5599 - Creative Writing for Teachers

English 5599 - Creative Writing For Teachers

Observations

My children enjoy playing in the floor. Most often when one or all of them do this, the object of their play is in my view. They might be working on a puzzle or playing cards. Sometimes one of my boys likes to use scissors on any convenient thing in his reach. This is one of those common events that I normally don't take much notice of. But just a few moments ago, I saw Taylor kneeling in the floor, busy working at some particular task. Whether it was work or play I do not know. His back was turned to me and I couldn’t see anything beyond his own frame.

I decided that on this occasion, I didn’t want to know what was beyond. It became a sort of game with me. I wanted to see if I could figure out the mystery by observing Taylor’s mannerisms. Was he into something that a seven-year-old shouldn’t be? Was he drawing a picture or making his mother an “I love you” card?

After several moments of watching my son, I realized that I was not going to know what his eyes saw. Then I realized something. This being, who would have never existed apart from certain “work” on the part of his mother and myself, was experiencing and observing something outside of me or my wife. An extension of my own being will live and dream and work and play and be without me.

I brew tea in the age of technology. I place two bags of Lipton in a 32 oz. jar and set it in the microwave on high for 6 minutes. After the allotted time, I open the microwave door and remove the tea. The water that once was clear turns a cola color. I pour its contents in a pitcher and dilute it with more water.

I realized tonight that by following the same formula, except trading Lipton for chamomile tea, the results are slightly different. The chamomile tea bags do not have the same effect on the hot water. Instead, the water directly surrounding the tea bags turn a pale yellow, but the rest of the water remains clear. I don’t’ know what causes this, but I would like to think that chamomile is cautious about what it associates itself with, especially when its in hot water.

It rained tonight. No, it poured. It is not often that I get soaked from my car door to my porch, a distance of about 12 feet. This evening was one of those rare times. The rain was so abnormally heavy that on my way home from the ball field (my kids’ baseball games were called off on account of the stuff), the rain thumped against the top of the mini-van as if it was pretending to be hail. I was glad it was the van’s head out in the elements and not mine. I got home, dried my hair off with a towel and turned the television on. Steve Kersh was showing a radar picture of the mess I had just come out of. His words were, “Okay, we’re going to focus on the portion of the storm that is giving headaches…” I thought to myself, how did he know that my van took such a pounding?

It’s funny the faces people make as they are doctoring their coffee at the sugar/cream table at Roasters. One will add a little sugar, give it a taste, grimace, and add more. Another will add some cream or half & half, sip, lick their lips contentedly, then add sugar. I can’t figure out why so many people want to mess with perfection, but they do. Roasters coffee is best when it’s black.

Overheard Dialogues

At Roasters

Woman #1: She’s doing much better than she was.
Woman #2: She seems like a whole nother [sic] person.
Woman #1: I don’t know what she’s on but…
Woman #2: She told me but I don’t remember.
Woman #1: She said she lost thirty pounds, but all of those people on [unintelligible] are doing that.

At Roasters

Customer: I need a large Mocha.
Coffee Guy: We don’t have any chocolate left in the store.
Customer: Really?
Coffee Guy: No, I’m just kidding. [laughs]
Customer: Oh, you’re mean (with a smile)… and a tall regular Mocha.
Coffee Guy: Whipped cream on that?
Customer: Yep.

Imagined

Boy #1: What is it?
Boy #2: A toad.
Boy #1: Can I see?
Boy #2: Yeah, but don’t let him pee on you. Hold him like this.
Boy #1: he feels squishy. I feel his guts.
Boy #2: He probably just ate some Jell-o.

Description of An Object

I hold in my hand a narrow glass pitcher.
(13 diverse descriptions)
1. There are deep vertical grooves cut into the glass pitcher on two sides near the base. If I were to turn it on its side, I could rest a cigarette in the one of the grooves. If I smoked.
2. FEDERAL LAW FORBIDS SALE OR RE-USE OF THIS BOTTLE. L9517 D-126 58.61
3. This object serves a dual purpose. Holding it just so allows it to be brass knuckles and a Billy club at the same time. Too bad it is made of glass.
4. I hold in my hand room-temperature ice. To my knowledge it has never been inside of a freezer.
5. Turned upside-down, this pitcher resembles a sugar cone from the ice cream parlor.
6. This pitcher must have previously been home to a marine mollusk. When I put it to my ear, I hear the ocean.
7. This is a bowling pin in a glass house.
8. This is an overgrown paperweight.
9. This is a hard-to-clean ashtray.
10. This is a monochrome kaleidoscope.
11. This is an antique thermos.
12. This is a low volume trashcan.
13. This is nothing but an old shelf ornament.

