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A place for Writing 12 students to read each other's writing, to critique, to suggest, to improve.
About Me
- Brad
- Former adult teacher who loves island beaches. Happy homebody and family man; once devoted dog owner, now without Tashi, my Tibetan Terrier. I prefer the absurdity of the imagination to the absurdity of imagining nothing.
12 comments:
It was a misty afternoon in a small town in the Philippines. The sky was gray and the sun was nowhere to be found. Groups of crows were flying all over the roof of an old, small church in the middle of the town. The church has a gothic appeal in the inside, different statues, and images of Saints and Jesus Christ resides on every wall and were lit up by burning candles. It was a very serene and solemn experience. The place somehow made me feel closer to the Creator. There was not more than ten pews inside, and I was seated on the second row. Then all of a sudden, while I was in the middle of my prayer, a lady with a big tattoo of a dragon that starts from her wrist up to her elbow interrupted me.
“ Where did you get your tattoo,”
she asked. I didn’t like her approach, for she destroyed my moment of prayer.
“ It’s a secret,” I replied.
She kind of realized that she was a bother, so she went back to her seat. And when I got out the church, I found her seated in one of the benches. She waited for me! This person is persistent, I thought to myself.
They called the man Old Crow because, so the story went, he had once dreamed of being one, flying across the late afternoon sky with all the other crows on the way to their roost by the marshy shores of Burnaby Lake.
A bird`s wing has an elbow just like ours Old Crow had once whispered, making it seem as though it was a big secret, one you shouldn`t tell anyone else.
Children loved him. When he came to stand alongside the wall outside the liquor store, he`d caw like a crow and flap his meagre, scab encrusted, arms. And, if you waited long enough, Old Crow would turn to you, hold his bony finger in front of his face, and whisper a secret in your ear.
“No, Lenny. . . Don’t die on me, Lenny!” she cried frantically and she still remembers as if it happened yesterday.
There was a crow teenager boy named Lenny. He was an athlete during his high school years.
Of course, most of beautiful young crow girls were crazy over him, but not Amy. Amy was Lenny’s oldest friend, and he thought he could do anything if Amy asked him.
In secretly Lenny loved her, but he couldn’t tell her because ‘if I would tell her, our friendship would end,’ Lenny thought. So, when Amy some jerk to introduce Lenny that he was her boyfriend, he couldn’t say anything.
As usual, Amy hung out with her boyfriend and Lenny. Her boyfriend hated Lenny because wherever he went, the girls were screaming at him; and yet, it seemed Lenny was in love with Amy.
One day, jerk made a bet with Lenny. The bet was to fly over a wall and returned to Amy, and if any of them came back first, Amy was the prize. So there they were, prepared to take off and win. As Lenny turned the corner of the wall, he was sure that he was a winner.
Not until that jerk tricked Lenny to think Amy was watching through binocular. So, as Lenny turned over to see Amy, he shoved Lenny to fall down, stepped over Lenny’s elbow, then stabbed him in the heart, and left him there to die.
As the jerk turned around to fly over to finish the race, Amy was there to see all of it, and that jerk didn’t seem to surprise; in fact, he pretended not see Amy, and flew over to win that race.
As Amy knelt down to Lenny to say, “I’m sorry to make you do this.” “No, it was fun, and. . . I love you. . .” Lenny said lastly and died in her arms. Amy cried uncontrollably, and finally realized Lenny loved her all along, and couldn’t realize it until now.
-335 words.
The Morning
This morning, when he was walking towards the company’s door, he found there was something unusual---many boxes in neat pile along the facade wall except the door, some securities strolling in the front of the building.
He suddenly felt the ominous dark clouds gathering over his head. He came to the front door in strides, and used the card-key to open the door. But the key didn’t work. At that moment, the two securities were standing beside him.
“Sir, here is your letter from the manager.” the security said and gave him a letter.
He opened the letter with a puzzled frown on his face.
“Because of the current recession, our company’s business is going down deeply. This morning, if you can’t open the door with your key, that means you are lay-off. You should return the key to the security and follow them to go into the company building; you were asked to pack a box with all your private things in fifteen minutes, and then go out the building.”
