filler, non-filler

I handed in my first portfolio on the 13th of February. I got my first scores on the 14th of March.

The final draft of the accompanying essay started out like this:

In class one day, George Ttoouli asked, “why do you write?” I still don’t exactly know. My reply that day was, “because there’s nothing else if I don’t; because there’s something in my head that I have to let out to get to what’s in my heart.” Even as I read the answer out from where I’d scribbled it on the corner of the page, I was afraid of what saying those words out loud would mean. Was I giving too much away, or too little? And what did that mean? This question continues to taunt me, unresolved.

But, months later, I find myself equally drawn to the less refined opening of the first draft:

The first story I handed in was a two thousand-word tale of a guy’s delusion and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was painstaking in his pursuit of a woman and completely misunderstood her response to him as positive. It was a disjointed piece, but mostly it was an experiment in character creation. I wrote down a list of random actions – folding clothes, dancing, writing by hand – and described them in detail, exaggerating them all for comic effect. 

I think I'm hoping that I would one day find a way to write that story, properly. But for now, here's a few hundred words of the very rough first draft. It's called Fold:

He folds his bed sheets - even those with the elastic bands at the edges that fit snugly around the mattress. There is a step-by-step process, and as he holds them up his lips part and close in time to the rhythm of the numbers. One: fold in half. Five: tuck in sides. Eight: pat down lovingly. And he does, every single time. There is a proper way to fold socks, did you know? Steps that involve turning and tucking - and very little twisting.
All five by eight by something of his wardrobe is a mother's fantasy and a teenage nightmare, the sort of place that would never know what dirty underpants looked like, much less smelled like. Every square inch of it is carved, parted, and painstakingly allocated to different items of clothing separated by two point five inches of inroad; and his clothes emerge from within its walls with their collars up in the air, haughty, crease-free and perfect - an origami dream. 

He stands in front of the mirror now, brushing specs of dust off his shoulders repeatedly, his collar perfectly square. He wiggles a foot, dislodging a stone from his sock, nervously bouncing from toe to toe. Stubborn little rock, it appears. He jerks his shoulders, "One two, one two," and shifts his feet, "Hop, step! Hop, step!" And then he stops, panting, red, sweaty. One wonders why he would not just put on another pair of socks.He hop-stepped all around his date that night, and she side-stepped him. But she was laughing, and so he did too, and they stayed on the dance floor for hours, "hop, step, side, step!” He walked her home, and he bent over and kissed her on her lips. This time there was no shuffling. 

He wooed her by hand as in the old days, by hand and pen and prose. He would sit and look out of his window at the green algae growing on the walls of the neighbouring buildings. He would search with his eyes for a spot of beauty between the garbage dumps and the streets, crowded and noisy with the sound of hunger and impatience, and in the end - not giving up, never giving up - he would turn his eyes heavenward, where the glare of the cynical sun would cause him to shut them in haste. But what better source of inspiration than his mind's eye, a private viewing of the object of his attentions, undiluted by the glare of reality? There, she was slender. And not thin - but healthy. But not fat - merely full-figured. But not curvy - only … perfect. There, she was beauty, undefined and undefiled. What is reality to a lover's eye but an inconvenience? 

With his fingers measuring the exact area around the mouth of his disposable pen he would write, carefully closing his o's, giving his y's pretty little mermaid tails, but what to do with his u's? He practiced the important letters on a blank sheet, marking out his love in puddles of black ink and deeply indented pressure points, working through e's and r's and h's and t's and a's that looked like d's. And only after she received the letters (the 'D' curled into the 'e', the 'a' and 'r' unintelligible from each other) did she give him her phone number.

I did not hand this in for my portfolio, you'll be relieved to know. But it is fun to go over my starting point, so to speak, and note where I've changed my mind, lines I would cut without hesitation now, things I would cringe to reread.
Of course, there is a life lesson in everything I write, because my mind only bounces thoughts of unprecedented profundity. Ha. Today's lesson is this: Look to the past only to learn, not to wallow. It is a lesson I have not yet learned to learn.