We Made it Home
Jul. 29th, 2019 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseSometime around two o'clock or so yesterday afternoon, we made it home. It's always scary leaving the hospital in a way, since you're no longer under intense care, but being at home means that there are no random beeps or pokes at odd intervals during the night (cats and teenagers notwithstanding.)
My Loft class was a disaster, though I did my flailing best.
The disaster was that, though I had six students on my roster, HALF the class failed to show up, and so i had THREE students. Let me tell you, it is tough to play a room with three, bleary-eyed (my class starts at 9 am) teenagers, ESPECIALLY since my class is structured under the assumption that I will get at least SOME audience participation.
Crickets.
So, that was one of the longest three hours of my life.
I mean, I think the actual information that I gave was useful and possibly vaguely entertaining, but l'm the kind of extrovert that when the class is low-energy, it's a struggle for me to rise above that. My lecture was understandably a little scattered and wandering--more than usual--since my brain was still half at home wondering how I can make the "soft food" diet exciting for Shawn and not send Mason and I into some kind of health crises of our own.
Telepathy wasn't what I was expecting. Except during exams. Then, I would actually hear the words in people's heads because everyone was hyperfocused. But, then it was a lot of shouting and not as helpful as you'd hope.
Most of the time, what I got from other people's brains were a bunch of weird, disconnected images and memories/
In fact, I didn't realize I those thoughts weren't actually mine until one day, I met, by accident, a serial killer.
My name is Charlie Sutton and I love to hang out at my local coffee shop, the Sacred Grounds. I'm a caffeine addict, so there's that, but also the Grounds? Totally Pagan, like me.
But so, this one day, I'm sitting there and not noticing the random things people are thinking because they're not really thoughts in word form. I mean, maybe, I don't remember having a baby so it's weird that I get a flash of a infant's smile in my head, but I guess I always figured randomness was part of everyone's thinking. Besides, so much of it is basically mental white noise. The sun is hot. Yep, sure is. Bacon is yummy, truth, my man. I mean, I've been a vegan for a few years now, so maybe I should figure that thought isn't mine, but BACON, am I right?
Anyway, I'm just sitting there, surfing on my phone when, all of a sudden, the image of a surgical blade carving out my eye--like I can see my own face staring at me in horror---pops into my head.
Startled, I look up to see the barista smiling at me.
When our eyes meet, I get another intrusive thought: a knife, this time, slitting my throat and beautiful, bright blood drips down in a perversely erotic way.
My barista's grin widens. In fact, she's grinning at me like the Chesire Cat. I kind of smile back, despite what's happening, because, frankly, I've had a crush on her since forever. I think her name is Molly and she's tall, a little on the sporty-side--which made me figure she was out of my league--smart AF, and... okay, this is going to sound weird now, but a little evil. Like, before this very moment, I would have said that she was evil in a cute way. Like, you know how you can tell someone who gives no fucks? And how hot that can be? Yeah, that, plus her humor was clearly like mine, tending towards dark, even gallow's.
But, now I'm thinking maybe that's not so sexy?
"Hey, you," she says, coming over to bring me a scone I didn't order. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Something like that," I mutter. Sure enough I get another burst of pictures when she slides into the seat across from me. Me, getting cloriphorm-ed in an alley I don't recognize, but which I guess to be behind this shop. What the fuck, man! This situation is just so weird and scary that I blurt out, "Could you please stop thinking about ways to kill me?"
Now it's her turn to look freaked out. "Why would you say that? I'm not thinking that!" But I hear other words overlapping those: Oh, fuck. They know
/story randomly ends.
The other story I wrote is much sillier and far more typical of what I usually end up with when I do the writing exercises along with my students. In this exercise, we were asked to use a prompt with character motivations/traits as fill-in-the blanks. Things like: I am____ and I believe it is my destiny to____. I am__, you wouldn't know to look at me, but ____.
The one I chose was I am _____ and my greatest possession is ______.
I decided to fill the sentence in this way:
I am a dragon and my greatest possession is immortality.
I gained immortality by eating a wizard.
I know what you're thinking. Dragons are supposed to eat maidens, but I guess I never developed much of a taste. Too soft. Too sickly sweet.
