Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in cloudspoken's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, April 13th, 2006
2:51 am	all i'm losing is me (dear doctor) letters #: 1, 2, and 7 three "letters." parts of an entire essay of them all written to my doctor (hence that part of the title of the overall essay). being revised and worked on for my editing class. these were written originally in 2002 at governor's school as a part of my senior portfolio that i decided to write in creative non-fiction. 64 pages of non-fiction, real stuff. my real stuff. my life, my thoughts, my feelings. in thirteen essays. ahhhhhh....lol. anyway, here are numbers one, two, and seven.... ( dear doctor: letter one ) ( dear doctor: letter two ) ( dear doctor: letter seven ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 9th, 2006
10:45 am	harry/hermione: prompt - "green" another...the second one i've "finished" (but things are never completely finished for me, so who knows, but this one just might, *might* be unable to have grow, who knows) for my harry/hermione claim over at fanfic100. Title:The Way the Eye Moves When Seeing Rating: G, yet again. *sigh* i hear all those ones of disappointment you, if anyone's reading this, are giving me, hehehe. be patient my pretties, patient. Note: Hermione reflects on the color green in various ways....always going back to his eyes, or always centered there better yet.... ( and sometimes we find the most important things inside the focal point of the face: the eyes ) (Comment on this)
10:40 am	harry/hermione: prompt - "friends" since this is my writing journal, it goes to reason that this would be a good place to keep all these ficlets/pieces stored, so here's the first, soon to be followed by the latest one i wrote early early early this morning.... Title: A Holding Out of Hands Rating: completely G Note: a relationship can't come from nothing...this is where and how they start.... *NOTE: i'm working on a Part Two of this piece, from Harry's POV, though still third person....that'll be posted once i'm more or less satisfied enough with it to post it as well* ( friendship can sometimes just be the beginning.... ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 8th, 2006
8:23 pm	harry/hermione piece (submission for authorship at portkey.org) WARNING: GIGANTIC piece behind cut okay guys...this is mainly up here just for possible use if the people over at portkey.org can't open the word document that i sent this to them in.... it's my submission piece for authorship over there. porkey is a harry/hermione, ron/luna, lily/james, ginny/draco site with an arse load of stories and artwork and other marvelous and beautiful things, and so naturally, being the gigantic harry/hermione fan that i am, and the sucker that i am for writing them, and just simply the writer that i am, i've finally gone and done it. i worked up the nerve to finally put in an application to become an author. and this is the piece i submitted. it's title-less currently, and still in progress. i'm actually planning on adding on to it in both directions (before where it starts and far after where it ends) so yeah.... it's HUGE, remember that....i'd post it in pieces, but i'm not, obviously. no one has to read it, i'm not expecting any of you to. like i said, this is just for my use if the need for it arrives. so yeah...oh, it started out as an entry for fanfic100, using the prompt "days" but it's grown FAR past that and even what i have doesn't really touch on days in general except right at the very beginning with hermione. so yeah... ( and there comes a time when things just don't work and have to be put to an end, for the sake of the world and the betterment of society ) Current Mood: awake Current Music: jimmy eat world - "23" (Comment on this)
Monday, February 20th, 2006
1:30 pm	the second chunk of "approaching stability" (which is the current tentative title) well, here it is, the second installment of my novel i'm working on my my novel writing class....as always, comments/suggestions/constructive criticism/feedback is very welcomed..... ( "none of you will find a photo you don't like," a voice said from behind addison... ) well???? errr, yeah....there's more after this as well, but that's all for this post, so the rest comes sometime later.... (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 18th, 2006
9:20 am	whoa, i haven't updated this place in YEARS it feels like. okay, so it's been a little over a year. that's still WAY too longer than it should be, and i'm very sorry about that if any of you reading this were anxiously waiting for something new to pop uip under this name for your reading pleasure (or disgust, who knows).... anyway, since a new semester has started and i'm taking yet another creative writing class (even though i technically don't have to take any more of them since i've already met the requirements for my minor in it), and i've been on a GIANT roll with this current project, i feel it's only fitting to start posting pieces of it, from the beginning up to what i have currently. but don't worry, i'm not going to put it all into one post, because that frightens even me into avoiding it like a giant splinter (which i'm deathly afraid of, so there's the reasoning for that analogy)...but yeah...so here it is, the beginning of my NOVEL. yeah, you read that right, my novel. scary thing, huh? the idea of me writing a novel. yeah, kind of scares me to, or it really did when the class first started up and i couldn't get very far into it. but now that i have thirty-three pages written of it so far i'm feeling rather positive about it so far, and hopefully that will just continue to be the case until it gets completed at some unknown time in the future. here's the premise: the main character is addison warren, 28, a photographer at heart and profession up until roughly a year and a half ago when she returned home after the death of her father (so she's was really close to), when she took over the running of his pet project, a bookstore called The Bookshelf. Her art isn't totally tossed aside, she still does a lot of it on her own free time and some projects that she gets asked to work on. The novel starts out with one of those projects, one her best friend since they were in second grade, shannon turner, has asked her to join her on, documenting the daily grind at the local children's theatre in their town as they prepare for the opening of another play (little red riding hood unless i decide to change my mind at some point before we workshop my first chapter which is going to be on march 13th, so yeah, i've got a good bit of time to decide on that), and she gets pulled into the life there at the theatre and the kids involved and also, not by any assertion on her part, the life of the operations manager/diretor at the theatre, a new arrival to lawton (the town it's centered in, but i haven't figured out where said city is located just yet. that's one of my immediate projects for it besides the outline which i have to have for class on monday night so i can pitch it to the rest of the class, eeep. save me someone, from certain death? heh). his name is tucker beck so begins their involvement in each other's lives and whatnot and blah blah blah....other than all of that i don't have a clue where else it's headed, except for lots of bullets of possible scenes/events to include somewhere amid the pages of it. so yeah...so now, because i'm sure i've already scared all of you off and no one else is reading this, here is the first section of the currently untitled novel by the me: ( addison knew that most people were of the mindset thatit is unnatural, off, bizarre, to be in love with some inanimate <i>thing.</i> ) well, there's the first bit of it....any any all comments/suggestions/ideas/criticism/ideas are MORE THAN WELCOME....in fact...I'M BEGGING YOU!!! PLEASE PLEASE PELASE PLEASE give me some constructive feedback, please dears. it would mean so so much to me if i could hear some of your opions/suggestions on this.... the next bit of it sometime later today or possible tomorrow, to give you guys who were brave enough to tough it out a break, heh.... (Comment on this)
Monday, January 31st, 2005
5:52 pm	and soon the updates should be coming *err, hopefully* yes yes, spring semester has started (as of today) and tomorrow i have my first class of my advanced creative writing class, so there should be some new updates coming along in the next few weeks, since it is a creative writing class and all of that jazz. and ooo!!! new icon! which i made myself *gag* it's not that great, but hey, it's a start at least right? uhhh, yeah, or something like that. heh. anyway, that's all, nothing more to update about. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 7th, 2004
12:23 am	more that i wrote today of my short story i'm revising.... Seeking the Truth in Rainbows The earth does not stand still, but something flips over (maybe a pancake), does cartwheels, jumps for joy, howls in pain, laughs in amusement, electricity passes through wires, the sky clouds over, rain falls, computer screens flicker and stay blank. Everywhere something or someone is doing something: people are sleeping in their beds, on floors, eating dinner, watching the nightly news, walking the dog, having dreams of lost cities and trunks of jewels, and it seems that the world doesn't notice the arrival of three-pound-nine-ounce Piper Maren Davis in wrinkled baby skin and mercury gray eyes. In fact, no one inside the operating room notices until seconds or possibly minutes later, when expectant father looks down and sees a small face gazing up at him quietly. The nervous mother gets more and more frantic, unnerved and displaced, and she sends herself into something close to hysterics when her waiting ears are not met with blatant cries of all the sudden newness life brings crashing down on an infant. She isn't calmed even an inch until proud beaming father walks over carrying their little girl, blinking to clear away the glare in her eyes from all of the lights in the room. Piper's mother isn't completely satisfied until she holds the strangely silent child in her arms and feels the rise and fall of her chest, the quick rhythm of her heartbeat. Piper grows as leaves burst into color and then crumble at the slightest hint of pressure, as seasons change and storms pass. Time passes through the scope of memory. Piper is two, then four, entering kindergarten then first grade. She loses her first tooth (the Tooth Fairy rewards her with a book of fairytales), learns how to ride a bicycle, learns how to swim, turns ten, then eleven, then twelve. She writes her first poem in English class and proud Piper flies home, waving the paper around like a flag proudly bearing the ultimate sign of achievement-a sparkly gold star. She bursts into the house in search for someone to show this great thing to, but no one is home, or at least not inside. She passes through the living room, then the dining room followed by the kitchen, and eases open the sliding glass doors that lead to the backyard. When Piper was little, maybe seven or so, she used to pretend that this was a jungle, as she thinks most young children do at some point. But now she is older (almost thirteen), and she knows the limits of reality. She knows, for instance, that the trees never had monkeys swinging from branch to branch. Now they are just trees, some pine and some oak (her science teacher showed them different types of trees last year) and one lonely dogwood. She also knows that there is no princess lost in these magic woods, and that that princess isn't wearing a flowing dress all the colors of a rainbow. No, now the princess is no longer lost or a princess, but is instead Piper's mother, dressed in a tie-dyed dress, and she is attacking the ground underneath the lone dogwood with a shovel, then just her bare hands. Clumps of dirt fly through the air, and fear slowly creeps up behind Piper and tugs at her shirt. Piper wishes that her father was home, but he told her this morning when he dropped her off at school that he wouldn't be home until right before dinner. She knows that he would know what to do, how to make her mother relax. She wants to reach out and stop her from tearing open the ground because Piper has this feeling that once her mother is done with the ground she will reach up into the sky and rip open a hole, and then she knows that her mother would then be gone. The paper bearing that golden star that had earlier brought so much pride and joy to Piper flutters to the ground as she pivots on her heels and retreats the way she came, and slips out the front door and skids to a halt in their deserted driveway. Someone should be home, has to be home, she thinks. "Just think," she mutters to herself. "Think, Piper." She looks up and down the quiet street. A cat slinks out from underneath the dark blue station wagon parked across the street in front of the Williamson's house. Mrs. Williamson could be home, she thinks, and heads to their front door. Her father used to tell her that Mrs. Williamson (he called her Patty she remembers) would clean their house when Piper's mother was too sick to get out of bed and would sometimes babysit Piper when her parents went out for the night on dates (which just grossed her out). Maybe Mrs. Williamson would know how to help her mother. She stepped over the cat that sulks near