Pressure Points

I decided it was time to revamp my blog page. I’m not going lie, its now past state has gotten pretty old and after browsing the wide variety of page layouts available, I decided on this one. Benevolence is its name and the short sentence used to describe it was irrefutable.

“A two-column simplistic theme with an inclination to perform kind, charitable acts.”

I mean, seriously, how can you pass that up? Besides, that strip of grass looks like you could take a nap on it during a warm summer day. Now that’s one way to inspire benevolence.

Plus, the afore mentioned grass strip makes me want to rush out and buy a Chia Pet. Which, isn’t wheat grass supposed to be uber healthy for you anyway? Just what I need to give my near-non-existent web savviness an energy boost.

The only bad thing is that  I feel like I need a magnifying glass to read the small font that comes with this. All well.

Cheers.

(stôr’ē) n., pl. –ries. An account or recital of an event of a series of events, either true or fictitious.1

I found myself in Goodwill a couple days upon returning to America from Africa. I was searching for God-knows-what (oh, that’s right, a French press, lamp, etc,) and I looked down to see two china plates in my hand, and in my mind trying to justify a reason why I should buy them. One had a pink floral pattern and was edged in gold, the other depicted a beautiful scene with hummingbirds, also rimmed in gold. They both had the little stamp on the back, saying their respective china company. I believe my justification for buying them ran somewhere along the slippery stream of thought that said since hand thrown pottery plates are nearly impossible to find second hand (it seems no one cares to throw plates, only bowls and mugs), it would be cool to have a set of mismatched china plates along a similar color theme.

Then I remembered.

I’m broke and have nowhere to live.

So what the hell am I doing holding two china plates and musing about their potential for a table I don’t have and eyeing a couple of ornate candle holders for a room that doesn’t exist. In fact, what am I doing in Goodwill at all? I just spent two days ridding my closet of the build-up of thrift store purchases like ridding a drain of hair and skin particles that left unattended clog the sink. So was my closet, begging to breathe after being left, forgotten, in exchange for a summer of living out of a suitcase.

I put down the plates, abashed, and continued my perusal of the junk that is crammed on every square inch of metal shelving like tiny toy soldiers thrown in a child’s toy box after play. Trinkets galore, outdated wooden things, and abandoned craft projects call to me from their exile, imploring me to bring new life to their outmoded styles. Soon I am standing in front of two wooden bookshelves barely taller than me and that is spitting books like a picky eater. I scan the titles written like a collage on the spines of the books, filtering out provoking titles; anything that may sound like it has wisdom to offer me. After I look through one shelf and am moving onto the next, I catch myself.

What am I looking for?

I just spent twenty minutes doing this exact same thing at the public library down the road. Frustrated, I give up and walk out, purchase-less for once in my life.

The truth is, I don’t know what I’m looking for, I don’t think I’ve ever really known what I’m looking for. I find myself doing things and stopping at places without reason, as if somehow, maybe, I’ll stumble upon that thing I am seeking. It’s not even a job I’m looking for, even though I really need a job if I ever want to move out of my parents’ house. If I were to be truthful and honest with myself, I’m looking for guidance, but ignoring any and all wisdom that may come from within myself. All because I don’t stop and splash around in the waters of my own desires.

But, I think I know what I want. I want to be a writer because there’s magic in words and I’m in love with the song they create, united in sentences that weave in and out, waltzing in the space between harmony and melody and becoming a masterpiece just as beautiful as anything Beethoven ever created. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but words are like pearls; mysterious, raw, and beautiful. I want to write because I have a story, just as everyone has a story, and stories were created to be shared, otherwise some essential part of what it means to be human will be lost, cast unwanted into the waves of the ocean never to touch land again.

Yet, though that’s what I want, combined with the flexibility and freedom of a writers’ life, there’s something even deeper calling me. I hear the sound like a mournful cry rumbling behind the door in my soul that I’ve shut, afraid to open, afraid walk through the emptiness to find God.  And I know if I do not find God, I will never be content.

And I wonder if the story of Africa was futile, if I’m destined to always stand, empty-handed in the same place, waiting like the men who lined the streets of Cape Town, waiting for someone, anyone, to pick them up and give them work, all so that they could survive. And I wonder why. Why did I ever go to Africa?

