Assignment #3 - Incomplete.

I can't find the completed version of this, and I can't find Assignment #4 at all. I will keep looking. In the meantime, here.

Every Saturday, my whole family (along with most of the population of whichever town we were in that winter) congregated at the rink to watch my brothers and their friends play. The spectators would watch voraciously, waiting for the next breakaway, the next goal, the next huge save or glove-dropping fight. The crowd’s steady murmur would swell with each swing of the game’s pendulum, and for a moment, they were satiated.

I watched too, with a different kind of hunger. I watched them move, the grace of them – the immense power of every stride held in check by pure economy of motion – they were like coiled springs, crouching predators ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness.

But, in Small Town, Alberta, it was a well-established fact that girls did not play hockey.

Girls were, of course, permitted to skate – only figure skating, though. My older sister was a fairly gifted figure skater. Even my eldest brother, despite being the goalie for the Bantam team, skated too – and theirs was a different kind of grace. No economy there; everything made up of florid gestures and great sweeping strides.

I did try, when my parents enrolled me. I tried to learn. But have you ever seen the blade of a figure skate? They jut out at the toe with a gnashing row of steel teeth, just waiting to bite into the ice and bring me to a screeching halt – usually on my face. I tried for five miserable winters, each filled with bruised hips and scraped knees and elbows. When I was ten, I gave up. I would never be a skater.

Thirteen years later, I had still never learned to skate. But several events in my life had made me reevaluate my own priorities, and on a whim born of that long-ago longing, I asked my youngest big brother to help me do something for myself. I asked him to help me buy hockey skates.

I was then, as I am now, a full-time university student, which essentially translates to mean that I could under no circumstances afford to buy brand-new skates for myself. So Conor, my brother, started us off at one of the larger used sporting-goods shops in the city. After only a few minutes, we left – he, frustrated, and I disheartened. It seemed that my silly little desire to finally learn to skate, to create for myself, in the wake of so much sadness, something wholly mine, was not to be fulfilled. Conor, though, was less easily dissuaded, and took me to another, and then another shop, where, he hoped, the prices of used skates would prove less prohibitive. Finally, we came upon a rather unassuming-looking store called Totem. Neat, hand-lettered signs adorned the window, advertising skate sharpening and service. We pushed open the heavy door and entered into the cathedral stillness of the shop’s inner sanctum: the skate room. Rows upon rows of shelves greeted us, every one filled with skates. Conor set to, determined to find me a pair that met his approval and my budget. While he systematically examined and discarded pairs for various reasons (some of which I didn’t really understand – what do trucks have to do with whether or not I should buy this pair of skates?) I wandered in and out of the shells, looking without enough knowledge to really see. Just a few feet to one side of Conor, who now had several pairs lined up for fitting on a bench situated between the two shelves, I saw a lonely-looking pair off to one side by themselves – the last pair of size sixes, they didn’t fit on the shelf with the rest, and so had been sentenced to segregation on the sevens’ shelf. I picked them up to have a closer look, keenly aware that I didn’t really know what I was doing. The scars of countless battles with hockey sticks and the blades of other skates adorned the toes; the laces, though not new, were still strong and smooth to the touch. A label on the back read CCM Taks 773.

By this point Conor had approached me to see what had caught my attention. He picked up the skates, looked at them, and his eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the same label that had intrigued me so. He flipped them over, blade up, exposing their underbellies to the light. Running a finger around the rivets that held the blade to the boot, he smiled briefly. Then he looped two fingers around the blade housing (which, I have sinced learned, is what the term ‘truck’ refers to) and tugged alarmingly. His smile widened – apparently, these skates had passed some kind of test. He set them down next to the other pairs that he had picked out and bade me start trying them on.

I saved the pair that I had picked out myself for last. The first pair was most definitely too small; long enough, but not nearly the width that my strange, square little feet require.

