January 31, 2014

Writing Style attempt: Just Do It

I am trying to make.myself feel okay about my failure last night. I cant. which also means that I feel really guilty for being so self involved and not forgiving myself for a tiny miss step.tonight I am at a birthday party and am going to drink some rum and try to remind myself that I have a right to feel my own depressing feelings and not worry so much about the expectations I put upon myself.

Also, I hate writing on the phone because it does some strange formatting shit and I dont want to go back and fix it.

January 30 2014

He Was a Good Dog. She Was a Good Man.

The dog was finally dead. Martin threw it into the wheelbarrow and rolled it to the edge of his mother’s property where he had dug a hole three weeks previous in order to fill this particular moment. Teresa followed behind and watched its stiff corpse wobble side to side when the first shovel of dirt hit Mozart’s body. His distended stomach the point of axis. After the last kick of dirt landed, Martin rose the shovel up high and swung it hard on top of the grave three times. The first time startled Teresa. The second confused her. The third made her cry – not loudly, not wetly – but in a hot stream that felt to her, like the world’s longest tear.

‘’What are you doing!”

“Gotta pack it down, ‘Resa, gotta pack it down.” Said Martin.

“It’s…” Teresa put her left hand over her leaking eyes to speak. “Don’t do it again, ok?”

“It’s done.” He jammed the shovel into the soil below and leaned on its handle. ”What’s the matter with you?”

 “I don’t know.” Teresa lowered her hand and put it on her trembling belly. “It was loud, I guess. And I-”

“Time to get back to the house now. Grab the shovel and put it in the barn.” He turned his back to her and started up the hill.

“Martin?” She asked timidly.

“Hmm?” He responded but kept moving towards the house.

“Were is Mozart now?” Her voice tasted strange in her mouth.

Her father stopped to look at her but didn’t move towards her at all. His eyes were more engaged than normal. “What’s that supposed to mean there, “Reesa?”

“Aunt Lil.”

“Yeah? ‘’Bout it?” He took hand out of his overalls and pushed down his hat.

“Where’s she now?”

“Dead. You were there. Open casket, your mom didn’t want you to see but ‘fuck does she know anymore.”

“She told me that Lil was in heaven. That that’s where good people go.”

“Sure baby. That’s where they go.”

“So, Mozart. That’s where he goed?” The second the question left her lips, Teresa worried that it would in fact be answered.

“Uh…” Martin scratched his shoulder then moved his hand up and rested it on his neck. “Mozart. Mozart is dead. Mozart was a dog. And dogs…they aren’t people.”

“So Mozart is nowhere.”

“Mozart is nowhere.”

“Mozart is dead and dead.” Teresa began to shake.

 

 

 

___________________________________________________

 

I FAILED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

January 29 2014

Writing Attempt: Non-Human POV’s

 

1

The grease under his fingernails knew it was living on borrowed time but it lived like it didn’t care. The brief interaction with the pen in Dana’s pocket had changed its perception of what it meant to be alive.

 
 

2

Berkley was worried about the decisions he’d made in the past 20 minutes. He tried to keep his cool as Julian moved up the long dryway into the grozh. But his anxiety grew and grew and grew and grew with each noise his master made until he could no longer contain his fear and began to bark.  

 

3

It had been thirteen days. Thirteen days of cinched up suffering behind the dresser with no end in sight. When the taller darker haired one approached and gathered the basket it normally would have occupied in this condition, the sock felt relief. Much to its dismay – it was over looked and had to watch its partner be whisked away for cleaning while it was left behind to suffer in filth.

--------------------------

 

Feeling a little more light hearted tonight, thankfully.

 

-Classy Biped

January 28 2014

 

Writing Style Attempt: Free Write Prose/ Continuation of the Reveal

 

As you might expect, the string of non diagnoses lead to nothing being fixed. Eating habits? Still terrible. Healthy coping practices? Thanks for asking, but I’m not capable or interested. Mood stability? Are you going to pay for those drugs? Familial reconciliation? Forgiveness is over rated and speaking my mind is goddamned impossible when I am still terrified of most people.

In an unfortunate use of bait and switch, instead of helping myself, I learned how to detract others from the truth. I developed ways to hide my illness(es?) so as not to hurt the people that mattered. But the problem with whatever it is that is eating away at my brain is that it’s desperate for attention, and because it is, it reveals itself in a bang instead of a whimper. My depression is the exhibitionist that throws open its trench coat at the pop warner game and ruins everyone’s week.

 -----------------

This was a lot of me writing for sense instead of writing to write. So it took me an hour but produced less than I wrote initially. Meh.

