Tour de France

You step off the plane, and it’s like you’ve time-traveled. Your body finds itself six hours ahead of its time. Your eyes see sunshine where they expect darkness. Your ears find noise where they expect silence. Your internal clock is now stalled and completely out of sync with your surroundings. And yet – the sounds! The people! The language! Everything is colorful and lively and new and you’re afraid to blink and miss a single second of it. Your hands shake — with excitement or exhaustion, you can’t tell.

On the train ride down to France, you see its neighbor Germany through a window – your first real view of Europe. It is somehow everything you expected and nothing like you imagined. It’s a cluster of villages nestled into the sides of a rolling hill. A countryside that sprawls out far as the eye can see. The grass, the rivers, even the air – all have a foreign quality to them.

After two hours acquainting yourself with Europe behind glass, you leave the train and take your first step on the ground of this alien continent. You feel like Neil Armstrong, going boldly where no man has gone before. The people around you speak in a tongue that, to your ears, is complete gibberish. Your head swirls with English thoughts that you cannot express to anyone, and, for the first time in your life, you feel voiceless. Unable to talk, you listen.

French is music. French is ballet. French is a silk ribbon of sound floating through the air into your ear and you understand nothing about it except that it is beautiful.

Fast-forward to your visit to quaint French villages, where you feel as if you’ve been plucked from reality and set down in the pages of a storybook. Think fairytales. Think Beauty and the Beast. Think flower-boxes and horse-drawn carriages and outdoor cafes where poets, artists, and intellectuals recline and discuss the great theories of the universe over coffee and bread.

Bread. It permeates everything. You smell it in the air, on your clothes. You carry it home with you and smell it on your skin at night. Your first French pastry is a pain au chocolat and when you bite into it, you bite into the sun. Fresh out of the oven, it fills with you with warmth that runs like liquid gold along your taste buds and into your bloodstream, stimulating every drowsy atom of your body to life. Bread at home will never taste like proper bread again.

You spend a night in Alsace, walking its streets long after the sun has fallen and the shops have closed and the tourists have cleared. And suddenly, in a moment of pure clarity, you realize you have stumbled upon the secret heart of France. It isn’t in Paris, as so many believe. It’s here. It’s in this little village – this tiny, overlooked dot on the map. You know because you ate its cheese and you drank its wine and you opened your mouth to its every taste. Now you stroll under its streetlights; you kneel to pet its stray cats. You touch the stones of its cathedral and think of everyone who has ever bent to pray here. You want to smile and you want to cry but mostly you want to lie down on this cobble street and be swallowed up into it and become a part of this magical town forever.

But you leave. You leave and you visit Paris, which is gorgeous and vibrant and wonderful in its own special way. You climb the three hundred steps of Montmartre and view the city from its highest vantage point. You wander through the artist’s quarter and see an endless line of painters at their canvases and wonder if the next Monet is among them. You sit on sidewalks eating ice cream and listening to the tunes of street musicians, tapping your foot because music is a language spoken by everyone. You walk through the doors of a dozen cathedrals and raise your face to a thousand stained-glass windows and think to yourself, If I were God, I would always have an eye on Paris. It is dazzling and it is loud and it is impossible to look away.

It is also exhausting. You visit the quiet hometown of your favorite artist to get away from its hustle and bustle. You pick a sunflower and write a letter and leave both on his grave, where you weep six feet above his bones. You close your eyes and can almost imagine him standing over you, his hand on your shoulder, his kiss on the top of your head. It is a day he would have loved: blue skies above golden wheat fields. You wonder if he would love you as well, love your offerings – read your letter and touch your sunflower, every petal.

You visit his exhibit in the Muse d’Orsay and it is something out of a Doctor Who episode. You stand for thirty minutes staring at a single painting. Hundreds of people elbow you, snap their picture, then turn quickly to the next one. You take the time to look, to see. You study every brushstroke, every bit of texture, every fleck of color. Tears slide silently down your cheeks. To know that you are standing face-to-face with the canvas his hand ran across – that you are inches away, that your fingers could easily stretch out and graze the places his fingers grazed. To know that is to reach through time and touch him.

You visit medieval castles and hear history whispering in the walls around you. You visit Notre-Dame and understand why it inspired so many stories. You sit on the lawn before the Eiffel Tower and consider how profoundly lucky you are to experience all of this.

And then, just as France begins to feel familiar, just as the land beneath your feet has stopped seeming so strange and you’ve even begun to speak a little of its language, you’re on the plane back home. You watch Europe tuck itself beneath a blanket of clouds and you wonder if you’ll ever see it again.

But you do. Even in America, you see it. You see it in pictures and poems and the pages of novels. You read descriptions of towns you’ve visited and your heart swells with joy. You hear a French word or phrase out of an English-speaking mouth and your ears perk up to listen. Bonjour. Voila. Bon appetite. You see it in the eyes of others who also been to Paris, who seem to understand everything you can’t articulate about it. Who can only nod their heads and smile and say “I know” as you struggle to find the words.

You know that six hours ahead of you, France is just as beautiful and busy as you left it. You lay your head down on your pillow at night and think about all the people in Alsace just waking up, sipping their morning tea and watering their flowers.

And you fall asleep, leaving the world in their capable hands.

The Empty House

“There’s no point now. No point.”
The lamp turns to face the clock, stunned as always by its declarations, but the window watches on from its home between the walls and the world without commenting. The clock goes on ticking.
“No, really,” it whines. “Really, it’s all over now. It’s already over. No point. No point.”
“Shut up!” The plants groan, their stalks bending, irritated by the reminder of their inevitable mortality, which would reveal itself much sooner than the others’. The clock falls quiet, but the words no point stay as the walls toss them around and take them in.
“Will they come back?” The window asks without turning around, its clear, lidless eyes peering out into the night. It never moves from its station, serving always as the boundary line between the In Here and the Out There. “They’ve turned Lamp out. We need Lamp. We always need Lamp. Are they coming back?”
“The family will come back,” the decorative rug sighs. “Back to walk over me.”
The ground’s muffled voice comes slipping out from underneath it to join in the conversation. “You know nothing of being walked over. That’s all I’m here for. At least you’re pretty.”
“Quiet,” the blank TV growls, stripped of its power and meaning. “Everybody quiet.”
“It hurts,” the lamp complained, straining against the darkness. “Oh, it hurts. Candles, help. Help me.”
“We can’t,” the three candles chime from the kitchen. “Fire’s dead.”
“Dead!”
“Nearly always dead. We’re just corpses.”
The paintings shudder, repulsed by the idea of sharing a house with the departed. The lamp suggests holding a funeral.
“We never give Garbage a funeral. It dies every week.”
“That’s because Garbage is garbage.”
“You’re quick to deal out judgment; you don’t even exist.”
“Light exists!” Lamp shrieks. “It’s been scientifically proven!”
“Everyone, listen!” The books cry out. “Something important, something important to say!” Their voices get lost in the chaos. Nobody ever listens to Books except when the family is in bed and there is nothing at all to talk about except Darkness.
No point. Shut up! Listen! Quiet! No, really! It HURTS, it HURTS. No point. Not now. Not ever!
“THEY’RE COMING.”
Silence.
All eyes – real, drawn-on, and imagined – turn to face the window. It repeats in its slow, measured tone: “They are coming.”
The plants shudder and straighten their stalks, giving their leaves a final shake before freezing again into reality. The portraits reassume the dead, far-off looks in their eyes and the chirps of the books fade again into distant whispers. Rug stretches itself out, sighs.
The lock clicks, and Door steps aside to reveal Family.
Everyone slips out of their coats and shoes and stumbles in from the cold, rubbing their arms and mumbling in primitive sounds no one quite understands. The ground lets out an oomph as it’s tread over once, twice, three times and then over again, with each footfall of each human.
Lamp’s flicked on. It breathes a sigh of relief as light goes shooting off into each corner of the room. Remote’s clicked and TV comes roaring to life. “Shop smart,” reminds the woman in the screen.
The father, the mother, and the child all sit together on the couch and stare at TV for an hour. It enjoys the family’s patient and dedicated attention (and never forgets to rub this in Mirror’s face).
The clock announces pointlessness until the family gets up and goes to bed.
After everyone’s upstairs, Books make a profound statement that is then instantly forgotten.
Instead, the objects listen to Silence talk, always impressed by what it has to say.

