What did you do last night, Hippolyta?

The subconscious is a funny thing...mystifying, in fact. Our subconscious is a part of us, but is so deeply hidden beneath layers and layers of clutter that we often forget about its existence. A subconscious, in essence, is like a hermit - a short man with a hunched back who either enjoys the solitude or is merely trapped within the confines of what he ironically calls "home". However, once the hermit emerges, if this ever happens, he usually has something enlightening to say - afterall, what is there to do besides reflect, when one is alone? I think my subconscious is a scaredy-cat. It waits until I am asleep to unleash all of its thoughts and ideas. I can only remember the creativity and the intense, unthinkable visual imagery of my subconscious if I wake up in the middle of my disturbing dream/nightmare. My subconscious is one of those kids at a frat party who needs alcohol to feel comfortable in his own skin. I am not. Let me clarify: I do not need any form of enhancement, I am sensitive enough as it is. But my subconscious needs a few shots before he truly lets loose. Here is an anecdote that describes what I mean:

When I studied at L'Academie de Paris, a school in Paris, France, the summer going into Junior year of high school, I took sleeping pills almost every night. It was my first time away from home and I was in foreign country. I needed some "pill-age". One morning I woke up. Barely. My eyelids felt like 20 pound weights and I stumbled into class. I was clearly in a subconscious state as I could have easily fallen back to sleep in a few seconds without any recollection of ever having woken up. Our Creative Writing teacher began an exercise in which she prompted us with phrases, questions, words, and music. One of the posed questions was "What did you do last night, Hippolyta?" in reference to a Greek goddess or mythical woman of sorts. We had a concise amount of allotted time and I wrote my most cherished poem to date. I haven't altered or edited it since that morning. I give the sleeping pills and my subconscious a majority of the credit. They came together and encouraged me to write something without censoring...and ultimately without thinking. I truly dug into the depths of my inner, imaginative being and produced something different from all of my other work. If only my subconscious would stop being such a wimp, have his mom call my mom, and set up a playdate, then we could create the unimaginable. Then I would be a happy camper. Sigh...Oh, well...Enjoy, lovers.
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What did you do last night, Hippolyta?

I stroked the dawn of day with my fingertips
Danced across the ocean's blue
Slashed the puffy clouds with a crackling whip
Ate the moldy dirt's amber hue

Sailed underneath the gathering of the stars
Licked the brewing barks of trees
Ran barefoot across broken shards
Rambled through a meadow of fallen leaves

Swam against the current of the gushing wind
Letting go of dreams long past
Pushed back by the forces of light, felt pinned
Through the journey of life, I dashed

Blackberry Jam

See previous post for commentary on this poem. Like Black Seeds, this was written at the Stanford Discovery Institute for Creative Writing - a three week summer program focusing on fiction and poetry at Stanford University. I studied here the summer before my senior year of high school. Warning: This poem may cause hunger.
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Blackberry Jam

Too sour
Causing pursed, stained lips

Her eyes - peering behind a broken face
Ghostlike whiteness, pinned pupils

Hands - old and dry as the hills were
On that summer day in the grassy field

When the whirring wind lifted up your shirt
The sun, painting an orange silhouette across your face

Mother says, "Spread the jam. Do not dip your fingers in the jar."
But I do not listen - licking my blackened palms one by one

Black Seeds

I know someone. He is not powerful, though many mistake him to be. Some believe he is angry and passionate, loud and unforgiving. But I know better - he is sad. So sad that he is reduced to nothing. He walks through life in a foggy haze, overcome with quiet grief. He floats in and out of my work. He is present in all of my poems. He is subtle and understated. He is within me. He manipulates me: the way my mind works. He tricks me and with his fingers, moves me to tears like a marionette. He does not mean to be cruel, but it is in his blood, pumping and coursing through his veins. He is lonely. He is consumed with thought, and thus his depth becomes cumbersome. He is precise. He is paralyzed. He is intense and irrational. He is a wasteland - uninspired and empty. He is hopeless. He is always there. Looming, like a dark shadow. In fact, he is a shadow, a deep shade of gray. He is not a real person. Though he is more human than some, he is not alive. He never was. No, he is a color. He is a personification. He is my personification of the color black.

