Poetry - Linger

the rain

after a vast drought
half-heartedly moistens
parched grass and crumpled blossoms

and before

the clouds played tricks
skirting back and forth
mischievous, brimming

temptresses

voluptuous and forbidding
rouged lips with locked legs
maddening our cracked mouths

one drop

a game of cat and mouse
of torrid wit and logic
steaming on the pavement

evaporates

Time is Cackling

I slept from 1:30 in the morning to 11:30 and I'm still tired. What does this tell you about my sleeping habits? They suck. Apparently ten hours is two too many. Or four too many. Or just generally too many.

We're in the single digits. Nine days and counting. I've decided to turn the living room into my temporary packing headquarters. That is, once I've started packing. Which I haven't. I have made a list or two in an attempt to figure out what I need to buy before heading back. Must distinguish between things I want and things I need. I've always been good at rationalizing the former into the latter... must stop being so underhanded.

Watched Clue with Alix last night. Hadn't seen it before and absolutely loved it. Hilarious. Exactly my sense of humor. Oh, Tim Curry. I thought about buying it today, but I already succumbed to ordering Driving Lessons and Emma (the book) from Amazon yesterday. I wasn't even going to buy Emma at all but ended up adding it to qualify for super-duper-sensational-spectacular-saver shipping (or something). Whoops. All self-control out the window.

I had an exceptionally fun time on Monday, which hasn't happened in quite a while. I went with Erin to get her glasses fitted, and then we ate lunch at Steak 'n Shake. After that we decided to head over to Underwood Park where we lay in the shade on a picnic table having a lovely conversation until Dave called. We met him at Borders for a drink. White Cranberry Tea. Very good. Wandered around World Market looking at jewelry and zoomed on over to Target where Erin bought a new comforter. Went back home to change and then met Dave at Raspberry Grove to watch Erin ride Rev in quadrilles. Got some sweet pictures:









The three of us trekked back to my house and watched Moulin Rouge, then did a Wal*Mart run for some snackage. All manner of foods that one should never eat too much of or in combination with one another. Bing Cherries, Starburst, Caramel Creams, chips, salsa, sour cream, and Wild Cherry Pepsi. What happened to my soda embargo? I really have lost all self control. (Where's Gabs when you need her to whip you into shape?) Anyway, after that we played DDR into the wee hours of the morning. The sweatiest I've been in a long time... but at least we were burning off the calories? They left around 1:30 AM, and I fell asleep right when my head hit the pillow.

In other news, haven't seen as much of Zach as I would like... but what's new in that department? I'm going to try to come home when his family goes on vacation in October (without him, obviously), but that might turn out to be tricky. Would I stay with him or my family? Could I stay with him without his evil grandmother surprising us with a midnight visit? I can just hear her shrill voice... "Zachary! Who is that in your bed?! How dare you!" Oh dear. Then again, she might be going with the rest of his family. Must confirm that. The main problem is how to get home. Train? Bum a ride from Gabs? Borrow a car from someone else (eek, dangerous)? I suppose the answer will arise when it's down to crunch time. I'll bank on that. :bites lip:

Overall, time is moving way too fast. Still sprinting trying to catch up with it. And me sprinting is a rather pathetic athletic endeavor, really. Time just keeps cackling while I stumble over my gangly limbs and double over from lack of physical ability. What a sad image...

Maturity, A Tirade

Here's an excerpt from Dictionary.com's "The Right Word" section (located below the definition of the word):

"Most of us would prefer to mature rather than simply age. Mature implies gaining wisdom, experience, or sophistication as well as adulthood; when applied to other living things, it indicates fullness of growth and readiness for normal functioning."

And I'm going to rant (some of you might say immaturely when you've finished reading this, I'm sure) about it.

It's the thing everyone thinks they are but aren't. I know a lot of people who claim to have gained a wealth of maturity within the last couple years and have, in fact, regressed into an ignorantly childish state of indulgence. Not everyone, mind you. But a few. And before I really get the ball rolling on this tirade, I just want to make it perfectly clear that I'm guilty of doing a lot of these things. These criticisms are for my own sake as well.

