All posts in Creations

When There’s Nothing Left to Say

by Drey on November 23, 1993 in Writing with 1 Comment

When there’s nothing left to say
And I’m standing here breathing
Into the receiver which has been stuffed
With the black marshmallows of your silence,
And the phone is a plastic leech
Nursing warmly at my earlobe,
I realize that the picture on my wall
Of Bora Bora
Is not Bora Bora at all,
But a beach on Kokomo
That has been made to look exactly like
A beach at Bora Bora.
Now that I am on to the fact that
Someone is going around creating flawless facsimiles
Of tropical islands,
I had better be pretty damn sure
That Key Largo really is Key Largo
Because that’s where I’m going
To forget that “we” ever gave each other anything more than
Furtive glances.

I know you think that I’ll never carve pumpkins again
Because only “we” carved pumpkins
In that special exclusive way,
And I should want to keep those moments sacred.
But you’re wrong.
I’ll sit there on the beach at Key Largo
And carve a pumpkin every fucking day
And it won’t mean a thing to me.
Sometimes there’ll be a girl there
To help me carve the pumpkin.
Yes, hon, a girl; someone other than yourself.
In fact, there’ll be a different girl every day!
And when we’re done carving that pumpkin,
We’ll roll naked in the sand
And the pumpkin meat.
There’ll be little almond-shaped seeds
Plastered all over us
And I will not be thinking about you at all.

You, of course, are oblivious to all of this.
You believe I should be concerned with the fact that
One day you woke up to find that your safe little world
Was really made of slinkies and tinker toys.
I remain silent on the phone.
I let you think I’m thinking about you thinking that I’m thinking About what you thought I said to you.
But I’m not thinking that at all.
I’m thinking that I’d rather dangle my balls
In a piranha tank
Than give you the satisfaction of weeping into the phone,
Cracking open my heart,
Making me say “Sorry, I’m sorry. It’s okay.”
You’re not going to get that from me this time.
All you can hear now is the muffled bubbling of your voice
As I drown you.
I flush and flush,
But you won’t fit down the hole
And the coiled umbilical cord stretches taught,
Trying to stay attached to my world.
It doesn’t matter.
I’m gone.
I’m off to Key Largo
Or whatever the fuck they’re calling it today.

Fake Dream

by Drey on September 8, 1993 in Dreams, Writing with No comments

This is not a real dream. It was the fake dream I wrote for a “Fool the Class” writing exercise where the class had to guess which dream was real. The real dream was the Cow Catapult dream.

I floated along by the fountain beside the Union Building, except that the Union Building wasn’t there. It was some sort of convenience store or a video rental place. When I dream that I can fly, I’m always standing upright, levitating.

My roommate sat in a chair reading. As I passed by, I realized that we hadn’t started to unpack our stuff. School had been in session for several weeks and our room was still bare.

I turned to look across the street, but found the wall to my dorm room instead. I was inside, sitting on the bed. My schedule card was in my hand and I was trying to read it. But I couldn’t understand what it said. It was a punch card like they used in old computers. Everyone else could understand it except me. Somehow I realized that there was a class I had completely forgotten to go to.

I was with Dave again. I told him about my schedule. We were walking casually along, even though I was about 3 weeks late for a class. He was telling me about a new Star Wars movie that was coming out.

Friends and Lovers

by Drey on August 20, 1993 in Life, Writing with No comments

Begin my junior year at DePauw.  I am rooming with Dave, who will become one of my best friends.  Ryan is the RA.  He also becomes one of my best friends.  We all live in Hogate.  We live in an experiment known as the “Substance-Free Floor.”  Ironically enough, I go on to violate just about every rule.

Upon my return from Fall Break, Dave and Ryan convince me that Dave has decided to pledge a fraternity.  I fall for it, only because I believed that Ryan was unable to lie.

I break up with Kerry.

I meet Beth.

I meet Cathy.

I start creating the Chronicle of the Pages world, later renamed DreamPunk.

I meet Alex Arevalo, the crazy Columbian.

In the Cathedral

by Drey on May 13, 1993 in Writing with No comments

Andre Monserrat
The Novel
5/13/93
Final Paper

IN THE CATHEDRAL
The element of the religious in Kakfa’s The Trial

When examining The Trial, one can see Kafka’s satire of a labyrinthine bureaucracy on one hand and a commentary on the religious institution on the other. It is this latter commentary that I wish to discuss in this paper. While there are allusions to religion scattered throughout the novel, I would like to concentrate on the chapter entitled “In the Cathedral,” which I believe to be the most religiously saturated part of the text. Continue reading →

Essay for Application to Akron University

by Drey on May 23, 1991 in Writing with No comments

I am on a teen speaking group called C.A.T.S., which stands for Concerned About Teen Sexuality.  The group is a branch of Akron Pregnancy Services, which serves as our home base.  The C.A.T.S. team travels around to local area high schools and churches, and we have been spread­ing out as far as Cleveland and New Philadelphia.  The main message of C.A.T.S. is that the safest form of sex is abstinence; that is, that sex should be saved until marriage.

