Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man. --Fyodor Dostoevsky
11 August 2005
life and everything after
15 July 2005
house adventures
12 July 2005
Cookies
Making cookies in Grandma's, while my younger sister napped, is the first memory I have that is not more sensation than experience. I was supposed to be napping too, but I could not sleep, the lure of the kitchen was too great. We creamed butter and sugar, used only real vanilla and the eggs were so fresh we had to wash them off before cracking them into the bowl. The whir of the electric mixer was more soothing than the hymns I learned before I could read. When the dough became too thick for the mixer we used wooden spoons, taking turns. Grandma would not let me give up when my right arm got tired, "Cookies need lots of elbow grease." So I switched arms. Flour, oats, and then the chocolate chips. Stir some more. The first batch went into the oven. We got the next pan ready while the first baked, but invariably I would finish dropping those perfectly rounded balls on to the pan ages before the timer sounded. The timer was old, a dial with sixty dashes to mark off the minutes. It would start about thirty seconds before zero with a low buzz, softer than the bees that came inside with the peonies from GrandmaÂs garden. Then it would actually click over the mark and the volume would increase to fill the house. We had to turn it off before that click so Mary didn't wake up. The anticipation brought by that soft buzz was almost more than my four-year-old being could stand. The smell of the cookies that preceded the buzz, caramelizing sugar, melting chocolate, seemed to me a more powerful alarm than the buzzer itself. The peak of the smell would tell you when twereeere done, not the peak of the noise.
30 June 2005
Go West Young Nerd
graduated and begins her life in Seattle. We send her off with open
hearts and our warmest of wishes. Take luck and enjoy your adventures,
NerdyGirl, but remember we are only a blog post away.
i will miss the NerdyGirl, though this gives me an excuse to visit Seattle. good luck and happy thoughts...
=)
05 May 2005
a poem...
my mother's bed was my center
a haven from nightmares,
a stage, a chapel, a palace,
a figate bringing me to imagined shores
with sails of cotton
and decks of down
it was my liberation
a platform for debate
battleground, confessional, and penance
a reluctant deliverance
from past ideals
and liquid dreams
that bed was a jumbled storage space
a table for an artist in confinement
knitting, beading, sewing
a cluttered hope
that energy is stronger
than cancer's weight
that bed was a singularity
streching time, pulling us in
a prision, a clinic, a hateful reminder
of an icon fading gracefully
a desperate prayer
through pain to peace
my mother died in that bed
16 April 2005
dying sucks...
i am in agreement with his sinfulness on the suckiness of death... i am not so sure that i would be this upset if i was the one dying, though... dying really sucks the most for those who don't die, the ones who are left behind to deal with the loss of an integral piece of themselves... and the waiting without knowing is also pure torture... to watch someone you love so much have to suffer and the degree of suffer is proportionally deep to the former strength, i can't even describe what it is like... and there is so much in my life right now that is wonderful - i am graduating finally, i have a great husband and am very much in love, i have discovered a passion for writing that is completely joyful even when it is not always fun - but i have a hard time with that because i know my mom is dying, painfully... and it sucks, completely... and i don't want someone to tell me it will be ok, or even be able to explain why - there is no explanation that would merit this kind of pain - i just want to be able to say it sucks and it is and it can not be explained away or even lessened by explanation.. it just sucks ... yeah, it does...
24 March 2005
spring fever...
our heroine wanders off in dreamy daze...
10 March 2005
untitled...
Routines can be comforting. The familiar motions, the smell of the dish soap we have used forever numbs the mind until it opens and drifts. Tonight my mind drifts to four weeks ago. The shock of response still courses through me.
My step-dad and sister were sitting at the small table in the apartment Gina and I share. I walk through the door and into the middle of a lecture on the evils of the Democratic Party. A knowing glance passes between my sister and I. “Here we go again,” I think to myself.
“You had better look long and hard at the candidates this year. Anyone who supports abortion is not someone any Catholic could vote for.” Getting up to leave Dan assumes the agreement of his daughters.
“Actually, I think I am going to vote for Kerry,” Did those words just come out of mouth? “His stand on social and economic issues support life after it is born, not just before.”
Dan turns around hand on the door, “You can’t just look at one issue.” The expression on his face makes me almost afraid, though I know he would never hurt me.
“I’m not, look at the war, the economy, the death penalty.” I see Gina’s expression from the corner of my eye. The shock and nervousness only register at a distance.
