If I'm going to rise up (while sitting) I'm going to have to start tomorrow. Those messages that have grown louder throughout the year, those messages saying "use it" and "write it down" won't be quiet - like some sort of p.s.d. for creative types. I go on and on about jumping into the deep end and taking chances. I also fully realize that I am quite the chickenshit (or have been up until now) in so many instances, and the time for fessing up and doing more than dipping my toes in the pool (however lukewarm) is NOW.
Xander said yesterday that "All babies start as circles", and I went on to explain how cells work in the simplest way I knew. Which is the only way I really know. He nodded his five-year-old baby chick head (it's the color of a baby chick) and looked at me with those borderline zealot eyes (his eyes are certainly intense for a five-year old) and I knew that he understood me. I could tell he knew that I understood him. I hope he always knows that.
So how to give due diligence to this amazing situation that I've been given? How to make this short spin so much more than an episode of True Life: I'm an Angsty Recovering Addict who Claims to Have All the Answers but Would Love to Just Sit Here and Look at Sephora All Day?
I'm not sure. But I know I'm supposed to start tomorrow. It's midnight, you know.
Once I stop praying
after I get the message
that all will be fine
I seem to click back
after leaving the dais
to my former state
of pacing the floor
and biting my wet knuckles
and doubting my voice
Should it end right now?
Can I strangle rhetoric?
I'm a pacifist.
Showing posts with label youth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label youth. Show all posts
Friday, April 2, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
floodgates, today.
She wrote a letter to a boy once, a letter that acknowledged a mutual attraction, a mutual outlook on life, the universe, and everything. It went on for pages and pages; complete open heart surgery, blood on the college ruled notebook, and she ended it with a “call me”. This was well before email, so she thrummed her fingers against her mother’s clean kitchen countertop and waited for the phone to ring.
A month went by. She and a friend were at the mall, that teenaged Hanging Gardens, and they spotted him going into Radio Shack. He had shorn his long hair, and had stopped wearing glasses. Her stomach churned and she was glad he hadn’t responded to her letter. She’d made a horrible mistake.
A week went by. The phone rings and she doesn’t answer, as she’s avoiding the telephone in the off chance that he calls her in late response to her glorious letter. Her mother yells upstairs for her to answer already, it’s for her probably, get the phone, she’s in the bathroom, etc. etc.
It’s him. After her shaky, chirpy “hello” she hears his gruff voice, “Got your letter. I totally agree. I totally feel the same. Totally.” Her response is diplomatic and swift, “I wrote that a long time ago, but thanks for calling me back!” and she hangs up, sweating and embarrassed.
There are things she’s not proud of. Her fifteen year old self was a baby still, but a mean baby.
A month went by. She and a friend were at the mall, that teenaged Hanging Gardens, and they spotted him going into Radio Shack. He had shorn his long hair, and had stopped wearing glasses. Her stomach churned and she was glad he hadn’t responded to her letter. She’d made a horrible mistake.
A week went by. The phone rings and she doesn’t answer, as she’s avoiding the telephone in the off chance that he calls her in late response to her glorious letter. Her mother yells upstairs for her to answer already, it’s for her probably, get the phone, she’s in the bathroom, etc. etc.
It’s him. After her shaky, chirpy “hello” she hears his gruff voice, “Got your letter. I totally agree. I totally feel the same. Totally.” Her response is diplomatic and swift, “I wrote that a long time ago, but thanks for calling me back!” and she hangs up, sweating and embarrassed.
There are things she’s not proud of. Her fifteen year old self was a baby still, but a mean baby.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Cusp Wing
There was a time in the cool cusp of spring that I completely believed that I was a fairy queen. I was little. I didn’t know that there are adults who spell it faerie queene and purchase butterfly wings at Renaissance festivals…I luckily didn’t grow up to become one of those women, although sometimes I wonder if I grew my hair long and put nothing but Lorena McKennett and Dead Can Dance on if I would be transformed for a few minutes. Into that kind of person, not a true fairy. I know they’re not real (uh-oh! Tinkerbell is starting to fade, hurry hurry, clap!)…
I remember the day clearly…recess, 2nd grade…the playground sloped up to a wooded area, probably only a grove but to me it felt like the Great Smoky Mountains…it was Knoxville, it was already warm, so it could have been April or May…spring's breeze is defeated by summer's heat early there. Myself and friends now unnamed and unknown would take up to that little hill with its mossy slope and run with the abandon of childhood, our arms outstretched, eyes only open enough to see a little in front of us, so we wouldn’t crash into a tree. If we ran quickly and wildly enough, we would become fairies…and I remember actually feeling prickly weight on my shoulder blades, the sprouting of very faint, veiny gossamer wings. It was dark enough in that small grove of hemlock and oak that I couldn’t convince myself that I was imagining things. We hopped from tree root to tree root, our tinsel voices chirping…the only words being, “Hello we’re fairies! (run run run…) Fairies, fairies!”
