Day Four in Boston - Sex and Other Playground Activities

Today started off with a few synopsis critiques.  One of those was mine.  At first I did have the run and hide my head in the sand reaction and felt a little upset in the tummy, but as the day progressed, the bit of shame faded and I am actually quite eager to take a nice long look at Celestyn and Alfred and rework the story from different angles.  It would be much more interesting - for instance - if the relationship between them was of a father/son sort, or if the homosexual elements were being manifested as a twisted way to perpetuate Alfred's revenge.  I'm actually pretty damn pumped and I am reminded again of how incredibly vital and wonderful it is to participate in a workshop like this as it floods your story with new possibilities.  Does that sound too cliche?  Tough.Sure it's nice to hear from friends and family that they like your piece, but it't not helpful.  They like it as it is and are afraid to tell you, guide you, show you what it 'could' be.  I was nervous about putting such a genre chapter into the mix but now I'm very glad as it has made me question a good deal many things about my own plot based issues and shortcomings.  I know where I'm strong and I know where I 'want' to be strong and today helped to reinforce that.  There was one thing that struck me as interesting: the faculty member overseeing the workshop asked me about the homosexual element and wanted me to explain why I felt that these two men needed to be together.  It was a fair question considering the time period, setting, and history behind each of them.  However, as the day wore on, I wondered if she would have asked that if one had been a girl.  There doesn't have to be a reason if it's a man and a woman because 'sometimes people just fall in love.'  I wonder if that would have been an acceptable answer to justify a homosexual entanglement born of blood ties and sensual feedings.  Perhaps I'm over thinking this and I most likely am, but it was just something that kept buzzing around my head.  With the story the way it is now, the answer really is that they just happened to fall in love.  But there might be a much different answer in the future and so, in the end, I'm glad she asked that question.

After the workshop I attended a Graduate Lecture on raw material and active imagination.  The woman leading the lecture asked us how many of us still play and I was glad that I could raise my hand high and proud.  This bled into the idea of spontaneity and the use of our subconscious energy.  In a nutshell for a writer: this is when your characters take over!  It was a great lecture that touched on Jungian psychology as well as lucid dreaming and meditation techniques.  I learned that I am a professional day dreamer and I learned that it's natural to have the sense that the character is doing their own thing.  What that means is that you are tapping into your subconscious and allowing it to form in its own way via your character/narrator.  I like letting 'him' or 'her' take control honestly; it makes for richer characters and much more honest interpretations of the world and humanity.

I napped in the student center today and woke up to a commercial for SNHU which boasts a Creative Writing program that takes place completely online.  I cannot fully describe just how utterly horrifying it would be to have followed through with my application to Southern New Hampshire University and to not be here right now, to be stuck in my room without any notion of who my classmates and professors really are.  Anyone considering distance learning should look into low-residency as it allows for a sense of home and family and invigorates rather than frustrates the learning process.  No matter how scared and nervous I was at the thought of undertaking my MFA at Pine Manor College, I honestly can't imagine being anywhere else right now.  Sappy, I know, but I think I've already fallen in love with the program and can't wait to see familiar faces again in June.

During dinner we talked about food and sex.  It all began when a fellow writer imparted to me that eating an oyster is like taking a bite of the ocean, and it's better than sex.  This piqued my interest and it went all downhill from there.  Pretty soon we were talking about the mating habits of slugs and how binge drinking doesn't mix well with seafood.  Also we compared sex to the act of cooking wherein I decided I am premature ejaculator.  I go in, I set up the ingredients, I preheat the oven, I look around and throw up my hands and say "I"M DONE!!!"  And when I'm not prematurely ejaculating, I'm a straight-up sex slave.  Hannah has me in there cutting up onions, bell peppers, and whatever else needs mutilated and then she has me set water on to boil, start the rice, stir the batter, check the cookies, stick a toothpick in the quiche... you know, all the grunt work.  The kitchen is a very sexual and dangerous place and I don't think I'll ever be able to separate sex and cooking in my mind from here on out.  That and the fact that mussels are utterly pornographic.  Yep.

