Ophelia's Nun

FinsburyParkCarrots

Originally posted by ExTReMe FrEAk
There is a woman named Penny. Her job is lost, along with her father. Both incidents happened around the same time. Loneliness shrouds her will and ambition. The rent is will be due soon, and with out a job, she may be evicted. She has decided to take a walk for while to unravel her frantic mind. Surely she must be thinking about her father, what would he say to her about losing her job?

As penny is walking, she notices a silver object with a sun shine glare around it. She notes the beauty of the object as she bends over to pick it up. She had found a coin, a quarter to exact, and how warm it was on her chilly hands. The coin warmed her right to her bones. For a moment, everything looks great, for Penny, and she gives herself permission to feel happy. It was just a quarter, but how she loves it so, it is sad to see such emotional attachment to earthly goods.

Continuing her journey to inner peace, she keeps her hand in her pocket, with the quarter in her palm. The sun warms her face, in turn, warming her heart. As carefree as she walks, she doesn’t take the time to notice her surroundings, how is that ever a good thing? She hears a diesel engine, follow by a very loud splash. This snaps her out of the light hypnotic trance she had put herself into. Fear engulfs her, as she sees a tidal wave of mud and water lurching for her. Penny can feel the horrible event before it even gets to her. It finally hits her, like a ton of bricks; she dropped to her knees in depression. As distant as she had now become from the world, she begins to feel “woe-is-me” once again.

Why do these things always gave to happen to poor penny? Why are there so many bad things happening to our sad Penny? She recalls her age, she is 26 years old. With this established, Penny begins to see everything come together. She feels the quarter in her pocket, and realizes her father had never left her at all, but had changed forms to be with his daughter. As she looks at the quarter, her father had completed her.

With this now in mind, our beloved Penny had come out of her manic-depressive situation, and felt once again, whole. With a new found understanding, and a moderately joyous feeling, she had become more earth bond. Her head out of the clouds, and her feet on the ground, as she applies for a new line of work.

how was that?.. Make sure to tell me how you understood Penny's revilation.

It's a very fine story and I like the element of metamorphosis, with Penny's father sent - as Penny in her psychology sees it - as a monetary token of incentive, alerting her to her very material necessity as the route to curing her difficulties. It's interesting how she works this out though still reads it as a supernatural intervention.

Okay. Now, the exercise had asked for you to write in the past tense but you attempted something more adventurous and did it in the present tense. What I've done here below in terms of editing your work is a hell of a lot less drastic than what a professional literary editor will do with a published writer, so please don't take any offence: I've tweaked your composition so that it foregrounds all the techniques mentioned above and pushes her consciousness rather than the narrator's voice to the fore. In fact, by writing in the present tense there are certain sentences that are so consonant with Penny's that they could in fact be both third and first person stream of consciousness, and that's something you'll see only rarely, in novels such as "Ulysses" by James Joyce.

Okay, this is it. Hope you don't mind. I feel your work is very very strong, I feel.

______

There is a woman named Penny. She lost her job and her father around the same time: How she feels that loneliness has shrouded her will and ambition! The rent is due soon, and with out a job, she may be evicted. She'll take a walk for while to unravel her frantic mind. Oh Father, what would he say to her about losing her job?

As Penny is walking, she notices a silver object with a sun shine glare around it. She notes the beauty of the object as she bends over to pick it up. It's a coin, a quarter to exact, and how warm it feels on her chilly hands! The coin warms, right to the bones. For a moment, everything looks and feels great. Penny gives herself permission to feel happy. So, it's just a quarter, but how she loves it so, though she knows it's sad to feel such emotional attachment to earthly goods.

Continuing her journey to inner peace, she keeps her hand in her pocket, with the quarter in her palm. The sun warms her face, in turn, warming her heart. As carefree as she walks, she knows she doesn’t take the time to notice her surroundings, how is that ever a good thing? She enjoys putting herself in a light hypnotic trance. But then she hears a diesel engine, followed by a very loud splash. Fear come before her, as she sees a tidal wave of mud and water lurching for her. Penny can feel the horrible event before it even gets to her. Thought finally hits her, and she drops to her knees in depression. As distant as she had now become from the world, she begins to feel sore and “woe-is-me”, but somehow strangely vital.

Why do these things always gave to happen to her? Why are there so many bad things happening? She's 26 years old! Penny begins to see everything come together. She feels the quarter in her pocket, and realizes her father had never left her at all, but had changed forms to be with his daughter. As she looks at the quarter, her father had completed her.

