The jewel, the gem of human life
Once forgotten in times of strife
Climbing out of rubbled decay
The depths of man come out to play.
America’s innate expressive urge
is blocked in technological scourge
Saving admiration for the elite few
to manipulate the public eye’s view,
civilized habits of a closed-throat culture,
is becoming a restricting vulture.
open up your inner voice,
dare to live simply, love, rejoice
when all we need is beneath our feet
to idolize stifles the natural beat.
a few wild egos for a million humbled,
disturbing the balance under which we’ve fumbled.
When we were consuming, creating waste,
The earthly tongue continues in haste
on the expansive plains we abandon our child
the young bee buzzes in blossoming wild
to fly around our psyches’ caves,
youth stored away for the depraved.
fill ourselves up with horrid notions,
like leeches slurping through the motions.
and shroud the child, a hidden kingdom,
whose limbs flail like stuff of freedom.
meanwhile we absorb the data,
minds cling on to endless schemata
in fragmented consciousness, we are defined
open the back door of your mind.
the plume emerges to ruffle your feathers,
to breathe new life into mucked up tethers.
as we can recall our ancient blueprint,
frolicking under stars of lucent.
envision a collective light,
where hearts are hearts, might is might.
plowing through the fog of industry,
evolution of our connectivity
rays of life, up the bark we climb
inner knowing will guide us in time.


if it helps, this part of the RYSE book explains the closed-throat culture idea.
“Many people have long been educated out of expressing themselves freely through human sounds, and most adults repress these urges. It is interesting to note that some of the highest paid professionals in blocked throat chakra cultures are singers and rock stars. In Europe it used to be opera singers. They get it out for everybody. The mainstream American culture is a blocked throat chakra culture. Countries where singing, chanting and making a lot of noise is socially acceptable have no rock stars; they send them over here or to Europe. They don’t need them.”

We were given a random phrase to prompt our writing for today. Here’s what came out of it, I might continue it.

Amelia sucked on her 40 ounce beer as she looked out through the screen of the porch of an abandoned farmhouse. The paint peeled below her feet, and her body folded in half when she bent over to feel its cracking texture—as fragile as human life. Amelia found this oasis on one of her escapist bike rides she took almost every afternoon to clear her mind. Every day she tended to her mother’s ails, her every whim and whisper. Now she allowed herself a couple of hours to let loose. Her copper brown hair reflected in the bottle, as she contemplated how her life would change after her mother passed. She guiltily pushed the thoughts out of her mind, like a child who sees ghouls in the shadows at night.

She walked out onto the field before her, and kneeled with the sweating bottle next to her pale, dirty knees. She closed her eyes and lay back, her hair entwined like a school of serpents in the indigo wildflowers. Amelia’s nose flared as she absorbed the Californian flowers’ flagrant scent, mixed with lingering beer, sweet grass and her own shampoo. The empty pockets of her soul began to repair in the southern sun.

            She could feel it in the air, the electricity of her mothers’ impending death. It’ll happen tonight, she contemplated. It was a certain heightening of her senses that told her, a certain friction that zapped her skin in random places, gradually picking up the pace like the popping of popcorn. She had a strange knack for predicting the death of those around her, making human relationships more difficult than not. Amelia feared the exploitation of her ability. Those who knew her were already dead—her father, best friend, and younger brother. She wondered if it was coincidence or not.

            But not now. Now she wondered how far she could climb this blue elderberry tree standing brilliantly before her, tempting her inner child. A gust of wind picked up her sage-colored sundress from behind, as if to convince her to go for it. She hoisted herself up, the heel of her boot firm on the hard bark.  

The prompt was to write an impassioned letter, either negative or positive, telling someone things you’d always wanted to tell them. 

Mom,

You have me forever in a chokehold of affection and frustration. You have been both my best friend and my worst enemy. I don’t think you understand how your emotions affect the lives of others, namely your youngest daughter. You are manipulative and you don’t even know it, although sometimes I can tell when you’re aware. I love you and I could never really hate you, but indeed I toe the line. You’re estranged from all reason, overwhelmed by every doubt, indulge in every whim. You are naïve, you are a little child in grown-up shoes.

