A Late Night Scurry
I am a terrible public speaker. Not atrocious, but terrible. Whether I find myself speaking in front of ten people or fifty, my throat feels like it is beginning to swell viciously and close in on itself. In the classroom, I find it difficult to broaden my chest and let the words flow smoothly out of my throat. My heart doesn’t pound ferociously as I offer to read a paragraph of another author’s story to my classmates, but when I open my mouth to speak I struggle with getting the words to come out properly. I feel like an air bubble is trapped in my trachea. Unfortunately, this feeling is only aggravated when I read a piece of my own writing. While reading it, the “air bubble in the throat feeling” is compounded with a flustered red face and a pounding heart rate.
I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and chronic OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) in seventh grade, as a twelve year old ‘tween’ who was struggling to find her own identity. This messy duo caused me to retreat into myself and hide my personality for years following. After two years of struggling with this, I thought I had completely overcome this rough patch in my life. Little did I know, three years and two new high schools later, my anxiety was not exterminated after all.
Going into the Creative Writing course, I was not expecting much from myself as a ‘poet.’ I have always considered myself to be an analytical thinker and writer, which was somewhat contrary to the creative students who surrounded me in this class. In fact, I wondered how they did it; how could my classmates write such great analytical essays AND creative writing pieces?
At the beginning of the semester, I had an extremely hard time writing by ‘following the brush.’ I tried to craft the perfect sentence in each piece I wrote, but that consequently made my writing process much more time-consuming and frustrating when it wouldn’t turn out right. As the semester went on, I learned to think less about the construction of each individual sentence, but instead focusing on writing with emotion. I learned to place the pencil in my hand and just write the thoughts that flowed through my head. Although it took practice and time to be less analytical and to stop searching for perfection, it helped my creative process flow immensely.
During the free-write time assigned to us at the beginning of each class period, I always wrote about my day, my feelings, and the persistent rush of emotions coursing through my brain. As my classmates read lines from the daily free-write written in their Moleskine journals, I heard beautiful lines they had composed for pieces they would create for the next poetry or story assignment. I tried to force myself to write lines that could be used in my poems or Creative Writing stories, but I couldn’t get the words to flow right. I became frustrated with my inability to have a creative thought-process that came naturally during free-writes. I would review the smudged graphite scribbles on the yellow-tinted Moleskine papers and look with disappointment at the writing, which seemed more like a diary entry than a creative writing outlet.
Subconsciously, the largest key theme that I wrote about in Creative Writing’s free-write and the assigned prompts was my loitering anxiety. At the beginning of the semester, I tried to create poems that described random things; many of which were insignificant to me. As I wrote more in my Moleskine, oftentimes at home when I was especially overwhelmed with my emotions, I wrote about my feelings and state of mental health. As I wrote in my journal, I listened to one of my favorite artists: Still Woozy. The ethereal rhythm and beat of his songs soothes my mind, which constantly races with thought. I find it extremely hard to relax; to do absolutely nothing. However, through listening to Still Woozy’s music, I am able to settle my pacing mind and body and do relatively nothing. My favorite song, “Goodie Bag,” is what I listen to as I write in my Moleskine journal. It‘s fluid beat is melodic to my ears, and places me in a trance of calm.
A short assignment that was fairly difficult for me to write was the poem inspired by Gretchen Legler’s “Things That Appear Ugly Or Troubling But Upon Closer Inspection Are Beautiful.” As I took my dogs on their daily walk at a nature preserve near the lake, I took photos of objects I found ugly or “meh.” (Things that would normally not catch my eye). When I got home, I tried writing in my Moleskin but found it very difficult to construct lines about each image. For an assignment that should have not been too time consuming, I sat flustered — scratching my head, erasing a word, then writing a new one, and then repeating this process for a few hours. Finally, I just decided to have fun with it. I decided to not strive for perfection. Instead of perfectly describing the images, I played with the concept of abstraction. During the last workshop of the semester, where my partners gave me input on this poem, I was pleasantly surprised with their commentary. Although I hadn’t read my poem for a few weeks prior to the workshop, and I cringed at some of the imagery, my partners commented on their fascination with the “jarring concepts of rot and death” in my poem. Although my wording was a bit confusing in some areas and they felt that my descriptions could be tightened, such as when I said “like violet glitter glued to white card stock,” the piece effectively transitioned from the depiction autumnal rot to the stillness of winter.
Things That Are Ugly But Upon Closer Inspection Are Beautiful
Lydia Rasetti
A copper leaf with brown veins and nibbled edges, a svelte caterpillar’s lunch.
An army of black gnats; their limp bodies frozen against a yellow wall like violet glitter glued to white card stock.
The toppled grey tree with brown slits oozing moss. Legs extend from the mass like the spider squashed beneath your shoe.
…
The putrid pumpkin’s stem, rotted hollow by the autumnal frost.
Once-whistling trees, silent. Their instruments lay decrepit on the saturated ground.
Birds muzzled, and the trees no longer dance. Their brittle fingers only grasp for air.
A hollow melody. Enlivened only by the distant echo of spring’s song.
The excerpt from “After Anthropology,” written by Aruni Kashyap, was a major inspiration to me. In fact, I included a few lines from this excerpt in my found poem. The bluntness and the emotion in the piece inspired me to create a poem that was full of tension and not necessarily positive. Poetry doesn’t have to be uplifting; in fact, I found that in the poems where I let myself write without any restrictions, I created pieces that kept the reader interested through raw, exposed, and non-sugarcoated language.
