The Story of Her Story of Her Story

     Joan Didion makes excuses for her own rediculousness.  Though her odd quality isn't a bad thing - it's good, in fact - she makes excuses for it as if it were a vice.  Essentially, she is obsessive-compulsive about writing things down; about keeping a faithful record of misplaced mental items.  In her essay, On Keeping a Diary, Didion uses a word - compulsion - to describe her habit, and this word is singularly pivotal to the meaning of her entire piece.
     By using the specific word "compulsion," Didion is being very suggestive, knowing the word has direct meaning as well as connotation that she knows her reader will pick up on. She implies that her habit is instinctive, innate and imbued within her so naturally that it is so powerful in her mind that it controls even her memory, "maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow" (Didion 2).  With this word comes a picture in her reader's mind - a picture of Joan, hunched over her little, dog-eared notebook and pencil stub, furiously fulfilling her impulsive need to preserve in writing something that often seems like gibberish, even to her, later on.  Sometimes, though, the jotted notations of random details serve as landmarks in her past, from which Didiom references whole experiences and memories.
     Joan Didion's choice of a single word steers he piece so specifically that without it, her outcome and message would be entirely different.  She is a writer with a keen imagination, but her "compulsion" takes her a step further, making her write down trivial or random details and integrating them, sometimes falsely, into the archives of her memory.  But, false or otherwise, these snapshots conjure up real emotions and connections in Didion's head, making them more important than the strictly real events and facts.
   

Déjà Vu

The slightest twitch

of my senses

unleashes my mind.

for a split second,

an immeasurable amount of time,

I am thrown into another sphere

feeling certain that

I have been here before;

Having spoke the same words,

Saw, thought

and felt the same things

once before

exactly the way I am

right now.

instantly my mind gropes into

the depths of my memory

frantically asking

desperately searching,

searching for something

I do not know what.

I cannot put my finger

on what I have felt

what I have remembered

and seen.

feeling it is of vital importance

to place this flashback

but the memory eludes me;

the harder I search

the more unclear it becomes

until it fades into

the gray light of my subconscious,

like a dream,

and I have no way of knowing

if I only imagined it.

Summer Reading

Now that summer has officially begun for me, I can feel free to dig into some books I've been saving for the only season that allows for a few lazy afternoons. As with everything else in my life, I made a list of books that made the cut for this summer. And, as with everything else in my life, the list is subject to change. More than once.

1. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. I honestly have no idea what this is about, or anything about Conrad, but it was a book that got cut from my AP Lit class reading list, and since I loved or appreciated everything else on there, I thought I'd try it out. Also, I just like the name.

2. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I've had this heavyweight sitting on my shelf since last fall and I've just been waiting to read it until I had time to wrap my head around it.  Here goes.

3. Envy and Splendor, both by Anna Godbersen. Okay, technically two, but I'm already halfway through Envy, and they're part of a series called The Luxe, about people in the Upper East Side Manhattan in 1900.  Easy to read and pretty addictive,

4. Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen. Janey and I are tight. We are soul mates, I'm pretty sure. It won't be Pride and Prejudice, (nothing could), but it will still be Austen, and therefore I can't help but love it.

5. A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf. Seriously, I love this woman. She was such an incredible writer and such a genius. (Yes, I spelled that wrong the first time.) I've only read Mrs. Dalloway, (the very name is practically inspiration itself), and I am dying to get into some of her other works.

6. Blankets, by Craig Thompson.  I read Watchmen this year and that was my first introduction to graphic novels. I didn't love (don't hate me), but I have an appreciation for many things that I don't actually love.  I've heard the storyline of this book is more up my alley anyway, so I'm going to check it out. At least for the culture.

7. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I've heard many great things. And no bad things. All from intelligent people whose taste I mostly trust.

8. The Orange Eats Creeps, by Grace Krilanovich.  A friend of mine read this during the winter for a class we were both in, and she told me this was crazy stuff. I read a couple bits a pieces of it and one quote really stuck with me, "His mouth was the hottest spot on his body and I sought it out like a little girl." It's about cracked-up, teenage, vampire whores or something like that.  Not that there really is anything like that. How can I not read it?

9. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. This is my sister's favorite book and she's been on my case to read it for ages, so I guess it's about time.

10.  Virginia Woolf: A Biography, by Quentin Bell.  Or another good biography of her, if I come across one.  I think her life illuminates her work so much and it becomes stronger with the support of that history. Plus, I'm a huge fan of hers to begin with.  I think too often I focus on the fiction or poetic work of writers and not on them as a person and artist, but all of than lends so much depth to their work.

The Five Dollar Story

Eben watched the woman in the smoky room, mesmerized by her swaying movements up on the platform. Slowly, she unbuttoned her already low-plunging top, slid each of her arms out and swung it around in her fingers coyly before dropping it to the floor. With now only a g-string on, she arched her back and slithered around the pole. As she came closer to him, Eben started, fished me out of his pocket, rolled it up tightly, and beckoned to the lady. She smiled a small, mirthless smile and moved our way, so he could slide me up in between the smooth skin of her hips and the thin red band stretched across. Reluctantly, Eben made his way past the bar and out into the bright night of the city. Giselle wandered out around to the back of the club, through the door that said Employees Only. She moved behind the ripped curtain and pulled on her old sweatpants and thin tee shirt from the’95 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, which she had not participated in, but had dug out of a sale box at a cheap thrift store in Oklahoma.

“Honey, wait for me”

Giselle turned at the sound of Libby’s voice and as she began redressing, her friend said, “Kinda slow tonight, huh?”

“Yeah. In a way, though it’s nice like that.”

“Agreed, but more people means more tips and that’s even better.”

“For sure.” Giselle laughed tightly,”Don’t like anything better than money, do we?”

Libby pulled her hair tightly into a ponytail, coughed and said, “K. Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Giselle ran behind the ripped curtain again and grabbed me up off the floor, along with two other $5’s. “All set.” The two walked quickly down the sidewalk, with the me clutched tightly into Giselle’s fist, crushed up against the others. In a small, out-of-place convenience store down the street, she placed me along with one of the others on the dinged up counter and demanded a single pack of blue camel and a bottle of janky-looking green liquid. The greasy guy behind the counter got a glare from Giselle as he hacked on her change before dumping it into her outstretched hand. The man continued his unearthly coughing as he flattened the me out and rudely shoved me into the register and Giselle grabbed Libby’s arm and they both lit up as they headed back to the dingy apartment they shared.

Stepping out of his cab, a balding man in a business suit let his eyes have the momentary pleasure of resting on the backsides of the two girls leaving the convenience store. That short enjoyment over, he sighed and went into the nearly empty store himself, asking, in a surprisingly gentle voice for a bottle of gin and a little bag of cheddar chex mix.

The scrubby clerk saw a lot of his type in the place but he was still fascinated with the man. Someone’s sleeping alone tonight, he thought, smirking.  Although he thought this about nearly everyone who came into the place, it was true this time and Willard J. Podd himself was going to spend some quality time with his bottle of gin, unconsciously trying to forget all the wasted years of loneliness and success that felt more like failure. He scooted a $50.00 across the countertop and the guy behind it plopped me and a couple of other bills down for Podd’s change, who folded us carefully and slid the two of us into his plump wallet. Before leaving the corner store, he opened up the empty brief case in his hand and stuffed the gin and snack mix into it, then stepped out onto the street. Reaching the end of it, Podd turned down a dimmer, narrow little side street, empty except for the ragged woman staggering toward him. As the two met up somewhere in the middle, suddenly the woman, with surprising strength, roughly shoved him up against the side of a brick building and pointed a shiny black revolver at his head.

“I don’t want no violence,” she said in a rather husky voice, “just give me what you got and there won’t be no trouble.”

As she scrutinized his every move, Podd shakily reached into his back pocket and retrieved his wallet which she immediately snatched from him.

Must be hard up to risk something like that, he thought.

The woman rifled through the wallet’s contents, snagging me and the rest of the goods. She dropped the empty wallet to the ground and backed out of the alley, gun still pointed at the ridiculous Willard J. Podd, left frozen against the wall.

