Fog through branches

I knew as soon as I started that first paragraph that I had no idea where this story was going. I picked a name. I picked "them."

It's been two months and I've thought I'd just let Nick and Pete stew in the Adirondacks for a time, let them figure some things out until I pick them up again - if I ever do. Because now I've got at least seven others running through my mind at a fictitious school and they're trying to get a whole lot done and they grab me and say, "Listen! Listen!"

So I typed, printed, and forgot.

"Who wants to start?" the professor asks after everyone has pulled out their copy of my chapter and I've read two pages aloud - wondering why he asked me to read this particular portion, wondering if my spoken voice will provide a better understanding.

Everyone glances at their papers.

"Okay, I'll go first." The professor turns to me. "I don't think this scene could have been written any better than the way you wrote it."

Well, how about that?

"How about, 'Sex, Lies, and Burning Guitars OR How I Spent My Summer Vacation'?"

[Diana]: maybe she'll say, "i'll call you, okay?"
[Lena]: yeah!
[Diana]: or
[Diana]: "But I'll call you"
[Lena]: or
[Lena]: "Don't let the door hit your ass"

I've spent more time than usual in fiction today - "But WHY would she lie?" I ask, sandwich forgotten, passerbys with fluffy dogs irrelevant. We pause for a moment to discuss how creepy it can be when people speak of their fictional characters as if they're real.

But I'd be lying if I said that my heart didn't speed up as I wrote how Nick begins to find out what has happened.

I've spent more time than usual on beam today - "Are you implying that I just saved your life?" I ask, putting my hand to her back for the next back handspring. "Yes," she says with a laugh.

I've spent just enough time in reality today - the four of us in one room, a conversation that began with Heroes and then tears and rough days and then turned, somehow, to bra sizes.

"At least you know what you want," my mom said this morning. "Yes, but I don't think it helps," I said.

But it does. It makes things clearer, although harder. I know what I want. And so I must do the opposite.

The rest is silence.

autumn lens

I'd thought that I certainly couldn't look more attractive than I did last night: sopping wet hair smelling of dye, glasses rubbed hastily on shirt, saturated jeans sticking to legs. Today could be a close second, though: messy hair air-dryed after rain, slow blinks of bleary eyes, purple socks, chipped nail polish, and still, the glasses.


Between the black eye and running out of right eye contacts, this is the first time I've worn my glasses for more than a day since I was fifteen. Sure, this pair isn't quite as round. But I can't quite shake those ninth-grade connotations: uncomfortable, uncertain, unpretty.


"You look different now with glasses," Kim says as we walk under late-afternoon sun on the Rocky Point track. "I remember when you had the bangs..."


"And really long hair..."


"Yeah!"

"I was such a loser," I say, watching my shadow grow taller on blue track.

"No, no! You were a dork," she says with a smile, "but so am I."

I still am.

We begin to run and my legs move quickly through the mind's fog.

I always think of goals, a purpose to this - the same difficulty with nights at Spins this summer - and by lap three I remember the Thanksgiving Day Races and that there's one I've never tried: the five mile. It might be lame compared to Joy's marathon in Athens, I think as I round a curve, but it sounds just about right for me ahora.

Glasses bounce on the bridge of my nose. I ran at Ridgewood with glasses, around and around the indoor track at Suffolk West, in the woods with Kelsey as snow began to fall.

Feet bounce to the beat in my ears. I hear less, see more. The breathing's more than all right though the training's been less than regular...

I hit that final curve - "One more!" I call to her as she walks - today will be one of those perfect kicks -

Do it for yourself.

I'm breathless but the best I've felt in awhile. I saw all of the bulky black braces while I ran but today my legs are strong. The knees turn in and the scar's pink as ever, but these are my legs and this is my strength.

