Week 13 Theme 5

Last one!

An actual or mythical creature. (revision)

Stare into its eyes and you will see the mortality of man’s creation, the frail beams that hold insanity at bay from the human mind, and you will see them buckle and phase. Stare into its eyes and you will see fire that warms the lonely and water that calms the passionate. Stare into its eyes, and you will see the threads of those that they charred and drowned. Stare into its eyes, and you will see your nightmares, your insecurities, your Fear.

Sing, if you dare, of that shapeshifter’s face that no man has captured it in its perversion, its mirror shine, its sneaking thoughts. Sing, please, of Fear’s ethereal existence, its guises as suppressed memories. Sing what you remember of its stalking amongst the crowd, a fleeting beanie in the mirage of hats. Sing of its many forms, the phantom bear at the hiking trail, the riptide at the river bend, the bowtie on the black widow.

Listen to Fear’s listless whispers planting jealousy into your deepest passions. Listen to its syncopated thumps, the quivers of one’s heart under Fear’s firm stethoscope. Listen as it grows, those tiny ideas driven by Fear’s amplifying hand, and face it.

Stare into Fear’s glossy eyes, and you will see yourself. Stare into Fear’s eyes, and you will witness an eternity in a second, and you will wish that you had not known that Fear was always behind your head, always whispering to you and you alone. Stare into Fear’s eyes, and laugh.

Week 13 Theme 4

Priorities

Sent by Sandra Merlow (local age 60) on January 14, 2511, UTC

Received by Vince Lu (local age 64) on June 12, 2516, UTC

Dear Vince,

We’ve had so many conversations complaining about how our academic institutions undervalue the sciences and overvalue the bullshit humanities, and about people who love words too much and ignore the beauties of the practical and the scientific. I’ve changed my mind. I hope you find these words interesting – I write to you hoping for a sympathetic ear to a conflicted old man.

In our ship’s library, the Canon sits in the back closet. The works of Socrates, Marx, and Kant go mostly ignored in favor of the writings of Knuth, Purcell, and Nash. I wouldn’t change that – in a population of fifty thousand on a ship that must be self-sufficient and unable to gather more raw resources for the thirty year trip, we need as many scientists and engineers as possible. But it saddens me that our children see philosophy and art with the cultural disdain that our generation held for math and science.

Our children would sooner forget Realpolitik, intricacies of Marxism, and Christian ideologies in favor of toxicity tests, half lives of refined plutonium, and Gauss’s law. On the one hand, I am glad that our children will not suffer the ideological wars of the old world, but on the other, they will need to relearn politics, for any society will eventually devolve to politics, and the only way to avoid old mistakes is to study them.

The Space Institute was intentionally creating a branch of the human race dedicated to technological advancement. They told us that our scientific advances, once our notes from a successful colonization finally reach Earth in 35 more years, will help humanity spread to the other candidate planets, and hopefully more effectively.

We’re the vanguard, and I suppose I should be happy Earth’s nations’ delegates have decided that our best shot lies with our brightest technical minds. Here’s to hoping that’s true, for all of our sakes.

Sincerely,

Vince

Week 13 Theme 3

Humanity

Sent by Jourdan Beauchamp (local age 31) on December 15, 2510, UTC

Received by Jerome Chang (local age 36) on May 10, 2515, UTC

Dear Jerry,

I hope this letter finds you well. In our profession, I suppose “well” means a steady stream of problems and paying clients to bring them to you. You know well my reasons for joining the expedition – that troubled life I left behind, which, unfortunately meant that I had to part ways with you as well. I hope your business managed to continue without me.

I’m writing to you about a thought that occurred to me recently, something the bright minds at the Space Institute clearly anticipated when they planned our social experiment. Bring families so that the strongest social bonds are preserved. Bring people of every profession to keep the ship running. Require that at least one generation of kids grows up on the ship so that they are not predisposed to build the new colony in Earth’s image. Those make sense. What tipped me off was a recent wave of xenophobia, which had the anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists worried.

It occurred to me that the Space Institute intended for our colony to be the “Adam and Eve” of a new world, and thus wanted to capture the full range of human genetic diversity in this ark. In addition to bringing families instead of unattached individuals and in addition to requiring that the first generation to step foot on the planet be those who don’t have life on earth as a reference point.

Separated by light years, it will be impractical for humanity to stay connected to its colony. The Space Institute clearly saw that, and probably concluded that the best thing they could do would be to guarantee our genetic survival in the evolutionary game. Does it scare you that we might one day meet again, but as Homo Sapiens Terra and Homo Sapiens Secundus, psychologically, politically, culturally, physically incompatible peoples?

I only wish that I could live long enough to see it.

Best wishes,

Jourdan

Week 13 Theme 2

Thought

Sent by Gray Peters (local age 45) on December 25, 2510, UTC

Received by Jacqueline Andrews (local age 44) on May 20, 2515, UTC

Dear Jackie,

I remember our weekly dinners, talking about how my teaching job on the ship might go and what the differences might be. As I’ve told you many times, it has been tough, and I have never been so humbled by the ideological power a teacher wields.

Can you imagine teaching physics in a world without gravity? Where relativistic time dilation is a fact of life instead of an arcane, difficult to observe phenomenon? Where zero acceleration in the isolated chambers is recreational? Where gravity is a remote force that acts amongst the stars and rocks, and relativity is the ship you live in? Where “down” is dictated by the rotation of the colony dome and where north, south, east, and west are not magnetic?

Can you imagine teaching math and history in a world without money? Have you tried to explain our Great Depressions to a population that doesn’t associate greed with cash? Have you tried to explain the World Wars to children with no conception of land or water?

These children grew up appreciating the heavens, the stars and constellations, but these children have never seen a sunrise over the Alps, or the crunch of freshly mowed grass. These children have never swum in a waterfall. Nor have they stood in a plaza to watch street performers. They haven’t skipped rocks over a brook, or sat under the afternoon sun reeling in a fishing rod.

They haven’t seen the sun. They have never seen a burning star from the earth’s distance – out here, there is only empty space. How, then, can we teach them in our own image, or will we create a generation of people technologically advanced, yet philosophically lacking both the problems and the sophistication that we, humanity, have come to value so much? Such is the plight of a teacher.

Love,

Gray

Week 13 Theme 1

Four linked themes. Today is theme #1.

Time

Sent by Casey Chou (local age 27) on October 9, 2510, UTC

Received by Cameron v.d. Boor (local age 33) on March 13, 2515, UTC

Dear Cameron,

It’s hard to imagine that you will be a parent when this message gets to you. To think that we were only middle school students when we had to say goodbye forever, me, about to board the bus to the elevator, you, watching as you held my half of the fluorescent bulb we pulled from an old man’s trash and I, yours. True, the time we spent apart was not in silence, but hurtling along at an unimaginable 0.5c through empty skies, invisible to your most powerful telescopes, I must be content to read about your life in slow motion, and always years too late.

I suppose that will become the sacrifice of our generation: that we volunteered entire families and communities to ride the space elevator for the last time, uprooting tens of thousands of people from their friends, knowing that they will never see each other living and breathing again.

We were happy with our holovids and our five hour latencies. I could hear about your day, and I knew we’d go exploring soon. I count myself among the fortunate ones – my closest friends are here with me. Others suffered more. But when we left the solar system, not for almost a millennium had time stretched so far that I must recall what I said eight years ago to make sense of your most recent reply.

