The Church of George
(Chain-Chain-Chain, Exercise #41)
I set myself up for big falls with my writing. I thought, ok, I’m going to school in September, and I have three weeks off before then, I can finish a draft of my novel, no problem, right. Well, after being away on vacation and editing what I had already writing, and deciding to experiment with a few different formats, I couldn’t do anything for a week an a half except lay around. So I’m back to the freewriting exercises I should be doing anyway, even though writing at all seems pointless because I feel like I have nothing to write about anymore.
For this exercise, I was supposed to make a list of words, and then use them in the order I wrote them. I started off with the word “heal” instead of the crappy examples the book gave because then I felt it was at least partially related to the novel I’m not writing.
Here are my words and then what I wrote:
heal, preach, bible, tongues, hands, dress, pew, pulpit, microphone, hair, glasses, screen, baptism, choir, chairs, carpet, wallpaper, cross, foyer, offering, envelope, radio, car, heat, sun, suit, crumbs, baby, tie
George didn’t go to church to be healed. He didn’t go to hear someone preach either. Not to learn more about the Bible, not to speak in tongues, not to raise his hands and praise the Lord, nothing like that. He went to see the pretty ladies in their dresses. He found a pew near the back and sat there as early as possible so he could watch them all walk past and his eyes would be at the right level. It wasn’t as exciting once the service got going because everyone was focused forward, looking toward the pulpit, and if George got caught looking around at the women and their dresses someone might find him out. Someone might run up to the front of the church and grab a microphone on stage and tell everyone that he was a pervert who needed to be saved or asked to leave. He looked like a pervert, he thought, because his hair was thinning and he had a pair of cheap glasses that were kept together by a wad of duct tape. Even with those glasses he could n't read the words of the chorus everyone else sang which shone on the screen at the front of the church. So on baptism Sundays, he sat near the front, so he could see all the ladies raised out of the baptismal tank, their dresses clinging to their bodies, revealing the size and shapes of the delicious mounds underneath. He always hoped one of the ladies in the choir with a short skirt would sit with her legs too far apart, but he could never really tell. He imagined crawling underneath the chairs they sat on behind the pastor where he would truly get the view he was searching for. But when the choir was dismissed, and the pastor began to preach, George had nothing to do but stare at the patterns in the carpet and squint his eyes until it looked like an endless pile of women’s breasts, or take off his glasses and stare at the wallpaper where it looked like a woman’s vagina. Coincidently, that spot was right beside a wooden cross mounted on the wall. He always forgot this, and when he noticed, he felt so guilty he had to get up and walk out to the foyer to clear his head. There he could hear the ushers counting the morning’s offering in the church office, opening envelopes and emptying their contents into a big pile. The radio played quietly, some old time gospel songs, while the men told stories and counted. George often thought about leaving, about getting into his car and driving away and never coming back. It would be better for him to suffer there in the heat of his sun warmed car than in the heat of Hell. It would be better for him to burn his suit and never return to this place of temptation than to burn his soul in Hell forever. But there was always something, something other than the ladies that kept him from leaving, something like the crumbs of a baby’s cookies he saw on the foyer carpet. People often came to the foyer with cranky babies to try and quiet them. To help them, he would take off his tie and put it around his head, stick his tongue out and make a funny face. The babies would smile and laugh and the pretty young ladies would thank him, and George would giggle inside and out.
I set myself up for big falls with my writing. I thought, ok, I’m going to school in September, and I have three weeks off before then, I can finish a draft of my novel, no problem, right. Well, after being away on vacation and editing what I had already writing, and deciding to experiment with a few different formats, I couldn’t do anything for a week an a half except lay around. So I’m back to the freewriting exercises I should be doing anyway, even though writing at all seems pointless because I feel like I have nothing to write about anymore.
For this exercise, I was supposed to make a list of words, and then use them in the order I wrote them. I started off with the word “heal” instead of the crappy examples the book gave because then I felt it was at least partially related to the novel I’m not writing.
Here are my words and then what I wrote:
heal, preach, bible, tongues, hands, dress, pew, pulpit, microphone, hair, glasses, screen, baptism, choir, chairs, carpet, wallpaper, cross, foyer, offering, envelope, radio, car, heat, sun, suit, crumbs, baby, tie
George didn’t go to church to be healed. He didn’t go to hear someone preach either. Not to learn more about the Bible, not to speak in tongues, not to raise his hands and praise the Lord, nothing like that. He went to see the pretty ladies in their dresses. He found a pew near the back and sat there as early as possible so he could watch them all walk past and his eyes would be at the right level. It wasn’t as exciting once the service got going because everyone was focused forward, looking toward the pulpit, and if George got caught looking around at the women and their dresses someone might find him out. Someone might run up to the front of the church and grab a microphone on stage and tell everyone that he was a pervert who needed to be saved or asked to leave. He looked like a pervert, he thought, because his hair was thinning and he had a pair of cheap glasses that were kept together by a wad of duct tape. Even with those glasses he could n't read the words of the chorus everyone else sang which shone on the screen at the front of the church. So on baptism Sundays, he sat near the front, so he could see all the ladies raised out of the baptismal tank, their dresses clinging to their bodies, revealing the size and shapes of the delicious mounds underneath. He always hoped one of the ladies in the choir with a short skirt would sit with her legs too far apart, but he could never really tell. He imagined crawling underneath the chairs they sat on behind the pastor where he would truly get the view he was searching for. But when the choir was dismissed, and the pastor began to preach, George had nothing to do but stare at the patterns in the carpet and squint his eyes until it looked like an endless pile of women’s breasts, or take off his glasses and stare at the wallpaper where it looked like a woman’s vagina. Coincidently, that spot was right beside a wooden cross mounted on the wall. He always forgot this, and when he noticed, he felt so guilty he had to get up and walk out to the foyer to clear his head. There he could hear the ushers counting the morning’s offering in the church office, opening envelopes and emptying their contents into a big pile. The radio played quietly, some old time gospel songs, while the men told stories and counted. George often thought about leaving, about getting into his car and driving away and never coming back. It would be better for him to suffer there in the heat of his sun warmed car than in the heat of Hell. It would be better for him to burn his suit and never return to this place of temptation than to burn his soul in Hell forever. But there was always something, something other than the ladies that kept him from leaving, something like the crumbs of a baby’s cookies he saw on the foyer carpet. People often came to the foyer with cranky babies to try and quiet them. To help them, he would take off his tie and put it around his head, stick his tongue out and make a funny face. The babies would smile and laugh and the pretty young ladies would thank him, and George would giggle inside and out.
posted by deadwriter at 9:01 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home