Welcome Back?

Dubby, I hope your summer is going well. We have a new member (finally!), so Dubby, meet Papa Smurf, Pappa, meet Dubby. I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to get some writing done.

I've been trying to clean the blog up a bit, so I've created tags to help separate post types. The new rules (!) are as follows (and are always subject to being broken, so no stress): if you post an update simply give your post the tag "update," if you post some writing, give it the tag "writing," and also add the tag with your user name, so that we can look up all the pieces that you've written if we are so inclined. Also, if you post a prompt or challenge just add the tag "prompt." When you create a post and go to the box to add a label, if you click "show all" on the far right you can simply select the appropriate tags without having to remember what they all are. Hopefully this will help keep the blog a little neater and more maneuverable.

Also, since PapaSmurf just joined us I thought I'd give a run down of how we do things (because it's soooo complicated). Basically one of us posts a prompt or challenge with a "due date," and we all attempt to write a piece along those guidelines and post by that date. That being said, we are pretty relaxed, so if you want to stray off topic, or switch between poetry to prose, or if you can't post in time, no sweat. You can post early, you can post late, you can skip a post. This should be fun, maybe a bit challenging, but hopefully not too stressful. We're all pretty busy with work, class, etc. Once someone has posted, the rest of us can read that post and then praise/critique it through a comment. The critique is mainly to help us improve our work, or to praise something that we used that especially helped. So try to note details and the like so that we can take that critique and use the suggestions and praise in our work that follows. Although we all love a little blind praise and much fawning, so feel free to deviate.

I'm thinking we should stick with another freestyle post for our next assignment, just to get us back in the swing of things. Any comments?

-Pliny

I Have Never Liked Your Smell

In my dream you came around the corner
with the thrumming of a bass and the smell of rain.
Not yourself at all, instead, dark and shadows looming deeply,
your smile splitting open the sun.
I felt the rain hit the window. I tasted the sun on my tongue.
And when I awoke I had to remind myself that I have never liked your smell.
I have never liked your smell.

Abandoned

This drags out a big and could stand to be tightened. I am open to any suggestions you might have. Should I also work on the imagery? I bow before your critique.
_________________________________________
Abandoned:

I smile when the first drops of rain fall welcome on my face.
So cold and refreshing, how can I but kneel in the newly formed puddles?

It is Tuesday and the ground is soft and springy with your water
the birds gurgle out their song, letting the drops roll off their feathers.

It is Wednesday and the puddles reach my knees, I hear of the songs
of worms that drowned and foxes that grow weary of swimming.

It is Thursday and I cling to the top of the tallest pine, tired,
panting. Is anything left alive besides the bugs that cling to me?

It is Friday, be blessed to the end of the week, but the sounds
of suffocating are roiling in my ears, and the sloshing only gets louder.

It is Saturday, the earth is quiet but for the steady chime of rain drops in the ocean
that is now the earth, bloated with water, ready to drift away.

It is Sunday. I swim for many hours until I reach the bottom step of the sky.
I place one foot on the firm stair and rise out of the water and climb.

I climb for many hours, as many hours as I swam. As many years
of Sundays as today holds. The water rushes out of my clothes for many years.

I pant as I climb. I sing the song of the dead caterpillars and bees,
I mourn for the wolves and the grass and the flowers. I look below.

The sun has already begun to sizzle, as its toes reach the water below,
I turn away and climb. How many years will I be climbing your sodden stairs?

Little chimes of water flowing gently down the steps below tell me
that soon there will be nothing but smooth marble, slippery, under me.

I stop. I am only 400 years from the top. Today is still Sunday. I am
800 years from the bottom. The sun grows stronger, and steps dryer.

My feet are raw from the dry stones steps. My muscles feel like stone
that may never return to clay. I pant. And watch the steady stream.

One little trail of water falls to hit the water 1200 years below me.
One little trail of water comes from the window of the upper room.

I push open the marble door; it swishes across the marble floor.
Miniature olive trees grow in pots around the room. The chairs are big.

I make my way across the room. I feel dwarfed by the size
of the table legs that reach my chin. I spot an open window.

