The Last Supper.

The elephant in the room followed me out the front door of my apartment and into my friend’s car as I strapped myself into the passenger seat. There was a smile on both of our faces as we greeted each other normally and talked about how excited we were to get the evening started as if to shake off the underlying anticipation. 

Just a couple weeks before, we talked about how we should celebrate the end of the tumultuous term and eagerly agreed upon going out for sushi. Now however, we were going out for a completely different reason; to enjoy our last normal night out for what we could only hope would be a few months. 

As we drove, my friend asked me if I was worried, “Will it bother you being stuck inside all day?”

Admittedly, I didn’t really think about her question that much at first. 

“Being encouraged to stay home all day and not talk to anybody was my dream as a thirteen year-old,” I joked.

As the car trawled forward, however, I found myself sneaking long glances out the window until I was staring out at the world that had accepted my resignation. 

It was a beautiful spring night, the sun was shining warmly upon the earth, casting it’s orange glow upon the ground and all the people upon it. Such perfect weather was hardly befitting of the near ghost town we were driving through but yet the whole town had fallen under an eerie silence. 

Once lively businesses were now dark and empty and as I looked closer I found that each one was marked with a telltale white sign whose meaning was apparent; quarantine was here. 

The car pulled to a stop in Momijis small parking lot, that same white sign was present on the door as we entered and I did my best to ignore the silent feeling of dread that followed me inside. 

To my surprise, the usually slow-paced restaurant was busier than I had ever seen it.  In fact, almost every table was taken, and despite being a day away from quarantine, everyone inside seemed to have the same idea of making the most of their last night out.  

The night pressed onward as we sat and talked, casual banter felt like drawn-out discussions and when our meals were placed upon the table I couldn’t help but savor each bite despite having ordered the same meal many times before. It wasn’t until the waitress arrived with our check that I was brought back into reality, we paid and offered the best tip we could muster, knowing that soon the waitresses would be giving up their aprons and leaving their jobs. 

We lingered there in the cramped booth for what felt like another hour, there was no food nor drink left between us and I felt myself running out of things to say, but still neither of us could bring ourselves to move until finally my friend pointed out that she would be making a long drive home back to Lebanon and we should start heading out. 

The ride back to my complex was void of any words, only the sound of the car’s stereo saved us from a crippling silence. Though the drive was only a fifteen-minute ride through the suburbs I felt like I was heading towards something far more baleful than just my apartment. 

The car rounded the corner and all too soon we were pulling back into my subdivision. We stopped in front of my building and for a moment neither of us said anything, there was a certain finality that could be felt all around us and it seemed like nobody had the words to face up to it. 

Finally, one of us spoke up and my friend, still holding up the facade of normalcy, said, “We’ll hang out again soon.” 

I nodded in agreement and hopped out of the car with a smile, the music from the stereo was still beating along without a care as we bid each other farewell and I watched her wave goodbye one last time before she drove off. 

I remained in place until her taillights were gone, only then did I feel that I could truly call my night over. I ascended the stairs to my apartment slowly and reached for the door handle. 

That night I would fall asleep and the next morning I would wake up in a completely different world.

On Writing

Stephen King's "On Writing" is a story that I honestly wasn't expecting to hear, the first 50 pages alone had me discovering new things about the author with nearly every line, but there were also quite a few things that resonated with me and had my mind lingering on specific sentences pages later. A lot of these resounding thoughts stem from King's own personal stories of his early childhood, his story of an illness that both disrupted and inspired his life and his musings on how his memories are random and broken apart are among some of my favorite pieces so far.

 I felt a great pang of nostalgia and recognition while reading King's anecdote on pg. 27. King's story in this part focuses on how after suffering from a long, intense illness, a young Stephen King was pulled back from school while his brother progressed onto the next grade. During this time King began to discover his passion for reading, writing, and creating his own works.

