Classmate Response, Final Week

Brett, in your Oddity you deal with Facebook, which is so engrained in our society that it is difficult to separate it from the strong connotations that comes with it. Facebook seems to be one of those things where everyone has an opinion on it, and it’s usually a strong one.  I think to handle Facebook is such a difficult opportunity. The main point of this piece seems to compare facebook to life’s progression—which is interesting but a little used. Facebook itself has a timeline feature, comparing your facebook usage and history over your life’s timeline—it’s almost depressing how empty mine is from 1991-2010. That aside I think you touched on something almost a little more interesting—the opening, “Facebook tells me my friend has a cold.” It seems so distant, so mundane. Facebook reports, like a newspaper. There’s a almost journalistic distance to Facebook, which is so interesting because it is an application intended to keep us and our relations closer together. I would have liked to have seen more investigation in that regard. Also, consider some tweaking here and there. “Communicates the word of God in approximately twenty to thirty words, usually in the form of a quote.” Can be sharpened and works just as efficiently without the “usually in the form…” part. Also, “Catching up felt like reading a short story written by your friend.” Can be reworded to something simpler, like, “Catching up is reading your best friend’s story.” I think you found something fresher in Facebook, and that’s saying quite a lot. 

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Final Week

1.      1.  (after pasting MDA shamrocks around the store)

“Our arch on the door doesn’t look half bad if I say so myself.”

“Yeah, it kinda looks like the archway to shamrock land or something.”

2.    2.   I realized today just how much I should value the youth given to me, because after seeing some of the people I work with up close, it’s all downhill from here.

3.     3.  “Well what do you know…”

“I don’t think it’s what I know that’s posing the problem here.”

4.     4.  “And you seriously didn’t think your dog would jump through the window?”

“Yes, excuse me for not imagining the unfathomable. I’ll start anticipating the seemingly impossible from now on. I await the day you tell me you were born a woman, you know why, because I’m imagining the impossible.”

Original Prompt and Improv, Final Week

To say that Purpura is a poet really shows in her work, from her beginning with the usage of her anaphora and her startling images—even the way she plays with the lines—the long sentences juxtaposed with a couple short, simple ones—really works well in creating the tone in this piece—very poetic, which I think helps ease the reader into Purpura’s reflection that takes place soon after the setting is described. Lia Purpura has a way of using both logic and questions to guide her reflection, for instance: “The opening was familiar. As if I’d known before, this…what? Language? Like a dialect spoken only in childhood…” She uses these questions under the guise of musing to further push herself into recognizing both meaning and connection. Perhaps some of the strongest, but most minute, strengths in this work are the use of Purpura’s verbs, which are strong, surprising, and precise: soaked, slicked, and dizzying just being a few. In relation to my own work, I struggle most with my verbs—the “to be” verb is my greatest downfall. I suggest that by following Purpura’s example and using stronger verbs, the work will improve drastically—thus, attempt a piece that uses “to be” and all its forms no more than three times.

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Improv:

Because this was something I struggled with in one of my workshop pieces, I decided to rewrite the opening paragraph using better verbs and as few articles as I could. Wish me luck.

Original:

If everyone is human before I pull out the money marker, then they are identical twins after. Each customer is a blip in a sea of distant faces. They all have the same jokes. “Don’t touch it,” they tell me “the ink is still wet,” or “just printed it this morning.” They all chuckle and wait with their hands shoved deep into their pockets, praying for this brief, defenseless moment to pass. I smile and swipe without a word because if money changes people, it makes us all exactly the same. The same jokes. The same impatience. The same moments spent holding our breath. All of us judged saints or thieves by a money marker, and somehow afraid we’re going to fall up short.

Rewrite:

When I pull out the money marker, people twin each other. My customers, once a blip in a sea of faces, joke and chat until they morph, indistinguishable. “Don’t touch it,” they tell me, “the ink is still wet,” and I watch as they chuckle with hands shoved in their pockets, praying for this brief, defenseless moment to pass. We are led to believe that money changes people. Well, if it does, it makes us exactly the same. All of us impatient, holding our breath, waiting to be judged and that’s just how we like it. No one truly lives for the unexpected anymore. We break out, claiming to search for adventure but we all turn back to what we know sometime—the same comforts of technology, the same vacation spots, the same three course meals, all experience. But we all return home. Isn’t the mantra, there’s no place like home, truer now than ever? Don’t we all like to venture out only to return to the expected, the typical—the exact same thing? I’ve learn to appreciate that sameness, because it’s a little easier to deal with each other when I treat you, not like the individual, but generic customer number one, because I know exactly what generic customer wants and exactly what they like me to say: and generic customer number one may I please have your Kroger card thank you and how are you today? 

