What Do You Do?

I thought I had an idea for a post.  Actually, I'm fairly certain that I did have an idea, I just chose to dispense with that idea for now because I stumbled upon my friend, Susan's, blog and I was intrigued by her post today as part of Blog Every Day in May even though I'm not sure that I'll be taking that particular challenge.  I've already got one challenge with my Poem-A-Day Project, and then the whole "figure out your life, Brianna" challenge.

So, Brianna, if you couldn't answer with your job, what do you do?

I write.  Lots of things.  Most consistently, I write blog posts and daily poems.  I write scribbles in a notebook that I keep in my bag at all times.  Every now and again I write a character sketch or an idea for a scene.  Over the summers for the past five summers, I wrote stage adaptations of Grimm fairy tales.  In high school, I wrote one act plays.  My last semester of college, I wrote short stories.  I've written lyric essays, but I'm still not absolutely certain what that means.  I also write letters because when I get writer's block, it's a really great and constructive way to get my thoughts onto paper without forcing myself to write something pretty.  Plus then someone definitely gets to read it!

I read.  As a result of my reading, I also leave books lying around the house everywhere.  I read multiple books at the same time because I suspect I have an attention problem.  According to my Goodreads account, I'm reading a bunch of books that I had to return to the library a long time ago, and if I wanted to actually read them, I would probably have to restart them anyway.  So honestly, I'm currently reading The Friday Society, and I'm carrying around Wonder Boys in my bag with a bookmark shoved between the first couple pages.  I also read poetry, though I haven't been reading quite as much as I want to, apparently I'm getting distracted by novels.  Oh, and comics.  Because that's a thing now.

I watch movies.  Mostly because I adore movies.  The last movies that I fell in love with were probably Perks of Being a Wallflower and Ruby Sparks.  There was a time when I was working through all the Alfred Hitchcock movies that I could find at my local library, then there was the phase I had when I watched a handful of Marilyn Monroe movies, and then there was my F-in 80s movie marathon weekend which featured Fame, Footloose, and Flashdance.  Everybody loves a good theme, right?  I aspire to watch AFI's 100 Years 100 Movies, although I'm kinda leery about a couple of the movies on that list.  Let's face it, I just want to see all the movies.

I intern.  I know this is kinda like answering with my job, but there it is.  Too bad.  Plus now I can repeat things that I've probably already talked about.  I numbered my internships based on the order I got them.  So Internship #1 is at Here's the Story, I'm the Communications Assistant, which means that I do social media marketing, write things, and generally take on assignments from my blue-haired boss.  Internship #2 is at Chicago Kids Company, and I help out the box office manager by taking phone calls and making reservations for teachers who want to bring their classes to our shows for a field trip.

I knit.  There was a time when I got home from Florida when I went into a knitting frenzy.  I knit a Hufflepuff scarf and a failed Hufflepuff hat for my friend, Claire, I made myself arm warmers, I think I knit something else too, but it was insane.  I have a pattern for curled toe elf slippers that I really want to make, but I'm terrified of messing them up because they're not square and flat...those being the requirements for all the other things that I've knitted successfully.

What else?

I'm pretty sure that's it.  I also do other things like clean my room, occasionally, wash dishes or do laundry for the family when I notice that it could probably use doing.  I go to free events when I remember that they exist.  I go out for drinks or pie with friends, so I eat a lot of pie and drink more alcohol than is probably healthy for someone who spends time with one person at a time and doesn't go to bars very often.  I also spend an unhealthy amount of time texting and checking Facebook.   I also watch television shows via Hulu or my friend's itunes because there's no conceivable way that I could possibly remember to watch a weekly show without setting a phone alarm.  Because that's another thing I do: I forget things.  I also procrastinate.  And I guess I job hunt right now.

So...those are thing things I do.  What about you?

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."

