4/28 Writing Exercise: 20-minute creepy stalker story @ Java Supreme
“A PhD in the Sociology of the Internet — what the fuck was I thinking,” Clarissa muttered as she stumbled out of her condo on Valencia and 17th. Red hair ruffled, glasses practically falling off her face, jeans fitting loosely around her waist after weeks of forgetting to eat, Clarissa locked the door and zipped shut her backpack which was spilling out with papers.
The irony was that Clarissa in her own affairs made a concerted effort to avoid the Internet, and technology overall, really. Email, text messages, and instant chat were the bane of her existence. Her research demonstrated that the uses of all these options were far more nuanced than simply providing impersonal alternatives to face-to-face interaction — but she had grown up in a big family with lots of warm, personal affection, and the clicking away in this large but lonely city just wasn’t doing it for her.
After walking a few blocks, Clarissa swung open the door to the neighborhood coffee shop and took a seat in the corner, laying out all her papers. “Water,” she said to herself, “Let me first get some water.” She retrieved a cup from the counter and poured some water for herself, taking a long gulp that included most of the water in the cup before setting it down. “Food,” she said to herself next. She went up to the counter with her pen in her hand, and deliriously pointed the pen up to her face while perusing the menu, causing a few stray marks resembling a beard to appear on her chin. “Healthy, I need to be healthy,” she thought, and she ordered a salad. She paced up and down the aisle behind the counter until the salad was ready, then paid for it and sat back down.
Clarissa sighed, surveying all the materials that lay in front of her. The draft of her dissertation was due in less than a week, and she still had a good 30 pages to go. She retrieved a pencil from her bag to mark up any relevant material and crossed her legs, opening up a periodical about youth and technology. Occasionally taking bites from her salad, she flipped through the entire periodical within five minutes. “Useless,” she concluded, setting the periodical on the corner of the table and taking more bites from the salad.
Dupatta Tera Saat Aag Ka: A Bilingual Poem of Seven Fires and a Scarf
Woh dupatta tum roz pehna karte the
Jisme shaamil tha ek patla sa daag
Chupana kaafi aasan tha
Jab tak koi na aaya chiraag
Ek din tumne mujhe woh dupatta diya
Aur maine pyaar se pehn liya
Magar woh daag seene mein phail gaya
Aakhir utaar kar maine aag mein kaskar daal diya
Woh aag pehla bujhne waali thi
Lekin dupatta ne naya josh jagaaya
Woh sholay kaise kapde ke andar se guzre
Ki tumhari aakhri nishaani ko mitaaya
You used to wear that scarf every day
It had just a little stain
One that was easy to hilde
While shielded from sunrays
One day you gave me that scarf
And I wore it in love’s name
But the stain spread through
Til I ripped it off and through it in the bonfire flame
That fire had been nearly extinguished
But your scarf gave it life afresh
The way the flame tore right through the cloth
Put out the last of your memory’s flesh
Tell-Fail Battery
Pleased to have enjoyed an evening replete with intellectual and physical rigor in equal parts, I turn on the heater, cozy up in flannel pajamas, and snuggle up under the sheets with a delirious smile spreading across my lips. I recount specific events of the day and the few days before it, the thoughts shifting and melding into lower and lower levels of coherence.
I am almost asleep when a brief, mechanical shriek interrupts my reverie. Ah, the godforsaken smoke detector. It had sounded earlier in the day, too, and somehow stopped arbitrarily. It just had to make its come-back at this moment, didn’t it?
I turn around and lie on my stomach. I press one ear into the pillow, and attempt stuffing the other ear with my blanket. No use. The chirping is salient, as disconcerting as a pale, blue vulture eye.
I finally click on my lamp and rub my eyes, squinting as they adjust to the light. I get out of bed and swing my desk chair a few feet over. I step on the chair and flip open the smoke detector, facing the failing battery head-on. I ruthlessly snatch it out.
