Living Metaphors

My patent neglect of living things should really come as no surprise to anyone who has ever given me a house plant. Green things always seem to die on me, which may have something to do with the fact that I don’t water them.  Back when Dylan and I were just friends, he gave me a lemon tree. He really ought to have known better, but I gratefully accepted it and stuck it on the window ledge.

There, I thought to myself. The gift of photosynthesis and all that. This is a living metaphor about growing relationships.

The lemon tree died pretty quickly, so that last part wasn’t exactly true, but I guess there was something sort of poetic about the way its edges gently browned and curled.

We have another lemon tree, now. It sits on the mantle and Dylan waters the thing with enough regularity that I toy with turning it into a poem once more, but simply can’t be bothered to do so.

Here is the thing: cold weather and dark days turn me unrecognizable. This is a certainty within my life, one of many that I can list off in a cold and clinical way. For example:

My plants die.
I will unabashedly order chocolate milk at restaurants.
Cold weather and dark days turn me unrecognizable.
I put things in “safe places” so I won’t lose them, and I can never remember where those safe places are.
My feet are always cold.

I haven’t yet decided if there is a point to this blog entry, but you should know that there probably isn’t one. If you want a house update, I’m sorry to tell you that there isn’t too much happening to the Little Pink House these days. Dylan is systematically dismantling the bathroom, but there’s no room for me in that 3x3 box, so I stare out the window, half-heartedly place lost things in their original homes, and think about dead lemon trees.

Sometimes I write. Not often.

Yesterday was the first real snow of the season, but it didn’t stick around for long. My phone tells me that it’s 30 degrees warmer in London than it is here. I’m not sure why, but the thought pleases me. 

While it was snowing, Dylan watered and repotted the overwhelming host of plants downstairs that he keeps alive with minimal effort. Most of them had been trapped in tiny pots for months, and their roots were snarled and tangled. He gently coaxed them into submission and patted them into their new homes while I read.

He is patient and reassuring and does not mind that my feet are cold.

I’m still not quite sure what I am trying to say. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with love that things stop making sense. When this happens, I remind myself that there is frost on the window, but things are still growing.

NaNo: Day 1

1. Wake up at 6:30. Am horribly confused by time shift.
2. Wallow in a pit of despair and self-pity.
3. Churn out 1740 words of the most terrible drivel ever written.
4. Commence triumphant cackling and self-adulation.
5. Continue the productive trend by cleaning, taking a walk, decorating, reading, grocery shopping, feeding, and writing MORE.
6. Constantly stare at clock while announcing, “It can’t possibly be only ___ o’ clock!”
7. Attempt to begin crocheting Christmas gifts. Begin a scarf for myself instead.
8. Start to succumb to effects of fatigue around 7:00.
9. Stare desperately at clock while announcing, “It can’t possibly be only ____ o’ clock. I’m so tired.”
10. So tired. 
11. Goodnight.

Life Update

For those of you who have reached out and wondered about my existence over the past couple of years, I offer you this:

A Little Pink House

In connecting with people all over the world through writing, it has been my experience that we see ourselves in each other. We want that happiness for others that we can’t find in ourselves. A lot has changed in my life, and as many of you know, I keep my memories as words. I hope you will all be able to appreciate that I have chosen the path that makes me happiest, and that path and those memories exists as words that I am keeping for myself.

Thank you for respecting that decision.

You know, what’s really neat about growing up is that I keep surprising myself by finding that I have the capacity to be happy, to fall in love with myself as a person, and to sound like a Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul book.

(Sorry about that last part.)

NaNo

Day one: 1676 words about glitter, chewed-up bacon, and cherub thighs.

Day two: 1,988 words about neatly organized wicker baskets, purple lipstick, and a necklace made of red and yellow pom-poms.

ONCE UPON A TIME ONE OF MY STUDENTS READ A POEM ALOUD AND IT WAS SO GOOD THAT I STARTED TO UGLY CRY AND THEY ALL JUST SORT OF LOOKED AT ME WITH PANICKED EXPRESSIONS LIKE HAVING FEELINGS WAS CONTAGIOUS AND THEN AFTER THAT NONE OF THEM COMPLAINED ABOUT HAVING TO DO A POETRY UNIT

Friendship and Extended Metaphors

Making new friends is kinda like getting a bonsai tree.

At first you’re all like, fuck yeah, I got a bonsai, look how neat! But then you start to realize that bonsais require EFFORT and you have to WATER THEM and put weird little wires on their BRANCHES and then you’re just kinda like, yeah, there’s a tiny-ass tree on my windowsill and I don’t know how to feel about that.

Bonsai trees don’t understand when you just want to lie in bed and contemplate the weight of the universe pressing on your eyeballs. They’re all like, hey, repot me and check my soil composition and also let’s go out for beers.

How do you explain social anxiety to a bonsai tree?

Why do I always want things that I will eventually kill?

SO

Writing a personal entry about my life seemed like a good idea about two minutes ago, but now it’s hanging over my head like one of those commitments you see to completion due to obligation rather than desire.

Or maybe I just won’t see it through at all.

(That in and of itself is probably the best example of what my life is really like, anyway.)

The Kingdom of Life and Death

two weeks ago i threw a stone
at the water and watched it skip three times, thinking
it will never do to grow old and content.

-

somewhere beneath this river
there is a castle built from stones i’ve thrown,
and all of the fish are kings and queens.

they’ve never been asked about their royal decrees.
no one has ever wished them a happy birthday.
they reign over the kingdom of life and death, and even the river
refuses to stop and mourn them when they go.

