Maybe I’m Not A Fraud

Do you ever have moments in your writing where you think, “damn.  Maybe I’ve actually got a smidgen of talent,” and the possibility of what you’re doing is made a little brighter on the horizon?

That’s why I keep this blog.  It’s a snapshot of my writing.  As I originally wrote in my About section I used to write silly little things in the margins of newspapers or in magazines and on random napkins and leave them wherever they were.  After a while I ended up missing the chance at keeping those random writings and having them to look back on.  The stories in my head were gone and I’d never read them again.  So here I am now.

I was reading back through some of my past writings of the last couple of weeks.  I came across a few that I remember enjoying when they were done and I gave them another scan.  I smiled.

“These aren’t that bad,” I said to myself, “actually they’re pretty good.”

Then I kept reading.  I read two or three more and then I got to one that I didn’t really remember what it was about and I opened it to read.  It was short, not even a thousand words but the further I read into it the more excited I got.

It wasn’t a great story or amazing surprise but I felt like it was really good writing.  The flow was good.  The descriptions made me feel.  I put myself back into the character, the narrator, and I could feel it.

Of course I’ve instantly gone into anti-ego mode and told myself that it was easy to get back into the character because the character is me.  Someone else might not find it as easy, but I still liked the writing.  I enjoyed the description.  I felt something and that’s what I always try and do with what I write.  I’m not a great plot organizer or twist ending writing type, but I think I have the ability to write things that can make the reader feel what the characters are feeling.

I hope that’s enough because it’s always enough for me.

I Can See Through

There’s such a population in the world that we can’t comprehend it.
A billion is enough to run the mind.
How about 7?
But how many of those billions can do what they really want to do?
How many are drones, like me, wasting time to waste time.

But I can see through it all
If only I could touch it

Rinse, repeat and rinse again.
Finding little joys in life to see the tunnel through the end.
Like me?
Live for the weekend and die through the week.
It’s not possible for everyone to live their happy life.

But I can see through it all
If only I could reach it

Do you even know what you’d do if you could do what you say you’d do?
Maybe that’s the problem that a lot of those billions face.
They don’t know which way they want to face.
Not like me.
I know how to be in that happy living space.

Because I can see through it all
If only I could mean it.

I can see through it all to the things I want to do.
For that happy ever after thing that we grow up with.
The meaning of making every moment worth a damn.
And not just wasting it.
Like me.

Because I can see through it all
but that’s all I ever do.

Tell Me

Tell me all the things I’ve lost because of doubt.

Tell me about the majesty and wondrous amount

of experiences I’ve lost and went without

simply because I went along the safe and easy route.

Tell me of my insecurities that caused worlds to slip by

Tell me of the flowers and colors not yet known to my eyes

and the hues of clouds above that float in different skies

simply because I’d rather not risk the safety in my life.

Tell me of tastes and sounds that I’ll never have, nor hear.

Tell me how the smells get sweeter the closer that you near

and the tastes, they taste, like tastes of fantasies my dear

simply because I could not overcome my fears.

Tell me of a life that I’ll never get to see played out

Tell me of the praise I’ll never get to savor as they shout

and each and every fan that I’ll never know about

simply because I wasted my life wallowing in doubt.

When your daughter’s school is anti-woman

I don’t do a lot of blogging.  I prefer to lose myself in creativity but something recently pissed me off and I wanted to vent about it.  It’s going to make me jump off of a cliff of ranting but it’s frustrating and doesn’t seem to be changing, despite the bullhorn placed to its mouth in today’s society.  I’m afraid it’s just going to fade away.

My 11 year old daughter told me on the drive home from school last week that a boy called her a Stupid Ass Bitch in class.  She said it without any emotion and it didn’t seem to upset her but it made me mad.  I asked why he did that.

She said, “because I wouldn’t let him use my glue stick.”

I seethed during the ten minute drive home from school.  I ran things through my head about just letting it go because it didn’t bother her, but the more I thought about it the more angry it made me.
She wouldn’t let him use her glue stick and that’s the natural response he gave?  It was extreme and vulgar considering it was a boy calling a girl these names.  The word bitch has much worse connotations when directed at women, so there is no “it’s awful when anyone gets called a bad name” nonsense.

