“Non-Fiction Act. Describing the Real World”

There are four, equilateral walls that comprise our wendy. Also a patio before you enter the door, which is hard to unlock, and you have to shake the icy, metal handle in order to do it. The outside of the wendy is freshly painted and smells of stain. Inside you feel cosy, provided you’ve turned the dwarf of a heater on which sits on the carpet and rotates, filling the air with the odor of warmth and electricity.

There are three desks inside; one for our mother, and two for my sister and I. Our desks are up against the book shelves, which are so full of books that they’re bending under the weight. There’s a window for each of us; one for me, and one for my sister. The window behind my sister’s desk, casting white light onto her maths workbook, gives me a sunny, green, early-morning view of the garden, and the rickety fence which separates the front half from the back half. My sister has a less appealing view. Thru the window behind me, all she can see is a brick wall, and a thin sliver of sunlight and tree branches trying to peak over the top.

Sometimes you can hear the ruckus of planes as they pass over our little suburbia, the grinding noise of their engines being loudest when they’re right above you and then grows dim and blends into the noise of the morning traffic, speeding this way and flying that way.
The growls of our dogs which we hear thru the door, indicated that they’re pouncing on top of each other again. The guttural banter sounds aggressive, but by the tone of it I can tell they’re merely playing. What really grinds at my eardrums, however, is when they bark incessantly at what appears to be nothing.
If I turn my attention to the white board, which is on the left of me, I’m easily distracted bythe plastic skeleton standing there. His eyes seem to stare off into the distance, and his shoulders are slightly raised so that it looks as though, if he exhaled, all his detailed plastic organs would tumble out of his ribcage onto the floor.

Finally, above a stack of drawers, behind our mother’s desk, a small rectangular radio sits on a wooden shelf, which is the same cosy young-wood color as the inside walls. It’s a silent radio, covered in grubby fingerprints. But it still reflects the cold atmosphere of our little schoolhouse. Early in the morning, it gets cold in the wendy. Unless you’ve switched the heater on, which we have, and it’s huffing and puffing of warming air accompanies the clicking of keys on my keyboard. “Click, Click! Puff!”
And outside, birds are singing in high-pitched, morning voices.

Pet Peeve

My Pet Peeves: “Sagging Pants”

Belts were invented for a reason, weren’t they?

Is it just a part of today’s teen society and culture? I don’t think so. Adults too, are walking around without the presence of a belt around their waists. Now if they were wearing tracksuits I might understand the absence of a belt. But no. People are wearing jeans out in public most of the time, and that’s okay, but put on a belt for pity’s sake, man, please.

This guy comes to fix our oven (he ended up giving us a brand new one, “Bonus!”) but as he’s kneeling there on the kitchen floor… his pants! They’re either a size too small for him, or they’re too big and that’s why they’re hanging low. Way too low. “Pull up your pants, put on a belt!” Of course I didn’t say that, but I thought it.
On another occasion, I heard about this afterwards because I wasn’t there to witness it (thank goodness), this dude’s going up the escalator at the mall. My mom and my sister were just passing the escalator and.. you know when you see something out of the corner of your eye and for some reason you turn to see what it is, then after that you regret having looked? Well, that’s what happened to my mom and sister, it’s happened to me too by the way and it’s left me scared! Anyway, they looked. He’s wearing a peak-cap and is all dressed up in his bling and so on, bet he thought he looked real cool going up that escalator. There was just one tiny flaw, scratch that, a major flaw in his get-up!

