From Cacophony to Melody: Escape to the Country
I was sensitive to certain sounds. The buzzing of the lights in the classroom drove me crazy, but the sound of alliteration awakened me to the poetic. Here's my escape from the noise.
I was born in a coastal city, where neighborhood dogs barked at hordes of screaming youth gathered to play games on concrete or dirt, adding to the cacophony of factory whistles, belching boats, and the soughing of ships in the harbor.
Streetlights winked on at dusk, drowning out the stars while television sets blared a different channel from the open windows.
Neighbors argued over the day’s news on front stoops, raising their voices to yell at their kids. Get outta there! Don’t do that!
Hasty drivers honked at dawdling pedestrians, black plumes of auto exhaust spewing fumes from hundreds of cars as motorists stepped on the gas revving their engines to go, go, GO.
Church bells gonged hourly. Wake-up-wake-up. Go-home-go-home. Dinnertime-dinnertime. Go-to-sleep. Go-to-sleep.
Masses of humanity dwelt in shabby apartments packed tightly together. Cooking odors co-mingled in the salty air. The riotous sounds of the neighborhood a discordant melody. And everyone’s laundry aired for all to see.
I escaped the chaos at five, moving to the last house on a dead-end road abutting miles of forest.
Here I belonged to the screeches of owls, the deafening noise of the peepers in the swamp, and the changing geography engineered by beavers felling trees at the bottom of the hill.
Gentle deer traversed our yard; but the squirrels, scurrying hither and thither, stashing their stores of acorns, possessed the place.
Chickens cooed in the backyard, pulling at worms, picking over scraps, and arranging their pecking order.
In winter, freshly fallen snow insulated the earth and preserved the tracks of animals, so I knew we had company, but I rarely saw the visitors.
The dog dozed, moving across the room every few minutes to sleep in the patchwork of sunlight; while the cat, curled on the couch, woke to flutters at the birdfeeder. Disinterested, she stretched one paw forward, then the other, yawned and rewound for another nap.
Night transformed the homestead. Dense darkness chased long, dusky shadows. Stars twinkled, tiny diamonds in the intense blackness, merging with the milky way until they formed a thick necklace of sparkling jewels, the moon its pearly pendant.
Piercing the stillness, foxes gleefully yipped over a rodent feast. Coyotes howled, their boasts reverberating through the valleys and over the mountains. Raucous raccoons tipped over garbage cans that clattered on the driveway. Or was that a bear?
My family didn’t watch TV but sat in the living room where every few minutes the flip of pages, a slight gasp or a chuckle slipped into the silence as we read our books before bedtime.
Occasionally, I miss the gong of a foghorn on one of the quieter nights in the city, but not enough to come out of hiding.
Writing Tips
In this section, I provide some ideas for writing teachers and workshop facilitators with some lesson ideas for teaching different types of writing. These come from my forthcoming book on using mentor texts to teach writing. While the book includes robust lesson plans for the teacher, it can be used by individuals to improve their creative nonfiction writing. Here are some excepts.
This piece of writing could be called a study in alliteration. It employs short paragraphs, a variety of sentence lengths, and as a mentor text has several benefits.
Benefits
Extreme examples of alliteration
Use of concrete details to create a sense of scene and immediacy
Compare and contrast (the country with the city)
Example of a short or flash memoir (under 1000 words)
Short paragraphs with a single idea in each one
Sentence-length paragraphs
Various paragraph and sentence lengths to create cadence
Example of onomatopoeia created to suggest what the bells might be “saying”
Example of verb use with only one form of the verb “to be” (“was” in the first sentence)
Example of first-person narrative with the occasional use of “I” (five times)
Example of the construction of long sentences to achieve a lyric quality
Assignment and Writing Prompt
The alliteration in this piece gives it a lyric quality. I suggest using different colored highlighters to note:
Alliteration (same sounds, same letters)
Verbs (Use a different color for the verbs “to be” and “to have” in any tense). It is challenging for many writers to minimize the verb “to be.”
Then, write one or two words at the top of each paragraph to give it a title. In other words, what is the paragraph about? Note that a short paragraph can convey a lot of information if the writer uses concrete details. Some paragraphs are one long sentence.
This piece of writing is based on the following prompt:
Suppose a writer who was profiling you asked this: "We all come from someplace. Where do you come from? How did you escape?”
I chose to write about the physical place where I came from, and where I found my escape. To round out the piece, I make a connection in the last sentence to my former life. This information gives readers a sense of my feelings about the place without directly telling them.
Use the prompt to write about a physical, emotional or spiritual “location” whether it’s a concrete place or somewhere in your mind or in your soul. Practice using concrete details and alliteration to tell your story.
Love it . . . I too, was born a city girl but escaped to the beach!