With this now in mind, Penny feels the clouds of what they've called her manic depression lift, and she feels, once again, whole. With a new found understanding, and a moderately joyous feeling, she feels more earth bound, less chained to the ether! Yes! She'll start today with her father found in gold. She'll apply for a new line of work.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Originally posted by olderman
HA!! Fins this IS a challenge!

i will do it, however, i will work on it and return.. this will be fun!!

I look forward to reading your work, olderman. I know you've read "Middlemarch": I know you're well acquainted with the dilemmas of Dorothea Brooke, Tertius Lydgate and Nicholas Bulstrode.

Barroom Hero

Originally posted by ISN
what's a poney?

lol! Hey, it was 1am when I wrote that. I know how to spell 'pony.'

I still love you ISN, for all your impeccable writing critiques.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Disss eeesss dahhhh lurrrrve thread. No punchups on blissweavin' territory, y'all. Anyway. Yeats couldn't spell!

FinsburyParkCarrots

Reeds, there were great reeds rising from the middle of the stream, some as thick as rhubarb stalks, all late summer yellowings of green and brown, shimmering in patches of muddy water sunlight, a dirty yellow. Their sound? A silky fumbling, expert and deliciously unnerving, setting the ears and temples on edge like the touch of dusty velvet. The wind leaned them pendulously, at times flipping their tips in the rippling black of the rush upstream. Shiftings of darting pike blazed in the brook at the reeds' sudden parting, streaking fast shudderings of light past the angling water wind. Coins of sun breaking through the reed stems caught the lip of a buckle on an open sandalwood bag, patterned and fragrant, laying by four bare feet on the daisyed grass. And there were eyes that flashed currency for a kiss, a deep meadow kiss, afforded by these brief shape changes in the ripple tossed reeds.

ISN

mmmmmmmmmmm.......

FinsburyParkCarrots

Originally posted by ISN
mmmmmmmmmmm.......

You know, a response such is this, above, is the deepest any poem might know.

Thank you.

Still Here

I really enjoyed 'The Reeds'...:)

also could spelling pony 'poney' be a form of poetic license? I thought it worked quite well.

ISN

poetic licence? to what purpose....this goes back to the thread on sevensins' piece......is a mistake poetic licence?

FinsburyParkCarrots

Never mind the "pony"/"poney" debate; back to the writing!

I want you to write a short piece of prose involving a character called Mrs Neave who has a discovery of some sort. You could use some of the techniques demonstrated in the exercise above, or write something different.

A few pages above I wrote my own "Mrs Neave's Discovery", and to save scrolling up I'll simply repeat it here:

Judith Neave ran her right index finger, panning left to right, along the third shelf of blue and grey cloth bound books in the case set in the alcove of the living room. White clouded afternoon light, from the back garden behind her shoulder, streamed through the closed French windows upon her forearm and hand as she played the tops of the books like piano keys. Each book reverberated a different memory. The old secondhand Oxford edition of Wordsworth, blue cloth with browning gilt, brought to mind Jeffrey standing clad only in a towel after a bath, on the landing at the first house they bought in Duke Street. He stood there, suds around his feet and soaking the landing carpet, reading aloud Maud in a mock parson's drone as she heard her laugh rebound around the bathroom tiles, she happy to go in and take his water for her own wash. They'd been young students together, married, and had got that house when Jeff had accepted his first teaching post at the new Comprehensive. Ha! Yes, she used to scour the market in town for poetry books for him, she never forgot him. Stacks and stacks, he really did read them all, he devoured them. That was long before they could afford to move here. And then there was that time when she was on maternity leave from the University after Jill was born. She'd take the baby into town and buy old collections of Donne or early English translations of Zola, and surprise him with them when he returned from work in the evening. There they were on the shelves, those memories. And look: That original Faber of Eliot! Ah, Prufrock. He recited it all to her by heart that first holiday together, their honeymoon out by the bright dunes at Southwold, snuggled on a red tartan blanket with rather warm Chardonnay, and with the cloud perpetually threatening rain and wind blowing her straw hat down to the sea. Oh, that was a touch of realism in the moment of romance! How did it happen, now? Oh! There he was in his cream linen shirt and trousers, all sandy, his eyes closed, whispering, she in her pink dress, her breast sighing. all the time watching his lips, "Do I dare?" Then the wind caught that hat she'd left beside her and it blew it up over their heads right up in the air, spinning it round and down to the sea, with the tide coming in for teatime, showering sprays of foam on the glistening sand ...

