Exercise 5: A Grand Way to Start My Day!

Exercise #5: Create a Story.

“A Grand Way to Start My Day”  - Annie V. Alanch

 “Wait!” cried both Annie and her sister, Valerie, as they carefully rushed down the long hill to catch up with the school bus pulling away from the curb.   Today was the first day of camp, and they were going to miss it if they missed the bus.  Dad and Pops both had early meetings at work and left Annie in charge of getting Valerie up and out of the house on time for the bus.  However, that was no easy feat. 

Annie has always been an early riser.  Ever since middle school, she would get up an hour earlier than everyone and watch cartoons on her laptop and update her Facebook status all the while thumbing through her various textbooks hoping to pick up anything she missed reading the night before. Even though she was only two years older, she was the consummate older sister.  For example, she is currently a sophomore A-Student at Snow Mountain High School.  And because of this, she knew if they missed the bus, not only would that weigh on her self-esteem, but she would also be blamed even though it was not her fault.

It was Valerie’s fault. She stayed up past midnight the night before playing her hand-held gaming system and Skyping with a new friend from half way across the world.  On most mornings, Dad would come to wake her up an hour before it was time for her to rise, knowing that he would check in three more times every fifteen minutes before she would even gain consciousness.  Annie would watch this display with annoyance.  According to her, both Dad and Pops babied Valerie and enabled her too much. 

For instance, there was that time when Valerie had to imagine and create an original project for her sixth grade science fair.  Valerie begged Annie to borrow hers from years before, but Annie refused to give up her indoor wall mounted herb garden design that won first place in the Snow Mountain 2008 Middle School Science Fair.  She argued that the teachers and judges would remember her work and she would lose face to her mentors. 

Valerie was not pleased with this reasoning, but conceded outwardly to her sister, while she clandestinely cooked up a plan.  Later that day, she asked Pops, who had a terrible memory in regards to his daughters, to help her design an outdoor wall-hanging spice garden.  A week later, Annie walked in to see Pops finishing the last bits of the project at the dining room table.  Valerie was “supervising” from the living room couch while watching television.  Annie rolled her eyes, sighed and threw up her hands as she walked past them towards the bedroom.

So, after Pops and Dad kissed Annie goodbye this morning, she was determined to wake her spoiled sister only once.  She walked into the room with a glass of water and said in a pleasant, but stern tone, “Good morning sunshine!  It’s time to get up and get ready for the first day of camp!  Wake up sleepyhead!  You have fifteen minutes before we have to leave to catch the bus.  Both Dad and Pops left early so that leaves me in charge.  I have breakfast on the table, but you will have to get up now in order to eat it.” 

Valerie responded like any large monster would, with a grunt and a snarl; and then she turned over and flipped the covers up over her head.  A sinister smile crept over Annie’s face as she said, “This is your warning. If you don’t get up on your own, I will have to do something drastic.”  Annie waited a heartbeat and poured the entire glass of water on the covers where Valerie’s head would be.  But instead of waking up her up, Annie wokeup the ferocious fury in her little sister.

While screaming expletives, Valerie flipped the soaked covers off of her knocking the glass out of Annie’s hand.  In shock, Annie screamed and jumped back.  The glass fell on the hard wood floor and shattered into an array of dangerously jagged shards of crystals. 

“Dad’s gonna kill you for breaking his glassware!” Annie shouted at Valerie. 

Not hearing a word, Valerie jumped up out of bed still cursing at her tormentor.  Her wet curly black hair flung water droplets on the ceiling and the wall behind her. She lunged for Annie’s throat with her unpolished chewed up fingernails hoping to inflict some sort of pain on her.  However, she never laid a finger on her rain maker.  Instead, it was she that felt intense pain on her feet as the broken glass pierced through her skin like pushpins through a corkboard.

So after gingerly plucking the shards of glass out of her sister’s feet, washing and then bandaging them up, Annie vacuumed the bedroom floor while her sister took an awkward and painful shower.  In about 12 minutes Annie had Valerie cleaned, dressed, fed and out the door only to find the little monster forgot her backpack.  Annie ran back to the house to open the door and Valerie searched the house through and through for her bag.  With Annie’s assistance, they found her bag under her bed and made a second attempt to leave for the bus.

The driver pulled the yellow bus to a halt and waited for the sprinting girls to approach.  On thebus, Annie apologized to Mr. Winton Rodriguez. As she turned to go sit down, her face felt flush from both the sprint as well as from the embarrassment of making the bus pull over.  She averted her eyes as much as she could but still noticed the glaring looks from her peers as she helped her sister to the last row.