Tracks

The railroad tracks for us to bury the dead, for us to look
at the corpses all stacked high like a house of cards,
one touch of the finger and you’re pushing humanity
off the brink.
This is our history.
And the poets looking on at it through stained glass
windows will write how flowers will grow from the graves
but those of us really here aren’t thinking about flowers,
we’re thinking of skin and how long it takes to start smelling.
This stench will someday fill the world.
The side that wins the war
writes the history books, tells the story,
and the side that loses gets tossed down here.
These railroad tracks, after the train has gone by
storming through the air, whistling and screaming,
and we’re left in the dust of it,
to remove shoes from swollen feet,
and watches from limp wrists.

Dear Jack Kerouac

Somewhere there is a couch no one is sitting on,

this is the saddest story we know.

Where is the music? Where is the sky?

Point me to the clouds I want to crane my neck and look.

Where does the road go? I’m following someone and I can only see their back.

I’m a piece of poetry, I’m The Road Less Traveled and

everyone interprets me the wrong way.

Close the door behind you because I know you’re not staying.

I sold my heart at a garage sale, I can’t remember who to.

I’m ready to leave this world for the next one

and I want new eyes.

Pull the fire alarm and stand me under it, I haven’t felt the rain in years

There are people here who have never seen fireflies before and I want to bathe in their newfound wonder

– let me tell you there are things in this world that produce their own light –

and the moon hasn’t stopped howling at me since I was born in its arms of night.

Let’s talk about haircuts and paper cuts and the kind of cuts you can get and the place where lost things go.

Take my hand let’s go home to our no-home.

Jack are you proud yet Jack am I writing with a beat yet Jack is this good enough for you and your On the Road soul?

My keys are around my neck but where the hell is the door to which they go I don’t even know and I guess this is how soul mates work.

Am I a round peg in a square hole yet?

Jack, darling.

The world sticks its tongue out at you and you think maybe it wants to French kiss but really it’s just making fun of you, this is how I sum up the universe.

Jack if you’re not proud yet I don’t think you’ll ever be.

Is this beat yet? Am I just beating around the bush or beating these keys hoping music comes out?

When I Go Falling

Tuesdays I fall from burning buildings.
Quickly, in the air, I assemble my wings.
I turn and twist and think about how fires get started, how children aren’t allowed to play with matches, and adults just shouldn’t.
My wings are going to be a rich, milky green. I see the shade I want on the lawn and pop my whole body goes the color.
Mama said fire has a sterilizing effect, and that the best way to clean is to burn yourself alive.
Why do I take everything so literally?
No, we’re not talking suicide, don’t go getting your pocket notebook out, you big therapist. There’s a difference between falling and falling with intention.
My wings are halfway done. I need bone. As the ground gets closer I imagine tree branches and snap they’re glued to my back.
I wanted to fly into the sun. I am further from the fire, but closer to the burning. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
The truth is, I was pushed.
The truth is, I floated out of my body and pushed myself.
And no, we’re still not talking about suicide.
My wings begin to flap. I heave them up and down, my muscles groaning. They beat against my body. I do not change my angle. I am held to my meteorite ways, falling to earth, and I won’t veer off course. Go ahead, try to push me in another direction – you don’t have the science.
I grew wings because I wanted to be a new kind of fallen angel.
I never said I was going to rise up. You still don’t need that pocket notebook, I still don’t need your diagnosis.
Going now like spit from the sun’s mouth, I fly myself into the ground.

6-Word Story

In Battle: Better Dead Than Alive

Inspired by Hemingway:

Reach, Hold, Pass On

The rules of the universe, as I know it, are these: Reach, Hold, and Pass On.

We are all given a tiny piece of the universe to call our own. We keep it only for a moment, a breath, until it escapes our grasp and goes tumbling back into the sea of everything. For a brief, tiny fraction of a millisecond, we capture the light and we hold it. We let it burn our fingers. We let it blind our eyes. We let it consume us for a moment, and a moment only.

But in that moment, it is ours.

We own it. We tend to it. We keep it alive.

And that’s what we’re all doing – capturing spurts of light on the tips of our fingers and holding on desperately, insanely, because holding on is the thing to do. It’s what we know. It’s what we define ourselves by.

Because our lives are indeed defined by the way we catch things and let them go. We hold onto people, sometimes grasping their hands in ours, sometimes heaving them over our shoulders and stumbling on, our bodies straining with the weight of them. We stretch out our hands and we scoop up dreams from the well of God-knows-where and we make them ours. We take light from the universe like children snatching fireflies from the summer air.

Then we hold it. We keep it. We stuff it in our pockets or we shove it in our purses or we tuck it safely away in file cabinets where we think the world can’t reach it. We make our music and we write our poetry and we have our conversations and we feel so infinite doing it, but the time in which we hold the light in our hands is not so infinite. We are not so immortal.

But the light is. It reaches different carriers, it finds new vessels, but it never ends. It is never put out. It just bounces back out into the world in a different way, in another form. This is the part of the process we struggle with – the most complicated aspect of the deal we all agreed to.

We have to pass it on.

Our lives do not stand the test of time. Our time here on earth is limited, our days numbered, our moments  fleeting. We will move from this place to the next place, wherever the next place may be. And some will be forgotten almost instantaneously. Others will be remembered for a brief while, in photographs or in between the pages of a history textbook. But eventually we will fade. We do not get to keep the light. Our hands will grow too transparent here to hold it.

So we must let it go. We must leave it behind. Whatever ways you managed to shape the light while you had it while remain a part of its memory forever, but you will not be there to trace its impact. Your legacy will be kept absorbed in that ball of light as it goes shooting into the stars of forever but you… you, my friend, will go on. You’ll find new light.

I cannot guarantee there is light where we’re going. I can only have faith, and faith tells me there is more to us, more to our story, than we know.

So until we unveil the mystery, we’ll just keep doing what we do best.

Reaching, holding, and passing on.

The Person I Meet on the Last Page

“Right now I smell like old books. My hands scented with tired words and broken ideas. Right now I smell like paragraphs and one too many adjectives.” ~Tyler Knott Gregson

There is always someone at the end of each book I finish, standing casually at the corner of the ending and the next beginning, one foot up on the wall, waiting for me with a smile and a cigarette between their fingers.

Whatever they are, they seem human. Humans made of words. They are the people who evade me at every turn as I chase them down, one exhausted, rattling breath away from giving up, one tiny thread of insane curiosity driving me forward. They’re always a step ahead of me; I, at their heels, always a fingertip’s length away from reaching out and grazing their skin. I don’t know why I run after them. I just do. It’s the only rule in this mad reality – the only routine.

The words move us forward. Each sentence tumbling on after the other is another footfall on the cold, concrete ground beneath us.

We run and we run and we run. We run in circles, we run in long strides, we run in slow motion.

Until it happens. Until my fingers slip under the paper of the last page and pull it forward, summoning a great something from the depths of the novel. Until they slip out from the words like a shadow, a shadow with a face and a name.

We meet. We might shake hands. Or we might fight and kill each other. We might simply stare into each other’s eyes and question the other’s existence.

Sometimes there are tears. Sometimes there is blood. Sometimes there is sorrow, happiness, or betrayal. But there is always something. And that is the whole point, isn’t it? We read the story for that something. That little, tiny something that either makes it worth it, or doesn’t.

There are so many people living between the sheets of parchment paper that sit on my bookshelf. So many voices calling out to be heard. I am afraid my life is not, and will not ever be, perhaps, long enough to satisfy all the hands that long to reach out and touch me, change me.

There are so many heroes to be found there. So many villains.

