Rowing

I'm putting my oar into the sea

Only to push against the sand. 

Lights

You've always had a face full of conflict, but when someone 

pricked you between the plates and

you lowered your shield--

I saw faith in a lifetime of dawns, 

prisms of color in gray raindrops,

light reflecting off warm windows in winter;

A light flashed inside me and 

flickers in memory.

 

Floating Intellect: Autumn

She barely stood up to put her books in her bag when she saw the flash of Camden's shoulder disappear from the door-frame. Autumn hastily arranged her books in her bag and swung it over her shoulder as she hurried out the door, down the hall, and bounded down the steps. She caught up with Camden outside on the lawn between the journalism school and the library. 

"Camden! Hey, Cam, wait!" Camden stopped but didn't turn to look at her.

"Are you okay? Do you have somewhere you need to be? If so, I don't want to keep you. You just left class so quickly and without a word, that I'm a little concerned."

"Everything is fine." Camden didn't meet Autumn's gaze.

Autumn moved to stand directly in front of Camden and rested her hands on Camden's shoulders--she looked down at her. Camden looked at the grass and fidgeted anxiously and uncomfortably under Autumn's gentle grip. 

"You're out of breath."

"I just ran out of class."

"You and I both know that alone couldn't make you lose your breath."

"If I were sick..."

"But you're not. Camden, I don't know what has happened recently, but it wouldn't hurt you to share. Something's off with you. You've been all out of sorts for days: You get flustered and distracted. You're absent-minded and disorganised. This isn't like you." Camden continued to look at her feet. But Autumn could feel her slow down, see her tense muscles and defensive posture relax, and hear her breath become less desperate. 

"Will you look at me?" Camden inhaled deeply, lifted her head, and looked resolutely in Autumn's eyes. 

Autumn paused and let her hands fall from Camden's shoulders. 

Her skin looked tired, it's milky lustre tuned to bone. Her lips looked dry and thirsting. Her curls hung lifelessly around her face. The shadows around her eyes gave her an expression of exhausted pleading, a pain turned hollow.

"Autumn...," she started to speak, but before she could finish what she intended to say her voice passed away . 

Autumn knew anyway.

She stood with restraint and watched Camden walk away. 

Dear Little Brother

This is just to say that:

when I'm talking to you on the phone and your voice cracks,

when we drove across country and you lost seven staring-contests 

in a row

when I visit every three months and you've got another inch on me,

when I can hear you in the background laughing

so hard you can't stop

when you could finally take my punches like a man

when I know, nothing fearing, faith never failing, that you'll do

the right thing

when I remember back to when I was twelve and you were eight 

when I have to remind myself it's seven years later

and you're only getting better...

I do, and did, and will look up to you. 

No matter how tall you get,

no matter how many years my junior 

you remain,

no matter how many girls you date,

or hearts you break,

no matter how often I'll give you advice because

that's what older siblings do,

no matter how immature you get...

I do, and did, and will look up to you:

I do, and did, and will always

love you. 

streaming semi-consciousness

The branches outside my window sit still for the first time in days, mocking with their contentment outside the tempest rising within. I ache with emotional exhaustion and a persistent crink in my neck. The darkness folds its curtains around me while I stare away my soul into a screen. I feel like fleeing through my window and across the masquerading mountains over cornfields and wide rivers to where winter has already come. I want to hide in a valley between overpowering rocks ascending towards heaven and the lake whose end can't be seen from the shore. I want to feel the sky unencumbered by the earthly trees that presently prevent my view. I want to feel the cold that apologizes for being so by jeweling my whole self and surroundings with crystals and creates a quiet security as it muffles the sounds of the world. 

I want to see stars. 

A moon who hasn't been replaced by stadium lights or crowded out by buildings. 

I want to see the splendor of the sun in it's descent, not just feel the gradual extinguishing of it's light. I want to see it pastel the clouds and set fire to the water, to see it retire to deep blue instead of abdicating, exiled by the dark. 

What I wouldn't give to see a cloud! What I wouldn't give to see it parade phantasmagorically across an azure stage so nonchalantly, so unassuming, passing it's silhouette over the unfortunate mortal. Oh if I could just lie on grass with the earth working for and supporting rather than working against me. If only the ground would calm itself long enough to let me lie on my back, for I cannot yet stand on my feet. I want to earth to hold me while I observe the heavens, not hurt me. 

Hide me while I wait for the apocalypse, won't you? If you can't bear me before heaven, at least bear me a little before hell. Sink me deep into your soil in one swift swallow. Plant me where the roots of trees may plant themselves, wrapping great fibers around my arms and legs, piercing through my side. If you keep me, I will keep you. Until together we will be burned in the great purging of our impurities by flagellanting blaze. 

If you will not keep me, I will wander until someone does. Here a stone or brook or borough, until somewhere will hide me forever. 

If, of course, that sky is beyond me. Those stars and moon and sun. Or else I am confusing darkness, outside the once-sought sky. In the end I see that somewhere I have breached the contract between the sky, the earth, and me. 

If it isn't bitter, it was never sweet

I 

could

erase

it 

all.

let it wash away

as rain 

f

a

l

l

s

and

let it fade to gray

Watch it become nothing

before  eyes.

my

This fake real life I 

REALIZE

too much

inside.

But

I won't hide.

For if I must, I'll take the 

pain

 to remind me now

 like a   sweet 

Refrain

 

of those things.

Once again.

Prepping for a paper

Step 1: Arrange study area in living room. Look at text on which I am supposed to be writing and type some garbage.  

Step 2: Talk to roommate. 

Step 3: Decide it is time for dinner. Make dinner. Eat dinner while typing some more garbage.

Step 4: Realize you have to get ready for an evening lecture. Get ready. 

Step 5: Go to lecture, which takes longer than the time alloted for it.

Step 6: Return from lecture and decide to make pumpkin spice bread. 

Step 7: Realize you have no nutmeg, so go downstairs, outside, to the other apartment complex, and rummage through your friend's spices before realizing she doesn't have any either.

Step 8: Go outside, to your apartment complex, upstairs and back to your own apartment. 

