The World According to Mike

I wrote the first two pieces with a local writing group.  Timed Writings are exercises in which you write straight through (in these instances for 10 minutes) without taking the pen (using a nice pen) off the page, so the writing is VERY spontaneous, and often meandering and entertaining to read.

I did not clean up grammar and punctuation because it defeats the purpose of doing this kind of writing.

WRTTTEN JAN 9th AT FLYLEAF BOOKS.  APPROXIMATELY 40 PEOPLE PRESENT…

I wrote without stopping after being given this prompt:   You receive a message on your machine from an old girl friend saying she made a big mistake breaking up with you the night before high school graduation and now she wants to see you years later. She adds details about things you both like and something about dinner before hanging up.

After being given that prompt, I wrote this timed writing:

God bless answering machines. If I answered the phone and heard my old flame proclaim her new found attraction based on a high school fling I might have fallen over and landed thud on the floor. My analytical mind would kick in after the shock wore off. She still likes me? Does she just want to make out? Did I really tell her I like lilies and souffle? Then, I’d start to get excited. Damn, this is some real intrigue. This could be an LMN movie. Old girlfriend dumps me on graduation day stripping me of my dignity de-robing me before I could walk up to get my official diploma. Now she’s probably gone through some kind of tumult of her own, had her water turned off, lost her way, can’t see the sunshine through the dark forest so she turns to the guy she slapped down in brighter days. I thought of her with some clarity now. Actually thoughts like these often add little clarity. Reality is when a person is in front of you displaying themselves—breathing, sighing. blushing, flirting, brushing back their hair—delivering signals at a NASCAR like pace. Memories paint broad brush scenes, intimate encounters fill in the details. It’s the details that matter. How dare she assume that flowers and souffle will make everything okay. She whacked me backed then and now she wants to have dinner. What is dinner. Dinner is dinner. Love is love. They’re worlds apart. Are you ready to order? Excuse me? Yes, I’m ready to order. I want a fresh life, no old girlfriends, no souflles, no lilies. New foods, new people—that’s what I need. A message from the past is trying to drag me back to high school. That’s done. I remember my high school locker combination 0-14-6—and I’m glad I remember, but those days are gone.

TIMED WRITING  SAT 6/12/2010 at Flyleaf Books

****THE PROMPT GIVE TO US WAS:    WRITE ABOUT BEING TRAPPED

Dogs sometimes feel trapped. It’s called separation anxiety. You leave. They stay. You walk away. They turn into a hurricane Katrina like frenzy. They become weapons of mass destruction.  They’re trapped—and in their unsophisticated minds they think of nothing but intense anxiety.  They of course don’t think of anxiety, they feel anxiety. They want to go with you. I didn’t want to go to work where I often feel trapped, but they wanted to leave their trap to go with me to mine. I’m supposed to show, not tell, but I’ve got to say it…that’s delicious irony. That’s irony that’ is a feast for undernourished taste buds longing for sweet tasting irony. Ironing has nothing to do with irony—does it?  Do people still iron? I’m sure they do—of course they do. I have not come within miles of an iron in thirty years. My friend Andrew and I were talking about freedom recently, about not feeling trapped. He was talking about kids and dogs and how one can feel the grip of entrapment grab you by the shoulders when something or someone is keeping you from doing something you want to do. It doesn’t really matter whether the something you want to do is exciting or not—it’s knowing that you can’t do it that pulls at your psyche, making your eyes dart back and forth, and your heart hurt, and your muscles tighten. Feeling trapped is a primal feeling, fight or flight, a caveman inspired trip down into the heart of raw emotion. Cavemen and women were trapped by giant animals, and lack of knowledge, and those musty too small cave homes. Real Estate agents would have had a hard time marketing those hard cave walls as being a wonderful place to move into. “I think I’ll feel trapped in here,” the potential buyer says to the worn out agent. “Yeah, but you’ll be safe in here,” the agent fires back.   Safety or freedom?  Oh my, we’ve walked into philosophic territory.

