tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-218350802024-03-13T07:32:08.278-07:00kspeicherwritekspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.comBlogger97125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-71675492456733192562008-07-11T07:56:00.001-07:002008-07-11T07:56:43.836-07:00The Living<br /><br /> July 20th, 2006: When I first met Paul, I told my friends that when he died I would not go on without him, that I would rather become a nun than remarry. Now he is gone and I, still living, sit here like a hard nail secure in the wall. I have not yet remarried and have long since changed my mind about the value of becoming a nun. I would be unhappy as a nun, and Paul taught me better than to seek unhappiness. <br /> I remember when I first told Paul that I loved him. Sitting on the old wooden bench in a small park, the trees above us covered much of the sky with their leaves, so the sky looked like exquisite blue lace. His hand firmly held mine, but the firmness turned our bones soft as silk as if to signal the luxurious texture of the moment. Our kiss, too, was rich as velvet, and all our other gestures became like garments to clothe our interwoven minds and souls.<br /> We returned to that bench in the park many times during college; each kiss we had there reminded me of why I loved him (not that I ever really forgot). We always moved slowly on our walks, indifferent to time or the false necessity of conversation. Our communion with each other was based on the idea that the gesture (our smiling eyes when they’d meet) was pure and perfect. The talking between us came from me. I often tried at first to talk about things: my day, my view on this or that issue, something I had heard about another person. All the while, Paul stayed quite and looked at me with a smile on his face that said that he knew the futility of my efforts and that someday I would know it, too. <br /> His hand held mine all through these walks, his arm gently swinging with mine as if our bodies had the purposeful motion of a grand father clock ticking evenly. I came to know all his gestures: if he stopped walking and pulled on my hand like a rider slowing down his horse, I knew to stop walking and to kiss him. At first, I was confused by the forcefulness of this command. He would stop me while I was talking, and it offended me that he didn’t want to listen. But it didn’t take me long to realize that he had cut me off not just for a kiss, but to show me that this was the meaning of it all, of life and thought and action: this, to express the human ability for happiness, guiltless, unbridled happiness, and not just the happiness of one person alone, but happiness that is multiplied when it is shared between two people. <br /> I am now old and know the art of silent confidence, the art of fearless understanding. My love is long gone, and I continue my life without him still exercising my ability to use my mind. But I will say that I miss him immensely. <br /><br /> Lewis Cline sat in a blue leather armchair in the study of his mother’s home. The sun reluctantly peeked through the partially open dark green curtains, and many fuzzy particles of dusk hung to the angular light. The sunlight dust made the shape of a triangle, which contrasted with the round fold of the forgiving curtains. Cline, having just read proof of just how bad his mother’s Alzheimer’s had become, began to shake, but he did not notice his reaction until a big drop of sweat dripped down his chin and splattered on the paper which he held with a pulsing hand. <br /> A tall, sturdy man entered the room. He had the look of hard-earned confidence, the kind of confidence that comes only from having your values and strengths tested many times. This look of self-assurance made his eyes bright and wide open, but somehow gentle in a kind of quiet indifference. He looked to Cline and expressed his greeting by silently nodding his head. At first, Cline opened his mouth to conduct the typical spoken greeting of “hello”, but then, remembering that he did not need to put on airs with his father, went silent. It was his father who spoke first after sitting down in the blue arm chair beside Cline. <br /> “It has been this way for a long time.” He expressed these words with no fear, no sadness, no regret, in the same tone that he would have used in introducing himself.<br /> The enormity of his mother’s condition swept over Cline, as if his father’s words were a flashlight illuminating something hidden but there all along.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-30302089665023050972007-05-04T18:00:00.000-07:002007-05-04T18:01:38.208-07:00Here is a start of a short story I am working on. I am having some trouble working on it in Virgina, because it is set in rural Pennsylvania. I need to study the accents a little bit. Maybe I'll hang out at the Buck with my lap top to record some country talk! Just kidding.<br /><br /><br />At any given time, each of Edward’s activities reminded whoever happened to see him of a sort of chaos or kind of disorder, but, with the help of his cunning attitude, the boy could distract his audience with his disgusting charm. In this way, he often got through school with excellent grades not because he knew the material, but because he would walk up to the teacher’s desk with his head low and his chest caving in to his stomach during a test. He took up this posture not to fool the teacher, but to just git some help in school. He would pose a question, maybe “Ma’am, I don’t get what you mean. I just don’t see what you’re sayin’,” or maybe “did we do this in class? Cause I just am not rememberin’ this, ma’am.” Which ever, he made a point to draw out the “ma’am” in a smooth, buttery way. The teacher could not resist. It was not his cuteness or his charm that worked, but his pure ugliness and ignorance. Still, the teacher always explained the question in a new way until he lifted his head up and down like a pendulum, showing that oh, now he got it. The bones in his face stuck out in a mature way, like he was an old man rather than a nine year old boy, and he always wore untied sneakers, muddy jeans, and his favorite cowboy shirt. <br /> <br /><br />“You ain’t just sitting on that couch there doin’ nothing, now boy,” shouted his mother. His mother, who most people called Jude but who formally went by Mrs. Neiderstal though she never had been married and Neiderstal was her last name all her life, said this to him often, and then she went upstairs and slammed her door and didn’t come down the rest of the night. She smelled like cigarettes, ‘cause she smoked ‘em a lot, and they stuck on her clothes like flies stick on the cows in summer. Her breath smelled like it too, kind of dusty and wooden, and not too pleasant.<br /> <br /><br />He hung around more with his grandpa and brother than he did his mom or aunt. They built things by their blood and sweat, big things like fences and chicken coops. They bailed hay in the summer, plowed fields, and did real man’s work. Duty, honor, and America, that’s what they believed in. Paul, Edwards’ brother, was a big dumb guy who never got passed the 8th grade in school. Grandpap was real smart though, one of the smartest in town, but he just stayed his eyes to the land and never wanted any real office power or anything. <br /> <br /><br />Grandpap’s house was a big, white thing. It glowed with a tan gleam in the sun, since it wasn’t warshed down often, but it sure held a lot of people and stood firm through all the winter storms. All the family memories stayed in that house, on the shelves, in the basement, on the chairs, and in the bedrooms. They said the house been in the family for years and years, long as they had the land, too. They kitchen said everything best. You’d walk into the house and immediately you were in the kitchen. Didn’t even need to go through no extra doors or nothing. The kitchen said it best as soon as you entered, with a big, navy blue sign with “Live Well, Love Much, Laugh Often” painted on it in cursive letters. This country type décor been in the Neiderstal house as long as Edward could remember, even since he were a little kid. Edward still a little kid though, but he don’t think so since just this year he started going through bodily changes. Oh, on the left wall over the sink, a sign said “Because of the Brave”. They were real Americans and weren’t afraid to show it. At different times of the year, Paul searched through the brown, card board boxes in the basement and picked out the proper seasonal greeting. Right now, since it was spring and no real national like holidays were around the corner, the country decor above the antique clock was the “Bless This Home” one. They were real good Christians too, and went to church every Sunday morning. <br /> <br /><br />“Don’t you go getting’ redd up now, boy, ‘member there is responsibility after responsibility that come with being a man. I’ll beat your bottom now if you be bad,” warned Grandpap. Grandpap was always saying funny things. Once, when Paul and Edward were out in the woods cutting through briers and jaggers to clear a path, Grandpap just spit out something like “know what you gun be doin when yunz my age if yunz don work now? Gon be sitting in a home like Jude and be doin nothing but smoking your life away, smoking it away like the woods in the summer in a fire, which don’t happen much but you just got to prevent it. Anymore, people don know how to respect people who be smoking and smoking, but in my day they sure did.” He said all this with out looking up from knocking over jaggers on the path, and when he spoke it sounded like he had marbles rolling around between his tongue and his cheeks. But the words were still sharp and stayed with Edward. <br /> <br /><br /> Edward lived in his mothers house, which stood right beside his grandpap’s house, and was made of brick. It was much smaller than his grandpap’s house, and didn’t have country signs all through it with saying’s painted on them. Edward thought it a pretty nice house. <br /> <br /><br />Edward was sitting in the yard playing with his dog when he saw the Conway’s car speed by on the narrow back road. He didn’t change his position, but kept sitting in the yard playing with his dog. The dog was a little mutt named Dossy, with brown and white spots all a long her back. She was rather ugly herself. One nasty tooth stuck out of her mouth at all times, so she looked like she was constantly growling. As Edward looked down at Dossy and noticed her ugliness and the brown clumps of dirt stuck in her fur, it occurred to him that he didn’t like her much any more. He didn’t know why this struck him so suddenly, or why it didn’t come to him until now. But she was old, ugly, and dirty. The Conway’s dog, though, she just had a litter of puppies a few weeks ago. They forbid Edward to see the puppies, since last time he pet one he dropped it out of his lap. He said sorry over and over, but it seemed that the Conway’s had no heart for a poor, ugly boy like Edward. They would not be swayed like the teachers at the Elementary school. They knew what was there’s, and how to keep it whole and unbroken by keeping Edward away. <br /> <br /><br />“You stupid piece of shit! You stupid stupid boy!” Jude screamed from inside the little brick house. Edward did not know what she was screaming about, or if he did anything, but he did know that when she sounded like that it was best he left. So he picked up old Dossy and started wobbling down the pot hole covered road towards the Conway’s house. Dossy didn’t like the bumping around that happened when Edward walked quickly, and she started giving him little bites on the fleshy part of his arm. He dropped her and started running down the road, towards the Conway’s. He knew to go to the first room in the barn. The door slid open easily, the mother dog stood up to see who’s there, and the little puppies looked all cute lying in some hay. He sat down on the ground with them, and fingered their soft fir gently, selfishly. He picked one up, choosing randomly, and held its face to his so he could smell the sweet puppy breath. Pulling it to his chest, he lifted up his oversized t-shirt and stuffed the little animal between the shirt and his body. It felt warm and good, and he felt alive when the animal breathed in and out against him. <br /> <br /> Mrs. Conway took care of the puppies. At this stage in their development, taking care of them meant playing with them and making sure they were still alive. Their mother did the feeding still with her milk, so they had not yet moved on to eating dog food.