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"I've only lived 18 years, but I don't want to change any of them. They're all part of my life, even the failures." -Makise Kurisu
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Bullet in the Brain (Tobias Wolff) Tobias Wolff Biography (Website) Bullet in the Brian (Audio Text) Bullet in the Brain (Video/Re-Genre) How to Format Dialogue This blog couldn't have come at a better time for me. The first part rewriting a segment of Bullet in the Brain could've happened whenever, it's the second part about writing about a scene in present life is the one with fortuitous timing. The day this goes up my family will have finished throwing a party for my brother so I'll have plenty to talk about. Bullet in the Brain Rework For all the experience of great import that Anders has experienced through his life it is worth noting he did not remember any of them but chose to remember the menial things that drove his blood to a sizzling boil. He remembered how his neighbor would start their lawnmower early every Sunday morning as Anders was attempting to gain much needed sleep. He remembered that no reasoning or bargaining would make them disrupt their “morning routine”. He remembered filing several noise complaints to the police and every time them telling him that his neighbor was doing nothing wrong. He recalled how his mother would always ask why he never came to visit whenever she called him. He remembered how she would mention her age and her lack of time left to spend with him was getting forever shorter. He remembered rolling his eyes as she attempted to regale him with mussing from her weekly book club and how every week would turn into nothing more than an excuse to trade gossip. Anders remembered thumbing his coffee table and telling his mother someone was at the door and that he would have to hang-up. Anders remembered the gentleman taking his time at the coffee shop that morning. He remembered the incessant way he tapped his foot as he scanned the menu attempting to decide on what to order. Anders remembered the man asking the cashier the exact ingredients in nine different blends and concoctions. Anders vividly remembered the fury of the man finally deciding on a simple black coffee. Moment in my life Today is September 23rd, 2018, a wall of rain is wailing on the house’s siding, it’s the first Sunday in about 3 months that I’ve had off, and I have nothing t… “Nick get up! Dad needs help setting up the tents outside!” My loving mother hollered from the bottom of the steps. My eyes creaked open and I groggily glanced at my phone as it read 9:18am. I yawned, stretched, and debated the sanity of my mother for wanting to still set up activities outside in the pounding rain. I threw on the first set of clothes I could grab and dragged myself down the stairs. The sound of table cloth rustling as it unfolded, the back-door’s screen slamming open as my dad ducked out into the rain, and the pitter patter of said rain all blended together into a symphony of noise. Today the D’Aversa family was throwing a party that my mother surely overcooked, planned, and prepared for. Seeing as it was for my brother’s 1st year of sobriety and wouldn’t give too hard of a time for it. The second I walk into the kitchen my mom is rambling off the list of chores for me to do. “Are we really going to still have stuff set up outside?” I sighed in disbelief as I rather bombastically motioned to the rain outside. “It’s going to be pouring the rest of the day.” “Yes, we are. That’s why you and dad need to set up the tents,” my mom quickly spat out as she ran downstairs to retrieve food from the basement. I looked at my dad defeated, and he returned the same look. We grabbed our jackets and spent the next forty minutes in the pouring rain setting up three tents that needed four people to do in a timely manner. Time jump to around three o’clock and my house is packed. About eighteen of my brother’s friends from his rehab program, several family friends, and my dad are all crammed into my family room watching the Eagles game. Meanwhile my mom is putting out the last remnants of food in the kitchen while holding idle chit-chat with the few guests not shouting at the T.V. My brother has long since shown up and congratulations were given out. I won’t lie I have absolutely no idea of how to end this, I really don’t. My sugar high from all of the desert and cake is coming down. All of the carbs from the dips, bread, and burgers is finally setting in and I’m falling asleep as I’m writing this. I’m proud of my brother, I really am. It’s been rough for the past eight years or so and him being sober for a year and five days is a tremendous step to things being back the way they used to be. A quote I’ve always took to heart, as shown by it always being on the write side of my blog page, comes from one of my favorite shows Steins;Gate. It’s an incredible anime about time travel that I could do a whole paper about by itself. Anyway, the quote comes from the character Makise Kurisu and goes "I've only lived 18 years, but I don't want to change any of them. They're all part of my life, even the failures” and I glad my brother has realized that even his worst years have shaped him to be a better person going forward.
