My husband just gave me the best idea. I should petition for sponsors on my website! If anyone is willing to sponsor me, let me know by April 4th--all sponsors get a nice Barnes and Noble bookmark. You can donate as much or as little as you want (or as Des can attest, be strong-armed into donating), but the most interesting donations are a penny a word for every word written--and usually that would be a surprise, but in this case you already know I wrote 3,430 words. But $34.30 is kind of a lot to donate to The Writers' Guild student organization at a university you know nothing about... so every $5 will be greatly appreciated.

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The following is a creative non-fiction entry for the longest sentence competition. I didn't know that we were allowing us (the officers) to participate. So I cracked down and wrote 3,430 words and raised $50 in a matter of like two hours. Not too shabby, huh? I'm too lazy to put in the proper tabs since the tabs don't translate to Blogger when I cut and paste. No names have been changed, except for the name of my hometown.


I used to be a window-shopper for other people’s lives,

accessorizing myself with the best parts

of everyone I encountered:

Ralph Waldo Emerson loved nature,

so I spent a lot of time reading beneath the trees;

My dad loved movies,

so I wanted to be a filmmaker;

Steven Spielberg made a movie called Jaws,

and I developed a fascination for sharks;

I loved The Muppets so much that I found out everything I could about Jim Henson,

and then wanted to be a puppeteer for Sesame Street;

when Disney’s Aladdin came out,

I loved that film so much that I wanted to be an animator;

As a child, I was a compulsive kleptomaniac for an identity,

Gleaming everything I could so that I could piece myself together:

I was my own Victor Frankenstein

fashioning myself into a Modern Prometheus;


I grew up in Somerset, California (quite possibly the most unglamorous town in the whole state)—when people think of California they’re usually thinking of Southern California,

and in my mind,

Southern California and Northern California might as well be two different states:


If Northern and Southern California were sisters,

they’d be identical twins that look nothing alike:

Northern California would be four minutes older,

and self-conscious of being the smart girl in class,

she’d wear Smart-Girl-Eye-Glasses because she wouldn’t be able to poke her finger into her eyeballs so that she could wear contact lenses—

Southern California, on the other hand,

would be the free-spirited younger half,

having no trouble poking herself in the eye in the name of beauty,

she’s cracked up to be very much the Valley Girl that everyone suspected she was, she’s the bleached blonde counterpart of the duo, with a sunless tan even though she spends every weekend at the beach,

and she giggles and squeals, whereas Northern California

would never be caught dead doing such childish things,

you see,

Northern California thinks that she is much too sophisticated for infantile preoccupations and Southern California simply thinks that her sister is “stuck up” and uses too many multi-syllabic words, “Why can’t she, like, just like, talk normal?”

oh, why indeed;


Somerset was in Northern California,

but in no way did Somerset pretend to be sophisticated,

The General Store (read: the only store) provided all the products inhabitants

of the backwoods could need: Drain-O, Tootsie Pops, a variety of nails and screws, Scott toilet tissue, and Spring time chicks and ducklings (to raise on your on property and later slaughter);

the town was 45 minutes past the middle of nowhere,

and that’s if you’re speeding around on Bucks Bar Road [the notorious pretzel roadway between Somerset and Placerville (the nearest regular sized town) that ate a regular diet of automobiles who mistakenly sped around the corners]

To give you an idea of how isolated we were in our provincial city:

Our post office refused to deliver our mail to our road because

it was too far out of the way, so in exchange we got “convenient” (read: free)

P.O. Boxes—the only things to do in the Somerset area

(and I say “area” for the sake of simplicity, since there were a number of towns just a smidgeon larger than ours, but none of which were populated enough to warrant a general store like ours)

were: drink alcohol, smoke pot, or have sex

[this final option ultimately led to several of the girls I went to middle school with (and would later see walking around the high school) pregnant]—

even the “stuck up” girls weren’t saved from becoming teenage mothers,

you know the kind of snooty girls I’m talking about:

The ones who wear make-up at the age of eleven,

Have perfect hair

and the latest clothes because their parents could afford

to drive them two-and-a-half-hours to Arden Fair Mall, down in Sacramento, and go shopping—you’d think that living in the middle of nowhere,

