Hand-Me-Downs

*I know this was only supposed to be 100 words, but I liked where it was going so I went with it…Sorry...

I was gifted an old book some years ago, retrieved from the home of my deceased great-grandfather.  Its cover is cornflower blue, like my least favorite Crayola, though with time, it’s faded into more of a lifeless grey.  On the front cover clouds of mildew stain the title:  Poe.  Poems and Tales.  The spine rests in a deformed slant because of a rip in the interior binding.  The cover’s corners are all bent inward and the edges are frayed, but the pages sewn inside are well persevered, save for the subtle bleach of persistent sunlight.  On the very first page, the work of a typewriter lines the edge.  “Starling Williamson     March 19, 1931”  The “t”, “r”, and “l” of the first name are bolder.  I run my fingers over their indentation and feel the concave they make in the old paper.  I wonder if the keys were sticking. 

The first stanza of “The Raven” is graffitied with shaky pencil marks annotating the meter of the poetry.  I picture my ancestor, hands aged and unsteady, teaching a grandson how to scan lines.  The boy is impatient in Pappy’s lap and whines about being released so he can resume hide and seek in the corn field with cousin Mark.  With the sigh only familiar to tired old men outrun by time, the grandfather excuses his impatient pupil and re-reads the poem that entertained his youth.  “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted nevermore.”  His voice is coarser than his last recitation, now grated by two decades of the harsh airs of the coal mine, but the lines still stir in him the same profound captivation they cast in his adolescence.  He shuts the book and returns it to its place on the shelf where my father will find it a lifetime later, vaguely recalling that Poe is a favorite author of mine.  And so the heirloom’s cycle lives on.
               Or so it’s romantic to think.  Truth is, from all I know of my father’s family, the men were rough and callous.  Farmers, coal miners, factory workers with a few years stolen by the army.  They lived selfishly and loved scarcely.  It’s hard to imagine any relative of my father cherishing literature the way I do.  But then, that’s the magic of used books.  In their covers, all tattered and torn, await two tales:  the adventure penned by the author, and the mystery woven by old clues left by a book’s former master.  Proper students of English crave the first, ready to dissect the prose and poetry into a barrage of existential metaphors pondering the purpose of man.  But readers – those who lust over the perfume of an old leather-bound as much as the legend its crisp pages hold – readers, crave the second.  Because readers understand that though a story may be conjured in the mad mind of a writer, it lives in the sweaty thumbs that smudge the type halfway through a chapter, in the saliva-slicked fingertips that turn the sticking pages.  Stories live in the hands of those who treasure their existence, ageing as they are handed down through generations.  Real stories are read in the clouds of mildew on cornflower covers.  And in the deformed slant of ripped spines.  Real stories are “Starling Williamson     March 19, 1931” with the “t”, “r”, and “l” typed too bold.

Response to Larry Woiwode's "Winter"

Larry Woiwode’s “Winter” is certainly a unique piece in terms of writing style.  The detail I noticed right away was the odd tense.  The opening phrase “In our seventeenth year on a farmstead” seems past tense, yet it is soon followed up with present tense verbs (“I decide”), making the voice seem passive throughout.  Woiwode is discussing the event as if it were presently happening, yet he speaks from a distance, detailing events that have already occurred (“unaware that we’re heading into the worst winter recorded in the state’s history”).  This makes for an interesting structure, but also a clumsy one.  It’s as if the reader has their feet on each end of a seesaw, trying to keep a balance as they read, the prose constantly switching between past and present.  This removed me from the story multiple times, if for no other reason but to try and keep my balance.  I also think this style caused Woiwode’s ending to suffer.  The story was meant to be suspenseful, the ending climactic, yet I felt the end was overwritten and attempted to be more dramatic than the event really was.  Perhaps it was language that bordered on clichéd philosophies (“Life, brief as a breath, over?”), but I also think that helter-skelter style had great impact.  We realize by this point in the narration that the events described have already happened, yet Woiwode is still trying to pass them off as some thrilling present.  If he’s writing the story about an event that has already occurred, we realized that he didn’t freeze to death trying to fix his furnace, so his false “present” is unbelievable.  If the story was told in plain present tense, the events would have seemed more urgent and I could have gotten lost in the excitement.  Also, if the story was told in the plain past tense, at least the piece wouldn’t have been trying to masquerade as something it wasn’t, and I could have focused on the events and not my skepticism.