Oddity, Final Week

My first trip to a consignment shop and the only thing I bought was a little glass dish. It’s small, obviously round, with high sides. No bigger than a saucer. The bottom is webbed and spiked with a sunburst of cracks that I can’t touch but I stare at through the bottom. There’s nothing special about the dish, save for its repetitive design of Technicolor fruits—watermelons, grapes, oranges, lemons, and strawberries all pressed together in one graphic still-life and then stamped repeatedly on the signs.

                When I picked it up, held it in the air to inspect the price scribbled at the bottom in black Sharpie—15 cents, my mother laughed at me. “Of course my child would pick that up. I guess you could use it as a candy dish.”

                A candy dish. It was just what I needed. It was just what this bowl needed—definition. What sort of aimless life does a fruited bowl lead—a bowl, too small for any type of substantial breakfast and certainly not big enough for fruit—less it be a couple small handfuls of grapes. This tiny bowl, before its brief stint of insignificance, had meant something. It was loved until it was worn—its purpose built cracks into its glass that I picked at, but could only be surveyed like pretty rays. I wanted so desperately to understand what it meant to be this bowl before, to be it now—a utensil without a purpose. To sit and wait in dust until someone found you again, gave you purpose—to be a candy bowl, in a new apartment, sitting on the countertop, full of foiled chocolates. Is that why the fruit never faded, though the glass faltered? Perhaps the fruit knew this day would come—another sweet moment, a moment of importance, filled up with someone else’s expectations—what a simple but mundane existence. 

Memory, Final Week

I really wanted a dog. I mean, who doesn’t want a dog? Those big eyes and wet noses—humans can’t have those attributes and still seem cute. That’s why dogs are clearly superior. And I wanted one, wanted one like people want air. I’d watch the stray dogs wander the street with a hungry eye as I drove past, my feet hovering over the brake pedal. I wanted a dog so bad I could almost feel the stroke of their hair beneath my hands, the soft bristle. When my parents promised me their dog I was ecstatic. When they told me they weren’t going to give her away anymore, I was broken—damaged, no better off than a crumbled Oreo cookie. I needed a dog to complete me.

                Part of it might have something to do with the fact that I grew up with dogs most of my life. My first dog was a terrier named Max. He was a demon, and I hated him. When had a mutual dislike for one another—he would bite me as often as he could to show it. When my parents told me he ran away I don’t remember being that disappointed. Time went on and new dogs showed up. I found out later in life that they had lied, that Max had been hit by a car and had to be put to sleep. I don’t know if it was the time distance that led to my apathy or the fact that I just never liked Max—who loved ripping my sheets more than he liked me—but finding out that he died left no traceable effect on me outside of finally knowing the truth. Perhaps I should have treated Max better. Or, perhaps, he shouldn’t have eaten my stuffed parrot. But Max was replaceable.

                I’ve had a German Shepard, two Pittbulls, a Pomeranian and a Terrier-mix. There was even the brief stint with that braindead Chihuahua dog Sophie. But when my parents moved to Maryland and I moved to my dorm room, we were all finally dogless for the first time in years and somehow I felt empty. I pined over and over about a dog. When my parents returned and got a Shih Tzu I permeated obvious jealousy. I babysat dogs just to be around them. I needed a dog.

                Perhaps that was why I was so excited when my coworker called me about the stray dog in the parking lot. I had just left work, tired, late, with arm loads of groceries. We made it home and emptied the car of bags. I was ready to rest when I got a phone call.

“Hey, there’s a dog up here. Do you want her?”

