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.

Week 2 Theme 2

Narrate an incident in which an object appears at the beginning, ideally in the first sentence, and then assumes a critical function by the end of the theme.

“There. That’s the bike I told you about. It’s been there all summer and fall semester.”

“Yeah. And?”

“Do you see a lock?”

“No.”

“Bikes around here get stolen even when there’s a lock.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“This bike shouldn’t even be here.”

“Help me. I’m still not getting your point.”

“Isn’t it weird that someone just left a bike here without a lock? And weirder that it’s still here?”

“What, do you want to take it?”

“Well, I’d feel bad. Maybe he wanted to keep it but didn’t have a lock for it?”

“I wonder if the owner ever meant to use it.”

“Well, there’s no air in the tires.”

“Sure, but how many owners modify their bikes and then abandon them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the gears. It’s a 21-speed gear configuration, and 21-speeds have two gear shifters, but this one has only one for the rear wheel and nothing for the pedals. And you can see how he cut the handlebars to add the shifter.”

“What?”

“He bought the bike, then added gears. Fancy rim on the back wheel. He probably added that too. That’s at least a hundred dollars in modifications.”

“So if the bike’s worth that much, why is it sitting here unlocked and unclaimed?”

“Dunno, but I wonder how long it’ll be before someone takes it?”

Week 2 Theme 1

A still life of a set of objects.

The cloudy afternoon light gives the chopsticks a dusty glow, the same soft shine that gives wood carvings their wizened look. Snake heads are carved into the tips, and the light brightens their worn paint and sharpens their shadows. Tiny nicks hint at the food they had seen on their journey through thousands of meals and miles.

Those chopsticks arrived in San Francisco by plane already bearing their first scratches – from fish bones the baby learned to pick out of his fish. He missed a few, and he would remember that pain after every other memory from baby years had faded. Those chopsticks watched a five year old reaching for tofu for the first time, and they waited in the child’s unsteady hands as the white cubes fell from them into smaller and smaller bits. Those chopsticks poked at the dinner plate alone with their teenage companion, listening to his silent monologue after his first breakup. Those chopsticks persevered in the hot frying pan of a boy learning to cook. They would meet more experienced food soon.

They followed him across the country, to college, in a box. For a decade, they rested in the dry safety of darkness until they one day saw light again on the dining room mantle, safe, at last, from food. And there they stayed, those two snake heads, watching quietly as his children picked up their chopsticks for the first time.

Week 1 Theme 5

Return to the scene in assignment 1 (or 3) and use it as the setting for an incident.

Travelling is too mundane, so I entertain myself by toying with human interactions. That’s why I always carry something special for the TSA to scan. Today, it’s nine juggling balls, three juggling rings, and a pair of poi. The agent made me wait as he took out my juggling balls, one by one. “What’s this?” “A juggling ball.” “And this?” “Another juggling ball.” “This?” “I could juggle these if you want.”

I arrived at my gate a bit early, only to find all of the seats taken. With nowhere to sit and nothing else to do, I took out my juggling balls. I admit that I’m just showing off, but I also love people’s reactions. A stranger approaches me about how she’s been learning to juggle, and our conversation turns to how good balls make learning much easier. A hipster, sitting next to his band-mates and their instruments, raises his iPhone over his shoulder, camera pointed at me. Subtle. A mother and child ten feet away are looking too. The mother pretends to be watching the TV above me, but the kid just stares.

The prankster in me approaches the pair. The mother’s face plays like a slideshow: sheepishness for being caught, anxiety from the approaching stranger, the possibility that he’s a pedophile or psychopath, and finally a forced, civil smile. To the kid, I’m just a juggler. “Hi, what’s your name?” Still smiling. “How old are you?” Now she’s looking worried. “Can you juggle?” She reestablishes her grin. “You should try it sometime. Gets all the girls.” I wink and leave, but not before I sneak a look at the ticket counter marquee, just in time to see the relief on her face.

