Eckleburg

Sunday night is blue. Tinted like jazz in a somber bar. The trailing smoke from cigarettes needing to be ashed hang like witch’s fingers in the stale air. It is dark like the early morning sky and lonely like the cars passing on the wet streets outside. Few and far between. Sunday feels like looking into a deep ocean, but only being able to float the surface. I shrug on my navy jacket and leave the dreary place.

My dreams are white. Not like soft clouds that support the sky. They move like ghosts and sound like static. They are sheer curtains that blow in one end of the room and out the other like pale flags. My dreams are the beautiful yet colorless shirts that fall from Daisy’s grasp. The bed’s linen holds me down like a blanket of snow, cold and heavy.

The morning is yellow. Soft like the weathered streetlamps, still going bright as the sky lightens. Gentle cello sputterings drift through the window, making dust dance on sunbeams. It is eloquent and golden. The bouquet sitting center on the table drops a petal covered in pollen. I leave it there and listen to the unseen strangers, feeling both within and without.

Gray are the busy people in the street. Their suits and faces wrinkled with wear. They match the concrete they tread, the monstrous buildings in which they work. Their dreary cubicles and screeching machines demand every bit of their attention. On their keyboards, the letters have lifted off away and attached themselves to those they hold captive. All with the same leaden gaze and set ways.

The sun sets and the sky is pink. The expanse blushes like sweet whispers. People start to see things through rose-colored lenses as they mourn the lost day. They are now all dreamers, parading in Gatsby’s Oxford suit. But their flowery words are raw and without real meaning. I go back to the bar, filled with laughing people with their flush faces. Because Monday is rosy, and the night will soon be blue.

Future Plans

What I found interesting about the Art Institute was that their programs allow their students to go right into their field of study without having to waste time with general education class that are not relevant to them. I wish more colleges did that, or at least were a little more lenient. Something else that I found interesting was that there is an Art Institute in St. Louis. My uncle and step-aunt live up there and I've always loved that city. For college, I didn't want to be too far from home or go to a private, expensive college. But with an Art Institute in St. Louis, it doesn't seem that far-fetched.

A question that I do have about it is switching majors. I wonder how easy or difficult it would be to explore more majors, and if you were to change, how much would you catch up? Or would it be like starting over?

One year from now, I hope to be settled in with college. I don't expect to know exactly what I want to do with a career, but I would think I would have a better idea than what I have now. In five years, I should have my degree in something, given that nothing dramatic or life changing happens. In 10 years, I think I would have a stable career, making friends and living on my own. I might still be school, depending on what I want to study. In 50 years, I hope to be retired. I would be such a cute little old lady, making crochet and learning all the things I wanted to but didn't have the time to. Like French, the flute, guitar, German. Maybe traveling the world in a very relaxed way, just really getting absorbed in the different cultures.

Moonlight Waltz

Moonlight Waltz

The night had turned silver, changing without acknowledgement of the party guests. The courtyard garden seem to be the only place in the world that was this still. With the flower blossoms closed shut to the sky, the crickets and cicadas sang a quiet lullaby. She had never seen the garden in full moonlight; its leaves so much darker and the trees so much wiser. It was as if the greenery all nodded knowingly to each other. She soon forgot her hasty escape from the bright ballroom. Bronze and gold people and décor, all laughing and jubilant. Too much so, it made her heart quicken and chest seize.

The trees and bushes were open and kind. They called her forward. The princess rose from the stone bench, cold in the black night. Her skirts drifted on the grass around her, creating a muted shuffle that seemed so natural to her she thought it incredible she had never been a part of this. Her soft fingers caressed each leaf she walked past and found patterns and stories in the tree bark. Stories she will keep secret and all her own.

Orchestration from the ballroom found its way to her ear, ever so faint and so sweet. She allowed herself a deep breath of the night air. The cold blue filled her lungs, making her heart quicken and chest seize. This time out of excitement. Finally, she had a sense of belonging. Here, out in the garden and away from the constricting castle walls. The feeling overcame her and lifted the sorrow from her lips.  She found herself moving in tempo, spinning in the garden's moonlight with an invisible partner. But she soon forgot him and waltzed in her own steps. Graceful and free, she let her hair down and loosened her bodice. The chilled wind raised goosebumps on her exposed skin. It sent a thrill through the trees and they applauded her elegance. 

She looked back at the gray stone of the castle with its golden light and iron rods. In that moment it is no longer the place she calls home. With a beautiful smirk she turns to the darkening garden and walks

Spring Days

Spring Days

Petals unfurl
In pastel and vibrant shades
Xena, in her
Iris gardens, planting bulbs in
Expectance of rain

During the winter wait
Umbrellas change to parasols
Signaling
The coming of Spring

Winter's Night

Winter's Night

Winter's still embrace

the sky frosted and cold

Lavender smoke from chimney tops

hidden within the gray lilac of space

Distant purple mountains old

always timeless like Nature’s clocks

against the deep rhapsody of night

Classmates' Blogs

I read Collin, Rachel, and Cora's blogs. I enjoyed reading their I Am poems and Object posts. With all of their posts, I really saw a connection between their blog layout and their writing. Cora had a focus on the little things in life and I can relate to that. From Collin's writing I could tell he enjoys simplicity, as shown in is object story about coffee. Rachel's I Am poem focused on who she is on the inside, and I like that style of writing. Overall, it made me excited to see what everyone else has written, and what we could learn from each other.