- C.S. Lewis

Challenge Day 1

Here it is, the first day of 2013, and the first day of my daily writing challenge!  I'm super excited to see what comes from this, especially since I'll also be continuing my Poem-A-Day Project until further notice.  So here we go: Day 1: Re-write a classic fairy tale.  Unfortunately because I happen to be starting off this year with a little bit of scatter-brainedness, it's more going to be a collection of scraps of re-written classic fairy tales.  YAY!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Belle sat alone on the floor in the castle's exquisite library, surrounded by a circle of open books, all of them untouched.  Instead, she had her laptop sitting on top of a short stack of books, and she was typing away on a review for Amazon's Kindle posted as "RosesThorn":

...coldly lit screens imitating the old pages that inspired them.  Their memory stores entire libraries within their sleek frame, but I am constantly drawn to paper.  It's so much more difficult to literarily eavesdrop when I'm looking over the shoulders of e-readers and every page looks alike.  There are no covers to judge on these books, which I guess is a good lesson for society to learn, but still.  How many phrases go by the wayside when books become endangered?  What happens to libraries?  Will they become museums?  I don't understand why someone would need to carry an entire library with them when they can only read one book at a time anyway.  Carrying actual books, and you can really alternate if you must.

She felt rather strongly about this.  Belle brought a finger to her chin, looking critically at that last sentence and shaking her head.

"Belle, that one's not going to work," she mumbled to herself, hitting the 'delete' key and starting over on that last sentence.

As she pondered what she could replace that last clunky sentence with, her Facebook flashed a notification. Belle navigated to the tab that held open Facebook and scrolled her feed to find the post.  It was from her father, tagging her.

So sick.  My only consolation is I got to see my Belle one last time.

Belle's eyes widened and she stifled a short sob.  Not only because of her father's sickness, but because of the sentence fragment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rapunzel's favorite thing in the world was pizza.  Unfortunately, the tower in which she lived was not conducive to making pizza if only because the one time that she tried...her mother had not been very happy because it had gotten close to burning down the place.  That might have been due to the fact that she didn't own a pizza stone, but she wasn't really thinking.

So the only way she could possibly get her pizza fix was by ordering delivery.  Every single day.

"Yeah, it's me again.  I'm the one in the tower.  Can I get a Hawaiian pizza today?  And a new take-out menu, because the one I had fell out of the tower and it didn't really end well," Rapunzel said, chattering into her brand new smartphone, the one she got for Christmas.  "Absolutely bacon is okay, is that even a question?  You can send your usual delivery guy, he knows what to do.  Thanks!"

Rapunzel did a little dance around her tower, rejoicing in the imminent arrival of pizza.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that's all I've got right now aside from the idea of Snow White running a dwarf brothel which just might show up in a poem one day just because that idea amuses me.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” 

- Albert Einstein

Poetry Friday -- Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

This Wednesday there was a themed poetry slam at my school organized by our performance poetry group.  The theme this time came off of the list of ideas that I sent ages ago, and it turned out to be "fairy tales."  Which was perfect for me because I love fairy tales.  Almost more than life itself.  Unfortunately, due to unforeseen and stressful circumstances, I was unable to write my very own fairy tale poems so I could participate in the poetry slam.  So...I just read during the open mic and I read this lovely poem by Roald Dahl called "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf."  It's kinda awesome, which is why I chose to talk about it on this Poetry Friday.

Thank you, Google!

First of all, this poem rhymes.  Now I'm not usually a fan of rhyme unless 1) you are Dr. Seuss, 2) you're writing for children, 3) you're Moliere and this is Tartuffe OR 4) it's so well done that I don't even notice that it rhymed until after I'm done reading it.  Because Roald Dahl is neither Dr. Seuss nor Moliere, that leaves us at either writing for children or well done rhyme, both of which I believe this poem falls into.  Sure "Grandmamma" and "caviar" are more of a slant rhyme than a true rhyme, but the rest of the end rhymes help move the poem along.  The rhyme in this poem also goes hand in hand with the rhythm.  The rhythm is really a quite bouncy one which helps the poem move in a kind of sing-song fashion, which is fitting for the subject matter and the story that's being presented.  In fact, if this poem didn't use this type of rhyme or rhythm, it might sound odd or more foreboding, far less cheery.  Although foreboding would also be appropriate what with the talk of eating children, but that's beside the point...

Another thing that I noticed which I talked about last week in "Initiation" is the use of dialogue.  Dahl uses quotation marks and dialogue tags to signal when he's using dialogue, which is a tradition of fiction.  For instance, "And Wolfie said, 'May I come in?'"  Dialogue is absolutely essential in this poem in order to follow the "show, don't tell" rule and because of the traditional, "What great big ears you have, Grandma" that goes along with Red Riding Hood regardless of what version you're reading.  (Okay, so there are different versions, and maybe it's not exact, but we're not going there today.)  When reading this poem aloud, it's really easy to take on different voices for characters such as the wolf and Little Red because the dialogue tags alert the reader to who the speaker is going to be.  And who doesn't love a deep-voiced raspy wolf to chat with a high pitched and cheery Little Red?