The next two poems Black Seeds and Blackberry Jam follow a similar vein - sharing the color "black" in their titles and themes. Both come from a dark place - one of insecurity and vulnerability, one of self-loathing; a place that I often visit and re-visit when I am inspired to write. Black Seeds blatantly revels in such thoughts. But Blackberry Jam, despite colorful imagery, also derives from blackened sentiments. As the old adage goes, some things are not as [happy as] they seem.

Both of these poems were written at the Stanford Creative Writing Discovery Institute the summer before my Senior year of high school. Let's get emotional.
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Black Seeds

Look at the town inside of me
What is seen?

Boney spine
Itchy eyes

Every imperfection
Shining, reflecting - into the glass

I miss you
The smell of  pine trees and hazy ash

Sprinkled on your pale skin
Goose bumps rising

Happy glory gone - over the bridge between us
That very blackness soiling our cheery mood

Jared was thirty-three

I guess I am particularly inspired to blog today. Maybe it's the gray sky or the fact that I've spent most of this afternoon cleaning my room that was recently hit by hurricane Victoria. I'm slowly recovering and picking up the pieces. Anyway, I wanted to post the most recent written passage about my newest protagonist, Jared. I hope to either make this particular story longer, or continue to write several excerpts regarding Jared and his all too interesting life. (That was sarcasm because Jared is an increasingly normal person...but aren't those characters the most intriguing, afterall?). If you have read my other passages you can tell that this blog has absolutely no organization or time scheme. I am merely posting whatever feels right at that moment or whatever makes its way into my hands. I have a feeling some deep, sentimental poetry shall be making an appearance soon...Buckle up!
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Jared was thirty-three. He lived in a modest yellow house, with an unkempt lawn, white window shutters that always let in too much light, and one redeeming feature: a giant oak tree. Jared was already considering his retirement. He sold auto parts. That was that. He lived alone, aside from a squirrel that sometimes rested in the shade of the giant oak. Jared liked to feed peanuts to the little creature when he was feeling brave, on days when a bout of rabies didn’t sound too miserable. Needless to say Jared was depressed. Well, somedays he was content but only when the game was on and he could sit in silence in his underwear on his ratty red couch from the “good ol’ community college days”, drink his favorite beer, and relish in the fact that he wasn’t being disturbed. But it was lonely and quiet. Living alone had its perks, but that didn’t quell the sinking feeling in his stomach.

One particular evening, as the sun was setting, Jared peered out his window. This was his favorite place to reflect. The window faced the street. His loneliness was momentarily subdued as the cars sped by and the people strolled to and fro along the pavement, distracting him. But what Jared liked most was staring at the giant oak tree. It fascinated him. It was so large, so miraculous, well, so miraculously out of place on his small lawn, in front of his small house, in his small life. The roots were stretched out among the grass, making the soil and the earth rise and fall. The tree’s strength was mystifying. Even passersby would comment about the girth of the trunk or the vibrancy of the leaves. As strange as it sounds, this tree was Jared’s only source of inspiration. It had every quality he lacked and every quality he longed for: power, presence, command….life. This tree was more alive than Jared felt he could ever be or had ever been. His whole existence was based on taking orders or being passive. He was an empty vessel. He listened and he operated. He was a machine, but he was running out of oil and as a result he was tired.

As Jared inspected the tree, he noticed that the leaves were starting to change color. The yellowing orange had chased the green to the tip of each leaf. His eyes followed the meticulous lines of the bark down until they met with the ground. He wondered if Toby would come. Toby was his nickname for the squirrel, his home companion. He had saved his whole bag of peanuts (the one he buys every day at work from the vending machine) because he was feeling particularly generous/ masochistic today. Jared was even thinking of hand feeding Toby, hoping that the squirrel might accidentally nibble a bit of his fore-finger, spreading a tangible disease throughout his body, making life simultaneously more interesting and less time consuming.

