Tonight we all decided to take a field trip and have our meeting at Cafe du Soleil, which was so fun. After checking in and sharing some nibbles, we decided to dive in and start writing.

For our writing exercises we collectively start with a prompt, and it’s always so interesting to see how varied the pieces are that come from one or two simple words. Here’s one of mine from tonight:

Prompt: “Missed”

The rain carved small rivers down the thin window pane. Past the drips and streams, the sky was a wash of piercing gray. Hard on my eyes, it was much easier to stare at the clever waterways and patterns in the foreground. I wondered if each of those droplets poured down anxious for its destination; determined on its journey: a solo dive, its only mission to soak. Knowing once it melds with another, their power together is greater than one. United they are a force to be reckoned with, and the more they join forces, the more unstoppable they become.

Breaking my daze, I hear a low thunder rumble. I let go of the intricate maps I’ve been memorizing on the window pane and take a sip of my tea.

The one thing I know for sure: you are missed.

If you want to read a few more of mine, I’ve published them on my blog. Many of the youth will type up & publish what they wrote under their profiles, too! Stay tuned by subscribing to our RSS feed.

Also, if you’re ever looking for writing prompts for your own creative writing, check out @dailywrite & @writingprompt on Twitter… and follow @bamboozledyouth while you’re at it!

If the video doesn’t appear below, click here.

Alternatively, if you can’t see the video above, because you don’t have Flash, click here to watch the .mov format.

photo by daniel sandoval

I (Karin) found this great list on The Write Idea, and it resonated with all of us here at BAM. So much so, that we decided to repost it for all the rest of you writers out there.

10 Things Writers Know

10. Writing is easy. Writing well takes work.

9. It takes longer than a week to write 80,000 words.

8. Fiction means made-up. I’m not my sleuth, nor are you one of my characters.

7. Just because I’m staring into space doesn’t mean that I’m not working.

6. Characters take on lives of their own.

5. You never really get a day off.

4. Just because a writer asks the right questions doesn’t mean the answers are correct.

3. Asking a writer which character is their favourite is the same as asking a parent which child is their favourite.

2. Self-doubt is a constant companion.

1. As Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing. I love having written.”

Check out more on http://the-write-idea.tumblr.com/

Haikus by BAM author, Alex

stoney gift of life
moody teenager on drugs
old people are cool

sweating between sheets.
spent breath and a ceaseless love.
nine months of torture.

white lights, satellites.
a wash of spirit to earth.
beginning of time.

the big bang theory,
if that was the case, I guess
we could just be dust.

Haikus by BAM author, Leo

The world moves alone
perceives things as consequence
what creates human?

Life defeated life.
Things go as called destiny
but nothing was planned.

Haikus by Willo (Adult Youth Facilitator)

Surprise! Water broke.
Rushed screaming pain, it’s coming.
Worth every push.

Sexy time, low light.
Condom breaks, unknowingly.
Strong swimmers make life.

Owl dies peacefully.
Reincarnation, yo.
I am here to hoot & holler.

Dinosaurs roam earth.
Humans appear. Idiots.
Ooh, ooh, monkey sex.

Haiku by Kate (Adult Editor/Co-Facilitator)

irish catholics breed
a thousand freckles, and i
sprung from brown eyed girl

Mia was here, but didn’t want to post hers. Natalie & Maggie were also here, but they left early.

There will be links to new BAM posts, photos, quotes, and more!

Follow us and we will love you. Not that we didn’t before

Nathaniel:

this evening [july 28th] in bam we had a special treat… Lucy brought in her friend Paisley and so we had two people from Australia at the table along with Jonathan, Maggie, Melissa and myself…
I think it was a pretty strong meeting seeing as we got started pretty darned late.

We had a check-in (first in a bit of a long time)… ate some delightful biscuits (cookies all the way from Down Under, where they call them that), what was that brand name again?
[IT WAS TIMTANS!]

Did a fun writing excercise on “implants” (the movie Timer came up in the checkins)
Then we skipped some other stuff that we planned to do (report backs on small group projects, and some stuff with FB and comments) and jumped right into some ideas for a website redesign!!!!! (under the brilliant leadership of one Melissa and those with whom she communicates regularly

She mocked up some really simple stuff (structural ideas for the site) on paper, then others commented and also did some sketching. basically we’re talking about having the bam banner at the top like it is now… a big box for the blog in the center (in which links to articles, along with some lead in copy would appear) and a dynamic (stays with the viewer) nav on the left with a short description of bam

That is the primary idea for change and there are like a couple small possible variations on that

One interesting thing that came of our convo was a brilliant question: does bam have a mission statement? if so what is it? (think purpose too) So like… We’ll need to start working on that… like even on our email loop between meetings,… because it is really important IMHO

Another thing that came up is the Bam Newsletter/ list serve… and kind of how that can be better (one idea was to automate it… and make it a regular thing- weekly or monthly by user choice)

Sleepy time friends, I need my beauty sleep
Nathaniel
PS nice work guys, I’m proud of y’all

This was our topic, and we could write for as long as we wanted to. Johnathan, Melissa, Celia, Lucy, Maggie, and Mia attended the meeting. Celia and Lucy chose to abstain from publishing their posts.

