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For years, I've started writing short stories only to stop after a paragraph or two and file them away in a folder titled, "Short Story Ideas." This folder I keep at the very back of a large file drawer at the bottom left of my desk. The intention is, I suppose, to revisit this folder someday, when my ability to write fiction, to make things up, essentially, are fully formed and ready to be exercised in a lucrative fashion. I'd take them out, one half-filled sheet at a time and finish what I started so many years ago. The ideas are good - the characters fully formed in my head, because they are based off of real people - and the plot, or at least the character development is there...but the writing! The writing is all off.
I am slowly beginning to realize my inability to speak for anyone but myself. And this is not a bad thing, I suppose, because who else should I be speaking for? But as a writer, this is severely limiting. I'm limited to one voice: mine - and to go beyond that, to assume the mindset of another character, to empathize and bring another soul to life...well, that's to risky. I inevitably feel, after a few paragraphs of writing fiction, that I'm making a list. This character does this, says this, sees this, thinks this... and is a cardboard cutout of the real life person I had intended to base them on. Why write about fictitious people I can't bring to life when there are real bodies, real souls swarming all around me, their stories waiting to be told?
Because they're still alive, that's why.
Cheever (I'm going to keep on going back to this guy for a while - it was a thick biography and I feel I spent a long time with him) wrote about his family - wife, daughter, sons, in-laws and close friends - masquerading these characters under the mask of fiction. When these people read his stories, they recognized right away whom he was writing about, and exactly what he thought of them. More often than not, the portraits were unflattering and many of his subjects (his wife, especially) were incensed, but what could they do? It was only fiction.
And now, I am compelled to be even more honest - after all, I have no fiction to hide behind if personal essay is all I do - this type of writing, though not quite stream-of-consciousness-vomit-style, is easier for me ('easier' being a euphemism for 'possible'). I know my thoughts. I can organize them in a heartbeat and not think twice about whether or not the plot will play out as neatly as I had hoped because there usually is no plot. Thoughts, opinions, observations and short character sketches of real people are not plot driven. The motivations behind their existence on the page is that I noticed them and chose to write about them. I don't have to worry about character development because real people are developed (though some, arguably, are not - but again, that is not my problem) or continuity or morality or all the other stuff fiction writers have to worry about.
Rereading the above paragraph, I realize it sounds like I have a problem with plot and character development. But I don't. Everything works in my head - it's just those same things get jumbled up on the journey from mind to paper. When I write fiction, I feel like I'm writing about something I haven't a clue about... the people, vivid in my head, are vivid because they're real. Then I categorize them as fictional characters and they lose their third dimension and fall flat - bam, onto the page - and as hard as I try to keep them alive, to keep their chests heaving, their hearts pumping - they are stillborn, cold before they even attempt their first breath. I am left with dead characters, shadows of their originals.
So. How do you write a short story? Damned if I know. Those paragraphs may vie to see the light of day, but in my heart I know they'll rest in that dark drawer for years to come until I move them, permanently, to the trash.
Some Cheever to Start the Day
When he died, he was buried at Norwell Center cemetery in Massachusetts, about fifteen miles from where he was born. He came full circle after spending his life trying to escape his hometown.
In 1940, he wrote:
"Nothing seems as genuine and vital to me as the life of the family I have left. Living in New York I've seen people grow old and buildings torn down, I've seen women cry and funeral processions but when I try to recall the way people live and die I think of my mother and my father and the people who live on our street."
In 1956, about his journal:
"I seem unable to read this journal for what it is, a means of refreshing my memory. I seem to look delightedly at myself in a glass. I think of it as something to be published and studied in libraries and this is not what I want at all."
Off to class now.
In 1940, he wrote:
"Nothing seems as genuine and vital to me as the life of the family I have left. Living in New York I've seen people grow old and buildings torn down, I've seen women cry and funeral processions but when I try to recall the way people live and die I think of my mother and my father and the people who live on our street."
