Creative Genius

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I know that probably no one is going to see this because it has literally been over a year since I posted anything, but it's worth the effort.

I am starting a literary blog on LJ, and it is only for invited friends.  It will contain the ongoing content of a large historical fiction project I've been working on for almost two years.

If anyone on my friends list, or from any community who has read anything of mine they liked in the past, just reply to this post and let me know if you'd like access to the Literary Journal.  It is untitled yet, but within the day, the page, and its title, will be up for all to start checking out.  So, if you're interested, let me know so I can add you to the allowed readers list.

I hope to see many of you old familiar friends, and plenty of new ones!

The hill above was a steep one, covered in dead, brown brush. The gnarled, bare trees with trunks the color of a harsh gray crawled up the hill, growing denser in their efforts. We stood there, at the bottom, throwing sticks into a creek, hoping they would drown. Naturally they should float down with the weak current but these got stuck in bits of muck and debris, forming their own graves.

"Nah I wouldn't go up there." My brother said, throwing another to its demise. He brought to his lip a piece of paper rolled like a cigarette filled with the bits of tan and golden bush and grass we had collected. We were smokers now. I was too since yesterday when they broke my jumprope using it as climbing rope.

My cigarette hung limply along my gumline, the make-shift tobacco having fallen out since I hadn't rolled it tight enough. As the spit wet the paper a nasty taste formed in my mouth, like the taste of play money as mom said, whatever that meant. Didn't have the same effect I suppose but it looked alright and that's what I needed to be to be in the club, one of the boys. My jeans were rolled up to my knees so they wouldn't get wet and there was mud on them from where I had fallen earlier. I scratched one leg with a dirty foot and tried to wince as thoughtfully as possible up the hill, like a cowboy at the horizon.
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Caesar didn't die because he was stabbed. He died because of who stabbed him. We're hurt most not just by what is done/said but by who does/says them. Take a lesson and keep your distance from everybody so that nobody can leave you bleeding to death on a marble Roman floor. But of course if you let nobody close enough to you, you die a death of loneliness. Look at it this way. Either way it's a gamble. Do you get the human friends, you know those flawed creatures likely to make a mistake and allow greed or power or ambition or insecurity to get in the way, or do you get the angelic, saintly friends who are a statistical rarity? All people fail us in one way or another. It's just about choosing who fails you out of malic and who fails you out of imperfection. But if you're sensibly afraid to get close to anyone or get lucky and decide to have your slumber parties and swap secrets with Brutus, you're dead ahead of schedule. The whole Ides of March thing. Some times the people we pick to protect us are the ones who have drawn the piercing blade, aimed at wounds they know we already have. What ironic lives we lead.

This is relatively short, some freewriting. Warning it does have a few profane yet necessary words. Feel free to take a look.

We were in the newly moved house and my two brothers were sitting on the floor of my room, putting together my bed. I was sixteen, that haphazard age between womanhood and childhood. I was leaning up against the wall, trying to look as lean as possible- something which was difficult for me as I had recently become perfectly aware of the bodies of thin women and the imperfect body of my athletic build. One of the boys was my brother by birth, a terror of a person who tormented and made my entire childhood the least confident chapter of my life. The other was a brother by the adoption of our family practically, sleeping in our house,eating our food. He was my brother's best friend at one point and my closest relative at another. I admired him and wanted him to see of me what my brother didn't. Of course that was nothing too much considering my brother thought of me in the most terrible way possible, labeling me as "bitch," "cunt," and other words that I timidly carried with me every day, afraid to be assertive in any manner lest I evoke those words once again.

But no Kevin was different, mostly. He never came out and told my brother off but he would often subtly divert the discussion so I wasn't the target. He made up a joke and looked up at me and smiled. He was kind of cute, I thought. Maybe. And only two years older. While I sat there, my head pressed against the wall, shamefully trying to look sophisticated, I began to realize that I might kind of like Jordan. I was just forgetting a boy who had more or less jilted me a few weeks prior- a senior to my sophmore. I didn't quite understand what he didn't see in me but maybe Jordan would find it. I bit the corner of my lip and tried to look mysterious.

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I remember him. Vaguely. He smelled of oil covered up with soap. His camoflauge green jacket was always ironed but shabby, possessing a certain age that couldn't be worked out. His teeth were pearly white, as all teeth should be, and when he broke his warm face into a smile, crow's feet framed his blue eyes. I don't remember his voice or his opinion on Global Warming or whether or not he believed in God. But I do remember him.

He used to put his finger over the peep hole when mother tried to look through it. That was how we always knew it was him. And when she would open the door, we would act surprised and he would pretend to surprise us. It was a tradition every time he visited and a game I learned from watching my older brothers and sisters. At first he didn't notice me as much, swarmed by all those bigger than me. They would surround him and he would put his hands above his head and proclaim in a deep but kind voice, "Don't shoot!" And they never did. They would stick their hands in his coat pockets and find all kinds of rewards. Circus peanuts and chocolate bars and tiny boxes of Cracker Jack. Anything you could imagine. It was like he had a tiny circus in his pockets.

Amazed by the sight and overwhelmed by the older ones, I would sit in the shadow of the hallway and peep out of the corner, watching as they tickled him to get him to give up the candy and induced all kinds of torture. Finally, when they had each conquered him and claimed their prizes, they'd scurry off, back to their games and things would get quiet again. He would pat his pockets like nothing was there and then look at me and say "Oh boy. Whatever are we going to do about you? I'm fresh out!"

