Creative Non-Fiction - Specialist Subject Final

So here is the [almost] most up-to-date version of the Specialist Subject piece - which I will be using for my first assessment. I have yet to apply any changes to it following last week's workshop but from what I remember, I got a rather mixed response to it, some good and some bad (or rather, constructively critical). Needless to say, it's still going to be undergoing further changes so watch this space.

This whole world is steeped in science. You cannot take a step or a breath without interfering with some unseen life force, like vibrating a thread on the universal spider’s web. Stepping out one day on a brisk Winter morning with the expectation of being drenched by the rain, I was pleasantly surprised to be met with the contrary – zenith blue skies bathed in sun, and the pavements exuding their acidic scent post pluviam. But I was in no way spared my saturation, for I was still weighed down, like a sponge heavy with water, with that unseen life force: science.

I just so happened to be heading towards the campus medical centre, which got me thinking about science. Not the physics which carries an apple from its tree to a patch of unforgiving concrete below. Not the chemistry which causes it to bruise in contact with said concrete. What I considered was the biology which guides the fly to the rotten core to lay its eggs. The living rice grains which boil forth are not something which many people would wish to go near with a ten-foot barge pole – I, myself, have often gagged when finding them carousing in the ripe juices at the bottom of a dustbin – but I have continuously found myself in awe of biology’s visceral intricacies and miracles in all their stages, from conception to dissolution. In this instance, I was only thinking about what could be wrong with me. Acidic taste in the mouth. Was it acid reflux? Food poisoning? Dehydration? I never usually got sick thanks to the strength of my immune system so it was kind of a big deal. It made me wonder just how resilient my insides actually were.

Faced with a dark clammy lump of meat on a tile and a scalpel as a teenage biologist, I had felt little in the way of excitement to carve it open and see what lay within. The resemblance was closer to the repast of a cannibalistic surgeon than a clinical classroom experiment. In my gloved palm, its cold solidity and disembodiment unnerved me, while the rancid odour of meat emanating from it seemed to bloom in my nostrils. I took a step back. It wasn’t that I was squeamish or averse to the sight of blood. I’d watched the daily decomposition of a mouse’s corpse from inanimate ball of fur to scattered bones with an almost poetic reverence; there was no poetry in this – until cloven open by a less reluctant hand. Here was an object I could put a title to. This pulsating fist-sized engine was possessed of chambers webbed with fibrous white tendons, muscular vermillion walls, aorta and vena cava protruding like fleshy straws from a thin cloak of fat. The lid had been lifted. Seeing this heart laid bare had instantly rendered the human body more beautiful than the textbook diagrams had led me to imagine.

Where before, the pruned labyrinthine mass of the cranial lobes resembled a rainbow crash helmet, now it was more a large and vulnerable pickled walnut. The chest cavity undulated with the swell of delicate coral branches and flesh curtains pressing against their white prison bars, instead of simply two misshapen pink balloons swollen with bunches of grapes. Then came the discovery that we somehow managed to compress thirty feet of digestive tract – from top to literal bottom – into our ninety inch torsos and wrapped it all up in twenty-one square feet of skin (enough to stretch across your doorway). Meanwhile, each and every cell of that body was engaged in inexorable and ever-diminishing renewal. I felt exhausted just reading it!

Unfortunately, as a result of that large pickled walnut, humanity has adopted an inflated ego which compels us to assert ourselves as the most superior life form, intellectually more advanced and so forth; an asset which we proceed to laud over the rest of the world like a shameless post-Eden Adam. However, upon closer inspection, Adam can be viewed as no more than an upright hairless ape with a censor button, which led me to wonder: how big does our ego really need to be? An animal such as the duck-billed platypus is, in form, virtually unchanged from creatures which existed 110 million years ago, yet thrives to this day. Even several fish, such as sharks, and other water-dwelling creatures like the horseshoe crab and leech-like lamprey, have undergone very little change from their prehistoric ancestors. If we are truly the superior species, then why has it taken us so long to get here? It was at this point that I started to doubt the value of intelligence.

In order to see where else the human design is failing, I turned to the microscopic. Allow me to introduce the Tardigrade or Water Bear. An immensely resilient invertebrate, no bigger than a full stop, this minute creature is capable of surviving at temperatures approaching absolute zero or exceeding boiling point (and you thought you had it rough when the air-con stopped working on the ‘hottest day on record’). Even when bathing in solar radiation or crushed in a celestial vacuum, these tiny teddy bears are seemingly indestructible, leaving us, as a species, kissing their infinitesimal toes in respect. Inevitably, like the children that we are, we begin to mimic such adept creatures through biomimetics. The humble though irritating burr, for example, inspired George de Mestal’s Velcro, while the properties of sharkskin are being tested as a defence against bacteria.

