Experimental Writing

 I. Thoughts While Writing

 

A container of pushpins sits on her desk beside a box of paperclips.  Both the paperclips and pushpins are multicolored, with pale and vibrant pinks and purples and whites floating in the plastic container much like goldfish that bob up and down in circular glass tanks.  The pins float in a sea of pastels, crowded and touching and uncomfortable.  Long needle edges spike through the plump ice cream fog of mixed color.  They spike and cut and tear through the air,through the space bubble concealed by the plastic.  A circular bulb.  A humble bulb for goldfish and floating tops and sharp edged prickling points.  As long as they remain in the container, the points are harmless.  They cannot prick or tear or rip through skin.  Blood won’t trickle down fingertips like it did for Sleeping Beauty.  All is safe.  All is coated in plastic.  All is concealed.  The paperclips are less daunting; they bend and snap and break and twist.  They do not have sharp, protruding edges.  They cannot prick; you will not bleed.  They sit there beside the tacks, again concealed in plastic, but this time unnecessarily.  The sweet pastels are calming and alluring, though their vibrant hues are dulled by the container that shields them from the world.  The container that locks them away and closes them entirely—completely seals them off.  Suffocating.  Isolated from existence.  From the air, the outside, the fresh winds of humanity and earth and civilization.  No one can taste sugary froth.  No one can be pricked, yet no one can experience the rainbow of delicious pink and purple cotton candy yumminess within.  And they are held captive, each pin squished up against another.  Without air, without room to maneuver, without room to breathe—all crowded against each other, swimming and gasping for air and space and poking their pins up desperately to no avail, trying to latch onto anything they can—to stick their pointy edges into the slippery plastic, round container closing them in—failing to hang on to the curved walls and struggling to remain afloat.  To avoid slipping to the bottom and being crushed by purple weight and burgundy blood and white snow.  Suffocation. Crowds. Noise.  Its all so noisy and loud and suffocating and condensed and walls caving in.  Walls of pure plastic.  Looking out and peering in—prying into this intimate closed off world and trying to understand a sealed off existence.  Trying to understand from the outside what one can’t.  You cannot understand the suffocation unless you experience it, unless you are choked by the clear walls of plastic and poked with pins and drowned by waves of cotton candy.  You cannot understand trying to remain afloat amidst a sea of pricks.  You are excluded, you are sealed off.  Your plastic coat cannot protect you from each pin’s sharp blow or the stench of stale air.  You are locked up.  You bob up and down and struggle to breathe and stay above pastel water.  You become the goldfish.  Drowning, slipping beneath the stabbing spikes.  The colors blur and indigos and violets swirl into muddied browns.  The muck sucks you in and overcomes you, so you cannot see the pins that stab you, which poke out through the gnoshy mud and clotted space.  You are surrounded, overcome, and sinking further down, below the muck and into the mud and grit of the sand.  You are the goldfish.  Trapped and pinned down by needles.  Everyone and everything is coated in plastic.

 

 

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II.  Autopilot:

 

