journal 10/10

oh look i just wrote something else! all that transcribing a journal made me want to write another one, so i just did.

hi dad, i know you're reading this, so i'd like to say that some of this is fiction and some is not.

10/10
Thursdays was date night. Edija and I would go to the Denny's on Riverside and Franklin, but we wouldn't go alone. TJ had to come along to dramatize anything that could happen. He was like a little bard, spewing abstract crap about what we were doing.

But we wouldn't eat at the Denny's. In fact, we wouldn't even go inside. We'd just park in the lot and walk across the street to the Sinclair station first. TJ would go inside and buy eggs because he was Hmong and most of the neighborhood was Hmong, so he wouldn't stand out. I looked like a boy then. I wonder if Edija was actually gay because he hated me when I grew my hair out that winter. I think we broke up over it.

Edija had gray-blue hair at that point, I think. It made him look like Anderson Cooper. We were just too obvious. So TJ bought the eggs.

I have no idea why we did this, but one day when we were driving around the neighborhood, Edija pulled over and said, "Dude, let's go egg Denny's."

And so we did. First it was one egg carton, then three, and finally we would watch TJ balance a tower of egg crates as he hobbled towards us. And then we'd find our favorite brown brick side and start throwing.

I swear when we did this we weren't high or anything. Like I said I don't know why we did any of it. Crazy unwashed people would honk at us as they drove past, leaning out their windows and cheering us on. To them we must have been a blank symbol of anything they were mad at. Some would say "Bush knocked down the towers!" or "Death to corporations!" or "Make abortion a health right!" We'd wave at them and keep throwing eggs. I'm glad it made someone happy.

9/26 journal

if froid and samuel were in a rom com, this would have been a thing. doesn't take a genius to decide who is who.

LANGUAGE DISCLAIMER: this is made with english. sometimes english drops the f-bomb when you encounter someone you hate.

9/26
You're at the ramen stand right by the quad. That ramen place is the only worthwhile place to eat at around here. How dare you. I haven't eaten or slept in two days, all because of the class you're the TA for, that has taken upon itself to become my new lifestyle. How dare you. Look at you, all well-rested and eager to get your huge bowl of miso buckwheat ramen. If only you got some sort of rabid food poisoning and you had to spend two days not sleeping or eating. How about YOU take on that lifestyle.

How am I, you ask? What do you think you can hide behind your schadenfreude, behind some sort of well-worn politeness? Fuck you, I just want my ramen to go so I can watch my face bloat up from the MSG and sodium in peace. YOUR face doesn't bloat up, doesn't it? That's because you have the metabolism of an ecstasy-riddled baby squirrel.

Have I written a response paper to the poem you published, you ask? No. I've just been sitting on my ass for two days trying to escape and join a Colombian drug cartel so I can give you some cocaine laced with dishwasher soap and watch you go into shock.

Why am I just staring at you, you ask? Sorry, I've just not slept in a while. Thats all. See you in class later. Enjoy your ramen.

Fucker.

Journals 9/22 and 9/24

So my creative writing class also has the policy of writing little snippets of whatever for at least like 20 minutes five days a week. Just gonna share what I've written. Hooray for writing all the time!


9/22
The netting on the tea bag is so fine it disappears in the tea-color water. I worry that fannings have made their escape through heat tears or stem punctures, but when the tea bag sways they sway with it. This is my second time brewing this bag. It's not that I'm thrifty or lazy or even grateful for the tea's flavor-life. It's just fun to watch the leaves breathe and curl, flutter in their little cage, lilt across each other. When they sink and give up, I know it's time to relieve them of their service and toss them out. I know when to let the useless sleep. They want to be working as much as I do.

I stop writing and bounce the bag.

I start writing again, tugging the string and lifting the bag out of the water with my free hand. It spins around and slouches like a marionette. When I drop the bag back in, not ready to remove it, it eases itself into the hot water, floating at first, and then slipping away before it presses up against the bottom. The boiling water is still hot, and the steam licks my palm as I hover it over the lip of the cup.