My love for you is a smokescreen, during which I temporarily forget that you chose your drug-dealing asshole of a boyfriend over your youngest daughter. I’ve never told you the horrors I saw in that juvenile shelter in those five long days, not knowing if I’d be taken in to the custody of the state. I spent five days with teenagers who’d stabbed their mothers, raped their sisters, burned down buildings. I spent five days trying to forget, burying my face in Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut while the others stared at me as if I had eight heads. They asked me, “Why on Earth are you here?” with incredulous expressions as I never tried to nudge my cyclical self into a rectangular hole. All I could tell them is that you are crazy, which is a belief I will hold until you prove me wrong. You’ve failed at that thus far.

I loved you when I found out you used to smoke pot in the downstairs bathroom when I was three, and cover it up by burning sage. I loved you when you drank yourself to a never-ending stupor, because you couldn’t handle your mistakes. I loved you when you’d ask me how to spell ‘harmonizing,’ and had Rachel edit your essays for college. I loved you when you called the police on Nicole multiple times for mere arguments, as if the cops could do anything about my crazy mother. I loved you when you told me that “this is the way it is because I am your mother,” because I can’t argue with the truth. I loved you when you allowed a heroin addict to move in with us. I loved you when you got pulled over the night before my birthday with my sisters and I in the car, because you were on probation for driving under the influence. I loved you when my friends told me that I had the “cool” mom, because you pretended not to notice when we fish bowled my room, because you were also smoking downstairs. I loved you when you sucked my father dry of his money for nine years after the divorce, and you’re still going back for more. I loved you when my sisters and I talked about my shitty father, after which you tried to make us think you’re the world’s best mother. I loved you when you went through all of your important belongings with my sisters and I, telling us what we’re going to get from your will when you die. I loved you when you cried, “if you don’t like it here, you can leave,” and yet you claimed to the police that I was truant after changing the locks on me. I loved you as I watched the courts practically snicker at you in the face of your repeated irresponsibility, when you thought you had the upper hand.

I loved you when you cooked dinner for my sisters and I every night. I loved you when you picked me up from debate team. I loved you when you taught me how to use the machines at the gym. I loved you when we were able to openly talk about having lost my virginity. I loved you when you brought me to get a flu shot and I squeezed your hand and cried out in pain. I loved you when you bragged to all of your friends about how wonderful your youngest daughter is. I loved you when you dropped me off at a friends’ house and told me, “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” I loved you when you diagonally cut my grilled cheese down the middle. I loved you when you put little notes in my lunch box, even though I haven’t had lunch prepared for me since I was in the fourth grade. I loved you when you brought my clothes and homework to the shelter for juvenile delinquents in Plymouth, and told me that “this place is much nicer than the foster homes I grew up in.” I loved you when we sang along with Lauryn Hill at the top of our lungs in the car on the way to the beach. I loved you when you made me blueberry pancakes and sausage before the MCAS test.

I can’t blame you because you’re a fellow human with many character flaws. It pains me to the core when I remember that those flaws come from a childhood of an alcoholic mother who threw you out of the house at the tender age of fourteen. I love you because in this life of mine, I never forget the good things about people. You’re lucky I have a good head on my shoulders, because any other person wouldn’t give you a second glance. But you’re my mother, and there’s no changing that. You’re only my biological mother though. We both know that but you won’t admit it. Rachel has been more a mother to me than you will ever be. I’ve learned my most important life lesson by watching you ruin yours. I am the only person alive who has any real faith in you. Men you meet may tell you that you’re a beautiful person with a big heart, and they are only partly right. But they don’t really know what you’re like, what your history is. But that’s the best part about time, it’s forgiving. I’ll never give up on you, but I’m done trying to fix you. I can’t tell you how redundantly I’ve felt like your mother or your therapist. When people say “I hate my parents” because they’re grounded for bad grades or trying cigarettes, they don’t know how lucky they really are. You’re forever a part of me, you beautiful disaster. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve taught me about the fragility of life.

Love,

Stephanie

Ode to a Lover

I don’t need more than what’s in my head,

A shriveled organ can say what’s been said.

