Friday, September 28, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Wednesday, September 2
- went through the task list by myself
- read over Brit's college essay
- we held a group discussion about the tasklist
- I read Sarah's poems and gave her comments
- the communal daybookwas DISSED
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Proxy-Post (September 23, 2007)
I will be missing class tomorrow to attend the Harford County Environmental Summit, which I helped to plan last year. I have included my basic storyline plan in a previous post, and right now have about 3 pages ready for workshop, which I will post here just to make things easy. I haven't decided whether I'd prefer paper or web-based WS, which would mean either printing or google-doc-ing. Also, I wrote in the communal Daybook last class. So far, I'm the only one. I'm alone, yes, yes, yes, yes, I'm alone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Devil
Last night I met the devil at dusk,
coasting closer to the end
of the steepest court in the neighborhood, the wind
dried out my contacts and I could only see enough
to keep my front wheel on the black.
Old Scratch had no body, just a voice
like steaming asphalt
in my ears, swearing from both
sides, and I wanted to
swerve, but I knew
that wouldn’t throw him off.
The paved circle rushed toward me, and he asked
what would happen if I didn’t turn. He told me
to keep going straight. He told me
he’d carry me through. Don’t act,
just let go, let me carry you,
let me lift you, let me
take you.
It wasn’t that I believed the voice,
hollering louder with each increment of acceleration,
but I wondered whether anyone would care
if I lied,
if I plowed into a mailbox, and explained away scratches
with slow reflexes, skinned knees
with the fallen leaves, broken spokes
with negligence.
As mephisto screeched,
I tensed with potential energy,
legs like coiled springs held steady on the pedals,
“Don’t, don’t! let go, let go!
Don’t don’t Let go, let go!”
Knuckles blanched to bend,
Held back from braking by the shouts;
“Don’t, don’t! Let go, let go!
Don’t, don’t! Let go, let go!”
I blinked like the ocean,
Imploring my vision to clear…
There’s a boy playing catch with his father;
the ball arcs between them like trust that I
won’t let Old Scratch take from me.
Fingers flex, brakes
Screeching, I lean
Nearly to the ground,
and like a cheap Target watch my legs spring
into action, pulsing up the hill,
past the boy and his father,
and mephisto’s murmurs dissolve
into action.
How it all Began
I watched the 2004 Summer Olympics sporadically. Opening Ceremonies were a must, and I was amused to note that the nations were called out in order according to the Greek alphabet, not the English one. Athens had to stay true. After that though, I wasn’t too invested in any particular sport. If something really grabbed me, I stuck with it until things got boring then changed channels.
That’s how I got started watching the women’s pole-vaulting. I couldn’t believe how the laws of motion allowed such possibilities. If I’d had a basic physics course, I probably would have, but that’s aside the point. It just knocked me out. The competitors ran, and timed the fall of the pole perfectly so that it would slam into the box just as they got to the right spot on the runway. The plants lined up perfectly, bending the living daylights out of the poles, and then, those women flew, usually right over the bar. Of course, I didn’t know all the terminology then. I was just watching, and took to rooting for Sofia Chevchenko. I don’t remember how well she placed, or who won the three medals. I do remember thinking to myself, “I’ve got to do that.”
That fall, I started high school. Foundations of Technology found me half-asleep every A-day morning. My friend Sarah was in the class with me. We got through all the ridicules projects by talking about almost everything else all through class. She was on the JV soccer team, so sometimes we discussed her games. Mostly, we complained about our other classes and planned fun things we never found the time to do. During one particularly excruciating book assignment, we got to talking about track.
“Know what I want to do?” I paused in my definition-writing and gazed up at the window as I considered my own statement. “Pole-vaulting. Looks like it’s really fun.”
“Yeah!” Sarah agreed, complete with pencil-waving. “I want to do that too! Our school’s probably not cool enough to have it though.”