the doormat and hesitantly knocks on the door. The cat stares up at Piper with apple green eyes and swishes its tail back and forth like a pendulum of a clock. "Mrs. Williamson?" Piper calls out. She hears faint footsteps heading in her direction, and a moment later the door swings open. "Piper, well hello," Mrs. Williamson says. "How are you? Would you like to come in?" She steps to one side and the cat skids into the house. Piper shakes her head. "No thank you," she says because her father would want her to be polite. She glances back at her house, and saw that she left the front door wide open. "Something's wrong," she begins. The smile that has sat on Mrs. Williamson's lips disappears and she leans in closer to Piper. "What is it?" Mrs. Williamson asks, and Piper points to her house. "Momma's outside in the back, and she's tearing up the ground, and Dad won't be home until right before dinner and I don't know how to calm her down." By this time Mrs. Williamson is standing on the doormat with Piper, and she pulls the door closed with a firm grip. Piper follows Mrs. Williamson back across the street and into the house which used to feel so familiar and safe but which now pushes and pulls on Piper's bony frame, attempting to let the built up fear ooze out of it's spill-proof container and stain the carpet. "Piper, I want you to listen to me very carefully, all right? I want you to go upstairs to your room, can you do that for me? Go to your room and close the door. I'll come up and get you once your mother's calmed down and resting. Go on now, get moving," Mrs. Williamson nudges Piper just enough to make her stumble forward to the stairs. She begins to climb, slowly at first and then faster, until she takes the last four stairs two at a time and dives underneath her bed. For several moments she lies there, among the dust bunnies and shoeboxes of cards sent for birthdays, holidays and just to say hi from various family members and friends of the family, and wonders what is happening to her fairytale mother-queen. A list slowly rolls through her mind: a momentary lapse of memory, of remembering who she was (who she is, Piper forces herself to think), or maybe there's a perfectly rational reason for her strange behavior. Perhaps she was searching for something that she buried there days, or months, or even years earlier. Her parents had moved to their home, the house Piper grew up running through rooms, decorating Christmas trees, singing songs during holidays, special events, and for no particular reason, practicing dance routines, dreaming dreams, doing homework and creating new and exciting worlds in her mind, years before they even thought of creating Piper between the two of them, so it was perfectly plausible that she hid something in the soil underneath the blue sky and the swirling leaves connected to spindly limbs and trunks of pines, oaks, and dogwoods. But what could it possibly be? she wonders, propping her face between her hands supported by her knobby elbows propped up against the hardwood floor scattered with pieces of confetti from one of her constantly evolving projects (the whole basis of this one fell through when Piper ended up losing track of the Ziploc bag that she stored the confetti in). But with every possibility Piper stirs up, the more unbelievable and bizarre they become, and her mother is not known for being unbelievable or bizarre, or at least not in her memory she hasn't been. "But there's always a time to start," she murmurs to herself. "Pip?" Her mother's voice floats through the house like one of the leaves from one of the trees out in the backyard loose from its stem, and for a moment Piper tenses up. What version of her mother would she see when she crawls out from under her safe fortress? Shining, brilliant, alert, loving mother ready to bake those cupcakes she promised to have ready for tomorrow for the annual school bake sale? Or desperate, flighty, half-mother half-paranoid temptress, closing in on her prey? Or none of the above, and some new, brand new version that her mother has created during her visit to the earth and its hidden treasures (or demons)? Dreading whatever the sight will be, she pushes herself out from her hiding spot and dusts herself free of iridescent-colored pieces of paper and makes her way slowly to the stairs. Standing at the top of the stairs, Piper sees her mother's back, standing solid and straight down at the foot of the stairs, like a pillar of strength, but she keeps herself from trusting this sight in case it's an apparition. "Mom?" she says, and this vision (or is it an apparition? Piper still isn't sure) turns and there is her mother, every inch of her displayed for Piper to view and still contemplate and wonder about whether or not this is the actual thing or just some distant memory or another one of her infamous masks she might have kept pent up inside herself until this very moment. "Pip, there you are," she says as she begins to climb the stairs that separate confident mother from hesitant and suspicious daughter. Piper still isn't convinced one way or another, but she goes down a few steps and meets her halfway. There is no trace of the insanity (if that's what it was) that happened earlier out in the backyard in her face or her eyes, but Piper knows that even if something can't be seen it doesn't mean it isn't there, and her mother perfected the art of hiding things during Piper's early years of life, walking around, apparently the perfect mother, hiding her obsessions and little quirks from the rest of the prying world. "I need to talk to you about something," her mother says as she reaches out her hand and grasps Piper's skinny wrist in her strong fingers. Piper stares at those fingers, with their perfectly shaped nails painted a pastel, almost cotton candy color pink, and her eyes slowly travel up the extended arm, to her mother's shoulder, then her neck, her chin, her mouth (Piper notices the same pale pink color on her mother's lips), her nose, and then to those teasing, sometimes deceptive eyes. "About what?" Piper asks, even though she already knows the answer. She wants her mother to voice it out loud herself, in her own, unique voice, rather than it getting swallowed up and choked down her throat like Piper imagines her mother hopes Piper will let it fall and fade into the past. Her mother looks at Piper carefully, sizing her up (or so Piper thinks), and puts on a cut-out smile, one she might have torn out of one of her tabloids she dedicates her morning cups (two) of coffee to. "You know," her mother says, her voice lowering, as if she's trying to hide from someone else in the house, but Piper knows no one else is lying in wait in any room. This is just her mother, settling back into her normal routine of bizarre antics that can sometimes (okay, usually) turn into partially paranoid acted out thoughts. "Talk to me about what, Mom?" Piper asks, clearing her voice, making it bounce down the stairs and into the hallway, so that it will surround her mother if she attempts to disappear without finishing what, in actuality, she started. "Oh you know," she says again. Piper doesn't blink, just continues to gaze at her mother's frantic eyes. "About my behavior, outside, a little while ago," she finishes in a rush, all of the words gathering together into a snowball and tumbling out of her mouth. Tired of being led down the same path time after time, breakdown after breakdown, Piper pulls her arm free of her mother's grip and puts on a defiant and stubborn expression on her face. You can only stand so much of the same old thing, she keeps repeating over and over in her mind. It's time to put your foot down Piper, she thinks, and is at the same time aware that her mother is searching her eyes for something, anything, that might give her some clue as to what's floating around in her daughter's head. "Have you thought up a new excuse? Or is this one the real one, the truth about all of your little episodes?" Piper knows this sounds coldhearted and mean and that it will bite a hole through her mother's exterior and really grab hold somewhere inside her chest cavity and fester until it explodes into a fierce flurry of hateful words and a flood of angry emotions that Piper knows will arrive sometime late in the middle of the night. If she plays her cards right, these negative little phrases she keeps throwing around in the air will ignite some hidden spark hidden under the many facades that might be waiting to have their chance for a breath of air, and maybe, just maybe, something honest will come out from beneath all of the past versions Piper has met before and all of those her mother is currently blending into existence. Nothing has really changed since that day Piper's mother tore up the ground and opened up the sky. Nothing except everything has aged, including the house, the neighborhood, and Piper herself. Now Piper only comes home on holidays. She is no longer that young, hopeful thirteen year old who dashed home one afternoon forgetting her father's instructions to wait in the library until her mother finished the laundry from the retirement home just a block away from the school. She has learned that everything eventually changes. Her backyard no longer holds illusions of elves, princesses, jungles and buried treasure. The trees have transformed back into pines and oaks; exotic bird calls have reverted into those familiar ones of blue jays, cardinals, and finches. The mother that she knew up until that day has changed too. Now, standing in the place of that once iridescent version in swirling tie-dye brilliance, is one of meek stature, dull once golden hair swept messily into a ponytail, and dark, sunken eyes that still find their way into Piper's mind and haunt her. Current Mood: creative Current Music: commercials (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 14th, 2004
11:49 am	a newly written and possible scene for the current story "How are you doing?" Piper asks her mother, who glances at her, tearing her eyes away from the accumulating pile of soap foam. "Oh, you know, the usual. I'm fine, just like I used to be," her mother says and then laughs. To Piper the laugh sounds like that of someone desperate to keep up appearances, which her mother has been known to be from time to time, when things were really swirling around in space and she couldn't distinguish the top from the bottom or right from wrong. "What about you? How is work going?" She hands Piper a plate to dry. "It's going," Piper says. "My friend in editing, Jack, is having a rough time. He's stopped taking some of his medications," she says quietly, once she checks and makes sure her father isn't lingering within hearing distance. According to him, he's tried confronting her from numerous directions and angles about her medication-taking issue, but has had no success. From the direction of the living room Piper hears the intro music to Jeopardy! and her body relaxes. Underneath the soapy water her mother's hands scrub furiously against the cheese grater, the speed and intensity of her actions build until Piper puts her hand on the bony, frail shoulder nearest her. Her mother stops long enough to give her a weak, diluted smile. "I'm fine dear, really. Just got a little carried away, that's all." She holds out a measuring cup to Piper, as if it's some sort of peace or truce offering. "Dad's been worrying about you," she says, and her mother's eyes get wide and instantly cloud with suspicion. "Really? And what has him all in worry-wart phase this time?" She holds up a hand. "Wait, don't tell me. He's been telling you I'm spending money left and right. That I gave a hundred dollars to one of those firemen who stand on the corner of Bells and Main Street with their boot in their hands for donations, right? So what if I did? It's not illegal you know," she says with a smirk taped to her colorless lips. Piper shakes her head and opens her mouth, but her mother rushes on. "Or has he been telling you about the dreams I've been having lately? The ones with Howard the Duck and Shamu ballroom dancing?" She turns towards the sounds of the televiision and shakes her fist menacingly. "He never could keep his mouth shut," she continues, unaware now of her daughter and the rest of the dishes piled to her right waiting to be cleaned. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 3rd, 2004