Me, I like something spicy, dangerously so, even.
Besides, it's ridiculously easy to get wizards and warriors to come to you. Meals on wheels... or horses, as the case may be. Because, of course, I have gold. So much gold. I wasn't born yesterday, and, anyway, after that knight killed my grandmother, I inherited her hoard. The vile runty knight only wanted "fame," apparently, or the maiden or some special cup or ring or other shiny he STOLE from us, but it wasn't like he could carry it all off, so what was left became mine.
Grandma's bones are buried somewhere beneath me, but, that, I suspect, is some other story.
This one is about a wizard and his ill-fated gamble.
I suppose this wizard had a name at some point, something his mother called him. I, however, think of him as dinner, so we shall call him Din.
Din came to me on a late Saturday afternoon in the middle of April shouting some nonsense about me terrorizing his village. What complete bullshit. A dragon needs to stretch her wings now and again, doesn't she? Is it my fault that people freak out over a little flyover? Honestly, we all know it's species-ism. They kill wolves and bears for just existing too, those foul little humans.
At any rate, Din was nattering on about vengeance and I realized, as he was balthering on, that probably my cousin Darktail --we're easy to confuse, because my tail is also dark, though not black like his, merely a magestic purple, or maybe indigo in the wrong light--might be to blame for this little mischief. I was about to inform Din of his mistake when he challenged me to a contest.
I love games. Any sort, really, but I am especially fond of battles of wits or riddles and all those things that usually end up with my kind turned into a mouse that gets eaten. At any rate, I decided not to correct Din and accepted his challenge.
/story randomly ends....
That's what teachers write when kids are probably writing something far more brilliant.
And, now I get to figure out what we're going to learn tomorrow. (I have this class every day for a week.)
My Loft class was a disaster, though I did my flailing best.
The disaster was that, though I had six students on my roster, HALF the class failed to show up, and so i had THREE students. Let me tell you, it is tough to play a room with three, bleary-eyed (my class starts at 9 am) teenagers, ESPECIALLY since my class is structured under the assumption that I will get at least SOME audience participation.
Crickets.
So, that was one of the longest three hours of my life.
I mean, I think the actual information that I gave was useful and possibly vaguely entertaining, but l'm the kind of extrovert that when the class is low-energy, it's a struggle for me to rise above that. My lecture was understandably a little scattered and wandering--more than usual--since my brain was still half at home wondering how I can make the "soft food" diet exciting for Shawn and not send Mason and I into some kind of health crises of our own.
I did write a couple of story starts that I'm tempted to share with you all under the cut. You might be able to guess one of the exercises we did in class based on the story. If you've ever taken a class with me on writing, you know that I love to talk about Orson Scot Card's "cost of magic" which is an idea he put forward in one of his books on writing SF/F. (Yes, OSC is a terrible human being with awful politics, but I loved Ender's Game and think that a lot of his advice on how to write was valuable and not diminished by his odious politics. I won't say "fight me," because, frankly, whatever you have to say on the matter is probably right. Thing is, I bought my copy of Ender's Game before I knew about his politics and I have stuck to my guns and have bought nothing from him since, which is the best way I can think of to protest.) Anyway, I'm pretty sure the thing I do in class is only loosely based on his idea, but we talk about how boring characters who have no weaknesses are and play a "game" (really, brainstorming) that involves making a list of random costs and random "super powers" and then I ask people to write stories based on one of each.
Here's what I ended up with:
Telepathy wasn't what I was expecting. Except during exams. Then, I would actually hear the words in people's heads because everyone was hyperfocused. But, then it was a lot of shouting and not as helpful as you'd hope.
Most of the time, what I got from other people's brains were a bunch of weird, disconnected images and memories/
In fact, I didn't realize I those thoughts weren't actually mine until one day, I met, by accident, a serial killer.
My name is Charlie Sutton and I love to hang out at my local coffee shop, the Sacred Grounds. I'm a caffeine addict, so there's that, but also the Grounds? Totally Pagan, like me.
