miyako73
08-17-2010, 12:28 PM
This is the first page of my autobiographical fiction. Please critique it. Any criticism will help. I learn from it. I am a newbie in writing.
Does the sun in the east drench the foliage, the stone path, the persimmon clay roof or burn like hell? Does the wind coming from the northwest blow gusts or puffs or does it chill? I have been wondering about the season of spring. I am in Beijing. In Daxing County. In the women’s prison. I have heard April is the month when fruit trees in the northern capital bloom. I wish I could see what an Asian spring looks like. I have seen peach and pear blossoms but not the blossoms of plums and apricots.
Of all, I love cherry blossoms the most. I used to sweep them in my grandparents' backyard when they started to fall at the end of March, the beginning of Manila summer. My grandfather’s horse, Galup, loved them more than grass after a whole morning of travel. My grandmother squeezed them with a bamboo press for their scent she used to infuse coconut oil. My friends and I would string them into leis and offer them to the priest, the nuns, and the wooden icons. Nowadays, only memories have kept me going. I miss the sun, the wind, the blossoms.
I have been in China for eight months now, but I have yet to see the grandeur of the Forbidden City I read in travel magazines; the Great Wall I wished to visit when I was a child; the Buddhist temples on top of limestone mountains sparsely covered with pine trees; the water gardens where pink lotuses and white lilies float like miniatures of pagodas on green paper boats; and the old ancestral orchards still visited by sparrows with ivory feathers on their necks, blue-gray pigeons, and Mandarin ducks. I want to see what I have only seen in postcards and calendars and on films and photographs, but it is no longer possible now.
Even the orange koi in the pond by the yard where most of the prisoners take a break, I am not allowed to see. I just imagine how they jump from the water to the air to bask in the sunlight and dive back with the breeze. My eyes have not seen much since my incarceration. Day by day, they are losing their sense of sight. Behind rusting bars locked up all the time, seeing is irrelevant.
Does the sun in the east drench the foliage, the stone path, the persimmon clay roof or burn like hell? Does the wind coming from the northwest blow gusts or puffs or does it chill? I have been wondering about the season of spring. I am in Beijing. In Daxing County. In the women’s prison. I have heard April is the month when fruit trees in the northern capital bloom. I wish I could see what an Asian spring looks like. I have seen peach and pear blossoms but not the blossoms of plums and apricots.
Of all, I love cherry blossoms the most. I used to sweep them in my grandparents' backyard when they started to fall at the end of March, the beginning of Manila summer. My grandfather’s horse, Galup, loved them more than grass after a whole morning of travel. My grandmother squeezed them with a bamboo press for their scent she used to infuse coconut oil. My friends and I would string them into leis and offer them to the priest, the nuns, and the wooden icons. Nowadays, only memories have kept me going. I miss the sun, the wind, the blossoms.
I have been in China for eight months now, but I have yet to see the grandeur of the Forbidden City I read in travel magazines; the Great Wall I wished to visit when I was a child; the Buddhist temples on top of limestone mountains sparsely covered with pine trees; the water gardens where pink lotuses and white lilies float like miniatures of pagodas on green paper boats; and the old ancestral orchards still visited by sparrows with ivory feathers on their necks, blue-gray pigeons, and Mandarin ducks. I want to see what I have only seen in postcards and calendars and on films and photographs, but it is no longer possible now.
Even the orange koi in the pond by the yard where most of the prisoners take a break, I am not allowed to see. I just imagine how they jump from the water to the air to bask in the sunlight and dive back with the breeze. My eyes have not seen much since my incarceration. Day by day, they are losing their sense of sight. Behind rusting bars locked up all the time, seeing is irrelevant.