I scurried into class thirty minutes late after an, eventful to say the least, AP Calculus test. Ms. Yuan greeted me and told me that my classmates were in the process of writing a found poem, and that I should grab a book from the front of the classroom and construct a poem built off of lines from the book and lines from my journal. Out of breath, I sat down and began to read browse through the poems in the book. Ms. Yuan informed me that she wanted me to turn the poem in within fifteen minutes, and I was internally freaking out. How am I supposed to turn in a decent poem in fifteen minutes?! I can barely write a semi-decent one in thirty. I quickly pulled a few lines from the poems, and a few from my journal and began to write my poem. As I rushed to construct my found poem, unknowingly I wrote my soon-to-be favorite poem that I had composed all semester. It turns out that through the time-crunch and chaos that ensued as a result of my AP Calculus test running late, and my anxiety to turn in a good piece of writing, I wrote something that was pure emotion — not analytical. I didn’t have time to find the perfect word for each sentence; I wrote the thoughts that flowed through my head, and made a piece full of raw emotions that even I didn’t have much time to process.
I Eat and I Eat
Lydia Rasetti
Neither money nor jewelry had value any longer;
payment was a ritual of past times.
He didn’t cheat just to confess,
but he was filled with a strange sense of relief.
Please walk with me.
But don’t ridicule me.
The earth doesn’t know law, only pleasure.
I’m not selfish, just cruel.
My tongue swells.
He demanded.
But… he should have requested.
He was a victim of black ice and bald tires.
I’m not evil.
I just want to make you fall in love with me.
Your gustatory imagery amounts to nothing less than an invitation to yet another try.
I eat and I eat.
Often, I find myself watching videos of rain. It helps me unwind; watching the rain dribble down the window is an incredibly relaxing tactic to ease my anxiety. This process of unwinding and bringing my mind to ease is amplified by writing in my journal as I watch this video.
The first draft of my food story told more than it showed… the opposite of what I wanted to do. I struggled with deciphering how I could write a story that showed it’s significance and meaning to me. In this draft, I thought that imagery and my explanation of the significance of the imagery was key to writing an interesting and meaningful food story, but something about it didn’t feel right.
Pizza Napoletana
The loud chatter of small old women with tanned leather skin and black dresses stretched tightly over their humped backs flowed through one ear and out the other. I was an impatient child when it came to waiting for food. The constant trilled ‘R’s in a language that I barely knew and the constant scratchy laughter would not distract me from my growling stomach, as I had only eaten sweet melon and fresh, flour-dusted bread earlier in the afternoon. I preferred it plain, while my brothers saturated it in the green olive oil from the tree in Mamie’s yard.
I fluttered my legs back and forth, brushing against my mom with the white cotton frill of my dress as I bounced my fingers on my brother Andrew’s arm, pleading for attention. This was a never-ending routine of mine; being the youngest with the quietest voice, it was hard for me to catch the eyes of my family members while we sat at the white-tablecloth twelve-person rectangular table. Scratchy sand particles resided in between my toes and the thongs of my sandals, making me itch to jump up from my chair and fling them off on the swing set across the street. It was our annual tradition, followed by another one: searching for our shoes in the hedge.
After stepping away from my food story for a few days, and re-reading the example ones from class (“Fast Food” by Jesse Waters was a large inspiration in writing my second draft), I decided to take a new approach to writing the piece. Instead of focusing so much on the imagery and the explanation of its significance, I focused on depicting the tension in the relationships between characters in the story.
Pizza Napoletana
“Anche….” the tiny old women with tanned leather skin and black dresses stretched tightly over their humped backs chatter incessantly. It’s always “anche” — also — as they talk over each other, not a care that everyone can hear. The constant trilled ‘R’s in a language that I barely know and the constant scratchy laughter aren’t distracting me from my growling stomach, as I had only eaten sweet melon and fresh, flour-dusted bread earlier in the afternoon. I prefer it plain, while my brothers saturate it in the green olive oil from the tree in Mamie’s yard.
I flutter my legs back and forth, brushing against my mom with the white cotton frill of my dress as I bounce my fingers on my brother Andrew’s arm, pleading for attention. At least ten times I have asked to no avail, “When will dinner be served?” but when my brother said “Quando verrá servita la cena?” When is dinner coming? Mamie responded with a dainty “Piuttosto presto, essere pazientare,” rather soon, be patient. My eyes blur from the hardened stare I emit to the happily chatting voices seated down two sides of the table. My mom says to me, “Maybe if you spoke in…” as she rubs my arm, but I pull myself out of my chair, and stomp my way over to the playground across the street.
Creative Writing pushed me out of my comfort zone. I came into the class uncertain of my capabilities, worried that I thought far too analytically and was not creative enough to be a good ‘poet.’ However, as I began to write in my journal and free my emotions onto the pages of my Moleskine, I started to confide in writing. My journal became a place of comfort for me when I was anxious or struggling with my emotions. I began to focus less on perfection in my poetry, and more on the raw emotions that I had suppressed for so long. This class taught me to open up and become comfortable with the paper and my readers. It taught me an incredible lesson: life is not about getting fixed on our mistakes or the speed bumps we encounter daily, but about going with the flow of things and not striving to be perfect.
