28. Writing

This year was the first one in a long time that I got to do creative writing as part of my English class. It's something that I've always enjoyed immensely, but in the past few years I've been too busy to find time to write consistently, so I was overjoyed when we did several creative assignments this year.
Instead of the normal post today, I figured I'd share my latest assignment -- I had way too much fun writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

The assignment was a pastiche, which is basically a pretentious way of saying that you must imitate either the style or the story line of a specific author's work. Of course, I chose Virginia Woolf; I think that, stylistically, our writing styles are fairly similar, and I loved reading her stories, so it was an obvious choice. But coming up with a topic to explore was much more challenging. I finally settled on how much time we spend doing various things over the course of our lives; sleeping, eating food, exercising, et cetera. But the most ridiculous one was that, over a 79 year lifespan, the average person spends six months waiting at stoplights. Six months! So, in homage to Woolf, I decided to write my paper on this modern conundrum. Enjoy!

It is rather unsettling for one to consider the passage of time. It feels as though our stories are yet unwritten and there is much that life still has to offer us, and yet we have already completed a large fraction of our given time on this planet. Even if we live to see one hundred, our lives are already twenty percent finished. And, while musing upon that, one cannot help but consider the amount of time spent engaged in various activities. It seems we waste an undue amount of time consuming food, sleeping, sitting in classrooms, watching television….  But in this modern society, the crime most plainly incurred against Chronos himself is the torture we all must endure while waiting at a stoplight.

The world is out there for the taking, visible, plainly in reach, but something is suddenly preventing you from seeking it out; cornered, trapped, shoved back as though by an invisible hand. The sudden jolt courses through your spine as you are unkindly jerked to a stop. It is a feeling of wasteful meaninglessness quite unlike any other; to be trapped within the metallic confines of the modern vehicle, sidewalks and storefronts visible, but not quite within reach. It is bad enough when you are moving, making progress to some petty destination likely as devoid of meaning as your journey was, but nothing tests one’s patience like being captured by the changing color of a light. How many minutes, hours, days, months, years, are wasted? In a society so advanced that we have put a man into space and become masters of medicine, why is it that we do not have a system of transport that does not involve endless waiting?

Eyes green with envy, glaring at those next to you who are lucky enough to be turning right; what gives them the power to forgo this photon’s powerful clutches? Are they so important that they must arrive at their destination, whilst you remain trapped?

And where are they going, anyway? Maybe to work their tedious 9-to-5 accounting job, wherein they waste the majority of their time stalking people on Facebook. Or perhaps they work at a fast-food restaurant, flipping burgers and burning themselves on french-fry grease to pay their way through college. A barista at Starbucks? A scientist at the research center? Maybe they are part of a covert operation for the CIA, working under the guise of a shop-clerk, secretly spying on people while they peruse clothes at Value Village. They’re wearing sunglasses, so, seems pretty likely….

 You are wrenched out of your reverie by the rude blaring of horns – the traffic creeps forward, and you are finally moving again. Another minute, second, hour wasted; never to return again.

 

 

14. Summer

We've just had the first week of good weather of the year. Well, good weather is all relative; it was still a pretty frigid week, averaging around 60 Fahrenheit. But it's enough to incite a little restlessness in even the most dedicated students. And this weekend, the temperatures have risen to almost 70 degrees. So I figured that, in homage to the coming summer, I would post something a little different.

Below is an essay that I wrote for English class. It is based (albeit loosely) on Virginia Woolf's Talland House, wherein she recounts memories of summers spent at a vacation house on the English coast.

The objective of the prompt was to employ the descriptive language and lengthy sentences used so often by Woolf. I apologize if the essay seems a little bit stilted or choppy -- I never got around to editing it -- but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

There’s a little town a few hours east of here that lies just on the Canadian side of the border. It’s not much in the way of a town, really; just a random smattering of imposing lakeside hotels jumbled with ramshackle houses and convenience stores. Right next to the main hotel was the Starlight Marina (much less romantic than it sounds) with the typical Ski-Doo’s and speed boats and kayaks. Osoyoos is pretty much like every other small lakeside town.  But especially when I was younger, it seemed an almost mystical place. The thing that struck me most when I returned to a few years ago was that, even when it seemed that everything and everyone had changed, this island of normalcy remained unchanged. Five years after I visited it initially, there was the same hotel that we always went to, same delicious restaurant, even the same ice cream stand. It always seemed almost anticlimactic once we got there, but the drives to Osoyoos were practically unbearable. My sister, older cousin, and I would always go there after having spent two weeks visiting with our grandparents’ farm in the interior of British Columbia. Our parents would come for the last few days on the farm, which was a rather tense experience. Even back then, there was always a barely perceptible feeling of animosity, a buzz of cold electricity that injected itself into every sentence and movement. It wasn’t that there was one event that triggered this anxiety, so much as a series of small events that made those few days a little choppy. We would pile into the car under the stifling Okanogan sun, finally free from all the family drama. The car ride seemed endless (six hours can feel like an eternity, especially when you’re nine years old). But we amused ourselves for the arduous journey, knowing that once we made it through, Osoyoos would be waiting for us, patiently as always.

As soon as we made it to the hotel, we would leap out of the car, impatient to get to the beach as soon as possible. Taking our bags out of the car and into the lobby seemed a Sisyphean task with the wonderful sandy beach barely a hundred meters away. We waited impatiently, shuffling from one foot to the other, unable to stand still when our goal was within reachable distance.

And finally, freedom. The second our parents gave the most miniscule nod, we took it as the go-ahead and raced onto the beach- Through the dimly-lit lobby, down the slippery tiled stairs, along the hallway wafting with chlorine from the pool, and onto the gray paved balcony. We could finally see the beach in its full glory- everything from the chipped bright orange paint on the metal hand rails to the dusty sand that went on forever on either side of us. We leaped down the short set of stairs and onto the warm sand. You could feel the sun-soaked grains covering your feet, each individual granule seeming to soak the stress away. We would tentatively dip our feet in the water, slowly wading up to our ankles, then our calves. Maybe our knees if we were feeling brave. None of us really liked getting into the water, and we would dare the bravest to dunk their head under the bracing water first. Being the youngest by two years, I was almost never first. I would stand alone at the shallowest bit of water, the ground coated with that same fine sand that now glopped in between your toes like cafeteria pudding. I would get up the nerve to go a little deeper in tortuously slow increments, wincing as the cold water lapped at my ankles. My sister always believed that the best way to get in was to dive all at once, and she tried to convert me by splashing me with pails full of sandy water and slimy strings of kelp. But once everyone was finally in the water, we would stay as long as possible.  We would splash around until our bodies were numb with cold, our skin pocked with goose-bumps. We stayed out until the sun got hazy on the horizon, stretching out time until our parents finally called us in for dinner.