Frost and Whitacre

This morning I decided to wake up early and go on a walk through the woods, before anyone was awake, while the day was still untainted by the hustle and bustle and stress of college students waking to their hang-overs. I blazed a trail for myself through the thigh-high snow, and found some of yesterday's paths from other adventurers to follow, too. I didn't bring anything with me except my cell phone (set on silent) and a small bottle of water (bare essentials in case I got stranded in the wilderness for a few hours).

In my head I was hearing the song "Sleep" by Eric Whitacre, a song I sang in Chamber Choir a few years ago. Beautiful doesn't do this song justice - it is pristine and passionate and the music, the chords, the voices, the words, somehow touch something deep in my soul; every time I hear it I feel like I grow and expand a little more as a person. I feel more connected, and at the same time m0re detached from the trivial and confusing questions we so often let bog us down. This song was originally written to have the words of Robert Frost's famous poem, "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening," but because of copyright issues Eric Whitacre had to ask a friend to create new lyrics. "Sleep" pulls a line from Hamlet's soliloquy - "To die, to sleep-- To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause." "What Dreams May Come" is also the title of one of my favorite movies, which I happened to watch last night.

All of these things came together on my walk this morning through the woods, in search of silence and perhaps in that silence and in the deep of the woods, to hear God. And I think I did hear Him. I felt Him there in the snow with me, and I heard Him in the music in my head and the music of the morning rustling through the trees.

This is my reworking of Frost's already perfect poem, with inspiration from my morning reflections.

Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Morning

Whose woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the Heavens though.

He'll surely see me stopping here,

to watch His woods fill up with snow.

The little birds must think it queer,

to wake with them in silence here,

between the hours of dawn's first breaths

the stillest morning of the year

before the air is stirred from rest

by words and wind; just emptiness

my woodland rambling lets me fill

with fairy flakes my mind is dressed.

Whose woods these are, He surely will

not leave me with an unfulfilled

promise of His, an oath to make

me hear in silence on this hill.

The trees their branches give a shake

to ask if there is some mistake;

I answer in a soft refrain

the snow my muffled answers takes.

These steps on deep and cushioned plain

find warmth in cold and pillowed pain

in curtained veil white forest weeps

and I by joining add my rain.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What dreams may come in dust of clay

my heart has seen in winter's day

in hidden graves and snowy keeps

My eyes on Him will find the way.

No use for umbrellas.

No use for umbrellas

Rain was our words

as it pelted her with watery bullets,

spilling back out her mouth as

"Flood Warning" flashed across her forehead.

Her gutters filled up

and splashed tears across her cheeks.

She thundered and her lightning

singed our hair and burnt our tongues.

As we watched it pour

our rain collected in a

puddle and limp, dripping clothes stuck to our skin.

Brushing raindrops from our shoulders,

we took off our boots

and danced in the mud.

The Iris Complex

Self Portrait, titled:

"The Iris Complex"

Going Under

This is a personal narrative that I wrote for my freshman year English class - five years ago!

Christie Flemming 11/16/04

Going Under

One moment in time, suspended in my mind as a slow-motion dream in which nothing existed but myself and the water around me.

As my body was thrown under by the force of the wave, the pull of the undertow - I could feel the water filling my nose as my feet were ripped off the sand of the ocean floor, the breath being torn from my throat like a fleeting wind, all the air sucked out. Words caught in my mouth as water filled me, never getting a chance to be heard. There was nothing I could do to change what was happening. I was helpless.

Tumbling, being tossed by the rhythms and whirls of the sea, I watched in sudden serenity as chaotic whirls of white bubbles filled my view. The ocean swirled around me in mad patterns that made no sense. Somehow it seemed to me time was lagging. But, unlike most near-death experiences, the life I had once been a part of did not flash before my eyes. No thoughts ran through my head as God’s peace caressed my mind. Blissful blankness filled me. I only stared in wonder and awe at the cloud of water it seemed I was now a part of.

