The Day in Which Everything Occurred

Thursday, 10/26/06

So, there I was, a day away from our first batch of workshops in Writing of Fiction (I just lost about half the people who know me and who also actually live near me, they've already heard this story. Good, more for the rest of you) which, for those of you who don't live this crazy lifestyle, is where the class pretty much reads each others stories and then offers comments on them, four drafts to a class period. So, I pick up one of the drafts, the second one in fact that I was reading that day, and, well, I nearly had a stroke. I wished, in fact for a stroke, a stroke would have been preferable to the mental and emotional turmoil and anguish that I found myself thrust into. The topic of the story that I held in my hands could essentially be summed up in two words: Star Wars. The odd thing was, that the story wasn't just like Star Wars or inspired by Star Wars, it basically was Star Wars. I think there was only one new character introduced in the entire story, and it was hard to tell if he was the protagonist, or just an incidental instrument of the plot. But basically, nothing happens in the story that did not happen in some form in one of the movies. An example: In the beginning of the story there's a bunch of sci-fi jargon that I didn't really understand, and then the first coherent piece of the plot was this section explaining to us that Darth Vader used to be Annakin Skywalker, but he couldn't control his rage and felt the Jedi had betrayed him, so he went over to the Dark Side. Shocker! So, next we learn that Darth is really, really angry. He's like, so angry that it's red. It's like white, too, he's so angry that it's white rage which is also red. And the only thing that helps him handle this rage is by damaging others, you know, violence and stuff. It doesn't make the rage go away, or make it any less, but he just has to be violent because of this rage. So, next he turns around and picks up a construction worker with his mind, and chokes him, using the Force. No way! So he killed him by crushing his windpipe without even touching him??? Yeah, seriously.

So, the story is actually about this guy named Jublin Wens who was a Jedi and then kind of fell out of favor because he "failed" the Jedi order through something that sounded vaguely like an accident but then he learned to control his rage a grief (which Darth couldn't manage) and so they gave him a second chance, for which he is still grateful. So when the temple was taken over, this guy was working for the bad guys as a kind of secret agent. Darth is trying to send out a signal to call all the Jedi back to the temple so he can destroy them, while Jublin is sending out a counter signal to warn them all away. So, finally Darth comes to check on him in his little control room, and they have an exchange of words in which Jublin, obviously trying a devious tactical method to make it look like he's blowing his cover while really drawing the cloak of secrecy ever tighter around himself, defends, to DARTH VADER what awesome and generally good people the Jedi are, all the time acting like he's still on Darth's side. Okay...cool...you're losing me.

So then, after some witty repartee, Darth invites him into the hallway to show him...I don't know, his new puppy, when all of a sudden Darth whips around and is all like, "Hey, you can't fool me, I knew you were a Jedi the entire time, now you're gonna get it." Well naturally the light sabers come out and you're getting geared up for a duel to the death, when they exchange a couple of strokes before Jublin gets hit in the face at which point his "bones dissolve, his skin melts" and, in the end, "His head was simply gone." Wow. Really, these mere words cannot possibly convey to you the extent of my frustration in reading this. It was well-nigh impossible to even focus on the words of the story because you just already knew everything that was happening, so why bother. Really, I spent about half an hour to forty minutes reading this thing and trying to form a coherent response. Do you know what I could have been doing in that time? I could have had a great conversation, baked a cake, composed a sonnet, picked flowers, frolicked in a field. Really, anything, anything could have happened, but it did not, it did not happen because my time was taken up (wasted? can I say wasted?) with this thing. I felt rather insulted as a writer and as a human being to not even be faced with a scrap of attempted creativity. Really, I am often not impressed with my own work, you can tell me that my work is the crap of the universe and I might not even disagree, but at least it's my work, they're my characters, I formulate ideas of my own. And yes, yes, I know that there is such a thing in this world as fan fiction (due to the fallenness of man, I have no doubt) but I have been given to expect that even in fan fiction, something happens, something besides what happens in the plot of the movie. As in, the movie is assumed as background knowledge and then something new occurs not just, hey, this guy was trying to do this thing, but it didn't so much work out for him and then his face melts. And really, oddly enough, I have run into a number of people who just must not understand the nature of what we are dealing with here, because they are not really reacting to this information that I am putting before them. Although I have gotten the plagarism question a number of times. The answer is...I don't know. I wish it was illegal. But I just don't know.

Then...well, some more things happened. A day is long here. But then, at around 11:30 that night as I was putzing around the house, we got a phone call from Thryn, who was over at Jeff's house informing us that our dear boy, who has been feeling sick for most of the week at this point, has a fever of 103 and they're on their way to the emergency room. Oh. Ok. Susannah, who was the one on the phone, asked if she would like someone to come with them and Thryn, obviously very distressed was like, Uhh...yeah, sure, I guess. That was obviously going to be me, they're my Jeff and Thryn. We ride in the car a lot together, why not a trip to the emergency room? So I'm running all around the house to get together the stuff (coat, bag, etc.) and am ready to go in about 2 minutes. They are already at the door by this time, Kathryn had run in the house just as I was running out the other door...classic. So, we're all piled in the car and off. I have to say, it was a pretty tense ride for me. I cracked a lot of jokes, me and Thryn both did because what else can you do on a trip to the emergency room except for in between the jokes and the groans from Jeff, I was praying, I was praying hard, because I have had a fever that was 104 on a couple of occassions, and so people have told me stories, lots of nice stories about what happens to your brain when the temperature gets up that high. So, I was scared. Really, really scared. We were driving over to Wellsville, which was about half an hour away from Houghton. Only, when we got there, we could find the hospital. We ended up getting dumped in this residential area. A phone call to Shellie, EMT and direction giver. "Are you sure it's the first set of stop lights?" "I'm sure." It was the second set of stoplights.

So we made it to the hospital and then there was...the waiting. The waiting and not hearing anything. The waiting and trying to focus on homework grabbed for the purpose. The waiting in the room with the fat, old man who kept falling asleep and waking up whenever anybody walked in. Must be a good hospital, he doesn't seem too concerned for whoever he brought. The waiting for a total of four hours before they had lowered his fever and diagnosed him with pneumonia and sent us home. Phew. We were all ridiculously hungry by this point, but why would you stop at 4:30 in the morning to get food when all you wanted to do was get warm and get to bed. Definitely just hit the sack that night and slept until about 1:30 the next day. Had noble intentions of getting up in time for chapel, in time for class, in time for anything, but it did not happen. A very strange day, all told. I have been keeping unfortunately similar hours all weekend, so I have no idea how I will be able to get to bed tonight, or get up tomorrow morning. But, at any rate, this is definitely the most exciting day that I've had in a long, long time. Hopefully it will be the most excitement of that kind that I have for a long, long time. Get better soon, Pneumonia Boy!

Happy Val-Day!
S.