My feet will carry me no further. I climbed for seven Sundays.
I climbed for 1200 years. I have only been here three days.

Three days opening this door. Three days crossing this room.
And now I cannot move. I stand, horrified, before the window.

The table is flush with the open window, the shutters are flung wide;
lying on the oaken surface it a large earthenware jug. It lies on its side.

Through a Child's Eyes: Chelsea

Chelsea
assimilation in eight paragraphs

The swing always creaks and groans very steady, like its speaking its own secret language. Creak. Groan. Creak. Groan. It reminds me of a bird who always repeats that same word that is in my head too, over and over again. Like hello hello hello. Or mountains eat dirt mountains eat dirt. Sometimes the whole set jumps and bounces and shivers. We like to feel as though we are flying, me and Liz. Creak. We like to touch the sky with our feet. Groan. I wiggle my toes and feel the wind tickle them back. I lean forward waiting for the right moment. Backward. Forward. Backward. Forward. I pull my arms out until the plastic around the chains is squeezing me tight. Backward. I get ready. Forward. A little farther. I wait until my feet are touching the sky again and then I jump. The ground smacks into me but I stand up quickly as though we were good friends. As though I’m a circus acrobat. This? This is nothing. Anyone can jump out of a swing. The dust billows like an audience surrounding me. Applauding.

We all stand around like we’re not sure what to say and nobody wants to say anything so nobody does. Chelsea. I let the name roll around inside of my head. It makes me think of rich people. The kind that have big houses as hushed as Sunday afternoons with fluffy white carpet in every room. Chelsea. Maybe a little gold, too. Yes, definitely gold in that name. She has short hair that’s dark and her skin is tanned, like she spends all of her time at the beach. My father’s Iranian she says proudly. Baba. That’s what she calls him. I decide I like her already. She’s sweet, and she knows loads more than me or Liz. Liz isn’t sure what to think. She twirls her finger through her dirty-looking brown hair and rubs a clump under her nose like it’s satin on a blanket. She’s always doing that. Rubbing satin under her nose.

The space between our yards is speckled. There are dry clumps of brown and yellow grass mixed all up with the soft blue-green from Chelsea’s yard. We stand in the little speckled island in the middle, the place where our mom threw the snake when she yanked it out of the post where it was trying to sleep on the front porch. You won’t have any babies on my porch she said. The snake twirled in circles as she swung it around above her head like Indiana Jones. To make it dizzy so it won’t come back. The snake disappeared in that little speckled island where we stand. I invite Chelsea into the backyard.

Chelsea doesn’t swing high like me and Liz do. Instead she sits with her hands all wrapped around the blue plastic on the chains and kicks the dirt with her shiny black shoes. Liz kicks off her sandals and climbs up the side where she can hang upside down by her knees. She doesn’t say anything. Do you believe in God? I’m not sure why I say that. It scares me that I did. Chelsea looks up at me, her eyes are brown, not the muddy mix of colors me and Liz have. Just brown. Is this a joke? Chelsea is used to jokes, she hears them all the time at school. I wonder what kind of wild kids she knows at school who make jokes about believing in God. She sticks her chin into the air. My parents let us chose our own religion, she says. I don’t know what to say. I believe in God, Chelsea says. I smile and push off in the swing. Chelsea swings too.

Chelsea gets colder than we do sometimes. We all stand in her bathroom, crowded around the sink, taking turns holding our arms under the cold water. You can see the blue lines of blood under mine and Liz’s skin because we’re so light. Clear almost. But Chelsea’s arms are covered in goose bumps and the little hairs are all sticking up like she’s rubbed a balloon over them. I must be cold-blooded she says. It’s because I’m from California. She knows more things than we do because she goes to a public school. And she’s from California.