Step 9: Decide to turn the pumpkin spice bread into pumpkin spice muffins.

Step 10: Hold a makeshift Family Home Evening in which you are the sole family member. Have two songs just for kicks, a prayer, a scripture, and listen to two Conference talks. Do all this while arranging a canopy over your bed with the window curtain that is too short for the window. 

Step 11: Show everyone said canopy.

Step 12: Eat pumpkin spice muffin while watching a little television.

Step 13: Commit to writing your paper.

Step 14: Hear roommate come back and go to catch up on her stories. 

Step 15: Commit to writing paper. 

Step 16: After you eat another muffin.

Step 17: Get on YouTube and listen/watch Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl" to get pumped up for writing your paper.

Step 18: Repeat step 17.

Step 19: Work on outline for paper while listening to "Viva la Vida: Or Death and All His Friends" 

Step 20: Work on outline until "Viva la Vida" stops playing (because you've worked through the entire album) and mess around trying to find appropriate music on YouTube.

Step 21: Finally finish outline and decide that you need to get pumped up again.

Stept 22: Go through various music videos searching for the perfect pep song.

Step 23: Decide you need to get up and move to keep awake.

Step 24: Decide you need to get up and go to the bathroom in order to feel comfortable writing your paper.

Step 25: Decide you need to make peanut butter toast with orange juice in order to get the serotonin flowing to write your paper.

Step 26: Decide to watch something to help you wake up while you eat your peanut-butter toast. 

Step 27: Change your mind and listen to Demetri Martin jokes while writing this blog about how many steps it took before you actually started typing your paper. 

Step 28: Realize that you must drink your orange juice in order for you to be able to properly absorb your adderall when you take it at 8:30, four hours from now. 

Step 29: Realize that you should have started writing the paper BEFORE the adderall wore off, to reduce the number of steps. 

Step 30: Write paper.

*Some steps have been omitted in the interest of time. 

Wristcutter: A love story

It always begins and ends the same way: innocent intentions turned to pulchritudinous pain. Tortuous, sadistic pain. It is my addiction. I am addicted to the pain I inflict upon myself like a cutter is addicted to the blade against his skin, to the scarlet streaks that form across the flesh and to the puckered scars.

And I've given myself a lot of them: scars. But my blade of choice isn't made of metal.

It's made of emotion. 

 

Slash.

The shallow feelings that fill my bathetic sentiments with puffed air.

Slash.

Erratic, diametrical irrationality nascent from obsession.

Slash.

No sooner have the latest scars turned from pink to white than I streak them red, agitated again. 

Slash.Slash.Slash.

It feels so good: to hurt so much.

Before all those scars, now hidden behind sleeves of silence or verbally veiled according to my own semasiology. Before all this: a beautiful lamb without blemish, without scars. Now ravaged and torn by the wolves I costumed in sheep's clothing--no longer suitable for sacrifice.

SLASH.

Floating Intellect: Prescott

His slow approach from the far end of the library towards the great table at the center was slow and quiet. His steps were deliberate and calculated, moving with a steadiness of foot attributed to his strength and agility; his sculpted, sinewy muscles working simultaneously in an even stride, his self-awareness and control keen enough to contain the impact, weight and reverberations of his steps. His breaths drew long and deep and slow while his arms maintained an uncharacteristic stillness, intending to leave the air as undisturbed by his approach as he could manage. He could not see the object of his destination, correctly imagining his object veiled from view by stacks of books and papers and notebooks piled in dangerous but artfully-neat towers, each one undoubtedly and laboriously arranged according to some complex and overly-intellectualized system. The effect of the stout table dominated by the evidences of an in-depth research grew continuously imposing as he neared the object of his thoughts. Soon he was close enough to catch the first glimpses of his motive. Upon discovering her asleep amidst a wave of papers and books, he moved from around the back of the table to the corner to her left. He rested his left hand gently on the edge of the table, unconsciously desiring to feel the beat of the breath transmitted through the thick wood, but at the same time, not wanting to disturb her.

She looked like an angel lost on earth. Her face, turned away from him with her left cheek using her open Shakespeare anthology as a pillow, was almost entirely hidden by the voluminous cloud of dark chocolate-brown curls forming a nimbus around her oval face, a spray of stray curls-- appearing star-strewn underneath the glow of fluorescent lights--shaded her olive cheek and mingled with the shadows of her long, thick eyelashes. A few flighty curls shuddered whimsically to her even shallow breaths, like curtains fluttering about to the breeze at an open window. Her eyelashes skimmed her cheek under the subtle movements of a dream, estranging the shadows across her skin. In spite of the estrangement by the activity of her lashes, like that of earth from the sun as the result of shading branches, she appeared otherwise peaceful, her dream perhaps a recollection of her pre-earthly angelic experience. The only disturbance, the only evidence of earth, the only stain to the situation came from the pen she held to an open notebook, trapped mercilessly beneath her right hand as it violated the paper to which it was held with a suspiciously-strong grip, one that might only be attributed to the coherent, but heavy enough to witness to her slumbering state. It's ink, which had begun as an obedient line in the formation of a "t," had budded to a blot and blossomed to a three-centimeter-diametered bloom under the pressure, no doubt having sprung a leak from some joint in its plastic construction.

He moved at first to remove the paper of its burden, intending to free the pen of its struggle and thereby rescue the entire notebook from destruction and relieving the hand from excessive stress; but he only left his hand to hover over hers for a moment, examining with some contentment the still-life of his hand so close to hers. Conscientious that such a movement of her hand, or even an attempt to extract the pen from her grip, would surely wake her; he moved his hand with a thought to shoo the petal-soft curls from her face, but stayed his hand again upon feeling the warmth radiating from her unusually-pale cheek, the heat normally signified by a fire-pink glow laying hidden beneath her silken olive skin. An unsteadily-sharp and deep breath and a flicker of lashes punctured his reverie and yielded him from any contact. He wanted to detain her restoration to earth.

His observations, comprehensive as they were, comprised but a small moment-the passing of a few seconds, during which his attentions were accompanied by a fulness of thoughts and visions like this angel had brought him prematurely to the judgement bar at which trial she made the sum of all his experiences, the measure of his creation, the fulfillment of his purpose.

