thoughts

Ready… Set… Write!

Okay, so this post might just have the single most corny title I’ve ever written. I hope you’ll all forgive me for it, because it’s actually reflecting what my feeling has been since this morning.

NaNoWriMo is starting tomorrow – so one minute after midnight, I am going to start writing, and hopefully get to my entire word count before going to bed. This is the second year I’m participating in NaNoWriMo,while last year I was living at home, someone else was doing my laundry, and I had very little that I needed to do besides write, this year I have so much to do that the 1667 words I need to write a day seem extremely daunting and threatening.

Unlike last year, I haven’t created an outline for my novel. I have a cast of characters, and I know, in general, what I want them to deal with. I know some of their motives, some of their histories, some of their attitudes and voices, and that’s helpful, but I don’t know where I want them all to end up, so I’m very unclear about where they’re going exactly. But that’s exciting – writing is, for me, a lot like reading in that I discover things along the way.

I’m writing literary fiction this year rather than steampunk/fantasy, so that’s going to be very different as well, since I feel that I write the genres quite differently.

It also happens to be Halloween today. I didn’t dress up as anything, and I probably won’t, since I feel like I’m storing up all my creativity for 00:01AM tonight when I start writing. I really feel like I’ve spent the past couple weeks crouching low, ready for the gunshot that will announce that the race is on. It’s strange.

Finally, let me end this extremely disorganized and badly composed post by saying that I will probably be posting to my blog less in the coming month because of NaNoWriMo. However, I succeeded in posting every single day of October! Huzzah!

Blackout

So the show I was supposed to be in tonight got canceled due to weather conditions. For those who aren’t aware, winter has apparently started in New York – it’s been snowing nonstop since about ten this morning.
Half my campus is experiencing loss of power, and the entire campus is Internet-less. Thank goodness for 3G technology.
So, once again, this is basically a filler post since it’s not easy to be creative while typing on an iPhone. I hope I’ll have something better to post tomorrow.
I hope everyone who’s experiencing this bad weather is safe and sound!

Hangout

I hung out with people tonight. I haven’t done that in a while. There was no setting – no club meeting, no rehearsal, no specific required activity. Just… hanging out. Sitting around and watching stupid videos of people making insane meals with bacon, beer and whiskey mixed into them. Sitting around and talking about people’s relationship problems. Sitting around and making super-strong hazelnut coffee and listening to records. Sitting around and having comfortable conversations with people I know, people I’m getting to know, and people I want to know better.

I really, really, really needed that. That’s why this post is totally cheating – I’m setting it to have been published on Friday, just before midnight, so that I don’t miss one of my post-a-days. Yeah, I’m cheating, but a) I’m being honest about it and b) it’s for a good reason. Because I finally got to unwind a bit tonight.

Weirdos of the World: Unite

fruit loop.

Read the post above, if you’d be so kind. Mckenzie, the writer of The Unabridged Girl is an incredibly talented writer. I mean it, she is. Whenever she’s posted fiction in the past, I’ve hungered to read more of it. In the post I linked, she talks about how she’s always been considered weird. I can empathize.

In elementary school, I was picked on a lot. The boys hit me, and even a couple of the girls. That was okay with me. It was better than the alternative. You know that old adage about sticks and stones? Well, If somebody hit me, I could at least try to hit back. Not the most peaceful or responsible way to deal with a problem, but self-defense was something I could do. It was the teasing that I didn’t know how to handle. My face would begin to redden, spurring on more lovely comments, and my brain would go blank as I tried to think of something witty to say. I tried the whole “ignoring” trick; I really did. But since I blushed furiously and teared up whenever anyone would tease me, I think that they realized they were getting to me no matter how hard I kept my head down.

I was called weird a lot. I wanted to fit in so badly that it hurt. I still get those moments of wanting to be popular, confident, blonde and skinny and pretty and perfect. I still get moments of wanting to be someone else, someone entirely different, and the urge to jump out of my skin in those agonizing minutes is overwhelming. It feels like there is literally something inside me bubbling furiously and wanting to erupt out of the flesh I live in and prove itself to be the person I should have, could have, would have been if only this, if only that.