I asked my daughter if she told anyone and she said she did, she had told the teacher but the teacher was busy and didn’t hear it.  The only answer my daughter was given was “okay, sit down,” and a passing “I don’t want to hear any cussing” to the class in general.  This boy’s verbal assault was not addressed individually.

So I decided to email the teacher and I wasn’t satisfied with the response.  I didn’t tell her the exact words that were used, simply “some vulgar language was directed at my daughter.”
The teacher’s first line was apologetic in favor of the boy.  She said that the girls were rude to him but she would investigate further (this despite her saying she didn’t hear what was going on).   At that point I decided to let her know what words were used and was further let down by her follow up response.

My daughter is a rule follower.  She is pushed to tears if we’re going to be late for school because she doesn’t like the attention of walking in after the bell rings.  She finished homework well before its due.  I’ve asked her numerous times to skip half days because no work gets done anyway and she refuses to stay home.  The information that the teacher gave in response to my email and her follow up goes against everything I know of my daughter.

The teacher said that the boy had his feelings hurt by nearby girls not wanting him to use the glue stick.  The boy then lashed out with “you stupid…” but managed to hold back the nasty words.  Yet, according to the teacher, the “bolder and more outspoken girls” filled in the blanks and spread rumors of what he said.  They then went onto harass the boy at lunchtime so he had to go to the Vice Principal.
The teacher followed this asinine description of events by informing us that she told the boy to ask other peers or her for supplies if needs them in the future to avoid these kind of triggers.

I was floored by her response to this situation.  I was not expecting them to string this boy up on the flagpole by his underwear, but she completely ignored any wrong doing of his and took his words as to how the events occurred!  She called my daughter a liar by saying he never said mean words.  (We confirmed that she heard the “stupid ass bitch” part first hand and she said yes, she heard the words out of his mouth).

The way she categorized the other girls as bolder and outspoken made it come off as a negative trait.  That these were mean girls picking on this poor, little boy.  That they were a scourge of the playground and the boy needed to be coddled.  How can a woman in today’s society be taking this position?  Outspoken behavior should be encouraged when constructive.  Boldness should be cheered.

I didn’t respond to that email.  There was no point in doing so.  I wanted to.  I wanted to email the principal and ask if this is how the school sees the female population.  I wanted to ask why the boys take on events were accepted as what actually happened.  I wanted to cause a fuss and make problems about this incident.
The reason I didn’t was my daughter.  She didn’t care.  She didn’t want the attention and I didn’t want to cause problems for her with a month left in school.

Which is a shame because I wanted to be her guardian.  I wanted to defend her and if she said this boy spoke those words then she isn’t lying.  I wanted the school to know that this kind of bullshit is unacceptable.  I feel like I should have kept pressing and made a bigger deal so the next time a boy verbally assaults a girl a proper punishment will be applied.  I wanted this boy to know that he can’t get away with talking to girls like this because he’ll grow up and it’ll be acceptable if that’s his initial response to adversity with women, to call them a nasty name.

I’m glad my daughter wasn’t bothered by it because, unfortunately, I’m sure it won’t be the last time some neanderthal male calls her something awful.  I just hope she knows that I will always be there to defend her when she needs it.

Eleven Fifty Nine Post Meridiem

We’ve got to waste some time.  Time is always spent on expensive things that don’t matter much.  We should pull the waded bills of time out of our pockets and drop it in the wind to fly off wherever it may.  Close your eyes and open your fists.  Let it go.

Whither away in the things that make the world disappear.  Those activities that build a castle around you.  Only let in those who are willing to forget that time is a thing and remember that we made it up to begin with.  Time has no place here.  No clocks, no hours and no minutes.

Don’t spend time on doing things that need to be done because you have to.  Waste time on doing things that don’t because you want to.

At the garden’s gate

Can we overcome human nature?  Is there a point in trying?

When a little boy picks a flower, he picks the most vibrantly colored flower.  He doesn’t go looking for it, he just notices it.  It’s beautiful and he wants it, so he trudges through the garden and picks the flower for himself.