As someone who has been holding tight for days on end finally breathes a filling, releasing sigh of relief, just so my body and mind relaxed, and I forgot about the danger I was in. In reality I was being thrown this way and that, the ocean not caring about me or even knowing I was there, a tiny spec amid its vast expanse - but to myself I was soaring, sleeping, floating.

As I was in that moment, surrounded by blue chaos for fifteen seconds, I thought of nothing. Can you imagine not thinking of anything at all? It’s almost impossible to clear our minds and become completely at rest, but that’s exactly what I did.

The fear didn’t come until I broke the surface again, spluttering, my silent ease a piece of glass being shattered, awakening all my senses to here and now, telling me of the peril I had just escaped. My bubble of security and nothingness popped, along with the calm I had just experienced. As my lungs were once again filled with oxygen, gasping in all the air around me, my ears were filled, too, with what seemed to me more noise than I had ever heard before. The sound of the surf and the seagulls filling my mind with incomprehensible clamor, my brain overloaded, and as the sound increased, I once again lost control. It seemed I had just entered the true chaos - this is what it sounded and felt like. I wiped my eyes, but all I saw was a blur. I was filled with confusion and panic. I didn’t know what was going on, what to do next, as all humans feel when they’ve lost control.

As I stumbled toward shore, all my strength knocked out of me, each foot dragged against the rocky bottom: the jagged passageway to my refuge amidst the sand. ‘Almost there’, I thought, and finally collapsed on the shore, each limb fully drained of any energy. All I was capable of now was to think - remember. I recalled, as I always will, watching unsuspectingly as my father and I bodysurfed the giants of Misquamicut Beach, waiting for another swell to come my way. Being suddenly encompassed by water, first pouring down my head, then slamming into my back like a thousand tons of steel propelling a train. It will forever be engraved in my mind, an epitaph on the sandstone of my memory, an insight on human frailty revealed in later years.

Strange, isn’t it, how the danger didn’t feel real until it had already passed? As if my reactions reversed: During the turmoil I was completely calm, almost relieved or happy, and once the danger had ended, the time when I should have been glad it was over, I was instead filled with dread… for something that had already occurred. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? I guess that’s the way it is when we come face to face with our own vulnerability and powerlessness.

(untitled)

Slipping a coat off, the black dress wrinkles

over tan, burnt shoulders

Listen – like the crackling skin of a wall

in her grandmother’s house

blazing with too many flames in the 3’AM sky,

like crackling, bubbling skin

voices itch over those shoulders in short bursts

and she sees the fire

that her grandmother’s house

had no strength to withstand

that melted them both,

all it left was the warped, mangled wallpaper

“Sorry for your loss”s become each bubble in the paint,

and as she walks to the coffin up front

her skin gives up to the voices

she melts and burns, and flames blow over her in sobs

She lets the fiery, crackling voices release her,

so her tears can drown out the

burning of her grandmother’s house.

Change MayBe

Do people change I don’t think they do I don’t think anyone does we just go around and around and notice different parts of the circle each time it always comes back to circles and we think we change but really we were always the same the same people at the base because the base is the circle we keep going round and calling something different and he was always a jackass I just didn’t realize it before but that doesn’t change the fact that he had it inside him the whole time he didn’t just change he was and is and only now it’s showing and we all think we can change because we want to think it we want to think we know we can change because change means progress and progress is improvement and we want to we think we can look back and say now we’re better we’re moving forward but really we’re only moving in time and who’s to say what direction time goes anyway up down around forward backward we think because we want to we believe because we can and the illusion sticks but the circles and the bases stay the same and our progress is really just uncovering the base for what it is and fooling ourselves that it wasn’t there before or someone else hadn’t already uncovered it we think we’ve changed over time over centuries but really we still live the same lives and act the same way and our primal desires are there and our hearts and our minds and our loves and hates and beliefs and arguments and it’s all there its all been done before but does that mean that we aren’t worth it I don’t think so I don’t want to think so I think it’s even more worth it to strive to want to believe to connect but we can’t pretend and we can’t deny and I am going to say that he changed because if he didn’t then what does that mean for me for us for anything I think I am the same as I ever was I still connect the same pieces of spaghetti in my brain and ramble in the stagnant ideas and it all comes back but maybe change is subjective it is an idea and the idea of change is something that hasn’t changed either and if we believe in it maybe that’s what makes it exist maybe you have to have faith in change and faith to hope that it is real or else what is the idea there for?

