Reading Response to Jennifer Davis's "No Tears for Me, Please"

  What is interesting to me about this essay is that I was just talking about this, this morning. About how we can't use certain words in both our language or on the page. And it isn't even the fact that it is so much a cliche, but merely the fact the word tear has lost all connotation with what is it can emotionally mean. I has become a dried up word, like a fruit left out in the sun. I do like the mini conversation that Davis gives between her and her student. I feel like she was trying to tell that student that it isn't the fact the Shakespeare is timeless, the word tear isn't. Five centuries, the word tear wasn't used in every single romantic, teenage, fanfiction piece of fiction, film, or conversation. The word tear could be said to readers and listeners and give them the emotion it is trying to provoke.
  These days we can't do that, we as writers have to come up with clever ways to say things that provoke emotion and meaning. I know many times I fall into that trap that is cliche and I have used the "tear streamed down her face and began for form puddles of salty pool on her pants" in some form or fashion more than I'd like to admit, but at the time it was mainly because I was lazy and didn't want to be clever. In today's writing world people have to learn that the words they think hold some emotional power just don't anymore and tear is one of them.

Reading Response to Amy Hempel's "In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried"

  I have to say that I really did enjoy this story and not because it was a sad and I do think that sad endings are some of the best stories but that the story actually made me mad. All throughout the story you have to two best friends, one who is terminally ill and the other who is coming to see her, interacting with one another. Our speaker comes and see her best friend in the hospital and they do everything wrong. Every idea you have of someone visiting a dying friend, whatever it is you thought throw it out the window. The whole story is about the speaker trying to deal with her best friend dying and all they do is talk about pointless trivia. And to be honest, after finishing it I realized that a story like this much better than one that follows to ideal route for a story like this. I realized that if I read something like that I wouldn't get the great internal struggle I do see on the page, and i wouldn't see the how great the ending was, coming full circle. Most of the time when I see someone do that I don't think it necessarily works out but in this case it does.

Reading Response to Elissa Schappell's "Endings"

  When first coming across this essay, I thought to myself, I don't have a problem with this. I'm great at writing endings. Then as I went through the essay and looked at the good and bad endings I realized that I fall more into the bad endings than the good ones. And the few good ones I do fall into I fall into what messes it up. The one that I do a lot because I always thought I was witty and smart and wanted the reader to see my message was the "Overly Symbolic Ending". I love the way she describes authors who do this, "It isn't uncommon for an author, anxious about his woefully unsatisfied ending, to attempt to seduce readers by getting them drunk on poetics, overripe similes and metaphors, and low-hanging fruit of symbolism, in hopes that some uber-image will emerge to which the reader to which the reader can attach profound meaning." Once I read that, I vocally stated in my room "Dammit!" Because it's true!
  I feel like with all these endings she gives don't necessarily matter. You can categorize and label the different goods and bads of endings but to put it bluntly, "Endings are a bitch" and they always will be. You should do what you want with your ending but the important part is that it isn't forced, it isn't bland, and it isn't just something you wrote just to have an ending.

Story 1 Revision

THE RECORD THAT DEFINED MY SUMMER

BY: AARON SCOBIE

It was dark now. The moon glowed immensely over the water of the lake. I just stared at that moon and traced its outline with my finger. I saw her in the side mirror walking up. I wanted to lock the doors and drive off but I let her in. I didn’t deserve this.

 "You know what's funny?"

"What?" she asked

"This record you gave me", I paused. "the second track is called 'The Summer's End'. It is basically what is happening right now. I just thought that was funny." I’m crying now. What are you doing Ron.

"I don't understand."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't tell me you're sorry!”

"I just . . .."

I’m being an asshole. I never yelled at her. Do I?

"I'm sorry please don't cry anymore." I can always figure out a way to hate myself. I wish she wouldn’t cry so easily. How often did I yell at her? Did I make her cry then? Did I Even care? I’m a nice guy and I treat her right. Even this far into out relationship I just don’t want to say goodbye to these three years, but I don’t want her to cry anymore.

“I’m sorry.” I think that was the first time in a long time I meant that.

