A BRIEF FORAY INTO FICTION

We've got a new voice teacher this year who's doing some very interesting stuff with Shakespeare. So interesting, in fact, that there are cool moments in class when I feel like I'm encountering the Bard for the first time.

We're working on sonnets first because they're short and easy to get a handle on, as far as rhetoric, meter, and metaphor are concerned. One assignment, the one I was working on earlier tonight, in fact, is to choose what I determine to be the most important word in the sonnet I'm working with, number 2, and write a story prominently featuring that word. The idea is to get the word's image stuck in my head in a way above and beyond what might normally happen if I was simply reading the sonnet to myself--ideally, such mental imagery will affect, in a very cool way, how I perform it. It's not a great story at all, I'm afraid; I'm not a fiction writer, but I thought it might be nice to share it here--it is fiction, but, of course, it draws heavily on my real life.

Anyway, here's sonnet number 2, just to give you an idea of what I'm shooting for overall by writing this story:

SONNET 2

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

And here's my little story, featuring the word "winter."

THE SWING SET BACK HOME

In Texas, the southern part of the state anyway, people say that there’s no winter. That’s not entirely true, however. There is a winter every year. It’s just short.

A couple of years ago, I was visiting my parents on Christmas Day. They still live in the neighborhood where I grew up, in the same house. I don’t go there much these days, but when I do, it’s always a bit weird. As many before me have observed, no matter how many years it’s been since one became an adult, reuniting with family always tends to force people to revert to their former familial roles to some extent. My older brother plays “the responsible one,” a leader, second in line to the patriarchal throne. My younger brother plays “the irresponsible one,” or “the baby.” Of course, these roles aren’t nearly as pronounced as they were some twenty years ago, but such traits always find their way out, often in surprising ways, at unexpected times. Me? I’m not sure what my role is or was, only that I become keenly aware that my united family, in some ways, relates to me as though I were still the guy I was so long ago. That really gets on my nerves sometimes.

And that’s why I took the first opportunity I could to get out of the house. My folks have a wonderful dog, a black lab named Madonna, who loves walks. It was cold outside, near freezing, but I just had to have some time on my own. So I bundled up, put the leash on the dog, and headed up the street to the bike trails I loved so much as a boy that criss-cross the entire neighborhood.

It had been quite a while since I had come this way, years, in fact. It was cold, very cold, but that didn’t stop childhood memories from flooding my mind. I knew every twist and turn of this particular section of bike trail or “Greenbelt” as it is commonly called in Kingwood, the neighborhood of my youth. In five minutes Madonna and I were walking into a little park I had played in during the middle and late 1970s. Here was the swing set I had used so often. I had a tradition when I was in elementary school: during the last week of the year I would make a point to go and swing for half an hour or so to celebrate the coming of summer vacation; the higher I went, the freer I felt, and the sounds and smells of springtime charged up my sense of anticipation. I let Madonna run free to do her business while I sat in a swing and started swinging. The seat and chains were cold, wet, and annoying. I had to contort myself in order to avoid the frigid mud patch beneath my feet. A weird rusty goo started coating my hands.

I was keenly aware that things just weren't the same as back in the day. My butt hurt, damned rock hard icy plastic seat built for much smaller hips. The chains pinched my fingers and their metallic frostiness numbed me, and this infernal playground device seemed to require more effort and energy than it did when I was nine. Ignoring the incongruities I continued to swing, trying, unsuccessfully, to connect with what I had originally enjoyed about this place.

Finally, the nippy Texas winter was just too much, so I started to slow down my swinging. Of course, I fell in the mud, but that’s when it all came together. I flashed on my childhood: it seemed like every winter I ended up covered in icy mud every time I went out to play. Screw the spring; I played here when it was cold, too. I laughed at my predicament. Then I cried a bit. But then I laughed again.

I called for Madonna, and put her leash back on. I laughed on and off all the way back to my parents’ house. Don't get me wrong, though. The whole thing really did suck.

Hmmm. I suppose it was a bit difficult to stay away from some of the other images from the sonnet, but that's okay I suppose. I guess I'll find out Wednesday when we meet for voice class again. At any rate, I've got winter, a particular kind of winter in fact, just oozing out of my brain now, so I'm willing to bet that I "get it."

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