This poem does a good job of riding the line of the traditional Red Riding Hood story before twisting it.  After Little Red makes all her usual observations, she says, "But Grandma, what a lovely great big furry coat you have on."  The wolf breaks the pretense of the poem by saying, "That's wrong!... / Have you forgot / To tell me what BIG TEETH I've got?"  This is particularly interesting to me because though the character doesn't explicitly acknowledge that he's a part of a story, he does acknowledge the original story by chiding Little Red for straying from the "script."  It's definitely one of the most fun things about this poem that the wolf corrects Little Red.  But Little Red strays so far from the script that she "whips a pistol from her knickers. / She aims it at the creature's head, / And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead."  And then we're left with a feisty Little Red in a wolfskin coat.  This departure from the original tale is plausible enough that the reader doesn't just throw the poem to the ground in disgust, and interesting enough that it retains the reader's attention and even earns the approval of the reader.  In short, what this poem does, it does very well.

PROMPTS:
1.  Write a rhyming spin-off of a traditional fairy tale.  Keep in mind rules of rhythm and rhyme, and try not to use lame rhymes if you can help it.  Think "Grandmamma" and "caviar"...
2.  Use some dialogue if you haven't already.  Signify it with italics or quotation marks, but probably not both.
3.  At the very end of this poem, the storyteller references himself (we're going with the masculine pronoun because of Dahl...) as "I" who ran into Little Red in the wood.  Write something in which the narrator appears in the action but as an observer or a commentator after the fact.
4.  Write about wolves.  Or what if the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood was actually...a bear?  Or a leopard?  What would happen then?
5.  Write this story from Granny's perspective.

"The small girl smiles.  One eyelid flickers.

She whips a pistol from her knickers.

She aims it at the creature's head,

And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead."

- Roald Dahl, "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf"

Fairy Tale

Let's just start off by saying I love fairy tales.  So when Sunday Scribblings provided me with the prompt: Fairy Tale it was really easy to take things I had already written.  The first piece (the poem) is a little something I wrote for my Poem-a-Day project.  So it's really recent.  The second piece (the prose) is from my freshman year of college.  It's from a longer short story (that sounds weird...) so it's really just an excerpt, but you'll get an idea of what the rest of it's about.  I really love fairy tales.  A lot.  Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 3, 2011

Once upon a time

Snow White was allergic

to apples and

Sleeping Beauty had

insomnia.

Cinderella prefers flats

to heels.

Rapunzel’s afraid of heights

so she stays away

from the window.

This irritates the witch.

None of them ever met

          Prince Charming

for some reason.

Snow White fell

for her allergist

and Sleeping Beauty spent

the night with

the beast.

Cinderella…she didn’t go

anywhere.

She became a hermit

and bashed men with

her godmother.

Until they fell in love.

Then they moved out.

Rapunzel couldn’t take it.

She jumped and tried

to fly.

Her little heart stopped

before her body did.

Happily ever after.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It’s rude to gape, you know.”

            Will spun around, the trees blurring together as he searched for the source of the voice.

            “You’re not very observant, are you?” noted the voice dryly.  It was then that Will looked down and saw what could be simply described as a frog sitting calmly in the grass, looking casually up at him.  Will felt as if his thoughts had been instantly wiped clean like deleting a file off a computer.  He took a couple moments to gather his wits about him until he regained the ability to at least stutter.

            “Y-y-you—you---“

            “I…” the frog prompted.

            “You’re a frog!” Will spat out.

            “I’m a frog,” the frog said, clearly unimpressed by this conclusion.  “Why yes I am.  Thank you for stating the painfully obvious.”

            Will’s frown deepened as his frustration with the situation increased.  It was improbable enough that a frog was speaking to him at all, never mind mocking him.

            “But you can speak,” Will clarified, forcing himself to remain calm by biting the inside of his cheek.  “Frogs don’t have the right vocal chords to speak.  It’s impossible.”

            “Nothing’s impossible,” the frog said wearily, massaging his temples.  “Things aren’t always exactly the way you assume they’ll be. 

A frog’s giving me advice?  Will thought, raising his eyebrows skeptically.

            “Thanks for the advice, but I just want to get out of here,” he said aloud.  “Wherever ‘here’ is.”

            “That may be true, but you can’t.”

