Writers

The past couple of days have left me feeling thoroughly emotional. I'm not sure what precisely to blame, so I won't begin to do so. I've discovered a gorgeous new favorite song by Regina Spektor, sort of in a haphazard aimless-in-Banana-Republic-oh, wait-that-song-was-on-Grey's-Anatomy-at-one-time-justifying-how-much-I-love-it kind of way, and I've since managed to convince my iPod that it is the only song I have downloaded, despite the fact that that isn't true. The other day, walking down the stairs from the 7 train to the ugly street where we walk to work, and listening to Regina Spektor, I felt a renewed, revitalized and strengthened sense (no, surge) of creativity in my head. Unfortunately, the more steps I took toward the dismal office, the more my creativity surge faltered, faded and slipped away. But the point is, I felt it.*Then there was tonight. I've been in my new class for a few sessions already and haven't really discussed the impact it has been having on me. The course is experimental fiction, which lends much in the way of my disastrous and completely vain attempts at writing anything remotely resembling a narrative, and so far I love it. My instructor is a genius. She opens her mouth and nothing but human truth spills forth, and in the most brilliant of words. She's in her forties?, is glamorous without trying, and spends the first 4 minutes of class pawing around for her Duane Reade reading glasses (Duane Reade being New York's primo pharmacy chain) (if I've never said so before, I am positively envious and love people who require drugstore glasses to read. Oh, if I could only have been so lucky with my piss poor eyesight!) Anyway, our class has thus far focused on vignettes and showing the passage of time via vignettes, followed by prose-odes, which proved to be the most difficult assignment I've ever been given. Hmm, since college. Anyway, I was workshopped tonight (avoiding a lengthy description of what constitutes a prose-ode). To make a long story extremely short, or mildly verbose but verging on the shorter side of things, my classmates referenced my story as "if this were a published piece" on several occasions. I'm not making myself very easy to understand but the gist of it is, my classmates were stripping it down to its bare bones because I'm in their class but they kept referencing published pieces, Raymond Carver and William Faulkner...how could I not come away feeling humbled, shy, ecstatic and having potential?? My classmates gave me what I'd term extreme confidence. By no means am I published, or do I even resemble anything nearing a possible published writer. But when I walked out of class tonight, popped Regina into my head to listen to her on repeat from 14th Street all the way Uptown to home, I felt, glancing at the speckled subway floor to someone's shoes to someone's face and back to the palm of my hand, like a writer. For once, like a bonafied, unpaid, unpublished and unread, yet real, true and wanting to be amazing...writer. And I owe it all to my classmates. Hmm, and all of those (you know who you are) who read me in between. Including Craig.*