Blog 14: A Photo

In this photo, my boyfriend is sitting in a booth drinking coffee with one on the managers(his Greek friend). Another waiter, Nicholas, is standing to the far left, smiling tentatively. I forget the mangers name but Adam and I went to visit him two years ago at the diner he opened in Sayerville. He has one of the biggest smiles I've ever seen, and genuine, like he's really happy about life. This photo was taken before I got a job at the diner in the winter of 2007.
I wonder who is holding the camera? Probably Sophia, the owner's wife, or Maria, the only female manger(both of whom were considered "lunatics" by the staff). Adam and his friend are both holding menus and I wonder if they were put there purposely for effect, because they both knew the menu by heart at this point. Nick has a white towel draped across his shoulder and a silver pen peeking out of his front pocket. He probably had just a second in between orders to pose for this picture with his buddies. Nick was very polite, respectful to women, which was rare in that particular setting.
I know the booth they are sitting in very well. It is the first booth by the front door and the one with a little privacy because you can slide up against the glass partition and out of view of the boss who is standing watch at the front counter. Back when Adam and I were just "an item", a piece of gossip to fill the mouths of the wait staff in between screaming at each other and the cooks, this is the spot we sat late at night and talked. Talked about school, his town in Cyprus, or talked about nothing in particular, my foot casually rubbing against his leg then coiling back as if it had been a mistake. I'm not positive, but this may have been the spot where I realized this might be more than a crush.

Blog 13: Rummaging for Memories

At the top of my closet is an old pink wallet I never use anymore. I remember shopping in Macy’s with my mom and begging her to buy it for me; my birthday was close so she obliged. Now it collects dust along with my other discarded articles of clothing and torn, musty purses. It was what I found in one of the folds that caught my eye; two faded Amtrak ticket stubs from August 2006. The ink is so faint I have to squint to read the price and destinations: one, Express first $95.00, NY Penn Station to Boston, MA-the second, same class and locations, $.00.
I remember this trip to Boston with my ex boyfriend vividly. It was the summer I had come home from a strenuous year at High Point University and he wanted to take me away for the weekend. This was a time when I still thought I would be in love with the same person forever, before I realized that is an exception not the rule. It rained the morning we left and it rained the night we came back (and most of the time we were in Boston as well). I told my parents I was going to my friend Dawn’s beach house in LBI (the same excuse I would employ a year later when flying to Las Vegas for 24 hours for a Celine Dion concert, which turned out to be cancelled anyway).
It was the first time I had ever ridden a train not counting the NYC subway, which in my opinion is not so much a train as a moving container of filth and malfeasance. I was really excited to return to Boston for a second time, the first being an eighth grade trip where we were escorted to each destination on our itinerary like little sheep. Once we got to Boston though, I don’t remember doing much except watching TV in our hotel room and stopping at an enormous Barnes & Noble on the way to dinner at Applebee’s.
Tom loved to travel; in fact I remember him leaving me a least once a month to go on some random excursion to Chicago, California, Pittsburgh, once even Alabama (I still haven’t figured that one out.) Toward the end, I found myself needing him the most when he was gone and finally it was too much to deal with. Selfish or not, I need a boyfriend who will stay by my side. When I met my current boyfriend Adam I was infatuated, and slowly began to hate myself for falling out of love with Tom. It’s funny how the objects of our greatest affection sometimes lose their luster and we find we don’t need them like we use to, kind of like the pink leather wallet I used to love.

Blog 12: Revising my essay

Although my first essay has potential and I would like to return to it later, for this class I am going to concentrate on revising my second piece, "The Same", which is a comparative narrative about my sister and I. I chose to revise this story because I have a lot more to say and feel I have not fully developed crucial elements and ideas. The whole point of the story was to ruminate over the differences between my sister’s childhood and my own. Initially I was going to come at it from a birth order angle, but found that was both difficult and possibly ineffective. It was also difficult to “tell” Colleen’s side of the story because I am writing on pure observation. As Maureen commented on one of my blogs, I am comparing my insides to Colleen’s outsides, which can be problematic if not addressed somehow.
I think I can expand several scenes that I mention fleetingly such as making pizza with my Grandma and I want to add a scene that captures the incongruity of our home life in the present and when I was a child. I also plan to add more dialogue, but I haven’t decided where it should go. I am flirting with the idea of completely changing the structure of the story as well. After reading Stanton’s “Laundry” I was inspired to try a parallel structure that requires alternating episodes that ultimately tie into one another (my childhood + Colleen’s childhood= a shared experience.) It would be more intentional/obvious than the parallelism I have created in the first draft. I want to smooth the transition between the opening scene when I’m on the telephone with my mom and the flashback to 1987, but I’m not exactly sure what needs to be done.
It is obvious now that I have to choose one subject and hone in on it, rather than address several things at once. What is the message I want to convey here, is it guilt?love?being a role model? I don't know yet.