[My entry for Week 1 of the new creative writing group HelpWantedAd_dicts here on Xanga: a lipogram written without the letter "i."]
Selflessness was always a problem for me before the day we met—just never came naturally, somehow. To help others seemed such a strange concept, a weak soft-hearted concept that wouldn’t bear up under the pressure of too much study. Surely everyone was self-centered; surely that was the nature of the world. That was how the cards appeared to fall, before we met.
But you—the way you made me feel alarmed me at the start, scared me even, because the concept of need for another person had never occurred to me. Escape seemed the best measure, and that was why you never saw me much, early on—your presence on a street corner would cause me to flee.
That never lasted for long, though, because truly need was the word to use. You glowed, you shone, you drew me to you as the sun draws a plant’s fervent green leaves. And gradually what began to dawn was that perhaps that need extended beyond you and me, beyond the two of us. (Okay, so you were the one who told me that, when eventually you became fed up that awareness for me was not an event that would happen sans some help.)
Truly my awareness of our world, a world of people that lean on each other for support and trust that they won’t be let fall, only came when you reached out to me and said, “Jump. You’ll land here with me,” and had no other reason than a want to open my eyes.
You clap louder, louder, but each successive burst of sound is no longer enough so you stand, even as the rest of the audience rises in a massive swell around you. Still the thrill and the sound rise, rise--and then, when the roar of applause is such that it might lift the very theatre from ground and still it is not enough, it is then that you begin to cheer.
So, unfortunately, I didn't anticipate the fact that Dream shares a similar complexion and style of garb... with Gene Simmons. Sigh. About halfway through second period I gave in to the system, sneaked off to the bathroom and turned my eye smudges into stars. Then at lunch when they had a costume contest I strutted (more like staggered) up onstage and did the worst rock star impression ever. But people still cheered. I think.
Tomorrow for trick-or-treating I plan to be Death, since I figure that without the dark eyes and with a more feminine shirt and emphasising the fact that yes, my skin is actually supposed to be white, I'll be much less likely to be mistaken for a member of KISS.
I don't know what I'll do if it's really cold, though. Hum.
Done: 1 unit of Geography and a lab report for science.
Still to do: 3 lab reports and 2 units of English.
Sigh.
So this is what's happened to me this week.
I started the second draft of Wisher after having a couple of epiphanies concerning the plot and characters (helped along by Jamie): that the ending I'd originally intended for the sequel should be the actual ending, that Grey's a lot more complex than I give him credit for, and that Rain should not be such a whiny teenager. I know I've told myself over and over that you're not supposed to start the second draft until you've finished the first, but my excuse is that a) it's a story for FP so it doesn't really count (ha) and b) I'll still be using most of the original material, just tweaking a few things.
Band is killing me. The reasons for me to quit include: that practising is eating into my already scant free time, that the stress levels sky-rocket every time I remind myself that it's an actual credit and that the mark I get goes into my average, that it's basically like having an extra class three times a week, that we only have three songs and they're getting boring, and that I'm losing a half hour or probably more of sleep three times a week.
The reasons not to quit include: that I'm pretty sure by now it'd count as a dropped course and go on my permanent record, that Megan would have to find someone else with whom to carpool unless she quit as well, that my family would give me heck, and that I'd either have to resign myself to being musically bored until second semester or join another band--and the only other one worth joining is also a course and in the morning.
I probably won't quit.
Probably.
Damn, what else--I was sure there were other things I wanted to write about. I got good marks on the most recent Geography test--95%, and I wasn't expecting to do that well. I Asian-failed a newspaper assignment in English (80%), but I was expecting that: I'm terrible at writing newspaper articles. I always turn them into narratives and I always manage to stick my own opinion in somewhere it doesn't belong.
Skipping ahead now. Tomorrow I'm wearing my Hallowe'en costume to school (because I CAN)--I'm being Dream from The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and frankly don't expect anyone to recognise me, but that's cool. In the morning I'm helping Jamie put on his costume (my recycled Phantom costume from last year); I talked him into it while we were raking leaves today after we argued about the fact that he's been significantly lacking in Hallowe'en fun for the past three years now.
I have to help him with the hair spray, which we bought today and are going to use to slick his hair back. 'Twil be interesting, for certain.
After school I'll be carousing around Westdale with whichever Gifties managed to get permission from their parents and then going to the pumpkin walk at Churchill at around 6:30. The plans were made in a hurry on Wednesday after we found that the school Hallowe'en dance had sold out of tickets, and I'm really not sure how many people are coming if any. If nobody can I'll be going with Mom and Jamie, traditional-like.
On Saturday we are [I hope] carving pumpkins in the morning (I'll have to ask the general familial populace about that in a minute). In the afternoon CoCo and I are tentatively going to a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) kick-off at a Williams Coffee Pub, and then she, her two younger brothers and parents and I are all going trick-or-treating around Waterdown and I'm sleeping over. She, Kieran and Corwin are dressing up as The Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2 and I'm so excited to see their costumes!
I'm also just generally hyper-excited because it'll be the first time I've seen CoCo in awhile and I miss her a lot. (A looooooooooooot.)
Aaand then on Sunday I go home and then straight back out again to Stratford with Mom and Jamie to see Cyrano de Bergerac on one of its last performances (we booked tickets when we were seeing Macbeth and Julius Caesar a month ago--I'm so spoiled with wonderful theatre). I've wanted to see it since I watched Roxane about a year ago, and Megan's dad saw it and said it was really good.
Also, November 1st (Sunday) marks the start of NaNoWriMo, and for the next thirty days after that I will have absolutely no time between homework and writing (by my calculations, to meet fifty thousand words I'll have to write about three pages a day--I'm going to die).
So I'll see you on the other side, because I probably won't have a chance to get on between now and then.