Tonight's faculty readers were wonder as per usual.  A man named Terrance Hayes did a set of poems that really sang to me.  His sensuous voice was easy on the ears and his handsome face and tall frame were very easy on the eyes.  I think I will be adding one of his poetry collections to my list of purchases.  I want to add one of Meg's as well.  The poetry is just so wonderful!  I'd forgotten how utterly gorgeous and precious this art form is to me.

Student Reading

This is a snippet from an introductory ramble that I wrote as a way to get me geared up and finally working on one of my two Dystopian novels.  This particular novel takes place in a future very similar to ours (and perhaps just around the corner).  The idea itself has been percolating in my brain since I was in middle school or thereabouts.  I was not yet ready to write it back then, but perhaps I have enough life experience now, and literary experience, to take a rough stab at it.  In any event, here is the short snippet that I will be reading aloud to my classmates on Tuesday.

So let me start with this: I live in a city, a large metropolis type, you know the kind, with smoke stacks thickening the air until it feels like perpetual gravy, and coating the roads, the buildings, your glasses, with thick unctuous filth.  You get it all over your fingers when you have to touch something.  I want to wash my hands right now just thinking about it.  But washing doesn’t help.  Railing is the worst, though.  You can’t help but cling to that shit going up and down the stairs, and you feel like you’re making some sort of sexual exchange with the metal, like you’re somehow switching out your skin for little bits and pieces of all the other people who’ve touched it that day. 

Even now I think of my hands as belonging to others and not myself.  This pen that I’m using came from the front desk of the reception area and I can’t even start to think of how many railing tainted fingers must have touched it during its life and here it is now in my hand, having been pilfered sometime after dinner and then squirreled away to my room.  That’s what the whole city is like, though, festered little pieces of the boys and girls of industry, holding hands, holding beverages, holding the door open for you.  Factory residue and acid mist on every page and every strand of hair.  It’s on every bite of every burger, soaked into every doughnut, pooling like oil on every piece of pizza.  Sure as shit, we’re eating this city.  We’re intimate with it.  Hell, when people kiss they taste the smoke stacks before they taste their lover and aside from bathing and love making, I can’t imagine that anyone would want to be naked in this place. 

But still, there is a sun and sometimes it breaks through the smog long enough to color the scenery and warm the cement.  I would like to say that during those brief moments of eldritch light we can see once again an expansive reality greater than ourselves, but really the sunlight serves only as a temporary inconvenience to a population that has, for better or worse, survived without the need for sunscreen or parasols for the past several decades and are wholly unprepared for direct doses of what my psychiatrist would call excessive exposure.   I personally have mixed feelings when it comes to the sky.  It’s pretty enough, I suppose, when the veil cracks and splinters of faint corpuscular rays fan out like a peacock’s tail from behind a stubborn cloud, but, at the same time, it frustrates me.  Everything beautiful frustrates me.

Day Three in Boston - Dystopia and Vampires

This morning I awoke at an ungodly hour and tramped my way over to the student center for a danish and coffee, then I went searching for a place to call home for a few moments so that I could work on making notes on my classmates' workshop pieces.  On my way to the allegedly haunted Moncreif Building I saw three plump, grey squirrels playing tag (or perhaps it was keep away) in the tall, tall pine trees.  I stopped and enjoyed them for a while and then went on my way.  This place is wonderful for things like that - we're so secluded and private and filled with nature.

Workshops went well today and my synopsis is up tomorrow.  I am nervous but after I revise it some tonight I think I'll be ready.  The rest of the day went quickly.  It was filled with Craft Analysis class and 'The Future Now: Dystopia.'  I do not have a 'shut up button' and sometimes I wish I did; between Marilyn and I, we monopolized all the conversation in that class.  I think I could talk to her for hours and we'd never run out of things to say.  I'm enjoying her company immensely, as well as the company of the rest of my fiction group.  There are also some Poetry and Young Adult writers that I have come to seek out in the dining hall and stalk about the campus always eager for an audience with their awesomeness.  Such a feeling of family here.  I only really feel alone at night because I have no roommate, nor a Hannah.  Not even any kitties to keep me company.  But I'm surviving.