And now it's time. The netting holds some of the water for a moment as it suspends in the air, and then it releases it all.


9/24
My grandfather had a Buick Park Avenue phase for about thirty years. I was born in the middle of it, his third reincarnation, as he called it, for he loved referencing time with his sedan armada. Somewhere around the time of this model, a champagne 1991 with a leather faux hatchback, we were driving into town, like the big city Minneapolis was supposed to be. The next car he would buy would be the one I drive now, but that hadn't happened yet.

My grandfather was a two-foot driver, one on the gas pedal, the other slowly eroding the brakes. This is how he drove; it was like a washing machine, and it knotted my insides up too. I would puke, but that hadn't happened yet.

And my grandfather still smoked, his breath and teeth pushing bits of tar and ash when he spoke loudly, because he believed a World War Two veteran was too exalted for a hearing aid. This smell, incubated and recycled by the rolled-up windows, sent my stomach over the edge.

I had lied down in the back seat on the blue leather, and so when I projectile-vomited it all rained back down on me.

Some bits of tomato and rice soup still clung to the tan felt ceiling, which had speckles of cigarette ash well patterned in it.

After I had erupted, my grandfather pulled over on the side of the road. I had cupped my hands over my mouth to prevent further spewage, and yet my hands had reeked of sunfish slime from fishing earlier that day, and made me more nauseous.

He sprayed some windex over the seat and on my hands, scrubbing the vomit lodged in between my fingers. That damn car always smelled of windex, if not cigarette smoke, and sometimes it smelled of baked leather. When the vomit was all cleaned up, the hot leather scent crinkled through the seams in the seat.

I think my grandfather stopped smoking after that because none of the Buicks afterwards had had that scent. But that hadn't happened yet.

Something old, something new...

Something that's very obviously not poetry.

I don't think I've been very direct about the... er.... direction of this blog, so I'm going to say this outright: I'm taking a fiction course, and I will be writing fiction intensively for the next three months. No poetry. I've honestly been drifting towards fiction in the past year or so, probably since NaNoWriMo, and while I still very much enjoy poetry, there are paths in fiction that I want to explore more thoroughly, and I have tons ideas for short fiction pieces/ longer fiction pieces. Is that to say that I won't be posting any poetry in the near future? No, but just don't expect it.

So now on to something more relevant to the title.

Several years ago, I wrote a poem based on my very first memory in honor of some birthday. I think it was my 19th? Whatever. I wrote a poem. It's the poem on my most popular post (woooo!), but for those of you unwilling or unable to click on a link, here's just a copy of it:

First Memory

Verdant shuffle, fresh from sleep.
Day unplanned save planned caprice,
Free from obligations to keep,
Time obliging only to creep,
Not too old for inner peace,
Every quandary tends to cease
At inception. None are deep.

I round the corner, put my fist
On a wall of mirrors, every shade
Reflected as to not resist
My acknowledging them in list. 
But soon was a connection made
Between myself, and one thought stayed:
“This is me. I exist.”

I obviously wasn't thinking in such flowery terms, but this was definitely how it went down.

And now for something newer.

Tuesday I had my first in-class exercise for my Creative Writing Senior Seminar (wtf how did I get so old, anyway?) and so we were given a prompt pertaining to an early memory and then wrote in our notebooks for about 15 minutes. I'm really digging the whole idea of writing more physically in a notebook rather than in a Word Doc, but then again I've always preferred it that way. And so here is my piece in all its 15-minute glory.


I don't know why, but I remember it was a Tuesday morning. My room was at the end of the hall, and the carpet was so green it resembled turf. I would always play on that carpet because it seemed more real. 

I wasn't very old ,but I knew the concept of opening a door, twisting my wrist around a knob I barely could reach. My fingers must had been previously in my mouth, because they were slippery and made my grip weak and awkward.

