Steering The Craft: Exercise 2

Exercise Two: I Am Garcia Marquez (from Steering the Craft)

Assignment: write a paragraph to a page (150-350 words) of narrative with no punctuation (and no paragraphs or other breaking devices)

Exercise One, First Draft:

I remember how it used to be Heuwit thought to herself as she slunk along the trash like a tired frog through the streets and the mud and recalled with traces of her finger on the dirt or the wall or her gaze placid and riveted to particular spots that now looked either nonexistent or on its way and so her murky vision brought her to the fishmongers hoisting massive ocean trout into the air with two roughened hands declaring a price slightly lower than that last man proffered while to the corner opposite the spice vendor danced tossing little smokes and powders into the air placing a better bet on the visual as customers flocked for all sorts of ingredients for cooking their seafood maintaining their glowing fragrant skin cleaning their garments and men and women chattered and bought and haggled and dealt while beggars or thieves or vendors or guards or assistants pushed through or scurried underfoot and all of this in layers as right behind the fishmongers were more sprawling out along the docks the wood planks stretching out in dozens of lines and vendors taking station on their boats beside ships beside kayaks besides cruisers and customers slid back and forth down these docks and if looked right behind the spice vendor there were more shops and cafes set into stone or tree or rug or roof some shouting some dancing some singing some strumming some hoisting into the air and all of it lively and alive and there amongst it all her father and mother tossing a little squirt up into the air and catching him and Heuwit’s own voice to me to me and father’s stalwart grin heave ho catch the trout before it slips back into the waters and a catch the kid brother squirming and drooling like a fish caught and then opening his eyes and beaming at her up into the chill air my squirt and up up up the seagulls caw like dark birds and the walls are nothing but walls and the mud is mud and empty and the kid brother is a darker shade of mist unfolding into the sky and the sounds of ocean lapping at the broken and unpopulated marketplace.