Clothes would be the least of a child’s worries,

and yes, for the most part I didn’t think about them

(most days I was more concerned about keeping my younger brothers away

from the rattlesnakes in our yard, or walking up the dirt road to my house because a mountain lion had been killing The Goat Man’s goats just down the road),

but when you’re in middle school,

no matter where you are,

Fashion dictates the junior high hierarchy;

I never minded that I was never on that food chain,

it was relief to me actually,

because this one time when I was in fourth grade, my mom bought me this really cute white dress with little rosebuds all over it, brand new from Target, I wore it on Easter morning and loved it so much that I wore it to school the next day and I saw some random girl wearing the same exact dress, I never wore it again)—

luckily,

I had my own little group of friends,

and they didn’t mind my Salvation Army hand-me-downs,

although I lived too far away for my friends to come to my house

after school or to have sleepovers,

we formed bonds in fourth grade when I asked Cara McMicken to star in a play I had written for ‘49ers Day

(we Northern Californians take great pride in our Historic Gold Rush, and much of fourth grade is spent learning about Sutter’s Mill and the discovery of gold about a half-hour drive away, and all of the learning culminates in a day spent like it’s 1849, where you’re given construction paper pieces of gold with numerical values, and you’re free to spend them however you wish—complete with square-dancing),

it was a more of a puppet show than a play, really (this was the time I had a Jim Henson fascination)

and I offered Cara the only human role:

She would be interviewing a family of finger puppets the way I saw my mom watch Oprah Winfrey interview guests on her show;

That small gesture ushered me into the small group of friends that lasted

Until eighth grade—I remember eighth grade marked the year

When my straight-As began to irk everyone except my dad (who, upon reading my first report card of the year, asked me, “What’s with this A-minus?”),

I stopped outwardly trying which, for me, meant eliminating my voluntarily raised hand in classes, so I would stop garnering the teachers’ attention, but it’s hard to do when at the end of each trimester the teachers handed out awards to students, and the teachers’ specifically made-up a “Super-Achiever” award just for me;


I also remember that eighth grade was the year

That I worried that when our small group of friends got to high school that we would

Split up and never see each other again,

but then Cara had a 14th birthday party,

and I was invited

(even better was that I was allowed to attend, even though she lived forty-five minutes away: my mom was willing to pick me up, provided that I rode the bus to Cara’s house on Friday afternoon),

And my fears about the group disintegrating faded away for a time,

because the party would surely solidify us as friends—except, well, Cara invited some girls who graduated a year before us, so they were “high schoolers” and hence, tremendously cooler than us (the measly middle schoolers)…

The truth or dare game started out innocently enough:

Eating raw eggs,

Running out into the frigid night air only in pajamas without a coat or socks or shoes, Confessing who you were crushing on—but then suddenly

things took a very wrong turn—the dares became sexual in nature,

(like, they made this girl “hump” Cara’s couch and then another girl flash the circle, then flashing became the only dare)

Body parts were flying naked everywhere,

except for mine and Erin’s

(we knew each other, but Erin was a quiet girl, so I didn’t really know her,

but then I thought I had known Cara and apparently I didn’t know her either);

Erin and I were so disgusted

that we both left the circle

and went into our respective sleeping bags,

we listened to the dares continue

as we fell asleep

embarrassed and ashamed:

I felt embarrassed that I had been stupid enough to go to this party, I felt ashamed that Cara had been my friend for so many years only to find out she was a pervert along with so many other girls, I felt embarrassed that I had to sleep in the same room as this Truth or Dare game, but most of all I felt ashamed that I could not do anything besides protest my participation—


The next morning, I awoke dazed,

Like, I wasn’t really in my body anymore,

Like last night hadn’t really happened,

I was the first one up,

and all the other girls were sleeping on the ground in sleeping bags,

or curled up with blankets,

and looked so peaceful,

Innocent,

What a crock,

Erin woke up right after me,

and Cara’s mom was making hordes of pancakes,

I remember I was barely able to swallow,

Cara’s mom was so perky and happy and naïve of everything

that had just taken place in her living room,

I only took one pancake,

I wasn’t really hungry


The girls started playing pool in the converted rec room,

and I tried to join in,

but I was listless and cringing

whenever someone looked in my direction


They started picking on me,

Saying that I never go with the group

Cara said I wasn’t really her friend, because if I was, I would have played last night

