A day and a dream.

Clear as day. Most days are hazy and the light makes things warped. Daytimes lies. When people say clear as day I think something goes off in my head to be wary around them whether they see the irony in their words or not.



I had a dream that I swam really far down in the ocean. And I was terrified because deep, open water scares me. And there were tons of jellyfish all around me as I went down and they were stinging me. Then I got to the floor of the ocean. I started touching all their tops and they were smooth and soft and they all gathered around me. And I heald my breath the whole time.

I'm tired...

There are some things in the world that you just can't pass up. You just can't have an opportunity for some things and not take it.
1. A visit to the beach.
2. A chance to whistle without being annoying.
3. Painting with your hands.
4. Learning something interesting.
5. Listening to a good song.
6. Something sweet.
7. A really good hug.
8. An adventure.
There is so much people deny themselves or others when they just shouldn't. It is sad that some people don't ever get a chance to do anything worthwhile for themselves. I don't mean in the world or the environment or finding a cure for cancer. I mean for themselves. And that is so sad. And so many people do it.

The seconds the soul is cradled.

This morning I woke up and I drove to school. And the air was cool and clean and I could feel fall coming. And I wondered if, on our deathbed, right before the end, we closed our eyes and went back to the happiest time in our life. If our eyes saw no priest, or empty alley. No relatives holding their breath or a dark hospital room through milky eyes but we saw with the crystal clarity that is only possible through rememberance of true happiness, the best day, the best hour, the best second, of our lives. Where he lived up in the mountains with his young wife and made love to her every night and somedays they stayed up talking until the early sunlight streamed through the window. Or where she swam in the small pond in the woods where the water ran so clear she could see the millions of colors of the rocks and the plants and the fish that swam inches from her. Or simply when they stood in the doorway holding eachother for twenty minutes straight with no talking, not trying to kiss, no moving, and absolutely no selfishness. I wondered if the last second, we looked back and we saw it was all worth it for that one time. To be really happy. And though we all may not die in a happy room or in a serene way, and though some may be crying and be in terrible pain, that last moment will be one of home and happiness and a sense of being found.


And if I were there when Rudy was sleeping, the bomb about to hit, I'd say to death, "I know you. And I know humans haunt you and the terrible things they do. But cradle his soul in your arms, not over your shoulder or hanging from your fingers. Hold him like you held the children from the gassing chambers and hold him like you held her little brother. Hold him like he's just the lemon haired boy dreaming about the kiss from the book thief next door. Walk with him down what's left of Himmel Street and hold him in your arms while she finally kisses those dead, bomb burned lips and I want you to cry. Because you'll never get a vacation with humans. And because I know he makes you cry, the boy who wanted to run like Jesse Owens." And I'd look death in the face and I'd know him. I'd see every sky and every color he's ever seen and I'd cry with him for the glorious and terrible human race.*




*If confused, please read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak in its entirety.

Parallel Universe.

So there is a theory that because the universe is infinite, there are more of us; exact replicas of ourselves living different lives at this very moment. Parallel universe. So somewhere, unfathomable distances away, we are living an infinite number of lives, each one different based on the many decisions, actions, choices, thoughts we have every second. Actions and thoughts others have. So somewhere, I'd like to think, I'm happy. Somewhere my mom is okay. Somewhere I'm not so sick all the time. Somewhere I'm with you. Somewhere I have less scars. Somewhere I lived up to my potential. Somewhere I still think the world a happy place. And that has to be enough for me, that there could be a life that worked out. It has to get me by knowing that in a way I am living out the life I wanted. So for now, we can just do our best, and late at night we can open our drawer of dreams and look at the life it could have been. That we are living somewhere else. Because it's beautiful and we know, deep down, that life was once possible because we once deserved it. Yes, I know the pain it brings, searing through our veins and straight to our hearts and that every night it's harder and harder to close that drawer back up. But we do, because we have to be brave and we know the hopelessness we feel would be so much worse if we clouded our minds with the dreams we can no longer have; the life we no longer have the chance to live. If I could, I'd reach my arms into the universe to simply place my hand upon your face. The face that does not belong to me in this life, but to a me in another, just to have a feel, a connection, to the you that I love.