-Classy Biped

 

January 27 2014

Writing Attempt: Free Write Prose/The Reveal

 

I’ve been moving through life recently with a brain addled by depression. I hate using that word because it is problematic in many ways especially considering its somewhat ambiguous meaning. I also don’t like to use this word because I have never really been properly diagnosed or even diagnosed with the same mood disorder twice. My two best friends in high school called it being a sensitive soul and an artist. The sweet group of women who ran the Alvarado Clinic program for eating disorders said it was bulimia nervosa with possible depressive states effected by my lack of nutrition. The therapist intern still getting her degree told me it was mainly my anger towards my father, lack of emotional skills to cope with sadness and disappointment and made me ‘open up’ to him in a joint session. My post high school boyfriend just called me crazy and a slut. My Chicago boyfriend called it being an alcoholic, then called the cops. The tiny, cold handed nurse in the Chicago emergency room who wouldn’t look me in the eye and spoke about me in third person only wrote ‘possibly suicidal or just depressed’ on the hospital forms that bought me a ticket to ride fully strapped down to a state institution. The team of faceless, nameless psychologists at the state run institution declared that bi-polar disorder with bouts of psychosis was my crime and gave me Zyprexa every morning at 8am from a tiny plastic cup. David Sedaris doppelganger, Dr. Bear, believed it was a borderline personality I suffered from but never committed to that diagnosis, only to the prescription of Zoloft and Lamictal with a Xanax back. My Chicago girlfriend called it manic depression. The man I invested 4 years of my talent to called it a result of trauma from abuse. The semi-strangers I chat with when I go out to write just say ‘depressed’. My Significant Other lovingly calls it “Low” and asks if I am feeling that way. Wikipedia calls it major depressive disorder. I call it self-destruction.

-ClassyBiped




I'm still thinking about this/working on this. May or may not post more if I write more.

January 26th 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Mental Breakdown

Die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination I have spent today on the verge of die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die I somehow have become a broken record that turns and turns and plays the same tune over and over procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination when I was younger I thought I knew what it was I wanted but after 15 + + + + years of pursuing that thing die procrastination die procrastination die I have discovered that I am actually hurt procrastination die destroyed by the passion I once had procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination so I guess now my next step is to purge and bend die procrastination die but how can I do such a thing when I can't even allow myself to give up on something as hyperbolic as one's dreams procrastination die procrastination die procrastination die procrastination.




-Classy Biped

January 25, 2014

As some of you know, I have been dabbling in writing a continuous fiction piece in second person. After the first few two entries, Mr. Biped told mentioned that he was impressed by the fact that I had set up the reader for anything to happen. “Aliens could come and I would absolutely accept that.”

Since then, I have been chipping away slowly at the form in order to find the big idea while building the world this character, You, lives in. Today, I am going to continue to develop it by looking back and trying to find any clues that I have left along the way. This ended up being editing and re-writing the last post in second tense.

 

You

***

Prologue

When you were twelve you saw a movie that took place in a not so far away city. You loved this movie. You were enchanted by its characters and the way it made you spit out that giggle your mother light-heartedly made fun of you for. You watched it on VHS more often that you’d now like to admit and each viewing only intensified the wide range of emotions it elicited in you.

 

Upon one of these many viewings – which one, you cannot possibly recall – you sat up from the living room couch, you pushed up your torso from the pillow on the floor, you removed our cheek from the cradle of your hands, you stopped making your cup of instant iced tea, dropped the ice cream scoop on the floor and froze.

 

This place is real. You thought. This place is living and breathing and growing and shrinking right this moment. This place has stray cats and houses not similar to mine. This place is a place and not a figment in my head or a setting in a movie. This place is real and I could live in it and make it mine.

 

As a young kid and into your teens you had many moments like this, where your body stopped moving and your mind took over. Sometimes it took seconds. Other times it took an hour. This was how you figured things out. This is how you became a child that was perceived as troubled. This was why the girls in 8^th grade called you a snob and you cried, “Why?” This action of non-action and need to be nothing but a mind discovering its purpose kept you occupied and developed you from a brainwashed child to an imaginative and curious thinker.

This particular instance that you are remembering now, when you realized that there was in fact life available to you outside your imagination and the contents of a VHS player, expanded a very particular and very helpful part of your brain. It bloomed the desire to leave. To explore. To be on your own and figure out if the places you felt most comfortable in - your bed, your church, the pillow in front of the TV, your mother’s arms - were in fact your true home. It was possible now that your home existed in a place you had never even considered to be real.

After this, you began to notice other actual places that you had previously over looked. Even the ones that took place in the very distant past, those too, were in fact real places that millions of people have lived and have very personal ties to. Even though you couldn't do the math, you estimated that by the time you were 50 and ready to retire, you would have had enough time to have visited every place you’d read about and remembered in the last 12 years of your life and by then, you could decide. Then you would truly know what home was and what home wasn’t yours.

