Myth Re-appropriation into poem

I Am Sisyphus

I am
more powerful than the gods
am
above
these so-called forces
of nature. Gravity
to me
is just another weight
to overcome.
And I believe,
after these trials,
the Underworld
escape,
games, merely,
that the rock will tip.

Poem from prose snapshots

The Girl in the TV

They were framed
in large, gold-rimmed spectacles,
his eyes.
And my grandpa looked
through them
to read the newspaper.
I was beyond,
staring at the TV,
its already small frame
getting smaller
still,
with time.
And I watched the girl
in the TV
shout and scream
at her grandpa.
But my grandpa
did not see.
So I turned it off.
And removed his large,
gold-rimmed spectacles
so that I
might climb onto his lap
and read the newspaper.

Prose Snapshots

He sat on the patched-up couch reading the Chinese newspaper with his large, gold-rimmed spectacles framing his kind eyes. The TV was on in front of him but he seemed not to notice, lost in reading about the world. But I was watching the girl in the TV. She talked back to her grandpa in disrespect and threw the allowance money he’d given her at his feet. I turned off the TV in defiance and marched over to my grandpa, thin on the over-sized couch that was falling apart, to give him a hug. And he folded his newspaper and hugged me back, unaware of the scene that had just passed.

Sometimes, at night, when the whole family was present, we would gather around the board-game Scrabble and put words together for points. My dad was the most serious about this, using his letters carefully, reading up on the rules and restrictions. But even so, he could never beat my mom, who assembled words in excitement, making the most interesting combinations, paying no heed to any such point system. She would get up to make some noodles as my dad took his time on his turn, and finish eating before he could tally up the score. And she’d smile playfully and wink at me, as it was always in her favor.

My sister was like a personal pest who would never stop following me around and copied everything I did. So I took her around sometimes. I did, because if I didn’t, she would start to cry. And because she was always there, she was witness to my acts of creativity, my imaginative genius. I created about ten million games for us to play. Four or five stuck. We played stuffed animals sometimes but I didn’t like the term “stuffed” because they were filled with something real, too, so I called them “little animals” and we referred to them as our “L.A.”s. She always wanted to be the bunnies so I let her be the bunnies and she wanted the cats so I let her have those, too. So I took on the personas of octopuses and armadillos, and when she saw that they were more interesting, we switched. And switched again.

First line from a line in one of Kyle’s poems:

You said to me, “old maps”
and I was at sea again.
Hand me a compass
Give me a fair wind
Blow me east,
for my sails have caught
a tidal spirit.

“On the Building of Boxes” (I may need to change this title)

words: -cucumber, savory, jaunty

And though they don’t have much
in these poor villages,
they manage
to intrigue my nose
with a savory smell – a cucumber
dish that they have spiced up
with cumin,
paprika,
spices of sorts,
and I think about her, again,
the girl who I used
to play with
in my childhood
who walked a jaunty walk
and talked a deliberate talk
in streets that were much too dirty
for me to play in now.

Jumping into poetry…

Words:
-cliff, voice, whir, needle, blackberry, clouds, mother, lick
-include proverb

I am standing
on a cliff
somewhere above the clouds
and the wind,
like the voice of my mother
whirs
and I see her as if
through the eye
of a needle
telling me, softly,
that this, too, shall pass away.

Re-write poem using different style:

I didn’t listen
I obsessed
and when my mother told me
that this, too, shall pass away
I saw the world,
standing on the tip of a needle
stuck
standing
on the tip of a needle
waiting for her to begin
sewing.

Reflection on Fiction

Fiction was supposed to be the unit in which I would feel at home as a writer, but it in fact proved to be the most difficult so far and will stand, I think, as the most difficult unit for me even after poetry, though we haven’t even stepped into poetry yet.