7:17 pm	the beginnings of the current short story i started last night The earth does not stand still, but something flips over (maybe a pancake), does cartwheels, jumps for joy, howls in pain, laughs in amusement, electricity passes through wires, the sky clouds over, rain falls, computer screens flicker and stay blank. Everywhere something or someone is doing something: people are sleeping in their beds, on floors, eating dinner, watching the nightly news, walking the dog, having dreams of lost cities and trunks of jewels, and it seems that the world doesn't notice the arrival of three-pound-nine-ounce Piper Maren David in wrinkled baby skin and mercury gray eyes. In fact, no one inside the operating room notices until seconds or possibly minutes later, when expectant father looks down and sees a small face gazing up at him quietly. The nervous mother gets more and more frantic, unnerved and displaced, and she sends herself into something close to hysterics when her waiting ears are not met with blatant cries of all the sudden newness life brings crashing down on an infant. She isn't calmed even an inch until proud beaming father walks over carrying their little girl, blinking to clear away the glare in her eyes from all of the lights in the room. Piper's mother isn't completely satisfied until she holds the strangely silent child in her arms and feels the rise and fall of her chest, the quick rhythm of her heartbeat. Piper grows as leaves burst into color and then crumble at the slightest hint of pressure, as seasons change and storms pass. Time passes through the scope of memory. Piper is two, then four, entering kindergarten then first grade. She loses her first tooth (the Tooth Fairy rewards her with a book of fairytales), learns how to ride a bicycle, learns how to swim, turns ten, then eleven, then twelve. She writes her first poem in English class and proud Piper flies home, waving the paper around like a flag proudly bearing the ultimate sign of achievement-a sparkly gold star. She bursts into the house in search for someone to show this great thing to, but no one is home, or at least not inside. She passes through the living room, then the dining room followed by the kitchen, and eases open the sliding glass doors that lead to the backyard. When Piper was little, maybe seven or so, she used to pretend that this was a jungle, as she thinks most young children do at some point. But now she is older (almost thirteen), and she knows the limits of reality. She knows, for instance, that the trees never had monkeys swinging from branch to branch. Now they are just trees, some pine and some oak (her science teacher showed them different types of trees last year) and one lonely dogwood. She also knows that there is no princess lost in these magic woods, and that that princess isn't wearing a flowing dress all the colors of a rainbow. No, now the princess is no longer lost or a princess, but is instead Piper's mother, dressed in a tie-dyed dress, and she is attacking the ground underneath the lone dogwood with a shovel, then just her bare hands. Clumps of dirt fly through the air, and fear slowly creeps up behind Piper and tugs at her shirt. Piper wishes that her father was home, but he told her this morning when he dropped her off at school that he wouldn't be home until right before dinner. She knows that he would know what to do, how to make her mother relax. She wants to reach out and stop her from tearing open the ground because Piper has this feeling that once her mother is done with the ground she will reach up into the sky and rip open a hole, and then she knows that her mother would then be gone. The paper bearing that golden star that had earlier brought so much pride and joy to Piper flutters to the ground as she pivots on her heels and retreats the way she came, and slips out the front door and skids to a halt in their deserted driveway. Someone should be home, has to be home, she thinks. "Just think," she mutters to herself. "Think, Piper." She looks up and down the quiet street. A cat slinks out from underneath the dark blue station wagon parked across the street in front of the Williamson's house. Mrs. Williamson could be home, she thinks, and heads to their front door. Her father used to tell her that Mrs. Williamson (he called her Patty she remembers) would clean their house when Piper's mother was too sick to get out of bed and would sometimes babysit Piper when her parents went out for the night on dates (which just grossed her out). Maybe Mrs. Williamson would know how to help her mother. She stepped over the cat that sulks near the doormat and hesitantly knocks on the door. The cat stares up at Piper with apple green eyes and swishes its tail back and forth like a pendulum of a clock. "Mrs. Williamson?" Piper calls out. She hears faint footsteps heading in her direction, and a moment later the door swings open. "Piper, well hello," Mrs. Williamson says. "How are you? Would you like to come in?" She steps to one side and the cat skids into the house. Piper shakes her head. "No thank you," she says because her father would want her to be polite. She glances back at her house, and saw that she left the front door wide open. "Something's wrong," she begins. The smile that has sat on Mrs. Williamson's lips disappears and she leans in closer to Piper. "What is it?" Mrs. Williamson asks, and Piper points to her house. "Momma's outside in the back, and she's tearing up the ground, and Dad won't be home until right before dinner and I don't know how to calm her down." By this time Mrs. Williamson is standing on the doormat with Piper, and she pulls the door closed with a firm grip. Piper follows Mrs. Williamson back across the street and into the house which used to feel so familiar and safe but which now pushes and pulls on Piper's bony frame, attempting to let the built up fear ooze out of it's spill-proof container and stain the carpet. "Piper, I want you to listen to me very carefully, all right? I want you to go upstairs to your room, can you do that for me? Go to your room and close the door. I'll come up and get you once your mother's calmed down and resting. Go on now, get moving," Mrs. Williamson nudges Piper just enough to make her stumble forward to the stairs. She begins to climb, slowly at first and then faster, until she takes the last four stairs two at a time and dives underneath her bed. Nothing has really changed since that day Piper's mother tore up the ground and opened up the sky. Nothing except everything has aged, including the house, the neighborhood, and Piper herself. Now Piper only comes home on holidays. She is no longer that young, hopeful thirteen year old who dashed home one afternoon forgetting her father's instructions to wait in the library until her mother finished the laundry from the retirement home just a block away from the school. She has learned that everything eventually changes. Her backyard no longer holds illusions of elves, princesses, jungles and buried treasure. The trees have transformed back into pines and oaks; exotic bird calls have reverted into those familiar ones of blue jays, cardinals, and finches. The mother that she knew up until that day has changed too. Now, standing in the place of that once iridescent version in swirling tie-dye brilliance, is one of meek stature, dull once golden hair swept messily into a ponytail, and dark, sunken eyes that still find their way into Piper's mind and haunt her. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 25th, 2004
5:21 pm	this is a story i'm working on.... It doesn’t matter what the color of the sky is, that there’s no meaning behind talk shows, that no one ever taught Ansley how to tie her shoe laces, or that the reason she cries herself to sleep every night is because it’s safer than staying awake. Ansley Johnson is not seventeen anymore, and she doesn’t like telephones. She never was a cheerleader or on the math team; she doesn’t like football, pizza, or slip-on shoes. She can’t tell anyone which direction is North without a compass, where she goes when she daydreams, how long to cook pasta, the meaning of life, how to change a tire, or why she loves to go outside in the rain. Sometimes she wakes up and doesn’t know where she is. It takes her at least twenty minutes to remember her apartment, the pale yellow curtains that remind her of sunshine, the piles of books scattered throughout the four room apartment. She gets out of bed, disoriented and lost, and explores the next room. It is a living room, even though many of the items traditionally found in such a room are obviously missing. No television, no VCR, no overstuffed couch with a lazy, sleepy-eyed dog stretched out over the cushions. Just more bookshelves, full of books, a map of the world against one wall, a radio on the windowsill, and lots of oversized pillows arranged strategically—and also very neatly—over the floor. There’s plenty of walking space, and in one corner lies a large dog bed, but there’s no dog in sight. Slowly, the room swims in to Ansley’s memory, and connections are made, words fitted together to form a thought. “Right. This is my living room,” she says, not sure who she’s saying it to. So if this is her living room, she can safely conclude that the bed she woke up in was hers, which means the bedroom was hers, and all of these books also belong to her. But she can’t possibly own this many books! It’s like an overstocked library, books running into other rooms, piles of books going up to the window frame, bookshelves on every unused wall, except for the wall that houses the world map (which draws a sense of pride from Ansley so overwhelming that she stumbles and leans against the doorframe behind her). What is it about the map that makes her feel this way? She walks closer, avoiding stepping on any of the pillows, and takes a closer look. On closer inspection of the map, she sees that there are marks all over it, different symbols and signs. If this is her apartment, she thinks she should know what those marks mean, but at first glance she isn’t sure. Then she notices a square piece of paper just below one end of the map. On it, it tells her which symbol means what. For instance, the star marks places that she’s been, and the circle marks places that she would like to visit one day. Those cities or states or countries that have a square next to their name are ones that her mother visited—but those were mainly different states; her mother didn’t like flying over oceans. The ones in blue showed her places she wants to go in the next five years, and the ones marked in green are those places that are for her more long term plan, say ten or fifteen years away, but definitely places she wants to visit before she stops traveling, or more than likely, before she dies, and therefore has to stop traveling, because her mother always told her that dead people don’t travel, don’t go anywhere, that they stay in the same place they died. To be completely honest, Ansley isn’t sure she believes this story that her mother passed on faithfully to Ansley and her younger sister, Ginny. They heard those stories when their father wasn’t home, while he was outside mowing the yard, or in the garage trying to repair the lawn mower (which always seemed to break halfway through having the whole yard completely mowed), but they stopped once Ian was born and their father left. But that was a long time ago. Ansley is older now, grown-up. She’s an adult, although sometimes she has to admit that she doesn’t feel much like one. Some days, when Ansley is walking down the sidewalks through town, passing strangers talking on cell phones, carrying shopping bags, holding the hands of impatient children, she has memories of when she was a child, mainly the times after her father left, and Ian was born. Now Ansley is twenty-three, Ginny is nineteen and about ready to enter college (if she decides that she’ll go after all), and Ian is fourteen, the best soccer player on his team (in his mother’s opinion and in most of the minds of the other players, although a few still hold their head high and think they’ve got what it takes to be better than him). The last time Ansley talked to her she was having doubts, and was thinking about finding a job somewhere in their hometown, to be close to their mom and Ian. Ginny was the sister that felt more connected to the family that still lived in the same house Ansley and Ginny were born in. Ansley was always odd, misplaced and not connected enough. Ansley knows this is because she is more like her father, and knowing this doesn’t really bother her anymore, because she likes being different. Being different is the reason she left home, went to college, found a job and an apartment in the middle of things, stacked books next to the refrigerator and the oven (even though she knew that wasn’t a good idea), and had a dog bed but no sign of a dog. As she walks into the kitchen, she sees piles of papers on the kitchen table, notes to herself, and lists of things that needed to be done. She eyes the coffeemaker, and, realizing that she doesn’t drink coffee, opens the refrigerator instead, being careful not to disturb the pile of books that are leaning precariously against the side of the refrigerator. She takes out a bottle of apple juice, and finds a cup. Pouring herself a glass, she notices the pill-minder that her mother bought for her when she started seeing a psychiatrist and was put on medication. Not wanting to see the assortment of pills staring back at her, she puts the cup of apple juice down on the table and turns her attention to the list that is on the top of the pile of papers. “Things to do on Tuesday, March 16th,” she reads out loud, realizing that she’s the only one who can hear her, but saying it out loud anyway, to give the following list more emphasis and attention in her mind. She reads the list over once, putting invisible marks on the most important ones, the ones that need to be done right away before forgotten about. “Call in sick,” she reads. This is the first item on the list, and she finds it strange. She doesn’t feel sick. But to be honest she doesn’t feel completely fine either, but she knows she doesn’t feel sick. Ansley has been working at the humane society for the last two years, and she loves her job. Which is why “call in sick” doesn’t make much sense to her. She reads on. “Call Dad.” This one is bolder than the rest, written over and over again in the same place so