             “I can’t?” Will repeated.  He was reluctant to believe anything the little fly-eater said, but seeing no immediate solution to his problem, it looked like the frog was right.

            “No.  You can’t.  Not unless you stop irritating me,” the frog said, crossing his little arms over his little chest.

            Will pursed his lips and nodded once before setting off into the forest to find his own way out of this delusion.  The frog’s reaction was late, giving Will a ten step head start before he called after him, “Where are you going?  You can’t just waltz off, you don’t belong here!”

            “I’ll say,” Will muttered.

            Ignoring the frog’s jabbering complaints following him through the trees, Will continued on through the brush.  With his eyes glued to the ground, he would have smacked headlong into the tower had he not heard the chattering voice above.

            “Belle, he’s been completely beastly to you.  Rose or no, I say you have to get out of there.”

            Will raised his eyebrows and tilted his head back to get a better view of the tower-dweller.  She was a young lady with auburn hair, sitting at the window seat of a circular tower with no visible doors.  She was holding a handheld mirror before her face and speaking (it seemed) to her own reflection.  But the girl in the mirror was a brunette.

            “Hold on a sec, I think my pizza’s here,” the tower-dweller told the face in the mirror.  She then set it aside and hung out the window, squinting directly at Will.  “Hello?  Are you here to deliver a pizza?”

            “A pizza?”

            “Yes, I’m starved!”

            “Um.  Actually, no.”

            “Did you see a guy with a pizza anywhere?  It’s Hawaiian.”  The tower-dweller craned her neck and squinted her eyes, hanging so far out the tower’s window, it looked as if she would tumble to the ground.

            “Uh, no, I didn’t see anyone,” Will said, almost apologetically.  “I’m just trying to get out of here.”

            “You and me both,” the tower-dweller rolled her eyes and retreated to a safer position on her window seat.

            The frog, having finally caught up with Will, hopped to a halt at the teenager’s feet, positively fuming.  He sat silent, glaring up at Will.

            “But could you tell me where I am?” Will called up to the tower-dweller.  She was reaching for her mirror again, but let her hand drop when she heard Will’s question.

            “Regnum Nymphae est umbra terra peregrina, jacens prorsus ultra agrum intelligerimus,” she replied, as if quoting the words from memory.   The strange words sent a shock of recognition through Will.  His sister’s book.

            “What?  What does that mean?” he asked her, but she had already returned to her mirror.  Instead, Will turned to the frog.  “What does she mean?”

            The frog scowled bitterly at being reduced to a translator for Will’s convenience.  If he had had it his way, he would have let Will get eaten by a dragon, and then everyone’s problems would be over. 

“The Realm of Fairy is a strange shadow land, lying just beyond the fields we know.”

The Realm of Fairy?  Will thought.  Now that the mysterious words had been given a meaning he understood, he felt somewhat cheated.  “That’s it?  I’m in fairy land?”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” the frog said, his obvious lack of sincerity showing in his wicked smile.  “But if you want—“ The frog cut himself off and looked past Will into the trees.  Whatever he saw caused his little amphibian eyes to widen.  Will’s face contorted with confusion.

“What wrong with you?” he asked.  But he received no response.  Instead, the frog turned around hopped off, each hop accompanied by a low croak.  Will smirked before another voice detained him.

            “You there, grim fellow!” called a voice that sounded like shards of glass being ground together.

            “Who, me?” Will asked, turning around and pointing at himself.

            An old crone (crone being a term that is used interchangeably with the word “hag” to describe ridiculously old women) was taking great pains to pick her way out of the brush that bordered the clearing.  She looked like she would shatter into a million pieces if she fell.

            “Yes, you, mud pie!” the crone replied, leaning heavily on her cane as she hobbled nearer.

            Mud pie?  Will thought, then decided it would be wise to remain silent.  Her yellowed and cracked talons looked as if they could tear anyone’s vocal cords to shreds and he didn’t want his to be next.

            “I have a task for you, flap-dragon.”

            Adding “flap-dragon,” to the list of terms to ignore, Will asked, “What’s in it for me?”

            The crone seemed to consider this for a moment, and then a wicked smile distorted her features.  “I won’t kill you where you stand.”

            If anything convinced Will of the sincerity of the crone’s threat, it was that smile.  The few teeth she had were jagged and looked as if they had never seen a glass of milk, much less a toothbrush.  And factoring in the bloodthirsty glint in her beady eyes, Will came to the conclusion that she was quite serious.

