A kind of storypoem.

Ah, song lyrics. They seem to heighten everything. An experience is surely brought to life with the right set of lyrics, music, vocals.

Here's a a little something I came up with solely relayed in song lyric stanzas from one person or another;

I was just guessing at numbers and figures
Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science, science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart.

Let's go and see the stars
The Milky Way or even Mars
Where it could just be ours.

Drink up, baby
Are you in or are you out?
Leave your things behind you
'Cause it's all going off without you.

But your sweatshirt says it all with the hood over your face
I can't keep staring at your mouth without wondering how it tastes.
I'm with another boy; he's asleep, I'm wide awake
And he tried to win my heart, but it's taken time.

Long walks in the dark
Through the woods behind the park
I asked God who I'm supposed to be.
The stars smiled down on me
God answered in silent reverie,
I said a prayer and fell asleep.

Meet me once again
Down off Lake Michigan
Where we could feel the storm blowin' down with the wind.

Let's get crazy, talk about our bigs plans
Places that you're going, places that I haven't been.
Build my walls up, concrete castle
Keep this kingdom free of hassle.

Yeah, I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home.
I know who I want to take me home,
Take me home.

Aeriale is...

...blowing out 21 candles in Atlantic City until Saturday. :)

PA TO NY TO OH. OH MY.

How circumstances change when you force yourself to step outside of the confines of dangerous comfort zones and choose to let yourself taste something new, perhaps even exciting. I met some wonderfully interesting people at the Chautauqua Writer's Conference this past week.

Poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers. Professors, hippies, stay-at-home mothers. Grandmas, speech pathologists, reporters. People of all ages and various backgrounds. A man who spent 2 months in South India and rode an elephant into town every other day. A woman who thinks she's found the ultimate brownie, an authentic New Yorkah.

Once I let my guard down, started opening up to people, conversation flowed as freely as the alcohol that decorated tables every night.

One night, however, trumped all of the rest, easily. While people mingled with red plastic cups, I stepped outside and took a walk. My grandmother would have frowned upon this action because it was well around 11:30pm and I am a young girl, alone, at night. She has never been to Chautauqua, however, and wouldn't understand.

I found a secluded spot by a streetlamp, a place where not many cars would stumble upon me, and laid down in the middle of the road. Star-gazed. Allowed myself time to think, consider. I talked to a few people on the phone and made plans to head to Cedar Point immediately after the conference on Sunday instead of straight home. I relaxed.

The rest of the conference was eventful and certainly pointed me in a direction with my writing. Which direction, I'm not sure. But isn't that the beauty of writing and re-writing and switching and cutting and starting anew? There are so many beautiful directions that there never is one 'right one'. There are possibilities and I'm in search of them.


* * *

I don't know what it is about Sandusky. The people, perhaps? The atmosphere? The energy that surrounds Cedar Point, in general?

Regardless, stuff happens at Cedar Point. Everything happens there. No one really makes anything happen, and that's both the blessing and the curse.

What happens, exactly? Well. Everything. I am a different person from working there, and when I returned for a quickie visit, I returned to whoever that person was, whatever she did.

Everything just happens.

And then I left. For the second time. I waved, and blew kisses, and told them I would be back, I would be back. I've never felt more welcoming hospitality from people than I did when I returned for this second visit. Awry is the word I've been searching for all night; awry. And awkward. And wish.

Usted conoce a ese te quiero muchacho, caliente como Mexico, disfruta. Rejoice. Rejoice.

:)

Peace Corps Slogan:

The corner office can wait.

Some corners of the world can't.

Life is calling.

How far will you go?

This I've Learned:

It's not too hard to kid yourself at 2 in the morning.

And then you wake up.

amor, bailando en susurros dulces

Our hands brushed the faces of every possibility, but neither of us had an actual choice. We side-stepped and danced passionately around every tree and phone and furtive glance, and in the arms of what was never to be had, we held each other.

He smelled like pineapple and sun tan lotion and every time I glanced right, he lingered.

See, we had nothing.

"If you just.." His breath on my neck deemed sickeningly sweet.

Some deal.

We danced and danced and danced until we stopped, and by that point, we were already over.

There was the beach, that one night, but he stole my camera and snapped a thousand memories I never saw. It was just as well.

Where is he? I asked them.

Corkscrew, they replied. You can probably catch him.

Nah. I danced on blistered toes away from our jungle.

On a side note:

I've come to terms with everything. It's taken me a week, but I'm allowed to wear my fifty pieces of jewelry everyday as well as flip flops and my hair down in messy sun-dyed curls... so what I'm saying is, I'm free!

I've been working and playing around with a piece for this upcoming Chautauqua Workshop, trying somewhat to place my mind back into this all-too-familiar mode of academic thinking. We'll see if it works come next Thursday.

On a side note, I'm getting new glasses this Wednesday. They are going to be so great, so librarian, so RED.

Case Study 2: (for all you science-y people out there)

From the book I'm currently reading:

"In laboratory studies, scientists have learned that, when it comes to love, a very tiny portion of the brain is actually involved. For example, friendship lights up receptors all over the cerebral cortex, but this isn't true with love, which activates parts of the brain more commonly associated with emotional responses like fear and anger. The brain of a person in love will show activity in the amygdala, which is associated with gut feelings, and in the nucleus accumbens, an area associated with rewarding stimuli that tends to be active in drug abusers. Or, to recap: the brain of a person in love doesn't look like the brain of someone overcome by deep emotion.

It looks like the brain of a person who's been snorting coke."

Ha. Thought I'd share.

Blessed Time.

It's what I quit my job for, right? Time? Well, I've decided to be useful with it. While I'm still trying to be productive in my writing, the least I can do is come up with my (probably not super literary, but whatever) summer reading list.

Here goes (and in no particular order):

House Rules (current novel) - Jodi Picoult
Soul Revolution - John Burke
Far From Home - Anne DeGrace
A Year in the World - Francis Mayes
Girls in Trucks - Katie Crouch
Neither Here nor There - Bill Bryson
Naked - David Sedaris
Look Me in the Eye - John Elder Robison
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb

..and probably so much more. May the time not wither away or pass me by, but may I take full advantage of what I've so whimsically chosen.

Do Work, Son.

Some people can write when they are sad, depressed.

I am not one of those people, unfortunately. I blank out. I stare zombie-like into the nothingness that is my white screen and wonder what in the world people see in loneliness.

My best, most productive work comes from being happy, bubbly. And then I shoot for the stars.

I'm missing Cedar Point people with a ferocity that only comes from being connected thickly through physical pain and desperate heat. I miss them so much.

And this is not helping my productivity whatsoever. Crap.

here's to those nights we felt alive

So. I've done some things these past few weeks that I am not really proud of, and here I am, semi-regretting, sweetly paying for those mistakes.

Oops. From this moment forward, I will dedicate my summer to not making those mistakes again, to writing without further adieu, and to slowing down my pace... because breezing through every day wild and crazy is apparently not the best way to go about things.

Cheers to thinking before acting (spontaneously and without regard for the future)!