The heater rumbles and makes a roaring sound.  The ribbons shake as I write this, so does the whole desk. And the lamp which doesn’t seem to be working.  Everything is grey and fogged and muted.  The windows seem blurred when you stare through the blinds which open like slits and range horizontally over the glass to the outside which is bright compared to the yellow dim world. It hurts my eyes to focus on the lighting and they shake a bit also on the ceiling.  Is the ceiling shaking maybe? Probably not or I’d feel it.  Or would I? the floor is slanted too. Possibly from ants carrying the breadcrumbs since they’re strong and moving quick now into clumps of bodies of black with food on their backs piling up into mobs of blackened ants on sandwich crumbs in corners.  I hope this house never gets that way. Like the tragedy of the commons since no one cleans up. We learned of it in economics, and of how everything goes back to economics. To locke and smith and list and all the philosophers of time and ow everything is traced through the origins of capitalism and money, but before that Aristotle and living and what it means to live and be human and what is science? With test tubes now and chemistry and smoke. Clouds of grey and Madam Curie and chemistry numbers.  Lots of math in pen and ink at first with crossouts on the page in lined notebooks. But now white boards over chalk boards and green and pink and red pens on white boards detailing equations in curved letters and writing on the board in different hand writings compared ot in notebooks.  In interiews that you have to write in they say to always pay attention to writing on boards vs. writing on paper. To impress the interviewer with your handwriting.  It seems so trivial and if they care about the way I curve my I’s and R’s and S’s more than my qualities I don’t want that job. Or what of the car I drive? I used to want a red car as a child, or a pink Barbie convertible like thing.  Now I like black cars, my car is black.  Black is always in, even if people say “Orange is the new black” like the television show with the blonde actress and blonde streaks in her hair but a bit of red would look nice died in as well but nnot the die in streaks more of just a glare of red upon the blonde. Layered on and blending like a latte swirling in foam and milky froth and whipped cream. Starbucks makes drinks like this that they say are fattening but the whipped cream is too good to resist the way it coats the top of your mouth and adds that dense layer of softness that’s great to lick to the touch. Its wonderful how the roof of your mouth is coated with slick sweetness like the slick roads when you drive in the rain. But not the snow which muddies your tires and you get stuck when you try to pull out of the driveway on the crickly crackly gravel and pavement. The harsh cement that bleeds and tears. Asphalt and sharp points and rocky terrain. Like mountain trucks gliding over sand dunes in the west and south and nice areas with sun shining above mountain racers and sand pouring everywhere as you speed down the trail, blazing past with gas spouting out the back of your vehicle.  It smells like petroleum but its fresh because your outside in the warm sun and the warmth on your face coloring your nose.  The heat presses into you back and the water trickles down your back, staining your shirt and forming damp puddles beneath your arms and a stench that’s embarrassing and your face is lined with water so your air sticks to the sides of your ear.  your earrings slip out and fall to the ground and you lose the crystalline structures like the diamonds. Lucy in the sky with diamonds. They say that songs about the discovery of lucy as well the skeleton, but other say its about drugs. Everything seems to be about drugs now. But I don’t know about then and there in London. You never know until you’re there you know? You have to be there and feel it on you and feel the heat and be in the moment. You can only make decision with the info youre given in the moment and until youre there you don’t really know. Why is the desk stills haking as I write. The keyboard types so loudly like pter patter on lined pavement and the paws of animals and my dog trotting up and down on the linoleum floor and painted wood and now it becomes scratched by his claws as he comes up to me with his smelly snout and skims my lips like a milk mustasche that graces my lips. Hair above lips like mustasches. Are mustashes back in? are they a fad? My dad would be happy. Happy like curious George and the  Jack Johnson album with George on the cover. There are yellow hues on the album title cover page and it makes you happy and want to jump. George the monkey with the ymbols in his hand clamping down clamp clamp clomp clomp clomping like sharks jaws that clomp to the sound of the music and dance along with you under the ocean with Nemo and friends and other fish and swimming in this blue bubble which is under the world but above the depths of hell, yet too far above to feel the fire.  In this middle ground but not near the earth where humans live.  Ariel knew this and wanted to be where the people are and see them dancing. Dancing in the moonlight, it’s a beautiful sight. Like lets go fly a kite. A kite to the sky might even reach the moon if it gains enough speed and goes up to the wind to the white foamy craters of the moon swirling in gusts of gas and exuberance and flooding into the black sky and moving across into orbit and milkiness with stars and holes on black velvet gems flowing brightly. Winds don’t bristle the planets like they do with the trees and the bees knees and jazz and the African component of jazzy vibes and talking and speaking and saxophones playing jazzy tunes and the luring whimsical nature of music floating through the pubs and guiding the drinks.  We order grilled cheese and dip the ooey gooey mesh of orange into soups of red and pour down the wine in the pub and then move to the music as we dine and dance and its warm like Thanksgiving.  Friends and family but also lovers who dance and we sit and we watch and let the alcohol settle and the bubbles die down and the hazy flood in our head goes through our ears and blood trinkles in btu its warm and alluring and calm and soothing and we sit too weighted to move with wine and drink and food but content watching others dance. And they move from one foot to the next slowly. Gents guiding girls, gents back up and form a star. Guys are back and the girls are forward move along and dance to the sweet jazzy tunes of the pub like vibes. The boy across from me is sending vibes too, though maybe im misinterpreting his looks and glances. he taps his foot like tip tap tip tap and his patent leather shoes on the floor bump along and the sticky stench of spilled drinks makes everything stick to the floor. And everythings a amess like frat parties and crowded basements and wooden walls. Girls dance on tables and the floor shakes and the walls move and the paintings tumble. Portraits of beautiful inventors and sailors are navigators and discoverers lined with beared and hats and growing muscles on their arm descend as they reach downward. Like the paintings in Harry Potter who talk to us and say their names and stories. These paintings talk to us too btu figuratively only, telling their story but leaving it up to us how to interpret it.  Where should we go from here and should we follow them further? Or should we keep going down the stairs before the parties ovr. Its so crowded and I just want to leave but its freezing outside and I cant find my coat and its such a long walk back and no one will go with me. I probably shouldn’t have come I really don’t understand how people like this type of thing anyway.