In 1956, about his journal:
"I seem unable to read this journal for what it is, a means of refreshing my memory. I seem to look delightedly at myself in a glass. I think of it as something to be published and studied in libraries and this is not what I want at all."
Off to class now.
Writing
I think this is the first time I've posted twice in a row - this, of course, was the original goal of my starting a blog. My first online blog was with Xanga, where I made my debut here, and later moved here. I do the same with paper diaries, moving onto a new blank journal when the last one isn't filled out...but I guess it's not the same with blogs, is it? Are you ever "done" with a blog?
I suppose, in the same way one can be done with a relationship or lover - you never truly "end" it because the words, like memories, linger around. No matter how much you've changed for your new life, someone has proof of the old you - the person who loved the "X-Files" and devoted entire paragraphs to terrible movies. This is what my old blogs represent - a verbal growth chart. Rereading some of the entries make me wistful and cringe at the same time - I was so happy! So cheerful! My voice so forceful and confident - when did things start to quiver and shake? I like to think that the force is still with me (haha) but that I'm learning from the Chekhov, who writes, as Nabokov said, in a "quiet, subdued voice." Tempered. Even. What made me saddest however, was how eagerly and how often I wrote. In high school, there were stretches of months where I wrote everyday, even if just a jubilant paragraph about nothing. Then I reinvented myself as Citizenneb (Who's citizen Neb? People asked) and apparently did away with diligence. Who needs it? I felt that I was as a slightly stronger writer with less discipline - or was I even a strong writer then? And then, in a final fit of hubris, left Xanga altogether as someone who was (not) Very Highbrow but who understood the irony of naming her new blog so. She was operating on another platform altogether, and became the utter opposite of what she intended.
I write little. One long, thirsty (thirsting to be read) essay once or twice a month, if at that, and nothing else. I traded diligence for a cleaner template. Enthusiasm for a blase attitude about everything, including knowledge. Thank goodness for the anchor of a good library...and books, books. They bring me back down from where I don't belong and set me write again.
I'm currently finishing up the biography of John Cheever, of whose short stories I've only read one ("The Country Husband") and didn't even like much. It was assigned for an English class at my community college and I thought it the worst out of what was offered in our anthology, but now that I know the author better (or at least think I do), I might reread it and try a novel of his as well.
He was a closeted bisexual for much of his life, a raging alcoholic and supremely self-conscious. Yet through it all he remained a prolific writer. He was, whether drunk or sober, depressed or elated, always, always writing. He wrote what seem like hundreds of short stories, a handful of decorated novels, and journals, which he kept for nearly forty years.
What then, have I learned from reading this excellent biography? I don't write nearly enough. Not on my blog, not in my journal, not letters or essays or anything... as of yet, I can't call myself a writer because I don't write. Occasionally, I jot something down only to throw it away because I don't know how to "categorize" it and it's this dreadful habit I have, of wanting everything to belong somewhere that I'm left, in my own journals, with a gaping hole from the ages of five to sixteen. However sporadically, I've kept a journal from a young age. One Christmas my aunt presented all the girls with a flower-covered journal and said we should start keeping a diary. Who knows - maybe it was a veiled attempt to keep us out of trees and dirt, but I took my aunt's words to heart and that very evening, sat down to compose my first entry.
It was, most likely, very dull...but I do not have the hard evidence to verify this. I doubt I filled that diary, or the one after, or the one after that, but I do know I amassed four or five half-filled volumes of diaries from my VERY young years and, in a crazed bout of spring cleaning some sixteen years later (when my obsessive organizational tendencies conquered my desire for a juvenile writer's legacy), I tossed them into the recycling bin. I regret this as much as I regret terrorizing a hamster I once kept and if God were kind enough to bring them both back and let me choose which to keep...well, it would be a hard decision. I would probably flip a coin.