I’m glad your boy problems ended in college, but I want to know who’s in your life now, and I have to hope that you put it in your personal record sometime in the past few years, or else I will be waiting much longer to see your family. To think that in the time it takes us to have a conversation, entire nations can rise and fall, entire wars fought, entire ideologies debated, entire lives passed, I fear that this message may have lost its reader, but I have hope that humanity has preserved peace.

What can one write, well knowing that the other person might no longer live? How can we perpetually write our last words to every one of our separated friends? I can only hope that my records will cover the thoughts that I forget to convey here.

Love,

Casey

Week 11 Theme 5

One character tries to describe a dream to another.

At the base of a fence in the Australian countryside sits one bunny and another bunny.

“I don’t like what I saw.”

“Another dream?”

“Not a dream, Buck.”

“Another allegory for your life, like the rest of them?”

“You’re mocking me.”

“Fine, what did you see?”

“Cut, green grass, but it bruised. It bled. It shriveled away wherever we walked.”

“Shriveled?”

“Perhaps the eagle flying away with a scroll in its talons had something to do with it?”

“Crazy. That’s what you are, crazy. I can’t think of any way those are connected.”

“Call me what you want, but it means something.”

“Just figure it out so I can get on with my munching.”

“Well, do you know how long our family’s been here?”

“Ages. We’ve always been here.”

“What if we haven’t? Maybe that’s what the dream’s saying. Maybe we’re causing this grass to bleed. Maybe the eagle flying away is like the history of this land disappearing under our feet.”

“I still think you’re crazy, but you didn’t tell me how it ended.”

“Bunnies. Lots of them, growing out where the grass died. A whole field of them, just more and more bunnies.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I think it means we’re killing the land.”

“Look at this, all the grass, nobody to hunt us down. Doesn’t look dead to me. Now shut up and eat.”

Week 11 Theme 4

An important life decision.

In the entrance to the MIT library on the final day of Campus Preview Weekend stands a rat. A brass rat, dropped by some unfortunate alumnus who was probably wondering where the brass rat went. So Jordan had an idea, picking up the rat and heading for the stairs to the tunnels. “What if you get lost?” he thought, “and miss your flight to Palo Alto?” Or rather, he wished he’d thought of that before dropping down into a low tunnel, pipes running the length of the ceiling. So he crept, looking for that alumnus.

At the first trapdoor, he climbed out into the soccer field. The ball zipped past him, followed by a swarm of tree colored jerseys cheering them on, people shouting “Jordan!” And so the ball landed at his feet. Soccer. He thought, as he dashed forward to join the formation. How did they know he was on the team? How did he know he was on the team?

But there was no time to think, so he passed, forgot about the ball, and turned around into a lush, green forest edge. Spring grass, thick and green. Perfectly trimmed. Crickets chirping under the cool New Jersey evening air. “What do you think?” a voice asked. Jordan looked up, his classmates all staring at him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“There you are, back with us, Jordan?” Jordan opened his eyes, wondering why he hadn’t done his Plato reading. “I believe you found my brass rat?”

Week 11 Theme 3

An actual or mythical creature.

Stare into its eyes and you will see all of man’s creation, the fires that warm the lonely and the water to calm the passions. Stare into its eyes and you will see the sorrows and regrets of civilizations gone, and the petulant monuments to all of their sins. Stare into its eyes and you will see inspirations of geniuses past, and those yet to be found.

Stare if you can, into that malleable wraith that cloaks itself with the terrible truth, the innermost thoughts and fears manifest in the air for one to see one thing and another to see another. Watch its grace and beauty idolized by bards past, and its mutations and contortions inspiring poets today. Watch as it confronts its people with their dreams, forces them to face hidden fears.

But stare into its eyes, and you will not find the future, the sparkling, uncertain future, for the wraith is found only in the present as a monument to the past. It repeats. Recites. Retells. It watches, not knowing what it sees, for the wraith does not see, it reflects. And those who look into that fearsome, ethereal face will see their own scowling back at them.

Week 11 Theme 2

Retelling of a fable.

A fallen log sat up high where one finds mountain goats. Windswept and chilled, it became a slippery shortcut for a long path down and back up to the other side. Today, two goats were headed to opposite sides, and only that log stood in the middle.

One goat stepped onto the log. Then the other did. The wind blew and their hairs followed, but the goats stood in place. One stepped, then the other did, then the first, then again the other. And now they had a problem: goats don’t walk backwards. With nothing to lose and the greener grass on the other side to gain, the first goat stepped. The second stood in place, his mind not decided. So he stood as the other goat stepped, barely keeping his grip on the slippery log underneath.

They paused again a couple feet away from each other. The moment of truth. They turned their heads and stared as well as animals with herbivore eye placements could, eye to eye, singular. Then our decisive goat charged. And our other goat thought “what the hell?” and lunged. They locked horns, and they thrashed, and they both slipped on the wind-polished log, falling off, one into the rapids below, and another to the side of the log, shaken, and wiser.

Week 11 Theme 1

A dream

Kat had a superpower that made her afraid to sleep. Whenever she dreamt, she could not feel pain. And because she could not feel pain, her mind took it as license to imagine morbid things. Thus were her dreams: painful scenes without the pain, nightmares with fear but no adrenaline, surreal, disturbed pictures she would gladly forget over her morning cereal.

Kat was in a plane. It was crashing into the Atlantic, flinging her into the seat in front. Kat bounced, skipped into the water and sank, feeling the cold water in her lungs but not the paralyzing fear. She watched fishes swim by as she sank deeper and her diaphragm spasmed with the numb twitches of a jittery muscle. Constant, small jerks that moved her ribs. And her eyes sank into the black.

Kat was sitting at a fire, hands cold, too cold. So she pushed them into the fire, feeling the gentle warmth and pleasant tingling. She watched as her skin blistered and shriveled, as her bones turned black from the soot rising from below. That was how her hands were supposed to be – not too cold, not too hot.

Kat was sitting at the ledge of the Grand Canyon. She wanted a photo, something to remember the exhilaration. But the wind was blowing, and as she stood up, she fluttered into the air over the Colorado River below. And she fell. She hit a rock, a surprising bump. And then another. And another. And she looked at the red lines forming on her limbs, wondering why the blood blossomed like her mother’s rhododendrons. And she thought to herself: aren’t rhododendrons pretty?

Week 10 Theme 5

Need to take my fourth of four nights off - I can't find the time tonight to write a proper theme.

Week 10 Theme 4

About a risk taken.

A brief conversation with my internal conversationalist:

“We’ve gone through this before. Risks. All that jazz.”

“Yeah, we have. But now I have to write about it. And I didn’t take any.”

“No, you can think of risks. You’re just setting the bar high, because you know how small ones don’t make good stories. They’re boring. Mundane. Nobody wants to hear about them. Or they actually just want to tell you about their stories while you listen.”

“Exactly. So I need something big.”

“What about your relationship stories? How they began?”

“I pretty much knew they would begin. I just didn’t know how.”

“Choosing colleges?”

“Didn’t know what would happen, but I couldn’t go wrong.”

“Startup idea?”

“Knew it probably wouldn’t work. Signed up anyway. Had nothing to lose. Lost nothing.”

“Your jobs?”

“Nope, that was a tiny risk. Paid off big though.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’ve never taken a risk?”

