Something Feels Off

UC applications are off and away. Hooray! Freedom finds me once again, at least for the moment. I can enjoy random days, and call forth my silly ways. I wrote these in the midst of all the hectic-ness, inspired by the rush of what exactly? Essays and pages and pages of information, all sent to places we think we like, but know about as well as the formation of underground sewers. Not to make the whole subject sound foul…the sewer is just a random simile. And I probably meant a nice sewer…Like a European sewer, with cobblestones, and presentable rats with accents.


Fear of fading

Behind the guiding hands
Is safety from expanses.
Like neatly trimmed trees
That stand as guardians at attention.

The fingers will unclench,
As readily as day permits the night to exist.
It is the twilight in-between
When sight fails and one stumbles.

To fade into the vastness of the new dark,
Is to give up existence.
It is why the cricket chirps at dusk;
The fear of getting lost.

Those guiding hands release to expose the wild distance.
A horizon of brilliant shades
That stuns the eyes out of focus,
Like the hazy moments between dreams

To blink away the glare,
Is harder than seeing colors in the night.
My hands are clear in front of me, whether or not I can see.
This twilight is mine.

It is my own stride
That leads me to the light.
Or that brings me where I disappear without a sound
Like snow in the wrong season.

My eyes still are blinking away,
Not only glare, but tears.
I have been thrown away from what I know,
Like a dear that lives next to a road.


Moments Do Fail

Moments do fail
Just as each of us has wronged
They do become derailed
And for purity they long

We do judge them here
Like a voice with broken song
Shame leaks tears
For they must still go on

Neither kill nor kiss
Can pull forward what has passed
Lost in the abyss
Like footprints swallowed by the tide alas

Ellora’s Random Column: Get Ready

The other day I was driving back from school with my mind going 100 miles per hour pondering over dilemmas, worries, and possibilities. Most of my thoughts were of future plans, college applications and continual agonizing over whether or not my decisions would be the be-all and end-all of my young life.
As I rounded Bonnie I thought to myself, is this it? It this the decision that I was born to make and live solely for the purpose of making? Is which college I get into going to determine whether or not I end up face down in a gutter with a bottle of Jack Daniels clutched in my hand?
If I think about it, college has been hovering about me wherever I go. Even as a little child my parents cooed to me while fantasizing that I would attend their old college stomping grounds. Today I can’t go a few hours without someone asking me which college I am going to or at least asking me to tick off a few of the prospective schools. Lets not forget the excruciating question that makes my mood deflate like a popped tire: What do you want to do?
As a 17 year old I should I know what I want to do with the rest of my life? I know what I like and what I don’t like, but there is no way that I could drag up an answer that would be in the least bit accurate. It has been my experience that what people end up doing with their lives does not correspond with what they originally thought. Everything that deals with the subject of what I want to do feels so delicate. I’m almost afraid to answer that question for fear of jinxing it. Sometimes I would just like to answer, “Nothing. I plan to do absolutely nothing with my life,” just to offset the pressure.
As I turned right on Errol I started picturing a family of birds, where the chicks get pushed out of the nest so they can learn to fly. There is no real reason that the chicks have to learn to fly. They could just stay in the nest and get fat on worms. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to live in the nest forever, or the human equivalent, which is probably the basement. The basement smells funny, for one thing, and for another it must be amazing to fly and use your own wings. I want to have more control over how I begin to stretch them. I just don’t see why everyone has to go about doing it the same way.
Either you get a job, or go to college, end of story. What a boring story! I don’t want to be a sheep that goes along with the rest of the herd. Sure, following the big curly sheep-butt in front of me would be a lot easier than doing more thinking, but there must be other ways of figuring out what I want to do.
As I drove up Coventry I thought, I know people who have plenty of credentials, but who didn’t know a thing about what they wanted to do after they finished school. They only figured it out after living a little. So, it seems backwards that college is suppose to give us all the answers to what we want to do in life, when maybe it is from life that we will learn about ourselves and figure out what we want to study. College isn’t going to be what life is like. I am not going to be living with a roommate in a dorm and eating on a red cafeteria tray when I’m 40.
On the Arlington, I passed a familiar face, a man who was out for his daily 10-mile walk with his beloved dog. Man, I thought, that guy’s going to be devastated when one day soon, his dog will keel over from exhaustion and die. Luckily I caught that thought as it passed through my mind and I realized that it was not something I would usually think. I wondered, why would I think such a thing? It was just because of my bad mood, I realized, not because I suddenly converted to pessimism.
It suddenly occurred to me that my impassioned views on college might be tainted. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “don’t believe everything you think,” and it could have applied to my present thinking. Perhaps college really is the best way to stretch my wings, and my mind. Maybe the herd of sheep just all happen to be going in the right direction after all.
I still refuse to expect that college will give me the answers that I am looking for, nor am I willing to subject myself to any more required classes. I will spend as much time as I can enjoying the things that I like, and the things that I don’t like, I will avoid like the plague. I know that college will be a part of my life, not the whole part, just a part. College is college, but definitely not life. No matter what decisions I end up making, I will do all that I can to stay out of the gutter. Don’t jinx it.