I gave up on being in the same room as them

(one can only handle so much badgering)

I found Erin in the backyard all alone,

She had tears on her cheeks

and was trying to wipe them away,

but they kept streaming down,

I felt the same way, except detached,

Like I couldn’t cry,

I wanted to,

because I knew I just lost Cara,

But I was too angry to cry, and too sad to start to a fight

So Erin and I sat there in comfortable silence for a long while

“My mom is going to be so mad at me,” I didn’t know much about Erin,

but I knew enough of her to know that her parents were religious fanatics,

and probably

would berate Erin for these secular activities that went beyond her control


“At least we didn’t join in,” I said


“I want to go home”


“Me too”


“But our parents aren’t supposed to come for us until 5 p.m.”


I felt nauseous at the idea of telling my mom

For one thing,

this was the first time ever I had been allowed to spend the night somewhere

For another, Cara lived forty-five minutes away from me

and it was quite a hassle for my mom to come pick me up,

it hadn’t been bad last night since I took the bus here,

but would my mom come get me? I couldn’t stand the torturous glares from those girls anymore


“I’m calling my mom,” I stood up and held my hand out to Erin,

“I’ll stand next to you when you call your mom, and I’ll even tell your mom that you didn’t do anything wrong”


Erin’s face red, and nodding,

took my hand and we asked to use the phone

Cara’s mom was confused as to why we wanted to leave the party early,

and that’s when Cara and the others came in and started yelling at us

Cara’s mom carted them off in the direction of the pool table and let us call home


I called my house first, but no one answered

Erin called her house, and her mom was coming right over to get us

I called again, and no one picked up


The girls emerged from the garage,

shoving me as I listened to the phone hopelessly ring

It was easier to concentrate on the ringing than their voices,


Finally, my little brother’s five year old voice saved me, “Hellooo?”

“Christian, go get Mommy”

“Ooooooh!

She still calls her mom ‘Mommy!’ Calling your Mommy to take you home?” They were trying to taunt me, but I didn’t hear it

I quickly told my mom that I needed to leave quickly,

and that Erin’s mom was already on her way to get us,

and that they’d drop me off at the end of Bucks Bar Road

My mom heard the urgency in my voice, and probably the sneering in the background, and didn’t argue,

Erin and I had already rolled up our sleeping bags,

we were eager to get out of there

So, we started walking to the end of the road to meet Erin’s Mom

As we left,

the girls threw pinecones at us

and one hit me on the side of the face, leaving angry red marks and sap behind,


They knew we’d tell,


I never cried

My mom would be angry about having to drive out sooner than expected,

and that the first time I spent the night somewhere,

it turned into one of those movies that I put into the VCR

thinking it was My Little Pony cartoons

but really

there were naked bodies

like the nakedness of the girls the night before

We told Erin’s Mom the whole story

About the game of Truth or Dare,

About the way it started and the way it ended,

then the way the girls turned on us afterwards since we didn’t play

Erin remembered that they had called us lesbians

because we had held hands while calling our moms,

and I remember wondering what a lesbian was,


I was exhausted by the time we reached the end of Bucks Bar Road

But my mom demanded I recount the reason why she had to get me in such a hurry

She didn’t seem as mad at me anymore,

And I didn’t care if the group split up when we got to high school anymore;


I dreamed of leaving this place

Actually, I dreamed that Steve Buscemi would figure out that I was his cousin,

and come rescue me and whisk me off to an independent movie set

But seeing as how the chances of that happening were slim to none,

I also dreamed of going to college somewhere on the other side of the country

I felt suffocated in Mt. Aukuum

So I started to dream:

I wanted to be a writer living in Greenwich Village

I wanted to be a director of movies, but good movies,

the ones that stay with you even after you’ve rewound the tape

I wanted to be Indiana Jones, not an actor, but an archaeologist, an explorer

Fortune and glory, kid,

Fortune and glory,


But when I really dream

I never have normal dreams

My dreams are mostly memories that I haven’t thought about in a really long time

They’re caked in a thick layer of forgotten dust,

that chokes you when you breathe it in,

smells like ghosts and tastes like spider webs,

I have dreams about people I haven’t thought about in a long time:

Like Katie-Did and Katie-Didn’t in second grade,

Our second grade teacher nicknamed the Katies because

One always did her homework

And one always didn’t

Or about Tera Beach

She was one half of an identical twin

that was hit by a car

while she watched her dad change a tire

I dreamt that I gave her my stuffed Cowardly Lion,

to help give her courage even though she had a steel rod for a femur,

and her feet would never be the same size again on account

of the swelling

and the cast,

But in real life, I never saw her,

I only saw flyers asking for prayers

And donations

Since the medical bills were piling up

And the man who smashed Tera

between two bumpers

Didn’t have insurance


Sometimes I think about all my old once-friends,

and how we promised to be friends forever,

but forever in thirteen-year-old speak

is really

only until the end of middle school,

but you don’t know it at the time,

you can’t even think that far in advance,

Forever is actually a long time,

longer than you imagine at thirteen

And it makes my eyes go all salty

to think that the kind of friendships in movies aren’t real,

and that’s not how life works

And it makes me angry, too,

But I think maybe that the anger is really envy,

Because I want to meet people like that

I want to grow up with someone,

and laugh about the times in second grade when

Mr. Hartshorn would make fun of the Katies,

because one always did her homework and one always didn’t

But no one will remember

Except me;


Every once in a while,

I dream about my old friend Steve Rista from fifth grade,

And how he was the only person who wrote to me

when my mom and brothers and I ran away from my dad,

and I had to leave school two months early,

and move 600 hundred miles away

My grandmother wouldn’t let us stay with her

Because she thought my dad would murder her

And my aunt wouldn’t let us stay with her

Because she didn’t have enough room

And my mom wasn’t talking to my uncles at the time

So we lived in that woman’s shelter for a month and a half

Steve is the only person I ever told about the drive-by and the bullets

It was a bad neighborhood,


But my dream always remembers how Steve

had to move away in eighth grade,

His family was Romanian,

but their neighbors thought they were Mexican,

So they left dead fish and death threats

in Rista’s mailboxes and answering machine

And how the neighbors called the cops one day

during the summer,

and said the Ristas were shooting at their property

So the cops came and purpled up Steve’s dad and Steve’s mom,

and even his little brothers,

the color of bruised grapes

And my dream always goes to the part where Steve’s mom drove him to my house

so he could say goodbye,

and I tell him that he’s the only person I ever loved:

As a brother,

and as a friend,

and as more than a friend, I don’t know

But I do know that I’d love him forever

But I don’t know when or where the love came from, it just sort of happened after a while,

But after a couple of months,

the phone calls and letters became more infrequent

And after a while, I never hear from him again,

Of course, I don’t call because my mom says the money has to pay

That guy my step-dad sideswiped while he was drunk,

and I stop writing because my pride is like my cat,

too proud to admit that she really wants the pink pouf when you’re staring at her, waving it in front of her face,

So my love becomes like cotton candy:

sweet at first, but then it just gets hard and sticky,

the fiber-glass sugar fibers cut the roof of your mouth,

but you keep eating it because it was so sweet

My heart becomes letters unsent


I wish I could have grown up with Steve,

I wish I had sent the letters,

I wish that my own forever to Steve hadn’t meant until the end of middle school,

like all of the forevers that were promised to me,

I wish I had been strong enough,

I wish I had a genie’s lamp so that I could wish to not have the kind of dreams that wake me up crying,


As soon as I was old enough to realize that Somerset swallowed people whole,

and not in that glamorous New York sort of way,

where you have to be a waitress to be an actress,

but the kind of swallowing that happens to people who have no dreams

and are left on their porches

swatting flies

in the 109 degree summer

complaining about the Wal-Mart that’s trying to go into Placerville

I fled on a red-eye

And now it is my turn to try to not be swallowed up,

and not in the glamorous New York way,

and not in the slow and suffocating Somerset way either

But in a new, not quite glittery way,

I have to worry about sharks in the water,

especially now that I am nowhere near an ocean.





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[On Idleness]

by Samuel Johnson








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There's a certain kind of feeling you get when you just know that you have rocked an exam. And that's the feeling that I am currently enjoying.


It was an exam for English 307, which is a class that spans American literature from the beginning (the likes of Columbus, Bartolome de las Casas, Bernal Diaz and Cabeza de Vaca) to 1865. Our test covered Columbus to Edgar Allan Poe. And I was terrified.