 

1

When you wake up, your last three toes on your right foot are numb. You flex both feet and move your ankles in opposite circles to return the blood flow and regain sensation. The cat, having spent its morning at the edge of the bed, sees this movement and immediately attacks the blanket catching its front nails in the stitching of the quilt and driving its teeth into your toes. You feel nothing physically, but kick him to the ground anyway. He lands loudly on the ancient wood floor and scampers off with contempt leaving a scent of revenge in the air behind him.

You claw at your phone on the windowsill behind your head, refusing to move more than necessary. Once found, it lights up on its own and glaringly welcomes you to your morning. It’s 5:30am. The phone knows this, but doesn’t care. Just like the idiot cat, and anxious you, once it’s awoken from its slumber there is no more sleep mode.

Maybe tea will help. The only good coffee you own needs to be ground and you’re pretty positive that that much intensive labor two hours before sunrise is forbidden by at least one religion. The heat from the gas burner is so comforting you place your face next to it. Why is this smell so alluring? The cat makes three figure eights around your ankles while sounding his alarm. Fine. You dump him his food and tell him nicely to shut up. As you leave the apartment, he looks up at you ready to meow in protest but before he can begin, you point your finger at him sternly and he yawns instead. Good. You say. In the hallway you can hear him licking at something furiously.

***

Three hours into work, you realize that tea was at best, a mediocre choice. In fact, you question if you possibly drank a useless hot liquid in place of a useful one. It doesn’t matter now. You shift your weight from your left leg to your right. Wait. You think. Are my toes still numb? Less concerned about the fact that one’s body parts should not stay numb for such a period of time, you worry that you have just spent six plus hours unaware that they were numb at all. You scan the room for anyone who might notice you and when it’s clear, you thrust the side of your right foot full force to the side of your desk.

Nothing.

You think about the theory that a person cannot willfully inflict harm on itself with the force that they can upon another. This worries you and so you get up to find Whitney in hopes he will be able to help.

2

 

Whitney has never once complained about the fact that when people meet him in person they are startled and more often than not visibly disappointed that he is not female. His lax attitude towards social prejudices such as this has always infuriated and intrigued you. You, who throws a match into your mental fire anytime someone’s glance or vocal implies they are considering you height either way.

 

When you get to Whitney’s floor Brandie (Why must she spell it this way?) looks up and tells you he is not here. You consider making some small time excuse about just passing by or wanting to see how she is doing but you’d both know it was bullshit so you half smirk and half sigh and forget to ask when he will be or where he is.

 

Brandie does this to you. Many women do this to you. Every time this happens, you remind yourself that it may have started out with gender but as time has told, it truly is not so. You are the same. You just carry a terminal disease called disconnect. It is hard for you to explain but you feel like you could draw it on a piece of scrap paper. And if you did, it would be described as such:

Two people with tin cans connected by string.

The person on the dominant (left – because we read from this) side is pressing their mouth to the cavity of their can in full expectation that their voice will be the pre-imminent vibration that begins the conversation. But on the other side of the canvas is a hunched curmudgeon the you, the supposed receiver. Bow backed and sensation heavy – you do not have the rim of your own can to either you mouth or your ear – instead you hold it to your left eye body frozen staring down its barrel. You observe. You do not listen. You do not speak. You watch.   

3

Olivia is pissed. You’re not sure why – you truly don’t care – but you can see it from approx. 72.47ft away. You check each bodily signpost top down.

1)    Head Jutted forward

2)    Top tip of shoulder blades a touch

3)    Right palm pressed firmly into her lower back – the Halfkimbo

And the biggest of all

4)    The right foot moving back and forth like a volatile seesaw – ready to move forward, ready to flee ready to fight.

 

You look down at your own foot (whose own issue still evades you) and move your last three toes clockwise inside your shoe – or at least you think you do.

Olivia slams her mouse on the desk and launches herself forward. You scurry backwards as quickly as your body allows in order to avoid the coming rampage but it’s immediately too late.

On the floor, you seriously wonder how it was possible for Olivia not to see you at all. Naturally she isn’t apologizing for her gaff and unprofessional behavior. Instead she is standing over you moaning about your inability to sense that she was going to be taking a trajectory that could collide with yours which lead to an obviously stale observation that she has had about the fact that you “in general” are an oblivious person who cannot keep their head out of their own ass and do what needs to be done.

You wonder if she is right.

4

Olivia held her hand out just long enough to not help you up. Then unbecomingly stormed off in a ferocious mess, tossing out HR appropriate insults behind her. You place your palms flat against the ground to push yourself off the floor but the icky friction between your skin and the Berber carpeting convinces you to just lay a while. You inhale in a puff of air then exhale out twice as much. Maybe I should stay here. You think. Maybe all day. You calculate how long you could actually get away with this plan. Possibly much longer if I had landed face down and worn grey.

