Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

Creative:

The Fruit Bowl

How do I take the story of universal suffering and make it my own? How do I
take a narrative of healing with intention and break it down into a language we
can both understand? A thing of chalk - brittle and white, forged under forced
circumstances and the inevitability of a human experience. Am I the chalk? Are
you?

Allow me to tell you this story - how we are so skilled and committed to life that
we learn to find love in warm concrete, say prayers while filling our cars with
petrol, making our beds when we are too weak to bathe. This story has many
versions - 7 billion dare I say, not all resolved or the least bit symbolic. A story
where pain can be condensed into a simple and understandable thing - let’s say,
something we all know, let’s say a fruit maybe - something sweet and
accessible. Let’s say an orange.

Yes, an orange.
Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

Imagine this, you’re a child again. You reek of innocence and routine, and the
world is exactly how you see it. Maybe it’s summer, say January, the screen
door is always showing, and your father complains about the air conditioner
being on - you still talk to him though about easy things like bugs and dancing.
The fruit bowl on the table is always full.

It’s Thursday afternoon and your mother has just gone grocery shopping. She
still calls you baby and asks you to help bring the bags in. Your father calls you
strong when you walk through the door, plastic up to your neck and straining
hands. You cannot get stronger than this - the pinnacle of proving yourself to
your parents.

Dave is here, he opens the door because he no longer feels the need to knock
(or more so, not yet). Maybe you’re 8, or 9, or 10. Yes, 10 sounds reasonable.
He invites you on a bike ride and you sneak two yogurt bars, lie to your parents,
and say you’ll be home before dark. You plan to see the sunset at the top of the
quarry hill but Dave skins his knee on the way there - do you go home; does he
soldier on?

You’re 15 now and your dad says he is sick but won’t talk about it in front of
your mother. Sure it might be nothing, sure it’s only early stages until you start
Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

to see the pharmacist more often; he now knows you by name. Have you
memorised the safe doses of hydrocodone yet? Can you see his life force
spilling from his skin? Maybe he holds your hand now in a way he hasn't done
for years, and that warmth you remember, tell me is it love or anguish? And is it
yours or his?

3 years ago your dad died of a terminal illness, but they didn’t know what it
was. Water now tastes like hospital lemonade and there’s a shirt in your
wardrobe you can never wear again. Maybe you do the groceries for your mum
now because she can’t stand the numbness of the shopping centre. The front
door is always closed, but the fruit bowl is still full. Lord knows, you must keep it
full. Pick up an orange from the bowl and prepare it for your mum, let it send
you back to your dad and Dave and January.

Cut it into pieces and eat it in the sun. Split it down the middle, pick out the
seeds and pith, your hands smell of citrus oil and everyone is smiling. What is it
like? Let’s say, bittersweet and colourful and you share it as if it is the last time.
Imagine everyone sinking in their teeth and saying thank you, savouring the
pieces like some holy gold. Imagine this, you’re happy and it was years ago - an
ache you wish you had of simplicity and youth. Imagine this, you’re okay and
quiet, and mostly you are good. Try to catch your reflection in the kitchen
Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

window before the birds and the grass and break it down into a language that
you can understand. See, this is love; your heart isn’t breaking anymore.

See?

Blanket Syndrome

What would you do if you had one day left on the earth?

When this question is asked, it’s usually as an ice breaker for a work
function you don’t want to be at, or a party at 3 in the morning (in my case
you probably wouldn’t want to be at that either). Regardless, it’s invasive
and intimate and the answers are never at all what they should be. For
example, had you have asked me two years ago my answer probably would
have been skydiving, or steal something, or confess my undying love for
some random kid on my school bus. I thought I had my plan figured out for
my last day (as contemplative people typically do) and then my
grandmother died.
Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

1. Anger

Grief, I found, is incredible at disguising itself as other emotions – usually

as anger, so that is where we will begin. For grieving people, anger is
common because of a phenomenon called blanket syndrome – the
overwhelming feeling that someone has tossed a blanket over you while
the world around you continues as it always has. That ‘suffocating while
breathing’, that ‘I pressed pause, but nothing paused’ feeling, you know
the one. This stirs anger because we always expect it to go away very
quickly, like posthumous fog that will lift as the day dries, but it never does.
Unfortunately, it sticks around for quite a while, and it eventuates into
frustration – because you want to tell the world to stop, and it doesn’t
because it doesn’t stop for anybody, and it never bothered you before
because you’re not anybody… until you are. Statistically, 153,424.70
people die every day in the world, but you don’t even know 153,424.70
people and all it takes is 1 to affect, dare I say change your world forever.
Now, how would you feel if I told you that ‘blanket syndrome’ is something
I completely made up? The feeling however, I nailed that one on the head -
which brings me to my next point.