Perhaps it is because I settled into creative non-fiction too nicely and got too comfortable. I’m not sure. I usually tend to think of myself as a fairly creative person, which is why I have always been drawn to fiction – inhabiting different characters’ voices and actually being someone else has always been fun for me. But somehow, throughout this unit, I felt as though I couldn’t get these creative juices to flow. The only consistent feeling I got when sitting down to write was writer’s block.

But though I feel that this fiction portfolio is not up to the standard at which I know I can write, I have learned many things throughout this unit. For one, I am definitely honing my skills in reading as a writer. The step to perfect is applying them. I have also done a lot of experimentation in our exercises and assignments. It may be that they don’t work as individual pieces, but in writing them I am practicing writing. Perhaps this is more important for me as a writer in the long run.

I should mention discipline. You told me in a conference that to be a writer, one needs talent, passion, and discipline (and luck, if we’re going to go there). This unit made me realize just how much I lack discipline. The reason why many of my stories are still unfinished (and not just unfinished in the sense that no piece is ever really “finished” – I mean really, far from finished, as in the ending is nowhere near well thought-out) is because I tell myself that I can only write when I am truly inspired to write, when I want to write. I put off writing, saying I will do it when I am able to set aside a large chunk of time to just sit and write and organize my thoughts. And it takes a long time to even do just that, when I have set aside time.

But here is my sample from fiction nonetheless:
(It is incomplete. I intend to finish this portfolio fully, but find that I cannot within this time limit. This is very much the fault of my writing habit and I am very sorry – I will get my missing pieces up as soon as possible.)

Writer response: Milos Macourek

Macourek imitation: Johnny’s Goldfish

Stranger Studies: England Strangers

Kafka Re-appropriation: The Boy Who Cried

Extraordinary –> Ordinary: Petrified

Dialogue Exercises: 1st, 2nd, 3rd person narrators

1st person short story: Pete’s First Date

Some exercises from my journal.

My long fiction piece is still unfinished as of yet…I will post it soon to complete my portfolio.

fiction piece in progress

(this is just a rough beginning…I’ll keep updating as I piece things together)

Story of the Stone

I’ll tell you I found it. One day, among some rocks in a riverbed, perhaps. I might tell you, if you point to my neck and ask, almost touching it, that the sun was shining in a cloudless sky that day, and a glint in the water caught my eye.

That is what I tell little kids, sometimes, because they have a fascination with found things, and it sends them scurrying off to riverbeds and trickling streams, squinting into the water despite the glare. Sometimes they find things like smoothed broken glass and that is enough. But that is not what I told Diego, when we first locked eyes two summers ago. It was a swelteringly hot day, even for Mexicans, and when I was forced, at midday, to leave my small but cool hostel room in search of water, no one was in the streets. I walked in the heat for a bit, and that was when we locked eyes. Or rather, when he locked eyes with my necklace.

There is a stone I wear around my neck. It is a bead, really – a stone, that lies horizontally with a hole drilled through it for a string to run through. Its shape is an imperfect cylinder that is slightly longer than the length of my lips and slightly wider than the width of them. It is called a Three-Eye stone because of the pattern. It has three eyes.

His mother clapped her hands together and said Diego, my son Diego, a few times before noticing me. When she finally did, she repeated the episode with increased fervor, replacing my name, which she did not know, with such a beautiful girl. I smiled as she sprinkled me with these soft Spanish words and continued to smile as she leaned in close to examine the stone.

“What is this, anyway?” William traced his hand down my face, gliding his fingers over my neck to get a closer examination of the stone. I cupped my hand over it before he could touch it. He lifted his head up off the pillow and looked at me through the darkness. “You’re not supposed to touch it,” I explained, “It’s bad luck.” And though his face was only a few inches from mine, I had trouble making out his expression. My hand still covered the stone. “Is that what the gypsies told you?” He let his head drop back onto the pillow and I couldn’t tell if it was in exasperation or simply tired disinterest. “I didn’t know you were so superstitious.”

I suppose because the stone is large, it draws attention. And it is unusual; few have seen the likes of it. No one can begin to guess where it might come from. People want to know.

