school

Family Time

My school has this weird thing called “October Study Days,” two days off which we’re supposed to use to study. Of course, what that actually means is that we get a long weekend in lieu of an official fall break, and we use it to either a) go home for a bit, b) party every night or c) get some work done (and still, most likely, party every night).
Option (a) is out for me because home, which is at the moment where I grew up, is halfway round the world or so. Option (b) is out because I don’t particularly like partying. Option (c) would have been what I would have chosen if I had to stay on campus.
But I’ve concocted option (d) which is this: d) go visit brother in D.C and get the eff off campus for a while.
So I’m going on a mini-vacation, during which I still have a ton of reading and writing to do. But I’ll have some relaxation time as well, which will be lovely and much needed at the moment (as you may have noticed from my all too frequent melancholy posts of late).

How’s fall shaping up for all of you?

New Challenge, New Look

I haven’t changed the theme on my blog for the more than three years I’ve been posting on it. It’s time for a change. I like the warm colors and larger fonts of this theme; it seems homier, less cold than my previous one.

In addition to changing the looks, I’m trying out the WordPress Post-A-Day Challenge for the month of October – I’ll see if I keep it up afterwards. Mostly, I want to use it to get warmed up for NaNoWriMo, which, despite my being at school, I still want to try to complete.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? Anything particular you’d like to see me post?

In-Class Writing Exercise Result

The writing class I took last year didn’t include writing exercises, which was fine with me. The writing class I’m taking this year, however, includes a few minutes of free writing every class, with three objects as our prompts. We sometimes read the results aloud, sometimes not, but it’s a nice way to keep our creative juices flowing, as they say. This is the paragraph that resulted from the seven-minute exercise on September 12:

“I need another coffee mug,” she said as she looked out the window, clutching the single one she already had. It was full of tea, not coffee, but she still called it a coffee mug. It had a corny photograph of NYC plastered over it and there was a chipped edge which she was always careful to hold on the other side, away from, ever since that time when she scratched her lip.
It had bled then, and she remembered the coppery taste of her own blood. “How weird, she said, “to remember blood while I’m drinking tea in my kitchen.”
There was no one there to hear her. She did this often – speaking to herself, that is – and she liked it. She’d been living alone for seven years (and wondered if that meant that good luck was coming her way) and she liked the way her voice reverberated in the empty apartment.
The wind blew outside and the tree that had its leaves mashed against the kitchen window swayed and creaked. It was a lonely tree, a tree that made moaning noises on cold nights.
The kitchen was her favorite room in the small apartment. It was the best place to congregate with friends (there were chairs for everyone there, good and drink as well) as well as a cozy place to sit with a coffee mug full of tea and think.
She wondered if it was time to get a cat. After all, living alone for seven years, the apartment still hadn’t seen the footprint of a man who was a lover. When she did have sex, it was always at their places. Would it be okay to leave a cat alone in the apartment overnight? Yes, of course, cats were independent, their own people with needs and wants.
“But am I read to be a crazy cat lady yet?” she thought aloud again. The words crazy and cat sounded nice together and she said them a few more times, walking in a circle around the table over and over again.

This is not my finest piece of writing, but I’m sharing it anyway, because I don’t usually post things that I haven’t read over and edited a couple times in the course of one sitting. This was entirely free-written, that is without taking the pen away from the page, without pausing to fix grammar or make things clear. It’s a good exercise that forces you not to over-think what you’re writing, which is something many of us tend to do.

Classroom

At 1:30PM, fifteen students and one teacher gathered around a table. It was on the top floor of a building that was normally inhabited by much younger children who knew it as their nursery school, but at 1:30PM all the children had gone home, as had their teachers.
The group of students in the white-washed, fluorescent-lit, mildly air-conditioned room were definitely not children, although their parents might have had a different perspective on that. They were all young adults, college-aged, facing the world on their own to some extent.
No two of them looked alike. Each had his or her own unique style of dress, whether it was blue hair, a classic polo shirt, or a t-shirt bearing an illustration of the Peanuts cast of characters on it.
The one thing they all had in common was their fear. It was palpable; they themselves could almost taste it in the air of the stuffy room, the sickly smell of fear with some odd sweetness in it that might have been just the hint of excitement. They knew that in the coming months they’d be baring some part of their soul to these strangers.
Two hours isn’t a lot, but sometimes it’s enough. At 3:25PM, the fear smell was a little less dominant. Laughter had relaxed the students, as had the teacher’s laid-back manner, the way he literally leaned far back in his chair and lounged like a teenager. There was comfort in his ease, and it spread to the others by osmosis.
At 1:30PM a group of fearful strangers entered the room. At 3:30PM, a group of curious, uplifted, excited acquaintances left it.