            “You’ve got a deal!” Will rushed to say, laughing nervously.  “What kind of task?”

            “I need you to deliver this to a girl with skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony, and lips as red as blood.  She answers to the name Snow White,” the crone explained, pulling an apple from beneath her cloak.

            “Why aren’t you doing this yourself?” Will asked, narrowing his eyes.

            “I have an Antagonists Anonymous meeting, and this can’t wait until tomorrow.”

            “Can’t argue with that,” Will shrugged.  He took the apple from the crone’s skeletal fingers without really looking at it.  Now, 99% of people in the world would have been able to make the connection between an apple and a girl named Snow White.  And 100% of that 99% could name all seven of the seven dwarves and even hum the Disney tune that was widely associated with the little men.  But Will Grimm was a member of that 1% of people who were drawn to cult classics rather than pop culture and avoided Disney like the plague.  And fairy tales?  Those were his sister’s thing.  “Where can I find her?”

            “Just north of this clearing, follow the bluebells.” The crone nodded toward an opening in the trees and Will followed her gaze, noting the snatches of blue.  As he left the clearing, he could hear the crone bidding the girl in the tower to let down her hair or something.  Shaking his head, Will set off to follow the bluebells.

            He wandered for what felt like forever but was probably only fifteen minutes in reality.  Sweat poured off his brow.  His breath came quick and labored.  All the trees looked exactly the same, moss creeping up their trunks and green leaves.  And there were bluebells everywhere.

            Will scowled, looking every which way for a path, or (more importantly) for something to eat.

            “’Follow the bluebells,’ she says,” Will muttered under his breath.  “I’ll end up starving here surrounded by bluebells.”

Unbidden, Will’s eyes found the apple clutched in his right hand, and it looked absolutely tantalizing.  It seemed to be speaking his name in a pitifully tiny voice.  He brought it to eye level and stared at it.  What light there was glanced off its surface, giving it a surreal sheen.  It was absolutely irresistible and his hunger prevailed.  So Will took a bite of the apple and fell down dead.

"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

- G.K. Chesterton

The Day After...the Ball

The clock struck the first toll of twelve, and Cinderella ran.  The second toll of twelve, Cinderella was at the door to the castle.  She dashed down the stairs, stumbling as she lost one of her glass slippers.  At the third toll of twelve, Cinderella glanced backwards at the stairs, only to see one of her shoes laying on its side halfway up the second flight of steps.  But she was losing time.  By the sixth toll of twelve she was inside the pumpkin carriage and on her way home.

In the morning, Cinderella found a pumpkin on her doorstep and a single glass slipper at the foot of her bed.

"Cinderella!"  The shrieking, grating voice of Cinderella's stepmother reached her ears from the farthest end of the house.  Swaying as she sat up, Cinderella swung her legs over the edge of her bed and stood.  "Cinderella!"

Cinderella trod on her bare feet down the infinity of stairs, all the way down to the kitchen where her stepmother sat at the table, reading the morning's newspaper where there would be written up an account of the previous evening's ball at the castle.  The newspaper featured a long-winded critique of one particular princess' pearly white gown and her interesting choice of footwear.  But Cinderella had no way of knowing this, of course.

"Good morning, stepmother," Cinderella greeted cheerily, only to receive a responding grunt from her stepmother as the two stepsisters tripped down the stairs and into their customary places at either side of their mother at the table.  "Good morning, stepsisters."

The stepsisters were still talking about the ball.  It seemed as if they had stayed up all night, their hair was disheveled but held onto the massive amounts of hairspray they had worn to the ball.

"And I couldn't believe what Margie wore to the ball, magenta is so not her color," commented Stepsister 1.

"And did you see Edith's shoes?  Emerald green, of course, but the collage on their soles was so last season," critiqued Stepsister 2.

"So the ball was enjoyable?" Cinderella asked, already bored by her stepsisters' prattle.

Here she was, morning after the best night of her life and nothing had changed at her home.  Shoeless, in possession of a pumpkin, and unimpressed by her stepsisters' account of the ball, Cinderella was back to the drudgery of everyday life with no hope of being rescued by her Prince Charming.

"Would you look at that, the prince posted an ad in the morning's paper," Stepmother commented, displaying the ad for her daughters and even Cinderella to see.  "FOUND: 1 glass slipper, seeking beautiful princess to marry the prince.  Prince Charming will visit the homes of every eligible young lady in the kingdom."  "He must really love her or something."