Assignment #3 - Sports, Science, or Nature

Actually, the assignment isn't going to be posted just yet - I only received it back from the prof today, and I need to clarify some of his comments before I post. But it will be posted soon, along with Assignment #4 - Definition (in 750 words. Seriously.). In the meantime, have a great weekend for me as I'm going to be working like a madwoman all the way through it!

Assignment #2 - Description

This week's assignment was to evoke the feeling of a place, and a moment within that place, through wholly descriptive language. Narrative was to be avoided as much as possible. I found this assignment extremely challenging, and have some trepidation about posting it here, but I did promise it, so here it is.

Enjoy?

Home

It feels as though both the city and I have been sleeping while I was away, but as my feet step from the bus onto sunwarmed pavement, the city wakes and I wake with it. The doors hiss shut behind me and I am home, in all its grit and glory.

The city wakes, and stretches towards the sun with towering skyscrapers that cast no shadow; they catch the light and make a game of tossing it back and forth between them until finally it falls in shards to the sidewalk below. The downtown streets collect broken light that clings to chrome and windshields until the cars throw it off to shatter anew against walls of warm brick and smooth stone, of hard glass and cold steel. Cracks and crevices gather the light into tiny pools, welcoming it and creating a sense of space at odds with hundreds of right angles that struggle to capture and enclose. It overflows, stings at my eyes, and I turn.

The city wakes, and yawning wind assails me with choking dust and the cloying scent of hot tar on conrete, and I must learn to breathe again. Corners are everywhere, sharpening the gusts into blades. It has not rained here today, and the city thirsts. Its parched air sucks greedily at my skin, which tightens until it has become too small for me and I am certain it must crack. I can feel the sun digging into it, seizing me roughly as a parent would a child gone too long before easing its embrace and burnishing me with molten gold. Heat rushes down and through me to pool languidly at my feet. The city’s floor sends it back in waves, at once buffeting and bolstering me as I pause to regain my bearings.

The city wakes, and its lifeblood begins to flow, people streaming by in twos and threes jostling me gently aside. Snatches of conversations held in a plethora of languages surround each cluster, an intangible wall to be penetrated only by those who share the secret of tongues. On the corner across the street, here in the city’s heart, an old man begs for loose change. His face is weathered and sunbeaten, his beard scraggly and unkempt; he wears layers of dirt interspersed with old flannel, reeking of humanity. His fragrance blends with the dust and the perfumes of inner-city traffic, with the softening tar and the ever-present miasma of coffee, tickling at the edge of perception as the city wakes, and whispers to me once more: I am home.

Assignment #1 - Story Exchange

EDIT: This is now an EVEN MORE substantially edited version. Parts of the introduction have been put back in, and several other suggestions from my instructor for tightening up the narrative as a whole have been incorporated as well. Feedback is still my heroin!

Some of you who have been reading for a long-ish while will recognize this post. It is, in fact, a substantially re-written version of this post, written just over a year ago. This week's writing assignment was taken from Stuart MacLean's Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange:

"I want you to write to me about a moment that you have experienced or witnessed or heard about that you think is worth writing about. It might be a moment of kindness or a moment of cruelty. It might be a moment of sadness or frivolity. It might be a moment you are proud of. Or it might be a moment you are ashamed of. It might not even be about you. It might be about someone you know or maybe its about someone you don’t know at all … maybe it’s something you have seen that made you smile, or cry. Happy or sad.

There are just two criteria for these stories I want you to write. Your story must short and it must be true."

The instant I read the assignment, I wanted to submit this piece, and although I attempted several other stories, this is the one I ended up going with.

Much of the revision was due to length requirements (500 words!!). I would love to hear your thoughts on the differences between the two drafts, and which you think is better.

Lost and Found

At one o’clock yesterday afternoon, I began to panic.

I couldn’t find my phone anywhere. My lifeline, my link to the world outside suburbia, had been taken from me. A cursory inspection of my bedroom yielded only my MP3 player, a car charger for same, a similar accessory for my stepbrother’s iPod, two passports, a guitar, the kitchen sink – and a startling number of dirty socks.

Now, I need to tell you a secret.