He doesn’t think if it belongs to him or someone else, or whether he has a right to pick this flower.  There is no consideration that other people might find this flower beautiful and they would like to enjoy it as well.  The little boy doesn’t stop to think of the flowers he tramples to get to the one he wants.  The path is now strewn with crushed stems and petals from his triumphant charge.

As the boy gets older will he stop and think that the flower does not belong to him?  Will he consider the collateral damage of trampling through the garden to pick it?  Can he consider other people’s enjoyment of the flower as much his?

Is human nature the destruction of everything in pursuit of individual wants?  Or is it the realization that there are other individuals with other wants that are just as valid as anyone else’s?  Perhaps its both and one overcoming the other.  That it’s the growth from one phase to the next and not everyone is able to complete it, and that’s why we’re in the world that exists today.

Hopefully we can all notice the flower and appreciate its beauty while, at the same time, allowing others to appreciate it too.  And, maybe more so now, protecting the flower from those who haven’t overcome the urge to pick it.

Morning rush

I ate my breakfast standing over the sink this morning.  I guess I really shouldn’t specify that it was this morning because I do that nearly every morning, the ones I eat breakfast on anyways.  Sometimes I’ll lean against the counter with the sink behind me, eating a bowl of cereal.  The other times my waist is pressed into the edge and I’m leaning over the sink so anything that drips or falls out of the breakfast burrito I made lands in an appropriate place.

It always seems like the most practical thing to do.  Why dirty a plate when the sink is right there.  Of course the root of it all is the rush in the mornings.  Get up, get showered, get dressed, get ready and go.  Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.  Move.  Let’s go, time to leave.

Have to hurry kids off to school.  Hurry myself off to work.  Then hurry home.  Is dinner ready?  No?  Hurry up and make it, then hurry up and eat it.  Okay, it’s bed time for kids.  Get them in bed, don’t take too long.  Is it all settled yet?  Is there anything else left to do?  The dishes?  The laundry?  Did you schedule that appointment?  Okay, good, hurry up and relax before bed.

Is it over?  Okay, get in bed.  Pull up the sheets and the blanket.  Close your eyes.  It’s around 11 pm.   Hurry up and get to sleep because tomorrow’s Tuesday.  Tuesday’s are always busy.

Wake up.  Get in the shower.  Clothes on.  Breakfast over the sink. Out the door and do it all again.

It sounds crazy but it would be nice to eat breakfast sitting down once in a while.

Earth

I went to sleep last night and woke up in the future.

I went to sleep last night when I was in the past.

And in the future everything we know is different.

In the future, the past we know wasn’t at all the same.

I don’t know how long I slept to wake up in the future.

But signs I see of weathering tells me it was quite a while.

The thing, you see, is that you can’t, or at least I couldn’t find

hints of life, communities or any proof that we were still alive.

The air was thick and the ground was bare,

no grass, no green, no trees.

There were no animals, there were no people.

Just emptiness as far as I could see.

I wondered how long life lived and when we went extinct.

I worried about my own life too and if I was here to stay.

We destroyed the planet and we sacrificed the future,

we didn’t listen to what science, or nature had to say.

Rich old men who would die before any of this came to be

didn’t believe, or didn’t care about, the youth, or you, or me.

They didn’t care about green grass or the blueness of the sky.

They didn’t care about pollutants infecting sea to shining sea.

I fell asleep in these horrors of the future,

laid my head down to cry.

I was shocked when I woke up in the past

and learned I had a second chance to try.

To try and convince the people.

To turn the fortune of our desolate fate.

To treat our planet better

before it’s too late.

Even with my vision

of a future dead and bare

some people can’t be convinced

what it means to have clean water, land and air.

All I can do is heed myself

my children, and my space.

If there are still people who try

we may still save this place.

 

 

That fake color blue

The sky isn’t blue and neither are you.

You’re a scattered reflection.

A person you thought I wanted you to be,

stretched to a person you aren’t,

to get closer to me.

The sun isn’t yellow, it’s as white as your lies.

Small lies that don’t mean much to anyone,

aside from the person you’re lying to.