THE FOLLOWING PIECES DID NOT COME FROM PROMPTS AND THEREFORE ARE MORE RANDOM AND FREE FLOWING…

The wood chipper stuck to her head catapulting the flowers toward the sea shore along the northwest coast of Oz. Sally picked up the flowers and ate them right after eating some oysters she found in the pocket of a plumber who was there to cook dinner for the clowns who had spent two hours munching on crackers they found at the candy store. The candy store represented the best that the funny pond toads had to offer on a blustery day on the golf course as the fading sun shouted out a last cry of frustration at being hidden away on a absurdly cloudy day in the foggy valley.

I coasted my way down the swanky highway in my dream until you fought your way in and crapped on my parade, allowing no one to breathe until the weight of the storm had moved to another place further down the river.  Paul stepped over the edge of the flower bed and dove into history, slogging his way toward all those muddy clowns before him who saw and then didn’t see the fog that surrounded them.

The clown tasted the gravy and passed it to the man in the river who was plunging deeper into debt as he fought to claw his way to Poland and zip his pants to a lollipop tree in the eastern part of his backyard, propelling the balloon forward along the strip of land adjacent to the waterfall that ran ripe with spaghetti, spaghetti that monkeys love to eat after they’re done playing scrabble in the dew— mountain dew was the farmers obsession after he cut the crops and filled the barn with apple cider looking toward a paddle boat he realized that all the cattle in the world wouldn’t change the fact that he was going to be a soldier until Tuesday and a rodeo clown until the pond overflowed its banks making the stawberries rush into the gas station parking lot behind the old mill and over the dam built by people from Oklahoma in the pollution free valley of the sun…

Written in 1 minute and 45  seconds…that was fun.

Okay, here’s another timed writing. I’ll go for 30 seconds…

The clover leaf fell off the trombone causing a stir in the soup can as if the people didn’t know that cucumbers were the meal of choice for worms in the jungle participating in volleyball in the rain after the crow flies into the barn at 78 miles an hour speeding toward the foolish ghetto scene in the museum of the train and the bra of the painting at the weather man’s back pocket going going gone and up up and away in the tasty balloon that elmer fudd made on his last embargo of the southern window of the tree lined street in southwestern virginia captivating splendor is the beefiest way to spend a shiny day in the spring of the trimester at the bottom of the gulley in your feline infested back water dreams.

This one is longer…

The fish rose to the top of the washer and stayed there until the boy swam to the bank and deposited his sandwich at the teller’s bike refusing to squander a pitiful chance to greedily transfer goods and services to the toilet bowl at the machine part store in the western state of pity and broadway putting the shark at risk of colliding with the fire truck and the donkey who escaped from the sandwich shop days earlier making the ballerina stop and decide whethere to put mayonnaise or mustard on her dress and pickles on her hair and croutons on her sweater before the monster escaped the clutches of the mad professor in the marines over the hill from the submarine and the cow pasture and under the clover leaf which Bob Jones hit with his putter until the ball was fully dressed and gone fitting the plaster dummy into the closet and the pluto into the venus plugging up the hole created by the full throated wobbler and the blu jay those beautiful sounds of the play thing cascading down the chimmney forever drowned out by the furry stranger whose backpack lingered at the bell tower feeling no sorrow just the sweet pain of injustice and the supreme criteria that the judge took to mean that dorothy and toto could co exist in vermont until the maple syrup froze and the snow melted in the frostry dinner table at the inn of the placid tractor wheel marganalizing all who could possible wonder what popsicle would rotate next to the hot dog until the game started rounding third the beefy dog ran for home signifying the end of the donut production for another year. Why did she think that anyone would care if margarine slapped around the fig newton until the sister could put it all in the attic for all time. She never clarified her cotton tie long enough to wonder where the carrots would fit in the sports car if Fred needed to go to the powder room before the crops were cropped and the bull was put away in the cigar box.