Author: Chrys Buckley

Chrys Buckley was born with albinism, which means she has no pigment and she’s legally blind. Chrys has bachelor’s degrees in Arts & Letters, Micro/Molecular Biology, and Biochemistry. She endured approximately ¾ of medical school before breaking free to focus on writing and disability advocacy. She’s currently in the Book Publishing graduate program at Portland State University, pursuing concentrations in Book Editing and Book Design. Chrys is the manager of the Digital and Audio departments at Ooligan Press. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Sun, Shark Reef, and Aerial. She was a finalist (twice) in MTV’s “I’m from Rolling Stone” writing contest. She has won the R.L. Gilette Scholarship and the Sophie Kerr Gift in English Literature. Her debut collection Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays is forthcoming from Wandering Aengus Press. Chrys lives, works, walks, and writes in Portland.
TV

Breaking Bad Episode 506 “Buyout”

Chrys Buckley

Only two more to go this season. Time flies.

Speaking of time, the last week was real light on posts–I had an out of town guest for several days–but will now resume the regular schedule. Lots of catching up to do with comments and with adding links.

In other news, I’m taking on writing spec scripts for existing TV series and of course I’m doing Breaking Bad so my head is all full of episode ideas (as of now, planning to do one that would fit between episodes 3 and 4 of this season) and thoughts on the most recent ep.

What a powerful teaser. Wow, that was so well done. It set up the perfect emotional impact by being very understated. They start with the bike, dismantling it with such surgical precision, putting it, piece by piece, into the barrel. There’s something slow and sad and beautiful about that sequence, and the music that went with it. And the lack of dialogue. It doesn’t let up, the bike seems to have endless parts to be disassembled. Jesse’s absence is so present. Then Todd uncovers just the kid’s hand in the dirt and you see they’ve readied another barrel. It’s enough to let the viewers know exactly what’s going to happen to the kid’s body, even though it’s never shown, which is just so, so powerful. Difficult to watch, but that speaks to its power.

And then the first line of the episode is Todd to Jesse, “You guys didn’t tell me the stuff (hydrofluoric acid) smells like cat piss.” You can read everything on Jesse’s face. Todd can’t. “Shit happens, huh?” And then Jesse hauls off and punches him in the face. I don’t know about anyone else, but I found that really satisfying as a viewer.

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Samples, Writing

A Star is Born: A Complete Short Story

Chrys Buckley
A Star is Born
A Star is Born

Sryall had once been a beautiful land, adorned with blooming trees offering many leaves. Serene waters were plenty. The sky above was a tranquil blue by day and a quiet navy blanket by night. Birds sang and animals frolicked in the grass. Humans lived, loved and laughed, generally enjoying the beauties and pleasures that life offered. The Sun rose high, not each day, but frequently, giving many great joy. The moon and stars gave comfort at night. Death was a sad event, for which were shed many tears, but it was often at the time of birth, to carry on the Eternal Cycle.

Life was simple then. People were free to express themselves how they wished. It was a period of great creativity. Much art, music, dance and writing were accomplished throughout the land. Imagination was encouraged. Dreams were seen as the gateway to unlocking the mysteries of the soul, something they truly believed to exist.

Continue Reading –>

~~~

Decided to do something a little different here.

I can’t post too much current material (a lot of times, writing posted on a blog is considered “previously published,” which disqualifies it for lots of places I might want to submit my writing pieces to) that I’m sending out (sporadically) and trying to get published. But I want to keep giving a writing sample every Friday.

So, what I’m doing is pulling up some of my early work and posting it here. Even though it’s mostly terrible and makes me cringe (like in a whole body shuddering, totally embarrassed cringe sort of way) to read it. I wrote a LOT while in high school, sometimes without deadlines or prompts. They were prolific years and there’s lots to mine. I feel like (hope?) my writing is really different now. A lot of the old stuff is sorta sci-fi-ish and not at all the kind of stuff I write now, but in the interest of posting something on a consistent basis, I’m going to embarrass myself publicly.

I wrote this one during my senior year of high school,  and it won first place in my school’s short story contest that year. Fun fact: Winning the short story contest, as well as an essay contest, was how I paid for some prom-related expenses.

Check out other (incl. some more current) Samples, as well as Published and Older Works for more writing samples.

~Chrys

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 505 “Dead Freight”

Chrys Buckley

And why I’m worried about Jesse. But that will come later.

I don’t know about anyone else, but this episode made me really, really, really want a Breaking Bad movie. More than I ever have before. It’s been said so many times how cinematic this show is, but this week’s episode just took that to a new level. That opening scene with the boy riding his dirt bike through the desert, all those shots of the train and from the train–it all felt like a movie to me and made me want to write some sort of open letter to Vince Gilligan asking him to please seriously consider making a movie. It was just a gorgeous episode, breathtakingly so. And what an amazing use of color. If last week’s episode was blue, this week’s was orange and red.

Another comment about the episode overall: It was a little hard to calm down afterwards. It was such an adrenaline rush followed by such a chilling ending that it left me all riled up. I’m also having a much harder time than ever resisting spoilers. Usually I don’t even watch the previews because I don’t want to know anything and they’re often misleading, but these last two days, I’ve been seeking them out.

So, where to even start?

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Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Albino – Seeing and Not Seeing 2

Chrys Buckley

When I was maybe five years old, my mom was convinced I couldn’t smile right. I studied her mouth as intently as I could, then stretched my own into the same shape. But one lip or the other was always too high up, too pulled down, turned too far in or out. I tried to work these corrections into my face muscles but I could never see my mom’s smile in enough detail to craft my own to look like everyone else’s.

Crystal Structures of Tyrosinase

I have albinism, a recessive genetic condition that results in skin, hair and eyes that are paler than pale, and legal blindness. An enzyme called tyrosinase that converts the amino acid tyrosine into melanin pigment is inactive in albinism and this leads to the whiteness and blindness. The visual impairment of albinism, though steady and consistent, is murky territory—I’m too blind to drive or read any of the letters on a standard eye chart except that top “E” but not so blind that the world isn’t intensely, sensually, visual. In the blind community, I am what they call a “high partial.”

Around the same time as smile training, my blindness was a dull but ever-present emotional ache. On the playground, kids ran up to me and called out “whitey” and “snowball” and “ghost,” waved their hands in the air and asked me how many fingers they were holding up, mimicked my ambling eyes. As I got older, the teasing involved spitballs, a kid who jumped out in front of me in the hallways and yelled, “Watch out, brick wall!” and the boys in eighth grade who stole books out of my locker and set them on fire.

Sometimes, in my room, away from the teasing by my peers but alone with the scenes replaying in my head, the ache would erupt into a scalding, white-hot rage. It was so unfair that out of all the people I knew in my family, in school and around town, I was the one who ended up albino. No one saw anything beyond my albinism. I felt like a ghost.