On Principle, Not Party

My conservative family's favorite pastime? Criticize Obama. 

I go by principle, not by party. Despite my socialist-slant to the left, I do not personally support Obama. And yet I find myself being constantly attacked by my radically conservative family. It's no help that my father subscribes to Ann Coulter's newsletter (which to me is the equivalent of reading satanically-stained apostate texts) or that my brother is borderline fascist. 

Yesterday, as if trying to convince me that Obama is Satan incarnate, despite my repeated affirmations that I DO NOT support him, my mother recounted a story of a recent heckling at an Obama rally. During Obama's speech, someone stood up and commented that the meeting had not begun with the Pledge of Allegiance. The person accusingly demanded to know why Obama had not begun his rally with the Pledge. Obama stopped his speech and asked the man to lead them in the Pledge, which he did, before continuing on. 

I knew my mother would twist this to an Obama-hates-America spiel. But as she told me the story, I couldn't help but get a picture in my mind of a similar incident. Every so often, someone in church forgets to start a meeting with a prayer and someone will stop the meeting and make everyone bow their heads before moving on. 

Ann Coulter may write books about Democrats who make health care and energy-alternatives their god in her book Godless, but as I listened to this story, I couldn't help but think: Republicans have made America their god, and the Pledge of Allegiance their prayer.

Music to My Ears

I have a very strange relationship with music: I can't live without it. Literally. When I can't find my iPod, which has been rather a lot lately, I walk around with my laptop open and my iTunes running. I associate memories, experiences, and feelings with music the way some people associate those things with smells. There is only one other thing with which I have such an intimate relationship: the written word. Therefore, I hereby combine the two in an non-poetical ode to six songs that have great meaning to me. A playlist of said songs can be found at the bottom of this blog.

1. Return to Innocence by Enigma

This is my favorite song of all time. The first time I remember hearing this song, as embarrassing as this is to admit, was when I watched a Jonathan Taylor-Thomas movie Man of the House about a young man who intensely dislikes his mother's new boyfriend but bonds with and eventually comes to love this man in his own way through a series of activities in the "Indian Guides," a sort of father-son bonding group in the neighborhood. The beginning of this song, a beautiful Native American chant features at the end of this film. When I hear the beginning it reminds me of two relationships I have. The first is with my biological father: I remember how JTT's character came to love the man who became his stepfather and it reminds me how much I love my own father. The second relationship I think of when I hear this song is the relationship I have with my Heavenly Father. This song has a way of randomly playing when I need it most, and every time I hear it I am reminded that my Heavenly Father loves me. The soothing affects that this song has on me helps me to remember that God is in control. 

Furthermore, this song has a message that I need to hear more perhaps than any other. It encourages me to "return to innocence," to return to how I was when I first heard it as a little girl. "Don't be afraid to be weak/don't be too proud to be strong/just look into your heart and that will be the return to yourself." "Don't care what people say/ just follow your own way/ don't give up and lose the chance/ to return to innocence." This song holds multiple messages for me: messages of repentance, finding and being true to myself, redemption, death, and of course, returning to innocence. 

2. Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve

Three of the songs on this playlist remind me of the same person every time I hear them and are inextricably associated with my high school experience. This is one of those songs. I first heard this song my junior year of high school. The orchestral introduction was played over the loud-speakers as the student body entered and exited the auditorium before and after ever assembly that year. I loved it and accidentally stumbled upon it one late night while browsing for new music. 

When I hear it, I remember what a tough year that was and filing in and out of assemblies. The song deals with the struggle for temporal things we leave behind ("tryin' to make ends meet/ you're a slave to money/ then you die").  Junior year was, for me, a struggle with a lot of temporal things: preparing for and choosing colleges; the reconstructive surgery that changed me emotionally, physically and mentally and the lost connection I felt with God after spending an entire semester completely self-centered. It discusses the bittersweet quality of our lives and reminds me of the bittersweet quality of the relationship with the person of whom this song reminds me. Painfully, its chords bring to memory the time I stood against the back wall of the auditorium for an entire assembly next to this person without ever saying a word and regretting it. Still. 

The song's title reflects my how I feel about it. It's bitter and painful, and yet, it's "sounds recognize the pain in me" and "I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind [and] feel free."

3. Fix You by Coldplay

This is the second song I associate with high school and with that one person. I remember walking out of my first period Health class on my way to second period during what was the worst semester of my life: Now I was actually applying to the colleges I'd chosen my junior year; my future was uncertain and I was recovering from another surgery. After struggling through Health class, the first song I heard on my iPod was this one. The crooning of Chris Martin about "tears streaming down [my] face," and "[loving] someone but it goes to waste," asking"could it be worse" almost put me into tears right there in the hall. But then, the phrase "lights will guide you home/ and ignite your bones/ and I will try to fix you" reminded me of my Savior and how He could fix me. And how someone already had fixed me, by example, the semester before and, though I couldn't have known it then, would fix me the next semester. 

4. Mustang Sally by The Commitments

This is the first song I ever remember hearing. Ever. This is the song to which I sang before I understood that music was made by artists rather than falling out of the sky and wafting through a stereo. Since I was young, my chore has always been to clean the kitchen. And I've always hated it. When I lived on 3rd north in Bountiful, I was often banished to the kitchen after meals to clean the dishes while my family was in the family room laughing as they watched television together. The family learned their lesson about leaving me though, when a cabinet fell on me and pinned my head between  it and the stove while they were in the other room. Often my friends would call and ask me to play, but I wouldn't be allowed out until the dishes were clean; and since I get horribly distracted, it would often take until all the soap bubbles were gone. 

Luckily for me, however, my father had a soft heart and took pity on me many a time. He would come into the kitchen, put on the soundtrack to The Commitments and we would dance around the black-and-white-checkered floor while he sang the male lead and I sang the female backup, using an egg-beater as a microphone. We may not have gotten the kitchen cleaned much faster, but it was certainly much more fun. To this day, I cannot clean the kitchen without music and yes, I sing and dance. The people who live behind us get quite a show.