“I guess I haven’t really. I’ve pretty much always known that it’d turn out fine. Never risked losing anything. Nothing big, anyway.”

“So you’ve never done anything without knowing the ending?”

“Of course I have. It’s just that uncertainty isn’t danger. You can know it’ll end fine without knowing how it ends. It’s like learning to dive. You know you’ll be fine even if you bellyflop.”

“Or like learning to juggle fire?”

“Yeah. You know it’s not dangerous, and you know it’s fun, so it’s not like you actually stood to lose anything.”

“Did you ever stand to lose anything?”

“Frankly? No.”

Week 10 Theme 3

A theme around the words “I remember.”

I remember when you conceived me in a moment of unity, inspiration, irony. I remember how proud you were to show me to the world, your baby for all to see and for all to describe, however, imperfectly, to their friends. I remember the confusion in people’s eyes at the monster before them, now grown from a cute baby to a terrible two. I remember being the butt of every April Fools joke. I remember being brought to basketball games. I remember being hidden during your conversations with other people, only to be brought out, always at the least opportune moment. I remember playing peekaboo, so many times, always when they expected someone else.

But I am not your baby, because you did not conceive me like you think you did. I remember an earnest effort, a time when I was appreciated at face value. I remember when there were many others like me, when we were the hits on the dance floor, when we were the companions everyone wanted to bring along on trips. I remember finally retiring as the younger generation took our place in your minds and hearts.

I remember when you resurrected me, disturbed me from my resting place telling me that you had great plans. I remember what you said: that I am the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time to make all the difference in a jaded world needing a hero. Then you found a younger, prettier one, leaving me once again spent, old, forgotten. But I won’t forget. I will never give you up. I will never let you go. I will never run around, and I will never desert you. Never.

Week 10 Theme 2

A short theme with no A's and no E's. Difficulty: that also means no articles of speech.

“Polish our floor.” Bob didn’t know why. Truly, Bob didn’t know how. But mom told Bob to do his work, so Bob took his tools, found his floor, and dug in. Two hours in, Bob put his mop down. If only mom could know how much work polishing wood floors took. If only Bob could look busy with his schoolwork, mom would stop with this stupid floor stuff. It didn’t look dusty. It didn’t look dull. It didn’t look sooty. It truly didn’t look worth mom’s worry, nor Bob’s monotonous hours, so why? Obviously, for odd jobs to do in Bob’s now copious time. Bob would go on his trip soon. Soon. But not now, so Bob took his polishing tool and did his work.

Week 10 Theme 1

Free theme on a starting sentence.

I hadn’t expected this. Three hours ago, an unconscious rabbit shows up at my back door. I took it inside, not realizing that the rabbit was unconscious because it had taken a fall from the twenty foot cedar tree in my yard. Do rabbits climb trees? Apparently they do when they’re being chased by bears. As it turns out, this rabbit was being chased by a bear, because I found the bear in the kitchen after a short trip to the bathroom.

How does one deal with an ursine dinner guest eating your other guest? Clearly not the way I did, or I wouldn’t be here now. Leaving quickly and hoping the bear would stay on its food, I fetched my shotgun from the closet in the bedroom.

Of course, bears tend to be more tickled than actually stopped by shotguns. I’m sure my neighbors appreciated the show, me fishtailing my car down a residential street trying to shake off a bear hanging tooth and nail off the trunk. Naturally, the bear returned to his rabbit meal afterwards, and this time he didn’t hesitate to chase my fishtailing car down the street again, again hanging off the rear end for dear life.

Perhaps the second incident was enough dissuasion – it didn’t return after that. Finally, I got some peace. But I hadn’t expected this. I made the news, and now PETA’s protesting on my lawn. I liked the bear more.

Week 9 Theme 5

A free theme on a confusion between the literal and the figurative.

In a suburban house. The window is broken, and Ben and Tim are inside.

“Well, I’m bugged.”

“What do you mean you’re bugged? Nobody hates you that much.”

“No? Then why do they keep bugging me?”

“Bugging you? Who’s bugging you? Look, there’s no way we can randomly pick a suburban house and the government just happened to put in cameras.”

“Not the government. The security company.”

“Then how come we didn’t set off any alarms?”

“Because this thing is bugged.”

“So they just want to hear robbers breaking in?”

“What?”

“You just said that panel is bugged.”

“Oh, no, not bugged like a microphone.”

“So it’s not working?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“What do you mean yes and no? Bugs don’t go halfway. They’re either there or they’re not.”

“Well, they’re certainly here.”

“Okay, so that’s a yes.”

“But it’s working every now and then. Like I said, yes and no.”

“How is that possible? Are the hidden cameras breaking the controller?”

“No, not the hidden cameras. You know what? Why don’t you just come here and see for yourself.”

“No, I’m busy fixing the window. Just tell me what’s in the panel.”

“Bugs.”

“But you said the panel was mostly working.”

“Wait, what?”

“You said the panel has a bug?”

“More like an ant colony.”

“Bugger off.”

Week 9 Theme 4

A brief list of proverbs.

A cat with nothing to see is blind.

Wait too long for the perfect fish, and you’ll miss the good ones.

Every garden has weeds.

Arguing is finding two ways to say the same thing.

Never run a marathon in new shoes.

Stop the music. Hear yourself.

You are what you eat. You don’t want to know what you eat.

Snowballs melt slower than snow.

Gravel doesn’t skip.

Week 9 Theme 3

An “orientational” metaphor.

When life turns upside down, we realize that we are alive. To live right-side up is to be normal. Normal is routine. Routine is fragile. Routine breaks. Life inverts. We see mortality. We deny it. We are alive.

Today, life is right-side up. The car is right-side up. Its passengers are right-side up. The driver will miss the traffic light above. A car will careen into the side. Time will slow down. Safety glass will rain, and the three upside-down people inside will watch their car skid. They will release their seatbelts, drop to the ceiling and crawl out the window. They will be alive.

Today, life is right-side up. The kayaker is right-side up. He will be right-side up when he pushes off the dock, and he will be right-side up when he takes his first exploratory strokes. He will overextend his arm, and the kayak will flip its passenger and his life into the water. Upside down, the passenger will stare up his drowning death and deny it the luxury of fear. He will pause – death has waited so long that it can wait more. He will orient himself, climb down, deeper, out of his seat, and dive to the surface. Floating there next to his upside down kayak, he will breathe life.

Week 9 Theme 2 (or lack thereof)

I'm having some trouble finding inspiration tonight, so I'm taking a break on tonight's theme. Hopefully better luck tomorrow.

Andrew

Week 9 Theme 1

Highlight a metaphor or some other type of figure you find there.

Las Meninas. Housed in the Museo Prado, this painting is Spain’s Mona Lisa, a painting centered on the young Infanta Margarita, but supposedly actually Velazquez’s self-portrait, a commentary on his role in the royal court. But what captivates the mind on this particular day is a thought that art critics all too often disregard: this painting is ordinary.

Ordinary not because Las Meninas lacks merit, but ordinary in the same way as the daily theme that would eventually describe it. Velazquez was a professional artist, working under the patronage of the Spanish royal family, and he produced paintings like today’s writer produces essays. It’s what he does. The ideas and symbols and themes fall together in an uncertain pile that sorts itself out as the work materializes, with the certainty that its reception will probably be decent, but with the faint hope that it is considered amazing, and with no knowledge of the meaning future generations might extract from just another paid work.