Most of ya'll know this by now, but last semester and I did not get along so well, as it marked the first time in my life that I failed an English exam (before that point I had never gotten less than an A on a test, so imagine my surprise). However, this semester is turning out to be infinitely better. The professor handed out "mock midterms" in order to prepare us for the layout of the test: 5 short answer questions (a single word to answer would suffice), 5 discussion questions (6-8 sentences of explication), an essay question, and finally a "pop" interpretation and analyzation question. And by "pop" I mean, we had to analyze a piece of prose or poetry that we had never gone over in class or for the class, discuss it, and try to identify it.


I was up until 4 AM this morning studying. I wanted to: remind myself of the finer details of the captive narrative of Mary Rowlandson; easily be able to recall at least two images Jonathan Edwards (of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" fame) uses in his sermons; figure out why Sarah Kemble Knight wrote that diary on her way to Connecticutt; and figure out typological functions served in James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers.


My studying paid off. I went back and re-read key passages, and I was extremely well prepared. I feel like this might have been one of the best tests I've ever taken.


And that's a mighty good feeling.

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You know what? I hadn't done my Tai Chi Chih in a week, and I just did some... and I feel so much better now... I almost want to change my mood from pissed to pleasant, but I like the vampire. Oh what the heck... I'll keep the vampire.


Ya know... I don't even feel mad anymore.


I love Tai Chi Chih. It helps put things into perspective.

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I would just like to say, that if I had a cock, this is where I would tell The Writers' Guild to suck it.


I started a student group at my campus last semester, and it hasn't turned out, at all, the way I had hoped. The inspiration for the organization came from a really awesome creative writing class I took a year ago. The whole class, it seemed like we all had this collective energy and interest in helping each other to create better work. It was invigorating. And I wanted to share that energy with more students from my university.


But apparently most members suck.


I live basically an hour away from school (counting traffic, because you have to out here). And I'm taking 17.5 credits. And I'm trying to graduate (so that means not screwing up this term). So I don't have the time, or the energy, to start the smaller writing groups to meet face-to-face on a weekly basis. But this guy I know has tried starting poetry sessions on his own, contacting members of The Writers' Guild, but basically to no avail. Only two people have shown up to those meetings.


As far as officer involvement is concerned... I feel like I'm being "ousted" from my own student group. I've been left out of meetings and decisions among officers of the group. We're having a really big and really cool event in April, bringing in editors and writers from magazines and newspapers to speak about the journalism world--but I haven't been "allowed" to contact and invite any of the speakers.


On top of that, usually I'm left in charge of creating flyers and then we all help distribute them. But after I made them 3 weeks ago (and got them approved to be put up in the dorms on campus), I never saw copies in our advisor's box. So I couldn't hang any flyers up. So I didn't. I've spent a lot of my own money on prizes and food and copies of flyers for The Writers' Guild that I will never get reimbursed for, and frankly I didn't want to spend more money on more flyers out of my own pocket. So I didn't. And then the vice president posts on our website officer forum that maybe he should be in charge of posting flyers from now on, ya know, so it doesn't get messed up anymore--even though he forgot to put a free 30 word ad in the student newspaper announcing our meeting on Monday.


We have a fundraiser this month, called The Longest Sentence competition, that no one has signed up for yet, basically. I wanted it to simply be a sponsored writing event--like a Jog-A-Thon, where you get teachers, friends, family, to pledge a penny a word (or a penny a page) for every word (or page) you write in the span of March--so anyone could write anything they wanted, fiction, non-fiction, poetry or a play or a screenplay. But that idea was widdled down to The Longest Sentence contest--which isn't interesting hardly any of the students so far. A lot of the English department faculty are excited by the ingenuity of the contest and are hoping for the students to really give it effort--but what if we have only like one writer signed up?


I feel like just abandoning the experiment of The Writers' Guild.

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I have found a new religion.


I now worship Lorie, as she is the driver of the car of God.


And she wrote this particularly good haiku on the subject:



Twisted hand of fate

The car cannot drive itself

Make way for duckling



She is both prophet and philosophist.


She is now known as Mahatma Lorie.


I bow to thee.


Out of the mouth of Lorie:


"Josh just came in and told me if he didn't poop before he showered, he just might poop in the shower.

I feel somewhat less godly now."


And thus Josh begat poop. And so it was good.



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