My little wispy curls bounced as I waddled out of my room. This was before my hair was ever cut, so the strands must have been there from the time I was born. My hair curled up at will on the ends, changing their size and place whenever I slept. And I passed my parents' room and Lala's room, the room I would graduate to when I became a big girl and had no need for the nursery.

I passed the brown and white sofa set in the living room. They looked like cows or horses, and I would straddle their armrests and neigh or moo for them. I would take off their cushions and pretend they were pelts or hides to make a fort. The cushions were stiff, and the naugahyde was prickly, but I had never seen a cow or a horse in real life, so I figured that was what they felt like.

And then there were mirrors. Some were bigger than me, all cast in frames and different shapes and sizes. Every time my mother went to Colombia she would come back with one or five. They were spaced unevenly along the wall, but I knew my mother must have had some method to it that I didn't understand yet.

I would look at the dust gathering in the crevices of the frames, pretend the mirrors were talking to each other, imagining what they would say. I never looked at the mirrors themselves because their frames were more alluring. Besides, many of them were too high for me to look at at eye level.

But one of them today was. It must have been the new one. My mother had just come back from Colombia. She would go there to see where she had come from what she was, she would later tell me. And there I say myself for the very first time in the mirror. This must be what I looked like, what I looked like to others. 

I'M BAAAAAAACKKKKK

Sup there, readers. Sorry that I haven't been around for like six months, but I guess it's not that surprising anymore. I've had kind of a busy summer that is just coming to an end, and in about a week and a half I'll be going back to school. I didn't write much in the summer since I had just taken a very intensive creative fiction class and I decided that I was going to just intentionally not write for a while until I missed it. I kind of regret this, because now I'm just too lazy to start writing again, but I've been trying to easing myself back into it by transcribing two little snippits I wrote in the summer. I won't be posting them because I'm not crazy about them, but I will be posting a poem that I haven't even written yet. Here's a poem with no editing and with the time stamp beginning and end. I won't promise anything. It'll probably suck way more than the scenes that I refuse to post.

Start time: 13:36

I found a kernel under my car's hood.
I wondered if it had made the sounds
That came from it when I went kind of fast.
I should explain that it was some popcorn
That I had maybe eaten like a week
Ago when changing my car's oil again.
My stupid car. No wonder it runs bad.
The oil-saturated kernel reeked
And I pretended I had not seen it
As I put the hood down and walked away.
A kernel makes no problems if I don't
Acknowledge that it's there, is that correct?

End time: 13:42

.... I think I'm hopeless.

The first time I heard the Lord's Prayer

Sup... there hasn't been much contact from me because I have been in New Zealand and Australia and being very busy and happy in a foreign country. That being said, I still wrote poetry. Here's a poem I wrote one night when I was bored and very much... bored.

The first time I heard the Lord’s Prayer

I was sixteen, barely alive.

I fed myself on the scraps of survival like

Empty words. They gave me the energy

Of a decapitated calf. I hate listening.

The young boy at the front of the church

Was as nervous as a chambermaid

Seeking a predator in the dark corners of a room.

Is God that scary? Is Latin so intimidating?

Aren’t both of those things dead?

The boy might as well been dead. He glistened gray

Under the heat of the lights and the heavy Catholicism.

And so he continued the song, his voice too stern

To break. He projected himself into notes so high

His sternum shriveled at each pause.

I would have felt bad for him but

You can’t feel bad for someone

That you hate so much.

His eyes closed as he breathed in like a faucet

And I wondered when he would crack.

Crack: like a linoleum statuette of Pegasus

In the bathroom at the back of the nave.

So real and so beautiful. So I’ve been told.

He opens his eyes and looks at me, released,

Unchained from his façade. He breathes hard

And closes his eyes again, catching wisps

Of the stale draft rippling through the elders.

He opens them again.

He’s looking at me again.
No, he’s looking at nothing.