I hope that this brings me to you, trillions upon trillions of light years away.

If this is it, I want to say the right thing.

Here is my letter. Maybe someday, after things have long changed, you'll find it and read it and know that somethings don't change.


Dear,
Love has been a tricky thing with me. I know what it is and I know what it isn't and yet I still haven't got a clue as to what the hell love is. I may not know everything and I doubt I ever will but I know somethings for sure. I know that love has not always been kind to me. I know that I haven't received as much as I should. I also know that I could be giving more. And the most important thing is that I love you. I've waited a long time for you to come around and when you did, it wasn't like I was falling in love. It was like like took me and shot me into the air and I kept going. When you left, it was like I had to fall back and the Earth's gravity sucked me back to the ground. It hurt. And I'm sure it always will. Some days it's the same as it was when you were first gone. Other days, I pretend not to care and I just feel like being destructive. But the days that hurt the most are when I think about you more than the other days. Like when I look at that cat or at that moon or even when I chew gum. I can't let go and I'm sorry for whatever burden that has ever put on you. No matter how hard I try, there is a hope that maybe, if you always know I'm here and how I feel, you'll realize while watching TV that you made a huge mistake and you want to come back. I know that won't happen. Two sides battle. Hope and eternal hopelessness. I'm the casualty. I just want to say that no one will love you like I do. But the real thing I want to say is that I never got the chance to say thank you. You changed my world by loving me like no one else would; like no one had the courage to. I hope with all my heart you can be really happy. You are the love of my life. This may change. I don't know. The important thing is that you made me want to stay around to find out.

Love always,
Emily

P.S. Thank you also for being my best friend. My very best friend. And for doing your very best to teach me things I wanted to know about like cars and about some things I didn't realize I wanted to know about like country music. Goodbye.

Greetings.

Meet my grandfather. He was born in '33 and spent his whole life paiting signs on huge buildings. He can carve you the Mona Lisa on a woodchip and he thinks all hospitals are uneccesary unless one of his family memebers is in one. As a kid, his idea of Sunday school was being dropped off and walking right past the church to the drug store to read comics until Sunday school was over and he could walk home. He was thrown out of Lutheran Bible school for making references to the pastor's mother. He claims to hate dogs and you see him sneak everything from steak to cookies to any dog he meets. He's the only person in the world I know who can fix anything. His big calloused hands have rocked me and picked me up off the ground with tenderness. He loves jokes of all kinds. He knows all the trees and all the birds. Meet my grandfather with me, for the first time.

Blues and greens.

Sometimes, we will really feel the world. We'll hear everything that it is always trying to say. We can it flow right through us. And it scares us. Shakes us to the core. Because it's easy and safe to think we are all alone in the vast sky above our little brains. But there it is. Below us and above us. It's everywhere. It's going in between the very atoms of our bodies and our brains. So next time we drive, we'll put our bodies out the window again and open up and we'll feel it.

Red, the blood of angry men.

Somedays, I'll wake up and feel like I'm in the movie August Rush.
Other days, I wake up and I'm in the passion of Moulin Rouge.
On some, it's Chorus Line, all the way.


Today, I woke up and I was in Les Miserables. Mainly the part where everyone dies, which is most of it. But the ending mostly. With all the dad back up and the flag waving and the red and blue everywhere and the song just beaming. Yes, that was this morning.

High school.

Okay, listen up.

You will get lucky. Because you are hot and great in the sack.

Let's go to prom and fill in all the blasted stereotypes. Let's get drunk and have sex we think we'll remember the rest of our lives.

Beat me. Ha.

I fell down the stairs.

I got punched.

I have a hickey right on my boob turning a disgusting color.

I fell off a bench.

I scraped my leg on my car.

I slammed my hand in the front door.

I cut my leg shaving.

I'm a crash dummy.

Camel Crush

Screw my big, beautiful dress.
And my stupid diet.
And my tan.
And all that money.
Screw prom.




Let's take a drive.

What is in a name?