If you let go of all your ideals upon entering college in order to "change" or "remake" yourself and come running back to your old friends when it bites you in the ass, no one is going to feel sorry for you. Your attempt at reinvention has not been mature. You're lonely because you've made yourself that way.

If you claim not to condone others' behavior in the presence of one friend only to deny your aversion to that same behavior in the presence of the other, you are not mature. You are a hypocrite.

"Respecting" someone's decision when secretly despising them for it is lying to yourself and to them. And "respecting" someone else's long-term relationship and then attempting to put your foot in the door is not the same thing. True respect shows maturity. False respect is a juvenile parlor-trick.

Talking about a problem with everyone but the person to which it pertains is unfair to that person. Along a similar vein, not addressing important, existing problems is probably one of the biggest mistakes people make, including myself. Shoving them into that cobwebbed corner of your brain is only going to make them more ripe for disaster when they tumble out of the vault.

You can both be wrong, and you can both be right. At the same time. It's immature to think that there is only one way to look at a situation. After all, what would the world be without multiple perspectives? Boring. Oh, and discussing disagreements is always better than yelling.

Manipulating or controlling people is never mature. Ever. Asking someone to change for you without consideration of their own ambitions and goals is selfish. And asking someone whether they think you're controlling is a set-up for disaster. Don't bate people into giving you the answers you want to hear. If don't want their honest opinion, don't ask the question.

Obsession isn't the same thing as love. Just as liking the idea of being in a relationship isn't the same thing as liking the person you're dating. Recognize the difference.

I think that's quite enough for now. I find that being matter-of-fact in the way I feel about things helps me sort them out. Telling myself that I'm being immature and recognizing it does a lot more than moping around waiting for someone else to give me a wake up call. I'm a firm believer in acknowledging your own shortcomings, even if some people would say that's my greatest weakness. And I wouldn't disagree with them. I'm probably the biggest hypocrite of all, especially for writing this entry.

But it helped.

Pause

He really missed me, I could tell.
We didn't go to the movie so we could spend time together.
Spend it, instead of spending it.
And I'm head-over-heels.

That part of me doesn't want August 17th to come.

Stretch out the month a bit longer... pause it.
So the late-afternoon sun slants through the windows all day.

Errands, and I Digress...

I like running errands. This might make me a mutant ooze-creature from an uninhabited bog in some dark corner of the Earth, but I do. I like the straightforwardness of making lists and checking off tasks once they're completed. Perhaps it makes me feel useful, which, during the summer, is a rare occurrence.

My boyfriend makes eleven dollars an hour sitting in a cubicle from seven to four every day shooting me emails as a makeshift messaging service. And occasionally answering service calls. Or something. I make seven-fifty an hour to teach children how not to drown. I get kicked in the bladder (which is nearly always full), hit in the face, or groped at least once every night. I have to deal with unhappy parents, hyperactive kids, and a repetitive curriculum. With my current job, sometimes the only thing I feel like I've accomplished upon returning home is soaking up more chlorine.

And I feel like a chemically violated sponge. My fingers don't even prune until I've been in the water for at least two hours. Apparently I've developed a resistance to moisture. My skin looks like a cracked river bed, and the lotion I slather on it at least once a day evaporates too quickly to make any real difference.

When did this turn into a bitching session? Steering it in another direction.

I had lunch at Fazoli's with my friend Alix today. I've missed talking to her. We're both incredibly pathetic. As she doesn't have a job and only volunteers at a museum a couple hours a week, and I don't work until later in the day, you would think one of us would pick up the phone and call the other. Ah, well. Lazy college students that we are... can't expect much.

We came back to my house afterwards and watched Hook, which I absolutely love. Greatly enjoy Dustin Hoffman. Can't even begin to describe how hilarious he is. I have a penchant for watching movies I used to be obsessed with as a child and seeing all the adult humor that I previously hadn't cottoned on to. "Near-sighted gynecologist" has got to be the most hilarious insult ever. Too bad Rufio only had a fifth-grade reading level...

