- Poem: Calm Down. (Mentor text based on Rock On)
- Fiction: Heavy Rain\
- My Choice: Crayons
- My Choice: Cold Turkey
- Letter to Z
- List O' Books
- Self Evaluation
Piece of Poetry(Also Mentor Text):
I am giving you the direct order to calm down.
Right now.
Calm down like the paper due tomorrow
got pushed back a week
Calm down like you just robbed a bank
and your team's van is getting away from the cops
Calm down like there was a zombie
apocalypse but you still have your twinkies
Calm down like the girl that you've
loved for years finally said yes.
Who am I kidding? PANIC
Panic like you just ran out of things
to calm down about
Panic like you have ten seconds to
eject
Panic like your parachute is sitting
in your car, forgotten
Panic like there are only 17 almonds
left
Panic like you just saw a dinosaur
Panic like it's the top of a roller
coaster and your seat belt is broken
Panic like you just got shot
Panic like all the rum is gone
Panic like the silence before the
answer you dread.
Panic like they have landed and they
do NOT like us
Panic like you heart has stopped
beating
Panic like you can't breathe.
Panic like there actually is no
tomorrow
NOTE: The reference to rum is not a
reference to underage drinking. Don’t Drink. It is a reference to Johnny Depp’s
character in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Memo:
I wrote this poem based on the “Rock Out” poem. I started just writing ‘calm
down’ but i ran out of things to say, so i decided to change my topic to
“PANIC.” My favorite part about literature is the humor in it, so I tried to
make this poem as funny as possible and had fun fitting in all the references I
could. I had more fun with this poem than I had with most of the other poems we
wrote in class.
Piece of Fiction:
The rain fell heavily that night. Heavier than it had in years.
Not normal rain, but a rain that was much darker and thicker. She sat on her
porch step and let the rain fall around her. It was done. The rain washed away
the pain from what happened. Whenever she closed her eyes, all she could see
was his face. Did she do the right thing? He deserved it, didn’t he? The woman
stood, as if some invisible force was pulling her up, and began to walk away
from the now-dark apartment complex.
The knife, now washed clean, dropped from her hand and crashed to
ground. This sound seemed to wake the woman and she began to run. The rain fell
in torrents, soaking the woman to her core. As she ran the rain seemed to
envelop everything, As soon as she closed her eyes, the rain no longer felt
like water. In the dark night, lit only by a solitary streetlamp long passed
by, the rain looked like blood. Reminding her of what she had done. The man’s
face again swam into her thoughts, pleading with her, asking for forgiveness.
But there would be no forgiveness. Not for him. The woman’s tears mixed with
the rain.
Her reverie was shattered when the blast of sirens broke the air.
First one police car, lit up with sirens, drove by, followed immediately by
another one. Finally, an ambulance finished the grim, flashing, procession. The
woman’s heart all but stopped. She crouched on the curb, hoping that the
torrents of rain would shield her from sight. The sirens faded, and soon the
only noise was the heavy downpour. She kept running; the rhythmic rise
and fall of her feet becoming more spread out. Just get back to her building.
That is all she needed to do. There it was. Relief washed over the woman. She
staggered to the door, and struggled to fit the key into the lock. The lock
gave with a satisfying ‘click’ and the woman fell through onto the dry, dimly
lit, hallway. The door slammed shut behind her.
It took all the effort in the world for the woman to get herself
to the third floor, through the door marked 4, and into her warm, sparsely
furnished apartment. She peeled off her soaked clothes and turned the shower
nozzle as far left as it would go. She sat at the bottom of her shower
clutching her knees, the hot water pouring over her. Her tears mixed with the
water. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve any of this. The minutes passed
agonizingly. She ran through what happened in her head over and over again. The
look of terror on his face; the face she once loved.
The heated water ran out and once again became a freezing torrent.
The woman jumped out of the shower, turned the nozzle, and wrapped herself in a
towel. As she walked out of the bathroom into the kitchen, one thing above all
caught her eye: The knife block. One knife was missing. She knew where it was.