that it will catch her eye. Why was she going to call her father? She couldn’t remember, but guessed that there was something important that either needed to be said to him or heard from him. Since Ansley moved out of the house and into her apartment, she and her father had been having more regular meetings. While Ansley was still in high school, living with her mother, it was difficult to find time where they could meet and catch up, without her mother knowing about it. If her mother knew that her oldest daughter was meeting secretly with the father who walked out of the house one day and never came back, not even to pick up his things or say goodbye, it was a good guess that she would flip out, or worse, demand to know where he was living and call the police on him. Ansley didn’t want either of those things to happen, even if seeing her mother flip out might be entertaining. The other items on the list did not seem important: take medication, do laundry, buy dog food, wash dishes, and go grocery shopping. Taking a peek in the refrigerator, she surveys what is still inside, trying to put off going grocery shopping until absolutely necessary. Grocery shopping is one of Ansley’s fears. She almost always has at least one panic attack while walking through the aisles. When Ansley was thirteen, and Ginny was nine, their mother took them and baby Ian grocery shopping one day, and disappeared. One minute Ginny and Ansley were arguing about what kind of candy to buy with their combined allowance, and the next, their mother and her shopping cart and baby Ian were gone. That was Ansley’s first experience with a panic attack, and after that they continuously accosted her, pounding against her flesh, turning her once independent mind into one of chaos, disorder, and confusion. Ansley doesn’t really blame her mother for the panic attack, although deep inside her some piece of her surely does, because if she hadn’t disappeared, the panic attack might never have happened, and Ansley would still be somewhat the same person she was before they started. No, instead Ansley blames herself. At the time she felt she had lost something, that whatever bit of control she held over her environment, her situation, her life, just suddenly vanished and left her there, standing in the candy aisle looking over her shoulder. She has to recognize that the fear that developed was always there inside her, hiding just below the surface of her awareness, but she blames herself for losing control of the situation and letting that fear seep through to the surface. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 14th, 2003
6:26 am	stupid poem that i hate that i had to write for philosophy here was my attempt at making some sense of al-ghazali into a poem. it really didn't work....but yeah You ask yourself questions Based on faith - I ask questions Based on proof (of which There is none). It's what it Means to be human, what It feels like to breathe and Dance, always questioning Every turn, tremble, and Quake. "What I'm looking for Is knowledge of what things Really are." Doubt, fear, Confusion, wondering, all of This gives us proof of nothing, Except our ability to ask Questions. We are unsure, Afraid, terrified, hesitant to Believe in something when Everything else has let us down Gently placed or violently Thrown us away from what We know, where we're safe. Things don't always belong In one place or another; In dreams "you believe Things and imagine circumstances" Holding them to be true and solid, Like concrete and stone. These Sense perceptions fool us into Thinking we are somewhere else, Someone else, anywhere else. bad i know, really really bad (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 13th, 2003
9:50 am	night here's the list poem: The night was full of fingertips touching The night was full of moonlight The night was full of words splintering silence The night was full of listening to muttered words The night was full of forgetting who I was The night was full of naming things I always forget The night was full of tears because it always happens The night was full of remembering lost dreams The night was full of keeping close memories of things The night was full of losing myself to the sky The night was full of wind swept leaves The night was full of imagining other cities, other places, other people bleh (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 6th, 2003
8:00 pm	If You're Still Here You've Stayed Too Long Sometimes you think you need this, the pain and sadness washing over you like rainfall, just to feel alive and to know that you aren't dreaming this, the life inside your head and the one on the outside. You were meant for horses, laughter, valedictorian of your high school graduation, photography, the color yellow, midnight shopping trips to Wal-Mart, Post-it note reminders, ghost stories, late night studying, early mornings spent choking down cups of coffee, snow days, and that little feeling inside your chest that you know something no one else knows. Things you were not meant for include, but are not limited to: the color pink, slip-on shoes, the smell of gasoline, phone calls, moving boxes, fire, and ice. "Ginny," your mother says in her sing-song voice that sounds like bells, sneaking up on you from behind, even though you can hear her footsteps on the linoleum. Don't turn around and face her, because that would be too easy, and she doesn't like things that are easy. You know how to handle her, without causing too many fights or fits; you've gotten good at this game she likes to play, because you've been playing it most of your life. Your father hated the way she did this, sneaking up on people, pulling out long threads of conversation that take up enough space to unravel even the sanest person. That's why he left, your father, when you were eight and just old enough to know what was really going on. "What is it Mom?" You stare at the insides of your hands, tracing the lines that spread out like the highways and interstates the two of you have traveled, in search of just the right town, just the right place. You have a sneaking suspicion that she's trailing your father, the distinct scent of his aftershave-Old Spice with just a little hint of fresh lemon. You don't bring up this possibility to her because if she knows you suspect or have an idea of where she's headed, what she's hunting in each small town, she might freeze up and do something really weird like stuff you into the washing machine or better yet, dispose of you completely by pureeing you in a blender. "How was your day?" she asks, and you turn to face her, to look at her eyes, because she never asks you how your day was. That is not the way your mother is wired. She is wired to keep in motion, causing as much mayhem as she possibly can while maintaining a perfectly measured and calculated smile, and then running away. Especially the running away part-she's great at that. "It was okay," you tell her, studying her face. She won't keep eye contact, so you know that something is going on. Usually she's bubbling over with words, and so this measured silence is not something you are used to. "What do you want for dinner?" she asks, and now you know something's up. She never cooks (you're the one almost always in the kitchen), so it can only be one of two things: 1) she's done something bad (like beat up an old lady in a wheelchair for the last jar of peanut butter in Food Lion) and she feels like she needs to make it up for some reason, or 2) she's having a guest, more than likely male, for dinner, and wants to impress him into thinking that she's a normal mother who makes dinner every night. "I don't know," you say finally, pushing the chair away from the table and standing up. "How about spaghetti?" she glances in your direction. Shrug, it doesn't matter to you. You could care less what's for dinner. You just want to know what's going on and why she's acting the way she is. "Are we having someone over?" You mentally prepare yourself for her to reveal that she has another new boyfriend. It hasn't been the first time this has happened. It happens everywhere the two of you go, and you should be used to it by now, but you aren't. You can't help that it hurts that she doesn't even think about your father, after what she did to him. "No." She avoids your eyes. So there's no new boyfriend. But there's something, you can feel it, and you're going to get down to the bottom of this, and soon. "I just feel like making dinner for a change. You know, I hate it when you're in the kitchen all the time. It's not fair to you," she adds, and you know where this is headed. "You need to get out more, make some friends," she begins. There's no stopping her once she's started this sermon, and the only thing you can do is sit it out and wait for it to end, so you can run away. "I have plenty of friends," you protest lamely, and she shakes her head. "Not here you don't. I bet you don't even know five people at your school," she tells you, and you don't argue with her, because she's right. The truth is that you know three people, and none of them very well, or not well enough to consider them friends anyway. If your mother heard that you even knew anyone, she would make you invite them over, and you don't want anyone to see the current apartment you live in, with the boxes stacked like skyscrapers in every corner, the collection of laundry in the bathroom, the pile of unpaid bills by the television. "When I was your age, I had lots of friends. We did a lot of things together, all the time. I was barely at home," she says, and you know you're not going to be able to get yourself out of this any time soon. When she starts in on her past she can settle in there and talk like it was happening all over again, and you're just a new face fit into the scenes and photographs and memories. "Mom, I know all of this. You've told me tons of times. Please don't start this again," you beg. She stops in front of the refrigerator and looks directly at you, into your eyes, and you know you said the wrong thing. "Ginny, I just want you to be able to have a good life," she says quietly. You nod. You know this too. You know a lot of things, even though your mother doesn't think that you do. For instance, you know that sometimes when your mother sleeps, she has nightmares, and wakes up crying. You can hear her through the thin walls of the rooms, and you lay there in your bed, and don't know what to do. You also know that she drinks when she thinks you're not looking. You find bottles stashed in her dresser drawers and in the trashcan. You don't know what to say to that either. You wish she would stop, because the reason she left your father was because he drank too much, and you don't want to see her go through the same thing again. "You call this a good life?" you are getting angry now. "Mom, we never stay in one place. We're always moving. The longest we've stayed somewhere was last year when you had that job as the secretary at the car dealership. But we had to move then too, all because one of the guys you were seeing found out that you were seeing someone else, and he went nuts. We've never stayed in one place for an entire year, I can't even go through one full grade in one place. And I know this isn't where we're going to stay, I can feel it. You're itching to move already. We've only been here two months! Moving every single direction at any moment is not what I would call the good life. It causes problems, it makes messes. One of these days you won't be able to run away when something gets bad. Something's going to happen, and I'm won't be able to do anything about it. I don't know what, but something will happen, and there will be nothing that either of us can do." You take a deep breath, because you've barely breathed while you've been talking, and you can feel your heart beating in your chest, loud like a snare drum. Your mother stares at you, her mouth partly open, as if she was amazed with what you've just said. But it takes a lot to amaze your mother you've learned, so you know that what you've said didn't do it. "Gin, I thought you liked moving. I know we do it a lot, and it's hard to meet new people, but I thought we had an agreement." She looks down at her hands, which are holding the packaged meat from the refrigerator, and she puts it down on the counter and walks over to the other chair at the table. "You never asked me what I wanted to do," you say. "You just made up your mind, and whenever you had a whim, we moved. I didn't get any say in the matter, you know that. If I did I would have gone with Dad," you mutter, hoping that she didn't hear that last part but knowing that she did. She sits down with a little plop, and sighs. She looks at you carefully, like she's analyzing every part of your face for some small defect, some inconsistency or flaw. You wonder if she can tell that you want out, that you're tired of moving around, that you just want to settle down somewhere and stay there for the rest of your life, or at least until you graduate high school. "Ginny, I thought you would have spoken up about it if it bothered you," she looks at you carefully, and you shake your head. You can feel the tears getting ready to fall, and you don't want to do this, not here, not now, not ever. "It's always bothered me," you try to keep your voice down so that the neighbors, the Johnson's, don't hear what's going on. "Why wait