Oh sure, everyone forgets to put on a belt or check that they’ve bought the right waist size sometime in their life. But geez, at least have the decency to pull up your pants.
Everywhere you go, in the hardware store some lady’s bending over her baby’s pram. Oops, look the other way! A guy wants to look cool and rebellious so he deliberately lets his pants hang so you can see his multi-colored boxers. “Pull them up,” I feel like telling him. But I know the answer will be, “You got a problem with me, dude?” So, you’ve just got to hang back, play it safe, and pray hard that they don’t drop any lower. I have no clue why people would deliberately let their pants sag. In some ways I have more sympathy for people who are unaware of their mistake. But to do it on purpose?
It’s this stereotypical view on teenagers. When adults are asked what teenagers are to them, they’re liable to tell you, “teenagers are that young group of people with their loud music, rude lingo, and sagging pants.” So teenagers live up to the expectations of the loud music, rude lingo, and sagging-low-as-they-can pants.

I’m a teenager, and I look cool without letting my pants hang low. It’s doable. Sagging pants are so unnecessary, and if you don’t believe that, pull up your pants for the sake of everyone around you!

Descriptive Writing Act. 1

“Rainbow Clowns and Other-worldly Things”

On both sides of the sunny street were convenient, wide-brimmed umbrellas. Underneath one of these umbrellas, enjoying the comfortable shade, I watched as the aliens invaded us. They were aliens, oddballs, fantastic marvels all dressed in the colors of sunlight that invaded our street. That is to say that they were colored with sunlight if the sunlight were broken up into its multifaceted nature as Isaac Newton showed it to be. There were clowns with rainbows on their heads, and their faces were plastic, and fake. The smiles too were unearthly. Devils as they paraded around in blue cloaks that caught the sun rays and intertwined with them, smiled unnaturally in ways that made you laugh but feel undone and question the solidity of your soul.
The slanted eyes into which you couldn’t look, but which seemed to be staring into the vastest chasms of your being. I moved about uncomfortably in my seat. But I began to feel better and relieved when the persons dressed as edible novelties paraded by.

A giant rose-red lobster floated past me, and he swayed because he was standing on a pair of stilts. They were questionably thin, I could see them through his velour costume. The material sparkled in ways material shouldn’t, and it made my eyes hurt, but he was still quite a spectacle as far as lobsters go.
Musketeers and princesses dressed in similar colors, and masks as fake and artificial as they come, at least added a touch of class and heritage to the chaotic scene; it was just such a pity about the material though. As I inspected the characters I wondered what their faces looked like underneath the masks. Were they really smiling fiendishly, or comically; were they even smiling at all? The question disturbed my mind a little bit.

It was all very well and good watching these people make fools of themselves, deliberately for our pleasure. The colorful performers set against the backdrop of an aging paradise under the blanket of a perfect blue sky was enthralling. But one couldn’t help but wonder if these strangers were really as care-free as they pretended to be. Then I turned to scrutinize the people at the table adjacent to me. The father was a jolly pastry, and he slouched so that his bellybutton rose up to eye-level. With a collection of pearls in his mouth he seemed to be enjoying the show. His wife was small and almost a contradiction to him. Her hair fell down in brown streamers to below her shoulders. Then their was their daughter, jumping up and down in her seat with a balloon in her hand that was green like an apple.
These people too looked happy, but did the question apply to them also? Were they too, in fact, wearing masks?

“After the Carnival”

Heavy clouds broke up the party. They were black and ominous and they distorted the blueness of the sky with their morbid, grey mesh of bad weather. The people cleared out after that. No rain fell, but the streets looked as if they’d been hailed on by storm clouds of waste and debris. A styrofoam coffee cup sailed passed me, agitated on by the wind. It bounced and made hollow clonking noises as it traveled in the manner of a tumbleweed.
Cans, burst balloons, and forgotten items of clothing lent the appearance of a deserted ghost town to the street. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a rainbow clown’s wig being carried off by the blustery weather.
I trod on some lifeless streamers scattered over the concrete, and bent down to pick one up. Some kind of static or resistance prevented me from doing so, and the hard ground scratched at my fingers which were frozen solid. It was cold now on the empty street.