-

one week ago i found a moss-covered stump,
and instead of crying, i counted its rings.

twenty-four.

if you were to cut me crosswise, i don’t know
what you’d find. perhaps severed arteries 
pouring out gold and poetry,
ancient cave paintings splashed across my vertebrae,
or the secret to immunity brewing
in the cauldron of my hips.

maybe you wouldn’t find anything.
i cannot grow rings, after all,
and i am no queen.

-

today, to celebrate my birthday,
i will head down to the river with a saw
slung over my shoulder and
chop down a tree.

i cannot help but think that one day you will
stumble across its stump and count its rings,
and you will ask the fish about what it’s like to die
without a name.

you will find a perfect skipping stone, but
instead of throwing it, you will put it in your pocket
because you know about the fish.
you know about the trees.

you know that we grow older against our will,
and even stones that skip still have to sink.

NaNo part 2344

and now a moment of silence for the first draft of my 2011 NaNoWriMo novel…‘cause that shit was bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

but now it is decidedly less terrible, and i firmly believe that i can get it through its first round of edits in time for our june trip to maine.

everyone i know is going to med school or traveling to europe and i’m just sitting here like goddamnit my tweet is 152 characters

i wish you online people lived within ten minutes of me

and then sometimes you would be like, hey, we are playing dominoes and apples to apples, would you like to come

and i would play board games with you guys

and someone would make tacos, because they heard i like tacos and hey, they have all of the ingredients, so why not

and if i started getting tired of non-stop interaction, no one would be upset if i needed to bow out early

but maybe i wouldn’t need to, and we could just also color

or sit out on a porch

and i would be like, hey, that constellation is cassiopeia, isn’t that neat

and it would be

and then we could play jenga and you would let me borrow your copy of aladdin and i would leave a secret note in your house in an unexpected place and you wouldn’t find it for three years but i would have moved away by then

and that is what i wish

Editing: Part 13

I finally felt motivated enough to do some editing today, perhaps because my dog needs a fenced in yard, which is probably not viable for another 1.5 years. It was also in part due to my decision to ask a couple of my students if they’d be interested in reading my book. These kids are basically me ten years ago in terms of love of reading/writing, and I think it’d be nice to test my words out.

The issue is that I simply was not happy with the beginning of the book. The whole shebang probably still needs a few rounds of editing to be passable, but the beginning is particularly weak. It’s a shame because I love my first line; it was picked out long before NaNoWriMo 2011 began.

I realized that if I give people my prologue to gauge interest, there’s no point in having a good first line if the rest sucks. I was forced to really examine my first few pages and admit to myself that the timing is off, and it’s off because of my first line.

HEARTBREAK.

It sounds silly, but rearranging the prologue was super difficult. I was emotionally attached to my beginning, and while the lines are still included, they’ve lost some of their pizzazz. I’m okay, though, because now the overall prologue is SO much cleaner, and makes a lot more sense.

I guess the main thing I’ve learned from the editing process is not to get too attached to any one thing, because you might need to move it or leave it out to improve the overall experience.

BUT IT STILL SUCKS, YO.

restless life syndrome.

things i am currently worried about

1. is this soda going to keep me from falling asleep at a normal hour?

2. what happened to the other half of the debit card i just discovered in bed?

3. what do my insides look like RIGHT NOW?

Editing Tip

Read your words aloud, preferable to an elementary schooler. They will call your shit out. If you don’t have one on hand, just read it to yourself and fix the parts where your characters sound like they’re speaking with a mouth full of marbles.

hi i have no filter and oh hey why did i say that but no seriously why

a book by me.

12-21-12

The Mayans said it first, but 
tea leaves said it second, her palm
said it third, and the boy 
down the road, the one with the blue,
blue eyes, said it fourth.

The world was going to end and she 
could not be happier. 

Her affairs were easy to arrange:
money sealed into envelopes,
the microwave unplugged, and one
last kiss for the blue-eyed boy.

She called her mother, 
and her mother did not answer. 
(But she did not expect her to.)

That evening she hid beneath 
a blanket with her dog and told stories
about the good times and the bad times
(but mostly the bad times, and how
now there would never have to be
bad times ever again).

Then she went to bed, heart lighter 
than light, winged with hope, 

and woke up crying.

1. turn on radio.

2. hear the the following lyrics: “She’s in the Class A Team/Stuck in her daydream/Been this way since 18/But lately her face seems/Slowly sinking, wasting/Crumbling like pastries”

3. turn off radio.

just because you can use a simile doesn’t mean you should.

NaNoWriMo Part 83

Things that have cropped up in both of my NaNo novels:

- Men with unusual tattoos.

- People throwing up on themselves.

- Characters that are far too sassy.

- “Brisk” air being mentioned approximately 30 times.

- Jerks wearing very little clothing.

- Good luck charms.

- Halloween.

- Fog as a plot point.

- Breakfast pastries.

person: hey, how’s it going?

me: i spend my life in a constant state of emotional turmoil, and every time you ask me a simple question i have to think back and wonder who i am at this moment. am i the happy face and the firm handshake, the slight nod of the head? am i the warm, understanding smile, the sympathetic ear? or am i just the person who invents different personas and fits a new face to every situation? you don’t really care how it’s going, and i don’t really care to tell you. your eyes are on mine, but you aren’t truly listening. what are you doing? what am i doing? where do we go from here?

me: …fine.