If I am going to get burned, let me do so in oblivion. I would rather not be cautioned too late and in vain, and I would certainly rather not be kept awake with the shrill reminder of my chamber’s diminishing prowess in smoke detection.
Leejiye Janaab: A Bilingual Poem of Welcomed Futility
Leejiye janaab, yeh fizool dastak
Aapke darwaaze pe khatkhataaye
Khulna namumkin na sahi
Phir bhi kaafi dhoop se chhaaye
Leejiye janaab yeh fizool dastak
Jo bhari mehfil ko bhar paaye
Jo de sake aisa mauka
Us rukaawat se kya ghabraaye
Take it, master, this futile knocking
Which comes rippling at your door
Impossible to budge, though it may be
‘Tis overcast with sunlight galore
Take it, mistress, this futile knocking
A full production of its own
With such opportunity engendered
The barrier is nothing to bemoan
A Handy Movement
Zaara was born left-handed. Or maybe she wasn’t, but she just preferred to use her left hand. No, it must be that somewhere in her early childhood she suffered some traumatic event that subconsciously triggered her defiance of right-handedness. Because you see, being right-handed was normal. It was the natural way. There had simply been no other acceptable way in the quaint town of El Derecho.
Still, Zaara for some reason just could not use her right hand the same way she could use her left. Her parents tried to teach her to use her right hand, and would sometimes supervise her while she was eating and doing homework to make sure she didn’t sneak in that sinister left hand. Her teacher would gaze at her disapprovingly, and her classmates would snicker as she used the wrong hand.
One time, she accidentally jabbed her elbow very hard into Jill, the girl that was sitting next to her and writing with the “right” hand.
“You freak!” Jill had growled, “Get that nasty hand away from me.” Jill then requested another seat, which the teacher promptly granted.
After that incident, Zaara was determined to learn to be right-handed. However, she was so upset and preoccupied with this goal that she was not able to concentrate on the actual tasks that needed to be performed with the hand. She started turning her homework in late because she was concentrating more on improving the manual dexterity of her awkward right hand than learning the material.
The children in her class were also unreceptive to her renewed efforts. “Dude, check out the freak trying to write with her right hand like us,” Jay muttered under his breath to Serena.
“Oh my God, what a dork,” Serena replied disgustedly, “Look, her hand is all fluttering. No matter what, she’ll always be a freak.”
When Zaara’s next report card came out, she had a C average, whereas when she had been using her left hand, she had mostly A’s and B’s. Zaara was very depressed; her parents were angry at her performance and her inability to adjust the use of her right hand, and she felt completely alone.
Then Takeshi moved to the neighborhood and joined her class. Takeshi also seemed to be inflicted with this left-handed disease, and the children had a new target. “Zaara and Takeshi, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” they would sing to their hearts’ delight.
Gentleman’s Dementia
In an effort to preempt any feeling of demoralization in these hard economic times wherein I have no stable income to call my own, I spent virtually all of my “savings” on a ticket to New York City a couple weeks back. My best friend met up with me there, and we had no specific intentions for the trip other than eating a shitload of pizza.
My friend and I aren’t particularly cultured in the way of enjoying museums, but we do enjoy film and theater. We spent our late nights catching up on such timeless classics as “The Craft,” and we decided it would be a good idea to see “shows” on at least two days. We saw STOMP together one day, and my friend was interested in seeing Wicked. Considering that I had seen Wicked a few months prior in Los Angeles, and I only had a handful of dollars left to my name, I opted out, and thought I would look for a more affordable form of entertainment on Times Square that afternoon.
I had heard that sometimes you can acquire last-minute tickets to crash a Broadway show at a decent rate, so I inquired about prices at the bustling box office for Mary Poppins. I was crushed to learn that tickets were sold out, and in the event of cancellations, they would be made available for $121.50. I inquired in the box offices for other musicals as well, with similar results.
Assed out by my poverty, I ordered a slice of pizza at Famiglia and read the newspaper. I then went to a neighboring coffee shop and ordered some green tea. I sat with it for a while, but then ventured outside, freezing and restless. I had so wanted to watch something.
