MayaWest Writing Project

A relation of the events of the MayaWest Writing Institute on June 23^rd

By Peter Frau- official scribe. The designation “Official Scribe” means that whatever I say happened happened. Who writes the history? I write the history.

             The day’s seminar started normally enough.       I entered the computer room and I saw the usual crew, Melissa, Hector, Alma, Ángela and Ellen. But then I saw a new body; a bobbing head of flowing harlot red hair. Somehow, in a foreshadowing moment I thought of Arriana, our mysteriously disappeared hippy-Acomrade in arms.

“Hi. I’m Joyce,” said the round face with pale, arresting, blues eyes. She had been introducing herself to everyone, giving them bear hugs.

“Yeah, Peter, this is Joyce,” I heard Ellen say. Was there warning in her voice? Was Ellen trying to convey to me to be on my guard? I wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter. It was too late. Within seconds, Joyce enveloped my mind. A searing bright light announced that a fundamental shift in my reality had occurred. The ding dong of the gong of the universe had gone dung.  I wasn’t sure if it was some magic, or some drug, or maybe a flashback, But I wasn’t in

At first I thought it must have been a flash back, a re-occurrence of an often hallucinogenic drug experience, triggered by an event or person somehow associated in the subject’s mind to the drug experience. Oh my God! This is what I get for going to all those Grateful Dead concerts without any intention of making it past the parking lot. All of those joyful mushrooms, those techno-color microdots, kool-aid sugar cubes, and Disney blotter were coming back to pay me another visit. If this was a flashback, well, I’ll just sit back and enjoy it.

Joyce’s face was a round sunflower. She rustled with every movement. The yellow petals surrounding her face moved in unified choreography, reflecting excess energy zipping around and around. The seeds composing her face tightened or opened reflecting her every emotion. I wasn’t sure if it was a flashback or if I have been intentionally drugged.

I felt that she willed me to sit down for the round table chat. Suddenly everyone appeared. Melissa convened us to order as she transformed into one of those Hawaiian hula dance dolls with a spring for legs. Twisting back and forth from the waist up, she remarked about the great number of posts we were writing.   By the time she had covered the topic of the invitations for our directors and facilitators to our open house she was only six inches tall and stuck to a blue magnetic base on top of the table. Small as she was she was cunning when it came to winning over our guests with food, and a little writer’s kit of paper pad and yellow pencils.

I looked to my right expecting to find Ángela with her Cat in the Hat grin, but instead there was Wilfredo.

“How’d you do that Wilfredo?” I asked touching him slightly on the shoulder.

“Do what?” he said. He looked strange. There was a small hissing sound. Slowly he began to bob

“What’s happening to me?”

“I think you’re losing your air.” I looked at where I had touched him. I had made a small hole in his plastic skin. Wilfredo was an inflatable doll that slowly sank flat on top of the table as he lost more and more of his air. I heard him mumble so I grabbed him by an ear and peeled his head up.

“Help me, man. I need some air.”

“Naw,” I said as I placed his face back down on the table. “I saw the movie airplane. I’m sorry.”

Someone shouted wanting to know who the time keeper was.

“Hector!,” everyone pointed to him sitting next to me. I looked to my left and there was Hector made into the Lego version of Indiana Jones complete with hat and whip.

“I guess I am,” he said passing his hand over the plastic stubble of his Lego face. “Who’s next?” he asked cracking his whip.

 “That’s me,” said Maria del Carmen Del Valle de Nadie

I still wasn’t sure if I was suffering from a normal benign flashback or if indeed I had been intentionally drugged, until I saw the scribe’s presentation performed by the Walks gang. And I thought I was tripping. These kids were stuck in a Star Trek episode. How geekish can you get. Thinking about it now, I’m not so sure that these kids were under the influence of some hallucinogen or if being delusional are their natural state. While most of us were seriously exploring the previous day’s events, they were role playing to some sound effects tapes.

The effects of the flashback, if that is what it was that I was suffering, could not stop me from perceiving the fact that the Walks gang in their desperation to entertain had no sense of proportion. Politely, in spite of the monstrous boredom we all felt at their performance, we pretended to pay attention to them.  Without warning, the entire Walks gang, as if of a single small mind began to chant repeatedly “Picture- Message. Picture- Message”. This was their summary of Abi’s brilliant book talk of graphic novels? Poor Abi was despondent. The Walks gang continued their “Picture- Message” mantra waving their arms above their heads from side to side. Faster and faster they went until they achieved lift-off. The entire table and fleet of chairs levitated and soared through the air, shrinking as it flew through one of the windows with a small clatter of broken glass. 

“Class. Class,” Janice said, and we all realigned ourselves in front of our computers. As Janice gave her demonstration on a poetry portfolio it occurred to me how very much like a witch she would look if she were dressed in a long black gown like Morticia wore from the

“Let’s begin!” she said. And the pen’s ball point began to roll on the paper. With a blip I was extruded from the pen onto the coarse white sheet. The ball point pressed me into the page. I formed the letters “I am a poem”.  There I remained, helpless and immobile, but content that at least I was a poem, until Tito scraped me off the page with a razor blade.  He had Zenaida snort me through a little straw. There I remained inside her nose until she began to twitch, and itch and she sneezed me out, standing straight up, right in front of the microwave. The timing for lunch couldn’t have been better.

I stared at the veins and sinews in my hands for the entire lunch hour. It’s important to be easily entertained.

Joyce Wlodarczyk, still resembling a sunflower, convened the afternoon session. She produced a magical file cover from which she produced sheet after sheet of paper in order to teach us how to formulate essential questions. And she also showed us how to hold a Socratic seminar. This must have been one of the most impressive demonstrations of the summer. But the effect of the flashback or magic mushroom or whatever it was, was wearing off. I was beginning to come down.  One of the last things she expressed was how difficult it can be for a teacher to keep quiet and let the students make sense for themselves. But the last thing she did say was that she would return on Thursday. Would that be too soon to drop again?