I don’t know if I believe in change but I know I live my life like I do we all do so why pretend like I don’t believe, even if all my evidence is pointing to the circles and the falling back and the same same same never changing but what changes is the way we perceive ourselves even if ourselves were always there to begin with maybe it's the same spaghetti but the jumbles are tumbling so we connect different pieces the paths change the locks the maze the pile of spaghetti has so many hallways so many doors and windows and growing regrowing paths hedges bushes escape routes and we can't step out of the maze to wrap it all around our fork. Perception is the door the key the challenge the striving and I am striving to perceive the change I don’t think I see but I know somehow it must be there in the circle with the absolutes the definites and the maybes. Maybe may be as long as you I we can hope to think it maybe.

Deciphering Clouds

As we lie here picking new species from the sky

My fingers stray through his brown curls

and wrap them snug around each digit.

Breathing deep, I am intoxicated.

Ear to ear, forehead to chin, we are

mirrored forms on the afternoon grass,

shadowed as the sun passes through the trees.

And as white cumulus take on form and life in blue-green eyes,

We strive to mold what we can from our own two helpless shapes.

Sticky Prints

my poetry is stuck in my head

it doesn't touch the world i do

with prints of flesh i press into the tangible

while my words print only on paper and neurons

i want my words to travel through the woods

and reach out to the trees the leaves

the branches

traverse across the mud and scum and squish of

the real

because that's where

truth is

found

in the sparks the pricks and the

red glistening drops you

can feel and see and smell and know

because it is there

in your mind

while it pinches

the cloak

of reality and sticks to

your skin is

the dirt under your nails

so they are left in

the prints you leave

in flesh in dust

on the doorknobs of life.

Love the Lying Sailor

Love the Lying Sailor

Gazing out off the bow

I dropped a line into the water.

A good thing about the ocean:

no one can hear you with the sea there to swallow your words.

The secret sank even faster than the ring she threw overboard –

It was following the ring,

chasing the diamond bait as if the line could snatch it up again and take back all the lies

but this line couldn't fix anything,

only bury that diamond deeper in the ocean.

I never knew why I gave it to her

I knew I didn't love her,

just her sandy hair and ocean eyes.

They pulled me in with the tide and our romance was a moonlit lie.

She never knew though

not until last night.

The diamond gave it away

with an unasked and unanswered question, "why?"

she somehow saw, in my lying sailor's eyes, the untruth of those words "I love you"

and the diamond flew and glittered and sank

and I knew it was over

I never would have kept her anyway

She was land and I am all at sea

She couldn't keep hold of me

and the land can't hold me either.

I wanted a diamond, I guess,

Beautiful and precious and fascinating,

to hold on to, one that wouldn't weigh me down.

So I gave it to her, the only diamond girl I knew.

But sailors like me can't give diamonds away, and we can't keep them either.

I was only lying,

lying with salt-soaked hands on the small of her back

and sea-breeze whispers close in her ear.

I remember how her eyes swirled like an ocean storm,

like the sky for once and not the sea.

I am convinced I didn't love her

or how else could she have known?

Diamonds glitter so, leave you dazzled and unsure.

I threw her back to be a diamond fish.

Follow me all to sea, but I will never follow you. The sea should be enough for me.

Diamonds are too much to care for, and too much to keep

Too much to love

and the secret line I threw into the blue depths was this:

"I wish I had."

Shadow Proves the Sunlight

(I like hypothetical situations
specifics scare me. are you ever baffled by the specificity of the world? i tend to think in generalities and then sometimes it hits me how strange it is that i am who i am, that i know the specific people i know, that i am where i am, how we interact, individuals…..)

