Sometimes Blossoms, Sometimes Thorns

I while back, I made tzatziki sauce to go with gyros, and I ended up buying live mint instead of dried leaves. I ripped the all the leaves off, the violence of the act dawning upon me only upon seeing the barren stalks sticking up from the bottom half of a soda can filled with potting soil, but I was nonetheless determined to make it grow. Winter, by the way, is not the best time to start an herb garden inside your kitchen window, but for one reason or another, the October snows were hesitant to hang about for more than a couple of days at a time, and that means that little Minty for a time enjoyed the leisure of sunbathing on his windowsill balcony, overlooking the lawn.

Minty grew big and strong, and the sun battled the clouds for as long as it could before the cold set in, before the swift-footed cirrus and the billowy hordes of cumulonimbus cast their shadow on the land. As is often the case when someone making great progress is beset by obstacles, Minty started to get discouraged, and I could see that his green confidence was fading in the face of opposition. I decided to set him on top of the oven, hoping that a little warmth would cheer him up, but I found out the hard way that the oven apparently provides for more than just a little warmth. Pretty soon, Minty's lower leaves shriveled up his stalks gave way. I think I killed him.

For now I walk in shadow and confusion, but then will I walk in light, for you shall be my lamp. You will be the spark to kindle fire within my breast. You shall be my every memory, my new philosophy, my enigma. You shall be the wonder that I ponder each minute of my waking reality, and you alone shall inhabit my dreams.

Tears are sorrows...

Tears are sorrows. Sometimes, when you cry, it's out of sadness, and the tears well up because there's not enough room inside of you for all the pain. And sometimes, when you cry, it's out of joy, and the happiness fills you up, and the tears well up because there's no more room inside of you for any sorrows.

Psych Ward: A Vilanelle

A dressing gown, a light, and fresh-cut grass–
My vision flashes red, my body shakes,
My heart, a stone, this cell made out of glass.

They gave me yellow pills that taste like brass,
And Betty brings me Salisbury steak,
A dressing gown, a light, and fresh-cut grass.

Before they brought me here I’d sit in class,
And hark, what light from yonder window breaks
A heart, a horse, a cell made out of glass.

They said hallucinations usually pass
Within a day or two. Can’t stay awake...
A dressing gown... a light... and fresh-cut grass?

A storm of convict thoughts that flee en masse
From there within my mem’ry’s lucid lake–
A heart, a shout, and pounding on the glass,

And leather straps, syringes... laughing gas.
And later on the aide will feed me cake,
A dressing gown, a hall, and fresh-cut grass!
Within this mind, this cell made out of glass.

Sahara

Calloused feet
leave five-toe prints
in still, soft sands,
still hot, still waiting
for night's cool reprieve;.
A long, thin shadow
trudges across an ethereal expanse,
a fragile frame fading
into a blood red sun
as it slips silently
over the darkening dunes.
And the desert– the desert
breathes out a tired sigh,
and footprints melt into the winds,
swirling off into the twilight sky.

A Stranger in the Corner

It’s like when you've been sitting near a campfire and then you turn away into the black night and your face still tingles with the heat; your skin feels tight and dry, and the fiery figures still dance before your eyes and then are lost in the endless night. And you glance back for a moment, and you’re flashing in and out of the flames, and then the images fade, and the fire dies, and the quiet night sets in.

I step down from the airplane onto the jetway, and the dry, summer air blasts my face. After more than twenty hours of crowded terminals and cramped, economy-class middle seats, I hobble along the walkway on wooden legs, lugging an old American Traveler bag stuffed with as many heavy items as the frayed, black canvas cloth or the dull-toothed zipper can possibly hold. My coat pockets bulge with the journals that I kept while in Ukraine and with whatever else I managed to cram in at the last moment. Up ahead of me is the portal, and there’ll be a lady there who gets paid to look nice and smile and say, “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas,” over and over and over. I can already hear the familiar clink of quarters from the slot machines in the terminal, and cigarette smoke is just beginning to tickle my nose with the smell of home. I feel as though with each step, the airy mists of some perfect dream unravel behind me and trickle off into nothing. Twenty four months wash by me in an instant, and for a moment I wonder if it has all been just a dream.

A Poem of Love...

Gertrude

I love the way you pick your nose,

The chipped nail polish on your toes,

Your crooked grin, your frizzy hair,

Your absent look, devoid of care.

I love your cakey, make-upped face,

Your manly gait, devoid of grace,

Your rumpled blouse, your sauce-stained skirt,

Your cheeks begrimed with soot and dirt.

Your hoggish snort and loud guffaw

Reduce me to dumbfounded awe,

And when I see your monstrous feet,

My flutt’ring heart nigh skips a beat.

In beauty naught surpasses now

Your bristle-brushy unibrow.

And I’ll not fear the touch of death,

When thinking of your rancid breath.

