Tuesday, November 29, 2005
rejection. . .
Thursday, October 06, 2005
a combined effort
Last night I thought of you, and it rained.
The stars shook their fist at me,
leaning out the window of the heavens
so I would be sure to see.
Smelling like you, rain dances on my face,
weaving fingers in my hair.
I'm alone, teardrops squeezing through saturated clothes,
molding to my body.
I want you to infect me with your decay again.
As the rain fell, the lakes drained themselves into streams heading south.
Rivers moving in every direction,
following the twisted paths my thoughts create.
Night breaks around me,
shattering glass on slippery pavement
I shake my broken fist against the stars,
as they try to hide behind clouds.
so I'm curious, what's the theme people are seeing? I tried to make it clear, without smacking you in the face with it. . .but I want to know if it's clear enough
Sunday, October 02, 2005
12 tasks
1st stanza:
1-start with something doing something impossible
-the moon fell down on the sidewalk
2-Continue that picture for us. . . .
-and broke like a hen's white egg
3-4-In the next two lines, use two of your senses to describe where or when or how this is happening, and try mixing the senses up. . .
-the summer was brown and dry, but it's music
felt soft on my arms.
5-describe yourself in a weird way. . .
-I was small, and I wore a small hat.
6-Make the 'I' say something he/she desired
-I wanted nothing more than to dance on my neighbor's green lawn.
2nd stanza:
7-Make an assertion that sounds true but couldn't be. . . .
Because the Earth's core was cooling, animals felt the urge to wander.
8-Now make a truer assertion. . .
Maybe the core wasn't cooling, but I felt a coolness in my wife.
9-Write a line describing another part of your settling, using one or two of the senses,
The night stilled, settling like sugar on our yard.
10-Then repeat the initial image in line 1, but change it in a noticable way.
The moon rose up on her elbows and shook out her long blonde hair.
11-Now write a line that seems to continue the story of mood.
12-but cross it out and make it the title of the poem instead (ha! I like that)
that's what I'm working on for poetasters this week, but the stuff up there isn't mine (I wish I was, I like the moon image, and the sugar one)
Friday, September 30, 2005
the day of doom. . .
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Awareness
Awareness
Somebody else's war
is in my heart and the pink
ribbon to expose the truth on my breast
changed into lead last week,
pulled me down near my shoes.
They shuffled through leaves
fallen off the arms of trees, covering
a trail no one wants to take
but too many women hike every day.
Shifting from plank, to cobra,
to downward facing dog, I breathe.
My heart takes up a sword
to fight her battle. twentyseven years ago
the war was lost with Grandma,
and their forces decided to rally again
against us. They push forward, their armor
crashing, the chain mail glinting
in the sunlight. I slip into triangle posture
readying my single force, watching the enemy rise
over the hill, trudging towards me.
Ok, yes, it's about my mother and her cancer, and about how I'm bound to get it some day too (read my rantings page for the story--"My mom was sick" post) but I'm curious what everyone's first reaction to this is, how they view this poem, and what I should fix. i think this one might actually go somewhere!
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Night sky
here ya go though, first daft, but I'll fix it up a bit and post it again--once I have a few people rip it to shreds
Night Sky
My heart is stuck
to the stars, as much as I pull
away and try to cut free,
it only damages me.
Nights spent in big cities,
buildings full of lights tower
above me. Flashing signs, glowing
bulbs sear their image in my eyes.
I feel a twinkle high above me tap
my heart and tug
at the arteries, but I can’t see
where it comes from.
Street lamps light up
the neighborhood, chase away
the darkness that lets pinpricks
shine, force their way
through the cloth.
Joe told me that it was a brave
hummingbird who rescued
everyone from a world of darkness.
The bears couldn’t rip holes
in the fabric, the coyotes tried
to tear it with their teeth. A tiny
bird, with vibrating wings poked
holes in the blackness
so we could lay on the tin roof, bundled
in sleeping bags and blankets to create
pictures of our own, in the stars blinking
above as they lowered an invisible thread,
tied a bowline around my heart, a string
strong enough to snap the scissors
of the three muses.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Monday, September 05, 2005
my three words
Permanent Record
The heat tells the stories
here, squelching out everything
else, a dull ringing left
in memories that you thought
you created, moldeed
in the clay of your history,
brought to life
in your actions.