I’m looking at nothing.

Nanowrimo 17

Last post! It's super long Thank you so much for reading if you have been all this time (no, seriously).  This has been such a fun experience. I'll definitely do Nanowrimo again in the future... Though maybe when I'm not writing a thesis.

-CD

Ambrosia Froid looked out her office window as the sun dipped under the trees. It was late in November, so late that she had to remind herself to not stare at her neighbor’s fluorescent Christmas lights and burn her eyes. He was old and colorblind, so he did not know any better, but the lights still did little to give him pity. Froid had always walked past his apartment and cringed at the bright purple. It clashed with everything. She would always somehow forget.

            The English Department office was empty now. She was the last to leave. She had no need to stay so late: she had interns that could do the busy work for her, or editors to boss around, but she never did. She had the equivalent of four Quentin the publishers around her every workday, making sure her lecture for her class was going okay, collecting her poetry to compile into volumes, bring her Americanos, bring her nicotine patches.

            This was the life of Ambrosia Froid: junior lecturer at the University of Washington, poet laureate of the state of Washington, hallowed alumna of the gracious university. Her living was nice: she was paid to do what she would do for free. She traveled to colleges to give readings, wrote on commission, ate at Asian Fusion restaurants with other famous poets, and best of all, had the enviable position of calling some student’s earnest attempt “flowery at its worst.” She was even more cynical now. She could thank poetry for that. However, she still needed it.

            As she entered her sparse apartment, she remembered the date: six years since Samuel’s disappearance. She had not even thought about it the last five. Once everyone assumed she was dead she refused to revive her hope. She had no idea where he went, but it was clear to her: she would never see him again.

            She held “hIre why’sdumb” up to the light. She did not ever take it out of the plastic bag. It was too precious to touch. It was not too precious to listen to though. She recited it every night. She had had it engrained into her mind for years.

            Next to it she had put her old copy of the first volume of y(not)ou. Samuel had published three in his lifetime and two had been published posthumously through Murkvein, but Froid never bought another copy. “hIre why’sdumb” was published in the beginning of the third and most acclaimed of the three. She refused to buy it in the wake of her breakup with Samuel, and while she was dating him, the second volume was published. She had no need to by the poetry of the poet when she was dating poet and could watch every one of them surge out of his mind and onto charcoal.

            Froid sighed and opened up the volume. She could not read it at all; it was destroyed when she made the poem “still you.” She had not forgotten the poem, but she had forgotten which words she had removed from where.

            Then she had an idea. In celebration of Samuel’s life, transcribe the volume, using the process of elimination to determine which words went where. It was arduous and time-consuming, but Froid had no desire to grade mediocre poetry. She would be just like Samuel: return it to the students blank.

            The first poem in the volume was called “wetrock.” She rewrote the poem, reinserting the words  “shore” and “blue.” The next poem was “man.Ia.trieval,” which was missing some prepositions and the word “split.” The third poem was her personal favorite, a simple poem called “gash:us.” She remembered which words went where because she had memorized it long ago: “lilts,” “morgue,” “and,” and “everyone.”

            The process continued for the rest of the volume. She reinserted nouns, verbs, prepositions, and adjectives everywhere. After a few hours the volume was complete again, in her handwriting in her own notebook. It was all transcribed again and lovely. She felt proud. She could feel Samuel there in the volume, at the expense of her poem. He was reassembled, triumphant, in his Spartan verse. She could appreciate him once more for what he wrote, not just her memory of him. The pleasure of once again being complete.

