A Compromise
Ok, ok, ok... I give in. But I'm still not mixing my fictional short stories with my "regular blog". I am however, nixing the third one that was supposed to be for my memoir style novel. Instead, I'll keep the excerpts here... since they're about me, after-all... and there's a bunch of stuff already on here from several years ago that could probably be retooled for it, as well. My new brilliant idea is to go back through and tag them all with a label called "autoblography" so that I can find them all later. And to celebrate my new idea, here's the first one I'm tagging:
When I was in eighth grade, I wrote a short story that won awards outside of my classroom. It was the very first time that I coated my slightly dark past in a heavy dose of humorous embellishment. This blog is the second. The story was called "The Cotton People" and it was an essay about an experience I had at age four when I lived with my grandparents and the younger lot of my aunts and uncles in Harrington Park, New Jersey. The experience was my first recollection of seeing snowflakes. I wrote about how I'd asked my grandfather how such tiny balls of cotton would end up covering the entire lot surrounding our house, creating the magical wonderland that my pseudo brothers and sisters would undoubtedly end up having a snowball fight in the following day. Being too young to go outside and play in the cold on my own, he let me believe that snow was made of cotton instead of ice. He further explained that it fell down in layers while I was asleep, and to get me out of his hair (what was left of it), suggested that I go to bed so that I'd see the results before I knew it. On my way up the stairs, I recalled that I'd heard my Aunt Liz using the word "layers" when talking to my grandmother about her hair. (It was the early 80's, after all.) Thinking she'd be the best one to answer all of my snow related questions, I promptly interrupted whatever she has been doing in the bathroom. I went on to write that my aunt misheard me when I asked her what "lay-yers" were, and thinking I'd said "lawyers" went on to describe men in suits and judges and courtrooms. To my horror, I crawled into bed with nightmares of little men made of cotton, falling from the sky, and splattering as they hit the ground... covering everything in the world with their white, fluffy guts... and my teenage relatives hurling their poor, lifeless remains at one another while laughing maniacally. Keep in mind that this was a story written by a thirteen year old, recollecting what it was like to be only four. Not only did I win first place for creative writing in my junior high school, but I went on to compete in a county-wide contest against all the other area tweens. One such competitor was a very polite Jewish girl who wrote a heart wrenching essay about her great-grandparents surviving the Holocaust and her grantparents' journey to America. We had to read our stories aloud at this Young Author's Convention to be judged by a panel, and I remember there were a lot of tears in a lot of eyes as she read hers. I thought for sure she was going to win. I was wrong. I actually felt guilty walking past her to collect my award and tell the judges what I felt about my story being published in some collection at The White House. Of course, looking back, it feels pretty good. Sure, I made half of it up, but at the base of it there was some truth... and heart. The latter is something an entirely true story about my younger years would be lacking. That's the thing about providing entertainment to others... people want to leave feeling good about something. Nobody likes a Debbie Downer. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Holocaust films win awards out of guilt. That's right, I said it. You hear that, Kate Winslet? You don't have to play a horrible Nazi to win a golden statue... instead, you could just take something rotten, add a laugh or two and turn it into something fluffy (even if the fluff is really just guts in disguise).