Week 1 Theme 4

Incorporate a name.

The Zoo is an odd place. You go to the zoo to feed your human fascination with animals. But you go to The Zoo to work. The Zoo resides on the third floor of a brick building on the corner of Prospect and Trumbull Street, home to Yale’s computer scientists.

This computer lab houses rows of extraordinary computers intended for use by extraordinary people. This place needs a concise, extraordinary name with extraordinary letters, and “Zoo” is perfect. Zoo. How often do you say that? Zoo. Maybe if you were a zoologist, you might hear that syllable more, and you might go to an actual zoo every few years. But for computer science students, the Zoo is a sort of gathering place that no other department is small enough or intentionally quirky enough to create. And for that, the Zoo is unapologetic. The Zoo is the misleading, loud, discordant call of its rare species.

The Zoo is home to campus’s most nocturnal. The place bustles at midnight, dwindles at 3am, and never completely clears because of the stubborn student with an equally stubborn problem set. Screens are laid out like portals into their animal cages. One says “python,” across from “frog,” not too far from “chameleon.” “Dolphin” has his own corner, peering into a world unseen by the rest of campus. Hardly anyone has a reason to go there, but for the few that do, this place is the Zoo.

Week 1 Theme 3

Describe a sacred place.

The Chinese have a saying: “Above, there is heaven. Here, there is Suzhou.” Chinese religions preach tranquility and introspection, moods which the picturesque lands here evoke. Naturally, Suzhou has a healthy gathering of temples, many of which survived the purges while keeping most of their former beauty. Thus it is no surprise that several tour groups wander the arched stone bridges over the polished water even on a frozen January afternoon.

Although the temple survived the century, its monks did not. There is no worship or meditation here, just the twitter of camera clicks and the hum of city life outside this former sanctuary. In a place that used to represent the transience of the world, men and women now record everything so that they might one day reminisce about the temple’s beauty.

The tour ends at an incense shop. For a few dollars, one can purchase bundles of incense to burn at anonymous racks, hoping to see silent prayers answered. But the true end of the tour resides under two tiled roofs, where couples and families are directed to fortune tellers. With their story told from their birthdays on a filament of printed paper, these families are encouraged to donate hundreds if not thousands of dollars to the temple in hopes of good fortune. Indulgences. Baggage from the purges.

Week 1 Theme 2

Adopt a roving point of view.

Home. For most people, there are many places like home. Find a suburban block, and you will likely find two houses built from the same blueprint. But for some definitions of home, there truly is no place like it.

Home begins with a hand-painted sign by a driveway off a New England forest road. Nearby, Smokey declares an extreme danger of wildfire. Headlights occasionally pierce the evening haze, otherwise lit by breadcrumbs of glowing dice. The gray thickens at each turn, until the labyrinth opens to a wide field. Coleman has taken over two corners – tents on one side, and far too many gallons of camping gas on the other. A longhouse occupies the far corner, where all of the food is cooked, but none of the fuel goes there. After all, the longhouse is not home.

A shirtless, barefoot man searches a clipboard of names with a flashlight that looks like an identity crisis. Men, women, and undecided pass through, donning their dogtags as they go to the many fire pits that enclose the field, hopeful for a familiar face. They’ll say their greetings before they trek to the dark wooden racks illuminated by tradition, where they each unpack and hang up their square red cloths and charred staves. Tonight, they will carry their cloths because there is a new member of the family.

A single figure weaves her way to the fuel. She baptizes her staff under her companions’ supervision, and, with a nervous tunneling gaze, follows her matador and photographer to a lonely torch. Flames wick onto her staff and peel back the winter cold amidst shouts from all three hundred onlookers: “Virgin burn!” As the flames fly, held aloft more by adrenaline than by her own hands, the family grows by one more person.

Week 1 Theme 1

Set a scene in which something will happen--or in which something has happened.

And so it begins.

---

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.