I had become interested in joining C.A.T.S. when they had a recruiting assembly at my school.  I thought that I could use my writing abilities for a good cause and write skits and speeches for team members.  Merely writing the material seemed just fine for me, but I thought that there was no way that I myself could get up in front of hundreds of teens to discuss sex.  Well, I was some­how coaxed into presenting a C.A.T.S. talk and my speaking career took flight.  I am now in my second year of being on the team and have spoken to thousands of teens about the importance of sexuality and virginity.

I believe that the media and peer pressure is causing the teen-agers of America to sell them­selves out and have sex before marriage.  By having pre-marital sex, they trade in their vir­ginity for a chance to get a Sexually Transmitted Disease (including A.I.D.S.), an unwanted preg­nancy, and/or the emotional heartache that goes along with it.  I believe that our sexuality is a precious God-given gift that is meant to be shared with only one person: our future husband or wife.

Time after time I have seen the responses of teens, thanking us for taking such a strong stand.  We are changing lives by offering people an alternative to the lifestyle taught in today’s world.  We are the light in the darkness.  We bring Truth into their lives.

I have seen my thoughts, feelings and writing ability transformed into something that touches people’s lives.  If there is even one person in the entire crowd that listens and responds to what I have to say, then I have done my job.  I have experienced plenty of pain in my life and knowing that I’m helping another person avoid it is a great achievement to me.  It is an ex­perience that no school can teach, something money cannot buy.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

by Drey on April 23, 1991 in Life, Writing with No comments

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry David Thoreau

There exists in all of mankind a deep-seeded yearning to become something more than their ordinary selves, to cast aside the lot dealt to them by Life and to truly relish each intake of breath as something rich and wondrous.  These men take their big thoughts and epic dreams, get out of bed in the morning, kick open the front door . . . and run headlong into the reality of a world that has no room for their delusions of grandeur.

And so, the common man will succumb to the dictations of his society, fold his dreams up into a nice little package and go about his normal life as a pedestrian in a grey metropolis.  Every once in a while he can take his dream out of his pocket, look it over, turn it in the light to see it from all sides, and then put it away with a sigh.

While this ordinary fellow’s life goes on in quiet desperation, his next-door neighbor fulfills his dreams.  A few brave souls, in complete contradiction to society’s platitudes, eke out a full life as pioneers on the frontier of a new existence.  In the face of a world ruled by rich, fat, corporate cowboys riding horses of chromium steel, these men of consequence uphold the rare virtues of chivalry, bravery, romance and imagination.  They discover a higher emotional ground and give names to uncharted regions of the soul as they carve out the way to their destiny.

Along with the desire for a lead role on the stage of life is the need for love and companionship, neither of which man can escape.  The face of a young lady decorates the inner halls of each man’s heart.  The nature of the man will determine whether he shall seek out the woman of his dreams or remain content to stare at the cold image of someone whom he shall always see, but never touch.  Perhaps he will find someone else, but he will live with that image of love lost forever emblazoned in his heart.

Romance, in the truest and deepest sense, requires a man brave enough to make himself vulnerable and acknowledge his need for intimacy.  Women long for these men to enter their lives.

They wait in quiet anticipation, unwilling to let go of their romantic dreams of a prince who will come to their rescue.  Some settle for less and live contented lives with men of mediocrity, but the patient ones will someday look out their tower window to see that their prince has finally come.

While the prince and damsel ride off into the sunset, the ordinary man watches them go with an aching heart.  But the poet feverishly scribbles down the account of what he has seen in order to capture it with ink and paper.  The poet, a noble scribe of the higher ideals, uses his quiet desperation as a fuel to give fire to his writing.  He chronicles his thoughts, feelings, desires and experiences to contribute a verse to the great, ongoing saga of romance.

The true romantic maintains a balance of courage and quiet desperation.  While having the bravery to act upon his dreams, he holds onto his meekness and nervous anticipation so that his hunger for virtue is never quite sated.  For him, every laugh, every tear, and every kiss will seem as the very first, enjoyed in its purest form.

Time does not forget these men; those who made manifest in their lives the deep life call of all humanity; those who left behind their quiet desperation and changed their dreams into reality; those who dared to love . . . and dared to be loved.

Life and How We Dealt with It

by Drey on January 29, 1990 in Reft, Writing with No comments

A comic tragedy presented as a trilogy

To be published in the Afterlife Continue reading →

Interlude

by Drey on December 28, 1989 in Reft, Writing with No comments

The shadow of the boy had almost etched itself into the cracked ground, so long had he sat unmoving. Again he pondered the meaning of life and his role in it. He gazed upon this land of living metaphors – fictional creations that were more solid than reality. This reality, his reality, was not real either and he knew it. It was all under his control here. But here and here only, don’t you forget it. Continue reading →

He could not Recall a Time when he was not Writing

by Drey on September 2, 1986 in Life, Writing with No comments

Begin 8th grade at CVCA.

I write a short story, “Welcome to the Real World, Mr. Human,” that I eventually turn into a play during my senior year.

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