Snapshot Essay

A Meandering Look at the Way I Write


Books and papers scattered around me. Word pulled up with sections of works I want to use cut and pasted in to form a collage of fonts and information. The random actually makes some sense to me, but who knows about anyone else. There’s a look of focus and purpose but not much else on my face. I want to get the paper done and turn it in. Glancing at the clock every few minutes to see how long I have left. I have pages marked out in the book, which is sprawled open on my lap with a page I’m using peeking and almost folding back into the one before it. A pen is on the desk on the right or in the spine of the book, waiting to underline another quote I may use. Black lines show on the pages. I scan over the work quickly, looking for what I need and nothing else. Only what I need matters now, no time for much else. A slight smile passes over my face as I find what I needed. Quickly it’s gone as I move on and pound out my point on the keys. The printer next to me spits out documents for other students as they bustle in and out. I hardly notice they’re there at all, too focused on the task at hand. Other times I’d be socializing but now I need to do this and it consumes me. Make the point, elaborate, move on. Never stay inactive, always make the argument short and effective, use precise language, what does the teacher want here? make sure to make sense. Thoughts cascade through my head. What was that one? It was good, but what was it? I know it fit right in and worked just like I wanted it to…Some thoughts I do grasp and in they go, into the cauldron. Those that slip will come back eventually. If it’s soon, great. Why am I singing now? Tori Amos and Jeff Buckley flood in and I’m almost at a loss to prevent them from transporting me away to where I won’t be stressed out like now. I can just hear the notes and the instruments and what could be added with just the right touch…but I need to work, focus and execute. Done! Print! Brisk walk to class and I’m slightly out of breath as I turn in the paper on time, beating that clock just one more time. * Scanning the text to remember just what went on there. Not quite sure where the author was going with that phrase. Ah! A firing of a synapse and instantly I have some idea and would just love to share, lol, I always share. I feel like I talk too much sometimes and slack off but then no one else talks. I don’t mind being wrong in the classroom, not at all. It doesn’t really matter. I’m here to learn to think more and in different ways but no one is thinking but the teacher, me and a few others in the class that share. It always was like this in high school, too. I know they are thinking something, I want to know what, I want to find out how they see this work…but still the oppressive silence. I look out the window to amuse myself with thoughts of how nice it must be out there. I only barely manage to pull myself back to the classroom and the thinking and writing and knowledge. Sometimes it’s easiest not to think and to just be there and take everything in without knowing why or what it is or how to use it in the future. It’s just like writing an essay, not too much and not too little. Where is that medium exactly? I always manage to find one side or the other and never, ever get it right on. I do try most of the time. It seems like when I don’t try I do the best and I don’t know why that is. I’d love to think that the more thought I put in the better it’d be, but I get too ahead of myself and write down far too many ideas at once. I do better when it’s just automatic. Looking back at the topic I realize how far I’ve strayed, yet again. Maybe this is why I can’t really ever write well, I get off on some tangent that my thesis never anticipated. Like this little exercise, I just want to go home already and I’m not quite half done. I want to stop writing but feel like much, much more is needed. I’m becoming apathetic, I almost missed a comma without caring. This is why school is so damned hard. You have to focus and do and learn and make your brain do exactly what it is you want it too for hours on end when it doesn’t really want to. The shift key on this thing keeps sticking, quite vexing. I didn’t know what went wrong at first. Now I’m straying again. Back to the snapshot not the scattershot of my thought. wow, internal rhyme there. The desk has a book on it, not necessarily on the right page, mind you. But usually I’m right on as far as that goes. Or I’m ahead, even, amazingly. I seem to be able to get what the authors try for usually. Or at least I try to make my own decisions about what they’re saying. Sometimes I’m validated and sometimes I’m reminded of how dumb I can be and how shortsighted. I usually leave my book closed when I’m writing about a story that’s been thoroughly covered. I rely on my memory to nail down quotes and then go find them as I need them and the page number. If I don’t know the material I’ll scan it quickly to see what points I can support. Then it’s off to the