Sure, Las Meninas contains some symbols and implied meaning. And yes, it’s fun to speculate on Velazquez’s intentions, but can visitors see him carrying his pen and backpack to the royal studio every day? Naturally, exactly one visitor did, and for the rest of the day, the mind clung to a faint hope that Las Meninas was just another day’s work, like a daily theme.

Week 7 Theme 5

Evaluation.

Writing is hard. I knew that when I signed up. I also knew that I was new to creative writing and that I would need to wear the keys of my keyboard to a smooth polish if I wanted to write with vibrancy and voice. Daily Themes seemed like a good place to start.

Seven weeks and thirty-three themes later, this eventual goal seems only farther away than it was when I began. I suppose that should be a heartening sign that I was learning. But that does not comfort the part of me who tries to recreate the musical elegance I read in the writers I admire, only to find that I’d composed a syncopated staccato.

I seem to have trouble with the “theme” part of the course. A theme is an underlying idea, an invariant that grounds the reader in a moving story. When I began the course, I wanted to learn how to orchestrate themes – to choose my words not only to express my ideas, but also to sound like them. I also wanted to emphasize those ideas at just the right points to keep the reader moving alongside my own thoughts.

While the words flow more easily now, and while I can say that I’ve improved on the goals I set earlier in the semester, I can still only capture that elusive eloquence in brief moments of inspiration or luck. Hopefully the next few weeks of writing will make that less accidental and more frequent.

Week 7 Theme 4

Revision: Create a fictional person who is like you in some significant ways.

Tony watched as a small turtle continued its trek towards the thick reeds around the pond. He was leaning on the bus stop sign. “Look, you just ruined my day for me. As much as I still love you, I’d rather not talk to you. Not for a while.” A groaning bus drove by, and Tony took the interruption to breathe. “Bye.”

It was getting dark, and the crisp evening chill only sharpened his newfound loneliness. Tony’s four-legged companion did not seem to notice any difference – and it was right, there really was no reason to let a disembodied voice touch his daily life. But it did, and Tony felt its unshakable tendrils once again. “How can you prepare for these things?” Tony asked. The turtle kept crawling. “I’ve been here before. I know how this works. I need to move on. It’s over. I can’t afford the distraction.”

Tony looked at his watch. Half past three. The bus would be here soon. He couldn’t hide his face for much longer. “Smile!” he told himself. “Smile! You’ll feel better.” So Tony smiled at the turtle and personified it as his sagely grandparent. “You’re probably older than him, aren’t you?” He said. “I bet you’ve been through your share. How’d you do it, you impervious git?”

The turtle stuck to its line, pulling itself along at the same leisurely pace. Even the whine of the approaching bus didn’t bother it. Tony laughed. He had to! It was funny! The turtle was speaking in metaphor! In this life, tonight was just another bus stop. So Tony muttered a thank you, smiled at the driver, and rode off, finally leaving the turtle in peace.

Week 7 Theme 3

After a short, two-theme break on theme writing to dispatch some unruly midterms, we're back and at it with a procrastinated piece on procrastination.

---

Write a story that meditates not only on experience but on how we talk and write about it.

Time has shown again and again that extreme circumstances inspire periods of extraordinary creativity and progress. It took decades of religious oppression to move the Puritans to the New World. It took a war for Picasso to paint his immortalized Guernica. And it took an ominous race of national pride and fear to land man to the moon.

Therefore, this particular late December night, in a darkened kitchen, shivering under three layers of coats, working by the fluorescent light of a computer screen, during a week-long power outage with no light at the end of the tunnel, I should have been able to write a half-decent college essay. They told me not to procrastinate in case extraordinary circumstances arose. So when the tiny, shrieking “told you so!” accompanied the draining battery meter, I could only admit that it had indeed told me so.

Procrastinators wish they were in my coats. I had no time to ponder topics. I would write, or I would go to community college. So my mind blundered in the shadows clawing for anything that could twist into five hundred coherent words. And after two percent of my computer’s juice, it settled back where it started its search. China, where I would go in a few days. That would have to do.

“Really? Seriously?” I muttered to my creative block. “Do you honestly believe that half the kids aren’t writing about visiting China these days?” And I waited, eyeing the barely legible How to Write the Perfect College Admissions Essay on the unlit bookshelf. Then it said back: “Okay, but nobody writes about toilet paper.” So I wrote about both.

Week 6 Theme 5

Revise an earlier theme in order to experiment with cutting your prose significantly.

Edited Week 5 Theme 4

Take time to talk to someone you would like to write about in the form of a brief profile.

Cut by a third:

I’m a bit early, so I find Paul in the kitchen. He straightens up from the table, striding with a bit of a penguin’s waddle to his oyster stew. 50 years were catching up. He gives me a taste. “It’s amazing!” “You know what I was thinking?” he says as he strolls to his table. “I’ll put the stew in these bowls and cover ‘em with a puff pastry. How’s that sound?”

“Amazing,” I say, but he’s already on his next dish. Taking a spoonful of hot oil, he pours it over a Chilean sea bass steak. “What do you think?” He asks, handing me a fork. “I heard that’s how the Chinese restaurants do it. Oh, how do you garnish this fish?”

“I’ve always added some salt, scallions, and ginger.” He cuts a stalk, arranges it quickly, and straightens back up, beaming. “How’s that look?” “I guess that looks fine.” I tell him. “Good enough,” he says, as he goes back to poaching bass steaks.

Cut half:

I’m early, so I find Paul in the kitchen. 50 years were catching up, but you couldn’t tell by his food. He straightens up and strides with a penguin’s waddle to his oyster stew. He gives me a taste. “You know what I was thinking?” he says as he strolls to his table. “I’ll put the stew in these bowls and cover ‘em with a puff pastry. How’s that sound?”

“It’s amazing,” I say, but he’s already on the next dish. He pours a spoonful of oil over a poached Chilean sea bass steak. “What do you think?” He asks, handing me a fork. “Oh, how do you garnish this fish?” “I just add scallions and ginger.” He scatters some and straightens up. “Good enough,” he says.

Week 6 Theme 4

Describe a night sky.

Betelgeuse was blocking the shot. A filmy haze streaked across the evening sky, just enough to scatter the more brilliant blacks with the tangerine terrestrial glow of sodium lamps. The gall! Had any other hidden behind the filmy mist, it would have been just a bright dot. But. Betelgeuse. Its red glare diffused into a blistering pimple on Orion’s shoulder. The hunter had seen better days.

Heather was already up far past her bedtime, and she did not enjoy the thought of her walk home as she sat stuck behind the console watching Betelgeuse ruin her night. The heavens – nowhere else might one find such a vacuous, vain space. Of the billions of miles spanning the sky, Betelgeuse had to attend its most popular corner, but tonight, it strangely joined the B-list. Any connoisseur of nighttime venues would know that Orion’s belt was the gathering place of the hip and young, the stars.

Betelgeuse was washed up. An old flame. A rare, inflated stalwart of a past eon ogled by too many eyes while it was still the only one that they could see. It was in every tabloid, its life combed over by far too many photographers hoping to start their petty careers. But tonight, Betelgeuse was dying, and Heather had no choice but to grant it one last centerfold.

Week 6 Theme 3

Exchange between two people who have different ways of talking.

