Elusive Creatures

Last Saturday, I attended a wedding renewal. I have known the couple my entire life, and they are even my brother’s godparents. They were celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. (This year is certainly wedding season for that family. Both of their daughters from their first marriage are currently engaged and are slated to get married this year.)

After the church ceremony, the twenty or so of us were then invited to the dinner reception. It was at an upscale restaurant that I hadn’t stepped foot into in a decade, so while we had time to kill, waiting for the banquet room to finish getting decorated, I enjoyed looking at the interior design.

Once we were gained entrance, my dad and I settled into a seat at one of the two tables. Randomly chose a spot in the middle, our backs against the wall. My eyes instantly admired the pretty floral arrangements and the candy sitting in tiny dishes right in front of me.

As people began filing in, the celebrated couple and their immediate family were placed on the opposite table. Which contained all the people I knew. I’m not one for small talk, so I hoped my dad would do enough talking to make it seem like I was engaged in conversations while I was really just eating my meals.

The first round of food that arrived was a bread/pita basket, along with hummus and a plate of various pickled vegetables. As I was delicately eating my buttered bread, my dad turned to the man sitting across from him and asked him something about his job. The man, who was probably about my dad’s age, replied that he had changed his career since they had last spoke, and he was now getting into real estate. But before that, he was more of a writer.

Of course, my dad then made a point to mention that I was, too, and then left me to talk with him while he turned to the person to his right to converse with them.

I explained to Ben* that I have a degree in Creative Writing, which was then immediately followed by him asking where I had gotten it. So I told him. And it turns out, he was once a Creative Writing professor at my college. He taught for 12-13 years before he got burnt out and switched jobs.

He didn’t specifically say what kind of creative writing he taught, but seeing how he mentioned he once volunteered to teach a summer poetry class to 12-year-olds, I’m going to assume that he leaned toward poetry. The crazy part was that I knew two of the professors that he was good friends with back when he was teaching. One was a poetry professor who taught my class for a month while my real teacher was out on maternity leave; we were his last class before he officially retired. As for the other professor, I knew quite well. I visited her office a handful of times to talk about my schedule (because she was Head of the Creative Writing department at the time) and was even my professor for two classes during my last semester.

I think I disappointed Ben a little when I admitted I didn’t keep up with the latter professor. The college had just hired her when Ben left. (She was an eccentric woman but always had a way of critiquing your material without making you feel terrible about yourself. To this day, she wins for giving me the weirdest compliment about my writing. But I’ll take any kind of praise regarding my writing, haha.)

Needless to say, I spent quite some time throughout the evening talking with Ben about writing and books. The woman sitting next to me – who was his daughter-in-law – even jumped into the conversation at one point to chat about her own sister and brother-in-law, who live over in England. The sister had self-published a book on Amazon, and the brother-in-law was an editor for something. I asked if her sister wrote British-English or American-English, which I don’t think was something the woman had ever thought about, so she guessed it must be British-English because her sister had been living there for over ten years.

As expected, Ben asked me at one point what kind of things I liked to write about. We also talked about Barbara Kingsolver and Ursula K. Le Guin. What threw me off, though, was when he asked me who my writing influences were. No one had ever given me that question before, and I was utterly stumped. I could tell him what my Top 5 Favorite Authors and Top 5 Favorite Books (which is a completely different list) were if he were to ask me, but I never really aspired to replica a certain author’s writing style.

Once the reception was over, I wondered when was the last time I had verbally talked with someone about books or writing in general. And honestly, I think it may have been while I was in a classroom setting, trying to earn that Creative Writing degree.

Writers really are elusive creatures. Or maybe we’re all too introverted. Or maybe there would be more of us if the job market was more stable.

I did meet a guy last summer who is a Staff Writer at a community newspaper (which is the competitor of where I was once an intern at…oops), but we only briefly talked about the craft of writing.

Where are all the writers? And I don’t mean the casual hobbyist, either.

I mean, I know they must be out there. I guess we’re just really good at hiding. Hopefully I can find them one day. After all, I know some nice hideouts too.




*Ben is not his real name.

Trying to Be Useful

I.

Last week, my mom came over to have us repair something. She had rediscovered a wooden motorcycle figure in her basement (which she took from an ex-boyfriend that she had eight years ago), and upon finding it, she decided she should give it to one of her coworkers because her son collects motorcycles. (The boy is only two years old, so I don’t see how he could appreciate or care about such an item, but whatever.)