until now? Why not speak up earlier?" It's hard for you to believe that you are having a somewhat intelligent, if not unwanted conversation with your mother. "Because it makes you happy to move." She looks at you like you've just told her you're an alien, or better yet the daughter of Elvis. "Well, it's true. You should see your face when we're packing boxes. You're happy. Why can't you admit it? You like running away from things. You run away from every place we go and you will run away from everyplace we're going to go, because you get a whim to leave. Maybe you smell it in the air. A scent like mint and it's time to pull yourself, and me, away from whatever life we happen to be piecing together at the time." You shake your head. "It isn't fair Mom. We've got to settle down somewhere. This isn't good for either of us." You can feel her eyes on you, but you don't look at her, for fear that you'll break out into tears. The tears are inching out from under your skin, under your eyelids, and you do not want your mother to see you cry. "I didn't think it affected you as much as you're saying it does. If I had known," she started, but you stop her. "If you knew, you still would have done it," you tell her, and move towards the refrigerator. Someone is going to have to make something to eat for dinner, so it might as well be you, since she seems out of the mood to cook. Grab the meat sitting on the counter, move it to the stove, unwrap it and place the raw meat into the frying pan. Turn on the stove to high, and wait. All you can do is wait now. You're waiting for the meat to cook, for your mother to blow up, blow things out of proportion, waiting for the tears to start falling, waiting for something to happen. "No," she says, looking at you, as if seeing you for the first time, really seeing you, the kind of seeing that involves really looking, really caring, something more than what she (to this point) has been wired for. You wait, not looking at her, but rather at her feet, tapping to some unheard rhythm in her head. "Ginny, I wouldn't have kept moving you if I had known." She seems sincere, but you remain skeptical. It's the best thing to do, remaining skeptical, especially with a person like your mother, who is liable to throw things and scream and cry within seconds of being disappointed. But this version of her, the one sitting at the kitchen table, shredding a napkin into thin strips, seems different from the other versions that you've seen, and you want to believe that she's real this time, that she's not going anywhere, not going to run away from this. "Then why?" You use a fork to separate the meat so that it can cook faster. Look up, look at your mother. You try and will yourself to meet her gaze, but you're still too afraid that you're going to cry. "Why do we always move?" She looks at you, you can feel her eyes on you, and her attention has been turned away from the napkin. You nod. She shrugs. You didn't think that she would come up with a real answer, didn't think that she could really sit down and think about something serious for longer than ten minutes. That's asking too much of her. Of course, asking too much usually means asking her to be properly dressed to a PTA meeting, or to remember to pay the bills (most of which you do anyway), or to be around when you need her. It's not like she's a terrible mother; it's not like that at all. She's just a little forgetful sometimes (okay, most of the time), and tends to get into trouble when she's alone. Sure, when your dad was around she used to put notes in your lunch box (Have a good day Sweetie or I love you), made sure you had a piece of fruit at every meal, didn't make you ride the bus or wait after school. But once your father left a vital piece of her left too, a piece that kept things somewhat sane, kept everything together. Now you're lucky if she remembers to attend parent-teacher conferences, sign your permission slips, if she remembers to eat lunch (since you aren't around to make sure she does), to take her medications. "Mom." You turn and look at her, really look at her, and you see something that you weren't expecting. Tears. She's crying. This is not normal behavior for your mother. She never cries. Ever. But here she is, crying into her hands as if she's praying to some God that she doesn't believe in anymore for something to help get her through the day, or her life, or maybe just this moment. Seeing your mother cry makes something in you shift, rotate, and pull away into the light. You grasp at it, making pathetic attempts at reclaiming it, and then, once you see what that piece of you is, you really want to start crying now. "I know you miss him," you say softly. She doesn't move. You didn't expect her to. "I miss him too Mom. But he had a good reason to leave. You weren't doing well. Something was wrong. Something is still wrong. All these years I kept on thinking that he left because he hated you, hated me, but I know why he left now. He left because he loved you too much, cared too much, wanted so much for you to be the same person he fell in love with in college. But you changed. I don't think you meant to, but you did. And he couldn't stand it anymore, and he had to leave, had to get out." You take a breath. "That's why we keep moving, isn't it? Because you're trying to find him, or someone enough like him to take his place. Mom, you've got to get yourself better before we can go at it again, moving around like we belong to the carnival or a side show. I'm here Mom, but I'm not always going to be here. Next year I'll graduate, and go off to school. Then you'll have to take care of yourself. You have to get ready for that." You walk over to your mother and put your arms around her shoulders and give them a squeeze. "I know," she tells you. "But I'm scared. So scared. I've gotten so used to moving all the time, looking for him, trying to find him and tell him that I need him back with us again, I don't think that I can make it in one place. I always used to tell myself, 'If you're still here you've stayed too long,' and then it was time to move on. I couldn't leave and go somewhere else fast enough." She looks up at you, and you see the tears stretching down her skin. "It's time we make someplace the right place for us, instead of always looking for it. We have to make it our right place Mom." You give her another hug. You think this could happen, that you and your mother might actually settle down in one place and stay there for longer than six months. The hope of it is in the air. No, you think, that's the meat on the stove. Which reminds you it's time to add the sauce in and get the pasta water ready. Life moves on, but it doesn't necessarily mean you have to move with it. You can stay in one place and go with it from there, from the same place as yesterday, the same place as tomorrow and a month from now, and things will be okay. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, August 18th, 2003
4:55 pm	all i'm losing is me (dear doctor series) [essay] "I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide." (Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind) Dear Doctor, I wasn?t made for beauty, love or slip-on shoes. I don?t want to hide anymore. I feel like it?s slipping back into my veins, the sadness and fear and doubt. I can?t control it. Returning takes too long when you?re on the edge of your seat, the end of the thread that?s become your lifeline to the sounds, smells, and thoughts that evade you when you need something to hold on to, and you feel like you?re the first to fall. People say that falling is an art, but it isn?t. Anyone can take a dive?it just always looks graceful, like a bird diving down to catch a fish, with its magnificent wings spread wide and then tucked into its body so they can gain momentum. Some of them are afraid. I know what they?re afraid of. I?ve seen those things on the backs of my eyelids when I try to sleep?the failure of some simple action, the attempts to close off feeling and shut down, the dreams you?ll never touch, never feel with the tips of your fingers, a feeling of loss and regret because you can?t find your heart anymore in the folds of your skin. What are you looking for inside me? A cause for the madness, a trigger, something more? You?ve cut me open and studied me, but, whatever it is, you haven?t found it yet because you?re pulling out strings of thought, emotions, and I?m certain that this will undo me eventually. You want me to spill everything so you can pick through it with plastic gloves, don?t you? Fine, I?ll let some things go so you can grab them up and dissect them under a microscope, but I won?t let you have all of it; I can?t afford to. Some things have to be my secret just so I can survive. This is all I am now: the sadness, the doubt, fear, and loneliness that sit around me in a circle, like a ring of fire holding me in, refusing to let me out even for a five-minute bathroom break, the words, the music in my head, the dreams. I get the impression that there isn?t much substance to me because there?s a hollow feeling at the base of my spine where I imagine all my energy pools and drops, that then gives me a floating sensation I experience at least half of the day. I feel as if I could swim through the air, past clouds and stars, like a hot air balloon, until something punctures my skin and my insides leak out. I don?t see myself as beautiful, or even pretty. I just see the face looking back at me in the mirror as girl, part stranger and part memory haunting me. I?ve taken the rold of the ugly duckling, only I don?t think I?ll become a swan at the end of my story. I can attack anyone saying "you?re pretty" or "you look nice," and so on with a desperate type of anger developing on my tongue like a bitter aftertaste because I don?t believe them, or that I can?t. Any such remark, or complimentary comment about something I?ve done or how I look or the kind of person that I am brings on a flood of retaliation in my mind. "They just feel sorry for you, you pathetic little thing. You?re no good, you know that. They?re just being nice. They?re lying, and you know it. You?re no good." This voice, so naturally mine, beats ideas in my head, under my skin, into the cracks, and plugs me up with things I ache not to believe, but that I can?t seem to fight. The voice feels as if it?s building up my immune system, not against a disease, but against compliments. I?d love to break through these walls, tear away the wallpaper and the plywood, yank out insulation by the pound, and crawl through the lies into the fresh, clean air. But how? Doctor, you?re supposed to have the answers. You claimed you knew the way out of these never-ending tunnels. I need those directions. Give me a map. Won?t you? I?m waiting in line, like a good girl. And I can be patient, just watch me. "You have to learn to love yourself," you say, "before anyone can love you," as if it?s the easiest thing in the world, like breathing. It isn?t that simple when you?re trapped underwater by some dead weight tied to your ankles, depression?s icy fingers inching up your skin , searching for a good place to latch on to and start sucking life from you. Acceptance isn?t the same thing as love, not here. Here, acceptance equals tolerance, stubbornness in a way, and love has affection, tenderness, joy, and elation mixed into the equation. The kind of love I?m talking about is the purest emotion, the laughing, joyful, I-feel-like-dancing-in-the-clouds, this-is-it, the best thing in the world, butterflies-in-your-stomach, heart-racing, peaceful kind of love. Or I think you suddenly feel like you?re heavy with it, the amazing weight of its body swimming through you as a dolphin swims through the Atlantic. The height of your love explodes into being with the graceful jumps it makes, slicing through water and air, frenzied exhilaration of it all. "I?m looking for a song to sing / I?m looking for a friend to borrow / I?m looking for my radio / So I might find a heart to follow" (Hanson, "A Song to Sing") Dear Doctor, I have no dolphin to guide me, only a shadowed pool dense with kelp. I won?t allow anyone here, onto the gray muted sand, into the murky water. I imagine if they touched one particle of sand, one drop of water, their dolphin-like love would twist, fade, crumble, and fall at their feet. My feet are too narrow and bony, my arch too high to allow me to wear slip-on shoes. They fall right back off. I have two hands, two bony feet, ten fingers and ten toes, two elbows, a nose, two eyes, two knees, and a faint heart murmur, among other things. All of this, these normal body parts and everything else, of course doesn?t give me any predisposition for madness, but madness had attached itself to my veins, and hides inside my teardrops, my blood. You have suggested that perhaps I want to feel this way, as if my insides were delicate pieces of thin glass that have broken and been pieced back together, waiting for another blow to send them into spiraling descent once more. I think I should have a Fragile sticker on my forehead, just as a warning. I will tell you that that has been the case once, when I stopped taking my Prozac and hoarded it under my pillow in a little plastic bag. I became tired of the perpetual wait for "change" to manifest in my life, to really feel, to feel laughter bubbling inside me again, to have joy under my fingernails, infused into my