Handwriting

According to a handwriting analysis I just completed, I am:

- extroverted
- gregarious
- emotionally responsive
- trusting
- uptight
- aloof
- callous
- focused
- defensive
- a leader

Oh, and I cling to my own ideals. Surprisingly, that about sums me up, with the exception of me being aloof. I wouldn't say I'm ever incredibly distant to anyone unless I have good reason to be. And it did also claim that because I don't put any bars at the top and bottom of my capital I's, my parents aren't quite the driving force in my life that they should be, which is entirely incorrect. I would never call my parents emotionally distant or absent.

Ah, well. It's like reading tea leaves. You're going to suffer... but you're going to be happy about it? I'll take it with a grain of salt. Though when you think about it, Ron was sort of right, wasn't he?

Fiction - Hollow

It had been days without reprieve. The harsh wind rolled across the countryside in a torrent of Spring thunderstorms, flooding the low ground encircling the stone cottage. The little house was perched on the highest hill for several miles, surrounded by a stretch of fields dotted by blunt boulders and peculiar outcroppings of slate-colored rock. When there were no storms, a low mist hung heavily over the grass. It seemed an eternal obstruction, keeping those on the outskirts of the cloud from peering across the meadows. By all accounts the landscape was desolate, though perhaps not uninhabitable. The occasional curl of smoke rising from the chimney on the hill was its only sign of life.

Inside the cottage, she stoked the embers with a thin, gnarled stick, sending sparks onto her skirt. Droplets of water fell into the chimney as the rain passed overhead, sizzling and evaporating in the flames. A cat meowed feebly from the shadowy corner, its yellow eyes wide and unblinking like twin lamps. She was hungry. They were hungry. But the deluge of rain had destroyed the garden. She told herself it didn't matter. The vegetables had been sickly anyway; the result of no sunlight due to the unyielding mist. Not enough to sustain one, let alone two.

It had been four months since she arrived in this place. On this hill. In this mist. Without meaning to. Each day had been etched into the surface of the small wooden table in the hearth-room. The cat had watched curiously as she made vertical scratches down its length. She only knew the number, never the month's name. She had forgotten many days ago where she had come from. And now she knew she couldn't leave. Why she knew this, she wasn't sure. A vague sense of certainty had stolen over her in the days she spent alone in thought. She had asked the cat, but he had only meowed and rubbed against her legs as if to say, "I'm sorry, but I'm stuck, too."

In her first week at the cottage, she found a cracked mirror in the cramped bedroom and was surprised to find her long red hair turning dark at the ends, her skin sallow and stretched, and her once startlingly blue eyes tinted pale gray. A trick of the light, she told herself.

Over time, however, she began to suspect the mist. The ever-present haze that seeped into every crevice of the stone house, every pore on her face, and filled her lungs so that when she breathed, she could taste the dampness in her mouth. Each time she opened the door to walk around to the garden, the vapor pressed in from all sides, compressing her chest. It was sometimes so burdensome that she was forced to abandon her attempt and retreat back indoors. It was days like this she was surprised she was able to start a fire in the grate at all. Curiously, it nearly always stirred to life. Perhaps the hearth was a vestige of an earlier, happier time when the fog hadn't existed. She couldn't say.

The mist was the entity most culpable of preventing her escape. She came to be sure of this. But as the days passed, she grew used to its presence. She stopped gazing in the mirror for fear of finding herself more gaunt and colorless than the morning before, letting her hair become more matted and wild with each passing day. She became steadily more disoriented, forgetting where she was for long expanses of time, only to wake up beside the fireplace hours later, the cat curled up next to her stomach, wondering what time it was, what year it was, what season.

Then the rain started. Drops plummeted from the sky, drumming on the roof of the little cottage without pause for days on end. And she came back to herself for a few moments when, stepping out into the pouring rain, she felt the icy beads of water strike her hands, her feet, her eyelashes. She ran down the hill through the newly-formed puddles and straight out into the field as far as she could go, stopping only when the wind picked up, lashing at her face and stinging her eyes; when the rain began to come down in sheets and thunder rumbled across the clouds. She became frightened, and struggled back through the gale to the house, where the cat soon began pawing the puddles of water she brought in through the door.