Seeing how I seem to be the glue-all-the-broken-items-that-break during the Christmas season, my mom naturally showed me this motorcycle of hers. The riser kept moving up and down when it should only be moving side-to-side. But most importantly, both brake cables were detached from the bike. My mom showed me the places where the cables were supposed to attach to the front fork, and then she promised to pick it up whenever she would return sometime the following week.

(And if you were impressed about all my motorcycle terminology, don’t be. I looked at diagrams to help me out while I was writing this.)

II.

For the past two weeks, I have been on fire – for being motivated and productive, that is. I’m sure it’s not too unusual at this time of the year. After all, the year is still brand new. But lately, I’ve been doing quite a bit of cooking. (Granted, I also cooked often while my brother came home for his Christmas break. I have this tendency to make large meals, so I feel less bad about myself when there’s another person around to eat.) I also read one complete book and one manuscript. (But, alas, my internship is drawing to an end now.) Additionally, I’ve been trying to get myself on a better sleeping schedule.

But what really has me going lately is that I have an itch to clean and declutter ALL. THE. THINGS. Everywhere I look around the house, I just want to attack it. I feel like I’m that one character in Finding Nemo. You know which one I’m talking about. (Hint: His name is Jacques.)

I have this strong urge to pick everything up and throw it out. Get rid of all the random piles and junk lying around once and for all. But my dad would get mad if I did that, so I can’t be so impulsive.

My latest project is the library. I cleared out one of the desktops, organizing all the scattered papers into a brand new accordion binder. Placed the essential office items off to the side of the desk (like a stapler, a multitude of pens in a holder, and a calendar). Bought two small shelves to hang above the desktop computer. (Punching holes into the previously flawless wall to hang them was quite the struggle, though.) Artfully placed various knickknacks that were lying around in the room onto the shelves. I even kept with a theme for the items!

You could almost pretend I did a room makeover…if you didn’t pan out and looked at the rest of the room. There are still two piles of boxes and papers overflowing on the floor. The other computer desk is surrounded by old bills. One bookshelf has two of the shelves stuffed with all sorts of random photos stacked on top of one another. All the DVDs are overflowing, because the new DVD shelf that is going in the basement hasn’t been built yet. (All the supplies were bought, though. But the basement and its remodeling is a whole other story.)

The entire house just needs a major update, but I can only do so much. After all, it costs money. Also, I have to think about how many more years I plan on staying in my childhood home. Gotta move out at some point. It’s probably going to take a few more years at my rate, but I’m not sure how much to invest in a house that’s not really mine, you know?

III.

On Saturday, I tackled the wooden motorcycle figure. First, I super-glued the riser. I think there may have been a knob beneath it in order to keep the rod in place, but it was clearly missing. Either way, the glue worked. The front of the bike can still move from side to side, and now there’s no danger of it becoming detached from the rest of the body.

Next, I moved onto the two cables. The right plastic cable conveniently had a small notch in the front fork where I could insert the cable inside, but the left cable did not have one. I was perplexed by this. Why was there one indent and not two? How was I supposed to attach the other cable?

My mom had gestured to me that each cable end belonged onto the fork, so seeing how there wasn’t a notch for me to connect the left cable to, I decided to create my own hole. I grabbed a screwdriver and kept twisting it, hoping I could carve into the wood something similar to what I saw on the other side of the motorcycle. I even took a hammer to it. Eventually, I announced that the homemade indent was good enough and began gluing the cables on.

I started with the right cable, fitting it exactly where it was supposed to be. I then applied glue into the newly created hollow. As I was holding the cable in place, hoping for the best, my eyes skimmed over the body of the motorcycle. On the left side, right above the foot peg, I noticed something peculiar.

“Amanda,” I said to myself, sighing. “You’re an idiot.”

There was a small hole on what I now know is the rear brake lever. That left cable was never meant to attach to the front; it belonged on the motorcycle’s body. Luckily, the glue hadn’t dried yet, so I quickly attached the cable into its proper place. As for the homemade indent, the gorilla glue I had used trying to attach the cable had filled the hole up.

I guess that’s what I get for becoming so focused on one task. I forget to take a step back when I encounter a problem, trying to plow ahead to force a solution when the solution was there the whole time. And for thinking my mom knew what she was talking about.

IV.

I wonder if that two-year-old knows more about motorcycle parts than I do now.