Inspiration 7.0

[Morrigoon]

I'm not sure what the protocol for introducing new images is, so pardon me if I'm inspiring out of turn, but I found this image pretty interesting.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

“Caught left handed, hah!”

Imagine the Blue Fairy bringing Mr. Potatohead to life, finding him a job in a small pornographic video shop and arranging for him a very unhappy marriage, and you will successfully dream up Peter Johnson, my high school principal. A man possessing first and last names that both mean “dick” should really try harder to defy expectation.

“You must think you’re so clever!”

Principal Johnson has a potbelly full of disappointment, and I’m convinced his favorite pastime is to shut himself up in a closet screaming invective and reviling his life. This man cannot possibly like himself. If only I could pity him. It’s good to feel sorry for other people because it leaves no room for feeling sorry for myself. If I could see his picture when he was a boy of five (before “disappointment” was even a word in his vocabulary), I might be able to forgive the man who sits smugly across from me, pointing his finger in accusation. He’s four times my age and has never learned that etiquette conveniently supplies one shared rule for pointing and staring, and that’s to never do either. Since my very first day of school, he stared harder at me than anyone. If this were a 1930s carnival show, he’d be frothing at the mouth first in line at the freak show. How could I ever forget his look of when we were introduced and I reached out to shake his hand? When I pass him in the halls, I half expect him to spit on me.

To add injury to insult, Principal Johnson is pointing at me with his left hand even though he is right handed. The lip smirk confirms that he’s doing this on purpose. Most days he knows his life is hardly worth living but right now he’s experiencing a moment of triumph. “Relish” is written all over his face. Some people become educators because they love to teach, others because they love to torment. My guess is that Peter Johnson’s instruments were too blunt to sharpen young minds, but **** floats before it sinks. In a country where the stupidest of people can rise through the ranks of power, a mediocre teacher can be promoted to run a school, no matter if it's run into the ground.

“Not so clever, though. You left a signature. Did you do it on purpose, or did you catch your balance stumbling into a wall with paint still on your hands?”

I remain mum. A still life Angel of Virtue.

His arms now folded across his chest, Principal Johnson adjusts his face to look vaguely concerned. This is how he’ll sit as he pretends to wonder why a girl with no history of misconduct and a flawless academic record would stoop so low. He’ll pretend because being concerned is what is expected of a high school administrator and because we’re waiting for the dean to barge in any minute with the results of the fingerprint analysis; he doesn’t want to be caught looking gleeful when the situation is supposed to be grim. The punishment for graffiti is expulsion and Principal Johnson wants me gone. If it were up to him, my existence would be reason enough.

It might baffle you that a person with so many physical flaws would be so intolerant of mine, but that’s it exactly: Here sits a man who thinks, I may be old, I may have a terrible comb over, I may have this hideous mole on my arm and broken capillaries all over my nose, but at least I don’t have that!

“That” is something I was born with. Can’t do anything about it and I made my peace with it a long time ago, though it saddens me to know I’ll never run the 100 yard dash or play the piano. Instead I’ve developed another hobby. It involves examining the pictures of people I know when they were children and detecting any evidence of what they might become. The measure of one’s life is like a book read back to front; when you start at the end, all that comes before seems predestined. What I seek is a person’s destiny showing up in their faces before the road is clear. So far my research has been discouraging. In all the photos I have examined, the blank and smiling denizens of the two-dimensional world only seem to be thinking one thing: CHEESE!

The photographs people are willing to share with me aren’t candid shots and most that are planned erase a person’s identity completely. It takes a very gifted photographer to capture people as they truly are, and perhaps only dark alchemy could transform image into Destiny. I’ll keep looking. I take self-portraits of myself every morning and night because the destiny that concerns me the most is my own. I’ve read A Prayer for Owen Meany half a dozen times to better understand my own condition. I’ve decided there has to be a good reason, but it’s hard to imagine what good will come from having two left hands, and my two left feet didn't win me any dates to the prom.