I hate laundry. I abhor and detest laundry so much that I have actually gone out and bought new socks and underwear rather than do a load of whites. Several times. So many times, in fact, that the socks have taken over my room, have formed a collective, and, I was certain, were holding my cellular phone hostage. Despite an intensive search through my things, I couldn’t find it anywhere. Calling from the landline yielded no results either – the socks had clearly drained the battery as an intimidation tactic.

Now I was faced with a difficult choice: should I negotiate with these terrorists? Should I succumb to their ransom demands of hot water and bleach?

No. I couldn’t possibly. And then it struck me – perhaps my phone had not accompanied me home last night at all. I looked consideringly at the looming mound of socks, and did the only natural thing to do in the face of such a dilemma: I left, and began to retrace my steps from the night before, in an attempt to recover my phone without resorting to such base measures as sorting and pre-soaking, washing and drying, folding and putting away.

I started my search at the restaurant where I had covered the evening shift the night before. However, it wasn’t there, so I began the long and arduous process of duplicating the evening’s journey. From the restaurant I trekked the few short blocks to my brother’s house, where I had visited briefly that evening. Alas – it wasn’t there, either. I then trudged across town to my sister’s place, hoping that she had inadvertently taken it after visiting me at work ( and wishing the entire way there that I had her phone number recorded somewhere other than my phone’s contact list). Not there either. It was beginning to look as though the socks would have their way after all. One last chance - I had also briefly stopped in at a pub on my way home to catch the period of the late hockey game, and it is there I went again, still clinging to the faint hope that I might yet save myself from the rigours of the wash cycle. My hopes soared – the manager had received a phone that very morning. Then my spirits fell once more - it was most definitely not mine. It began to look as though I would have to battle the Seventh Sock Cavalry after all.

So I did what any normal person would do in that situation: I procrastinated, and headed down to a friend’s place for our weekly movie night, obstinately shoving the whole issue to the back of my mind in order to concentrate on having a good time. Unfortunately, that particular tactic worked better in theory than in practice; images of grey and grimy socks shadowed my every thought. By the time the first movie was over, I simply had to get to my house and have one last look around as it was now definitely too late to do put in a load of wash.

I began resolutely looking through my things as quietly as possible and with ever-increasing levels of despair. Finally, defeated, I made ready for bed, resolving as I did so that on the morrow, I would do at least two loads of laundry.

But then, just as I was turning down my comforter for the night, what should fall out of my duvet cover but… my phone! My battle tactics (or lack thereof) had thwarted the socks yet again. Victorious, I plugged it into its charger and went to bed, panic attack finally over, smugly exultant in once more prevailing against the Deadly Scourge of Socks.

Speaking of which, I think I need to go buy some more… I’m out of clean ones.

Everything Old...

As I prepare myself to make the transition from teacher to student for the last time in the foreseeable future, I consider how different my outlook on my final course will be in light of my recent teaching experiences. The course I am taking (as some of you know) is WRITE 298, the Intro. to Creative Nonfiction. The subject matter of this course holds a great deal of potential for me, not as a student but as a teacher; in recent years, Alberta Education has put an increasingly strong focus on personal responses to texts, to the point that I have found myself struggling as a teacher. I greatly look forward to having a collegiate relationship with my instructor, as well as a teacher/student one; I relish the thought of learning, not only how to write, but how to teach writing to others. The craft of writing, as I learned during the course of my practicum, is currently in a bewildering state of paradox; many of my students struggled with stylistic elements, grammar, and puctuation; and yet (perhaps becuase of the newfound focus on personal writing) many of their pieces moved me nigh to tears. Often during the past two months, the hour of midnight has found me hunched over the kitchen table, coffee cup in hand, laughing aloud or wincing in pain as I experienced the joys and tribulations that my students shared with me. I am passionate about good writing, but have only the barest glimmer of how to accomplish it, much less teach it; and so, I approach this final course with great anticipation.

{On that note, though, I will likely be posting my assignments up here after handing them in, and would dearly love feedback for them!)