            The happiness waned though when she saw that that would not change anything. Samuel was still gone. Samuel would not come back because she filled in the blanks spots in her book. Samuel existed on the pages of his poetry, but he did not leap off the pages in the tangible way that Froid could hope for. She could see his hands where the charcoal may have smudged on the manuscript, but she could not hold it. She knew the charcoal would transfer to his hands and later everything he touched. He would get it all over her cheeks whenever he had put his hands on her face to kiss her hello. She had no charcoal on her face that night. She wrote in pen. She could see him with a poem in his mind sitting on the ground trying to get it out as fast as possible. They would be in the middle of a conversation, of breakfast, of reading, and he would have to stop. He would run, tripping over things or nicking his shoulder on a wall to get to some paper and charcoal. And then he would write. No, not write. It was a spasm. It was violent. He would close his eyes and clench his body, sweating as he poured out what could have been his life into one poem. This happened every time. Froid would watch him, wondering when he would fall over dead or snap out of it and resume his life. But it was beautiful. He never looked so alive, so passionate, so anything as when he was scrambling to write lines of near incoherence onto a page. It did not matter if no one else could read it. He could. Poetry was all he cared about. Froid knew that deep down. If it ever came down to deciding between anything and poetry, Samuel had an obvious and regretless choice. Once he wrote his poetry he would resume whatever he was doing as if nothing happened. He was so dissociated from his two worlds that Froid sometimes thought that he forgot that he wrote poetry. But then she would remember his choice.

            Samuel had already made that choice before. Froid knew it so well.

            As she sat alone in her apartment, surrounded by her thoughts of Samuel and his poetry, she decided to complete one last task to commemorate him. She found a piece of paper that he had made for her that she never used and some charcoal in a box of art supplies.

            She closed her eyes and began to write.

            b(ridge)d

            all[forgotten]us

            per{feets^feats}fection

            faction/faction

            bro(apart)ken

            4seven ye(ons)rs

            I[what]I you see^

            up!wards? no in

            paper. yes

            p(age)s of wait

            WEIGHT

            and you see I.

           

            She opened her eyes at the completion. She read it to herself. It sounded like Samuel. She followed his orthography, his methods, like he was there, like she was him.

            She felt someone watching her. She looked up. It was Samuel.

            She jumped backwards, hitting her head on the wall. When she picked herself back up he was gone again.

            “I need some air,” she said aloud. She had been by herself in the apartment for too long. She took a hidden packet of cigarettes with her just in case.

            The wind was harsh that night. It seldom snowed, but it rained enough to make one wish for it. The sidewalks were icy from when the temperature slithered around freezing. Froid had seen freshmen slip on this. She was too old to fall.

            She walked past the library with the Suzzallo Reading Room. It looked smaller now. It seemed less important now that Froid had her own publications in it. She had read theses of students commentating on her poems. It un-validated everything for her. Academia seemed to be a lost end. One day she could look back and appreciate higher learning. There was none of that with her tonight, though. She wanted to close her eyes, hear Samuel’s voice recite “hIre why’sdumb,” and open her eyes and be at the edge of a shore. Be in his poem forever.

            “Professor Froid!” called a voice.

            Froid looked around. A freshman boy named Nikolai Murcielago was running towards her, but he slipped and fell on the ice. He spent the last of his commute sliding with a pained expression on his face. Froid did not help him up.

            “The assignment for tomorrow… Are we still to read the volume of your poems? And analyze “man.Ia.trieval” by Coldridge?”

            Froid forgot assigning that at all. “Skip the Coldridge. We can cover it later. I’ll email out about it tonight once I get home.”

            “Oh, thank you, Professor! Thank you so much for teaching this class. I’m a huge fan of your work. I can’t wait for you to publish another volume. Maybe you can bring in a poem for workshop? Just a poem you’re working on? It could be very interesting!”

            Froid smiled. “I’ll think about it. But for now, do the assignment for tomorrow. I know you’re not the fondest of doing your homework, but I must remind you of the adverse effect on your grade that will have.”

            The student nodded in earnest. “I promise I’ll turn it in on time, Professor Froid!” He walked away, having learned his lesson from the ice, but still managed to slip and fall again.