“No, it does.” I assured her, looking back to my textbook. “My sister used to do track, and when we’d pick her up, I’d always see people standing out on the field with poles. They were always the last ones still there.” Identical grins mean that we agreed to go out for pole-vaulting that spring, together.
On March first, I donned my gym uniform and headed to Mr. Knoll’s room in the science hallway. The head track coach was also the cornerstone chemistry teacher. Upperclassmen laughed and bellowed inside. Freshmen were easily identifiable by their frightened looks and the fact that they, like me, for the most part wore gym uniforms. Older kids had bundled up in sweatpants and hats, gloves and jackets. There was a brief meeting, paperwork was turned in, and then we went outside. It was probably in the thirties or forties. We ran. Sarah and I stuck together She was more appropriately dressed, but I don’t feel the cold very much, so I was more worried that she’d get cold looking at me. I didn’t dare complain. Our warm-up was two laps, and twice we ran past the cluster of coaches; Mr. Knoll for sprinters, Harris for the middle-distance kids, and a third figure we couldn’t name. He was tall and lean, dressed in workboots, jeans, and a blue jacket.
After the warmup, we stretched. Senior captains led us, making everyone count to twenty out loud. Everyone lined up at the fence to do quads and leg-swings. Then on to calisthenics. Jumping-jacks got our blood flowing again, then down on the track for push-ups. We rested for a moment before switching to crunches. Sarah and I found some senior pole-vautlers. They identified the mystery man as John Butler, Olympian and North Harford vaulting coach. We introduced ourselves at the end of practice.
“Hi,” Sara said. “My name’s Sarah Meehan. I want to polevault.”
“Sarah?” He extended a hand.
“Yeah.” They shook.
“Good to meet you.” He smiled. “I’ll forget your name, though.”
“Aren’t you cold?” That was Harris, addressing me. A skinny distance runner, he was probably colder in his sweats than I was in my gym uniform.
“No,” I said.” But if you have a tissue, I’d like it.” The coaches all showed empty hands.
“Do you want to polevault too?” Butler asked me.
“Most definitely.” Okay, I probably didn’t say anything that cool-sounding. But since I’m telling the story and can’t remember exactly what I said, I’m going to pretend that I did.
“Good,” He said. “That’s great. We’ll probably start splitting off to do some drills in about a week…Mr. Knoll wants to do just conditioning this first week, then we’ll add on technique after that.”
“Okay,” I said. I was too numb to think of saying anything else.
Then Sarah and I followed the rest of the team inside. My frozen fingers somehow got my gym locker open, pulled out my things, and dialed my home number on the pay phone. Gloves, I thought. Bring gloves tomorrow, and sweatpants. I won’t need the wings until next week.
Why I shouldn't drive
I mix up left and right. It was never a chore to figure out which shoe went with which foot, but it took me the longest time to remember which way certain letters went. If a word had two g’s in it, there would be one bottom hooking off in each direction, just so I’d be sure to get one right. It wasn’t until third grade swooped in, with its lessons in cursive, that I was able to keep my writing consistent..
The first time I went to a concert at a club, I was reminded of my childhood struggles. As members of the under-18 set, we were all required to receive slashes on our left hands. I watched as this procedure was carried out for my friends. Then I handed my ticket to the lady with the scanner and held out my right hand for the man with the marker.
“I need your left hand,” he told me.
“Oh,” I quickly swapped them, flashing a grin. “Sorry, I mix up left and right.”
“If you hold your hands out like this, the left one makes an ‘L,’” he explained, speaking slowly and enunciating. I held my hands out as he showed me, four fingers together, thumbs perpendicular.
“They both make an ‘L,’” I declared, and joined my friends, heading up to the juvenile section.
“One’s backwards!” the man said over his shoulder, in a sort of muttery shout that was half to himself, half meant to make me look like an idiot for the other people in line.