Maybe Prince Charming would rescue her after all.

"You say good-bye,

away you fly,

but on your lips you'll keep a kiss,

all your life you'll dream of this, 

lovely, lovely night."

- Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella

Into the Woods

She went to the woods for answers.  It was the customary place for figuring out your problems because there was something about the Enchanted Forest that encouraged reflection.  Her father had gone to the woods for answers about his marital issues, her uncle had gone to the woods for answers about his mother, and today Princess Camilla went to the woods for answers about her boyfriend.  Well, he wasn't her boyfriend per se, but she kind of wanted him to be.

He was a boy she had seen in the market on one of the days her parents had taken her on a carriage ride through the kingdom.  He was driving a cart full of cattle to wherever he was going, and his horses had nearly collided with the the horses drawing the king's carriage.  The driver gave him a hard time about it, and when Camilla looked out the window to see what the hold up was, she saw him.  Their eyes met for barely a moment, and she knew that she would rather go for a cart ride with this boy than with Prince Aubrey Stephen who had a massive mole on the side of his nose.

"So what am I supposed to do here?" Princess Camilla asked the open air, turning around and taking in every enchanted inch of the woods surrounding her.  "I'm just looking for some answers here!"

"Answers?  She's looking for answers?" said a voice, causing Camilla to jump and shudder.

"Who's that?" she demanded, whipping around.

"Who's that?  So many questions.  Which answers do you actually want?"  the voice asked.

"Show yourself!" Camilla said.  The voice laughed, "Down here."

Once Camilla's attention was directed in the correct place, she found an emerald green frog sitting on a log nearby, looking at her with a slight leer in its golden eyes.  He licked his lips with the tip of his tongue and smiled a froggy grin.  Camilla jumped once again, sidling away from the frog once its tongue made an appearance.  Her face said "ew..." but her voice was trained to be polite so she didn't verbalize it.

"How do you do?" she asked, making the stiffest of curtsies and smiling carefully.

"Another question.  Fine.  A frog.  And you're supposed to look for your own answers," the frog replied, crossing its little arms over his chest.

"But what am I supposed to do to find them?" the princess asked.  The frog rolled his eyes at the realization of  her increasingly slow thinking.

"Maybe if you sit still long enough they'll find you," the frog observed.

Camilla smiled mildly at the frog and inched a bit to the left, saying, "Thank you, you've been such a help" right up until she was hoisted up into a tree by a person-sized net.

"FINALLY!" came another voice hidden within the trees.  The source of the voice leapt out of the bushes and revealed itself to be a disheveled looking man, leaves stuck in his hair and dirt staining his once fine clothing.  "I think you found your answer..."

Thank you to Sunday Scribblings for the prompt "Woods".

"Into the woods, into the woods, into the woods and out of the woods and happy ever after!"

- Into the Woods

A Letter to Prince Charming

Dear Prince Charming,

My name is Brianna; I got your P.O. box address from a friend of mine (you might know her, then again you might not, she's the one sitting on the couch behind a book as big as her head) and I would like to take this chance to say a couple things.  For your convenience, I shall number them.

One.  I would like to compliment you on your perfection.  You really are spectacular.  It's alarming how charming...you are.  I would love to know who designs your wardrobe, because I'd like to talk to them about a wardrobe for myself.  Anyway.  You're perfect.  Not only are you devilishly attractive, but you're witty, intelligent, alluring, brave, adventurous, self-assured, and of course, highly desirable.  In fact, everyone's looking for you.  That brings me to my second comment.

Two.  Where are you?  I keep hearing about people looking for you, and I have to admit that I picked up a raggedy map that promised it would divulge your location, but I probably would have been better off using a GPS.  You seem to be lost in some unplottable location because I haven't seen on any Facebook statuses that someone's found you.  I would have thought I would hear by now.  If you've been lost for so long, it's only a matter of time that someone'll find you.  Maybe you should hold a press conference and give some clues as to where someone can find you.  Only the cleverest or most devious people need apply, unless you have clones that you can give to the less than worthy.

Three.  Where did you come from?  If you can't tell me where you are, the least you can do is tell me where you're from.  I'm guessing you're not from an alien planet or a different dimension (unless you're The Doctor), but you had to come from somewhere.  Who are your parents?  I get the feeling that you were raised by Optimism and Imagination with Disney as a close godfather who came over for dinner weekly.  Nurtured on the food of dreams, happy thoughts and pixie dust seasoning, you grew up to be your perfect self.  The most desired man in the world, right next to Mr. Right.  Unless of course you're the same person, but that's another question altogether.