But the thing is – I like being weird. I like the fact that I read while I walk. I like the fact that I have lip-piercings but don’t wear any makeup usually and don’t care about how I dress most of the time. I like the fact that when I do dress up, I sometimes do the goth thing and sometimes do the classy, white blouse and nice pants thing. I like the fact that I’ve read the Harry Potter books so many times that I remember that Nearly Headless Nick’s real name is Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington. I like the fact that I play computer games but am still a hopeless romantic. I like the fact that I find pleasure in being on my own with my books, curled up in bed.

Are there things I regret about being weird? Sure. Of course. Do I still have issues? Oh my goodness, yes. If you could hear the inside of my mind, the extent to which I feel guilty about things that aren’t my responsibility, and the amount of time I spend judging myself, you might just go crazy yourselves. And yet… And yet I’ve come to accept that I wouldn’t give up the joys I get in my weird pleasures in order to be “normal,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.

I also realize that I’m incredibly lucky to be going to a university where being weird is encouraged and that I live near New York City where being weird is a much coveted quality. Maybe there are places where I would feel much less secure in my weirdness.

Have you been called weird? Do you embrace, shun or hide your weirdness?

Burden

When the ambulance sirens sounded, I turned over and put the pillow over my head. Normally I wouldn’t pay much attention, but I was scared I knew where they were coming from and the guilt was eating me up.

He said he would kill her. But he said it every day. Still, I probably should have told someone about how his eyes seemed to have fire in them when he said it this time. But who’d believe me, huh? Everyone here is threatening to murder someone. We’re all angry, all the time, and can you blame us? Living on less than minimum wage salaries, half of us not even knowing English real well, needing to raise our children in a place where they can see people shooting up on ever corner – wouldn’t you be angry?

I paid attention in school, though. I knew that talking a bit nicer would get me places. And that makes me angry also, because we all understand each other here, so why can’t the world try to understand us too? Why can’t they start talking like us, huh? Anyway, that doesn’t matter right not. That’s not the story I’m telling.

The story I’m trying to tell is about how those sirens woke me up and how I thought I knew that what he kept threatening had finally happened. But I didn’t know what to do about it. Someone had already called 911, right? So the cops would show up in a bit, and I wasn’t going to go talk to them and squeal right there in the open where everyone could see. Nah, people who do that end up dead all too quick. But I did need to know if what I thought was happening was actually happening.

I pulled on my sweats and a sweatshirt and checked to see that TJ was still sleeping on the couch. He’s my brother. The kids were asleep, too, and I knew that if one of them started crying, TJ would get up and go take care of them. He was good about that sort of thing. He liked being a good uncle to them when he remembered that there were things to life other than booze. Poor guy.

My face looked nasty without the makeup that I use to keep it fresh, but it was night and no one would see me. So I went downstairs, and walked to where I heard the sirens coming from. Just as I started though, they must have gotten to where they were going because they shut up. My heart was beating so quick that I can’t describe it. I knew where to walk even without the sound.

There were plenty of people outside of the apartment building. This area’s never empty, even at night. Some people live only after the sun goes to nap. Sure enough, I saw the medics sitting around and smoking, and I knew what that meant. That meant that they were waiting on the cops now, that there was someone dead in there and not dead cause of nice old age. Nah, there’d been a murder here.

I didn’t go too close. I didn’t want anybody to remember me. I wanted to wait for the cops in the shadows and tell them that I knew who did it. But I sure wasn’t going to tell them that I could have stopped it. That was my own burden to bear.

Worrier

The trembling in the barman’s fingers was noticeable when he brought the next round of drinks to their table. Tabby, the tall brunette who had been eyeing him up all night, spoke up.

“Hey man, you okay?”

“What?” He set down her drink, sloshing some of the brightly colored liquid out onto the table, distracted by the question more than by his hands.

“Your hands. They’re shaking. Everything alright?”

“Of course,” he said, fixing a grin on his face. “Sorry about that,” he pointed to the spilled drink, “I’ll get a rag. Just a sec.” He hurried back to the bar, and Tabby turned to her girlfriends.

“Something’s not right with that guy.”

“Shut up, Tabby, you’re drunk. Also, you’re a fixer.” Joanna was big-boned but lanky, and she was the drunkest of them all at that particular moment. She didn’t notice the way her words were slurring together or how her eyelids were already drooping a little.

Tabby rolled her eyes at Kate and Gina. “If I’m drunk, then you’re a lobster,” she muttered under her breath. Joanna didn’t hear her. She was digging in her wallet for a couple quarters for the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner. “No, but seriously,” Tabby continued. “He’s shaking.”