Ego Iacio a Umbra - Ergo Sum
(I cast a shadow - therefore I am)

sometimes existence seems too strange to be specific, too big and broad and undefinable ungraspable to pin down on the ground and stand in and over and say there you are you! i see you and i am and i know!

the shadow proves the sunlight
maybe groundhogs day is more than its cracked up to be
Punxsutawney Phil proves himself
every year
and even though we know the sight of his shadow
won't really make a difference to winter's six more weeks
that is not really the test
the shadow is an affirmation
of there-ness
and us-ness
existence

and sunlight. the shadow proves the sunlight
groundhogs scare me they always have
a traumatic experience as a
six-year-old has left me
in contempt of the creepy little creatures for what's going on 13 years
am i afraid of the groundhog?
or the shadow?
have i lost mine?
is it stuffed in a drawer with peter pan's, waiting for wendy to sew it back on?
or have i simply ignored it, taking those six weeks for granted every year and condemning the groundhog for his silly display?
the shadow proves the sunlight
so i suppose i should go fetch wendy and have her pin it back on right away
make sure i don't use soap as glue
my shadow might mistakenly slip itself off again and bubble into another universe

but then peter would help me find it
recruit the lost boys
and straight on till morning! we go
in search of the sunlight

The Gravitron

(I submitted this as part of my application to Colgate)
Colgate Supplement - Please use this brief essay to help us get to know you beyond what is defined in your scholastic and extracurricular record. In 250 words or less, please respond to the following: What would the title of your autobiography be and why?

I would title my life "The Gravitron." In the midst of life I sometimes feel like I am riding around in circles, in both good and bad ways. This carnival ride resembles a small space-craft, equipped with vertical mats lining the walls for the passengers to lie on while the craft spins at high speeds, the force of gravity pressing you to the sides. Using the analogy of a ride on the Gravitron to life shows me the cycle of life and its inescapable pull. I can’t simply watch life go by because I am in it, right in the thick of it. Once it starts spinning I am pressed against the walls, out of control and trying to pry myself off to slow down. But I forget that the Gravitron ride is exactly that: a ride. Rides are fun; they give you a thrilling sensation and let you scream at the top of your lungs with no reservations. Rides can set you free. In life, I can forget that I’m supposed to be having fun; I get overwhelmed. If I could stand in the center and watch everyone spin around me, maybe I would know how to go on with some control. I wish I could rest awhile before spinning again, and hopefully I wouldn’t lose my lunch when I got back on. But just as on the Gravitron, I have learned to enjoy the ride and work with gravity, not against it, climbing the walls and folding my knees, discovering new, exhilarating ways to ride life. “No more working against me, gravity, I know your game. I’ll embrace the pull and ride along with you, letting life spin me dizzy and content.”

Fine Tuning Soap Bubbles

i feel like i write in bubble letters

too round too clean too easily pricked and popped and squared and

i wish i wrote more angular

bubbles of soap rising from the foaming writhing bathtub to

form the multiple universes that i am arguing against i am arguing with i am arguing against but with

but i don't believe in bubbles i believe in god and god certainly didn't write in bubble letters but he wrote in circles

as far as i can tell because it all comes back and back and expands and coils and paradoxes are filling the bathtub

but still i am arguing with the crazy man across from me in philosophy 226

because i think telling god we think we've gone round the circles is like writing in bubble letters and i can't bring myself to commit to that in words or ink or even foam

so here i am writing another bubble letter

and hoping to praying to god that he is there in that bathtub popping all the bubbles except ours

Toes in the Sand

I like walks on the beach

beaches in the cold are

more welcoming to me

more welcoming because

they are void

of people heat and sweat and yelling and radios and smoke and babies and diapers and rainbow umbrellas and suntan lotion that sticks to your palms and all you are left with

on the cold winter beach is

the sparse beauty of the stinging salty air

the cold fierce smell of it

and the sheen of the sparkling water

and sand endless sand

welcoming

you into the silent cold stinging salty clean beauty of the world.