Your stubbled chin oft to behold

Is better boon than purest gold,

And if true love be hard to find

Then glad I am that you are mine.

Scraps of Memory

These are just a couple of thoughts from a personal narrative that I'm working on. Still figuring out what I want to say and piecing together the emotions and the words, but I figured I'd share a little bit.

You never take enough pictures of people when they’re there, and then they’re gone and you search everywhere to find something to substantiate their existence, to make them seem real again. And you think that maybe it was all a dream but you can remember all the things you did together and you mouth to yourself their favorite phrases or close your eyes and picture their faces just to remember. And then you think that maybe it's just a really bad joke, but then you go to his house and his mom cries and Melanie won’t look you in the eye.
...
I’ve always wondered what it’s like to really cry at a funeral, and I still don’t know. When grandpa died, I cried, but that was because mom was crying– I didn’t really understand what it all meant. Death is, at first, a stranger in the corner, and you don’t really get it at all. You just start to not remember anymore, and that’s what death is for you. It’s not the bullets or the bombs or the cancer that they show in all the movies: it’s just a not-there-anymore, an absence.

Lords of Earth and Sky

A short story/creation myth about the rise and fall of dragons. Let me know what you think, because I would love feedback on the good the bad and the ugly. Confusing parts? Leave a comment! Thanks!

Lords of Earth and Sky

My people were once a noble race, a kindly sort, but were brought to anger and destruction by the acts of man or fate. That is not to say, of course, that there were never so-called bad eggs among our lot– that I shall yet demonstrate–, but it would be folly to suggest that any significant portion of the world’s evil was, at least at first, bottled up within our ‘draconian’ hearts. We dragons were a proud race, and though, as time passed, my brothers grew more and more prone to fits of jealousy and rage, we were, at least to begin with, a peaceful sort. Indeed, perhaps more so than any other creatures to roam this earth, we were a happy people, content with our simple pleasures. I was young and strong, back before the wars. Oh, how my scales gleamed, sapphires against the emerald seas, and my wings beat in powerful strokes that carried me high above the clouds to airy roosts. Indeed, our early days were ones of magic and wonder and peace, but then something changed inside of us. Then the world changed around us. And then we lost the magic.

I, Marak, am the last of my kind, and I alone remain to tell our tale, of dragons, the Lords of Fire and Earth and Sky.

Redemption

Another short short that I've been working on. I'd like to flush it out to about 1200 words, where it's at only 750 now, so let me know what kinds of things/events you think could emphasize the ideas better. I have some ideas, but I'd love to hear your suggestions, comments, etc.

Redemption

          She says to me, “Why don’t you come in for a little bit?” and I say okay because I think she’s just being nice and all. And then she keeps looking at me all sexy-like, and she scooches on over real close to me, and I’m thinking that she’s not really interested in buying a Bible anymore. I mean, she’s pretty and all-- prettier than just about anyone I’ve ever seen. An’ I woulda liked to give her a kiss or something, but I haven’t sold anything today and I need the money, so I tell’er I ought’a go, and manalive she wants me to stay, but I leave anyway.
          Then I get thinkin’ about how Mom used to send Beth off to bed when the sexy parts would come on in movies, and I always thought it was kinda funny how that stuff was bad for Beth but not for Mom or for Gary or me.
          The next door’s tall and red, and when I knock, a raspy, lady’s voice says come in. The house smells like sweat and Mom’s lavender Febreeze, and I kinda tiptoe past piles of junky ol’ antiques til I see this big ol’ lady sitting in a big ol’ scarlet throne or something. She’s got these enormous bosoms that just kinda loll around on her big ol’ gut, like Bacchus in our textbooks at the community college, and she’s got these porkchop legs that kinda dribble out from under this dress of hers. Big ol’ kielbasa fingers tap-tap-tappin’ on her chair, and little chocolate chip eyes look me up and down all hungry-like from behind her marshmallow cheeks. “What’ve you got for me, boy?”

Red Berries

This is a short short that I wrote recently. I'd love to hear your comments, impressions, suggestions!

Red Berries

We’re reading stories, and Philip is growling under the table like a tiger, and Lily is giggling, and I am sitting in my green, dinosaur chair, and Teacher’s face is all red and scrunched up like a balloon with a hole in it, and it’s because Philip won’t sit down and Jacob is talking and Teacher has been baking, because I can smell the cookies. Soon, we’ll go outside and take off our light-up shoes and wiggle our toes in the soft grass, and you can still smell it, because Mr. Teacher cut it while we were doing sharing time, you could hear it. Lily’s hands will be dandelion yellow and sticky from dandelion milk, and Teacher will go out front and then come back and smell like smoke. I will feel the sharp sand on my hands, and Philip will eat it even though we can smell cookies, but it’s because he’s poor and doesn’t have a mommy, that’s what my mommy says. Teacher’s face will still be red because of Philip and because she smells like smoke, and Jacob and me will find swords under the bushes or pull them off of trees, and then I’ll be a knight and Jacob will be a pirate, and I’ll kill him or he’ll kill me and then Teacher will call and we’ll be friends again. And then Philip’s hands will be red, and his lips will be red, and his tongue will be red, and Teacher will scream and Mr. Teacher will have to stay home from work to cut down the berry bush, and Philip had to go to another school.