The time is lunch, but the year is debatable. The place is an upscale New York restaurant, but the topic hasn’t settled. Our first conversationalist is a retired, grayed, congenial man who really has seen the world in his long career as a spy handler. Our second conversationalist is a thin, slightly taller than average, 22 year-old with a model’s face. But if you ask her, the conversation is between a very sharp man from the past and an ambitious young woman starting a career.

“Amanda, have you thought about what you’ll be doing next year?”

“Yeah, I want to do something interesting. Maybe work in the Middle East, or I could be a researcher for 60 minutes.”

“Well, you know what it is they say.” William gingerly rested his fingers on the table as his eyes glanced first left then back. “You’re attractive. You speak well. You know, I know a guy who works at the Picknell Foundation. What if you were to get in touch with him? Maybe have lunch.”

“He sounds interesting.”

“You could enter into their broadcasting program. Like those…” William glances left again, though no reporters are sitting there. “Like those news anchors. Maybe in a few years, you can have your own show.”

“That’s a good idea, William, but I’m not sure that’s what I want. I’d rather be doing the research.”

“Well, you want to meet interesting people, right? That’s always been the one way to meet everyone. You’ll get to interview them. You’re someone who could win a grant to do that. Hmm, look, here’s what I’ll do. Why don’t I send this guy an email, and I’ll include you, Amanda, I’ll include you in it.”

“William, thank you for trying to help, but that’s just not what I want to do.”

“You know, I was just speaking with him at dinner sometime last week. He was asking…”

“Oh, how was the meeting? Do you know who the fellowship winners are?”

The time is today. The place is still the restaurant. The topic just changed.

Week 6 Theme 2

Using plain, "ten-center" words, predominantly Anglo-Saxon in origin, write a theme about someone or something you love passionately.

3pm, just outside Shanghai. Two boys sit at the window of a Beijing-bound train. The summer heat is just barely too much for the air conditioner, but they don’t care. They’re staring at a board between them covered in grid lines. Flat white and black stones sit where the lines meet. The train bumps over the track, and the stones shudder in matching time. They smell like glass and palm sweat.

The younger boy clicks a black stone against the board. Another slips from his palm and crashes into the careful pattern on the board. The older boy sniffs it before he throws it into the bowl it came from. As he thinks, the younger boy fixes the arrangement.

“Why don’t you go there?” asks a slightly wider boy watching from across the aisle. The older boy puts his white stone elsewhere. “No, that’s a mistake. You should go here.” The wider boy takes the stone. The older boy clicks down another and stands up. “Listen, Fatso, I already thought of that. Give me the piece.” Fatso pulls his arm back. “Come on, think about it.”

The older boy sits down on the other side. “I did. Look, Fatso, if you think you know better, why don’t you take my spot?”

Fatso does, and he grabs a handful of white stones as he scoots into place. The older boy pulls a black stone out of the younger boy’s hand. Moist with sweat, it slips out of his fingers as he puts it down. It clatters into place, but the young one picks it up again. “He’s right. I was feinting.”

The older boy reaches for another stone, but the young one grabs his wrist with clammy hands. “Look, this is my game. If you want to play, take your spot back.” As the older boy ponders whether he wants to watch Fatso lose more than he wants to play, he smells his wrist. It smells like glass and palm sweat.

Week 6 Theme 1

Write a theme about a specific style you admire.

Wesley usually kept his door unlocked. This evening, I found him in his room peeling an apple with his pocket knife. He sawed up and down with his right hand as his left turned the apple, uncovering its yellow flesh as juices dripped down his fingers. He was always stubborn about his unusual way of peeling apples, in part because it would attract attention, but mostly because our debates over apple-peeling technique always entertained bystanders.

His clothes said as much. He had just returned from an evening performing stand-up comedy, and he was still in costume: jeans, brown leather shoes, and a purple velvet jacket with a smoking pipe in the chest pocket. The pipe blew bubbles. A rubber band ball, an empty wine bottle sat in his top hat – he always opened his routines by juggling all three of them. It was flashy. The other performers couldn’t do it.

As he finished explaining how the show went, he trailed off. Wesley was out of topics. The silence that followed was punctuated by only the soft scratching sound of his knife passing through the apple skin. He stood up, swaying left and right, catching himself before he would begin to fall. In his completely still room, he had to move.

As the last sliver of the apple peel fell into the trash can, he turned to me with the proud smile of a six year old that had just learned to ride his bike. He held the apple towards me. “See? Peeled. Now I’m going to eat it.” He impaled the apple on his knife, and, holding it by the handle, he took the loudest bite he could.

Week 5 Theme 5

Create a fictional person who is like you in some significant ways.

Tony watched as a small turtle crept off the pavement and towards the pond. He was leaning on the car door with a phone to his head, as he had been half an hour ago when he found the turtle. “Yes, I’m okay, life goes on.” The turtle took a step. “Look, you just ruined my day for me. As much as I still love you, I’d rather not talk to you. Not for a while.” Another step. “Bye.” He dialed another number. “Hey, I’m running late. Don’t hold dinner for me.”

It was dark. The parking lot had emptied, and he too would need to head home soon, but not yet. His life had reversed at the whim of a few intangible waves carried cross-country by the combined ingenuity of mankind, and in all their wisdom they had not prepared for the inevitability in which Tony now found himself.

The turtle plodded on oblivious to Tony’s self-pity. “You and I are not so different,” he said. The turtle took another step. “I have a deadline at work. I wish I had your determination.” Silence. And Tony sat in it as the turtle vanished into the pond.

Tony forced a smile, glad that the nighttime darkness hid the corners of his mouth that were struggling to stay raised. And when his mind finally wandered to thoughts of dinner, he sat back down behind the wheel. “You’ve got it figured out, little dude.”

Week 5 Theme 4

Take time to talk to someone you would like to write about in the form of a brief profile.

I arrive a little early to the dinner party, like I usually do, and find Paul in the kitchen. He greets me the way he always does. “Here, try this,” he says, dipping a spoon into a large pot on the stove. I know to taste before I ask what it is. Today, it’s a creamy oyster stew, good as always. Paul puts down his ladle to gesture with both arms. “You know what I was thinking? Andrew?” he says as he leads me to another counter. “I’ll put the stew in these bowls and cover ‘em with a puff pastry. How’s that sound?” Delicious. As always.

“Hey, so I was thinking we should do a Chinese New Year’s dinner,” he says as he pinches the puff pastries onto their bowls, “maybe with some fish, and fried rice, and maybe bok choi on the side. What do you think?”

Paul has recently been exploring Chinese food, kicked off by a trip to New York’s Chinatown. According to his friends, he took to the food like Charybdis in a drought. Perhaps his cravings were finally convincing him, or perhaps he was simply trying to expand his range as a chef. Having grown up watching others prepare Chinese food, I was quickly becoming his source of inspiration.

“I was thinking maybe I could steam some cod with a bit of soy sauce. What do you usually do?”

“I usually use sea bass.”

“Like Chilean sea bass? Oh, you mean with the fatty steaks? That’ll be amazing!”

With Paul, it always is.

Week 5 Theme 3

Metaphor

Normal people use their pens for writing. This “Talia Ehrenhart” clearly did not. When I found her name etched in precise letters on the plastic pocket clip on the pen’s cap, I realized that this wasn’t a pen you’d lose in a backpack. This pen wasn’t meant for writing – it just happened to be a pen.