Peter and Margaret were the last of the guests to go home. They'd said to Judith if she needed anything, just to call. Jill had been but had now gone to her boyfriend's: She'd said she couldn't take it being here, surrounded by memories, so soon afterwards. Judith was still in the black outfit. It wasn't right to change so soon, was it? The fabric itched a little. She touched an unfamiliar edition of Proust with her fingertips. Then she felt a warm light upon the side of her face. She blinked, turned, and opened the French windows, to let the afternoon sounds of a busy high street resound over her garden wall, through her garden and into the still living room. Flies poured in on the speared cocktail sausages and limp ham sandwiches from the wake, before now untouched on their plates on the table. Judith turned her eyes once again to the strange copy of Proust, "The Remembrance of Things Past", plucked the volume from the shelf and opened it in her palm, the soft dust jacket sensuous against her flesh. Then she saw her husband's name etched in someone else's extravagant hand, a Loop on the J, a flourish on the Y. And just as the sun blinded, she read the dedication.

Okay, have fun doing your own!

ISN

I so loved reading that the first time I read it........it was so incredible......and unsettling......I have my favourite Proust edition.....still ain't finished it.....I'll try this exercise too tomorrow.....

olderman

here's my attempt at focalization..

Penny, never one to hold a grudge, had attempted to live her life in terms of self actualization. And yet, through her marriage to the professor, was living a life of terrible disappointment. Now she wondered, as the funeral that made her a widow was over, what was left of her life that was worthwhile. Her idealistic fervor was broken, but not lost.

Penny, not one to lament, found solace in her resolve to effect change. If not for the world, certainly for herself. Although her former life was over, a lifetime of possibilities lay ahead. And the path she would ultimately choose to walk, although littered with memories, could not have been more clear. Her emotions under control, Penny braced her mind for the certain encounter with the woman she had never allowed herself to meet.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Ten out of ten, olderman. Thank you.

FinsburyParkCarrots

I posted this on your "Challenge" thread too, olderman!

He said, "I'll write an overview to show
a panorama of the lack of God
across an island; they will know me now
to be a poet-seer, one who'll plod
the boulevards and office blocks to make
my document on how the greed of man
stalks plastic satisfaction in the wake
of science. Shaming fakery's my plan."

You say, "And when your cupboard's bare and cold,
and when the lightbulb pops and flies are blind,
and when the mirror rots with spots of mould,
and when the broken window screams the wind,
Will you build, in 'challenging', a land,
a notion that the ones with money planned?"


__________________

FinsburyParkCarrots

Penny remembered. At that introductory morning session, on enrolling at the Open University, Penny had laughed with the others in the classroom. The lecturer had enthused (while hopping about the tiled floor in his squeaky tennis shoes and matching navy blue cords/v-neck sweater combo), that "Educating Rita" was pretty accurate and that many students found themselves after the Foundation year of study leaving their boring partners and suburban Thursday morning tupperware parties, to go hiking around Bangladesh with a troupe of radical jugglers instead. But, of this, she was sure. She hadn't laughed quite as loudly as some others, though. Yes, she remembered that.

Had she an inkling of what would follow, even then, or was she transposing her knowledge of following events onto her memory of her feelings of that moment? She wasn't certain. Trying to capture the memory of feeling seemed to her to be like trying to remember the thoughts that encircled the brain at the moment of waking from a dream that was still carrying on slightly.

She knew that it had, ironically, been Nigel all along who had encouraged her to take the course. She had been bored from day to day in the first couple of years after work brought them back from a stint in Singapore to their Essex hometown. Nigel was now commuting to London every day; the kids were at school and surprisingly well settled , but Penny's days had been empty, filled with fears that the old depression was coming back. The new house to her was box-like, 1980s built, spacious but cold and square. Everything she'd done to make the decor more homely had only accentuated the soullessness of the place. The antique chests of drawers and dining sets seemed like someone else's furniture to her, hoarded by possessive ghosts. And ha!, when she would go to visit Nigel's sister for daytime company (well, duty, she knew) she'd see the same decor, the same borrowed histories and hear her voice laugh emptily, echoing on beige matt walls to half-hearted gossip about people she didn't even know.

And yes, the course had more than filled a void. She physically felt her mind expand as she'd spent nights in the little study she'd designed for herself, with the pc and rapidly filling shelves of devoured books,
poring over Gillman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" for an assignment to be sent in to the tutor in the post, the following week. She'd stopped meeting the in-laws after about the second year of study; Nigel had mentioned once in the car, quite sternly on one brief moment of togetherness during a Saturday shopping trip, that it had been commented on that she'd seemed sullen on those last visits to his sister, not even smiling and looking bored. Nigel had added that she was turning strange when she rejoined that she was too happy to laugh these days. The kids had started to make noises in the back, to know what was going on and they'd spent the rest of the drive and day in Nigel's boiling silence.