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-74165538239444591652007-05-04T17:52:00.000-07:002007-05-04T17:53:47.894-07:00I updated this again!<br /><br /> She opens the plastic pantry door, finds the box of Go Lean cereal, measures a portion into an orange measuring cup, and then transfers it into a blue and white bowl. Cameron must have just left for the office and the children must have just caught the bus for school. The house stands still in the same sort of silence that happens each morning after most of the family goes off. And of course they hadn’t cleaned up anything from their breakfasts. She can trace the exact trail of each person’s breakfast. A few kernels of Rice Krispies scatter the kitchen counter and a greasy pan sits emerged in the kitchen sink along with a bowl of half eaten Lucky Charms. She settles herself comfortably at the breakfast table as she pours a cup of hot coffee. She is still wearing her purple cotton morning robe and fluffy slippers, but changes her thoughts to her outfit for the day. Oh, for sure some jeans. Maybe her red turtleneck. <br /> <br /> <br /> In another house a few blocks down, a woman pushes the snooze button on her alarm clock. She turns over to her husband, but, as usual, finds that he already left for the day. After feeling around for her glasses on the bed stand, she wobbles downstairs to the kitchen. Her daughter, Taylor, sits cross legged on a high stool at the counter, taking big gulps of coffee. Between gulps, she runs her fingers through her hair and adjusts her scoop neck shirt. There is no exchange here of soft pleasant words. No, they talk in low huffs and looks of criticism. She’s the bigger person; she’s the adult.<br /> “Honey, I haven’t changed my mind ‘bout what I said last night.”<br /> “What?” Taylor says without looking up and after letting a few seconds pass.<br /> “You heard me. I just, it’s gonna be sewed up by the time you get back from school and I don’t want a fuss about it. Girls like you shouldn’t be wearing things like that.”<br /> Typical. The girl swooshes her long dark blonde hair over her shoulder as she cockily rotates her body to face her mother.<br /> “And what exactly is a girl like me supposed to wear?”<br /> “Something nice,” the mother offers. Then, “no, I’m not talking about this. You just don’t be surprised. Girls like you should look like you were raised good, and well you were.”<br /> Usually, Taylor would start lecturing back to her mother about how what you wear is a matter of style and self-expression, not upbringing or manners, and gosh Mom can’t you just let me be for once? Today she just turns back towards the counter and takes another big gulp of her coffee.<br /> “And you’re too young to be drinking coffee!” The mother adds. She stomps upstairs and quickly dresses in her favorite blue jeans and shirt, pulls her hair up in a pony tail, grabs her purse, and drives away.<br /> <br /> <br /> “Mooooomm!” She hears the words pierce through the shower water as it pounds down on her head. <br /> “Whhhhatttt,” she yells back. The bathroom door creaks open and her daughters face peeks in.<br /> “Can you take me to school? I missed the bus.” <br /> “I can’t, I have a meeting.”<br /> “For what?”<br /> “Just ask your Dad. I have a meeting.” She stays in the shower for another 10 minutes. The water turns her body red as a lobster, but she doesn’t care. When she gets out of the shower, she looks at the flashing red time on her alarm clock.<br /> “I’m late,” she says to herself in surprise. Dressing quickly, she pulls on a sweater that sat rumpled on her daughter’s floor, and she rushes off to her appointment.<br /> <br /> <br /> In another house, a lady with graying hair finishes her morning gardening and leaves the house still wearing her black garden clogs.<br /> <br /> <br /> The last lady arrives first to the meeting. She left the house after insisting on a kiss from each of her children. The day started out fine, until her oldest daughter announced that she would be going home with her friend Sarah that evening before the school dance. The mother and daughter argued back and forth. They directly faced each other and both of their strong jaws open and shut, open and shut to spit out their argument.<br /> <br /> Two square, wooden tables line the right side of the tan walled coffee shop. The women sit in spindly brown chairs at one of the tables. The tan and white speckled floor spreads beneath the chairs, each positioned slightly towards the far right of the table. At the head, the spot that the chairs angle towards, sits a woman with brownish red hair cut into a soccer mom bob. Her red ribbed turtle neck peaks out and tightly holds up her neck, her black rain coat hides her body, and its yellow and white checker trim perks up on both side like the ears of an attentive dog. To her right sits a woman with blonde hair, cut in that same style. She wears black clogs and a brown jacket. Beside her, a slender woman with tight blue jeans, a cream, long sleeved t-shirt, and blonde hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head, throws her hands forward, side to side, and glances in with dark eyes towards the lady at the head of the table. <br /> Their talk cracks as thickly as cawing geese, but between the cracks forms some English.<br /> “He lives across the street from me, and when he was over seas this time, he had one going down his chin, and he was like well, you see doctors and lawyers or need to become one or you’re nothing. But the doctors and lawyers don have that. It’s this long, and he looks like a tool, you know! And just have to go over seas and this is what’s stopping him from going to Richmond at school. That’s what I told him. Yep.”<br /> “Yeah, yeah,” reassuring voices say from the side, above, and below.<br /> “Yeah, I mean even the way your bodies gonna change, and everything, and they’re going to fade in the midst of them,” the woman at the head of the table said to the other women. When she speaks, they all listen and stop their side chatter, looking up at her with hopeful expressions.<br /> “Well my friend got one on the shoulder.”<br /> “Not a pretty picture,” another lady with wispy strawberry blonde hair, short and framing her face in little chunks, half questions and half confirms the quality of the thing on the shoulder, shaking her head. Her hot pink t-shirt wrinkles up to her neck in horizontal lines when she leans back into the wooden chair. <br /> “No it’s not!”<br /> ”And she said to me, well, I’ll just wear a t-shirt.”<br /> “And you know how your style will change. One year one outfit will be your favorite and then it changes and you say how did I ever wear that?” says the main woman with the red turtle neck, the head goose. Then, “Well, it’s like at my sisters 50th. They asked, you know, how many piercing does your daughter have, and do you have a tattoo. And, of course, she does, or they wouldn’t ask. And, you know, she’s announcing it, and I’m like why did you get it and did mommy knowwww?” Everyone laughs loudly. “50 years old, and she got it years ago when she was 26. And I’m thinking why she even told me now. It was a secret the whole time. And I know that she told our other sister. She has a tattoo! You know, but no one else. My dad wasn’t shocked, but she’s 50 and it’s like what are you doing. And my mom was like that was a wild time in her life. She was probably drinking, you know.” <br /> “I know. Just how many of them were drinking at that time, right?” says the lady sittin to the right of red turtleneck. Outside, the rain streams the window in thick lines.<br /> “Yea, when I was growing up my friend wanted one, and I said I’ll drink the beer with you and I’ll go with you.”<br /> “But that’s where I draw the line, right!” All the women laugh in unison. Their laughter starts small and grows loud and high real quick.<br /> “Well, my son has one. It’s this wide, just huge black, but this is at least outlined dark and then it’s shaded. Well, I don’t know, the part that comes out from it is black and its an intricate design.”. <br /> “He said the only part that comes up, I think the shirt covers it, but the only part that comes up is on the shoulder and the neck.<br /> “And what about the dresses? That’s what I’d like to know.”<br /> “My daughter, she goes now ‘Mom let me pick my owwwwn dress’, I have to stitch it a little, because it was a little low. She said oh yeah, that she has a brooch on the side, there’s like a brooch holding it on the side. It’s only going to fit on one leg some day.” Laughter that clinks like dishes getting washed in the sink.<br /> “When is their prom?”<br /> “It’s next weekend, the 5th.”<br /> “And yours?”<br /> “The week after that.”<br /> “I’m sure it will be pretty. But it sure is something, that dress. It’s tiny.” <br /> “Where does she go tanning?”<br /> “This one up there over by rite aid?”<br /> “Is it the one up by star bucks?”<br /> “Yeah, yeah. Taylor carried it around in her purse though, in a can, and I asked her, how much is this? And it was thirty some dollars!”<br /> “It’s like, what do you need that for. She goes to the bed and uses the can, what’s the purpose?” She cocks her head back and forth like a wobbling hen.<br /> “Yeah, but still, 40 dollars for a lotion.”<br /> “Well, she’s got to have a big can too cause she has to put it all over her body.”<br /> “And what are they doing after the prom?”<br /> “Well, she told me one groups going here, and one here, and she just might go with one first and the other one second.”<br /> “Like what does that even meeeean?”<br /> “They just expect that to be okay.”<br /> “Mommmm, we’ll be fine, they say.”<br /> “Oh there is no way, one boy will be driving a suburban, and she’ll come home smelling like cigars, and you’ll just know what happened.”<br /> “It’s gonna be something.”<br /> “I’ll take pictures.”<br /> “Yeah, take pictures.”<br /> “Bring the pictures next time.”<br /> “Well they don’t even get dressed at their own house. Now they all go over in a group to one friend’s house and get ready there.”<br /> “Jessie said, I can’t do my hair. I need a salon. And I said no, get a friend.”<br /> “And they get these wild hair styles up on their head, like something no one real wears.”<br /> “And what do you do with that, how is that hard.”<br /> “You just take a bunch of hair and put it on their head.”<br /> “Well they want a little braid, and a little weave, and come on.”<br /> “How much does that cost?”<br /> “Oh come on, it’s like 40.”<br /> “Oh, that’s just the coffee makin’ you chatter. It int that much.”<br /> “I just don’t understand,” says the lady with the hot pink t-shirt, her bold jaw-line turned toward the woman to her right. <br /> Tan, with buttons and a flat band that ties around the stomach, one woman’s coat relaxes on the chair as it waits for its owner, who wears a baby pink sweater that cuts low around the shoulders. Some extra padding covers her shoulders and her back, like she’s proving that, when she was young, her bones showed gracefully. Now they fought to show through the fat of the woman’s back. After she got in the car earlier that morning, she realized that the sweater she put on in such a rush belonged to her 18 year old daughter. Luckily, her daughter needed to loose some weight and the sweater fit them both perfectly. <br /> “And you know what else, why do they all have braces now?”<br /> “No one had braces before.”<br /> “Well, if you want perfect teeth, like the stars, then you gotta get braces.”<br /> “That’s true, that’s true. Because some of these girls have just fine teeth, but they’re not straight enough, not white enough, whatever.”<br /> “My daughter gets the whitening strips and puts them on her teeth every night. And I wonder why she’s doing that. People supposed to have different colored teeth. Not everyone’s born with teeth as white as egg shell.”<br /> “Egg shell isn’t even good enough now. They want glowing, like white light, or a white fence. You know?”<br /> “That’s never good”<br /> “Ugh, to be sixteen.”<br /> “And that’s so young, and they think they’re so old.”<br /> “I though I was old then.”<br /> “And all the boys do now is play the video games.”<br /> “Last year, my son would stay in for the weekend. It was like someone was always there. And I miss my kids and the family time.”