“I didn’t notice,” Gina said. She shrugged, a dramatic feat that caused her to immediately hitch up her shirt so that nothing would spill out. Kate wasn’t listening to any of them; she had her face buried in her phone and was alternately typing and staring intensely at the screen as if it would grant all her wishes. Tabby raised her eyebrows at Gina and gave Kate a pointed look. Gina rolled her eyes and mouthed “They’re fighting again.”

Some girls’ night out this turned out to be, Tabby thought. Joanna’s drunk already and is going to fall asleep in five minutes, Kate’s having the same old relationship issues as always, Gina is in one of her quiet moods and I’m still stone-cold sober. And worrying about a barman who I’ve never met before.

The barman came back with a rag and wiped the spill. His hands were still shaking. Tabby stared after him. She hoped he was okay.

Bright Side?

My dorm room has three windows; four, if you count the one that’s in the emergency exit door, which I don’t, because I keep the blind down on it at all times. The reason for that is that I’m on the first floor of my building, directly overlooking, from two windows, the main entrance used by students to come and go from main campus. The window in the exit door overlooks a little hill on which people sometimes sit and smoke when the weather permits. The last window overlooks an ugly tarred roof and from it I could see, if I wished, the windows of the apartments in what I can only call the second wing of the building. I keep that blind closed most of the time as well. So really, I have very little light coming into the room during the day, and at night all my blinds are closed except one, and that window is blocked by a screen so that the people walking below won’t be able to see me changing.

I’m a pretty private person, which is why I’m still ecstatic to have this single room, even if the windows aren’t quite as useful as I’d hoped. There are other downsides to the room, though. Since it’s right by the entrance, I get to hear all the drunk partiers who go out to smoke at one, two and three in the morning. At first, it really irked me. But lately I’ve grown used to it and have even come to see it as a plus. I can’t recognize people’s voices because of the echoing quality, but I can sometimes pick out some words and I try to remember them, to weave stories from them, to put images and faces to them.

I’m back at school after a lovely mini-break with my brother and his girlfriend in Washington D.C. I’m halfway through the semester. There are bright sides, too.

Armchair

An old woman sits before the fireplace. She clutches in her hand a photograph of the way she used to look. With the clarity of vision that comes only with old age and disappointment, she realizes that she was beautiful once. At least, she was beautiful outside. She can almost see the writhing black snakes that used to fill up her midriff and her heart, hissing and twining around one another, gloatingly, reveling in their hold on her.

A log crackles inside the fireplace and the old woman away from the photograph. There’s a cat by her feet, one of the several that she keeps around her, to remind herself that she still knows how to love. Not many people will let a gnarled old woman touch them, but cats don’t care how wrinkly she is, as long as she pets them.

She tries to get up, and falls back into her chair. She tries again, and falls again. She begins to weep. The cat by her feet sits up, stretches, and jumps into her lap, giving her an excuse to stay where she is. She wonders if another excuse is what she needs. The tears stop flowing as she gathers her resolve. She nudges the cat gently off of her lap and grips the arms of the chair firmly. She takes a deep breath.

She gets up.

Drip Drop

Drip. There is a computer screen in front of me. Drip. There is a glass window behind it. Drip. There are drops coming down from the roof of the library behind the window. Drip. There is a gravel yard beyond the water. Drip. There is a brick wall beyond the yard. Drip. There is a tree behind the wall.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
The sky is one long unbroken shade of gray, which seems to be fitting for the kind of day it is. My mind is not at peace. My soul is not at peace. My heart is not at peace. Peace is close to the word piece, which makes sense, since they’re all in pieces right now.
Drip. There goes a tear. Drop. There goes another. Drip. The smell of wooden paneling makes me cry. Drop. The thought of thousands of miles makes me cry. Drip. I feel far away. Drop. Everything is pressing too close.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.

Counting on My Fingers

One,
I count. One is the first.
There isn’t much else to recommend it.
Two.
I count. Two is the best.
But it’s gone and can’t return.
Three.
I count. Three is pure fun.
I think of snow and fur.
Four and Five.
I count. Four and Five both start with F.
They will always be together.
Six.
I count. Six is hard.
It has some of two and some of three in it. Isn’t that beautiful?
Seven.
I count. Lucky number?
Not really.