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October 27, 2011
Creative Writing
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An application for a class: In a paragraph, provide memorable insight into your life that is not addressed in a resume.

My approach to life can be described by my approach to bridge jumping. Take the Dorset Avenue Bridge, for example, from which I jumped in the summer of 2007. There were 20 minutes left in the Longport Beach Patrol scavenger hunt, and the last item on our list was: Jump off a bridge. Photo mid-air required. 12 points. Our group knew everyone else would drive to the mini-golf course in Margate and take a picture on the tiny bridge over a pond on the eighth hole.

There were no extra points for jumping off Dorset, which arches over a winding lagoon in Ventnor Heights, a neighborhood just outside of Atlantic City, N.J. But it didn’t matter. We headed to Dorset. My blood pulsed with pride and competiveness and a boldness that tends to emerge when I want to be perceived as brave. I knew then that I would jump. I hopped up onto the rail, slipped my shirt up over my head and handed my shorts to a friend.

I wanted to let go, without pausing, and disappear into the blackness below. But the water looked shallow from my perch. I envisioned a messy death.

So I ran down the bridge, jumped onto a stranger’s dock and quickly lowered myself into the water to test the depths of where I would land. Satisfied with the water level, I climbed back up the dock and up the side of the bridge to the top.

Only then did I laugh and let myself plummet into that dark water.

Lost in a book

February 16, 2011
Creative Writing
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Write a factual essay on some aspect of your relationship to reading, writing or storytelling.

The swim meet came down to the last relay. It was a competitive meet in the way that meets of summer swim clubs typically are. The competitions, always held in the evening and outdoors, were basked in tradition and twilight. The rivalry was friendly — all were mindful of the unspoken promise that families would convene for pizza after the last race. Folks looked forward to this Wednesday night excitement.

The 15 to 18-year-old boys relay stood before the starting blocks. The friendly atmosphere took a temporary sense of seriousness as the boys shook their muscles and fixed their goggles multiple times. Members of both teams gathered at the opposite end of the pool, pushing and shoving each other for a prime spot in front of the two center lanes. Already, they started to cheer.

If you had turned way from the screaming throngs of kids, you would have found me, an 8-year-old girl sitting off to the side alone. I sat cross-legged, my swimming cap still on, goggles pulled off my face just enough to see and a book open in my lap. I didn’t hear the crowd cheer. I didn’t know I was alone. I didn’t watch the last relay.

I read.

I have since forgotten who won that race, but I do remember the conversation in the car ride home that night. My father initiated it. He could not comprehend my apathy toward the excitement of the night. Years before, he had been part of Wednesday night relays that pumped themselves up for small town glory.

I could not understand his disappointment.

“It was the last relay of the meet,” my father said. “Your whole team was up cheering for the relay.”

I shrugged.

“It was the good part of the book,” I said.

For me, reading trumped life every time. Once, my grandmother took me to play with her friend’s granddaughter. I ignored the girl and read one of her books instead. When the date was finished and the grandmothers asked us how the day had gone the girl frowned and disappeared upstairs. I asked if I could take the book home.

Sometimes I struggled to separate the real world from the worlds in my books. The grove of trees with the rock island beside my house became my Terebithia, named after the imaginary land in Katherine Patterson’s award-winning book. After reading E.L. Konigsburg book Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, a book about two girls who decide to become witches, I convinced my group of friends that if we tried hard enough we could will ourselves to learn magic.

I don’t remember when I lost the ability to lose myself in a book.

I imagine that one day I walked out to that grove of trees with the rock island and saw nothing but a pile of mud-stained rocks and a patch of puny looking stumps. In reality, the process was probably more gradual. Life slowly started to center around other things: hanging out with friends, getting into college, playing varsity sports, dating boys and loathing and loving my family. In high school, I stopped reading at swim meets and started winning races. I started to enjoy people more than characters. I found that the real world could be just as complicated or calm or cruel as a world created with words.

And now, as I’ve chosen this journalism path and the real world looms ahead of me, I’ve found that I’ve continued to learn about other worlds differently. I don’t read books. I read blogs. My attention span is short. I crave brief, succinct bits of information that I can digest quickly before moving on to the next thing that stimulates my mind. I read magazines clips, short text and newspaper articles.