I once heard a boy call my name. He called it loud and clear and I turned. But here is the thing about names; there is always someone who is near who has your name, too. I turned and saw a face I didn't know. When I realized it wasn't me, I went on, hating all the parents who had to name their children with the same name. I once heard a boy call who I was. He called it loud and clear and I didn't turn. I went on hating all the people who knew who I was.

I will name my child something hardly anyone has so they can always get away.

Me

I make up Broadway musicals and their scores in the shower. And they aren't half bad. The choreography is trash, but I haven't got much space to work with.

I am not an organized person but I freaking hate dirt, mostly in other peoples houses.

I am very passionate. About a lot of things. And I am full of empathy.

I can read like a demon and their is no one who can brush their teeth with such fevor like I do.

I am appreciative of good music and anything broken and it's possibility.

I can make anything craft-tastic with sequins and ribbon and glitter and stickers.

I'm not close. Hardly a baby step. But it's better that going back.

Just.

All my life I stumble,
But up here I am just perfect,
Perfect as i'll ever be...

The new visualizer on iTunes makes me want to cry. I imagine it is the closest I'll ever get to the things people see when they have that disease where they can see sound. Kind of like the Northern Lights, which I have also not seen. I want it on my ceiling.

X

I've always made the good choices. Yeah, I fuck it up a lot. But there is never a time when I sit back and say "Shit, I should have...yada yada." The time when I'd just rather die. He tried to off himself. And if he had died, it would have been on my hands. He came to take me to the hospital to see him and I said no. I went and got drunk. Made new friends doing ecstasy. And I'll never get a chance to apologize. He made my life hell years ago and here I am feeling sorry for being the reason he would have died. Life is never what you expect it to be. Stop making plans.

Buffalo Wings.

I'm going to run. And I'll keep going. So far that the burning pain in my legs will numb and the blisters turn into calluses. And I'll do my best not to look back. Just wait. One day I'll be here and the next all you'll see is the dusty trail that I have left behind. I'll go until the trees and grass and sky all look new and different and unrecognizable. I'll run until even I am different. And if I'm not, I'll just keep running until I am. Because running will be better than sitting around watching my ice heart melt into cold useless water that will evaporate at the first ray of sunshine. Maybe I'll run so much that I'll lose my humanity. Maybe I'll just become a buffalo and I'll roam forever. I'll be a buffalo and get wings and fly. Ha. Buffalo wings.

Which is more foolish, a child afraid of the dark or a grown man afriad of the light?

Lennon.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.

I like your cheekbones. How they are carved from clay. The red brown clay of your skin. And your deep black hair. You know how it shines like silk. You're warm and tall and full of muscle. Sometimes when you smile just the right way, the crooked way, I want to cry. Because I love you. I love you when I don't even believe in love. But I am always irrational. I want to claim you. I want to keep you so you can always keep me from falling into a thousand pieces. You are my best friend. I want to hold and hold and hold and never let go. I want to always inhale how you smell like the earth and the ocean. And how you smell like sweet hookah and the time of the world. I can't lose you today.

Colored underwear.

Monday=Red
Tuesday=Yellow
Wednesday=Green
Thursday=Blue
Friday=Purple

Doesn't Monday just feel like red? I'm dressing according to the days of the week. I'm currently looking for underwear in the corresponding color and with the day of the week written on them. So, if anyone knows where I can find such a thing, let me know.

Oh, boob. The sun woke up. Again. Will it ever just wait? Just a single night?

Old words.

Gay is such an ugly word. Both by what society has put upon it and the actual sound. I wish there was a nicer sounding word. But gay is tearing my life apart. I'm not prepared for this. I need to run away, just for a few weeks. I'm too young to be old.

Sincere thanks.

Thanks for all the notes on my writing. I wish I had time to make it better but it's already late. I think I am the only student who has the guts, or the ADD, to not turn something in on time in my AP Lang class. At least I tried instead of handing over the dead lifeless papers I usually do. But thanks again, they really did help.