“Great!” she thought sarcastically, “This is a grand way to start my first day as a camp counselor in training!”

Exercise 4: Luck, Not So Much!

Writing Exercise 4:  Write a paragraph or two that you would write to somebody who is down on their luck.

“I wanna see how lucky, Lucky can be.” – Melissa Etheridge

If anyone were to assess my life right now, they would probably say that I am one lucky man.    I drive a nice car that is almost paid off.  I live with my son, Blair, in a comfortable converted two-bedroom apartment with a view of a garden and a laundry center in the basement.  Certification for adopting Blair a few years ago was seamless and hassle free.  I enjoy my work as a professor in the building around the corner from my home.  I use credit cards to pay for most things; and I have money in the bank to pay them off regularly.  I see my loving and kind dad about once a week for dim sum in Westchester, and have a pleasant relationship with my siblings (Rosalie and Michael).  I dance often at home and at the Big Apple Ranch with other amazing dancers.  I am pretty fit, smart, and know how to give and receive love.  How lucky can a guy be?

Well, oddly enough, I don’t believe in luck, at least not in the romanticized version of it.  As it is, my life was designed and constructed carefully.  Hard work and perseverance is what manifested this fortunate life.  Luck, as I define it, is a state of mind, not something that happens upon a person.

For those who are “down on their luck,” that may be hard to read.  So, I would like to share with you that my life was not always like this.  I remember living in a tiny cramped basement apartment eating ramen noodles and rice with ketchup to get by on the little money I was making as a bus boy to pay rent.  This was over 2 decades ago.  If luck were real, I was certainly down on my luck.   

I was a 17 years old high school student living on my own, and I felt like the world was either picking on me or forgetting about me.  Although I was such a goodie, as I didn’t smoke, drink or do any drugs, I was miserable.  I worked hard during the day with school and work, or trying to find work.   At night, I cried myself to sleep wishing things would change. I begged, my then Christian, God to make my life easier, but He could not hear me through the dark wood paneled walls and musky basement air.

I remember one night, after brushing my teeth in the closet sized bathroom, I leaned the weight of my scrawny teenage frame on the sink and stared into my own sad eyes in the mirror.  I told myself that I was going to be ok.  I didn’t need God to believe in me.  I didn’t need anyone to believe in me.  I have been getting by on my own, and I can continue to do this indefinitely.  I took a deep breath and searched myself in the glass.  As much as I wanted to believe my own words, my own reflection didn’t even believe it. 

That’s when I felt it. I felt a shift.  Literally.  The sink I was resting on cracked and a portion of it landed on my left foot causing me to curse out loud.   Apparently, the weight of the world was on my shoulders and unfortunately, my weight was on the sink.  Lucky, not so much.  I had to pay the landlord for a new sink, and for the next few days, I limped my way to and at work.  I learned that evening that if I ever feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, I should probably brush them off before leaning on the sink.  I also learned that as bad as things are, they can always get worse.

Twenty years later, and after many other mishaps, this kind of madness continues in my life.  Recently, my son and I headed out to meet a friend to go dancing in NYC.  As we walked to the car I told him why I appreciated the many good things in my life now.   I told him that because I had so little, all that I have now feels like an enormous amount of wealth.  I remember telling him how fortunate I was to be able to go dancing with my son and a friend.  As we got closer to my parked car, I noticed that my car was broken into.  The burglar(s) broke the side rear window, stole my radio, iPod, and my son’s dance shoes!

After the initial disbelief and shock, I texted my friend and told him that we would be a little late.  I then called my insurance company to learn that they would pay to fix the window.  As violating as being burglarized felt, I couldn’t help but notice that it was only the small back window that was broken, which would still allow me to drive the car, even in the rain.  Furthermore, I was thankful that the burglar(s) left my registration, insurance card and my watch! 

When I tell this story to friends, they tell me that I am a foolish optimist.  Well, luck would have it that that doesn’t bother me!  Luck is a state of mind that I choose to embody.  In my life, I have learned to live life on life’s terms by accepting what is happening now and focusing on what I want. This is how I ended up moving from a dingy basement apartment to living a life of luxury in the third floor comfortable converted two-bedroom apartment with my son.

May you find luck, however you define it.

Exercise 3: Imagine Joining a Writing Group

Exercise 3: Imagine you have joined a writing group in your area.  This group is full of writers from different backgrounds and skill levels.  You present your most recent piece of writing to the group.  How do they react and what are all of their comments?