The pattern hot molded into the plastic light cover above you reminds you of the triangular protrusions on a meat tenderizing tool. A meat tenderizing tool reminds you of your nasal voiced sister at 7 stealing your mother’s to smash slugs on the sidewalk in front of the neighborhood boys to instill fear. You imagine you are the slug – lay cold and cut like the meat – adopt the mind of a scared pre-teen boy – and allow the rectangular beast to raise up then plunge down on top of you over and over, manipulated by an omniscient unseen hand. The make-believe violence releases a toxin inside of you and your whole body relaxes until you feel deflated and limp.

The dream is simple. You’re on a train that despite moving forward in space – is not moving equivalently through time. With each check of your watch, your anxiety inflates. You look around the train car, which you realize is comprised of geometric shapes floating in place without being physically molded or connected. You can’t remember if this is normal or not. The people occupying the seats that surround you seem strangely calm in comparison to your mounting anxiety. Looking closer you observe that despite being genetically different, every single one of them has the same expression on their face: an accepting calm. Like sentient mannequins placed intentionally to complete a rouse. A rouse that ends in your slowly unfolding mental breakdown.

-To Be Continued (dream gets better I think)

Classy Biped

January 24th 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Fiction (Attempting to find a style)

 

“Anna Lucia.”

Her name was unusual in all the right ways as well as moderately reminiscent of a place on the earth I had always wanted to travel to. As Anna Lucia spoke, I watched her eyes dart up when impassioned, her long fingers fan out gracefully when amused, and her shoulders vibrate when she laughed for real. In the farthest nook of the outside patio of my favorite bar, I watched Anna Lucia sparkle.

 

Having only met her an hour earlier (let’s take a moment to revel in the magic of proximity in a public place) I was amazed at how enrapt I already was by this relative stranger. Despite the fact that she looked nothing like her (later I would describe her as a person equivalent to a photo layered with a negative filter) Anna Lucia oozed a familiar aura, radiated an identical charm, and tethered me with the same irresistible draw of Vivienne: my childhood best friend.

Four bourbon and sodas in, I found myself in front of the bathroom mirror with eight fingertips to my face. Something had happened to me along the way, hadn’t it? The single light above the sink bounced cruelly off the pockmarks that laced my skin and the sight made me almost cry. Just like the terrible acne that scarred my skin for the rest of my life, the initially wonderful relationship I had with a girl so many years earlier scarred myself to the point that everyone I met could see the scooped out holes that would never be filled in.

____________________

Another decent writing attempt that I hope to get back to again. We'll see. It seems to me that this whole experiment will end up with me finding a few items that I truly feel compelled to complete. Of course I'd like to complete all of them , just like I'd like every one to already be complete and perfect, but that's the type A side of me vs the depressive side of me.

Thank you for reading. Whoever still is. It means so much.  I've already gone through some serious emotional waves in only the first few weeks of this process and I imagine it will get worse before it gets better. As I said, weeping to Mr. Biped today after apologizing for my anger last night 'I just want to do something good with my life." In a small way this is doing just that.
-ClassyB

JANUARY 23 2014

HI!

I am upset!

I am angry!

I wrote for two hours by hand then got into an argument with Mr.Biped that made me not want to post.


I am hoping/wishing/believing that tomorrow I will be able to finish my typing of what I wrote but who knows.

I apologize. Blame......




-me

January 22 2014

Writing Attempt: Editing a Scrap of Thought I Wrote Down Two Years Ago – Emailed to Myself and Forgot About Until Today.

 

In my drunkenly disordered state, her lips did less conveying and more swaying side, side (sigh) to side.

"Ohhh nooo" she said as she plunged her forearm into her handbag (double-wide).

I followed her every move raptly. Slowly. I bit my top lip somewhat casually. I wondered how long it would take for her to find whatever it was she was so desperate to find and hoped that it would take longer.

There was something intriguing about the way she told her body to move in order to complete a desperate task – an ability to let her thoughts shrink and her motor skills fatten. It was all fists and grabs and no one else exists until the task is completed, until the thing is found.  Find it strange or not – this is not the first time I’ve had this thought pause.

Born into best friend hood 32 years prior. We were beautiful babies. Our picture was on the front page of the Calhoun gazette. Headline: Babies of Best Friends Born at Exact Same Time!  457 people subscribe to that you know. They all saw it. Saw us. We were told they smiled at our synchronized arrival. So beautiful: twice! We grew up telling that story like we saw it. Like we were mentally there. We grew up fighting about that fact.

“We were there!” she’d say.

“Yeah, but did we see it? Can our eyes vouch for it or our memories vouch the truth beyond hearsay?”