After a couple of minutes of strolling, cup in hand, my gaze fell upon a sign for Flash Dancers, a Gentleman’s Club. “Free Admission 12pm-5pm,” it read. I rotated my wrist, and then, remembering that I never wear a watch, reached into my purse for my phone to check the time. It was a few minutes past 3, and my friend wouldn’t be done with Wicked until at least 4:30. The sky was looking ominous with the promise of imminent precipitation, and this establishment was just beckoning me inside. I had been looking for a show, after all, and the price of a drink would sure beat whatever they were charging for Mary Poppins.
I so wanted to finish the green tea though.
Devouring Grand Avenue: Tales of Lovin’ and Grubbin’ in Oakland’s Grand Lake District
- Light Is Amazing (Location: the lake)
- If You Don’t Have Money, You Better Have Time (Location: Ensarro)
- You Need Heart and Head (Location: Smitty’s)
- The Mystery Gets Them; The Farting Keeps Them (Location: Kung Pao Kitchen)
- Subdued by a Vampire (Location: Grand Lake Theater)
- The Silence of Regret (Location: Car)
- Butterflies on Grand Ave. (Location: Coach/Alley)
- Lovemaking and the Grand Lake District (Location: Gondola on lake)
- No Figs, No Dates (Location: Zza’s)
- Rabbit Heaven (Location: Camino)
- Such a Loser Rule (Location: Coach)
- Anticipation Is Better Than the Real Thing (Location: Senor Nero’s)
- Five-Toed Shoes (Location: Lucky Lounge)
- You Have to Dig Through a Lot of Dirt to Hit the Goldmine (Montage)
- Have You Seen the New Batman? (Location: Easy Lounge)
benjamin, baby
born aged
endowed like a sage
growth casts its spell
stirring timeless regression
wrinkles vanish
youth imbibed
childlike lapses
to the prolonged fate
of a sudden infant death
Pasta Cleaner, Esquire
In line with my enjoyment of livin’ la vida et cetera, I have recently scored a volunteer post as a Production Assistant for an independent South Asian-focused film being shot in the Bay Area. “Production Assistant” is basically a euphemism for Director’s Bitch. There are about six of us, and we fill in for any number of tasks that may be required: cleaning up the set, moving furniture around, procuring wardrobe changes, running out to get food, etc. Being the token brown female in the group, I have been generally profiled into suitable menial tasks such as ironing saris and helping the cook. I happily comply, figuring that no experience is a wasted experience, especially if it provides an opportunity for a good story.
“The cook” is also a volunteer — an extremely kind, if somewhat frazzled woman in her 50’s with a New York accent and a rather pronounced propensity for clumsiness. For the past several days, when not cooking, she had been running around the set looking quite jittery and muttering to herself about how unhappy she was about the budget constraints for the food, and the wastefulness and ingratitude of crew members. Yesterday, I was asked to help her prepare some pasta for our group of about 20.
She asked me to throw the pasta in the pot while she scurried around serving tea and making preparations for the pasta sauce. I threw the four large bags of pasta into the pot, and it came to a decent boil about 10-12 minutes later. Meanwhile, we chatted about what had brought us to that set. She mentioned that she had experimented with different careers, traveled, met lots of people, but was essentially still broke, unsettled, and searching for the right path, and I welcomed her to the club. But, I pointed out, we were both still approaching life with openness and willing to dabble in new things and encounter new people, and that had to count for something.
For whatever reason, the family in whose home we were shooting didn’t seem to have any appropriately sized strainer, so the cook pondered an alternative method to drain the pasta: she would lift up the pot, and I would slide a plate over it to filter out the water into the sink. That seemed straightforward enough, so I lifted up the plate in preparation for the filtration.
The next thing I knew, the boiling water had scalded my thighs, and the pasta was all over the crusty kitchen floor, and the cook was alternating gaping at both, with her arms still outstretched in flummoxed petrification.