My young thoughts, doubt coercing—

Unbeknownst, your light reversing

In my slumber, your emotions did quake,

As you waited for my soul to wake.

Your elder core once overlooked,

Is now the bait on which I’m hooked.

In the forest, your love imparted

A path split through time uncharted.

We rounded a corner of curiosity—

Through a clearing, we slip into harmony.

With every swell, your tide transcends,

Our collective intent emerges and bends;

Creating a body, soul and mind—

A creature of ethereal kind.

Your breath a rhythmic melody,

Emerging from a natural place of sanctity.

When your palms and my hips align,

My ebb your flow intertwine.

And I’ve let you in, your wave swept over me,

Pulling me up from the undersea.

Your current erodes every hesitation,

Renewing my faith in man and sensation.

This is a continuation of one of my latest pieces that I posted before, although I’ve changed the first part a lot. It’s a work in progress, but I’ve gotten some good feedback from my creative writing class thus far.

Slashed canvases lay strewn on hardwood floor, imagery covered up by paint splatter—a woman’s face with an unintentionally bleeding eye; a pair of hands of different skin tones, fingertip to fingertip, a connection slashed by bright, piercingly obtrusive orange. Various tables are caked in paint of every hue and type due to experiments with watercolor, oil and acrylic. The walls are speckled with ideas—an original wallpaper of drafts—inspired by dreams and memories that penetrate daily life and linger on until executed. There are sporadic holes in this interior design, evidenced by thin layers of glue where tape used to be. The eye trails down the wall to crumpled up paper as the missing puzzle pieces have been torn down in a rage and also splattered with paint—mustard yellow, iceberg blue. Pallets and cups of water are randomly placed where the average person might trip over them—the pigment still wet and dripping down the sides of the cup, the wall, the canvas, the brush, his fingers—frenzied, yet graceful. Assorted lamps and clamp lights are placed strategically, but one is shattered amongst the flurry of scraps. Next to a telephone opposite a giant easel by the door, business cards lay in a nest-like manner—some smudged by graphite fingerprints—squandering useful table space for creation. But again, the pile trails down to the floor, as if swept aside and rendered useless: names of art gallery owners and art procurers, museum officials and fellow painters. A record player is spinning listlessly in the corner, music absent as the needle drifts over dust particles with an empty crackle. In the center of the room a man sits on a tall stool, trying to catch his breath in the electric air—pungent with the pigment of his projects.

The man lifted his head from the dish of his wet palms when he hears a creak at the door—a small black paw pushes it aside and strolls carelessly in. His black-and-white, Persephone, rubbed affectionately against his leg in this most tenuous moment of weakness. “Persey, where do I go from here?” After a few deep breaths, the man strolled around in agonizing leisure; his mind aching with every step as he begins organizing the disarray. I must prepare. His thoughts were racing with the multiple methods, the innumerable options of his impending suicide.

The man sat down at his desk with his typewriter staring dauntingly at him, as if to say, “Do it, you won’t. You enjoy living too much.” He was determined to douse his dread of ending it all. He sat for a moment, his fingers drifting intimately over the metal and plastic labyrinthine keys. When you read this, his fingers pressed reluctantly, I will have created my most poignantly original works of art. The canvases are dripping with life and death, a temporary museum dedicated to fifty-seven years of relentless passion. The fervor, the obsession—It grabs hold like a leech, slowly draining the soul and feeding the empty stomach of creation. The lining has worn away and the toxicity is flowing through me. There is no other escape. I don’t know who you are, I don’t know why you came to see me, but I’m sorry it was you. In my last gasp I can only pray for the mercy of time to tell this tale. My only friend is my cat, Persephone, who I have left in the next room. Please see to it that she is safe and happy. He racked his brain for the last words. I’ll see you in another life, or not. The man signs his name for the last time.

The man turned on Ludwig Van Beethoven for his inspiration. He put on a smock and grabbed an exacto-knife from a drawer of craft tools. He drew in a sharp, annihilating breath has the blade glided down his arm. Wincing, he let the bloody paintbrush take him to the depths of his last mark on Earth— the staccato violins matching  the pitch of his voice as his soul released its whimper out into unrepentant silence.