This song made the 1965 Ford Mustang my favorite car. And, since the other songs on the soundtrack included other soulful and jazzy numbers such as "Chain of Fools," it probably prepared my pipes for the genre, as today my voice sounds much better as a soul sister than a pop princess.  Finally, when I hear a new song, I sometimes evaluate it based on whether or not my husband will be able to sing and dance to it in the kitchen with our daughter. "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs is my current favorite.

5. Suffer Well by Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode, one of my favorite bands, almost had two songs on this list. But I didn't think it would be fair, and I have more of an attachment to this one than any other. Off their Playing the Angel album that came out in the fall of 2005, the songs on this album were described on the jewel case as being "pain and suffering in various tempos," thus, this album fit my personality more or less perfectly, probably more to the more.  This song, written by lead singer Dave Gahan about his extensive drug use, stuck out to me. My life has its share of pains and sufferings in various shapes and sizes or "tempos"  The chorus line of "just hang on/ suffer well" has become my version of "endure to the end."

6. Romeo and Juliet by The Killers

 The #1 played song on my iTunes currently with  114 plays, this  cover of the great song by the Dire Straits is one of which I never tire. I chose this one over the originally because 1/ The Killers is one of my two favorite bands (Depeche Mode is the other), 2/ I prefer the rawer, grittier sound of Brandon Flowers's voice to Mark Knopfler's and 3/ I find Brandon Flowers incredibly attractive and like to visualize him singing this song at my wedding, to me, as the groom. Well, I don't really visualize the wedding part, but I wouldn't object to it if it ever happened. 

My reasons for liking this song so much could provide enough material for a teen angst/romance novel. I like the idea of a guy stepping out of the streetlight and saying "You and me babe/ How 'bout it?" Mostly because I have an obsession with streetlights and lamps of all kinds, but also because what follows is a ballad of love and devotion on the part of this song's Romeo for Juliet. I'm not gonna lie: If the right person told me I'd "exploded in [their] heart" I would find it awkwardly romantic. Romeo says a lot of things sweet and romantic but a little awkward and off, just how I like it. Things like "I dream your dream for you and now your dream is real," and "I can't do a love song the way it's meant to be/ I can't do everything but I'd do anything for you/ I can't do anything except be in love with you." Romeo's devotion for Juliet lightens the heart blackened by the previous "Suffer Well."

Finally, as you may have guessed, this is the third song that reminds me of the person who really had a huge impact on my life, and it wouldn't be but for one line: "It was just that the time was wrong." 

Shakespeare wrote "If music be the food of love, play on./ Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting/ the appetite may sicken, and so die." Music may not fuel my love, but it fuels my life and I imagine that in the day I get too much of it, in the day I grow sick of it, I'll stop living.

Explicit Liber Regis Quondam Regisque Futuri

For those of you looking for a translation to the Latin: This is the story of the Once and Future King

I still remember the first book I ever smelled: The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks. The book became popular when I was in the third grade because of the movie and I was given a copy of the book in school. For all its popularity, it did little to endear itself to me. The plot had merit but seemed predictable, the characters inspired indifference for their fates, and the writing didn't particularly impress me. A commercial book marketed to children experiencing the psychological stage of development where they believe toys are alive, children who've just exited that stage but secretly hold on to it, and mothers who want their children to read more and need a book with a premise tempting enough for their reluctant-to-read child--this book fulfilled its purpose by selling well for a few years, bringing in more bucks for the publisher when it materialized into a feature film, and ending up on the thrift store shelf a decade after its release. It was an instant gratification book for the publisher, hardly a classic. 

Despite my strong distaste for the story, read when I still maintained a policy of finishing every book I started, I loved the book. For the first time, I appreciated a book for the paper on which it was printed, for its glossy paperback cover and its black serif words. I suppose in human interaction appreciation for someone based solely on their physical features as opposed to the  content of their personality might fall within the realm of shallow behavior on the part of the beholder.  Yet, my appreciation for the object of a book kept me from discarding the story of the plastic-to-flesh Indian and instead secured it a place in the Hall of my Endearments.

One might inquire as to the origins of my affections for the book I read with displeasure: Lying on my stomach on the floor of my bedroom, couched between my bed and the window facing the east wall, completely unseen by anyone who might whim to enter my room; I fanned the gray-tinged pages against my face and the warm spring air, inhaling the scent slowly. I exhaled reluctantly and the held the rough-matte pages to my nose like a gardener to his fragrant flowers. The scent--musty and sharp--juxtaposed with the smell of unnatural man-made ink seemed so comfortable to me, soothing and familiar. 

Ever since that day, I doubt I have ever read a book without smelling it's pages: This simple action completes my relationship with the book. And every time I begin a new book, I am doing just that--embarking on a relationship. I share experiences, emotions, thoughts with each book I read; when I am with a book, I am only in the company of that book, setting aside a piece of myself and my time only for those paper-backed pages. 

Sometimes I get hurt in the relationship. Of Mice and Men rendered me unable to say I'd never read a book I didn't like: I'll never have those minutes of my life back again. As much as many of my friends enjoyed The Old Man and the Sea in my opinion, it was poetically shallow and confirmed my adoration for the rhapsodizing of Dickens. And, while I dearly loved the contents of Death of a Salesman,  the Penguin-classic pages from which I read smelled like puke--creating an exact juxtaposition to my experience with The Indian in the Cupboard. I later purchased another copy of the Arthur Miller play. Same book, different package.

Yet, despite all those poor literary relationships, my best relationship and most cherished developed the same way all my best human relationships form. It came from an unattractive, slightly abused--and by abused I mean it had giant red ink stains all over the pages--copy of The Once and Future King from the Salt Lake Public Library. Even before I read that beautiful opening line "On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays..." I cradled its spine in my left hand, placed my right thumb on the edge of its first page and with slight pressure against the back cover from the fingers on my right hand, I coursed my thumb from the first page to the last, slightly bending the book and sending the worn-soft pages waving past my eyes and blowing a swift breeze across my face. My whole body filled with the scent. It smelled wise, neglected, and forgotten. It smelled like soil that had been too many times tilled being planted again, a river that had seen one-too many floods returning to its natural peace, a tree that had weathered storms that had stressed its boughs resting its leaves in stillness.  It smelled like a book that had been through much and seen much, that had finally been put on a shelf to rest. Battered, flimsy, and broken, its yellow pages sighed and fell still in my hands. 