As soon as she got around the buildings’ corner, Jocelyn stuffed me and the rest of her loot into her bra and sauntered off down the city streets. She knew the man she left in the back street wouldn’t bother to come after her, and he probably didn’t have the to balls anyway. So JoJo took her sweet time, pausing to look luxuriously in the windows of the club’s and the other brightly lit buildings. An hour later, she crossed one more street, ending up in “her part of town”, and now moved faster toward the unwelcoming but familiar broken down hotel, crawled through the glassless window at the bottom, into the empty basement below and promptly fell sound asleep. I spent the night with the others down her shirt, strapped against her warm, small breast.

Upon waking the next morning alone and covered in dust, JoJo remembered last night’s luck and decided to treat herself to a real breakfast. Peering out to see that no one was watching, she pulled herself back up through the opening from where she had come, and meandered in the direction of the diner.  Approaching the eatery, Jocelyn came upon a little boy, dressed in a dirty white shirt and tie, crying rather loudly but trying not to, which only made it worse.  With a sudden display of compassion, she stood near him for a moment until he met her gaze with big, sad eyes.

“What happened to you?” she said, sounding fiercer than she expected.

“I don’t know where I am,’ he whimpered.

“Well…..” She thought. “What’s your name?”

“Trevor Michael Andrews,” he told her in a small voice, and then stronger, “But I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“And why is that?” she questioned, amused.

He glared at her. “Mum told me not to talk to strangers,” he informed her with conviction.

JoJo hadn’t heard of this rule before. “Oh! Well, my names JoJo. There. Not strangers anymore.” She observed him solemnly then smiled and said, “So…you don’t know where you’re at, huh?”

Glancing at her timidly, he shook his head. She realized that she didn’t want to get too involved with this kid, but would still feel guilty just leaving him alone there, considering the variety of bums that spent time on these streets.

Trevor stared open mouthed as JoJo reached down her shirt and pulled me out of her bra. Not really a big bill, but not so little you couldn’t do anything at all with me, JoJo felt generous and grand giving me away and even though Trevor hadn’t grown up the way she had, he still took me with shining eyes.

“Thank you, Miss JoJo!”

“Yeah…..” she felt a little awkward now, but she pointed him toward a payphone down the street, “Get on now. Go find yourself, boy.”

The boy trotted off in that direction, but once he got inside the booth, he sat there for a few moments, dismally aware of the fact that he had completely forgotten his mother’s phone number, which he was supposed to have memorized.

Maybe I’ll never be found. Maybe I will have to live on the streets and be a hobo forever! An idea that had once sounded marvelous now made him want to cry again. Maybe I’ll never see my mum….or go fishing in Salt Lake with dad….or…or…..anything!

While he sat there lost in thought, time passed and he remained there, unaware of its existence. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the glass door of the telephone booth burst open, Trevor screamed, his dad shouted and his mum rushed in, flung herself upon him and began sobbing. He sat there, stroking her head for a long while. Mr. Andrews knelt beside the two of them, surrounded both mother and son in his strong arms. Finally he said gently, “Come on. Let’s all go home now.”

He was so, so sleepy as he climbed the staircase up to his room. Lacking the strength to even redress or shut off the light, little Trevor collapsed onto his big ‘ol bean bag chair into a deep sleep. He slept right on through dinner time and then into the night. At 2:17 the next morning, Trevor woke up when he fell off the big ‘ol bean bad chair and onto his toy car lying there on the floor. Finding JoJo’s gift still crumpled in his small fist, he stuffed me into his blue ceramic piggy bank. Then, with a little sigh, he flopped back onto his bean bag nest and slept soundly until the next morning when he awoke to his mum calling him down to eat his scrambled eggs before they got cold. Meanwhile, in the darkness of the piggy bank, I patiently awaited my next adventure.

Sometimes, I stumble upon old pieces or tidbits I wrote earlier in my life and, if it's something I forgot about, I get really excited. To me, it's like finding  money you forgot about.  That's what happened with this story.  I wrote it for fun a couple of years ago and I was just weeding through some old stuff on my computer when i came across it. I haven't written much lately so I thought I'd post it and maybe you can get a laugh too.