Questions

I’m trying to figure our why with 5 or 6 hours of sleep, I can hardly function the next day. With 10 hours of sleep, I tend to feel the same way. I asked a friend today why things are the way they are. He told me that the more sleep you get, the more you need. I said, “So if I get used to 5 hours of sleep, that’s all I need?” He answered, “No. It doesn’t work the other way around.” I think I am more confused now than I was before.

Either I don’t ask enough questions or I don’t recognize them for what they are. It is difficult to think up some question off the top of my head. I’m told that the best thing to do when this happens is to free write. Sometimes you get somewhere, sometimes you don’t. I guess it’s okay since this is my journal to write whatever comes to mind. Maybe then some question will occur to me. It’s not that I have all the answers in the world. In fact, it is far from that. The more I live, the more I realize I don’t know. Maybe I’m on to something. I am told that with knowledge comes guilt. I agree with this. When you know the facts about something, you can no longer sit and observe. There are always feelings or actions that must be given to any situation. The guilt comes when you realize that ultimately, whatever it is you are trying to accomplish is futile because in the end it does not matter. Oops, that didn’t come out in the form of a question. The proper question I mean to ask is, Are we guilty in the sense that we know of life’s futility? Ecclesiastes states, “Everything is meaningless!” This comes from the wisest man on earth, Solomon, King of Israel. Although partly, he was using a rhetorical device I think there is some seriousness to his claim. Those who know all there is to know about a subject is in some way doomed to live with that knowledge.

I was wondering why I need to be in a certain place before I can write creatively. I am not talking about journal stuff. I’m talking about the stuff that I would like to work on unto completion. It is the same with homework. I need for certain things to be in place regarding my surroundings. Otherwise I get stuck. This, I have read, is common among writers. There are certain rituals that occur for the real writing to begin. What’s up with that?

I have a screensaver on my laptop that comes up if 5 minutes passes with no information sent through the mouse or the keyboard. It is a message I have typed that asks, “Where is it?” I do all my homework on this computer as well as my creative stuff. When I am stumped for longer than 5 minutes on something that I am working on, the message appears. I am asked to find whatever words or answer I am searching for. Usually, I am sitting, dumbfounded, stumped, stupefied with some problem I am working on. The message pops up, brings a smile to my face as I realize that I am talking to myself. I am asking myself to find what it is I am looking for. It’s really rather cool to know that I care so much for my level of productivity. So for me the ultimate question, the one I hear quite often is: “Where is it?” When the answer comes, I realize that I still don’t know where it was—only that it has finally come to me. I suppose I will never be able to answer the question of its present location, because once I find it it is no longer wherever it was before. Instead, it is here.

Response To A Poem

Dusk at Homer’s by Charlie Smith

The sun withdraws into its twilight years,
into forgetfulness and dreams.
Hard to forget what once we had,
but I’d rather,

rather move on. Ducks in the city,
wildlife in the city, birds:
a list of sightings
tacked to the St. Luke’s garden shed: vireos,

a brown thrasher, tanager, shrike.
Who saw those birds?
Some historian, I guess,
someone with time to kill.

Or now we just say things.
I say she loves me and that’s what it is,
say Pesco’s still alive,
still talking Aquinas as he cooks.

And that fall when a storm
blew all the leaves out of the trees
and the football field on Saturday was ankle deep
in yellow and red tatters,

we scampered in our satin suits
through them.
An old man in the window is reading a book outloud,
maybe, like me,

skipping the bad parts.
A woman nearby’s
got a squared-off look. She took
the average of herself and went with that.

I try to remember what
we used to say about things,
how we put it to ourselves.
I don’t know, do you?

I’ve got time on my hands,
it won’t wash off.

I chose this poem because I had just finished reading the Iliad and thought a poem with Homer’s name would most likely be referring to the Greek poet.

I was wrong.

This is a poem about something entirely different. Homer is an old man This is evident by Homer’s description of the sun being in its twilight years. Since the sun is more of a continual reality, the twilight must be directed to the one who perceives it.