The knife was sitting outside the man’s apartment complex. The woman collapsed
against the counter, wracked by sobs. Her loud sobs slowly became quitter and
less violent. The woman was calm. The woman stood.
Lightning flashed across the sky, lighting for a moment the dark
kitchen. The knife block stood on the counter, with a knife missing. Not one
knife, but two.
The rain fell heavily that
night.
Writer’s memo: This
piece, although sad, was not meant to be quite so depressing. The ending sort
of just came to me while writing in class. I started this piece in the lab
while just writing for fun. I didn’t have a past idea for it or a plan. The
story just came to me. This is flash fiction as it describes only a small part
of a larger story.
Personal Choice: Crayons.
CRAYONS
INT – KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM - DAY
Open on a full classroom of kindergarteners.
Focus on a single student. This is TRAVIS. He is 6. He is wearing a red fire
truck t-shirt and poorly washed overalls. Travis has a bowl cut. He is
surrounded by similar looking students, but none of them seem to pay attention
to him. None of them know the truth about Travis.
EXT – PLAYGROUND – AFTERNOON
Focus on Travis’s overalls, now spattered
in blood. A sharpened blue crayon is held loosely in a tiny fist. A blue
minivan pulls up and Travis’s MOM asks:
MOM:
Hey Honey! How was school? Was that boy Jimmy
mean to you again today?
Travis gets into the car.
TRAVIS:
Yeah... But I dealt with it.
Mom turns back in her seat, sees the blood
covering Travis and his overalls.
MOM:
Oh sweetie, not again.
INT – NURSE’S OFFICE – DAY
Sparsely furnished office. Travis, again
wearing the innocent fire truck t-shirt and overalls. He is holding a dripping,
sharpened green crayon. NURSE, dressed in white clothes, uses a towel to wipe
Travis’s bloodied face.
NURSE:
Travis, sweetie, this isn’t how we handle
anger. You have to stop doing this!
Travis appears to break down crying. The
nurse appears to feel bad, the child’s weeping is making her regret her words
TRAVIS:
I’m sorry Miss Nurse. I didn’t know what I
was doing.
NURSE:
It’s alright. We’ll just let this one go as
well.
Travis gets up to leave, removes his hands
from his face to reveal that he has not actually been crying.
INT – SAME OFFICE – NIGHT
Lightning. Travis stands in the corner. He
holds a sharpened purple crayon. He hides behind the door and says
TRAVIS (innocently)
Miss Nurse? I don’t feel so good.
NURSE
Travis? Is that you?
The nurse walks by Travis and looks through
the doorway. Confused, she turns around. The door swings shut, as if by itself,
revealing Travis, with an innocent-seeming grin on his face.
TRAVIS (softly)
Bye Bye Miss Nurse
CUT TO BLACK
FINAL SCENE:
INT – KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM – NIGHT
Focus on a box of crayons. Only a single
red crayon remains. Pan out to the classroom which is empty except for a
single, trembling student. Travis, still in overalls, still wearing the fire
truck tea shirt stands over the box of crayons. Travis is drenched in blood.
Travis lifts the final crayon out of the box and walks over to the sharpener.
Travis sharpens his crayon ominously. Travis pulls out a white sheet of paper.
Travis crudely scrawls a smiley face. A drop of blood falls on the paper.
ROLL CREDITS.
MEMO: I wrote this
piece in class when we did the quick write on creating an unexpected character.
I didn’t think that the piece would go anywhere but while I was writing I kind
of just took the idea and ran with it. When I was finished writing it… even I
was more than a little frightened. I’m certainly never going to be able to
visit a kindergarten classroom the same way again.
2nd Personal Choice: Cold Turkey.
He sat in his room, covered in sweat,
shaking uncontrollably. All he could think about was that next high, or
about the last one. How long had it been? He looked around his room until he
saw what he was looking for, sitting on his bedside table. The black, empty
capsule, cracked in half, stared at him mockingly, as if to say "Ha!