I want to know them all. I want to learn about their parts in this mad, forever-shifting reality of ours. I want to ask them how their stories can be so complex and yet so simple, so impossible to break down and yet so completely breakable. I want to understand the layers and layers of good and evil, mystery and fiction, romance and tragedy, and how they all pile up on top of each other until they melt like wax into our twisted little world – a world in which good people die of cancer but children build snowmen, a world in which poems are written but the lovers who write them grow cold, and a world in which sad stories are told right along with the beautiful ones.

Maybe it’s all beautiful. I’m still trying to figure that part out.

All I know is that I am a reader because I enjoy the chase. I enjoy the mountains and the waterfalls and the valleys I find myself in during my travels. I enjoy the thrill and sensation of running towards my next discovery, my new understanding. Moving from one moment to the next, dancing through an eternal string of moments, both light and dark, that brighten these hallowed halls of ours.

Because that is what we are all doing – whether we are readers, lovers, writers, poets, artists, musicians.

Running. Towards what, no one really knows.

Just keep running, and maybe someday we’ll find out.

Rate this:

“The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.” ~ Italo Calvino

You have ghosts.

If I asked you, would you know them? Could you tell me what they look like, the sound of their voices?  Could you hold them out towards me, broken and exposed, and tell me their stories?

How well do you know your ghosts?

We all have dead things that we carry around with us. Shattered hopes, fragments of old dreams, scars from our struggles. They are the bad days that never truly leave us, they are the tears that never completely dry from our eyes. A ghost is nothing more than unfinished business.

I am haunted by the risks I didn’t take. The opportunities I missed. The people I could have loved, but didn’t. They come back to me everyday.

I can never fully rinse the blood of my mistakes from my hands.

And yet I welcome my ghosts, when they come to me. I strive to do great things because of them, in spite of them. They are the whispers from the ever-present darkness, yet they guide me forward. Their voices lead the way. If I tell myself I can live, that I will live, with these ghosts inside of me, I break through the shadows. The darkness dissipates around me, falling from my shoulders like a veil. I stumble forward.

I’ve held their hands. I’ve sung to them. I’ve hated them, and I’ve loved them. They have never been friends, but they have never been demons (those are something else entirely). My ghosts represent the lifeless things I have picked up over the years: feelings, people, memories. Some of them are words that were never spoken, some are ideas that were never expressed. Some are chances to say “I love you” that I didn’t take and others are reminders of my failures – the times I fell down and stayed down, and that I am more ashamed of than anything.

But what do we have to live for if not our ghosts? They are what we are trying to prove wrong. We ask it of ourselves to rise above them daily. They are the foundation we must always keep underneath our feet. We build up from them. We stand upon their shoulders.

You must tell yourself: I am more than my ghosts. They are part of me, but they are not all of me.

You must know your ghosts. You must make acquaintances with your dark thoughts. When they cry to you, you must block out the noise. You must know why you can’t listen, why you can’t give in. You must draw your strength from them. When they come forth, you must know their faces. You must familiarize yourself with the blank stares in their eyes.

You must know why they exist.

And most importantly, you must remember why you need to fight them.

Two Dead Eyes and a Pair of Broken Hands

“It doesn’t matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching.” ~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

The old man was dying, as old men do.

He stared at the few rusty rings that held the white curtain around his hospital bed and thought about some things it just seemed fitting to think about at a time like that.

He thought about life, yes. Here, in the shadow of death, he thought of life. He thought about the numerous years and days and hours of his he had spent wandering the little roads and pathways of the world, crafting his legacy. He thought of the many faces he had seen, and of the woman he had loved, and of the children she had given him. He thought of the books he had read and the paintings he had made and the laughter, the constant laughter, that rang in his ears even now as his life faded like an echo, reverberating off the walls back to him, a reminder, a whisper, of something that was, but won’t be again.

Was he ready to die? His daughter Michelle had visited him last night; she had grasped his hand in hers, trembling, and told him that it was “okay to go now”. He hadn’t wanted to take her words to heart, but now he suspected that he had, because there was a strange pulling sensation in the pit of his gut and a sudden willingness to give in to it. To stop fighting. It scared him a little, that feeling. He didn’t trust it. How could he? He had spent the last eight months battling with cancer. They told him to fight. They told him to hang on.

He had said so much, he had done so much. He was scared of how the person he was, the life he knew, was seeping through his fingers like smoke. The more he tried to cling to it, the more it slipped away. With him gone, who would there be to remember – his graduation, his wedding, the days his children were born? Who would be around to hold the memories? Who would be there to call them back?

It will be like I was never here, he thought. Like nothing I did ever mattered.

And that was terrifying. He grew cold as the thought entered his mind. He looked down at his hands. The fingers, once strong and firm, were now wrinkled and thin with age. He turned to stare at a mountain landscape hanging on the wall in front of him. His eyes wouldn’t even focus on what he was sure, almost sure, was a breathtaking vision.

He cursed himself. Damn these two dead eyes, this pair of broken hands. Damn ’em straight to hell.

And so he cried. And the nurse came in to give him medicine and change the sheets, and she viewed his tears with a face that had seen many such tears being shed before. The old man wondered how many dying people this woman had watched cry, but the thought only made him sob harder, his shoulders shaking with the weight of it all. Soon, too soon, he would be in the ground. He would turn to bones. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

But then the old man got to thinking about everything his hands had done in his life, and everything his eyes had seen. He thought of the things he touched, the people he laughed and cried with, the places he left his fingerprints. He thought of the tree he had planted in the backyard, the photographs he had taken, and the music he had made, which had no doubt been swept off into the wind and was now playing gently in some quiet, unknown place of the world in which it would play on, even after he was long gone.

Maybe I have touched the world, in my own tiny way, he thought. Maybe we all do.

So there, in the face of death, on a hospital bed, the old man blinked away his tears and looked down at his hands, soft and aged, in his lap.

And he thanked God for giving them to him. He thanked Him for the chance to touch things and change things, to make things his own.

His broken hands became beautiful once more.

And when the nurse came in the next morning, the old man was still, and his small, soft hands rested gently on the rails of his bed, at peace.

Observing that Endless Blue Mystery We Refer to as “Ocean”

“The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can’t.” ~Christopher Paolini 

The ocean.

If there was ever a place on this planet that could come close to the glories of heaven, it would be the ocean.

My spirit is attached to the infinite boundlessness of the sea. It calls to me. When I am there, I am complete. I am whole. Nothing else matters, nothing else exists. In the moment my feet reach the sand and my hair is thrown about by the wind, there is nothing in the universe but the sea and I. Nothing between me and this vast, endless line of blue that so perfectly captures the raw and exquisite allure of life, and reminds me that I am forever lucky to have a part in it.

What could be more humbling, more daunting, than standing before something so genuinely never-ending as the sea? We are only beginning to understand the complexity of it. We’ve only scraped the surface of the waves in terms of knowing all the mystery it truly holds. The ocean is nothing but a big, magical unknown to us.

It is because of this I feel so spiritual as I stand before it. As I even think about it now.

The moments of my life seem to be defined by the times I am there and the times I am not – the times I can see it and the times I can only hear it through conch shells.

It is my escape. Never am I as in-touch with my God and my inner self as when I am in the waves, gazing out at the water before me. It is a magic I cannot describe. The ocean teaches me that there is so much more to life than the cage we build around ourselves and live within the confines of everyday. There is a world outside the boundaries of routine. There is more to life. There is always more.

The ocean reminds us of this. It throws us into the sharp reality we all must come to accept: that we are not the center of the universe. There are worlds and worlds and worlds of unexplored, uncharted territory that lies in the realm beyond our knowledge and understanding, and at some point in our lives we must learn to make peace with that. We will never understand the ocean completely. Can we not just love it for the dazzling mystery of it all? Must we constantly strive for a definition – to classify a person or a place or a concept in simple terms we can easily understand and wrap our heads around? Must we label the ocean as being nothing more than a “vast body of saltwater”?