Four.  What are you looking for?  Brains?  Brawn?  Beauty?  I know a couple people who would be prime candidates for your consideration, so if you're interested, you should really give me a call: ***/***-****.

Five.  What are you waiting for?  I find it really interesting that girls and women of all ages are looking for you, even though the majority of them wish to be pursued by you.  So are you waiting for them to find you so you can give chase?  But what if you're tired of the chase?  Where does that leave your ardent admirers?  I can tell you right now that if you just come out of hiding for a little while, you're bound to get laid almost immediately.  I say "almost" because it might take a little time for clothes to be torn off, but all the same, you'd be in pretty good shape considering you're in high demand.  If someone were selling you, they should hike up the price because there's only one of you, and everyone wants you.  Just think of the profit that people could make off of you...  (Cynical Brianna pipes up and points out that's how Godfather Disney did it.)

Six.  This may be a radical idea, and you might not agree, or this paragraph might be the reason why you don't write back to me, but can I be my own Prince Charming?  Theoretically, all I have to do is transfer those complements I gave you to me, and then I could be devilishly attractive, witty, intelligent, etc.  I'm not talking narcissism here, I'm talking self-love, which is a milder and healthier form of narcissism.  Would that be cool?  Would you be okay with that?  I'm saying that if I become the type of person I would find desirable, would you come out of hiding and introduce yourself?  Then there's the whole thing that maybe I would be too much like you that we couldn't get along, but we could work it out, right?  But if I become my own Prince Charming, will I still need you?  I also wonder if there will be other people in the world that will be drawn to me and my Charming-ness and maybe then I could settle for the court jester or a traveling minstrel or the jack-of-all-trades I saw working on repairing the waterwheel in town.  At that point would it still be considered "settling" if I had the attributes I find desirable in Prince Charming and then love between myself and a serf?

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a huge fan of yours, you're still on my Christmas AND birthday wish lists since just about forever, but if there's only one of you, and there are how many me's?  I'm just trying to figure things out so everyone can win.

Anyway, if things don't work out with Cinderella/Snow White/Rapunzel/Sleeping Beauty, give me a call.

Yours ever,
Brianna

P.S.  I found this super cute poem that I thought you might enjoy: Prince Charming.

Prince Charming vs. Dragon

"Someday your Prince Charming will come.  Mine just took a wrong turn, got lost, and is too stubborn to ask for directions."

- Unknown

The Day After

Q:  So how are you this morning?

A:  Just fine.  I may have slept until 10 AM, but it was delicious, I can tell you that right now.

Q:  What are your plans for today?

A:  Today I plan to make a prototype/draft/initial drawing of the Marauders Map that I'm going to be making for my staff.  Of course there's a slight possibility that members of my staff might read this blog, leading to spoiling the surprise and all of my fun, but that possibility is slight.  And even if it was true, I probably wouldn't want to know because I'd like to pretend that it'll be a surprise.  Anyway, this Marauders Map is going to be one of those signs where the RAs can move a little marker to let their residents know where they are at all times.  Oftentimes RAs forget to move the marker, but that's quite alright.  So I'm making this Marauders Map inspired sign thingy and the little markers are going to be footprints with a little banner that says the name of the RA!  I'm SO beyond excited, there aren't enough words to describe it.  I'm geeking out, I kid you not.  There will be pictures.

I'm also hosting rehearsal at my house for The Grimm Players, the fairy tale performing troupe that I'm directing.  It occurs to me that I should probably go out and look for costumes for that, but considering I had little to no luck finding costumes last time and I would have to fill the car up with gas...I'm disinclined to leave the house today.  Which makes me a hermit, and I'm okay with that.  For the most part.  Anyway, it's horribly difficult to find a brown zip up hoodie for dirt cheap (which is the only price I'm willing to pay for a hoodie that I'm going to destroy anyway).  You wouldn't think it'd be that big of a deal, but apparently it is.  Which is frustrating.