Mia:

it scares me. it scares me that a group of people can have in our society, under our laws, can have that cheesy spy movie staple, “a license to kill”, without even the necessity of a college education. If any civilian, not a policeman, just your average joe with a licensed gun, somehow accidentally shot a man, there’d be consequences. Holy shit, there’d be consequences. Shooting a handcuffed man who’s on the floor, straddled beneath you? That’s not fucking self-defense. Looks more like an execution.

The rules are different. I’m supposed to accept that. but I can’t.

No matter what the government or society says, my mind and my conscience don’t give a moral edge to a killer just because he’s in uniform. In fact, I’d hold them to a higher standard. Police officers should be trained to keep their cool. they should be able to deal with high pressure situations without failing their duty to protect humans. Just because someone causes issues, or even commits a crime, that person is not subhuman.

In my opinion, our police force’s highest priority should be to protect the life and well-being of every citizen. Sure, innocent people deserve extra protection, but less innocent people still deserve the respect and consideration of government officials, even i they don’t show it back to the police. Cops are supposed to be, in an ideal world, the good guys, the ones who are trained about things like the difference between a taser and a gun, trained not to kill on instinct, but to follow the law.

I don’t know about the solution to this case. i don’t know how to fix this.

But someone should. The more instances like this that pop up, the more police brutality the youth of my generation see again and again, the less respect we have for police.

I don’t trust the police.

When I see them, I’m scared, and I’m a fairly law-abiding kid with all the privileges of my race and little-girl appearence.

I’m terrified. I see that they have power, and that they abuse the fuck out of it. I see their blue uniforms, and I shiver, and hope they like the look of my group of friends, because I don’t honestly trust them to wait for a crime.

I see their guns and I can’t trust them not to pull the trigger.

I know that this isn’t fair to the majority of police, who are trying to help the community. I know this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. But it is.

Fix it.

Melissa:

Losing Color

Johnathan:

I never watched any of the Oscar Grant videos on youtube. From the videos displayed in the news, it looked like he was handcuffed to the floor, which made the reason for bringing out a taser more strange, let alone a handgun. If he was restrained on the floor, he couldn’t have moved to threaten him in any way?

How? If the BART Police have batons, tasers, and a handgun, how would words alone, angry, frustrated, or even death threats, face against those things?

If we take Officer Meserle’s words as truth, that he meant to tase Grant, there still wouldn’t have been a reason to tase him: I do not know exactly how Grant could’ve scared Meserle into tasing him. I know people will start to talk about what it means to maintain decorum under a loud crowd, and that I don’t know shit. So, as part of the mostly uninformed masses, I will say that the situation is very, very suspicious, and I question Officer Meserle’s motive behind tazing him. This is my conclusion under almost no information about the situation.

Maggie:

Vulture Dude Bro

We also discussed a Seventeen Article, pitched on the cover as “THE PARTY DRUG THAT CAN MAKE YOU FAT & UGLY.”

oh seventeen, whyfore art thou silly (sometimes)?

7/19/10, first day of internship with baker      

I awoke at 4:30, got dressed in old jeans and a white tee.  I downed a quick breakfast which I washed down with a large cup of coffee.   Then Lenny and I headed off for the S Bahn.  IT was chilly as we rode our bikes through the empty streets, but I was happy, for this promised fair weather once the afternoon rolled in.  I slept on the S Bahn, and woke abruptly as we pulled into Rosenheimer Platz and it was time to get off.  We walked a ways through the slowly awaking city.  But while the city was just waking up, the bakery had already been in locomotion since the middle of the night.  Such is the life of a baker: to tirelessly supply humanity with warm roles for its breakfast promptly at six o clock when such things are needed.  We entered a courtyard that opened off of a main street.  We were surrounded by a small canyon of charming old apartment mansions one of which housed the bustling Schmidt Brotmanufactur.  And yes, the place does smell of flour, however, further nasal exploration reveals the faint sent of sesame and sun flower seeds, with a hint of butter.  It is always stiflingly hot inside the building, my happiness at the prospect of cooler weather faded.       

