Silvertongue reading

I read a very short story tonight at this reading series called Silvertongue. It was about my cousin Jennifer's autism and how it's dealt with in the family. Surprisingly, I managed to keep my nerves under control until I was up at the podium. Then my face turned red and my voice started shaking a bit, but I finished it! Then afterward, a couple of people said they liked my story, which made me very happy!

Silvertongue was combined with Verbatim tonight, which is a poetry reading thing. The only other guy reading a short story instead of poetry was very good. He pulled off a difficult form, and his words almost sounded like poetry. Much better than me and my purely straightforward writing style. I wish I could muse more beautifully.

Here's a piece of what I read. The topic was "keep it in the family."

When I was a kid, I always got pissed off when Jennifer and her family came to our house to visit. It meant that I had to put all of my important things at the top of my closet or bookcase so Jennifer couldn't get to them. It meant that she would eat my mother's tall, beeswax candles, although that was more funny to me than it was to my mother. It meant that I had to constantly stay in my room, or keep an eye on it at all times. If I left, I would come back to the door cracked open.
"Jennifer," I would growl, bursting in. And there she would be, on the floor in the middle of a mess of my clothes and toys and CDs and secret stash of makeup.
"Sorry!" She'd screech. Then she'd run out, muttering in a voice garbled with other half-words, one of my family's video tapes in hand.


Then I went to this photography gallery opening thing, and it turned out that it had been canceled and there were very few people there. It was kind of awkward, since I brought wine to share, and ended up hiding it and keeping it for myself. Now I'm drinking it and it's pretty good, so it all evened out. It's Hirschbach and Sohne Riesling.

Until next time!

Shit, it has almost been ten days since I last posted!

I've been writing, though, I swear! I wrote a piece of flash fiction that I want to submit to the Story Week Reader, so I'm not so sure I want to post it here. Although there are a few short shorts that are already on this blog that I may submit as well, like the "Changes" story. Those of you that aren't reading, give me some feedback! I will post the first paragraph of this new story that I wrote.

She had eaten nothing all day. Flashes of light from neon signs pushed themselves into her consciousness, their bright pinks, greens, and reds demanding, “pay attention to me!” She wondered if they were hot to the touch, and was disappointed when she stretched up both arms and found the lights too high to reach. She figured that the burn of the glass on her hands would distract her from the ache in her stomach. She looked up at the sign, slowly reading the words that advertised food and warmth inside.

But she couldn't eat. Not just yet.

She was starving the baby out. A hunger strike against her own flesh and blood.

I kinda like the story as a whole. I wrote most of it on the train on the way home, it was awesome. I just got an idea and wrote it all out. If you wanna read the whole thing you can tell me or something.

Okay, bye.

Entries typed from my journal.

Written around 4:15 PM:

AAAAAAA! An obese woman in an electric scooter just got on the bus. I looked up as she rolled to the space designated for wheelchairs, and saw under her far-too-short skirt that was pulled taut above her knees. Her legs lay apart, and the fat leading up from her knees pooled inward, her thighs touching right before I could see her underwear.

I am scarred for life. Just kidding, that happened a long time ago.

(there is a line across the page)

I think it's time to start writing my memoir/novel thing. Or compiling it and filling in the cracks. I guess I'll start by editing the other half of this essay on self-injury. Then I can piece together and edit the chapter on being in the hospital. Then I connect the two together. Probably the hospital chapter after the self-injury chapter.

And I can write an introduction after the whole thing is done, Fat Girl (by Judith Moore) style. The interviews need to be in there, too. There's a lot of stuff I've done since sophomore year. I'll have to edit and rewrite a lot, since I wrote each piece to stand on its own, and now a lot can be explained early on and not need explanation later. I wonder how long it's gonna end up to be? I was kind of figuring that it shouldn't be less than 200 pages. Isn't that still novella length, anyway?

I get distracted so easily, but I really want to do this. I've worked pretty (?) hard (?) on this subject matter so far.

(End of journal entries.)

Thoughts on Faces

I've been realizing lately that I don't like looking at people's faces. Especially in photographs or commercials when the face is right there, zoomed in and looking at you, it bothers me. I just don't like facial expressions.

This isn't the case all the time, because I do like looking at the faces of people I like, such as my friends. But the expressions of some people just makes hatred well up inside of me.

I think this is one of the reasons why I don't like American comic book art that much (well, as opposed to Japanese comic book art). The faces of the characters are twisted into positions that aren't very flattering. The lines in their faces are accentuated. Whereas in manga, their faces are simplified and everything is made to look "prettier." Does this mean I'm obsessed with beauty? I don't know.

Sometimes it's like a car crash: I just can't stop looking as these people's faces move into different, ugly positions. I suppose this happens more often in real life, where I like to stare into people's faces. I like to read as much as I can about them before looking away. I am a creeper. But when I watch commercials or see close-up photos of faces, I can't look. I must divert my eyes. Even if it's a picture of someone I perceive as beautiful, sometimes it's too much.

But not all the time.

Don't judge me.