Or can we realize that the sea is something else entirely?

As I leave you with that thought, allow me to quote one of my favorite Disney characters, “That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails; that’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is – what the Black Pearl really is… is freedom.” ~Captain Jack Sparrow

The Art of Making Music

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” ~Aldous Huxley

Unrealistic expectations. That was what brought me to that moment, standing hunched over a tiny violin with eyebrows furrowed in concentration, fingers to the point of bleeding from the countless hours spent repeatedly pressing them onto cold metal strings, head pounding and aching from the grueling effort it took to create a decent sound.

What had I expected, really? To make beautiful music the first time I sat down to play an instrument? To send the notes tumbling one after another in an effortless stream of perfection? My ears hurt from straining to get a single pitch in tune. An entire song was out of the question… completely.

Giving up sat patiently and quietly on the horizon of my mind: a quick and easy escape from this horrid and out-of-tune hell I had managed to get myself into. Why exactly had I wanted to play an instrument in the first place? I won’t flatter myself and say it was because I wanted the challenge. No, I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be good. I was to be the next young violinist prodigy, minus the actual time and effort.

That was the day I almost quit. The day I almost gave up. But I guess there was a little backbone in that 10-year-old me and a small voice in the back of my head that came forward from the uncertainty with a quiet but firm, “No.” So I stuck it out. And the next day came and I picked up my violin once more and made my fingers bleed and my head ache all over again. But I didn’t stop.

And to this day I haven’t stopped. It’s been nearly seven years and I’m still going at it. Day after day after day I pick up my instrument and I fight. I wage a daily war. I fight for perfection. I fight through sweat and blood and tears and pages and pages of sheet music. What once appeared as nothing more than black dots on a white page has become a second language to me. I live and breathe music. If you took apart my soul, you would find quarter notes spilling out from the bottomless depths within me. If you leaned down close and listened to the pounding of my heart, it would be hammering out beat one of a 4/4 time signature.

Not many people know this side of me. The musician. I am most often regarded as the writer, the reader, the teacher. But there is another part of me, more quiet, more haunted – a part that hears the calls of the universe and answers back with cries of its own, my fingers flashing across the fingerboard of my violin and converting the essence of the world into music.

Music is what saved my soul from the bleak, plain shores of reality. It was the ship that arrived at port and sent my name into the wind, calling for me, promising adventure. Promising a different kind of life. I set my feet upon the deck of that ship and stared out at the open ocean rolling before me, my heartbeat skipping around like a hare but exhilarated by the dare of it all. Exhilarated by my own audacity.

To think that I could tackle that raging sea before me, I would have been mad. No, I only desired to sail it. To see some of it. To gaze down into the waves of something I could never truly understand. Now, that was real adventure. That was the journey I had been waiting for all my life.

It amazes me now to realize there was a secret hiding inside that old, hand-me-down violin I used to play all those years ago. How was I to know that through my persistent, suffering bliss I was unveiling more and more of that secret everyday?

There is a life waiting for us. Each of us. It sits in the forgotten corners of the world, places that have long slipped out of memory and time. Perhaps it is a despairing thought to know that we might not ever discover these places where our lives await us, might never stumble across the cabinet or glance behind the door to discover where they lurk. Yet I prefer to think that our souls will find a way back. That they’ve been there before. That they can lead us to the very place we’ve left our hearts in past lives, hoping beyond hope that our unconscious would bring us back. To find whatever would await us there.

Whatever would lead us back to becoming who we really are.

Trees, Poems, and Leftover Spaghetti

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our own emptiness.” ~Kahil Gibran

Emptiness?

Well, Kahil Gibran, there are many things I am feeling right now as I sit before my computer screen at 11:30 this Friday night, but empty is not one of them.

Exhausted, yes. Beaten, worn-down and tired, certainly. But not empty.

It has been a long and grueling day, my friend. That I can say with complete honesty. I am sore and aching, my eyelids drooping and my thoughts scattered and slow to formulate. There is a part of me that longs to reach the comfort of my bed, close my eyes and block out this day that was all too much. That took all too much from me.

But there was one thing that today didn’t take. And that was the passion – the one thing that never sleeps: the unrelenting urge to pick up the pen and create something. To condense all the thoughts I have had this past week into something salvageable – something that someone would want to read. To awaken the writer within once more.

No, I am not empty. I am full.

I dragged myself out of bed at 5:30 this morning. That, I did not want to do. I have taken three tests today. Also not too enjoyable. I have been disappointed over a history grade, I have been rained on, and I even had to eat nasty leftover spaghetti for dinner.

All things considered, I deserve to go to bed right now. Probably should.

But instead I am up writing. Why is that, I wonder? Why do I choose this moment to write? Why don’t I reward myself for making it through today by going to sleep, like all the other millions of normal people my side of the earth?

Because this is my reward.

This is the first time all week I have been able to stop and write. I am choosing to. No one is forcing me to sit down and hammer these words out. No one has yelled at me to get in my room, sit my butt down, and do something meaningful with my life. No one is pouring thoughts into my head and ordering that they be put down on paper (well, for all I know there could be… that would explain a lot).

No, instead I am here. Writing. And I am so happy about it, I can forget the exhaustion for a while. I can forget the pouring rain and the bad day. Even the leftover spaghetti is fading into nothing more than a distant memory.

This is what passion is. This is what love is. If everyone in the world could feel the way I do now about something -anything at all- that could inspire them the way I am inspired in this moment, our world would be better by tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. We as mankind would have set ourselves on a road to greatness.

Let us now take a moment and reflect on our lives.

There is something inside you that never sleeps. Something that can make you forget all about your leftover spaghetti and want to stay up late just to enjoy it for a little while. Something to bring your soul peace. It could be music, it could be art, it could be a good book.

But for me, it is writing. As it has always been, and always will.

So amidst all the schoolwork and the chores and the numerous other things I am far too tired to rattle off right now, I have done something I wanted to do.

And that something is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

The Beauty in Life

Dear reader,

I have a confession to make.

I am in love with the world. It is a mad and hopeless kind of love – the love that cannot be explained or defined. I can’t say how much I love the world, or why I love the world, or for what reasons I love the world. I can only say that I smile at the stars and look at the clouds and wonder how something could be so beautiful and so imperfect at the same time, and I fall more and more in love with the mystery of it every day.

I am forever the optimist. My eyes are constantly peeled for the beauty in life, and they find it everywhere. It does not often cling to the surface, but it is there. I love seeing warmth and wholeness in everything around me. I like to wonder. I like to create. I like to be in love with the world.

But there are many who would look me in the eye and ask me: how could I love this world, so flawed and imperfect? So tragic and damning? So dark and despairing and lost? How could I find beauty in ugly places where it does not exist, and marvel at goodness and purity that is only an illusion – nothing more than a thin veil of lies I’ve spun in my own mad reality of believing dreams come true and love is endless and infinite?

And yet I find it difficult not to be in love with the world when I wake up in the pale, breathless hours of the morning when the sun’s rays haven’t quite touched my window yet, and the air is almost chilly, and the covers are nearly touching me, and my eyelashes flutter open from a dream and I smile because the world is almost perfect in this moment. Almost, not quite. But close enough, for me.

Yes, I really love the world.

And sometimes it’s a scary thing to admit, this love. Because not everybody sees it. And people will judge you for it. They might think that you’re ignorant. Worse still, they might try to convince you you’re wrong. Say you’re a hopeless romantic. Nothing but a sad and tragic poet, who clings to the work of Tyler Knott Gregson every night and cries because it is so beautiful and really doesn’t do anything with their life at all but think things are beautiful and write things that are beautiful.

But maybe the sad and tragic poet isn’t so sad and tragic after all. There is beauty in life for those who are willing to see it.

And that is why I write – to create beauty, so that one day, some person unknown to me will find it within my words and come to see the world in a different way. There is so much to fixate on that is ugly and bad. So much that is almost perfect, but isn’t. We can either chose to accept the fact that anything worth loving will always be nearly perfect, or we can live in bitterness because of that “not quite”.

