By: Annna [2006-03-16]

Creative Writing

from the dream backlog


acropolis jones, building inspector

There's this guy at work named William.  Nice guy, laid back transplanted Californian, plus he was a vegan for a long time so he looks about ten years younger than he is.

Anyway, he was teaching a creative writing class for which I'd somehow signed up.

I didn't recognize the building; massive and stone-hewed, it was on the outskirts of town and not attached to either of the colleges.  The interior was exactly the same grey stone as the outside, lit only by multicolored neon beneath the glass blocks of the floor.

It took me a while to figure out where I was and where the class was.  By the time I arrived, there were already about a dozen people sitting in the classroom.  Despite the cyclopean architecture of the rest of the building, the classroom itself just looked like a classroom, complete with tiny graffiti'd desks and an overhead projector.

William handed out his syllabus, which had his office hours and contact information on one side and a series of assignments on the other side.  They read:


Complete five or more stories about any combination of the following:

Crows
The End of the World
A Secret That Shouldn't Have Been Kept
The Beginning of the World
Toshiro Meow (a Japanese Cat)
The Decline of the Presidency
Vending Machines (any kind)

 

There were several more items, but those are the ones I remember.  After William passed those out, people started digging through their backpacks, as if to start writing right away.  I was sitting in the front, having come in late, and I asked him if he was going to teach anything or just have us work on the assignments.

"Yeah, I think everyone can get behind the ideas on their own," he said, "Actually, the reason I applied to teach here was this:" and he took a big brass ring of keys from his pocket.  They were the keys to the roof, the stairs to which were in the classroom's closet.

The roof was flat and very high up, but completely planted as though it were an English garden -- hedges and all.  There was even a fountain, and statuary and trellises everywhere.  There were also soda machines.

"Isn't this something?"  William sat down on a bench and took out a book.  I looked around for a while and then went to the stairs to go back down.  William stopped me:

"Hey, wait until the class leaves or they'll figure out where I went."

UNLV [2006-03-16 00:40:43] König Prüße, GfbAEV
The garden part reminds me of the story my sociology professor at Portland State told us about his office at the UNLV. He said that Smirnoff and Fleischmann's distillers had been in a grant battle, the result of which was that his office was very deluxe and included a garden with a fountain. If the fountain squirts vodka, I'm there in a minute.
Cyclopean? [2006-03-16 03:52:55] posthumous
Isn't it the Pantheon that's Cyclopean, not the Parthenon?
Wiki [2006-03-16 06:39:54] König Prüße, GfbAEV
"Cyclopean ruins are found at Greek, Etruscan, south Indian, Talayotic, and Anatolian sites." I am happy that Indian might be included because I was just yesterday reading the history of math, and the Indians developed our number system and the important zero. They developed seven simple algebraic formulae that cover just about everything, and used these formulae in the construction of the Vedic Temples. Don't ask me what Talayotic means, I have no idea.
Old One Eye [2006-03-16 18:03:19] posthumous
Doesn't this look Cyclopean to you?

http://kevino.net/images/kevino.net/fullsize/p-rome-pantheon--2.jpg
Un Occhio [2006-03-16 18:37:18] König Prüße, GfbAEV
Yes, it looks like the eye of the Cyclops!
http://tinyurl.com/p2rfj
Talayotic [2006-03-16 20:16:47] König Prüße, GfbAEV
Here are some photos of Talayotic constructions on Menorca, said to be cyclopean dating from c.2000bc--
http://tinyurl.com/hm5xc
heya [2006-03-17 06:53:24] crashpod
Hey I know Will thats cool
Hercules [2006-03-17 18:09:28] König Prüße, GfbAEV
"When he looked the cave in the eye, Hercules had a moment of doubt."
--W. H. Auden
so that's cyclopean architecture [2006-03-17 19:59:25] posthumous
who knew that thingsihate was an educational site? at least we've confirmed one thing. annna is smarter in her sleep than I am awake.
What She Knows [2006-03-17 20:17:37] König Prüße, GfbAEV
Annna has 'cyclopedic knowledge!
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