Words to note, remember, use! I find that most of them are pretty pessimistic, probably because they’re words that I picked out from 1984 by George Orwell.

Pall - an aspect of something causing it to decrease in beauty

Listless - having or showing little or no interest in anything; languid

Debase - to lower in quality, character, or value

Lassitude - weariness of body or mind from strain, lack of energy

Etiolate - to drain of color and vigor

Annihilate - reduce to utter ruin, destroy

Vestibule - a passage, hall, or antechamber between the outer door and the interior parts of a house or building.

Labyrinthine - resembling a labyrinth (obviously, haha. I just love the way it sounds though)

Exhortation - a speech or writing meant to persuade, inspire, or encourage

Palpable - readily or plainly seen

Persiflage - light, bantering talk or writing

Assent - to agree with or give in to

Impregnable - unconquerable

Demur - to make an objection

Beseech - to ask earnestly for, beg

Superfluous - excessive, unnecessary

We had to choose from a list of types of people, but describing them by their habitat in a showing, not telling manner of freewrite. This is what I wrote…

Slashed canvases lay strewn on hardwood floor, imagery covered up by paint splatters—a woman’s face with an unintentionally bleeding eye; a pair of hands of different skin tones, fingertip to fingertip, a connection slashed by bright, piercingly obtrusive orange. Various tables are caked in paint of every hue and type due to experiments with watercolor, oil and acrylic. The walls are speckled with ideas—an original wallpaper of drafts—inspired by dreams and memories that penetrate daily life. There are sporadic holes in this interior design, evidenced by thin layers of glue where tape used to be. The eye trails down the wall to crumpled up paper as the missing puzzle pieces have been torn down in a rage and also splattered with paint. Pallets and cups of water are randomly placed where the average person might trip over them—the pigment still wet and dripping down the sides of the cup, the wall, the canvas, the brush, his fingers—frenzied, but beautiful. Next to a telephone opposite a giant easel by the door, business cards lay in a nest-like manner—some smudged by graphite fingerprints—squandering useful table space for creation. But again, the pile trails down to the floor, as if swept aside and rendered useless: names of art gallery owners and art procurers, museum officials and fellow painters. In the center of the room a man sits on a tall stool, trying to catch his breath in the electric air—pungent with the pigment of his projects.

I don’t even care if I don’t get accepted to my top school, because something good came out of it. This is one of my favorite pieces of writing as of late.

Personal Statement 

            Thoughts of my childhood always bring me back to the beach. The memories closest to birth that I can recall most vividly are hazy and bright, sitting in the sand for hours and playing with rocks and shells. Nearly every morning my mom packed my older sisters and me into the car, and we refused to leave until the sun finally went down on those long summer days. Although I loathed the application of the thick sun-block that my mother forced us to put on at least every hour as a precautionary measure, I always looked forward to roaming on the beach with my sisters. On the shores of Narragansett beach we searched for hermit crabs under the rocks of the jetty, and made “drippy castles” from the soft, wet sand as it slipped through our tiny fingers.

            By the time we moved from Rhode Island to a microcosm of a suburb in Massachusetts, I finally knew how to swim. On the calm shores of the Mattapoisett town beach, I can specifically remember the day I fell in love with the ocean.

            “Stephanie, lie on your back. Let the water hold you. Watch,” my mother said, as she turned over to look at the open sky. I did the same, but I never thought it was possible to simply float. I looked into the clouds, my ears encompassed by the salt water. As the sea cradled me in its gentle arms that day, I was in a state of innocent bliss. From then on, my mother would always call me her little fish, because the ocean became my home.

Even the pungent scent of low tide lured me into the ocean. Under the blanket of water I tumbled, over and over in the expansive basin. There was something ethereal about this realm, and I felt it most when I sat at the ocean’s floor and peered up into the beaming rays of her celestial light, speckled with drifting life at the whim of the leisurely currents. I would sit there until all the air from my lungs and mouth was gone, rising up in tiny bubbles pining for escape.

