Last Writing Class of this Session

We had the last session of the creative writing class last Thursday, and were instructed to bring some entertaining readings. So, I revisited two of the pieces I wrote for the humor class two years ago, and read them at the class, to some acclaim. Here they are:

The Comet

Comets and meteors have rammed into Earth from time to time. In 1908, for example, a huge area of Siberia was devastated by a comet. But scientists are only made curious by such destruction.

In 2005, NASA launched an 820-pound slug of copper (with a camera and a propulsion system) into a neighboring comet, to see what it was made of. The "ejecta," the debris kicked up from the impact of the slug, are being analyzed to determine, in the words of one of the NASA scientists, whether comets are "dirty snowballs" or "snowy dirtballs."

What if they find out that comets aren't made of dirt and water, after all? Maybe they're made of palm trees, or pepperoni pizzas, or fur coats, or dolphins, or skis, or oboes, or old truck engines, or paper clips, or surveying rods, or old computers, or bus transfers, or clown makeup, or steel kettles, or brown paper shopping bags, or street signs, or Swiss watches, or acrylic paints, or tattered paperback books, or backhoes, or wrought iron railings, or Louis XIV armoires, or corn silos, or locomotive engines, or birchbark canoes, or threadbare sheets.

Flinging a huge chunk of metal at an object is not the most sophisticated method of studying it, I think. Also, it's just not a neighborly thing to do. How would we like it if somebody flung a heavy object at Earth to see what it's made of? Mm. I'm thinking of the crater in Siberia and wondering if maybe somebody did.

The Sea and Me

My bed sings a siren song to me, one that I can hear from miles away. But the song is not loud, just insistent. It lures me to my bed, wrapping me in sleepiness like a wonderfully soft bathrobe. It whispers to me of relaxation, release, and refreshment. It reminds me of the simple pleasure of sleep. I go gladly to its embrace. My bed becomes a conch shell of shimmering warmth; at once it is both large and protective, and cozy and comfortable.

In the morning, however, it's another story. Then my bed is a huge octopus. Its arms spring forth from the mattress and entangle me in their tentacles of sheets and pillows. The gigantic octopus grasps hold of me and refuses to let me go. (It seems to have woken up hungry.) I struggle to free myself from its grasp, but every time I lift my head from the pillow it drags me back down underwater. Not satisfied with just keeping me asleep, it keeps me in bed even when I don't actually get back to sleep. On weekends, when I don't try that hard to get up, it can keep me from leaving the bed until half the day is gone. On workdays, however, my need to earn a living gives extra strength to my struggles, and I break free of the long, suckered tentacles and swim off to work.

___________

Just before class, I dashed off the first scene of a recorder camp murder mystery. Since I'd already sketched out some characters and done a plot outline, I had no excuse not to - and if I didn't start it now, I probably never would.

Death by Recorder, scene 1

The recorders were playing a bit out of tune, but the dissonance troubling Harmony was not musical. She and the other students were playing in the opening session of the week-long Mendocino Early Music Festival. They had spent at least a thousand dollars to attend the workshop, and some had traveled halfway across the country. The room should be filled with the joy of music making, she thought.

But that wasn't what Harmony was feeling. Her shoulders were climbing towards her ears, and she wasn't getting good, deep breaths. "Could I be nervous about being here?" she asked herself. "This is hardly my first recorder workshop. No. I'm here, my luggage is here, I know how to get from my room to the dining hall to here. The weather suits my clothes. No, I'm not nervous. This must be someone else's feeling that I'm picking up on."

She looked around the classroom, once part of a military barracks, to see if she could spot someone who might be the source of her discomfort. The teacher, Meolody, stopped the music often enough that it didn't taker Harmony very long to survey her 30 fellow students.

She knew about half of them from earlier workshops. She had spoken with Hank, Melody, and Elizabeth earlier today, congratulating them on their good taste in choosing the same K&M purple folding music stand that she used (and that was used by nobody else in her local playing community).

She also knew Horace, Julie, and the other teacher, Heather. None of the players looked especially troubled, but nobody looked joyful, either. Harmony couldn't put her finger on it, but something was amiss in Mendocino.