“Kerry supports gay marriage.”
“So do I.” Oh shit, I just said that out loud, but I can’t seem to stop. “I believe that homosexuals have as much right to love and marriage as you or I do.”
“The Scriptures say that homosexuality leads to Hell. By supporting their lifestyle you are helping them get there.”
“I don’t believe that either.”
“You had better pray about that.” The sound of the door closing still echoes in my mind. I don’t know where all that came from. It was like someone else had taken over my body, someone who didn’t know you were supposed to just go along, just agree or make noncommittal comments. What you think is not as important as keeping the peace. Helping Mom keep the peace has been my job ever since that day when I was five.
My eyes opened to the early morning light. That was a day from a time long before alarm clocks and wake-up calls, a time when I eagerly greeted each new day and all the wonders it would bring. Too often anymore I dread rather than anticipate the morning, and I look back now with envy on that innocence.
That day, like many others, I lay in bed feeling the weight of the quilt, its warmth against the morning coolness. That quilt still lies on my bed, its bright mismatched and patternless squares a link to that innocence. I couldn’t see the colors then, the light was still too faint, soft and grey with a tinge of blue from the curtains.
I can still hear Mary, my sister, snoring across the room. The baby was crying down the hall, maybe it is what woke me up. Or maybe it was Mom’s voice soothing her that brought me from my dreams. I lay there staring up at the mobiles for a little bit, brown bear, yellow chick, blue fish. Round and round.
The feet of my pajamas protected my toes from the cold floor as I padded to the kitchen. The light was on and the yellows and browns seemed even brighter after the soft light in my room.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Even on that day, everything about mom is soft, her smile, her brown hair framing her soft face, her warm hazel eyes as she spots me in the doorway, her small round body as she hugs me good-morning. I pad over and climb up into my chair.
“What do you want for breakfast, pumpkin?”
“Can I have the puffy cereal?”
“Sure, sweetie,” I am surprised at the easy agreement to a cereal that is only for special occasions. “Do you want to go on a trip?” Mom pours milk over the cereal.
“Where to?”
“Do you remember the Vreelands, in Nebraska.”
“”How come?” I start to kick my heals against the rung of my chair.
“Just for a visit.”
“Can we all go?” I spoon up the sweet cereal.
“Well, you and Mary and Gina and me,” Mom starts feeding the baby again.
“What about Daddy?”
“He is already on a trip.”
“Where to?”
“He had to go away. He is sick.”
“Is he going to go to Heaven?”
Mom smiles at the question, “It is not that kind of sickness,” serious again, “some times he hurts people, because he is sick, so he had to go away to make sure nobody gets hurt. Do you understand?” Flashes of yelling, locked doors, hiding under the bed run through my head.
“Uh-huh”
“Now will you help mommy get everyone ready to go?”
I have always been Mommy’s big helper, probably even before that day. Through the fights and the screaming, holding Mary’s hand as we hid, making sure it was me Daddy paid attention to, not her. Helping with chores and learning to cook. I have been told over and over to let go of the past, but sometimes it won’t let go of me, the weight of a quilt, the early morning grayness, Mommy’s big helper, the smell of dish soap.
“I think you are getting too liberal,” Mom wipes the last plate dry and puts it in the cupboard.
“What do you mean?” My chest tightens uncomfortably as I pick up the pan from supper and start scrubbing as though every speck of stuck on casserole is my own personal enemy.
“You listen to too many people. You are like St. Peter, you know what I mean?”
“Not really,” Dan must have told her how their daughter believes in gay marriage, abortion and all those other things no good Catholic girl would ever believe.
“You listen to all these crazy ideas. Every time you hear something new you change your mind. You don’t think things through for yourself.”
“I don’t think that is true, Mom.”
“You change your mind every two weeks.”
“I do?” I continue washing that same pan, feeling trapped in the tiny kitchen, in the conversation, in the past that doesn’t quite fir anymore.
“You know what I mean.” She says it as if I am deliberately misunderstanding, as if everything I believe is for the sole purpose of hurting her.
“Mom, I haven’t changed my mind about much of anything in a very long time.” I see my life in fast forward – the little girl with big dreams, the hundreds of thing I was going to be when I grew up, the multiple major changes in college, the semester in Austria and how the enforced solitude of culture shock eliminated the static and left me with nothing but the core of who I am. The vacillation stopped on a snowy day in Vienna four years ago. How could she not see the woman I have become?