But as the temperature rises, you melt
into forgetfulness, losing
yesterday, the day you ran
after the neighbor's dog. Misplacing
last year, curing your bastard
father into oblivion, forfeiting
the first day in detention
your freshman year.
Sun beating into pavements writes
your history, all the stories blurred
edges of memory, until it's all heat-stained
days, waiting for
the air conditioner to work again.
bleh--I'm not so sure about it, but we'll see how it goes. for a rough draft it's not too shabby, and there are a few things I like, some of the metaphors and the like, but yeah. I really don't like having to put swear words into my writing, it doesn't please me one bit. Thus is life when I have a teacher who will say openly "Oh, blow me," when he's sick of debating. it's such an interesting class though.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
City Weekly's poetry contest
anyway, here's what I'm thinking about submitting:
Sucker
You overflow into
my brain, push,
press, tap, bleed down
my spine spreading
out like the apsen
tree that takes
over our front
yard. I spray weed
killer, pull, chop,
mow to get
rid of new
sprouts. The green
still broke
through the dirt.
You push
out through my eyes,
clear and wet,
drip down my
face, fall over
my teeth, expressing
yourself in my words.
The title, I'm unsure about, my prof recommended it, since it's the secondary shoot starting from the base of the plant, and it kinda fits in, but I'm not sure yet. the line breaks I'm still playing with as well, but for now, I kinda like it.
and can I just say, I'm reading "White Oleander" again, and it's still one of the most poetic books I've read in a while, I can open almost any page and find something that's just amazing. "At Christmas time, it was hot again, and smog lay thick over the Valley, like a vast headache over a defeated terrain, abscuring the mountains" (p. 177) ok, so I admit, that's not the best, but that's pretty good. Vast is a good word, I like it.
I was also given an assignment for my current poetry class, assigned three words (and I had to give up my 3 words) and I hate them already. off the top of my head, I had parole, bastard, and life-sentence, or something like that. Granted, since they all go together I can pull something out of a hat, but I hate swear words, I hate them with the passion of a thousand spaniards, and now I have to write a poem, and put my name by it that has that word in it. Oy, as soon as this assignment gets turned it, that word is gone, shoot, the whole poem might even be gone. . .good thing it's labor day weekend, and I can work something out tomorrow.
anyway, if anyone's interested in submitting something to City Weekly, it must be shorter than 1,000 words, and be in their office by 5pm on sept. 7th to
City Weekly's
7th Annual Literary Contest
248 South Main Street
SLC, UT 84101
and I bet you can find the rest of the info online, because I don't want to type anymore tonight. I hope with labor day mine will get there on time. . .
Monday, August 29, 2005
Cultivator of extreme elements
-a cord of snakes
-a bowlder of bears
-a desinary of seagulls (I'm unsure of this one still)
-a swallop of bullfrogs
-a grockle of geckos
-a nipper of robins
-a swazzle of whales
-a jaru of emu (what's the plural form?)
-a fusty of penguins
-a lacky of geese
then we did some word compounds and an epithet. each rather hard but it gave me a great phrase, which I like a lot and need to find a home for
"Following a grockle
of geckos through the heat-stained
boulders, the cultivator
of extreme elements toys
with lightning bolts."