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What is Creative Nonfiction? Making Scenes in a Memoir There we go now I'm doing this assignment right. You ever read the phrase "present life" and think that includes an event from over a year ago? Well I did and now I'm following the instructions. So this is just a little short snippet about the first and only time I've ever set foot in a friends grandparents' house and it was and experience to say the least. I had no idea what to expect when I entered the house. I’ve driven up to this small cream-colored house a dozen times before, but I’ve never had a reason to step inside. I pulled into small and empty two car driveway, the pavement looked fairly new, only a few small cracks were visible. This is my best friends Katie’s grandparents’ house and it looks like a grandparent’s house. There’s nothing immediately obvious about it to make me think that, the front door has two stained glass panels to either side, there’s a big bay window to the far left hidden by a pair of overgrown bushes, the small garage to the left of the driveway looks old and the door in desperate need of a paint job. It just gives of a grandparent persona for reason. The three of us, Katie, our friend Eric, and I, climb out of my car and into the house and I am immediately thrown off guard. Katie has told me about the “collection” of dolls her grandmother has, but collection is not the word I would have chosen, more along the lines of obsession. The immediate eight-foot foyer is the only open space on the entire ground floor. The small living room directly across from the front door, that is plastered with pale pink shag carpeting that looks like it smells of old moth balls, and I swear I could hear a faint crunch as I walked on it, has five floor to ceiling glass cases. All five of which are packed tighter than sardine cans in a submarine with dolls, two whole cases of which are filled with dolls of Marilyn Monroe. The bay window in the back of the room, is littered with vases, jars, picture frames, knick-knacks patty-whacks give the dog a gosh darn bone every surface in this house is covered in something. I turn to my right and see the final nail in this coffin, the last thing to cement this house as belonging to someone from a much older generation and something I will never understand the purpose of. I see a wall that is entirely one mirror and a quick scan of the house reveals it is one of three mirror walls. I walk into the kitchen and begin poking around some of the knick-knacks along the kitchen shelf. “Nick be careful with that it’s real jade,” I heard Katie nonchalantly yell from down the hall. I was so shocked I nearly dropped what I was holding. It was a strange thing in a similar shape to a Russian nesting doll but had a face and design similar to a Japanese kabuki. I knew her grandparents were fairly well of so the fact that it was real jade isn’t what surprised me. What surprised me was the fact that this and as I soon realized other real jade statues were just sitting out on a kitchen counter right next to the kitchen table at perfect height for someone to accidentally knock them of my pulling out their chair. I kept looking around the house, each step on the wooden floor sending out a near deafening creak and sending a wave of dread over me thinking that any step will be the one to send this house tumbling down. In every room, I went into it was the same thing. Priceless vases, statues, and the like all scattered around and finding a home on every open spot. The dining room looks like a single bouncy ball could cause thousands of dollars in damage from just what is not even placed in glass cases. We soon leave, and I am not a religious person, but I say a quick and silent prayer that that house never experiences even a small earthquake. Tonight, was going to be another Tuesday night. I’ll sit in my basement with my friends and we’ll gather around a grey plastic fold out table covered in stains that is way too small for the six of us, but it’s the best we can do at the moment. We’ll cover the table in various books, folders, and way too many dice sets, each one finding a new spot on the color spectrum. This is what we do every Tuesday night, Dungeons and Dragons. I still remember when we first tried it more than a year ago. I looked around the small room I shared with my friend Eric. The walls were a pale green, the wood floor’s varnish had long since been worn away from use, a glance out the window should a blue sky that was slowly being absorbed by gray rain clouds, and I am sitting in the corner of the bed getting the only Wi-Fi signal in the whole condo. This is my spring break, trapped in a condo in Sea Isle, with seven other people and I only actually like four of them. I looked back to my phone and paused the video I’m watching, episode 26 of the D&D live stream, Critical Role. I can hear loud voices coming from the other room, I still have my ear buds in, so I can’t make out if it’s shouting, laughing, or whatever it is, but knowing this group it could be anything. I checked the weather on my phone and much to my chagrin it was still calling for heavy rain for the next three days, exactly how long we’d be staying in Sea Isle. I threw a pair of socks at Eric who’s sitting on the other bed in the room. We talk back and forth about what in the hell are we going to do for three days. After about ten minutes I get an idea. I frantically start opening up Google maps on my phone. After a minute of searching I grin widely, turn to him and say, “Remember how we’ve been wanting to try out Dungeon and Dragons?” He replies with a perplexed nod and I continue, “Well why not now? There’s a card shop about fifteen minutes from here and we’ll be trapped in the condo for three days,” It doesn’t even take a second before the two of us are throwing shoes on, I grab my wallet and the two of us burst out of the room and into the living room where our frantic nature is met with five confused looks. We tell everyone our plan and we are met with mild indifference for the most part, I then inform them I plan to purchase the necessary items and then they start to look more interested. Four of us all head out the door into the bitter cold March air and pile into my sedan. The car ride down to the store was filled with rampant discussion about the classes we’d make and how bizarre all of our voices were going to be. An hour later, and about eighty bucks spent, five of us were gathered around the small dinning room table, the old wooden chairs screeching back and forth across the tile floor as we all pawed at the pencils and dice laid out before us. After another hour and a half of figuring out rules and stats to the best of our ability we began our first game. It was haphazard, nonsensical, and I don’t remember a minute of it. What I do remember is the joy on the players faces as we all tried our best to out do each other. I remember the sweat on my face as we entered our very first fight. I remember how after that first game I began looking up how to properly create a character, tips on writing a backstory, what race and class combinations worked best. That day was over a year and a half ago an aside from a month or so after that and a few weeks here and there my friends and I have all played D&D every week since. (I'll be taking a picture of tonight's game) Links:
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Nick D'AversaWriter, outstandingly good at mouthing along to songs, level 9 Dragonborn Blood Hunter, and just trying to figure out what in the hell I'm doing. Archives
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