Category: Writing

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

cabin-snowEarly that winter, I went on my first overnight Girl Scout camping trip. My mom was working more at the newspaper, so for once, she wasn’t one of the troop leaders. We arrived at a big cabin called Hammond House. The walls were the color of wood and little cots lined the walls. The cabin was a long rectangle. One of the girls had recently learned the “Light as a Feather” game and we played it incessantly. One girl would lie in the middle and we would all surround her, purring two fingers from each hand under her. The person at the head gave a fake eulogy and then we all intoned, “Dead as a doornail, stiff as a board, light as a feather” over and over slowly lifting the scout in the middle up off the floor and up, up, over our heads. There were a lot of us, girls and girls and girls lifting, and it felt magic. We even did it on our troop leaders. I only got to be in the middle once.

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Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Caught in the Act – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 5

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

hall1“What on Earth were you doing?” Mrs. Domaracki asked when she caught me slithering out under a bathroom stall door. She ushered me out into the hallway.

“I was just, well the lock was stuck, so I—“

“I saw you climbing over the stalls,” she said.

“Fifth graders were doing it too!” I blurted.

She looked around swirling her head dramatically. “I don’t see any fifth graders.”

“Not now. They were here earlier. They told me to.”

She put one hand on her hip. “Who? What are their names?”

“I don’t know, fifth graders.”

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Samples, Writing

Bathroom Jungle Gym – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 4

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

tlww4indexI started asking to go to the bathroom way too often in Mrs. Domaracki’s class, especially when she was about to check homework and I hadn’t done it. It wasn’t a good plan—she always checked mine when I got back—but it delayed things a bit. I got a good sense of when she was as about to check, raised my had and then wandered slowly to the girls bathroom with its pale green walls and three stalls with low walls. I sat on the toilet and read a chapter in a book or thought up what I wanted to write in my next “book “ about secret passages and baby-sitters. Or I did math problems or recited in my mind facts about the Solar System until I couldn’t anymore because it had been more than five minutes and I had to scurry back to class.

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Samples, Writing

Mystery Worlds – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 3

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

the_secret_passage_by_nelleke-d5eoh7j_largeAt every indiscretion—a not perfect grade on a test, talking in class when I wasn’t supposed to, not coming in from the playground in a timely manner after recess, not doing my homework completely or on time (a bad habit I’d quickly slid back into), reading during lunch instead of socializing with kids who made fun of me—Mrs. Domaracki called my mom. Even if it was just one thing in a day, it always counted for two warnings.

Night after night, several nights a week, I was sent to bed at seven. I lay in bed, watching the sky still light out outside my windows. Sometimes I’d stare at the tree out my east-facing window by my bed. Or stand at the south-facing window across the room with no big trees outside it but way more sky. I listened to the fire siren as its moan ebbed and flowed. In my head, I talked to my Care Bears on the white shelves near the south-facing window, telling them why it, whatever it was that day, wasn’t my fault. Sometimes they believed me. Sometimes they sided with Mom and Mrs. Domaracki.

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Writing

Writing Question: Point-of-View Poll

Chrys Buckley

povimagesSo I’m working on this new story, and I don’t even know whether to call it fiction or non-fiction, it’s something experimental in between the two. Most of the story is just a conversation between two people, and yet it’s intense and full of drama. I actually want the feeling that the story evokes, at times, to be uncomfortable, too close for comfort, because if such a conversation were to take place in real life, it’d be awkward and uncomfortable (and still intense and full of drama). Oh also, in the story, it’ll be a little unclear if this conversation ever happened or was just in the character(s)’ imaginations. Yeah, I’m weird.

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Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Instrument Analysis – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 2

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

jazzy-cello-susanne-clarkAnd at first, I tried to be good. All my dittos from class were filled out and filed neatly in my folders. I swept the floor even though I couldn’t see the dirt, going around the kitchen systematically until a dark pile formed in the epicenter. I scrubbed the bathroom sink and only complained silently to my favorite doll Jenny and my Care Bears in my room. I went to the Centerstream after school program with my seven-year-old brother Randy and didn’t cause any trouble.

One day early in the school year, my music class had a test. It wasn’t a real test, our teacher assured us. She just wanted to see what we already knew coming in. Up front she had about twenty-five big glossy photos of instruments lined up side by side, all seated in that little tray that’s supposed to hold chalk and erasers, and leaning back against the blackboard. The teacher told us to get out a piece of paper and number it one to twenty-six. Next to each number, we were supposed to write the name of the instrument in the matching picture.

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Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

The “Truth” About Me – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 1

Chrys Buckley

tlww1imagesI was excited for fourth grade. I had been assigned the teacher I wanted, Mrs. Domaracki. I had new school clothes. I had all my school supplies in order—folders for math and reading and science and social studies and spelling. Some had covers with graded coloring going from almost white on top to a deep fuchsia pink on the bottom. Others were black with hot pink and yellow squiggles scattered about. They were all packed in my backpack, ready for the new school year. There was only one thing left to do.

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Music, Samples, Writing

Total Eclipse: A Memoir Chapter

Chrys Buckley

This piece directly follows Warding Off Eclipses with Sex and Music, which chronicles what I thought of as my alt rock music heyday at fourteen.

totaleclipseimagesI was seventeen. Everything had changed. Love Phones went off the air. A country station bought X107. Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys took over all the other radio stations. Even Randyand the neighbors weren’t into music anymore, like music has a switch for some that can be shut off. I wondered if my switch—that feeling I got from music that was like a direct line to the moon and my deeper self—was one of those circular switches for dining room lights, slowly being dimmed.

It was the night of the Battle of the Bands in my high school gym, the one school event that made me feel like I wasn’t an alien. I needed this evening so badly to help crank my light back up.

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Writing

My Essay “Seeing and Not Seeing” Won Third Place!

Chrys Buckley

wwlogo-200Holy crap!!!

This spring I submitted several pieces of writing to a handful of contests and had almost forgotten about it. But last night I got an email that my essay “Seeing and Not Seeing” won third place in the Willamette Writers Kay Snow Writing Contest for non-fiction!

You can read a description of the essay at the Personal Essay and Memoir page.

I’ve also posted a few excerpts, Reading Eyes and Faces, Albino and My Face, which are part of the longer essay which you can read anytime.

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Metaphysics, Samples, Writing

A Somewhat Double Life – Dark As Roses 3

Chrys Buckley

dar3imagesTo start this short story from the beginning, click here.

I take the box of this week’s letters and hold it close to me so that Kevin can’t hug me. With a quick wave I leave the office and head for my car across the parking lot. I throw the box in the trunk and close it tight. I get in the car and speed off to meet my two best friends for lunch. I like them because they’re never bursting with color, but dim like me.

When I arrive at the cafeteria on the ground level of our dorm building, Jade and Andrea are already waiting. “Hey, we were about to go inside without you,” Andrea says.

I catch up with them. “Sorry. Crowley let us out late again. Always seems to do that on Mondays. Then I had to run to the paper office to hand in my movie review.” They nod knowingly as we fill our plates with food.

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