Secondly

Third Grade
All of the kids in our neighborhood played outside at the same time, just before dinner and right after lunch. Riding bikes, digging holes, and making war. I was alone one day and walking on the sidewalk three houses down the street from our newly built house. Our house was fresh and clean and very white. It hadn't been broken in yet. I felt safer outside in the dirt with my feet cut from running around barefoot over the sand and pebbles the snow trucks had left behind from the icy winter like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs. The outside has been used for millions of years so there is no worry of getting it worn. That is where I found myself, playing in the sand, when the boy across the street rode up on his shiny trick bike. He was the kind of child who was unintelligent, comanding, and loud. In a child's world, it was all that mattered. I had never been in a child's world for long. He ordered me to lay down on the sidewalk. He usually liked to play these games in the privacy of my basement where the walls resembled the concrete bricks of a jail cell. I surrendered myself with my head in the grass and my body stretching across the cement. He towered above me with all his authority and without a word pedaled his bike over my stomach . The compressing of my skin and my muscle sounded like a steak being rolled into itself again and again. The wet meat squishing and the blood forcefully rearranging in the muscle. I begged for mercy, but I didn't have the power of innocence. No one wants to show mercy on a broken girl. He had previously made sure of that. Once more, he turned his bike and rode over me again, my stomach meat becoming softer, tender. When I could finally open my eyes again, I saw my savior. A soft white light shone around his hazy silhouette that blocked away the sun. A hand that no god could have reached towards me, picked me up from the ground. No adult could understand how to save me from my unwillingness to get off the sidewalk where rocks bore into my back. I ran with my bare feet up the street to our clean house, never looking back. I'd heard the sounds of him avenging me before and I could hear them again in my mind. The sound of wind and the sound of meat being tenderized.
I have never lain across the sidewalk again. I've been to scared he won't come when my stomach is flattened all the way down.

Tenth Grade.
The circles under my eyes started on one Friday night full of sweet smoke and hot, dewy skin. I went home late and hid the evidence of a second life under my clothes. While I was in the shower trying to scrub the dirt and sweat from my pores, I leaned my head directly under the hot stream of water and cupped my bruised hands around my ears and listened to the water roar. The powerful noise becoming thunder rolling just under my skull over the vast sky of my brain. The water streamed down my face making it hard for me to breathe, but I couldn't let the sound disappear. Not yet. I let the thunder pound away every thought and every noise. In one second, I lost my breath and had to step forward. The water changed. It sounded like the Pop Rocks we used to eat. The snapping and the crackling of the little candy sitting on our tongues and when we parted our lips we let the sound out, making it loud enough for each others ears. This time I was alone with no one to share my crunching noises with. I slammed the shower off before I had to listen to much more.
A shower doesn't always wash away the dirt, but if things get loud enough, it can drown it.



I suppose this is my second rough draft. It's about my experiences but based on the format and style of Indian Education. There is no racism because it isn't the common theme of my paper. More comments? The last really helped. I like this a little better.

Help?

I have to write this paper for my AP Lang and Comp class and it is supposed to be based of Indian Education which is where a Native American man ties the theme of overcoming racism and seeing how white people see him to each grade and an event that happened in it. So here is my rough draft. It needs work. I missed the day of peer editing. Be my critics.

Third Grade

All of the kids in our neighborhood played outside at the same time just before dinner and right after lunch. Riding bikes, digging holes, and making war. I was alone one day and walking on the sidewalk three houses down the street from our newly built house. Our house was new and clean and very white. It hadn't been broken in yet. I felt safer outside in the dirt with my feet cut from running around barefoot over the sand and pebbles the snow trucks had left behind from the icy winter like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs. That is where I found myself, playing in the sand, when the boy across the street road up on his shiny trick bike. He told me to lay down on the sidewalk. He usually liked to play these games in the privacy of my basement where the walss resembled the concrete bricks of a jail cell. Learning early on that listening to the older kids granted me certain access to various clubs, I settled myself with my head in the grass and my body stretching across the cement. He towered above me with all his authority and without a word peddaled his bike over my ribs. The compressing of my skin and my muscle and my bones sounded like a steak being tenderized for supper. The wet meat being pounded in with a wooden mallet. I begged for mercy, but I didn't have the power of innocence. Once more, he turned his bike and rode over me again, my stomach meat becoming softer. When I could finally open my eyes again, I saw my savior. A soft white light shone around a hazy silohuette that blocked away the sun. A hand that no god could have reached towards me, picked me up from the ground. No adult could understand how to save me from my unwillingness to get off the sidewalk where rocks bore into my back. I ran with my bare feet up the street to my clean house, never looking back. I'd heard the sounds of him avenging me before and I could hear them again in my mind. The sound of wind and the sound of meat being tenderized.
I can still hear the meat of another sounding so much juicier than my own.