“And if I knew which one that was, I don’t think I’d need a pneumonic device to tell left from right,” I informed my friends as we climbed the stairs. “Just the other day, during my eye exam, I was reading the chart, you know, with the letters, and I paused partway through this one row and said, “I think that’s a backwards ‘L,’ and my mom and the optometrist laughed.” We all laughed then, and went on to enjoy the show, but this problem can have very serious manifestations. Enter the car.
I was about to make the return trip from a study circle in Edgewood. That’s a straight shot down 152, which is only two turns and about ten miles away from the intersection right by my house. I just say, “that way,” in my head and remember which way to go without assigning the terms “left” and “right” to the directions. It works most of the time. I just have to really concentrate when I’m using internet directions, and prefer to have a map so that I can get a visual with which to use the “that way” method.
This experience began, however, not with faulty directions but with failure to look. As I was backing to pull out of a parallel-parking job, I rammed straight into an SUV. But I was in a small car, moving uphill, so our license plates were knocked off a little, if anything. I didn’t see any damage to either car, so I just left. But as I reached the first intersection, 152 and route 40, I felt increasingly uneasy. I pulled into a gas station at the corner, parked the car, called my mom, and told her what had happened. She didn’t seem concerned. While we chatted, a man pulled into the air station a few yards away from me. The call ended in under a minute, and then I no longer had an excuse for sitting in the lot.
I started her up, did a tight U-turn. Three boys on bikes zoomed by in front of me, throwing quick glances back before entering the highway. I pulled up, checked traffic. A left on Route 40 would enable me to come up to the light and turn right onto 152. Then it was a straight shot to Upper Crossroads, miles of steady driving to shake off the SUV incident. The light was red, holding back all the traffic on route 40 while the cars on 152 sped through. I wondered if I should go out the other way instead. I’d have to drive all around the parking lot, but it would simpler once I was out. No need to turn right around that other lane. What the heck kind of intersection puts the oncoming traffic to your right, anyway?
The car behind me started honking like crazy. I looked. It was the guy from the air station, waving his arms around. Must be in a hurry, I thought, then went ahead and turned. There, on the other side of the red light, four lanes of headlights waited to surge towards me. I pulled into the lane between the yellow line and the concrete divider. Concrete divider. I needed to be on the other side of it. No. Yes.
“Wrong way, wrong way!” I could hear the man shouting then, and I think he had gotten out of his car. But it was too late. I was already in the highway. Wait. No one was moving. The light was still red. I checked traffic like a madman, then pulled right back into the gas station, went around it, and made a right onto 152. Green light. It turned yellow as I drove under it. Story of my life.
It’s debatable whether this was really a case of mixing up left and right, or more one of inexperience with night driving and divided highways. Whichever, I prefer to stick to my local, two-lane or unmarked roads. It is easier to negotiate with curves than with oncoming traffic.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On my honor, these add up to at least four pages in Word, when appropriately spaced.
Regularly scheduled programming to be continued on Wednesday, September 26.
Bis Dann!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Devil
Last night I met the devil at dusk,
coasting closer to the end
of the steepest court in the neighborhood, the wind
dried out my contacts and I could only see enough
to keep my front wheel on the black.
Old Scratch had no body, just a voice
like steaming asphalt
in my ears, swearing from both
sides, and I wanted to
swerve, but I knew
that wouldn’t throw him off.
The paved circle rushed toward me, and he asked
what would happen if I didn’t turn. He told me
to keep going straight. He told me
he’d carry me through. Don’t act,
just let go, let me carry you,
let me lift you, let me
take you.
It wasn’t that I believed the voice,
hollering louder with each increment of acceleration,
but I wondered whether anyone would care
if I lied,
if I plowed into a mailbox, and explained away scratches
with slow reflexes, skinned knees
with the fallen leaves, broken spokes
with negligence.
As mephisto screeched,
I tensed with potential energy,
legs like coiled springs held steady on the pedals,
“Don’t, don’t! let go, let go!
Don’t don’t Let go, let go!”
