FOUR HANDS AND THEN AWAY

New York City with Gary.

ON BEAUTY

"I think vitality is what is attractive to people. 
That's why there are a lot of pretty girls that are kind of boring to look at." 
—Linda Ronstadt, 1977

CLENCHED SOUL

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.


Pablo Neruda

IF I WRITE THAT, THEY'LL THINK IT'S ME

I had no choice but to sign up for a Creative Writing class this semester - a class I've been avoiding for awhile now.

Here's the truth - I am really insecure about sharing my writing. This blogging thing is really funny because I find that I am almost always inclined to share a real personal side of me, when in reality I am uninterested in letting most people get to know me.

So this creative writing class brings about some anxiety, because we are openly sharing our work. And I can take criticism, but there was an incident in a Lit class last year where we were paired up with a classmate to proofread one another's papers, and I was paired with this girl who was terrible at following the college paper format, or writing in general. I went easy on her though, because she had openly admitted to me that she hated writing and was only taking the class to fulfill her degree requirements.

When I got my paper back it was like somebody had violently attacked it with a red ballpoint pen. I stared at the paper I'd spent hours working on and researching, butchered. All the sentences she'd disregarded with a flippant slash, and scribbles of "this doesn't make sense" or "please revise" or "where is the thesis statement?" all over the margins. I was a bit miffed. The thesis statement is in the last line of the first paragraph, shit-for-brains, I wanted to say.

Her paper on the other hand was so unfortunate that no amount of editing could have saved it, and I might as well have just ran one long diagonal slash through the entire thing and written, "please take College Writing 101 again."

But I didn't.

But what would be worse is being the worst in a class of confident wordsmiths and storytellers.

The professor had us do some writing exercises before anything else.

Off to a bad start.

THE LITTLE THINGS

Rough week for many of us.

Writing thank you notes is so old school. Why don't I do this?