ah, it sure feels good to finally be writing a bit again
Friday, August 26, 2005
poetry
But I'm contemplating putting together a collection of poems I have, and working on them and making them fantastic and perchance getting them published *crosses fingers* we'll see what I can do
Saturday, July 09, 2005
in need of a hug
that's situation number one. Right now I'm in a little town in New Mexico. Actually I'm not even in a town, I'm sitting in the middle of a field, stealing connection from the health lodge of the boy scout camp I'm at. I've been visiting my parents since this past wednesday. I thought it would be great for me to get out for a while, I missed my family,things have been rough between a few of my friends, and I have just been bummed out lately. so I come here to New mexico, and it just gets worse. The trip started on wednesday morning, at 6:30am, when the girl I was going with didn't feel like it was a good thing for her to go. so I drive off by myself and make the 12 hour drive by my freakin' self. it was horribly long, and I wasn't such a happy camper. ok, I'll admit, I cried for a little bit while I was driving, not so much because she wasn't with me (no offense to her) but because of everything piling up and it just hit me, and I collapsed. I'm not a crier by anymeans, some people wonder if I have emotions I htink.
anyway, so I'm here in new mexico at a boy scout camp, where 2 years ago, I worked with captain jax here. and unfortunatly, his memory is everywhere. the things we did here, it's all over, and it hurts so much, we had such a good time, and our relationship grew so much during the summer we spent here, and it's just hard to hink of him pushing everything in the corner of his mind to later delete.
so I need a hug, I just want to be hugged like it'll never end. I want someone to just hold me and tell me that I'm a great person, and that there's so much out there for me, that when I just need to let go and cry they'll tell me it's ok for me to do that and give me a shoulder. there's a book I haven't been able to read yet, it's at desert book, something about a needed hug or something. I keep thinking of it, and how good it'll be when I finally can read it.
I'd like to think that I'm strong in the gospel. I turn to the Lord, not just when I need him, but all the time (I'm sure moreso when I need him) but it didn't really hit me until just recently (I htink it was a talk I heard somewhere) but the atonement isn't just for forgiving sins, and I always forget that. because I had to use the atonement for a large issue in my life, I don't think of it as the way the Lord knows about how I feel in everything happening, but as a way He found to help me overcome sins and be forgiven. But it's so much for than that, and I'm just starting to realize it, and trying to find a way to make it work for me. I was told in a certain blessing to remember the atonement in my life, and I just assumed to was to help me overcome sins, because of the timing of the blessing, that's what I would use it for. But I realize even more, right now especially, that it's help me in all situations, that the atonement is so the Lord can help in the good and the bad times I'm having. when I'm just struggling because my tire went flat, or I want to shout with joy because I was accepted to a magazine, or I want to curl up and die because my boyfriend broek my heart. Either way, in whatever situation, I'm able to call on the lord because of the atonement and all he went through, so he could empathize with me. not sympathize, but actually empathize, and feel what I'm feeling. I'm trying to be able to understand that so much. even when I'm in the middle of nowhere, trying to forget captainjax and move forward, he knows what that feels like and I've just got to remember that and take advantage of it.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
China cabinet
there's also a lot going on for me right now, and i wish I could figure out it. once I do, I imagine it will be on here, because writing is how I sort things out. I can write what I think easier than I can just say it (Go figure! ha!) ok, but this story is also a piece I wrote for my cnf class, and I really like this one a lot, I think it has potential, I may have to make it a little bit longer, but I think this is something that can be submitted somewhere! yay!
18 years after my mom decided she wanted to get a china cabinet, my dad finally got around to getting one for her. It sits against the wall, facing the kitchen; proudly showing off the china set passed down from her mother to herself, the set that eventually will be split up between her 5 daughters.
After my grandparents decided to become permanent snowbirds in St. George Utah, my grandma thought it time to distribute everything important among the children and grandchildren. She didn’t want everyone to fight over who got what when she eventually died, although, since she was only about 65 at this time, we didn’t have any fear that it would happen any time soon. As she packed for the move, she set things aside with someone’s name, so she wouldn’t forget who was getting what. My mom got the majority of the china set, since she was the only daughter, and my four sisters and I each got one tea cup and saucer, part of the set my mom received. Each item made the trip from across the ocean with some ancestor or another. I never did pay attention to where my family tree root’s started.
