Dream: We Never Had An Apartment
Tuesday, Oct 23:
The circle of fifteen desks filled the small classroom; I sat opposite the door, a couple seats to the right of the professor. He had returned our writing assignments (8-12 typed pages); mine was only four sides of illegible scrawling from my notebook. Across the circle, Anne G-H began reading hers aloud ("since hers was the best"), pausing to read and explain each of the professor's comments.
Why doesn't the professor say something? Is this what we're supposed to do? If everyone reads their entire piece, we'll be here all day.
The night before our assignments were due, Dan C showed me what he'd written. He excitedly explained Medieval mining techniques. gnfnrf gestured at the small field where his fictive soldiers conducted a last-minute drill. He unfolded a two-page map divided into irregular sectors, each marked with different types of arrows. He pointed at the symbols and started explaining the different ways his story could tell itself.
I nursed my collected scribblings in the apartment where I grew up, unfamiliar to me now. My mother bustled in the front door and set down her bags. She talked about her meeting as she walked into the kitchen, then came back to the living room. She sounded strange, tinny; her voice matched the movements of her lips, but wherever my mother went, the sound of her voice always came from behind the door of the spare bathroom.
I left my mother in the living room and walked to the steel door. I'd never been inside before, but that hadn't struck me as odd until that moment. Mother was saying something. I turned the handle and pushed, and the tinny distortion left her voice. Bare cement tiles covered the walls and floor, and the ceiling light was the only fixture of any kind.
This isn't a bathroom. Who needs a closet ten feet square?
My mother sat in the empty room another of her, since the first still stood behind me in the living room. A set of moose antlers a yard high grew from her head. She looked sad, but pleased to see me.
How much of my life has been a lie?
The circle of fifteen desks filled the small classroom; I sat opposite the door, a couple seats to the right of the professor. He had returned our writing assignments (8-12 typed pages); mine was only four sides of illegible scrawling from my notebook. Across the circle, Anne G-H began reading hers aloud ("since hers was the best"), pausing to read and explain each of the professor's comments.
Why doesn't the professor say something? Is this what we're supposed to do? If everyone reads their entire piece, we'll be here all day.
The night before our assignments were due, Dan C showed me what he'd written. He excitedly explained Medieval mining techniques. gnfnrf gestured at the small field where his fictive soldiers conducted a last-minute drill. He unfolded a two-page map divided into irregular sectors, each marked with different types of arrows. He pointed at the symbols and started explaining the different ways his story could tell itself.
I nursed my collected scribblings in the apartment where I grew up, unfamiliar to me now. My mother bustled in the front door and set down her bags. She talked about her meeting as she walked into the kitchen, then came back to the living room. She sounded strange, tinny; her voice matched the movements of her lips, but wherever my mother went, the sound of her voice always came from behind the door of the spare bathroom.
I left my mother in the living room and walked to the steel door. I'd never been inside before, but that hadn't struck me as odd until that moment. Mother was saying something. I turned the handle and pushed, and the tinny distortion left her voice. Bare cement tiles covered the walls and floor, and the ceiling light was the only fixture of any kind.
This isn't a bathroom. Who needs a closet ten feet square?
My mother sat in the empty room another of her, since the first still stood behind me in the living room. A set of moose antlers a yard high grew from her head. She looked sad, but pleased to see me.
How much of my life has been a lie?