“Infants are incredibly perceptive. They learn from the womb.”

“So then we ourselves are perceptive enough - hunter gatherers of info from birth. Why don’t more newborns pop out and write investigative reports for their local journals?”

“That’s ridiculous and you know it. Perception – like absorption – is not static.”

“All I’m saying is- if infants are that perceptive, that absorptive, when they arrive they should get a tell all book deal and pay for the cost of labor instead of mooching for decades until they find themselves.” My breath always shortens here.

“As per usual, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

“As per usual – I am reminded that we are the farthest away from friends than we were born to believe.” I looked at her elbow – crookedly protruding from her hand bag. It was so lovely. It was so hideous. “Did you find your thing?”

“My what?”

“What you were looking for.” I know. I failed.

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.” I reached out my hand and grabbed my favorite clump of her hair. “Want a walk home?” She didn’t answer. So I walked alongside her until she picked up her pace to let me know we were simultaneously okay and at our day’s limit.

---------------------------

 

So I found this in my email today - it was a really bad thought/poemy thing that I am pretty sure I wrote to myself while on shift at least two years ago. I decided I liked a few lines from it and turned it into something much much better. While talking to another writer today, I realized that a lot of this process for me is learning how to edit. So today -  I edited this tiny thing. Hopefully in the near future I can find enough focus and humility to edit the big thing I want to.

 

Thank You All for being here.

 

-ClassyB

 

January 21 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Poetry.

 

From his dead-eyed stare and untethered work ethic

You can tell that the man outside your window

Has never made more than $20,000 a year.

He speaks in plain tongues.

And knows how to ignore the movement of the world around him.

This is partially why you have decided to not place your middle finger against

The double paned glass and mouth “Fuck you.”

Even though it’s 7:47am on your one day off in two months.

Even though he is wearing disposable white booties over his crocs.

Even though he can literally see the top of your head while you pretend to sleep in your bed.

You give him the benefit of the doubt –

Because solidarity for the working class is important…

Right?

 

 

 

Feeling nominally better...

ClassyB

January 20th 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Second Tense Serial Cont...

 

Olivia held her hand out just long enough to not help you up. Then appropriately stormed off in a ferocious mess, spitting HR appropriate insults.

At some point being on your back in the middle of the 4^th floor hallway shifted from a nuisance via a smalltime workplace casualty to a delicious stretch of rest that afforded you some on the clock introspection. The grid like pattern printed into the florescent light cover above you is reminiscent of the sharp triangular protrusions that make a meat tenderizer tool useful. You think about how you argued with your sister about the necessity of a meat tenderizer two Christmases ago. Her forced nasality makes you shudder even in flashback. The ordeal ended with her accusing you of being so cold that

 

***

I apologize.

I wrote a three page draft today that continues this story but I need to be honest and tell you (as well as admit to myself) that I am very depressed. I have it written out by hand but it needs editing and as I have been trying to move it tonight from page to screen I have crumpled into a stupid pile of useless emotions and am no longer able to translate my own words from one medium to another.

I will try again tomorrow. I will now allow myself to understand that even though I didn’t successfully put it on the internet – I did write today and I haven’t betrayed my promise to myself.

 

Thank you to the few who are still reading this. It means a lot.

 

-Classy Biped

 

 

 

 

January 19 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Writing From a Picture (A young girl feeds a small tab to her father)

 

The Perfect Accumulation of Love Represented Through the Mundane

 

I can imagine her Mother dictating her regimen.

The kids at school had been getting the sickness and Carolyn – with her boisterous attitude and penchant for make believe in the primary grade sandbox - made her susceptible to germs of all strain, shape and form.

It might have been a children’s aspirin, or maybe a drip of castor oil slipped onto a communion wafer, no matter what it was, Carolyn would have taken it like a champ. Being the eldest she had already learned how to act not only responsibly but as an example. She knew she must be a pillar of her small tribe.

I suspect after taking the tablet herself, she became alarmed, sensitive to the fact that her father (whom spent every evening in his study)would be the one who missed the dolling out of such an important dosage.   

This works better with the picture for reference...shit.

I'm feeling like I'm failing at this challenge. I need a little more confidence and definitely more time in a day.

fuck.

-ClassyBiped

January 18 2014

Writing Attempt: Continuation of my Second Person Story

 

Olivia is pissed. You’re not sure why – you truly don’t care – but you can see it from approx. 72.47ft away. You check each bodily signpost top down.

1)    Head Jutted forward

2)    Top tip of shoulder blades a touch

3)    Right palm pressed firmly into her lower back – the Halfkimbo

And the biggest of all

4)    The right foot moving back and forth like a volatile seesaw – ready to move forward, ready to flee ready to fight.

