Friday, April 29, 2005

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror

Today he said I had a beautiful face
Today he said I was many things
Today he said that not everyone is so strong or understanding
Meaning he or she?
Does it matter?

For all the things that were left unsaid:
I want you selfishly for me alone
I want you by my side for always
I want you there to hear me cry the tears of rage I feel deep down inside
I want you to hold me in the night when I wake up in terror
Screaming and clawing at my eyes
I want your body simply to make me forget the world outside exists
I want you to dare to open all the boxes of my being and not run away
I want you to want me fiercely for that is the only way I know to be wanted
I want your mind
I want your soul

Until you learn to ask for what you want for you
Then you will never have me
I know what I want
Do you?

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Constant Never

From this city there starts a line going across the mountains and deserts. It ends on the sunny coast of California. There I've been and there I've seen. Another line took me to Colorodo and Nevada. Snow capped mountains, high altitude, in one city a simpler life while in the other a fantasy. Then there is the line going east, first across the Mississippi river washed up on a truly decadent city then on to another more subdued place with no less a fantasy than the one in Nevada. Where or when will I be in another place with a different face?

I want to wake up in a strange bed with a beautiful stranger. I want to wake up in one city and go to sleep in another. For breakfast I would like croissants with butter, chickory coffee, and strawberry jam. For lunch I would like sausage on a stick from a cafe in west Texas and for dinner I would like Alaskan King Crab that was fished out of the icy waters that morning. Perhaps you could join me in each and every place. That I would like too. But please don't talk too much because sometimes I don't want to talk I simply want to feel. The rough fabric of the blanket in a Motel 6. The grease on the formica table top in that diner on route 66 . Stopping by a cemetary thrown down and forgotten by the side of the railroad tracks and rubbing my fingers over the names of people that ended up where they weren't even born. And to feel the skin through the shirt, to run my hands down the groove of the spine on a living statue, to feel that hardness and that softness between my fingertips. The heat of breath upon my shoulders and in the hollows of my throat and my hips. Lovers are lucky they have a lifetime but the annoynmous bodies in the empty rooms across the landscapes of America's hotels are even luckier because they have the freedom to choose where they go, who they see, and where they lay their heads down for the next night, in the next city.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Sweet relief

I have an outlet for my stress however it hasn't been fulfilled recently so you could say that I am long overdue. And when I finally let it all out the earth will indeed move beneath our feet.

I wonder sometimes about him with the blue eyes that turn so dark when he is angry. He is a great person but could he really make me happy? I turn it over and over in my mind and I think, yes, he could. We could make it work. But then I have to be honest with myself and admit that I don't know if what I am feeling is really love. I care for him very much. I admire him for his incredible idealism to want to make the world a better place especially for students. We share the same ideals, we share the same passions, we share many things. But......there is always a but. I am afraid that life would eventually be too dull with him. He already thinks I am a wild child. If we give in to the wild side I will walk away from it unscathed. He won't. I could eventually live with myself if I hurt him or his family, but he never would get over it. The guilt would tear him apart. I am much more guilt-free. Is that wicked of me?

No, it is better that we remain friends. For all our sakes. Besides he's not available to love me. And he never will be. I must find my own true love who can love me back the way I deserve to be loved. He's a good man. But would he fight for me? Would he be willing to bring down the stars, the moon, and the sun for me? Would he give it all up for me? No. And so he is not the one.

The heart can not be ruled. Love can not be forced. Either you feel it or you don't. I want to feel those butterflies in the pit of my stomach. I want my heart to beat like a furious drum within an enchanted circle. I want to stretch out, naked upon the sand, under a cloudy moonlit night with the sea pulling at my hair and my arms and legs wrapped around my true love. I want to make love in the crashing surf, in the glare of headlights, with the wind and sand rubbing our bodies raw. Damn the consequences. My love, right now, is wrapped up tight. Waiting to be unleashed upon an unsupecting world. Watch out for me then.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

How is this any different than the one I've got at home

I'm referring of course to this on-line journal. You see I've got so many other journals at home, I usually just write in long hand in beautiful leather bound gilt-edged snooty journals that this whole concept of a cyber journal seems rather iffy. I mean what's its true purpose anyway? Who is going to read anything in here that I write? Only my friends who don't know about my real wrtings so then the whole point is rather moot isn't it?

Seriously though I suppose I could use this space as a venting page in which I can tell you all of my life's deepest frustrations. Such as working my ass off in a career that is fine but not my life's true calling. Being single. That right there is a bit of a thorn. I'm a really great person, highly ambitious, hard working, beautiful, intelligent, and I am not afraid to take on any adventure. However, most men these days seem to want a barbie doll. What I mean is someone who you can pull the string in her back, she says all the right things, and looks great in just about anything she wears especially a thong, low-slung jeans, and a midrif showing two sizes too small shirt. That's all fine and good, but there are other types of women out there.