The relationship that followed was anything but peaceful. From the first fanning of its pages I had expected the best from this book. But this did not happen. The book seemed to drag on forever as I read it, dragging me along behind, hitting my head against rocks in the road. Reading this book was like walking through a desert without an oasis: It left me exhausted and thirsting for more, occasionally visioning  a mirage. For a book that seemed so void of strength, it put up a good fight. Or rather, I lost many battles with it. I battled against the plot that seemed to have too many sub-stories and get too sidetracked. I battled against characters and events that seemed annoying, unfortunate, abhor-able. I continued to read it only to avoid defeat. I was determined to finish every book I started and when I finished this one, I knew victory would be sweet. I took this book with me everywhere--to school to read after finishing tests, camping, to church, even in the car. It was my constant companion. 

What happened in the final ten pages can only be described by the closing lines of hymn 235 "Should You Feel Inclined to Censure:" It says "Do not form opinions blindly; hastiness to trouble tends;/Those of whom we thought unkindly Oft become our warmest friends." And so it was. I can honestly say that the last ten pages of The Once and Future King are perhaps some of the loveliest final pages I have ever read because, after hating this book so decidedly for months, everything came together in those final ten pages. Every story over which I had groaned, every character for whom I had harbored enmity, every line at which I had laughed with derision ("It's a whale!"), all these things suddenly revealed their purpose. Of the many fictions I have ever read, this one's message perhaps resonated the most with me. For the first time since I had started the book my figurative thirst was replaced with a real one: the one left there by the lump in my throat. 

These days, the book is my constant companion not because of my desire to conquer it, but because of the comfort I find in its pages. When I travel, it is the book in my carry-on, the one to which I cling to help me through long flights so often accompanied by anxiety. When I need something to read that I know will not let me down, it is the first book for which I reach. And when I need a book's pages to fan, paper and ink to smell, it takes precedence over all others. The original copy I read from the Salt Lake Public Library has since been returned--but not before becoming the first book I ever renewed. I now have my own copy, a little more stout, a little less abused. When I bought it from the bookstore, of all the pretty copies and editions I could have chosen, I chose the one that was perhaps the most unattractive only because it was the same edition as the one from the library. Every time I pick it up, it reminds me of all the experiences I had the first time I read it and how sweet the reward when I arrived at the end. And of all my books, it smells the best. 

Urban Pocket Lint

Sorry, #3 does not apply to me.

Robert Corey

"5 1/2, 6, 6 1/2, 7. Black and brown at opposite ends. Work shoes at the top, dress shoes at the bottom." Every day for 13 hours a day, Robert Corey organized shoes. Every morning he woke up at 5: 27 AM and without opening his eyes, he would walk into his closet and stretch out his hand. He would walk back and forth among the 5 long shelves of shoes, gently brushing his finger-tips against each shoe in turn, a meditative caress. Thirty-three minutes later, he would choose the perfect shoe. 5 minutes later, after dressing, he would perform the sanctified ritual of slipping his left foot into his left shoe, followed by his right, putting on each shoe with a sigh. Taking care to not scuff his shoes, he would then drive to work at the Penny Loafer. 

When he arrived at the Penny Loafer he would begin by organizing all the shoes in the giant show-room, starting in the children's section and working his way through to men's. He loved to touch the shoes, to feel their different materials against his skin, to handle and hold them. He would position all the shoes perfectly in their boxes so that they fit comfortably, while still showing off the style. He would arrange them by size, style, color, heel-height and designer in a perfect and obsessive organization. When he was working nothing and no one could disturb him. 

When he had finished with the show-room, he would move into the enormous warehouse-like stock room, where he would repeat the ritual. Nothing gave him more pleasure than smelling the scent of new shoes, following the shoe's stitching with his index finger, or letting the shoe rest in his caring hand. No customer of the Penny Loafer would ever see this back room, but every night he would fall asleep dreaming of the beloved shoes in perfect rows. Robert Corey loved no one in his life so much as he loved shoes. 

At the end of the day, Robert Corey would say good-bye to the shoes and return to his home. He would carefully remove his shoes from his feet, polish, clean and caress them before putting them back in their proper place. Before turning the light out on his shoe closet, he would tell his shoes good-night, with a promise of returning in the morning. One minute later he would get into bed, three minutes later he would be thinking of shoes and seven minutes later he would be asleep. 

Park Swing

They came here every week after theater rehearsal. She once told him that every good memory she'd ever made had been at that park on the mountain overlooking the valley. She would always climb to the top of the jungle-jim, teetering dangerously on the edge as she raised her arms to embrace the sky and breathed in with a certain satisfaction the unmatched view of the sunset over the great lake and its island. Then she'd put down her arms and with great deliberation she would inhale and exhale the contentment of a slow and steady sigh. The whole time she performed this ritual, he was struck by the joy she seemed to drink into her life with every breath.

Then, full of energy, she would dance her way down from the jungle-jim and make a dash for the swings. She always went higher than he did and yet she never pumped her legs the way children are taught in elementary school. Instead, she propelled her body forward using the strength in her torso. No matter how many times he watched her, he could never copy her technique. But it was perhaps because his heart was not in it. If he had swung higher than her, he never would have been able to watch her face as it was lighted by the sunset at one moment, and then covered in the shadows of the trees as she fell back from the sky. He wouldn't have been able to see her wide smile. It was the only time she ever parted her lips when she smiled, the only time she ever let her guard down enough to really laugh. She would laugh without reservation, joking cheekily with him; and so thoroughly amazing him with her quick-witted comments as to leave him in a state of complete wonderment, dumbfounded and blundering by the time her joking stopped and she became more serious. 