Jared waited for 2 ½ hours. He watched his digital clock, the red bold numbers changing after what seemed like days. He walked outside, pushing the creaky door open, feeling a slight breeze whip past his unshaven cheek. The porch reeked of linoleum and death, even though neither of those two scents were physically present. Jared scrunched his nose and stormed up to the tree in search of Toby. As he rotated his torso, too lazy to move his whole body, he saw a tiny dog wagging its tale. It was one of those Weiner dogs. It was mostly black but some brown speckles were scattered throughout its matted fur. Jared only saw the dog from behind, the short tale wagging profusely. As he approached the dog, Jared noticed something large and brown held between its mouth. He thought he saw blood along the pavement pathway leading to the porch as well. As he got closer he realized that the son-of-a-bitch dog had captured and killed Toby and now held him happily in its mouth.

Movie Theatre

This passage was written at the same time as the "Craters of the Yellow Moon" (see below). I was inspired after going to see a movie alone, waiting in my red-cushioned seat for the previews to begin, and simply observing the people around me. However, it is written about a fictional male protagonist. I often prefer to write about or in the mind-set of a seemingly simple man who is actually filled with sensitivity and complex thought. N-JOY.
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The smoothness of the chocolate was tempting. He longed to gently pop the circular candy into his delicate mouth, chew it systematically with his overly used molars, and graze over the texture with his lustful taste-buds. But instead he fiddled with it in his fingertips - tossing it back and forth amongst the engraved wrinkles, his pale skin. How could something so small cause such instantaneous, gratuitous pleasure? "Oh, it's just a fucking chocolate," his mind reminded...but he wasn't so sure. Within this tiny morsel lay DEATH, DESTRUCTION, and even TEMPORARY INSANITY (known as a "sugar high")...well not really...but yes, caused by increased consumption, of course.

The sound of insignificant chatter began to fill his surroundings: talk of artificially flavored popcorn, the endlessness of previews, and the anticipation for a new film. "Why do people constantly need to entertain themselves, or was it, to distract themselves?" he wondered. And if this movie was simply a form of escape, why was he there? He was fine, but everyone else around him was not.

After finally succumbing to his tongue, he placed the chocolate into his mouth and began to inspect the people around him. A true observer, he watched the way people spoke, how they interacted with their company and strangers. He even examined their shoelaces (tied or untied?, socks or no socks?). Was this from boredom or curiosity? Who knows. A couple sat down next to him. "Are these seats taken?" the slightly overweight, mousy-haired woman had asked, as she marched her way into the center of the aisle. "No, no" he politely said, although he was thinking "By answering truthfully, am I sacrificing the entire armrest?". She looked pleasant enough, and he felt relaxed. If anything should happen to him, if he should feel faint or antsy and need to leave (due to his bouts of anxiety), she seemed to be a good temporary companion, a reliable "snuggle buddy", if you will.

He thought of offering her a chocolate, but then realized that action might seem strange, as pure kindness is often deemed as such in this society. Most people are only courteous or thoughtful or generous when there is a secret or ulterior selfish motive, and thus they believe the same of other people. He also reasoned that her husband, or partner, or whoever he was, would not be too pleased. Moving on.

His eyes roamed - searching frantically for something to captivate their interest. He wanted to be in a film in this very moment. He wanted to spot that unique beauty across the theater, make eye contact, swallow his heart in one fast gulp, and become fascinated with the possibilities of their future, fantastical relationship. But he knew that was false. What a pretense. Ha. "Love at first sight". "Romance". Did that still exist? Would any woman fall for his desire to be chivalrous? - banishing the idea of treating her like the dirty, scuffed "Welcome" mat outside his lonely apartment? "No," he thought. "Women don't want that anymore"...Sigh..."Oh, modernity". He chuckled to himself. Could he be any more pretentious? Even the word pretentious was pretentious. And it wasn't as if he was acting that way to impress others, he was sadly, trying to impress himself. He certainly needed to stop over-thinking, which is precisely what he did when he noticed a peculiar child peering through the seat in front of him. The boy seemed to be completely devoted to his imagination. It was clear that he did not know the difference between reality and "non-reality", but then again who does know? The boy was talking to himself, emulating the noises of a race car, as he emphatically moved his arms back and forth over the crushed velvet seat. "Brooom, broom!", he yelled, staring straight at his one-man audience. The stranger smiled, with a longing behind his gaze; a hunger for innocence, but even simpler than that, a craving, a need for fun in its most organic form. This little boy did not have any objects or material possessions. He only had himself, and he was content with that. Why couldn't adults be that way? Why couldn't he entertain himself, or keep himself company, or invent creative games for himself?

