This wagon is different from most wagons. The sides are wooden panels a foot high. We could remove them if we wanted to, but we don’t want to. The bottom is plain wood. It differs from the sides in the fact that it is not painted bright red. Bryan wheels the wagon into the middle of the street with me right behind him.
“Get in,” he says as we reach the center of the road.
“What?” I say. I’m not going to get in an old wooden wagon aimed down a steep hill.
“Get in,” Bryan says again. He pulls one of the helmets out of the wagon and hands it to me.
“This is so dangerous. I’m not getting in. Let’s go home, Bryan,” I say. I grab his hand and try to drag him back to the house.
“Amma, relax, it’s not that dangerous.” He lets go of my hand and gets the other helmet out of the wagon and slips it on his head. “We have helmets. We’ll be safe.”
I’m still hesitant as I watch him straighten out the wagon so we’ll go straight down.
“Get in,” he says again. I slowly crawl into the wagon. It wobbles whenever my weight shifts.
“Don’t kill me,” I murmur.
“Relax,” Bryan says, “trust me.” He grabs the handle and pushes it back hard against the front of the wagon. “Get back,” he says to me so I scrunch myself into the back panel of the wagon, grateful that Bryan will be in the front.
Bryan gives a slight push and jumps into the wagon. He grabs the handle and pushes it from left to right until we have finally been straightened out. I am hugging myself in the back of the wagon, pulling my knees closer and closer to my body.
“Relax!” Bryan yells to me. His voice seems to stumble with the bumpy road. I close my eyes in a refusal to relax but without sight there is nothing to be afraid of and my entire body calms down. We hit a larger than normal rock and are airborne for one second.
This came out of a story which revolved around the main character (again named Amma) taking a road trip to find someone. Instead of finding the person that she is looking for, she finds a number of other people, including a free spirited young man named Bryan.
My freshman year of college I was doing a lot of things that young people do their freshman year of college. For me, even more so than having the general new experiences, I was making a whole new set of friends. I felt like I had been completely abandoned by the people that I used to know when I got up to University. It wasn’t that they weren’t around. They were. It was just that it had become apparent that we were heading in different directions in our lives. I have always wanted more than to just hang around the same town forever and to start a family right away. I wasn’t working on a career that was conducive to that. It’s not that I don’t think it’s absolutely lovely that they wanted families and that they were working on what they wanted, it just wasn’t for me. I have never wanted the career that I felt half-assed about so that I didn’t feel bad when I quit to have children.
Anyway, I was making new friends and one of them was this wonderful guy named Bryan who had a lovely deep voice and beautiful eyes and who listened to reggae and compared joining fraternities to joining gangs. He skated, which I thought was fantastic because it was something that I always wanted to learn how to do. I thought he was fantastic, so I wrote him into my stories as a person who teaches the main character a lot about herself. The first exercise was an exercise in trust. I think that trusting people is something that I struggle with. I never know who to trust and when I’m supposed to start trusting them. Should I trust that most people are good right away, or should I hang back and watch? I made the character of Amma the same way. She was worried about trusting people and then she goes on this fantastic cross country adventure in search of some guy and along the way she finds all of these people that she has to trust because they know her destination and she does not.
It’s an interesting situation. I still find it difficult to trust people, but I’m trying harder and I see my efforts making a difference in my own life. A positive difference, so that’s a good thing.
(Oh, and the wagon that I'm describing in the beginning is called a Radio Flyer Town and Country. We had one when I was a kid and I hadn't seen anyone else with one like that for years so I thought it was unique to my family. Kids are self-centered like that. Of course there were other wagons like it. The company wouldn't have made just one.)
Showing posts with label #3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #3. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Magical Realism 4/5/01
There was something wrong with the house. The wind was pushing a tree against the outside north wall of the room. Thumping, thumping in an always quiet house. Below Jason and Amma, in the kitchen, there was creaking. It sounded as if every cabinet and drawer was opening and closing on its own. Creaking, clacking in an always quiet house. Something scurried across the attic above them. A mouse, a rat, possibly a chipmunk. Something alive that wasn’t there the night before. Scurrying, scurrying in an always quiet house.
Amma groaned and rolled over. Jason got out of the bed and stomped his foot on the floor. “SHUT UP!” he yelled. The house silenced itself. No more scurrying, no more creaking, and no more thumping. Jason crawled back into the bed. He snuggled up next to Amma. Something isn’t right, Amma thought as Jason’s arms slid around her.
“Something isn’t right,” Amma said. Jason cocked his head.
“What’s not right?” Jason asked.
“Something.”
“The house is quiet now. There’s nothing wrong.”
“But something isn’t right.”
Jason grunts and pushes himself against Amma, begging her for warmth and affection. He closes his eyes and relaxes. Something isn’t right he realizes. His eyes snap open. “Brian.”
“What?” Amma murmurs.
“Brian didn’t wake up when I yelled. Something isn’t right.” Jason sat straight up in bed. Amma rolled over and snapped on the lamp next to her head. They fly out of bed at the same time.
Amma gets to the crib first because the crib is by her side of the bed.
Brian is lying peacefully on his bed. Amma stares at him. Jason stumbles over and stares at him. His fists are clenched. His chest is not moving slowly up and down. Amma and Jason hold their own breath in order to hear the breaths that aren’t coming out of Brian’s small mouth and nose.
“Call 911,” Jason says. But Amma is frozen. She grips the side of the crib so tightly that her knuckles turn white. “CALL 911!” Jason yells, he himself frozen. Tears begin to flow down Amma’s face. Her cheeks become red apples, shiny from the wetness of the tears. Jason hears her whimper and he takes a dive for the phone where he dials the three numbers that mean help.