                I don’t remember how I responded. I don’t even remember the drive, sitting in open anticipation, wondering what this dog looked like. I just remember pure, trembling bliss and a vocal prayer that, please, don’t let this dog be ugly. I wanted, so badly wanted, a dog of my own—one that would fit me and reflect me, complete me. I wanted my dog to be the beauty inside me that I never even knew I had, and I wanted everyone to see it and fall in love. I guess, through my dog, I wanted everyone to love me.

                And when my coworker handed me the puppy, the trembling bundle all close-eyed and whining in my arms, I almost cried. And when the puppy nuzzled her head into my neck and nipped at my uniform I knew this was it. This was my dog. This was Chewy. I had no idea at the time that my dog was only three weeks old, but holding her up against my neck, feeling her soft warmth, that dog cradled ahead of it, a lifetime of responsibility. She has a lot to live up to.

Reportage, Final Week

The first thing that struck me was the smell—the stinging stench of cigarettes. I wonder, what made them, the last people to live here, decide it was ok to stand in the living room and puff just one last drawl of their cigarette; what were they going through to make them heave out that heady cloud of smoke and paint the room with smell. My throat ached and I climbed through the darkness to make out anything, any saving grace among the typical apartment amenities. What I got was peeling wooden floor tiles, bent window screens, broken patio blinds and cracked glossy mirrors. I imagine the last tenants grasping another puff between their teeth in the bathroom for the seven years bad luck they were about to get for that last one.

Still there was something fundamentally defining in this tiny apartment—some metaphoric space redefining my character and my circumstantial outlook. It was at the threshold that I ceased to be Diamond and in the smoky haze received the looping laurels of responsibility, crowned into some greater being beyond knowing, beyond true understanding. It was like that abstract concept of adulthood became literal, concrete. It slammed shut behind me like the apartment door, with urgency and gravity. And in that moment I was lifted in the smoke. In that choking cliché, that eye-watering blaze of sensual assault and there, hidden like nugget in the floor cracks, was the sweet stench of victory—a scent so subtle you had to breathe it in again just in case. I coughed, stepping back into the living room and peeking out the patio, watching some hornet lull in the glaze of sunshine. With him went a silent prayer that this scent of victory didn’t start my allergies into a tizzy. Of course, it always does. And it did.

Classmate Response

In Response to Susana's Reportage Week 7

This is the most interesting Waffle House occurrence I've never had but wished I did. it's definitely a shocking moment, realizing the guy at the gas station next door is wandering around with blood on his shirt. However, I feel like there are more things begging to be dealt with here. Starting in order, though your Waffle House description successfully makes me envision every Waffle House I've ever been in, I feel like there are other details begging to be touched. At my Waffle House, for instance, no matter what time I seem to go in there, there is always the same guy cooking--middle-aged, peppered hair, and huge, thick glasses. Because we know some of the best strange cases occurs in the workers at Waffle House. I would have liked to seen these characters manipulated more. What were they doing? And more on how they reacted when the man with the blood stepped in? I imagine, open 24/7, these people seem so strange characters. I'd like to know their response a little more.

I'd also like to touch on your relationship with your son. Are these dinner dates common with you guys or is it just a way of catching up? Give me a little more on your relationship.

As well, I feel like some reflection could be integrated here. The gas store attendant, for example, is briefly noted and then even more briefly noted is the trusting woman. I feel like this is the writer's moment to delve into that "strange" behavior. Why does the man cower while the woman trusts? Why do she feel compelled to help him? What is this man from the crash feeling, do you think, while interacting with these characters and how do you as the narrator feel about them?

The wedding characters are literally the toppers on this cake, please write more on them as well. This kinda cheered me up tonight, so I really appreciate this tidbit. :)

Memory

I like to think I’m like most people. I like the American things—apple pie, beef hot dogs, and really bad horror films. I like pretending I’m a bigshot when most days I’m grateful to sail just below the radar. And like most people, I hate being called in to work on my day off. It was Sunday night, and it had been a long day. 

Any day that includes a baby shower stuffed with woman shoving cocktail weenies in their flapping mouths, battling over who knows the most nursery rhymes, is going to be a long day. Coming home and trying to bury my head into my pillow, my phone rang. It was my sister. At work. Trying to relay a message from my boss that begged me to come in to work. It was after five and I was exhausted and I told her no and hung up the phone.