As my mom unpacked the china set, she came across the tea cups my grandma had given her to keep for us girls. She was smart, I know I would have broken mine or lost it if I had been in charge of it. As I watched her and my dad gently place the china in the cabinet, I wondered what my brother was going to get. He wasn’t getting a tea cup from grandma, (much to his dismay I’m sure). My dad then revealed to me what his only son was getting. A dusty brown box with ‘David’ written on the side had been put in the cupboards under the cabinet. The tape holding the box shut was faded yellow, and broke easily apart.
“Glenn gets this” my dad said, and set the box on the floor in front of me. Intrigued by this, I opened the box; it looked like a bunch of rags to me. I pulled one out, and it unrolled to expose a green-tainted serving spoon. It didn’t look like anything stupendous to me. Joking, I said “So Glenn gets dirty silverware”.
“Silver is right.” My dad replied, and then pointed out the fancy engraved ‘W’ on the handle. I opened another rag, spilling out a few forks, their tines and handles also tinted green. The ‘W’ was now obvious on the handle. Glenn was getting the family silverware set, since he was the only son, the first born son, he got to keep the family name of Wilson. I felt a sense of guilt inside of me. All of us girls in the family, we were all so anxious to get rid of the W as a last name, wanting to move forward in the alphabet. It had turned into a game for us, to see who could get the farthest in the alphabet. AnnaJune was an ‘E’, Jenni was now a ‘G’, and Heather was going to be a ‘G’ as well. Amber was only 11; we weren’t even going to try to get her involved yet. I had no prospects, but I was hoping for anything higher than an ‘E’ to ensure success in the game.
My grandma, on my dad’s side had written a letter to him before packing up the silver. I don’t recall the exact words, but she wrote that the whole silver set was his and his alone to do with as he chooses. He was the first born son. There was also a list of how many of each item there should have been. We were missing a few spoons, a candle holder, and other random items. My dad knew where they were. After my grandpa died, and the family went through his things, he knew his other siblings had taken things, since they all lived close in California, and we lived in Utah. All he got was the partial silver set, a Japanese chest, and the orchids. He let everyone else fight over the things that didn’t matter to him; he knew he was lucky to get out with what he had. And it had been a fight; his sister still wasn’t talking to him, 15 years later.
We haven’t yet cleaned the silver, my brother, who was 16 at the time, doesn’t really care that some day he’ll inherit it. Right now it still sits in the box under the china cabinet, wrapped up in rags. My mom’s china, her history, is proudly displayed in the glass enclosed cabinet, while my dad’s sits in a box, waiting for someone who cares enough for the ‘W’.
Monday, June 06, 2005
for another friend . .
anyway, this one's bout my room-mates boyfriend. It's very true of him, but it was fun to write. Another mimic, which was just fun (to read as well)
He flips me over every time I see him, when I would much rather prefer to have my feet on the ground to say hello. What kind of hello can that be when all I see for the next few minutes is the room spinning? Whenever I get the craving to run, he tells me how much he hearts the high school track, while I lay down until the feeling passes. He would drink protein shakes all day if he could afford it, and can’t imagine how I would rather drink a glass of water than the brown sludge. The first time I meet him he told me we could never marry because I love dogs and he despises them. We could never get married for a 1,000 different reasons, but he feels the need to add one more each time he sends me an e-mail or letter. He loves the angry rock, while I prefer the emo punk rock. After spending two years in Wisconsin, he can’t stand cheese. Cheese is a staple part of my life, and I don’t know if my world could turn without it. He hates to read, and hates to write. The only thing I could ever think of possibly doing with myself is writing and reading. He thinks I waste afternoons reading books when I could be out playing ultimate Frisbee. I don’t think it’s time wasted, I was able to spend the afternoon with a person I didn’t know in the first page, and become completely involved in their life for the next 200 pages.
I always talk loud, and he talks so soft that people sitting next to him can’t hear him. My family doesn’t know how to be quiet, so we yell to be heard over the other person, because my story is ultimately better than hers. I stutter a little bit when I talk, and I generally can’t get across the point I’m trying to make. He will create words to suit his purposes, saying something in three sentences that could have been said in three words. I don’t like to be the center of attention, because I know I will be embarrassed and people will laugh at me. He thrives off the attention of others.
