Anyway- I don't like looking at my grades. It's something that I've been doing since I started college and started to really bomb classes. Tests would come back and I wouldn't look at them until a week or more after I had gotten the grade. I didn't want to know how bad I did, I wanted to move on past that test or that assignment, and not have to worry about it. It was my simple way of thinking that I was smarter than I actually was. That way I could just keep on going and not stress.
Anyways, I've been doing that in my graduate level classes. I turn in assignments, and then I never look back once I turn them in. It own't be until weeks later that I turn my head back towards what I turned in to see what people said about them. Recently I looked back at what I produced two weeks ago and really started comparing it to what other people in my classes were producing. It's really weird, but I think I just might actually be good at this stuff.
All of my comments from all of my professors were positive, all of the stuff that I creatively wrote turned out really good, and even when I was going back and reading through them I was only finding super minor errors that ould be fixes (and should have been fixed if we're being honest) but I didn't see any serious revisons that needed to be made.
I don't know, I run into the typical author/artist compelx where I just think that my writing isn't good enough. That I'm never going to be published, that I'm just doing this because I think it's fun, not because I'm actually any good at it. It's nice to see that not only do I enjoy it, but when I put my mind down on the paper and really focus I can produce some high quality stuff.
Traditionally I'm not the biggest fan of sharing what I've written, especially if it's for a class and I don't feel like I spent enough time on it, but I'll try to break out of that habit. With that in mind, here's tonight's creation. As well as a lot of time spent on this last night. The directions were that we had to take a character in One Flew Over the Coocoo's Nest (I know I spelt that wrong even with my eyes closed) and we had to take a scene that involved them, and tell that scene from their point of view. I took Mr. Ellsworth, the crazy guy who's always dancing and tried to show what he was seing during the party.
Enjoy-
Mr. Ellsworth Dancing
“It’s as though there’s a string
traveling straight through you, pulling you up to the ceiling. It starts at
your butt, travels up your spine, and goes straight out the top of your head.
Always remember that string, pulling you up.” Mr. Ellsworth could hear the
lectures from his dance teacher Miss Whitwer even though it had been decades since
he took a class from her as he started moving his feet to the music. He knew
that he was many things, but a sloppy dancer was not one of them.
Mr. Ellsworth tried his best to
follow her instructions that had been burned into his mind from hours of
rehearsals. He pulled himself towards the ceiling, relaxed the shoulders, with
his chest out, and the secret to the entire thing that no one ever talked about,
but every dancer knows and uses to make it all come together, he squeezed his
butt cheeks together to add that extra sense of tension. Squeezing your butt
makes all the difference.
With a little pause his head filled
with the music that filled the dance halls of his youth and began the dizzying
spins of a polka. Again Miss Whitewer’s voice filled his head, counting off the
beats. “One, two, three, and, one, two, three, and . . . .” The more she counted,
the stronger the rhythm pulsed in his head became, and the more he was back
home with his girlfriend, who later became his wife, in Boston.
Each beat was a minute from his
life when things were better; a minute that he could spend before the accident,
a minute that he could be with the smiles of his family again. He spun, he
shuffled, he dipped into every movement just to have the minute where he was at
the park with Deborah again. It took him a vis a vis to remember how it felt to
grab Ronald off of the slide as he giggled his way down for the fiftieth time
that afternoon. A redowa gallop brought back the picnic that they brought with
them that Deborah used too much mustard in the potato salad.
Miss Whitwer’s counts pulsing
through Mr. Ellworth’s head changed from a strict polka into an upbeat foxtrot,
“One, and, two, three, and, four, one, and, two, three, and, four. . .” and
Ellsworth, with a brief moment of trying to remember the new dance, switched
into a turning box leading him into the first dance he ever had with Deborah.
“Remember to lead with your toe. Toe, heel, toe, heel, toe, toe, toe, heel!”
Each with each step, one more thing
would come into focus of that perfect moment. Three backing magic steps made
the yelling of the rest of the men surrounding him disappear. A single rollaway
numbed his nose to the alcohol and a half turning box later he couldn’t smell
how the stench of people that hadn’t showered in days. It was a box parallel
break that allowed him to catch a scent of Deborah’s perfume. It was hard for
him to make out the details and finer hints within the smell, but just that
single drop that managed to make it to his nose let him know that it was her,
dancing with him.
The foxtrot Mr. Ellsworth was
dancing, transformed into a waltz, Miss Whitwer changed her counting into a
flowing, “One, two, three, one, two, three. . . .” Mr. Ellsworth started to
glide around the chairs and tables, focusing on the rise and fall of each
movement he made, making sure that he never broke his hold with his wife in his
arms. The hold was always important, you wanted to be close, but not too close.
It was like a perfectly made soufflé you had to balance every last aspect of it
to make it right, but when you made it right, it was heaven on Earth. With a
traveling box his hands could feel the fabric of her dress, it was a polyester
fabric, and it always seemed to be rough in his hands, but the fact was that it
was more his calloused hands to blame than it was the fabric that made it
rough.
A switch to promenade position with
a hesitation on the turn began to transform the room around him, erasing the
white beds, the white walls, and filling it instead with the black tuxedos of
men like him, and the vibrant colors that flowed over the women dancing. He couldn’t
see it yet, but he always loved the midnight blue that Deborah wore that night.
It would shimmer from blue to black depending on the lights that covered them
as they danced.
It was at a natural spin turn that
Ellsworth made in the back corner of the party that it happened. For the brief
two count of Miss Whitwer’s barking counts the entire routine became worth the
work. The sore joins that took a beating from the jumps of the polka, the
vertigo that the foxtrot’s manic speeds caused, and the nausea from the waltz’s
spin meant nothing when he caught a glimpse of her caramel hair. In the back
corner of the ward, which to him had become the center of the ballroom at The
Plaza, for a brief two count that seemed to last for hours, Deborah was back in
his arms.
For that movement filled by
McMurphy trying to get chief to chug another shot of liquor, Deborah smiled.
Her hair flowing down her back and over his hand was like a honey satin blanket
that tickled his hand with every movement that they moved together. Her eyes
were locked on his, with the faint squint they got every time they danced
together. She was focusing, but only because she was so happy in the movements
that she had to remind herself to focus on what was going on so that she didn’t
step on his toes. He always made fun of her for that squint, and that night,
for those two steps Ellsworth saw more joy in the squint than focus.
The two count sped by and Ellsworth
slowed his spinning and gliding around the room. He continued to dance, but not
with the same fervor, because he had already got what he wanted for the night,
to have the dance with his beloved Deborah.
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