~~~

Another sample from my essay “Seeing and Not Seeing.” Here’s the previous excerpt from the same essay. I have to say, this piece above is the very beginning. The essay doesn’t end in this same place or mindset.

~Chrys

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Writing

A Blog Award, Facts, Questions and Blogs to Follow

Chrys Buckley

I just got nominated for my first blog award :)

Thank you Andrew Toynbee! I’m psyched to play along.

What is the Liebster Award?

“The Liebster Blog Award is given to up and coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. The Meaning: Liebster is German and means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing and welcome.”

The rules that come with the Award:

1.      If you are tagged/nominated, you have to post 11 facts about yourself.

2.      Then you should answer the 11 questions the tagger has set for you & generate 11 new questions for the people you subsequently tag.

3.      Tag 11 more Bloggers.

4.      Tell the people you tagged that you did.

5.      No tagging back.

6.      The person you tag must have less than 200 followers.

Firstly, 11 facts about myself

1.   I went for years without TV. This may be surprising since I write so much about it now, but TV was basically absent from my early 20s. The first show that I got hooked on coming out of that phase was House. I didn’t know TV could be so smart, or have such a sarcastic, hilarious, disabled genius as a main character. It opened up my TV-watching world. I still remember the first episode I saw, and what monologue of House’s got me hooked (for House fans, the episode was “Lines in the Sand” (304) and it was House’s “circle queen” speech).

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 504 “Fifty-One”

Chrys Buckley

This was one of my favorite episodes this season. It was one of those slower episodes where the emotional drama takes center stage and things bubble to the surface. Really excellent writing, with lots of little details to dig into.

I don’t know if anyone else felt this, but I had a sense of the end being near. Of course there’s that ticking watch at the end, but more than that, I got this feeling when Skyler was looking at the pool. When all you see is the bright blue water taking up the whole screen, and that eerie music plays, it just felt ominous. It felt like, if I didn’t already know this was the last season, it would’ve been clear in that moment. I just really felt that this story and normal life for these people can’t last much longer.

This was a very blue episode, with the pool, Skyler’s dress and the watch at the end. From the beginning, blue was Skyler’s color (look at just about anything she wears in Season 1) and in this episode, we got to see a lot more dimensions of Skyler, and of the relationship between her and Walt.

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TV, Writing

Writing Lessons from Breaking Bad: An Overview

Chrys Buckley

As I mentioned in my first post, Foraging Into the Blogosphere, I’m partially justifying my obsession with the TV show Breaking Bad because it offers so much insight on good writing, insight that I think writers of all different types of stories–fiction, non-fiction, screen, prose–can apply towards their work. Most of my posts have been about either Breaking Bad or Writing, and I’m hoping these posts can merge the two topics, and will be applicable whether or not you watch or like the show.

Not long after getting into Breaking Bad, I was typing up some of my old writing from longhand into Word. It was memoir material I had written while still way too close to the subject matter, and had never edited, just raw “shitty first draft” material. And it was terrible! I couldn’t believe how repetitive, self-indulgent, and just plain MESSY it was. It was confusing even to me, and I had written it and lived it. What was I trying to get at? I couldn’t tell. And I was not in control of the writing as an author should be.