She Loved Me

She loved me

I wrote her a song
but her sad smile tore it to
shreds
and I couldn’t try to sing it anymore.
I swore I would piece it
together for her one day,
unshred and unshard the notes,
to put a happier smile on her face.
She told me she loved me
and I heard the past tense
too clearly in that sad smile of hers.
She couldn’t help it, I know.
She loved me, she did,
But I never could keep that song
from falling to pieces.

Fingers to Lips

Shh…

Fingers to lips
set the world to a hush.
Brush back my tall grass,
wind-swept fingers to touch.
You slip through, a breeze
in my hair.
In whispers your eyes fill a soul,
still the air.



Fingers to lips set the
world to a hush.
Soft and quiet, your breeze
is a secret to touch.
Wind-swept fingers slip
through, brush my cheek, smooth my hair.
In whispers you eyes strip a soul
‘til it’s bare.



Fingers to lips set the world to a hush.
Brush back my tall grass
with your soft wind-swept touch.
You’re slipping through,
like a breeze,
in my hair.
In whispers your eyes shape a soul
from the air.

MFEO

Made For Each Other Sonnet: “You can breathe now; some air’d be good for you”

She can’t remember the last breath she stole
In holding his she had forgot her own
But that lost skill had left her air so cold
His warmth was her best cure for being alone

He breathes for her as they rest as one soul
She can’t tell if she hears her heart or his
In beating loud their halves have made a whole
She loves the smell of his breath as they kiss

In sharing thoughts the air is running out
But holding breath at least the two could touch
And warming air left them no time to doubt
For after all she has his air to clutch

Who knows how long this shared air will last?
But holding him has made her heart hold fast.

Inspired by Brittany Rose

Can I count on you anymore?
Because when I pull and you don’t pull back
I’m only left fallen to the ground,
bruised tailbone and hands hanging lonely.
Could you take my hand, for Christ’s sake,
and pull me back again?
Or am I the only one who wants “us” to be?
Don’t stand there, looking at me sitting here, and
wonder why I’m crying.
I fell hard for you, and
I sure got my exercise holding on tight.
Could you fall down, too?
Or at least pull me back
and kiss my lonely hands?
Don’t walk away,
not now, with all my energy spent on you.
I can’t even get myself up.
I want to feel your tug
to balance the weight on my side
and tell me the bruises won’t fade before
you notice.

Surreal

Constellation Romance

Surreal
to say the least
and the shooting stars surpass it all
Visions escape from behind my eyelids
Shiver over a frozen-dew field and pitch black night:
like a slate to etch my memories on, each
pinprick smiles with a twinkle in the corners.
And every shadow on that night sky’s face
is only a moment the moon wasn’t looking
and we sank deeper into the heaven of crisp unrealness
With eyes open or closed, the world is the same
with him at my side
wake to reality
but the dream never breaks
free-floating romance in a sky of constellations.

Sunday Afternoon

(wrote this three years ago)

Sunday Afternoon
We sit.
We talk.
Our heads swivel from eye contact
to a jittery hand counting seconds.
Perhaps his red Jeep Cherokee would drive
the stopper from a bottle of bubbling words.
But neither of us wishes to leave.
The hand jits another jat
And we are left gazing
into eyes full
of champagne questions.

A Study of the Stars

Those stars wink at us
We see their winking and
do not think of the fading,
only the brightness blinking back
In their inconsistency the stars
are as confident as time itself;
They are a soothing, inexplicable comfort,
as reassuring as a Father’s kiss.
We reach up and find God.
And in all their winking, falling,
shining, rising, setting,
smiling, brilliant, streaming passion
We find ourselves
Lost we open our eyes in the dark
and swim from light to light
And the few shooting brights rain
brilliant, bold, and doomed,
lonely and beautiful in their
pursuit across the seemingly stationary sky
- they have broken
from their suspended setting to
shine, to sink and to soar
much faster, more wildly
and more radiantly than the others
In their boldness, their stunning, spectacular,
short-lived streaks,
we can only find hope for a miracle
For what else is it,
to hold yourself in the sky?
In each star we find wonder,
wandering,
safely strewn across the mind of God
through black but light-filled night
Those stars they carry us to
where they were, where
they may not be now,
but we believe them
and let their smiles from light-years’ past
shine us to a future
We clutch their brightness
and shine with them, leaving
the grass for a minute

The stars, they know us
Their points of life line your
eyes, trickle through
the strands of your hair,
seep through your every pore
to outline your sky-filled space

You breathe, in and then out, then in and out again, and with each breath
the Stars wink.