It simply wasn't fair.

Craters of the Yellow Moon

After my introduction (see below) I thought it would be appropriate to begin with the work that inspired the name of this website: "craters of the yellow moon". I believe I wrote this passage either senior year of high school or freshman year of college.
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Her dimples resembled craters of the yellow moon. But her heart soared among the stars. She wished on comets, prayed to planets, and dreamed of the constellations. Her head was not in the clouds, but her thoughts were muddled and confused, as if her mind floated in a pink orb of bubble gum, always uncertain and ready to pop. There was pain within her enlarged pupils; black holes that truly traveled to the depth of her thoughts, the epitome of her hunger. When people gazed into her eyes, she wanted to tightly grab their shoulders and shake profusely to rid them of their fallacies. She wanted to push them through her gaping wounds, visible behind her glazed eyes, so they would sink to the bottom of her stomach, and she would not feel empty any more. She wanted to devour someone with love and she wanted to be craved and engulfed in return. However, a sense of hopelessness was never-ending. It loomed over her, like a lurking shadow would as it silently stomped through her engraved footsteps. All of her actions were remedial; they traveled in a destructive circle and she felt consumed with claustrophobia. She was trapped - in an invisible, vulnerable glass box, easily broken but never actually peered into. She was a goldfish in a tank of dirty water: algae and her own filth surrounding her. But it was not all so gloomy. She still had hopes, despite the desperation. But she considered herself blind for maintaining such feelings. Blind from reality, because she was, in fact, deceiving herself. She was a contradiction in a world of normalcy. She was an unintentional hypocrite in a world of black and white. But mostly, she was a flawed, lonely saint in a world of happy sinners. Where would she find her white and golden wings? When would she fly again? Would her potential ever amount to anything of substance, anything at all? Would a solution to the world's problems ever fall into the wrinkled palm of her hand? Or would the boulder that she carried on her back succumb to gravity and let her be free...

The First of July - A New Beginning

Today is the beginning of something. And beginnings are always exciting. Endless possibilities are consistently waiting in the wings for a new beginning, a fresh start to arrive. And when the beginning finally takes flight, all that has been dormant has the ability to flourish. Directly after, new possibilities fill the foot-prints of the old and wait impatiently for their chance to stake their claim, for their chance to evolve. However, beginnings are also daunting and inspire fear. What if all the daydreams, all the thoughts do not translate in reality? What if ideas were better left unsaid? And worst of all, what if all the quieted thoughts and desires, those that are kept sacred and in the depths of one's mind, were much more impressive as figments or imaginings and are mere nothings once they become tangible? Nonetheless, a beginning is the opportunity to take a chance, to do something, and to relinquish the comfort of looking back. It is a chance to be brave and take risks. A beginning means that you have not only grabbed the reins of the future, but pulled on them...hard. And now you are off on some adventure or another, unsure of where you are going or where you may end up, but you are courageous enough to face what lies ahead. Bravo.
...I believe I have just congratulated myself.

Aside from beginnings, I love saving things. The drawers of my desk are filled to the brim with memories. I have a shoe box, covered in blue wrapping paper, that contains letters, ticket stubs, and certain e-mails and internet conversations that were of some significance when they were printed. I also keep birthday cards. Usually people discard them immediately, as they are more eager to open the present then read someone else's words. But I cherish them, because they are hints of the past. Photography is the most well-known form of remembrance. It has come to my attention that I am in a constant state of nostalgia and therefore feel almost spiritual when I see a beautiful photograph. I miss my childhood and the past several times in one day. I guess thinking about the "things that once were" is my escape from the present and the future. Because those elusive ideals scare the hell out of me. It's silly. Not only do I want what I can't have. I want what I've already had but will never have again.

