Tuesday, April 27, 2010

I suppose this counts as "writing"

It's 9 am. I haven't slept since sometime yesterday. I randomly decided to send my mom one of those fruit bouquets for Mother's Day. While ordering it, though, I got stuck on the little card that comes with it. What to say? I started being super obnoxious and have come up with a lot of things NOT to say. Here are the ones I decided to scrap:

"Happy Mother's Day! Tomorrow celebrates 21 years of your being a mom. Congrats! You survived!"

"I'm sorry I put you through 20 hours of labor. Here is a tasty treat to make up for it."

"It annoys me that my birthday falls on mother's day"

"Thanks for providing me with a rich environment to explore as a child so that I could grow up to be a high-functioning adult"

"... Enjoy the fruit. Yum!"

"Thanks for attempting to push me out of your vagina. I'm sure you didn't particularly enjoy that. But thanks for going through it."

"Aren't you glad I'm out of that 'Here's an ugly pot I made you in preschool!' phase?"

"Even though I now live 3 hours away, I'm still thinking of you on Mother's day. 1 down, 1 to go. Good luck shooing Ryan out of the nest!"

"I acknowledge I am your offspring. It is the social convention to present you with a gift and spew sentiment. Consider this my fulfillment of that convention. Huzzah."

I don't know what to think about the fact that my mom would be annoyed with any of the above. I mean, she's lived with me for 21 years, why does she keep expecting me to magically stop being obnoxious? -___- She has to know anything less than the above would be completely fake. I actually am very sincere in my appreciation for her allowing me to infest her womb for 9 months, cause her intense pain for 20+ hours and then demand practically all of her time and money for the next 21 years. Baha maybe THAT'S what I should put on there. Hmmm. :P

-Jesse

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Daily Writing is Hard!

Writing something everyday is turning out to be much harder than I thought it was going to be!! I have nothing to write about, it seems... and all the things I do get an impulse to write are all of a "non-fiction" style, whereas I want to practice creative writing and descriptions. I'm not sure how to manage this just yet.

Maybe for now I'll just write whatever I feel like writing until I start reading, or start getting inspired enough to write some creative non-fiction. :) Not sure. I know I need to work on my time management skills.

-Jesse

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Nicole

Here goes my first attempt at daily writing, and the first time I have written anything in a very very very very ungodly long time.

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((In one of the sessions I attended at this conference, I was stuck waiting in a room for 30 minutes, and ended up watching this lady, whose name tag said Nicole, interact with several women around her. This is a not-too-exaggerated portrayal of her.))

Contours and lines seemed to be converging in a giant mess of fluid motion. Nothing here remains straight or solid for long that doesn't eventually spin out of control. I trace these lines with my eyes. I take in the colors, the shapes, but come always, irrevocably, back to the lines. In math they tell you that every line is eternal. Any line you see is merely a segment. As I watch this tangled arrangement of lines which swirl, duck, spin, and flirt with each other, it helps to think that they may be thin pieces of forever, in various shades of amber and gold. They are fragile, despite it all. Each line appears to be held, suspended, at the very cusp of a moment, the edge of a possibility. If I think about it too long, I get anxious, wanting the lines to finish their spiral down, down, down, and keep on going. I have a strong aversion to the pause I discover them in. I'm impatient. The streaks, the stripes, they converge and twine around each other, creating a silhouette of chaotic feminine beauty. A curl here, a spiral there, they all align, somehow, to frame her face. When she turns, and the twining mass is tossed, nonchalantly, I see her face, the main act. She has creases enough to be thirty, but beauty enough to be seventeen. Her smile is hesitant, and her lightly hooded eyes seem to retain a sorrow - not an obsessive one, but something that tugs at her from somewhere. When she laughs, it feels as though she's holding back, and while her lightly drifting curls shake against her face with all the energy of a coiled spring, her weak expressions and faltering voice contradict her own incarnation. Everything about her seemed aimed to make her disappear, except her hair. Her face was pale. Her lips small and shell-pink. Her eyes a nondescript blue, beneath pale lids below pale brows. Her hair, however, a flaming golden amber, stood out. Despite the inherent destiny of being born with an explosion of hair, it was as if she intended to live her life without making any impact. She was trying to slip away. And now, I have refused to let her.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Personally Invested

My life is falling apart, details unneeded, because I have stopped doing the things I once loved. Somehow, I think I slowly gave them up to do homework, take tests, go to class and chapel and all the stupid things I'm required to do so I can get a degree and get out of here. But now I'm graduating, and all those things are soon to go away, and I find that I have very little left over. I need to start doing, again, the things that matter to me.

One of those is writing... And since I already have a blog in place, I figured I'd use it to work on my writing... mostly fiction, some in a memoir-ish style, maybe just descriptions of things that happened... I dunno. So, for now, I hold out no promises that there will be any sort of logic or reason to anything going on on this blog. But I want to learn discipline, and dedication, and I want to try and write SOMETHING every day, hopefully posting it to this blog.

My plan for getting my life back together is a 4-part plan. 1) Talk to God lots. 2) Read lots. 3) Write lots. 4) Do small projects and goals that I used to want, but gave up on, on a not-regular basis, just whenever I have time... these will probably come out of my DayZero list. :)

I'm almost kind of excited about this project. :) And I haven't been excited about much in a long time.

-Jesse