hair, the freedom to live without the threat of falling into the shadows. I am a little frightened by this ache, and I have to be honest and say that I don?t think I?d really know what to do with them if I could have them. But no one?s ever really free from it, are they? When you?re nervous, worried, or afraid, you feel as if you?re being hunted by some fierce, hungry animal, and, when you have your senses afterwards, you see this little chipmunk following you, picking up the little pieces of bread you?ve been leaving, like Hansel and Gretel, so you can find your way home. All of you worrying was for nothing, but now the real panic sets in because you are lost. Everything you do, all the little things, has the possibility to frighten you or send you into a frenzy. It?s as if my blood has turned into little drops of ice, coursing through me. I find that I jump at any overwhelming sound?gun shots, slamming doors, loud crashes, shrill noises, screaming?anything like that. Occasionally I get involuntary muscle spasms. My fingers might fly through the air at my sides as if they?re dancing over piano keys, but the sound?s muted. My mind is filled with thoughts, accusations, bitter endings to my favorite fairytales, and bitter endings to myself. Then the mania glides through the battleground like a knight on his horse, and the paranoia recedes into the shadows, defeated for the time being. "The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there," state Kay Redfield Jamison, from An Unquiet Mind, and she?s right. All of a sudden I feel like the Energizer Bunny. It?s as if someone has turned on a faucet pouring out pure energy, and I?m swallowing it down in huge gulps. I?m writing like a maniac, or obsessively cleaning my room, thinking up new and possible life-altering projects (yeah right), talking and laughing up a storm, and keeping myself as busy as possible, in a frenzy, hoping and praying that this high won?t come to and end too soon. I don?t always know when I?m going to "fall," but there are a few typical warning signs: irritability, lack of motivation, sleepiness, loss of interest in things that you usually enjoy, suddenly crying for no reason, a drop in performance at school or work, headaches. For me these signs tend to crawl and hide behind me or inside my clothes, waiting to latch on and gain control. Depression is as if you?re slowly rotting from the inside out, growing hollow, drained, as if someone has stuck a straw in you and suck out everything that makes you who you are. It takes too much to live and too much to die, so you bob up and down in the misery well, with the occasional visitor to drop a bucket of fresh sadness down to you. There is no light, anywhere, so you stumble around with sadness up to your knees or higher in the darkness, not even caring that you?re self-destructing in the process. It?s a constant weight that attaches itself to your mind, wraps around you like a blanket, only it?s not comforting at all, it?s just annoying and makes a fierce anger rise in your throat, and you can?t shake it. You?ve grown accustomed to the stickiness, the density of it pushing down on every square inch of your skin with little needles puncturing through your armor, forcing the goo into your body, your blood, your spirit. It gets the best of you because eventually you can?t ignore it; it?s presence has gotten too strong, and you?ve cut off all your ties to the reality, the people who could help. (Comment on this)
4:52 pm	connections [essay] "A new heart will I give you, a new spirit put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart that feels." (Chaim Stern, Singing the Living Faith) When I was seven, my grandfather died of a heart attack. I remember trying to picture his heart, the shape of two raindrops sewn together at the tips, attacked, but I failed to come up with a good image of what was attacking him?other hearts, feet, scissors, needles, thoughts, wild animals, piranhas, people?so I gave up. At his memorial service, while we stood at the plot, I stared at the urn and tried to imagine the tall, towering man I knew inside the little jar, his bones, skin, his heart sitting neatly in a pile. I wanted to open it and see if I was right, but my mother held my hand and wouldn?t let me go. On November 10th, 1983, when I was born, I had a heart murmur, an irregular beating. I don?t know if I still have it or if it settled into a new pattern and disappeared like fog. I think that because I was born six weeks early, my heart had yet to adjust to beating on it?s own compared to beating along with my mother?s rhythm and was desperately trying to catch up, skipping along the sidewalk, jumping over the cracks (careful not to break my mother?s back), and missing a beat here and there. Maybe my irregular heartbeat is why I feel so out of place most of the time, a little off, no matter where I am, too soon or too late. Or maybe it?s not even important. You hear everyone say, "home is where the heart is," and you wonder if it just means that home is your body, since your heart sits behind your ribcage like a prisoner behind bars, if it?s something bigger, like your house, the city or state you live in, or if it?s just something that people like to say. Love speeds everything up a little bit, not enough to throw things off, but just enough to be noticed and recorded as a major event. The heart must heed this as well, and rushes blood out faster and returns it to the brain to bring a little logic to the situation. What you feel is its anticipation to an event, an outcome, with love it?s the flood of joy and happiness, of feeling safe that makes the heart work harder. Fear carries the same reaction, the sudden increase in beats, the quickening of breath, the fast, controlled and clipped intakes of air. The heart breathes too, with every pulse that it emits and sends through the hard shell of your bones and the softer exterior of your skin, to the soft palm resting above the place where you imagine your heart is, left side, beneath your breast. A year and three days after the day that I was supposed to be born, December 28th, 1982, my twin brothers were born, twelve weeks premature. They died the same day. Spencer and Tyler, the names go hand-in-hand in my mind, one can?t go without the other. A small photograph of them lying side-by-side is the only memento I know. I study their little chests and the place where their hearts would have been, and imagine blood cycling through their dried and hollowed veins and arteries, reinventing life into limbs and muscles. Once I stepped foot onto London streets, I was caught in the frenzy that attached itself to my heart and fell into step with its rhythm and its footsteps. There was life everywhere I looked. Nothing was dead or hidden in hibernation. I felt so wonderfully alive. I was always afraid that the feeling might end, but it didn?t, and I fell in love with London. I walked pass Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and watched the changing of the guards, walked through Piccadilly Square, and I found a place that I knew was somewhere I was meant to be for a while. I cannot imagine what it must have felt like to lost my father, as my dad had to, and I wonder if his heart ever thought of giving up, throwing everything away, not care anymore. It had to have slowed down for a while, wanted to just hide from everything and lock the door. I wonder if his heart beats a little faster when he looks in the mirror in the mornings and sees the familiar lines of his father?s face in his, and in his hands. Laughter makes the heart giddy and childlike. Sometimes tears follow if the laughter won?t stop, or hiccups that cause the heart to steady itself, brace itself against the familiar lining of ribs and lung. It must feel open and free, on-top-of-the-world, full of static energy, an electric current racing through the bloodstream. My friend Kelley recently visited the local hospital where she lives in Ontario, Canada, fearful that she might try and kill herself if left alone. The nurses did some blood work, took an electrocardiogram and told her that all the medications she?s been taking, none of them prescription, have caused her to have heart problems. I imagine that her heart is pounding away at her ribcage, trying to get free, to talk to her, tell her some important secret or something its learned in seventeen years. Then I think that maybe her heart?s just tired, finished with all of this (her life that needs to be better, her family, the pills, all of it) and is putting in one last fight. Writing has opened my heart up to things that I might not have had access to. It has found chambers filled to the brim with sadness and fears. Writing is just an attempt to lower the capacity of those caves, to make some sense of what I can and throw away things that I can?t. If I could not write, I think my heart would wilt, if it could, and slowly dry up to heavy mass in my chest, with no purpose except to pretend that it does something useful. I never knew my brothers, but I imagine that they?re with me, guiding me through the world, hovering over my shoulder, particles in the air above me, around me. My heart fills with something that must be love whenever I think of them, a heavy feeling that covers everything. My heart felt empty for a long time when I finally understood that my grandfather was gone and would not be coming back. While I didn?t cry, my heart wept and flooded my ribcage with salty rain. One of my favorite people had left me, and I blamed myself. I thought that everyone blamed me as well. It was irrational and stupid, but I thought it anyway, and it?s taken my heart years to accept that there was nothing I could have done to save him. My heart has lost someone else, a sister this time, and it?s taking its toll on my sleeping habits and my emotions. Mollie was much more than just a pet to me. She listened when no one else did, and I never had to worry that she would judge me. Her beautiful heart, always loving and never hating, radiates still in the absence of her goofy smile and violent tail and graceful running, and I know that my heart will never let me forget her, because she is a part of me that will always remain pure and whole and beautiful, without any scars. The past is something that sometimes the heart wishes would just disappear, like so many other things, but it sits down and waits until the heart gets a free minute to address it. Nothing ever goes away completely. The heart is left alone to deal with memories, voices replaying in your head, certain phrases spoken by people you want to forget but can?t seem to no matter how hard you try. I imagine that the death of my brothers would have been the hardest on my mother, seeing that she carried them inside her womb for six months, becoming so connected to them that her heart must feel some extra burden, an added weight or cup of grief. I wish I could tell it that Spencer and Tyler weren?t meant to survive, that they?re safe and happy up in the stars, where their hearts can track us through the particles in the air and know where we are at all times. As a child I thought my heart looked like the Valentine?s Day cards you get, the perfect shape they make if you fold a piece of paper in two, preferably pink or red paper, and cut out a tear drop, making sure that you don?t cut the piece of paper into two pieces. I tried to imagine my heart, the equivalent of a heart-shaped candy or Reese?s Peanut Butter Cup. I could almost see it pulsating inside my ribcage, throwing its fists around on the bone to make the thump sound I hear if I submerge myself under water or sit in complete silence. My heart towards my mother is loving, like most any heart towards its mother, laced with understanding from similar emotions floating through both of us. It has sympathy for her having to carry me inside her for seven and a half months, and a great amount of respect for everything that she?s helped me get through in almost nineteen years. I think it can hear her heart sometimes, or I?d like to think so, and I imagine them matching rhythms so they pulse simultaneously. My heart towards my father is full of love as it should be, and etched with memories of basketball games in our yard, contra dancing, saying goodnight, summer vacations spent at our cottage in Pennsylvania. Sometimes I wonder if my heart will ever fill completely, if there won?t be any more room for anything to take its place inside. My father assures me that I am fine, that things will get better, and that he will always be there for me if I ever need him. In him, my heart has found a great friendship, a bond that connects us both, weak wrists and all. Before I was born, my parents adopted a wild burro and named him Uno. I do not know if he was born with a hole in his heart, but somehow he acquired one somewhere along the way, and that?s what he died of eventually. At the time my father was learning with him how to plow some land. I wonder what exactly his heart looked like, if there was a gaping hole where tissue should have been, if he was missing any chambers or arteries to compensate for the diminished supply of blood it pushed out each second. Pain is something that the heart slows down for, as if the blood it circulates suddenly thickens and flows slower through the ventricles. I cannot imagine a heart breaking under too much pain, but I suppose that, if it?s possible for the heart just to