I don’t know how to plan anything, and I don’t carry a day planner with me to schedule anything. Everything in his life is planned and sorted. The next 50 years are all planned out, I don’t even know what’s going to happen tonight. He will work for 10 hours a day, hard manual labor. The only thing I can focus on for 10 hours a day would be my writing and in his mind, that’s not work, that’s just writing. When look back on when I meet him I remember intense anger because he told me my dreams to write were stupid and I would make no money. I told him that I don’t need to make money as long as I love what I’m doing, that’s enough for me. But I ask him about all the fights we used to have, the arguments that would make me furious at him for days, he just laughs. For him, those were the best moments of our friendship, the moments when he was he and I was me, and we decided that nothing was stupid enough to break our friendship.
yeah, it needs some work, I realize reading over it again (haven't looked at it for a while)
oh yes, and asmond, I apologize if you felt decieved or if the personal things you wrote you didn't want olf friends reading, but I do enjoy reading the things you write, and seeing a different side of you, that's the best part. :)
Saturday, May 28, 2005
my submission
I just moved into my new apartment, an it's workig out great. Now, if I could find a guy. . . .that would be nice as well. My room-mates constanly have guys one's practicly engaged, and Im just lonely I decided. curse-edness. anyway, here's my loneliness piece
Rooftop Loneliness
“I had a strong sudden instinct that I must be alone”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up
I watched the clouds come in across the sky, pushing their way into the mountain. They didn’t want to rain, but I needed them to. I needed to feel the wetness on my face, to lose myself in the sound of drops hitting the earth. Night started to take over, and I could see a few stars, the ones that outshone the streetlights that were blinking on all over. I was on the roof top again, the one spot I could go to and let my mind calm down for a moment. I was hit with the desire to get out. I didn’t know where it came from, what part of my brain decided to turn around and say “Hey! You have got to be alone. Right now, be alone”. All I knew was that I couldn’t get rid of it.
I was working two jobs and going to school full time in the summer. Every day I’d sit in my Shakespeare class at Southern Utah University, trying to understand the characters in King Henry the Eighth or something like that and I would realize that I had been staring out the window at a pine tree blowing in the wind for the past half hour. For Freshman Orientation, one of the jobs that kept me busy, I’d always volunteer to be the back up guide on the campus tours. I wouldn’t have to talk to the Freshmen, I could meander around campus, bringing up the rear of the tour group. While the front guides would explain about the Administration building, I could sit on the steps by the water fountain, lost in the trickle the water made coming down the rocks, watching the leaves twirl under the bridge.
Why hadn’t I gone yet? It was already the end of July, when the storms start coming more frequently here in the desert. It wasn’t that I hated Shakespeare, things weren’t spinning down into the toilet of life, I was making plenty of money between both jobs to support me even next semester. Yet my backpack was sitting by my bedroom door, half packed, almost begging me to quit my jobs, quit school, top the pack off and hitch hike to the Appalachian Trail.
Instead I took walks. In the afternoons, between work and school, I would travel the streets of the town. I noticed the worms in the gutter, the shadows of birds across the asphalt. I didn’t ever pay much attention to the houses and the streets. In fact, I avoided the streets I knew would have kids playing on them, or other people. I chose a path that would lead me around Cedar City that most people wouldn’t take for any reason. I knew exactly where to stand on a certain street so I could turn one way and smell sage, turn another way and see the canyon, another and watch hummingbirds fight over a feeder. The sage reminded me of the mountains, and after two weeks of smelling the sage everyday I thought I was going to explode. I couldn’t stand the thought of the real world. I didn’t want to have to worry about what was going to happen tomorrow. I didn’t want to have to plan my days off of work two weeks in advance. I didn’t want to have to pretend anymore, to tell everyone I’m doing just fine when inside I was aching to get out.
More often than not my roommates had to say my name more than once to get my attention. A textbook would be sitting in front of me on the kitchen table, but my thoughts weren’t involved in the pages. I was imagining being in the mountains, just me and the wilderness. Some place where I was by myself and didn’t have to concur with society.
