Freewriting Practice - Spontaneism

Another exercise...

“Aiuto! Aiuto! Dio m'assista!” Her cries echoed throughout the theater. And there, I was, in the front row, having suddenly changed from wondering why I'd come to an Italian play in the first place to remembering that the girl my friend Carl liked was in it to wondering why I didn't like her in the first place.

The play had come about as a result of something I'd said a few years back about how our school should really “embrace other cultures and their languages”. It was my freshman year, and I was sure as hell gunning for the role of political activist. I'd been so enraged at our French teacher for refusing to go over French literature (she protested that there were no English translations, and the students would find it difficult to translate) that I'd completely forgotten that I really didn't care about other cultures and their languages.

And now, three years later, I did care. Which is why I was at an Italian play. That, and the girl my friend liked was the prima donna. That was another phrase I'd picked up from Carl in his sudden and rabid appreciation of the Italian language. My translation was “leading lady”. Carl didn't like this, as he said he preferred most prima donnas as being referred to as women, seeing as that was what they normally were, in an Italian context. I happened to agree with him, but who says “leading woman”?

The play was nearing its end, and so was my patience. But I'd gone so that I could tell Carl what happened, so that he could convince her he'd gone but had to leave midway through. This was his excuse for staying up all night to finish a homework assignment he'd somehow neglected. Somehow. He actually had stayed up all of that night to attempt to write something of a love note to her. He'd failed, or at least he'd failed to meet his own standards, and really he just spent the night detesting himself for lacking the ability to write something poetic, moving, and romantic.

And so his affection for her had put me in the place of the friend that gets involved. The truly depressing part was that that friend, in my experience, generally ended up paying for being the person in the middle. But I was there anyway. And here's where it gets bad: I was beginning to like her too.