More Slam Poetry

In Creative Writing class, we listened to some slam poetry clips from YouTube to get inspired, and inspired I was.

This one, called "Pretty," really got to me. For a long time, I had depression, mainly due to my overwhelming feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.  It wasn't just about the way I looked, but that was a huge part of it.  I've always been a perfectionist when it comes to things I care about, and I put so much pressure on myself to be better, to be the best I could be, that when I couldn't do it, it broke me down.  It is still a problem for me, but has taken so much hard work to get even to the place I am now.  Katie Makkai's presentation in this video is amazing and inspirational.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0&feature=related

I love it when people surprise me by being completely different from how I assume them to be.  Sometimes I unconsciously stereotype people I don't know based on the way they look, but I am usually wrong, and I love finding  someone interesting in  an unexpected place. I don't know if that makes sense, but watch this video and I think you'll see what I mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppwowTJg0mI

This was the first one I watched and I still love it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfTa4B7wQ_8

I wish I had that kind of verbal power. Maybe someday.

Audio Slam

Hey.  This morning I realized it has been ages since I've posted, due to the busyness surrounding a little event called graduation.  And this afternoon (still feels like morning!) is the first time in a while I've had nothing very pressing to do.  And I'm putting off vacuuming my bedroom, which is quite an undertaking.  So, this is the audio of me reading the slam poem in the last post.

Let Me Throw This At You

My voice

calls out to you from this stage.

My voice

raises itself like a dragon rearing its head

and it falls 

it falls like the world trade center,

casting rubble out in waves

millions of paper

millions of annotations

of margins

of love notes

and millions of voices

crushed

but not silenced

voices smothered and beaten to a pulp

yet still they rise.

From the dust, from the ashes,

from the millions of love notes

my voices come through

like smoke

and they suffocate me

and they choke me

and they cloud my view

but I keep talking and pushing my words out 

tearing, and crying out,

animalistic

like a woman in labor

pushing and groaning and losing control

and pushing some more

until something new is born.

and this something is the embodiment of a new passion

this is new life and it has new life

it is shriveled, purple potential,

growing, stretching, scraping its knee, climbing trees into

a potential of energy

through scarred arms and stolen hair dye

to become potential of power

and beyond that to a power in its own right.

This voice is my right.

It is my right to project and thrust this

voice out

to meet its destiny

though it be shaking 

though it spends its nights alone

though rocks scape against it

paring it down,

sharpening its switchblade

slicing through this and that, person and opinion

the molten vocal chords of my throat

spewing across this crowd and burning you too,

burying you in your own ideas

burying you like Vesuvius buried Pompeii,

buried in ideas only to be discovered 

a thousand

maybe ten thousand years in the future

if hence the future still exists,

and all of this, I find, 

is still in my head.

and I found myself screaming at the top of my voice “i can’t do this. . . 

anymore”

an you said “you were never doing it. you have to start, you can still start - your life depends on it-, even now, especially now, because you are here and you are now and most of all you are.” 

you are you are you are. 

I am. 

[This is my first attempt at slam poetry.  I might post an audio presentation of it at some point.]

Uncertain Grace

She is the soul of a gypsy, 

a feather, blown in the wind

wandering alone

choosing to be lost.
Soliciting solitude 
as one might solicit company.

she is a rarity

undiscovered but highly sought after

a star, burning through her mortality

Her radiance sears my eyes 

but I cannot look away.

She is an idea of brilliance,

the thought of a thought

An unsteady light.

In January,

a spark of static on a dark sheet.

she is a mother wearing her child's face

needed and unwanted

she must be an apparition

moving, as she does, with uncertain grace

leaving, in her wake, a power she does not know.

Caught, in her halo of light,

she is an everyday angel.