She always stopped swinging when her tone became more serious. She would slump in the swing and lean her head to the side, resting it against the chain from which the swing hung. Her feet would burrow or carve nondescript designs into the sand. He would still his swing to her side and watch her expression turn in the twilight: brow troubled, gaze disturbed and focused on the ground, mouth down-turned. This was when she had expressed to him her college concerns, when she had told him about her troubles at home, when she had confessed to him that she had feelings for someone she pained herself would never feel back. Sometimes he would offer advice, other times he would extend sympathy and comfort. Most often, however, he would simply listen, not because he didn't have anything to say, but because he felt so strongly the pain through her words that the lump in his throat held any response prisoner in his chest. The grief in her voice always seemed too much for tears and as the last shafts of light were finally swallowed by the earth, her voice would turn hollow with anger and then it would stop altogether. 

In the dark she'd get up from the swing and lie in the grass, putting her arms behind her and resting her head in her hands, gazing at the stars between the leaves of the trees, attempting to make out constellations by turning her head at multiple angles. He would stare at the spot where he knew she lied, even though he couldn't see her, just knowing that she was there and imagining what she looked like put enough of a picture in his mind. Minutes would pass before his eyes made out her shadow distinguishable from the grass. Then he'd rise and walk over to her, standing next to her and looking down at her face framed by the soft tendrils of her hair and haloed by her arms, her eyes now closed. He'd lie down next to her, mimicking her position by putting his arms behind his head and leaving enough space between the two of them so that his elbow only seemed to brush hers. He tried to guess which stars she'd seen, which ones had seemed brightest to her, which constellations she had made out. By the time he'd get around to guessing at her thoughts, her sighs of misery had turned into the slow, shallow breaths that accompany sleep. 

He played the whole scene over in his mind as he stood looking at the playground in the waning daylight, like a ghost observing an event from his own life. He walked to the jungle-jim and climbed up to where she had always stood, sitting on the wall where she had braced herself, his legs hanging over the side. So this is what she saw. He'd never taken the time to join her, always content with the view from where he stood. But now... now he saw the sunset he'd watched her inhale, felt the light that had illuminated her face with gold. The sun was bleeding its passionate colors into the cool blue of the sky over the lake and pastelling the clouds over the crest of the island. No wonder this vision had inspired in her such euphoric expression: He'd never seen the sunset in such splendor, he'd always been to busy gazing at the splendor that was his best friend and taking his joy, or pain, from her own, that he'd never seen things from her perspective. 

He jumped down from the wall of the playground and strode towards the swings, taking his usual place. He curled his hands around the chains to either side of him and felt the piece of paper in his hand, trapped between the chain and his palm. It was this piece of paper that had brought him here. Her neat, slender handwriting was difficult to decipher among the many creases he'd made to it, balled up in his fist; but he tried, yearning, to make out its words. 

You've been my most patient and invaluable friend... I cannot expect you to understand nor do I want you to try... Please forgive me. 

The swing left of him, the one that should have been occupied by her, moved and creaked softly in the wind, as if nervous of her absence. The light gave up trying to fight against the darkness and he could no longer see her words. The swing stopped creaking as if she had gotten up to go lie on the grass. He imagined her getting up once more, thought he could hear the bareness of her feet upon the soft grass. He knew that she was there, and just like always he couldn't see her. The darkness had taken her from his view. Like always, he pretended to gaze at her figure on the grass. Minutes passed and he could not make out her shadow; so, worried, he rose to join her, to see her face and lie next to her. He looked down at her face, confused by the shape it had taken of the grass. He sat down next to her before falling on his back, resting his head in his arms, his elbow brushing hers. 

Almost. 

The leaves in the wind echoed the shallow breaths she did not breathe, although she slept. 

Tabula Rasa

I want to be void of feeling.
I want to be plastic and posable,
to answer insipidly and without inflection of tone,
emotion, or interest.
I want to gloss expression from my eyes and walk without
distinction,
to think nothing of any thing or any one
person.

I want to do nothing and feel
nothing and be nothing, to rip savagely from
my body every cathartic
feeling that now floods and suffocates: drowns.
I want these sentiments like pains to leave new, better
pains of emptiness.

I want my heart to be a permanent tabula rasa,
a cold stone with a character carved by the wind,
none of these affections dimpling my shell or smoothing
rough corners.
Better barren to live than dying through fruitless poisoned blossoms.

Floating Intellect: Camden

Her seat gave her the perfect vantage point for observing him without being noticed, but she couldn't help hoping that he might turn around and see her or walk past her on his way to refill his drink. Even from far away she knew it was him; she had every insignificant mannerism recorded in her mind. She knew him by the angle of his shoulders; the tilt of his head when he was talking, which differed from the tilt of his head when he was listening; the subtle gesticulation he made with his hands when trying to win someone over to his opinion. When he got up, she would recognize his posture in walking, the length of his stride, the weight of his footfall upon the ground. At that very moment the curve of his back, the position of his forearms on the edge of the table, the placement of his body slightly angled towards the woman with whom he was conversing told her that his conversation was light-hearted and casual. She imagined his facial expressions as he spoke: She imagined his shocking royal blue eyes animated and bright while he nodded his head in response to his breakfast companion's story. Perhaps his lips formed a knowing and mischievous smile.

She thought of that same smile directed at her, those same tempestuously blue eyes stopping her heart, stealing from her mind every intelligent thought and staying her lips. Even in her imagination she could not meet his gaze with the same boldness she could anyone else's. She became a shy child merely thinking about him, the ocean of his eyes away from her strikingly sharp-witted, convincingly sarcastic, and unabashedly blunt self. There was something in his air, the familiar and mature sound of his voice, the almost-twinkle in his eye that so intrigued and fascinated her that held all sensibility and confidence captive. The mere thought of him turned her entire world upon itself and left her intensely, disturbingly vulnerable; as if she could not conceal from him the tunnels of her mind or the caverns of her heart. This feeling that he could render her entire universe of thought and being unhinged, as if he could see and shape her soul, left her groping for some semblance of control; some way to know about him the things he could lay bare about her upon on instant's inquiry. From where did he come? Where was he going? About what did he dream? What were his goals? What dark thoughts did or would he entertain when he thought not even God could hear them?