I recall the last day we played the fairy game…I had stopped in mid-flight and looked up at the tree canopy…the sunlight dappling through perfectly green foliage, and then POP! Something small and strange wriggled in my right eyeball. I shut my eyes and clamped my hand on my face and whimpered. I wasn’t a screaming 7 year old, but a moody one. I slowly walked over to the assistant teacher and said, “Something from above fell in my eye!” and she told me to open my eyes so she could take a look. This was difficult, as every time I moved my eyes or tried to open them the little thing wriggled more desperately. Finally, I was able to hold it open for long enough for her to pull the creature out…I remember her heavily accented voice (they had accents to me, my family was from Ohio and we didn’t talk the Knoxville way…) calling out, “Oh honnnnnnnnnney it’s just a little green caterpillar, LOOK EVERYONE!!”
And then came the thundering of 20 or so feet on the red clay of the playground…everyone clamoring to see the tiny, ¼ inch long fella that had been held prisoner in my eye. How strange it must have felt for it to be in a giant’s orb of blue and white, and black! What sort of cave was this?
After the show-and-tell hands on science lesson…recess was over. In we marched to the classroom…and my friends and I never played the fairy game again. Like all childhood games, it had played itself out. I think I replaced it with pretending I was Mary Poppins and jumping off of our lonesome, empty, rusted storage shed with a black umbrella above me.
- submitting to Scribbit's May Write Away Contest
I remember the day clearly…recess, 2nd grade…the playground sloped up to a wooded area, probably only a grove but to me it felt like the Great Smoky Mountains…it was Knoxville, it was already warm, so it could have been April or May…spring's breeze is defeated by summer's heat early there. Myself and friends now unnamed and unknown would take up to that little hill with its mossy slope and run with the abandon of childhood, our arms outstretched, eyes only open enough to see a little in front of us, so we wouldn’t crash into a tree. If we ran quickly and wildly enough, we would become fairies…and I remember actually feeling prickly weight on my shoulder blades, the sprouting of very faint, veiny gossamer wings. It was dark enough in that small grove of hemlock and oak that I couldn’t convince myself that I was imagining things. We hopped from tree root to tree root, our tinsel voices chirping…the only words being, “Hello we’re fairies! (run run run…) Fairies, fairies!”
I recall the last day we played the fairy game…I had stopped in mid-flight and looked up at the tree canopy…the sunlight dappling through perfectly green foliage, and then POP! Something small and strange wriggled in my right eyeball. I shut my eyes and clamped my hand on my face and whimpered. I wasn’t a screaming 7 year old, but a moody one. I slowly walked over to the assistant teacher and said, “Something from above fell in my eye!” and she told me to open my eyes so she could take a look. This was difficult, as every time I moved my eyes or tried to open them the little thing wriggled more desperately. Finally, I was able to hold it open for long enough for her to pull the creature out…I remember her heavily accented voice (they had accents to me, my family was from Ohio and we didn’t talk the Knoxville way…) calling out, “Oh honnnnnnnnnney it’s just a little green caterpillar, LOOK EVERYONE!!”
And then came the thundering of 20 or so feet on the red clay of the playground…everyone clamoring to see the tiny, ¼ inch long fella that had been held prisoner in my eye. How strange it must have felt for it to be in a giant’s orb of blue and white, and black! What sort of cave was this?
After the show-and-tell hands on science lesson…recess was over. In we marched to the classroom…and my friends and I never played the fairy game again. Like all childhood games, it had played itself out. I think I replaced it with pretending I was Mary Poppins and jumping off of our lonesome, empty, rusted storage shed with a black umbrella above me.
- submitting to Scribbit's May Write Away Contest
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