Moments later I got another phone call from work. I ignored it, trying to suffocate my cheeks with the pillow now. Not long after that, my sister texted me. I have no idea why I didn’t turn my phone off, or silence it. I never do. I imagine I like having my sleep patterns interrupted so that everyone can listen to me as I bitch about it for hours. Like most people, I like feeling like my opinion matters.

They asked if you could come in at nine tonight.

I sighed. Or maybe I rolled my eyes, smashed my head into the pillow repeatedly, than stomped around the house for no apparent reason. Obviously “no” would not be an acceptable answer tonight. I texted her back and told her to tell them I’d be there. I really hate being called in to work.

Coming in at nine o’ clock, felt like coming in at any other time.  Except by now the store was mostly empty and the employees eye you kind of oddly because the majority of the perishable department members are clocking out while you’re clocking in. A couple, “kinda late aren’t you?” comments that you kind of ignore and then you go to your position, whip out your phone, and just stand there.

I was running self-checkout tonight, we call it U-Scan, and I wrapped the handheld that controls the machines around my wrist by the attachment. I whipped out my phone, and with the store almost empty, typical of a Sunday evening when everyone's kids were in bed dreading another Monday morning, I texted and surfed, and played Words with Friends. When I wasn’t doing that, I was wandering the Front End, bothering my manager and the other employees that darted in and out of the front or that worked the registers. It was boring work but I should admit it was one of a few times I earned a very easy, very lazy paycheck.

I don’t remember who approached me with it first. Maybe the store manager for the night, a tall brown-skinned man who often wore his dress shirts crisply pressed and blue. Why he seemed to prefer powder blue hues over all other shirt colors was a mystery to me, but under his heavy brown jacket he was usually wearing blue. Perhaps it was my supervisor, working accounting that night—redhead, bony, and giving off more smoke than a barbecue pit. Either way, the both approached me, asking if I had heard about the creepy man.

It is important to understand that at Kroger, we have more than one creepy man. There is one gentleman, who we’ve decided must be homeless. He comes in, long hair swaying, smelling foul and eyeing everyone in a way that makes our customers pause. Of course, they end up standing there too long and catching a whiff of him, and that’s when the complaints start. The employees on the other hand have learned to hold their breath and run. Fast.

But this night he was not the creepy man they were talking about. They explained to me that this man was a common customer, but I had never seen him before. They described him to me as a Charles Manson lookalike, which surprisingly enough did not narrow down the field for me. But he had come in earlier today and grabbed a Gatorade and was walking the store, sipping it. One of the customers pointed him out to our manager and told him that they and another employee did not see this man purchase his drink. My manager spotted him and as he started to approach this man, the man turned in the other direction and hightailed it out of the store, Gatorade in tow.

But the man came back later to purchase two loaves of bread.  The Manson twin spotted my manager while he was in the store and approached him, bread loaves swinging in his hand. He stopped in front of him, and our manager, Mr. Nash is his name, gave the man a familiar but friendly greeting. He didn’t answer, nodded it off and muttered.

“I’m sorry.” He told him, and before Mr. Nash could respond, the man rushed off for the registers to pay for his bread.

“Probably felt guilty for stealing that Gatorade,” Mr. Nash told me later, “but I couldn’t prove that you know. 

So when I caught up to him later I told him that I didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but he was okay by me.”

I remember staring at my manager, my right eyebrow slightly raised because that’s the only one I can lift. I didn’t say anything, just stared at him as he continued the story.

Apparently the man went home, and then made a phone call up to the store, asking to speak to Mr. Nash. He asked when my manager would be leaving, and Mr. Nash explained to him that the evening manager usually switched for the overnight manager around 11 at night. The man then asked Mr. Nash if he would wait for him and Mr. Nash said he would. He hung up abruptly.

So here it was, a little after ten when the man showed up. I knew it was him when all the front-end employees fell silent, crowding in spaciously conspicuous areas around the front door, watching him. My redheaded supervisor dodged behind customer service, hovering over the phone and watching him without faltering. 

While everyone else ducked and meandered to avoid his gaze, she watched him without hesitation. This was typical of her, and it was probably why this man ended up gravitating to her later.