Somewhere just beneath her throat she ached to know the answers to these questions. Her whole body seemed alight with curiosity, like a violently burning flame that started at her heart and curled its way around her bones, setting the floor on fire beneath her feet and burning brightly out her eyes. The fire escaped her control raging across the room to where he was seated snaking its way up the legs of his wooden chair leaving behind charred and blackened stubs as it roared up the perfect curve of his backbone."He will feel it," she thought with a panic that only fueled the flames. "No! Stop, STOP!" Her breath became quick and shallow, her heart like a hummingbird's wings. She saw and knew that he could feel the flames now upon his neck....

Abruptly he shot from his chair, turned to see her staring, grabbed his bag and walked past her as she abashedly reverted her gaze.

Seinfeld - Exclamation point

Waging War
A few weeks ago, I participated in an online chat with a friend during which she said something quite amusing. I responded with "HAHAHA!!!" I had no sooner hit "send" than I realized my level of amusement and laughter did not merit such an enthusiastic response. Feeling guilty, I forced myself to laugh out loud about what she had said. Then the guilt set in even more. I realized that with that response, I had failed the English language by succumbing to the temptation to misrepresent my true emotions and reactions by using capitalization and exclamation points in excess when not warranted. I had joined the ranks of those curly-haired, volleyball-playing, white-car-driving ditses named KariAnne who cannot carry on a conversation--written or spoken--without using "lol," "HAHAHA!!!!," "omg," and "like" to fill their already vapid and shallow sentences.

I'd noticed this trend for many years and had resisted it by using proper punctuation and spelling in all my online correspondences and text messages. I derived a great deal of satisfaction and pride from knowing that I was one person who was not contributing to the degeneration of the English language. Yet, in my haste to reply to a text one day, I refrained from using necessary quotation marks. I felt dirty inside. But the trend continued to the point that quotation marks are the punctuation mark I neglect most often. I justify my actions by diligently using other punctuation marks such as the comma and my beloved semicolon. Yet some days I am haunted by the startling premonition of the future of my electronic communications as utterly incomprehensible to the well-read and bred. It scares me.

I have, however, made progress in my recovery. In a recent email from a friend on a mission, at least four of the already very-few lines he had written consisted of the aforementioned "HAHAHA!!!" I had once thought his use of such an exclamation rather sweet and amusing; but today I found it annoying and distracting, an ostentatious testament to his inability to express himself in other, more natural, ways through the written word. What's more, I hardly think he was laughing as uncontrollably and loudly as his punctuation and capitalization would have one believe. This startling trend is merely a reflection of the inability of humans, especially men, to give an accurate portrayal of their emotions through with their writing. And linguists everywhere will tell you that having a command of the written word is the true test of a person's understanding of the language. After this encounter, I vowed to wage war upon the degeneration of the English language.

I have vowed to refrain from ending sentences with prepositions whenever possible, overuse of the exclamation point and/or the abuse and misuse of any other punctuation mark. I vow to explore all the wonderful grammatical intricacies of the English language and to respect and honor strange but correct and complex syntax. I will go to pains to expunge clichés and otherwise insipid phrases from my writing. English today is a fine handkerchief stuck in the mud, and I intend to save her and give her a good washing so that she might once again become a lovely adornment and accessory upon the vestments of my accomplishments and character.

Raped and Robbed Part I

In my sweet, little suburban hometown of Bountiful, Utah the only thing people don't do religiously is lock their doors. My family once came home from a week-long vacation to find that we had been cooling the outdoors with our ostentatiously open front-door for probably the entire week. An overview of the house reassured us that nothing had been taken and our faith in our little town remained intact. This faith, however, did find exception in my childhood friend's home where the front door is always dead-bolted to ensure that no one is, as my friend's mother puts it "raped and robbed." Every UPS delivery person and slimy solicitor must wait those few extra and awkward seconds for the homeowner to unlock both the door-knob and the dead-bolt. Those of us familiar with the family know it is best to announce our intended visit well in advance and to use the side door. Despite my friend's mother's precaution, I always thought it a silly one in our land of milk and honey. I had always considered myself blessed to live in such a safe and trustworthy town, until I came to the land that rivaled it for nectar and ambrosia.

In the even smaller, rural Southern town of Lexington, Virginia where I make my residence nine months out of the year the residents don't just leave their doors unlocked, they leave them open for you. This spirit of trust grows from Honor System at the university that comprises half the town. This student-run and upheld system maintains that no student will lie, cheat, or steal. There is one consequence for engaging in any and all of these actions: immediate expulsion from the university. The Honor System is so effective that students, including myself, often leave their books, laptops, iPods, cellphones, designer bags, etc. unattended in the common areas of the university for hours and even days without incident. The respect for the belongings of others and the reverence in which we hold the Honor System is such that dollar bills have been left untouched on the ground for days until someone claims them. This sense of honor extends to and is supported by the town surrounding the university. My friend once witnessed a gentleman park his car on the street and exit his vehicle leaving the keys still in the ignition and the car running with the door wide open while he ran into Wal-Mart.

The freedom and ease with which one moves about the town is like nothing I had ever experienced in Bountiful and I became so accustomed to leaving my things wherever it pleased me, that I had trouble NOT leaving my bag in the open air when I returned to Bountiful for holiday. I soon realized that Lexington, Virginia is not the real world and an airport is not Lexington. If it weren't for the annoying lady over the PA in the airport telling patrons to not leave their bags unattended or accept anyone else's bags, I would be under interrogation for terrorism right now. Every time I had to leave my gate in the terminal to get a spot to eat or powder my nose (actually, I didn't have powder for fear it would be mistaken for anthrax) I was forced to pack up my books and laptop and strap my bag to my body like a suicide-bomber on a mission (oh the irony) in a cumbersome and tedious act of compliance with real-world rules. By the end of my traveling, I was beginning to think it would have been worth it to stay in Lexington just to save myself the backache of having my heavy carry-on permanently strapped to my back like a papoose.