Needless to say, my own diaries are spotty. Entries are often unfinished or filled with blather, or, much to my dismay, dreadfully repetitive, almost predictable. A NYTimes book review of Cheever's posthumously published journals observed, correctly, that the great writer's journals were flush with grand themes: "Nature, God, home and sex." Good luck to who ever tries to find a fourth of that in my journals. It goes without saying that a man's journal is about himself - but even through Cheever's loneliness one can sense the others around him, his family, friends, the places he lived and visited, all rendered in vivid detail. He was self-absorbed, yes, but still wrote with a writer's eye, seeing and wanting to believe in the world around him and most elusively, in himself.
Halfway through the biography I put it down and pored through my own journals, wondering what sort of person they revealed me to be. I was dismayed to find that my best and most personal writing, if it has shown itself at all, cannot be found within these pages. In fact, I would be quite embarrassed if these were ever read by anyone else because they make me out to be rather shallow. I write most about a new type of materialism: the desire to travel, to be well-read, and to be accepted by men and women alike as something I haven't really taken the pains to become: an intellectual, a cosmopolitan. What for? And why? This is what struck me most about Cheever's journal, and his life story - that he was always studying himself, always looking for ways to improve, loving dearly the things he loved (men included) without really knowing why, but relentlessly asking himself, "Why, why, why?"
This is any writer's ultimate question. Earlier today I interviewed with a professor regarding my application for a Fulbright Grant. And while the interview went well enough, I was surprised that the professor didn't ask me so many questions as he did suggest books to read.
"Have you read "Family" by Ba Jin?"
"No."
"Have you read the short story collection "People of Taipei" by Bai Xian Yong?"
"No."
Rather than shake his head at my lack of knowledge regarding Chinese emigre literature, he rattled off a few more titles he thought would suit my research.
"How familiar are you with Chinese and Taiwanese history?"
Not very, I admitted, but I planned right then and there to become very knowledgeable about it.
"Okay, then..." and here, I expected him to say, "What do you know? What do you know about anything?"
I was prepared to say, "I know a little about very few things."
But instead, he continued talking and I continued to steep in my own ignorance. Sitting there in his office, surrounded by his books about my country and my heritage, and listening to him - a middle-aged white man who was more fluent in Chinese language, politics, and history that I could ever dream to be - I realized I needed to play more than catch up. I needed to wake up. I needed to focus. I needed to be good at one thing.
I left his office with the feeling that I'd failed the interview but knowing that I hadn't. It was a personal standards thing. I was lucky that he was too excited, too clouded by his own knowledge and passion for the origins of my project to write a negative evaluation, but the truth was, had he dug further or really listened to my answers, he would have found out I knew only the bare bones of my own project and my family. How important is history? Culture? Language? Very. And how much did I know of each of these? Very little.
Vague is how I would (aptly) describe my grasp of these topics, and vaguer still, is what I hope to achieve with the grant, or with my life as a writer in general. Of course this is all nicely masked on my Fulbright application - but I learned in the interview that I can't really call myself Chinese, not in the sense I want to be Chinese. And I can't be called a writer because I don't write enough.
The interview ended. I stood up and we shook hands. "Good luck," he said, "It sounds like a great project and I hope you accomplish it."
"I hope so too," I said, and though my voice was laced with self doubt, I felt a resolve, familiar to me but now with age, more forceful. A sonnet by Milton wafted through my mind as I left the white man with a Chinese background richer than mine and headed down the hall to the elevator. "How soon hath time..."
The doors slid open and I stepped in. I pressed one. Back to level 1, I thought. There, I would rekindle the desire to be good, truly good, at one thing. To writing. To writing.