After a month long sprint to write 50,000 words, I called it quits at 50,168, my novel still unfinished. I don’t know what I expected when I started, I guess I didn’t expect anything. I’m finding that for such a big picture person I am, I’d rather take it in pieces.

But I suppose I thought it would be easy, just time consuming. After all, I knew what my story would be about; that childhood fantasy fairy tale thing where my heroine could fight with a sword and ride a horse like nobody’s business. It would be easy, start at the beginning…write to the end. I didn’t expect to feel ashamed of my story. I didn’t expect it to be so hard to fill the in-between spaces of my rising and falling action. I didn’t expect a love triangle, nor for my heroine’s father to be alive. I didn’t expect so many secrets and I sure as hell didn’t expect for my plot to completely splinter right at the end. I didn’t expect to get through 50,000 words and hardly know my heroine at all. Finally, I didn’t expect that actually making the benchmark would such a downer.

That’s right, a downer.

I guess I could say I understand better that it’s so hard to write a novel, that people choose to sprint and write a short story, or better yet, a short short than to aim for the marathon pain of a novel. Maybe my pessimism results because it’s 10:32 on a Monday night and I have no one to celebrate with because my writing buddy is 120 miles away. I did expect to feel more elated, to feel a sense of satisfaction, but all I feel is, “okay, now what?”

So, now what?

25,588.

I don’t really want to know how many words behind I am. Writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days is nigh on ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

How many times have I been tempted to wallow in ridiculous? Fantasy is for nerds, my story’s boring, why the hell am I trying to justify something that doesn’t need to be justified. They’re just words. No bid deal. What’s the point?

Seriously, get a grip.

Writing a 50,000 word novel is quite a feat and quite an adrenaline rush, except for right now when I’m lamenting how many words behind I am and it seems futile that I’m ever going to catch up. After all, I have more important things to do with my time, like figuring out what to do with my time.

Right now, I’m sitting in the ghetto of Philly (is there a better word than ghetto?) listening to rap music moving down the street and someone speaking another language very fast and very loud. The fire alarm just woke me from my 5 min nap because the pumpkin muffins Amanda and I made from a box, picked off a shelf from Philabundance (how cool a name is that for a food pantry?!) burnt in the oven.

Now, we’re waiting for Jess to get home from her job at the thrift store so we can go thrifting and make it home in time to hang out with the neighborhood kids and make dinner.

Maybe until then I’ll write another 500 words. Maybe I’ll be surprised.

I’m under the mindset that there are good days and bad days and that most of the time, people get to choose.

The dawning of my bad day was more like late afternoon. Well, it hasn’t really been a bad day, no one’s died except a bird and it could’ve died yesterday, or judging by the smell, the day before….Anyway, it’s been more of a string of frustrating events.

First, when I get home from work, my dog drags in a dead bird and settles in the living room to chew on it like a bone. I tell him to take it outside and he does, a pungent smell wafting after him as he goes. Next, I get stood up in a book study, (which can I almost say I almost expected it?). I actually read and contemplated the material too! Totally prepared for good discussion.

Then, I had graciously volunteered to make dinner because my cooking skills are getting rusty and I want a break from all the meat my mom cooks and I don’t eat (I guess being vegetarian has it’s ups and downs. The downs usually come when food and carnivorous company collide).  I decided on French onion soup and roast beef sandwiches, to satisfy the need for meat that the male species has. I end up adding too much sugar to the soup and burn black the bread for the sandwiches. (damn broiler.)

Now I’m starting to get sick of this sad tale, but I’m almost done.

In a fit of productivity brought on by frustration, I tend my myriad of houseplants, which I have dutifully been neglecting for the past few weeks. When I go to water them, their dry dry soil rejects my peace offering and pees it all over the floor, and in one instance, my collection of journals from the past ten years of my life. I mop it up and then go out to sacrifice a plant I’ve decided I don’t like and the moon’s not even up to watch me throw it on the compost pile. Sheesh.

The only conclusion I can reach is that pessimism breeds comedic moments, but then again, maybe that’s a choice.

