Friday, October 5, 2012

Exploring Point of View: Early Morning

Photo Credit: Morguefile by Jade


This week's post is a task set by Beth, aka Word Nerd. The assignment: to write a short piece first from the first person and then from the third. I decided to write fiction and to attempt, for once, to write from a male point-of-view. See what you think.

First Person
Monday I woke up to the bomb blast of an alarm rupturing the dark.  The alarm sat on a nightstand across the bed—on the other end of an emptiness where covers lay almost undisturbed, a pillow still neat and fluffed, a vacancy. I dragged myself there on my abdomen, like a pissed-off nudibranch or a purposeful caterpillar, in search of the button.  I hit snooze instead of cancel. God fucking damn it. Behind me lay wrinkled sheets coiled up about my body like foam around a rock, the neatness of her absence now despoiled. 5 AM. The first words from my lips a curse.

Downstairs, the coffee was brewing. I had needed to remember to set it up last night. That was her job. She set up coffee. I unloaded dishes. How bizarre it seemed now that a marriage should be so much of classroom job assignments and so little of holding hands and jumping together in falling leaves, screwing in hot tubs and pouring out the contents of one another’s soul. Neglect to unload the dishwasher and forget about a smile from your teacher, much less a slap on the ass.

Bitter. The coffee tasted bitter. And the half and half was spoiled, curdling chunks of cottage cheese in my mug. At least there was plenty of coffee. I’d made enough for two.


Third Person
Monday morning Ethan woke like every Monday morning, angry. Maybe angrier than usual. Maybe sad as well. He beat up his alarm clock as if his arm were the extension of a baseball bat. For all his rage, he appeared impotent—a bedraggled man of forty-five, with hair in need of cutting and a face that needed shaved, attacking banal technology as if it might have been the cause of all his ire. He sat upright for a bit and stared hauntedly at his bedroom, at his king-sized bed, now gone to wreck, and then scooted off the mattress and stood, tucking anger under hospital corners of control, to straighten the sheets. When the bed was restored to perfection, he left the room.

Downstairs, the coffee was brewing for Ethan. A cat mewled outside and he didn't hear. Lisa let the cat in every morning, fed it, petted it. Ethan hated cats. He simply didn't hear it. It wasn't there. He had put in too much of the grounds and they had leaked into the carafe, had settled into mud. He didn't see this either. He didn't smell the off-ness of the turning cream. He poured it into his coffee and it rose to the top, forming solid pieces of corruption. He took a sip and then stared at what he was drinking. For a moment, a look of realization was etched upon his lined and tired face, as if frozen in time, coffee in hand, still. He stood this way, second after second, unbearably still. Then, slowly, Ethan lowered the coffee to the counter. A tear rolled down his cheek.

10 comments:

  1. Apparently my phone post didn't post or I got thrown into your spam folder cuz it was on my phone? Whatever...
    I really loved the first person here. I was so much a fly on the wall AND a cell inside his heart. The sadness swept over me and I have felt that sadness in my own life and his was so real.

    In the third person, I saw more anger than pain. Until the end, the tear, the sadness.

    Excellent piece of writing as I always expect when I visit your page, but this time as a man, you surprised me with your masculine language and thinking process. Wonder if our men members will feel you got that male thinking down!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Jo. It sort of wrote itself. Sometimes I think that when I write fiction, it is just like having used a ouija board which allows various characters to enter the room. To think that they all live in my head is much more bizarre, actually.

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  2. I really like the tear in the end.
    I could see him tensing up, too.
    It is so hard to comment on something so wonderful and expressive.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks. It's funny, I often have the experience of having difficulty commenting on posts I really like as well. So I guess I consider that high praise.

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  3. Haven't been here in a while, and this was cool. Both were great, and if you are looking for advice on writing from a male perspective I think you nailed it.

    -Bob

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    1. Thanks, Bob. I appreciate that. It felt fun and different to attempt it.

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  4. I want you to know I read... But it's hard for me to comment sometimes.. This was a wonderful piece and has definitely left me intrigued and wanting to know more about Ethan..

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    1. Thanks, Larissa. Maybe some of these odd characters will have to have their own book sometime...

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  5. This is amazing! You sure are a talented writer. I could see the scene clearly in both view points; and even though I'd read the first person, the third person kept my interest to the end. Great read!

    http://joycelansky.blogspot.com

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Joyce. I kind of attempted to have each reveal different things about the character. Maybe the second piece reveals some of what might have sent Lisa away, which isn't apparent to him on the inside.

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Faith in Ambiguity by Tara Adams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License