Beavers and Bogwater, Batman!

I seem to have a terrible case of the writer's block this evening. I'm trying to do that GD Seward project, right? And I know what my story is, more or less. And I know how I want to go about writing it. But I've just been staring at this stupid one page that I actually have been able to eek out, wondering how the holy flyin' heck I'm going to turn it into three.
There are some days I just straight-up dislike writing. She's a fickle, un-giving biznatch some days. All I ask is for three measly pages. They don't even have to be great. I just want to get them done and written. Then I can go back through them and clean up the bad parts. I can't do much with a blank page, though.
I hate a blank page. It sits there, all white, and mocks me with its empty whiteness. I need to kill it with long strands of black words, but I just can't seem to find them.
Send me good thoughts.

Thank you, my creative whatever, for absolutely nothing

So, I'm sitting on the couch in my room with my feet up, trying to totally knock out my whole rough draft tonight. Ambitious, right? But I figure I'm not really busy right now, so I might as well try to do this before the week hits me in the face and knocks me right on my butt. And my creative whatever, wherever it is that my brilliant ideas sometimes spring forth from completely unprovoked, seems to be on the fritz. I can't tell if what I'm putting down right now is good or not. I'm torn between "Dang, this is good" and "I pity the poor sucker who has to slog through this pile of crap". It's truly disheartening.
See, I'm kind of going for length with this one; I need a piece that will help my portfolio size. And so I'm writing for length, and I all of a sudden realize, "I could die writing this story. Sweet hickory, I started writing about someone's life, for cryin' out loud! This could go on forever!"
So that's where I'm at right now, for those of you who have some sort of personal investment in the progress of my writing life. I hope your non-fiction ramblings are pouring out more easily than mine at the moment.

If you write on it, you keep it

I spent an equal amount of time reading this week's essays as I did erasing the stupid little notes from the fool who owned my book before me. At first, I didn't even know if I owned a pencil, or an eraser for that matter. Generally speaking, I'm a pen man myself. I feel like you're more likely to write something stupid with a pencil. After all, it's easily enough erased. With a pen, you're committed to what you're writing. It sort of makes a guy think ahead. If what I put down is permanent, I actually need to think about it. Some fool got a hold of a pencil, and that was game over for my book. Any inane little thought that popped into his or her head went all over the essays. "He doesn't want to be like his father", he/she comments at one point. No way? Was that a profound thought for you, or did you really think you'd forget that?
You'll excuse my bitterness; I hate erasing things. But I did like these two pieces. I have a question, though. Does a guy have to be gay to be published in this anthology? I'm detecting quite the pattern here...

Bouncy Balls and Eternal Halls

"I went to a funeral once."
That's how I started my first paragraph of my second project. I want to write something about my great-grandpa and hopefully capture a little bit of who he was through the piece. But I realized very quickly how nearly impossible it is to capture who someone was using nothing but a child's memories. Trying to write who this man was on a piece of paper is like trying to catch a bucketful of smoke. (Hold on, because this is where the cool title ties in.)
I remember this time as a little kid, we were staying in a hotel with my dad's side of the family for our Christmas get-together. In my grandpa's mind, staying at the Ramada was much better than going to anyone's house. Anyway, I had this bouncy ball, and I carried it around in my pocket over the couple of days we had gotten together for the holiday, taking it out now and again to bounce as I walked. Occasionally, it would deflect off a rough spot in the thin carpet and skip away down the hall, and I would chase after it, bent over like someone attempting to scoop up a loose baby chick. After a while, I just stopped chasing it because I started to feel pretty foolish. I knew eventually the ball would stop and I could catch up to it and pick it up again. But what if the ball never did stop? What if it bounced down a hall that never ended?
I think sometimes writing from memory is like that. You can't wait for the ball to stop and then go pick it up and examine it. Sometimes with memory, all you have is that bent-over hobbling run, trying desperately to catch the ball but getting nothing more than the glimpses of it, now and again a brief touch as it bounces and skips right through your fingers.
And that, Great Grandpa, is why I'm worried about this story. It's because every year, you skip a little further away from me. I hope you like what I write.