Talia’s eccentricity did not restrict itself to an engraved name. I would later discover that Talia was a pseudonym, meant to hide Lydia from questions about her odd pens. Most of them began as Pentel R.S.V.P. Fine Tips. She would mold thin neoprene sheets onto the transparent body of the pen to create a grip. On the rubber, she would etch a thin circle near what I would later discover to be the balance point. The tip and back cap were weighted with cured glue, and Talia had drilled a hole in the back cap so that she could insert the ink cartridge backwards. She didn’t like writing with a backwards pen, but she also never planned to write with these pens.

Talia created these pen while she was learning to twirl them. This single, small, annoying habit blossomed into an evening obsession. She would twirl absentmindedly as she read, even as she wrote. She would twirl to stay awake in class. She would even twirl butter knives, more than once intimidating friends at lunch – Talia didn’t use butter knives to cut, either.

Week 5 Theme 2

Biography

Zack turned to me as we watched a worker unload sheet after sheet of cardboard from the Ikea truck. He rubbed his hands, wondering aloud: “How many layers do you think I need for a seat?” “Dunno. Why don’t you just try it?” I respond. “Four?”

“Maybe.”

Zack was always the kind of person who just tried things. Back in his high school years, he rigged an aerosol can and a match into a flamethrower. There’s a video of it on Youtube. During one snowy evening, he cooked a dinner without using a spatula, because he wondered if he could. While others were finishing their desserts, he dripped a Monet onto his napkin with candle wax.

One doesn’t often see an Ikea truck with piles of cardboard but no furniture. But then again, Zack would rather make his own. For weeks, he had been talking to me about cardboard furniture. “Do it right,” he said as he showed me his chair designs, “and you could make cheap, environmentally friendly furniture!” His designs always questioned cultural norms, though not to break them. He just forgets them easily. These designs were no different – the chairs had triangular backs and seats. “For structural integrity,” he claims.

“Nah, actually I just wanted a triangular chair.”

Week 5 Theme 1

Physical description.

She is never quite who she seems to be. Her hair appears between blond and brown and glows orange under bright light, never quite a single color. On dry or humid days, her hair falls just short of her shoulders, puffed outwards by her curls bumping against each other, never settling into a single shape long enough to be called a hairstyle.

At the age of twenty-two and in her senior year in college, she is clearly not a college student at heart. She wears lavender eye shadow and bright red lipstick, but she is hardly girly. Her frequent sports injuries, her fascination with cars, and her penchant for video games would tell you that. She drinks, but you will only find expensive gins and craft beers in her apartment. She takes classes, but she spends most of her time working, supporting herself because her family does not.

She isn’t thin, but then neither is she unfit – she looks like a carefully managed health regimen locked in a constant struggle with family genes. She is, for the most part, a vegetarian, but only because she hasn’t bothered to reintroduce her stomach to meat after Lent. She was too busy being not what you’d expect.

Week 4 Theme 5

Free theme focusing on voice.

Chat log with Tyler, May 13^th, 2010

Tyler (4:10 am): i’ll help you later, but i have to finish my senior project first

Me (4:13 am): that’s fine, I’m almost done wit hpart 2, working on the stats collector now

Tyler (7:21 am): crap, collasped on my keyboard

Me (7:31 am): take a nap

Tyler (7:31 am): no, ill finish

Me (7:32 am): you faceplanted the keyboard after two red bulls

Me (7:32 am): take a nap

Tyler (8:50 am): back sorry, was sleeping on the floor

Me (11:17 am): finished the stats, had to redo most of your work, but it works now

Tyler (11:30 am): still working on my project, i’ll be done a few hours

Tyler (11:32 am): if i wre more awake, i’d feel bad letting you do the work

Me (1:50 pm): just fell asleep standing up, back later, saved my stuff in the repository

Me (1:50 pm): this nescafe stuff tastes like shit.

Tyler (2:30 pm): finished.

Tyler (2:35 pm): i’m looking at your code, and i can’t understand any of it

Tyler (2:45 pm): know what? i should just leave it to you, me coding will stlow you down

Me (4:05 pm): back to wrok

Me (4:07 pm): you know what’d help? You should write the report while I go test this code

Tyler (4:09 pm): ok, i’ll write up the protocol

Me (4:14 pm): k

Me (7:50 pm): shit, one hour left

Me (7:55 pm): i’m tripping balls

Me (8:11 pm): come on

Me (8:11 pm): work

Tyler (8:17 pm): explain how you didt he stats stuff?

Me (8:23 pm): not important, just read my code and throw something up there

Tyler (8:56 pm): took my best shot, in your email

Me (8:59 pm): k.

Tyler (9:15 pm): how’s it coming?

Me (9:18 pm): two nodes working, trying to get autorecovery working, fucking annoying internte connection

Me (10:31 pm): works, no obvious bugs. i’m done… ugh, never goin gto pull thsi kind of all-nighter again

Tyler (10:32 pm): finished writing, how’s it look?

Me (11:13 pm): good

Me (11:13 pm): send it

Me (11:13 pm): too tired to care

Tyler (11:17 pm): ditto

Tyler (11:17 pm): done

Me (11:17 pm): I don’t want to be a junior any more.

Tyler (11:18 pm): huh, prof already gave us our grades

Me (11:20 pm): I’m going to go lie in a coma

Tyler (11:31 pm): it was an honor, sir

Me (11:32 pm): shut up and go to sleep.

Week 4 Theme 4

Write a scene of dialogue in which two speakers rub up against each other. There be some aggression or erotic excitement or both.

Agent: Hi, Nate speaking. Can I help you?

Caller: Hi, I’m calling because I got your bill in the mail, uh, there’s a line that doesn’t look right.

Nate: Okay, what’s your claim number?

Caller: Wait, one sec… let me get the papers out. Where’s the claim number on these bills?

Nate: The upper right corner.

Caller: The one with the dashes.

Nate: That one.

Caller: One-Three-Three-One-Zero-Seven.

Nate: Okay, our records show that you still need to pay us, uh, eleven thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars.

Caller: What?

Nate: Our records show that you still need to pay us one one two five zero dollars, um, for medical expenses from August eleventh.

Caller: The bill says only one hundred twelve dollars and fifty cents.

Nate: No, sir, your bill says eleven thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars.

Caller: What does your screen say the bill is charged for?

Nate: Ambulance…

Caller: Ride. Do you think there’s any way an ambulance ride can cost eleven thousand dollars?

Nate: I’m sorry, sir, your account says you owe one one

Caller: two point five zero dollars. The ambulance isn’t plated in gold.

Nate: Sir, if you want the bill corrected, you’ll have to

Caller: Can I speak with your manager?

Nate: Sir?

Caller: Your manager. I’ll have to speak with your manager. Sir.

Nate: Sir, I am the manager.

Caller: Then get your manager on the line.

Nate: Sir, I can’t

Caller: Fix the bill.

Nate: Sir, you’ll have to get the hospital to

Caller: Fix the bill.

Nate: Sir… sir… hello?

Week 4 Theme 3

A dream that included a resonant voice or conversation.

I’m standing on a bedpost. A voice emanates from the corner, where one would assume a door, its message dulled by the vacuum of sensation that obscures unimportant details. “Don’t jump!” it shouted. “Don’t jump!” The ground shrinks away below my feet placed perfectly side by side, my vertigo raising me to flagpole heights as a second voice fights the first. “That’s not so far. You’ve jumped off this bedpost before. How else can you get down?” “Don’t jump!” shouted the voice in the corner, its message dulled by sheer altitude. I jump.