Her feet move slowly back across the faded green linoleum to stand next to me at the sink, “I still think that you are too liberal.”
I find myself silent once more, but the peace now has a bitter taste I never noticed before.
08 March 2005
angels
~brian andreas
don't fall asleep... i don't want to miss my life...
so i know that it has been long enough since i posted that people probably don't even check my site anymore, but for those faithful, foolish few who do, an update...
now that i know that i will be graduating in may, i have started the process of looking for grad schools so that after my year off, when i have gone completely crazy living in the real world, i will have some idea of what comes next... i really like the program here in laramie, but i want to look outside the known as well... i am looking a mfa creative writing programs, with a specialization in creative non-fiction... i am finding that all the good ones are in places that i (and i don't understand anyone who does) would never want to live, like idaho or iowa... these options make the idea of laramie all that much more appealing... there is a good school in miami, but it is good enough that i am not sure that i would be able to get in, though of course applying would hurt nothing... so my summer will be work and study for the gre so that i can take it before the end of summer... also the collection of letters for various programs must start soon... i am glad i am taking a year off in which to do this... i don't think that i will be able to completely abandon academia however... i am already planning on taking more writing classes in the fall... i think that the most frustration thing is that i didn't discover writing sooner than my last semester... oh well...
long and somewhat rambling, but an update none the less...
21 February 2005
mad libs - Linus's Concert Program
more mad libs to follow...
25 January 2005
23 January 2005
caffeine soup...
so adjusting to post-honeymoon-return-to-school-and-work life is quite a change but it is starting to happen, and quite honestly i am loving it. that i think makes me a special kind of crazy because i honestly don't know what i would do if my life wasn't crazy...
so i will resort to the quotation of poetry, Henry Vaughn, 17th cent. to be exact, to express the way i feel much of the time lately...
I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time is hours, days, years
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd;
i understand that this is a highly existential state in which to view my current (and continuous) existence, but well, it fits
so i am not sure that i said any or all of what i wanted to, but there you have it... a caffeine-induced post...
16 January 2005
can you see auras?
Violets are the inspirational visionaries, leaders
and teachers who are here to help save the
planet. Most Violets feel drawn to educate the
masses, to inspire higher ideals, to improve
the quality of life on the planet, or to help
save people, animals and the environment.
What Is Your True Aura Colour?
brought to you by Quizilla
20 December 2004
for fun
F:
Your Beauty liesin Contradiction. Controversial, unpredictable, and
never what anyone expects.You appearance and your personality are two
opposite things. Even yourappearance sends different signals to different
people. To some you may lookinnocent and sweet, to others you look mysterious
and intimidating at the sametime. No one ever knows what to expect with you.
You are a little bit ofeverything all mixed together. You can be watching
the football game with theguys one minute and the next out shopping at the
mall. You seem to be almost adifferent person every time you meet someone, but
at the same time you knowexactly who you are and there is always that one
thing that makes you you. Youenjoy keeping people guessing and people love how
completely unpredictable youare.
Some ThingsThat Represent You:
Element:Fire, Water Animal: Chameleon Color:
Dark Tones, LightTones Song: Everything by Alanis Morriesette
Expression:Half-smile
Gemstone:Opal Mythological Creature: Gryphon,
Half-breeds Planet: Mars Hair
Color: Red Eye Color:Brown
Quote:"Appearances can be deceiving."
quizzilla is so much fun...
17 December 2004
update
well that is my life right now
good luck any of you who still have finals...
20 November 2004
good and evil
that is not what this post is about... though this blog has been rated...
instead i am going to talk about food... good or evil you have to have it... and i really quite like it... especially holiday food... mmmm, turkey... did you know that the lower figure for what you will eat on Turkey Day is a pound and a half... that is just turkey, not potatoes, or stuffing, or yams, or gravy, or rolls, or cranberry sauce... just the bird.. that is a lot of food... no wonder americans are fat... and evil...
19 November 2004
ironic peace
John Yeats Middle School
Suffolk, Virginia USA 23435
Women's restroom, 1st and only
Killing for peace is like fucking for chastity.
this concise, anonymous statement very accurately expresses my issues with the illogic of the so called "War on Terror"... it makes no sense... and has not proven its own logic... maybe i need another bumper sticker... though possibly edited for content...