<br /> “Cause now it’s like they’re all gone.”<br /> “Even though they’re still there.”<br /> “And in the summer we have to get used to it again, ‘cause now there’s family time.”<br /> “And everyone needs to be apart still.”<br /> “It is weird, you know it’s not like you walk around asking them to be with you, you know.”<br /> “My daughter said last weekend, what Mom? You want me too?”<br /> “Like she has too many people to please.”<br /> “Exactly.”<br /> “It’s not like we just disappear.”<br /> “But they do.”<br /> “They’re just gone all the time. Go to this friend’s house, then this one.”<br /> “My daughter said to me, Mom, I could be away from home for months and months and I’d be fine. You might see me on holidays and I’ll be fine. And I said well I’d just die.”<br /> “Does she want to go to Tech too? Well that’s a long time from now, let’s not talk about that.”<br /> “It is a BIG deal.”<br /> “It is a big deal.”<br /> “Yeahhhh.”<br /> “Now has she had a boyfriend before? No, this is the first one for her too?”<br /> “Uuugh”, one of them screeches forming her hands like she’s strangling her neck, “and when they fall, they fall hard.”<br /> “Can you believe it?” <br /> “Well, I think my husband is clueless, because I said something to him about our daughter having a boyfriend. And he said what? And she wants to go jogging with her boyfriend, and my husband says, no, with us. He is going to DIE when she graduates.”<br /> “Yeah, I see, I see.”<br /> “It’s almost like they’re cool, and we’re just the mother. And the guys like to talk to Cameron, but they don’t even know who I am. But that’s fine, I’m just the mother, you know.”<br /> “Well it will change.”<br /> “Does he know you?”<br /> “I mean I’m sure he does, but he doesn’t say anything”, her hand push forward with straight fingers like she’s saying stop.<br /> “What I think is so shocking is that everything is so up front, and poof its just gone, and it’s just that person.”<br /> “Well you were really close to Dan, are you still?”<br /> “Well, no. Well, not really. It’s like he’s still the same kid, he’s still sweet. But it’s just the time. He’s always off doing other things. And what do you do with that? I do all the talking. I have to go find him in his room, he doesn’t find me.”<br /> “And there’s no reason.”<br /> “None!”<br /> “What do you say, you know? They’re getting good grades, how do you stop them from leaving?”<br /> “And she just says, you know, in college I’m gonna have more independence, you know. Especially in the summer, when they just keep going. And, last year the girls were on track together and they were just fine, and this year this is the first that the three of the girls aren’t going to be together.”<br /> “Like Cameron, he’s the Dad, but you do the drop off, and you have to stay and watch them. You know they are our kids, but you don’t interact, you just do the drop off.”<br /> “We went to Baltimore, because of the aquarium. I get a call at 8:10, and my son wasn’t feeling well and he had AP history, but I was kinda relieved because he was gonna have to get his sister on the bus and get her home, but now when he stays home there he’s fine. But anyways, he calls and says is there any other way to get in the house without a key.”<br /> “Ohhhh no.”<br /> “No!”<br /> “And I said well, try grandma cause she’s got a key. He calls, he calls me back, she must be at the Y. Well, I say go to the Y. He said I can’t I’m in a T-shirt and boxers. So he calls Dad and Dad said I can’t come home I have a meeting in 10 minutes. But he ran home anyways. And he got the key and he was all right, but it’s just like you know, all this drama and I don’t need it.” <br /> The coffee makes them talk. <br /> “Ugh, but college. That Lauren girl got a full ride somewhere, ‘cause she was dating Dan. And Dan said he was going to try and maintain their long distance relationship. And they’re going to try to behave, you know.”<br /> “Well Taylor’s boyfriend stayed at school back home, and they tried to maintain it again too. “<br /> “This is the time to figure it out though.”<br /> “This is the time, and you, you just have to figure it out, you know, and just try to find a relationship. I don’t know, I just told her to be careful. She just doesn’t worry about a thing.”<br /> “Does she love him?”<br /> “Well, that’s what she feels. But she’s in it, and she can’t see anything, and we can see everything.” “Well, that’s just learning the hard way. There’s just some things you have to do. You can’t pull them out of everything.”<br /> The women throw their talk back in forth, leaning into the table, leaning out, opening their wide eyes and their mouths to talk. And making their words long to say that this really means something, and shortening their speech to show surprise. Their hands push forward in stop signs, and they shake their short hair back and forth, and they throw their chests in the air in surprise. <br /> “These girls will just wear anything!’<br /> “Or nothing!”kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-63561911214145865852007-04-28T09:01:00.000-07:002007-04-28T09:02:22.153-07:00Coffee Chatter<br />April 27, 2007<br />Updated April 28, 2007<br /> She opens the plastic pantry door, finds the box of Go Lean cereal, measures a portion into an orange measuring cup, and then transfers it into a blue and white bowl. Cameron must have just left for the office and the children must have just caught the bus for school. The house stands still in the same sort of silence that happens each morning after most of the family leaves. And of course they hadn’t cleaned up anything from their breakfasts. She can trace the exact trail of each person’s breakfast. A few kernels of Rice Krispies scatter the kitchen counter and a greasy pan sits emerged in the kitchen sink along with a bowl of half eaten Lucky Charms. She settles herself comfortably at the breakfast table as she pours a cup of hot coffee. She is still wearing her purple cotton morning robe and fluffy slippers, but starts thinking about what to wear today. Maybe her red turtleneck. <br /> In another house a few blocks down, a woman pushes the snooze button on her alarm clock. She turns over to her husband, but, as usual, finds that he already left for the day. After feeling around the bed stand for her glasses, she wobbles downstairs to the kitchen. Her daughter, Taylor, sits cross legged on a high stool at the counter, taking big gulps of coffee. Between gulps, she runs her fingers through her hair and adjusts her shirt. <br /> “Honey, I haven’t changed my mind ‘bout what I said last night.”<br /> “What?” Taylor says without looking up and after a few seconds passed.<br /> “Taylor you heard me. I just, it’s gonna be sewed up by the time you get back from school and I don’t want a fuss about it. Girls like you shouldn’t be wearing things like that.”<br /> The girl swooshes her long dark blonde hair over her shoulder as she cockily rotates her body to face her mother.<br /> “And what exactly is a girl like me supposed to wear?”<br /> “Something nice. No. I’m not talking about this. You just don’t be surprised though. Girls like you should look like you were raised good, and well you were.”<br /> Usually, Taylor would start lecturing back to her mother about how what you wear is a matter of style and self-expression, not upbringing or manners. Today she just turns back towards the counter and takes another big gulp of her coffee.<br /> “And you’re too young to be drinking coffee!” The mother scolds as she stomps upstairs and quickly dresses in her favorite blue jeans and shirt. She pulls her hair up in a pony tail, grabs her purse, and drives away.<br /> “Mooooomm!” She hears the words pierce through the shower water as it pounds down on her head. <br /> “Whhhhatttt,” she yells back. The bathroom door creaks open and her daughters face peeks in.<br /> “Can you take me to school? I missed the bus.” <br /> “I can’t, I have a meeting.”<br /> “For what?”<br /> “Just ask your Dad. I have a meeting.” She stays in the shower for another 10 minutes, so she could be sure that her husband and daughter left. The water turns her body red as a lobster, but she doesn’t care. When she gets out of the shower, she looks at the flashing red time on her alarm clock.<br /> “I’m late,” she says to herself in surprise. She is never late. Dressing quickly, she pulls on the first sweater she finds and rushes off for her appointment.<br /> In another house, a lady with graying hair finishes her morning gardening and leaves the house still wearing her black garden clogs.<br /> The last lady arrives first to the meeting. She left the house after insisting on a kiss from each of her children. The day started out fine, until her oldest daughter announced that she would be going home with her friend Sarah that evening before the school dance. The mother and daughter argued back and forth. They directly faced each other and both of their strong jaws open and shut, open and shut to spit out their argument.<br /> <br /> Two square, wooden tables line the right side of the tan walled coffee shop. Five women sit in spindly brown chairs at one of the tables. The tan and white speckled floor spreads beneath the chairs, each positioned slightly towards the far right of the table. At the head, the spot that the chairs angle towards, sits a woman with brownish red hair cut into a soccer mom bob. Her red ribbed turtle neck peaks out and tightly holds up her neck, her black rain coat hides her body, and its yellow and white checker trim perks up on both side like the ears of an attentive dog. To her right sits a woman with blonde hair, cut in that same style. She wears black clogs and a brown jacket. Beside her, a slender woman with tight blue jeans, a cream, long sleeved t-shirt, and blonde hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head, throws her hands forward, side to side, and glances in with dark eyes towards the lady at the head of the table. <br /> Their talk cracks as thickly as cawing geese, but between the cracks forms some English.<br /> “He lives across the street from me, and when he was over seas this time, he had one going down his chin, and he was like well, you see doctors and lawyers or need to become one or you’re nothing. But the doctors and lawyers don have that. It’s this long, and he looks like a tool, you know! And just have to go over seas and this is what’s stopping him from going to Richmond at school. That’s what I told him. Yep.”<br /> “Yeah, yeah,” reassuring voices say from the side, above, and below.<br /> “Yeah, I mean even the way your bodies gonna change, and everything, and they’re going to fade in the midst of them,” the woman at the head of the table said to the other women. When she speaks, they all listen and stop their side chatter, looking up at her with hopeful expressions.<br /> “Well my friend got one on the shoulder.”<br /> “Not a pretty picture,” another lady with wispy strawberry blonde hair, short and framing her face in little chunks, half questions and half confirms the quality of the thing on the shoulder, shaking her head. Her hot pink t-shirt wrinkles up to her neck in horizontal lines when she leans back into the wooden chair. <br /> “No it’s not!”<br /> ”And she said to me, well, I’ll just wear a t-shirt.”<br /> “And you know how your style will change. One year one outfit will be your favorite and then it changes and you say how did I ever wear that?” says the main woman with the red turtle neck, the head goose. Then, “Well, it’s like at my sisters 50th. They asked, you know, how many piercing does your daughter have, and do you have a tattoo. And, of course, she does, or they wouldn’t ask. And, you know, she’s announcing it, and I’m like why did you get it and did mommy knowwww?” Everyone laughs loudly. “50 years old, and she got it years ago when she was 26. And I’m thinking why she even told me now. It was a secret the whole time. And I know that she told our other sister. She has a tattoo! You know, but no one else. My dad wasn’t shocked, but she’s 50 and it’s like what are you doing. And my mom was like that was a wild time in her life. She was probably drinking, you know.” <br /> “I know. Just how many of them were drinking at that time, right?” says the lady sittin to the right of red turtleneck. Outside, the rain streams the window in thick lines.<br /> “Yea, when I was growing up my friend wanted one, and I said I’ll drink the beer with you and I’ll go with you.”<br /> “But that’s where I draw the line, right!” All the women laugh in unison. Their laughter starts small and grows loud and high real quick.<br /> “Well, my son has one. It’s this wide, just huge black, but this is at least outlined dark and then it’s shaded. Well, I don’t know, the part that comes out from it is black and its an intricate design.”<br /> “He’s got a lot of muscle on his back,” one says, managing to catch her breath through her red turtle neck peeping up out of her checkered coat collar. <br /> “He said the only part that comes up, I think the shirt covers it, but the only part that comes up is on the shoulder and the neck.<br /> “And what about the dresses? That’s what I’d like to know.”<br /> “My daughter, she goes now ‘Mom let me pick my owwwwn dress’, I have to stitch it a little, because it was a little low. She said oh yeah, that she has a brooch on the side, there’s like a brooch holding it on the side. It’s only going to fit on one leg some day.” Laughter that clinks like dishes getting washed in the sink.<br /> “When is their prom?”<br /> “It’s next weekend, the 5th.”<br /> “And yours?”<br /> “The week after that.”<br /> “I’m sure it will be pretty. But it sure is something, that dress. It’s tiny.” <br /> “Where does she go tanning?”<br /> “This one up there over by rite aid?”<br /> “Is it the one up by star bucks?”<br /> “Yeah, yeah. Taylor carried it around in her purse though, in a can, and I asked her, how much is this? And it was thirty some dollars!”<br /> “It’s like, what do you need that for. She goes to the bed and uses the can, what’s the purpose?” She cocks her head back and forth like a wobbling hen.<br /> “Yeah, but still, 40 dollars for a lotion.”<br /> “Well, she’s got to have a big can too cause she has to put it all over her body.”<br /> “What’s that?” asks the one with the pony tail.<br /> “A 36 dollar can of tanning lotion,” her friend proudly fills her in, stretching her torso up taller and nodding as she passes the information around the table.<br /> “And what are they doing after the prom?”<br /> “Well, she told me one groups going here, and one here, and she just might go with one first and the other one second.”<br /> “Like what does that even meeeean?”<br /> “They just expect that to be okay.”<br /> “Mommmm, we’ll be fine, they say.”<br /> “Oh there is no way, one boy will be driving a suburban, and she’ll come home smelling like cigars, and you’ll just know what happened.”<br /> “It’s gonna be something, I cayn imagine.”<br /> “I’ll take pictures.”<br /> “Yeah, take pictures.”<br /> “Bring the pictures next time.”<br /> “Well they don’t even get dressed at their own house. Now they all go over in a group to one friend’s house and get ready there.”<br /> “Well then how are you gonna get pictures?”<br /> “Jessie said, I can’t do my hair. I need a salon. And I said no, get a friend.”<br /> “And they get these wild hair styles up on their head, like something no one real wears.”<br /> “And what do you do with that, how is that hard.”<br /> “You just take a bunch of hair and put it on their head.”<br /> “Well they want a little braid, and a little weave, and come on.”<br /> “How much does that cost?”<br /> “Oh come on, it’s like 40.”<br /> “Oh, that’s just the coffee makin’ you chatter. It int that much.”<br /> “I just don’t understand,” says the lady with the hot pink t-shirt, her bold jaw-line turned toward the woman to her right. <br /> Tan, with buttons and a flat band that ties around the stomach, one woman’s coat relaxes on the chair as it waits for its owner, who wears a baby pink sweater that cuts low around the shoulders. Some extra padding covers her shoulders and her back, like she’s proving that, when she was young, her bones showed gracefully. Now they fought to show through the fat of the woman’s back. After she got in the car earlier that morning, she realized that the sweater she put on in such a rush belonged to her 18 year old daughter. Luckily, her daughter needed to loose some weight and the sweater fit them both perfectly. <br /> “And you know what else, why do they all have braces now?”<br /> “No one had braces before.”<br /> “Well, if you want perfect teeth, like the stars, then you gotta get braces.”<br /> “That’s true, that’s true. Because some of these girls have just fine teeth, but they’re not straight enough, not white enough, whatever.”<br /> “My daughter gets the whitening strips and puts them on her teeth every night. And I wonder why she’s doing that. People supposed to have different colored teeth. Not everyone’s born with teeth as white as egg shell.”<br /> “Egg shell isn’t even good enough now. They want glowing, like white light, or a white fence. You know?”<br /> “That’s never good”<br /> “Is Anna going to the dance today?”<br /> “I dun know,” her shoulders shrug up out of her cut off pink shirt.<br /> “Andy didn’t have a clue about it”<br /> “Yea, Anne sed the only one goin is Ryan.”<br /> “Ugh, to be sixteen.”<br /> “And that’s so young, and they think they’re so old.”<br /> “I though I was old then.”<br /> “Yeesss!”<br /> “And all the boys do now is play the video games.”<br /> “Last year, my son would stay in for the weekend. It was like someone was always there. And I miss my kids and the family time.”<br /> “Cause now it’s like they’re all gone.”<br /> “Even though they’re still there.”<br /> “And in the summer we have to get used to it again, ‘cause now there’s family time.”<br /> “And everyone needs to be apart still.”<br /> “It is weird, you know it’s not like you walk around asking them to be with you, you know.”<br /> “My daughter said last weekend, what Mom? You want me too?”<br /> “Like she has too many people to please.”<br /> “Exactly.”<br /> “It’s not like we just disappear.”<br /> “But they do.”<br /> “They’re just gone all the time. Go to this friend’s house, then this one.”<br /> “My daughter said to me, Mom, I could be away from home for months and months and I’d be fine. You might see me on holidays and I’ll be fine. And I said well I’d just die.”<br /> “Does she want to go to Tech too? Well that’s a long time from now, let’s not talk about that.”<br /> “It is a BIG deal.”<br /> “It is a big deal.”<br /> “Yeahhhh.”<br /> “Now has she had a boyfriend before? No, this is the first one for her too?”<br /> “Uuugh”, one of them screeches forming her hands like she’s strangling her neck, “and when they fall, they fall hard.”<br /> “Can you believe it?” <br /> “Well, I think my husband is clueless, because I said something to him about our daughter having a boyfriend. And he said what? And she wants to go jogging with her boyfriend, and my husband says, no, with us. He is going to DIE when she graduates.”<br /> “Yeah, I see, I see.”<br /> “It’s almost like they’re cool, and we’re just the mother. And the guys like to talk to Cameron, but they don’t even know who I am. But that’s fine, I’m just the mother, you know.”<br /> “Well it will change.”<br /> “Does he know you?”<br /> “I mean I’m sure he does, but he doesn’t say anything”, her hand push forward with straight fingers like she’s saying stop.<br /> “What I think is so shocking is that everything is so up front, and poof its just gone, and it’s just that person.”<br /> “Well you were really close to Dan, are you still?”<br /> “Well, no. Well, not really. It’s like he’s still the same kid, he’s still sweet. But it’s just the time. He’s always off doing other things. And what do you do with that? I do all the talking. I have to go find him in his room, he doesn’t find me.”<br /> “With my daughter, she’s on the go a lot. But she’s always on the move. And I have to pull her in and say you know this is our house, and you need to be here. She’s always out somewhere.”<br /> “And there’s no reason.”<br /> “None!”<br /> “What do you say, you know? They’re getting good grades, how do you stop them from leaving?”<br /> “And she just says, you know, in college I’m gonna have more independence, you know. Especially in the summer, when they just keep going. And, last year the girls were on track together and they were just fine, and this year this is the first that the three of the girls aren’t going to be together.”<br /> “Like Cameron, he’s the Dad, but you do the drop off, and you have to stay and watch them. You know they are our kids, but you don’t interact, you just do the drop off.”<br /> “We went to Baltimore, because of the aquarium. I get a call at 8:10, and my son wasn’t feeling well and he had AP history, but I was kinda relieved because he was gonna have to get his sister on the bus and get her home, but now when he stays home there he’s fine. But anyways, he calls and says is there any other way to get in the house without a key.”<br /> “Ohhhh no.”<br /> “No!”<br /> “And I said well, try grandma cause she’s got a key. He calls, he calls me back, she must be at the Y. Well, I say go to the Y. He said I can’t I’m in a T-shirt and boxers. So he calls Dad and Dad said I can’t come home I have a meeting in 10 minutes. But he ran home anyways. And he got the key and he was all right, but it’s just like you know, all this drama and I don’t need it.” <br /> The coffee makes them talk. <br /> “Ugh, but college. That Lauren girl got a full ride somewhere, ‘cause she was dating Dan. And Dan said he was going to try and maintain their long distance relationship. And they’re going to try to behave, you know.”<br /> “Well Taylor’s boyfriend stayed at school back home, and they tried to maintain it again too. “<br /> “This is the time to figure it out though.”<br /> “This is the time, and you, you just have to figure it out, you know, and just try to find a relationship. I don’t know, I just told her to be careful. She just doesn’t worry about a thing.”<br /> “Does she love him?”<br /> “Well, that’s what she feels. But she’s in it, and she can’t see anything, and we can see everything.” “Well, that’s just learning the hard way. There’s just some things you have to do. You can’t pull them out of everything.”<br /> The women throw their talk back in forth, leaning into the table, leaning out, opening their wide eyes and their mouths to talk. And making their words long to say that this really means something, and shortening their speech to show surprise. Their hands push forward in stop signs, and they shake their short hair back and forth, and they throw their chests in the air in surprise. <br /> “These girls will just wear anything!’<br /> “Or nothing!”kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-85256883269414555092007-04-25T20:17:00.000-07:002007-04-25T20:18:12.903-07:00Updated April 25, 2007<br />Note: My goal with this piece is to pay attention to minute detail. I hope to describe textural definition and shed light on the ability of the eye to focus in on the extraordinary.<br /><br /><br />The stone slate, broken in uneven slabs,<br />Cemented to form a courtyard floor,<br />By the town hall, in Ashland,<br />Is laid on by lime green needles<br />That fell from the shady trees whose<br />Leaves look like miniature, green, unpainted<br />Oriental fans. Or like giant algae,<br />The size of a baby’s hand.<br /><br />Scaly chips of flowers<br />Who have passed from their youth at the end<br />Of a stem to this iridescent slate<br />Touch the stone delicately, like an old woman’s hand<br />Illuminated in the moonlight, touched to<br />Her lovers face.<br /><br />In some cracks, brown green piles<br />Of the needles, and some mulch chips gather.<br /><br />An ant zig zags.<br />He carries something: A bite of a fallen flower<br />(Oversized fly wings, but white and pink)<br />All crisp and flaky like paper, and dead.<br /><br />He marches off with his prize.<br />And another one goes, frantically.<br /><br />The ants move, more than before, the longer<br />The gaze holds, focusing in as binoculars, the more ants appear.<br /><br />They skim the stone as uncontrolled<br />As Children driving bumper cars.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-17301367953775082452007-04-25T20:00:00.000-07:002007-04-25T20:01:15.831-07:00I wrote this a year and a half ago:<br /><br />To feel pain. To feel love. To feel warmth. Summer rain beating against a dewy window. Crying until your eyes turn blue. The sizzle of walking on hot pavement. Diving into a freezingpool of water. Running in the crisp autumn air until your breath hurts. Turning over the silkycloth of a pillow in the deep night, feeling the underlying side’s cool refreshment. A meal. Waterstreaming off your body after standing up in the bath tub. Naked feet pressing into a richcarpet. Listening. Silence.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-42723139356151866502007-04-25T12:34:00.000-07:002007-04-25T12:35:32.973-07:00<div align="center">The Ants</div><div align="center">(Draft 1)</div><br />The stone slate, broken in uneven slabs,<br />Cemented to form a courtyard floor,<br />By the town hall, in Ashland,<br />Is laid on by lime green needles<br />That fell from the shady trees whose<br />Leaves look like miniature, green, unpainted<br />Oriental fans. Or like giant algae,<br />The size of a baby’s hand.<br /><br />Scaly, feather like chips of flowers<br />Who have passed from their youth<br />At the end of a stem to this iridescent slate<br />Touch the stone delicately, like a woman’s hand<br />Illuminated in the moonlight, touched to<br />Her lovers face.<br /><br />In some cracks, brown green piles<br />Of the needles, and some mulch chips gather.<br /><br />An ant zig zags.<br />He carries something, white and pink:<br />A bite of the pod like feather flowers<br />All crisp and flaky like paper, and dead.<br /><br />He marches off with his prize.<br /><br />And another one goes, frantically.<br /><br />The ants move, more than before, the longer<br />The gaze holds, the more ants appear.<br /><br />They skim the stone like uncontrolled<br />Children driving bumper cars, or like ice skaters.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-25181756308920612042007-04-13T10:35:00.000-07:002007-04-13T10:43:27.634-07:00Star Stories #2<br /><br />Tall trees, tall like giants, stand in clusters. Their trunks are naked from winter, and their branches bend in curves and curl like corkscrews. They are willows and oaks. A ballerina stands beneath the open sky. The world is just the girl and the trees. Her skin is pale and she looks to the stars that dot the sky like sprinkles on an ice-cream cone. The stars glow brightly. Her skin glows as the stars, and when she dances her dress of iridescent blue and grey seashells shakes. The shells are cracked and just little chunks of clamshells, and they click like heavy rain beating against a glass window in a summer storm. The ballerina dances a smooth dance with many twirls and reaches to the stars. She shakes her seashell tutu, and, like hard rain, the stars drop slowly out of the sky into her hands and speed up like popcorn popping in the microwave. The stars then blend into her hands. The lights of her skin and of the stars blend together like a thumb smeared finger painting. She becomes one with the stars, dancing into the sky. Her sea-shell skirt still can be seen twinkling in the sky since she has taught the other stars her dance.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1176349812171144842007-04-11T20:48:00.000-07:002007-04-11T20:50:12.196-07:00<p>Here is a poem I wrote in August, but that I just updated a few weeks ago. I tried to add in more textural definition and pay attention to detail. </p><p align="center">Watching Water from the Bath and the Sky from the Porch<br />8/31/06<br />I sit in my bathtub<br />(It is white, smooth, and porcelain like)<br />Squishing bubbles through my fingers<br />(They are white, smooth, and porcelain like)<br />Watching one drop of water drip<br />(drip, then silence, drip, then silence, just like that)<br />Every few seconds from the faucet lip.<br /><br />Before me<br />They sat here and wondered too<br />At all the mysteries<br />Behind time and water.<br /><br />I sit on my porch<br />(We painted the wood green. White columns and white railings, too)<br />Dipping bread into steaming soup,<br />(The bread tasted sturdy, and the soup burnt my tongue)<br />Watching pale clouds on heavens floor<br />While beads of rain steadily pour<br />(Not night time yet)<br /><br />And now night takes over<br />And I watch moon flowers open their faces.<br />The clouds move<br />(Have you seen clouds move too?)<br />And they’re dark with nights approach.<br /><br />But I sit and watch.<br />Maybe if I do not move<br />(I stop)<br />I can stop the clouds.<br /><br />The moon comes out<br />And I want to reach my hand to it<br />And grab onto it,<br />But, I know I’d be disappointed<br />That its closeness is an illusion.<br /><br />In the morning, I know I will step out of my bed<br />And look into the mirror<br />And that I will look older than the night before<br />And that before me, they sat here and wondered too. </p>kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1176349666732503752007-04-11T20:47:00.000-07:002007-04-11T20:47:46.733-07:00The Old Man Who Sang<br />3/22/07<br />I passed the old man. I ran the track and he walked. We ran or walked in opposite directions. I want to get this right. His face was like a hold. I did not notice it at first, or perhaps it had not started, not his face like a hole, but his song. I heard it after my fifth or sixth lap. Maybe my thoughts had quieted after five laps and I now could hear sounds outside myself, or maybe he started at this moment. I don’t know. I want to get this right. I ran the laps and passed him each time. The white shirt on his back clung to his neck, brown chest hairs stuck out beneath his throat, and folded into wrinkles where his stomach caved. The back hunched. His brown shoes peeked out and covered his ankles. But his face. The light and the dark folded into the creases and lines. He sang louder and louder and walked. He sang louder and walked and his song was vague but he held the hue of a monk’s chant. I remember the jealousy I felt in the gut of my stomach and that I ran faster to prove myself. He could express himself, but I use clichés in my conversations and in my expression. I recognized one song, “I’ve been working on the Rail Road.” It fell heavily and smoothly from the depth of his face that was the lines, the hole, the creases. I could be so old that I could sing and not look up, I made this my wish. He did not see me, or if he did he knew that he had to sing at that moment. He had to sing at that moment so the noise crept out of the hole of his mouth and into the world of the red track and the gym. I was in that world but he did not know. I want to get this right, I want to get this right, please please. I ran faster to release that thing that sat heavy in the gut of my stomach. My way and his way differed since mine was hidden in the gut of my stomach, but his way heard when he sang to the world. I knew I ran faster. He sang and sang and I ran and ran. My speed was my own, no? I decided to run, no? Like he decided to sing. Yes, we were the same; the old man and I were the same. Such is life anyhow. At least I tried. I do try, I do try. At least I tried.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1176349603945743292007-04-11T20:45:00.000-07:002007-04-11T20:46:43.956-07:00<div align="center"><br />Memories Like Film Clips<br /></div>When Zanzibar Took Off<br />3/19/07<br /> It was early spring. The snow barely glazed the ground. The snow glazed the ground thinly, like if a child smeared the icing of a cake with the finger. The snow that remained on the ground had the thinness of the spot where the child smeared the icing of a cake with the finger. Each horse grazed on the grass, crunching loudly. My Daddy grasped my hand the whole time. I looked at the grass, brown from winter and slowly becoming green again from the Spring time. All the world became green again in the Spring, and I knew it was good. In front of us, the horses grew bigger. If I kept walking , my head would just lightly scrape the fuzzy belly of a horse. I was short. We stopped in front of each horse, petting their soft nuzzles. My favorite horse was Zanzibar. He was the most beautiful and graceful. His head was as fine boned as the feet of a ballerina, and his nose curved like an archers bow. My Daddy lifted me onto Zanzibars back. His coat smelled of sweet hay and dust. My Daddy lifted my sister first, actually, and I sat behind her and held on to her waste. The horse stood, breathing, without a halter. My sister and I were then flying. Zanzibar saw a monster in the grass, we like to say. So he ran and ran so quickly. We held on. We could have fallen and hit the ground. We could have fallen and hit the ground and been killed by booming hooves. My sister gathered the silky, brown mane into her hands, and she squeezed her fingers to her palms to create a firm grip. My Daddy ran towards us worried as ever. And we laughed and laughed. The laughter bounces off this paper. The laughter seeps from this pen; it is breathed in and out. We could have fallen. <br /><br />Anointing Prince With Oil<br />3/24/07<br /> The pony was very sick and I thought he might die. His sickness is called colic, and it means he ate something and it hurt his stomach. Our horse doctor traveled to Prince to give him shots and to tell me about caring for my sick pony. Prince looked the same as he did in healthy, but I saw sorrow creep from his brown, round eyes. His brow furrowed, his head drooped; it was real bad. The sickness was real bad. The doctor said to walk Prince, to walk and walk and walk and walk him. I could even choose where I walked him, but I could not choose how often or when. This was because I must walk him very often and walk him and do this very often. For four days Prince and I went on quiet walks. He was small. He had a light chestnut coat. His hooves were dark. He had a dark, almost black, stripe sailing from the bottom of his mane to the top of his tail. This was called a dorsal stripe. I comforted him by explaining that he would be okay. I knew he would, I knew he would. Fat must have wanted to curl her long fingers aroung him. Fate must have wanted him, to taste him as she may savor a chewy cookie. So I prayed to God that he might save my pony. I put both of my hangs on Prince’s shoulders and prayed. I prayed and prayed and prayed. And then I prayed. And then, the next morning, I prayed, but he felt better. When I prayed in the morning, I then walked to the house. I found a bottle of olive oil in the cupboard. Its smooth, yellow surface felt firm and true in my hands. My hands knew the seriousness of this business. I looked at them. The hands were a creamy yellow like the olive oil. They were also glossy like oil. I was very young. My walk quickened. My hands received the oil and marked a cross on the chestnut head of Prince. I then marked a cross on each window of the house. The oil smeared and left marks on the windows that still can not be scrubbed away. This cured him. It was true that it would cure him. I did this, I really did. I marked every window of the house because God could save my pony.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1174239123517865472007-03-18T11:32:00.000-07:002007-03-18T11:32:03.516-07:003/12/07<br />The Sister<br />The sister is a part of me<br />I can open a closet and she is the box<br />Of scraps: ticket stubs and letters and zooming memories<br />(Always the clear green and blue of an idealic day<br />And the motions and distant events of a childhood.<br />What a mystery memory is).<br />My days are recorded in her face<br />The laughter echoes<br />Rapidly as rocks being thrown at a window<br />When the child looks down at a hopeful face.<br /><br />The soul is quiet with the sister<br />It is the quiet earth throughout time,<br />With shatters and sand,<br />Eroded into a formation<br />Of sisterhood.<br /><br />I saw the sister just recently<br />And we were the same reflection in the mirror<br />And the same pattern of rippling sand<br />Of crimped hair and plaid skirts<br />And hacking jackets.<br /><br />We are quite beautiful together,<br />And peaceful,<br />The sisters.<br />3/13/07<br />Last night I had a dream that you and I were in a field at night. I was teaching you how to fly. We only could fly for a few seconds at a time and then our bodies would smoothly bounce back to the ground. I felt close to the ground but must have been high up because I gathered stars into my hands, thousands of stars like buttons or seashells or petals, do you see it? We ran quickly. And we glanced at each other with gleeful smiles as we ran. I took your hand and told you to crouch and then to jump. “You will fly”, I told you. We ran quickly through a field of green grass, green grass glowing turquoise in the night. I saw no other landscape, but I saw the green grass glowing turquoise in the night and I saw the sky that shined like the back of a whale moving through the cold ocean. But the stars shined in a true way. The stars shined like tin foil. We really did fly. In the night, in my dream, we really did fly, but it felt more like gliding. I could feel us gliding because the wind tickled my body. I showed you to crouch, to then use your legs for the muscle to push you into the sky. When we flew we were the backs of whales moving through the ocean. As we moved we hit the tin foil stars that went cling clang as they shattered against our sides. The stars dipped into my hands. They dipped like silver coins dropping into an offering plate and making that same generous noise. They held their form; they did not dissolve. The sun did not come upon us but rather we were in continual night and kept flying and landing.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1174239102173321222007-03-18T11:31:00.001-07:002007-03-18T11:31:42.176-07:00I listen to the dancing of sounds<br />Spinning each other with wispy tulle<br />And shaking, shaking their skirts of leaves<br />Clicking their heels, the earth rewords<br />Quickly to the heart- the autumn wind blows<br />To tell the tale of the land below<br />Where each life falls with a breeze<br />Swiftly caressing the silky fool<br />From the heights to the dirt floor.<br /><br />To walk outside through the changing woods;<br />To feel a part of the earth: the unspoken place<br />Where all were born.<br />But looking down to covered feet with synthetic<br />Forms and cushioned beats, separating from the crispy dry leaves which<br />Lie like gold in a Pirates treasure heap.<br />And try to think the real thoughts of worth<br />Of origin, order, or of birth<br />No thoughts will conjure from the dark stew<br />Because the soles of synthetic mark<br />The separation of form from earth.<br /><br />It does indeed cure the shell<br />To lie and walk and feel the<br />Uncontained wild and finally<br />The heart can roam and<br />Simply breath, pulsing and<br />Reaching to the deepest dirt like<br />Ancient trees with digging roots.<br /><br />Fallen trees look to the sky<br />Of bursting stars, licking the night like an inextinguishable fire;<br />Fallen, fallen to the ground<br />Where crunching leaves mindlessly surround<br />And every weather, rain and wind and sun and heat<br />And cold and dark and shining<br />Can seep into the veins of wondering men and<br />Give them life.<br /><br />But I return to my machine<br />Which tells me when to breath.<br />I throw this book of white<br />Parched paper and find some bark<br />Where all philosophy is recorded.<br />The grass sways, the wind shakes it;<br />The trees bend, upon the mountain<br />And it moves, slowly consuming.<br /><br />Does the morning glory, in<br />Its closure, wish the opening back again?<br />Does the apples’ heart weep when<br />A bruise appears on its skin- and ponder<br />Its youthful days on the branch?<br />Does the golden rod plan out the day-<br />And now I glimmer, and now I fade,<br />And here I’ll go, and there I’ll sway?kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1174239071813277482007-03-18T11:31:00.000-07:002007-03-18T11:31:11.816-07:00The Grasshopper<br />“A Leaf”<br />A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:<br />It is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls<br />On a heap of others, stops, fades. No one<br />Admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,<br />Followed its flight, no one will distinguish it now<br />As it lies among other leaves, no one saw<br />What I did. I am<br />The only one.<br /> Bronislaw Maj<br /> I sat down in a fraying beach chair to look at the water and slowly sip my coffee. Rain from a few hours earlier soaked the morning, and the lake blended entirely into the sky in pale grey with hints of blue. I felt a light tickle on the back of my neck and turned to see a small grasshopper perched on the chair. I watched it as quietly as an observing scientist. The grasshoppers long legs stepped slowly and deliberately and I realized I was examining one of nature’s most beautiful dances. It gradually bent its front legs and rubbed the underside of its entirely grass green body against the chair and rubbed its rounded nose against each front leg, dusting the last drops of sleep from its body; the movement reminded me of a just waking cat. Leaning in closer, I saw its green tranquil eyes shaped like little rain drops and as sweet as a child. I watched it’s gracefully movements, the way it swayed ever so slightly in the morning breeze. The rain tap tapped harder then before, and soon a down pour soaked my skin. I ran to the lake and dove swiftly into the water marked by a billion rain drop dimples, swam to a sand bar and sat down in it, pushing my hands through the thick lake bottom. The experience was exquisite. Delicate tones of blues and hardly visible greens swish swashed through water and sky. So God was painting a water color this morning, blending the colors of the world with tender water drops.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Finding the Sea Glass 7/21/06<br /><br /> Bending down in a smooth swoop, I clasp the new treasure in my hand. Unlatching my fingers, I toss the glistening stone from palm to palm, allowing its misty tones to remind my skin of soft loving touch. Holding the stone between my thumb and pointer finger, I try to gaze through its hazy complexion, but what once was a broken piece of glass now lay a stone resembling the polished emerald city. I imagined a sailor throwing a useless bottle over board without a second thought. It splinters against the side of the boat and sinks to the bottom of the lake, grinding against rock and sand. This churning continues for a few weeks or less, speeding the process with the harshness of each storm. Tossing back and forth, back and forth, the glass eventually ends up on the beach. A broken piece of glass with sharp edges. Harsh weather and the hurling of waves. A faultless gem. <br /><br />The Harmonious Flight 8/17/06<br /> In the morning I saw tiny birds above the whisky waves flying towards the southern horizon. The flock flew in a single file line creating a constant line of flittering wings. Their flight continued for several minutes, thousands of birds in a row caressing the whole stretch of sky. Like Can Can girls, they methodically flapped their wings. Just below them, each bouncing wave danced also, and I saw the world in both poetry and a mathematical equation- with a perfect balance of rhythm and purpose. <br /><br /><br />The Morning 7/23/06<br /> If in the first moments of looking in some ones eyes you see flickers of how they truly feel, the earth similarly shows its true nature in the earliest moments of sunrise, when the dark sky must stubbornly give way to light. In the early morning the sun breaks through and shatters the darkness, marking the sky with coral slits and fiery slashes. On this particular morning, dark midnight clouds settle like fat lazy men, budging slowly from the horizon. The lake, with waves crashing into foamy egg white, offered colors of steel and silver, bright whites, navy, ballet pinks, and lemon. Despite the soft undertones, the water looked ancient but constant, alluring but distant- like some untouchable and beautiful god. Cold and prehistoric in its steel texture, the water stood victim to the dominant sun. Slow and steady in its course, the sun stamped reds and oranges into a dark world. <br />A deep breath of air. I take it eagerly. With a crash of white foam the purples mix with the sandy browns and then fade away. Little bubbles sweep swiftly onto my toes, leaving a few to liger, absorb my peachiness, and reflect it in their globe of gleaming curvature. Honey yellows dance on the edges and I think of fireflies tangoing through the leaves of trees. The low set, lazy men clouds start rimming with soft pinks and golds, slowly bursting with the morning. I stand up to stroll over to a heron bird wearing garments as purely milk white as a bridal gown, pick up a piece of only slightly misty sea glass which I throw back into the water for further processing, turn and watch my footsteps imprint the balmy brown sand, and sit down by a hill of tiny seashells. Blinking wildly, I look to see syrup of pure gold reaching for my toes. I follow the gold across the lake to the huge yellow sun, and I am surrounded. By still and timelessness. By swirling colors of browns, pinks, blues, gold’s, all in every hue and texture.<br />I sit here. A deep breath of air. I am tiny in this scene, a dot of pale ink on the canvas. But I am here, and I am glad to be bathing in gold. And my hands, thankful to be basked in pink light. I imagine my face glowing like a white heron, made radiant in simplicity next to every other color. My toes creep over to the blues and greens, and they welcome me with chilled water and diamond bubbles. The new light is everywhere. <br />I let is smooth away my bitterness. I let it take my steel grays and push through in red slivers, to seep through my toes and fingertips and melt my cold dark soul. I wanted to be illuminated, to walk as the sun and melt everything in my path. <br />I stood up, heavily and filled to the brim. As I continued walking the stream of golden sun chased me. I remembered the moon at night, how I thought it followed me by the way it always magically appeared outside the car window no matter which way I’d go. I remember being so bitter at the moon, cursing it for failing me, hating it for watching but not protecting. Looking again at the gold, I felt tempted to return to my bitterness. “Will you protect me?” I asked this sincerely and out loud. I shook my head; sometimes God just needed to turn the volume up and talk to me. Then I heard it, a whisper in my soul- soft as the foamy egg white waves. I heard that I needed to listen to the silence. A deep breath of air. The wave’s crash: they ask me to remember the earth when it was new and untouched. They told me to remember that light always comes.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1174239028684797262007-03-18T11:30:00.000-07:002007-03-18T11:30:28.693-07:00The Oz Farm<br />Today I rode my bike past an old farm. First, I noticed the quintessential red barn. It should be straight, perfectly painted, with box windows and a white picket fence around it. But chipped paint covered this barn, faded to shades of terracotta and pink. The carelessly cut windows tilt in crookedness, and blank slabs of soggy wood support a run down wire fence surrounding the pasture of tanned grass. A few more tilted buildings, slight and rotting, scatter randomly through a broad field. Beside a rusting tractor, countless brilliant flowers situated in perfectly groomed gardens surround the blindingly white house with respectable green shutters. Throughout the garden sit a myriad of strategically placed statues, perching and protruding, hidden in every possible spot like munchkins popping out through layers of gigantic flowers. The garden and house are exaggerated and immaculate and argue the effort of the woman of the house to cope with the habits of her farmer husband. She is splattering beauty, pouring buckets of effort to erase the chaos.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1150409508987469272006-06-15T15:09:00.000-07:002007-03-18T10:37:52.500-07:00<em></em><br /><div align="center">"Ministering Angels"</div><em>I am but a shell</em><br /><em>Without the earth and the sea</em><br />This is the place. This is the place with no name, with no character, with no energy. It is blank and careless, dark and heartless, cold and numb. It is a nondescript face with no expression: no eyes to witness, no nose to sense, no ears to listen, no mouth to communicate. This is the place; it is the room with no name and no face. Just an empty vacuum. The Tick Tock ticks.<br />This is the man. This is the man in the deepest despair, in the darkest, gloomiest misery. This man, in the darkest, gloomiest misery, sits on the floor in a cold blank jail cell brooding in anguish at his infected heart. The pits of Hell vehemently grip his skull causing it to sag wretchedly between two limp and hopeless knees. This man, feeling more alone than any man who lived, is undergoing a transition from anger and curses, from resentment and ill-wishes, to willingly allowing the cold blank jail cell to suffocate the vigor of each successive breath. The Tick Tock ticks.<br />At first glance his eyes appear weak, but hide a shyly kind man. With cheeks that hollow in like carved wood and thin lips which close as tightly as scissors, his silent face seems more gentle than harsh. His smooth skin, weathered only in patches, testifies to a life of harsh experiences. However, once his eyes showed only kindness and his face was as smooth as a sea pebble.<br />He came here on a day of unusual sunshine and beauty. This day knew no sorrow. It seemed to mock him, he now recalls, to bid him farewell with the most accurate tinge of irony.<br />In this jail cell he creates. Perhaps, he remarks, because the walls destroy him and eat at his core. Recreating through writing and drawing rebuilds his existence with an inky smear, becoming his only way to endure. He remembers music. He sits wearily searching for a note and begins humming a tune which he pulls by a fragile string from the depths of his memory. Music has not pacified his ears in countless days. He remembers a song, the beat gently sounds. “All that shimmers in this world is sure to fade away”, the all too appropriate lyrics of the Fuel song emerge eagerly. To pass the rhythm of the Tick Tock clock, he rewrites the verse. Creating:<br />All that glistens in this globe is sure to glide away, like golden arrows whistling through the dainty clean air. Everything that shines in this earth loses its color, like a fading, hazy, blurred silver spoon reflecting nothing of real consistency. Each glistening, gleaming, shining, shimmering, shocking thing in this world surely fades away, like some flowering, reaming, silkily soaring-and suddenly!- Dreary dream.<br />In the jail cell he sleeps. He sleeps to dream of heaven’s gala; countless thimbles of golden syrup dripping from the black cap sky and soaking life back through his fingertips. And he awakens, to see the true black cap of loneliness and solitude.<br />But one day, before the loneliness, the breeze mixed and turned the blood in his veins. In those days the birds’ clear twill transferred their potion into his lungs. He recognized his role as a human, he thought with guidance and clarity. He lived without cares; an unquestioning heart. He knew God, because he felt the forces of life quickening his body every moment.<br />For this man, the change to desperation happened through continually engaging in experiences which eliminate the recognition of the living air, the thudding breath, the evident God. He recognized change at its dying moment, at the beginning of his new ugliness, when reconciliation expired.<br /><em>I hear an Angel!</em><br /><em>When silence fills me.</em><br />Now, as the man sits in his jail cell with Hell pulling his thoughts between two bony knees, a knock knock on the door opens his eye lids with a jolt. Time stops- the door frozen half way open and the drab guard with a gaping mouth standing firm as a stone. The man hears the guard announce “A letter” in a cold, distant, booming voice, which makes time restart. The man hesitantly reaches over to the letter, which lies on the stone floor and glows with whiteness. First its’ glow frightens him. Then he opens the letter with as much vigor as a young boy on Christmas day. He feels the most wonderful joy. He wants to shout a joyous shout; for with the arrival of the letter his despair and anguish disappeared. The porous texture of the letter seemingly captured all the happiness floating around in the universe. The jail cell smiles at him, even the cracks in the stones adopt an upward curve. A breeze (in a windowless room) lifts him to his feet, and he walks, grasping the letter to his chest. An angel! he cries. An angel.<br /><em></em><br /><em>Flight is the productof God exhaling.<br /></em>Her head tilts to the cream swirls in the sky (through the cascading trees with buds pregnant with new life).<br />“The air. The sun. A smile. The swaying meadow. To exhale. To walk slowly. The closed eye lids. A buzzing bee. Stinging cold water. To feel rain. Bubble clouds. To clear the throat. To search. A simple prayer. Hope. A crackling fire. A leaf which floats. A twilling bird voice. The soil. Blue. Ancient trees. Birth. Silence. To wipe sweat from the brow. A single tear.” The earth, so far below, looks quiet and peaceful and she envies the people walking quickly with places to go. “To be human.” She talks to God and thanks him for the day, for the world, for her life. She asks God to help the people in need, the people dying, and the people with no hope. Then she closes her journal, climbs down the tree, walks to her room, unlocks the door, and sets down her school bag.<br />Weeks have passed since she sent the letter.<br />She is 18 years old, in a tackily decorated college dormitory. In the mornings she brushes her teeth and goes to class. In the afternoons she works in the library, or reads in her room. And now at night, she hears a whisper. She remembers her old friend Tom, who she met several years ago one drunken night. He sold drugs. That night she talked to him about his life, and why he jeopardized everything with his habits. He cried. They kept in touch through emails ever since. He loved her. She was the girl he loved but hurt, a girl who should rightfully hate him.<br />The last email, which she sent almost a year ago, went unanswered. So she writes a letter. She sends it to his house, believing he still lives off the profit of drugs. She tells him he has a soul to hope, eyes to witness, a nose to sense, ears to listen, and a mouth to communicate. She tells him he is not an empty vacuum, and to remember stinging cold water, to feel rain, bubble clouds, hope. To be human.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1147995485962878862006-05-18T16:34:00.000-07:002006-05-18T16:38:05.973-07:00The leave flitters in the wind<br /> Because the wind pulls it onto the dance floor.<br /><br />A pebble is old<br /> even when the earth reforms it.<br /><br />I am but a shell<br /> Until I lie in the grass or swim in the sea<br /><br />A building is like the earth-<br /> It is only a term, for a space filled with activity.<br /> <br />The birds' flight is the product<br /> of God exhaling.<br /><br />I hear an Angel!<br /> When silence fills me.<br /><br />To an ant<br /> I am like the wind<br />It senses me but can not feel me<br /> But through the tangible crush.<br /><br />A petal without her flower<br /> is still as silky as heavens' garments.<br /><br />The air acts as a transporter<br /> for sents and sounds and feelings.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1147831390773186422006-05-16T18:52:00.000-07:002006-05-16T19:03:10.786-07:00<div align="center"> I Ponder This:<br />Am Not I Who I Was?</div><div align="center">(A reflection on My Reflection)<br /><br />I lift my hand in a slow buttery swish. My walls. They are cold and impersonal. I have lived here for a year and the memories seem as foreign as strangers passing on a smoggy street. Like friends of another life, like I have shed a shell and am me not her. My green eyes, they glance across the room and focus on a photograph on the wall. It is shiny and reflective. It is like a mirror. In this photography I see my reflection. The reflective is immediate and true, it does not lie. Yet it is bendable, flexible. What is this place, this college for? What has it made me? I am part mirror part photography. The photograph- a concrete specimen of a second. My body is a tangible specimen of the evolution of my soul. I am textured and shiny, and I am not alone. I am the photograph- in all its gumby nature it still preserves the past. I am not new, I am not recreated, I am my past, I am real, I am a memory, and I am tangible. <br /> I am the mirror. I am a reflection, but not of me alone. I am this room, this space in the Universe. These walls, these tacky posters, these drawers, that bunk bed. I am the desk; I am the books thoughtfully strewn in organized chaos across the earth. I am the song I listen to. I am me, it is I. A photograph: a single second of college fun captured in infinity. I have stolen that moment and in return it has stolen me.<br /> So I revisit the memories and they no longer seem as foreign as strangers passing on a smoggy street. We meet, we shake hands, and then explain “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” </div>kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1146655586151135632006-05-03T04:25:00.000-07:002006-05-03T04:26:26.160-07:00The next two paragraphs of SG paper (scroll down to May 2nd for the beginning)<br /><br /> Civil war created an ideal environment to cultivate human rights violators. With the presidency of Jacobo Arbenz the United States viewed Guatemala as a communist threat. True to United States habit, in 1954 the Central Intelligence Agency investigated and eventually exiled Arbenz. With his exiling came horrific commotion which inspired human rights violations by guerilla forces, the succession of military juntas, and the indirectly even the CIA (Readers Digest). Aboriginal peoples experienced torture, targeted killings, disappearances, and displacement from their Mayan communities, increasing human violation towards indigenous groups (Readers Digest). Additionally women were denied healthcare, economic security, and political access, while children became malnutrition, received inadequate healthcare, and became victim to sexual abuse or child prostitution (Readers Digest). With only one doctor for every 10,000 rural Guatemalans, even infants experience an extremely high mortality rate and malnutrition among Guatemalan children is one of the worst in the world (Madre). <br /> From a sociological perspective Guatemala’s structural adjustments have caused an increase in poor living conditions that lead to crime. The countries structure caused an increase in unemployment. Furthermore, living costs are three times the minimum wage, leaving eighty percent of the population impoverished and almost sixty percent of households without access to proper health facilities (Madre). Women searching for work raise the frequency of the maquila, or sweatshop, where poor wages and abusive conditions plague the workforce (Madre). Indigenous peoples residing in the Guatemalan highlands have been inundated with poverty and hunger after a huge drought in 2001 and a decline in the main export, coffee (Madre). Over 40 percent of Guatemalans are unemployed because of the coffee crisis and destructive World Bank policies (Madre). Although currently at its worst, violation of human rights historically plagued this country.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1146630281588511962006-05-02T21:23:00.000-07:002006-05-02T21:24:41.600-07:00First two paragraphs of a research paper in Social Geography on "Human Rights Violation in Guatemala" <br /><br /> A country no larger than Ohio and consisting of extreme diversity in climate and terrain, ranging from steep mountain ridges to the Peten rain forest, Guatemala is a country of a rich history buried amongst its physiographic qualities. Regrettably Guatemala’s history involves severe battles which sprang from the deep wounds of political conflict. About twenty-one miles outside Guatemala City sits the Pacaya volcano, a magnificent view that “when active, a deep orange ribbon” of lava skids down, vanishing into ash at the foundation (Simon 13). This beautiful picture turned gloomy when, in the mid-1960’s, the Guatemalan government declared Pacaya a dumping site for hundreds of victims of systematic repression. Since 1970 nearly tens of thousands of people have been murdered by the Guatemala government, reaching its peak in the 1980’s with the inauguration of President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo (Simon 16). Since his inauguration, the country has somewhat improved, but still struggles with a highly controlling military force. Due to a historically shaky political system the Guatemalan people have incessantly undergone tremendous human rights violations in various ways and by various offenders.<br /> By examining Guatemala’s geography, perhaps some understanding will result about the cultural influences on human rights violation. Guatemala is the third-largest country in Central America, with an area of 42,042 square miles and 8.5 million people. Of those 8.5 million people fifty-five percent of them are Mayan Indians, belonging either to the Quiche, Cakchiquel, Kekchi, Mam, or Pocomam ethnic group (Simon 19). Most of these people live in rural highlands, while non-Indians live in either Guatemala City or coastal and eastern lowlands (Simon 19). The country is geographically divided into twenty-two provinces and 329 municipalities (Simon 19). Only 1 percent of Guatemala’s people are considered to be elite, and the lowest income groups have worsened in recent decades (Nyrop 50). The lowest income groups live in the western Highlands, an area inhabited by about 70 percent of the nations Indians (Nyrop 50). Not only have these people survived poverty, but they have survived a history of continuous political tyranny. Although Guatemala has recently transitioned to democracy in recent decades, Indigenous and Non-Indigenous peoples have undergone extreme abuse from the rulers of this conflicted nation.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1146499146624980192006-05-01T08:58:00.000-07:002006-05-01T08:59:06.646-07:00Style Lesson 10: The Ethics of Style<br /> In the previous chapters Williams discusses how to make a sentence structurally correct and stylish, and now he explains the ethical responsibility of writers and readers. Writers have a responsibility to write clearly enough that our readers understand us. Similarly, readers have a responsibility to read hard enough to understand the complexity of ideas. Therefore, Williams creates a golden rule: “Write to others as you would have others write to you.” <br /> Williams also explains that some writers unintentionally write poorly. For example, writers may employ unintended obscurity, intended misdirection, rationalizing opacity, and salutary complexity. Finally, how do we decide what counts a “good” writing? What is more important: writing that is clear but does no good, or writing that does well but is unclear? Williams warns college students to take all of his lessons seriously, because in “the real world” bad writing is common and distasteful.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1146436060973446862006-04-30T15:27:00.000-07:002006-04-30T15:27:40.986-07:00Journal Reaction Part 2<br />Slaughter-House-Five<br /> After finishing this book, another main point reaches my interest. I love Vonnegut’s use of language to push ideas into his reader’s brain. He uses repetition of phrases to signal different events and tones. I wonder is he’s the genius that thought this up, or if some past author served as his inspiration. The main phrase that Vonnegut repeats is “So it goes”. Billy Pilgrim says that the Tralfamadorians say “So it goes” every time some one dies, to imply that death is an inevitable part of life. Billy picks up this phrase, repeating it after death is mentioned. In some parts of the book, I was simply overwhelmed by the amount of times “so it goes” was repeated. This is such a clever method, and reminds me of the way architects design memorials. <br />The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. serves as a prime example of how architects design memorials to affect viewers in specific ways. This memorial is a long black wall, a couple inches at the beginning, and angling upward to several feet in the middle. Names are inscribed in the black background, and viewers can see their reflection as they walk along beside the memorial. The viewer is amazed at the amounts of names, because the wall is narrow and spreads the names over a long distance. Furthermore, by seeing ones reflection in the shiny black surface, the viewer feels connected to the people who died. Similarly Vonnegut use phrases to trigger emotion.<br /> “So it goes” is a simple three letter phrase. It is not decorated, lacy, or profound. In fact, if it was only sprinkled lightly throughout the text the reader would take little notice of it, and certainly not consider it significant. However, after a death scene Vonnegut repeats this phrase. Its interesting how that phrase reminds you that someone actually died. Death is so frequent an occurrence in this book that without the phrase, the reader would be numb to its forces. By repeating a phrase, Vonnegut reminds his reader that some one actually died. Furthermore, with its repition comes recognition of the vast multitudes of people that die as war tragedies. Such a clever strategy!kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1146345913178401012006-04-29T14:24:00.000-07:002006-04-29T14:25:13.193-07:00Journal Reaction Part 2<br />The Things They Carried<br /> After finishing this book, I am inspired to adjust the way I write to closer look like O’Brien’s. He writes with such vitality, with such a life force, that events previously foreign to bystanders come alive. Each event breaths with unique rhythm and volume, and the readers eagerly consume it. After admitting my reaction to O’Brien’s writing style, I am now interested in examining my opinion of war. <br /> I am convinced that each human is born with this gut instinct that screams of the immorality of war. Born innocent to the world, a child looks encouraged towards his neighbor. As the Bible teaches to “love thy neighbor as yourself” so a person newly born into this world respects his neighbor. How unnatural it would be if an infant devised a scheme to destroy a play mate that refused to share a toy. However, children are undeniably quite capable of manipulation. In Bill Cosby’s stand up comedy, he does a skit where a child climbs to the top of the refrigerator, grabs a forbidden cookie, and then, as the adult enters the room, says “I got you a cookie Mommy”. Thus, are adults similarly driven, that they will deceive to get what they want? One passage in particular stands out to me in The Things They Carried:<br />War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.<br />Evidently war is full of a multitude of ironies. For example, what is worse: idly standing by and letting people die at the hand of a dictator, or intruding into the matters of another country and determining the future of its citizens? What is more just: freedom to determine one’s own destiny, which means no interruption by other nations; or gaining freedom even if it means the invasion of countries such as America? <br /> I suspect, in the near future, our nation has a lot of deciding to do. What does freedom mean to us? What does death mean? Is the loss of one life a justifiable cause for the loss of another? O’Brien means not to answer these questions but to raise them, challenging readers like me to do some serious soul searching on behalf of this nation. <br /><br />Journal Reaction Part 1<br />Slaughter-House-Five<br /> As soon as I began reading this book I saw undeniable similarities to Tim O’Brien’s novel. Kurt Vonnegut begins by discussing the truth of his novel, saying that some of it is true and some of it is not true. Vonnegut uses lies to reach the truth, similar to other writers. That’s the beauty of fiction: the words used are inaccurate, but they paint accurate pictures.<br /> Vonnegut uses time travel throughout this novel, not only as a means to transport his reader through the chronology of Billy Pilgrims’ life, but as a means to discuss different theories. For example, the residents of Tralfamadore have different ideas about the consistency of time. They view time as already determined, like a string of spaghetti or Christmas lights. To them time is tangible, unable to be manipulated, stunted, or changed. It simply is. I find this theory fascinating. Billy Pilgrim uses the Tralfamadorians concept of time to cope with his own life. For a reader like myself, I view these time travel theories as a literary move. I think it’s a genius method: use time travel not only as a way to move a character from place to place, but as a way to interest the reader.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1146234092156142612006-04-28T07:20:00.000-07:002006-04-28T07:21:32.170-07:00The second way Vonnegut writes about effects of war on combatants is by describing Tralfamadorians’ views about death. As Billy reflects on time travel he writes a letter about his experience with Tralfamadorians:<br />The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral…Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes’ (27).<br />Although Billy tries to use this method to cope with death, he constantly remembers the war. When he tries to go to bed at night he can not sleep, he explains “But sleep would not come. Tears came instead. They seeped. Billy turned on the Magic Fingers, and he was jiggled as he wept” (62). Therefore, Vonnegut speaks out against war by detailing Billy Pilgrim’s attempt, and ultimate inability, to cope with death. <br /> Since citizens often absentmindedly allow war to become an unchangeable part of life, O’Brien and Vonnegut use their novels to speak out against war. Both authors illustrate the effects of war on soldiers in order to educate ordinary citizens about what is happening to combatants. In addition, these authors clarify that war continues far after actual battles, and becomes entrenched in the people partaking in them. Through these writings, hopefully general readers are called to activism against war.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21835080.post-1146159287522851562006-04-27T10:33:00.000-07:002006-04-27T10:34:47.543-07:00In cases such as Norman Bowker, Vietnam had a deadly affect. Norman Bowker got out of Vietnam safely, and returned to the security of his home town. However, he spends evenings driving slowly around the lake in his town, over and over again. In a letter he writes to O’Brien, Norman explains:<br />“There’s no place to go. Not just in this lousy little town. In general. My life, I mean. It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam…Hard to describe. That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sewage with him…Feels like I’m still in deep shit” (156). <br />All Norman wanted when he returned from the war was to embrace his home, yet like he said, he returned physically but not in actuality. The sewage of Kiowa sucked him up, consuming his soul. Although Norman imagines ways to reconnect with home, he never does, and ultimately commits suicide. Therefore, the war drives Norman insane because on his return home he can no longer relate to the people that enjoyed life while he was in a foreign country fighting a war. <br /> Similarly to The Things They Carried, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House-Five illustrates the effects of war on combatants. The main character in this book is Billy Pilgrim, a man stuck in time. Vonnegut takes the reader on a journey involving Billy’s experiences with time travel. The core story is Billy’s experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, but Vonnegut continually interrupts its chronology to insert past events of Billy’s life. These flashbacks (in the form of time travel) demonstrate the isolation that Billy experiences as a victim of war. Slaughter-House-Five provides countless examples of how the war effected Billy Pilgrims’ connection with reality. <br /> In the first chapter of this book, Vonnegut addressed the reader directly, without the use of Billy Pilgrim as his character. By telling us a short story about who he is and how he came to write this book, he reveals how the war affected him personally. For example, Vonnegut explains that he tried to find an old war buddy:<br />I had the Bell Telephone Company to find him for me. They are wonderful that way. I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. I get drunk, and I drive my wife away with a breath like mustard gas and roses. And then, speaking gravely and elegantly into the telephone, I ask the telephone operators to connect me with this friend or that one, from whom I have not heard in years. <br />This introductory chapter shows the reader the difficulty Vonnegut had with recovering from the war enough to write a book. He persistently talks about the struggles he had writing this book, explaining that first he did not have any ideas of what to write about, and then did not know how to write about what he wanted to write about. Consequently, the reader gains a sense of the seriousness of the war as soon as the first page of this book, expanding their understanding of the outcome of war.kspeicherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04899061323540817545noreply@blogger.com0