I pondered if such a thing could work on my throat as I returned home. I didn’t get an appointment that day (surprise, surprise), but I’d been told to call back tomorrow. I listened to the dull rhythm of my footsteps, like a metronome, like a pulse. Some may choose to segregate themselves from their primal past by ignoring the world’s biological drumbeat, force it to fade in the face of chemical advancements and greater steps in space than anyone has taken before. But when we owe our current victory to the successes of that past, then that drumbeat should be impossible to ignore as it’s beating inside our own heads.

Creative Non-Fiction - Three-Hour Incarceration

So this week is a study of form and language when talking about an activity or job which has a routine and which (probably) is tedious/boring/soul-crushing (this applied to me after a few months at it....) I worked for an antique company which is, in itself, pretty interesting but when your role is primarily data entry it does start to dull over time.

9.30am (or thereabouts – you never leave the house exactly on time) you stand and knock…several times, on the flaky lion door-knocker, to be admitted into the cosy establishment which houses your cell.

9.35, you sit in the dank little office, lit by one, sometimes two, of the three lightbulbs in the fixture overhead, the familiar smell of musty books mingling with cat litter and whatever is cooking in the kitchen down the hall. The first item is in your hand from the pile of magazines, books, postcards, beer mats, theatre programmes, comics, clippings, or newspapers sitting beside you. You and your voluminous warden. The jolly bespectacled grandfather anyone would feel comfortable around, but with a face that after several months you’d be happy to never see again.

With time, and diminishing errors, his visits become less frequent, leaving you alone to your own hopefully productive devices.

9.50, the piles just don’t seem to get any smaller, especially when you’re dealing with wafer-thin beer mats and scores of 3-page pamphlets, the life history of which must undergo your scrutiny and documentation on the screen of a decrepit blinking box to convert it into cash.

9.55, this one probably never saw the light of a pub interior so it’ll sell for two quid…

9.57 …this one is identical but with a sloppy ring mark right in the middle, knocking fifty pence off…

10.10 …this play features a prominent celebrity at the start of their acting career so, of course, it’ll sell for more than a printed copy of some local school rendition of Bugsy Malone – until you spot a stain five pages deep where someone had been careless with their popcorn. There goes another fifty pence.

10.20. There’s a fly. In here. Somewhere. It buzzes so close to your ear as if on purpose. As if it knows you’re already watching the neon digits in despair (it hasn’t even been an hour yet?) and that the last thing you want is to spend another two hours feeling your already chilly skin crawl (why can’t he just turn the heating up a fraction?) You flinch with every fly-by until it goes silent. A momentary relief.

10.30 brings another relief in a standard issue mug with the same cheerful cat pattern on it, but without biscuits because you’re ‘on a diet’.

11.00, you somehow make it to the halfway point – without needing to use the toilet either (although saying that now might be a good time). You feel your efforts deserve a reward, so you dedicate a little more than the required time to the next colour-filled superhero comic until…

11.30 …one becomes several and you suddenly realise that that pile isn’t getting any smaller, but time is getting on and you only have one hour left.

11.50, okay, you just about save yourself (not that he’d notice when those comics seem to go on for weeks!) You finish the icy dregs of your tea, tensing when a faint buzz sounds from behind the curtain in front of the desk.

Beyond the window, you see people going by: driving, walking (with or without a dog), jogging. Today is December so it’s pretty cold outside, which makes you wonder at the dedication of some people…and the stubbornness of others (is it too much to ask to bring the temperature a little closer to twenty?)

12.10, you secretly thank your stars this job isn’t all typing or your fingers would have atrophied from being glued to the keys and mouse for so long. The same can’t be said for your eyes which have been losing focus every fifteen seconds, staring back and forth between page and screen trying to correctly spell the twenty-letter title of a German book.

12.20, it’s watching the clock time. You can almost hear the chains sliding loose and hurry to get extra done to lighten the load tomorrow (knowing full well there’d always be more even if you did finish early).

12.23. The fly’s back. Come to wish you goodbye - until tomorrow.

12.25, you debate taking a toilet break so you can stop now (it’ll be a half hour wait otherwise)

12.28. You wait too long. Perfectionism can be a bitch when there are so many things to consider with a magazine of sewing patterns.

12.32, you put on your scarf, coat, hat, gloves, bag, and wait for your release to be effected. With a full bladder, empty stomach, and a dying mp3 battery, you hurry on your way homeward.