I wake up, arms raised above my head balancing myself for the fall. My eyes go to that bedpost, three feet off the ground. Three feet. That’s not so far.

I’m standing again, this time in the basket of a hot air balloon, looking down. My friend’s voice says from behind, “You’re not thinking of jumping, are you?” I point. “My house. It’s down there. My bed.” A hand grabs me. “No, you’re not serious, are you? Don’t jump. You won’t make it.” I stare. “Don’t jump. Do you hear me? Don’t jump.” But no, comfort and rest isn’t up here. It lies in the squeaky mattress springs under that roof ready to catch me floating down. How else can I get down? “Don’t!” the voice shouts. I jump, arms raised above my head, trailing my falling body.

And I wake up as my knuckles strike the backboard, the rest of me safely tucked in. I whisper to myself. “Don’t jump.”

Week 4 Theme 2

A dialogue between one leader and several others.

“Is he worth looking at?”

“Well, he spent his time, um… volunteering in Africa.”

“But his essay sounds too… precious. He learned a lot, but, uh, what exactly?

“Okay, so no. Next.”

“This one’s a... what do you call them? Mathletes? Application says she’s won some national awards.”

“Female, too.”

“Rare breed. Keep her in.”

“Get this, this one set the state high school pole vault record.”

“Yeah, but look at his grades.”

“Keep him in.”

“We don’t have a pole vault team, do we?”

“No, seriously, his grades are crap.”

“Keep him in.”

“The next one’s a less obscure athlete.”

“I thought we prided ourselves on recruiting athletes who were also scholars.”

“Shut up. We’re keeping him in. Now tell me about the next athlete.”

“Nationally ranked chess boxing champion. Chess rating’s 2180.”

“What’s chess boxing?”

“You said he was an athlete.”

“2^nd in his weight division with the World Chess Boxing Organization.”

“There’s a World Chess Boxing Organization?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t ask a question. You just said ‘You said he’s an ATHLETE.’”

“You didn’t answer my question either.”

“Chess boxing is where you, um, alternate rounds of chess and boxing, and the first to get a checkmate, sorry, the first to get either a checkmate or a knockout wins.”

“That’s not a sport. That’s just weird.”

“He’s a warrior scholar.”

“This isn’t 1700.”

“Smart, fit, interesting interests, we should at least keep him in the running.”

“Fine.”

Week 4 Theme 1

Two moments clearly defined my writing style, although there were actually far more than just two defining moments. The first happened in junior year of high school, when my English teacher mentioned my “dry wit” in his class comments. I did my best to exaggerate the qualities that he thought worth complimenting by poking at the mundane elements of life.

The second moment happened last year when I read a list of bad similes. I began to respect unusual combinations of ideas. This first started as a daily notebook of off-the-cuff word associations: “rocket goat,” “honey marmalade,” and so on. The last entry was “conversation pit.”

In the passages that I bolded, you can see my attempts at addressing unnoticed details: the gloomy sky that any Portland resident has long learned to ignore, or the problem of finding seats at airports because people always put their coats on the seats. I end the paragraph with a sort of homage to Tim O’Brien’s writing in The Things They Carried and his unusual knack for ending thoughts with short, pointed sentences.

The bolded lines in the second paragraph are characteristic of my writing starting last year. They’re collages of images and multiple cultural connotations, sparing the rod, purgatory imagined by South Park as a plane stuck at the gate, the overwhelming dullness of modern art museums, the barren (Spartan) but functional Samsung branded poles, and so on. I’m often afraid that the connotations become too dense and start detracting from the story itself.

So when you read the sentence I underlined, it seems uncharacteristic. “Drift” is a verb commonly used with eyes, and “exercise videos” is a not-so-subtle way of saying “she’s exercising”. Neither carries the additional connotations I like to include when I write my sentences, which probably explains why my favorite pieces of writing seem to always straddle the border between artful and distracting word choice.

----------------

Selection: Week 1 Theme 1

Rows of black leather seats line the side of the room, some facing the windows that reveal the steady parade of planes lazing by under the Portland afternoon overcast. There are never enough seats.

For the lucky child who was spared the Benadryl, this purgatory reminds him of a modern art museum. Adults stare at the wall, engrossed by the Spartan arrangement of Samsung cell phone charging stations and flight information displays. He tried to sleep, but some door alarm is beeping from just far enough away for only the undistracted to hear. His heels are sore. His Nintendo DS is out of battery. He already complained to his mom. Everyone is in silent agony, but nobody wants to admit it.

His eyes drift to the other end of the terminal, where a woman, standing in front of the window, is swinging her arms like the women do in his mother’s exercise videos. The woman has been sitting down and getting back up every few minutes. Other signs of life drift by. Another child locks eyes as she speeds past on an airport car with her dad in a wheelchair. A well-dressed man loses his sandwich lettuce to gravity, but not before trying to catch it on its way down.

A college student who was also watching the lettuce turns to check the time on the ticket counter marquee. He smirks, pitying the blank-faced crowd as he digs into his suitcase like a kid with a better idea.

Week 3 Theme 5

Go back to the "sentence-sounds" you collected in the first assignment and write a narrative in which one or more of them appear.

Twelve has a bad habit of turning cherubic pupils into vengeful harpies with their new high-pitched voices. As a high school student whose voice still cracked on occasion, Michael would only begin to contemplate the seventh grade female psyche several years from now. Unfortunately, it was currently now, and there was a cluster of them in the classroom, in front of several indignant sixth graders.

“Those clothes are soooo yesterday.”

“What? They’re Abercrombie and Fitch.”

Despite Michael’s inexperience as a teacher, he knew that awkwardness was every teenager’s bane, and he was intimately familiar with awkwardness. So he stopped talking.

“Didn’t you sixth graders get the memo? They’re not popular any more.”

…

…

…

One student woke up. Another finished his notes and clicked his pen on the table. Michael folded his arms and leaned back against the whiteboard. The students followed his gaze to the girls. The girls looked at him. They looked around the room. They looked back at him, expecting him to resume. He did not. This was a war of attrition, he was escalating it, and he had superior numbers. Finally, one of the girls folded.

“Wow, this is awkward.”

“Huh. Why’d you stop? I was enjoying your lecture on fashion.”

…

…

…

A sixth grader raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“Can you go over paragraph eight again?”

Week 3 Theme 4

Revision (of week 2 theme 3)

My first time flying alone, I carried three dollars and twenty-five cents in quarters. It was five dollars, but I used some to tip the taxi. You never know when you need exact change. One return flight and cut hand later, I began to carry hand sanitizer and Band-Aids.

Then I added a Philips 0 screwdriver out of a desire to differentiate myself from other travellers. And also out of paranoia. Everyone has a laptop, but few carry the means to repair them, and no hotels offer complementary screwdrivers. As if fate needed to justify my paranoia, my laptop broke down on a trip to China, where I could not trust the computer repair shops with my files.

When the left lens fell out of my glasses in the middle of Chicago O’Hare, I began carrying a two millimeter flathead screwdriver as well – many wear glasses, but few carry the means to repair them, and hotels don’t offer flatheads either. Years later when I was once again in O’Hare, this time stranded and on perpetual hold with customer service, I ran out of phone battery. So I began to carry an extra one.