"A Bunch of Phonies"

I read The Great Gatsby this week, and that's got me thinking a lot about the ideals that we construct for ourselves. See, Jay Gatsby isn't really Gatsby at all. His name is James Gatz, and Gatsby is just his constructed persona-- the summation of all of his 17-year-old aspirations of money, influence, sophistication, and charm. The thing is, everything that he lives for-- everything that he is or represents-- is an empty shell, an arbitrary abstraction of what he is to become. He spends the entire story trying to convince himself that he has, indeed, attained that unattainable dream, reached that great summit that he had so long before imagined, but in the end, the dream falls apart; the reality of his situation is brought to light, and he is left all alone.

I've asked myself often, 'For what and/or whom do you live?' and I find myself answering differently each time. I guess you could say that at one point in my life, I had my own Jay Gatsby that I had built up for myself: he was quick-witted and dagger-tongued, cynical yet a hopeless romantic, a perfect intellectual, an overt critic, a part-time philosopher, and an aspiring novelist. He wrote lots of first pages of books and told people that he was writing a novel. He knew all about Kant and Jung and Heidegger-- that, perhaps was one of his more real faces. He read every long book that he could get his hands on and made a point of informing everyone that he not only had read them but also thoroughly enjoyed each and considered it one of his favorites. And it's easy to sound smart when you know a little bit about something to which others are entirely ignorant. It's like the kid in your 9th grade class who is fluent in five languages because he knows how to say three sentences-- that is, until someone who speaks Portuguese shows up, and then he's only fluent in four languages.

I think I first saw myself one day in high school when my friend, Abigail, asked me for help on a homework assignment. I remember that she turned to me at one point and said, "Greg, don't take this the wrong way, but you can be really condescending at times. That's why we don't usually ask for your help." At first I was kind of taken aback, and the holographic image that was ever before my eyes lost focus for a moment; all I could see was a little kid who was kind of afraid and pretty lonesome, but then the stabilizer came back online with a string of self-justifications, and the image was back again.

I've changed a lot over the past six or seven years, and while I can't say that I'm free from hypocrisy or unkindness or pride, life has had its way of peeling back some of the dragon's scales. It's never much fun at first, but then the hologram comes down, and you start to see things in color again. Sometimes, you can distinguish a faint shimmer or a quiet whirr about others-- as if they have some little hologram generator as well--, and you think to yourself about what you once were and what you've become. And you're glad for who you are, and you feel, if only for an instant, that that little kid inside you has grown up a little bit. He's learned a lot, and he yet has a lot to learn before he becomes what he is truly meant to become... but he realizes above all that it's always better to be you, with all the flaws and weaknesses and sorrows, too...

Baby Steps

A lot of times, we limit ourselves by our own self-doubt. We think, 'Oh, I shouldn't even try, because I won't be good at it,' or we excuse ourselves, saying that we've tried before and it turned out poorly. And there are a thousand writers and a thousand singers and a thousand architects who aren't writing or singing or building because at one point they said to themselves, "I can't."

The thing is, when a baby takes its first steps, they're wobbly and they're slow-- honestly, they're not very good at all. But we shout for joy and we tell the neighbors and we call mom and we write about it in a baby book because baby took his first steps.

When a child is learning to play the piano, we hear tons of wrong notes and endure hours of what can only be considered noise, and yet we urge them on: 'Keep trying. You'll get it soon! Just keep working at it.' And soon enough, baby is walking and running and little Timmy is playing Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff, and we're thinking to ourselves how amazing it is that they've come so far in what seems like such a short time. And yet... in the back of our minds... is a lingering 'I can't. It won't be any good.'

The only thing keeping us from our dreams is the wall that we erect within our own minds-- the compulsion to self-criticize and self-abase and to discount any little bit of progress that we make. So maybe you're not a writer yet, and maybe you've never even been on a stage; maybe you don't know the difference between calculus and a calculator, or maybe foreign languages 'just aren't your thing.' But that's not what really matters. We get so discouraged at our perceived lack of progress when we might, with the same vigor and excitement as at the first steps of a small child, rejoice in our little triumphs, our own baby steps. They're not bad just because they're our first... or our second... or our hundredth. And in the end, if we keep at it, things'll work out. "Keep trying. You'll get it soon! Just keep working at it!" And soon enough, you're running and you're writing and you're doing differential algebra, and you're marveling at how far you've come in what seems like a such a short time. And so... in the back of your mind... is a triumphant, 'I can!'