If anything came from Hell...

If anything came from Hell, it's flies and other buzzing insects. I'm doing my best to find my muse and really hit my writing stride, and all I can hear is buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. And not just a little buzzing. A constant, maddening drone as if this fly is trying to single-handedly annoy me to death. So of course I try the flail dance, but that didn't help at all. For all my flapping and flailing, I think that fly might have been mocking me as it dodged my efforts with ease.
I would just like to say that if I hadn't found a flyswatter which, apparently, is the only object flies can't avoid, you'd be sitting in class three or so weeks from now listening to a God-awful Takota Thiem draft all about flies. And so help me, there would me research in there. Fortunately, I pancaked that buzzing Satanic annoyance after about a ten-minute chase scene between my parents' kitchen and dining room. All's well that ends well, I suppose, and the writing process continues until a new annoyance takes up the mantel the fly left behind.

This is just a little piece of fiction. NOT creative non-fiction. Enjoy.

"The Pear"

The man walked to the farmer’s market shortly after sunup. He bought nothing but a single pear, which he carried home in a paper sack. He placed the pear, still in the paper sack, in the refrigerator. The pear was pushed all the way to the back of the refrigerator, on the second shelf, between the butter and a Tupperware full of week-old stroganoff. The door swung shut, and the tiny bulb blinked off. And all the pear could do was sit, and wait, and get colder.

Through the door floated the muffled acoustics of the man’s day: The throaty gurgling of the percolating coffee. The screeching grate of a chair being pulled out and scooted in. The roll-oll clash, roll-oll hush as the man opened and shut drawers again and again. The swish strik swish of metal on metal as he sharpened each blade in the house. The kuh-lick kuh-lick as he strode about the kitchen and up and down the stairs in his heavy boots, which he was never supposed to wear around the house.

The pear slowly cooled on the refrigerator shelf as the man went about his chores. In the darkness, it incrementally got colder; first the fragile, tender skin, followed by the heartier stem. The dense, grainy flesh took much longer to cool, and it did so slowly.

The center of the pear was still warm as the man pulled open the door and pulled out the Tupperware of stroganoff. The man knocked the pear over as he slid the Tupperware past. The pear lay on its side as the man tore off the lid and opened the microwave, buttons screaming their shrill BEEP BEEP BEEP, followed by the whirrrr-dzuhhhh as the microwave spun slowly into life. As he ate, the man tapped his heavy boots on the hardwood, knocking little bits of dirt onto the floor with every tap of the steel toes. She hated that.

The pear spent the rest of the day on its side, slowly cooling until its center was just as frigid as the tender, green skin. The man settled in his plain, straight-backed chair. It had once been red, but sunlight and the wear of years had faded it to a dry rose color. He leaned forward in it, pulling out his little pocketknife and slowly whittling on a length of birch root. The wet wood shavings fell onto the thick green carpet. That was another thing he was never supposed to do. The shavings never came up, no matter how many times she vacuumed. He liked the feeling of the firm, wet wood falling away under his knife, and he thought there was nothing much better than whittling in his chair.

The seeds of the pear were even cold as the woman’s car pulled into the driveway. The sun was already setting outside, and the sunset was fiery and angry. The man was still whittling as she walked through the door, dropping her keys briskly on the counter. Her words were muffled through the heavy insulation of the refrigerator. She yelled at the man about wearing his boots in the house, about whittling on the carpet, and about leaving his dishes from lunch dirty on the kitchen table.

The man cared about the words about as much as the pear did. He flicked the last piece of loose wood from the end of the birch root. Then he stood up, walked slowly into the kitchen, and drove his sharpened stake into the woman’s throat. She died without making a sound. He let her fall to the ground in a heap then dragged her onto the counter. Through the refrigerator door came the roll-oll clash of the knife drawer. For a time, the man stood and thought, wondering which would be best. Then came the faint clop, clop, clop, for nearly an hour, of a cleaver striking the counter.