"This is what happens to me every time I look at my college applications"

(Joyce Tenneson)

I woke up this morning to my alarm. I sat up, bleary-eyed, slapped off my alarm, and sunk back into sleep. This happened about four more times and somewhere in between I had a dream. In it, I threw off my covers, stepped onto the chilly floor, walked into the bathroom, washed my face, and went out for breakfast. My alarm went off again. What? I thought, as I tried to come to my senses. It seemed so real, my mundane morning routine. I thought I had really woken up already. I realized that it is when I dream about waking up, that I am really, truly tired.

Gazing From Afar

It's late and I'm listening in the dark to Solitude, by Evanescence.

evanescence lyrics

lyrics site

I've been getting that thing again. When I have dreams, and I get the feeling that they are trying to tell me something. I know they are different than normal, sleepy-eyed dreams. They stay with me, and then I just get a feeling-- a feeling that there is some change happening, some unbalance, something that isn't fitting right. It's like misplacing an object... you keep looking for it in the spot you think you left it. You can almost see the outline of it there, but it's gone. It should be there, but it isn't.

I'm worried about the one I dream about, and yet I can do nothing. I could be wrong, but the more things fall into place, the more my dreams make sense. It is distressing to realize that I might be more correct than I expected. I guess I just hopped that I was wrong, and passed off what I felt as just my over thinking. Now I have come to realize that it is harder to be in a place where I have no way to reach out, to touch, to say anything, to even try to be there... than it is to be in a place where I don't know what to do, but at least have a way to try. At times it might seem easier to have nothing expected of me, but in truth it is aching inside me. It is a side of me, pallid and weak, powerless be a friend... It's not me. I don't just stand and watch something break. I just can't turn away... but I have no place to move.

To feel this adds another side to what I have felt before. I still feel, but it seems less important now. I feel so far away, with no crossing over. I just wish for ease. I wish for a grounded repair. I wish for warmth, and a touch that finds its way.

Despite it all, I want to be there, in whatever form I’d have to take. As is now, I just look behind me and see the shadows form into an empty figure. But what can I do, really? Keep on doing what I do. Keep on doing what I love, and let the pieces fall where they will.

A poem in search of the closure I never really found:

Your Wilting Rose

Like burning tissue paper,
The edges of your rose grow crisp.
The colors fade, and then disappear,
Replaced by docile grays.
The once soft and vivid petals
Wilt against the ceramic glaze.
Like your wilting rose,
My smile silently transforms.
Once jovial and grinning,
My lips are tight with uncertainty.
Like the touch of a cheek on a frosty window pane,
Chilled questions seep through my mind.
My thoughts are ablaze with qualms that flash about like sparks.
As luminescent mist drifts through the early morning sky,
I felt radiant at the words you spoke.
But with the new sun, your enchanting words vanished.
The Afterglow left me swiftly,
Returning the dark folds to my dress.
I wonder where your words go when they do not find me.
Does another hear them?
My heart beats rapidly with the memory of what I knew could be love.
Was it deceived?
I sway, as blustery fields of grass make waves.
To just begin the feeling,
Of what it means to love,
Leaves me unfinished in safety.
A painting hardly started,
For fear of smudging.
To be inside my mix-matched chandelier
To let you see me,
With all of my luster and faults together,
It is a frightening prospect.
I crave for you to lovingly seek my brightness,
And to wish to discover every facet.
Even with the fear of falling,
It is breathtaking to fly.
And yet, spectacular besides,
Is the moment that I may tumble and die.
If our paths are to cross no longer,
Please find your blissful days.
Now and then I look for you still,
In empty places that you do not stand.
I will remember you, and with my returning smile,
I will not falter on my way.
Someday I hope to be painted again,
So that I may be completed with another’s shades.
Colors that become bright, and stunning even as strokes unintended.

More Halloween!

Ghost Busters! Save me!
Geisha with keys! makes sense to me.
sherlock homes! He burned me with his cigar multiple times...though it was made of cardboard and shiny red plastic. ouch.

Oh sexy! An Abercrombie model. I love skin!
He totally got into it too. Posing like a pro. I was so sad when he had to put his shirt back on.
Oh Ms. Hebden! You really did scare me...kind of. Ah!

Psycho clown?
No idea what she is. Darling though

Aw cute! I wonder what would happen to Miss. Polkadot if she got cought in a strong, blowing wind...