A Short Story, About a Short Story, About a Short Story
I wrote a story for Writer's craft, trying as much as possible not to write a story, and I would really appreciate some feedback, seeing as the comments I'm probably going to get back will include lots of "huh?"s and "I DONT GET IT!"s
I know at least three of you on my friends list are teachers and I'M WATCHING YOU!
Harvard University psychology professor and avid supporter of LSD, Ram Dass once said, "My goal isn’t to take away your confusion. Confusion is a fertile field in which everything is possible. If you think you ‘know,’ you’ve just calcified again."
Cassandra James sits at her computer desk, turning this thought over and over in her mind, spinning like a gerbil’s wheel with no stopping in sight. The mental exercise is much appreciated, in part because Cassandra lives alone, and because she has been unable to speak all weekend. Her thick brown hair is beginning to fall haphazardly over her once-tight sweatshirt that’s now two sizes too large since her diet has been reduced to chicken soup and strawberry jell-o, alone.
At this point in time, indefinable thoughts and Ram Dass are the only things that make sense to Cassandra, so she’s been adding to her list of potential graduation comments all day, Ram Dass’s included. Among her favourite quotes are comedian, Steven Wright’s, "I have an existential map; it has, 'You are here' written all over it," and fantasy writer, Tom Robbins’s assertion, "Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business."
Of course, all this list-making is just procrastination. The actual reason she is sitting at her desk is to write a short story for her Writer’s Craft class. Unfortunately, one needs more than a few lofty ideas to flesh out an entire plot.
“Though, what is any action but a procrastination of another?” she thinks to herself, and glancing at the pie recipe her mother left sitting on the barren and neglected stovetop, Cassandra writes, “If you want to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
“This is recovery mode,” she decides. Just before the weekend, Cassandra’s mouth had been cut open, five teeth ripped from her jaw and all the gaping holes then stitched back up again, nice and new. Now there is Codeine running in her bloodstream that seems to lend a texture to everything that passes under her gaze, allowing her to feel the shape of the cluttered objects in front of her. “This is no condition under which one should work!”
She slams down the ice pack which a moment ago was soothing her bloated cheek.
“This is pointless! I can’t even sort out my own head, let alone another world for a fictional character,” and oddly it is at this moment that Cassandra begins to type her first line.
Because of the silence forcing itself upon her, Cassandra notices her other senses heightening. Unable to speak, sensations to Cassandra’s ears and eyes are being altered by the battered and inferior state of her mouth and everything she sees has new light and meaning. She picks up a cylindrical silver tin labeled, “The Weary Gardener’s Lavender Spice Skin Balm,” and twirls it around and around in her hand, caressing the smooth, circular, opening ridge. The magic this holds for her, in just touching, again stops her from writing coherently. She wonders if this story really matters in the grand scheme of things, and just what the hell is the grand scheme of things anyway? “Why are we measuring everything to this intangible scale?”
Thoughts like this dawn on her much like a dove lands on a tree branch momentarily before it takes flight again, leaving only memories of its grace. The words she types meld into each other and shift into patterns that are anything but sentences. Nothing resembles a storyline, but then again, life is nothing but an accumulation of thoughts, so how could anything she writes not be a story? Quoting the Danish existentialist philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, Cassandra scribbles down the words originally spoken, "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." At the moment, she couldn’t apply her mind to writing a story; Cassandra knew only that she had to live one instead.
She then tried to read over what she had written but realized she could not. Her eyes stopped and stumbled over every phrase. Anything that wasn’t a new thought felt regressive to her and only pure production would satisfy. The tenses didn’t matter, the grammar didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the ideas.
She didn’t understand why it had suddenly become so important for her to express her views on life. Maybe she was scared that she would pass through high school without anyone really understanding who she was, but she was wise enough to know that she couldn’t even begin to explain it. Cassandra didn’t just want to be some face on a page, giving shout outs to the initials of her nameless friends, in a nonsensical stream of consciousness. This quote was important and so was the photo she selected to accompany it.
It must have been receiving the grad photo proofs that started Cassandra off on this tangent of self-expression. Or maybe it was the last few days of sitting on the couch with nothing but her own ideas swirling around in her head. Let’s not forget the large dosages of Codeine she was prescribed to take every couple of hours. Whatever it was, she perceived things differently now. The level of depth and reflection every object she looked at, all had equations. Math for the first time in her life seemed like something worthwhile. She felt herself exploring the possibilities of everything. The overwhelming sensation that she could do anything was being frustrated by being forced to sit down and make up a story.
Cassandra needed a break. But just as the thought came to her, another replaced it. “A break from what?” she wondered. The only break in life is death, and at that point she had only written three lines of her short story. And they happened to read, “Harvard University psychology professor and avid supporter of LSD, Ram Dass once said, "My goal isn’t to take away your confusion. Confusion is a fertile field in which everything is possible. If you think you ‘know,’ you’ve just calcified again." Her character, Chelsea Jamieson, sits at her computer desk, turning this thought over and over in her mind, spinning like a gerbil’s wheel with no stopping in sight.