I’m currently reading Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded. In a chapter called “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth,” he argues against the mentality prevalent in America today that we are chest deep in a green revolution. Calling the situation more of a “green party,” he says in America, right now, “it’s all about looking green.” Instead, we need a whole new system pioneered by innovation and backed by greater efforts than recycling yesterday’s newpaper and buying “green” clothes.  We’re not having a green revolution, he writes, “because we are offering ourselves and our kids a green vision without resources.”

I find it ironic that America is the so-called leader of innovation, yet we are the top of the world when it comes to consuming in excess and we can’t seem to satiate our appetite for oil. Quite frankly, it all makes me very cynical as to the direction my generation and the upcoming one is taking. I have the honor of working with a bunch of middle-class, suburban white kids who, for the most part, are a pleasant group. Their biggest flaw happens to be nothing more than an addiction to video games and a desire to coast through life. Nothing more…right? The trouble is not that they’ve been handed life on a silver platter, the trouble is, is that they expect it.

At the middle school where I work, we offer kids 25 minutes in the morning to get homework help and to make up assignments that they missed. Unfortunately, the majority of students who come in, have assignments that they didn’t do. This past Friday, 95 7^th and 8^th graders (38% of the student population) were supposed to come in. Maybe half did. A lot of these students had multiple assignments to turn in just because they don’t want to do homework at home. If they don’t get it done at school, then they don’t do it until they are forced to. The sad thing is, some of these students have tests to finish and it takes them three or four days to do it because they don’t study.

In addition, as a TA for Intro to Cultural Anthropology, the professor of the course would comment that he had to make his tests easier every year because more and more students were failing. When I’d go to teach my recitation, the students didn’t care about discussing things, even topics such as evolution and racism, even though these are considered “hot topics.” Instead, they wanted me to tell them what would be on the test so they wouldn’t have to read the textbook or do a lot of studying.

I find this aura of laziness and apathy to be downright frightening. It’s as if our comfortable, convenient lifestyle is coming back to bit us in the butt. After all, it’s a well-known fact that tension and struggle breeds action and change. Even looking into my own life, I can see so many times I could have done better but didn’t because I wasn’t motivated or I didn’t know better. It’s no wonder we go for the easy fixes and balk when things get hard. As to the green revolution, Friedman writes, “Have you ever seen a revolution where no one got hurt? That’s the green revolution we’re having, everyone’s a winner, nobody has to give up anything, and the adjective that most often modifies “green revolution” is ‘easy.’” It’s almost no wonder we’re not getting anywhere.

A week ago I was unemployed and watching the pennies dwindle in my bank like slowly sifting sand in an hourglass. What’s worse, I found myself laying on the floor of the room of my childhood home, the same room that has been mine for the past 19, and lamenting the same sad lei motif that I don’t know who I am or what I think I’m trying to do with my life.

So I started to write. Intentionally. A lot. I rediscovered my love of fiction, re-learned to see words as pearls; beautiful, mysterious, and raw. I re-entered the world of stories that swirl around our lives like many colored collages, evidence that the sum of its parts are greater than the whole.  I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer, from the first Halloween stories I penned as a 3^rd grader, but it always seemed to be more of an excuse for the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted to be. After all,  I stumbled by accident upon the major of Anthropology and two years later, onto the major of English, both of which I graduated with, and both of which I’m learning occupy a fickle in-between place in the “real world” of success.

But there I was broke, jobless, and living at home. I decided to try free-lance writing. Craigslist became the object of my obsession as I repeatedly looked for writing jobs in the entire state of Kansas. I sent out countless emails of interest, garnering nothing back. I did manage to snag a place with Examiner to be a blogger on budget fashion. It pays pennies, but I am happy to get paid to write about something I love (bring on the thrifting!) and learn in the process. (Blogging, it turns out, has a whole circuit board underneath that I had no idea about.)

Then I ambled across a free-lancer bid website, where writers can bid for jobs. Not really knowing what I was doing or how to write for the internet, I placed a test bid on a project of 24 articles that paid $30. That’s $1.25 per article.  (What the hell was I thinking!). The person said they would not accept any bid higher, so I joined the website and bid, never dreaming I would actually get hired.

But I got hired.