Life doesn’t amble at the slow and convenient pace of a child, and the exciting world of oblivion found in books is constantly shoved aside for the daily grind of passing classes, producing news content and paying bills, for big-city plans and internship hunting and for fostering relationships with people whom I fear I’ll never see after the dissolution of this crazy world known as college.

There are still subtle reminders of the imaginative dreamer I used to be: a blog post, a daydream or a brief fit of pleasure induced by words that capture my attention for more than a matter of minutes. But I find reality’s sharp tug hard to resist. The real world calls and I’ve learned to listen.

Ode to the Acme Thunderer

January 27, 2011
Creative Writing
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Bring to class a personal artifact that has meaning to you, involves a story, says something about you, etc. It can be a photo, an object, a small bit of writing, a piece of candy — anything that has significance to or about you.

2 short quips:

Look at me so I can tell you that you have drifted too far to the left. Or a rip tide is forming dangerously close to your right shoulder. I will not use my words but my hands, pointing to where I want you to move, gesturing to you abruptly to indicate I’m getting annoyed and I won’t tell you again.

One blast, long and rising:

Now I’m getting pissed. Most likely I am pointing at you, my blatant gesture calling you out in front of all beach-goers. Listen, on my beach, I’m the boss.

Three short blasts:

Don’t think. Move. Drop your clothes. Grab a can. Get out of my way. The quickest way through the waves is under them. Feel the thunder above. Scratch and claw the sandy bottom, pulling forward. When the thunder passes, explode again toward the surface, toward a victim.

Whistle grease:

…doesn’t exist. When a senior lifeguard tells you to ask around for this elusive item, don’t. You’ll be the laughing stock of the beach patrol for the day. It’s the same thing with “shore line.” They’ll send you down the beach to check each stand till finally, exhausted, you’ll notice the line of sandy shore and murky ocean behind you and realize you found it.

A memory, sparked by leaving, which sparked a story

August 18, 2010
Creative Writing
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“I don’t think we can go back to the sandbox anymore,” she said, not looking at me. Instead, she looked at the ocean. It stretched out in front of us past the jetty for miles. I waited for her to explain herself. She did, as always.

“You know that it’ll never be the same,” she said. She looked down at her fingers, nonchalantly examining her fingernails as if what she was saying wasn’t a big deal to her. It was summertime; we were headed to college soon.

“What?” I asked. She looked at me now and smiled. But nothing about her smiled except for her lips. For a second her eyes glistened, but the next moment they were normal. Her voice was steady when she answered.

“Everything,” she said. We were silent, both of us left to our own thoughts. But as she sat there thinking about endings, I thought about beginnings, smiling to myself and thinking about the first time we sat here together discussing the sandbox.

We met at the jetty as soon as school let out. I brought a quart of Wawa Ice Tea. She had picked up some sushi-to-go at Miyako up in Margate. We sat, perched on the rocks, sharing swigs from the carton and stuffing our mouths with Spicy Tuna rolls.

“Remember when we were kids?” she had randomly said, “And like, you could play for hours in the sandbox. And problems didn’t exist there, unless you decided to create them. It was like the rest of the world had to stay outside until you were done creating whatever world you were creating in the sandbox. Don’t you wish you could just go back to that sometimes?” I looked at her, knowing exactly what she was talking about but not able to resist, making a smart-ass remark.

“We live by the fucking beach,” I said, “I never had a sandbox.” She looked at me and laughed and laughed. I didn’t understand what was so funny. When she finally caught her breath she spoke.

“Wanna know something?” she said, “Neither did I. Which is weird. They always made so much sense to me.”

The jetty became ours. Or so we thought. We claimed it for ourselves that day. In a moment of high school glee we decided that it would always be our place, a place to find solace in. We invented this kind of magic; we both didn’t know how to describe.

We’d tell our secrets to the ocean. I suppose everyone here does, in one way or another. But she and I kept meeting at the jetty, sitting as far out on the rocks as we could and shouting things at the water.

He can’t get it up.

I took some of the Student Council car wash money and went out to breakfast.

I’m afraid that college won’t be able to live up to high school.

I remember the first time I confessed to her that I’d sometimes swim out, far beyond the breakers, till the shoreline was far away and I’d escaped, then scream my thoughts to the ocean. I expected her to look at me weird. But she only shrugged.