We can either admire the light or begrudge it for the shadows it creates.

So, dear reader, I hope you can always find the beauty in life. I hope sometimes you’re given the chance to create beauty, and when you are, I hope you take it. I hope you put light out into the universe. I hope you love people, and I hope people love you. I hope you have dreams, and I hope those dreams come true for you. I really hope you can find happiness here in this lovely, confusing world of ours.

And above all else, I hope that you can one day come to love it as I have.

Forever yours,

A not-so-sad-and-tragic poet

One December Morning

I dedicate this blog post to the many victims and families of the Connecticut shooting this week.

It was not a pretty story to write, but these stories are never pretty.

*   *   *

Brooklyn Division of Police Report: Friday, December 14th

Case No. 9184704

Name: Rogers, Jeanette

Age: Fifteen

Cause of Death: _________

*   *   *

Red. That was the color of my death. No, no peaceful gold nor soothing white for me, but great dark swirls of maroon.

There was nothing strange or unusual about that morning. Sunlight drifted lazily into my room; the alarm went off as it always did. I pulled myself out of bed to fix breakfast and take a shower. Not once in the final hours of my life did I stop to consider that this might be my last day on earth. That I was never going to see this house again, breathe this air. I have often heard talk of a foreboding feeling: a dark wisp of apprehension before fate plays its part. I experienced no such thing. That is why when I raced out to catch the school bus that day and forgot to hug my mother goodbye, I didn’t turn back.

After all, there would be many other countless opportunities to hold her and tell her I love her.

When I got to school, I inched my way past the crowd to get to my locker, heaving my textbooks inside and grabbing what I needed for Language Arts class. I think there was going to be a test that day, or something like that. I’m finding it harder and harder to remember those little details lately. I feel my life as it slips through my fingers, as the memories disappear like smoke. It is so easy to forget.

I had heard all the stories. I had read about school shootings, and I knew they happened. Just not to me. Just not to anyone I knew. I could believe them from a distance, somewhere completely separated from my world. I could hear about one in some far-off place and shake my head and say, “Such a tragedy. I’ll keep them in my prayers tonight.” But for it to have happened- in my town? At my school? Nonsense. No one ever thinks it’s going to be them.

But the truth is – it could be anyone. Death is not as picky as we think.

It happened so quickly.

The noise rocked the halls like thunder. Three in a row. Boom, Boom, Boom. Firecrackers. For a horrifying moment, I thought the ceiling was going to cave in. Then came the screaming, loud and high-pitched. Then another burst of sound. The word formulated in my mind and sank into my bloodstream, chilling my entire body with fear.

Gunshots.

My sneakers hit the ground within seconds, squealing as I sprinted down the hallway towards the east side of the school, away from the sound. If I had been thinking clearly I would have bolted immediately for the doors, but I ran like a frightened animal in the only direction I knew to be safe: away. Classroom doors slammed open and I began to hear the shrieking of teachers above the sudden chaos of running children, pulling student after student into their rooms to safety. Boom. Boom. Boom. Oh God. The sounds were getting closer.

I recognized an eleventh grade Pre-Calculus teacher catch my eye. He reached for me immediately. I turned to face him, to flee into his sanctuary, when I saw my best friend Tina staring at me from far down the hallway. She opened her mouth -to scream or call my name, I don’t know- but I heard another gunshot and watched in slow motion as she keeled over and fell to the ground, her blonde ponytail the last thing I saw before she disappeared behind the rush and pandemonium.

The walls flew past me. I didn’t even know I was running towards her until I was at her side, clutching her hand. Tina was like a sister to me. There was a gaping hole in the side of her neck that was gushing blood, and she was choking and panting and staring into my eyes as a pool of it began to form around us. Every inch of me was screaming. The whole scene was screaming. So much red. So much hate. I think back to that moment and all I can remember is the screaming and the warmth of Tina’s blood on my hands.

I looked up and the first thing I saw was the gun. He was waving it everywhere, firing it off at anything that moved. His gaze met mine and it was as if a light had fallen upon me. A good life. A life with potential. Something that can so easily be snatched away. I saw in his eyes an insane, raging desire for my death and a pleading for forgiveness at the same time. It was the saddest thing I have ever experienced.

Tina was squeezing my hand so tightly as she slipped away, holding on to me like I was the anchor that could tie her to life. I wanted nothing more than to gather her up in my arms and share in her misery, to relieve her of half the struggle. To help her.

The shooter raised the weapon like a torch, and I felt the impact in my side as the bullet entered my body. The force sent me falling backwards and my head crashed to the ground next to Tina’s. She was already gone as I lay there dying, her eyes blank and unseeing. I stared into them as my own vision went blurry. I focused on her face as Death carried me away.

I feel it too, Tina, I heard myself crying silently. I feel it too.

On a Journey to Find the Right Words

“He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world. She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.”

~Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

It is a common story.

The dedicated writer, after a long day spent fulfilling other commitments, finally sits down at his desk.  The faithful pen works its way into his hand and waits for the movement, the usual flick of the wrist that will plunge him into the piles and piles of words that have lately been growing in his mind. The room is dark and cool. The numbers on the clock tell of some late, unspeakable hour of the night. That is normal. The words come when they come. The writer can only hope to catch them in rare, fleeting moments like these.

Something haunts the writer this night. It hovers over his shoulder: a great cloud above him. He captures and holds it like a distant memory. It sits somewhere between reality and the great, open vastness of the heavens.

It is a story. A beautiful story, waiting patiently for him to only formulate the right words.

But oh, to write such a story as this! It is a task for the gods.

And yet, it exists. This story has formed inside the writer’s head and is as real as the blank paper before him. It lives in his thoughts. It breathes life and vision, color and description. The man closes his eyes and gropes with his mind- trying desperately to clutch at this story and turn it into something he can put down on paper.

This story is… What is this story? How to describe this story?

What words could do it justice, could capture the essence of this story like the flash of a camera stealing the fragments of a moment right out of the air? What tiny scribbles can this pen make that can recreate something I have conjured up in my mind that is so completely vivid and yet virtually indescribable? Am I setting out of a pointless venture- a venture to find the right words? Do the right words even exist?

These are all questions that have passed my mind from time to time. As writers, it is our job to find the right words. It is our speciality. But we do not always succeed in our ambitions.

Too often have I failed in my endeavor to tell the untold story. Too often have I fallen short of describing what has truly been whispered in my heart. Too often have I gasped in the dead of night, having seen the right words floating in front of my waking eyes, and too often have I reached forward and grabbed nothing.

But still there have been times when I pieced together handfuls of words and emerged with something whole, beautiful, complete. There have been stories and people and places born from my mind who leapt from it onto my writing pad with ease. These I keep with me. They have carried me through dark times when the wrong words came disguised as the right words, and the perfect stories disintegrated in my fingers like ash.

We are, as a race, on a journey to find the right words- to tell someone how much we love them. To describe our passions. To explain our hopes and dreams. And the truth of the matter is- sometimes the right words don’t exist. There are some thoughts, some feelings, some ideas that simply cannot be explained, for their value and meaning stretches beyond the capacity of storytelling into the realm of all that which cannot be told. All that is too immense to compact and fit into something as tiny and simple as the written word.

We as writers fear this realm. And yet, my friends, it is not something to be feared. It is life. There are always going to be words- the wrong words, the right words, and the words that only scrape the surface of that which they are trying to describe. The words that don’t exist are very real, too.

Once you realize this, the world is yours.

So yes, I am a writer. I am on a journey to find the right words. I suppose I will have to scour the earth many times over – but if I do find them, I will hold them in my hands like jewels, smash them to a dust and throw their remains to the wind in the hopes that it will carry them to the places they are needed.

I set out on this grand and worthy quest- a life of telling stories- with a light and hopeful heart. I am a chaser of words and ideas, a hunter of stories and a whisperer of tales. So if, when I come to the end of my years, I discover that I was trailing nothing but a vision, I will have no regrets; for the pursuit of words brings me joy, and joy is what transforms an ordinary life into one of full of daring adventures and exciting discoveries.