Anyway, to make a long explanation short, to "nut-shell it", if you will, I have saved a number of passages and poems, excerpts and stories from the course of my life, thus far. They are scattered throughout my room, saved in random folders on my computer, and still inside of me (so many countless, "possible", unwritten words that are screaming to be put onto paper, or in this case, onto the screen). This blog will not be my journal. Though writing has always come naturally to me and is, perhaps, ingrained in me, I have never been able to keep a steady diary. Writing about trivial things, like my daily activities, bores me and I was never able to throw myself into that kind of routine. I don't believe anyone wants to read about my life on a day to day basis anyway. To be blunt, and probably slightly offensive, I find this kind of blogging to be ego-centric. When I read a blog, which is actually quite rare, I'd prefer not read about how wonderful someone's life is and how he did a,b, and c that day. Tell me something real, something painful, something inspiring. That is what interests me. You may call me cynical, I simply see myself as a realist.

Like Drew Casper, one of my film professors at USC and someone whose words I take to heart, once told us in lecture: the young people of this generation are "post-modern babies". We strive or struggle to create a world of our very own, where we, as individuals, are the center. We create facebook profiles and myspace pages in hopes of enveloping ourselves into a world of "me, me, me!". Our faces are plastered on the computer screen along with posed images of ourselves, laughing, making "sexy", "goofy" faces, holding red cups at parties all to send some warped message out to other people. So that we can judge others and be judged in return, but only to the extent that we provide. It is all surface and I agree with Casper. No one walks to class and admires the trees or the serenity of our surroundings anymore. Instead we chat mindlessly into cell phones or blast music through headphones - separating ourselves from the world. We limit our human connections by sending simple text messages due to ease and comfort. We don't challenges ourselves. We are lazy and sucked into a world of technology.

So...here I am - being, semi-hypocritical (as I do have a facebook, although I have grappled with it, deleted it, retrieved it - my main reason for keeping it being that, sadly, if I get rid of it again, I will, consequently, be cut off from many people whom I care about). And now I am writing a blog. But I don't want this to be my means of telling the world about myself. I don't want this to be self-centered. I know that, inherently, a blog can be seen as very "self" oriented, but this is not my intention. Instead, I want this to be a means of sharing creative work. I will be posting my creative writing in hopes that people will be inspired, moved, or entertained. In hopes that someone out there, who feels lonely and helpless, realizes that he/she is not the only one.

One Last Thought: My "father" (for lack of a better word) left my mother and I before I was born. He has virtually never been a part of my life and in doing so he has indirectly chosen the path I have taken. Despite the bouts of anger and emotional roller coaster his absence has caused me, I would still welcome him with open arms. My father-daughter story is not like the ones portrayed in films. The father doesn't come back. He doesn't beg for forgiveness while the angst-ridden teenager shuts the door in her father's face and says she can't forgive him. Sometimes there is a trite, happy ending where the two float off on some hot-air balloon ride (re: Drive Me Crazy starring the beloved Melissa Joan Hart) or they hug and cry in eachother's arms. Other times it is the child that completes the cycle of rejection. But here I am, willing to forgive someone who has caused so much unhappiness and unnecessary stress in my life, and he is not here...never has been and never will be. I am sharing such an intimate detail about my life because I believe that his absence is the cause for my innate desire, my intrinsic gravitation towards writing and other creative outlets such as singing, dancing, and acting. Research and data support the theory that children of single parents latch on to activities where communication is the key. Where being in the spotlight, being heard is of the utmost importance. And it is true, above everything, I long to reach other people. I use my writing first as a way to express what I am thinking and how I am feeling in hopes of releasing the down-trodden, negative sentiments that are all-encompassing. Other times I am simply inspired by an observation or a story and use writing as a means of making what I see in my mind or in reality into something more concrete. But ultimately I write as a means of communication. Thus the purpose of this blog is to share and connect. Do with it what you will.

Comments on anything and everything are encouraged.