“Everyone tells their secrets to the ocean,” she said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. She repeated herself. “Everyone does that.”

She and I embraced the tradition without ever acknowledging its meaning to both of us. Usually we had some inner sense of when each other was having a bad day or brimming with excitement about whatever event was going our way.

“Secrets?” was all one of us had to say. And soon we’d find each other before walking down 13th street to the sea.

~

Now, two years later, as I prepare to leave my summer world behind once again, I don’t think much about sandboxes or ocean secrets or spontaneous rendezvous or magic. I will work at the beach tomorrow for the last time and feel a slight twinge of sadness.

But as I cross the bridge from work to home, I will probably forget to take that one last glance in the rear view mirror at a world that once held so much.

What I’ve Learned (in the style of Esquire)

June 5, 2010
Creative Writing, Musings
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Please see: Esquire, What I’ve Learned

KATY BERGEN

STUDENT, DAUGHTER, EX-ATHLETE, WRITER, 20, LINWOOD, N.J.

> I thought at one point I enjoyed cockiness in men. But while that trait can make for some delicious banter, it burns out quickly. I’ve found nothing more appealing in a man than quiet confidence that speaks for itself.

> Honesty is the most important quality in a friend. The raw kind. It doesn’t ignore emotions or feelings, but you know it will never mislead you.

> Talent doesn’t guarantee anything. My father is terribly talented. Sometimes I think if he wasn’t a father, he’d be out there changing the world. Instead, he’s chosen to change mine.

> It’s funny. When I think of happiness, I think of little snippets of time — fleeting moments when the sun is in the right place on the Longport jetty or maybe my whole family laughs simultaneously as we eat at the Round Table. I guess that ecstatic kind of happiness is fleeting for me, but the brevity of its nature makes it all the more desirable.

> I rarely lie outright, I’ve found that not much good comes from that. But I often lie by omission. There is a lot I keep to myself.

> My greatest fear is to be very old and dissatisfied.

> In myself, I deplore self-pity.

> In others, I deplore self-pity.

> Beach Patrol taught me to get along with different kinds of people. When you are stuck in a wooden stand with someone for 8 hours, you quickly learn what works for the stone-faced lieutenant doesn’t work for the chill recent college graduate.

> As we watched little kids dominate the surf one summer day, a stand partner told me that the reason I “suck” at surfing was because I grew up and forgot how to be fearless. Sometimes, I wonder what any one of us could do if we could get back to that place where we were small and fearless.

> I’m discovering there is a rather large gap between my actual self and who I fantasize myself as. Fantasy Katy likes sky diving, impulsive, carefree behavior and being the center of attention. Reality Katy’s feet are way on the ground and she’s okay with that.

> I used to think being sarcastic made me powerful. Then I stumbled upon this quote in one of my favorite books, A Separate Peace.

“Sarcasm… the protest of those who are weak.” – John Knowles

> It made me think.

> I’ve learned nothing is black and white. There’s a scene in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn where Francie, the main character, falls for a soldier on leave. Though they barely know each other, on their parting night, he asks her to sleep with him. She declines but later asks her mother if she did the right thing.

“There are two truths,” her mother said. “As a mother I say it would have been a terrible thing for a girl to sleep with a stranger. But as a woman … I will tell you the truth as a woman. It would have been a very beautiful thing. Because there is only once that you love that way.”

> I love that line, mostly because it applies to anything. The world is grey.


A Letter to Men

April 28, 2010
Creative Writing, Humor
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I love Esquire. And by love, I mean I’m obsessed. It’s witty. It’s fresh. It’s filled with good writing. Esquire has all the delicious things I want to absorb from a magazine — without the shallowness of magazines typically geared toward females.

I’m particularly in love with this month’s issue. Ironically, it’s about women. I’m a woman. It makes sense.

I learned a lot this issue: American women want men to drink Scotch. No one cares about Michelle Obama’s hair. And, in the results of a very “unscientific” poll, 89% of women would not stay married to Tiger.

Christina Hendricks is on the cover this month. She’s hot. My boyfriend thinks so too. We sat staring at her for a while together. It got weird.