Knuckles blanched to bend,
Held back from braking by the shouts;
“Don’t, don’t! Let go, let go!
Don’t, don’t! Let go, let go!”
I blinked like the ocean,
Imploring my vision to clear…
There’s a boy playing catch with his father;
the ball arcs between them like trust that I
won’t let Old Scratch take from me.
Fingers flex, brakes
Screeching, I lean
Nearly to the ground,
and like a cheap Target watch my legs spring
into action, pulsing up the hill,
past the boy and his father,
and mephisto’s murmurs dissolve
into action.
How it all Began
I watched the 2004 Summer Olympics sporadically. Opening Ceremonies were a must, and I was amused to note that the nations were called out in order according to the Greek alphabet, not the English one. Athens had to stay true. After that though, I wasn’t too invested in any particular sport. If something really grabbed me, I stuck with it until things got boring then changed channels.
That’s how I got started watching the women’s pole-vaulting. I couldn’t believe how the laws of motion allowed such possibilities. If I’d had a basic physics course, I probably would have, but that’s aside the point. It just knocked me out. The competitors ran, and timed the fall of the pole perfectly so that it would slam into the box just as they got to the right spot on the runway. The plants lined up perfectly, bending the living daylights out of the poles, and then, those women flew, usually right over the bar. Of course, I didn’t know all the terminology then. I was just watching, and took to rooting for Sofia Chevchenko. I don’t remember how well she placed, or who won the three medals. I do remember thinking to myself, “I’ve got to do that.”
That fall, I started high school. Foundations of Technology found me half-asleep every A-day morning. My friend Sarah was in the class with me. We got through all the ridicules projects by talking about almost everything else all through class. She was on the JV soccer team, so sometimes we discussed her games. Mostly, we complained about our other classes and planned fun things we never found the time to do. During one particularly excruciating book assignment, we got to talking about track.
“Know what I want to do?” I paused in my definition-writing and gazed up at the window as I considered my own statement. “Pole-vaulting. Looks like it’s really fun.”
“Yeah!” Sarah agreed, complete with pencil-waving. “I want to do that too! Our school’s probably not cool enough to have it though.”
“No, it does.” I assured her, looking back to my textbook. “My sister used to do track, and when we’d pick her up, I’d always see people standing out on the field with poles. They were always the last ones still there.” Identical grins mean that we agreed to go out for pole-vaulting that spring, together.
On March first, I donned my gym uniform and headed to Mr. Knoll’s room in the science hallway. The head track coach was also the cornerstone chemistry teacher. Upperclassmen laughed and bellowed inside. Freshmen were easily identifiable by their frightened looks and the fact that they, like me, for the most part wore gym uniforms. Older kids had bundled up in sweatpants and hats, gloves and jackets. There was a brief meeting, paperwork was turned in, and then we went outside. It was probably in the thirties or forties. We ran. Sarah and I stuck together She was more appropriately dressed, but I don’t feel the cold very much, so I was more worried that she’d get cold looking at me. I didn’t dare complain. Our warm-up was two laps, and twice we ran past the cluster of coaches; Mr. Knoll for sprinters, Harris for the middle-distance kids, and a third figure we couldn’t name. He was tall and lean, dressed in workboots, jeans, and a blue jacket.
After the warmup, we stretched. Senior captains led us, making everyone count to twenty out loud. Everyone lined up at the fence to do quads and leg-swings. Then on to calisthenics. Jumping-jacks got our blood flowing again, then down on the track for push-ups. We rested for a moment before switching to crunches. Sarah and I found some senior pole-vautlers. They identified the mystery man as John Butler, Olympian and North Harford vaulting coach. We introduced ourselves at the end of practice.
“Hi,” Sara said. “My name’s Sarah Meehan. I want to polevault.”
“Sarah?” He extended a hand.
“Yeah.” They shook.
“Good to meet you.” He smiled. “I’ll forget your name, though.”