That’s why I’d lie there on the roof, trying to ignore the noises in the house below me, staring through branches into the dark sky. It was then when my urge to be alone simmered down, content for the moment, when it was silent, after my back was numb and everyone else had gone to sleep. But come the next morning, it returned with a vengeance, realizing it had been fooled by a rooftop
I had a friend who lived out of his Volkswagen van for six months; he said it was the best time he ever had to just live life day by day and to not to worry about anything. Now he walks around campus with his feet bare and dreads in his hair. He doesn’t care what people think of him or how he’s doing in relation to others. He’s still living day by day and that’s what I wanted. My older sister told me that I could come visit her for a while, that it would be good for me to get a break. She told me I’d regret quitting school when I was so close to graduating. The last thing I wanted was to spend a weekend with my sister in the Salt Lake Valley. It would be easier to take a shovel to the hole I knew was growing inside of me.
And it is a hole; it is a deep dark hole that was trying to take over my life. There is actually no trying; it’s taking over my life. There’s a part of my brain that fights back though. It knows that I couldn’t leave, no matter how much I need to be alone, like Fitzgerald, or else I will most assuredly crack-up. Reason slowly takes over and talks me out of it. Reason pushes my loneliness into a box and sticks it in the corner of my mind where it knows it will sit for a while. What reason doesn’t know is that it could break free at any moment. That instinct that I must be alone. And as the rain slowly starts the pelt the rooftop around me, as the darkness of the clouds cover the stars; I know that this time I can’t resist it; reason won’t be able to stuff my desire back into a box, won’t be able to stop me from being alone. For whatever reason, I know that I have to be alone. So I’ll walk down the street, stand in the right spot and turn around; smell the sage, look at the canyon, and watch the rain drench the hummingbird feeder.
so that's what i turned into three lit mags. . .boy it's going to be sad when i get rejected. . .
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Journal and lives
I carry a little bag around with me, not a purse, because purses are not something I use. This is kind of like a fanny pack of sorts. It's the top part of my Kelty Backpack, it unbuckles, and kind of turns into a little bag. so you'll know it's not like a purse, I have my Book of Mormon in there, my writing journal, my day planner (which actually doesn't have anymore days in it. . .) some pencils, my checkbook, wallet, waterbottle, keys, and that's probably about it. Maybe some snacks as well. I call it my life, because it really feels like my life is in there. Heaven help me if I lose that bag!! but now I can perchance keep my journal in there as well. We'll see.
anyway, I hate the title on this piece, but that's the worst thing for me, titles always have been! so as I play around with this piece the next few weeks (since I'll have no life except for work after tomorrow. . .) we'll see what I can come up with. I want to get the quote to be emphasised more as well, I'm struggling with that as well.
Final Summer
“I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.” -Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That, pg 681
I don’t know exactly when it occurred, but I knew Philmont was a place I probably wouldn’t see ever again. I left there the end of the summer after my 1st year of college and didn’t look over my left shoulder to see the arrowhead shaped rock on the mountain face. The legend says that if you see the arrowhead over your left shoulder as you leave, then you’re destined to come back to Philmont someday. I may have known then, somewhere inside me, but the connections hadn’t been made.
I taught rock climbing all summer at a huge national Boy Scout camp in
The feeling I felt there wasn’t something I could replace, but I couldn’t go back. For whatever reason, I had to let it go. It harder than I thought it would when my entire family went back, and I stayed home in
I don’t know why I feel this need to hold on to the place I know I won’t ever spend another summer at, but I can’t let it go. I can’t ever hear Phish sing “Farmhouse” without picturing a bunch of guys dressed as loggers, singing in front of a campfire, the background music being a washboard, spoons on a leg, and an acoustic guitar. “I never ever saw the northern lights. . .never ever saw the stars so bright”. I laid on my roof top every night for the whole summer, knowing that at Philmont, in Miner’s Park right now, someone is climbing up the ladder with their sleeping gear to sleep on the roof.
