[This
is the first of several writing assignments I did for a "personal and
exploratory writing" class last fall. For each assignment, she (the
teacher, or "professor") would choose maybe ten people at random to
read their thing out loud. I was scared (though not terrified, as I
thought I'd be). Here's prompt no. 1.]
If
your mind were a house, what would it look like?
The
first thing you’ll notice from the street: Blue, my house, with a blue little
window and a blue Corvette standing outside on the curb. The blue represents a
sadness or loneliness I feel when I ain’t got nobody to listen to. The next
thing you’ll notice is the ample parking: A fourteen-hundred square foot
driveway is surfaced with grey hexagonal pavers made from a 30/70 blend of
recycled bike tires and concrete (representing my willingness to help the
environment) which leads up to two four-car garages and three one-car garages.
All the garages are currently empty, and their emptiness represents goals or
dreams that I may never achieve. A welcoming mat with the words ‘Yo,
Whassup?’ beckons you through
the African Zebrawood double doors and into the foyer, from which you get a
view of the grand staircase. Wall-to-wall carpeting covers the floors of the
living and family rooms, and this represents my conservative or reserved
nature. There’s a home theater, too, which represents my liking of movies. The
kitchen has a breakfast nook that’s bigger than the kitchen itself, taking up
nearly a third of the house’s square footage, and this represents my tendency
to make a big deal out of something that shouldn’t be a big deal at all. A pool
filled with sparkling cider waits past French doors (more African Zebrawood),
which probably represents my love of non-alcoholic party beverages. The house is built of brick, because I
think deliberately, step by step, and a brick structure is stable, even
when it's confronted by conflicting forces. In the story "The Three Little Pigs,” the wolf, the antagonist of the
story, blew nothing but air at the little pigs, but their well-built brick
house defeated him in the end. I am a wise and rational pig. The End.
[When
I finished reading, teacher told me I didn't have to explain the living shit
out of every statement, that the reader could figure all that out
himself. I told her, "Das coo, baby, but if I didn't it would only
be like four sentences long," which she could dig. I'm also not sure how many in the class got the cunning "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" reference, but the ones who didn't
were probably like, Oooo-wee,
this muthafucka is deep!]
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