The pear had begun to freeze, sitting as it was near the back of the refrigerator where it was coldest. For the next few hours, all that could be heard through the door was the faintest splashing sounds, followed by flush after flush of the toilet.

Finally, the man opened the refrigerator door, wiping his hands in a wad of paper towels. He pulled the paper bag with the pear in it from its shelf. Opening the bag, he drew out the pear. The man wiped a big knife on a different paper towel and cut a big slice out of the thoroughly chilled pear.

It was so juicy.

Who even knows anymore?

I really felt a strong hippie sort of vibe radiating off both of these pieces. I'll talk about Wendell Berry's "Getting Along With Nature" first, since it weirded me out less than Annie Dillard's "Living Like Weasels".
As a country boy, I think Berry hit it dead on in his piece. He could have really gone tree-hugger with it, but he really presented an interesting scope on the issue. As human beings, we both desire some level of the natural and require some amount of the industrial. We can't any of us handle a completely raw natural environment; we simply wouldn't survive. Even those rugged pioneers and Plains Indians living on the windswept plains had some sort of man-made shelter, some sort of weaponry for protection, some little piece of industrialization in their battle against Mother Nature. With the years have come a steady advance in industrialization. And now one is left to wonder: Have we gone too far? I really appreciated Berry's words, "No good thing is destroyed by goodness; good things are destroyed by goodness." No man could have said it better (especially not me. I'm just way off today).
"Living Like Weasels" will get only a small piece of our time. Pardon my gruffness when I say, What the balls? This would be that hippie vibe I was picking up. Whereas Berry touched on the natural preservationist aspect, Dillard seemed to be covering the drug-induced musing aspect. It was like some sort of LSD/marijuana/peyote cocktail. Just too weird. That's all I have to say about that.

And now, a poem

I wrote this last week at 2 in the morning. I'd like some feedback on it, but if you feel yourself tempted to just say, "It sucks", I'd really appreciate if you could explain why. Or, just enjoy it. Thanks.

I wouldn’t

I wouldn’t mourn me

All shriveled up and gray

Empty and gone in some hospital bed

I wouldn’t guide me

All demented and lost

Confused and scared in a world I don’t know

I wouldn’t help me

All facedown and filthy

Choking and drowning in my own habit in a gutter

I wouldn’t trust me

All hood up and long strides

Walking slow and alone at two o’clock in the morning

I wouldn’t like me

All straight A’s and straight-laced

Too stiff and right to know how it feels to screw up

I wouldn’t notice me

All big glasses and small voice

Lost in the crowd I’m trying to fit into

I wouldn’t mind me

All dirty cheeks and brand new sled

Eating Christmas morning candy on Christmas afternoon

I wouldn’t take my eyes off me

All new and soft

Warm and delicate in blue blankets

I wouldn’t

In reaction to Something something and something else

In my experience, it's either been a wild success or a terrible idea to write anything after midnight, especially on an empty stomach. Either I have reached that perfect balance of fatigue, hunger, and creativity which allows me to 'wow' even myself, or I put word to page and drop out something that can't force much more than an 'eh' from me. Only time and about 300 words will tell.
Neither "Physical Evidence" nor "Return to Sender" changed my life, but I've decided I'm really okay with that. I have managed to appreciate them for what they are, and what they have done right as creative nonfiction pieces.
"Physical Evidence" bled a sort of vague interest which reflected perfectly the author's feelings. For years, she didn't want to know what had happened to her mother. In those times, her imagination showed her mother in a sort of blurry half-light. She was satisfied with the small amount she knew of her mother; she really had no reason to hope for much more. Eventually it became more of an interest for her to discover whatever she could about her mother's murder. At this point in the article, the details start to pick up, reflecting very well the hunt she undertakes.
And then she ends it. Very abruptly, she ends the piece, leaving the audience with the tiny bit she knows about her mother, forcing us to feel the way she does. She knows nearly nothing, and we know even less.
"Return to Sender" didn't really shock or move me in any particular way until the end. The author ends by really struggling with who he is and how that matters in his relationship to his father. He struggles to break free of the hold his father's judgment has on him, while simultaneously craving his love and approval. I think we can, or at least I can, pair this to our relationship with Our Father. We want his approval so badly, but we refuse to turn away from the sin we are. Once again, I could go on and on about this, but I'll leave it open to discussion. I already know what's in my head; what do you all think?

