imperfection

"imperfection" is the pen name, or pseudonym, that today's author has chosen for herself. She says it matches her choice to use no capitalization and unconventional grammar in today's piece. What creativity, though! This story is a romance with a twist of tragedy, yes of unrequited love -- maybe fans of Twilight will find it more "perfect" than the author feels it is!



she'd followed him into his classroom one day, even though they weren't in the same class. she was something whimsical--part human, and part something unconventional. she was something different, all right. not good, not bad, and not even anything in-between.

she had plopped down into the seat next to him, ignoring the protests of the person who was supposed to sit there, and didn't say a word.he asked, vacillatingly, if she was lost--if she was new and needed the teacher to show her where her classroom was.her chin was resting in a pen-tattoo-d hand as she stared at him, her gaze unwavering.he shifted and looked away, waiting for the teacher to come over and just take her awayawayaway.---

years later, when they were in middle school- the place of busted lockers and duct-taped binders, she asked him to the very first dance. (the most important one.)he had said no. she had been expecting it, been steeling her heart up for his most-likely answer, but she hadn't expected it to hurt this bad; it was bad to the point of her paper heart getting tiny crinkles near the edges, bad to the point of her stomach coiling and uncoiling like a snake in a trance, badbadbad."don't break," she whispered to her heart. "don'tbreakdon'tbreakdon'tbreak."

he pretended not to hear her.---for once, he was the one watching her as she did something unimportantly urgent. he stared at her pen-tatoo'd hands and her dyed hair (FAKEFAKFAKE) hair and her too-skinny (breakable) limbs, and her eyes that showed him that there was a fire in her that kept her going, rammed her through plastic dolls with plastic houses and strong winds and this ongoing (empty) world.he picked up his pencil and told himself no.---

they were running the mile. she had been the last person to finish, and when she did, she sank down into itchy blades of grass with the ants and worms and weeds and flowers, lungs rattling out like a steam engine. her barely-existant ankles looked as if they would shatter into a million pieces, but her eyes were gleaming and stronger than ever. "you have a long way to go," he told her.she looks up at him with her eyes the color of mirrors, and let out a laugh that sounded like dry leaves rustling to together in a breeze. "maybe," she said, "but at least i get to smell the roses."---

"do you think," she asks one day, out of the blue, "that maybe you could pretend that i was perfect?"he gives her one of his looks--the one that's half quizzical and half belittling--and rips her hands from his shoulders. (he watches the daisy petals fall from a naked stalk.)"i'm trying," she whispers. "i'm trying so hard, and i'm killing so many flowers, but they all say that you love me."he says nothing, and she laughs. "i guess flowers are just like pretty-faced people, then.)---a week later, she gets that dance. and for those three minutes, she can pretend that she is perfect, that flowers are actually pretty and smart, and she can feel that paper heart of hers being taped together.there's no music, and it's in the middle of nowhere but not really, just a few blocks down, under a dimming streetlight, but she doens't care. she doesn't notice that she's wearing torn jeans and a tattered shirt that's almost down to her knees, and not in a fancy dress and heels, or that he's staring at a point just beyond her head.she cries, and she tucks this little moment away into her book of memories.---

he's holding an expensive paintbrush and swirling to colors together. he's supposed to make something beautiful, something tragic.he paints her, with her mirror eyes and pen-tattoo'd hands, and her spindly limbs and that fire in her.he stares at the painting for hours before he finds his dad's lighter and sets it on fire.(burn.)she falls on the blacktop, right on the grafitti hopskotch squares. ---

"she's been malnourished," the doctor tells him. "we'll keep her on life support, and see if we can get her to gain weight."he barely nods before giving him a loose handshake. the doctor leaves, and he glares at her.(the pretty flowers always die early.)a little color drains from her lips.--the nurses whisper in hushed tones. "it's a pity," they sigh. "she would have been a beauty."he watches her knuckles turn white as her hands clench into tiny, bony fists.--

she's scheduled to die in two hours.he's giving her his last visit when he stops thinking. he grabs her and pulls her out of the bundle of tubes. she's set onto his back somewhat awkwardly, but it feels right--it feels perfect.(she would have loved to hear him say that.)and he runs.--they're at the school, and he tumbles down a hill and they land near the track-- the one where they ran the mile.she opens her eyes and sees his face, illuminated by the dim light of the sunrise. and suddenly, everything is perfect and pretty and beautiful--even the dirt on her face, and the grass stains on her hospital gown, and the worms and the weeds and the itchy blades of grass and her pen-tattoos.sunlight falls on her flower-face, and it feels like warm rain. "hello," she whispers. "hello, sun. hello, hello."