Eventually, with my travel problems solved, the utter boredom caught up to me. I had always carried banned books so that I could simultaneously enjoy the great literary works and others’ discomfort, but no book can hold back the drone of threat level colors and passenger names. No, I could not accept the collective malaise of several acres of waiting areas. I needed energy and flash, a differentiating prop. Thus I began to carry juggling balls.

Week 3 Theme 3

Write a theme about an early experience of sound.

I met Integer when he was learning how to ride a bike. Integer. It doesn’t roll off the tongue easily. It doesn’t shout well, and even the little kid that I was realized that “Integer” wasn’t something people said much. “Lucy!” Maybe. She was another friend. But you could never shout “Integer!”

I only knew him as the neighborhood kid. We’d ride bikes around the Lagoon, which sounded Spanish to me, because English words don’t sound like that. No, we didn’t live by the lake, we lived by a lagoon, a fancy way to say lake. Or maybe it was a lake with apartments built around it, because all of the lakes I saw had trees around them.

On the other side of the apartments, there was a boulevard, spelled B-L-V-D. Boulevard, like a big street. To get home from school, we’d have to take a you-turn on the BLVD. And every day, without fail, Integer and I would meet by my patio (the room that was missing a wall) in front of the lagoon with our bikes, and we’d ride around in the park.

I don’t think my parents ever told me what Integer meant. They taught me decimals later, on Christmas, and then they said that Integer wasn’t a decimal. Well, yeah, I could’ve told you that. What did Integer have to do with numbers?

Week 3 Theme 2

Filler in a monologue.

Ten minutes. Seventy-four already.

“Well, like, if you like want to play something like the trumpet, then take, like, band, you’d like a place like that.”

Eighty.

“You need to be like careful about your grades because middle school, like, doesn’t work like fifth grade. You get like five grades, not just, like, one.”

“Well, you can’t know, like, everybody because the school’s, like, huge. You make some new, like, friends, but you keep old friends.”

“Sixth grade’s like funny because you aren’t like big kids any more. You have to, like, wait for eighth grade before you like have like everybody’s respect again.”

Ninety-two.

“Yeah, there’s a, like, swimming pool, so you can go with like friends to the pool after school.”

“I go like every week, but some people, like, go every day to swim, like, laps.”

“You know like all that stuff they like tell you about puberty? Yeah, well, like, everybody grows a whole, like, foot. And some guys like start going, like, out. Like, everybody gossips.”

“Oh yeah, like, you start getting like dances in seventh grade. It’s like the best thing ever and the sixth graders like always try to get one, but they never like get it.”

One hundred and nine.

Puberty. The middle schoolers never told me about the contagious “likes.”

Week 3 Theme 1

A page of conversations.

“Well, you already have several line splices, so another line splice won’t increase your Big O.”

“But you have to dequeue from the queue every time you splice.”

Buddy!

Bro!

Chump!

Homester!

Hey, where’s the floss?

Vvvvuuuut?

Where…

Djjjunn vvvyyyy vvvuh djvvvwur.

Oh, thanks.

Huh, this is kind of sloooWAAAAAAAHHH!

AAAAAAHHH!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee!

aaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhh!

Those clothes are soooo yesterday.

What? They’re Abercrombie and Fitch.

Didn’t you sixth graders get the memo? They’re not popular any more.

You’re wearing them too.

Goals

1. Write with the reader in mind - write to the reader's understanding of context.

2. Expand my range and experiment with different styles of storytelling.

3. Pay more attention to word choice and cadence.

Quote of the Week

"Life's toughest decisions are between what you want and what you know you should choose."

-Anonymous

Week 2 Theme 5

Free theme about an object.

In the back corner of the cupboard lies a shaker of white powder. Monosodium Glutamate. Zhou’s dinner guests have tasted it, but they have never seen that shaker, and Zhou makes sure it is never seen. Like they do for foie gras, her guests abhor the thought and savor the act. They do not want to know about the MSG, but they will gladly eat it.

It was not always so secretive. Before Zhou emigrated, the shaker kept guard by the sink, next to the stovetops. It was an accepted fact of life, and although it was seldom used, it was nevertheless an open secret, acknowledged when the day’s butcher didn't have as good chicken as last week’s. When Zhou had her first dinner guest in the states, her guest asked her what was in that shaker. Despite the language barrier, her guest quickly reminded her between looks of disgust that MSG was carcinogenic. False, but that was enough for Zhou to hide the shaker.

When her guest returned the favor, Zhou asked what she was pouring out of a brown carton and into the food. Artificial sweetener, to keep the food healthy. Zhou said nothing out of a foreign politeness, though she had heard that artificial sweeteners are carcinogenic.

Week 2 Theme 4

Compose a shopping list, a list of found objects, or use a found list of some kind.

2004: Debussy

2005: Mendelssohn

2006: Rachmaninoff

2007: Markovich A.M.P.

2008: Muse

2009: Bloc Party

2010: Lady Gaga

Friends often ask me how I seem to have a black hole where my knowledge of music should be. Where one usually keeps lyrics to 90s hit songs, I have nothing. Where one usually remembers tunes by mainstream artists since the 2000s, again, I have nothing. When a friend finally asked me to write a list of artists I liked since high school, I came up with this.

This list speaks of a child raised by immigrant parents, whose music comprised Chinese pop, bad Motown, and any piano music he played. Sheltered from popular culture by uninterested parents, classical music became the only music I heard. Hit songs by Nelly or Brittney Spears occasionally floated into my perspective, but classical music was most of what I heard, and was therefore the only music I cared for. College changed that slowly. At first, I resisted by finding unusual music—to this day, I have yet to meet anyone else who has heard of Markovich. Then I was introduced to Pandora, and thus to the music that people had been listening to for the past decade.

Ultimately, this is the musical history of a late adopter. My musical tastes now lag by only a few years instead of a few centuries, but my musical tastes are not unique. I adopt books late. I am still reading classics I was supposed to have read in high school. I adopt electronics late. I had no MP3 player until this year, nine years after the iPod launched. As much as I try to stay current in any subject, I am always reminded that I only found out about Lady Gaga four years after her debut.

Write a narrative that has the form of a list embedded in it.

I found inspiration at an airport security gate, where I realized that every traveler in front of me carried a laptop. Here was a device in which every person kept their business and personal life, and yet I didn’t know of any traveler who planned for the inevitable moment when their computer failed. That would happen to me, eventually, and I needed contingency plans.

At first, I just packed an extra Phillips 0 screwdriver, a repair disk, and an extra hard drive. Computers always break at the worst possible times. For many, that means finals week. For me, that meant the middle of a trip in China, where I could not trust a Chinese repair shop with my identity. Not too soon after, I added a two millimeter flathead. Not all screws are the same – eyeglasses have even smaller screws, and my eyeglasses fell apart in the middle of a Vermont forest. I repaired them over lunch.

I get odd looks for these screwdrivers. People today seldom repair their own things, and electronics and eyeglasses belong to the domain of specialists, so a traveler in an airport poring over a gutted laptop is a rare sight. I admit, most people would not repair a laptop in an airport, but most people also forget to set up internet relays beforehand to visit banned websites in foreign countries. Yes, I am a rare and unusual species of traveler, but I have my contingency plans.