Christina wrote a Letter to Men. You know, the whole goddam species. (It’s about time.) In addition to an anti-male-capri’s stance and a love for the word “panties,” Christina thinks men should drink Scotch too…

“We want you to order Scotch. It’s the most impressive drink order. It’s classic. It’s sexy. Such a rich color. The glass, the smell. It’s not watered down with fruit juice. It’s Scotch. And you ordered it.”

The whole thing was funny. I tried to write a letter of my own. Don’t think I quite attainted the definitive and worldly wisdom of the curvaceous Mad Men star, but I gave it a go…

Dear Men,

We love your sense of humor. Simply put, if you don’t make us laugh, you have no chance.

Do not ask us if we’re PMS-ing. The answer will always be no. We don’t PMS. We just get mad. Monthly.

We remember forever where we were when you first kissed us, the circumstances in which we met, the first time you truly disappointed us. We thrive on details and struggle to understand why you can’t do the same. At times we generously give you opportunities to prove you pay attention more than you do. (See below.)

Remember what we like, what we say, what we do. You will be quizzed.

We also remember when you were in eighth grade, and you were over your girlfriend, and you wanted to hook up with a Kirsten-Dunst-look-alike you spent the summer with at Jew camp. You called your current girlfriend (us) and said, “Hey, I’m not really sure if we’re together or not but is it okay if I get with [insert camp girl here]?” Yeah, that wasn’t a good idea.

(*This of course is a hypothetical situation and not in any way, shape or form related to a personal experience.)

We hated Kirsten Dunst forever after that, even if it was eighth grade.

We want you to be specific. Be prepared to back up compliments. We don’t want to know that we’re pretty. Tulips are pretty. And ponies. We want to know why we’re pretty. Specifics mean something— we chew on them all day long. What do you like about my eyes—the color? The shape? My eyelids?

Stand up for yourself. We mess with your head to see if you can take it. We’re secretly disappointed when you let us get our way without a little challenge.

No, tickling. Men make the mistake of thinking that because our faces are forced into smiles and bursts of laughter we are enjoying ourselves. It’s not funny. It’s not cute. It reminds us of that creepy aunt or uncle at a family reunion who still thinks tickling is a way to say hello. NO.

Also, no Abercrombie and Fitch. It died with LFO. In middle school.

No man should not like beer. Learn to love it. Honestly, women don’t really care if you like it. They don’t really care if you know a lot about it. But never ever EVER say out loud: “I don’t like beer.” Such a travesty leads to instant emasculation. And it hurts the ears.

You don’t know this, but every time you pay, we notice. We know it seems like after awhile you are always paying for dinner or coffee or candy cravings or that cute puppy in the window or whatever. And even though most of the time you think are just receiving a simple thank you, you don’t realize that you are racking up a jackpot of points inside our heads. The thing is, paying makes us feel worth something.

Don’t think for a second that when we giggle and say “oh, please,” or give you the ever classic eye roll when you are complimenting us that we have any desire for you to stop. Hint, keep going.

About our appearance. It makes no sense at all, we know. But when women stop dressing up for you, it’s actually the ultimate compliment. We want you to see us at our best… and our worse, an honor formerly reserved for our mothers and bathroom mirrors.

Marriage (No thanks) Relationships simply need communication. As in talking. Not texting. Or Blackberry Messaging. Face to face. Eye to eye. Duke it out if you have to. Get into it. But if men still just need to get a clue — I hear letters work really well…

Endless Summer

September 3, 2009
Creative Writing
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longport

Creative Writing Assignment: Write an anecdote of someone you know that shows their true character.

As we sit side by side on the hard wooden lifeguard stand, I can’t help but thank God that I wasn’t sent to 26th street with the sadistic Simon, who might make me do boat drills till my palms bleed or to 30th street with Joe who would talk about crew, and then his girlfriend, then crew again. All day.

So when my beach patrol captain sends me to the 35th street beach I am relieved to find out that my stand partner for the summer is Will. Will embodies any visions I have of the stereotypical ‘surfer dude.’ When he talks his words come out slow and deliberate, as if he is savoring the gift of speech in the first place. He worships tides, smells of salt and sweat, and rocks a wide-brimmed straw hat that, together with his sunglasses, almost hides his face.

Everyday he wears a mask of white sunscreen. When a bratty little girl giggles walk by our stand ands points at him he looks at her and smiles to her father next to her. “I mean I look like a freak show everyday for a reason,” he says, “I want to be around to enjoy this for as long as I can.” Then he tells the little girl to wear her sunscreen.

