Attempt. I try to surround myself with people zealous about improvement – in themselves, in society, in others. I’ve struggled with perfectionist tendencies throughout my life, for good and bad. Being a perfectionist has led to obsessive and controlling behavior with my own actions, reactions, and thoughts. I have found true contentment a very difficult feat. The more I’ve evolved, the more I’ve worked on turning my perfectionist tendencies around – learning to be okay with mediocrity, living in my thoughts without trying to accelerate them, yet challenging myself in daily life. Through the selfish act of introspection found in yoga, story and poetry writing, and music composition, I have felt gratified to see the change in myself and the positive effect on others I can have.
Barrier. Something that directly counters this growth is the overwhelming amount of black mold spreading from those around me. They just want to exist, the just want to hate those with convictions about the world in which we live, they just want to smudge the colorful explosion of reaction. I try to focus on these people’s positive qualities, but sometimes, they have an inescapable and gooey film that constantly surrounds them. If I or anyone else touches it, the disintegration begins: warped features, rank and poisoned breath, the usurpation of the skeleton, leaving only a floating mass of mold spores taking shape.
Capture. Humanity basks in the iridescent and illusive claim on knowledge made known by thunderous and iron voices. The lack of one's foundation makes no difference at all; the reality of softness beneath the seen armor does not matter. On the contrary, the appearance of strength sucks in humanity, and once inside, there's very often no escape. Once inside, humanity melts into the goo just like the skeleton that was maybe there before.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Aven, rough draft, part I
Every morning, young Aven’s women dressed her in gowns made of smooth silk and lace that ballooned to her feet. They curled and pinned up her glowing gold hair. They shined her shoes and ironed her stockings. Every evening, Aven would return from running around the estate grounds and romping through the nearby woods with her silk dress torn and streaked with thick, black mud, her hair falling down around her face, and her shoes scuffed (or sometimes missing). Her women would toss her in the tub and scrub her from head to toe. She’d sometimes be denied dinner and sent straight to bed. Bright and early with the sunrise, Aven’s routine would begin again.
Aven liked to smile. She liked to look you in the eye, and hold your gaze as though your eyes were her very own to manipulate. Looking someone in the eye affected them; whether it made them think you wanted them or you disapproved of them, it affected them nonetheless. She thought that showing the whiteness of her teeth was like showing the centers of her eyes. She liked to do that as well. Even at such a young age, Aven knew her power over others. She knew that all she needed to do was lift her crystal eyes at another being to make them nervously grin, grit their teeth, or leave the room as though a gust of hurricane wind blew them from sight. Just like that.
Aven had no mother. The mother she was supposed to have died while giving birth to Aven. Her father raised her in an estate surrounded by woods on all sides. A small dirt road, nearly unable to be traveled, led to the estate, and due to its excessive bumpiness, few people visited. The only people surrounding Aven attempted to influence her development by holding a stick over her head, leading to short, even steps when they were watching and running and knocking things down when they looked away.
Now, Aven is 16. Aven sits with her right ankle perched on her left knee, her lacy underskirts visible and frothing around her legs and feet. Her palms face the ceiling in her silky gray lap. Lacework extends midway down the tops of her hands that are pressed into her lap and partially up her arms before the gray silk begins again, hugging her arms and smoothed up across her chest. Pearls adorn the collar of her dress just below her collarbones. Sun-kissed skin unfolds from beneath the dress and up into her face - high cheekbones, rosebud lips, small pointed nose, and gray-blue eyes in stark contrast to her tanned skin. Where one expects to see neatly combed and tucked hair, maybe in braids wound around her head, one finds a shock of short golden red hair tussled on top of her head. Aven sits at the far end of the ornate room full of hunter green and royal blue and shimmering gold. The rest of the people in the room sit at an oblong mahogany table in the center of the room. They discuss Aven, and they decide that a holiday to her great aunt’s house is an excellent solution.