Self Explanations

I wrote the first of these when I was 16 and then a year later added another...

Self Explanation at 16
I have an old tictac container,

empty now of vanilla breathmints

and instead lined with baby teeth.
I saved all the ones the tooth fairy didn’t take,
and when they didn’t fill it, I took
to saving the fortunes from the cookies
my dad brought home sometimes.
I’d meticulously fold each rectangular slip of paper,
coil it, and slip it
through the tictac slot at the top.
I can imagine that those fortunes hold
something,
but never what.

AT SEVENTEEN
Love is not always perfect.
The love you find can be the love you want,
But that doesn’t mean it will last forever.
Love can die,
It’s a fact.
One that I never thought I would believe.
Love comes in many forms,
In short bursts of naïve, unbridled passion, and I would hope there are long bursts of it too.
I still believe in Love.
And I found that I won’t settle for less once I’ve seen I can have more.

Powdered in Stars

everything's just a mem'ry
powdered in the stars
twisted in the trails of lost and scattered view, of bias
found unfounded,

among the fading hues of midnight blanket
settle into comfortable falsity - bidden quick to come:
the mind's a-making to which we readily succumb

everything's just
a mem'ry to hold in perspectival recompense
fair or beauty to thine eyes may later be recalled with salty lament
o mem'ry, that fallible necessity
on which histories and nations
and lastly - or firstly - men are built and bolstered
therein lies the question, each of us petrified to find - is it
the "just" to be concerned, or is there yet
a more?

(inspired by dorian gray, jekyll and hyde... and frat boys)

One Soul

(2 is lying on the floor)

(1 walks in slowly)

1- So, uh, how are you today?

2- (sits up slowly, looks at 1, then looks away)

(calmly) Well, now that you're here, everything's just so much worse.

1- (stares blankly at 2)

2- You're gonna make me get up now, aren't you?

1- (continues to stare)

2- You're gonna make me get up and go out there. And let people see me. I don't even want to see myself.

1- You don't --

2- Yes, I do. You're going to make me. And maybe it's good. Probably it is… But does it really matter? No one will know if I don't…

Look at you. (1 and 2 look at 1, then 2 averts gaze again and 1 looks at 2)

Why can't they just see you?

1- I've been out there for a while… it doesn't feel right without you. It's like - it's like I'm not real.

2 - Maybe you aren't.

1- (silent for a moment)

You know, this is really shitty.

2- I know. I know it is.

1- Then why do you do this?

2- "Why"?

1- To yourself - to me? Isn't it hard to stay holed up in here?

2- Not as hard as going out there.

1- But you're smothering yourself! You can't live like this!

2- But I can, and I do. I have been. That's why I have you. And every time you come back it just reminds me of how much deeper I've retreated in. It'll take you at least an hour to find your way out again… Why can't you just leave me here?

1- Because, this isn't where you belong. Not entirely. You belong out there with me. Maybe I don't even belong out there…

2- (abruptly) Leave. Just leave me alone. Go BACK.

1- No.

2- (stares menacingly)

1- I'm not afraid of you. You need me.

2- (standing up, continues staring)

1- What's the point? What's the point of being here if you're never coming back again? Why even bother with me - with either of us? This shell might as well be empty. Why don't you just leave?

2- You know what you're saying? You know what you're telling me.

1- …I do.

2- (quietly angry) I'm smothering myself, huh? …So why don't you just finish the job?