That grief is also lovely.

Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

2. Love

As oxymoronic as it sounds, loveliness is foundational to grief – because

what is grief, if not love? Name a time you’ve grieved someone you didn’t
love (unrestricted to romance; I mean every person you’ve felt compassion
or empathy towards (fictional or otherwise because this is an English
essay)) and you probably can’t. As stated before, grief is wonderful at
disguise, like some sort of manipulative tactic to force you into seeing the
world at a different angle. A more soft, distant angle. This distance is often
overlooked as a negative side-effect, as we always assume everything
about grief is exactly that – however there is an inexorable warm
depression that comes with knowing the blanket is one that we share.
Now, should you avoid the anger stage of grief or perhaps go head-first
through it, you will arrive at the loveliness. The thing that makes you feel
warm when you go outside or think their name when you see a four-leaf-
clover; the thing that makes you more patient towards others and cherish
smaller moments of ‘breath’ (peaking from the blanket because lord knows
it does not cease).

So, I’m going to ask you again. What would you do if you had one day left on
the earth? And because we’ve gotten so close over the past 600 words or
so, I’ll prompt a better answer from you by explaining how I changed my
compromised plan those years ago:
Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

If you drive toward Bolwarra from the east side of Maitland, you’ll pass a
pink and yellow fibreglass calf named Annie. Though it added 10 minutes
to our afternoon trip (as we lived in the complete opposite direction) my
grandmother would take us there every day. A short lived yet guaranteed
smile every day. If I had one day left on earth, I would go see Annie. I would
sit in the adjacent sunflower field, look for her name in the sun and search
for four leaf clovers.

Would you like to come with me?

Reflection:

In my creative piece The Fruit Bowl, I focused on creating a story which the
audience felt as though they were writing with me. I did this by utilising the
metafictive style of Colum McCann's “What time is it now, where you are?”, the
structure of Zadie Smith’s ‘That Crafty Feeling’, and the universal human
experience of finding happiness in simplicity, which is represented in the story
by the motif of the orange in the fruit bowl. I aimed to draw on my experiences
wherein happiness felt like a colossal and unreachable thing, and after
reconnecting with my own definition I could “break it down into a language we
can understand”.
Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

I chose the metafictive style of Colin McCann as it helped me to tell a story

while also speaking directly to the audience. This was a far more effective way
to convey the universality of pain and happiness as it established the inclusivity
of the story and subsequently gave both the audience and myself authority on
the subject. Similar to McCann, I use repetition in ‘let’s say’ when providing
details on the character’s life progression. Not only does this make the audience
the author, but also represents the subjectivity of an “inevitable human
experience”. The repetition shown in “let’s say, something we all know, let’s say
a fruit maybe - something sweet and accessible. Let’s say an orange.” mimic
stream of consciousness and allow an insight into the foundations of the text -
my thought process and what the motif of the orange means in terms of the
story.

The structure of the text is broken down into significant life events that show
the passing of time and maturing of the character, particularly in the
juxtaposition of bringing in groceries as a child and having to do the groceries
after the passing of the character’s father. This was influenced by Smith’s
structure wherein each point is given a number - likewise, mine an age, such as
“Maybe you’re 8, or 9, or 10. Yes, 10 / You’re 15 now”. By doing so I was able to
further apply the motif of the orange by stating that the fruit bowl is always full,
highlighting to the audience that pain is not necessarily a circumstantial
emotion.
Hayley Pearson

Miss Watson

Year 12 English Advanced 1

Task 3

Overall, through the analysis of other texts and the development of my own, my
craft of writing has been highly sharpened and influenced, heightening my
ability to connect with audiences and myself through writing.