I have a bipolar relationship with writing.  It seems like a very personal and private task, yet it can also be out in the open for public display.  On the third day of my writing exercise, I write while sitting in a van with three other people on my way to a meeting in New Rochelle.  I am sitting in the last row while everyone is facing forward and paying no mind to each other.  The driver’s attention is on the road.  The woman sitting in front of me is napping and the man sitting to her right is daydreaming out the window.  And then there’s me, secretly putting words on this page bouncing between looking at the screen and then looking out the window to avoid a headache from the vertigo induced by the ride.  And although all four of us are in our own little worlds, each as private as the next, I am writing something that will be posted later on my blog, which will pop my bubble of privacy making this experience public. 

It is possible that my van mates could stumble upon this work and learn the secrets of the last row, but it isn’t very probable. In fact, it seems that my posts, which are reposted on my Facebook page and tweeted through twitter, are barely seen by those I do know.  I have about 10 readers per new post, and I think some of those “visits” are from me checking to make sure my posts uploaded correctly. 

Another characteristic of this bipolar relationship I have with writing is my experience of fear and excitement.  Those two feelings jump up at once when I think about joining a writing group.  The internal Dynamic Duo battles it out.  They sound like this “I wonder where I can find a writing group.”  “Well, the internet is a great way to find anything!” “When will I find the time to meet?”  “You have so much time you can start spending it on this as well!”  “Why would they want to include me?”  “Why wouldn’t they want to have you?”  “How much time will I have to devote to it?”  “All the time in the world that you need and as little time as you can afford will be just enough.”  And finally, “If no one is reading my posts, why would I want to subject strangers to my beginning skills?”  “Not no one is reading them.  And if no one were reading them, you still are exercising your writer’s muscle and defining them with every word you post. So keep it up.”

This internal dialogue is not uncommon for me.  I approach much of my life with this yin/yang curiosity before I take action.  Sometimes, this process can be debilitating for me to taking any action.  When that happens, I do one of two things.  I postpone taking any action at all or I take a breath and do it any way.  I think the latter is when I exercise bravery and faith. 

For today, I rest with my insecurities as a writer, or as a person who is interested in writing, and will not join a writing group in my area, but I will be brave and have faith as I continue to post for 30 days on my writer’s blog, and see what happens.

Exercise 1: Describe the best piece of writing that you've ever constructed.

Writing Exercise 1: Describe the best piece of writing that you’ve ever constructed.

On February 24, 2005, I was at my in-laws in Mt. Vernon, NY and everyone was out shopping for dinner and ingredients for making gooey and decadent chocolate truffles.  It almost felt like they were the hunters and gatherers while I was holding down the proverbial fort with my pencil, notebook and schoolbag.  I was sitting on the corner of the long dining room table feasting on my Gender, Race and Class textbook. 

I loved the book, but loathed the class. The textbook was filled with personal stories from people of various oppressions including people of color, different sexual orientations, and gender expressions and identities.  It helped deepen my understanding of oppression and woke my somewhat still dormant inner activist.  However, my frustration with the class was that my professor would assign these readings from the textbook for homework and then in class, she would read the assigned passages aloud to us.  Sometimes I felt like it was story time at Pace University’s Pre-K and I would long for my juice and blanky! 

And the discussions were dismal.  One time, after a reading about sexism, I was working out a theory in my head about how Catholic females had Mary as a role model, which seemed unfair.  I wanted to see how the thoughts in my head would match with my professor’s expertise, back when I thought professors were the experts.  So I asked, “If Mary is the ultimate woman, doesn’t that set all girls and women up for failure?  I mean, to be as awesome as Mary was a person who identifies as a female Catholic would have to be able to give birth without having sex. Doesn’t that create a no win situation for females?” “Also,” I added, “doesn’t that fuel more myths about rape, sex, and issues around abortion?”  I was on fire with my desire to gain clarity on some of these issues, for as a young Catholic boy, I was not allowed to ask questions, but had only to listen and observe.  I was eager in my inquiry to see whether or not my observation held any weight. 

My professor smiled and said, “No. That has nothing to do with sexism.” 

In later years, I learned that sexism is all about that and more.  And that was the reason I loved the book, but loathed the class. 