But so, this one day, I'm sitting there and not noticing the random things people are thinking because they're not really thoughts in word form. I mean, maybe, I don't remember having a baby so it's weird that I get a flash of a infant's smile in my head, but I guess I always figured randomness was part of everyone's thinking. Besides, so much of it is basically mental white noise. The sun is hot. Yep, sure is. Bacon is yummy, truth, my man. I mean, I've been a vegan for a few years now, so maybe I should figure that thought isn't mine, but BACON, am I right?
Anyway, I'm just sitting there, surfing on my phone when, all of a sudden, the image of a surgical blade carving out my eye--like I can see my own face staring at me in horror---pops into my head.
Startled, I look up to see the barista smiling at me.
When our eyes meet, I get another intrusive thought: a knife, this time, slitting my throat and beautiful, bright blood drips down in a perversely erotic way.
My barista's grin widens. In fact, she's grinning at me like the Chesire Cat. I kind of smile back, despite what's happening, because, frankly, I've had a crush on her since forever. I think her name is Molly and she's tall, a little on the sporty-side--which made me figure she was out of my league--smart AF, and... okay, this is going to sound weird now, but a little evil. Like, before this very moment, I would have said that she was evil in a cute way. Like, you know how you can tell someone who gives no fucks? And how hot that can be? Yeah, that, plus her humor was clearly like mine, tending towards dark, even gallow's.
But, now I'm thinking maybe that's not so sexy?
"Hey, you," she says, coming over to bring me a scone I didn't order. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Something like that," I mutter. Sure enough I get another burst of pictures when she slides into the seat across from me. Me, getting cloriphorm-ed in an alley I don't recognize, but which I guess to be behind this shop. What the fuck, man! This situation is just so weird and scary that I blurt out, "Could you please stop thinking about ways to kill me?"
Now it's her turn to look freaked out. "Why would you say that? I'm not thinking that!" But I hear other words overlapping those: Oh, fuck. They know
/story randomly ends.
The other story I wrote is much sillier and far more typical of what I usually end up with when I do the writing exercises along with my students. In this exercise, we were asked to use a prompt with character motivations/traits as fill-in-the blanks. Things like: I am____ and I believe it is my destiny to____. I am__, you wouldn't know to look at me, but ____.
The one I chose was I am _____ and my greatest possession is ______.
I decided to fill the sentence in this way:
I am a dragon and my greatest possession is immortality.
I gained immortality by eating a wizard.
I know what you're thinking. Dragons are supposed to eat maidens, but I guess I never developed much of a taste. Too soft. Too sickly sweet.
Me, I like something spicy, dangerously so, even.
Besides, it's ridiculously easy to get wizards and warriors to come to you. Meals on wheels... or horses, as the case may be. Because, of course, I have gold. So much gold. I wasn't born yesterday, and, anyway, after that knight killed my grandmother, I inherited her hoard. The vile runty knight only wanted "fame," apparently, or the maiden or some special cup or ring or other shiny he STOLE from us, but it wasn't like he could carry it all off, so what was left became mine.
Grandma's bones are buried somewhere beneath me, but, that, I suspect, is some other story.
This one is about a wizard and his ill-fated gamble.
I suppose this wizard had a name at some point, something his mother called him. I, however, think of him as dinner, so we shall call him Din.
Din came to me on a late Saturday afternoon in the middle of April shouting some nonsense about me terrorizing his village. What complete bullshit. A dragon needs to stretch her wings now and again, doesn't she? Is it my fault that people freak out over a little flyover? Honestly, we all know it's species-ism. They kill wolves and bears for just existing too, those foul little humans.
At any rate, Din was nattering on about vengeance and I realized, as he was balthering on, that probably my cousin Darktail --we're easy to confuse, because my tail is also dark, though not black like his, merely a magestic purple, or maybe indigo in the wrong light--might be to blame for this little mischief. I was about to inform Din of his mistake when he challenged me to a contest.
I love games. Any sort, really, but I am especially fond of battles of wits or riddles and all those things that usually end up with my kind turned into a mouse that gets eaten. At any rate, I decided not to correct Din and accepted his challenge.
/story randomly ends....
That's what teachers write when kids are probably writing something far more brilliant.
And, now I get to figure out what we're going to learn tomorrow. (I have this class every day for a week.)
no subject
Date: 2019-08-01 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-02 01:36 am (UTC)