1- (stares dumbfounded)

2- Finish the job! Then you don't have to lie anymore! Then you never have to come back here.

(2 is looking 1 squarely in the eye and 1 meets gaze, then a look of acceptance settles into 1's face)

1- So you're giving up?

2- I guess I am.

(1 holds 2's gaze while reaching down to remove their sock. Then 1 walks the couple steps over to 2 who has laid down again, calmly places the sock over 2's face, and begins smothering 2.)

1- Yeah? Oh yeah? How do you like it now?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(CUT TO 3 and 4 on bench) (3 is played by same actor as 1)

(3's eyes are closed. 4 is leaning close to 3 with a concerned look.)

4- (tapping 3's shoulder) Hey… Hey! (concerned) …You in there? (waves hand in front of 3's face)

3- (opens eyes abruptly, shocked, then turns to look 4 in the eyes) Hey.

4- Oh my god, you scared the shit out of me! You were gone for over an hour! Where were you?

3- (smiles cheerily but forced, ignoring the question) Well, now I'm back!

4- So, uh…how are you today?

3- (laughs) I'm fine! (When 4 doesn't respond immediately) Aren't we going out?

4- (looks at 3 in shock and confusion, then acceptance) Yeah! Yeah, of course. Sorry… Let's go! (starts to get up, then stops and turns back to 3)

You know, sometimes I feel like I'm smothering you.

3- You don't have to worry about that. Not anymore.

CURTAIN

rain

It is raining but I can’t feel the heavy drops because I am standing beneath a tree, the leaves are shielding me from the wet. I can hear the rush of the fall wind, filled with moisture and restlessness; it spits stray drops into my hair, my face, my eyes. My glasses are fogged up so that I can’t see to recognize the face of a friend less than an arm’s length away.

It is raining and I am soaking wet. I am not standing under the shelter of the tree, I am waiting, in the open. As I wait the rain works its way through my cotton t-shirt and my suede shoes, sculpts my hair into a strangely combed Zen garden, wipes the mascara off my lashes and leaves it smeared on my cheekbones instead. I can feel the restless winds pick up as I wait.

It is raining but I no longer notice the drops because I could not get any wetter if I tried. My t-shirt is transparent and my shoes squish and squash with every step I take. It is a slow, patient rain now, waiting for me. What it is waiting for and why, I do not know.

It is raining and I am warm and dry and not contemplating another trip outside at least until the morning. I can hear the restless winds whisper as I sink into bed, a different kind of soaking seeping into the cotton of my t-shirt, into the flannel of my pajamas, into the cold side of the pillow as my cheek traces leftover mascara onto the clean white. My suede shoes are drying as am I; my hair leaves a damp patch where it rests, the Zen garden now combed into manageability. I settle into the dry dark and let the rain, rain.

It is raining and I am asleep, vaguely aware of the gentle rustle of the restless winds as I dream, letting my mind drip-drop from reality to unconscious. I am in the damp, foggy thick of life, waiting for the rain to come and go as I study patterns in the weather.

THE PRESENCE OF A DAY

The day came with subtlety, creeping through the cracks

of Wednesday Thursday Friday holding its breath

Barely a whisper of warning -

that I refused to heed.

I thought I saw the day before it approached,

anticipated its ache, its meaning, its heaviness

And declared myself unaffected, free of its presence

But it enveloped me, wrapped me up and suffocated me with its

folds of shadows and hazy disconnected-discontented-ness

It took hold of me and I could not

understand what it was pressing down

Until I realized, and then the weight only became heavier

Tried to rinse it off

Rub the dark depression from my skin, sud the shadows from my hair

But I only pushed the day deeper in, and its presence settled into my bones

Like a lead string pulling from joint to joint

I was drowning in the presence of a day, just another day, but

despite this, inescapable, forcing its heavy load through my denying veins

and slowly bringing itself to my surface.

And my stomach sinks with the weight of her presence.

girl (girl.).