Move-In Day

As a member of the prestigious (*snort*) welcome team at my college, I get to move in to my dorm today. Sadly, I wasn’t accepted to the tour-guide position I’d applied for, which – I’ll admit – soured me for a while. Why should I be on our welcoming team, helping new students move into the dorms easily and efficiently, for free, when my school doesn’t want to employ me as one of its representatives?

I gave myself a mental slap around the head and box on the ears, and remembered that the reason I wanted to give guided tours of my school is because I love it and wanted to help others see it in the same light that I saw it in when I first visited my beautiful campus. Sure, loving my school doesn’t mean that everything about it is perfect – our bureaucracy, for instance, is horribly and needlessly complicated and some of the important administrators are really, ahem, not nice (which is putting it very nicely). But the academics and the social life on campus are incredible, and those are the most important things at school, aren’t they?

So as I unpack in my new room today and think about the fact that I might be helping lift boxes in pre-hurricane weather tomorrow, I’ll remind myself that I wanted to do this even before I applied for a paid position, and I’ll remember that when I was a first year I was intensely grateful to this group of kids who got my things into my dorm for me, and I’ll hope that someone remembers me well tomorrow, even if it’s just as a helpful blur above a green t-shirt.

Halfling

“Let’s look at the third problem now. Seven-hundred and twelve divided by fifteen.” The chalk squealed against the board, but Mrs. Pipridge didn’t even flinch. “How about,” she said, back still to the class as she finished writing. “Donald.” She turned, and her eyes gleamed with something malicious as she pointed them in the boy’s direction. “Donald?”

“Yes, Mrs. Pipridge?”

“Will you please explain how we can find the answer to the question on the board?” It was incredible how her voice became sharper the more polite she was. Donald looked at her, his mind shutting down as the numbers swam in front of his eyes. He lowered his head and saw that the answer was written carefully, painstakingly, in his notebook. He’d worked so hard with his tutor to learn long-division, and he’d finally got the hang of it. But he couldn’t manage to get a word out. He stared, terrified, at Mrs. Pipridge’s leering face and opened his mouth, willing himself to speak.

Mrs. Pipridge sighed, and Donald felt as if her breath was like the iciest of December winds, penetrating through his sweater and right into his ribs, making his heart freeze and contract. “Fine. I see you have nothing to contribute, as usual. Laura, how about you?”

Donald heard titters from behind him and felt something sticky and wet hit the back of his head. He didn’t turn around, though. He knew that if he did, he’d receive a spitball right in the middle of his forehead. It was no use telling, either, because Mick and Tommy, the boys behind him, always managed to hide all evidence of straws and chewed-up paper by the time any teacher reached their desk. They were pros.

The new school was exactly like the old one. It was supposed to be liberal and progressive – Donald didn’t know what the words meant, but he’d heard his house-mother throwing them around a lot in meetings – but the kids here were just like kids everywhere. Sure, there was another halfling here, but she got as much crap as Donald did. She just shut up about it, like him, because that was the only way to get through the day.

The Other One, as Donald thought of her, had it better than him, though. Everyone knew that she’d got it on her father’s side and that her mother, a war-hero, had killed the one who’d injected her. The Other One could at least embrace her humanity entirely and disown those parts of her that were so different. But Donald didn’t know who either of his parents were. For all he knew he wasn’t even a halfling; he might be pure Aylyen, although he didn’t think so. His skin wasn’t nearly green enough for that, and while he did only have three long fingers to each hand, his toes were absolutely normal, pink and stubby just like any other kid’s, and the doctors said that was a sure sign that one of his parents had been an H, not an A.

He sometimes wondered whether the Other One ever wondered if she’d be happier with other A’s. Donald wished sometimes that he’d been taken along when the A’s left Earth, but he knew it was a pipe-dream. Aylyens wouldn’t want a halfling either, would they? He was stuck in the middle, between two vastly different worlds, and there was absolutely no way out that he could see.

Home For the Summer

I’ve been gone a while.

And now I’m back. I’m planning on posting something every day for the summer, as a personal challenge and as part of my plan to begin writing on a proper schedule again.

A few updates:

-My semester back at school was incredible. I am now finally finished with my freshman year of college and am a rising sophomore!

-I’ve been working on my third novel during the past few months and am going to hopefully finish it this summer.

-I have been learning, more and more, to be in the moment and not to worry so much. I have a long way to go, but it’s nice to know that I can actually make progress when I consciously work on myself.

Robin

I’m not sure that I’m ever going to do anything with this, but I’ve had this character floating around my mind for over a year now, so I finally decided to write a little introduction to her life.

At the age of twenty-four, the thing Robin loved most in the world was her house.

It was tiny, painted blue with white framework on the doors and windows. There were flowers in the three windows that faced the street, and a garden leading from the front door right down to the small white gate. There was even a lone tree in the yard, one that had grown enough to give a little shade during the long, hot summer days.