Thus far, I’ve written 5 articles on things from Prada wallets to poor credit car loans. Knowing nothing about such things, each article has required time-consuming research, which made me realize my output exceeds the input my bank account will receive, but it has kept me on my toes and challenged my ability to add just enough BS to season a well written article, full of relevant information. I write 1-3 articles a day.

Oh, and by the way, I’m employed now.

On Tuesday, I unexpectedly got 2 jobs; one as a para with 7^th graders again, and one as a server in a classy restaurant.

Needless to say, I am now cursing my decision to take on a project that’s time consuming and pays nothing. But it reminds me why I am a writer. Writing is like playing with crystal wind chimes and watching the light shine through them to dance in rainbows on the wall. The rainbows may be insubstantial, but they’re beautiful and they’re free.

I drink coffee in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening, though I usually avoid it in the afternoon because it takes a grinder to my intestines like they’re peppercorns. I drink it at Radina’s, at home, and in my car with a dollar cup of cappuccino mixed with some “real” coffee. Gas station coffee to me is like the environmentalists that can’t resist the convenience of throw away diapers. I’m pretty sure the only rush I get from gas station coffee is a sugar one, since there’s probably not enough caffeine to kick start a chicken. I drink it as I’m driving; early morning road sunrise gotta get to work. By eight. It’s exactly 1 hour and 57 minutes from Manhattan to my house if I drive 70.

I drink my coffee black for breakfast, with a splash of soymilk to turn it from bitter dark brown to a sweeter mocha color. No sugar please. There’s plenty of sugar in my Honey Nut Cheerios. I drank it strong and saturated with grounds like Turkish coffee in Africa. The French press pushing up a thick creamy layer of foam, slightly tanned. Better than buying a cup to find that it’s only instant with a lot of hot milk to cover its lack of taste. Sugar anyone? They love their sugar in Africa. Raw, brown, white.

At my parents’ house, I drink their Folgers fast, the bitter thick taste stomping on my taste buds like a group of amateur cloggers. I’d rather go to a ballet, thanks, but the cloggers are the only act showing. Take it or leave it. I guess I’ll take it. I chug it down with my cereal while I read the paper, distracted so I won’t dwell on the taste. One cup. My parents leave me one cup in the pot. It hardly seems worth the beating my tongue goes through, but I drink it anyway. And I’ll drink it tomorrow.

White legs turning to feet in whiter strappy sandals ending in opaque toenails. These feet are walking, crossing the dark burnt red tile that stripes the coffeehouse floor. Red, brown, red, brown, black. These feet cross the rough black mat that lines the entrance like the red carpet, following another set of feet out the door. There are smudges in the tile like paint strokes adding depth and character to a painting. Scratches mar the shine. I could stare at the floor for hours, reading the scratches like a palm, reading the story of those feet that walk its surface.

Others sit, lining the wall. A man walks by me, turning his body sideways to pass. I see blue jeans, brown belt, and pock-marked green knit. Empty chairs remind me of indecision and black tables of unknown future.

Did you know there’s three n’s in “unknown?”

Why is unknown black? Why can’t it be a color wheel, vibrant with possibilities that scan the entire color spectrum? I’m not even on the color wheel, I’m stuck in neutral, choosing my options from bowns, greys, and whites.

Everyone is wearing blue. Navy blue plaid, bright blue t-shirt, color of sun on ocean, faded blue of hot summer sky. Only one stands out. The bright red of the flesh of a strawberry. His warm hue an affront to the ocean that swirls around him. He’s a clownfish, I think, mocking the cool waters, shouting, “look at me!” I look. How can I not? The eye is drawn to what stands out like a moth to a flame, rarely noticing subtleties unless intentionally noted.

Sadness come,

come to me

I want to hold you, to comfort you

like no one every has and swaddle you

tight, against the lightening strike of heartache.

Injustice come,

come to me

I want to give you voice

to remove the silence, like chains, that Lies

has entangled around you throat.

Anger come,

come to me

envelope me in your white hot fury

cast your fire upon my shores

to burn away to still waters.

Oh my soul, come,

come to me

though you’ve wandered far and lost

through dark paths of indecision and despair.

Come home to me,

for I am already in you, as you are in me

and Love is ever abiding.