I purchased three books today and am eager to snag a few more before I leave.  These are the novels that the teachers and staff here have published and they all look so amazing that I'm really torn as to which I can justifiably leave with.  I may grab some more via Amazon at a later date but if I purchase them here I get the luxury of having the author him/herself sign the copy for me and there's something wildly exciting about that.  I love signed copies of things.

In other news, I am exhausted!  I hope to get some good sleep in tonight.  I'll be putting up my notes from the Dystopian class on the Detangled Writers Blog either tonight or in the morning.  For now, just wish me luck as I'm about to have my poor little vampire quite crucified on the workshop table tomorrow.

Day Two in Boston - Bridgette and Two Minutes

After much running around and getting mildly lost here and there, turned around between similar looking buildings, and a date with campus security to obtain an ID card bearing a terrifying effigy of yours truly, I am finally home (in my dorm) and calling it a night.  I have some things to read, some stories to look through and mark up sufficiently, as well as some ideas to jot here and there for my Dystopian endeavors.  A few things I noticed/learned today: the computers in the library are slower than shit, I like the walk between the dorms and the student building no matter the temperature, I'm not used to eating three meals a day and have spent a majority of my time in the bathroom as a result, 'shitolerance' really is the key to any working relationship, and I'm not the only one who enjoys a good Riesling.    Things that others have noticed about me: I lie constantly but always own up to it, I am passionate about the books I've read, I cried over 'A Separate Peace,' and I may or may not have an alternate personality named Bridget.  The last is in direct relation to the fact that I was supposed to have a roommate but, due to sudden illness in the other party, I find myself quite alone in my spacious dorm.  To alleviate the loneliness, Bridget was born.  She's quiet and sweet but a complete prankster and what started out as an imaginary friend has slowly been turning into a 'possessive force' and we've taken to 'blaming Bridget' when something goes awry or when I try to bite my shoulders.  It's fantastic.

The people that I've met are all wonderful.  The best thing about them is that they are willing to talk about themselves, about craft, and about their nerves or reservations.  I feel silly sometimes because while they are reinventing fairy tales, working on memoirs, compiling poetry, and popping out awesome short stories that make you want to slit your wrists, I am working on a vampire story.  Still, there is no snobbishness here.  There is no 'oh, you're a genre writer' in the atmosphere and for that I am very grateful.  Tomorrow is our first round of work shopping and it will be the 'spoiler' day as we are going to go around and talk about the story boards of each of our pieces.  For those of us working on novels that means giving away the climax, the falling action, the whole kit-n-kaboodle.  This isn't a problem really, but I still feel silly telling them the end of a vampire novel versus telling them the end of a tragic vignette or the like.  Oh well.

I will also be attending two classes tomorrow.  The first one is a class on critical analysis, of which I will be doing many.  I'm actually quite excited for this and have been longing for a chance to do a critical paper detailing certain shared elements between 'A Clockwork Orange' and 'American Psycho.'  And taking 'Kite Runner' and 'Drowned Cities' and drawing upon how one makes you hate the Taliban, the other makes you hate the world and how they do it through nearly identical means.  Most likely these ideas will seem stupid after tomorrow but maybe not.  The other class I'm taking is the one on Dystopian literature.  I'm sure I'll have much to say on the subject.  As I look back over my books read list, I find that I actually have a good deal of Dystopian novels under my belt which is one of the reasons I feel so inclined now, more than ever, to try my hand at one.  That is what I want them to workshop in June.  That is what I want to finish for my creative thesis.  Either that, or I shall finish up my vampire story.  One is nearly done, one is a raw idea that's been slowly taking shape ever since this past August.  I suppose it's just a matter now of which one needs told more.  Eventually both will live and *crosses fingers* be published, but the sudden invigoration of the residency has left me panting and eager to write something brand new.  Again, we shall see.  Later this week I will be doing a student reading and it will either be a portion from a short Nano piece or a couple of poems - the ones on this very blog.  I am undecided.  The other option of course is to read from Fork (the companion piece to Scalpel which we are going to be workshopping after the vampire story).  It can only be two minutes of reading to make sure that everyone who wants to has a chance to go.  I'm nervous but determined.  

