Creative Writing Prompts: Tell a story from the point of view of the kitchen floor

This is a change of pace, but hey, it's my blog, I can do what I want!  Back in Chicago, back in my life-before-baby, I was taking a creative writing class and really loving it.  Since Adeline joined us I haven't been back, but I'd like to keep doing some writing.  So I found a website of creative writing prompts and I'm going to try to do one a week.  Or so.  I'm sharing them here to keep myself motivated.  And I'd love any feedback.  Enjoy!

Prompt: Tell a story from the point of view of the kitchen floor

OK, let’s just get one thing clear right away: I am the kitchen floor.  You’re probably thinking, “Why on earth would I want to read a story about the kitchen floor?”  And to that I say, come now, dear reader, don’t be ridiculous!  This story isn’t about me.  I mean, good God!  I’m just a floor.  No, no, this story is about what I’ve seen.  And believe me, I’ve seen a lot.  After all, I’ve been around for over 100 years.  Oh, sure, they touched me up a bit when they rehabbed the place 15 years or so ago.  But it’s still me, I’ve been under here all along.  I’ve seen families come and go, couples and bachelors, young kids and old ladies.  I’ve watched them, but I’ve been silent.  I’ve seen what people do when no one else is around, how people treat each other when no one can see, how people treat themselves.  It’s not pretty.  And sometimes it’s beautiful.

I’ve seen lonely men come home after a late day at the office and pull a beer from the fridge.  Then another beer and another.  Maybe he smokes, maybe he doesn’t.  I watch him walk off into the living room, to turn on the tv yet again.  I wonder when he’ll have company, when I might see another set of feet.  I’ve seen lonely women, too.  Some women drink too much.  She waits until late at night when she’s the only one awake.  She starts slow, just one glass of wine.  She sits at the kitchen table and spends the night on her computer; checking facebook and message boards and forums, reaching out for contact, a friend.  Anybody.  Eventually she’s drunk the whole bottle.  She doesn’t sleep and she doesn’t eat and she’s getting too thin.  But she can’t stop herself.  Other women have other problems.  She makes herself a good dinner, she tries so hard to be healthy.  But I know she’ll be back.  Late at night the hall light turns on and she’s opening the freezer.  Just some ice cream this time and next time I go to the store I promise I won’t buy anymore.  She sits on the floor and eats it, as though if she doesn’t go too far from the fridge it doesn’t count.  I feel her tap her toes, the anxiety keeping her up isn’t calmed by the food.

I see happy moments too – I’ve seen plenty of parties, where everyone inevitably gathers in the kitchen.  Friends catch up after too long, sharing gossip and secrets.  People chat and mingle, tell stories and laugh.  Girls congregate in corners and giggle too much, leaving everyone else wondering what they’re having so much fun about.  By the end of the night they’ve dropped food on me and spilled their drinks, but I don’t mind.  I love to see people like this – if only for this night, they’re happy.  And maybe if I’m lucky I see two people meet.  I watch their feet, the way she tucks one foot behind the other, nervous but also flirtatious.  He steps closer to hear her over the din of the crowd.  She follows suit and soon they’re close enough to touch, they want to touch.  I don’t know what happens when they leave the party, but I know they had a chance.

I’ve seen young lovers cook together, so happy to treat each other to the joy of a meal lovingly prepared.  They play Sinatra and dance as they stir sauces and sauté veggies.  They drink wine out of one glass and giggle and kiss more than they eat.  They sit at the table for hours after the meal, talking about love and life, their dreams, their past, anything and everything.  They have their whole lives in front of them, and nowhere they’d rather be.  She prances around barefoot, her toenails painted, still trying to impress.  Her high heels long kicked into a corner of the room, forgotten for the night.

I’ve seen those same heels kicked off again, but this time she’s drunk, taking off her shoes to quiet her steps, hoping not to wake him.  She’s home late again, who knows where she’s been.  He’s angry again.  They fight in the kitchen as always; their feet land hard now as they storm around.  They scream at each other, saying the things they know will hurt the most, things I wish I’d never heard.  He throws her to the ground and I catch her.  But I can’t break her fall, try as I might to soften myself and comfort her.  I’m no comfort now.  In the morning they’re back again, sitting at the kitchen table with a wall of ice between them.  I watch and I listen.  They don’t hear each other, but I hear them both.  If only I could take them by the shoulders, shake some sense into them.  Show them what the other feels, how the other hurts.  But I can’t.  I sit in silence and watch a marriage fall apart.  I’m just a floor, what more can I do?