[Photo cred: TheSartorialist]

Phobia

At eighteen, I have passed my peak.  I am over the hill and running full tilt down the other side.  I have sped up time on my own and have honed in on the light at the end of the ever-shortening tunnel.  For fear.  For fear of staying in the dark.  The darkness of life.  For fear of becoming.  I am an old woman, I am decrepit.  I am senile.  I have become so to avoid becoming so.  I am afraid of becoming my mother, my father.  My grandparents, their false teeth, their hearing aids.  Their used tissue paper skin, transparent, covering a soft web of congested purple veins.  My grandfather’s shaking hands, my grandmother asking me again and again who I am and where my mom is.  “Where is your mother, Molly?”  No point in telling her I’m not Molly.  She’ll only ask again, in thirty seconds.  Five, four, three, two. . . one.  “Molly, is your mother here?”  

I am haunted by the nightmarish image of myself sleeping on the couch, toothless mouth hanging open, a drawn-out nasal snore emitting from my withered head.  But the vision doesn’t end there.  No.  It gets worse.  Underneath my stained, mint green, highwater pantsuit, my swollen, neckless body lays in an unsightly state of disarray.   Lacking proper support, my sagging tits droop on either side of my body, falling to my elbows.  My puffy shoes have the velcro opened up in order to give my varicose feet some extra room.  Shitting the bed and doddering about, food falling out of my muscle weakened  jaw, I am merely a vast embarrassment to everyone about me, even if I don’t belong to them.  

I am scared of reverting back to diapers and bibs, of store clerks patronizing me with dear. “Would you like some help with that, dear?”  Sometimes it seems that the only difference between the very old and the very young, is that the very old know what’s happening and they are growing into it, rather than out.

I am afraid of subjecting someone else to the sickness part of in sickness and in health, but I’m even more afraid of finding out there’s no one who would take that vow.  I dread well meaning but snobbish twenty-somethings explaining life to eighty year-old me.  My children trying to pass me off to one another like a useless family heirloom that sits about collecting dust and only represents sentimental value.  In other words, no value at all.  

I couldn’t survive living long enough that my only remaining friends are frumpy african violets or elderly cats with skin diseases.  Having already reached middle age, it is a relief for me to never have to worry about carcinogens or crows feet or saving for retirement, since those things will never touch me.  Afraid of caring too much, I have become careless, preferring the feeling of wind in my hair to the security of the helmet.

I don’t want to go on living so long that the world’s insanity overcomes any trace of youthful optimism and innocence and I become embittered or loony.  I have chosen instead to live fast, die young and leave a good corpse.

Fearing too much life has me scared to death.

Spike.

I was planning on writing this in my usual free-verse style, but I decided to try and put it together in a more organized prose-like fashion.  It still feels kind of staccato, like it should be set up the the line-break pauses of poetry.  But just read it slow and take it for what it is. Maybe a little of the quality can be sacrificed to break out of a comfort zone? Or maybe I should just stick with what I know I can already do.

Children's Story

Hi.  I'm a total dry well right now.  BUT! I had an assignment to fulfill. . . and I never disappoint. Yeah, right.

I like kids, okay. I have a three year old and a seven year old brother who are my best friends and they're pretty much awesome.  But I'm not "good with kids." I don't know how to cater to their interests. I was a wacko child (heck, I'm still wacko), so it's not like I can just reference my own childhood.

But the assignment was Write a Childhood/Bedtime Story. Do It.  So. . . I did it.  Just kidding. I put it off. For a long, long time.  And then I did it.  My perky creative writing teacher is editing it for me (hopefully) and maybe we can turn it into something less gross. I'm being hopeful.  It's a blessed trait. You're welcome.

I will post it. Judge me. Judge me hard. Mmhmm.

Young and Free

“Look at you. You’re young. And you’re scared. Why are you so scared? Stop being paralyzed. Stop swallowing your words. Stop caring what other people think. Wear what you want. Say what you want. Listen to the music you want to listen to. Play it loud and dance to it. Go out for a drive at midnight and forget that you have school the next day. Stop waiting for Friday. Live now. Do it now. Take risks. Tell secrets. This life is yours. When are you going to realize that you can do whatever you want?”