It seems that the things you think will last forever are the things that never do. I apply to Philmont, thinking that this year I’ll go, this year I won’t go through the pain and loneliness I went through last summer. But something holds me back, something I still can’t put my finger on. Philmont offers me a job at Miner’s Park. I sign a contract for an apartment in
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
a short short
He'd always open the door for everyone, no matter where we were going, or who we were with. He would talking, the random stories constantly flowing from his mouth, directly from his brain. The connections of thoughts were made like his brain made them, which meant we had no idea how he got from the family dinner he had yesterday, to taking his dog to the vet, to the movie we watched two years ago.
There was no interrupting him, and no one knew where his next sentence would lead, but I knew that no matter what he had to say, if his arms were full of something, or even when they were empty, his foot would still rise and kick the door open.
At first I really struggled. I wanted to find a moment and compress it down as tight as possible, so tight that it would squeak. This isn't tight enough for me yet, but it is just a moment, written in just a moment one could say. that's what I want to convey.
I think I decided to try my rooftop loneliness for submission, that one has good concrete things in it, and I've gotten some ravs in class from that piece. I'm going to combine it with another one I wrote I think--well, eventually I will, but I think right now it's stronger on it's own. Maybe sometime I could create a compilation of lonely/wandering pieces. that would be cool.
well, that's enough for today. I have something I wrote posted, and that's what I've been trying to do, at least one thing every day, so that'll get me writing more.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
a thought on publishing
and y'know, the comments on the last piece I put on I'm going to incorperate. Maybe the new era will publish me or something if there's religious meaning behind it :)
and OSC is doing a writing workshop this summer at UVSC and I'm too broke to attend. Maybe I'll just transfer to SVU for a semester and take a creative writing class from him, that would be cool.
anyway, here's my piece. in the workshop, someone said I should title it "rooftop loneliness" which I like.
(Insert: A cool title that I can’t think of yet)
“I had a strong sudden instinct that I must be alone”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, pg 521
I was hit with the desire to get out. I didn’t know where it came from, what part of my brain decided to turn around and say “Hey! You have got to be alone. Right now, be alone”. All I knew was that I couldn’t get rid of it. Sitting in my Shakespeare class, trying to understand the characters in King Henry the Eighth or something like that, I realized that I had been staring at a pine tree blowing in the wind for the past half hour. For Freshman Orientation, I’d always volunteer to be the back up guide on the campus tours. I wouldn’t have to talk to the Freshmen, I could meander around campus, bringing up the rear. While the front guides would explain about the admin building, I could sit on the steps by the fountain, lost in the trickle the water made coming down the rocks, watching the leaves twirl under the bridge.
More often than not my roommates had to say my name more than once to get my attention. A textbook would be sitting in front of me on the table, but my thoughts weren’t involved in the pages. I was imagining being in the mountains, just me and the wilderness. Some place where I was by myself and didn’t have to concur with society. My evenings were spent up on the roof of my house. I’d lie there, trying to ignore the noises below me, staring through branches into the dark sky. The stars were few with the street lights that surrounded my house, but my mind would calm down for a moment, when it was silent, after my back was numb and everyone else had gone to sleep. It was then when my urge to be alone simmered down, content for the moment. But come the next morning, it returned with a vengeance, realizing it had been fooled by a rooftop.
In the afternoons, between work and school, I would go for walks. My head would fill up with the things going on around me. I didn’t really pay much attention to the houses and the streets, as I did the sense of things around me. In fact, I avoided the streets I knew would have kids playing on them, or other people. I chose a path that would lead me around Cedar that most people wouldn’t take for any reason. I knew exactly where to stand on one street so I could turn one way and smell sage, turn another way and see the canyon, another and watch hummingbirds fight over a feeder.
After two weeks of smelling the sage everyday I thought I was going to explode.