He was dressed in camo, which he had not been wearing earlier as I was later informed. He wore a tight green bandana on his head, wisps of black hair framing his ears. He was dirty, hands shoved into his pockets and he walked with his head low and bobbing, swaying with each exaggerated step forward. He locked eyes with Ms. Brenda, a sweet older lady and the only cashier left at that time of night. Then he moved over to the cupcakes and stood there, waiting. I found out later it was the last place he had spotted Mr. Nash.

Everyone was in a tizzy. We were all women, and we were all afraid of what this odd man might do. Afraid of his changed wardrobe. His crazed appearance. Afraid of his dirt. I watched the man, my heart pounding, waiting. Not because he was scary, but because of what heightened sense of alertness everyone in that store felt. We all watched him disappear into the store and the front end buzzed with fear. And then just as quickly as he appeared he dodged out of the store, almost as if in a run, and did not come back that night. Mr. Nash appeared soon after, shaking his head and chuckling.

“All of you are blessed.” He said, sweeping his hand out around us, “he came to me and told me, bless you  and all those around you. Then he left. So, you’re all blessed.”

And we stared at him, some of us glancing where the man disappeared out the store. Some of us, like Mr. Nash, shaking our heads and rolling our eyes. And I, like most people, not sure if I should have come into work after all that night.

Reportage

I shoved the bagel into my mouth. It stuck to my throat, making me thirsty, but I put another piece in and chewed. The onion flakes crunched into my teeth. I love onion bagels, but they’re so hard to find where I live. 

I’m not sure why they have them further south than in Douglasville, despite my store having every variety of powdery protein bars you could ever not want. Perhaps people just don’t like starting their breakfast with onion breath. Either way I bit into another piece, trying to distinguish the taste of sweet cream butter from the twang of onions. The room was almost dark and my free hand tapped absently at the laptop keyboard.

My mother was in the other room of her small, one bedroom, low income apartment. The bedroom door was wide open, but except for the light drizzling in from the barely open blinds in the living room, the house was dark and quiet. Except for my mother praying.

I sat on the couch in choked silence, half-listening, half-afraid to. My mother prays every morning, and when I visit her, she excuses herself not long after waking up to “start her day off with her Father.” I wait, preoccupying myself, trying to be respectful.

This time however, it was just me and her. My sister was back in Douglasville and I was here by myself. Her husband stepped out and I waited in the darkened living room with my breakfast, though I have no idea what I was waiting for. Her voice poured into the tiny room, rising and falling like deep breaths full of prayer. I half-listened, not out of disinterest but because I almost feel like I’m intruding when I hear her. I could hear her voice inflect again, begging, pleading. “Let her know You.” She begged, and I swallowed the last of my bagel—hard. I had no idea why, why “her” and “she” could mean so much, but I felt like she was praying for me. Perhaps it was guilt that set in, or shame. Not that I have no religion, or that I don’t know the Lord, but just the idea of my mother on her knees in a room where I could not dare see her. I was really, really thirsty.

I walked as silently as I could into the kitchen. My mother sniffled, crying with her prayer. I set my burgundy plate down on the counter, using my fingers to pad the drop. Then I opened the fridge and grabbed a Yoohoo and silently weaseled back to the couch. She was almost crying now, praising and pleading, and I sat on the couch, trying to push her voice out, trying to think. It felt intimate. I felt wrong. Who was I to intrude on her conversation? Her business. I set my head back on the couch and closed my eyes. My mother’s voice fell and I tried not to remember any words, tried to respect her privacy. I wondered if I was supposed to go in the room with her, fall in my knees and agree with her. I was ashamed that I hadn’t done it already, and scared that I didn’t know what would happen if I would. Would it seem in genuine? Disrespectful? Would I interrupt her midstream?

I sipped the Yoohoo and continued waiting, the laptop screen reflecting light off my face. Still unsure of what to wait for. My mother was sobbing now, her voice intelligible only to her, and perhaps God. Her voice lifted and bounced. I sat there in silence, letting her voice flood into the living room, and squeezing out the nagging at my ear.