Yes, there have been boys whenever there is one around. He may be a stable hand with the smell of manure all over him or a cook with chicken guts on his hands – it did not matter to Aven. It isn’t as though Aven is a nymphet; more accurately, boredom inhabits her very veins, a boredom she and everyone else hoped would pass with emerging from adolescence; but, as Aven sees it, nothing in or about her life changed as she moved beyond adolescence. Her responsibilities – or lack thereof – remained the same; her interactions with other families and friends stayed just as minimal as before. In fact, emerging from adolescence caused Aven to behave in what her elders would label “rebellious.” The random boys bored Aven more than ever so she took to more public and visually shocking behavior – witty interruptions at the dinner table, not caring for her expensive gowns and in fact sometimes recreating her gowns by cutting off parts or layers, and finally to her most recent feat, chopping off her long and flowing hair. Aven thought that to get anything to change around here, she needed to draw immediate attention and response, and her choices proved successful as now, she is able to go away for a short holiday. Of course, her superiors do not find Aven’s going away to be an award; rather, they see it as a punishment: being sent to a small house with far less luxury and accessibility. No stable hands there. Great Aunt Ida does everything herself and will most likely force Aven to do the same. The girl needs to learn some responsibility, they mutter.
As Aven waits for the carriage to draw around to the front of the house, she sits on the wide steps that form matching right angles with the stone walls that hold up the roof over the doorway. That’s where Aven sits – in the doorway and out of the rain. She watches the fat raindrops plop on the steps just before her toes. It’ll be nice to be away from all this rain. Depending on which direction the rain has moved this fall, Great Aunt Ida’s house is either far enough south that the rain has almost certainly passed over the south already or is still far enough north that it will not arrive at Great Aunt Ida’s cottage until the end of Aven’s stay. Aven wears a plain wool dress today with sturdy dark shoes instead of slippers. She feels much more comfortable in this dress than the silk ones, but she’d still rather wear boy’s pants tucked into boots than a heavy old dress that limits her movement so. Childish, they say. She’s so childish. Really, Aven just likes to do things herself. She likes to use her hands, and she hates being waited on.
She hears the wagon sloshing through the puddles on the side of the house – a huge stone mansion with small square windows dotting the front and sides. Aven stands and smooths the front of her dress before her tall, slim figure darts down through the rain to enter the carriage; the carriage driver doesn’t even have time to walk to her with an umbrella.
Aven liked to smile. She liked to look you in the eye, and hold your gaze as though your eyes were her very own to manipulate. Looking someone in the eye affected them; whether it made them think you wanted them or you disapproved of them, it affected them nonetheless. She thought that showing the whiteness of her teeth was like showing the centers of her eyes. She liked to do that as well. Even at such a young age, Aven knew her power over others. She knew that all she needed to do was lift her crystal eyes at another being to make them nervously grin, grit their teeth, or leave the room as though a gust of hurricane wind blew them from sight. Just like that.
Aven had no mother. The mother she was supposed to have died while giving birth to Aven. Her father raised her in an estate surrounded by woods on all sides. A small dirt road, nearly unable to be traveled, led to the estate, and due to its excessive bumpiness, few people visited. The only people surrounding Aven attempted to influence her development by holding a stick over her head, leading to short, even steps when they were watching and running and knocking things down when they looked away.
Now, Aven is 16. Aven sits with her right ankle perched on her left knee, her lacy underskirts visible and frothing around her legs and feet. Her palms face the ceiling in her silky gray lap. Lacework extends midway down the tops of her hands that are pressed into her lap and partially up her arms before the gray silk begins again, hugging her arms and smoothed up across her chest. Pearls adorn the collar of her dress just below her collarbones. Sun-kissed skin unfolds from beneath the dress and up into her face - high cheekbones, rosebud lips, small pointed nose, and gray-blue eyes in stark contrast to her tanned skin. Where one expects to see neatly combed and tucked hair, maybe in braids wound around her head, one finds a shock of short golden red hair tussled on top of her head. Aven sits at the far end of the ornate room full of hunter green and royal blue and shimmering gold. The rest of the people in the room sit at an oblong mahogany table in the center of the room. They discuss Aven, and they decide that a holiday to her great aunt’s house is an excellent solution.