 

You look down at your own foot (whose own issue still evades you) and move your last three toes clockwise inside your shoe – or at least you think you do.

Olivia slams her mouse on the desk and launches herself forward. You scurry backwards as quickly as your body allows in order to avoid the coming rampage but it’s immediately too late.

On the floor, you seriously wonder how it was possible for Olivia not to see you at all. Naturally she isn’t apologizing for her gaff and unprofessional behavior. Instead she is standing over you moaning about your inability to sense that she was going to be taking a trajectory that could collide with yours which lead to an obviously stale observation that she has had about the fact that you “in general” are an oblivious person who cannot keep their head out of their own ass and do what needs to be done.

You wonder if she is right.

 

-more tomorrow

Classy B

 

January 17 2014

Writing Attempt: Writing while not writing

 

I am so tired I don’t want to write tonight. Instead I want to watch movies on Netflix and pretend I look as good as Olivia Wilde in night wear without makeup. I have been thinking today about things I once had that now I miss. I think that for today’s entry I will simply list some of them. For those who have been following the blog – I will continue the second tense story soon. I know I already miss it.

 

1)    Having a sickness and being taken care of

2)    Eating because I’m simply hungry and nothing more

3)    My black ipod that had EVERYTHING I want to listen to on it

4)    Chicago

5)    Excitement for the unexpected

6)    The veracious first months of loving someone

7)    Age 20

8)    Confidence

9)    Willy Graves

10) Relationship 2, 4 & 6

11) Being the only child

12) California

13) Iggy and Alice

14) The green pillows at my parent’s house

15) The pacific ocean

16) Pilsen & my apartment on 19^th st.

17) Almost everything I’ve ever donated to goodwill

18) My virginity

19) My overt sexuality

20) September 29^th – October 3^rd of 2011

21) Opening night

22) The drive to…

23) Daisy Cutter

 

 

 

 

Love,

Classy Bipedal Narcissist

 

January 16, 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Second person continued…

 

Whitney has never once complained about the fact that when people meet him in person they are startled and more often than not visibly disappointed that he is not female. His lax attitude towards social prejudices such as this has always infuriated and intrigued you. You, who throws a match into your mental fire anytime someone’s glance or vocal implies they are considering you height either way.

 

When you get to Whitney’s floor Brandie (Why must she spell it this way?) looks up and tells you he is not here. You consider making some small time excuse about just passing by or wanting to see how she is doing but you’d both know it was bullshit so you half smirk and half sigh and forget to ask when he will be or where he is.

 

Brandie does this to you. Many women do this to you. Every time this happens, you remind yourself that it may have started out with gender but as time has told, it truly is not so. You are the same. You just carry a terminal disease called disconnect. It is hard for you to explain but you feel like you could draw it on a piece of scrap paper. And if you did, it would be described as such:

Two people with tin cans connected by string.

The person on the dominant (left – because we read from this) side is pressing their mouth to the cavity of their can in full expectation that their voice will be the pre-imminent vibration that begins the conversation. But on the other side of the canvas is a hunched curmudgeon the you, the supposed receiver. Bow backed and sensation heavy – you do not have the rim of your own can to either you mouth or your ear – instead you hold it to your left eye body frozen staring down its barrel. You observe. You do not listen. You do not speak. You watch.   

-I hope you are following along...I sure am

ClassyB

January 15th, 2014 - Day 10!

Writing Style Attempt: Continuation of Second Person (I'm liking this)

 

When you wake up, your last three toes on your right foot are numb. You flex both feet and move your ankles in opposite circles to return the blood flow and regain sensation. The cat, having spent its morning at the edge of the bed, sees this movement and immediately attacks the blanket catching its front nails in the stitching of the quilt and driving its teeth into your toes. You feel nothing physically, but kick him to the ground anyway. He lands loudly on the ancient wood floor and scampers off with contempt leaving a scent of revenge in the air behind him.

You claw at your phone on the windowsill behind your head, refusing to move more than necessary. Once found, it lights up on its own and glaringly welcomes you to your morning. It’s 5:30am. The phone knows this, but doesn’t care. Just like the idiot cat, and anxious you, once it’s awoken from its slumber there is no more sleep mode.

Maybe tea will help. The only good coffee you own needs to be ground and you’re pretty positive that that much intensive labor two hours before sunrise is forbidden by at least one religion. The heat from the gas burner is so comforting you place your face next to it. Why is this smell so alluring? The cat makes three figure eights around your ankles while sounding his alarm. Fine. You dump him his food and tell him nicely to shut up. As you leave the apartment, he looks up at you ready to meow in protest but before he can begin, you point your finger at him sternly and he yawns instead. Good. You say. In the hallway you can hear him licking at something furiously.