Oh, this story. Oh, this story. I don’t even know where to begin. It was part of my first novel which was written in parts all over my notebooks. It’s something I always return to because I do love it so much. I’m sure that you noticed that the name of the woman is the same name as the character from my last post. They are not the same person. Sometimes I just get really attached to names.
I must tell you that I was surprised to find this part of the novel in my third notebook. I don’t like the third notebook very much because it reflects a very awkward period in my life. I like this part of the story. I like what I did with it.
This [unfinished] novel is incredible to me because I was so young when I started working on it but it was so well-defined. I knew the characters and I knew what they wanted. The main character in this story is not Amma or Jason. It is the house. I was trying to bring to life something that is normally not a living being. I’m sure that it has been done before, especially with houses. Ander Monson said in one of his beautiful tweets “A family, often itself contained by a home, is a mechanism for containing: secrets, pain, stories, beauty, the seeds of its own undoing.” I think, in the case of this story, I wanted to make a home that, not only contained a family, but reflected it as well.
It was my first attempt at magical realism. I think it might have also been my last. Magical realism is a tough thing to create and to put into a story for the same reason that I think stories that are written in genres such as Science Fiction and Fantasy are tough to write well. I don’t write Science Fiction and Fantasy because it too often relies on plot twists instead of character arcs. In magical realism you have to create a story in which the characters are believable. Despite what is going on around them and however crazy it may seem the characters have to behave in a way that any normal person would behave. They have to react correctly. It’s tough.
I remember submitting a draft of the beginning of this story my freshman year of college in my first ever creative writing course and I remember how my professor reacted when we read it in workshop. He opened the workshop by saying that I had created something really wonderful and that we have to take into account when reading magical realism that, so often, it is something that is used by writers who are describing characters who don’t live in the most ideal of situations. He asked us to consider whether or not we thought that magical realism worked within the realm of suburbia. He thought that it did. His comments made me feel both embarrassed and proud.
I am fairly proud of this little bit of writing in a notebook that I find difficult to read.
Amma groaned and rolled over. Jason got out of the bed and stomped his foot on the floor. “SHUT UP!” he yelled. The house silenced itself. No more scurrying, no more creaking, and no more thumping. Jason crawled back into the bed. He snuggled up next to Amma. Something isn’t right, Amma thought as Jason’s arms slid around her.
“Something isn’t right,” Amma said. Jason cocked his head.
“What’s not right?” Jason asked.
“Something.”
“The house is quiet now. There’s nothing wrong.”
“But something isn’t right.”
Jason grunts and pushes himself against Amma, begging her for warmth and affection. He closes his eyes and relaxes. Something isn’t right he realizes. His eyes snap open. “Brian.”
“What?” Amma murmurs.
“Brian didn’t wake up when I yelled. Something isn’t right.” Jason sat straight up in bed. Amma rolled over and snapped on the lamp next to her head. They fly out of bed at the same time.
Amma gets to the crib first because the crib is by her side of the bed.
Brian is lying peacefully on his bed. Amma stares at him. Jason stumbles over and stares at him. His fists are clenched. His chest is not moving slowly up and down. Amma and Jason hold their own breath in order to hear the breaths that aren’t coming out of Brian’s small mouth and nose.
“Call 911,” Jason says. But Amma is frozen. She grips the side of the crib so tightly that her knuckles turn white. “CALL 911!” Jason yells, he himself frozen. Tears begin to flow down Amma’s face. Her cheeks become red apples, shiny from the wetness of the tears. Jason hears her whimper and he takes a dive for the phone where he dials the three numbers that mean help.
Oh, this story. Oh, this story. I don’t even know where to begin. It was part of my first novel which was written in parts all over my notebooks. It’s something I always return to because I do love it so much. I’m sure that you noticed that the name of the woman is the same name as the character from my last post. They are not the same person. Sometimes I just get really attached to names.
I must tell you that I was surprised to find this part of the novel in my third notebook. I don’t like the third notebook very much because it reflects a very awkward period in my life. I like this part of the story. I like what I did with it.
This [unfinished] novel is incredible to me because I was so young when I started working on it but it was so well-defined. I knew the characters and I knew what they wanted. The main character in this story is not Amma or Jason. It is the house. I was trying to bring to life something that is normally not a living being. I’m sure that it has been done before, especially with houses. Ander Monson said in one of his beautiful tweets “A family, often itself contained by a home, is a mechanism for containing: secrets, pain, stories, beauty, the seeds of its own undoing.” I think, in the case of this story, I wanted to make a home that, not only contained a family, but reflected it as well.
It was my first attempt at magical realism. I think it might have also been my last. Magical realism is a tough thing to create and to put into a story for the same reason that I think stories that are written in genres such as Science Fiction and Fantasy are tough to write well. I don’t write Science Fiction and Fantasy because it too often relies on plot twists instead of character arcs. In magical realism you have to create a story in which the characters are believable. Despite what is going on around them and however crazy it may seem the characters have to behave in a way that any normal person would behave. They have to react correctly. It’s tough.
I remember submitting a draft of the beginning of this story my freshman year of college in my first ever creative writing course and I remember how my professor reacted when we read it in workshop. He opened the workshop by saying that I had created something really wonderful and that we have to take into account when reading magical realism that, so often, it is something that is used by writers who are describing characters who don’t live in the most ideal of situations. He asked us to consider whether or not we thought that magical realism worked within the realm of suburbia. He thought that it did. His comments made me feel both embarrassed and proud.
I am fairly proud of this little bit of writing in a notebook that I find difficult to read.
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