I could do at this point was ignore the fact that I had more in common with the Cake-loving, (he meant the band but it took a while to figure this out) Lord of the Rings fanatic with serious opinions about the structure of capitalism than the relatively sane jock in the seat next to me. Eventually I fell asleep.

I woke up to see we had stopped at  a Tim Hortons filled with UPers all dressed entirely in plaid. I noticed simultaneously that my cheek was quite damp with drool, and that the muscular shoulder of my athletic seat companion was much damper.

The remaining hours of the trip were spent apologizing awkwardly to my companion. And just when I started to feel comfortable again, the old feelings of dread and discomfort flooded back when I saw, through the windows, about eighteen twenty-somethings, dressed entirely in fleece, circumnavigating the bus at top speed, shouting and jumping like coked-out second graders encircling an ice-cream truck. I quickly discovered that these asylum escapees would be leading us through the Canadian wilderness. My heart sank.

Lining up for group selection, I noticed that there was only one attractive female leader. All right, I thought, if I get into the hot leader’s group, maybe I can use that as evidence that things won’t be so bad. I’ll just use this girl as a chauvinistic omen. Slowly, names were called out, a drool stained shoulder appeared and was called to join the hot leader’s group, then a gangly kid with a stupid last name, a curly haired girl with a mean mug, a short, dark-haired girl talking at the top of her voice to stamp out nervousness, a tiny gymnast girl, and then…

“Colin King.” A sign from the god of sexism, everything would be all right. And despite the girl with the train whistle for a voice, and the Kentuckian hippie who cried whenever possible, everything was all right.

After embarrassing myself in introductions where we had to pair our first name with the name of an animal starting with the same letter, (I thought alternate names for roosters were funny, I did have pet chickens for Christ’s sake) and discussing Amelie a little too passionately, I realized that I’m not that different from these idiots. We like similar movies, we all laugh boisterously, and we all have to be disgusting together, so whatever!

And it was this realization that these losers were the exact same kind of loser as I was the formula that concocted some fantastic wilderness adventures: Scaring off a monster together after responding a shriek from the curly-haired New Yorker, pulling canoes through waist deep bogs, only to then have to carry them on our heads for three kilometers through the woods. Making a giant rope swing while the leaders were gone, and then another with them present. These were the same leaders that later convinced us that we all had Giardia, and were going to have to make use of the butt plugs we’d been carrying around, until we opened the packaging and discovered they were concealed candy.

 I’ve since had a few adventures with the angry girl with the curly hair, I live with the gangly kid, and my saliva-covered muscle-man turned out to be one of my best friends of freshman year. And I didn’t even have to call my mom once because the freak found his home.

 Outline: Conflict: Apprehension of College.

1.     I feel isolated

2.     Surrounded by lameness

3.     I am lame

Resolution: Lameness accepted universally.

 

Profile Pitch

I would like for this next project to spend a few hours in the public library downtown. The library is interesting in its architecture, and has apparently won a national award for best library, yet it is also a congregation point for all sorts of colorful characters. It's right by the park in the middle of town, where a lot of homeless people hang out and they wander over to hang out inside occasionally. It is also a place where a lot of families and petitioners and old people frequent, so mere observation should give me a decent body of material.
I think I'm going to chill at the front desk for a couple hours because that's where all the confrontation happens, but I will wander around the library to see all the screaming kids and such. But mostly it will be a profile of the check out counter, hopefully some people will get angry over some fines or something.
So more than following a direct chronological order, it would be an establishing introduction, a series of vignettes and a conclusion.

Response to Writing for Story

This book was really cool, the story examples were quite enjoyable, I liked that one was kind of a downer and the other was ridiculously uplifting. The tips help me realize how important small details are in narrative. Smells, sounds, people’s characteristics and mannerisms, all add flavor to your narrative and make it connectable, which is the ultimate goal.

            Also the importance of a theme that is kind of silhouetted throughout the whole story, like the beep-beep-beeping of the heart monitor in Mrs. Kelly’s Monster, and the repetition of the phrase ‘Keep on keeping on,’ in The Ballad of Old Man Peters.

            Something else that I already knew but was good to have reinforced since I don’t apply it that often is the outline. The amount of detail and just pure stuff in these stories is overwhelming, and it would be incoherent without a premeditated structure.

            Also the notion the deceptive simplicity is elegance really stuck with me. The technique that boils down complicated ideas and stories into cohesive language is the most daunting challenge of the book, but also the most important.