            We started the day with a lesson on how to operate the lift, and then moved from there to pretzel making, which as I found out is not as fun as it is made out to be.  There’s no slow and deliberate folding of the warm dough, like one experiences in a *** kindergarten; no, one must do ones best to lift the already formed pretzels of a quickly moving conveyer belt.  If the machine has malfunctioned and spit out a strand of unformed dough, then one must apply the special pretzel making technique, prescribed by the rather intense but very kind baker to my left, he had mastered this technique long ago.  It involves a twisting motion of the dough, so as to form a loop with the characteristic twisted piece sign shape; let me tell you it’s not that easy.  When done correctly it takes only a few seconds but I was taking a little longer than that be the time we were finally done with that mornings pretzel batch.  After this warm up exercise, the day unfolded quickly, the bakers were all quite friendly, and very willing to help out a stupid American.  I had a little trouble with the complex commands they would give me, but on the whole my German actually served me well.  After eight hours of baking and a strenuous task involving an immense pile of pans and a strange whirring cleaning machine (I will not elaborate), it was finally time to sweep up.       

At the end of the day I was covered from head to toe in a grease and flour, but I also wore a smile, and that’s what was important.  A very tired Lenny and I took the S Bahn back to the house, where, shortly upon arrival, I took a short nap.  I awoke to the voice of Lenny and his girlfriend laughing over something downstairs.  I arose and went to join them in the living room accompanied by Jonathan Strange, which I read for about two hours before dinner.  The whole family plus Rachel, Lenny’s girlfriend, sat down to a barbeque dinner taken outside on the patio.  After dinner, I retired to write up my day, and so I come to the present moment.       

7/20/10, day two      

I woke a bit later this morning at ten till five.  The same routine as yesterday was repeated, except that this time I remembered my camera.  As we made our way to Englaschalking station a shot some pictures of a none too amused Lenny.  I kept shooting as we exited the train and made our way through the early light to the bakery.  It promised to be another beautiful day, in the low seventies with wind.   When we reached the bakery I had stopped taking pictures.  The few people that were up at that hour had been casting funny looks at the boy gleefully snapping photo’s at five thirty in the morning on his way to work.  The day unfolded similarly as the previous, except that today at about 9:30 I was transferred out of the bread department and over to the pastry room.  I’m not sure if this is because either they don’t like me in bread, or they deem me now ready to perform the complicated task of puff pastry making.  They probably don’t have in reason whatsoever, but I do like to speculate.      

rosenheimer Platz Station

train leaving Rosenheimer

When I arrived in Pastries, I met the Jovial, and round pastry chef.  Suffice to say that he fulfilled quite a few of the stereo typical traits one expects from bakers and also plenty of other one would not expect.  To my chagrin but also reluctant happiness he spoke very good English, (everyone here speaks English here, and one cannot escape it).      

  I passed the rest of the day with him and his assistant.  We spoke of many things, not the least of which was the state of German and American radio, and his wish to go to Burning Man.       

Munchen at 5:30

 

At the end of the day I had managed not to get quite as dirty, although I still may have spoilt my shirt.  Once back at the house and after a large lunch I took slightly ill to my stomach.  I don’t know where this came from but it has passed on by the time I am writing this.  It did, however sap my will to do anything for the rest of the afternoon.  Luckily, tomorrow Lenny and I will be able to get another hour of sleep, as we are not summoned to the Bakery till seven O’clock.  Thank the Lord!      

      

on our way from the station to the bakery.

the entrance to Schmidt Brotmanufaktur

 

             Sorry for the delays in this update, the last forty eight hours have been rather hectic and I didn’t have any time to write.  

            7/21/10      

            Today I woke up at 5:30 and work started at seven.  I was in the pastry kitchen once again, but today was to prove not nearly as pleasant.  I was put under the control of a veritable tyrant of the kitchen.  From the very start he was annoyed with me because I didn’t speak good enough deutsch.  It took me a little while to process his commands and during the slight delay he would explode and yell at me to use my brain or my eyes, or something to that effect.   Now I have been expecting something like this to happen for a long while now, so it wasn’t as bad an experience as I thought it would be.  The only thing that really bothered me was when he told me to stop crossing my arms.  I soon remedied my problem by taking on long tasks which meant I didn’t have to talk to him much, and eventually I was transferred back to the nice pastry chef.  We took the S Bahn back home after staying a little later, past two, and I took a short nap and read for a while.      