"Absolute"ly

Well, it's that time of the year and in Advanced English we are reading Robert Cormier, one of the greatest writers of young adult novels (in my humble opinion!) This post, is unlike the others in that the essence of it is really hidden in the comments part of this post. As we are enjoying our third winter storm of the year and reading I Am the Cheese, we tried our hand at imitating Robert Cormiers style by using absolute phrases to zero in on some tiny detail within a scene. In the comments, the absolute phrases are marked with italics. An absolute phrase combines a noun and a participial form of a verb ("ed" or "ing" suffix) to zoom in and examine a piece of the whole. Click on the "Comments" link on the bottom of this post to see how something as simple as a tiny phrase can have a profound effect on our writing.

P.S. If Cormier has captured your attention, try reading The Chocolate War and The Rag and Bone Shop. Both are simply wonderful.

Mini-Metaphor poems

Some of these poems are inspired by characters we are reading about in Things Not Seen, others are inspired by our own experiences, but all of them say so much with so little. These poems emphasize the power of metaphor. The first one is by Chris, the other three are anonymous.

I am a book
with a cover
that does not interest you.
Like wind, you cannot see me,
but feel.


I am a dress,
pretty, beautiful,
used once,
then thrown away
in a closet.
I am alone.


I am fire.
I scorch whomever
tries to love me.
I burn and turn
until there is no one left.


I am a dark room,
mysterious and luminous.
Never will you know
what lies inside.

One Great Poem Inspires Another

In the March 21, 2005, Linda Gregg published a poem called "Whomever" in the New Yorker magazine. It haunted me. It told about a homeless person in Penn Station who tried, but failed, to be "invisible." Since we are studying a book about invisibility right now, I thought we could take the pattern Linda Gregg created grammatically and adapt it to write about something new, some other person who is figuratively "invisible."

Mark's poem is about just such a person; I won't ruin the surprise, since I think it speaks for itself. And to Linda Gregg, if you ever read this post, forgive us our "borrowing." We learn from the best!


You are not out yet.
I saw you again this mourning in your baggy pants.
In between bars,
Thick, rusty, hard.
Dressed in orange, black and white
With tears, sadness, and fear in your eyes
Locked up, but not as far away as you want.
I dont know what to think.
I'm glad to be here with you
I think there is a dark side to you.
Other times I think you are a great guy.
Always it is pity,
A bucket full of pity.
Never having a life with your family.

Mr. V's Authorial Debut

OK, so the secret is out. I've been working on a book. This is only Chapter 4, or at least pieces of it, and that's as far as I've gotten. I hope it won't be too confusing, even though it refers to specific scenes from chapter 1-3. The narrator is a sixteen-year-old-boy who is off from school for the summer. He had to move way out in the booneys due to his parents' sudden divorce. A distant cousin of his mother set them up with a man named Jackson Knoll, a man they've never met, who is providing lodging and a job for them both in a country convenience store. The only other employee of the store is Jen.

Please leave me comments! This is only a rough draft with plenty of errors and room for improvement, but I hope it creates a bit of intrigue about some of the weird things going on in the tiny town of Pleasant Valley. Enjoy!

Chapter 4

The first time I saw the helicopter, it was just after sunset. I’m not really sure where it came from, but I heard it, hovering over our apartment like a curious insect.
“Well, that I didn’t expect to see,” I muttered.
“What was that honey?” my mom called from the kitchen sink, where running water must have obscured her hearing.
“Nothing,” I told her, leaning up against the cold glass, watching it disappear into the gray dusk. It’s twinkling light drew back into the darkness like a star, and just beyond a forested hill, sank slowly into the fabric of the land. And that was it.
Until I caught the same sound again two days later. This time it was midday and I was restocking Ding Dongs in the store. An old lady in a hat was pondering the tabloids and talking to herself, clicking her tongue in disdain.
“Is there a hospital nearby?” I asked.
She looked up at me inquisitively and then over her shoulder as if to check if I was speaking to her. “No,” she finally replied, turning back to the tabloids.
“It’s just . . .” She looked at me over her glasses as I spoke. “It’s the second time I’ve heard that helicopter this week and it seems strange that one would fly over here unless it was a MediVac or something.”
No response.
“Excuse me,” I said, ducking into the back room and out the rear exit.
The strange, gray bird was following the same path it had two days earlier, predetermined, resolute, growing smaller and smaller until it fell out of sight in the same distant stand of trees. I stood, hands on my hips, staring after it.