(a girl is sitting cross-legged on the floor, biting her nails with slow, subdued anxiousness)

(she uncrosses her legs, rocks back to rest her weight in her hands and crosses her ankles, eyes downcast)

(the girl brings her knees into her chest, hugging her arms around them with just a little too much strength, resting her cheek on her knees before realizing this position only offers temporary comfort)

(she relinquishes her grip around her legs, pausing for a moment mid-transition) *

(she succumbs to the banal urge to curl up on the floor, first simply on her side as if sleeping in her bed, then resorting to fetal position, presenting herself as a figure of ultimate vulnerability while using her own body to protect the vital parts)

(she is no longer here. She is gone, the curled, surrendering body floating in some other reality as she sits cross-legged on the floor, biting her nails with slow, subdued anxiousness. She views herself as if suspended in a pool of water – a freshly formaldehyde-ed Damien Hirst exhibit, a piece of art for others to view with confusion or understanding, criticizing objectively but inherently subjective in their judgments, accepting or rejecting her without her even having a chance to defend or explain herself – she-the-work-of-art no longer belongs to herself as soon as she is presented to the world, given away without her consent, open for interpretation.)

(as she sits cross-legged on the floor, biting her nails with slow, subdued anxiousness, she lifts her eyes and greets the world with two challenging orbs of pure, formaldehyde-dripping soul. The exhibit has been taken down. She uncrosses her legs and drops her hand.)

(she stands, a little unsteady, but here she is.)

One Minute Monologue

One Minute

Sometimes you see the seconds slip past and you wonder when it was you started wasting your life. You wish, for just one minute, you could plug up your life’s hourglass and take the time to figure out what the fuck has gone on since you lost track. You’d sit there and try to count each miniscule grain and wonder what moment it held, what it meant to you before it fell in the ever-growing pile – if you had been paying enough attention at the time to notice. And then you’d look up, see the impending, innumerable sands above you, and make a decision:

You won’t let those grains fall for nothing anymore. As soon as the plug is out, as soon as your hold fragile on time is gone, not a grain will slip past without something worthwhile making it up.

Starting with the last 60 seconds.

I take life too seriously...

I take life too seriously. I’ve always known it. And then I dwell on the fact that I take life too seriously and it just becomes even more serious. I like looking at life whole; I like seeing it from a higher vantage point, taking it all in, in one big gulp. But I wish – I wish – that I could have just one moment, as a moment, just for me – something to experience, to relish as it happens and only exist in it then, not also in the future or the past or some other place, or even in my own mind. I want to LIVE now. I want to see life steadily and then be able to look back and think how much I enjoyed losing myself, finding myself, in those moments I lived. I want to be here when I kiss someone. When I laugh and hug and converse into early morning hours. I want to be here. In this moment. In this world, in this reality, in this physical being we have been placed in. But then I know that I would be terrified. I can’t let go of the whole. It is as much a part of me as I am of it and it won’t let me go, even if I could conceive to try to let go of it. There I go over-thinking things too much again. So serious. So dramatic. So deep and thoughtful and insightful and so so serious.

I want to have time. I want to have time to make a masterpiece, to really MAKE something. Something that will change people. Maybe not all people, but someone – I want to make something that can change an individual and will stick with them. I want to string words together that will capture another person – not use words but find words, the right ones or even just the ones that want to be found, and share them with whoever they are meant for. I want to have time to find myself in this jumble and to realize what is important. I need to find the time. It feels like there is so much to cram in I don’t even know where to start. Sometimes I feel lost, like I don’t know where I was coming from or where I was going and the next step is merely something I find in front of me not something I was looking for, and I take it only because I can’t think what the other choices are, if there are any. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, maybe that’s on the way to finding a moment simply for the sake of a moment. I just wish sometimes that I already was where I’m going so I could know for sure that I’ll get there some day.

I am unstuck from the fabric for an instant - or longer, it must be so much longer - splintering in different directions as the universe spins a web for me to land in - but my sharp pieces rip the delicate fabric to trails of dust as I am lost further into the deep, floundering for something solid to grab me back and stitch me in.