I suppose, in the same way one can be done with a relationship or lover - you never truly "end" it because the words, like memories, linger around. No matter how much you've changed for your new life, someone has proof of the old you - the person who loved the "X-Files" and devoted entire paragraphs to terrible movies. This is what my old blogs represent - a verbal growth chart. Rereading some of the entries make me wistful and cringe at the same time - I was so happy! So cheerful! My voice so forceful and confident - when did things start to quiver and shake? I like to think that the force is still with me (haha) but that I'm learning from the Chekhov, who writes, as Nabokov said, in a "quiet, subdued voice." Tempered. Even. What made me saddest however, was how eagerly and how often I wrote. In high school, there were stretches of months where I wrote everyday, even if just a jubilant paragraph about nothing. Then I reinvented myself as Citizenneb (Who's citizen Neb? People asked) and apparently did away with diligence. Who needs it? I felt that I was as a slightly stronger writer with less discipline - or was I even a strong writer then? And then, in a final fit of hubris, left Xanga altogether as someone who was (not) Very Highbrow but who understood the irony of naming her new blog so. She was operating on another platform altogether, and became the utter opposite of what she intended.
I write little. One long, thirsty (thirsting to be read) essay once or twice a month, if at that, and nothing else. I traded diligence for a cleaner template. Enthusiasm for a blase attitude about everything, including knowledge. Thank goodness for the anchor of a good library...and books, books. They bring me back down from where I don't belong and set me write again.
I'm currently finishing up the biography of John Cheever, of whose short stories I've only read one ("The Country Husband") and didn't even like much. It was assigned for an English class at my community college and I thought it the worst out of what was offered in our anthology, but now that I know the author better (or at least think I do), I might reread it and try a novel of his as well.
 |
| John Cheever at home in Ossining, NY, 1979. From the N.Y. Times. |
What then, have I learned from reading this excellent biography? I don't write nearly enough. Not on my blog, not in my journal, not letters or essays or anything... as of yet, I can't call myself a writer because I don't write. Occasionally, I jot something down only to throw it away because I don't know how to "categorize" it and it's this dreadful habit I have, of wanting everything to belong somewhere that I'm left, in my own journals, with a gaping hole from the ages of five to sixteen. However sporadically, I've kept a journal from a young age. One Christmas my aunt presented all the girls with a flower-covered journal and said we should start keeping a diary. Who knows - maybe it was a veiled attempt to keep us out of trees and dirt, but I took my aunt's words to heart and that very evening, sat down to compose my first entry.
It was, most likely, very dull...but I do not have the hard evidence to verify this. I doubt I filled that diary, or the one after, or the one after that, but I do know I amassed four or five half-filled volumes of diaries from my VERY young years and, in a crazed bout of spring cleaning some sixteen years later (when my obsessive organizational tendencies conquered my desire for a juvenile writer's legacy), I tossed them into the recycling bin. I regret this as much as I regret terrorizing a hamster I once kept and if God were kind enough to bring them both back and let me choose which to keep...well, it would be a hard decision. I would probably flip a coin.
Needless to say, my own diaries are spotty. Entries are often unfinished or filled with blather, or, much to my dismay, dreadfully repetitive, almost predictable. A NYTimes book review of Cheever's posthumously published journals observed, correctly, that the great writer's journals were flush with grand themes: "Nature, God, home and sex." Good luck to who ever tries to find a fourth of that in my journals. It goes without saying that a man's journal is about himself - but even through Cheever's loneliness one can sense the others around him, his family, friends, the places he lived and visited, all rendered in vivid detail. He was self-absorbed, yes, but still wrote with a writer's eye, seeing and wanting to believe in the world around him and most elusively, in himself.
Halfway through the biography I put it down and pored through my own journals, wondering what sort of person they revealed me to be. I was dismayed to find that my best and most personal writing, if it has shown itself at all, cannot be found within these pages. In fact, I would be quite embarrassed if these were ever read by anyone else because they make me out to be rather shallow. I write most about a new type of materialism: the desire to travel, to be well-read, and to be accepted by men and women alike as something I haven't really taken the pains to become: an intellectual, a cosmopolitan. What for? And why? This is what struck me most about Cheever's journal, and his life story - that he was always studying himself, always looking for ways to improve, loving dearly the things he loved (men included) without really knowing why, but relentlessly asking himself, "Why, why, why?"