I forgot to ask Jen that afternoon. There was something about her that could make you forget anything. Her sharp, bright eyes and wide gleaming smile.
“Did you know that Mr. Knoll lets us steal a candybar each break? “
“Lets you steal?”
“Yeah, kind of funny, huh? I guess it’s not really stealing then, but it still feels kind of fun.” She strolled over to the candybar rack. “My favorite is Three Musketeers. It’s like eating a chocolate cloud.”
“Awh, c’mon! Snickers is so much better. Peanuts, caramel. Who can resist that?” She reached for one and slipped back behind the counter.
“Someone who wants to keep her girlish figure,” she joked. Then, more seriously she added, “Y’know, funny thing about Mr. Knoll is that if anyone other than an employee on break steals a candybar, there’s hell to pay. Once, this guy was passing through, middle aged, sports coat, not exactly your shoplifting type, and sure enough, camera caught him snagging a Snickers bar. Knoll got the guy put in jail. I mean, literally. Thirty days, maximum sentence.”
“Wait, you mean he’s got cameras in this place?”
“Sure – behind those mirrors in the corners – that’s one-way glass.”
“Really? Way out here? But where are the monitors?”
“Oh, I don’t think there are any. Just recordings of everything that goes on in here.” Suddenly, she leaned forward, changing her tone. “Although, I have wondered whether Jackson Knoll sits in a cellar somewhere, watching us like a cat, like everything in here is some bizarre reality TV show.” She leaned in close, so close, I felt her breath. “And we are the cast.” She drew back, nodding somberly.
A second later, the line of her mouth curved into a reluctant smile. “I wish you could see your face!” She started to laugh. “You look like you swallowed a bug!”
“I – I knew you were joking,” I said, sagging my shoulders and averting her gaze. “He wouldn’t have cameras in a hick-town convenience store like this.”
“Oh, I wasn’t kidding about that part,” she said, handing me a Snickers. “There are cameras, all right. Thirty days. The guy went to jail.”
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To be honest, it was tough to understand how the place stayed in business. The gas was the most expensive place I’ve ever seen, and only two or three cars would drop in before lunch and maybe five or six on there way home from work. Mom and I never did accounting. An armored truck pulled up in the middle of the night, and they had their own key to the store and the cash register. All we had to do was lock up and walk upstairs to our apartment. We figured we only made about a hundred dollars a day, certainly not much more than that, which would cover only the employees wages. So how was Jackson Knoll paying for the electric, the stock, the taxes . . . the whole thing seemed a little fishy, though nothing was as strange as the man himself.
Ther was a picture of him, from the seventies,w ith a mustache and bushy sideburns, that hung behind the counter, sunbleached and cracking. The little engraved panel on the frame said “Jackson Knoll, Proprietor.” He didn’t really look like a man who would get rich selling Twinkies and travel he world someday, but apparently he’d surprised the people of Pleasant Valley, rising above and beyond their modest expectations.
One day, she came back again. It was the lady with the flipped up curls, driving the blue Lincoln. Same lady. Same car. I swear.
“Good morning,” I said, stepping into the morning sun.
She didn’t reply, but a credit card magically appeared between two of her fingers. She chewed her gum methodically and said, “Fill ‘er up.”
This was the second time I couldn’t quite make out the man sitting in the passenger seat. I was standing next to the car, and he was pretty tall, so all I could see was his blue jeans and his hairy arms. There was blonde hair on his arms, almost white, and lots of it. The gasoline slowly chugged into the car, then stopped abruptly after three gallons. It was full. I swiped the card.
“How’s your father? Feeling better?” I asked turing the card back to her slim fingers and pointed nails.
“Excuse me?” she said, lifting her lip and eyebrow into something between puzzlement and a sneer.
“I mean, your father, the other night. You seemed really worried about him. Is he OK?” I stammered. The man in the passenger seat said something under his breath.
“My father,” the woman said, staring ahead and starting her car, “my father has been dead since before you were born.” And with that, she sped off, leaving my thoughts spinning.

Oh, The Humiliation!

Sometimes, an embarrassing or painful moment can be the richest source material for writers. This excerpt from Cody's memoir proves how true this is. The voice in this piece is exceptional; if you know Cody, you feel like you are listening to him tell it! OH, and by the way, the English class scene did not take place in English class, and I am not the teacher . . .


I poked my neck in the room and my English teacher shot a stern look back at me. That was quite the awkward moment. I walked in with my head hung low.

“You’re late.” The cold, harsh voice was one that always made me very nervous.

“I-I know” I stammered. “I slept through my alarm and I ran to try to get here in time.”

“I don’t need to hear your excuses. If you ran you would have been here on time. Have a seat.” I sat down and slowly sunk into my chair lower and lower. He spoke up again, “Today we will be learning grammar, and common mistakes that are made while trying to use it properly.”

He passed out worksheets to everybody and when he came to me he paused. He bent down and got closer to me. “You have a D- in my class Mr. Hutkin. Small things like being late are unacceptable.” I nodded.

As much as I would like to explain why I was late, apparently he didn’t want to hear my excuses. I didn’t like him. He was my least favorite teacher. So many words mixed in my head of what I wanted to reply. I filtered them and came out with; “Yes sir.” I somehow made it until the end of the day.

