Archive: Sunday Scribblings

In college, JG and I used to throw together semi-spontaneous game nights in a common area of our dorm because we were, and still are, the consummate party-hardy types. (Ahem.) Depending on the number of people, there would be several areas of play going on at once: Catch Phrase, Dutch Blitz, and spades made appearances, but I inevitably huddled on the floor to play Cutthroat Anagrams.

I learned to play this anagramming game during a summer college program I attended during the summer before my senior year of high school, and it played to my strengths so well that I was on a constant mission teach others how to play so that I could whip them. I mean, I wanted to spread the joy of a fun game…

Uh, anyway, the game is pretty simple, and it works best with at least 4 people:

• Dump Scrabble tiles onto the floor and arrange them so that all of the letters face down. Players should circle up around the tiles.
• One by one (we usually go clockwise), players flip over the tiles in the center. If a word (3 letters or longer) can be formed from the exposed tiles, a player can say that word, take those tiles out of the center, and arrange the word in front of him. That player then flips the next tile.
  - For example: If C, A, and T, were all flipped over, the first person to say, “cat” or “act” would take those tiles out of the center. Ties are generally settled by popular consensus of who was first.
• As players continue to flip over tiles, they can form words from both the letters inside the circle (as above) and words that others have made — hence the cutthroat aspect. There are no limitations on the number of times a word can be stolen.
  - For example: If someone flipped over a K, a player could steal CAT from the player who claimed it and anagram it to form TACK.
• If a player flips over a blank tile, put it aside; they are not included in play.
• Play continues until no additional words can be formed. Players tabulate their scores by counting up the Scrabble values of the letters in their possession. Letters remaining in the center do not count toward anyone’s score.
• Limitations on word formation:
  - Words must be at least three letters long.
  - Words must appear in the Scrabble dictionary to be valid. If a word is challenged successfully (i.e. the word is proven to be fake), the letters return to where they started.
  - Anagrams cannot include derivations of the original word.
  - - For example: CAT could not be stolen to form CATS. DATE could not move on to form DATED. However, it would be legal to anagram CAT to CART and DATE to FATED.

There were several regulars who enjoyed the game as much as JG and I did, and we had a good time talking smack and coming up with new word combinations. I was not known to be particularly competitive, but when I played Cutthroat Anagrams, I was rather ruthless. I shouted my new words loudly, so as to drown out any other potential rivals. In the event of a claiming tie, I found that if I swiped the letters right away, people would generally let me keep them. I sat in the circle on my knees, perched right over the tiles so that I could afford a good glimpse of the newly-flipped tile. My posture earned me the nickname, “the Vulture,” which I interpreted as a sign of admiration.

On one occasion, I taught the game to a newcomer, but I wasn’t sensitive to the fact that I was somewhat, uh, overzealous in my energy. Anagramming didn’t come easily to this new girl, and I showed no mercy as I swept up tiles left and right. I remember stealing a word from her with a triumphant “HA!” and pouncing across the circles to gather my prize. In a low voice, JG said to me, “This is why people don’t … never mind.” Okay, whatever.

At the end of the round, the new girl got up from the floor shakily and said, “I think that’s enough of this game for me, but thanks for showing me how to play.”

Is this what JG meant? This is why people don’t what? Don’t want to play with me? They don’t want a challenge? It’s not my fault that I know that the ZOO will most likely go to OOZE and then OZONE. If she just played longer, she’d get it, too.

But I knew that I wasn’t as gracious as I could have been. I tried to dial down the Vulture mannerisms for other newcomers, despite the fact that it was perfectly obvious that we should be looking for a sequence like CAT, CART, CRATE, TRACED, DETRACT. Right? Totally obvious.

#53, 54

Sunday Scribblings #88: Competition

For me, considering writing means considering reading because the two are complementary pieces of a continuous process. In growing as a writer, I try to read strong writing, which helps to inform what I write afterward. As a result, I read quite a lot.

When I’m asked for the title of my favorite book, I’m hard-pressed to narrow it down to just one. However, when asked for my best-loved author, the answer is quick: Madeleine L’Engle. She is probably best-known for A Wrinkle in Time, but over the past ten years, I’ve collected more than thirty of her books and I love revisiting them from time to time.