            It’s also interesting that all stories have conflict and complications, but also a story can be about damn near anything in our lives, so it dawned on me how much of our lives deals with conflict and complications. 

Oozing Sores

“Bye, Colin.” A quick hug and my mother turns away from me, not even looking back as she leaves me on my own in a state I’d never been in, with people I’d never met, about to take a twelve hour bus ride and spend three weeks in a Canadian State Park with these strangers.
“Hi!” someone exclaims to my right as I catch the last glimpse of my mother’s severely silver head. “I’m Luis! Where are you from, I’m from Texas!”
Oh Jesus, I thought… Texans. I abandoned the conversation to change into the wilderness garb that had been accrued by my parents for me, based on a list sent by the school. Nylon, mid-thigh length, brown shorts, SmartWool socks, black Tiva’s, green windbreaker, blue bandana, Aviator sunglasses, I looked like the most expensive homeless person ever.
I felt even more out of place when I returned from the bathroom and realized I was the only person decked out like a fool at this juncture. My eyes welled as the Velcro ankle straps of my dorky shoes stripped a couple of layers of skin from my Achilles. This was going to be terrible.
I wasn’t an away-from home kid. I attended camp once, and by that I mean my mom dropped me off only to get a phone call from her wailing seven-year-old a mere three hours later begging her to come get me. Luckily the camp wasn’t but ten minutes from my house, and it wasn’t even an overnight affair. I just didn’t like severe, long-term change, or what I perceived to be so.
With this knowledge of myself, I gritted my teeth, called myself a pussy and entered the Recital Hall in the FAB to be debriefed along with my normally dressed cohorts. I took a seat near the back, and started eavesdropping.
I heard a lot of names of towns I assumed were in Michigan: Troy, Dexter, Detroit… Well the Detroit Area, Ann Arbor, Grosse Pointe, Ann Arbor, and then a throaty voice said, “I’m from Avon, Connecticut.”
Holy crap!
“Dude I’m from Granby!” I blurted. “Oh wow, how are all your cows?” asked Ryan Douglass, my fellow Connecticutian and future friend who would later transfer after freshman year.
“I just have chickens thank you,” I replied, “How’s all your money?”
“Just wonderful.”
Well he’s kind of a dick, I thought, but at least he’s relatable. As my comfort zone expanded as slowly and painfully as my oozing Achilles wound, I found myself caring less and less that the people around me were either snarky dicks or complete douche bags.
“I’m Sam, I like Cake!” shouted the four foot, patchy faced kid in the seat in front of me at the beginning of the day long bus ride. “Do you play any sports?” Asked a deep voice to my right. Lunatics and jocks, it was just like high school.
All I could do at this point was ignore the fact that I had more in common with the Cake-loving, (he meant the band but it took a while to figure this out) Lord of the Rings fanatic with serious opinions about the state of the economy than the relatively sane jock in the seat next to me. Eventually I fell asleep.
I woke up in a small puddle of drool on the muscular shoulder of my athletic seat companion. Apologizing awkwardly, the old feelings of dread and discomfort flooded back when I saw out the windows, about eighteen twenty-somethings, dressed entirely in fleece, circumnavigating the bus at top speed, shouting and jumping like coked-out second graders encircling an ice-cream truck. I quickly discovered that these asylum escapees would be leading us through the Canadian wilderness. My heart sank.
Lining up for group selection, I realized that there was only one attractive female leader. All right, I thought, if I get into the hot leader’s group, maybe I can use that as evidence that things won’t be so bad. I’ll just use this girl as a chauvinistic omen. Slowly, names were called out, a drool stained shoulder appeared when a Joe Malone was called to join the hot leader’s group, then a gangly kid with a stupid last name, a curly haired girl with a mean mug, a really loud half-Korean, half-Italian girl, a tiny gymnast girl, and then…
“Colin King.” A sign from the god of sexism, everything would be all right. And despite the girl with the train whistle for a voice, and the Kentuckian hippie who cried whenever possible, everything was all right.
After embarrassing myself in introductions where we had to pair our first name with the name of an animal starting with the same letter, (I thought alternate names for roosters were funny, I did have pet chickens for Christ’s sake) and discussing Amelie a little too passionately, I became great friends with these people. I’ve since had a few classes and adventures with the angry girl with the curly hair, I live with the gangly kid, and Joe Malone turned out to be one of my best friends of freshman year. And I didn’t even have to call my mom once.