I needed to quit both my jobs, quit school, fill my backpack up and hitch hike to the
I called my sister up one night, the night when I couldn’t take it anymore. “I need to get out here” I exclaimed on the phone, “I can’t take society anymore, I can’t focus on my work, I can’t think of anything except taking at least a year off of school and just getting away from everyone. Shoot, in a year by myself I could write the Great American Novel.” She didn’t understand me, she couldn’t comprehend how I could be so close to graduating and want to just take off “You’ll regret it later if you do this, why don’t you just come up and stay with me for a weekend?” she told me before I ended the call. The last thing I wanted was to spend a weekend with my sister in the
And it was a hole; it was a deep dark hole that was trying to take over my life. There was actually no trying; it was taking over my life. There was a part of my brain that was fighting back though. It knew that I couldn’t leave, no matter how much I needed to be alone, like Fitzgerald, or else I would most assuredly crack-up. Reason slowly took over and talked me out of it. But when I sit on my front porch watching the storm clouds move in over ‘C’ Mountain, I’m hit with it again. The instinct that I must be alone. And as the rain slowly starts the pelt the ground in front of me, as the shadows from the clouds darken the cement, I know that this time I can’t resist it, reason won’t be able to stop me from being alone. For whatever reason, I know that I have to be alone. So I’ll walk down the street, stand in the right spot and turn around; smell the sage, look at the canyon, and watch the rain drench the hummingbird feeder.
Monday, May 23, 2005
My gift
I wondered what it would take for me to give my life for someone. How much emotion and love towards them would I have to feel to be willing to die for them? Could I die for a complete stranger, if it came down to that?
My sister Jenni went into labor nine hours before she was supposed to be induced. If she had the baby within the next three hours, he wouldn't be born on her husband’s birthday. He came out one hour into the new day. But he couldn't breathe right, his lungs weren't clearing properly. His heart beat was in the low eighties, and slowly dropping. Then the doctors couldn't find a kidney.
The first time I saw him was through a glass window, where he was in the back corner. A bright light was on him to keep him warm and tubes and wires ran all over. As I held his big brother up to the glass, so maybe he could see his new brother, I thought about death. My little nephew, who I knew nothing about, would I give my life for him? If there was possibly a way for me to take his place, if by chance he was going to die, would I do it? I couldn't answer that question. I knew my sister would, without a second thought, her son or her? It would be an easy choice.
After my mom was diagnosed with cancer, my dad said he would die in her place. He would take that cancer in a heartbeat, if it meant she would live. After watching his mother and sister die of the same thing, I could see why he would do it.
I dated a man who I thought I could die for. That if it came down to someone saying "It's you or him" I would say "By all means, take me." Even after he broke my heart I realized that I would die for him. And I wondered if this was the emotion my sister had, when her baby boy had a question mark for the future. I wondered if my dad was full of this feeling as he watched my mother go through radiation treatments, and I wondered, as I watched the man I would die for fall in love with another, if this feeling I felt would leave me.
I’m not sure if it’s worth it. To have a feeling so powerful towards someone that I would die for them. I couldn’t see how it was worth it, when the one I would die for, would no longer be willing to die for me. The unfairness in situations was more than I wanted to accept. My father wasn’t able to take my mothers place, as much as he wanted to, he wasn’t able. My sister was helpless when it came to her son and his medical problems. Just like them, I am helpless when it comes to the power I feel I have within me. It doesn’t matter how much I would want to take someone’s place, the situation’s the same, and it couldn’t occur.
When I first held my nephew, after he finally came home, I wondered what the power is that flows through the soul, when one feels that someone means so much to them, that their life isn’t worth enough in comparison to that person? How does it come? I don’t remember it coming into my life. I don’t remember it always being there. I don’t remember if it was there when he first told him he loved me, I don’t remember if it was there when he told me he was going to marry me, I don’t remember if it was there when he told me that he was breaking up with me because God told him to marry someone else. All I remember is watching my mother suffer, and feeling helpless, watching my nephew teeter on death’s edge and feeling sorrow, watching the man I love walk away and feeling pain. Would it be considered a gift of life or a gift or death if I did die for someone?
Prosetry?
this blog will be my musings and a journal you could say, another blog will be my writings