No sunlight whatsoever, everything was a macabre grey hue. Here where there had once been so much light, and joy, and festiveness; now there was only the garbage. Forgotten byproducts of the carnival littered the road I trudged along. Tiny hints of faded color, in the forms of crackers, costumes, and plastic whatnots mocked the existence of happiness in this sunless place. Even in the trees there was no tangible or visual compensation. It was horrible to look at.
The idea that these carnival calamities were all that there was to show for the performance was sickening. That the people who had danced, feasted, and partied, sucking the life out of everything they paraded past and leaving their filth behind was a mystery.

I didn’t blame the weather for the disgusting scene of waste and neglect, that was the people’s fault. But the overshadowing clouds only served to deepen the depression I felt now that the party was over.

“Cherubs in the Window” (Short Story Assignment)

Most stories, including this story, have hidden mysteries within them; and those mysteries have meanings to them, for that is what defines them as mysteries. As you read the follow story may this task be set before you; to carve the mystery out of the story, and the meaning from the mystery.

I walked along the cobbled stones of an ancient street. It was an italian street, and as such it was filled with italians. They were watching me, and I was watching them as I walked and they stood there -watching me. It was my job to observe people. I was a writer. Not a very successful writer, I wasn’t even published, but that is not what makes a writer.

I’d tried to sell my scribblings to the local newspaper. Their response; “You need more experience, the people in your stories are far too -how should I put this?- fanciful. What you need is to get out in the real world and live a little bit.”
I was still having trouble getting my head around that one, so I got a job, a paying job. So I had to take the occasional mental case to an asylum; at least I was earning an income.

That was where I was on my way to, another customer. The townsfolk had been complaining recently about some guy who was chiseling up a storm and making a racket. He’d be causing a riot soon, and so I was called upon to step in, to intervene. My only concern was that he was armed, with a chisel and hammer.
But nobody seemed to be complaining as I walked down the street. I guessed that this job would be over quickly; I couldn’t have been more wrong.
As I passed under a bridge I began to hear the faint indications of an argument. I could hear yelling, and the sound of people crowding together irritably.

“You idiot!” I heard one angry civilian call out, “you could have killed somebody!”
It was as if I’d walked into another world. When I finally emerged from under the bridge, I saw the people crowding around a tall building. The walls were whitewashed, and in a square window of the top floor (it was a two-storey building) a youth was sticking his head out and yelling intolerable things at the mob beneath him.

“It’s all the commotion your causing outside my front door that made him fall!” he shouted. The boy was European, but not italian, and I could tell he was well out of his depth in this situation.
Calmly, I approached the building, pushing my way through the furious thunderstorm of townspeople. But when I came to the door of the house my heart stopped. Lying there, on its side, was the face of a child. It was wrought in stone, and beside it, smashed in pieces, was the rest of its body. It was some sort of cherubim. I could only just make out its wings, shattered into tiny fragments on the street.

By this time, the entire audience of people had fallen deathly silent. They watched me as I cooly stepped over the broken monument and asked to be let in.
“Open up,” I said, loud enough for the boy in the window to hear me. I could hear him running down the stairs, fumbling with the keys, and making a frustrated remark before he finally found the correct one.
“What would one boy need so many keys for?” I wondered as he let me in.
“Follow me, please.” He was smiling when he opened the door, which was strange considering his predicament. But I resigned myself to following him up the stairs to his apartment.
“Tell me, sir, are you an art-lover?”
“Why yes,” I stuttered, “I’m a writer.”
“Marvelous, then I’m sure you won’t have any objections to what I am about to show you.”

He walked slowly over to a desk, upon which was laid something rather enormous. It was covered with a large blanket, very tattered and old, and I noticed bits of marble were strewn around carelessly on the table. He became very excited and mysterious, in an impish and child-like manner so that found him amusing. With one motion, having the effect of a magician revealing the final prestige of his act; he uncovered a statue. It was an exact replica of the angel that I’d seen smashed to pieces in the street below.
Only now in this light, did I notice the imperfections in his work. The head was hideous, and rudely sculpted, as was the case with the rest of the body. The exception to this being the wings, which were extremely detailed.
He took it up and set it in the window.
“So,” he asked, “what do you think?”