***

Three hours into work, you realize that tea was at best, a mediocre choice. In fact, you question if you possibly drank a useless hot liquid in place of a useful one. It doesn’t matter now. You shift your weight from your left leg to your right. Wait. You think. Are my toes still numb? Less concerned about the fact that one’s body parts should not stay numb for such a period of time, you worry that you have just spent six plus hours unaware that they were numb at all. You scan the room for anyone who might notice you and when it’s clear, you thrust the side of your right foot full force to the side of your desk.

Nothing.

You think about the theory that a person cannot willfully inflict harm on itself with the force that they can upon another. This worries you and so you get up to find Whitney in hopes he will be able to help.

 

(To be continued.)

 

 

Friends – I worked too long today – gonna sleep and venture forth tomorrow!

-ClassyB

January 14 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Second Person

 

You have only been here once before, but the familiarity between your lungs and the moist air, the effortless way your feet navigate the uneven floor knocks that fact out of the equation. Similarly, the desire you feel for the paper thin bark that surrounds you, radiates guiltlessly from your palms sends a signal to your whole body that this is and always has been, home.  

***

When you were twelve you saw a movie that took place in a not so far away city. You loved this movie. You were enchanted by its characters and the way it made you spit out that giggle your mother light-heartedly made fun of you for. You watched it on VHS more often that you’d now like to admit and each viewing only intensified the wide range of emotions it elicited in you.

 

Upon one of these many viewings – which one, you cannot possibly recall – you sat up from the living room couch, you pushed up your torso from the pillow on the floor, you removed our cheek from the cradle of your hands, you stopped making the instant iced tea or scooping the ice cream from the bottom of the bowl and froze.

 

This place is real. You thought. This place is living and breathing and growing and shrinking right this moment. This place has stray cats and houses not similar to mine. This place is a place and not a figment in my head or a setting in a movie. This place is real and I could live in it and make it mine.

 

As a young kid and into your teens you had many moments like this, where your body stopped moving and your mind took over. Sometimes it took seconds. Other times it took an hour. This was how you figured things out. This is how you became a child that was perceived as troubled. This was why the girls in 8^th grade called you a snob and you cried, “Why?” This action of non-action and need to be nothing but a mind discovering its purpose kept you occupied and developed you from a brainwashed child to an imaginative and curious thinker.

This particular instance that you are remembering now, when you realized that there was in fact life available to you outside the contents of a VHS player, expanded a very particular and very helpful part of your brain. It bloomed the desire to leave. To explore. To be on your own and figure out if the places you felt most comfortable in no, your bed, your church, the pillow in front of the TV, your mother’s arms, were in fact your true home. Or if your home existed in a place you had never even considered to be real.

After this, you began to notice other actual places that you had previously over looked. Even the ones that took place in the very distant past, those too, were in fact real places that millions of people have lived and have very personal ties to. Even though you couldn't do the math, you estimated that by the time you were 50 and ready to retire, you would have had enough time to have visited every place you’d read about and remembered in the last 12 years of your life and by then, you could decide. Then you would truly know what home was and what home wasn’t yours.

***

Six months in, the paper thin bark on your favorite tree was wrinkling and began to spoil. The knots grew thicker and grey in color. The delicate branches snapped with the slightest wind and you watched the once luminous flora become a sickly figure against the now pasty sky. You tripped every time you walked the uneven earth and developed a wheeze from gasping for breath while squinting to see the limp stars in an over-lit sky. Tonight, you stand, frozen.

            This place is real. You think. But I am not of it. This place moves forward, moves back, keeps getting bigger as I get smaller and smaller. I called this my home but it has become a chore. I have to be bigger than my surroundings and rely on me to keep it so. This place that once was, now is no longer mine.

You take a difficult breath in and recall the first kiss you had with this once beautiful place - which reminds you – there are still 20 years till you are 50 and more than an equal amount of places you still haven’t been. Much greater land to adapt to or conquer. Unseen places that have been tightly contained in your movies, your imagination and your books. You hold out your hand to the streaky, starless sky and say, “Now where to?’’

- ClassyB

January 13 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Poem/Prose


Subject: The First Time You Bring Someone You Love Back Home


The plane ride was hideously easy.
I had imagined it would elicit more drama.
Especially since the last time I flew,
I got escorted off the airliner for cussing at an attendant.

When we got off the plane and acquired the rental car
I realized I had somehow managed to visit family while still being independent.
It was the first time.
It was the first time.
It was the first time I did this, without someone else's help.

I signed for the rental car.
Turned out to be a Crown Vic.
I drove it, with uneasy ease, to my parent's home.
It was the first time I felt in control of my own travel.
I unbuckled my belt, kissed him on the cheek
He seemed so relaxed
I was so wound I don't remember if
It was open or closed mouth.

