Let's Make You Hate Me

Ms. Many Flaws' Ten Personal Statements:

10. I'm indecisive and it hurts the people around me as well as infuriating me when they can't accept it.

9. Control Freak doesn't cover it. If I don't approve of some decision or action, it doesn't happen.

8. Every year that goes by I grow more hatred for my mother. When I look into my future, I don't want her anywhere near it. I don't want her words of wisdom, I don't want her near my children or my home.

7. I have to change all the time. I can't have the same job for more than a few months at a time, I can't have the same style forever, I always change around my furniture. I'm hoping I can stand being in Nashville for three more years.

6. I'm an undisciplined artist.

5. I find religiousness in a person a major flaw, and this is one of my flaws.

4. I'm a sucker for romantics,

3. and for intelligence.

2. My sister is my best friend, forevs.

1. I am nineteen with 80% of my life left.

Questions

I am going to Vanderbilt next year. With someone like four or five past family members as alumni, I want to make it my own.

I walk around campus seeing all these young, hot women, and all I see is the future rotund women who cut their hair shorter, flip out the ends, and speak inconsequentially in order to preserve their sanity. I feel sorry for them, because I wish they could have a more fulfilling life. I know, though, that that is what really makes them happy. They want to be the wise mother, the wiser grandmother, kind wife and sister. They want to make the best casseroles and walk barefoot on tile flooring. We have that much in common, I suppose, but I want more than that. So much more.

I am listening to very pretty, melodic instrumental music but I feel my brain rotting. I think I need constant intellectual stimulation. Now, seriously, I feel like my insides are rotting. I would lick conversation off the floor if I could.

As soon as I escape my past it bumps into me in the supermarket.

Reality died sometime ago. Whether it was with tragedy or just losing my home state-of-mind, I cannot decide. I can't stop thinking that these next three years will just be me turning around until I get dizzy enough to stop, sit down, and wait out the rest of my life.

I drive sixty miles to another world. The idea is to pursue happiness. Just the opposite of the "known evil" idea, I know disappointment. If disappointment's on the other side, then I would not have lost anything. But it promises much more than that, so I'm taking the chance.

I have a terrible, terrible ego. I have a balancing act for that ego, but it has yet to subdue my indigestion. I don't need a balance, I need an example. I need to befriend someone worse than me, who can take that part of my identity with him.

I have an unnatural affinity for sweets.

Letter to the Future

This one's from a few months back.  Can't decide what to do with it.

_________________________________

We know our civilization is different.  From the textbooks we read and study, we know humankind hasn’t always lived in tunnels.  The only time scholars gave any time or length of paper to burrowers, they spoke demeaningly of the inferior species—unintelligent and two dimensional with no hope of ever being truly sentient beings.  Actually, the old textbooks described the “modern man” as having evolved from apes and as being at the height of existence and learning.  Had these people known that they would evolve, in a sense, to be the lesser creatures, perhaps they’d have recognized the instinctive genius in taking cover beneath the ground.

Five billion years after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, we have no religion.  The sun is dying, the human form no longer resembles painted images in relic churches, and we livelike demons cowering beneath Earth's crust.  Who could believe in a God whose doctrine teaches us that his love is undying like the sun, that we are beautiful, and to model ourselves after his glory, the glory of Jesus, and those holy angels?

Let me repeat that:  our sun is dying.  The only people who walk on the surface of the Earth are scientists conducting research on the rate of the sun’s deterioration and its effect on Earth’s surface.  There was a newfound respect for art from the renaissance because of the focus on the natural forces when humans first closed of the sun's toxic light.  Those images which remained may well have been humanity’s last look at the wind on an open sea, the sight of two lovers strolling under trees enjoying the afternoon sun.  For those reasons the Jardin Arenas were built to satisfy our innate desire for the green and blue Mother Nature created, by supplying artificial grasses and breezes.  These arenas have since become rundown; what we first loved because of its limited existence, we now feel has turned against us.  The public feels cheated by nature.  Instead our highways are decorated with vibrant graphic designs—the greater the distance from natural beauty, the better the art.

                                                             ~~~

“What are you after, here, Henderson?  Who’s your audience?  You write this like a message in a bottle to posterity.”

“This is a message to posterity.  Humans have survived all that is possible to survive.  What makes us so special that we are Earth’s finest, Earth’s final?”

“Oh come on.  Don’t pull your elitist accusations on me.  For the sake of the reamining population’s sanity we must adorate the present.  Start mentioning a possibility of future for humans and people see, first of all, your lack of credibility, and second, that the civility exhibited and instituted by the ROS will no sooner save us from annihilation than a bean from being eaten.  Do you want to remind them of that?”

“So don’t publish it, not yet atleast.  Put it in a safe place.  Even let it get lost, because if we as a race truly are limited in our days, I want some record of our existence.”

“You’ll have to take that request up with the ROS.  I’m a small-time newspaper editor.  You think I can communicate with extra-terrestrials?  Now go write me something I can publish.  Talk to Knorr about that baby factory for the future story he’s been researching, will you?”

                                                                  ~~~

The last remaining government is the ROS, shortened from the Reunification Organization for Survival.  It was founded by a group of environmentalists who offered the smartest power alternatives when the fossil fuel wells dried up three billion years ago.  For the majority of its existence the ROS was a beneficent, placid entity advising the global population on how to live with the Earth, not just on top of it.  It was the ROS who suggested air-fueled crafts that essentially bounced from building to building, eliminating the need for highways and increasing personal mobility.  There was such a high approval rating for the ROS that when they suggested relocating us underground, the public met the idea with very little disapproval.  The ROS claimed it could provide re-generated sunlight through a system of pipes and filters from the surface.  They argued we would be closer to the underground water reserves.  On the surface, our fresh water sources evaporated, creating a thick blanket of air, never precipitating, so when the ROS promised cool water, thinner air, and gentle sunlight the globe rejoiced and began building tunnels.

Today the ROS controls our diets, our sleep habits, our work places, and our national identities.  While on the surface the last reamining marks of national identity were minimal and defined solely by sports teams, here there are neither sports nor diversity because, over time, everything has become mixed together.  “America,” reads one textbook, “is the melting pot of the world, embracing all the ethnicities of the world in a microcosm of global unity which gives hope to the possibility of a future peace.”  The textbook correctly predicted peace and complete global unity, but at the price of progress.  The freedom of speech and press remain, but anyone with an idea for a better future admits that conflict is the only path.  Therefore change is sacrificed in the name of communal happiness.

                                                                      ~~~

“Welcome, Mr. Henderson.  My name is Wagner.  I’ve read your stuff and I must admit your examinations of the choices of the ROS are, well, none too kind.  Why should I put this in _some kind of box they'll send to SETI_ when you are so critical of what we do?”

“I wrote the truth of what I see.  You obviously can’t deny the organization’s actions, and I put them in perspective for the potential readers.  If what you say is correct about the final death of Earth, then the message will reach its intended audience long after the end of ROS.  Therefore the ROS will suffer no consequences, no humiliation.  If, then, you still wish it to be unread then you represent the ROS as an organization concerned with its reputation.  Juvenile, I’d say.”

“My, what heavy accusations.  I can take your manuscript before the board, but I don't think they'll take your voice in this piece too lightly, especially not your criticism of peace.”

“Let me go before the board when it comes up.  When my work, when my thoughts are in another’s hands, I like to defend myself.”

“Fair enough.  Thank you for your visit, Mr. Henderson.  Surely your work will go recognized.”

“And your time, chairman Wagner.”

                                                                          ~~~

Therefore it is in your hands I leave this piece of literature.  Make of it what you will, but know that you were not alone.  The humans, as we call ourselves, are a proud race.

Trains

Even an hour distance can't seem to separate us from what happened a few months ago.  Every once in a while, a train whistles by campus.  We might be out in the grass enjoying the sunny breezes, or we might be cozy in a bed somewhere.  We might be happy, oblivious at least, but its horns rear us out of that reverie.  I see the train coming, with its lights, its horns, its majorly reduced speed.

Then in English.  I never noticed how many authors use death for some literary effect.  In every single large piece I've read this semester, someone has died, been killed, or killed themselves.  In the other pieces, maybe one in three stories featured death.  Death, death, sadness, death, and their significances.  It makes me angry, actually.  Are these authors really not talented enough that they find no stories about the human experience that don't include death?  Why the obsession with mortality?  No, that I get.  Why do we have to be so narrow-minded?  Why do we have to bring up those bad memories just to understand why somebody is sad and feeling lost?  Proof:  before now I didn't really weigh what untimely death meant to the people it touched.  That's proof because the author doesn't seem to be effective.  I have read a few that made me feel that feeling, but not most of them.

The train passes and I go back to my midnight homework, knowing I've lived to see the spring, the summer, children growing, young people experiencing.  I'm coming around to pity him, but it's hard.

As of yet, Untitled

The Beginning



I fell in love with an Indian once, two summers ago. He was a kind and forgiving gentleman, and as exotic as his cocao skin. Before him I only knew American men, with their thick calves and thicker skulls. He was like a blossom for me, beyond beauty as a little white flower bud, growing and showing me its secrets as its petals yawned for the sun.

We met in a flower shop in India. I had just graduated from a minor American university and decided that I had not really been educated, so I boarded a plane with my waitress earnings with no assurance of my safety except for a bar of soap. I first travelled through Europe, but found it to be mostly populated with thick accents. Their cultures were not a surprise. Then, I travelled East. Past the Indus River was a wild none of the videos could capture. India captured me, and so I stayed. I'd never witnessed such a humility as with the Indians--they gave me their flowers and, soon after, their hearts.

Within the first week I had a small, two-room apartment in the packed city of Mumbai. Though it was an ocean city, I saw little of it during my daily routes. I worked for India's Reserve Bank as a minor teller, for very little money. I was comfortable, however; my only cost of happiness was the little apartment, a few food items, and eventually the flowers to bring the sun into my apartment.

The reason I went to that particular flower shop is that one of my friends at the bank, a French woman on similar travels, recommended its beautiful blooms. They decoded India, she said.

The next day I had off, I went to the shop with the greatest desire for orange and red petals, blue and violet. Once in, I was drawn to the small bud of the white Dasavala flower. I stood inspecting its soft exterior for what must have been an extraordinary amount of time, because a man came up to me and spoke about its even softer, pink interior. He said once the Dasavala bloomed, the white petals seemed to beckon the eye inwards, toward the soul of the flower, where its worth lie. This man was Ravi.

He continued to give me a tour around the flower shop, describing each blossom as passionately as if they were each his daughters. It was clear, though, that the Dasavala was his bride. All others, no matter how splendid, were still not quite as elusive and wistful as its luminous petals.

By the end of my tour, I had chosen small flowers of every color and style. So many had I chosen, that I spent my first week's pay there, in that shop! Ravi, the sweet gentleman with the chocolate thumb, carried some of my many flowers out the door. He walked with me around the shop, down the street, past the small fruit market, on past the many temples for the many people, back down some narrower streets, up my stairs, into my apartment. At none of the moments during our walk had I said, "Ravi, would you please come in?" Yet I felt no discomfort in letting this perfect man behind my locks and bolts.

Once inside, he made no affection known but for the flowers, which we were setting on their new vigils over my life. Some went on my kitchen table, some went outside, on my balcony's tiny wooden table between the two wooden chairs. The Dasavala, placed last, went in the window in my room. Ravi placed it so that the sun would hit its blossoms in the morning, while the sun was just ripe, and innocent.

The Wanting Past

Senior year of high school, about a year and a half ago, one of my teachers asked what being half-Greek-Cypriot meant to me. It's funny, because it sounds like one of those college application essays. I want to talk about it here because I don't ever feel like I've fleshed out these thoughts, or the thoughts of why I actually do love my parents (despite the neglect I blame them for).

Let's see here. Greek Cypriotness is a small percentage of the global landscape and doesn't have a very high coefficient of pride when I travel places. No one's even heard of the island itself; of course they don't know the difference between being Greek-Cypriot or Turkish-Cypriot, or just plain Greek or Turkish.

Why do I feel so proud of being born in the place and having family there? I certainly can't attribute any part of a childhood happiness to the nation, as I've never lived there permanently. Vacations were enjoyable, yes, but not a part of my permanent mind-set. I don't speak the language, which is often a great source of pride for certain national-types.

One might think I take a selfish sort of pride in the half-ethnicity because it just sets me apart a little from everybody else. Maybe it's just something that justifies my having an awkward, abnormal at least, nose.

And you would be right. I like to feel a little bit removed from the general population; I like to think I have more than one place to call home. I like having an eccentric father that I can't bring out in public because he's just never understood.

Most of the time, all I feel is a knowledge of where I came from. I feel like it explains me better. Perhaps my eccentricities, but they can easily be explained by my dad and my mom. It's more of knowing that there's some place in the world I can go and be welcome. A second home maybe.

I like to feel that a part of me dates back to the ages of antiquity. I am Greek, the greatest of all heritages! The source of knowledge, beginning the endless pursuit of its rusty knobs (wanting to be cleaned). I am the great-granddaughter of Alexander the Great, the great-niece of the ancient philosophers. My sister is the woman who's face launched a thousand ships.

Yes, I fantasize, but it's something that allows for a concrete definition of myself, more than anything else ever has. For all this I am proud to be from some tiny little vacation island in the Mediterranean.

The Science of Art, and Art's Useless Science

This picture is what it feels like to cry. The vision aspect is the same. Up close, all I can see are the tears dripping from my eyelids. Then in the distance, I see the shapes forming illusions of themselves, allowing me my privacy. There's something comforting about crying, the way it builds a wall, the way I can only go inward. Inward is where the comfort is. But then, the cry is disturbing. It must be, otherwise I wouldn't still be smothering myself in my pillow. Who are the shapes in the distance? Are they unknown figures who glance my way, wonder at my story, and go on being glad they're not wearing my stockings? Is it my mother standing in the doorway, stifling her curiousity and about to offer me some dinner (to which I'll say no)? Are they emotional goblins waiting for the precise moment to pounce on me? My immediate future made blurry by teary emotions? Again, I go inward.

All this in a photograph is art. It's not the half-blurry, half-intensely-focused shot that these PhotoJerks always take and feel leads to perfection. No, it is the speculation, and the possibility for interpretation. You, for instance. Before I talked about crying, you may have thought of funerals or of the city or of refreshing spring and life even among death. It is the passion I feel at first glance, and the chest beats that make me slow down some just to look at something so inconsequential, but so important. This is art. I think it was taken by one of my friend's friends over the sea, in Germany. I used to think that creativity was for the distants and the far-offs, the exotics and the paid-wells. Just like the musicians who, if I didn't know them beforehand, must have performed some business-trickery in getting a record deal they didn't deserve, or scoring hits that they paid the radio to spin.

But then, art is not something local. It's not something that everybody in that creative writing class can access. So, what is it?

I might think it's a universal spirit. One must first tame their desire and selfishness in order to access the altruism of pure art. I can reference Ratatouille here: the quote 'Anyone can cook' wants to mean not that any person on the street can cook, but that a great cook can come from anywhere and be any type of person. The same with art.

Revolving around that thought, the 'pure art' thought, the 'universal spirit which must be accessed.' Are we born with the ability, or are we taught. Consider this, also. Many critically acclaimed and popular artists were not even recognized until after their gravestone had dried from the first rain. What kind of drive does it take for a true artist to persevere when their surroundings do not encourage them? This would seem to support that the artist is born and cannot avoid accessing the universal spirit.

As for me. No, I am no artist. I know many artists, though I couldn't exactly claim if they are the cosmically consequential artists or the everyday artists who use it as some lease for their daily struggles.

The entry title, "The Science of Art, and Art's Useless Science" refer to the ancient perception that science is some unattainable exactness, mastered only by the well-educated. For art, I probably lean toward the thought that art (atleast, the deep part of art that inspires to create something genuine and unique to the creator) cannot be taught or learned. The unattainable part of the science definition is what fits here.

And then--what use is art to us? I read an article somewhere talking about how art in recessions and depressions inspire the locals that a better future is up ahead. I might call that the, oh whats it, opiate of the masses? That fits. I think it's more than that. Art is everything. Science used to be an art. Take Leonardi daVinci as the prime example if you wish. All of the great scientists achieved their successes and were able to pass on their knowledge to the future world, us, because they could imagine something larger than what already existed. I consider Galileo and Newton and Kepler and the like all to be the great Romantics. They saw the pre-existent knowledge and rebelled to the greatest height by declaring it as completely false! Who could dare to do that today without receiving scorn from the scientific community, even with the best support? Now that statement is a bit extreme, but it still leads to the conclusion that science has diverged away from its origin.

I like to fantasize sometimes that I'm back in the 1600's, when women were just barely dipping their toes into the science pool, and I wonder if I would have joined them. I look back to the turn of the 20th century, the mid-twenties, and I wonder if I might have agreed with Einstein, or if I would consider it a lofty dream not based in our reality. I yearn for the scientific frontier, as well as rejoining it with the original deviation from the mean.

Aye

I am a successful sinner in the land of repentance and humility. I begin my sentences as references to myself, clear indications of my selfishness.

I am a girl with a brain and a few hips that aren't too seductive, and eyes that reward seldom. I have all-male professors, if just a little bit feminine.

I create stories in my mind--both long and short. They have characters and plots which are mostly ironic. I do not write them down, because I think my mind is a reservoir that never leaks. Life has proven it to be a colander, straining material of less value than the noodles I cook at home.

I put off my future, as if I only have today. My mother speaks to money, my peers speak to happiness. Proof positive both are exclusively separate.

Broken English best reflects the tumultuous mind. Since the mind never smooths, we practice an injustice in misrepresenting it.

End.

Little Girls Need Moms

I find it funny that having a bad relationship with my mother teaches me so much more about how to be the right mother than even a good one might have.  The thought and theory that it works comes from the notion that through my failed relationships I have taken away some positive lesson to be learned.  I looked at my life as if it had been some piece of fiction, and I asked what the moral of the story was and how the characters grew.  Each time, I learned something valuable about myself, and all lessons have helped me towards being my better self.

I've only recently realized that this practice can help while still inside the failing and doomed relationship.  The source of failure is now both our faults, but of course originates with the bearer.

Source of failure: love.  

Sometimes I imagine her in her college days when she might have been seducing each little seedling of a future.  One of them ended up being my dad, and I think that says a great deal about her.  I can attempt to brag about my dad without trying to sound like I'm (indirectly) bragging about myself, but it's impossible.  He's a smart guy.  He outsmarted his professors in college without even caring, but that's not a very good example.  We all know what professors really are, but that's another essay for another time.  In the end, my mom chose someone she felt suited her, and who suited her?  The smartest guy around.  It makes sense, too.  She was the only one of her siblings to go to college like a normal person should.  The rest either were manipulated into impregnating young women (yes, it's true) or ended up in drug and alcohol rehab.  She was used to being the brightest, and so she must marry the brightest.

They go along happily for a few years, even have two little squats running around their feet.  She coasts through the first few years because the first little girl was just so docile.  Even after having been thrown into a parenting shock with the second, the Tasmanian Devil, she seemed to be doing okay.  Both were making good grades in school with no disciplinary problems.  Her brother's children were not so lucky.

After a while, though, she begins to wonder philosophically as to who she wants her children to become and how to achieve the result.  Of course, she wants her children to be raised in her image so she treats them accordingly.  She speaks to us as if we are adults; she begins planting good, healthy behavior in our habits; she rewards us for smart behavior.

The result of it all is pretty good.  Her first daughter is at school on scholarship, seems to be having all the normal relationships she should be.  Her second daughter is well on the same path with some nice side dishes of musical talent.

I thought this was the story, but then I start seeing the behavior she's implanting on the two new little daughters she's molding.  I see her rewarding them with "Oh, what a smart girl" when, once a day, they count correctly.  She doesn't see the hugs she should be giving them, or the simple playtime and attention they so desperately want from her.  She doesn't see that the rations of affection she gives them now will be devastatingly missed when she slowly whittles them down to nothing.

Then what do the girls do?  They get lost from trying to find love.  I did.  All through middle school I never had the courage to love myself, and I blame it on her all because she was too busy fine-tuning a smart little gadget to say "I raised the child," somewhere down the line.  At what point, exactly, did she forget that the only thing I wanted was her eyes and her attention.  We were never good enough for her, never good enough to keep her company.  Just good enough to brag about and then tuck into bed.  "Think of all the great things you'll be doing tomorrow!"  And then she stopped tucking us into bed/stopped noticing anything to be proud of/started noticing the heating bill/water bill/dirty dishwasher.

I think that in her eyes we are machines.  All she did was provide the original parts and occasional grease to work out the rust.  When the machine broke after she didn't maintain it, she yelled at it like the piece of tin it is.

I'm losing my focus.  Anyone can blame her mother for feeling lost without love.  Instead, I'm thankful that I have love with Judson and that I can regain some of that lost, truly unconditional love with his family (I never knew it felt like that.  If you're reading this, know you're lucky.  I've never seen such love inside my own home).  More than that, I'm thankful that I can see how to be the mother mine didn't know how to be.  She blames her mother, but I should thank mine for showing me.  So what?

Love.  That's it, and that's all.  Don't hold back the love for fear of seeming foolish.  Don't stop tucking in the little girl, even if she becomes a big girl while you're in the middle of it.  Don't stop reading her stories, or telling your own, or listening to heres.  Don't stop the embarrassing hugs and I Love Yous.   Don't kid about her hardships even when you feel like they've long passed.  Don't ask why she's crying, just hold her and let her listen to your heart.  Do cook her breakfast, her favorite meal, even after she's moved out.  Do act like she's still the little girl whose back you scratched before bedtime.  Do have the deep eight-year-old conversations that bore you but make her feel a part of everything.  Do say you're proud of her, no matter how small her accomplishments are.  Help her cook, sit down with her and help her with homework instead of complaining what a shitty day at work you had.

Most and best of all, be with her as much as you can.  Just talking or sitting or sleeping or watching a movie, anything.  Make it so that when she gets older, she doesn't doubt your love for anything, and make it so that you're the one she runs to when she needs someone.

The Class Poet

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop


Keeping Battle

The art of keeping is a harder war to win
A war whose sides are me--it never ends
When losing, like divorce, just keeps stopping in

The keeping war yields to unforgiving sin
Consider life and love, even just the friends
Who disappear in sight of kinship going thin

'T would seem that all I keep is held within
But since that's metaphysical, let's not pretend
The one and only not-lost win, is my skin

I had it with me when 18 years ago I did begin
It doesn't seem to change even with the trends.
Keeping isn't hard, to me it's always pinned.

Seems it's all that's with me--this shallow bin
of everything I've created: Messages I send
through the keeping skin which reflects my within

Eventually the time ravages will take even my keeping skin
But for that, it seems I must make amends
For it knows not that it makes a sin
This losing war just always has to win

Dribble, dribble, snoot

Title:  The Fixation on Life is Silly

Subtitle:  How everybody deals with it, and the only reason it's important.

Life is the narration you give it

and these poems the drool that stain your night

(Hiding underneath your sub-conscious

    --that's what that means)

Emotion, the rash act you choose to personify

     as separate from your ever-so-logical self

The actions you take are the plot-line you set right

Or if it's condemnable, something inevitable

Your tragic flaw seems not such a flaw

    but something innate that puts us in awe

The End

Interestingly enough, is never the end

End a chapter, end a soliloquy

The dream Hamlet predicts is the natural fix

All along, scraping the ends and folding them into beginnings

Your rationale for decisions are comletely the truth, just

from the final and ever-changing actual end.

Modern Flaw

The wound beneath me

Bleeds for another

Mother gift to give

Shift actions too swift

Thoughts drift across some forgotten shore

Beg more to be with the original sin

See I almost forget what

Once you did love me

Faults in Clemency

Entry 1

The phone rings in a large office building downtown, just another bell-chime in the harmonies among papers flying and workers sighing. In one corner of the building sits a modest secretary, continuing another day in her modest life. As she picks up the phone, no shock or surprise appears on her face. She jots down the date and time of an appointment.

"Mr. Patterson, your wife is coming for lunch with you. First you have a meeting with Mrs. Johnson, though. Would you like me to re-schedule?"

"I should be all finished with Mrs. Johnson by the time Kelly comes. Thank you, though, Petunia. Listen, could you go get some sandwiches for Kelly and I for lunch?" Petunia scribbles his order on the back of her pay-stub. She will wait until thirty minutes before Kelly arrives to go get their lunch, lest the hot sandwiches get cold.

The noises of the office building continue on: pid-padding of feet, hands grazing arms in kindness, candy plopping out of candy jars, faxes arriving, copy-making, phone-calls ending, chairs scooting, computer chimes, yawns, pencils. An ordinary day is awarded to the ordinary people for their loyalty to the company.

An hour before lunch, Mrs. Johnson arrives at Mr. Patterson's door for their meeting. Before she notices Petunia, she walks up to the door casually and places her hand on the knob. Petunia coughs, though, and Mrs. Johnson steps back to ask if Mr. Patterson is in. His presence confirmed, she knocks carefully and enters slowly.

These weekly meetings between Mr. Patterson and Mrs. Johnson usually last about forty-five minutes. Petunia, knowing this, is eager to get the sandwiches in expectation of Mrs. Patterson. She prides herself on timing daily events perfectly, so that one task ends right as the next should begin. 'Efficiency, competency, and diligence are all you need to get by in this world, dear Petunia,' her father used to say to her. She used these words at his eulogy.

Thirty minutes before lunch, Mrs. Johnson is still in her meeting with Mr. Patterson. As Petunia leaves, she hears some ruffling papers and a large laugh. 'Oh,' she thinks, 'Mr. Patterson is always quite the entertainer.'

Petunia enjoys her outings, her food assignments, her menial tasks. She is a child-less caregiver, eager to take anyone under her wing. Mr. Patterson, over the course of Petunia's career at the firm, has become her man-child. She plans his day, makes sure he eats a healthy lunch, and returns him to his wife unscathed by the brutal highrise businesses.

When she returns to her little desk outside Mr. Patterson's door, Mrs. Johnson slinks out of the room with a half-smile unsuccessfully hidden from Petunia. Mr. Patterson follows her out, and while he speaks to Petunia about lunch Mrs. Johnson lingers a while, looking through the papers she is carrying. Their bodies walk away together.

Five minutes before lunch, Petunia searches for her man-child to make sure he will see his wife on time. She eventually finds him in the break room. While Mr. Patterson and Mrs. Johnson's bodies are not touching, their contours seem to ebb and flow together. He inhales and she laughs, the curves between them just lines of white against their grim clothing. As Mr. Patterson leaves with Petunia, he talks bout how long he and Mrs. Johnson have known each other, about their evenings spent grilling in the back yard.

Right on time, because Kelly is a punctual and time-conscious woman, lunch begins. Mr. Patterson enters his office stiffly, dodging glances to the corners of the room. When he sees that everything is in place, he lowers his shoulders and greets his wife.

"Hello, honey. I've been going through all this paperwork and I want..." The door closes, and Petunia is again placed at her guard over Mr. Patterson's 8 x 10 domain. More phone calls arrive, more appointments are planned, and all of them are coordinated through Petunia's catching eyes. Twenty minutes into lunch, Petunia hears someone fall. Perhaps it is Mr. Patterson! She should make sure he is fine, but she knows Kelly can take care of Mr. Patterson. She is a practical woman. Practical women think alike.

As Kelly and Mr. Patterson leave his office, Petunia asks Mr. Patterson if he would like to reschedule Mrs. Johnson for next week. Kelly shoots a fierce glance at Mr. Patterson. Before anyone says goodbye or allows for kisses, she tromps out the door. Two elevator dings later, and Mrs. Patterson is gone.

Mr. Patterson pauses for thirty seconds, silent while he tames his hair. He walks back into his office, even as Petunia tries to affirm his appointments for later in the day. No amount of calls or approaches later on in the day can provoke Mr. Patterson out of his office. He squats, belligerent.
__________________________________________________________________

A crisp morning means spring is trying not to arrive loudly. I honestly think that the wind and the sun are dueling. In the end, we all know that the sun will win and that the wind will no longer be the harsh opponent it so longs to be, but a soft breeze to wipe the sweat from our foreheads. Eventually, spring will arrive. Unfortunately for all us college students, it tries so hard to stay on the other side of the world. Damnit, Australia, give up your warmth!

About the story, I wrote it a month ago. I figured I should finish it. And, I have a particular direction I want to go in, so be warned. If I felt I could achieve the necessary impact on the reader, I would say to protect your heart. We'll see where it goes in the end.

What Calculus and Physics Have I

The people around me have enough potential energy for my happiness to reach a maximum. They are good people, with honest square roots and enough entertainment contained within them to allow me to experience a better day.

So what’s the problem?

My integral! My integral is negative, it doesn’t match all their positive outputs.

Metaphor aside, I get frustrated. The little things people do as a part of their character flaws (which I do, truly understand that everyone has), honestly destroy me inside. I am incapable of sympathy when someone else fails where I succeed.

Not only that, but once a person has decided “Yeah, she’s a cool chap, we should hang sometime,” I become distant. Why? Why do I do all these things? I fail to make decisions on whether I really want to be someone’s friend instead of taking the time to experiment, say.

Conclusion

I am in a transitory state. I’m 95% sure I won’t be seeing many of these people again, so it seems I’ve just been idling along, not going to any efforts. It’s a terrible curse—I have the choice of either losing friendships now and being lonely and slightly depressed, or I make the unbreakable bonds of friendships to these people I know I could be friends with in ten, twenty, fifty years. The downfall of that option is that once I leave, I’ll just be feeling the guilt I feel when I don’t communicate because I’m Lazy.

Conclusion Part II

I’m lazy. I don’t want to make any decisions right now because everything’s going to pivot 180 degrees in about three months. Can I wait three months?

Let’s party tonight, friends, and see if I can’t fix this problem and stop thinking about it too seriously.

I'm restless as the Spring Breeze!

I walked out of the dorm this morning, straight into a warm gust of wind. I feel the electrons in my molecules jumping a little higher, a little faster. They fly all over the place, making me jump and squeal in joy. My heart beats a little faster, my lungs breathe a little deeper, and I can't help but pushing out all those cynical thoughts for just today.

Spring!
Oh, I think about it and I just start whirring. My little mind and my muscles just want to jump everywhere and exclaim how wonderful it is. It's a relief after the hard winter, and we can walk anywhere and do anything uninhibited-like. We opt for friendliness, we can't possibly have a sour mood. It's the time of year that happiness is unavoidable. I really can't contain myself enough to form an actual sentence or a paragraph that makes sense. All I know is that this weather has me flying like I always wish I could. Honestly, just breathing is the most satisfying feeling I've ever felt. It's not building, it's not tense or suspended, it's all the happiness you can bear in a single instant, times about 20 instants to last a breath! And all that happiness just repeats and repeats until you hyperventilate from absorbing Earth's good energy.




Aaaaaaah, just give it to me, give it to me good, spring.

Lives in Review

As I said, I wrote some things, and I wanted to post them somewhere just to give them a third party feel, atleast for myself.  Yeah.

Some of these are halfsies.  I get half-inspired, and there it is.

Hide your eyes

Not meant for imperfection

Trust these lies

They're for your own protection

---

Ozymandias Revisited

I am a universal man

I am the heavens and land

I will not dull with the grating sand

Nor fall from grace up on my stand

Me and my lofty universal grand!

I am the king of a man-made world

Sitting in an ugly cigarette-butt stand

No profit in my rotting mind

To benefit me in the plotting kind

I am the king of a wondrous trash land.

---

What stories did they write, fifty years beyond me

What flaws characterize me, lead me to my doom

Events of my life, misshapen geometry

Past loves thought incidental, ended up my truths

Of all my passing times and wayward shifts

Which direction did I stumble stumble rightly there

The infinite thoughts and words, flowing in a river

Delta of my mouth, ocean of your doubt

The life that's past, convincing us go forward

Become my ending grit, becoming me in spirit.

---

Spoken word-thoughts become my long list of truancy.

---

Legs flailing in the dead of night

Looking for a great delight

Hearts racing, smiles changing

Shimmer from the union-making

Going on forever-longer

Aiming to prolong our hunger

Looking for a great delight

Searching in the dead of night

---

All these words are pulling me

In the wrong direction

Got nothing to say or be or see

From this old perspective

Sitting in the filthy day

Soaking in the filthy night

Speaking in two tongues

They've got no stay inside this head

Nor peace inside my bed

---

Human

The characters in life, or caricatures we've made

Cocktails of malice and creatures cliche

Orbit the sun in the pattern of life

Oh common eye, see now our strife.

Hark! The orbit!  It seems somewhat queer

What have they, their orbit, seems somewhat near

Their land on this planet is one with what's mine

Be their shelter my rain, their doldrum my shine

Sin-seek to compell them in life's last triad

Tragedy:  All in the end makes

A life complete, just life half-had.

(This one's really rough)

---

Clover Farm

Education

Procreation

Denigration

Death

Happy times

with fools in kind

You're lucky

Be the best

Education

Procreation

Denigration

Death

Find the one

Who's got the guns

Discover what means

One plus one

Education

Procreation

Denigration

Death

They get older

Now them numble

They know what's what

Best

Education

Procreation

Denigration

Death

Now it's over

Never quicker

Better when you

Grow with Clover

Done

---

Twist my wrists and bend me back

Forever give me someone's past

Of lightness, darkness, filled and packed

Nothing ever bloomed like asked

---

Johnny Fucking Kennedy

Blew my fucking mind

We loved him just so

Goddamn much

We traded him in kind.

---

Every word is a panted breath

In the throes of love

You fight the feel, you kick, you squeal

Thank the god above

---

If I'd known the coward's weight

Carried sorrow, heavy fate

I'd have known a better way

To fight the ills, to face the day

Instead I floated life along

Beside life's river happy hangs

We went together singing long

Caroling out our chaste prolong

Now I hear my party bells

For reasons which I cannot tell

I became the coward scorned

A tainted life, my life adorned

Finding now my certain fate

Ending how they thought me great

---

A Salty Juxtaposition of Images

The heart is a vast and empty space

The tenants come and go

Scared away by thrashing glee

Seducing them in throe

The heart is a vast and empty space

Vacant by my doing

Their thoughts surround me, haunt unbounding

Demons, me unbinding

The heart is a vast and empty space

No room for other sin

I look upon the store of sorrow

And smile while thoughts are grim

The heart is a vast and empty space

Infinitely filling

Tracing holes to a center mind

Once there withdraw, repealing

---

And that's all folks.

And, poetry contest? Three best?

Double-Fisting Hiroshima

An infinite number of possibilities reek about me, but I feel like I can't touch them or taste them or feel them or be them.  I feel limited, I feel limiting.  Honey, this engagement is over.  Do we marry or do we part ways?  Every instant standing still is a possibility lost to the great, swallowing monster of time and I want them all back--I want every moment I ever turned down.  Perhaps if I just go back to the places and re-invent the occasions I'll be able to apologize to my monster.

He is not forgiving.

Do we exit, or stay?

Freeloader

My mother is pushing me out of the house. I am pushing back. She claims maturity is marked by taking on responsibilities such as work and...spending time with family? Her arguments have many large holes.

I get the right grades, I don't get in any trouble, but I tend to go out with friends, and I choose to avoid wasting my precious winter break working at a place I hate, making a negligible amount of money.

Ah my crimes cut deep.

Somehow I doubt my future will be shaped by today's shitty jobs. I'll graduate, I'll travel, I'll work, and all this will be completely unrelated to being a server or whatever other kind of job.

Oh! But I'll learn what it means to work as a part of a team, to take a bullet, to eat the words of an idiot and praise it like it's the word of God, to be overly competent and surrounded by impotence.

These lessons are valuable.

Now I know how to be subordinate, and I know how to be completely demeaned. My spirits are tainted against the working ways, goddammit I'm not doing it.

Tension in your Nugget

I've got this fire burning cold in me, raging unrelentlessly. I've been fi-fighting it for so long, but I think it's the wrong approach. I think I'll try giving in, seeing where it takes me. I think I let it once, but it took my consciousness with it. Having that back, it's like Christmas at midnight.
============

The one thing about life that has been deluding me lately is everyone's fear of mistakes.

Someone close to many people I love died a few weeks ago. Although nothing is certain, someone would have to be Aristotle to convince me he didn't do it on purpose. He had many problems in his life, and I think in the end he decided he'd made too many mistakes.

My mother is a few years from the fifty-mark, and she categorizes her life as a list of mistakes. College, marriage, remarriage, children.

Now, I face a decision. I either stay at this land-locked, farm-locked university, in a department that wants me to stay and do their "research", surrounded by 99% of Kentucky's smartest students, or go to an urban city, an urban university, and risk being in a department that "shuts their doors", talking to rich kids in their polos and white cardigans.

The mistake part, right? That's where she started. Mistakes.
If I should channel my response through a 20's poet, I might say

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

I don't think the mistake happens when you make the wrong choice. The mistake happens when you don't know how to deal with it, and you let it consume you to the point of shame and regret.

The man and the train: face your chosen circumstance, make the hard decision, and let yourself be happy. You're not the only one who chose the wrong life for yourself. A car is not a total reinvention, but it's a start.

The woman and the computer: your fate is not who you are, and it is not decided. Yeah, you're blocked from going out, you're prevented from getting to know your aging daughters, but it will not last. The mistakes you blame let you learn, so learn. Relax, and do the best you can.

The first-person narrative: make your mistake.



Another question: Is life a comedy or a tragedy? Pessimism or cynicism?
Today the sun is out shining, but the wind and the cold air cut my skin.

Raunchy Things are True to Form

Living fucking life

And fucking goddamn life

You hear it just so goddamn much

You want to spew your fill

I want to suck the marrow,

Blow it goddamn hard

Instead I find myself asleep,

Waking in my bed.

Now if we feel the fighting urge

To be a smaller person,

We do the fucking in our heads

Not feel the fucking feel.

My English professor said that the careful, diligent writer pursues poetry.  He finds its eloquent words disproportionately significant to, maybe, a short story or novel.  This prof also thinks, though, that there is only one dominant interpretation of Shakespeare.  I say?  Thanks for the A, and I'll see you in a day.

I've been poetic lately.  My shit started out shitty, and as time went forth and I got bored of the shit, I wrote noticeably less shitty.  However I surpassed the ideal "less shitty" and proceeded to write completely incomprehensable bullshit.  I yearn for the lesser of the shitty days, they were my best.

What I mean to say is, it's good to hear from you.  I'm not actually this profane little bitch-of-a-girl.  I take on the persona to fuel whatever needs to be ousted from my soul-thoughts.

PS:  I don't like this big, white background.  It daunts me.