In the book, I read this week’s assignment, which was written by Langston Hughes.  In this essay, he explored ways in which a person can internalize oppression.  He talked about how he knew of an artist that didn’t want to be known as a black artist, but simply as an artist alone.  He challenged this man’s wish by stating that he wanted to be known as a white artist because that would be the automatic assumption of the common person.  This reading had my head reeling.  When I finished reading his essay, I closed the book, and sat and stared at the pink walls in the dining room.  I found it hard to breathe and I cried for a little while.

Suddenly, I felt a burst of energy and reached past my notebook for my journal.  In it, I started writing.  The words flowed through my right arm into the pencil and onto the page seamlessly.  The words seemed to have a life of its own.  It was as if I was a vehicle or instrument that something bigger than me was using to create the work forming on the page.  When it was done with me, I felt exhausted and excited.  I wondered for a moment if I had been used to carry a message, like Mary was used to bring God’s message. 

This was one of the few times I had experienced writing where I didn’t have to think; I was an instrument of something much bigger than me.  It is rare that I feel a connection with writing, and so I treasure and savor them, much like the way I savored the chocolate truffles my in-laws made when they returned from shopping later that night.  And the soft and decadent chocolate truffles were scrumptious, though they melt away so quickly.  Lucky for us, writing creates a more permanent piece of work that can be consumed over and over again. 

The work created that night on paper, now digitized is as follows:

The Washing Machine - JY

The melting pot
blending of coloring's not.
What's the true plot?
Like a washing machine bleaching us all clean.
Colorless we seem.
We need to see what's between the sheets, the lines.
It's more than what meets the eyes.
Can you read their minds?
Not while we ride this spin cycle, turning, learning to be burning our own earning and buying their sense.
Smelling their scent, so pungent and unclean.
Using bleach to hide the mean.
We ain't dirty as they seem.
We are just like them, human beings.
So why do we purchase their dreams, and ideals, learn how to feel how they feel, wash away and drown out what's real? Is that the new deal?
I think not.
Clean out your closets, shoes and socks.
Hang out your laundry.
Clean and beautiful are we not?
Color so vibrant. Feel the rush of the tide pulling us under, begging us to hide what's inside.
But we can't be denied our right to fight, to stay true blue, not just red and white.
This battle's for all.
Hear the cattle call herding us, hurting us and paining themselves.
We ain't in the history you put on your shelves.
Painted by numbers with only one color, raping our sisters and killing our brothers, is there any way for you to justify or rectify or do I need to build my own hope and erect it by spreading out the truth?
Let the water subdue.
Realize we're all in this together.
None of our hands are clean in this washing machine.

Exercise 2: How Does Writing Fit Into Your Life?...It Don't!

Writing Exercise 2: How does writing fit into your life? Is it a hobby, a profession, a dream or something else?  Write about this priority and if you would like to shift it at some point.

Writing is chore, much like doing the dishes, folding the laundry or having to wake my body up early in the morning for work after staying up much too late the night before.  However, I have learned to enjoy a clean kitchen sink, find clean and pressed clothes when I need them and pay my bills with a job well done.  But I have yet to reap the rewards of writing.  I do all of the other chores in my life because I need to, and in some small way, I want to.  Writing however is not something I yet need or want to do.  It is a chore that is not required or rewarding as of yet, but I am hopeful.

As a child, I was constantly made fun of.  I internalized hateful messages about my race and bilingual tongue.  I struggled with speaking and reading well, and the constant mocking from my peers made me more nervous and stutter more.  I now understand that my stuttering and inability to read aloud was due to their racism.  But a boy knows only the pain and embarrassment of not being able to perform.  So I believed that I was not able to read or write very well due to something innate.  I was damaged due to my race, and I would forever be held down, especially when I spoke or read.  From there, I did as very little reading as I could get away with.  I figured that my tongue was not fitting well in my mouth and that reading aloud, and then later reading at all, was too much work.   

Add 30 long years to that belief/lie, I find myself as an adult longing to be someone else.  I long to have written a book.  I long to be published.  I long to be a writer.

And so that is why I started writing yesterday and why I am writing today.  I am committed to write every day for 30 days with prompts I found in an e-book on my iPhone, “TheWriting Sampler” by Bryan Cohen.  This commitment is to the little boy who was told that he could not read aloud, nor ever write a book.  This commitment is to all the children who have been told that they couldn’t do something just because they looked different.  I write so that I can tell not only my story, but to share my journey with others.

With that goal in mind, I sure damn hope that after these thirty days that there is a pay-off.  I mean, I do have a list of other chores to get to that have more immediate results!