in nonfiction class today the professor had us break into small groups of three to write a one-page collaborative essay in fifteen minutes.  our group (jess, joshua, and me, but almost exclusively me) came up with this:

jess found a pen underneath a bench outside.  its end had been chewed to bits by the teeth of a stranger.  it was one of those cheap black ballpoint pens you can buy in a pack of ten from the drugstore.  this pen, however, was different.  the end of this pen had been chewed in an almost uniform circle.  it was broken in, and jess was ready.  though he had no idea whose mouth or ear or other orifice the tip of this pen had seen, he found himself chewing it anyway, almost compulsively.  who had it belonged to? he wondered, as his teeth clicked comfortably in the existing grooves.  were they the next longfellow?  the next jane austen?  or just the next john grisham?  what inspiration lay in the dried up saliva jess was now ingesting?  he checked to see if the pen still worked and, since it did, he concluded that whatever level of genius its former owner posessed, this former owner had forsaken his or her saliva-encrusted writing utensil, and perhaps a touch of brilliance along with it.  was this the taste of genius?

it’s not a bad fifteen-minute essay, if i do say so.  maybe it’s when i quit trying so hard that i don’t suck.

tonight at artiste i was sitting at one of the booths, alternately writing my anne bradstreet paper and reading dracula. it’s quite amusing, at least for a professorly english major, to write a paper on a stalwart puritan woman’s view of god and salvation, only to abandon it in favor of a book about homoerotic bloodsucking. sinners and saints night, i like to call it.

thomas came and sat with me, and we discussed (while intermittently staring off into space, confused) the fact that today both of us felt dazed and out of it. i compared the feeling in my head to a plate of sharp cheddar cheese nachos that had been left sitting on the counter for a couple of hours (rendering the chips soggy and the cheese congealed and greasy), and then squished into a ball and stuffed between my ears. thomas, on the other hand, said his brain was velveeta. which is probably made of snot and yellow #5, anyway.

it occurs to me recently (recently being pretty late in the game, as i’ve been doing this for a year now) that this writing of short pieces on the web is honing my writing technique but is doing virtually nothing for my narrative- or character-constructing skills (unless you consider me a character (which some do)). ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, though, so i will get on that shit soon.

(also, who knew that shaun and i are writing the same paper on the same topic for the same class at the same time? not you, i bet. but he’s chronicling his entire experience (or at least he was (until an hour (well, seventy-two minutes) ago)).)