As many of you already know,

in addition to being your AltDaily editor, I’m also a teacher. I taught essay writing classes at ODU last year as part of the MFA program, and I’m teaching summer session at The Muse. I’ve also taught my share of high school level students, both here and abroad.

I believe in the power of words. I believe self-identifying as a writer enhances one’s living experience: as a writer you see the world in details, in characters, in a way that lends itself to beautiful prose. In my hippied-up, Buddhisted-up, New Yorker subscription pre-womb vision of the world, well-crafted words have just about as much power here on earth as God him/her/itself.

ANYWAY, you know the cliche.

I have so much fun in my classes giving my students assignments and seeing what they come up with that I thought I’d share a writing exercise here now again. This one I’m calling Kitchens:

Kitchen.

My students and I were talking the other day about how to create a realistic place, be it a room, a car, a home, or a river. The best place to find what feels real is in reality, one’s own life. So here’s the drill: Create a composite kitchen out of the kitchens from your life. Write two lines of detailed, honest description from each of the following kitchens: your current one; your mom/dad’s; your grandma/grandpa’s; a step-mother/father’s; ex-girlfriend/boyfriend’s; an authority figure’s; an office kitchen.

Or, you know, any other kitchen out there.

Please share yours in the comment section. Here’s what I came up with:

“The grass is always greener where you are,” says a piece of slate hung on yarn. The top of the fridge is lined with steins and a vintage ice bucket decorated with geese and hunting dogs. The old dishwasher never got the dishes clean. Then we got a new one; the dishes are still dirty. It smells like toasted bagels and fresh challah from Fleishman’s around the corner and cantaloupes balled and left to breathe on the counter. The phone on the wall over the table has a cord that stretches clear to the living room couch (we all know, cause we’ve done it to scheme with friends and lovers out of ear shot of Grandma, preparing brisket none the wiser). You can’t look at the floor without seeing those live lobsters, smashed to pieces but muscles still bleating, after Ellen threw them down during one of those horrible fights. There’s a forbidden drawer stuffed with macaroons and pecan sandies. We leave our dishes in the sink and her mom thinks we’re trying to get her. From the table you can barely not see the TV. The pancakes are better than you’ll ever taste again. You worry one spill of anything, even water, might get you kicked out. It’s sad that people consider this home away from home. The preservatives in the tidy row of artificial sweeteners fights off the oxygen with a microscopic vigor.