Disappointed but embarrassed at making him feel bad, I would just shake my head and urge him to go onto his business with mother with a feeble smile held between my cheeks. Then he would check as if nobody was looking, and let out a low whistle, signaling me. I'd race over and nearly bounce off his knees with my haste. He'd squat down to my level and smile, opening the inside of his quote and looking down at his chest pocket pointingly, a place none of them had been tall enough to check. I'd reach in with timid but nimble fingers and pull out a red lollipop. The only red lollipop he brought. Just for me.  He would smile and his eyes would twinkle and he would stand up, patting my head. As he walked away he would say "Our little secret."

Then every afternoon after he came, I would proudly hold my red lollipop and savor it, never biting into it but making it last because he'd brought it just for me. Special. Now sometimes I think back to those times and him- the first person who had ever made me feel special, the first one to ever pick me out of a crowd. Like I said, I didn't know him as long as the others and I didn't know his life story but I do know he wasn't the robber or pirate captain or indian he was in all of their games. He was the kind old man with a red lollipop in his jacket just for me.

If only is one of those wonderful terrible phrases, isn't it? It's one of those things that opens up the possibilities of what you could do if only. That's a wonderful thought. It allows boys to touch the moon if only they could become astronauts. It allows girls to be models if only they would grow into six foot tall, beautiful amazons. If only.

But the secret to if only, after you're done dreaming, is that it really is if only. It's a wonderfully expansive yet limiting phrase. Expansive in thoughts and dreams and clouds and all those things that you can't ever really grasp, just look at and marvel. You can look at an elephant shaped cloud and it doesn't make it any more of an elephant than it makes me the leader of a ringed circus.

If only. But if only gets you nowhere because you're saying it while sitting on a hill, fingers intertwined with blades of grass, neck craned painfully upward at the places you could only be if only you were a bird. Well, I'm no bird. I'm a girl and I'll only look eyelevel at a nest or the top of a tree from my bedroom window.

If only. Yes it's a terrible wonderful phrase. It will get me nowhere and leave me here, watching the clouds until cold but gentle drops of rain draw goosebumps on my bony arms and nudge me inside. I think I'll never say it again, such a vile thing for sending me inside. Maybe after I go in I won't say it. Yes just after. Because as much as it leaves me here in body, sometimes it lets me stretch for that blue and white elephant in spirit.

If only things could go on like that forever. If only the rain would never come and that cloud would stay with me, sharing an otherwise dull and calm afternoon. It gives me a false hope but a hope nonetheless. If only.

This is a few paragraphs worth of some freewriting, arguably not enough to use the cut tool but I thought I'd be fair and courteous and all of that rot. If you have any thoughts, let me know what you think.



Nothing ever changes. Today I met mom for lunch at some bistro in town. She'd not seen me for a little over a month since I've been away at school and all. We'd just ordered. She'd have a turkey sandwich. I'd have a salad. Lite everything since I was trying to stay on the lean side. We had our drinks and some free time. This would be the moment where the tempo would wind down and she would say, "You look wonderful sweetheart," or "God you're growing up." Nope, not my mother. It ran more along the lines of, "You need to have your eyebrows done, don't you?"

People were ordering fresh wheat subs filled with greasy meat, backwashing into crystal glasses of water, and secretly worrying about whether or not they had anything in their teeth, while my mother was critiquing my appearance. Typical. Amid the calls from the kitchen and the bussing of tables, my childhood was coming back to me in thundering echoes only I could hear. "Aren't you going to do your hair?" "That's not the dress we bought for you last spring, is it?" "My, my, I'm going to have to buy you some benzole peroxide."


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Some days I sit on the edge of that cliff and think of what it would be like to fall, to slip, and to plunge into nonexistence- not because I want to die. Sometimes I just wonder what it would be like. Because you never really know until you know and by the time you know, it's over and doesn't matter anymore, does it?

I hug my legs and look down at my dirty feet and think of how they would look- my arms splayed about like a bird, my brown hair behind me, racing to keep up with my body, my clothes pulling, clinging to what's above me, revealing my girlish figure.

Yep, I'd really look like something. It'd be a vertical journey to somewhere nobody else had gone. I'd be a bird and I'd fall as fast as I flew. The problem is I'm not a bird and as gracefully as I might fall, my landing would be catastrophic. Because birds don't have newspapers do they? People won't talk about them for days, will they? They don't have gossip and whispers about how you were beaten or how you had missed everything you ever aimed for and maybe that's why. Birds don't have people to question why they fly away and why they plunge to the ground to get out of a storm-lit sky.

 And birds have wings not arms. And nests to land on. And thin sticklike feet that don't crush like bones when they land.

Yep, I'd really look like something- but not a bird because I'm not one. I'm a girl and we don't fly or plunge, we drop like rocks, dead weight. We'd look like something but we wouldn't land. Our bodies would hit and our spirits would drain out, shrinking into some shadow, crushed under broken bodyweight and shame. We'd look like something to talk about for days, weeks... remember that girl who...?

And then we'd be nothing and we would know what it was like.

I'm going to shove you away and run because I feel like my world is exploding and my heart is blowing town. Sometimes I rein it in and tie a rope around its neck, a tamed mare who forgot her place in front of the company. But not today. Today it can't be tamed. It needs to bolt in one direction and rampage as far as its flanks will carry it. Today it's a passionate, grieving stallion and doesn't want to be ridden and can't be roped in for any circus or rodeo. Today I just have to let it go and try to fly as close behind it as possible. That way I don't completely lose it.