My first thought was along of the lines of, “Writing quality wise, this is equivalent to Private Practice, and I want to strive for Breaking Bad.” Now, there are two things I want to clarify here. One is that I don’t really think I’ll reach BrBa level, but it’s nice to have a goal like that, one that will push you beyond your usual limits, your current perception of your abilities. And it may not be BrBa for every writer, but I think it’s important to find that thing, whether it is a book, a poem, a TV show, a movie, a song, something that inspires you with its genius and is so brilliantly written that it provides a new, high standard to strive for.

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Samples, Writing

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Chrys Buckley

LeadUsimagesI poked my brother sitting beside me. “Pssst, we only have fifteen more minutes,” I whispered. He pretended not to notice but I could see the smile on his face and knew he was glad that Junior Sunday School was almost over. I played with my pigtails, pretending to scratch my ear. Then I poked Davey again. “I guess Anne’s the favorite today,” I whispered. He still wouldn’t look at me but he stuck out his lower lip.

“Elizabeth, that’s enough! Stop disrupting your brother and start paying attention right this very minute!” Mrs. Ross’ voice was high and shrill, and she had a snarl on her face. I gave her a nasty look back. “And quit it with the pouting or you’re in big trouble, missy.”

She shifted Anne from one knee to the other and went back to reading us her Bible story. I growled under my breath. Anne lived next door to us. We walked to our first grade class together every day and she yelled at me because I played with flowers in the fields and chased the neighbor’s dog. “Lizzy, we’re going to be late,” she’d say like the whole world was going to end if we were late by even one little second.

I always said, “Then go ahead alone and be a goody-two-shoes,” but she never did. She stayed and waited while I climbed trees and picked dandelions and rubbed them on her arm and made up songs about the clouds. We were never late ever, I always looked at my Little Mermaid watch and made sure we had enough time to make it just before the bell. I liked to give Anne a scare.

~~~

This is an excerpt of a fiction story called “Lead Us Not Into Temptation” about kids who test the scary stories their Sunday School teacher tells them. I’m never sure exactly hwo to classify this one. The main characters are really young, so it could be thought of as a children’s story but I never really think of it that way.

~Chrys

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TV

Breaking Bad Episode 503 “Hazard Pay”

Chrys Buckley

I think this episode could unofficially be titled, “Walt’s Ego is Bigger Than Jupiter.”

On Breaking Bad, there is always so much attention paid to visuals, colors and sound, and all of this seemed especially true in this episode, starting with the sound of the metal detector wand thingy in the first shot of the teaser.

The teaser for this episode was the most straightforward we’ve seen this season. It was pretty great to see Mike dressed as a paralegal. And we meet another one of the guys on Mike’s list, Dennis, who was mentioned in last week’s episode during the conversation between Mike and Lydia–he’s the manager of the laundry. That lawyer, Dan, seems pretty nervous, what with the way he taps his fingers and the way he’s looking down and not making eye contact when he says he has his paralegal with him.

All of Dennis’ money was taken by the feds, just like the money Mike had set aside for his granddaughter Kaylee.  Like I mentioned last week, a lot of this happened because of the magnet vs. laptop heist that Walt, Jesse and Mike pulled off in 501 that broke the frame, revealing the account info that gave the DEA the money trail. But that’s in the past, no way to get that money back, so Mike wants to move forward, and as for his guys, he’s promising to “make ’em whole.” Love that phrase!

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TV

Breaking Bad: How Walter White Poisoned Brock and What Happened to the Ricin Cigarette

Chrys Buckley

UPDATE AUGUST 26: After last night’s episode, there are a lot of questions about Jesse’s desert revelation and how it all fits together, so I updated this post to include that toward the end, to keep it chronological. You can skip to that part here.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people come across my blog from googling something like, “How did Walter White poison Brock?” or “What happened to the ricin cigarette?” or “what happened berries Walter Brock” or something similar. On the Breaking Bad message boards, questions about these topics still rage. While watching the latest episode on Sunday night, some friends were asking the the same questions. This storyline definitely has to be one of the most complex–maybe even convoluted–plotlines on the show. Some of it is more left to assumption than explicitly shown. So I thought I’d try to elucidate with my understanding of what happened, start to finish.

In episode 407 “Problem Dog,” Walt makes some ricin in the superlab. He gives it to Jesse, who puts it in a “lucky cigarette” that he keeps upside down in his cigarette pack. The ricin cigarette is born.

Walt, his revolver and lily of the valley

In episode 412 “End Times,” Walt is despondent and doesn’t know what to do. Gus has just threatened his wife, son, infant daughter and brother-in-law. Walt knows that Gus could be close to turning Jesse against him and that Jesse’s flagging loyalty is the only thing keeping Gus from killing him. Since Skyler gave a big chunk of Walt’s drug money to the IRS for the Ted thing, Walt doesn’t have the money to get himself and his family out of town through Saul’s disappeaerer “vacuum guy.” He sits out back behind his house and spins a revolver. The first two times, it points at him. The third time though, it points to a potted plant, which (we will later come to see) is a lily of the valley plant. Here is where Walter White gets his idea.

Continue reading “Breaking Bad: How Walter White Poisoned Brock and What Happened to the Ricin Cigarette” →