“Aren’t you cold?” That was Harris, addressing me. A skinny distance runner, he was probably colder in his sweats than I was in my gym uniform.
“No,” I said.” But if you have a tissue, I’d like it.” The coaches all showed empty hands.
“Do you want to polevault too?” Butler asked me.
“Most definitely.” Okay, I probably didn’t say anything that cool-sounding. But since I’m telling the story and can’t remember exactly what I said, I’m going to pretend that I did.
“Good,” He said. “That’s great. We’ll probably start splitting off to do some drills in about a week…Mr. Knoll wants to do just conditioning this first week, then we’ll add on technique after that.”
“Okay,” I said. I was too numb to think of saying anything else.
Then Sarah and I followed the rest of the team inside. My frozen fingers somehow got my gym locker open, pulled out my things, and dialed my home number on the pay phone. Gloves, I thought. Bring gloves tomorrow, and sweatpants. I won’t need the wings until next week.
Why I shouldn't drive
I mix up left and right. It was never a chore to figure out which shoe went with which foot, but it took me the longest time to remember which way certain letters went. If a word had two g’s in it, there would be one bottom hooking off in each direction, just so I’d be sure to get one right. It wasn’t until third grade swooped in, with its lessons in cursive, that I was able to keep my writing consistent..
The first time I went to a concert at a club, I was reminded of my childhood struggles. As members of the under-18 set, we were all required to receive slashes on our left hands. I watched as this procedure was carried out for my friends. Then I handed my ticket to the lady with the scanner and held out my right hand for the man with the marker.
“I need your left hand,” he told me.
“Oh,” I quickly swapped them, flashing a grin. “Sorry, I mix up left and right.”
“If you hold your hands out like this, the left one makes an ‘L,’” he explained, speaking slowly and enunciating. I held my hands out as he showed me, four fingers together, thumbs perpendicular.
“They both make an ‘L,’” I declared, and joined my friends, heading up to the juvenile section.
“One’s backwards!” the man said over his shoulder, in a sort of muttery shout that was half to himself, half meant to make me look like an idiot for the other people in line.
“And if I knew which one that was, I don’t think I’d need a pneumonic device to tell left from right,” I informed my friends as we climbed the stairs. “Just the other day, during my eye exam, I was reading the chart, you know, with the letters, and I paused partway through this one row and said, “I think that’s a backwards ‘L,’ and my mom and the optometrist laughed.” We all laughed then, and went on to enjoy the show, but this problem can have very serious manifestations. Enter the car.
I was about to make the return trip from a study circle in Edgewood. That’s a straight shot down 152, which is only two turns and about ten miles away from the intersection right by my house. I just say, “that way,” in my head and remember which way to go without assigning the terms “left” and “right” to the directions. It works most of the time. I just have to really concentrate when I’m using internet directions, and prefer to have a map so that I can get a visual with which to use the “that way” method.
This experience began, however, not with faulty directions but with failure to look. As I was backing to pull out of a parallel-parking job, I rammed straight into an SUV. But I was in a small car, moving uphill, so our license plates were knocked off a little, if anything. I didn’t see any damage to either car, so I just left. But as I reached the first intersection, 152 and route 40, I felt increasingly uneasy. I pulled into a gas station at the corner, parked the car, called my mom, and told her what had happened. She didn’t seem concerned. While we chatted, a man pulled into the air station a few yards away from me. The call ended in under a minute, and then I no longer had an excuse for sitting in the lot.
I started her up, did a tight U-turn. Three boys on bikes zoomed by in front of me, throwing quick glances back before entering the highway. I pulled up, checked traffic. A left on Route 40 would enable me to come up to the light and turn right onto 152. Then it was a straight shot to Upper Crossroads, miles of steady driving to shake off the SUV incident. The light was red, holding back all the traffic on route 40 while the cars on 152 sped through. I wondered if I should go out the other way instead. I’d have to drive all around the parking lot, but it would simpler once I was out. No need to turn right around that other lane. What the heck kind of intersection puts the oncoming traffic to your right, anyway?