I should probably read as well so I can stop complaining about how I haven't been reading.  I finished How to Buy a Love of Reading, and to avoid spoiling the book...let's just say that the ending is a little surprising.  Okay, a lot surprising.  I enjoyed the book overall, especially the writer, Bree McEnroy who I could relate to.  According to her backstory, she believed in happy endings and wrote stories that always ended well.  She was whimsical and enjoyed the little things in life, but then her soul was eaten alive and she started writing really bad metafiction that got published despite the fact that it was horrible.  So basically, I have to avoid the soul eating, and I'll be golden.  That's what I've learned from this book: avoid soul eating situations.

Oh this post is going to be thrilling to read when I look back on it.  I'm just...gonna go...have a good Thursday!

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

- C.S. Lewis

Just a Fairy Tale

Q:  What ever happened to your theatrics from high school?  You were an actor?  Whaaaa?

A:  Yes.  I was an actor in high school.  I did theatre all four years at school, taking part in a number of "straight plays" as well as musicals.  I really grew as a theatre person throughout those four years, going from playing little parts my freshman year to playing character bits in junior and senior year.  By then I probably played a grand total of 3 old ladies, as it kind of became my specialty.  I wouldn't say that I was particularly good, just that I had a ton of fun and I really enjoyed myself.  In addition to my acting pursuits, I also wrote a couple one act plays and directed a couple scenes and plays.  I stage managed a couple shows and things too, but I feel like that doesn't really count because I wasn't too good at it.

So after high school I went on to college and became an English major, and that's where my theatrics went.  To the wayside.  For all intents and purposes.  Sure, I still wanted to act, but I was on the outside of the theatre department, so I was left out of the loop when it came to figuring out when auditions were, what shows were, etc., etc.

Over the summer it was a different story.  Summer of 2008, I began The Grimm Players as part of my Girl Scout Gold Award.  I wrote adaptations of three fairy tales (Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and The Fisherman and His Wife) for the stage, modernized them a bit, and added in some environmental bent to a couple of them, and recruited four actors to perform them at my local library.  Ever since then, The Grimm Players have been invited back to perform over the summer, and every year we've come up with new fairy tales to perform, so by now I've got a good nine fairy tales that we've adapted for the stage.  And I say "we" because by the second summer I began sharing writing duties with members of the group because they had shown an interest in writing.

This summer, I'm a little pressed for time, and so I'm writing my adaptation right now.  My brother craned over my shoulder and asked if it was for school.

"No, it's for the fairy tale thing that I do over the summer," I answered, scribbling a bit more on my adaptation of Stone Soup.

"Oh.  When are you just going to make that into a business and start charging?"

So that got me thinking.  We've been doing this for four years, well, this'll be our fourth summer, and our library liaison has said more than once that he wished he could pay us.  But what if there were people who could?  People or organizations, that is.  What if The Grimm Players became a theatre company?  I could use it to support my horrible writing "habit" as I write the next great American novel, because theatre is such a lucrative industry.  I've taken an Entrepreneurship class, so I know the basics of writing a business plan, so what else is there?  Obviously a ton of money would have to go into it, and I'd have to find enough dedicated people willing to take zero paycheck for goodness only knows how long, but how cool would that be?!  We could be a travelling troupe and perform in tiny little venues for little children.  Maybe we could even go to schools and encourage kids to get into theatre.  Of course, that would mean more writing, and possibly branching out from the Brothers Grimm umbrella.  Or actually spending money on costuming or props.  But in the grand scheme of things, wouldn't it be more interesting to watch a minimalist version of stories that are so well known?  And then there's always the fact that we could bring more obscure stories to light.  We could do five stories in a set, expanding the show to a whole hour...

Definitely something to consider.

Enthusiasm

Sometimes I get excited or do things that confirm my nerdiness. For example, merely knowing the date of Towel Day/Geek Pride Day...

One of the most recent examples of my nerdiness displays has been with the final assignment for my class. I'm taking Introduction to Dramatic Literature. So I already geeked out over reading Hamlet AND over finding all the references to eyes, blindness and seeing in Oedipus the King. On top of it, we have to do this final project type thing. One of the options is to re-write one act of one of the plays that we read, adapting it into a different genre/style. Now anyone who knows me will know that I adore the idea of adaptations. Just look at my past two summers for evidence.
So sharing this excitement is interesting because no one knows what I'm talking about. Because I'm going to adapt a Medieval drama into a modern comedy. And I already have all sorts of ideas to keep it from getting preachy. Which is always good when adapting morality plays for modern audiences, I find. :^P It's just coming together really well in my head, and I can only hope it'll come together on paper as well!