When I was in high school, I always carried a book with me (you know, just in case I had to wait somewhere) and it was usually a L’Engle novel like A House Like a Lotus or The Arm of the Starfish. A friend once asked me if I felt strange carrying around “a kid’s book,” but the thought that I was reading juvenile fiction hadn’t really fazed me. In the end, it was all good, fun reading with strange creatures and exotic locales like Portugal and Antarctica. Who cared where they stored them in bookstores? Madeleine L’Engle has been a constant reading source for me, holding my hand through the early years of novel-reading and then pacing me through more introspective memoirs. I learned to love the feeling of new words on my tongue and on my mind — tesseract, ontology, mitochondria, magnanimous — and relish the thrill of wrapping my head around the plot, emotional process, or thought journey I was following. She is my go-to for a comfort read and I’m still hunting down books for my collection. The satisfaction at the end of the pursuit is always worth it.

Partly for Janssen, but mostly for the general good, here are my most highly-recommended Madeleine L’Engle books, with explanations for my favorites. I’ve had this idea brewing for a while, but in light of her recent passing, I think now is a good time to share and remember. I already miss her, in a way.

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A Swiftly Tilting Planet
I recommend the entire Time Quartet wholeheartedly. Sure, they’re youth fiction, but I dare any adult to grasp the full meaning of any of these books in the first try. A Swiftly Tilting Planet is my favorite of the series and I have no fewer than three copies of it on my shelves: the copy I grew up reading (can’t trash that), a copy of the reissue circa 2001 (ooh, pretty new covers), and the hardcover, signed copy that a friend bought me. So, clearly, the redundancy is justified. I really like the book’s theme of interdependence and the ancient rune as the structure for the chapters and the story. It never gets old for me, even after the sixth time through.

Two-Part Invention
In this memoir, L’Engle shares about her marriage and trials during her husband’s battle with cancer. Even though it sounds depressing, I love what she says about love. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read about a real, strong, committed relationship. At one point, when JG and I were dating, I suggested that he read Two-Part Invention, which was a personal risk of sorts because I identified so deeply with it. I was half-afraid of my reaction if JG, the person I thought I was going to marry, didn’t like it at all. When JG returned the book to me, he was full of high praise, much to my relief. The best thing he said was, “I feel like I know you better after having read this book.”

- - - - -

• If you feel unsuccessful: A Circle of Quiet
• If you want a great novel: A Live Coal in the Sea
• If you want another great novel: A Severed Wasp
• If you are religious: The Genesis Trilogy
• If you need a baby gift: The Other Dog
• If you have suffered a loss (and you like dolphins): A Ring of Endless Light
• If you are in the mood for intrigue (and you like penguins): Troubling a Star
• If you have a best friend: Friends for the Journey

#25, #27

Sunday Scribblings #76: Writing

[September 20 edit: A lovely tribute at Slate.]

When I was seven years old, I received a diary for Christmas, even though I’m pretty sure my Christmas list called for “dairy.” It was a pink hardcover volume with a Mary Engelbreit illustration on the front and a lock between the two covers. I kept the key in my pencil cup because, duh, who would look there for the key to my top-secret diary? My first entry detailed that Christmas morning: what gifts I received (including “this diary,” as though it weren’t self-evident), what we ate, and descriptions of every gift we were bringing to my grandmother’s house that evening. I felt the need to include explanations of everybody in my family in parenthetical references, which was an odd practice in the context of my surreptitious key concealment. Despite my best intentions, I had a hard time writing in the book because of its construction. I’d lie on my stomach in my day bed, writing earnestly, but in one wrong move, one side of the book would whip up and slap me in the cheek. I also struggled with the idea that I was writing a letter to some nebulous person. Who was Diary, exactly? And why did she care about what was going on with me? Diary was a she, of course. It was a pink journal, after all.