I naively believed that once I had arrived back at Bountiful that I could return to my old habits, but alas, even the land of milk and honey seemed like the sketchiest streets of Chicago compared to the place from where I had just come. I had to lock my car and keep a close claw on my purse. I didn't care if that Mormon mother with seven children looked as if she walked around with a clap-on, clap-off halo on her head. More likely one of its lights was burned out and she had copious amounts of Prozac coursing through her veins, making her capable of any type of misconduct that one would only do under the influence or in a state of extremely ill mental health, or both. I couldn't even leave my laptop in the family room of my own home without someone messing with it until it threatened to self-destruct. It was then that I realized how good I really had it and how twisted the real-world actually was. An innocent effort to keep up on the news revealed enough wrong-doing in the world to snap me back into reality. In real time, people are dishonest and untrustworthy. They hate each other and think of clever ways to kill each other. In the real world, the nicest person you meet could also be the most perverted; and above all, there is always the chance that you could be raped and robbed.

Inhale, but don't exhale.

When I was in high school, I wrote a paper on the children's novel The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. While the book was sickly sweet at best, it was well written; and I wrote fondly of it as if it was worthy to share shelf-space with the works of Austen, Dickens, and many other great authors. Abounding in alliteration, replete with hyphenated adjectives, and tastefully garnished with figurative language (all literary devices employed by authors of the classics, including the aforementioned,) this essay exemplified the very best of my literary style. I felt that, with this essay, I had arrived as a writer.

My teacher praised my essay excessively to the entire class, announcing to my peers that they should all read my paper to see how good writers wrote. Faulkner once said that, "[The writer] has supreme vanity," and I was no exception. My pen was my most precious possession. My writing came from many painstaking hours during which, like Gene Fowler, I would "[stare] at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form[ed] on my head." I fashioned my lines from the sinews of my heart, gave them marrow from my own bones, and breathed the dust of my whole soul into their nostrils. I found the greatest expression of myself in words. I vainly wanted the whole world to read and admire my writing, but at the same time, thought it too sacred to share.

For my first real writing assignment at university, I chose a challenging but interesting topic, daring to take a risk. I wrote draft after draft, becoming intimate with the wastebasket and the great large "x" that expunged my many failed ideas. When I finally felt that I had arrived at something close to a final draft, I took the essay to the University Writing Center to be reviewed by one of my peers. After pouring over it for some time, the reader stabbed me in the heart with her red correcting pen. She told me that my sentences were too long (unfortunate, as one of my favorite paragraphs in literary history comes from a little known author named Charles Dickens and is a single sentence long,) my aptly used alliteration was distracting, and my metaphors were irrelevant if not superfluous. In the readers words, it had the "potential" to be a really good paper.

I broken-heartedly made the suggested changes (actually, much of the alliteration stayed as I couldn't bear to see it go) and took my paper to my professor for her critique. While she did not critique my style, she did set fire to a number of my ideas with which she "disagreed." The fact that I removed these ideas from my paper attested to the high regard in which I held this professor and her opinions, but it hurt nevertheless. With bruised ego, I composed my final draft and submitted it. The B+ I received on the paper sat like a stain on my soul and left a hole in my heart.

This experience only served as precursor to the startling and unfortunate truth about college: While university life may have been meant to foster learning and elevated thought, I found it as a community meant to stifle creativity. I no longer find pleasure in thinking about my studies, now that I know I must think as my professor does. I cannot design my own box and instead must fit into the too-tiny box that has been prescribed for me by my professors, often at the expense of a hand or foot or some other part of myself that must be sacrificed upon the altar of their expectations. If I expect to please my professors, I must submit my mind as clay in their hands to be stretched and pounded into something that they want me to become.

Thus, my worry comes when I consider that I may lose my identity at the expense of my so called "academic success." Must I sacrifice one part of myself for another part of myself? Is there a way to reconcile the two? I have yet to find a way to successfully link my creativity to academia. Perhaps, when all is said and done, I will have found that this was only a refiner's fire meant to prepare me to be bent into a new way of thinking and come out a fine new work of art. In that case, I suppose I will have to put up with stifling university life. I must inhale their thoughts, words, opinions; but exhaling my own is strickly prohibited. Who needs to breathe anyway?


And to Flannery O'Connor who said "Everywhere I go i'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher," I say that no one remembers you or what you wrote. Apparently, her teachers weren't good enough.

I can explain.

When I was a sophmore in Honors English, my first writing assignment required me to write about my name: what it meant, if I liked it, how I got it, etc. After the teacher, Mrs. Van Brunt, told the class the assignment, a vision lighted on my mind. It was a vision of how I received my name. I imagined my father, the one who chose my name, sitting as an eighth-grader in an English class not unlike the one in which I then sat. Sitting skinny in his seat, elbow on the desk and his head tilted to one side in his hand, he stared off with eyes slightly glazed, his thick dark hair falling across his brow. Just then, a small piece of pocket lint floated into his line of sight and he sat up suddenly in his seat, reached forth his hand with swift reflexes and snatched the piece of lint from the air. As his hand closed tighlty around the tiny ball of cotton a name popped suddenly into his head: Paige. It came as quickly as the lint that interrupted his daydream, but at that moment, my father decided that this name would be the one after which his first daughter would be called. And so my name is Pocket Lint. I am Pocket Lint.

From that day I have thought of my name and therefore of myself as Pocket Lint. I have thought of many other things in my life as being lint. My laughter, my sneeze, my smile, my more peculiar habits--all remind me of lint for one reason or another. Of all the things I consider lint-like, I especially consider my thoughts to be among those things about myself that qualify as lint. They lay quietly, unassumingly for weeks where one might occasionally place their hand during an uncomfortable moment, during a bout of boredom, or during a conversation to mull over and perhaps leave for another day. However, the time must come for the lint to be extracted from its place in the jacket pocket (and yes, these are the kind that live in a jacket pocket, meaning they can be hung up and out of the way for some time before being taken out again.) Whether extracted through the hand of the owner or through the lint-trap that is everyday life and experience to meet some unknown and careless fate in the waste-basket, the lint often finds its way from my pocket out into the world--if only for a brief moment--before being discarded. However, I have come to grow fond of many of these tiny thoughts and consider them to have more worth than a fate dooming them to eventual death and burial in the waste-land of thoughts. So, I present, for my satisfaction and I hope for yours, my pocket lint.