            Froid knew she would not workshop one of her poems to the class. It was not because she did not like criticism, but rather it was because there was no need. She preferred her own edits to her work. It kept them unspoiled. She also knew Nikolai Murcielago would not turn his assignment in. She knew him well. What she did not understand was why he kept pretending like he was going to.

            “Nikolai Murcielago, you just might become a great poet someday,” she mused as she returned towards her apartment.

            Her apartment was just as she had left it a half an hour ago, save one new addition. Samuel was in the middle of the room, holding a briefcase, reading her poem out loud.

             “Bridged:

            All forgotten in us

            Is the feet’s feats in perfection

            Faction for faction

            Broken apart

            For seven years and eons.

            What in I do you see?

            Upwards? No. In

            Paper. Yes.

            Pages and ages of wait

            And weight.

            And you see I.”

            He smiled at her. Froid could only stare. The silence made Samuel impatient somehow.

            “Yes, I’m alive, in case you’re wondering.” His speech was different. It was relaxed. He looked different. He looked resurrected. He looked like how he did in the poems he wrote.

            “But, how?”

            “Well, technically, I wasn’t alive for a while. Until now. Now I’m alive.”

            Samuel dropped an adverb so casually. Froid had never heard him use one before. It rattled in her brain like flimsy tin.

            “I… I…”

            “Yes, you. It was you,” he replied.

            “What? What did I do?” Froid thought she was dreaming.

            “Samuel, am I dreaming? What’s going on here?”

            He lifted at her poem and pointed at it. “This is what’s going on.”

            “What?”

            Samuel sighed. “Ambrosia, I just came back to this world by using your poem as a literal bridge. The least you can do for me is say something other than vacant questions.”

            “I….”

            “Or pronouns.”

            Froid composed herself once she poked his face. He smiled sheepishly as she poked his dimples. He was real after all.

            “Permit me one question.”

            “Very well.”

            “How?”

            “My poetry. I was tired of living somewhere that wasn’t there. So I left. After my brother was destroyed I decided would be a good time to leave. It was nice, really. I got a lot of writing done. But, I got bored.”

            “Bored?”

            “There was something missing. It was boring playing God.”

            “Boring?”

            “Ambrosia, please say a different word.”

            “Like what?”

            Samuel sighed. He opened his briefcase and out of it flew thousands of poems. Froid gasped as they fluttered everywhere, falling like the snow she wished Seattle would have.

            “Is this all the writing you’ve done?”

            “For six years, yes.”

            “That’s a lot of writing.”

            “It is. I brought it all back with me.”           

            “What are you planning on doing with it?”

            “Who knows. Probably publish again, make some money.”

            “This will make a lot of money,” she muttered.

            “It definitely will. The late Samuel Tyler Coldridge miraculously appearing with volumes worth of unpublished poetry?”

            “Sounds like royalties to me… Are you planning on staying long?”

            Samuel laughed. Froid’s momentary elation fled.

            “Thought so. You’d probably rather be bored than be here anyways, right?”

            Samuel stopped laughing. “Who said anything about leaving?”

            “Wait… what?”

            “You wrote me back into this reality. You better take responsibility of me!” Samuel teased.

            “But…”

            “No buts!”

            “Are you hungry?”

            “Famished!”

            “And not for poetry?”

            “I think I’m done writing for a while.”

            “Why?”

            Samuel gestured at her apartment. The floor was nowhere to be seen.

            “That and… well… I’m going to sound like the most hackneyed poet to ever walk the earth, but right now I’ve got the only poem I’d ever need.”

            He smiled at Froid. She knew what he saw.

            “I’ve got higher wisdom,” he said as he gazed at her.

            Froid handed him the manuscript still in the plastic bag. He slapped it aside as he embraced her, resting his cheek on her hair.

            “I like this version better,” he murmured.

            Froid smiled like the blue of oceans.

            “What are you hungry for?”

            “Hmmm… maybe Peking duck. I’ve always been curious as to why the hell that athlete liked it so much.”

            The End