Living is an Act of Madness

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” ~Fredrick Nietzsche

What is madness, but a notion of an unsound mind which knows not the realness of things? Which hears not the words falling from the lips but rather the music slipping from the throat, and feels not with hands but with the heart and soul? What is it to be insane- or to be thought insane by those who only think differently? Is it a state of mind? A way of life? By thinking too much, feeling too much, being too much… are we truly mad?

Was Edgar Allen Poe insane, or merely a man who felt more passionately, who experienced life more fully, than those around him who were supposedly sane? What then, is sanity? A trembling state of normalcy? A vow not to feel as one can feel and not to do as one has the potential to do?

I try to find something beautiful in every day. I truly believe, deep down, that good people exist. I still read fairytales. I like to walk in the rain because it makes me feel alive. I write handwritten letters. I love recklessly and unconditionally. There is no greater happiness in the world for me than in a freshly sharpened pencil and a warm cup of tea. Sometimes when I feel sad, I take a book off my shelf, softly run my fingers across the pages and breathe in that old parchment smell. I think the real tragedy of life is to give up on the one you want in order to settle for the one that does not give you every happiness you deserve.

Am I insane?

Am I mad for having faith in a future that can be better than the present moment? For thinking that life is a beautiful thing, no matter how cruel and cold and heartless the world can sometimes seem? For believing that magic exists and can be found everywhere, because I have felt it and I have breathed it and I have lived it? For being unwilling to settle, because my soul longs to reach the four corners of the earth and touch as many people as it can? For scribbling down words that might not ever reach those who need them the most? Am I insane?

I think too much, and I feel too much. I am too much shoved into a person- a person trying to live too much, to write too much, to love too much. What is too much? Who defines too much? Can someone be too happy? Too miserable? Where is the line drawn? How much exactly can a person take before they start flowing over? If conforming to a certain standard is the sign of a balanced mind, then I don’t want to be balanced.

We are insane, but the way we see the world is more real than the way others see it. Where they see lines, we see all that fills them. We are the ones who rise above the slaves of the ordinary and scrape the sky with our trembling fingers. We are the people who refuse to believe in ‘impossible’, who dance away from the crowd to the silent music that comes from our hearts alone.

We are the ones who live. And living, after all, is an act of pure madness.

Which I guess means that we’re all a little bit mad, aren’t we?

Those Who Lit a Fire Within Me

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ~William Butler Yeats

Have you ever been touched?

Have you ever fallen into a moment, a glowing sliver of time, when you gazed into a pair of eyes and felt within you a sudden rush of air flying in like tufts of dandelion weeds blowing through an open window? Did you look into those eyes and stare down those pupils into the depths of a soul and feel the urge to run forward and lose yourself in that person forever- in that moment that was so magical it was almost unreal? Did their hands reach without reaching and touch without touching the edges of your heart, grazing with fiery fingers the many pieces of you and perhaps leaving a bit of themselves there as well, in that jumbled and unorganized pile of lessons and memories and thoughts that have accumulated inside you after all your years of wandering- of getting lost and rediscovering yourself and trying to decide which is really which? And amidst all the chaos, did they stand there, like it was the simplest thing in the world, holding you in suspension, turning you round and round in their hands?

I believe that there are certain people in this life that we are meant to meet- whose way of thinking is so parallel to ours that we relate to them on deeper levels than we knew even existed. They teach us about ourselves, acting as mirrors and throwing our images back to us, absorbing all of our light and shining with it to remind us of its existence. These people are found few and far between, but when they do come across our paths it is like the collision of two worlds, scraping past each other, denting the other, moving along forever changed. We take something away from them that becomes a part of who we are: small bits of shattered glass collected from others that come together to form something beautiful, shining, in pieces. You are merely a unique compilation of bits and scraps of those who have touched you.

But there is always someone who comes with fire.

They walk steadily towards you, bearing a torch wreathed in flames. You are so pitifully unaware of how combustable you are, of the way the completely flammable fragments of your soul sit inside your body, waiting for the single spark that could set them ablaze. Smoke begins to cloud your vision, fill your lungs, drowning you as they approach.  There is darkness everywhere. Darkness, darkness, nothing but darkness. Where is the light? Your frantic mind screams, your eyes wide searching for the what was there a moment ago, now blown out like a candle. Where is the light? And just before you sink into despair you see them: shadows springing from the fire in their hands and casting light on half their smiling face. They reach out to embrace you- and before you can move, they touch the flames to the many pieces.

Oh, how they burn.

You look down, and watch with amazement and wonder as flames lick their way around your ribs and your heart. Here now, there is light- not shining from some outside source, but from within you. You are the fire. You are the light. You no longer need a flickering candle at your side to free you from the suffocating darkness constantly lingering at your shoulders and threatening to swallow you. You are the candle. The darkness draws back until it is nothing more than a black, distant memory.

The pieces heat to extreme temperatures and begin to melt into a thick, golden substance, dripping like wax into your bloodstream. They are no longer individual parts belonging to the minds of others. They are yours-they are you– and they seep into the cracks of your being like liquid gold and warm you with a feeling words cannot begin to describe. And it is not often that words fail me.

I speak as someone who has known what it is to be set on fire, someone who has, from the moment it was set into my soul, tended to it and kept it burning. I have been touched by many sets of fingers, grasped by many hands, and gathered pieces inside me until eventually, I ignited. And it was the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Allow me to explain.

For those of you who don’t know, one of my goals in life is to become a Language Arts teacher. It is simply one of those things about me that just is– for reasons I cannot explain. It was a seed planted in me a long time ago, and it was only recently that I turned around and saw a garden flourishing from what was once just a disturbed spot of earth. I am so thankful it did though. I know myself now. When I realize I want something, that I truly, heart and soul, want something, I stop at nothing until I get it. I know where I’m headed, and with a clear course set before me, I plan to walk on firmly and make it one hell of a journey. Language Arts teacher? Well you better believe with my mind set to it, I’ll be the best one there ever was.

But sometimes I have to stop myself before I get too arrogant with my grand, wild plans and ask myself how I’m going to make that happen. Great teachers aren’t just born out of the blue- popping out of thin air and landing in a classroom of students ready to start teaching. Teachers aren’t born- they are created. I already have the passion, the love of reading and writing, the constant drive to learn. But I am not a teacher. The question is- how do I forge myself into one?

Time to go back to grabbing pieces of others.

And so that is what I have been doing lately- watching my teachers (the good, the bad, the ugly) and learning from them not only the subject material but also what makes them click. What was it about my ninth grade Language Arts teacher that made her so inspiring and unforgettable? Why are all my old middle school teacher’s former students still talking about her now, years after they have stepped foot in her classroom? What exactly makes me cringe when I draw certain teachers to mind? These thoughts (and many, many more, I promise you) constantly have the gears in my head turning as I scrutinize each and every one of these oblivious souls and wonder if I have what it takes to be like them- and in some cases, to not be like them.

For example: Mrs. Wagner. How do I begin to describe Mrs. Wagner? She was my eighth grade Language Arts teacher and definitely the one to nudge me down the road of writing. She was the first ever to read my work and tell me she thought I was going somewhere with it. Though she did encourage me, she didn’t hesitate to make me work for good grades -which I got- because she knew that I needed to be pushed, and that I had the potential and could go far. I admired her for this, mainly because she was the first teacher not to just hand me an A+ and pat me on the back; instead, she made me work. And you know what I realized? That I loved it. I developed a thirst to prove myself- and from that point onward every essay I handed into her had been the product of many long, grueling hours and at least ten rough drafts. I polished and perfected those papers to the point of exhaustion- and I turned them all in with a sheen of sweat on my forehead, a cramping sensation in my fingers, and a smile on my face that stretched from ear to ear. She was my hero. To this day I have not forgotten her, and I still email her at Christmastime to talk and catch up.