Carry the Sea

   The waves crash upon the white sand, calling “hush” to the few who still watch the ocean.   A mother, her daughter, and a handful of birds are all who stay; feeling indigenous enough to bear the cold sea breeze to watch the sun shift her colors. All an elaborate dance to call the moon to stage with his deep blues and purples. Slowly, the sun sets. The birds take their cue to leave so the sun can watch the girl. She’s holding a shell in her hands. Small and white at first glance, but to the daughter, it’s full of the pinks and purples and yellows of her favorite sky.

   “Mommy,” she wonders aloud, “how do they get so many colors? The seashells, I mean…”

A bit of thinking on the mother’s part as the waves  continue their lullaby.

   “Well, honey,” her mother starts, “I think it goes a little like this.”

   She sits up from their sandy blanket and pulls a corner aside. The young daughter leans forward in anticipation of the answer.  The woman dips her fingers into the cool, gritty sand.

   “All shells start out white, like this.” She raises her cupped hands to her daughter; she cups her hands in turn to catch the falling granules. They are shining like the stars she’s waiting for. “And someone has to make the shells, right?”

   The daughter nods eagerly.

   “Someone very special…,” she muses, trying to coax out a guess.

   “A fairy! Mermaid!” The child’s eyes are bright with imaginings.

   “…a goddess,” her mother grins. “Big and beautiful like the sun…” She gazes out toward the sea as if to watch her story unfold.

   “She strolls along the beach, watching over the ocean and the sky. One day she thought, ‘How beautiful this is. I want to carry this place with me always.’ But she couldn’t easily carry the sand or the water with her, and how could she capture the salty breeze off the ocean, or the colors of the sky?’ The beautiful goddess in her billowing dress figured maybe that’s what makes her Earth so special.” The mother looks down at her daughter and sees that she has her eyes closed tight and mouth scrunched up, trying to imagine such a divine essence. Her mother takes a gentle hold of the girl’s check and continues, “Just like my little girl!”

   The daughter giggles and says, “Keep going with the story!”

   “‘I know!’ said the goddess. ‘I shall create something new! Something just as precious as the moon and the stars, but able to be held and treasured.’ She took a handful of sand and held it to her chest. Then, she told the sands a secret so important that the grains wouldn't pull apart. She told the wind to howl and carve the rise and fall of salty waves into the bright, new glass she named a shell. 
   "But the shell was still missing something. Although waving like the ocean and gritty like the sand, it still wanted for more. The goddess looked to the sky and found her answer. The setting sun reflected its rays along the water, and cast layers of colors into the darkening sky. She held the shell high to the sun and coaxed the light to stain the glass with its display.
   "The goddess admired her new creation with such joy. She made more and more seashells as the sun set, each with a different sky called to stain it."
   "That's how they're made? With sunlight?" asks the daughter.
   Her mother lies back down on the blanket and sighs, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe." They listen to the waves crash for a moment more. The daughter stares at the shell in her hands, the breeze lifting her hair from her face.  
   "What was the secret?"
   "Hm..."She bounces her foot over a knee and says slyly, "When you put a shell to your ear, maybe its trying to tell you, but it's not allowed to share the secret."
   They pack up and head home, carrying the ocean with them.

   

I am...

I am

a dreamer, a child of chigger weed and lightning bugs, collecting rocks of little and extreme importance, running from bees and wasps and things that sting.

   a daughter and a sister, living in a small, white house by the railroad tracks

   whistles and lights and letters from a times and a train long gone, swaying with the wind in the chipped porch swing, listening to cicadas sing.

   a student, trading green grass for shag carpet, a stick in the dirt turned pencil on page.

I am

   rainy mornings and clear summer nights, fluid, a vague in between of seasons, barren trees reaching toward the vast expanse of sky.

   the lavender tree just off the front porch, the rose bush just beneath the window.

   hoarded journals and broken pens, pencils that scratch as I tattoo my thoughts onto thin canvas

   fleeting ideas and forgotten songs

   an Altoids box, filled with things only I remember, a necklace, two bracelets, three hair clips and a carefully folded hall pass.

   a dusty jewelry box, filled with photos and letters and rock of importance, the music box I cleaned and tuned and showed off good as new.

   the old pine dresser with drawers that never close, clothes that litter the floor, a cheap vintage mirror covered in colored tissue paper flowers.

   balls of yarn and crochet hooks tucked under the rocking chair, a viola caked in white rosin, a black and white bass shy of the amp.

I am

   eyeliner bold and black, happily pale with summer freckles

   big brown eyes that belong to my mom and aunts, an oval face and bent fingers from my dad and grandpa.

   red hair from God knows where, red cheeks and hands when my drink is too hot, blue lips and fingertips when the air gets too cold.

   mysterious cuts and bruises that come and go as they please, chipped nail polish with glitter touch-ups

   the brown jacket, covered in dog hair, shoes that refuse to stay tied.

   apparently old enough to layout my future, too young to understand how

I am

   wingin’ it, and hoping I fly.