           Lenny plans to meet some friends on the Isar River and although I really wanted to come I also had pre-made plans for the evening. I took the S bahn back past Rosenheimer Platz to the Merienplatz where I exited.  I was going to meet up with Allason, a graduate from SF Waldorf.  She had just got off work and was heading down to the Rathaus to meet me.  Before she arrived I walked around the downtown, breathed in the sultry air and sights and smells.  It was a very pleasant evening the temperature right around 70 degrees, the warm light glancing of the old baroque building with an orange pink glow.     

Spire of Alter Peter Cathedral

 

    

   

  

 

Tower of the Rathaus

    

some church

 

entrance to Merienplatz

 

Alter Peter sanctuary

 

entrance to the Rathaus

 

Rathaus

 

After a while I met up with Allason and we rode the elevator high above Marienplatz to Café Glockenspiel.  We sat outside until a brief evening thunderstorm blew us back indoors.  I ordered an excellent risotto and she an Apfel strudel.  Over dinner she explained that she was working as a Nanny for a family from the Bay Area,  that was here in Germany on business.  After dinner we took a walk through the downtown.  On the way we stopped to listen to an especially cheerful string trio with accompaniment (there were many of these small bands spread out through the downtown).  I took some pictures.     

String Trio with flute and piano

 

 After the next piece the flute player informed the crowd that “No photos only pictures.”     

         I think I will use this statement to end all my arguments, sort of like Ray William Johnson’s “Two camels and a tiny car.”  Later we happened on the red carpet for the german premier of the Cameroon Diaz Tom Cruise film, Knight and Day.  Unfortunately we had missed the event and they were already cleaning up.  From there we stopped buy the ice cream stand and got some ice, and dropped into a beer Garten for a small drink and some apfel schorle.  It was a lot of fun, and the only drawback was that I didn’t get back to the house until late, all the time knowing I would pay for it in the morning.  But hey, it was a great to meet up with someone from SF and the night was very enjoyable.       

            22/7/10 day four and the following Friday.  

 I Woke very fatigued from my slight excursion the night before.  It wasn’t that I drank a lot or tired myself out in some way, it was just that I went to bed too late to get up at 5:30.  Throughout the work day I’m not sure how much of the break room coffee I consumed, but I’m sure it wasn’t a healthy amount.  After work I was still extremely tired so I went straight to sleep upon return home.  Now there was another reason I went straight to sleep:  the owner of the Bakery thought it appropriate for me and Lenny to experience the nightshift on Friday.  So we would be going to the bakery at one that morning.      

 I was awakened at eleven o’clock by a large roll of thunder.  There was a major thunderstorm rolling past.  The wind was whipping the marquee shade outside my room so I hauled it in but stayed outside and let the storm rain on me a little bit.  The drops one my face reminded me of a storm back in Virginia, it smelled of the east coast as well.  That night when I started work in the ever blisteringly hot chamber of the Bread manufactory, I wasn’t tired like I expected, I guess it’s easier to get up at one in the morning than 5.  But by the end of the frenzied yet robotic rush to finish the bread in time for breakfast, I lost my strength and was barely making it by the end.      

So Lenny and I limped home as the city was waking to a grey morning around us.  I slept until late in the afternoon that day.  I woke and a few hours later me and Lenny and a large crowd of friends headed off to a club to celebrate the advent of summer break.  It was a dance club called Drei Turmen (three towers).  Now I hate dancing so I was feeling a little bit worried as we reserved a place in the cushion lined exterior.   But I started to drink, and after two beers I was a little bit more in the mood.  Once I got into the dancing I had terrific night from there on.  I did end up having a bit to drink by the end though, and I slept quite awhile the following day.  But hey, this is summer break so……yeah.      

    

                School is finally coming to an end and summer vacation has just begun, and not a moment too soon.  It is scorching hot here and sunny every day.  And I will not lie; the schoolroom became a veritable hell in the last week.  The air becomes humid and sticky, the sun shines in on the back of your neck, and you begin to horribly regret your decision to wear a shirt that morning.  A decision that is made in the coldest part of the day can never stand the test of time.  You listen to the teacher drone away and in my case you probably only understand a third of what he’s saying.  It would be difficult to stay awake in class even if you did understand what he was discussing, in my case, I find myself jolted awake every five minutes or so.  I’m not trying to be rude; it’s just very hard to maintain polity uprightness when the deeper meaning of the conversation escapes you.  Of course this is also the case in many other conversations I’m witness to, but for some reason the ones at school are the only ones that seem to bore me.  When I first arrived in Munich, there was a little party thrown for me.  Susanne invited one other family for dinner and cocktails.  The father in this family was an Englishman who moved to Germany with his wife and learned to speak almost perfect Deutsch.  Despite living in Germany for many years he still spoke the king’s in a very proper oxford fashion.  He told me that when he first arrived in Germany he was very lost when attempting to carry a conversation, but that as time went one he began to develop a good ear.  He also told me that the first step to learning to speak German was getting to the point when one can begin to pick individual words , that you already know, out of rapid conversation and start to comprehend there meanings within said conversations. 

