Baby, It's Cold Outside

Brave New World

I read Brave New World and this is the project that went with it. In colour are pictures of themes in the book, in black and white are the opposites of the themes in my own life during the Youth Retreat this last weekend. There are 28 pictures in all, but I will put them up in shifts.

Choosing to be Blind and Deaf

Choosing to Listen

Alone

Crowded

I Promise . . .

. . . something new is coming.

Dear Briahna, For You

To an amazing, lasting friend . . . finally, an update.

"I'm so weird, Life is so weird, People are so weird." (Fine, so you didn't say boys are weird.)

"Everything you say is wrong . . . and you're just weird!"

"I still beat myself up for the things I did twenty five years ago."

"He's too good looking for me to make a fool of myself in front of!"

"You need to find your happy place."

"Marshmellows are the building blocks of life."

"And what kind of bread would you suggest with this?"

"The white ones . . . what happened to the white ones?"

"Uhh . . . sir? I believe you have my jingle bell."

"You're just stuck in the Civil War!"

Exploding luminaries . . . which I am determined to still have at my wedding.

And of course, Day Quil. So many scary moments packed into one tiny bottle.

My Day? (final draft)

My Day? It is insignificant, unimportant.

My Day overflows only with jarring alarms, cold showers, unfinished projects, and an endless to-do list. The hours intertwine, creating a bizarre patchwork of disjointed memory. My adolescent image lies forcibly preserved under layers of fashion and modern intuition. 

The fuming world howls an agenda at me. Not for me, not to me, not with me—at me. Self-centered crowds scream and shove for their rights—the rights to move, to argue, to preach, to convince, to survive, to be. Like children they fumble about with eyes closed, ears plugged, and mouths opened wide.

            I fear the Day. I detest the Day. I defy the Day.

            I defy it with my Night.

            Night—my inviting cloak of darkness, concealing and caressing. It destroys my mask of reality to reveal a natural expression of melancholy contentment.

I read through the Night, filling my mind with radical ideas and enchanting fantasy, through page after musty page of uneven print and newfound familiarity.

I sketch in the Night. Losing track of hours, I use form and texture to crystallize a memory or object or lover’s face.

I write of the Night. My heightened emotions find no better residence and release than between ink and paper.

I sing to the Night. Low pitches of love and endurance stream from my lips in practiced rhythm. Ivory piano keys yield to my fingers, mixing harmony and base with direction and beauty.

I dance for the Night while no one watches; drum beats throb through my subconscious, demanding momentum. My hands and feet trace intricate patterns in the air as my overwhelmed mind flies free from my body.

I talk with the Night. Darkness, such a clever, confusing shroud, unveils truth. Only truth is spoken, only truth is thought. Darkness reveals the gorgeous and the hideous alike, leaving no room to deceive. Alarming, but not unpleasant, words escape my mind, escape my tongue, and always escape my regret.

            Because of My Night, I do not survive, I live.

Mismatched Tea Set (final copy)

Take a careful look around my room. Spin slowly—can you see them? Do you remember? Can you recall the threesome’s last use before they took permanent residence in musty towels and cardboard boxes? There they stand—two cups with matching patterns of soft-coloured petals and delicately curved handles alongside a petite, midnight blue dish with a modern, uneven lip. Displayed one next to the other, the patterns, colours, and forms intertwine to create a pitiful entourage of petty treasures. Still, I am terrified to handle the dishes, picturing my panic at the sight of scattered slivers and powdered porcelain decorating my floor.

I stare aimlessly, waiting until I feel you sit beside me. I shed my teenage immaturity and transform into the insightful child everyone once was. You and I, no longer relatives, but playmates, dress up with your exotic costume jewelry, elaborate hats, and
traditionally banned make-up. In my plastic oven I bake raspberry scones, pound cake, and, your favorite, my secret-ingredient cookies to serve on the flat, blue dish. I fill the small teapot with my finest of teas and the matching cup with both sugar and creamer, remember their inability to ever mix? In most authentic British accents, we chat about the weather, our families, and the annoying boys in my first grade class.

“More tea, Kemaw?” I ask. You smile, pleased, and hold your cup towards me for the tea I just brewed on my plastic stove. I reach for the teapot.

