Each Friday, post a list of the observations you've come up with that week. I'll list mine, and then you can post yours as comments. Since this is a short week, you'll only have three.
Week of 1/8:
We pack the last of the snow into snowballs, and we stand in the rain and aim at the trees.
On the news, a man stands with his hands in his pockets while his house floods.
G's plastic rocking horse is creepy because 1) it has no teeth, and 2) it neighs even when no one else is in the room.
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The steam by the parking lot that usually trickles is a raging river today.
ReplyDeleteThere are three squirrels eating bird seed in my back yard, fighting over who should have access to the feeder.
The daffodils are about an inch tall, signaling that spring is not as far off as it feels.
A man walks through the rain without an umbrella, jacket, or hood. His hair drips wet onto his clothes but he acts like he doesn't notice its raining.
ReplyDeleteA threatening voice mail is left on a girls phone. "Get the fuck out of Washington. No one likes you. You're hurting people's feelings. I'm over your hurting people's feelings so get out. Bye." It is unclear whether the message is intended for its recipient and another message is left.
"I wish you knew who this was cause that would probably be helpful to you but really like this is your one and only warning. Please leave Washington. You keep hurting people's feelings. That's not acceptable to me. Ok. Leave Washington. K thanks Bye."
One Greyhound bus on I-5 rear ends another. Both are full of passengers looking disgruntled.
Oops. . .
ReplyDeleteWhen the rain falls the way it does on these December days, and when my bangs flop from my hood the way they do, I feel like a dog in the tub. I need a haircut.
There are no books on the sixth floor of the library. Just rows and rows of empty shelves with metal dividers. More like the scaffolding of a library than the thing itself.
The depression, where the puddle used to be, dried to a muddy film. The footprint reads someone slid; a scrape stretched down to the brick.
*A girl returns home at four PM to find her door handle has been removed by her roommate. There is just a hole and a blank sticky note over where the handle was.
ReplyDelete*A young couple tries to take a flirty bath together, but the girl slips and breaks her tailbone. They can’t have sex for nine months.
*All the locks in the basement level's bathroom of the library have been removed. A girl sits down and twice another girl accidently walks in to use that same stall. There is graffiti all over that stall.
--Jessica Crockett
A mouth burned by baked potato, wherein the skin of the affected spot comes loose and is accidentally swallowed, heals completely by the third day.
ReplyDeleteGummy peach O's on the sidewalk, soaked, swollen and slowly melting. Who drops candy like that?
Elsewhere:
Saw a man who looked like Vin Diesel. He sipped a coffee and gave me a quick glance of disinterested suspicion.
In front of the bus a stocky old lady, wearing scarf and shawl, crosses the street. A floppy bearded graduate crosses the other way, so bad did I want to see them high five each other as they passed.
I love how we all interpreted the instructions differently.
ReplyDelete#1
There is an awkward, fertile moment at the end of a class where you know someone kind of, sort of, like a friend-of-a-friend or you’ve had a class with them before. In this moment, there’s usually some subtle hesitation, maybe a vague sluggishness, where one or more of you are trying to figure out what is expected of you. Do you wait to chat with the other person, do you just toss them a friendly nod, or what? If one person just bolts for the door, the other seems to experience some amount of relief, knowing that nothing is expected of them and the awkward moment has finally passed.
#2
Bicyclists seem to confuse the hell out of drivers, who don’t know whether to deal with them like cars, pedestrians, or some strange and terrible hybrid. And I understand their confusion—the behavior of a bicyclist could change at any moment without the slightest provocation. A bicyclist could legally move from sidewalk to road and back again for no reason other than to annoy automobile drivers. As a matter of fact, I hypothesize the following to be the easiest way of irritating a driver: ride a bicycle.
#3
There are six potential reactions customers can have when you recognize them as repeat patrons. In order of most common to least common:
1) flattered, but trying not to show it
2) guilty, because they don’t recognize you
3) creeped out
4) very mildly annoyed because they feel they’ve fallen into a predictable pattern (this is rare, but most common among the 30-40 year-old women demographic)
5) mildly annoyed because you’ve established yourself as a person and not merely a means of making purchases (luckily, you can immediately tell which people these are)
I don't know if I'm going about this incorrectly or not, but next week I'm going to back off of generalizations.
My 3 observations for week 1:
ReplyDelete1. (4:51 PM on Wed) That cat is going to be the death of me.
2. (4:51 PM on Thurs) All men are dogs.
3. (4:51 PM on Fri) Valerian root extract doesn't work at all.
My first observation is the fact that I'm not in the class at all.
ReplyDeleteMy next is that this site is not working on my partner's computer (she IS in the class), and she can't post from home.
Third, the site works just fine from my computer, even though it's old enough to pass for steampunk.
