Thursday, February 04, 2010
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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.
7 comments:
Formula:
1. Three sentences where a person is engaged in an activity at some place using some form of tool.
2. Two sentences describing things happening around, near, above or below the person.
3. Four sentences that tell the reader:
a place where this person has been a long time ago
one thing/event this person remembers from this place
an ambition this person once had but has since lost
what this person first saw when he or she returned to that place
4. Final sentence returns to activity from before. One detail should relate to numbers two and three.
Here's my humble postcard story from today's class!
The Waterskiing Roofer
John picked up the Skil saw and cut the board down the middle. He had balanced the four by eight sheet of plywood on his knee as he made the cut, straight and true. It was hot up on the roof of the building where he was working near the Skytrain station in Burnaby.
Below him, the traffic was building on Edmonds as the evening rush hour began, although John thought to himself that “evening” was really about 2:30 in the afternoon nowadays.
“Hey John! How about handing me another box of roofing nails.”
John thought back to his childhood home in Vernon and his desire to be a champion waterskier. He’d been accepted on the Canadian team, but he still winced as he recalled the fateful day when he had tried to do a 360 at the end of the tow rope. The fall had been spectacular and had torn the ligaments in both of his knees. Even now, when he went back to Okanagan Lake he could barely bring himself to look as he saw the waterskiers slaloming behind a fast boat.
John realized that the foreman was looking at him with a puzzled expression on his face and put the thoughts of waterskiing glory out of his mind and turned back to his work on the hot roof.
Jack was smoothing the wet concrete with his trowel. The rectangular shape was only about eight by four, but he'd been at this awhile and the beads of sweat were popping up on his forehead like braille on a page. Safe to say, the sweat was not forming just from the heat.
The summer breeze was blowing gently across his face. A gesture almost too kind for this one hard at work.
The sound of the trowel hitting the wet cement reminded him bitterly of the "clink clink" sound long ago of the mattock hitting and splitting large rocks at the quarry. How he had despised the wardens eyeing them from behind and hitting them between the shoulders with their billy clubs if they so much as paused to mop their brow. Yet, he was also reminded of his youth - the "plink plink" of his guitar strings as he learned to play; how he had so wanted to be a professional guitarist. But those dreams were shattered abruptly and even recently when he had driven by that God-forsaken prison, his body shook when he saw the high, concrete walls and thick, metal bars.
Now he was staring down at a different type of concrete, as children's voices in the neighbourhood sounded as though they were mocking him as they played:
"You know you'll just wind up right back there in the end."
Mary got up from her bed, went straight to my room, grabbed my guitar and sat on a bench on our porch. She lit up a cigarette, and while blowing a cloud of smoke, she strummed the strings of the acoustic guitar. She was playing Stand By Me by John Lennon, singing to her heart‘s content, stomping her foot on the wooden floor.
The cold gale was howling, as if jamming along, joining a lone blues-woman.
She seemed to be in a trance, in a world of her own, staring at the distant swaying trees.
The moment was just like when we were at the beach, gathered around a cracking bonfire, playing some reggae tunes. Then all of a sudden, she put down the guitar, stood up and started dancing some kind of tribal dance around the fire, eyes closed. ”I want to be a dancer,” she said, kicking the sands, then adding, “the queen of tribal dancers!” She halted, kept her awkward stance for a few seconds, opened her eyes, turned to me, smiling, and said, ”Your turn, my King.”.
“C’mon, Yoko, sing with me!”
-Postcard stories:
There he is in his bed, texting fast and secretly to his lover. You see, Joel just got married to his high school sweetheart. And he has absolutely no idea why he’s cheating her.
Beside him was his wife. How beautiful she is in her sleep! But that’s her business now.
Joel first met his lover at some bar during his business trip. When he first saw her, he thought he saw an angel surrounding by a choir. Maybe, yes, maybe he was right because she was wearing a white dress. You see, when he graduated from high school, he wanted to be a pope. He didn’t know why back then, but he was attracted by nuns.
So there he is, texting fast and secretly to his lover. He wants to stop, but he can’t because his hand has his own brain.
He is typing (while he pulls a paper out of other files).he sends emails to other companies, and the other luggage are waiting for him in the line. He works as a worker in Western Luggage Company in Toronto.
His table covered by papers and files, and a cup of cold coffee is beside his laptop. His chief wants some information about other companies’ invoices.
He lived in Homburg many years ago, and he studied psychology .He played soccer since he was twelve years old .He loved to play in famous soccer teams but he stopped playing after his leg was broken. When he is going back to Germany with his wife, he would like to talk about the time he was a soccer player.
He set a picture of a soccer ball in the background of his laptop, and he looks at that in the coffee breaks.
Postcard Stories:
Aaron is in Vancouver busy fixing up his new place. He was trying to hang up a beautifull painting that he just bought for his home. While he was hammering the hammer into the wall he excedently hammed it into his hand. He screamed. . . "OUCH!!!" and fell on to the ground where all the other nails were. He was in alot of pain, so his wife had to rush him to the hospital. Aaron was very weird about goin to the hospital, so he tried to play it off but his wife would see that he was in great pain so she dragged him to go. When he arrived there he remember being there when his mother passed away and how sad of a day it was for him. He told himself he would never come back to the hospital again because thats where people go to die. After his check up he saw that the doctors helped him feel better he realized its not only a place to die, but its also a place to get better. He had seen alot of people happy and smiling it wasn't only pain that was goin on in the hospital he had seen people having babies and startin a new life. After being there awhile he realized his hand was starting to feel a little better so, he went home and rested and hung up his painting few days later.
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