"Night"

Okay. So I'm not getting any help. Oh, well. Thanks anyway. I've got a few ideas that I'd like to try, but first I need to obviously start writing more. I'm thinking about taking a short intro that I ave and trying to work it as a serial. My friend Bartley has been doing that on his blog, and I'm inspired. Good on you, my friend. But in the meantime, here's another piece I dug up from ages past. I wrote this (or its first stages) in my 12th grade creative writing class. It was an imitation of style exercise, but I forget what the original piece was. If it sounds familiar to any of you, please let me know.

"Night"

I pause to rest, leaning against a graying hedge, crudely forged from loose stone and clay. From this familiar crest, I have frequently gazed across the silent valley below, and into the night. But never in my previous journeying across this knoll has nature’s simplicity struck such a chord with my soul as it does now; in wonderment, in awe, I fall entranced by its somber spirituality. I feel the wind on my neck; my soul shivers, stirring my passions. The perception of a lifeless, gray world begins to unfold itself before my eyes, a realm where darkness and light exchange perspectives in their elements, harmonizing, becoming one.

And in the midst of this simple sanctuary I see a grove; the sturdy oak, durable as time and more rugged than man, gathers in the cold and embraces the gentle silence. A dull moon glistens through the treetops and administers additional solemnity upon the melancholic land. In the distance, mountains without shape silhouette the sky, romanticized by the mystic moonlight. From this corner of the darkness, the light magnificently reigns over the earth. Reflecting its radiance from the serenity of the still, black water before me, the moon purifies this realm of darkness, cleansing it from evil, mystifying the grayness.

Nature beckons, yearning to share its light, its darkness. The winds, breathing tranquility across my face, kissing my eyelashes, usher a gray patchwork across the heavens, sheltering the fragile light of the moon. Unveiling her lady briefly and then tucking her away again, the night integrates reality and innocence wholly and flawlessly as to encompass all shades of emotion: light and dark, good and evil, love and hate; all blend within the shadows of my mind.

And this is how I see the night. I have experienced every aspect of its enchanted playground and felt its deepest secrets. I always see it from the darkest shadow, a world of mystery, frozen until the morning comes, like a dense fog at midnight, a cold blanket covering the earth. And suddenly, the howl of a wolf – a sustaining note – musical and harmonized with the orchestral chords of the night owl, of singing crickets, and the rhythm of the rustling foliage breaks through the silence – this first note of the darkness lingers in my mind. It casts an everlasting calmness that shines mysteriously through the despair of my soul, lustrous and enchanting, like the moon dissipating night’s disconsolate shadows.


One year I used this in my creative writing class (that I teach) as an example of over-the-top description. A week later one of the other English teachers in the building brought in an "amazingly brilliant" piece of 'student work.' The teacher noticed that this student was in my class ad wondered if she had written anything else like it. Moral of the story: don;t plagiarize your teacher's work, even if he doesn't consider it all that or even half a bag of chips. How's that for awesome?

P.S. I'm still looking for reviews--good examples for students. See the post dated March 8 for details.