Creative writing course - Week 9 - A memory of ants

I missed week 6 of Creative Writing. During week 7 and 8 we didn't do any writing exercise. Instead, we watched and discussed a couple of TED talks. One by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie titled The danger of a single story and the other one by Elif Shafak titled The politics of fiction. I strongly encourage you to watch them whether you're interesting in writing or not.

On week 9 we talked about memory and we were told to write a little something describing or inspired by a memory. I wrote about the day I was bitten by the bullet ant. It's mostly a bunch of scattered ideas, with so little time it's hard to compose something coherent and unified. I had already written a entry on this blog about that experience back in April 2012:

https://tanaicardona.blogspot.com/2012/03/conga.html 

Ants

Back in the day, when climate change wasn’t a thing, there used to be many different species of ants in my hometown. Two different species lived at home. One of the them were black and tiny, no more than a few millimetres in length, and they were completely harmless. The other ones were called, candelillas, little flames. They were a dark shade of orange and had a painful burning bite. It was forbidden to eat in bed, because just a single crystal of sugar could attract the candelillas and they could attack you in the middle of the night. These ants were part of home and you could always find a long procession carrying crumbs of bread or bits of dead insects anywhere in the house during the quite hours of the afternoon. In the park, near the Sinú river, I remember seeing often two other species of ants. The leaf cutter-ants, which are like beefed up candellias, and a solitary type of slightly larger black ants that liked climbing on trees.

Nothing could have prepared me for the day that I met the bullet ant for the first time: the Godzilla of all ants. I remember it to be larger than my big toe, but I was about 10 years old. I was in the middle of the tropical rainforest with my dad, squatting on a rock and bathing in the fresh morning sun breaking through the dense canopy. When I saw the ant, or better when I felt the ant, it was already too late. It had grabbed my foot with its powerful claws and its stinger was deep inside my flesh.

I don’t remember the pain, but there is a reason why they are called the bullet ants. I remember being on my dad’s shoulders, I was unable to walk and developed a strong fever. I remember pineapple plants along the path to the tribe of the Emberá people. I remember the shaman asking me to drink some kind of medicinal potion. And then, my memories ended abruptly.

Creative writing course - Week 5 - Postmodern Science Fiction?

My name is Lei. In fact, we are all called Lei. I am the only human left in this planet. I am not sure at what point in time I stopped being what I used to be or whether I have changed so much that I am now a new species, yet all my different forms are one, are Lei. When you left Earth, 1.5 billion years ago, there were so many different types of people, so many different species. Today, it is just me, Lei, and the other 355 million copies of myself. Do not be puzzled friend, as a species, our way of reproduction has changed. My children are usually identical to me, but once in a while, errors do happen. The oldest isolated Lei today live in a remote island. There, I have been physically isolated from the rest of myself for more than 400 million years. If you saw me there, you would not recognize me, but rest assured, it is me. There, I am diminutive, furry, and nocturnal. For complex animals like us, asexual reproduction used to be disadvantageous in a constantly changing world, but that is no longer a problem. This world does not change as it used to change. I am the sole master of geological cycles. I choose when continents move, or how fast mountains rise, or how much ice there is at the South and the North pole at any given time. So, I can evolve slowly: parts of me have changed, but I am still the same. The reason we are clones is because the mixing of genomes between two different individuals, like in you and in other archaic humans, would have quickly destroyed the genetic structures required to achieve a unified mind. Do you understand? I had to sacrifice all of Earth’s diversity to achieve infinite dominion over time and space.

Creative writing course - Week 4 - A good day

On the third week we didn't write an individual piece, we did a group activity. On the fourth week we were asked to write a description of a normal day, but exploring narrative styles. I decided to narrate it in the second person inspired by the amazing and award-winning 'Broken Earth' trilogy by N. K. Jemisin.

A good day

You are suddenly awake in the middle of the night. Your wife, Carmel, turned her body abruptly taking all of the duvet with her. You try to fall asleep again but thoughts of photosynthesis invade your mind. You imagine yourself in a conference hall saying: “therefore, it is quite evident that oxygenic photosynthesis must have originated before the great oxidation event.” You try to stop thinking, to relax every muscle of your body, to focus on nothingness, but a fraction of a moment later you are thinking about the last time you saw your parents, two years ago.

The loud sound of a war horn wakes you up. Louder than loudest trumpet. The water boiler. Carmel is in the shower, you realize that is 7.44 am. For breakfast you have a scrambled egg, a banana, and coffee. It is a clear morning, no clouds are visible, you inspect the chilli plants. They look good but the population of aphids is growing exponentially. You remove two crowded leaves, you squeeze some aphids between your thumb and index finger. You sit at the table with Carmel and start eating your scrambled egg. She is already finishing her porridge. “I have a new idea for my dissertation, decolonizing the museum!” she says excitedly, “Huh, interesting, tell me about it.”