Goal #1: Be like Mrs. Wagner

Now let’s talk about Mrs. Fabich. Oh, that Mrs. Fabich. She has been my Latin teacher for the past three years now, and I’ve grown so fond of her. Mrs. Fabich is probably the most intelligent, energetic old lady you will ever meet. Not a single day do I walk into her classroom and find her in a bad mood. It’s not hard to tell that she is passionate about her job- and she has a love for every single one of her students that is so refreshing, yet so hard to find. She is one of those teachers who really gets it. I watch her and find that I want to be like that- to love my job so much that it shows on my face. I want to be able to rattle off Shakespeare like Mrs. Fabich rattles off about the Roman Empire. I want all my students to come and hug me on the last day of school and wish me a good summer, like we all do with Mrs. Fabich. I want my passion to carry me through life and I don’t want to slow down, ever- I want to dance and laugh and be crazy all while being an amazing teacher, which she does so well. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ll probably shed a few tears the day I leave her classroom forever.

Goal #2: Be like Mrs. Fabich

And then there’s Mrs. Perrin. She was the one with the fire.

I can’t say that in my whole life I’ve ever met a better teacher  than Mrs. Perrin. She is -in my opinion- the pinnacle of what one should truly strive to be like. She took the dreams inside me -the incomplete, intensely passionate ideas and desires floating around to no point or purpose- and set a match to them. And let me tell you, I went up in flames. Everything became clear in my vision. I knew at once where I was going, and what I had to do to get there. I looked at her career and and saw in it exactly what I wanted from life- to be happy. To simply be happy. My unconscious often leads me to amazing places, and as long as it leads me to a good and beautiful place I’m quite content. I believe with all my heart that a Language Arts classroom is a good and beautiful place. Mrs. Perrin helped me see that, and for that I owe her my everlasting gratitude.

Goal #3: Strive to be like Mrs. Perrin

I have been touched, I have been burned, I have been scorched. I have been molded into the person I am today by many sets of hands who kneaded my mind like clay and turned me into something far better than what I was before. Teachers like Mrs. Wagner, Mrs. Fabich, and Mrs. Perrin came into my life for a reason. I know that reason, as well as why countless others have crossed and left my path, and I hold on to those reasons that destiny hands out like scribbled words on slips of notebook paper, promising me that everything that is meant to happen does and will. I stuff these reasons into my pockets and keep them close to my heart. I like to believe that I am part of a bigger plan- a bigger picture. A tree inside a forest. My life is a but a ripple in this vast ocean of things, but if I leap in with enough force that ripple might just reach others. It is a very beautiful thought, and one that often brings peace to my frantic and troubled mind.

Think about all the people who have made an appearance on your life’s stage. Which ones left the biggest impressions on you? What emotions did they evoke within you- the desire to laugh, to cry, to change? What words did they utter that you sucked in like oxygen and now tumble and rattle around inside your hollow, echoing body? Who touched you? Who lit a fire within you?

We sit here in this empty auditorium before our stage and wait on, always in a constant, perpetual state of waiting, for the next torchbearer to come flying down and start the raging fire within us.

But do not, I implore you, ever forget that you too are a bearer of flames.

The Beautiful Process of Living and Dying

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” ~Lucy Montgomery 

Autumn is my favorite season. I lose my heart to the tastes and smells of October- the fallen leaves filling the air with the scent of cinnamon, the pumpkin flavored everything, the walks in the park completely enveloped in a swirl of orange and yellow and red. The weather is perfect and the sunsets are gorgeous and I could just bury myself in a half-dozen blankets and waste the day away with my black cat in my lap and a book in my hand. There is truly something to be said about the fall- something magical.

I love this season. It often reminds me of endings and new beginnings. Ask people what their favorite part of autumn is and I can almost guarantee your most popular answer will be the trees. They are exceedingly beautiful, with their drooping branches and lustful abundance of color, and yet there is a touch of bittersweetness in the way we look at and admire them but know at the same time that they are dying.The leaves are stunning, but they fall softly to the earth to rot and decay and fade away into nothingness. The trees are abundant with life but in a few short weeks their branches will be bare, the memory of warmer days still clinging to the fragile bark. Life is flashing before our eyes, swept away to the wind.

But it is beautiful. Death is beautiful. We mourn the passing of July and the vanishing sun but know in our hearts that their time is over, that it is only natural, that winter must come and bring with it flurries of snow to blanket the world and hot cocoa mix to warm our tired and weary souls. Autumn is a reminder that the earth has lived fully and is now ready for the sleep and rest that comes with the winter months. The trees have had their moment, and now that moment is over, ready to be replaced by another.

So many can find it in themselves to hate the winter. They see in it only the grueling task of shoveling snow, the torturous trips to Target for some last-minute Christmas shopping, the tangling of lights and the rising cost of heating their homes. When I think of winter, I instead feel the radiating warmth of a fireplace and the glow of the holiday spirit. I hear the ringing of bells and All I Want for Christmas is You played repeatedly over my favorite radio station. There’s children in the backyard building snowmen, with red cheeks and a twinkle in their eyes.

I find something beautiful in every time of the year, and I feel blessed that I live in a place where I can enjoy each and every one of them. The change and rotating of seasons constantly give me something new to look forward to. Summer brings laughter, Fall brings beauty, Winter brings rest, and Spring brings hope. I never get bored with the world. I just sit back and watch in wonder as time flies before my eyes like birds taking flight and the Earth spins on its axis like a dancer, never faltering in her leaps and twirls.

Life changes and flows from one thing into another, but is never lost. Take a step outside for a moment today and breathe deeply, reminding yourself that you are not so different from a tree. Find something to admire and marvel at in every aspect of your life and hold on to it tightly. Even after it’s gone, don’t relinquish the memory. Nothing is lost until it is forgotten. Leave a trace of yourself behind, a tiny part of you that can tell your tale after you’re long gone, such as the tree that stands tall even after the shedding of its leaves, a tribute to the days of summer long past and a reminder that there is more, there is always something more, ahead.

The Girl of Words

Note: This is a short story I had to write for school to imitate the writing style of Ray Bradbury

As far back as I can remember there have always been the words. I can see them in my mind’s eye, the small black letters showcased beneath my pale skin, unashamed of their existence. I carry them with me always, for we are one, the words and I. Others see them and gawk, their beady little eyes glaring down with indignation at the tiny ideas and beliefs flowing so freely inside me. Words can change people, they warn me. Words are dangerous. Hide them, cover them, pretend they are not there. I am a malfunction: something the government did not intend to happen. I often wonder if there are more like me out there, although it’s best not to get my hopes up.

I read enough to know that the world was different, once upon a time. Then, around the 2080s, a massive epidemic broke out. It hit all the major cities first -New York, Hong Kong, London- and spread like wildfire to everywhere else through airline transportation. The world was declared to be in a state of Global Panic.  People were dying. Order was collapsing. The United States government, in a last-ditch attempt to save mankind, invested all remaining money in funding Nanotechnology. The result: nanobots – microscopic robots injected into the bloodstream that help the body build a virtually indestructible immune system. On the molecular level, they target and kill diseases before they even pose a threat. All survivors were given the injection, and within a few months the virus had been entirely wiped out.

I am one of the very few who suspects a second directive was given to the nanobots. No more than a decade later, the government began to see this new technology as a way of reinforcing law and order, which at that point was out of control. The world needed rebuilding, its inhabitants forced into a state of collective thinking. And so they also programmed the nanobots to send messages to the brain that hinder the production of dopamine, a chemical that, when released, rewards pleasurable behavior, and to sequester regions of the brain that control creative thought and dreams.

I think the writing on my arms, diagnosed as a rare and serious “mutation” of the skin, appears because my desires to think and create are so strong that they have unconsciously overridden the commands of the nanobots and manifested themselves on my body. I’m interrogated constantly but don’t seem to be much of a threat, so the Officers have settled for covering the words up and ignoring them. I’m convinced they aren’t aware of my ability to mentally suppress the nanobots. No one knows – not even the “family members” in my assigned living quarters. I intend to take the secret to my grave, if I can manage that.