Day One in Boston - Crime Scene and 1984

Today I embark on a fantastic voyage.  I arrived not too long ago at the Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts (where I will remain for the next four or so hours) and I have much to report of the journey; observations and such.  Firstly and foremost, I have to say that yesterday, the preparation for the departing flight was the most relaxed of any I've ever known.  I took my time, gathered my things, did some laundry, ran around the house naked for the most part and when we I did finally arrive at the Spokane Airport, it was so early that I was able to sneak onto an earlier flight for Seattle which gave me a longer layover at that airport but in the end it got me started sooner and I thought it was pretty neat that I ended up in the exact same seat on the earlier flight that I would have had on my later flight.  That seat was E14 by the way.  Lucky seat I suppose.  Also, a general observation: if you want TSA to talk to you, wear a yellow scarf with the words "CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS" written all over it.  I and the caution tape scarf received many, many comments and eye quirks during the travels but the best exchange occurred right there in Spokane.  A TSA agent eyed me a moment and approached.

"What kind of crime scene we talking about exactly?"  He asked with a raised eyebrow.

I said the first thing that I could think of that wouldn't get me a cavity search.  "A gentle one."  We chuckled and I explained that I'm meeting someone in Boston and wanted to give her a clear indication of who I was and what better way than to say 'here I am' than to wear a big old yellow crime tape scarf?  The subsequent flight was spent thinking of what might constitute a 'gentle' crime scene and my mind flooded with bizarre images of date rape gone wrong or the good old crime of passion wherein a lover strangles his/her conquest as pretty as you please and settles them down in the snow to die quietly and gently.

Moving right along, my second flight was filled with about 100 pages of Orwell's "1984" the first thing I really honed in on was how intricate and necessary the role of sex and violence is in all Dystopian novels whether they say the dirty words or not.  Interestingly enough, this novel takes the stance that it is through limiting of sexual contact and the eventual breeding the instinct out of people that will keep a nation quiet and controlled.  Similar in concept to that of "Equilibrium" where a man is accused of 'having relations with a woman' and all he did was hold her hand.  In other Dystopian novels however sex is encouraged to the point that it will lack all meaning such as it is in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World."  I suppose a case could be made that whether sex is limited or in abundance, the point of it is to keep bonds casual and social and decrease attachment between individuals.  Fascinating.

On this flight, I learned something else as well.  Take a chance and say something to the person next to you and it will make the flight better.  Not always (because sometimes you have the great misfortune of sitting next to a real sour son of a bitch who would rather be violated with a chainsaw than show a stranger an ounce of kindness) but most of the time, a polite little comment really pays off.  This young pretty black girl was in the middle seat and I was against the window feeling huge and obtrusive when she took out a little bottle of lotion and did up her hands.  It smelled awesome! And since that was a genuine and honest reaction, I went ahead and told her that I really liked the smell of her lotion.  She not only perked up and smiled at me, she pulled the bottle back out and let me use some as well.  It was from Victoria Secret and smelled like cake batter and coconuts.

Back to the subject of "1984," there was a line that made me pause and literally shake my head.  Not in the 'oh, what a shame' kind of way, but in that classic, cartoon double-take fashion.  "We are the dead."  Says Winston at one point as he lays next to his Julia after a bout of highly forbidden love-making.  She refutes this and tells him not to talk about death and what not, but I was stuck there on that line for a good few moments.  For those who know me, you'll know that I am die-hard David Bowie fan.  I own all of his studio albums and one of my absolute favorite has always been 'Diamond Dogs.'  Now, I've always known that this album was based directly off of Orwell's work - with song titles like '1984' and 'Big Brother' how could I not?  But never having actually read the book left me hearing the album with the ears of an outsider.  I adored it, but could only grasp the surface.  Now, however, I am replaying the album merrily in my mind, extracting images and themes that directly link to the text of the novel and I find it all the more compelling and exciting.