Chelsea writes in cursive, and when she prints everything is upright and straight and tall. Her letters never hunch their shoulders or bite their nails. They’re beautiful letter-writing letters, all looping and grown-up. California letters. I know how to write in cursive, but my letters look like they’ve been eaten by the dog. Home-school letters. That what Chelsea thinks, I’m sure of it. She’s going to teach Liz to write in cursive so that she won’t feel left out. Liz dances around our dining room and tells our mother who looks up from her sewing machine with a mouth full of pins. I hate it when my mother frowns. It makes me feel all jumpy inside like I’m doing something wrong and I should know better. I should know better. But I don’t. Why can’t she teach Liz cursive? Liz is really quiet, the way she gets when she’s thinking. She’s always thinking she should be able to do everything I do. She shouldn’t. Not for three more years. No. A word we know not to argue.

Later in the week Chelsea’s mom comes over in her high heels and perfume. The bushes are all dented from us crashing into them with our bikes but she doesn’t seem to notice. She never comes over, but I think Chelsea made her and it makes me feel all wrong. She explains that Chelsea knows proper cursive. Proper, not regular. She can teach Liz. She won’t teach her wrong. My mom gets mad but she waits for Chelsea’s mom to leave before she does. The waiting makes the house stormier and the kitchen bangs with pots and pans. Every time we pass the dining room window I feel terrible, like I’ve eaten a huge plate of watermelon that wasn’t ripe or lied about cleaning my room. Every time we see her in there sewing. All summer long. Always inside.

Chelsea waits on the porch while me and Liz sneak into the house and take down the flour canister and the sugar and the vanilla. Salt. Measuring spoons. Baking powder. Spatula. Cocoa. We’re careful like burglars. I smile to myself. Liz, who’s smaller than all of us, knows how to do things Chelsea can’t do. I tuck the big stained cookbook under my arm and we tiptoe back out the front door. Liz lets it slam behind us and I get mad. But she just laughs and runs. We dump everything down on the counter in Chelsea’s kitchen and I sit back to watch my sister. The master at work. Chelsea tastes the cocoa and spits it out and we all laugh. I feel proud of my sister. Of our family. Even Liz knows how to cook without a box.

Topic: Through a Child's Eyes

Well, I'm assuming that no one else is going to have time to post this go-round, and since both dubby and I have posted our WildCard submissions (I promise I'll try not to get caught up in tags and titles) I guess we're ready for a new challenge.
In one of my literature classes we just finished reading The House on Mango Street, and now we have an assignment where we have to write a vignette from our childhood, looking through the eyes of a child, which we will then break down and critique as part of our study on Russian Formalism and New Criticism (yuck). So I'm proposing a challenge, since I need some practice with this, that we write a vignette, scene, poem, or short story from the eyes of a child.
I'm excited already.

Topic One: The Meeting of Friends of Foes

I guess this needs a little bit of background, though I'm not sure how much to get into. In this scene, Muni (the narrator) is being reunited with her cousin, who was her childhood best friend. At the age of fourteen she went to live with her cousin and his family on their dye farm out in the country, because the city was occupied by a military force known as The Red Guard. It was while living on the farm that Muni discovered she had a special talent, she could fly (well, it's more like walking on air). She kept this talent a secret as she learned and perfected it. When she was seventeen her cousin left the farm to attend university, but he never wrote home or visited during holidays, and his parents acted very mysterious about the whole matter. Two years later Muni's father, who was still living in the city, died, which stirred up a lot of anger and confusion in Muni, who had lost her mother at a very young age, due to a brawl between the citizens and the Guard. Muni decides to use her talent for something and leaves the farm to secretly re-enter the city.
This scene takes place on the rocky cliffs that back the city, where she has just encountered her cousin for the first time in four years. It turns out that her cousin has some talents of his own, and it's obvious that the training he has been receiving didn't come from a university.

Pardon the roughness of the scene...