I walk out of my house onto the road, heading for school. Even after all these years, the vision of the outside world still comes as a shock. The uniformed, miserable workers in their equally grey and miserable suits march in a military line to and from work everyday, crowding the streets, rushing by in a hurry on their way to nowhere. A briefcase hangs on each hand, a permanent grimace on each beaten-down and weathered face. A plain checkered tie, so strongly resembling a noose, fits around every neck.

I clutch my books to my chest and look at the ground as I walk, my eyes unwilling to meet this horrific scene before me. School is, mercifully, only a few blocks away. I enter the doors and breathe a sigh of relief. Language Arts class is first period. I’m there in the blink of an eye, my enthusiasm to learn driving me there with urgency.

It’s so hard to hide the fact that I love being here. The room smells faintly of coffee and fresh rain, and a warmth hangs pleasantly in the air that evokes strong memories of nights spent by a roaring fireplace immersed in a good novel. Inspirational posters cover the walls alongside various Shakespeare quotes and vocabulary terms. It is not at all a bad place to be on a Tuesday morning. I sit at my desk and gather myself into my favorite position: my cheek resting neatly on my left hand and my right grasping a book. Class begins. The world outside the window is bleak and gloomy as it always is, the world inside it soft and glowing. I sigh. Nothing is out of the ordinary, not today.

I feel suffocated. This happens sometimes, nothing to worry about. I clear my throat and flex my fingers as my skin grows tight with the words, all cramming themselves against each other and pushing against the walls I’ve only half-heartedly built to hold them back. I’m uncomfortable now. They are unusually loud today, screaming to be heard, begging me to set them free. It’s painful, and my temples start throbbing. Boom! Boom! Boom! Each cry is a blow to my head. I’m clenching my fists so much that my nails have begun to dig into my skin, drawing blood. They’re banging against my skull. The walls are coming down. Boom! Boom! Boom! I can’t take it anymore… I can’t…

My head feels as if it’s been ripped open. Light comes flooding in and I’m immediately blinded. My eyes can’t focus in on anything except an intense whiteness. A thousand watts of electricity jolt through me, awakening every sense and emotion in my body until I’m feeling everything, absolutely everything, all at once.

A sudden rage I’ve never experienced before comes screaming out from some dark place inside me: an extreme anger directed towards the leering figures with the watchful eyes, who took my words and tried to lock them away, shoving them into the far reaches of my mind in the hopes that I would not pursue them there. I flash back to a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago, a conversation I had long since blocked from memory until now.

*          *          *

We were walking together in the hallway. My sweater had rolled up slightly, exposing my wrist. I shoved it back down, but too late. She had already seen.

“What are those?”

“Nothing,” I said automatically. “Words. Don’t mind them, don’t tell. They’re not bothering anybody.” If she told, they see how there were more of them, more coming each and every day, crowding my skin instead of fading from it as they would if I shut them out completely.

She eyed me cautiously. “They’re awfully ugly. I’d have them surgically erased if I were you. It’s quite inexpensive these days.”

I had never been so deeply offended. The words, blessings in my eyes, were obscene in hers. I felt them sway inside me, trembling.

“When was the last time you were happy?” I asked abruptly, a quiet fury in my voice as I turned the conversation in a dangerous direction. “And I don’t mean a time when you got a birthday present or a weekly pay of allowance, I mean a time you were really happy.” Her eyebrows rose. The question perplexed her. “Have you ever experienced a moment in your whole life when you were so filled to the brim with passion and inspiration that you felt you could open yourself up, and the light that flowed out of you could fill the world?” Of course not,” she breathed, her chest heaving rapidly and genuine fear in her eyes.

“I have. All the time, in fact.  And the Officers tell me to stop, but I can’t. I’ve tasted happiness and now I crave it constantly. I think I’ve discovered something amazing, revolutionary even. These words here,” I yanked my shirtsleeve up. “They’re called dreams.” Her eyes grew wide. “What are dreams?” The question slipped out before she could stop herself.

I consider this for a moment, never having given them a formal definition before. I find that I don’t have one to offer. “All I can say is that with them… I think it’s possible to change the world.” Now I know I’ve gone too far. The very suggestion -even the slightest hint- that the government can or should be altered is treason and punishable by death. I clamped my hand over my mouth in horror, and not knowing what else to do turned and ran, leaving her speechless behind me. We weren’t friends anymore from that day on, but there were many times I turned around and found her eyes staring into mine with a blazing curiosity from across a crowded room, terrified but intrigued by the girl with the dreams.

*          *          *

I begin to notice the words swirling in circles around me, drawn to me from out in the universe as if by some magnetic force. I hold them elevated in time and space with my very presence, and they rotate around me as if I am the sun and they are my planets. Suddenly I am not so afraid to use them anymore. I turn to the girl next to me, staring off into space with blank, vacant eyes.

“I’m going to be writer,” I tell her excitedly, believing for a foolish and hopeful second that someone in the world actually cares about my life-changing epiphany.

She looks at me as if I am insane, and then goes back to watching the wall like I haven’t said a thing. I don’t care. I’m so happy I could smile warmly at her ignorance and kiss her on both cheeks for listening.

The bell rings, and my heart is light as a feather. I greet everyone who passes by with a joyous grin and a friendly hello, the words inside me playing with the thought, Writer, Writer, I’m going to be a writer. My ears perk up as I hear my name called over the school speaker. I’m to report to the nurse’s office. That’s odd. I don’t recall ever turning in a request for an examination.

I’m so jubilant and thrilled right now that this doesn’t really bother me, though I do feel some stirrings of unease in the pit of my stomach. It’s probably just another interrogation. More questions, more probing, more lies on my part. (“Yes, of course I’m trying to stop, Officer!”) But when I step into the office, it’s not the usual men in steel suits who greet me, but a doctor and a handful of government officials wearing black shades and holding out identification cards with the letters F.B.I. stamped onto them.

“Is this the child exhibiting the… behavior?” One of the men asks. His voice is deep and unfeeling. “Yes,” says a woman somewhere behind me. My arm is grabbed and I’m shoved down onto a chair, where the doctor jabs me with a needle to draw some blood. He gathers enough to fill a small vial and then plugs it into a slot on the small machine he’s holding in his hand. It immediately starts beeping. “Oh, she’s positive all right,” he says grimly. My heart is racing. Something is very wrong. Instinct tells me to run but a lifetime of obedience keeps me in that chair, petrified, unable to move.

The government officials grab my wrists and my shoulders, holding me down. I start struggling now, kicking and screaming and raking my nails across every bit of flesh that comes into my line of sight. It’s no use. I know the syringe is coming before I see it, and in the last few seconds before it enters my skin I close my eyes and accept my fate. My last independent thought dies on my lips. I’m going to be a writer. My head is going fuzzy, my vision clouding over. Oh God, not this. Writer, writer. Please, not this. I’m going to be a writer. I’m slipping away. It’s not fair, it’s not right. I’m going to be… to be…

I am sitting in a chair in a crowded room. A man hovers over me, checking my pulse. “She’s good to go,” he says. I look down at my arm and catch a few black words fading from my skin before they disappear entirely. I feel sad for a moment, but then the foreign emotion is gone. There was something important attached to those words, but now I can’t remember why they were there. It doesn’t matter. They slip carelessly from my mind.

“You can go now,” the doctor repeats.

It is time to return to the learning center and resume my studies.

I stand up robotically and walk stiffly out the door. As I’m pulling the doorknob shut I hear the doctor say, “She should be one of the last of them. We’re slowly weeding her kind out: the rebels, the troublemakers, the disrupters of the system. Within a few months this minor setback will be corrected, and we shall finally have peace.”

A tiny voice in my mind wonders who the “she” is that they are talking about. Then I feel a sort of small zap in my brain and it vanishes entirely.