This is any writer's ultimate question. Earlier today I interviewed with a professor regarding my application for a Fulbright Grant. And while the interview went well enough, I was surprised that the professor didn't ask me so many questions as he did suggest books to read.
"Have you read "Family" by Ba Jin?"
"No."
"Have you read the short story collection "People of Taipei" by Bai Xian Yong?"
"No."
Rather than shake his head at my lack of knowledge regarding Chinese emigre literature, he rattled off a few more titles he thought would suit my research.
"How familiar are you with Chinese and Taiwanese history?"
Not very, I admitted, but I planned right then and there to become very knowledgeable about it.
"Okay, then..." and here, I expected him to say, "What do you know? What do you know about anything?"
I was prepared to say, "I know a little about very few things."
But instead, he continued talking and I continued to steep in my own ignorance. Sitting there in his office, surrounded by his books about my country and my heritage, and listening to him - a middle-aged white man who was more fluent in Chinese language, politics, and history that I could ever dream to be - I realized I needed to play more than catch up. I needed to wake up. I needed to focus. I needed to be good at one thing.
I left his office with the feeling that I'd failed the interview but knowing that I hadn't. It was a personal standards thing. I was lucky that he was too excited, too clouded by his own knowledge and passion for the origins of my project to write a negative evaluation, but the truth was, had he dug further or really listened to my answers, he would have found out I knew only the bare bones of my own project and my family. How important is history? Culture? Language? Very. And how much did I know of each of these? Very little.
Vague is how I would (aptly) describe my grasp of these topics, and vaguer still, is what I hope to achieve with the grant, or with my life as a writer in general. Of course this is all nicely masked on my Fulbright application - but I learned in the interview that I can't really call myself Chinese, not in the sense I want to be Chinese. And I can't be called a writer because I don't write enough.
The interview ended. I stood up and we shook hands. "Good luck," he said, "It sounds like a great project and I hope you accomplish it."
"I hope so too," I said, and though my voice was laced with self doubt, I felt a resolve, familiar to me but now with age, more forceful. A sonnet by Milton wafted through my mind as I left the white man with a Chinese background richer than mine and headed down the hall to the elevator. "How soon hath time..."
The doors slid open and I stepped in. I pressed one. Back to level 1, I thought. There, I would rekindle the desire to be good, truly good, at one thing. To writing. To writing.
Dreaming in a Bad Way
Like a responsible super-senior, I ditched my last class and came home early. In my Milton class, I fought to stay awake by weighing the pros and cons of going to my next class, which, two days in, revealed itself to be a huge waste of time. University requirements under the guise of being educational in terms of "American Cultures" usually are. So I walked in the general direction of the class then turned right and headed home.
My housemate Maria was also home. We were in the same American Cultures class and had talked earlier about ditching - so I wasn't surprised to run into her on the stairs. She was holding an empty glass smeared with melted ice cream.
"Hello," I said, "Fancy seeing you here..."
She laughed and asked me what I was going to do with all my free time.
"Take a nap," I said.
"I wish I could."
"Why can't you?" Napping, like internet, should be available to everyone.
She couldn't nap because she'd wake up with a headache every time. "It's just not worth it for me," she said.
I understood what she meant. As well-napped as I am, a good nap can be extremely elusive. Timing is everything, as is the time of day. Nap too early and it's like you're extending your lazing around in bed time. Nap too late and it throws off your actual bedtime. I like to nap between three and five pm, ideally for an hour, even though scientific studies show that a half-hour nap has the most energizing benefits.
I wanted to nap for an hour today and told Maria so.
"D'you think you could wake me up at three thirty?"
"You're not going to be grumpy?"
"No way," I said, "I need to get up or else I'll just sleep forever. I'm aiming for one of those refreshing naps."