He couldn’t believe his eyes. He said in a terribly loud voice, “ I have worked in the company for fifteen years, they shouldn’t give me the elbow like that. Could you tell me how many people are lay-off ?”
“We don’t know. That is the company’s secret,” the security answered coldly. Then the two securities led him through the emergency door to go into the building.
After fifteen minutes, he carried the box and went out the emergency exit with heavy steps. “ How can I pay the mortgage? How can I pay the car loan? How can I….” he sighed deeply at the thought.
Several crows were flying over his head with sad cries. He felt a particular cold this morning.
----297 words
Keep way from the crow
In Chinese culture, crow is a kind of inauspicious bird. We don’t like its image and the sound, and hate them as rascals.
In social life, we call the men who prefer to the gossip talk and sow discord as the crow beak. In the past, people called the officers who worked in the procurator organ and stopped no evil were the “crows”.
In the literature, the crow is the symbol of dark mind, greedy, dirty and cruel as a vulture. It is the code of meaning harsh, cold, depression, the ending of a day, and an ill omen. In the paradigm, the word crow almost causes us to associate those negative things immediately and feel the heart shrink.
The “Crow Terrace” was the nickname of the “Cypress Terrace” of the imperial prison of Son dynasty. There were many cypresses in the yard, and lots crow nests on the trees. People would rather like to call it “Crow Terrace” for this hatred crows’ prison in which the famous poet Su Tung-po was restrained for five years.
For a common farmer family, the crow nest on the tree of the yard is the trouble at elbow and armpit. Other than cawing on the wall, roof and dropping, they rummage your yard. More than that, Chinese believe that they will bring some unluckiness to you family. They will demolish the nest and shoot the birds away with slingshots.
I don’t know the deep reason in secret of their mind; I just think they don’t like the crow for their figure, colour, sound, and their behavior—none makes them seem to be gentlemen.
Words: 270
Keep way from the crow
In Chinese culture, crow is a kind of inauspicious bird. We don’t like its image and the sound, and hate them as rascals.
In social life, we call the men who prefer to the gossip talk and sow discord as the crow beak. In the past, people called the officers who worked in the procurator organ and stopped no evil were the “crows”.
In the literature, the crow is the symbol of dark mind, greedy, dirty and cruel as a vulture. It is the code of meaning harsh, cold, depression, the ending of a day, and an ill omen. In the paradigm, the word crow almost causes us to associate those negative things immediately and feel the heart shrink.
The “Crow Terrace” was the nickname of the “Cypress Terrace” of the imperial prison of Son dynasty. There were many cypresses in the yard, and lots crow nests on the trees. People would rather like to call it “Crow Terrace” for this hatred crows’ prison in which the famous poet Su Tung-po was restrained for five years.
For a common farmer family, the crow nest on the tree of the yard is the trouble at elbow and armpit. Other than cawing on the wall, roof and dropping, they rummage your yard. More than that, Chinese believe that they will bring some unluckiness to you family. They will demolish the nest and shoot the birds away with slingshots.
I don’t know the deep reason in secret of their mind; I just think they don’t like the crow for their figure, colour, sound, and their behavior—none makes them seem to be gentlemen.
Words: 270
Its not often that my aunt and I would actually go out and browse through the mall. Usually we would just hang out at home, playing video games and such. Occasionally take the dogs out for long walks in the woods where we could play ball with them. Without the fear of throwing the ball in a direction some poor pedestrian would be walking in. Sometimes we would take a longer trip down into the deeper woods to what we called our "secret pond". It really wasn't much of a pond, more like a small hole of water.
But today we were off to the incredibly boring mall too go shopping. Not really my idea of an exciting day. But I had no choice to tag along, my aunt can be quite persuasive. The drive didn't take very long, just a few short minutes. When we arrived we got out of the car briskly and headed towards the front entrance of the mall. It was not very busy due to the fact it was earlier in the afternoon we presumed. We were about 50 feet from the main entrance door when it happened. All you could hear was this loud "SLAP" sound right in front of us. My aunt and I looked at each other in shock, then at the ground in front of us. There laid what looked like a slab of beef fat. Slowly I raised an eyebrow, completely confused with what happened.
"Chris, look up over there!" My aunt pointed upwards facing north of us.