And isn't that lovely?

raindrops

I want to always be this girl.

such a day

Between el dia de los muertos and festive skulls (I can't believe I ran out!), delicious wraps, free hugs, papers placed in my mailbox offering such free hugs, wrestling, napkins with professions of love for me, M&M's picked from trail mix, having another week to plot where the heck this novel is going, the blue bruise now wrapping under my eye, the hint of an excellent approaching weekend, sore legs, Tanya's e-mail about parentheses, real laughter between young and old, the ability to finally just relax and hang out, having one last year to break free (so they say), a new toothbrush, and one of the two ninja parking spots...

This life is treating me pretty well, you know?

Just to note

"For the record, you're still beautiful with a shiner."

Well, thank you! :-)

small roads with small names

Nothing will change the highways I've taken. I could care less for gas or miles or money.

It was always worth the drive.

And now?

Dark fields, stars, one headlight that flickers on and off.

Would you believe me if I said I was happy?

soft, round

One's enough to take the edge off this night. White dashes flick past - past - past. Goo Goo Dolls sing the soundtrack for this short drive.

And you're not thinking 'bout tomorrow
'cause you were the same as me.

Everything so soft, so round. Friends so close to me minutes before and they will be again shortly.

This aloneness is all right.

When I step out into the parking lot to walk back, the cold wind hits my face, taunts my strides and takes my hair. The same wind as a year ago. The one that knew, The world you are living in is not real.

Swipe in, open door, I nod to wind and step inside.

Perhaps still not quite real, these situations and circumstances here. But closer, I think with beautiful music still singing softly.

This is my life now.

And I'll become
what you became to me.

That girl is so dangerous

"You look even more brawlic," KC notes.

I'll take that.

raising everything

completely dare be beautiful

-e.e. cummings

An hour ago the shoulder of my UTEP T-shirt was wet from her tears. I lose it altogether when we dance - the room's so warm, our shouts and music raising everything anyway -

"I need a miracle!" we sing again and again, and she's smiling for real and I'm sorry to keep anyone awake but we need this -

I pause briefly when he needs to talk - What should I do? he wants to know - Be who you are, I say sincerely - and then we dance, we dance -

And right then, what more could I want?

Not surprisingly,

Ed Gal knows what's what once again: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27201084/

a portrait of the artist

It came at a weird time; in fact, as I was sitting in Lauren's bathroom (yes, indeed) during a quick break from our Sing Star training. Flush with success from "Move Along" and "Baby, One More Time," I mentally prepared to get back in the game.

And then I semi-saw it in quiet coolness. Maybe why the part of me that was so adamant about the MFA instead of an MA eventually won out. Why I feel increasingly discouraged that I will never have a story worth writing or any publication beyond The Blog. Why I know that regardless, to add would be fine (espanol, por ejemplo, otra materia) but to give up would be wrong.

Because if I hadn't happily chosen gymnastics at age 11, I would have been a dancer. We all know I'm a bit of an actress and if I wasn't so timid to sing and improve that pitch, maybe I'd give it a try.

Published or not, I am a writer. And if it wasn't writing, it'd still be something impractical. Something emotional, something that breathes. Something that dreams.

adjective

brawlic:

1. very diesel or strong; ready to fight at any time.

ex.: "You mad brawlic."

more than halfway through weekend duty

And isn't this who I have wanted to be?

Things That Are Black, "Who wants ice cream?", Things With Spots, God-awful ring tone, directions to the nearest barbershop, fog and fingers touching windmill, Wainscott, running running (but not away this time), okay let's go -

four in the backseat, both windows down, one CD blaring, many voices laughing.

why so serious?

One person's trauma is another person's...laughter?

I was convinced that what I'd written was, at most, melodramatic and, at the minimum, emotionally charged. Hell, just writing it had put me in a bad mood. And by the time it came my turn to read out loud, I slumped a bit and hoped that maybe she'd pass over my story this week.

I read the first page. I look up.

And everyone is...grinning.

"This was really amusing and fun to read," one classmate says.

Amusing?

"It sounds like you're mad at him for doing exactly what you did!"

"He sounds like a nice fellow and he really seems to care about you."

"This could be a sitcom!"

They pale in comparison to how I've felt about her for my entire life.

Italicized lines are from someone else about someone else, but I see just how right they are. They all are.

