So You Think You Can Write: Juliette

For this, my third assignment in the Times Colonist "So You Think You Can Write" competition, I was tasked with creating a character in 500 words or less.  Descriptive writing was not something I often did and so this was an intimidating assignment, although it was easy compared to the one that followed.

"Juliette"

Gliding between Formica tabletops, her slender fingers around the handle of a coffeepot, Juliette remembers when John would take her dancing and, when the diner is quiet, she can almost pretend it’s still spring 1967 and the air smells of gardenias in bloom.

She closes her blue eyes and remembers the summer before John was drafted: drinking iced tea on the porch with her parents before sneaking away to make love by the banks of the Atchafalaya Basin. Juliette trembled in the moonlight, a tall, slim girl even then, and he handled her like something precious and rare.

More Oral Magic: The 2012 Victoria Spoken Word Festival

No?  How about some poetry then?

After a successful inaugural run last year the Victoria Spoken Word Festival is back for more in 2012 and so, apparently, am I.  For the second year running I will be on-hand to comment on the festivities, bringing the magic of the Spoken Word Festival to the frail, housebound and triple-booked.  


Just like last year, tickets are cheap ($5-$10) so try to make it out to one of the events at either Cafe Solstice or the Intrepid Theatre, from Thursday to Friday night.  Click the first link below for scheduling information.


Post 1:  The 2012 Victoria Spoken Word Festival Begins!  - The philosophical barber, Fish Jesus & Floyd Jones
Post 2:  Tongues of Fire Instant Slam - Meltdowns, turkey love and a bearded snake
Post 3:  The Awesome Shit Showcase - Nostalgia, glitter & heartbreak.  Also bodily fluids
Post 4:  On the Edge, Into the Sunset - Saying goodbye with class (and a golden penis statue)

So You Think You Can Write: The Knife

For the second assignment in the 2011 Times Colonist "So You Think You Can Write Contest" we had to tell the story of an item about which we have ambivalent feelings.  This is largely the truth (groan) about an angry time in my life and how I came to possess a handmade knife.

   The Knife

The drawer to the left of my kitchen sink contains a bizarre inventory of items: there are Ziploc bags filled with wet naps, ancient elastic bands, and various foreign coins left over from vacations past.

At the very back is the centrepiece of my little collection: a homemade knife. The pockmarked blade was machined from industrial steel; the handle from plastic cutting boards. It’s worn and without practical use yet I’ve taken it with me every time I’ve moved, from house to apartment to house, for six years.

I keep the knife because even though it represents a miserable part of my life, it’s also a reminder of the lessons I learned from the man who gave me it to me and how his sadness helped me to let go of the anger that had come to define me.

So You Think You Can Write: Nicolette, Tennessee

Last September, just before heading down to Las Vegas to blog the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition, I entered the Victoria Times-Colonist's "So You Think You Can Write" contest.  In a previous post I mentioned I was chosen as a finalist and urged (some would say threatened) my readers to vote for me.  My attempts at coercion failed and, alas, I did not win the contest.  I did, however, write some fiction, which I had not done before and it came out nicely, if I do say so myself. 

Over the course of the contest I wrote five pieces, including my qualifying story, and over the next little while I'll be posting the assignments here.  This first doesn't have a title but is about growing up in the (nonexistent) small town of Nicolette, Tennessee:

The men of the Delaney family are not known for being long-lived. Our grandfather, Lee David Delaney, died in the Number 52 mine collapse in 1964 and his son, our father, David Lee Delaney, died twenty years later from a lung infection caused, it is widely accepted, by working in Number 53.  And believe me, when I say ten years, I mean to the day.  We tried to console ourselves by saying that at least we could confine our grief to a single day.  It would have worked if it hadn’t been Christmas.  

Neither death made the newspaper, Grandpa Lee David’s because Christmas 1964 was about when all those rivers in Oregon got to flooding and daddy’s because one man dying isn’t news, especially if he was a good man.  We remembered them though, each in our own way - grandma for one developed a fear of going underground.  This wasn’t a problem until she came to visit me in New York City and screamed the entire way through the Holland Tunnel. 

The policeman who pulled us over was very gracious once he figured out that this 102lb senior citizen from Nicolette, Tennessee was no threat to any part of America except its eardrums.  Between her accent and my grandfather’s too-big dentures he barely understood anything she said - he made out the word “Yankee” once and took it to mean that she was a baseball fan.  I didn’t correct him.

My younger brother David & I were affected by the elder Delaney’s deaths in a different way - having died as a result of their jobs managed to impress upon us that toil was not conducive to good health and should be avoided.  David excelled at this –by the age of ten he could sit in one spot on the front porch for up to sixteen hours.  Jim Abramson, the tobacconist, would hire him to wear a headdress & pose as an Indian statue in his smoke shop, paying him in Prince Albert cigarettes – Jim always meant to have a proper carved Indian made but artists were in short supply in Nicolette in those days.  Now David teaches yoga in Cosmos, California and can’t believe people pay honest money to be taught to stand still.

Myself, I made up stories.  At first they were about people I knew, like my mother.  Shortly after David was born she ran off with Tor Engvall, a local farmhand who also performed a Johnny Cash tribute act in retirement homes.  At first she’d send postcards but they thinned out as the months passed & I sometimes imagined the two had been swallowed up by a whale, like Jonah.  

Eventually I made up other stories and with both television and literacy being a luxury in those parts, people would come by Grandma’s house at night to hear me tell them. 

Now I live in New York City and can’t believe that people will pay honest money to read about Nicolette, Tennessee.