You're too late." It hadn't even been a day. Still, he was overcome by an
overwhelming urge to find another pill. This desire possessed the man entirely,
and he succumbed to the darkness.
He
awoke on the floor of his tiny, one-room apartment. The pills were scattered
around him, covering the floor; all broken, all empty. He was soaked in sweat,
and he stepped into his tiny shower. The door shut behind and the water
enveloped him. No matter how hot he turned the water up, the shivers would not
go away. He walked out of the bathroom, dressed, but still shivering, still
panicking. Then, as if by pure miracle, he saw something that made his heart
leap. A green pill on his bed. Not the black one's he desired so strongly but a
pill nonetheless. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal the small metal circle set
above the vein on his arm. It clicked open and the green pill dropped in.
Immediately he felt his muscles relax and the shivers subside. He lay on his
bed, breathing normally. He took a second to reflect on himself.
The
ports were implemented soon after Xanoxine had first been introduced.
A legal drug that had no side effects they had said. Easy, safe, fun! Little
had everyone known that it was the most addictive substance known to man. The
ports made the little pills more effective, easier to take. Of course this
caused a panic. First it was outlawed, but then people started dying. Then
the government fell. The monetary system, now obsolete, had
fallen as well.
His
little reverie ended when the little metal circle hissed and the green pill
popped out. Empty like all the others. There was no chance that he would find
another pill like that in his room. He called his friend. Well, friend was
generous. He had never seen this man's face, nor been told his real name. He
solely knew him as X. He ran the operation near the man's home. The one problem
with this new barter system was that he didn't have anything to trade. All
his furniture was long gone, along with most of his possessions. A
glint of metal caught his eye. Of course! The watch! It was a relic, analog,
and separated from the arm. Nowadays everyone had the time blinking on
their wrists always. He grabbed the watch and ran out of the room fast as he
could.
X
was waiting for him at the corner. His face covered with the same mask he
always wore. Black with a yellow X emblazoned on it. The man, panting, ran up
to him and showed him the watch without even saying anything. X held up three fingers.
"Three?' the man said indignantly,
"This
thing is worth at least 10!" X paused, then reluctantly held up five
fingers.
"C'mon,
this is an heirloom!" X paused, sighed, and reached into his stained, torn
overcoat. He pulled out a new pill. Not a single color like all the rest.
Yellow and black stripes. A warning? Ignoring it, the man grabbed the pill.
Looking at it with wonder, joy, and hate, he rushed back into his tiny, drab,
flat. The pills clattered as his feet made contact with them. He fell onto his
bed, adrenaline pumping through his heart. He pushed the pill into his port. It
hissed closed. His body convulsed, writhing. Eyes wide open, staring. Why did
he not listen? Why didn't he quit? The man's body, frozen in a grotesque
position, went cold.
Writer’s
memo: I wrote this based on a writing assignment during class. I prefer,
instead of writing about myself, to write about fictional characters in
situations that are nigh on impossible. When you asked us to write about a
habit, my mind instantly went to drugs, and this story expanded from there.
Dear Doctor Zerwin,
This class has been a breath of fresh air in the suffocating enclosure of IB LA classes. The way you encouraged us to work, stay focused, and actually care really changed the way I see writing. Now, rather than dreading it while huddled in my bed the night before a paper, I actually look forward to writing creatively in the future. Although the majority of the pieces that I have written are morbid and full of suffering, that does not in any way reflect how I feel about the class. Thank you for an incredible year.
Regards:
Jay
Books I've Read:
Green Mile: This Stephen King novel was one of the saddest books I've ever read. That being said, it was still a phenomenal read.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer: As ridiculous as this sounds as a book, it was quite good. The movie entirely ruined the point of the book, and thus the concept of vampire in america. An odd concept, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Lincoln Lawyer: This book was amazing. It helps that I am interested in law but even so as a mystery and a thriller this book was an awesome read. The movie does not do it justice.
Self Evaluation:
Polished Pieces: 4
Memos:4
Letter/list: 3
Unifying Elements: 4
Reading: 4