She shrugged and said she'd knock on my door when the time came. I climbed into bed and closed my eyes.
True to her word, she banged on my door at 3:30. It startled me, but I was not fully awake. I had broken the thirty-minute rule and was feeling even more tired than when I had first lain down - I thanked her for banging on the door and fell back to the pillow, hoping for more of the same delicious slumber, but my brain was already going haywire.
I dreamed, in a bad way. I had parked my car in some lot and could not find it. My friends Marvin and Calvin had picked me up and offered to take me to my car. I sat in the back seat, looking anxiously out the window at passing cars as we drove from lot to lot. "Is it here?" asked Calvin, every so often.
"No," I'd say. My voice was tinged with worry. In the dream, my and their parents were waiting at their house, so that we could leave for some road trip. My father had left a voice mail on my phone saying they were waiting patiently for us, and that he had bought me a chain of some sort, to go with a pendant. "I have the chain," he said, his voice calm and happy, "I hope you will like it."
In the car, I wrung my hands and thought about the chain. Marvin impatiently tapped his fingers against his knees and made heavy sighing sounds. "Where did you park your car, Betty?"
"I don't know, I don't know."
All the lots started to look the same, surrounded by bland apartment complexes that had the same shaped pools. It was a horrible labyrinth. I would never find my car, a white Prius, and I worried that everyone was waiting for me. The boys were patient enough, but as Calvin made another turn, his phone rang and he picked it up. It was some girl, obviously in her teens, looking for one of his friends, whom she wanted to go out with.
"So you're not with him?" she said.
"Nope," said Calvin, one hand on the wheel. It struck me then how old they had grown - driving me around, looking for my goddamn car when they had lives of their own. I used to tutor them, you see, but now they were playing patience with me, and I obviously didn't know a thing anymore.
It didn't look like we were getting anywhere. My car was nowhere to be found and I feared we were in another city altogether. And I was beginning to feel dizzy, as the buildings and cars flew by and Calvin kept turning and turning....
I woke up, my neck at an awkward angle, but immediately relieved that it had just been a dream. I was about to burst in my dream, beneath the pressure of two families waiting for me to find my car so that we could go on a trip.
Stepping out of my room, I heard voices in the kitchen. Maria laughing with our housemate Kirsten.
"Hey guys," I said.
"You went back to sleep?" Maria asked.
"I did. I shouldn't have. I had bad dreams."
Maria chuckled. "My dreams are very bland. And repetitive."
"How so?"
"They're boring," she said.
"Like..."
She sighed, and her expression said, "You asked for it." "I usually dream about charging my ipod."
I stared at her. "Really. That's it?"
"Yup. I charge my ipod. It's charged. I wake up."
"Wow. They are boring."
It seemed boastful to talk about my own more vivid dreams, the most recent one excluded, but I did so anyway. I told her about flying and about being chased by dogs. Kirsten and Maria were impressed - neither of them ever dreamed about flying.
"For some reason though," I paused for a minute, "I'm always running and jumping over trashcans."
"That's awful," Maria said.
"Yeah... you charge your ipod. But adrenaline pumps through my veins and I jump over trashcans. Eventually I start flying."
"Crazy," they both said.
"Yeah."
It got quiet in the kitchen. Kirsten left to check on her laundry. I smiled tiredly at Maria and wondered why the hell I'm always either lost or running.
My housemate Maria was also home. We were in the same American Cultures class and had talked earlier about ditching - so I wasn't surprised to run into her on the stairs. She was holding an empty glass smeared with melted ice cream.
"Hello," I said, "Fancy seeing you here..."
She laughed and asked me what I was going to do with all my free time.
"Take a nap," I said.
"I wish I could."
"Why can't you?" Napping, like internet, should be available to everyone.
She couldn't nap because she'd wake up with a headache every time. "It's just not worth it for me," she said.