Because, well, it hurt like hell but if I know now that I can forgive, that we are very much human and no matter if I cry or swear certain things to myself -

isn't this a test, after all? -

"Despite all that, I'm here," I told you my first night there -

that I will still feel the very same if not stronger -

I feel strongly that I can overlook that, because of how much she matters to me.

- then, well,

why not smile with them?

the story's in the first paragraph, they say

"It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume ownership of a town or a word.

"It is also essential."

Inconsistent courage pisses me off, but tonight I choose to be stupidly brave. To walk on dark path under trees instead of in safely-lit areas the way they tell us to.

"Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to inner life."

Grass crinkles softly in yellow lights. I see no one. I see thoughts.

This place is haunted, you know.

Compromise: dark path with solid lights from buildings ahead.

So many dark windows. Who is like me?

I can't cry. Would you believe that? Well, last night I looked up at the stars while I was driving home and they made me so sad. I don't know why. I mean, hell, they're always there. What else is?

But besides that.

a break like this

http://www.dakotafilms.com/clips/promos/the-bourne-ultimatum <-- my cousin is the pizza delivery guy!

To Eric and Matt

Feet pause. "Is that a finger?"

"I'm talking to the nice man," she says.

"We're bored here. Can you drive onto the grass or something?" he wants to know.

"Later," we promise.

Sashaying with umbrellas past bright facades and brick pathways. "Don't have a cow!" and we groan and laugh.

Sprinting over sand - cool but not yet wet - meet grey crashing white grey again and again -

I stand at the shore, watch crashing grey and know that the desperately rushing tide runs to meet me - I smile - this overwhelming chaos, this beauty - I have finally found a place that is me.

"Let's break out the wine," Kim suggests as the trouble alarm beeps loudly and emergency lights shine on the residents in the hallway who look at me.

We play power outtage instead of power hour. Never have I ever kissed a cheerleader. Giggling fits take us outside. Intriguing basement conversations next to the room with one chair. Kid in the blue poncho, what's his story? Keep it on the DL.

"You two were in bathing suits and I was wearing a tank top," she'll claim later. Rain and wind slap our skin like the volleyball that keeps soaring under the net. Orange lights illuminate laughing bodies in the night.

White skirt,
soaking rain,
brilliantly clear morning.

This is the best time I've had in three years.
What have you been doing?
You don't want to know.

silent dim way of spirits

It's ten o'clock and we're already yawning. She pulls her fingers through reddish blond hair and talks about traffic court and moving south.

So who's the adult who lives in here?

Radio stations come in as crisply as headlights on dotted lines. Laughs come as sharply as plastic ball to plastic bat.

Are they, like, the school gangsters?

Ghosts on the highway each night. If I were the ghost in the windmill, I'd come down to this field to run from sweatshirt to sweatshirt, laughing in the silent dim way of spirits.

The thing is that you can't be afraid. You have to push through.

Reading about writing and as I listen, something glows again.

I should be here.

We should go sometime. I don't need to drink. I just like to dance.

I like learning to love small towns. But as she drives through the two stoplights that separate us from my car, I have the urge to tell her to keep going. Keep moving. Past these places.

I've lost the old nostalgia that upstate skies had for me, even from the start. I'm south and the stars are sharp and she laughs, good friend, keeping me clear, present.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

I want to be the ghost tonight and not the driver. I want to get lost tonight, flowing through forests under the red slice of moon until someone whispers softly for me to turn back.

to the next to the next sort of life

What I've learned:

RCR's = death. There's nothing quite like the desperation - yet liberation - of knowing for certain, "I am fucked." Everyone has a story. Everyone. I can function on one hour of sleep, apparently. Never think that you won't run into someone again. We may be exhausted but I will always be trying to make you laugh - and laughing even if you stay silent. My friends roll deep. Always. These bathrooms do not include soap. Or towels. I say I'm nervous but I walk up and down as if this is in fact mine. As if those answers are mine.

And I love this dizzying jolts of words - laughs in slow times - quick quick feet - one hour of sleep smile and pass from the next to the next to the next sort of life.