I am a seventeen-year-old girl who has never broken a rule in my entire life, having always felt that I was born with one problem big enough to last its entirety. Staying out of trouble has been my life’s mission statement. Since my first day of school, I have been a model student. I'd make a perfect soldier but the army would never have me. I’ve cultivated a spotless reputation. No drugs. No alcohol. At my last gynecological exam, I snuck a peek at my chart. Next to my doctor’s illegible notes is the word VIRGIN stamped in red block letters. Modern day Hester Prynnes are pinned with virtuous Vs.

So why, after spending so much of my time trying to shroud my imperfect body in perfect deeds, would I sneak into the school over the weekend to paint a mural of Principal Johnson caricatured as a gigantic penis? And why would a “clever” girl leave behind such incriminating evidence?

Because I am fed up, of course, and because I want him to know that it was me. I want the whole school to know. Prom is over. All school work has been turned in. Graduation is on the horizon.

I have acceptance letters to no less than five prestigious art schools. I doubt they'll all change their minds over something as trivial as a misunderstood senior art project. I wrote about my inteionts in my college admissions essays, after all.

So here I sit, patiently and calmly, for the scales of high school law to tip in Principal Johnson’s favor. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter.

My destiny remains unknown but confidently I walk towards the future, with one left foot in front of the other.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by LSPoorEeyorick

Collectively,
UR in my thread
rockin' my socks

Can I gush about your gush post? I seriously love your gush post. You gush much, much better than I do. Seriously!

Originally Posted by LSPE

Jen, I've already told you, but I just loved this. I'm so fond of the way that a few sentences can allow a reader's brain to play, to mix up and put together the facts the way they want to. I have a pretty specific idea of what this is about, but I would bet it differs from the next person's, or the next... the way that we all look at a photo and see it differently, we can look at your story and read it differently. This was particularly illustrated here: "“It says STUART. Where the bell is. That’s all.” Seemed the right thing to say, the truth."

Yay! That is totally what I was going for. I did a little dance of adding and deleting facts, trying to decide how much to reveal, and how much to leave up to the reader to interpret.

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

I'm not sure what the protocol for introducing new images is, so pardon me if I'm inspiring out of turn, but I found this image pretty interesting.

That was taken outside EH1812's place, right?

[Cadaverous Pallor]

EH - Wow, love the gritty determination in this one. Taking a premise so wacky, weaving it with utter realism and have it work so well - bravo!

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

EH - Wow, love the gritty determination in this one. Taking a premise so wacky, weaving it with utter realism and have it work so well - bravo!

Thanks, lady. Gonna read the others as soon as I can. I'm having problems with the edit functionality here. Every time I try to fix one little thing in a sentence, it just loads and loads and loads and won't post the change.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Eliza Hodgkins 1812

Thanks, lady. Gonna read the others as soon as I can. I'm having problems with the edit functionality here. Every time I try to fix one little thing in a sentence, it just loads and loads and loads and won't post the change.

Click "Go advanced" if it's doing that to you.

[Morrigoon]

Meesa like deesa, mmm hmm.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Jen, you write young people better than anyone I know and most people I've read and I'd mojo you into oblivion if I had any mojo I could give.

The cement was absolute gray, looking soft and almost spongy, rippling in their own time. A bricklayer’s comb marks were deep and irregular, the seams between cement sheets apparent and showing painful weakness. Old damage had been repaired with more goopy cement, platelets trying to congeal in wounds. Jude did not want to touch it, for fear of a wet or yielding skin, though he knew he had put a hand on this wall before.

And then their is your unique and beautiful attention to detail. I love what you notice.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Click "Go advanced" if it's doing that to you.

Thank you.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Eric, that was a chilling and haunting account of someone just outside of alvations reach, yet close enough to leave their mark, and a great piece of writing. Thanks.