races, beat that clock. Kinda a theme in my life, huh? I’m working on it. Anyway, Ellison is not a terribly easy man to argue a point about. The characters are so changing and conflicted that they don’t fit into any argument at all well so I have to focus hard on what I’m doing. I have that look when I’m writing. It’s been sapped of all the joy it used to have for me. Now it’s just a formula into which you insert what you need and delete what you don’t. I can remember when I wrote something every day. I strained my vocabulary and worked to create better similes and metaphors. I wanted to describe something beautiful in a way that was at least equal in beauty. Somehow D’Evelyn managed to extract all that joy and make it a field of barren logic. Only since I left have I managed to rekindle that spirit through music and writing songs, or at least trying to. I really do look quite joyless, actually. Uni-Ball in hand (the implement of masterpiece destruction), I’m like a machine writing, if you will. Emotion doesn’t play into it at all, it’s just point and quote, point and quote, next paragraph, conclusion and stamp it it’s ready to be sent up! * I still have the look of intent on my face, a focus. It’s more soft, though, like that of a jeweler observing his metal in the fire. I’m creating something from me, from what I am and have learned and think. I’m creating something that I want to make fit into something someone else has created and I don’t want to screw up their work with mine. I’m kinda nervous because of this. Fingers pick out a melody and strum or trill. So much to think about while still trying to write something that will sound amazing and move people and move me. I’m really the tireless critic of myself. I’m always changing, revising, refining what I’ve written. I’m sprawled on a ratty couch. The cloth is earthy, a khaki tone with ruddy accent and some slate blue. Boring but effective. The fabric is pilled from years of hard use and the cushions just aren’t that fluffy anymore. There’s almost a pattern of lines in the fabric although sometimes a line rebels and crashes into its neighbor. There are only two cushions on the couch, not three, it is relatively small, after all. Micah is on the edge, engrossed in his guitar work. I’m closing my eyes at times to hear and predict and feel what the notes are and will be doing. My pen moves quickly, I’m barely scribbling legibly but that’s ok. I need to get down what I’m thinking or it’s quickly destroyed by the notes that follow the idea into my mind to be processed. Once I loose an idea I have to make another to take it’s place. The second isn’t as good as the first and the song turns slightly from where it was. The only missed line cascades until all the lines must be reworked. One makes no sense without the other, after all. The floor is carpeted in a very light desert dun. An old and worn piano sits to my right. It’s for storage of knick-knacks now. It’s out of tune and the diploma that hangs above seems to have aged badly as well. The paper is yellowed and worn at the edges. It’s from an Illinois conservatory, which I couldn’t tell you if I tried. Perhaps it was Northwestern…I do not know. On my left are various cases. Two acoustic guitars, one in his hands, reside in these. So does a royal purple, four string Ibanez bass affectionately known as Katy. She’s got a scratch, as I recall, on her side near the base. It’s minute, really, but Mi almost had a heart attack when it happened, it’s his first baby. There’s a 70’s Stratocaster in natural wood with white plastic accents, also laying demurely in it’s dilapidated and nearly useless case. There patter looks like reptilian skin but is clearly plastic. The scrapes and scratches of many years fall from the handle to the broken bronze latches. Above these, like a tower, stands a jet black Steinway. It’s smooth, glossy sides reflect the cases as if to taunt them with their inadequacy. It’s the instrument that truly amazes me here, none of the others can match it. The top is in need of dusting, as it always is, but the keys glisten and you can see where fingers have worked and abraded them to a perfect finish. Sometimes hands pass over them with speed and grace I can’t begin to fully comprehend. That’s the beauty of classical movements, they are so beyond the human touch and ken. It’s as though the minds of those who wrote this are so expanded in areas I don’t even realize I have that I can’t know what they really meant to do. My Uni-Ball is in my hand as I attempt something near to this. It’s the finest pen for the student to use. But the fine tip, not the ultra-fine, is the one to use. The fine tip is delicate and precise but passes a line onto the paper that is of the perfect width and has a deeper, darker script than the ultra-fine. The ink flows better than a ball point, too, which lends it such superiority over these. The urge to create is evident again on my face as I smile over a line I just wrote down. It’s good, really good, good enough to make even Tori and Jeff take note. *