I’ve seen children, too, and it’s them I love the most.  They’re closer to me, down on my level.  They know I’m not just a surface to be walked upon, but a place to play, a place to learn new things and discover new worlds.  While mom is cooking baby crawls under her feet.  She sees every detail of my grain, see the crumbs from last night’s dinner not yet cleaned up.  She finds the one board that’s warped and she thumbs it.  I feel loved, appreciated, not taken for granted.  But she grows, faster than I’d like.  Soon she’s running not crawling.  Soon she’s climbing on furniture and making a fort of the kitchen table.  So quickly she’s forgotten those moments we had.  Before I know it she’s a teenager, hardly deigning to spend five minutes in the house, let alone in the kitchen.  She’s gone before I know it.

And I’m still here.  I watch and I listen but I don’t get involved.  After all, I’m just the kitchen floor.

Dostoyevsky's "The Devils": On Socialism, the Church and Russian Identity

I love Russian literature.  I went through a period a few years ago when I couldn’t stop reading it – Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, etc.  Then I got busy reading other things; this is my first foray back into Russian lit since that time.  Still love it.  Dostoyevsky in particular has always been a favorite of mine.  I love that his novels are dark and his characters are a little bit crazy.  Or a lot crazy.  I love the way he gets into the mind and the psychology of his characters to explain their bizarre actions.  The Devils certainly has its share of crazy characters. It’s also more political than many of his other novels, which I, of course, love.

The Devils is Dostoyevsky’s commentary on the socialist revolutionaries that were fomenting change in Russia during his lifetime.  The revolutionaries are portrayed as extremists who are willing to go to any lengths to achieve the change they desire.  But for many of them it’s not even clear what they desire – they don’t seek to build, but merely to tear down everything about the Russian state as it is.  They want to get rid of government institutions and destroy the Russian church.  The method of change they have chosen is violent revolution, which will be accomplished by creating so much disorder and chaos throughout the countryside that the people finally rise up.  But in addition to being ruthless, the revolutionaries are portrayed as somewhat incompetent.  They seek to provoke a nationwide revolution, but they only act in their own small town.  They believe there are other “groups of five” throughout the country doing the same thing in their towns, but they have no evidence that this is actually true.  If the revolutionaries are portrayed as incompetent, the conservatives representing old Russia are, if anything, even more so.  They are incapable of confronting socialism head on, but rather prevaricate and, in most cases, fawn over the socialists without realizing the extent of their ambitions.  The only people who seem to realize the danger ahead are those who have embraced the church.

Often when reading Dostoyevsky I’m reminded of Ayn Rand’s major criticism of Russia.  She believed that her morality could never thrive in Russia because the people were both communists and still in the thrall of the Russian church, both of which she saw as incompatible with true freedom.  In The Devils, Dostoyevsky portrays exactly this dichotomy.  The band of nihilistic socialists is set against the older generation of conservative Russians and the Slavophil Shatov, who believes that the Russian identity is indistinguishable from the Russian church.  Dostoyevsky himself was a Slavophil, and you can see his obsession with the church come through in most of his novels.  So while I love Dostoyevsky’s writing and appreciate his depiction of radical revolutionaries, we part ways at his obsession with the church as the solution to all problems.

"Confession of a Buddhist Atheist"

 Can one be a Buddhist without believing in karma, the gods, and the cycle of death and rebirth?  That is the question that Stephen Batchelor sets out to answer.  His book is part memoir (covering his life as a Buddhist monk and then an ex-Buddhist monk), part history of the life of Buddha, and part essay on secular Buddhism.  Unsurprisingly, his answer is that, yes, one can be a Buddhist Atheist.

The memoir section of the book felt at times stilted and often unnecessary.  What he was trying to say could have been said with much less personal detail.  It often felt like this was a form of catharsis for him – like he really just wanted to get his story down on paper.  I guess I should have expected a lot of memoir since the book is titled “Confession” but for whatever reason I expected mostly essay.  But some of the memoir was indeed interesting.  His experience as a Westerner going East and becoming a Buddhist monk is of course uncommon and it gives a personal feel to his explanations of various sects of Buddhism and the ideas that they propound.   And his decision to disrobe and become a lay Buddhist sheds light on his arguments about secular Buddhism.

The history of the Buddha’s life was fascinating.  I imagine Batchelor’s approach is somewhat controversial, but after he gave his reasoning it made sense to me.  Batchelor believes that much of the history of the Buddha’s life and much of his teachings have been supplemented or colored with ideas that were already present in Brahmanic India at the time the Buddha lived.  Belief in karma, gods and demons, and reincarnation were all part of the general mindset of the time.  If the Buddha had taught these things it would have been nothing new.  But he obviously did teach something new or he would not have had such a powerful impact.  Batchelor therefore argues that discussion of these pre-Buddha ideas should be stripped from the texts to reveal what the Buddha really did teach: The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.  He gives quite a bit of primary source evidence to support his theory that the Buddha’s teachings were concerned with the here and now rather than attainment of Nirvana and release from the cycle of rebirth.