Capturing a picture (classroom)
Nov. 5th, 2007 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
original_laviOur professor gave us a prompt to "capture a picture" - show the entire narrative behind it, in just a couple pages. It's funny, I started mine about one a.m. the day it was due - and I had also just started my NaNo novel (yes, I'm doing that for the first time), so it was an abrupt switch and I actually had to catch myself: WHOA, this is not just for word count, this is for CLASS and a GRADE. Nevertheless - something really interesting happened, and my professor told me afterward that he really thought it was excellent. I do too now, reading it again. It was a little worrisome at first because the theme is so dramatized!high school - but I think I pulled it off. I really like my last three paragraphs.
Also, there is very subtle slash.
About the picture - I do watchfoto_decadent , though I don't have a large appreciation for the really strange stuff in it. I best like the classy, well-done portraits of everyday life. Like this one - it has a number of favorites in it.
Also, there is very subtle slash.
About the picture - I do watch
foto_decadent , though I don't have a large appreciation for the really strange stuff in it. I best like the classy, well-done portraits of everyday life. Like this one - it has a number of favorites in it.A new room. All the motion within, stopping to try to catch all of it, fix upon what is important, take it in all at once to adjust and adapt and react.
But it’s really just the same old scene; all her peers with new names and faces, but the same interactions, leaning together and away from each other, whispering and looking and touching. She does not know the interactions and will have to learn.
She steps in because she has to, must react even though she isn’t ready yet; slightly breathless, clasping her things to her in a way she already knows she shouldn’t. They are ignoring her, she is already dismissed and put beneath notice; the first chance is gone and she will have to win a second, once she knows the rules of the game.
It is a relief, though, to know she is already on probation and she has a little time to observe and be without being judged. As she moves in, she looks at the girls’ bare smooth legs and long sleeves; the moderate socks and shoes – well, she already matches them there, anyway. But not the tops, and her sweater would clearly never be seen again. Her hair, too, does not fit, but that would be harder for her to change.
There is more to it than clothing, however. Fascinated, she watches one girl reach around a friend’s shoulders to place a cigarette at the friend’s lips. The second girl has turned toward it. Such cooperation and intimacy – it stops her breath, her heartbeat quickens.
She isn’t used to this – there had been a cool degree of respect and haughtiness between everyone in the place before. The novelty of the closeness captivates her, though, and she already longs for it. How long before she can be part of them?
Another two, these of opposite sexes; the girl leaning toward the boy’s ear, something she has seen dozens of times before, but even so…this is her new scene and so she watches it as attentively as though she has never seen it before. There are new details here: the stretch of the girl’s hand directly away, the strange way the boy is holding his jacket to him (perhaps her clasping of the books isn’t so ludicrous after all) and his eyes focus on something ahead of him, instead of his companion.
She turns her head, and the scene snaps to focus. The flash of unspeakable understanding, just like a lightning strike in its brevity; then it is gone, and all that is left is the residue on the inside of one’s eyelids.
Another boy who would seem ordinary to any adult; he is ordinary, probably, but she knows when she sees him sitting alone on a desk, watching the class before him, that all her peers revolve around him.
A description – he – is unnecessary. All that stands in that moment are his subjects in cool action, seemingly unaware of him except for the boy’s lapse of subtlety to look at him – and she, the new girl, in her flash of understanding, her beholding the key to her new world.
But it’s really just the same old scene; all her peers with new names and faces, but the same interactions, leaning together and away from each other, whispering and looking and touching. She does not know the interactions and will have to learn.
She steps in because she has to, must react even though she isn’t ready yet; slightly breathless, clasping her things to her in a way she already knows she shouldn’t. They are ignoring her, she is already dismissed and put beneath notice; the first chance is gone and she will have to win a second, once she knows the rules of the game.
It is a relief, though, to know she is already on probation and she has a little time to observe and be without being judged. As she moves in, she looks at the girls’ bare smooth legs and long sleeves; the moderate socks and shoes – well, she already matches them there, anyway. But not the tops, and her sweater would clearly never be seen again. Her hair, too, does not fit, but that would be harder for her to change.
There is more to it than clothing, however. Fascinated, she watches one girl reach around a friend’s shoulders to place a cigarette at the friend’s lips. The second girl has turned toward it. Such cooperation and intimacy – it stops her breath, her heartbeat quickens.
She isn’t used to this – there had been a cool degree of respect and haughtiness between everyone in the place before. The novelty of the closeness captivates her, though, and she already longs for it. How long before she can be part of them?
Another two, these of opposite sexes; the girl leaning toward the boy’s ear, something she has seen dozens of times before, but even so…this is her new scene and so she watches it as attentively as though she has never seen it before. There are new details here: the stretch of the girl’s hand directly away, the strange way the boy is holding his jacket to him (perhaps her clasping of the books isn’t so ludicrous after all) and his eyes focus on something ahead of him, instead of his companion.
She turns her head, and the scene snaps to focus. The flash of unspeakable understanding, just like a lightning strike in its brevity; then it is gone, and all that is left is the residue on the inside of one’s eyelids.
Another boy who would seem ordinary to any adult; he is ordinary, probably, but she knows when she sees him sitting alone on a desk, watching the class before him, that all her peers revolve around him.
A description – he – is unnecessary. All that stands in that moment are his subjects in cool action, seemingly unaware of him except for the boy’s lapse of subtlety to look at him – and she, the new girl, in her flash of understanding, her beholding the key to her new world.