Sometimes we fall into silence and lose ourselves among our own thoughts or in the adrenaline rush that springs from watching a water full of bathers. But any time we fall into silence for too long, I can expect Will to breath a happy sigh, gesture to the ocean, and say, “This is the life KB, this is the best job in the world.” I usually follow his finger and look around. The ocean before us is a murky green that fades into sparkling blue the farther my eyes travel to the horizon. It’s enticing. Makes you not want to leave.

“How long are you here for?” a shoobie asks Will one day, anxiously watching his child splash in knee-deep water. “Hopefully forever,” says Will with a laugh, purposely misunderstanding the question. He just might be. He looks 24. He’s 30.

One night my summer boyfriend and I fight about staying together come fall. I tell Will about it the next day. He understands.

We are summer people, he and I. The sun and the sand mold us into carefree, impulsive individuals that float through life as aimlessly as the tides. But winter snaps me out of the long lazy daydream that is summer. Suddenly I’m forced to think things through, take on responsibilities, and face a formidable enemy-the future. I don’t think winter snaps Will out of the endless summer he lives in. I realize this as our conversation digresses into relationships.

“I like women. They like me too. Then they realize what I have to offer and whup—they are out the door. Still, KB,” he says, “I think somewhere there is a girl for me.” He laughs. I laugh too. I understand what he is referring to. At the end of September, when the beaches close, schoolchildren hole up in classrooms, and most normal adults go to work, Will will make a plan. Each winter is different. He likes the open-endedness of his winters, I imagine. Being thirty and unemployed gives you some options. One year he buys a camera and makes a surfing video. Another year he spends the winter in Maine and makes friends with some lobstermen. He tells me how this past winter he started a dog-walking business.

It was successful, the dog business. But Will doesn’t want to talk about the dogs. There is a story bursting to come out in everything he does. “I’ve got to tell you about the cougar!?” he says, excited but as if the story is just one of many crazy chapters in his life, “Ohhhhhh KB, the cougar!”

He started by walking her poodle. But when he’d come to pick the dog up, she’d always be around. Lurking, he says. It creeped him out. She was older, attractive even. But desperate. I imagine this is a quality Will despises. One day he is combing the dog out in the kitchen and The Cougar walks in the kitchen with nothing but a towel on. Says she lonely. Says she wants a companion. Says she’s coming into a inheritance soon. As soon as she settles her deceased mother’s estate with her sister, she’ll come into seven million. Says she want him in her life.

“Seven million?” I say, impressed, “You said no?” He scoffs at me. “And give up the beach?” he said, “KB come on. I’m going to be here till I die.” He gestures again to the sea before us. “This is the life, KB. This is the best job in the world.”

*names changed

*photo:  http://www.kpfwatercolors.com/longport.jpg

True Colors

April 28, 2009
Creative Writing, Musings
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To a Former Friend,

As you stood there, ignorant of the frustration and pain you created with your feigned apathy, I watched your true color seep through your skin. You could not have intended to create the situation that allowed me to see you for what you really are. But the veil was lifted; the image imprinted in my mind.

I’m trying to recall this color. But the shades of your soul have slipped my mind, and my own disappointment, sorrow and anger remain in their place. Still, I’ll try. I think, what is the color of weakness? Of fear? Of immaturity?

If pride was a pigment, would you have been yellow? Outstanding, attractive and full? Probably not. Perhaps pride would be black. All-consuming. Unyielding. Surely, you don’t deserve to be associated with blue, the royal representation of calm or melancholy or sympathy. Well, obviously— you are incapable of expressing these emotions.

Red is rage. You have expressed that. Maybe that’s a better fit. But red is also passion. Energy. Courage. Not a color that hides. Red could look someone in the eye.

Is Green a color that inflicts pain? I think the likeness of the Earth, of Life, of Nature could not reflect this kind of cruelty.

What’s the color for someone content with the easy? Is fun-loving Orange repulsed by what is difficult? Doubtful.

As you stood there, ignorant of the frustration and the pain you created with your feigned apathy, I watched your true color seep through your skin. I remember this color now.  If I pass you in the hallway or the street I’ll see it, no longer hidden.

Greyness. Bitter and empty. The color of the ghost of a friendship that once was.

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