Worrywart

As the summer comes to a close - 19 more days until I move into McDavid with the rest of the FARCers (Fine Arts Residential Community... ers) - the anticipation and eagerness that I felt in June for school to recommence is waning. I have one more week of work (grace à dieu), two weeks without my parents (they're celebrating their 25th anniversary by taking a trip across the country), one week without my best friend (she's visiting her significant other in Michigan), and about three weeks attempting to see my boyfriend at least more than once before the long-distance stretch begins, as he lives in a gilded cage made of bribes and financial support (long story).

It's a lot to process. Moving forward, people going their separate ways, leaving things behind. I want the freedom that comes with being at school, but my brain isn't ready to tackle the 18 credit hours I've thrown at it (perhaps unwisely). I'm excited for my publishing internship, though reading 20 short stories a week in addition to the rest of my schoolwork might be a bit much... especially if I'm going to attempt to toss in the same amount of socializing I did this past semester. Without violin studio things might be a tad less stressful. I'm just worried about talking to Prof. Szekely about stopping. I did forewarn her at the end of last semester that my workload was too heavy to keep up with lessons, but I'm not quite sure she really processed my situation. Music types forget that not everyone is as dedicated to their craft as they are. She graduated from Julliard... that's all I'm going to say. But then one must ask, why is she working for the University of Missouri? Our orchestra department blows. Or, well, it isn't of any note, at least.

In the friend department... certain things are worrisome. Casey and I are going to get along fabulously as roommates, I can just feel it. Aside from that, the Jim and Sayeed combination is going to be interesting. If only they wouldn't harbor the same love interest. :sigh: More roommate turmoil has already surfaced where Gabs is concerned, as Jane decided to live in Campus View Apartments without telling her until very recently, meaning Gabs will be stuck with someone random. A very classy move by Jane. Downright swanky. She's been an extremely sophisticated person ever since she started dating Jeff... ahem. And then there's the fact that Gabs, Liz, Jim, Ben, and Johnny will have already been at school for a week prior to Sayeed and I's arrival because of Marching Mizzou. They tend to get a little chummy, and I'm worried about feeling incredibly separated from their group. I've never met Johnny face-to-face, either. He's Ben's best friend from high school (a freshie, oh goody), and he seems to have a unique sense of humor, generally likable. The truth is, I think he and Gabs are going to hit it off really well, and I'm worried she'll pull a Jane and desert everyone for better company. I'm probably over-analyzing everything to death, but my fears are still simmering away under the surface.

You would think college would be rather freer from drama than high school... a naïve hope, really. However, I can't afford to spend the rest of my summer stressing about what-ifs and could-bes. I need a good smack in the face and a sense of purpose. I should start making lists and taking inventory of everything I need for school. That and stop sitting around the house all day being useless.

Sounds like a plan. Or at least something vaguely resembling one...

Poetry - Half Asleep On A Monarch's Wing

Finally kicking this thing into gear with a poem I wrote in 2006. Enjoy.

half asleep and I want to cry
ocean tears
for the expanse of what I feel

a sullen saline
stings the edges of untouched lashes,
and the pain is
d i s c o n n e c t e d
and irrational

I want to spill out emotions just for
the sake of spilling out emotions,
and no, not for anyone else

just me

that's what happens when you
run out of ideas to
drown out the sound of the ticking clock,

hitched unwillingly to the wall like a new
Christ nailed to his own martyrdom,
splayed hands stretched round

West and East
Nine and Three

the connection ensured by polar opposites;
magnetic and alluring as the
pull of his scent on the wind,

the sensation of whispers on naked flesh,
promises kept, and
promises forgotten

we don't know yet, though
so I'll just place this butterfly's wing
behind opaque glass for the
time being

and when the air strikes in its final release,
perhaps it will crumble without the scaffolding,
and the wind will sting my eyes

and

ocean tears
will fall for the expanse of what I feel,
just for the sake of feeling something

sooner or later
we all have to wake up,
and half-asleep will disappear
—a sacrifice with the tide,

a lone Monarch wing in its wake