You are now on the Piccadilly line, half way through the audiobook of Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler. Akin, a mixed-race alien-human baby with superhuman abilities attempts to escape a tribe of extremely xenophobic humans in a world after the end of civilization. You’re so absorbed that before you realize it you’re taking your jacket off and waking up your computer. The strong scent of coffee makes you glad. You sit at your desk, coffee in hand, headphones on, Discovery Weekly on Spotify, hoping not to be disturbed by anything. The perfect recipe for a perfect day.

For the past six years you have attempted to solve when and how photosynthesis originated. You have made good progress and some remarkable discoveries. You assume that most people think the moment of discovery, that moment of eureka, is filled with excitement and euphoria. It definitely is, but just for a brief moment. When euphoria fades and you become aware that your discovery goes against the current consensus, a consensus that has existed for more than half a decade, then it becomes a burden and you feel desperately lonely. You notice that you have stopped moving and you’re staring at your screen visualizing imagined realities.

Fortunately, it is time to go home with Octavia Butler.

“Mi amor, you should join the British bake off” I shout with full conviction after Rahul, an inconspicuous human being, wins the final of the competition with a pretty ugly looking cake, although apparently delicious. You brush your teeth, and go to bed. This time a different dystopian world, thousands if not millions of years into the future, will put you to sleep.

Creative writing course - Week 2 - Cabbage soup delights

This exercise was about: "defamiliarize". The idea of distancing yourself from common ideas in such a way that they lose familiarity and become strange and foreign. We had to write a short piece on a word, there ware several options like "taste", "smell", and such... I chose smell. I don't think I got the exercise right, though. Haha! And I don't think my classmates liked it. It's hard... to be creative. It was supposed to be funny, but only Carmel got the jokes when I read it to her at home.

Cabbage soup 

Last night my wife and I made a vegetable soup. We usually get a box of locally sourced vegetables every week. British winter vegetables are kind of sad. Mostly cabbage and turnips or other varieties of these two with fancy names… cavalo nero, celeriac, kholrabi. We made 10 liters of cabbage soup just for the two of us. After an hour of cooking, the powerful cabbage smell, a fragrance possibly enriched with an unusually high concentration of volatile sulphur-containing compounds, reminded me of punishment. When I was a kid back home, in a remote little city in the tropics, punishment meant drinking carrot juice: I suppose I was a peculiar kid, although I’m not sure of the proportion of kids who dislike carrot juice, maybe after all that is not so peculiar. Perhaps a Colombian person loving cabbage soup is the true definition of peculiar. I wondered in secret, “why use turnips, or parsnips, not sure which one is which, when I can actually use potatoes?” Potatoes, queen of the root vegetables. Tonight, I must come home and drink my cabbage soup, perhaps if I add 2 full tablespoons of pesto it will quench some of the powerful aromas. I shall serve myself only two full ladles. That is as much as I can tolerate, of course, pesto included. At least, the idea that my carbon footprint is dramatically lower than if I had a steak should enhance my comfort levels by a perceptible amount. I suppose with catastrophic climate change on the horizon, it is a good thing that potatoes grow in England.

During winter our weekly veg-box is made entirely of giant cabbages 

Creative writing course - Week 1 - Man behind glass

I joined a Creative Writing evening class to have an excuse to write something less academic and practice my creative skills. In class, we usually get a theme and about 20 to 30 minutes to write a short piece. In the first class we were shown a couple of rather abstract images, and we had to choose one and write something creative about it. I chose an image, a photo shot through a blurry glass. At the otehr side of the glass you can see a man moving, almost out of view, out of the frame. This is what I wrote:

Man behind glass

I didn’t know if he intended to push the old man against the door. To harm him.

I was petrified at the other side of the glass. I noticed that it was hot and humid, some condensation…

How long has it been now?

But what can I do? The old man is probably dead now. Wait, they’re still struggling. Scream. Ouch, yeah, I think it is already too late.

Did he see me? Should I hide? Should I call the police?

But if I move to get the phone out of my pocket, he might see me. Do I know these people?

Door opens. The aggressor leaves. I’m saved.

I don’t want to get into trouble. Should I sneak away? As silently as possible?

Should I check if the old man is dead?

Wait, there’s no body there. Was this my imagination? Wait, how long has it been?

There is no condensation. Has it been hours? Wait, what else can I remember? Were the lights on? I think they were, but now the lights are off.

I arrived at work at 10.21. It is now 10.41. But, is it tomorrow now?

Is there any evidence of a crime? I remember hearing the kind of sound a head makes when hitting wood. There may be some blood in the door. How did I get here? I don’t remember hiding in that empty office. Wait, is that Julia’s office? Oh my god, this is blood. Not a lot though, maybe the old man did not die.

But if now is tomorrow, where was everybody? Could I have lost consciousness for an entire day? Did no one notice me? Wait, what day is today? Sunday, was I planning to come to work on Saturday?

Wait, the back of my head hurts. It actually hurts really badly.