This was a very familiar situation to me, when I was in middle school I began to suffer from a seizure disorder and I spent a lot of time cooped up in the hospital or at home, by my sophomore year of high school I was unable to recover my grades and I was sent to an alternative school, it was a difficult period of my life but I developed a strong sense of who I was and am because of it and those experiences have essentially lead me to where I am now. 

On the subject of "where I am now" I'd like to reflect a bit on what I think is one of my favorite quotes  in the book so far. Early on in his story, before he truly begins to lament on his childhood and his beginnings as an author, King makes a brief statement about how Mary Karr is able to recount her childhood in an unbroken panorama, this is where I found a truly amazing quote, "Mine is a fogged-out landscape from which occasional memories appear like isolated trees...the kind that look as if they might like to grab and eat you."

This quote feels like it's perfectly describing every time I've ever lied awake in bed thinking about buried memories from my past, situations where I've been wronged or where I've wronged others, arguments from years ago that still hold a bitter place in my heart or off-handed comments that still leave me feeling rotten. I think his analogy perfectly envelopes the idea that even if an old memory is buried under thousands of new ones and they can no longer be seen or connected to anything else, they exist forever and are a part of you.

These examples are just a few things pulled from King's narrative and while I do feel a connection to these stories and phrases I also have to say that they don't give you the entire idea about who Stephen King is and what you learn about him from these passages doesn't really reflect who he is today. However, one thing in these 50 pages that does give you a good idea about the author, outside of just his home life and teenage exploits, is his deep rooted passion for action and horror. It's sort of like an underlying theme in the book, from his questions about death as a child to his fascination with horror movies and disinterest with domesticity and innocence, it's apparent that King has always felt an attachment to the darker side of fiction and one of the biggest things I learned about him was that his greatest passion had been with him since he was a child.

Another thing I learned from Stephen King, this time about writing, is that successful writing does not equal good writing. At the very beginning of his book King says that he could have written his book and profited from it because of his success in the industry, but the book wouldn't have had any meaning if he wrote simply because of his success, it wouldn't have been truly good.

I feel like this can be applied to Feature Writing in a variety of ways, but one in particular, stands out to me. In this class we all have to write, whether it's a blog post such as this one or a full on exam, this class focuses on who we are as writers. That being said, anyone can write, anyone can read 50 pages of a Stephen King book and blog about it, but good writing is more than just big words and lots of paragraphs and it's more than just a shiny grade or the title of "Best-Selling Author", it's about what we know and how we apply it, our experiences and what we make of them, that is how we get truly unique stories and the ability to turn good writing into memorable writing.

First Post!

Hi everyone, thank you for coming to the debut of this blog's first post. It's an exciting milestone for me and my classmates I imagine as we're all embarking on this new journey into our Feature Writing class without ever leaving home.

To start things off I'll go ahead and give you all a warm welcome to my blog, it's a bit like Frankenstein's monster at the moment, kind of raw with a lot of visible seams, but give it some time and love and it will really come together, it's a journey I look forward to making with all of you these coming months.

I suppose if this is Frankenstein's monster then you must be wondering about the doctor? Well, there's not a whole lot I can say about myself that will blow your mind, I've never won any medals or trophies, I'm really just an ordinary girl who likes to draw and is still figuring her life out. There is one thing you all might enjoy though....

This is Pinto, destroyer of shoes whose favorite hobby is pretending he wants to sit with you and then barking at you when you try to pick him up, he's been one of my quarantine buddies for the last few weeks.

I really hope this blog becomes an opportunity for us to grow together and that we can all take something away from this during these difficult times, that being said here are just a few goals I've set for myself for this term:

#1: Stay on top of the work! It'll be a new regime to get used to but I'm still striving to do well in my classes this year and to use my resources even if they're all at home.

#2: Attend all the meetings! Participating in all the Zoom meetings means more opportunities to get the help I need and to be able to make the most out of my classes.

#3: Get a schedule! Right now everything is kind of unorganized in terms of schoolwork and so I'm determined to come up with a plan that will substitute my schedule before the COVID kicked in.

...And that's that! I hope we see more of each other these coming months and I look forward to getting to know you all!