visiting the past
I've been living all day long in 1979 and 1982 and 1984--reading my journals and notebooks. Not what you're supposed to be doing when you clean, but I couldn't help but stop to read how I felt in 1977 when I was leaving my 1st marriage, or a list of things to do in 1983. Make pumpkin bread, take raincoat to cleaners, call mother, type plot summary. I had a raincoat then? My mother was alive. I used a typewriter! It's like visiting a foreign country where I used to live, the past as exotic to me as Brazil, a place where I was younger and more interested in shaving my legs (it shows up on many lists).
Here is what I wrote (somewhat later) about my writing classes:
The 1st creative writing class I took--Alberta with her birdlike turning of the head, her twittering, her steely, glinting eye. I wouldn't read my story to the class, so she did. She read it, and I felt stunned, and horrified to hear my words in her mouth.
I remember sitting in class, listening and waiting to say something clever, judging the teacher, my sometimes arrogance. I remember the university as a series of caves--cave-rooms where I studied, flirted, read, talked; and paths--English dept. to the library, library to the Cage, cafeteria to the pool, pool to bookstore. The campus a miniature world, a diorama set in the larger world of the city, places marked by my vision of myself, my long legs in tight jeans coming toward me in the dark glass of Rhodes Tower.
Here is what I wrote (somewhat later) about my writing classes:
The 1st creative writing class I took--Alberta with her birdlike turning of the head, her twittering, her steely, glinting eye. I wouldn't read my story to the class, so she did. She read it, and I felt stunned, and horrified to hear my words in her mouth.
I remember sitting in class, listening and waiting to say something clever, judging the teacher, my sometimes arrogance. I remember the university as a series of caves--cave-rooms where I studied, flirted, read, talked; and paths--English dept. to the library, library to the Cage, cafeteria to the pool, pool to bookstore. The campus a miniature world, a diorama set in the larger world of the city, places marked by my vision of myself, my long legs in tight jeans coming toward me in the dark glass of Rhodes Tower.
posted by mary grimm at 5:35 PM
2 Comments:
this post reminds me of the ferlinghetti poem, "the world is a beautiful place."
"my long legs in tight jeans coming toward me in the dark glass of Rhodes Tower" is the best sentence ive read all week
L,
Sean
I love your description of those writing classes.
This post makes me want to find that box that I know -- wherever it is, I can't remember! -- contains my old journals from junior high, high school, college. Then I stopped keeping them. If I found them now, reading the old pages, seeing my strange shifts in handwriting, could be exciting, sad, scary, funny, all at once. Now I regret that I stopped keeping them.
Post a Comment
<< Home