Tenth Grade

The cirlces under my eyes started on one Friday night full of sweet smoke and hot, dewy skin. I went home late and hid the evidence under my clothes. While I was in the shower trying to scrub the dirt and sweat from my pores, I leaned my head directly under the stream of water and cupped my bruised hands around my ears and listened to the water roar. The grandeur of the noise becoming thunder rolling just under my skull over the vast sky of my brain. The water streamed down my face making it hard for me to breath but I couldn't let the sound disappear. Not yet. I let the thunder pound away every thought and every noise. In one second, I lost my breath and had to step forward. The water changed. It sounded like the Pop Rocks we used to eat. The snapping and the crackling of the little candy sitting on our tounges and how when we parted our lips we let the sound out, making it loud enough for eachothers ears. I slammed the shower off before I had to listen to much more.
Later, we ate Pop Rocks in the shower and almost went deaf.

Looking back to the future.

Years from now, we'll look back and wish it could be the same. We'll say we were just kids having the time of our lives and we were taking the world for our own. Claiming that the drugs were experiments, things to make our suburban lives more interesting. We'll say that it was all in good nature. Our memories will fail on the hard parts. The parts we can't down. That we had alternative motives. Some of us needed to be lost, some of us were pressured by people we wanted to love us, some of us were serious addicts, some of us were looking for a fun time, some of us wanted to make it easier, some of us were just looking for an escape. We won't remember that because we'll have to remember the reasons why. All we want to remember is the highs and the laughing and the crazy shit that went down. The unspoken understanding of the things we went through to get to that point. The understanding that there is more to getting through life than whitty phases and intelligent one-liners. For now, we'll smoke a bowl, do a line, pop a pill, or drop a square. We'll drive around and enjoy the world that seems so small.

Oh man.

No more depressing days with smoke filled nights. It's way too much to handle. I can't even control it right now. I'm losing my fucking mind. All I remember is the snow. And the blue.

Nightime Snow.

The snow that glitters the second the sun comes up. The quiet. The silence. The untouched. No tracks of those who have walked before me. Only mine can be seen. The world belongs to me. The white can be gathered in my arms forever. Then the sun rises fully from the ground and the white is suddenly blinding. The world awakens and instantly feels to big. And nothing is mine. Selfishness must be given up again. The cruelty of the way the world must go on.

Well,

HOLY SHIT!
This is incredible. So I have been mixing music and I believe I've come up with the most glorious music in the world.
Kerli Koiv's "Walking on Air" added to Mute Math's "Typical"

You have to mess with it just right but, holy hell, you'll know when it fits.

Poignant.

So poignant. And the pressure of the fire on the flesh. He burns holes in your flesh. With his tounge. And you can feel the heat when his eyes search over you. And it hurts to listen to him. And to watch him. And it hurts when you don't. So poignant. And it will cut. A man will kill a girl and bury her body and she will decompose and flowers will spring up where her body was and bees will use the flowers to make the honey and the father of the dead girl will eat the honey. And he will become the girl. You used to dance. You used to dance like the trees did before people came along and ruined you with their greed and their poison and their cars and their hate. You killed the dancing trees so you become the dancing trees. So poignant. The pressure of the ice on the heart. The only way down is to fall and years later when you are much younger, we can go back.

Movies and dreams and lists.

I fucking love The Chronicles of Narnia. There isn't a doubt in my mind about the awesomeness of the movies. So, I'll stay up late not doing homework that should be done and watch them. Because they deserved to be watched.

I still remember it. The paint peeling away. I can't stop thinking about it. I need to find it.

I want to sleep in Cinderella's castle. Add it to the list.