- - -

I went to camp for the first time when I was eight years old and I was so excited. A whole week to go swimming and make funky crafts? Yes, please! Although I had no traces of homesickness, my mom sent along a care package with my ride. The brown-paper-wrapped shoebox contained small gifts like a flashlight, pictures of the family, and best of all, a small, spiral-bound journal. On it, a sticky note read, “Just so you don’t forget to tell us anything.” That week, I used a mechanical pencil to scrawl out breathless narratives about how camp was “soooooooooo fun,” I would be best friends with my bunkmates forEVER, and I never wanted to go home, ever. From that week on, I eschewed the “Dear Diary” format.

- - -

In high school, I developed a habit of acquiring gel pens of all shades of the rainbow and I resolved not to use the same color two days in a row, resulting in a rather blinding display when I looked back for some cringe-worthy reading. The same thoughts always emerged: I can’t believe I liked that boy. Those girls are still that mean. I’m so glad I went to school out of state. Over the years, a blank book was always a safe gift for me, but I was picky. I always accepted blank books for various purposes, but for writing, I needed a spiral binding, lines on both sides of the paper, and a size somewhere between a half-sheet and a school notebook. In ten years, between that week of summer camp and high school graduation, I had filled up a journal every other month. My bookshelves were filled with books crowded with tiny cursive handwriting in fluorescent colors, detailing how deep and sensitive I was.

Going back and reading about my adolescent drama wasn’t exactly nostalgic for me; it was akin to looking at an album of gawky, fashionless, glasses-filled self-portraits. Even so, I kept the books until I came home to clear out my bedroom because I was moving into my first apartment. Moving between dorm rooms for four years had made me a frugal packer and I knew that the time had come. After flipping through the pages and sighing, I loaded all of the books into a box destined for the trash. Trash is such a harsh word; it’s not quite what I meant at the time, nor now. The real purpose and benefit of the journals was to help me process what I was experiencing, not to preserve it like a personal museum. That purpose has been fulfilled and I no longer needed to hold on to the physical books. In a way, I’m proud of the “body of work” I created at such a young age; what it lacked in panache it made up for in quantity and heart. That’s worth something, I think.

#92

Sunday Scribblings #73: Dear Diary

My older sister and I are four years apart, but we’ve been mistaken for twins. I don’t think our faces are all that similar, but I can see how two Asian girls who happen to have the exact same height and build, tend to wear similar color schemes, and talk at the same rapid-fire clip with incomprehensible inside jokes might come across as twins. I’m making plans to visit her in D.C. for a long weekend and the basic plan is to eat our way through the city, so we’re scoping out key restaurants to hit in the most strategic order. I can’t wait.

I’m also tossing around the idea of meeting up with a few online friends from the D.C. area, which would be my first blogger meet-up. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how I can explain to my sister how I know these people. Not college friends. Not former co-workers. Not even friends of friends. What do I say? I met them on the internet, but they’re not creepy men, I promise. Not that I’ve met them before in person. Because that’s not sketchy or anything.

The underlying issue is, of course, that my sister doesn’t know about this here blog. I do my best not to post something that might be hurtful if she (or the rest of my family) were to stumble upon the site somehow, so I’m not opposed to her knowing, but I’m not exactly volunteering the information. If she doesn’t ask, I don’t answer, and she hasn’t. That is, conveniently enough, she has not asked, “Hey, do you have a blog?”

I suppose that I can simply pretend that the people I’m meeting are college friends and be done with it. That option makes me feel squeamish because my sister and I are so close, so the thought of passing off the meet-up as something that it’s not is really uncomfortable. I have visions of having to make up back stories for these people: what they majored in, how we met, that funny time we had a Silly String fight on the quad. Ugh. I have a terrible poker face. It would never work.

On the other hand, I could tell her about the whole thing. My best guess for a reaction is that she’ll be surprised at first, but then she’ll want to whip out her laptop to see just what that sister of hers has been saying on the internet. Then I’ll have to swear her to secrecy, at least with our parents. That scenario isn’t too painful, I guess.

I don’t know if it’s self-protection or what, but I like having this corner of the universe for my own. I know that it doesn’t really make sense because a handful of other folks tune in semi-regularly. I get nervous when I think about telling people in my actual life that I have an online writing venue.

Hm. “Online writing venue.” Now, that has a ring.

Sunday Scribblings #65: I Have a Secret