Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

Write in the Style of an Essayist Who Impresses You

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

Inspired by Jia Tolentino’s “Five from Kyrgyzstan,” here’s my attempt to work off of one piece I’d started and then add two others, for my version of “Three With the Divine.”

 
One

I’m trying to remember the exact verbiage the camp counselor gave us, when he encouraged us to step out into this night, be alone, and invite Jesus Christ into our hearts. I walk in the open field, the white of my Keds in the moonlight. There are millions of stars, a splay of crystals on black velvet. Is He there?

I stop wandering and wait. Sit down where I am and listen. Crickets sound in the blades. A cabin door shuts in the distance. I search my heart, a doorway, he said. I lace my fingers together, feel the wrinkles of my knuckles. I ask again, listen, wait. But there is nothing.

Two

In the unseen area behind the pulpit, there is a changing room. It’s a church version of a back stage and today I’m a player in the production. Full submersion. I tell my boyfriend it’s not stage fright, when he slips into my changing cubicle. The one-size-fits-all, white gown they’ve given me hangs, twelve sizes too large. I can’t do this. Nothing feels right, as the hum of a congregation of a 1000 plus fills the pews just beyond the partition.

“You can’t turn back now,” he says, sorry, but certain.

I don’t. I get in the line-up to the pea-green, plastic tub, step down the stairs, and cross my hands in front of my heart. Am pulled back, quickly, into the swish of liquid. In and out.

Three

I’m standing in the kitchen, warming refried beans and grating cheddar cheese. My bare feet stand on terra-cotta tile. Newspapers are stacked on top of the microwave near the small window. The sun angles in upon the countertop, casting gold as I dare.

I flip the flour tortilla, right on the stove top’s open flame, and let myself consider it. There may not be a God.

I may be damned, but so be it. I’ve got to start with nothing if I’m ever going to know anything.

courtesy of D Coetzee
courtesy of D Coetzee
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Re-write a Piece from a Different Point of View

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

NOTE: Originally written in first person, the following is a re-write playing with the immediacy of the second person perspective.

NaPali Coast

 

You begin regularly hiking a remote trail that leads eleven miles down a distant coastline. There, you sleep under a canopy of sky. You record the sounds of a few musicians that spend time there. Bamboo flutes lilt above the swoosh of wind over rocks. Songs are sung, as water ripples through ginger-laden stream beds.

One of the musicians on that coast, is Rex. Tall, blond, and blue-eyed, he says he’s on his way to New York City, where he plans to pursue his music more seriously. His songs are about living in nature, and his love for being free and true. You offer to record his music in the coastal haven, one last session before he heads to a concrete jungle.

On the first night camping, you both stay up, star-gazing, naming the shapes of the clouds that pass above in the moonlight. If you see a dragon shape forming out of cotton billows, he sees it too. You feel a familiar connection with Rex, like a big exhaling sigh. It’s surprising, exhilarating, and calming, all at once, though it’s not necessarily romantic. In fact, you’re not sure you even have a physical attraction to him. But the link between you both is strong. You never go to sleep that night.

Somewhere around 2am, the breezes cool. Your bodies are outstretched on a bluff beneath the cumulus, and he offers to pull you closer, moving one arm, carefully, around you. With the contact, an instant reverberation floods every particle of your being. A clear voice from within, rings deeply through your body.

“This is the father of your child.”

You lie still, allowing his arm to warm you, not daring to speak of the words that are flooding your senses. Your mind cannot comprehend what is vibrating through you. You continue watching and naming clouds, sweeping the message to the periphery. You stay up until the sun rises, and as the sky turns pink with morning hues, Rex announces to the ether, “That was the best night of my life.”

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Research & Write

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

PROMPT INSTRUCTIONS: Do some research relevant to your topic, then apply it to a section of your prose that felt insubstantial or thin.

Feedback on previous pieces, has requested more background on what is not working between Rex and I. By going back into my journals I found concrete details and then created a hybrid of them as a journal entry below.

 
JOURNAL ENTRY

September 30, 2003

I’m here on the bed, while Rex is in the other room, babying his acoustic guitar. I can see him winding the fresh, new strings, plucking each one to vibrational perfection. But I feel no harmony.

He’s mad, and has turned to his instrument, polishing the curves of its wooden body, with rapt attention. I’m jealous of a guitar. My burgeoning belly begs for just a simple touch. The Mama Massage Oil we were gifted hasn’t even had the seal broken. I want to scream, then sob. But I cannot risk to feel the loneliness of this pregnancy. I, too, am stringing a symphony – our mutual composition – of neuro-pathways, fingernails and a nervous system. I want this being to sense only welcome, not one trace of sadness in my veins. Yet tonight is just another night, watching the hunch of Rex’s shoulders, him facing anything but me. And I’m here with my body, beautifully transforming, in our house thick with tension as he strums.

I’m trying to take responsibility for my part of all this upset. Rex says I need to meditate. I’m sure it would be beneficial. But it’s hard to take that advice from a man whose meditation nook is covered in dust and dried gecko poop. Which is the source of tonight’s upheaval. Apparently, in my attempt to dust the myriad of saintly photos collecting spores galore, I accidentally bent Meher Baba’s picture. So as the Indian-style font beams out from beneath his holy beard, “Love Alone Prevails,” Rex is reprimanding me like a child, scolding me for carelessness.

This outburst leads to his more favored form of meditation these days, a cigarette break outside. It’s supposed to keep the second-hand smoke at bay, but smokers never realize the clouds they create. Their sooty exhalations are far-reaching, impervious puffs that slink in sideways, heavy, invisible but stinking.

courtesy of Daniel Costal
courtesy of Daniel Costal