Later that night after I had finished my homework, I decided I needed to take my shower. It was about 9:00. I emptied my pockets and put the contents on my bed: a crumpled piece of paper, at least 7 pencils, and my phone. I pulled my pants down. But it’s okay, I had boxers on. I sat on my bed so I could get the pants off of my ankles when I felt a surging pain rush up to the right side of my butt. My legs sprung up and I saw blood all over them. I felt like I had mooned a javelin thrower. I turned around to see a pencil sticking straight out. Half of it was inside of my body. My mom walked past my door and did a double take. Who could blame her? She saw a thirteen year old boy, blood dripping down legs, in underwear, pants at ankles, and pencil in butt. She said something that blew my mind.

“Maybe if your room wasn’t so messy, that wouldn’t have happened.” I was expecting something like. “Are you okay?” or maybe, “Let me help you out.” Instead I get a comment on the style of my room.

Looking back I must admit it is humorous. Of course while it was happening it wasn’t. That same pencil is actually still on my nightstand. The nickname “princess” wore off after about a month. At night some people check for bugs, I check for pencils. I must say, that was one big splinter.

Horror (or at least Hyperbole!)

Do you remember those early trips to the dentist as a child, when you were never sure if you were going to make it out alive? Andrew captures these moments well in his humorous memoir. I love how he builds in elements of the horror genre to write about the dentist. It's a perfect extended hyperbole. (P. S. Sorry I can't figure out how to make blogger indent the paragraphs. Weird, huh?)

Imagine being forced into a small colorless room where a man approaches you with a long needle, a large pair of pliers, and you have nowhere to run or hide. This is my story.
It all began on a beautiful sunny day as my Mom drove me through our little town that I knew so well. It was grocery day, the day my brother and I loaded into our SUV with its hot, sticky, leather seats. The sun scorched our car and us like toast in an oven as we headed towards Wegman’s grocery store to stock up on food for the upcoming week. This day seemed strangely different from the rest of the times we had gone grocery shopping; I could just feel something was wrong. It wasn’t until our car pulled up to the large white building with a giant ceramic tooth out front that I realized I was at none other than a child- killing dentist’s office!

I stared at my Mom with my big round blue eyes and begged her not to make me enter that wretched building, but it was no use. After several minutes, which seemed like hours of lecturing from her about how nice the dentist was, I was physically dragged and forced into the all white dungeon. I made my way into a cold room that contained what looked like to me like torture tools hanging on the cold, lifeless walls. I was then directed to a bed-like chair by a pretty woman with an evil smile on her face and breath that smelled like baloney and putrid cheese. She told me to lie down on the stiff, cot-like chair that felt as if I was lying on a rock. I had no doubt she too was in on the plot to kill me, along with my Mom and the dentist. Then a large light beamed down at me from just above my head. My frail, squinting eyes made me feel as if I was a deer caught in the headlights of a car. Just when I was sure things couldn’t get any worse, I heard footsteps moving towards me. I saw a tall figure in a white coat approach me holding a needle the size of my arm, and as skinny and sharp as a point on a barbed wire fence. Then he leaned over and stuck the long pointy needle deep inside of my mouth as excruciating pain shot all around my jaw and face. Then all of a sudden, the pain stopped and my mouth felt numb. Just when I thought the guy wasn’t going to actually slaughter me, he took a weird looking pair of pliers and jammed them into my mouth. I could taste hand sanitizer on his powerful, small fingers. Next I heard a pop as I gazed at the tooth that shot out of my mouth along with the dentist’s cold strong hands and a pair of blood soaked metal pliers from my numb and all together petrified mouth. I stared the tooth down for a moment, just to let it know that it was the reason for all the ruckus and pain today. It did not care; it just stared back up at me with its white lifeless eye. Then the colorless tall white figure finally spoke, and said, “All right, you’re good to go.”

“That’s it? but I thought you were going to kill me!” I said.

“Yeah, that’s what all the kids think, but I’m really not that bad of a guy. I just happen to have the job most hated by children,” said the dentist.

“You know what, you are a good guy and dentist, that wasn’t that bad. I will tell the rest of the kids at school too”, I said.

“Thanks kid, have a good one, and I’ll see you at your next checkup” said the dentist with a smile.

“All right. Bye and thank you,” I exclaimed. And as I left the office and drove home I felt bad that I had said all those crummy things about the dentist. He ended up being okay after all.

This experience made my dentist visits a lot less scary and even slightly enjoyable at times. This routine visit to the dentist also taught me not to judge a book by its cover. In my particular case, the so-called killer dentist ended up being a really cool, nice guy. After the entire dentist experience, I look back upon it today and realize it wasn’t all that bad. When the day was done at the dentist’s office, I ended up with a free toothbrush and milkshakes for the rest of the week to help sooth my sore mouth. Not a bad trade.