At first, Homer says that it is hard to forget the past, but he’d rather. He wants to move on to today. He describes the present: ducks and birds in the city. In the city? Do young men observe nature in the hustle and bustle of their prime (city)? Not generally. Homer also mentions a list of birds on a sign and ponders, “Who actually took the time to watch and name these things? Men with time on their hands.” He mentions the weather (another trait of people in their twilight years), and how he and some friends (?) played in the leaves in their pajamas (?).

He mentions an old man reading a book. Maybe, like Homer, he skips the dull stuff. He doesn’t have time to read entire books anymore. Yet, now, he has nothing but time. The past, which he wanted to forget at the beginning of the poem, is now lost to him.

Beginnings

He was just standing there in the middle of the road like he was in the grocery line. Still. His head was bowed.

Was he looking for something? Was he mad? I tapped my horn.

No response.

The guy looked like a statue. Could he be having a seizure. A motionless seizure?

“What the hell is a barstool doing in the House of God?” Reverend Clark barked aloud.

The guitar stopped abruptly. The congregants turned and saw the former pastor at the back of the chapel, hat in hand. His eyes were fixed on the young man with the guitar sitting on a stool. The man sat motionless, dumbfounded.

“First you sell the organ, then you bring in this hippy,” he said, walking toward the front of the chapel. “Can you play Handel, goddammit? Beethoven? Hell, no.”

Johannes Brahms played softly on the radio as Gerald sat contentedly in his Lazy Boy. There was no other ambient noise other than the occasional sound of the air conditioner coming on. Candle light shimmered.

Gerald was a fat man. He enjoyed sitting in his chair for an hour or so each day after work. He would sit at his desk for the bulk of each day, but his favorite chair at home drew him like clock work afterward.

This is where Gerald’s heart stopped. The music continued. The candles flickered until their wicks drowned in hot wax.

“Will you give me a minute?” Mark shouted at his 5-year-old son. “I really need to get this done.”

Mark Wilson had been working over three hours on his report. John wanted to play baseball. He couldn’t understand why his dad kept asking for a minute when it had been 120 minutes since he first approached him.

Description of Me as Writer in the Library

In this moment as I type on my keyboard, I realize that surrounding me on all sides are the wisdom and discovery of thousands of men and women of all nations, languages, and cultures. What can I put into this word processor that has not already been uttered once or twice before? What can I contribute to the world at large, the world that comes to the library or the corner bookstore for answers to questions, for entertainment, for enlightenment? Do they seek me? Do they approach me as though I were Socrates, who was said by the Oracle of Delphi that he was the wisest of all? Do they come to me as they came to Solomon, crowned with the greatest of wisdom in the East?

No. In fact, as I sit here, I stop typing. I look to my left and my right. I observe the people. There is a woman to my right at a computer terminal. Whatever information she is after is being offered by a cable modem. In front of me sits a black man about my age. He is flipping through a stack of magazines. Behind me is an elderly gentleman. I know he is still there because I can hear the pages ratting. I don’t want to startle him, so I will not turn around. A gentleman in a white cap and purple shirt is reading a newspaper. The librarians are chatting at the front desk. No one approaches me. No one seeks my words, my thoughts.

List of bogus titles

The Oak In the City
Five Reasons Not To
Will You Pass the Salt?
The Adventures of Riley Parker and Bumber McGilliculy
Can I Have a Donut? and Other Questions From Below
The Priest and the Porn Star

My Civilization, a Poem

America—my civilization,
my neck of the woods.
The cowboys, the Indians, the Mets.
Rivers, lakes, the Hudson.
California girl,
West Texas sunset,
Florida coast.

New York.
Liberty. The Towers.
The Towers.

Storm befalls the calm.
Downpour.
Fire, metal, ash.
I gasp.

America.
My civilization.

White

He brandishes white,
no other color.
The small of his back
hides polished nickel.
His eyes narrow,
his mind narrow
like a one-way street—

A hot sword
upon the Muslim,
a fuming manifesto
against the Party,
a burning cross
against that other race,
a god to himself.

His pale head shaved,
his shirt parading Dixie.
O, strip off that procession of hate,
put down that gun.
Disarm, defuse.

His dog uneasy
when he approaches.
The fear he summons
flows from fear inside.
Yet it persists,
like noxious gas,
whirling.

The white odor
lingers in his wake,
present like burning sulfur.
I choke.
The only color he knows is
white.

The American Scholar