Creative Non-Fiction - A Giraffe Among Strangers

A little late but I got it here in the end.
(NB: This is the updated version)

A vicious sheet of swirling white continued to gust through the doorway, the kind of white it hurts to look at, even through tinted goggles, and stings to breath in for its caustic purity. People came in from outside dusted in it, grinning out of warmly exerted faces which buzzed with confidence. They were the most frightening and inspirational strangers I’d ever seen.

I began to tug anxiously at my puffy mittens, trying to tuck them better into my cuffs; they refused to cooperate. It was the cold gusting around me, as much as the brilliant obscurity, which scared me more than expected. A cold which seemed capable of penetrating heavy-duty ski boots as well as two layers of thick socks.

‘Are we going out in that?’ I asked, looking back to where my boyfriend, Jackson, and his parents stood, much calmer than I.

I’d forgotten that my boyfriend was one of those ‘strangers’.

They were all veterans of the slopes, his family having been coming to these same Italian mountains for the last twenty years. There was always a cheerful hello for the ski instructors and the restaurant manager, the same apartments booked year after year in a nearby complex, and an enviable ease when moving anywhere with five foot lengths of sharp carbon fibre strapped to their feet.

‘We’ll give it a little while’ was the reply.

I’d felt more like a new-born giraffe trying to acclimate to its immense limbs with those same lengths of carbon fibre on my own feet.  

Jackson came over to give me a hug, and flashed a reassuring smile as he sat down to adjust the straps on his boots. His were for snowboarding, and so much more forgiving, much less rigid than mine: it was as if my feet had been encased in lightweight stone.

I gave the blizzard one last look before sitting down myself to wait. That blinding white mountainside had already been acquainted with the novice bite of my skis sliding down the tiniest incline, and yet at that moment, I almost felt as if that once had been enough. Skiing was a sport which required more effort than you might think, leaving your legs sore from unaccustomed exertions and stripping you of the confidence that you’d ever improve.

‘I think we’ll give it a go’ Jackson said to me, pulling his ski mask over his mouth and dragging his broad snowboard out into the quiet oblivion.

Still not sure if I was even ready, I tugged at my gloves again, lifted my skis to my shoulder, and followed him out into my own personal snow-globe. 

Creative Non-Fiction - A Peace of Mourning

Hey, it's been....well, a while since I last posted in here - since the Poetry Challenge back in October (jeez) but as I am back into a prose creative writing module, I think I could start uploading each week's assigned piece. The focus of last week's piece was Nature Writing, and finding a small piece of nature to concentrate on. I chose a part of a nearby graveyard. I hope you like it as much as those in my class did.
(NB: This is now the updated version)

I should’ve felt some kind of emotion coming to this place, but all I felt was peace. Peace at the solitude wrapped in a white noise of bird song and the dull colourless rush of traffic. Peace beneath the blinding cold midwinter sun. Peace at the satisfying sound of my steps scraping and clicking against the stone underfoot.

Dewy grass muted those steps as I turned aside towards a small tree which appeared to be bursting from the very lungs of the grave’s occupant. In tarnished metal letters I’d find their name, how old they’d been, and who might miss them, but that didn’t matter to me as I’d cast my eyes over more personal stones enough to know what I’d see. Instead I gazed upwards towards a trunk and boughs twice as dense as expected due to a choking burden of glossy prickling holly and matt club-leaved ivy, their ropy tendons clinging with lethal tenacity to the bark. With another nip of earth-scented breeze, those boughs also became twice as vocal, their collective leaves susurrating smoothly against one another. I’d often heard such a sound in every other graveyard I had visited. Breath of the dead, perhaps?

A shiver of colour induced me to look down again to a carpet of damp fleshy leaves which had all but reburied the dead, gravestones and all, leaving just the coarse and weathered tips to protrude. I wondered whose relative had had the bright idea to sow such rampant plants. Their only charm was their tiny stems from which burst a small star of fine purplish-white petals, but even then the winter air had already robbed some of their colour, leaving them to shake their faded and downturned heads. Their act seemed as much in self-pity as in reverence of the stately crows perched atop the stones, a feeling mirrored in myself.

I felt that birds, with their free-roaming wings, were the embodiment of each individual soul interred beneath the ground, at liberty to go where they wanted but always return to this exact same place. The silhouettes of gulls ghosting and laughing overhead was rippled and reflected in the water pooled in a fallen gravestone. The distant twitter of small birds had formed a fabric of natural sound which vied for supremacy over the modern roar. By this point, the clouds were drawing nearer, trailing rain like soft grey feathers, compelling me to leave. As I did, the sound of children shouting and a dog barking somewhere echoed around me so they were shouting and barking everywhere. They were unafraid of the rain.