I understood what she meant. As well-napped as I am, a good nap can be extremely elusive. Timing is everything, as is the time of day. Nap too early and it's like you're extending your lazing around in bed time. Nap too late and it throws off your actual bedtime. I like to nap between three and five pm, ideally for an hour, even though scientific studies show that a half-hour nap has the most energizing benefits.
I wanted to nap for an hour today and told Maria so.
"D'you think you could wake me up at three thirty?"
"You're not going to be grumpy?"
"No way," I said, "I need to get up or else I'll just sleep forever. I'm aiming for one of those refreshing naps."
She shrugged and said she'd knock on my door when the time came. I climbed into bed and closed my eyes.
True to her word, she banged on my door at 3:30. It startled me, but I was not fully awake. I had broken the thirty-minute rule and was feeling even more tired than when I had first lain down - I thanked her for banging on the door and fell back to the pillow, hoping for more of the same delicious slumber, but my brain was already going haywire.
I dreamed, in a bad way. I had parked my car in some lot and could not find it. My friends Marvin and Calvin had picked me up and offered to take me to my car. I sat in the back seat, looking anxiously out the window at passing cars as we drove from lot to lot. "Is it here?" asked Calvin, every so often.
"No," I'd say. My voice was tinged with worry. In the dream, my and their parents were waiting at their house, so that we could leave for some road trip. My father had left a voice mail on my phone saying they were waiting patiently for us, and that he had bought me a chain of some sort, to go with a pendant. "I have the chain," he said, his voice calm and happy, "I hope you will like it."
In the car, I wrung my hands and thought about the chain. Marvin impatiently tapped his fingers against his knees and made heavy sighing sounds. "Where did you park your car, Betty?"
"I don't know, I don't know."
All the lots started to look the same, surrounded by bland apartment complexes that had the same shaped pools. It was a horrible labyrinth. I would never find my car, a white Prius, and I worried that everyone was waiting for me. The boys were patient enough, but as Calvin made another turn, his phone rang and he picked it up. It was some girl, obviously in her teens, looking for one of his friends, whom she wanted to go out with.
"So you're not with him?" she said.
"Nope," said Calvin, one hand on the wheel. It struck me then how old they had grown - driving me around, looking for my goddamn car when they had lives of their own. I used to tutor them, you see, but now they were playing patience with me, and I obviously didn't know a thing anymore.
It didn't look like we were getting anywhere. My car was nowhere to be found and I feared we were in another city altogether. And I was beginning to feel dizzy, as the buildings and cars flew by and Calvin kept turning and turning....
I woke up, my neck at an awkward angle, but immediately relieved that it had just been a dream. I was about to burst in my dream, beneath the pressure of two families waiting for me to find my car so that we could go on a trip.
Stepping out of my room, I heard voices in the kitchen. Maria laughing with our housemate Kirsten.
"Hey guys," I said.
"You went back to sleep?" Maria asked.
"I did. I shouldn't have. I had bad dreams."
Maria chuckled. "My dreams are very bland. And repetitive."
"How so?"
"They're boring," she said.
"Like..."
She sighed, and her expression said, "You asked for it." "I usually dream about charging my ipod."
I stared at her. "Really. That's it?"
"Yup. I charge my ipod. It's charged. I wake up."
"Wow. They are boring."
It seemed boastful to talk about my own more vivid dreams, the most recent one excluded, but I did so anyway. I told her about flying and about being chased by dogs. Kirsten and Maria were impressed - neither of them ever dreamed about flying.
"For some reason though," I paused for a minute, "I'm always running and jumping over trashcans."
"That's awful," Maria said.
"Yeah... you charge your ipod. But adrenaline pumps through my veins and I jump over trashcans. Eventually I start flying."
"Crazy," they both said.
"Yeah."
It got quiet in the kitchen. Kirsten left to check on her laundry. I smiled tiredly at Maria and wondered why the hell I'm always either lost or running.
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