When my fingers hit the flawless, biting porcelain, I awake. It was so vivid, but not the reality for which I hoped. I have never seen you. You have never seen me. You never knew I existed. You chose to never know. We never played dress-up. We never hosted tea parties for my dolls. We never talked. You never smiled at me. You never gave me a chance. You never gave yourself a chance. How could this be what you wanted?

I miss you. Some days I search, confused, for some solution to my grief, my unexplainable grief for a woman whose existence ended far before my own began. Part of me is incomplete, my broken identity lies between dusty pages of lost stories and old photographs. Without you, I would never exist. But with you, would not my existence be different?

I imagine you every day when your mismatched tea set catches my gaze. I dream of our strong friendship built on similar personalities and interests, ones I developed on my own, uncannily resembling yours. I envision our cancelled tea party with your exquisite dishes. I wish for a grandmother, not an apparition poised behind a glass picture frame. All these visions, aspirations, false hopes, they are not reality. Only one statement, only three simple words can I say in truth, I love you.

All You Need is Love, Love, Love is All You Need

Creative Writing Journal- "The knot"

The knot-a doubled-over length of rope, tied tight and strung around a stout tree trunk. A purple knot, to match my vibrantly blue hammock. I tied the knots myself, hung the hammock, too. It would be my fault only if I swang once, then plummetted to the dense forest floor.

The knots hold. They creak as I rock, the bark compresses, threatens to slip the rope. I stare through my cocoon, watching squids wrestle with gnomes in the sky. I'm alone and quiet. No one nags about chores or yells their agenda at me. Homework and college applications never existed. No squeaky fan or whining T.V. distracts. The inaudible whoosh of my hammock fills my ears, blocking my thoughts. I make myself sick, looking backwards, as the upside-down tree swings as a pendulum, keeping time with my effortless breathing.

I lie, embraced in yards of rope and parachute, until the breeze becomes a violent gust. It swings me higher and higher until the strong knots I tied fray and snap. With one last blast of wind, I'm thrown into the air-past the solid trunks, past the unreachable canopy, past the blue sky, past the clouds.

I'm flying and falling through arcs and spins. I'm off and I'm not returning.

Goodbye, Gravity.

(What I see when I look backwards and up through my hammock.)
(And then just up.)

His phobia . . . (fear)

My teacher wrote this phrase on the board today in Creative Writing as a prompt. The following is what I wrote, very rough and totally unedited, but the idea is there.

My phobia . . .
of the elusive elipses. My irrational fear of a blank page, of the painful transportation of images from mind to pen and paper. A time-consuming block of vocabulary, preventing my overcrowded ideas from permanent preservation. An abhorred feeling creeps through, one of spending incredible amounts of time creating ensembles of words with minimal progress--confused that the pictures floating across my eyes are vomited onto the page, scattered and scantily clad.
Pretentious. A phobia of pretentiousness. That some self-sufficient, poetic peer would snort at the words that I struggled to write.
On the other hand . . .
I adore an elipses heading a page brimming with my hurried, inconsistent handwriting. Few things satisfy like a story finished or a poem accurately conveying my feelings.
For all the toil of writing, the euphoria is sweet enough to erase the past.

Unused favorites

...the whole wide world is mine...

If I had a chance for another try,

I wouldn't change a thing
It's made me all of who I am inside

And if I could thank god

That I am here, and that I am alive

And everyday I wake

I tell myself a little harmless lie

The whole wide world is mine.

--Angels and Airwaves, "Rite of Spring"

Consider the Lilies

Dear Briahna, This weekend I went to the lake...

Summer is Ending

I've been avoiding the End of Summer because it means quite a few people I dearly love will move away. I know I'll see them again, but saying goodbye, the hardest part, is fast approaching and, in some cases, has already happened.

Shopping List

Unmeasured pressure behind
my chest
forces out a single
drop
to be followed
by
numerous companions
unchecked--I drown
beneath my
blanket
behind a door
locked.
I am fine.

(I was looking through my book and this poem caught my eye. It's from 2007)

She's my FifteenYearOld Sister

First, I'm sorry blogging has been nonexistant for me. The computer decided to switch me to html format and I had no idea how to change it back. Also I am html illiterate.

Second, my little sister is fifteen! She's a wonderful sister to me, the only person who got me through church-changing last year. That is number one on my list of why moving to Covenant ended up being a good thing, because my sister became my best friend.

I love her so much.

Colorado is . . .

. . . Colorado.