She remembered studying in her room for that essay, the kids being long asleep, and Nigel still at some late night party with colleagues in London. He was at these nights more and more, but she by then was past caring. If he had been here, what would that have signified?

And then in the third year came the summer residential school in York. She'd drifted with her folders under her arm to breakfast each morning, through geese waddling across the rolling Heslington campus, past the Ouse brimming deeply the shadows of Langwith and Vanbrugh, and with other students laughing a new laugh she could laugh herself, deep with resonances of Fauvist canvasses, Yeats's mythologies, all the mysteries of a consciousness suggested in the language of willow rustle and grass glaze shimmerings.

And now, here, in the delicious shade of nodding chestnut boughs, a man in her embrace was looking deeply in her eyes, weaving her golden hair in fingertip tapestries of a beginning touch of love, and the river was lapping, the river was calling, the river was calling, a kiss, a kiss, a kiss, a kiss, the river, an ocean, the waves, a kiss, a kiss, and in that moment she remembered all, and her shoulders felt the press of duty, the dilemma of commitment against the recklessness of touch, the hopelessness of a moment. To kiss? To kiss?

olderman

This Is A Different Penny.. Same Name, Different Chick

Penny's mind swirled with reflective doubt, the strains and stains of lost ideals boiled in the pot of a proud disposition. Added to the soup was a certain fear that deeds would surface to every cousin's gossip. What to say if they knew, what to do when those bastards, foul and stankin', nasty and rankin', and if grandma somehow is made awhere?

cuddle up in a big feetule pozishun, deny.. that's it, just deneye,
go to heaven in a big comfy moment of fuzz fuxx fuck anyone who loves you... i miss penny, i never knew her, but i miss her nonetheless

ISN

hehehehheheheeh.....

okay....now for my Mrs Neave

ISN

The photo of their wedding was plain, monochrome and stark: Karen Neave felt that she didn't look good in photos, and John was not handsome in any way, so they went for a dignified look, standing side-by-side, but in its own way, it was a beautiful picture.

Karen was the dietician in the local hospital, and John an accountant. Karen was working on the mental health ward every morning, and would visit other wards throughout the day. The dietician's job was made very easy by the hand-held computer into which all food orders were made. All Karen had to do was read from a menu each day, and enter people's choices. She loved meeting the patients, and seeing their satisfaction with the wonderful meals that were prepared, with no thought of cost, but only the patients' health in mind.

The Neaves had been married a year, and Karen was daily visiting the mental health in-patient ward, when she met an unusual patient. Although this lady was committed and receiving treatment, Karen noticed that she wasn't gaga like most of the others. Whereas a lot of patients seemed mildy catatonic to her, or sometimes hysterical, this lady was bubbly and chatty. The patient made a point of being around between 10 and 11, because she wanted to ensure that she wasn't given the usual fare, and could make her special choices.

Karen spent two months on the ward during those hours as the regular dietician, and a friendship between the patient and the dietician emerged, causing Karen a few niggles of doubt about whether she would be seen as overstepping her role.

The patient told her about her newborn baby, and how her partner's family was trying to separate them. This resonated with Karen, as she herself wanted to start a family. It was during the first fortnight of the patient's stay that Karen slipped a photograph of her wedding between a notebook to show to the girl. She always worried about the reaction when people saw the photos because she felt herself to be a plain Jane, and her husband had no looks. The patient seemed to see the real her, and in a way, it frightened Karen, because most people looked at her and saw only her frizzy hair and buggy eyes, and seemed to talk to her but not reach her.

It wasn't long before the patient was asking her whether she had any 'news'. Karen experienced burgeoning presentiments that somehow, this girl knew that she would have 'news' soon, and it thrilled her to think that she might become pregnant.

Months passed, February to April. The discharge date for the patient arrived, and the obligatory cards and cakes were purchased (as well as a few bags of shopping for an old Irish lady, burdened with the mis-diagnosis of senility). Karen wasn't supposed to be working on the ward that morning, but she swapped her shift with the other woman. She saw the patient unload the cakes and the shopping, and nabbed her. The twinkle in her eyes was only one of the signs of her excitement. As the patient sat down at the table in the ward garden, Karen told her the 'news'. She noticed the patient's discomfort when she said that she felt as though the patient knew all along, but ignored it, as she knew the lady well enough to know that she shared her joy at this threshold.

FinsburyParkCarrots

I had no idea these little exercises would produce such exciting results. Thank you both. I'll have to think of some more tasks!

olderman

Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
I had no idea these little exercises would produce such exciting results. Thank you both. I'll have to think of some more tasks!

thank you mr fins!! my assignment will be to expand an idea a bit further than i have done so far... i'll give it me best!!