I wonder...

I wonder sometimes where I'll be five years from now, what I'll be doing and with whom... I wonder if I'll be married or if I'll have kids, and I wonder what their names will be if I do. I wonder sometimes what tomorrow holds-- who I'll meet and who I'll find again. And I wonder sometimes how many somebodies you have to go through before you find an everlasting friend... I wonder sometimes about what goes on inside of people's heads and wonder if, in the end, we're not so different as we maybe sometimes like to think. Because I think that in end, you probably wonder, too. And that means that we're probably not so different at all...

Give them Bread

His hands were rough and worn, his face made raw and red by wintry winds. A tattered coat hung limp over melancholy shoulders, and ragged spurts of icy breath materialized before his face and lingered momentarily in the air before fading into the white of winter. I barely understood him above the hissing of the winds when through cracked lips came a stuttered, "Do you have money for bread?" I peered at him, fixing my gaze on the black beads, huddled beneath a forlorn brow; though he stood but a few feet from me, his eyes were miles away-- a glimmer at the bottom of an eternal well. "Are we not all beggars?" I smiled wistfully to myself and nodded to the man, and we walked together into the nearby corner store.

Before Ukraine, I never understood what it meant to be poor. Sure, there had been times when money was tougher to come by, and I had certainly read about abject poverty, but there was never a day where there was no food in the pantry, no money to pay the electric bill. There was never a day when I had to pawn my dishes so that I could buy bread or when I stood alone and cold in a frigid gale, begging from the apathetic and hurried handful of people crazy enough to still be out on the streets. We just happened to be passing by, but that experience and hundreds of other similar ones have got me thinking a lot about the plight of the poor.

When you get to the top...

I hate hill runs. They just aren't fun. And you don't go all that far, but in the end, you're still just as exhausted as you would have been if you had run a marathon. Well, the other day in my jogging class, we were assigned (you guessed it!) hills, and we'd be running up and down a quarter mile stretch as many times as we could in the class period. I was obviously elated at this revelation, but I got going all the same. I usually do pretty well at keeping near the front of the class when we're doing regular jogs (thank you long legs), but I was lagging behind a little bit, and I could feel the initial pangs of what would become a pretty excruciating side ache. The thing is, every time that I would pass someone going the other way, whether I was going up or they were going down, regardless of whether I was ahead of them or they ahead of me, the other runners shouted out, "Good job!" or "Keep going; you're doing great!" and however mundane it might seem, that was what kept me going for those last couple of runs up and down the incline.


We're all struggling along through the journey of life, and I think it's safe to say that we've been through a lot of the same things-- many of the same experiences, the same disappointments and joys. Maybe our courses have been a little bit different. Maybe you're a little bit farther up the path than I am, or maybe it's the other way around. But the point is, you don't have to be at the top of the mountain to throw down a rope. Sometimes, it's the little acts of kindness and the simple words of encouragement that mean the most, and wherever we may be in our journey, there's bound to be someone nearby who could use a hand up or a shout of encouragement. Life's not a race, so we might as well take the time to help others along their way. And when you get to the top, remember those who are yet struggling forward...

"Wait and Hope..."

I got on my Facebook Sunday morning and wasn't finding much of interest there-- you know, the typical rant of, 'Look at me,' and, 'My life is so hard'--, but then I stumbled upon something that really caught my attention; I guess it just kind of resounded within me. It was just three words, posted as a comment on someone's status update, but I couldn't get it out of my head all day long, and I've been thinking about those words ever since:


"Wait and hope."

I don't know if it's just the stage of life that I'm at-- the fact that I don't know where or with whom I'll be ten years from now or, for that matter, tomorrow--, but those simple words are such an inspiration and a comfort to me. I wonder for whom Dumas wrote them originally-- whether his wisdom was discovered in desperate anticipation of his difficulties' end or whether it was written for another. I think, sometimes, though, that things like that and things in the scriptures were put there just for me. It's kind of an absurd thought, I know, but it still makes me feel like those ideas are my own, a part of me.

Wait and hope. That's all we can really do sometimes. I feel like that's what life is about a lot of the time, and it's been an especial focus of my life this last while. I'm waiting to see where college will take me and what opportunities will open up as I get further along in my programs. I'm waiting to fall for someone-- to find someone with whom I wouldn't mind spending eternity. I'm waiting and hoping as I try to become a better person, as I work to overcome my weaknesses. But I'm okay waiting. And I'm okay hoping. Because in the end, everything's going to be alright, and things are going to work out as they are supposed to. God's promised us a whole lot, and sometimes we've just got to have the faith to endure, trusting that, in the end, all His words will be fulfilled in full.