“My family is waiting on me. Can’t we talk about this later? I didn’t even want to talk about this right now. I wanted to wait.”

“Just go.”

“Call me when you get home, please?”

“Yeah.”

And she left. I sat in my car waiting for time to stop and reverse itself. My eyes started to turn red as I waiting for their cars to leave. They’re waiting on me. I put my car in reverse and start to drive. I decided to keep the radio off. I can feel my hands pulsate as lead this line of cars to the turn off.

            It was completely black all around me now. The road was thin and curvy. I tried to go pretty fast as to try and keep some distance from the other cars. The road was long and narrow road. It was a dirt road in its plainest sense. I had my windows down. I could here toad croaking so. I wonder if there is a swamp near by or if that is just the lake behind me.

Finally I got to the turn off which lead onto the highway. I’m pretty far ahead of the rest of the cars. I decide to sit there and I start to contemplate what to do. If I go right, it leads to pushing the inevitable conversation to some other time. If I go right that I’m just going to keep pushing. How I want to go right, but my hands have decided otherwise. I turn the wheel left and home home.

            I have driven this drive at least a hundred times before now: in the morning, late at night. Everything seems so unfamiliar this time. I begin to look for landmarks that told me how far or close I was to being home but no matter how hard I try to focus in on those things, I never can seem to find them. Not the giant billboard that someone spray-painted “myspace.com/fadetogrey2” or the obvious intersection in Abbeville. Everything seems so new. From where I left, the drive would normally be an hour and a half, and while I thought it was going to feel like forever it actually felt like I had just blinked

            I made it home. I got a text from Fanny saying that her mom was making her do something and that she would be able to meet up for at least another hour or so and that she was sorry. I knew she meant that but I didn’t want to believe her. My mom asked why I was home. “Ronald what’s going on?”

            “Mom I . . .me and Fanny are having some problems.”

            “Oh Ronny.”

            “It’s ok. Really” I started to cry again. I feel so worthless and pathetic.

            “Has it happened yet?” Mom asked.

            “No were going to meet in an hour.”

            “An hour! Ron it is already . . .”

            She could tell I wasn’t in the mood to fight to she stopped and hugged me.

            “I’m going to be in my room.” I walked off to my room. Home always has the stench of a mixture of cat hair, dog hair, and stale cigarettes. I sat down on my bed for a minute until I fell to the floor and grabbed a shoebox. I kept a lot of our mementos over the years. Here’s the rock from our one year anniversary where we to that quarry next to Chewelah in Auburn. Oh and here’s the tickets from our first date. I was so nervous for that. 

We went to La Parilla for dinner for our first date. It is one of the chain Mexican restaurants that looked like it was really nice from the outside but all the food was crap. I took her there anyway because that’s where she wanted to go. I think that was the only time she actually decided on a place to eat ever in our entire relationship.

I remember she had on this red dress and it was covered in little penguins. We sat and ate and talked and soon it was over. I took her to a movie after that. I couldn’t remember what it was but that’s not important. I caught myself grinning remember what happened that night at the movies. I remember I had my hand on her leg. It was funny to look back on both of us back then and how we had this weird semi-sexual moment. Having just as quickly I had moved my hand in, I moved it out. I felt like I was a freshman in high school, blushing and grinning very wildly.

After that we held hands. I had held hands with plenty of girls before and I don’t want it to seem like cliché arrogant romantic type to say that that time meant more than it did but it didn’t. I played it off to her as though it was the most sensational moment I had ever had while holding hands with a girl but I just wanted her to like me. I took her home, we made out at the front door, and said bye to each other. I got back in my car and fist pumped the air.

I set the tickets down next to the rock. There are few things in here I don’t really remember why they were so memorable. I began to dig through the box in hopes for finding something meaningful other than the obvious one year, two year, first date, first valentines day, etc. My hands are moving much quicker now and the sound of that fucking AC unit next to my window is starting to get on my last nerve. I threw the box across the room and just lay back on my bed. I rolled over and was face first in the soft, white comforter. The smells of old smoke resonated in my nose. Between this and that noisy AC unit, I want to just go home now.