stop, then anything can happen; even beyond imagination the thought is intricate and overwhelming. I wonder if the heart decides to stop feeling the pain at some point, if it just gets too bogged down in it to care anymore. This must be something that other people have questioned, but it feels as if I?m the first and the only one who ever wondered about it. If the heart could talk, would it tell us its secrets, the reasons it has for loving someone, for believing in something, in faith? I want to cut myself open and talk to it directly, as if it were another person with enough logic to answer back, why we all believe in different religions and different gods when there is, that we know of for certain, only one universe, one planet with life on it. Would it tell me if what I believe in is wrong, or would it lie to me and let me continue to believe in something as long as it made me happy or gave me something to hold on to? Sometimes I think I would rather not know if it meant that the truth was suddenly in my hands. My version of my heart has changed since I was a child. I do not think that it is pink or red any more, although it is proven that the living heart is indeed a blood red color. I have decided that it is one of two colors: pale blue or gray. Either suits me fine, and I have no real impulse to go with one or the other. In the end my heart still remains inside my chest, sends flashes of pain through my nervous system on occasion. In our science class in eighth grade, we had to make a heart. We were given things that we could choose to use or not?balloons, Play-Doh, aluminum cans, paper, glue, scissors, clay, markers, colored pencils, construction paper?and were left with the directions to "make a model of the heart out of whatever you want. It?s due in three days." My friends Jacqui and Shannon and I got together and thought things over first, then grabbed a balloon, red, yellow, and blue Play-Doh, and glue, and went outside onto the walkway that connected our trailer to the rest of the school. In the end we created our heart with a water balloon. We glued on thin layers of red Play-Doh and yellow and blue tubes to show the difference between arteries and veins. Ours won first place, and was set out in the library on display. It held up very well, until in the end someone stuck a pencil into it, into the heart of it all, and all the water leakes out and created a gooey mixture in the pie tin we kept it in. Depression makes the heart act as it reacts to pain, because depression is a type of pain, a slow, building pain where the end is nowhere in sight. It floods your senses and weighs you down. I do not think that the heart was made to withstand this, that it came around my accident and no one has been able to get rid of it as of yet, but it?s something that they?re working on to alleviate. Do not confuse depression and fear, because, while they may go hand-in-hand, they do not intertwine. Each one has its separate entity and is original in its own way. Fear causes your muscles to tense up, frequently causes a headache, and restricts certain activities, like depression does, but depression mostly causes a destruction of those things that cause you to tense up, becomes something of an inactive situation, and brings sadness into reign. Neither one can be eliminated completely, and so they hang around, hovering just beyond immediate grasp. If dreams are pleasant, they fill the heart with wonder, freedom. If they become nightmares, then the heart feels fear and pain, and there is no wonder in that. Dreams are the outcome of the heart staying alert during sleep, trying to dissect images and thoughts that wind themselves through artery and vein, slipping in and out of skin, dancing with the shadows. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
4:47 pm	the space between [essay] Ten fingers. That?s always good, I think. I wonder if I could get used to not having one or more at this point in my life. Probably not. My fingernails could be better, but I haven?t bitten them in a month, so that?s good. I don?t like nail polish for some reason. I used to though. The skin at my knuckles is wrinkled, and it always makes me feel old whenever I look at it. But when I make a fist it disappears, poof, like magic, and I?m happy (relatively speaking) again. I usually think that they?re too long and too bony. I have to get larger rings because they won?t fit over my knuckles, which gets annoying after a while. But there are days when I actually like them and am proud of them and want to show them off, but there?s usually no one to show them to, which saddens me, so I?ve balanced myself out and I just remain in a state of numbness. I have yet to decide if I like them or not, my hands that is. I try not to think about them too much, just on the principle that if I think about things too long they tend to become something I constantly worry about. I get self-conscious and hide them under my legs if I?m sitting down in a chair where other people could possibly see them, but that doesn?t happen all the time. Other times I don?t care if people see them. But I still find myself watching them with some sort of patient, quiet envy that seeps through my skin like water on a paper towel and envelopes my concentration and my sight. Without my hands, I imagine I would be something of a blind person, because I depend on them as I do my eyes, and may end up with a seeing eye dog to lead me around; without my hands, my eyes are meaningless and useless. I try and think of all the things that my hands do during a day: hold a fork or other utensil to carry food to my mouth, pick up clothes, socks, shoes, tie my shoelaces, type on a keyboard, write on paper with a pen, change cd?s, flip pages in a book, hold a brush so I can brush my hair, a toothbrush, put in my retainers, water plants, grip a steering wheel, lock doors, pick up trash, hold open doors, pet animals; there are thousands of things. Then there are the things that don?t happen all the time, that fluctuate and disappear and may reappear somewhere later on, and this is the one thing that I could probably do to hurt myself the worst, and I have. Cutting is not something I am proud of, but I won?t deny it. If I choose to ignore what my hands have done, then I?m no better than someone who claims no responsibility for killing someone, because in short, that?s what I could have done to myself with one flick of the utility blade, its shiny silver edge slicing into my skin, calling blood to surface. But it didn?t get that bad. I never cut deep, never brought the flood of cherry red blood, never really wanted to. My hands had so much power over me then, something that demanded attention and time to be taken away from other, better things. I?d heard stories of people hurting themselves with scissors and razor blades, or any available sharp object that they could find, but, like many people, didn?t believe that it could seduce me into walking into Wal-Mart and buying a pack of six utility blades. I was young and stupid, and I thought that cutting would fix everything. I never thought that it could become addictive, never dreamed that I would be found out, never imagined that I would come to such drastic measures to relieve the pain that was engulfing me on the inside. It was something I decided I needed to try once, to see what all the talk was about, and then I?d throw the blades away so I wouldn?t stumble on them while cleaning my room someday. I never got around to throwing them out, although I wish that I had. It would have been much easier to resist the urge to make faint scratches on my skin if I knew that they were in a dumpster somewhere. The only sold evidence that I have to remind me of my little dance with self-mutilation is a faint scar on each arm, vertically in the center on my left wrist, and an inch or two away from my elbow on the inside on my right, but they?re enough. I feel lucky to know that I?ve extinguished the behavior, while I know that thousands, if not millions, of other teenagers like me (mostly girls) and adults are locked in a dangerous waltz with cutting. Many people who cut are also depressed or psychotic, and while self-mutilation is not one of the symptoms of any depressive disorder, there is a strong possibility that it may be occurring or that it might. The act of cutting is in theory a way to release the pain, or to feel something, because in depression you feel little and there is much pain. You find yourself aching for something that will alleviate just a small amount of this pain, or something to bring a spark of feeling into your clouded mind. My hands have become a fascination of mine, things I find myself staring at in mid-sentence, or during a brief pause of the river of words gushing from them. People have told me that I have piano fingers, and I have to laugh. I?ve played the violin, the flute, attempted to play the guitar?but not the piano. I got a keyboard one Christmas, but I never learned how to play anything other than "Mary Had a Little Lamb." but I?ll sit in front of it sometimes, rest my fingers on the keys, and look at my hands from that perspective?my muscles tightening with every move I make, the skin stretched out evenly with little squiggles on the knuckles that remind me of road maps. I can?t imagine anything more beautiful than these things we take for granted, and I place them on the top of the list of the most important things, thrown in with smiles, music, dogs, paper, pens, and books. I?ve seen photographs of myself when I was a week old, and my hands are little more than one and a half inches long, and I?m captivated by the metamorphosis that has taken place-it seems impossible for the bones to grow larger, and yet they have. I wonder if the amount of skin has changed too, if it?s grown along with the bones, or if the veins have too, if they?re just stretched and pulled along with the rest of me. For me it?s hard to fathom; it?s like asking or wondering if God exists, how our planet or the universe came into existence, trying to comprehend that everything we do is formed by electrical signals and impulses, or that we?re all made up of pure, untapped energy?star stuff. In reality we never touch anything, we just think that our hands are touching, that skin is resting on skin, that we?re actually feeling the wood of the pencil between our fingers, the fabric of our clothes, the chair, the table. There?s always an infinitely small space between two things, but we perceive that we?re feeling the object. Scientists now say that, "When you think you touch a thing, there are certain electrons and protons, forming part of your body, which are attracted and repelled by certain electrons and protons in the thing you think you are touching, but there is no actual contact. The electrons and protons in your body, becoming agitated by nearness to the other electrons and protons are disturbed, and transmit a disturbance along your nerves to the brain; the effect in the brain is what is necessary to your sensation of contact, and by suitable experiments this sensation can be made quite deceptive." I imagine the feel of the skin on the tip of the index fingers touching must feel like love. Maybe this is where God lies, in between the gaps of surfaces touching, pretending to, and we are reaching out for this sensation. These sensations, the unexplainable comfort we receive when we think that our skin is being brushed by other skin or held, the relief we feel when our skin brushes against our clothing, in reality is all false, but still comforting. (Comment on this)