Oddity

At my mother’s house, on the main wall of her kitchen, is a set of cupboards and cabinets. On top of the cabinets is an artificial potted plant. The plant looks like budding artichokes, dusty and odd-colored. It’s not green, but more gray and brown, and a dusty film covers the ridges of the buds. The pot looks like it is made of clay, a rusty brown color that fades into gray at the top. It’s not much bigger than the size of my head. An owl sits right next to it, just slightly smaller than the plant, eyeing me with a cockeyed expression. His black pupils, almost seem to shake in the round orbs of his eyes, his chest puffs out over the edge of the cabinet and no matter how I move he seems to be watching me, incredulously.

They appear to be a set, but I cannot understand how they relate to one another. It might help if I knew exactly what the plant is, some cactus perhaps, but instead I look at it and I remember that dreaded vegetable, the one that stabs my fingers through the thin produce plastic bags and I try to weigh and ring it up. Small strands of fuzzy plantlike fingers shoot out of the top and curl over, heavy with dust. But it’s the owl you always see first, looking at, eyeing you. An owl, always aware, perhaps most nosy, more predatory, than wise, and he’s feeling in the mood for more than artichokes.

Junkyard Quotes 1-4

I took a bunch of headlines from the Sunday AJC that seemed kinda odd.

1.       1. Coping with death in the workplace

2.       2. Drug court: Saving money, Saving lives.

3.       3. Decorated Veteran of the Teenage Conflict—Courage under Criticism

4.       4. National research shows some kids have higher academic performance when taught by teachers from their own ethnic groups.

Original Prompt

Bernard Cooper's "Burl's"

My parents usually lingered after the meal, nursing cups of coffee while I played with the beads of condensation on my glass of ice water, tasted Tabasco sauce, or twisted pieces of my paper napkin into mangled animals. One evening, annoyed with my restlessness, my father gave me a dime and asked me to buy him a Herald Examiner from the vending machine in front of the restaurant.  

Cooper’s essay begins in a restaurant setting. He uses this setting to subtly flesh his parents’ characters, as well as uses it as the source and occurrence of his main topic--gender identification. It is at Burl’s that he has his first brush with gender confusion, and it is there after that he begins questioning the roles and the binaries that he identifies with. Cooper fuses these gender identities with both his parents stark roles and his wavering one and as a result reveals more about their characters and their roles in relation to one another—their intimacies or the lack thereof than could be revealed through simple telling. The reader also focuses on the narrator’s struggle to fit into expected character. Cooper travels throughout the work, but his return to Burl’s places it as both the opening and closing of his work, contrasting the plastic and phony aspects of the restaurant to the phoniness of reality. Cooper questions what is real and where does gender begin to define? 

However, there is an interesting section in the beginning where Cooper focuses on tightness—holding tightly to the dime or paper, the tightness of the transvestite’s dresses. Cooper struggles to fit the world into two tight binaries, and in doing so, struggles with the open interpretation of the world around him. My challenge is to take a moment where you have felt tight, whether that was feeling like you were trapped in a tight, stressful situation or even wearing a pair of jeans that don’t fit quite right anymore, and then reflect on that tightness and attempt to tie it into some moment of discovery, or openness. 

Improv 1, Week Eh...

I’ve always had a fascination with Applebee’s slogan: Eating Good in the Neighborhood. Partly because I’ve never considered Applebees a part of my neighborhood. I actually don’t consider anything outside of my housing complex a part of my neighborhood. Douglasville’s claim to fame is that it is the place where Atlanta keeps its charm. These slogans scribbled along the bottom of location maps in Arbor Place Mall, it had to be true. But I don’t feel hospitable to Douglasville. It is at once, a large and small town. Everyone knows one another, and if they don’t, they can be related to one another without crossing more than two people. We have all crossed paths at one point or another. But relativity aside, there is always the distance, the avoidance to talk to one another, to relate to one another. There was nothing about Applebees that said neighborhood to me.

But it was the place where things happened. It wasn’t very big, shoved somewhere between a Wendy’s and a Best Buy, it wasn’t hard to find but it wasn’t all that obvious either, until they changed the sign to include a bright red neon apple that catches the sun and reflects it in your eyes when you drive past. Every once in a while you’d read the sign and learn about upcoming trivia or poker nights, big prizes to be one, but for the most part it was just another restaurant for the family to go and eat for a relatively decent price, and quality that was significantly better than the Golden Corral just a few hundred yards away.