            Why I was waiting for Fanny to text me, I remember a time when we were going for a drive. We did that a lot only because we didn’t like to walk around outside anymore, or at least I didn’t, and also I probably couldn’t think of anything else to do. But I remember this on drive. We were going back to her house and we were talking about something involving religion. I’ve never been the most religious type but she was and I tired to respect that. But we were talking about something and we started arguing about it. We always did this we never seemed to just discuss things; we just had to fight about them. Most of the time we would fight and she would stay quiet for a long time and I would say I’m sorry and she’d get over it. This time was different. This time I yelled at her for the first time.

            “You know I really don’t get why you get so worked up over things like this.”

            “Things like what?” I asked.

            “You know, it seems that whenever you get to try and talk about something that seems the smallest bit controversial you get up in arms and you stick to one side.”

            “I do not!”

            “Yes, you do.”

            “Like what? Give me one . . . three examples.”

            “I not doing this with you.”

            “Look the only thing I can think of where I got worked up was when we were talking about female preachers and I ended that because I knew it would lead to something stupid for us to argue about.”

            “Why does something like that have to be stupid?”

            “What female preachers? Because it isn’t a big deal.”

            “Well I think it is. I says in the bible that the role of a preach has to be filled . . . “

            “Well that was written thousands of years when women weren’t seen as people and why does it matter if they preach or not? People who bicker and argue over semantics and nit pick over every little detail in the bible are stupid and it just causes for more controversy and argument. Like”

            I waited for her to respond but she just diverted her eyes from me. I kept making quick glances at the road and at her waiting for her to say something.

“What? Don’t not look at me. Hey!”

“What!” She replied.

“Hey.” I said back much more softly. I realized I had over stepped my boundaries so I tried to pull myself out of this hole I had put myself in.

She still didn’t look at me. Her eyes had focused on the road and they weren’t moving.  I took more focus off the road and just stared at her. I watched as her face turned to a dark shade of red, which ran to her eyes. She starts to cry.

“Take me home, now . . . please.”

I opened my mouth to try and salvage the moment that had obviously crashed much earlier than where is was at but I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut for the first time in a long time. I turned the car around at the nearest median and started back. It was odd. There was an eerie calmness to the car. The radio was off and neither of us was talking.

I thought that if we had a reasonable talk that we would get back together. I kept jamming words and sentences together in my head; pitting together scenes and scenarios where I would talk myself out of losing who I thought would be the only girl I would ever love. The record she gave me earlier that day came to mind. It was full of break up songs ironically. I tried to focus on that song “The Summer’s End” and hope, no pray that that would be how this summer would end. I continue to deny the idea that I would be alone, and feeding the idea that I was this perfect guy and she needed me so much more than I needed her; I deserved her for how great and wonderful I had been to her.

I got up and went to the bathroom. While I was peeing I remember something that wasn’t in the shoebox. It sat on a table full of boxes of trinkets and jewelry stacked on top of each other in my mother’s room. I finished up and ran to her room. I heard her get up and ask me what was wrong but I didn’t answer. I moved all the boxes aside aside until I found the one my mom used to keep her special jewelry in. I opened and pulled out a ring. It was my grandmother’s wedding ring. It was small and golden. The diamond was very tiny but I thought of this ring as better than any huge rock some people would propose with. She had it for me to give to the girl I wanted to marry. I had been saving it for sometime. I grabbed it and wrapped it up in a napkin to keep from scratching it. Maybe if I told her what my plan was she would change her mind.

            I walked but out to my car. I sat waiting for the phone call of where we were supposed to meet. After about ten minutes she calls and tells me to meet her at the Taco Bell near my house. I cranked my car. I rubbed my hand against where the ring was. I felt the lump as it moved between my fingers and watched all those thoughts in my head fade away. All the scenarios and speeches I had prepared were gone. I stuck my hand into my pocket and pulled the napkin out. I slowly unfolded it, feeling the fabric slide on my hand. I pulled the ring out and held it up to the moon. I had the strange desire to want to ring to shine in the moonlight, as some weird sign that everything was going to be ok. That when I drive to meet her, we would cry and make up and be laughing with each other the next day. But no, those stories don’t happen.