My best friend sent me this quote on facebook. She found it in Stumbleupon- from "Four Short Plays" by Louise Flory, and it completely sums up our feelings right now. We keep talking with so much excitement about the future.  This is the time when everything is going to change and we can do anything we want and there's so much to see and do and feel and there's really no other time we'll have so little holding us back. It feels amazing to be young and alive (always, but especially now) and there's so much to look forward to.  It's one of those times when I feel like I'm getting high from the pure joy of living and being happy and free.  Whatever has gone wrong in the past has no hold over my beautiful, untainted future.  Maybe I'm seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, but I'd rather err on the side of beauty than the side of doubt.  The world is always a great place to be in the springtime, but especially when you're eighteen years old and you are wearing a sundress.

In Good Form

I feel so uncemented. Yeah, I made that word up. But really. I so rarely have a real form in my writing.  It seems always a combination between poetry and prose, kind of like free-verse, which I love, but honestly, I just feel lazy. Lazy because my poetry isn’t poetic enough, or flowy enough, or enigmatic enough.  Lazy because my prose isn’t structured enough, isn’t solid enough, isn’t fast enough. I like writing when it all just spills out of me, but I’m getting slack about technical things. And I don’t care about having all the technical things right for only their own sake but for what they truly contribute to the piece. It’s high time I clean up my act.  There’s a great deal of improvement to be had and I don’t want to be too chicken or too lazy to face that because of my own laxity. 

I’m working on a prose piece, and this time I want it to be in legitimate, unquestionable prose. It isn’t there yet. Wish me luck.

Crawl Space

A dull, fractured thump

is heard.

The curtain wavers, ruffled by a zephyr

shot through with electricity.

tension.

Voices with strands of 

a furtive excitement

speak quickly,

hushedly.

Lights flicker,

then fade.

The voices dissipate.

A moment of blackness

before the red drapes part

and a light

warms your face.

Your face is warm,

your hands restless,

feet relying

on muscle memory

to propel you into place.

But your back is straight -

the breeze has stilled

and it waits;

expectant.

Trusting.

I hold my breath as you take in yours.

With the sound of your voice 

my arms and the back of my neck

crawl

with the tingled shiver

of beautiful refrains,

of misty sunrises.

Your voice grows louder,

grows strong

and passionate.

You hook my heart up with

yours,

beating faster 

and faster, and,

in a pinnacle,

stopping

short.

I climb the ladders;

I know each portal; 

I recall the hours;

yet the magic is no less diminished 

in my eyes

than if I was 

immersed 

for the first time.

The Voice of Truth

The billboard messages
come to life
as I draw near.
There's no throwing this train.
The menacing faces reach out
at me -
I only recognize
them for what they've told me
they are.

I run to them.
I choose them
in my insecurity,
in my lostness.
I am brought in
and torn apart.
Even what I don't know that I have
they take away from me.
Into my emptied player
they put their soundtrack;
the soundtrack of hate.
I thank them,
relaxing,
as the familiar sounds
break me down
and build a million new pathways in my brain.
Every day,
every week,
the sound of the wrecking ball
grows louder,
more soothing,
until the explosions
consume every other sound
as they wear down,
down,
and down
rendering me shredded
pulped and bloody,
unable to feel anything but
this death.
Unable to hear anything
but these lies;
the ones that sound so much like
truth
to me.

If The Whole World Was One Color

“if the whole world was one color,”

you asked me,

“which would it be?”

at first i thought green.

definitely green.

because green is the only one

that when gone,

is missed.

and green is a mixture of two,

so it can be three.

that is true.

but it’s all wrong,

green is not the answer.

green is sickness

and the veins of only half the world.

green is always the color of 

that bitch’s mood ring.

snot-nosed and jealous

of all the greener beauties and

their green love.

the sea is green

in its cold deception.

all these things,

so not green.

but there is another color

that loves

green like

a mother loves a son.

her last son.

blue is a peace wedded

to fire.

blue is the drunken orgy

and the confessional the next

morning.

blue is what i know

and what i know that 

i don’t know

and that i have no idea.

but blue is the one 

that when i shut my eyes,

the others may still arise 

in succession.

ironically, 

always ending with purple,

so it doesn’t hurt to open my lids 

again.

Kindred Spirit

I know, how presumptuous of me to be so possessive of her. But really. . . I want to talk to her.  I wish I could be her friend, but I'm sure I'd end up just soaking her in my worshipful drool.  And she'd be grossed out. And she'd be like, "Hate to tell, but your writing sucks. And I don't actually hate to tell you." But, yeah. A girl can dream.  About being friends, not about what she'd say.