He turned out to be quite right.  As I sat at the table for the rest of the evening I could understand so little of what was being said, sure I pretended to understand some things, I laughed when the others did, so as not to seem rude, but truthfully I was sitting there in a little world of ignorance doing my best to contain my frustration.  That night I cried a little, I had no idea how much the ability to have a descent conversation had meant to me. 

My frustration only grew immensely over the next week.  I’m sure anyone who’s been on an exchange knows what I’m talking about,  the urge to socialize with intelligent banter is very strong, and yet one cannot,  you can only stand there and smile stupidly at everyone, laugh at jokes, and try not to reveal you’re inferior language abilities.  I’m not very talkative by nature but, when I get home I will talk my head off.  For the first couple of days I will off handedly muse about Schrodinger’s cat, and chaos theory, and for next three days I will bore everyone with obscure and lengthy observations on the nature of Vespasian during the year of four emperors, such is my desire for sophisticated chatter. 

Still, things have improved of the last two weeks, I can almost always figure out the gist of what is being said in social speech, and the simpler discussions I understand completely.  I’ve and a roughly ten days ago I started be able to pick familiar words out of sentences just like the English father had been talking about.  And as summer sets in and people get off school my life here has begun to take a drastic change for the better. 

(Next week I will be doing an internship with Lenny, at a baker.  I will be documenting my five days there on a semi daily basis.  I will also start taking more pictures; I realize that I haven’t been taken nearly enough pictures.)

54, 74, 90 , 2010, ja so stimmen wir alle ein,
mit dem Herz in der Hand
und der Leidenschaft im Bein
werden wir Weltmeister sein.

-German football anthem (translation not given, do it yourself)

            Paul the octopus was once again inserted into his feeding cage.  He is no ordinary octopus; no he’s an oracular octopus, though whether or not he knows this is somewhat doubtful.  In any case he has once again been placed in his tank along with the two colorful plastic boxes of food.  Would it surprise you to find out that this rather generic looking, albeit patriotic, plastic food containers are also not normal?  Of course it wouldn’t! These boxes contain the fates of nations, or at least the fates of certain nation’s football teams.  Not the least of which, is Germany.  Yeah, it is said that whichever team’s box is chosen by the anointed of god, Paul, for his supper, that team shall be the victor in the upcoming match.  And so far, Paul has been a very accurate seer.  The results of each of Germany’s matches have been predicted correctly by this eight limbed sea creature.  And despite the hopes of fans across Deutschland, his fatal decision held true in Germany’s latest match against Spain. 

            Despite all the Logic stacked against Paul’s case, he once again proved the pundits wrong.  Disbelief turned to realization of the Octopus’s powers, at right about the 85^th minute as the score remained Germany 0 to Spain’s 1.  And it turned out that that singular goal was all Spain would need to advance to the final, leaving a stunned silence hanging in the air all over the Bundesland.  From Olympia Stadium, to the Hirschgarten people were stunned.  I now know what it feels like to sit in a huge stadium with forty thousand other people and experience complete silence.  It’s hard to explain.  It’s as though all the beer trenched victories experienced at the Beer Garten, all the spectacular goals saluted with wildly patriotic toasts, (patriotism is something Germans very rarely exhibit outside of a football event),  all the four to zero blowouts and ushered in by the triumphant blast of vuvuzelas, has all come down to this moment of silence,  this sad little memoriam of something that could have been great, something that should have been great, a dream that is now dying with the last echo’s of “Deutschland!” in the now dark and Empty stadium. 

            Then football fever is simple over the next day.  People go to school; they don’t stay at home and feel depressed, they just get one with their life. Sure there’s the Weltmeister final to watch on Sunday, but now it’s just another game to viewed on the TV; there’s also the third place game, but as I’ve found out the Germans really do stick to the Mercedes Motto, “the Best Or Nothing” and many of them would simple be disgusted by such a farce. 

(And that’s all for this week’s update.  Sorry about the delay with the pictures.  They will be posted tomorrow on all the updates where they are missing.)