______________________________________________

I stood on the rock, panting, wishing I could look away. His eyes were ready to tear me into pieces. I didn’t want to look at them, to see his questions and his betrayal and his pain. But I couldn’t look away. He broke eye contact first, tearing his gaze away is if cutting me off from his life by sheer will. He trained his eye upon the rock near my shoe. I felt bereft. I wanted to see into his eyes again.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feebly. He glanced up, quickly, as though he was expecting to find something, to see something. I didn’t know what. I wasn’t sure if he saw it. My mouth felt glued. I opened it, slightly, and ran my tongue across the roof and floor and around the insides of my cheeks. He was looking at me again, his brown gaze making me feel as though I had given up more than just my own life the moment I stepped off that hay stack. My eye caught motion as he licked his lips. I strayed from the brown eyes that had once felt like magnets, to his mouth. His lips were fuller than mine, square even. I remembered the shape they made when they said my name; gently parting, the bottom one protruding slightly. He might never say my name again. I forced myself to swallow as my mouth became full. I didn’t know what to say.

He took a step forward, hesitantly, and I was suddenly overcome by a fire I couldn’t describe. I wanted to move, yet I couldn’t. He had betrayed me, and I him. We could never be friends, even cousins, again. My eyes pricked and I looked away.

“Muni.”

I jerked my head, my heart racing. He was standing closer than I remembered. I could hear his breath, gently, near my ear. I was startled into looking up into his eyes. The patterns reminded me of the swirl of milk in coffee. I felt myself start to shake. He was here, in those eyes, my cousin, my best friend. He was here.

His hand gripped my elbow. It felt so big, so warm. The last two years, so cut off from the people around me. I started crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I should never--didn’t think I had a choice--had to do some-- people were dying.” He wrapped his other arm around me, drawing me closer. I could smell the sweat, and that faraway smell of golden rapeseed, that lay beneath it. It smelled like home. I felt his lips touch my hair, so lightly it might have been a bee landing briefly before taking flight again. I looked up into his face again, following the jagged jaw and high cheekbones across his skin. He looked tired. Small lines had begun to form beneath his eyes and above his mouth. Lines of worry, not of laughter. I felt grief take hold of me again, taunting me with all the pain I had caused in trying to save people. Yes, I had preserved many lives, but for what? I had destroyed the peace of his family, the family that had loved me like I hadn’t deserved. But had I not gone-. I shivered to think what would have become of the city.

I looked at those lips again, this time so close to mine. He was my friend and cousin, the brother I never had. I licked my lips again. Surely he saw me in such light. A sister who had disowned him and betrayed his family, yes, but a sister nonetheless.

“What is it?” he asked, his lips parting and meeting and parting again. I looked away, trying to regain my composure, hoping he hadn’t glimpsed the desire that had haunted me for the past four years. He was here, within my grasp, holding me in his arms, and yet…

As if sensing my hasty retreat he withdrew his arm from around me nervously cleared his throat. “It’s getting dark”

We picked our way across the top of the cliff in silence, not speaking until I had led him down the rocky slope to the streets, twisting through alleyways and climbing the rickety stairs to my apartment. And then it was only to remark on the sparse decor, and the location of the towel cupboard near the bathroom, and the finicky toilet that had to be flushed just so or it would overflow onto the bathroom floor. I left him to shower as I rooted through the refrigerator, looking desperately for something I could feed him. I ended up throwing everything in a big pot, all the old greens that had begun to wilt, the corn that was freezer burned, last week’s Plov, which was a gift from my neighbor who came by to tell me that she thought I was growing too thin; at least I thought it was last week. I couldn’t identify the meat in it, but the rice and carrots were still good. I filled the pot up with water, set it on the back burner, and said a prayer that the stove would stay lit long enough for me to have a turn in the shower.

Topic One: Miscellaneous

Per suggestion, to get things started we won't have a specific prompt or challenge, just post something that you are working on. If you're feeling brave you can try for 3-5 pages, as an enthusiastic member suggested (I'll avoid using real names since this blog is completely public, but you know who you are;-) ), or you can just post what you have (hopefully it's more than a page, but I understand time constraints, so just do what you can). You are free to reply to this post (and of course everyone else's), but when you submit your own work be sure to do it in a new post so that we can see/find it easily.
Can't wait to see what everyone has been working on (or not working on) since last semester!

P.S. I promised my sister that I would giver her credit for the use of her photography on our banner. So if you were, perhaps, busy admiring the banner, credit goes to Violet.