The instant I graduated from juniordom and embarked on my pre-senior summer, I began my AP lit summer work.  The reading part, that is.  That included Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale.  I tolerated and appreciated George Orwell, but I fell head-over-heels in love with Margaret Atwood.  To the point of drooling.  Almost.  Just imagine the kind of person it takes to write a book like that.  So overwhelming, yet unassuming, so complicated and grand, yet casual.  (I love paradoxes. Or maybe just contradictions.) The kind of book I struggle between being so enthralled as to finish it quickly, and knowing once it's done, I can never read it for the first time again.

And then.  I read The Blind Assassin. And more drooling happened. Seriously, maybe I'm just dumb, but I didn't see the end coming.  Those are the kinds of surprises I like.  I loved the lovers. They were like crack for me.  Reading that story gave me some serious inspiration (does it count, like that?).  I'll post the inspired-by piece sometime.

Now I'm halfway through The Robber Bride, and even though it may have disappointed others, it doesn't seem like it's going down that road for me.  There is this character named Charis (with a hard k sound), who is a young hippie with an old soul.  She's all in tune with people's auras and the colors of pain and feelings and taking care of living things.  Margaret just continues to awe me with her characterization and the way she makes people deeper and wider then even what she writes about them.

This may seem a bit over assured on my part, but I feel like I have a connection with her, or at least I think in a similar way.  I recognized my own thought pattern in her writing and although my work is far from the level she's attained, I imagine she didn't start out where she is now, either.

Do you have any writers that you particularly feel a similar connection with?  Not just ones that you like, but ones whose style you sometimes emulate or who you feel would be great to talk to?

Power

A smile

breaking, like a wave,

like a whitecap on a windblown sea

it washes her face

in loose supremacy.

It creates a diversion,

turning heads on the street -

creator of an accident.

Creates the accident and picks it back up.

Sacrifices are made to this smile,

sacrifices of riches,

of intellect.

A sacrifice of uncommon blood

made to that innocently demanding smile.

It knows each passage,

each gateway,

yet it hovers

above reproof.

Welcoming every reason as its intention,

it wordlessly sweeps away blame,

casting it off 

like a diadem in the sand.

It reaches for

and touches.

It commands and is given.

A surrender of innocence,

a venture for elegance, 

an attempt

to meet the standard of a bar that is constantly rising.

The smile is a luxury,

casually sumptuous.

The crown jewels in the black market,

Circe perusing the supermarket

casting spells upon the eggplants,

the brussel sprouts,

the pears.

This smile. . .

this smile.

Hers.

Plush

I love words. Obsessively so.


I love words and how they taste and feel on my tongue; spicy, sick-y sweet, delicate, strong. Rich and creamy or barely-there, cotton candy-like, or dark and bitter like black coffee.  Decadent.  


Words like myopia and onomatopoeia. 


honeymoon


wonton


crumple


ooze.


dusk


voluptuous


cobalt


deluge.


Some people think I fill my vocabulary with big, ridiculous words whose meanings I barely know, to sound smart and complicated.  But really, I just love how they feel in my mouth; squishing down in every crevice, like a tiny cream puff, eaten quickly, yet savored.  Just as yummy. Just as satisfying.


delish.

Under My Hair

The squares 

a round

the edge of the room

They are boxes

They are squares

They shine.

The room is dark

the darkness of a bright light

smell the air

where it cuts you

in the back of your head.

Smell it.

It hurts.

It is a living hurt.

The squares

a round

have grown

since I’ve seen them last

I’ve seen them last

and last.

Invincible.

Like a bird.

And inside the box

get inside the box

too big for the box

with a bird 

on your head

a bird without wings

on your head.

Trying to fly.

Frozen movement

but the box is still there

and you are still there

with a bird without wings 

trying to fly

clawing into your head

through the fog

ripping it back

tearing it apart

the ultimate frustration

refreshing

rip it off 

rip it off

it’s over

and we’ve gotten no further

today.