I am doing this way differently..I have been writing down an observation and then writing a little journal'esque' thing...that way I have a little more to pull from in the long run. Here is the blog I set up to go with it :) http://schoolandfuntogetherinone.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteMy 3 Observations:
ReplyDelete1. The old man on his bike who stopped riding to examine a grocery cart that was tipped over on the side walk.
2. Girl beside me in my class crying during a film.
3. The way my boyfriend mumbles and then speaks coherently in his sleep almost like a conversation.
1. Strangers are the easiest to blow up on.
ReplyDelete2. The girl sat on the bus in high heel boots, sweatpants, holding a pair of wet jeans and a paper cup with contacts in it.
3. Four friends went to a party. One of them had robbed a store. At the party, one of them realized his wallet had gone missing.
1/7/09 - As the girl dug through her purse, a harmony of tinkling keys and prescription bottle maracas echoed through the library.
ReplyDelete1/8/09 – He lay facing the wall, his back to hers, his fingertips tracing the graffiti of her youth.
1/9/09 – Her son sat silent in his car seat with his chubby finger against the window, drawing a mountain as the car steered over every bump.
Wednesday-A puddle in the center of a walkway restricting passage. There is only enough room between it and the muddy grass for one line of people, which means one direction at a time. Bad luck for the people trying to get to old main. Also, there is a right-of-way. Details sketchy.
ReplyDeleteThursday-A Janitor walks and talks unusually fast in in a rather sporadic fashion. He/she is conceivably on one or more amphetamines. Harboring strong desire to ask which.
Friday-Inspiration for insight in students shows strong correlation with and may be directly proportional to the hour of the day. 8:30 class is lecture course whether teacher designates it as such or not.
Wednesday: Fifteen totwenty people huddled together trying to avoid the rain.
ReplyDeleteThursday: A girl stopped and asked a man for the time. After he told her, she started running.
Friday: A bus driver responded to a call on his radio about a missing girl.
1/7/09
ReplyDeleteEmo, hipster, punk, hippie. Meaningless yet ubiquitous words seem to be one of the main cultural byproducts of my generation. Of course, these words start off meaning something very specific, but then are so loosely applied as descriptors that they are soon unable to illustrate anything more than the ridiculous simplicity of social dynamics in the imaginary world that the describer thinks he or she is living in.
1/8/09
When the football program was cut, it was almost hilarious to see the transformation in some of the players. Before the meeting, they were one collective nuisance that invaded the fourth floor of the VU where I was studying. Afterwards, individual ones wandered back out into the hall, whining like toddlers to their parents over their cell phones.
1/9/09
Mostly I was worried about getting soaking wet, which I did. But I also got covered in sand. I went for a bike ride, and came back looking like I'd been doing somersaults on a beach.
There was a seagull in a raging storm that simply danced with the wind that carried it in all different directions.
ReplyDeleteThree giant blue exercise balls deflating while three saddened girls observed.
A girl, about thirteen, putting red lipstick on using a restaurant window as her mirror.
Wednesday: I find it uncomfortable to help another male shop for pants.
ReplyDeleteThursday: It's incredibly easy to think, "I've changed."
Friday: In the waiting room I slowed my breath, cautious of the air.
Can't get registered from my home computer to post on this blog. See above post by my helper husband. I am not on campus at 4:51pm.
ReplyDeleteThe original book of genesis had named not one god by several. It was not until 500 years later that they decided on one all encompassing god and made the rest angles.
ReplyDeleteA woman in fred meyer's bulk section weighed out over five pounds of sunflower seeds roasted with no shell.
the downtown bus station plays classical music at night to keep the bums away.
a guy in front of me at the shell station buys a pack of camel crush cigarettes, the attendant ask him if he has a lot of friends.
Same attendant warns me to watch for gray cars when driving in the fog.
three houses on yew st hill still have their Christmas lights turned on.
mornings at the grocery store are apparently designated for women and old people only. beware interference on their stomping ground.
Saturday: My fridge literally has one egg, a half jug of soy sauce, three kinds of salad dressing, mustard, and ketchup...hmm, what to make.
ReplyDeleteSunday: I never realized before, but the girl who plays Jennifer in Back to the unture isn't the same one in Back to the Future 2 or 3.
Monday: My cousins cell phone ring tone has to be the most irritating sound on the planet.
Tuesday: Yikes! Sponge Bob marathon.
Wednesday: The man next to me smells like stale onions.
Thursday:I really want a polish dog from the VU Vender Alley.
On the end of the dock, out in the misty lake under a clear cold night sky with stars above, I looked into the mysterious fog and dark waters and suddenly remembered being about five years old and being there, same dock, same lake, same sky, same mists.
ReplyDeleteHe makes wild lamps, combining old parts in odd and practical ways, with bright paints and exotic switches. When people ask to buy one, he refuses to sell. “There is no such as too much light or art around the house.”
“Not sure I will remember your name,” the pretty visitor murmured. “Yes, you will, it is Ryan.” He replied, blue eyes sparkling.