The sequel to my first "published" story was going to take place just weeks later and involve what I recall as being my extremely brave attempt at feeding the family dog. Considering that this pet was an enormous and unruly Siberian Husky that basically ran wild on a zip line for most of its life, I'd say that it was a courageous endeavor for a four year old girl packed tightly into a puffy blue parka. Unfortunately, the tale fell flat... face first into a bowl of Alpo, to be exact... and even though I was just beginning to write, I knew to keep moving and pursue other ideas. I proceeded to jot down some obvious fiction for my eight grade teacher prior to departing into the world of high school... a place where my life would nearly end, though I didn't know that then. The first was called "The Magic Flute". I'd prefer not to insult your intelligence by explaining the plot line to that one, but as anyone could likely guess, there was a princess, a dragon and a boy who was not a knight. Next, I wrote two illustrated pieces back to back. One was about a bag lady/gypsy with a cursed pearl necklace and the other was about a little girl, electrocuted when lightning hit a carousel, who returned to an abandoned fair ground on stormy nights in hopes of finishing her ride. The drawings were better than the stories. It was about that time that I stopped looking back to the days of innocence where I watched Fraggle Rock and dreamed of fantasy realms... days spent with my grandparents, aunts and uncles... and started to focus (quite literally) on my current surroundings. I found an old Canon SLR with a cracked viewfinder in the depths of my stepmother's closet. Instead of hiding in my room, writing about places that were anywhere else, I decided that I would escape to as many places within my small town as possible to see if I couldn't unearth some beauty in the present. Up to that point, school had been my only outlet. I was a teacher's pet, an honor student, a creative writer and artist. But at home I was invisible... unless of course my father was overly drunk or my much younger half brother was overly bored. The high school offered photography as an elective and I elected to put off writing to take on the world through a 35 mm lens. I loved being in the dark room, I loved creating and capturing life in still frame, and I loved that I could express my mood by taking a picture of someone else. Much like I had done with my junior high stories, I deflected nearly every sad emotion by sharing it through art. The fact that no one else saw it, made it that much easier to share.
Hiding in the photography lab for half the school day didn't bode well for popularity, but I managed to cultivate a very diverse and artistic group of friends that actually wouldn't change too drastically until we all went our separate ways after school ended. Between classes and during lunch period, I felt at home, at peace and safe. I photographed all of these comrades with elaborate props and costumes that I'd scrounged up at the local consignment shops along with a few left-over pieces from my aunt's failed modeling career (the same aunt with the 80's layered hair-do). I pretended that I was capturing the very essence of their souls on film, exposing the inner beauty that only I could see, while knowing deep down that I was dressing them up in my own sorrow.
There was a boy. He was the first boy who I loved as a friend, as deeply and completely as a friendship would allow. Jason was a fabulous painter and sketch artist. His work put everything I'd ever done to shame, but he told me that I was a very good photographer and asked that I take his picture. He intended to use it to paint a self portrait assignment for his oil painting class. To take such a serious photograph, I would have to put all my props aside. I would have to go to his house, set up some make-shift lighting and simply shoot... him. I was nearly fifteen and had never been to a boy's house, let alone his room, let alone while his father was not home. Naturally, I would bypass seeking permission from my own parental units, and the one he had didn't come across as caring one way or the other. Jason was damaged like me, maybe even beaten down and broken-spirited like me, and that made me love him all the more. I wanted his portrait to be perfect, and it was (too perfect to even supply as an accompaniment to this posting). His long hair was pulled loosely back, allowing one strand to hang, framing his strong jaw. It wasn't the first time I wondered why he wasn't popular, why he didn't have a girlfriend and why he'd hang out with the likes of me. His hazel eyes penetrated directly into my camera lens and I knew that he was gazing into the tunnel leading directly to my heart without even realizing it. It all sounds more painful and angst-ridden than it actually was, although if you found my actual diary from back then, you might think otherwise. His entire room was ornamented from wall to wall with rich green and purple vines, flames and other various textures. When my camera was safely packed away in my bag, he proudly showed me every canvas, unfinished or not, all of which I genuinely admired. Then he borrowed his father's van and drove me home. As I opened the door, I thanked him. Confused, he asked what I was offering my thanks for when I'd done him the favor. Then, as quickly as I could before spilling a tear from my eye, I said I was thanking him for being nice to me. He leaned across the gear shift and hugged me from the side. He let me know that was what friends were supposed to do, and we hugged often over the next few years of school, but never anything more. Three weeks before our graduation, he disappeared. I never saw him again. Luckily though, he was there for me through the freshmen and sophomore years, times when I was bullied at the bus stop, pursued by a mentally handicapped admirer and publicly humiliated... sometimes a mixture of the three. But those stories are worth telling one by one...
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment