Icky Metaphors

So there's been quite a lot going on, but none of it is particularly riveting blog material. Mostly I just feel like I'm chasing a horse that bucked me off--no, that's not really the way to describe it. Actually, I feel like I'm lurching my way out of a puddle of quicksand that I just realized was there. I'm just far enough behind in my tedious, scheduled aspects of life (school, work, etc.) to edge me into a bit of a panic and throw the more enjoyable things (writing, sleeping) all to hell.

Those goals I previously set out? Not going to happen, at least not this semester. Well, I guess I have been more social, but all the nice creative stuff has sunk down just out of my reach. Kind of depressing. I am, however, working as a production assistant on a short film that I'm quite excited about, so that's something. Also, I'm bound and determined to submit something to the undergrad literary journal this semester, even if it's not something I wrote this semester.

Hopefully winter break will bring a massive wave of leisure and inspiration, and I'll be back on track. But there's a lot of muck I have to shovel out of the way before I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

Yesterday I stepped out of the library to meet a goose-drownder of a downpour. And like every other student caught without an umbrella, I greeted it with an exasperated sigh or two. Why did I choose today to leave my umbrella at home? Why did it have to start raining now? I stood at the edge of the covered walkway, grumbling and bracing myself to make a run for it. But even as I contemplated the falling sheets with rising resentment, I came to a mildly horrifying realization: I was being a boring, stuffy old grown-up.

I love storms and rain and wind. I always have. And not just looking out through the window--I was out in the damn stuff all the time, splashing in the puddles and catching drops on my tongue and generally making my mom certain I'd catch my death of a cold. What the hell did I care if my natty ponytail or my beat-up cut-offs got a little damp? Maybe the world has taught me to grow up a little too well. I watched poor souls skitter across the open square; hunched and miserable, they were only trying to get to the next shelter as quickly as possible.

Screw that.

And so I walked--no, I sauntered out into the rain. I admired the marbled grey sky and appreciated the cool patter of water on my arms and face. When I was certain no one was watching, I did a little pirouette. And of course, I managed to get at least one excellent puddle splash in. By the time I made it home, my clothes were sodden and my glasses nearly useless. But damn if that wans't the best walk home I'd had in quite a while.

This is testing my will power already

So, last Monday (the 24th) marked a double-beginning, as it were. A new year of my life (age-wise and such) and a new year of school. Neither got off to a particularly fortuitous start, but everything seems to be shaping up. Hurrah!

Now, since I've heard that "real" people have these things called "goals," and since it's an intriguing concept, I've decided to try it out.


Things To (Maybe Possibly Hopefully?) Do This Semester:

-Write (and finish) at least 2 short stories

-Read On the Road

-Socialize more, dammit! I have friends that live within walking distance from me--why do I not see them more than once a year? My hermit complex needs to be scaled back...lots.

-On that note, make some new friends. Nothing too drastic, just one or two would be fine.

-Failing that, at least get out more.

-Save up as much money as possible. Well, as much as I can without too much inconvenience.

-Win at NaNoWriMo!

-Exercise at least once a week. You know, or so.

-Start eating (and actually enjoying) once new kind of vegetable.


Now, I'd say that's a respectable list of potential undertakings.We'll just see how all this business pans out.

My View of LSU, Part 1

Louisiana State University has Always Been There, hanging over my head throughout the course of my life. A large percentage of the population of Baton Rouge will bleed purple and gold if given the least opportunity, and such rabid fanaticism did not endear me to the institution. I swore up and down that come time for college, I was getting as far away from LSU (and the entire city and state) as opportunity would take me.

Turns out, that wasn't very far.

So yes, I ended up at LSU. But being stuck here... well, I haven't found it nearly as disagreeable as I thought I would. In fact, I've ended up with my optimal lifestyle (at this point, at least). I share an incredibly convenient and rather charming apartment with my wonderful boyfriend; my social circle consists almost entirely of super-awesome people; they pay me to go to school, for chrissakes. And though I've lived near it all my life, it's just in the past year that I've been able to look past the miasma of football and "GEAUX TIGERS" and see the place for itself.

The point I'm meandering around to is that I recently "bought" (in exchange for paying the electricity bill) a very nice camera off my boyfriend, and I've taken it with my on a couple of walks around campus and surrounding areas. Here are a few of the photos I snapped; it's no detailed photojournal, but I got to play with my new camera and document a glimpse of my current setting to boot! These should be worth a handful of words, at least. [It was impressively difficult to coax all of this into anything even resembling a workable format, so Parts 2+ may be a while in coming...]



<-The stairwell of my apartment building. A combination of creepy and charming!









Interesting and slightly shady everyday things.

















Some shots of the clocktower. Who doesn't like a good, old-fashioned phallic symbol?



















































Around campus, etc.

State Street, where the magic begins.

Nightly Apocalypse

Every night just outside my window, a battle is fought. I’m not exactly sure of the nature of this fight, but night after night of involuntary research has led me to believe that it is a hellbeast, a sign of the coming apocalypse, venturing up from its unholy den to hunt. The hour of this battle is variable, but it is inevitably timed to happen only moments before I drift off to sleep--a nightly trial of the soul. To the thing outside my window, this is probably a bonus.

The first sign is a faint, ominous snarl, life the rumblings of thunder from a distant storm. As it crescendos into a grumbling roar, my body involuntarily tenses and I grind my teeth in anticipation of the coming trial. After it reaches its peak, the roar subsides into a thoughtful purr as the two sides ready for battle. Here the approaching beast usually lets out its battle cry, a shrill, repeated scream that sends my head burrowing into the pillow. The idle growling swells back to a roar as the beast charges. It meets its prey in an unholy crash, the crack of doom aurally silhouetted by the grinding screech of the attacker, a sound like the screams of the damned—not those placid souls resigned to their fate, but the ones who are royally Pissed Off about the way things are going for them. Every night I pray for a swift victory, for though the beast always wins in the end, its opposition puts up a hell of a fight sometimes. Some nights the scuffle is mercifully quick. Other nights the cacophony of bangs and crashes, rumblings and shrieks goes on for ages, echoing off the walls of buildings and the inside of my skull.

Finally, the beast, satiated at last, throws the carcass of its prey to the ground, where it lands with a hollow crash. It trumpets its cry again, this time in smug victory. It is an arrogant, ostentatious thing, this beast. With one last, contented roar, the thing rumbles laboriously off, its belly full, and I allow myself a small shudder of relief. It is only after all of this that I am able to attempt again my quest for sleep.

Oh, wait, I believe I hear the beast approaching now. I’m afraid I have to go; I have front-row seats for tonight’s apocalypse.

An Offering of Poetry-- How Delightfully Droll!

Dredged up some more poems, one a couple of years old and the other a couple of months. In my more recent affairs with poetry, I've taken a different direction, experimenting more with enjambment, etcetera. Possibly some more of these to come, and I'm working on some actual new stuff to post. Fingers crossed!

----------------

Infidelity

I can see where her head lay
A strand of hair where mine should be
My voice is silent in this house
An accusation of his infidelity

But I shall take, I shall shake, I shall break
These walls until they say
What harlot has usurped my vows
A week and a half from my wedding day



The Edge

The raindrops drip
as smoke on the sill
And the air thrums
with the words and the rhythms and the riffs
Of the human experience

And we breathe the
smoke and the liquor and the hour
As we shout our souls
into that thick air
In hopes that some other’s
will turn to ours (for what?)

And again we reel
With our cosmic clichés
into our philosophic armchairs
As we discuss lives
laid bare
(not ours of course)
by forsaking the world

But for all our eighty years
(some more
some less)
We have drunk but a
fourth of our cup

And so we lapse into
the words of the heads on our mantelpieces
Still shouting desperately
Grasping at explanation
Or meaning
Not seeking the edge
but the delineation of its silhouette
In the hopes that someday
If we see it if we sense
its dark smirk
looming on the horizon

We Will Know.

Overlooking the Abyss

Not quite sure what this is, so we're going to go with prose poetry. I didn't realize it when I first had the idea, but this more or less describes my experience with writing. Just a little dribble from my mind, but it's far better than nothing, which is what said mind has been producing recently.

-------

Last night I dreamt before I slept that an ivory maiden led me through an ivory tower perched on the edge of a cliff. It was high, the tower, overlooking an abyss, and from it bridges sprouted, many of them. They arched across the wide gulf, a spiderweb of safe passage. I told the maiden I wanted to stand on the highest point of the highest bridge, to straddle the abyss and watch its two edges meet eternally at a point just short of infinity. She smiled the smile of a lady saint and led me up staircases and down hallways. I thought at first we were walking in circles but realized we were walking in spheres; the maiden assured me this was the right way. The light was the light of a grey early morning—itself indistinct, everything else painfully clear. Often our shadows ran too far ahead and had to wait for us to catch them. I could not decide if the tower was one room or thousands. And finally we emerged at the tip of a spire, at the point where the bridge must begin. But instead of a path, the abyss bloomed before me, fading into a depth farther than I could fall. No walkways spanned it, nothing tethered its edges, and there was no sign that anything had tried. And so I balanced between waking and sleeping, calling out to the maiden who was no longer there.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Blog...

This post was going to be an episode of me whinging and wringing my hands about how I haven't posted since February. There were going to be excuses, rationalizations, and a rather self-deprecating rant about my fear of writing. I decided to forgo all that-- it really wasn't worth my time or anyone else's--and instead make this a simple announcement: This Blog is Still Active. What's more, flying in the face of my laziness and self-criticism, I intend to update (gasp) frequently.

Well, at least more frequently than once every six months.

So I guess it's time to clear the rust and dust and rats' nests out of the old brain-motor, and actually get things rolling. I can't guarantee anything groundbreaking, but I can guarantee something, at least.

(Probably) Forthcoming:
-The first bits of a character sketch/story I'm working on
-Musings on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
-A first attempt at prose poetry (??)

Now all I need to do is hire someone to stand behind me with a menacing look and make sure I update regularly. Any takers?

These Are the Bruised Relics of My Past

So here's some poetry I finally dug up. It's strange, when I go through things like old diarys or LiveJournals or DeviantArts... I feel like some new-age archaeologist sifting through a red-light district. Anyhow, these are some poems written about two years ago, rough and virtually unedited. I might be better at poetry now, but then again, I haven't tried since then. Who knows.

-----

Icarus, Indeed

The wind invades my lungs
I breathe of its accord, not mine
The very breath that beats
Beneath birds wings is now my breath
I might fly with them this once

To taste and hear the sun
It chides me for my folly
I follow the foolish wingbeats
Of the doomed dreamer Icarus
Forgetting he was just Man

And with my grand wax wings
I know the wind and sun will take
And on this edge of fools
I return to my homely perch
To sleep, to dream, of another flight


Not Quite

Our love is not quite anything-
Neither simile nor metaphor
Can make it something else
Nor acronym nor mnemonic
Can render it easily explained
Nor can it be framed by adjectives
Lovely and elegant they may be
Nor even levered by adverbs
Floating lightly and softly about
I suppose a few verbs may come close
After all, they swoop and sway
But I maintain we cannot be captured
By any grammatical structure
Save the platform I construct
That we may boast our linguistic victory


3:20 AM

It's strange when thoughts don't come in words
And everything to say
Trips lightly not off my tongue
But instead falls out my brain
The dance of speech eludes me
(But I did always want for grace)

And silly faeries steal the letters
Floating freely from my pen
And make them into changeling fiends
Then back to thoughts again
(But at least I'm free of penance
If good writing is a sin)

Perhaps it is the dreadful hour
That steals these words from me
For at any other time but this
They come quite easily
But the moon has set and the sun not risen
So I think my words shall sleep.


This Is Not A Love Poem

There was a harvest moon tonight
It was low and bright
And it reminded me of you
After a fashion
And it reminded me
That you had never heard me sing
But that's alright
There's a song I know
That reminds me of you, too
After a fashion
It's low and intense
Says forgive, not forget
Never forget
That everything will be alright
Because it always ends up that way
And I sing to myself at night
After the moon rises
So I don't forget
Could I forget?
We danced once (under the stars)
And you sang for me once
And it was love...ly
And I won't forget


Ode to Fire

O Fire! This gift I both loathe and adore!
Your flippant beauty is deceptive
Can't your enamoured lovers see
You burn and sear them on a whim
And beneath that is a suprising chill
Such an unexpected property
Many, so many are dazzled by you
Yet you shun them as you please
They they may try, I know
You cannot be tamed
But still it remains
That fact of your superior beauty
Of which even the gods seem jealous
They kept you from Man, but to no avail
With you we were so bitterly rewarded
You giver of light, of warmth
You destroyer of all
How many have been humbled by you?
I, myself, among them certainly
How fickle to those who may love you!
Alas, you care not for them
You dance along your way
Heedless of their adoration of curses
All fades next to you
For fortune of folly you burn on
And singe all who might try for your warmth
Keep your flickering, overwhelming beauty--
I cannot bear it.


Keepers of the Dark

Why must all the keepers of dark be ugly?
They should dance among the gaily miserable of the light
-- But that is why they keep the dark-- to stay hidden
Their selfish lonliness keeps them ironically safe

Think of the fair maid of the night and her polished gentleman
Through lovely frozen courts and icy parties he moves mechanically
Then at night the fire of her love in the gutter
Of them, which is the happier?

And what of the poet who writes by the candle?
Night by night, her beauty drains from her pen?
As she writes of love she never knew and a sun she'll never see
She has everything she's ever wanted, all only for herself

Dark surrounds the keepers, the secrets to hide them
His cape a bitter and mocking protection
But those who withdraw there will not be found
Their wish is granted, their hope only hung on themselves.

------

Well, channel teenage angst into freeverse, and I guess this is what you get. I'll update with some more current stuff, probably in prose form, fairly soon.

The World is an Improbable Place

All the time, improbable things are happening to people with otherwise reasonable lives.

…

Did I ever tell you about the time I met the Devil?

We (the Boy and I) were walking home after visiting with a friend. We were in That Neighborhood—every city has at least one, the refuge of the artists, the druggies, the bohemians, the hippie kids living off the dregs left by the legacy of the Love Generation. None of the bland menace of Surburbia here; the buildings tumble together in a hodge-podge of colors and styles, all different but all dingy and not a little worn around the edges. In retrospect, it wasn’t particularly surprising to find him there, going about his business. It takes away credibility from the bogeyman in the closet image, at least.

In any case, dusk had set in, and we were looking to get home before total dark. But it was winter, and before we had made it halfway, night crept in and overtook us. It was clear and very cold, and the stars had rallied against the smear of streetlights to show an impressive strength of numbers. In fact, I was so caught up in gawking at the stars that I almost didn’t notice the man standing on the edge of the road.

He was talking on a cell phone when he caught sight of us. “No, no. Of course. Hey, let me call you back later. Okay. Ciao.” He snapped the phone shut. “Hey!” It took me a second to realize he was talking to us. He was standing next to a telescope, grinning and waving us over. Behind him, another man, short and stocky and wearing an oversized fur coat, was loading boxes into the back of a truck.

I glanced at the Boy anxiously. This guy seemed on the shady side, and I didn’t necessarily want to get drawn into talking with him. The Boy just shrugged and waved a greeting to the man. As we walked towards him, I eyed him suspiciously. He was a tall, swarthy fellow with dark close-cropped hair that came to a widow’s peak at his forehead. Now that we were closer, I saw that he had a thin scar that snaked down his left cheek. He was still grinning; it seemed vaguely out of place on his rather severe face.

“Here to catch the show?” he asked amiably. We exchanged puzzled looks as he waved, taking in the sky with his gesture. “The show,” he repeated, patting his telescope fondly. “Venus and Jupiter are dancing together tonight, folks, right above the crescent moon. Those cosmos are smiling right down on us.” He was still grinning, and the light was slipping and sliding across his teeth. It was beginning to unnerve me. As he went on to list other rare astronomical occurrences, I watched the other man load boxes and mentally named him “the sidekick.” Then the first man paused, looking at us.

“And do you know the next time this—all this—is going to happen? Hm? No?” His grin grew wider as we shook our heads. He looked over at his sidekick.

“2012.”

“Twenty-twelve!” he repeated brightly, sounding like a manic game show host. “Yes, 2012, that’s when it’s all going down. Big party, bi-i-ig party. Everyone’s going to be there. You guys should come.” We nodded, laughed a bit nervously. “Didn’t catch your names,” he said, looking at us. His eyes were hooded, and I couldn’t quite make out their color. We hesitated, then told him our names. He repeated them slowly, committing them to his memory. “Look forward to seeing you there,” he told us. I wondered how soon we could extract ourselves from this.

“Hey, are you guys in love?” the sidekick asked suddenly. The Boy and I looked at each other, taken aback.

“Um, yes, actually we are,” I replied. The Man (he had gained capital letter status in my mind) nodded. He held one hand out in front of him and brought the other one back, drawing an imaginary bow. He aimed at and “shot” the Boy, who played along, putting his hand to his heart.

“Yeah, that’s good,” the Man said, lowering his hands. “We’re gonna need more people like you two. Good people. Smart people.” He was grinning again. “You know.” We laughed again. Yeah, we agreed, we knew.

No one said anything for a moment, then the Boy mentioned the new Metallica album, which the Man seemed quite enthusiastic about. They threw that around for a while, then we finally made our good-byes.

“Very nice meeting you,” the Man said. “I’ll try and remember you guys…keep an eye out for you.” He winked. And as we turned to go, I thought I saw his eyes, for the briefest of moments, gleam bright red. I blamed it, like anyone would, on a trick of the light.

We continued along the street in silence, but when we got to the corner, we both spoke simultaneously.

“Was that--?”

“Did we--?”

We stopped and looked at each other, then kept walking.

After a moment, I said casually, “I’m thinking we just had a chat with Satan.”

“That’s funny, I was thinking the same thing.”

“Should we…I don’t know, go to church this weekend or something?”

“Nah. Probably wouldn’t help.”

“You’re probably right.” I thought for a moment. “That new movie’s playing tonight. Want to go? It’s still early.”

“Sounds good.”

So we continued on our way. I only glanced over my shoulder twice the rest of the way home.

Ashes to Ashes

We sat on a grand, sweeping staircase leading to nowhere. It was a cold, solid shade of ivory, but the floor below us was a dizzying whirl of checkered patterns. They seemed to be moving almost imperceptibly of their own accord and I felt a little woozy looking at them, so I turned my attention elsewhere. The hall, if that’s what it was, didn’t end, but stretched on and on before us until distance grayed it out into a dull infinity. An army of potted plants lined the walls, standing at attention between huge windows that looked out only onto a gentle, featureless brightness. I looked up. The ceiling wasn’t visible either; the walls just stretched up, seemingly interminable. Somewhere very far off, a maddeningly slow version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” played, thin and scratchy as if it were on an old record.

I looked over at him. He hadn’t yet spoken and was absently studying the patterns on the floor, seemingly lost in thought. I took the chance to study him, and tried to be discreet about it. He seemed real enough, certainly more so than our surroundings and much more than my memories of him, which grew more abstract every day. I could even smell him, he was so solid and close—that scent peculiar to each individual. His was instantly recognizable to me, even after months of its absence. I was surprisingly calm. I was vaguely aware that I should be upset, or angry, or something at least. But I had no urge to slap him, or spit on him, or get up and walk away, though I had played out all of these scenes over and over in my head with a vengeful glee.

Finally he looked up, offering me that sheepish, crooked grin of his. I quirked an eyebrow in return. We continued to sit in silence. One beat passed. Two. But can you subdivide it? I thought wryly. Tri-puh-let, tri-puh-let…then he spoke, interrupting my mental rhythm.

“So… how’ve you been?” His voice didn’t echo as I’d expect in the huge room, instead it sounded close, intimate, as if we were in a small room. I shrugged, said nothing. My gaze slid off him and over to the potted plants, which now appeared improbably to be waltzing with one another. A few more moments of uneasy silence passed. He shifted and seemed about to say something else, but I cut him off.

“Why?” My voice was flat, dull. If I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t happy to see him either. I wasn’t anything, in fact. The guilty pit of emotion I kept hidden specially for him was gone, replaced by an airy nothingness. It was actually quite a relief.

I still wasn’t looking at him, but I could see in my peripheral vision that he was still looking at me. “Please…don’t ask why what. You know damn well and if you pretend you don’t, we have no business talking.”

“I wasn’t going to ask why what,” he muttered, rather in the way of a child sulking. I had preempted his ploy of circling the matter, as was his expertise.

“So, why?” I looked up, and our eyes met. There was a flash of something—pity? Guilt? Smugness?—in his.

“It...it’s not important,” he said softly. “Trust me.”

I laughed, a harsh sound that surprised me. “Trust you? Trust you? You’ve lied to me every chance you’ve gotten since we met. And then you—just—and you expect me to trust you?” I grimaced. “You’ve asked a lot of me before, but this is a bit much.”

“Once you would have trusted me with your life without a second thought.”

I just looked at him, then looked away. I didn’t really have to stay here and listen to this, did I? Then he raised his hand and softly cupped my face in his hand. I was too shocked to recoil. He had never so much as touched me without some kind of provocation, and never, never so gently or solemnly. He brushed my cheek with his thumb, and I saw it glisten. I was crying; I hadn’t even realized it. I turned my face and pushed his hand away. Insults were one thing; even a tussle would be normal. But this, this I couldn’t deal with.

“It doesn’t even matter now, does it?” he said in the same soft tone. He sounded almost apologetic. And I realized begrudgingly that perhaps he was right. No reason he could give was going to change things, really. I should have let this go long ago. So I just shrugged.

After that we talked for hours, not that time mattered much in that room. Rimsky-Korsakov had long since stopped and turned into the soundtrack to Hairspray, which turned into The Nightmare Before Christmas. We didn’t talk of anything of consequence, just related silly little anecdotes and musings on the past to each other and debated things like the best way to resolve a certain chord. We never went back to the subject of our strange relationship or how it had ended.

But as our conversation went on, I realized that there was something I still had left to say. There were three words I thought I could never bring myself to speak, not to him, not after all that had happened. But there they were, on the tip of my tongue, waiting for me to open my mouth. I figured I might as well say it; after all, I had nothing to lose here, and it might finally bring me some peace, or at least closure.

“I forgive you.”

He said nothing, only smiled slightly. I realized I was smiling too. The music was growing fainter, and his face was fading away along with the rest of the room as the light grew brighter. Finally, finally, I thought. It’s over.
And I woke up.

------------------------------------

That day I burned our pictures. It was symbolic, a funeral with a body of memories to put to rest. I watched in silence, dry-eyed, as the fire licked at snapshots I had locked away for so long, unable to look at. Ashes to ashes, I thought. But as the edges of his crooked grin began to crackle and curl in the flames, I felt my throat close up and a familiar pressure on the back of my tongue. Not sadness, anger. And I realized that I had lied. I hadn’t forgiven him. How can you forgive a phantom, a demon that lurks in the corners of your mind, popping out at the least opportune moments? For he was no longer a person to me, only a knot of memories and pain that wore his face. And I could not bring myself to forgive that, not really. The fire had burned down to a tiny pile of cinders. So this is what it all came down to. Ashes to ashes, I thought again, grimly.

So I turned away, letting the wind scatter the ashes as it wished. The whole ordeal seemed a failed exorcism, and now the priest was shaking his head, packing up his crosses and holy water, and going home. But in the end, we all have our demons.