In reaction to "The Pain Scale" and "Consider the Lobster"

In the interest of consistency, I'll go ahead and examine the piece which just didn't appeal to me quite as much as the other. That, in this case, would be "Consider the Lobster."
I had a teacher in high school who said, "You're only allowed three hates in your life." It is for that reason that I won't say I hated this piece. I know I hate the Devil and underwear that don't fit right; I don't feel like wasting my last hate on this. Suffice it to say that about halfway through, I started checking the side of the road for the exit to the end of Wallace's piece.
I'll give him points for being thorough, but that's all Mr. David Foster Wallace is getting from me. "Consider the Lobster" reminds me of a bit from a comedian named Dan Cummins. Cummins is talking about how Satan-worshippers ruin everything by cheering for the angry, bitter, losing team. "It's like one of your friends says, 'You should come over and watch 'Fight Club', 'The Matrix', and 'Donnie Darko,'" Cummins says. "And you're like, 'Yes! Those are three of my favorite movies of all time!' And then you get there, and the guy goes, 'Psych! We're going to watch 'Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties'...twice! Go Satan!'"
That, in hyperbole, was how this piece made me feel. Just let the people eat the lobsters, dude. And it is totally okay to go two sentences without a paragraph of segues.
And now that I've ranted and raved, I'll talk a tiny bit about "The Pain Scale". This, I felt, was very well-done. I actually learned something, but at the same time, I was drawn into the story that Eula Biss was telling. Biss isn't complaining the whole time but simply telling the reader what happened to her and how she dealt with it, while simultaneously weaving in random facts which somehow still relate. For anyone who has ever been in a state of pain for long periods of time, these thought processes are exactly what Biss presents in the piece. I thought this was very well done.

In reaction to "High Tide in Tuscon" and "Small Rooms in Time"

For the purpose of time, I'll simply say that I could take or leave "High Tide in Tuscon". That is not to say it wasn't well written, nor that it didn't raise admirable points. I simply didn't care for it. It was a shining example of how someone can remove God entirely from every aspect of her life and reduce life to a dull, drab, grayish-blue river that keeps oozing, oozing, oozing by.
On the other hand, Ted Kooser's "Small Rooms in Time" hit me so near to the heart it's frankly surprising I'm here to write this. I can't put my finger on what exactly he did in this piece that hit me so personally. The closest description I can procure is to say that it was joyfully forlorn. Mr. Kooser was shocked and grieved that something so terrible could happen somewhere he and his family had once felt safe. He didn't want to dwell on such a tragedy, yet he finds himself exploring that old house, recalling the smells and sights.

However, he can't entirely remember it as it was, as he can't help but imagine bloodstains on the orange shag carpet of the cellar walls. In his mind, the bittersweet times of his life held both blooming spring and gloomy winter at once. He recalls nothing but dreary, gray days with his young bride and son as they struggled to keep a sinking marriage afloat. Yet at the same time, he remembers his jolly foreign neighbors, continuously stooped over their beloved flowers as they slaved to bring some beauty into the world.
I struggle to put words to why I was so touched by this piece. It may be that, in some small way, Ted and I are the same. I find myself wandering not through rooms of my old houses, but through houses of friends long since forgotten, places I spent so much of my childhood which will never be the same, lost in the black-and-white still of memory.