PS: I had my wisdom teeth out on Thursday. It's kinda the key.
I know at least three of you on my friends list are teachers and I'M WATCHING YOU!
Harvard University psychology professor and avid supporter of LSD, Ram Dass once said, "My goal isn’t to take away your confusion. Confusion is a fertile field in which everything is possible. If you think you ‘know,’ you’ve just calcified again."
Cassandra James sits at her computer desk, turning this thought over and over in her mind, spinning like a gerbil’s wheel with no stopping in sight. The mental exercise is much appreciated, in part because Cassandra lives alone, and because she has been unable to speak all weekend. Her thick brown hair is beginning to fall haphazardly over her once-tight sweatshirt that’s now two sizes too large since her diet has been reduced to chicken soup and strawberry jell-o, alone.
At this point in time, indefinable thoughts and Ram Dass are the only things that make sense to Cassandra, so she’s been adding to her list of potential graduation comments all day, Ram Dass’s included. Among her favourite quotes are comedian, Steven Wright’s, "I have an existential map; it has, 'You are here' written all over it," and fantasy writer, Tom Robbins’s assertion, "Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business."
Of course, all this list-making is just procrastination. The actual reason she is sitting at her desk is to write a short story for her Writer’s Craft class. Unfortunately, one needs more than a few lofty ideas to flesh out an entire plot.
“Though, what is any action but a procrastination of another?” she thinks to herself, and glancing at the pie recipe her mother left sitting on the barren and neglected stovetop, Cassandra writes, “If you want to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
“This is recovery mode,” she decides. Just before the weekend, Cassandra’s mouth had been cut open, five teeth ripped from her jaw and all the gaping holes then stitched back up again, nice and new. Now there is Codeine running in her bloodstream that seems to lend a texture to everything that passes under her gaze, allowing her to feel the shape of the cluttered objects in front of her. “This is no condition under which one should work!”
She slams down the ice pack which a moment ago was soothing her bloated cheek.
“This is pointless! I can’t even sort out my own head, let alone another world for a fictional character,” and oddly it is at this moment that Cassandra begins to type her first line.
Because of the silence forcing itself upon her, Cassandra notices her other senses heightening. Unable to speak, sensations to Cassandra’s ears and eyes are being altered by the battered and inferior state of her mouth and everything she sees has new light and meaning. She picks up a cylindrical silver tin labeled, “The Weary Gardener’s Lavender Spice Skin Balm,” and twirls it around and around in her hand, caressing the smooth, circular, opening ridge. The magic this holds for her, in just touching, again stops her from writing coherently. She wonders if this story really matters in the grand scheme of things, and just what the hell is the grand scheme of things anyway? “Why are we measuring everything to this intangible scale?”
Thoughts like this dawn on her much like a dove lands on a tree branch momentarily before it takes flight again, leaving only memories of its grace. The words she types meld into each other and shift into patterns that are anything but sentences. Nothing resembles a storyline, but then again, life is nothing but an accumulation of thoughts, so how could anything she writes not be a story? Quoting the Danish existentialist philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, Cassandra scribbles down the words originally spoken, "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." At the moment, she couldn’t apply her mind to writing a story; Cassandra knew only that she had to live one instead.
She then tried to read over what she had written but realized she could not. Her eyes stopped and stumbled over every phrase. Anything that wasn’t a new thought felt regressive to her and only pure production would satisfy. The tenses didn’t matter, the grammar didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the ideas.
She didn’t understand why it had suddenly become so important for her to express her views on life. Maybe she was scared that she would pass through high school without anyone really understanding who she was, but she was wise enough to know that she couldn’t even begin to explain it. Cassandra didn’t just want to be some face on a page, giving shout outs to the initials of her nameless friends, in a nonsensical stream of consciousness. This quote was important and so was the photo she selected to accompany it.
It must have been receiving the grad photo proofs that started Cassandra off on this tangent of self-expression. Or maybe it was the last few days of sitting on the couch with nothing but her own ideas swirling around in her head. Let’s not forget the large dosages of Codeine she was prescribed to take every couple of hours. Whatever it was, she perceived things differently now. The level of depth and reflection every object she looked at, all had equations. Math for the first time in her life seemed like something worthwhile. She felt herself exploring the possibilities of everything. The overwhelming sensation that she could do anything was being frustrated by being forced to sit down and make up a story.
Cassandra needed a break. But just as the thought came to her, another replaced it. “A break from what?” she wondered. The only break in life is death, and at that point she had only written three lines of her short story. And they happened to read, “Harvard University psychology professor and avid supporter of LSD, Ram Dass once said, "My goal isn’t to take away your confusion. Confusion is a fertile field in which everything is possible. If you think you ‘know,’ you’ve just calcified again." Her character, Chelsea Jamieson, sits at her computer desk, turning this thought over and over in her mind, spinning like a gerbil’s wheel with no stopping in sight.
PS: I had my wisdom teeth out on Thursday. It's kinda the key.