This one time I cut school...

But not really. Our second creative writing assignment was to write a detailed (fictional) account of a day we cut school. See, this one was easier because I cut school a significant amount of times in 8th grade, and enough in HS to give myself a break every other week or so :) So this is a very false story, however, it could have happened, but it didn't. Maybe I'll write about a day I really did cut school, sometime :) Oh and this was also based on a passage from Housekeeping.

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Unexcused Absences
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The thought the skip school never occurred to me until that day in February. Granted, I had played hooky plenty of times by feigning some sort of illness and claiming to be too sick to go. It always worked with my mom, however I didn’t do it often. She would never give me a day if I just asked for it, either. I had asked to take a day off to spend with friends. Not a whole week, just one day! She said no, of course, so I took it upon myself to take the day off. I was in high school so at this point I had friends who could drive too! A small group of us, roughly five people, I’d say, gathered in the lower senior parking lot on a Wednesday. Wednesday being in the middle of the week, no one would say we had just cut and taken a three day weekend. Being so early in the morning, just 7:30, we decided to go to Dunkin Donuts, in another town of course, first. After spending about an hour eating jelly donuts and drinking very sweet and light coffee, we headed to the mall, also in another town. All of us were brave enough to take the day off, but we didn’t want to be seen by our parents or a friend of theirs in our small town. After perusing the mall, making small purchases of colorful shoelaces at Hot Topic, and butterfly earrings at Claire’s we went to the newly built movie theatre. All of us finally being seventeen, we decided to see a rated R movie – Underworld: Evolution. It was great. Who would have thought they actually put sex right on the screen in a rated R movie! I knew my mother would die if she knew what was in the movie, although she’d probably still let me see it. By the time the movie was over, it was 2:30. I called my mom telling her I had to stay for a newspaper club meeting and I would get a ride home with my friend. She was fine with this, as she wouldn’t have to pick me up at the end of our road from the late bus. After a very eventful drive home – we took a scenic route and ended up getting lost, causing me to have to call my mom again and tell her we were stopping to pick my friends brother up, and drop him off at their house. Instead we stopped in a clearing off the road we were lost on, and sat on the grass for a while, cloud watching. We saw all kinds of shapes in those clouds, including, but not limited to, a duck, a cow, the first three letters of the alphabet, an ice cream cone, and the Mona Lisa. It was a fun afternoon. By the time I got home I was a bubbly bundle of smiles. My mom asked how school went and I said great and fine. She never questioned the trinkets I suddenly had, and she never asked why there were three other people in the car. I was happy for the rest of the night, feeling very free and alive. I didn’t deliberately cut another day of school for the rest of the year. I didn’t need to. I had one great day and another might be a disappointment and that day was one thing I didn’t want to spoil.

Lately...

I haven't written much of anything lately, except papers for school.

I had 3 creative writing assignments for my Narratives of The Self class. They were awesome. Well, I really liked writing them, as they were fiction. They are based on passages from the book Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson. The first one I had to write a fictional story from my families history. It had to take place before I was born and be about someone else. I wrote mine about my great granny. Remember, this is fiction.

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A Guilty Mind
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I am standing in the kitchen watching my husband by his truck; the truck with it’s beautiful painted side: “Bamond’s Deli Traditional Italian Meats and Goods”. The boys are in the yard with their friends. Little men, they think they are, bossing each other around, pretending they’re like their daddy’s, tall, strong, and commanding. I look at the dishes still filling the sink; I haven’t made it very far. Kathy and Joy are playing in the living room and they know they’re supposed to be cleaning the den. The grandfather clock in the living room chimes that it is six-thirty. These dishes won’t wash themselves so I plunge my hands into the frothy water that has gone warm, and pick up my sponge. The remnants of our dinner, pasta again, are washed down the drain and the plates are stacked in the metal drying wrack on the side of the sink. My thoughts are wandering tonight, I think. They can’t seem to stay on one thing for very long. Why are those girls not cleaning the den? Judy came over yesterday, while John was at the Deli working. She won’t come when he’s home, still very bitter. It saddens me that she will only visit for the sake of seeing her nieces. The children are still young enough that they don’t see the displeasure in their Aunt’s eyes when she visits us. She didn’t stay long, just long enough to hug them, see their new toys, give the boys each a dollar, and leave. They don’t see their daddy’s eyes when her name is mentioned, when they told him of her visit. No one but I know the pain Judy suffers and the guilt John feels. I should feel guilty too, and I often berate myself for not always feeling guilty. It’s not my fault who John loves is it? Judy shouldn’t blame me. It’s been nearly ten years. I mean, it’s not like they were married! Or even engaged! A letter sweater means nothing, a ring is something. I had a ring, and all she had was a sweater. Ten years later and I still doubt myself. But aren’t we happy? I should have loved my sister more. Why didn’t I love my sister more? All these years, though, and we’ve been happy. John doesn’t know how much Judy loved him. He never had a chance. I have to put her feelings aside. The kids can’t find out, that would be awful. What would they think of me, their mother, stealing away the one man her sister ever loved. The cold water on my hands brings my thoughts back to my task. With a grumble I let the water out, refilling the sink with hot sudsy water. I yell for the girls to quiet down, hadn’t I told them to clean something? I forget. As I bring my porous pad to the next bowl, plate, cup, saucer, fork, spoon, my hand stops at the knife. Sharp, serrated. That’s how I am, like the knife. I cut into Judy’s life and messily took what I felt was mine. No use being guilty now, what’s done is done.

I got an A.

Anyway, I'll post the second assignment soon. Is anyone reading this?

For once, then, something

For Once, Then, Something is a poem by Robert Frost, whom I love. I love this poem. I will write more later about it's meaning, when I find my notes, but for now, here it is. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!!

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
My myself in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths-and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

~Marie