There it was. A crow, perched up high on a wall, above a Safeway sign. It took us a minute to run through all the possibilities of what just happened. Either, a random piece of fat rained from the sky and landed in front of us. Or this crow had just dropped a slab of disgusting fat right in our direction.
"Think that bird just threw it at us?" I said to her, as I scratched my elbow in bewilderment.
We both looked at each other, then at the bird, then back at the piece of fat. Then all at once we burst out in laughter at the complete randomness of the situation, as we continued into the mall.
A few days he has being driving me of the wall. Today he opened his secret. He announced proudly; he bought a house. He is taking us to show this house. I was excited. It was a long drive from our apartment. He stopped his car in front of an old house. Yellow red leaves were spread everywhere in the yard. Few crows sitting on the trees seemed like they were over there to welcome us. When I entered in the house once I looked at wall then roof. The walls were colored with crayons. On ceiling had patch looked like leaked. In washroom tub, sink and toilet were turned yellow to white. My husband assumed I was not happy anymore. He told me, “yes house is pretty dirty, but it will look nice again with a little elbow grease"
The Secret
The sun sunk when dusk came. Crows came too at the same time. There were countless. They carpeted the sky like the ground and sky exchanged their positions. Whenever Lisa drove out of Burnaby Costso, before she turned on Willinton Road, she would always be amazed by the “crow carpet”. They landed on wires and poles. Made them look like complicated staves. Sometimes she’d worry that the weight of the crows would break the wires.
Once Lisa put her elbow out of the window of her car when she passed by the “crow club”, guess what, a “bomb” dropped from sky on it. She was so disgusted and swore to herself never do it again. She always wondered why crows always rested here when tons of them headed to the same place from all different directions. “It was the rancidness attracted them.” Erick told her.
“The what?” Lisa doubted.
“Do you see that wall?” Eric pointed to the gray wall of the *** restaurant which was famous for their meat pie with a crooked smile. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“What?” Lisa felt tensed even she knew Eric was just kidding.
“Did you ever go to this restaurant with your ex?” Eric looked solemn abruptly.
“No, I’ve never even stepped into there, why?” Lisa was curious anyway.
“Don’t then. . . .Since the meat stuffing they serve is made from crows’ meat. And the rest parts like heads or claws, they buried them under the wall.”
246words
I walked into my brother’s room to ask him about what he and his friend were saying. I leaned on his dresser and stared into the mirror.
“What were you two talking about? All I could hear was the laughter and sometimes my name,” I started.
“He said it was a secret. So I won’t tell anyone,” My brother said.
“It doesn’t sound much like a secret now that you know,” I said.
“It is a secret.”
I stared at his wall of posters of his favorite musician and actors, thinking of a way to get the information out of him.
“I know who’s crushing on you,” I lied. He jumped out of his bed and stood next to me. He elbowed me aside and started raking his messy hair in front of his mirror.
“Who is it? I’m hoping it’s Tina.”
“Here’s the deal, Mr. J. Tell me why my name was being mentioned in your conversation and you’ll know your crush.”
“Okay. It’s supposed to be a secret, but we’ll exchange information.”
“Exactly,” I said, almost impatient.
“Top secret, again,” he said. I knew he wasn’t going to tell me. He was very secretive. I started heading for the door then.
“Aren’t you going to tell me the name of my crush?”
“It’s a hush-hush, too,” I said, and slammed his door shut behind me.
When people is out at the elbows, the secret of wall street is to eat crow.
An Incident with Crows
When I was a kid I was attacked by crows. Since then, I am scared of them.
It was early morning, and the weather was cold. I left home for school. As always, I heard the unpleasant voices of crows, but did not pay attention to them. One of them flied too close over my head, the next one grabbed my hat. I went down injuring my elbow. In pain, massaging my elbow, I looked up at the big three, and saw dozens of them sitting on the brunches.
Again, a pair of them flied towards me. Snatching my bag, I run and hide myself in a secret place beside the wall. After a while, a woman came out of the building.
“Hi, could you please help me?” I said from my hidden place, “Those crows attacked me”
She looked up, smiling she said, “Ok, don't be scared come with me.” I run after her to follow her close. This way I left the attack zone, but the memory stayed with me.
177 words
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