If A Story Falls in the Forest, Does Anybody Read It?

That is so profound.


Had my writing class last night again--the one with all of the very supportive and awesome women that meets in a church and where we get snacks! Last night, we had homemade chocolate chip cookies and ginger snaps at our break. The week before, we were offered poppy seed cake with icing (this is reminding me of the type of entries I used to keep in my Hello Kitty diary when I was ten. They were almost exclusively about the food I ate that day, or the day before, or two weeks previous. Something like: "Dear Diary, Today we had grape Popsicles and Kool-Aid. It was fun!..Dear Diary, Today was a fun day today! We had hot dogs, potato chips, pickles, any kind of pop we wanted and cupcakes. It was fun!" Ad infinitum).


The writing exercise for last night was to write (as yourself or as a character) about a time you (or the character) cried or didn't cry. I couldn't get into it. I started with something about a girl whose mom has just gone into remission from cancer and how she hears this and throws away all of her religious iconography, but that was boring and I've already written a cancer story. No one really likes a cancer story. Then I started writing about how I learned to disassociate and not cry and how I would sometimes force myself to cry and then stare at myself in the mirror to see how I looked while crying and how this has somewhat led to me narrating my life at times as though in third person. But that's not really true. I don't go around thinking, Girl walks down the subway stairs, almost falls. I am self-conscious to the point of being self-conscious about being self-conscious and trying very hard not to appear that way. There is probably a clinical term for this in the DSMV: Disassociative Affect Responsive Narcissism or DARN, you're self conscious! Anyway, my free write wasn't that great, kind of self-pitying, so I didn't read it out loud. One girl made another girl cry by writing about her dead boyfriend. We went over a story and I had to keep myself from talking the whole time...It was a good story but needed some work and I always get hyper when a story is already pretty good but could be even better. Here, let me write that!


I turned in my donation story. I kept changing things at the last minute and so when I finally had the chance to read through it after class, I noticed quite a few typos. Overall, though, it's not horrible. We'll see.


As far as the reading on Saturday, it went fine. I should've practiced reading it out loud at least once before getting there because I kept stumbling over my words. I hate that. There were three of us. The first woman read a piece about being a lesbian cop and about wanting a cheesesteak. I was really too nervous to listen. Then I read and nobody was sure if they should laugh at parts or not. In the future, I am going to have a minimum of five plants in the audience who will laugh and/or cry or sigh or go "WOW!" on cue. Another woman read after me; a well written piece about being abducted. Unfortunately, some kid kept playing with this toy that made a joyous circusy noise when he pushed the buttons, so she'd be reading something very serious and then in the background, you'd here the theme from Bozo the Clown. Maybe it was intentional; maybe it was a performance piece. Anyway, thank you to all of my friends who showed up. Without you, it would've been just me and the other two women and that bratty kid.
Thanks.


Celia sent me this photo. She said I should always wear the halo brace when going on a date to keep myself from doing anything inappropriate.
















I told her that something like this would probably be more effective:


Comments

Anonymous said…
you might be right.
~celia
Anonymous said…
the braces are a good idea but could present problems in terms of putting together a cute outfit.
Aimee said…
Though I could go for a metallic look? Like, all super 80s or something?

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