Okay, enough of that. I'm over-taxed, over-caffeinated, and under-pleased. I really have nothing more to add right now.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Where is the passion?

I have done something unlike anything I have ever done in my life. I have told my employers that I won’t be returning to the school next year. You see I am an English teacher and for the past three years I have worked for one of the largest urban high schools in our district. But this past year has been a revelation to me. I have steadily grown more and more despondent over my career. Although I enjoy teaching, it is not my passion. Although literature fills me with passion, and reading a good book transports me to another world, that is only a small part of who I am. My true passion and calling is in writing. It always has been. And so with no job lined up for next fall, I have taken a plunge into colder waters than I ever thought possible.

In no way am I suggesting that people tell off their bosses and quit their jobs. But the following questions are something to think about:
“What do I want to do with the rest of my life? What do I want to be when I grow up?”

I want to write. If I am not writing then I am not living. But in order to live, pay the bills, provide a home for my son and myself, then I have to be working. However, how do I solve the problem of earning a living while trying to break into writing and getting published? I thought about that and decided to try my hand at writing a spicy, erotic, sensuous piece for one of the many publications dedicated to women’s erotic literature. Thus far, I have written 16 pages of some very bland and boring situations with two characters that despise each other but will ultimately end up in the sack, making furious love to each other all over their isolated cabin out in the woods because that is what the guidelines dictate. There is nothing wrong with writing this sort of stuff because there is a need for it and a market. Therefore, I told myself I will fill it. I will write this story and I will see my name in print.

Except here is the ultimate paradox. I won’t even sign my real name to it because I don’t consider it my real writing. I am doing it for the most selfish of reasons. I need the exposure. I need the money so I can live, earn my MFA in Creative Writing, attend conferences, meet other writers and work on my real writing.

Is it any wonder then that I have hit a brick wall like a car careening out of control? Today I was sitting in yet another excruciate-tingly boring teacher’s professional development day and instead of listening to the speaker I was trying to work out my character’s next conflict point when this suddenly jumped out at me:
Miralee longed for this man to touch her, caress her, with his strong arms; she longed to lose herself in the green fire of his eyes. Miralee longed…for her creator to stop writing such tripe about her and set her free to truly explore her role as a woman in this society that tends to typecast women into roles that don’t even fit them.

And I asked myself why these characters sounded and acted as wooden as the trees of the forest they are lost in. Do I even like them? Not really. I am simply writing this piece for all the reasons outlined above. And that is never a good reason to write anything.
As writers we struggle, we starve, we reach very high, we sometimes fall, but we get back up. I just fell. I hate that story because it isn’t the real me. Where is the passion? Certainly not with my characters because they can’t even seem to fill out a decent page. It’s in here, deep inside of me, just waiting to burst out, if only I will let it. Fears and doubts are all a part of the process but it’s harder to break through the brick wall then it is to just hit it, bleed, and then decide never to approach a brick wall again. It’s time to punch through the wall and come out on the other side. I have no idea where I am going to be come next September. I am hoping to still be teaching but I am also hoping that I will be in a MFA program and writing from my heart. Writing about my passions in this life. Writing about what makes me happy, what inspires me, and what I can inspire in others. That is my role as a teacher and a learner. Wherever I go I will take this lesson with me.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Struggling writer needs money to attend conference

I have been writing since I learned to hold a pencil in my chubby little hands. But it wasn't until the emotionally charged whirlwind that was my teenage years that I actually started writing down all my thoughts, feelings, activities, and experiences that happened to me in a journal. Short stories and poems in odd bursts were to follow throughout my emotionally charged, turbulent 20's and 30's, but still my constatnt companion was my journal.
Suddenly, something in me has literally burst from my chest and my mind and all these words are tumbling out. The stories are itching to be told. My mind is in again in a turbulent whirlwind. I need to find others like me. I want to attend conferences but have no money to pay for them. Instead I am cracking my head to come up with get-rich-quick schemes in order to finance my trips. Here are a few things I've come up with so far:

1. Stand on a street corner with a sign that reads "Struggling writer needs money to attend conference. Giver will receive a haiku in return for investment. Thank you for your generous support of the arts."

2. Write trashy romance novel under pseudonym, get contract, take all money received, attend conferences and trash the romance novel industry never revealing I actually am part of it.

3. Become professional card reader and make tons of money telling other people that their futures look good.

Which should I choose?