Yes, there have been boys whenever there is one around. He may be a stable hand with the smell of manure all over him or a cook with chicken guts on his hands – it did not matter to Aven. It isn’t as though Aven is a nymphet; more accurately, boredom inhabits her very veins, a boredom she and everyone else hoped would pass with emerging from adolescence; but, as Aven sees it, nothing in or about her life changed as she moved beyond adolescence. Her responsibilities – or lack thereof – remained the same; her interactions with other families and friends stayed just as minimal as before. In fact, emerging from adolescence caused Aven to behave in what her elders would label “rebellious.” The random boys bored Aven more than ever so she took to more public and visually shocking behavior – witty interruptions at the dinner table, not caring for her expensive gowns and in fact sometimes recreating her gowns by cutting off parts or layers, and finally to her most recent feat, chopping off her long and flowing hair. Aven thought that to get anything to change around here, she needed to draw immediate attention and response, and her choices proved successful as now, she is able to go away for a short holiday. Of course, her superiors do not find Aven’s going away to be an award; rather, they see it as a punishment: being sent to a small house with far less luxury and accessibility. No stable hands there. Great Aunt Ida does everything herself and will most likely force Aven to do the same. The girl needs to learn some responsibility, they mutter.
As Aven waits for the carriage to draw around to the front of the house, she sits on the wide steps that form matching right angles with the stone walls that hold up the roof over the doorway. That’s where Aven sits – in the doorway and out of the rain. She watches the fat raindrops plop on the steps just before her toes. It’ll be nice to be away from all this rain. Depending on which direction the rain has moved this fall, Great Aunt Ida’s house is either far enough south that the rain has almost certainly passed over the south already or is still far enough north that it will not arrive at Great Aunt Ida’s cottage until the end of Aven’s stay. Aven wears a plain wool dress today with sturdy dark shoes instead of slippers. She feels much more comfortable in this dress than the silk ones, but she’d still rather wear boy’s pants tucked into boots than a heavy old dress that limits her movement so. Childish, they say. She’s so childish. Really, Aven just likes to do things herself. She likes to use her hands, and she hates being waited on.
She hears the wagon sloshing through the puddles on the side of the house – a huge stone mansion with small square windows dotting the front and sides. Aven stands and smooths the front of her dress before her tall, slim figure darts down through the rain to enter the carriage; the carriage driver doesn’t even have time to walk to her with an umbrella.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Possible apocalyptic story
Look into those trees over there - the black pines to the right of the paved road. If you look closely enough, you will see me: bony, pale, dirty, shaved head starting to stubble, gaunt face. You probably can’t even determine what color my eyes are. Well, I’ll tell you: they’re blue. And since I have little to no hair, I’ll tell you the color of that, too: dark brown. Normally, I have more weight on me. Normally, I’m not stumbling through the woods. Normally, there are cars on the road. Where is everyone, you ask. Not here is all I can say.
Ten. My bones ache, and the thin skin covering them is scraped through across my knuckles and on my ankles. The dead leaves crunch beneath my bare feet, my fingers grab at the trees as I stumble. My spotted vision gulps down the skinny trees to my sides: dark and crackling like fireworks waiting to go off. I look away and down only to find carcasses of rabbits and birds. Everything carries the sound of popping; some anonymous thing will set off everything, and the fireworks celebrating death and birth will sound. I smell death; everything has the smell of ripened antiquity. I think, what else can die? What else can we give up? And the answer is: me. I can die. I can be given up.