Inextinguishable Moments

Long after I forget the dialogue of a conversation, I can recall the perfume of the moment.  Smells linger.  Like the lung-searing rot of cigarettes that embeds itself into hair.  Or the bright citrus that stains fingers after peeling a fresh orange, resistant even to soap.  And I love body sprays.  You find out a lot about person from the scent they choose to wear.  There are feminine young girls, wearing pink and curling their hair, who douse themselves in the loud juiciness of fruits – berries, cherries, and peaches.  There are sultry adult women, wearing short cut pin skirts and V-necked silk blouses teasing with one button too low, who pair their maroon lipstick with the dark allure of black currant and plum.  There are the conservative women, quietly hiding behind thin-rimmed glasses, who dab a touch of vanilla on to each wrist before hurrying out the door every morning.  There are men with polos and khakis who spritz with the freshness of white waters and salty beach air, reminding them of their beloved vacation homes.  There are confident young men, with penetrating eyes and dark, gelled hair who go out smelling of nothing but the alluring tar of their embellished leather jackets and the slight whisper of the morning’s minty aftershave.  And there are men who accompany their gold watches and pressed suit jackets with the richness of amber wood and sage.

I once bought a candle because it smelled like my best friend’s cologne.  A mix of spicy cinnamon and musky sandalwood.  Each time I lit the wick, I remembered that smell on his t-shirt when I hugged him.  I remembered the faint trace of it in his hair when he used my chest as a pillow on his parents’ couch.  I remembered how the black sheets on his California King bed rubbed that scent on to me when I spent the night.  I remembered the way a slight odor of sweat tried to mask that scent on his neck when he kissed mine.  That candle reminded me of the nights we snuck up into his room after school and explored each other with our hands and mouths until his parents came crashing through the door downstairs.  When I told Jason I bought a candle because it smelled like him he laughed at me.

“You’re such a girl,” he chided.  Then followed up with, “I miss you, too.”
                On my dresser still sits the unmelted nub of the candle that remained after that wick refused to light.

Comparing "A Second Time" to Olivia's Essay

I connected the emotion from “A Second Time” to the emotions Olivia experiences in her essay.  When Galvin writes “It was the year you left me for the first time,” I am reminded of Olivia’s emotions when Jeremy left her family for Japan and the trips home became scarce.  “The new house” also reminds me of Olivia’s description of the unfamiliar home she walked into the day her brother called to argue with her mother.  Though it was the same building, the emotions and habits of the place had altered completely.  Also, when Galvin writes, “spring was the fallacy that brought you back,” I recall how Christmas was the only time Olivia’s brother would return, displaying a false sense of family.

Taylor's Essay Compared to Dorothy Allison

I associated Taylor’s essay a lot with Dorothy Allison’s “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.”  Both write with a matter-of-fact tone, relying on their description of characters to give color to their story.  This makes the writing easily accessible and also keeps the tone of the words in line with the themes and setting in each piece.  In Taylor’s essay, the reoccurring notion is that simple, homely people in a small town setting can be the most emotionally impactful and relevant people in one’s life.  Similarly, in Allison’s piece, we are presented with pictures of a “rough” family; people who do not necessarily meet expectations for the support system for a young woman, but never the less are the people closest to her in life - for better or worse.  Both stories offer sympathy to “dirty” or unrefined characters – Taylor throughout and Allison through her description of her ill-aged aunt.

Things I Hate

I hate close-minded people who clutch bigotry with the same fervency they would a lover – ironically, those people will never truly know love.

I hate the audacity of any person / government / administration on some kind of sick power trip telling people who they can or cannot love / marry / protect.

I hate that I cannot truly hate him; even after all he’s done.

I hate abusive people.

I hate jealous, immature girls who stoop to call other girls “like so ugly” just because they didn’t get their way in a relationship.

I hate men, of any age, who chose to feel powerful by intimidating women with catcalls or physical force.

I hate rape culture victim blaming because it’s easier than demanding change to centuries old patriarchy.

I hate physical fights.

I hate emotionally / verbally abusive fights.

I hate the disproportionate pressure put on women to achieve / adapt to the media’s daily definition of “beautiful”.

I hate most aspects of my body.

I hate that most days I’d rather be distracted by the Internet than depend on my own creativity to live my hours.

I hate that people scare me so much.

I hate that I’m so afraid to take risks.

I hate that I waste so much time.

I hate that I’m constantly aware to how little time I have to waste.

I hate that it’s so easy for people to become parents.

I hate spiders (and most bugs, to be honest).

I hate the grey area of “acceptable” conditions to murder (war, capital punishment).  I also hate that my opinions on those issues remain trapped in the quicksand of that grey area.

I hate public displays of selfish rudeness – It is not an employee’s fault that you are incapable of reading a coupon correctly, you narcissistic asshole. Please stop screaming, cursing, and making everyone else around you feel both personal discomfort and pointed hatred.

I hate that the only goal my mother seems to have for me is to immediately find a husband and have his babies.

I hate that true love is not guaranteed.

I hate that traveling is so expensive.

I hate the “Murica” mindset that insists the United States is the best and only country that exists – it prevents us from progressing, appreciating worldly culture, and thinking objectively / critically about our country’s issues.

I hate that I aspire to be a completely different person than I am, yet I am not disciplined enough to change.