papertickles

So I have been taking this memoir writing class for fun (and credit) and I have decided to post some of my writing on here to see what you think. I am totally open to comments and critiques :)

I remember the kitchen from my childhood home very well because it was my favorite place in the house. It was shaped like a rectangle but with one corner cut off so that the entrance was wide open at an angle to the living room, straight across from the front door. It had those ugly white linoleum tiles for the floor that never looked like they were clean. The kitchen table was an antique oak table with carved legs and hidden leaves that unfolded so you could sit up to eight people there. We only had the four chairs to match though, and they didn’t have cushions. The appliances were an old seventies refrigerator, stove and dishwasher, all in white with black trim. The right wall was almost all exposed because we had these old sliding glass doors that opened up into the backyard, and there was a window next to it right above the kitchen table. On the back wall, there was the stove; to the right of it were drawers below some countertop, and then the sink and the dishwasher. Above the sink was a garden window that jutted outwards toward the yard and was made of all glass so plants could grow in it. My mom could never grow any plants though, so she hung prisms of all shapes and sizes from the top of the window. In the afternoon, when I would come home from school and sit at the table to eat my after school snack, I would get covered in rainbows as they drifted across the floor, the ceiling, and the wall behind me. My mom loved them, and would get just as excited one day after the next over how pretty they were. On the left wall was the pantry, all whitewashed wood like the rest of the cabinetry, followed by the refrigerator. I didn’t really appreciate it then, but I think the openness of our kitchen combined with my mom’s penchant for rainbows made me love the kitchen more than any other room in the house, including my own. I didn’t have fond memories of home cooked meals because, frankly, my mom couldn’t cook, so we ate out, a lot. Our refrigerator was usually filled with take-out containers, Sprites, milk and cheese—the basics—and there was always ice cream in the freezer.

When I was nine, my mom decided to remodel the kitchen. She gutted it completely, but the result was beautiful. The floor became Mexican paver tiles with big cream-colored grout lines. The sliding glass doors became gorgeous, honey-colored French doors that swung out into the yard and had gold fixtures. My mom took the old chairs from the table and had an L-shaped bench seat built along the wall around the table that had storage for our pots and pans underneath and was topped with dark blue velvet cushions. This also had a secret compartment in the corner under the cushions that was our little secret: we hid all the sweets and treats from my dad there. The cabinets were redone with more honey-colored wood, and the stove was replaced with a stainless steel Wolf brand that my mom gloated over for months. The countertops and backsplash were redone in a dark blue tile to match the velvet cushions and the whole room transformed into something deeply vibrant with life.

I love this poem, but I had totally forgot about it until now… long story. enjoy!

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are.”
Pussy said to the Owl “You elegant fowl, 
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?”
 Said the Piggy, “I will”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand.
They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

~Edward Lear, 1871

sitting in the math mezzanine of neuberger hall is an interesting experience… everyone around me is speaking a language I recognize but definitely don’t understand. i am so not a math person.

today i vetoed productivity in favor of a nap and i hope that works out for me. now i am hoping to get some artistic inspiration. there are days/moments/minutes when i feel so overwhelmed with creativity but don’t act on it, and then are times when i want to be creative and feel nothing. that’s actually poignantly accurate—at this moment i feel nothing. apathy and lethargy and nothing. oh to be unmotivated. so in lieu of creativity now, i shall post a short story i wrote forever ago and unearthed on my hard drive recently…

it’s in journal format, two entries, and its called “The Wish Giver”:

Journal Entry #65

November 22^nd, 2014

What if you could make a wish and it would come true? You’ve only got one chance to get it right though. What would you wish for? Right now I’d wish to never have to pee again. I have to pee so bad but I’m sitting in the Coffee Bean with my laptop, and frankly it is just such a hassle to bring all my valuables with me into the bathroom simply because I have to pee. Frustrating. I suppose I could ask someone to watch my stuff for me, but who can you trust, really? Its beginning to hurt. You know, I could totally get a bladder infection from this and then I’d have to take antibiotics. Ugh, the world would be so much simpler if people were just trustworthy. Ha! That’s it! I could make my one wish be about trustworthiness. Make everyone in the world be trustworthy…not necessarily that people can’t lie, but simply that if they tell you they’re going to do something, you can trust that they’ll do it. How would that affect the world, I wonder? Well, regardless. I do have to make a wish. I get one, just like everyone else. I have to make it on my eighteenth birthday, because my parents decided that would be my gift. You see, this guy a couple of years back discovered some device that lets you have one wish—ingeniously called the Wish Giver. I’m not really sure how that contraption works, but they say that it manipulates the fabric of time and space (I call it “fate”) to give each person at least one chance to get exactly what they want in life. There are rules, of course. You can’t make a wish directly aimed at someone else (i.e. love, death, injury, etc.) or wish for money. They learned that real quick after some stockbroker wished he had all the money in the world. Yeah, that happened. They retrieved it, but the government quickly began micromanaging the Wish Giver. Oh and just in case you were wondering…I took a chance and left my stuff while I dashed to the bathroom to relieve my overburdened bladder. It worked out okay, I mean, no one stole my stuff and I feel better, but what if I came back to an empty little table and no way to get home? I’ve been thinking a lot in “what if” terms. I think it has a lot to do with the whole wish thing. Just a few years ago people went on with their lives without any form of control except self-determination, and even then bad things happened all the time. They still do, but now people seem to feel more secure, like they have some form of influence on their quality of life. You can’t wish that you won’t die, but you can wish that you wouldn’t die painfully. And the wishing itself is a tricky thing. You can wish that you’ll become a famous singer someday, but if you’re tone deaf and talentless then you’ll be famous for other reasons (like sleeping with Justin Bieber) and fail miserably in your singing career. Similarly, if you wish to have an amazing voice and be a talented singer, your wish won’t guarantee your success or fame. There are all kinds of loopholes. For example, there is an extremely cute boy sitting across from me. I can’t make a wish that will directly affect his life, but I could wish that someone fitting his description became the love of my life. Sure, I’ll meet someone that looks similar, maybe even him, and we “fall in love,” but there’s no guarantee that he will be a faithful guy or anything of the sort. From what I can tell it’s best to make a wish that doesn’t involve anyone but yourself. No wishing for love or happiness either. The best wishes are the simple ones that have the least amount of possible distortion fallout. I turn 18 tomorrow. My appointment for the Wish Giver is at 8 am. What the hell am I going to wish for? You can, of course opt out of making your wish, and some people do. After all, it isn’t cheap. The government figured out real quick how much people are willing to pay to change their lives. But my parents are quite insistent that I make my wish. I’m a little more ambivalent about the whole thing. I think my parents will probably hate whatever wish I decide to make because it won’t be grandiose and exciting. But I’m a cautious one, and having the ability to change my own life at eighteen is a bit overwhelming. Its like the opposite of getting pregnant, but with the same amount of responsibility weighing on the decision. Someone already wished for world peace, which tanked the economy, and then someone else wished for war to revive it. Others have wished for better careers, or different lives, only to find themselves unsatisfied with the change. Wishing to be really smart doesn’t go over well either, because it usually backfires and those people go crazy and commit suicide. I think I’ll have to sleep on it. 

Journal Entry #66

November 23^rd, 2014

This morning I wished that the Wish Giver was never invented. Against all odds, it worked.

-The End-