            Every summer was the same routine, but every moment revealed another breathtaking discovery. I can recall marveling at the texture of the barnacles on the rocks, and ogling at my sisters in disbelief when they told me that they were living, breathing animals. The brilliant green of the seaweed didn’t go unappreciated. While the other children flung the flotsam at each other for cruel entertainment, I was captivated by the beauty of life in its variety of forms, colors and textures. For hours I collected shells and sea glass to bring back to my mom in a bucketful of sand; returning to our umbrella for a short interlude of soothing dreams painted by the rhythmic sound of the waves colliding on the shore, and nurtured by the warm, yet affectionate kiss of the summer sun on my young skin.

Looking back on these simple moments, I know now that nothing is as precious as when encountered for the first time through the lens of a child’s eyes. As a teenager on the brink of adulthood, I am beginning to experience reality in all of its harsh ambivalence—but I will never neglect to stop and float.

This was an interesting assignment. We had to choose two pictures of people we knew but had never met before, and write a scene where they’d meet; their initial impressions based off of their expressions in the photos themselves.

^ Josh, on the left,

^ And Meg, on the right.

I never gave it a title, but here goes.

A man stepped out onto the beach to clear away the heavy day that became of him. His face was very telling of the spirit within the man—although he was only in his mid-twenties, his soul was wise with an ominous knowing. The pale blue ocean reflected in his eyes, which were deep set and hiding behind a prominent brow. In his irises were many different shades of brown—like a leather wallet that was wrinkled and stained from much use and had not been properly cared for, but loved all the same and constructed to last. His dark and thick head of hair continued down his sideburns, and met with even scruff of his beard that emphasized the jaw line but softened the frame of his face. The hair follicles seemed to let each fiber of his beard peek out for a couple of days to enjoy the crisp air of the beginning of spring, and the end of a dark winter which once rendered his soul bare and useless.

He sat down before the quiet shore, alone with his acoustic guitar and his own sense of being. Looking out into the abyss of the ocean’s horizon, he let the gentle waves carry the strum as he graced the nickel-bound strings with the dense calluses on the tips of his fingers. Harmonies blended as they reached out from inside his very core to touch the nature surrounding.

Behind him there was much overgrowth of woodlands that thrived due to their placement next to the sea, and the elements of water and earth combined before the man as he expressed it in song. Finally, after much hibernation, the spring had let him be alone and content, instead of the lonely ache that once consumed him. A chill ran up his spine not summoned by the fresh breeze of the beach. He listened. A girl appeared from shadow of the woods, with a grin that consumed her freckled face.

“Don’t stop playing,” she said.

The strangers’ presence interrupted the smooth flow of emotion which one radiated from the body of his guitar. He was playing for himself, the gentle waves, the seagulls, the trees, the birth of spring—not this strange wanderer with orange tentacle locks and peach-colored cheekbones. His tentative gaze met her own as she placed herself before him, waiting for the melody to continue where it left off. He couldn’t just go back to that niche where he was once taking his inspiration from. He started a new melody, which was faster and more upbeat—he let her energy guide his fingers. The vibrant blue of her t-shirt contrasted with the many orange hues of her snake-like mop of hair, each lock seeming as if they were little creatures on their own, playfully teasing each other in the wild wind.

He began to see into the layers of her aura, as he noticed with each new person that he met in an intimate setting such as this. In his observation of her personal spectrum of organic green, vibrant yellow, lovely violet, chaotic black and violent red, his multitasking glances turned into philosophical rumination. He let the rhythm flow out of his body, unconscious of the beauty reaching her ears. The polarity of her being struck him, hard. Why do we feel the need to introduce ourselves with names? He realized that our labels are meaningless to the actual nature of a human being. He was introduced to her not be a greeting, but my a psychic exchange of energies which passed between them.

He snapped back into reality, and noticed that his guitar was producing sounds that were drawn out and reflective of his sudden melancholy state. She doesn’t see like I do. He didn’t want to stop playing so that she could ask his name and they could talk about the weather. He wanted to stay at this comfortable distance of not knowing what bands she liked, what school she went to, or what her favorite color was. He wanted to let his imagination fill in the blanks. After all, he came to know more about her in those fleeting moments than most people could ever perceive. He was in love with the mystery, and disenchanted by the mundane. His life was ruled by infinite interpretations of intuition.