 

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III. Dream Work:

 

I like the sound of his footsteps.

There’s something soothing about

his steady gate, the weighted thud of aged rubber.

There’s something inevitable about it too.

I’ve come to rely on the slow turn of the doorknob,

and never fail to retrace my route behind the wooden bureau.

There are shoes in there, but mostly leather pumps.

All lined up heel-to-heel, one by one, toe by toe.

I guess you can say I’m a perfectionist.

Only he can don rain boots.  

 

I do not like the sound of her stilettos.

She clicks across the classroom, the tiled floor

pulsing beneath her webbed feet.

I sit up front, in the center.

I am perfectly aligned with my desk.

I am perfectly aligned with the axis of the chalkboard.

My hand works, but my mind falters in paralysis.

Sixtysevendividedbynineteenisfour.

The hands do not move steadily like his gate,

but trip over each second,

and skip minutes entirely.

Fourteenmultipliedbydecimalninetytwoisnotthree?

Are you sure?

Hands refuse to turn numb.  

 

I am no longer in the center.

Nor aligned.

I yearn for my spot behind the bureau.

I’ll be expecting you,

and your sweet scent of rubber. 

 

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IV.  Waking Up:

 

I promise I’ll tell her.  No you never know, you never do I swear.  You don’t care, it doesn’t matter.  Trust me, trust me.  What time do I have?  Just tell me later.  I never ended up going.  The doll did it.  Butterfly.  Butter flies?  Go away.  Shush just shh please, it’s fine I don’t care, really.  Turn it off!  My neck I really can’t.  Don’t push me just carry it over.  She is going to come after the dim show.  The dark light you know the one I’m talking about.  Bring it back in the day between.  I’m up, I’m up.  I know I hear you.  Yes, I am, I promise.  Shut up I don’t care.  Just bring her the twinkle light.

 

 

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V.  Commentary:

      For my first piece, I strived to record my thoughts as I was writing.  I began by simply describing the contents on my desk, and then quickly became fascinated by a very mundane object: a container of push-pins.  I ended up writing about the push-pins for the entire piece, relating the container to a fish bowl and ideas of suffocation and hypocracy.  I do not think I would have ever considered the diverse meanings of "plastic" if I had not forced myself to keep writing about what I was thinking at that exact moment.

         My second piece is definitely the least constrained of the four.  I truly let my mind wander, this time not allowing myself to think about what I was writing at all.  I ended up creating nonsensical words and typos, as well as wandering off quite frequently on random tangents.  I purposely did not break either of my first 2 poems into paragraphs so that they would appear like random streams of disjointed thoughts.

      The final piece I completed was the most fascinating for me, but also the most difficult.  My mother often tells me that I say crazy things when she is waking me up, none of which I remember.  For this task, I had to convince one of my housemates to wake me each morning, and to engage in conversation with me immediately.  She would then jot down what I said, and I later combined these phrases into the poem "Waking Up."  This work, as well as my first two, mimic my random dream-like thought process that manifests when I free my mind of restraints.  In my third work, I strive to convey diverse and nonsensical occurrences in several of my dreams.  I hope to paint a clearer image of the dream content, itself, in this third piece, while still maintaining a degree of absurdity.