The car behind me started honking like crazy. I looked. It was the guy from the air station, waving his arms around. Must be in a hurry, I thought, then went ahead and turned. There, on the other side of the red light, four lanes of headlights waited to surge towards me. I pulled into the lane between the yellow line and the concrete divider. Concrete divider. I needed to be on the other side of it. No. Yes.
“Wrong way, wrong way!” I could hear the man shouting then, and I think he had gotten out of his car. But it was too late. I was already in the highway. Wait. No one was moving. The light was still red. I checked traffic like a madman, then pulled right back into the gas station, went around it, and made a right onto 152. Green light. It turned yellow as I drove under it. Story of my life.
It’s debatable whether this was really a case of mixing up left and right, or more one of inexperience with night driving and divided highways. Whichever, I prefer to stick to my local, two-lane or unmarked roads. It is easier to negotiate with curves than with oncoming traffic.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On my honor, these add up to at least four pages in Word, when appropriately spaced.
Regularly scheduled programming to be continued on Wednesday, September 26.
Bis Dann!
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
September 18, 2007
So this weekend I decided to be an optimist. Thigns are gonna change around here, just a lil' bit.
Today:
Today:
- worked on poem I starrted last class, incl. revision and extension
- consolidated novel ideas
- watched Jeff laminate our passes
- did gymnicetics to regain focus
- worked on devil poem more- I call first draft finished now
Premise:
Early one summer, a girl runs away from home. She hitches a ride with middle aged man, who, unbeknownst to her, is her uncle. The story is told in her dreams, and flashbacks (vignette-style), and in his letters to her family back home. I’m not sure, she might write poems too, if she feels like it. I’m not sure exactly how it will end. I think I want her to go live with her uncle, or bring him home with her or something. But. That’s what I’ve got so far.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Today I considered the possibility of dropping this class. I don't think I truly belong here.
The sequence:
The sequence:
- Finished going over the vingette I started last time. I declare it ready for workshop.
- Attempted to give constructive critisicm to Kalie. Highly unsucessful.
- Wrote down some thoghts I had yesterday about my novel.
- Had an idea to develop an idea I got over the summer. Worked on it at breakneck speed.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
September 11, 2007
Today is the first day under the plan in CWIII. I'm thinking of adjusting my checkpoints. Can I really have a final idea by the 24th? We'll see.
I thought of another side project I want to do, and will probably work on a lot before the first checkpoint. I want to write a bunch of vignettes about track, all the good times, like our debate about abortion, that bad times, like when Amanda got hurt, and the weird times, like when Becca got suck in the mat. Then, I can print them all out on nice paper, find some photos to go with, sew up the binding, and give it to Butler at the end of the year. I think Sarah was going to write some too. That would be extra-special. This isn't my year-long because I don't think there is enough stuff to write, and I know I'll get tired of remembering stuff even more quickly than I'll run out of memories. It'll be a nice way to break up to noveling, though.
Things I did today:
I thought of another side project I want to do, and will probably work on a lot before the first checkpoint. I want to write a bunch of vignettes about track, all the good times, like our debate about abortion, that bad times, like when Amanda got hurt, and the weird times, like when Becca got suck in the mat. Then, I can print them all out on nice paper, find some photos to go with, sew up the binding, and give it to Butler at the end of the year. I think Sarah was going to write some too. That would be extra-special. This isn't my year-long because I don't think there is enough stuff to write, and I know I'll get tired of remembering stuff even more quickly than I'll run out of memories. It'll be a nice way to break up to noveling, though.
Things I did today:
- Devised idea for communal daybook
- started revising a polevaulting vignette I wrote over the summer
- anguished about checkpoints
I think I will revise my first two checkpoints to allow for more exploration before I settle on an idea. I do know for sure that I want to avoid writing the whole novel in straight prose. I'd get sooooooooooooooooooooooooo bored.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)