The house was on a small residential street in Studio City in Los Angeles, which was another thing that Robin loved about it. She loved being so near a happening area and yet snug in her own little space, the picture of suburbia. She had a Mr. Horns to her left in a small yellow house, with a rather large yellow Labrador named Puck, while the house to her right was empty, a big “FOR RENT” sign the only inhabitant of the fading lawn.

Robin had acquired this house in a strange set of circumstances. It had, belonged to her great-aunt Lucinda, an eccentric woman who had lived in a nursing home for the last twenty years of her life. The family was under the impression that she’d sold it years ago, but, as she wrote in her will, she’d left it empty, freshly painted and clean, ready for her great-niece, who had only just been born, to grow up and receive it. When Robin turned twenty, Lucinda passed away and the house was discovered in the will.

Robin couldn’t believe her luck. As a university student, she longed to leave the dorms behind her and live in a space all her own. She had no desire to return to the poisonous environment that was her parents’ house. She’d suffered enough hardship over the years, and having finally escaped by earning a full scholarship, she had no intention of ever going back.

Halfway through her Junior year, she moved out of the school dorms and into her new home. It had needed much airing out after twenty years of standing empty, and furniture, too. She’d scoured both the flea markets and the Internet for cheap, secondhand stuff, and she  sanded, repainted and lacquered some of the wooden pieces she’d found. In fact, she’d spent her entire winter break on making her new home as perfect as could be. This was another reason why she loved it so.

Another reason was that she was hardly ever in it. The commute to school on two buses, the time she spent in classes and in the library studying, as well as her job at one of the administrative offices kept her so busy that she would normally arrive back at her house at ten and leave the next morning at around seven. Out of those nine hours, some six were spent sleeping, and one was spent in a morning haze of coffee, toast, shower and make-up.

The two hours she had to herself every night before she fell exhausted into bed were her treasures. She didn’t allow herself to study, review material or read anything that had something to do with her major – which was history – or her minor – which was philosophy. She spent the time reading comics online, watching films or taking a long, hot bath.

It was a perfect life, really, and she often felt ridiculously lucky.

But everything changed when her brother got out of prison a week before graduation.

Mandy Meets the Goblins (Part 1)

The day that Mandy met the goblins was, from dawn to dusk, perfectly normal.

She woke up, as usual, with the crowing of the rooster. She went around the farm with her brother, and they both did their chores. Sometimes they asked Mother or Father for help, but mostly, they knew how to milk the cows and collect the eggs and check up on the sheep in the pasture. Mother and Father would have helped them if it was a year ago. But it wasn’t a year ago, it was today. So it was normal for Mandy to cry a little bit when she heaved a pail of milk into the kitchen. It was also normal that she had a silent but violent tussle with her twin brother over the ripest apple from the forlorn apple tree.

At noon, almost the whole family gathered around the table for a very quiet meal. Mandy kept her eyes down and ate quickly so that she could get back to her chores. Chores made it easy not to think about the beautiful, teenage girl who had been lying on a bed upstairs for the past year; a girl who also happened to be Mandy’s big sister. She was also the reason that Mother and Father didn’t do much anymore – they were always upstairs, or running down to bring up broth, or running into the attic for some old and moldy doll.

After Mandy finished eating, she and her brother did their afternoon chores. Some of it was weeding the garden, but only when the sun was going down and it wasn’t so hot. Another chore, which they did right after they’d eaten was attend to their lessons. Every weekend, they went to the school that was five miles away and had lessons there along with many other children who lived on other farms. During the week, they’d need to study those lessons, and their parents used to be so strict about it that the habit stuck, even though Father and Mother weren’t strict about anything anymore. This was Mandy’s favorite chore, since she had to think very hard indeed about what she was doing, and couldn’t think about the invalid upstairs.

Dusk came, and with it, the end of Mandy’s day. She went up to the room she used to share with her sister (her brother slept in the room next door). She got ready for bed, like she always did, and climbed into it, like she always did, and put her head down on the pillow, like she always did. Except that now things stopped being normal. Because there was something very hard under her pillow that went “Ouch!”

Sitting up, Mandy reached a hand under the pillow and pulled out… what looked like a very strange, greenish rock, with pointy bits. Then she saw it wasn’t a rock, but a small, man-shaped thing that was curled up tight, trying to look like a rock. The pointy bits were its horns, and he couldn’t apparently, curl those up tightly too.

“Who’re you?” Mandy asked, laying the little person-thing down on her pillow.

“Mnthngjstrck” it said, without opening its mouth.

“Listen,” Mandy reasoned. “I know your not just a rock because rocks don’t make sounds. So you can stop being all scrunched up like that.” A tiny eye blinked open in what Mandy assumed was the thing’s face, and it looked suspicious. “Don’t worry,” she added quickly. “I’m not going to scream or anything.”