I forget my reply, and only faintly recall an argument with another complaining passer-by in the street. But the day ended with a fallen angel -shattered- a young man who went insane, “He only wanted to fly,” I remember him saying; and me, the person who was forced to transport the boy to his future home -the asylum.
The question that continually plagues my mind however, is this; “Did the ‘angel’ merely fall, or was he pushed?”
This is the mystery I leave to you…

“Traipsing about a Cemetery” (Endings Exercise)

Jeremy stood, solid as a marble pillar, and didn’t move. All the trees around the graveyard were swaying, but Jeremy remained motionless. His whole spine was rigid except for the top bit, where it bent slightly downwards and let his head rest against his collarbone.
He was staring down at the crumbling tombstones, red because they were made of clay, and crumbling because they were old -very old. Mr. McGregor stood beside him.

“Is this your family?” Jeremy asked quietly.
“It was…” Mr. McGregor’s voice trailed off. He was not unhappy at this present moment, he was just very thoughtful and reflective. He stooped down energetically and crouched beside the largest of the four stones.
“This one shows where my wife was buried,” he said, almost smiling. Jeremy knelt in the sand and scratched some dust off the stone to reveal the name that was engraved on it.

“Mary” Jeremy read aloud. “She had a beautiful name.”
“She was far more beautiful than her name,” the old man said, now grinning like a school boy. “I still remember the day I first met her.”
Jeremy didn’t even have to ask questions, he just read Mr. McGregor’s face like a book, with each wrinkle a paragraph that documented a chapter of his history. Jeremy could tell that he’d loved Mary dearly. It said so in the wrinkles.
“And this one,” said the novelist, moving over to a second stone which was similar but not quite as large as the first one. “This one has the name of my precious Rachel on it.” This time, the narrator got a bit tearful. “I’m sad,” he complained, “For two reasons; firstly because I lost her, but it’s Okay now because I’ve learned to let her go, and secondly because she never got to grow up and do the things she’d always talked about doing. That last one, I think, would be the unselfish reason why I’m sad.”
The wrinkles heaved and sighed as the old man moved on to the third stone. “This one is here for my boy,” he said, a hint of pride in his tone. “He was so brave when he got the sickness, Mary told me, he was always smiling and asking how the others were. He was braver than I’ve ever been, and he was only eleven.” Here, Jeremy could tell he struggled to hold back the tears. He could read that in the wrinkles too.

The last stone was minuet, almost unnoticeable it was so small. But there was a name engraved on it just the same as the others. “Bertha”.
“She was only a week old when she got ill,” Mr. McGregor informed the boy. “We lost her first. I hadn’t even thought of a name for her yet when my wife sent me the letter to tell me she’d gone.” A whole tear escaped his eye and ran down his aged cheek. But then suddenly he withdrew himself from the morbidity of the stones in front of him and rose to a towering height above Jeremy.
“I have two regrets,” he said punctually, “one; that I let the war drag me away from them, and two; that they didn’t live to experience the full life of any other person. But I console myself with this; that every person in your life who gives of themselves so that you can experience the fullness of life has deposited a part of themselves into you. So, they become part of your heart, and you carry them around with you in there,” Mr. McGregor jabbed his finger into the left side of Jeremy’s chest, “for as long as you live. Your father’s there Jeremy. And it’s not the stone that helps you remember him, it’s that bit of you that is Pete.”

Pete, Jeremy’s father. The boy who had intruded upon an old man’s garden all those years before. The boy whom McGregor had grown very fond of, and had vowed to take care of his son after he died. Jeremy remembered Pete very well. He was “in there” for certain.
“They were my family,” said Mr. McGregor, “and so are you now.” Helping the boy up, he held his hand as they walked along the dusty road; the road that led home.