Tag: Nonfiction

Writing

Nonfiction — “Geography and Centipedes”

Posted on by Desmond White

Today, I had a rather innocent and ill-informed student inspect an atlas on the wall (one with only the boundaries of countries but no printed names), point to Cambodia, and say, “I think that’s South Koran.”

He meant Korea.

I asked him if he was 100% sure and he said, “Well, no, because I thought Korea was near the Middle East.”

“No,” I said, pointing to Africa, “It’s closer to East America, although Middle-Earth is between them.”

“Oh! I should have known that.”

“And across the ocean is the United States,” I said, pointing at Greenland.

“Next to Russia,” I pointed at Canada. The student screwed up his face in confusion (was something finally getting through?), and I added that “the map’s upside down.”

We had fun, I corrected the mistakes, and we moved on.

Later, someone made a disgusted snort at a mention of The Human Centipede (I didn’t bring it up, someone else did). My student, perceiving injustice, protested. “Human centipedes are cute, too! All bugs are, even if you don’t like how they look.”

We (that is, the class) quickly surmised that he didn’t know what we were referring to, and so we stalled at a certain crossroads. We wanted to reveal to him his ignorance on the subject, to enlighten the little fellow, but we didn’t want to corrode his innocence. The human centipede is a concept contrary to decency and goodness. It embroils oppression and futility and the depravity of man’s imagination into a singular, iconic combustion.

Instead, we tiptoed.

“We’re not talking about a bug, exactly.”

“It’s a way… for people to get together.”

“It’s like a team building exercise.”

“It’s not a sexual thing,” someone assured him.

“Is it hard to do?” he asked.

“Not if you have the right attitude.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“Is there also a human caterpillar?” he asked.

“No, no, no.”

A human caterpillar made me think of a human cocoon, and I shuddered at the image of a wet sack of living, struggling flesh. For a moment I envied the know-nothings and little-minds, only to think that really, the degree of distinction between myself and this student was relatively minor, only I’d been shielded from the world’s true evils by Rated R movies and shadow-images, cloistered in a school that looked like a prison, secreted into a suburbs with invisible but tangible walls, as ignorant of greater powers and principalities as a centipede, its face turned ever-downward in its small, contained clamor.

Life

Nonfiction — “Static Movement (Family)”

Posted on by Desmond White

My parents are an amazing, oblivious people. After a quarter of a century, their clumsy attempts have ceased to be frustrating⁠—have, instead, slipped into the realm of ridiculousness. I hope I don’t come off as condescending. It’s just that through their undertaking to gratify my interests or reject them, I have been able to understand my parents as the loving, literal-minded, and culturally-stunted people they are.

Growing up, every experience had to be shared or rejected. If they couldn’t understand it, or if my younger siblings couldn’t take part, than my involvement was betraying the family’s interests. There was this notion that the family had to stick together, which is probably why I wasn’t allowed on sleepovers⁠—Dad and Mom couldn’t come.

And everything was shared, especially toys, even if it meant scratching all of my DVDs and scattering my legos between my siblings’ rooms. I was banned from watching television unless we were all watching it, and I didn’t care much for Fox News.

My bedroom had a window which looked into the living room. Or, from a more accurate perspective, my parents sitting on the couch in the living room could look into my room. My door locked from the outside.

Hiding in the restroom with a book became my escape from the ant colony. I was intrigued by the savor of stories, the sweet and sour taste of lies, the pasty sweet smack and blackened results of poetry, the prologue’s d’oeuvres and the epilogue’s bitter aftertaste. I began to regard my parents’ diet as having a sort of rot that their tongues, burnt, numbed or blunted by scriptural verbatim, could not detect.

For a long time I wasn’t aware of their literalism (paired, as it often was, with an unwillingness to participate in pop culture). I read The Hobbit, and enjoyed it, but wasn’t allowed to start Lord of The Rings because it was “unchristian.” (I did anyway.) But I could read Every Young Man’s Battle, the Biblical Art of War against masturbation.

Imagine my confusion when Dad recommended I read The Screwtape Letters. I was disappointed to find very little screwing. 

Life

Nonfiction — “Post-Grad Blues & Hues”

Posted on by Desmond White

Well, hey there. I’ve been Internet-less for a portion of Summer, and yet somehow I’ve been enjoying myself. Apparently there are “real lifey” activities as fun as binge-reading Cracked.com or absorbing via the eye-holes the entire echelon of Archer. Like fishing. Well, not fishing. But other things. And I’ve been doing them. Road trips, paintball, camping, grilling, horror movie-athons. Now that I’m a graduated man I can do whatever my bank account permits i.e. purchasing a compact bow for the much needed manlification of my lifedom. Additionally, a certain relaxing (and nerdly) hobby has reappeared: the painting, configuration, and playing of Warhammer 40K.

Summer nearly over, I’ve decided to finally begin a project I’ve mostly declined through my creative writing “career,” which is the creation and completion of a first novel. There’s an idea that’s been scratching the back of my brain meat for some time: a science fiction adventure-comedy that wouldn’t require Hemingway-level chops. It’s simple, sorta funny, sorta entertaining, and wouldn’t tear me apart if it flopped. So here goes.

EDIT (August 30, 2013): The novel flopped.

Life

Nonfiction — Mendengar Saya Menguam

Posted on by Desmond White

 

Sumatra, Indonesia

We can’t afford color blinds on our windows, not with kids in Disney shirts waving from the roadside, young women stooped by rubber trees, old men smiling with malachite teeth. There is the International conglomerate and the poor indigenous and all that separates us are barbed-wire fences and fat bank accounts. I spend my day learning U.S. History; my nights playing soccer with a ball of teak root. Some locals drop a hornet nest near my head. I think 9/11 occurred in Kuala Lampur.

 

Tianjin, China

The skies are gray. There are no pigeons but deadly chemicals disguised as bread crumbs. We can’t let the pets outside – I wonder if it is because of the poison or the markets where vendors line stalls with freshly-gutted dogs. The Chinese see us less as bourgeois, more as barges. Strangers call their friends over to laugh at our large feet, our looming height. A business man wants my picture by a bull statue’s testicles. Poverty is swept behind skyscrapers and the larder of cranes. Our U.S. passports can only get us far. From there on it is knowing which barbershops cut your hair and which are brothels.

 

Lecheria, Venezuela

We live in rich man prison – a network of mansions connected by a network of canals. Transport includes travel-by-yacht. I’ll take the boat to the Mall, tie her up, watch a film with English subtitles. I’ll take her to open water and fish like Ernest Hemingway. We say what we want about Hugo Chavez. The taxi drivers never agree; they think they’re monitored. Nothing can stop the wanton – not the insurgents, not the kidnappers who take our neighbors, not the pirates asking for agua with pistols behind their backs, not the man collapsed in the Wendy’s drive-through with a bullet in his shoulder.

 

Santa Barbara, California

I’m idling incognito, an exclusive ooze, wasting away with a cynical smile. There are scars on my legs from jungle hornets, a little red book full of Mao. I think in languages I never use. I walk along landing strips and thumb airplanes and refuse to play tricks on Gimpel. I don’t belong. I don’t belong. I don’t know where this is going.