Ten. My bones ache, and the thin skin covering them is scraped through across my knuckles and on my ankles. The dead leaves crunch beneath my bare feet, my fingers grab at the trees as I stumble. My spotted vision gulps down the skinny trees to my sides: dark and crackling like fireworks waiting to go off. I look away and down only to find carcasses of rabbits and birds. Everything carries the sound of popping; some anonymous thing will set off everything, and the fireworks celebrating death and birth will sound. I smell death; everything has the smell of ripened antiquity. I think, what else can die? What else can we give up? And the answer is: me. I can die. I can be given up.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Inspiration
I have always adored fairy tales and in college, was able to explore them to a certain extent in a terrific woman-centered study: Angela Carter (the inspiration behind my blog title), the Brothers Grimm, and the underlying propeller of fairy tale creators - the folk tale. So long ago, the original fairy tale - the folk tale - consisted of gore, deceit, you name it. I was going to try and recreate some of my penned research from college, but upon revisiting my college essay on Angela Carter's "The Erl-king," I've decided to cut and paste here. Maybe rereading something I wrote at a creative time in my life will inspire me to make new:
To understand the original goal of the literary fairy tale — pre-Angela Carter — one must grasp the concept of the oral folktale. Folklore is determined by culture, and although the basic stories and themes remained the same, whoever was reciting the tale held the power to manipulate, dramatize, sexualize, twist comedic or squeeze the gore into the tale. Details resided in the narrator’s mind and tripped out of that mouth over the air and into the listener’s ears. Within the oral folktale lived the chronicle, the myth, the legend, and the fable, and out of the oral folktale grew the literary fairy tale. Sometimes called the oral wonder tale, these tales were similar to fairy tales in their climactic structure and memorable characters. Some of the folktales differed from each other, such as the myth, which typically attempted to explain the beginning of humankind or some natural phenomenon by way of a story with supernatural occurrences. In the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, people began to write down these oral tales, and they slowly began to form the modern day literary fairy tale. One specific author writes the fairy tale, and this allows for its difference from the oral folktale, in which many individuals compose the tales as they tell the stories to family and friends, dragging it in the dirt then rinsing it off to make it new, a new unit through composition and re-composition.
Rereading this brings a few things to mind: college (or forced construction) and employment (or forced deconstruction). College has the ability to provide students with a comfortable environment in which they can explore, think, talk, argue. The classroom proposes a place in which to do something, but outside of the classroom, where are we? Looking for comfort, looking for the "right place" in which to express ourselves, and taking initiative to build that kind of network is difficult (fingers pointed at me). I've returned to my favorite medium: writing. And it's taken me a good long post to get to my point-I'm going to write to rediscover creativity that I feel has trickled out of my body and down the street and into the gutters since I've been working 9-5 jobs that merely utilize my organization skills. Writing to enliven a flow of thoughts, emotions, and to see the animation of architectural sketches.
To understand the original goal of the literary fairy tale — pre-Angela Carter — one must grasp the concept of the oral folktale. Folklore is determined by culture, and although the basic stories and themes remained the same, whoever was reciting the tale held the power to manipulate, dramatize, sexualize, twist comedic or squeeze the gore into the tale. Details resided in the narrator’s mind and tripped out of that mouth over the air and into the listener’s ears. Within the oral folktale lived the chronicle, the myth, the legend, and the fable, and out of the oral folktale grew the literary fairy tale. Sometimes called the oral wonder tale, these tales were similar to fairy tales in their climactic structure and memorable characters. Some of the folktales differed from each other, such as the myth, which typically attempted to explain the beginning of humankind or some natural phenomenon by way of a story with supernatural occurrences. In the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, people began to write down these oral tales, and they slowly began to form the modern day literary fairy tale. One specific author writes the fairy tale, and this allows for its difference from the oral folktale, in which many individuals compose the tales as they tell the stories to family and friends, dragging it in the dirt then rinsing it off to make it new, a new unit through composition and re-composition.
Rereading this brings a few things to mind: college (or forced construction) and employment (or forced deconstruction). College has the ability to provide students with a comfortable environment in which they can explore, think, talk, argue. The classroom proposes a place in which to do something, but outside of the classroom, where are we? Looking for comfort, looking for the "right place" in which to express ourselves, and taking initiative to build that kind of network is difficult (fingers pointed at me). I've returned to my favorite medium: writing. And it's taken me a good long post to get to my point-I'm going to write to rediscover creativity that I feel has trickled out of my body and down the street and into the gutters since I've been working 9-5 jobs that merely utilize my organization skills. Writing to enliven a flow of thoughts, emotions, and to see the animation of architectural sketches.
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