            I closed my hand and held the ring. I closed my eyes and let out a few more tears. I grabbed the napkin, wiped my ears and wrapped the ring back up. I walked back inside and handed to my mother. As I left my house to go to Taco Bell I thought about the record again. And this time the first song I had tried so hard to keep out of my head started playing. I got back into my car, cranked it, and headed off. 

The sky is so black today. It is so dark. It’s much darker than the water of that murky old lake I saw earlier today. I sat in the parking lot of that Taco Bell waiting for her to arrive. She would be a minute for how far away she lived. So I rested my head against the headrest and laid my seat back and closed my eyes and I waited.

“Let’s just forget everything said and everything we did: best friends and better halves. Goodbye autumn nights . . .. I just think its best, cause you can’t miss what you forget. So lets just pretend everything and anything between you and me was never meant.”

Reading Response to Dorothy Allison's "Place"

  Going into this essay, mainly from the opening paragraph, I didn't know what I was getting into. I disagree with Allison's view on why we read but that is not important. The main thing is that I thought I had a good view on what place was and how to write it. Boy was I wrong. Allison talks about place being this other character in the story, this other manifestation that has an outreaching hand that can convince and control the reader and also the characters in the story. One example that came to light to me was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and how the she explains the place in which the Bennet's live and how their village is this other character.
  One part I especially like well more so a line I liked was, when she was explaining how to generalize a city or a part of the country and how it can give place a very distinctive meaning. My favorite was "Central Florida is despair." I think this is great because I have plenty of friends from that area and if you ask anyone of them to describe it, they would say this. It is just an interesting thought to think about a place or place in this light. I know one too many times I have fallen under the idea the place and setting are one and the same and that a story can be told only from the perspective of a room or a simple area. My struggle is I don't describe how the place affects all my senses and this essay brought this to light to me.

Reading Response to Louise Erdrich's "Disaster Stamps of Pluto"

  I have to say I really enjoyed this short story and mainly for the fact of how they went about explaining the story. From the very beginning of the story it seems very introduction-y. And I mean that in a very good sense. It has this very fun way of introducing the town in a way that gives us an idea to who the main character is, her personality, the town itself, and the history of the town. We are also introduced, through giving the history of the town, that this town seems to make itself have the persona that it is interesting and a cause for people to stay. One of these is the mystery of the main character's family being murdered and also the banker running away with all of the towns money. I mean come on. This is a small ass town in North Dakota called Pluto with a population of God knows how many.
  I feel like Erdrich was trying to impose the outlandish event that happen in this small town to give meaning to this only doctor and our main character. Our main character is an older woman with no family and one friend and through these very intense and crazy events that happen in this town, we are given a reason to want to know this woman and continue to be interested in her. The reason being because all of these events are in some way or fashion tied to her: her family, her friend, and her newsletter.

Reading Response to Chris Offutt's "Performing Surgery Without Anesthesia"

            I have to say that I do agree with what Chris Offutt is saying in “Performing Surgery Without Anesthesia”.  In the first three to four pages of the essay he describes his own personal struggles with revising which are also similar to mine. A lot of times when I write something it isn’t for a class so I write it and then set it to the side. However if it is for a class then I have to revise and that makes me look back at the paper. To be honest I don't want to a lot of the time because like Offutt said, I try to but my heart and soul and pour all my emotions into that paper, story, etc. and if I look at it then I'll see exactly what is wrong with it and also what can be fixed. That requires me to see that what I wrote originally was not the best thing in the world and that it does need to be revised or how Offutt puts it “to see again”.

            The second half of the essay is Offutt’s input to the problem that I have and also how writers should go about looking at problem of revising. I like the idea he gives that is you have a story about a father and son from the son’s perspective and you know the story will be better if you did it from the father’s perspective do that. The main problem he what to get across with revising is that when you do revise do it big. Don't just change a little chunk here and a little chunk there. Either go all in or don't revise at all.