beautiful monsters

Yay!

Started my writing workshop this afternoon. I’m in love with writing all over again. And with writers, all of them, (well, almost all) I adore them! Especially my tutor. She’s fantastic.

We did some exercises today, we were given half a sentence and we had to finish it and then keep writing, for three or four minutes, we weren’t allowed to take our pen off the paper (except to get from one word to the next). It’s amazing the stuff you write without any thinking or planning or editing... where does it come from?

When he opened the cupboard he saw a big rotting turnip. It was huge and soggy and covered with brown blotches. It was sitting in a puddle of fermenting turnip juice. It stank. It smelled like all the worst smells you can imagine, all mixed together and then left in a warm place for too long. He quickly shut the door, and stood there for a few minutes feeling as though he might faint. Then he took two steps to the right and opened the next cupboard door. Inside there were three hedgehogs. Two of them were playing chess, nudging the pieces across the board with their snouts. The third hedgehog seemed to be some sort of referee. He watched them for a moment. Surely the next...

An ear is like a delicate shell, a mirror of the shell you pick up and hold to your ear when you need to hear the sea. It’s like a basket to be filled up with secrets and buried under the sand. An ear is like a tunnel, a cave you can crawl inside and curl up, or venture down into the darkness, deeper and deeper. You could end up anywhere. You could find your way to the heart. And ear is like something made out of a piece of clay you have been playing with, fiddling while you talk to someone, not paying attention to the shape your fingers are sculpting...

The best part about this course is the Reading Journal. Yup, it says in the course outline "students must read extensively in the genre." We have to read at least 12 picture books, and at least 24 books for older children. Yup, that’s me, sitting under a tree in the civic square, or curled up on one of those big squishy chairs in the young readers section of the library, with a stack of picture books beside me. It’s not escapism. It’s not procrastination, or laziness. It’s not an addiction. I am conscientious and studious and dedicated to my education thank you very much. It’s study, all right? You wouldn’t want me to fail my course now, would you?

Call it life experience

"I happened to you," he says, and it’s true. He just happened, unexpectedly, inexplicably (deliciously). He just happened and everything flipped upside down, sped up, became brighter. He didn’t fit in with your plan for your life, or even with your plan for the week. He clashed with your identity and the queer reputation you’d carefully constructed over the years. He wasn’t supposed to happen... but he did. And it’s wonderful.

And then, just when you’ve come to terms with him, reconstructed your identity, practiced what you’ll say to your friends, your parents, your poor confused counsellor... it’s over. Well, it doesn’t stop, completely, at least not straight away. There are still a few kisses that leave you feeling dizzy and confused and weak at the knees. And of course, there are still your own daydreams and desires. You still want to slip your fingers around his as you walk down the street. You still want to reach out and touch his hair, bury your face in his smell, brush your fingers over his lips. He still hugs you, and it still makes you feel like you’re falling between the stars, like you’re burning all over. You still want to push closer against him, rest one hand behind his neck, the other sliding up under his shirt. You still want to do unthinkable, unprintable things...

But of course, you can’t do any of that now. Cos you’re Just Good Friends.

Don’t ya hate that?

Addiction update

I’ve decided to cut down on my consumption, but not actually cut it out all together.

I don’t think I can actually live without drinking ch*c*l*te.

I don’t mean that without it I feel shaky and headachy and grumpy (although there’s that too, of course).

I mean, really, without drinking ch*c*l*te, what would there be to live for?!

Yay (Part II)

Just one more exercise? Please? They’re so much fun... (You’ll probably get a lot of this for the next 11 weeks).

Ok, for this one, we split into pairs, and we had to briefly describe a childhood experience, then we had to write up the other person's experience in our own words, and then ask a series of questions. What interests you? What questions do you want to ask? What puzzles you? And so on...

Here’s what I ended up with;

When Kate was about three years old, she was busted in the kitchen with an empty packet that should have contained her grandmother’s heart medication. Of course, everyone panicked and assumed she had swallowed the pills, and she was rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. It was a ghastly experience. She sucked her lips together like the doors of a lift clamping shut. But, just as a lift has a button you can push to open the doors again, Kate had buttons, and someone knew how to push them. They cleverly asked her questions, and she couldn’t help herself, she couldn’t resist answering them. The moment she opened her mouth, they shoved the tube down her throat.

Afterwards, her dad bought her an icecream, and he was so upset he had to buy himself one too. They sat side by side, exhausted, stunned and shaken, slowly licking their icecreams.

Naturally, the question that immediately springs to mind is what flavour was the icecream?

And then, the second most important question is, what did they actually do?!! What did it feel like? How big was the tube? How far down did it go? Could she actually see the stuff they were pumping out of her stomach? Did it make a pumping noise (whump whump whump) or a sucking noise (sssshhhhllooup)? What if they accidentally sucked up her stomach? Your stomach isn’t actually a vital organ, so you can live without it, but it’s connected to lots of other bits that you might miss eventually.

How did she get to the hospital, did they speed through the streets in the family car, running red lights in their panic, or did they call an ambulance, and was she whisked away by paramedics in white coats with red lights flashing?

Who actually asked her the questions? Was it a doctor making a lucky guess, or was it her father, who knew her well? And what did they ask? Did they ask an interesting question, a surprising question that she wanted to answer? Or did they ask such a ridiculous patronising question that she had to indignantly open her mouth and tell them exactly what she thought of questions like that.

Kate doesn’t actually say that she swallowed the pills. She says she allegedly swallowed them. Perhaps she actually dropped them down the sink, one by one. Perhaps she fed them to the dog. With all the excitement of ambulances and stomach pumping machines, I bet no one would even have noticed if the dog dropped dead. Perhaps they wouldn’t even find him until the next day, and then they might just put it down to old age. And what happened to Kate’s grandmother? I hope someone thought to stop by the chemist on the way home and get her some more pills. You’ve only got one heart. If they sucked that up by mistake you’d be in trouble.

Posted by Fionnaigh at March 3, 2003 08:26 PM