3:34 pm	lessons in falling [essay] "they fall, and this is the beauty of flight." (art homer, "falling" in short) there are different degrees of falling, as there are different degrees of cooking read meat - think rare, medium rare, done, and well done. almost anything can fall: stars, faith, love, your heart, a bowling ball, rain, leaves, hope, fruit, the occasional infant, airplanes, animals, people. maybe one day the things that we consider fall-proof, like the sun or god or gravity, will fall, and what we know will just be a clutter of books, paper, bodies, fire, and dreams. [one] you're walking somewhere, inside a house, on a street in london or new york city, near a graveyard, your school or work, down the aisle, anywhere, and one of your feet lifts and begins to lower itself back to the ground, but isn't parallel to the surface it's stepping on. in fact, it's rather tilted - definitely not the angle you want, and then it happens. your toe hits the ground and the unexpected flash of pain sends a jolt through your body. tripping is one of the degrees of falling where you can catch yourself, keep your body from its final destination, floor or ground. it almost always starts with stubbing your toe, or bumping into something that's inhibiting you from continuing in the direction you were headed. but this method of falling rarely ever requires extensive therapy or counseling. nothing is broken, nothing snapped into two or more pieces and fell to the ground. you're still in one piece, and that moment already happened minutes ago and is now pushing its way out of your memory, refusing to be held in the long-term memory bank. [two] stumbling brings tripping and almost falling together. maybe you hesitate for a moment and it looks as if you've tripped over something, and then there's the initial step after that moment's hesitation where it can easily be perceived as the act of "falling" in its loose definition, but you don't. you prove wrong all of the people who thought you were going to fall on your face, and there's a sort of victory in stumbling, because your body has picked you back up without going through the completed act of falling. it was able to sustain the hesitation and the awkwardness in continuing on after, with little more than an extra push to keep you upright. [three] slipping is something different altogether. there's a graceful touch to this type of falling, as it's more appropriate, recognized and accepted. your body makes the fluid adjustment to the change in weight from one area to another as if it were like breathing in another breath, but now you've climbed higher in altitude and the air's colder. slipping requires that there be something of a concrete position in the beginning. then you're allowed to slowly melt away from that to another point along the line of whatever it is - i usually imagine slipping on a slide i'm trying to walk down; it doesn't necessarily mean that i'm going to end up going all the way to the bottom, just another place further down. slipping has a little more pain added into the equation. a scraped knee or elbow, a raw area of skin where the friction of your body met the surface and fought for control, and the surface won a little bit of you for a souvenir. tripping and slipping are nowhere near as drastic as crashing or collapsing. there's much less harm done physically or emotionally. but as a child, you do not know this, and everything brings tears to the corners of your eyes, a flash of pain so brilliant that you scream and run to hide behind your mother's legs to escape the enemy (the cement, a corner of a desk or table, a pair of scissors). the child is completely submerged in the moment, the here-and-now of the day. [four] at some point in your life, you drop something, maybe a book or a cup or plate or vase. things drop in altitude, like airplanes, on a regular basis, and it's completely normal. some things have to drop in order to reach a certain destination. other things aren't necessarily dropping for the benefit of falling; it's more of an accident that happens so suddenly you don't know what happened until a few seconds later, when you're able to adjust to the difference of weight, the sound, the outcome. dropping is one of the faster ways of falling; it takes less time and less energy, and has the ability to be a little more harmful than the others. things drop from windows, from tables, from almost anywhere. when you fall from your bed, you're dropping from one plane to another. none of the methods of falling has to take very long, and, for the most part, recovery is almost instantaneous. [five] faith, more than anything else, has the possibility of collapsing around your feet like broken shards of glass from a window. buildings collapse, come crashing down to the earth, and leave plumes of dust and aggravated air in their wake. the distance from the starting point and the destination is usually much further. but this too can be sudden and abrupt, completed by the time it takes you to open your eyes in the morning while lying in bed under the comfort of the covers, or your heart to stir in the warmth of your ribcage and beat just once. one morning you wake up, get out of bed, take a shower, put your clothes on, and are getting ready to step out onto the front porch when you're attacked by fear. in another heartbeat, it can disappear, vaporizing into air when you let your breath out in a hurried sigh. you can fall from being one person - outgoing, happy, energetic, articulate - into something that seems like another body, someone else's, shy and reserved, weighed down by the anxiety and sadness. this one can be finished in seconds, days, weeks, months, and years. it's a gradual decline of things as you once knew and believed them to be into an area that brings tears to your eyes, forcing you to mask yourself behind fake smiles, taped on with duct tape so that no one could pull it off it she tried. 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Sunday, August 17th, 2003
11:16 pm	some new stuff (that's old stuff) coming soon...some essays that i wrote, we shall see.... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 6th, 2003
9:56 pm	part of something now hesitantly titled "radiance" Everyone knows something, Tayten decides. Some know more than others, but everyone knows something. Her mother for example, knew lots of things-not all of them true and most of it all was based on some delusion or another that she had while in the grip of paranoia. She "knew," for instance, that there was something in her daughter that God did not mean to put there. For years, the Davis family was not religious, but after Cade was born, Annalise fell upon God in a most unusual way. She had stopped at the post office to mail a package of pickled onions and diapers to her sister Annabelle who lived in North Carolina and for some reason couldn't buy them herself, and instead of turning right off Main Street, on a whim she turned left, and drove slow, and happened to pass a boiled peanut stand on her left. Intrigued, she parked the station wagon and crossed the street, leaving the engine on and the air conditioning running because her precious little baby boy was in the backseat sleeping peacefully. Boiled peanuts, Annalise thought, were very strange. And for some reason she adored them. She bought them whenever she could, at any stand or store she happened upon. She froze some one time, because she thought she would probably want some in the winter, when, of course, they are out of season and VERY hard to come by even in a place like South Carolina that stayed relatively warm compared to other states in the winter months. So she put them in a two gallon bag, labeled them "P-Nuts" and ceremoniously placed the bag in the freezer. This was a test-run, and, if successful, Annalise would no doubt purchase an extra freezer chest just for thousands and thousands of boiled peanuts. She walked up to the green painted cart that had bags of boiled peanuts lining the top shelf, and a crudely made cardboard sign hanging from one post. She didn't think of the sign at first, didn't really pay attention to it, didn't really care what it said (although she would later, and care very much about it then) and asked the lady how much the different bags were. One dollar the woman said for the small bag, and two for the larger bag. This, Annalise decided, after doing some quick math in her head, was a very reasonable price, and dug in her purse and came out with a ten dollar bill. "How many do you want?" the woman asked Annalise, and Annalise smiled serenely, something she was very, very good at. "Three large bags and four small ones," she said without hesitation. That figured out to be six dollars for the three larger bags, and four dollars for the four small ones, and six and four were Annalise's favorite numbers, and she was very good about figuring out just how to spend that much and nothing more. The woman smiled, and Annalise noticed her gray hair for the first time, and her pleasant smile. Someday, if I'm older, I want to look like this woman, she decided. She wanted to have a "thank-you-very-much-and-have-a-nice-day" smile like this woman did, and gray hair, unlike white hair, didn't disturb her sense of color coordination (black with any color, except white, and white only with blue and purple) and interestingly enough, gray was nowhere in her color scheme up until now. But she wanted hair like this woman, and the smile, and then her eyes moved over to the post and saw what the cardboard sign said, written in black and red permanent markers. "Jesus loves you. He died for you." It took a few seconds for what the sign said to break through Annalise's paranoia-ridden, God-less, boiled peanut-obsessed brain. The woman noticed Annalise staring at the sign and smiled again. She must have thought that here was a woman who knew about God and Jesus, and read the Holy Bible every night before bed, and went to church every Wednesday night and Sunday morning dressed in her best dresses and nice shoes, but she couldn't have been any more wrong. Annalise Davis had never read the Bible, never stepped into a single church in a nice dress and good shoes, and never knew that there were church services on Wednesday nights. She always thought that Wednesday nights were set aside for chicken sandwiches with lemonade and a dash of vodka, because that's what her mother did every Wednesday night, and her father never complained. Not that he would have of course, her father was dead more nights than he was alive, and only seemed to wake up in time to drive to work down on one of the plantations that South Carolina has tossed throughout its geography, and then come home and eat dinner and go to sleep. Annalise and Annabelle never saw much of their father, but it was enough for them to know what kind of man they were supposed to marry: someone just like their father, because their mother had so much freedom and so much free time to do whatever she wanted to do, which consisted mainly of making the girls clothes and the occasional dress for herself, and writing letters to the White House complaining about the economy down South and their desperate need to get more important people in the south so they would see what a lovely place it was, especially South Carolina. Annabelle was lucky enough to find that kind of man her first attempt at dating, and married him seven months later. Annalise had to try, and try, and try again. Just when she thought that she had found the right guy, he turned out to only be interested in her family's fortune (what was left of it anyway), or very interested in knowing everything about her, which was not something Annalise wanted. Then she happened upon Greg, and she knew it was meant to be. Greg Anderson was, in all matters of the word, brilliant. She had never met anyone like him. What made him brilliant was a list of factors that all melted together and boiled into the tall, thin body that Greg Anderson lived in. He was from up North, Delaware to be exact, and had gotten his major in mathematics and economics at Clemson University. The way he smiled attracted her to him; it was a little lopsided and the right corner of his mouth always seemed to be in the process of trying to convince the rest of his mouth to smile as well. The smile, the degrees, and his original location all meant that he was very work-oriented in Annalise's mind, and so she could count on him to be away most of the day and leave her alone to do all of those things that her mother did and then some, because naturally Annalise would want to add to it and become her own person. At first, that was exactly what Greg Anderson did. He left her alone most days to wander through their new house, their new yard, the woods behind their yard that were new to Annalise. She made chicken salad for lunch, served it with Ritz crackers and lemonade (minus the dash of vodka that her mother was known for), and wrote letters to Annabelle-long rambling letters that talked of hidden passageways, old photographs found in desk drawers, collections of stuffed bears, all of which were never found by Annalise but by Tayten when she was older. And then she became pregnant, and everything changed. No more lemonade-vodka drinks-Greg made sure that there was absolutely no alcohol in the house once they knew she was expecting-no more freedom. Greg became almost disgustingly involved after that fateful doctor's visit. Annalise thought she had a bit of the flu, and wanted to be checked out, and she walked out with the knowledge that there was a little person growing inside of her, maybe about the size of a pea by then. He brought home magazine by magazine, hoards of them, ranging from Cosmopolitan to Parenting. He stocked up on parenting books, made trips every Friday after work to Barnes and Nobles, made lists of books that looked promising that he would mention over dinner and see if Annalise was interested in any of them. He always bought her one "fun" book a week. She loved romance novels, so her collection steadily grew and grew over time. Greg bought the child books, Dr. Seuss, fairytales, bedtime stories, picture books, chapter books. He thought it was better to be prepared and have enough books for the child to read whenever he or she got around to reading them than to be found wanting. On Mondays he would leaf through the baby name books and jot down interesting or meaningful names he liked. He wanted time to savor the names, push them around in his head, but he knew that ultimately it was Annalise's choice. The day they found out it was going to be a girl, Greg was overjoyed. He had always wanted a little girl. Annalise was disappointed. She had envisioned a little boy rather than a girl, but no matter, it wasn't that big a problem. If worse came to worse she joked, they could trade the baby in the nursery for a little boy. Greg told her that the hospital must have very strict procedures in cases of switching babies, and he didn't want anything to happen to either his growing little girl or his precious wife. Annalise liked it when he called her that, his precious wife. It made her feel like she belonged somewhere, that being pregnant was all right since she had a loving husband. (2 Comments |Comment on this)