January 12th

Writing style attempt: blog post on mobile

Sundays are my most dreaded days of the week. I realized I haven't had a Sunday off for at least 5 years.
I wish I didn't feel this way currently. Work is good for money and rehearsal is good for creativity. In theory. 

But theory is bullshit because it doesn't take variables into consideration.

I'm feeling a bit worn out but in a way I haven't experienced in a while. There are many things that I like about my life but there are many things that are overly taxing.  I need to find a better balance but I'm unsure how. 

I'm 31 and I forget that.  Until I see other people younger than me doing things I feel I should have already done or should be doing.  I know I shouldn't compare myself but it has always been in my nature to do so. Hence this project.  Self discipline is my biggest downfall and my need for perfection is my biggest hurdle.  I can only hope that my constant search to find the right group of people to help and motivate me will someday be successful so I can be comfortable in my own artist skin again and truly do what I feel I was born to. 

-end of self pity rant.

ClassyB

January 11 2014

Writing Style Attempt: Prompt with a challenge to only write dialogue to convey two characters.


Prompt:

Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man’s friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.

 

8:27am (home)

            “Hey. Hey.”

“Jesus. Don’t scare me.

”’Hey’ is scaring you?”

“When I’m sleeping, yeah.”

“Where are the car keys?”

“Dresser?”

“Nope.”

“By the T.V.?”

“Nope.”

“Kitchen table?”

“Checked.”

“Black table thingy in the hall?”

“That is where they should be, but nope.”

“Babe, I dunno. I’m half asleep. Check again.”

“Are these the pants you wore yesterday?”

“Maybe.”

“There in the fucking pocket. Thanks a lot.”

8:34am

“Have a good day.”

“Runningfuckingla-ate.”

“Have a good day.”

“Love you too.”

 

3:49pm (via text)

Ugggh. It’s been so busy that I didn’t get a break until just now. How’s your day off?

 

3:53pm (via text)

Have you ever encountered a small, then after leaving said smell, continued to smell it throughout the day?

3:54pm (via text)

What are you up to?

4:49pm (via text)

Not much. Internet.

Where are the quarters for laundry?

Nvm. Found them.

Have you seen the Frosted Flakes?

We bought some last week, right?

5:50 (via text)

Cnt tlk wrking nw.

 

7:01pm (home)

            “We can just get something at Jake’s. I think they have happy hour till 8.

            “Whatever you want.”

 

7:46pm (diner)

            “I got sucked into an argument today about the validity of the Salem Witch Trials.

            “Like, did someone think they were valid?”

            “No, the burning at the stake. They weren’t burned they were hung.”

            “Oh. Right.”

            “The opinion of, ‘Well if it isn’t true then why would it be repeated throughout history is bull shit. Then I went back and forth for a while about religion again with someone, I hate and love that conversation.”

            “What kind of conversation?”

            “It just fucking irks me how people can believe in one thing generally and then not do their research. Even Atheists, they have this belief, there is no god, but then they also refuse to understand the validity of the existence of people who created the thing they don’t believe in.”

            “Right.”

            “I may not believe in it, but it still exists. I dunno. I may not agree with a lot of shit, but I can’t deny that, for example, L. Ron Hubbard inadvertently created a religion because someone who read his book felt like it was their own gospel.”

            “Or Jonestown.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Even Manson. A smattering of folks found him charismatic enough to kill for.”

            “Do I subscribe to what these people were shilling? No. Do I believe they existed and were influential? Yeah.”

            “Well, you couldn’t of subscribed, there wasn’t the internet yet –

- I deserve that silence coming from your side of the table.”

            “Where’s the salt?”

            “Sorry, I was hoarding it.”

            “Should’ve known. Very sneaky.”

            “So, who was this you were talking to?”

            “When?”

            “About the witches.”

            “Facebook friends, you know.”

            “Ah. And the religion? That was like a singular convo?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Who with?”

            “Just a friend.”

            “Cool.”

 

11:10pm (home)

           

“I haven’t seen your precious sugar flakes. I never see them because you eat them the second they get home from the store.”

            “I love a big bowl of Frosted Flakes. So what?”

            “So, they’re fucking probably gone already and you forgot. Or they’re under the bed, or behind the computer still open and too stale to eat anyway, just because you soaked them in milk for ten minutes, doesn’t make them more edible!”

            “I’d still eat them.”

            “EXACTLY!”

            “Are you mad at me?”

            “I’m gonna take a shower. Don’t wait up. I may also take some time and touch myself.”

 

5:14am (home)

“Is that you?”

“Hnh?”

“Are you awake?”

“Smishmamishma.”

“I can’t stop thinking about those stupid Frosted Flakes.”

“Youf oun dem?”

“Nevermind. Goodnoght.”

“Loff yeu too.”

-ClassyB