The next day, Diego wanted to introduce me to his family. So he took my hand and took me to his village. His mother was cooking corn tortillas when we arrived in front of her worn, wooden house, thatch-roofed and everything, leaking from the rain and smoking from the cooking. She was expecting the milkman.

The stone is actually from Tibet.

I usually wear it tucked under my shirt, where I can feel it on my skin. Perhaps that is why William didn’t ask me about it until a month into our relationship, because it was wintertime then – a time of warm sweaters and thick coats and a cold that amplified the bell tolls of Big Ben. It was not until he accompanied me back to my flat to politely remove my coat and pull my concealing sweater over my head that his curiosity was piqued. I could tell, during that slow study of my body, that it was my necklace that was the main object of his attention. But he gave my figure its due respect and did not ask me about it until the next morning, when we had become a bit better acquainted.

I told him that a gypsy sold it to me for a good price. He looked amused. “Oh?” “She was a traveling gypsy.” William was not exposed to the world. He had never left the small, proud island that he called home, bowing to the queen, kneeling before the houses of parliament, and I knew he would know nothing of far-away lands. “Of the Ruska Roma.” He did not follow. “The Russian Gypsies.”

In-Class Exercise: Strange Words

5 words:
-slukie
-galiven
-vollow
-slitties
-selukilim

Salt

He’s searching all my cupboards again.

“I told you, I don’t have any.”

“Pepper, ground pepper, cloves…selukilim? You have selukilim and you don’t have salt?”

I smile as he galivenly sniffs the small bottle of selukilim. The kitchen is in a vollow state. Half-chopped onions litter the countertop. Chives, parsley…a whole slukie of vegetables still haven’t been washed.

“What’s this?” He pulls out a half-rotting zucchini from somewhere among the mass of decaying vegetables. He makes a face and tosses it into the slitties.

Dialogue Exercises

3rd person:

“Which is apparently unprecedented, or not unprecedented, but—”

“But very unusual.”

“Largely. Yeah, largely.”

Thomas looked back down at the newspaper and continued to read.

“Historical,” she said.

He nodded. She was looking out the window, staring the sun down. It cut into her eyes and made her squint. Thomas paused in his reading to examine her over the top of his newspaper. He thought her rather pretty.

“Oh, if I could go back now…” The sun threw sparks into her red hair.

“Go back…”

She tore her eyes away from the sun to look at him, and he thought he saw its light still lingering there.

“Home.”

And she was squinting at the sun again.

2nd person:

“I really want more chicken, but there isn’t any more.”

What do you say to that? You might say gee, that’s really too bad or you might say maybe that’s because you ate it all, but you think it best not to say anything, so you continue looking down at your plate of food and continue feeding yourself, pretending you didn’t hear.

“I need more water.”

You’ve been sitting here for an hour now and you wished fifty-four minutes ago that you hadn’t listened to your friend who’d set you up. After her first plate of food you’d already listed twelve other places you’d rather be, and by the time she finished her fourth course, you’d revised it to include twenty-seven others.

She has her mouth full but she manages to talk between chews and swallows.

“The beef’s a little salty but it’s bearable.”

No, you think. It’s not bearable. In fact you find her quite repulsive.

Look, you say. They’re putting the buffet away. The restaurant is closing.

She looks surprised. “Oh!” A bit of meat flies from her mouth and lands two inches away from your fork.

You stand up to excuse yourself and walk quickly towards the restroom.

1st person:

“Cigarette for the winner?”

He passed one to me and I lit it against the wind.

He laughed. “I’m the only fucking sober one here.”

I watched as he swung the beer bottle in the direction of his mouth and missed, sending glugs of beer down the front of his shirt. He cast the empty bottle aside and I watched as it rolled down the pavement, gritting against the cement and making a hollow sound.

He made to stand up but swayed instead. I stood to help him but he pushed me aside, angry now.

“I’m the only damn fucking sober one here.”