“Oh,” the creature unfurled, tried to stand on the soft pillow but lost its footing and settled for sitting. “Well, I suppose you’d better call me… Erm… Rocky.”

“That’s a sort of funny name. Did you just make it up now because you were pretending to be a rock?” Mandy was a very inquisitive girl, really, and this was the first time in a year that her curiosity really perked up. She was acting, technically, with what her parents called “bad manners” but she didn’t mind. It was good to do that again.

“No,” the thing answered, sounding a bit peeved. “It’s the closest translation of my name into your language.”

“So you’re from another country?” This was exciting – Mandy knew all about other countries (well, she knew that there were some and that people were a bit different there) but she’d never met someone from them before.

“You could,” hesitated the thing. “You could say that, yes.” Mandy stared at the thing, and it stared right back at her, neither saying anything for long moments.

“Um,” Mandy knew she was about to be very bad-mannered, but she couldn’t help it. “What are you?”

A Schedule

Ancient Greece, course number 10110, exam at the New High-School at 4PM. Tomorrow.

That sounds like I’m taking an exam IN ancient Greece. But no, I haven’t learned the secrets to time travel… yet.

The day after tomorrow, Friday, is the day before my birthday. I’ll be going with my friends to a cafe in Jaffa to listen to some jazz and then walk around the flea market.

Saturday, June 26, is my birthday. I’m turning twenty. Last year, I was extremely depressed before my nineteenth birthday, but this year, I don’t feel much of anything. Does it scare me that I won’t be an official “teen” anymore? Yes. Does it scare me that “twenty” sounds so grown up? Yes. Is there a little part inside of me that’s screaming at me to get down on the ground, play with dolls, make faces at boys I don’t like, and stay a child forever? Yes. But then, there are good things that come with age. I can’t think of anything that I didn’t have last year or the year before, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be. Anyway, I have more important things to figure out at the moment – like getting back to health so I can get back to college.

Yes, I’m going back to college – I hope, I think, I want – but not yet. It’s going to be spring-semester. So meanwhile I’m here, until October when I need to send my letters in and proclaim that on all fronts, I’m better.

But how am I going to spend my time? What am I going to do? Well, I have a few objectives, none of which are easy:

1. I’m going to relax. I swear, hand on heart, hand on my favorite teddy, hand on my favorite book, I swear that I don’t know how to relax. Not really, not for stretches of time. There’s always something I should be doing. Something I’m supposed to be doing. Something productive, that looks good on a resume, that will make me busy so that no one will be able to tell me that I’m wasting my time. So, once and for all, I’m going to say NO to that overachiever inside me – I’m going to tell her that I’m taking a break, whether she likes it or not. This may be the one and only time in my life that I’ll be absolutely, 100% free to rest and relax and catch up on my gaming, my reading, my fun. I don’t know if I’ll manage, but I’m going to try. You may think – this is the easiest damn thing in the world, how can this be a hard thing to do? Well, let me tell you, you don’t live in my head. This is going to be a real challenge, and it’s probably going to be the one thing I won’t manage to do.

2. Having said all that, I don’t want to loll around in bed all day, every day. I just want to do something that I want to be doing. So, my next objective, is to finish the four games I have that I’ve not yet finished, that were expensive, and that I REALLY want to play. You may say what you want about video/computer games, since I know there are many people who are against them. But you know what? To me, they’re stories. They’re stories I get to be in, get to participate in and get to anticipate and wait for what comes next and to be responsible for it. It’s like an extremely interactive Choose Your Own Adventure Book for me.

3. Take drawing lessons and maybe voice lessons. I’ve always wanted to know how to draw, and as for my voice… well, I’ve always been one of those people who sing along to everything – including making weird noises when the horns/piano/guitar are playing. But it’s scary, putting myself, my voice, a deep part of who I am, out there to be scrutinized and looked at and played around with. So this idea is still going around my brain and I’m thinking about it.

….and, the most important of them all:

4. I’m going to write. I’m going to make a schedule. I’m going to put aside two hours a day, every day, starting next week, and during those two hours I’m going to be dead to the world. I’ll take no calls, I’ll see no friends, I’ll make no excuses. Can I get up to make coffee? Sure. If I go on holiday, will I take a break? Possibly. But I’m treating this as a job. Not in a bad way – not at all. This is exciting me almost more than the rest of them. Because if I dedicate, say, half an hour to writing in my blog on an average day, then the other hour and a half will be going towards one of my bigger projects. There are three serious ones at the moment, and I’m going to have to play around with all of them and choose which one I want to be serious about right now. But I’m going to do this. I have to do this. I have to see that I’m able to do this and enjoy it. Because, as every writer I’ve ever heard has said, part of writing is just learning to sit your butt down and write. And write. And write.

**

So there it is. My summer schedule. All wrapped up in four nice points. Now I just have to stick with it.