What's a Shiv?

"Don't worry, Anna will protect you in the dark across campus."

Anna looked up from her half-painted fingernail at the expectant face of one of the younger girls and the sarcasm traipsing across the face of her co-worker.  Being one of the shortest and scrawniest people on staff, Anna was probably the person least likely to be able to defend anyone much less herself, if the occasion called for it.

So she nodded solemnly.  "Oh yeah, of course!  I've got pepper spray.  And a shiv in my purse."

The girl asked, "What's a shiv?"

Anna laughed in that Pssh, you don't know? sort of way and explained that it was a makeshift knife that could be used as a weapon.  The girl's eyes widened while Anna's co-worker smirked.  Of course, if this were a real rather than fictional shiv, it probably wouldn't have been allowed.  Anywhere.  Outside of prison.

"Have you ever used it?" Anna's co-worker asked, feeding the story but interested to see where it went next.

"Of course I have, on my ex-boyfriend's car."

Anna's favorite part of the whole storytelling experience was to watch the faces on her audience.  She could tell that the younger girl immediately believed in the maiming of a car but wanted to figure out for sure if it was true.  And her co-worker was giving her a look that said, Okay, but seriously now.

"Did he have leather seats?"

"Not anymore he doesn't."

"Did you carve your name into them?"

"Of course," Anna said, grinning wickedly.  Her audience went quiet, a mixture of skepticism and respect floating in the air while Anna bent her head down to finish up painting the nails on her left hand.  It was a couple minutes before anyone spoke again, and by then the conversation revolving around Anna's destructive streak could have dissipated.

A pause.  Then, "Did you really do that to your ex-boyfriend's car?"  Not the younger girl, but Anna's co-worker.

Anna just smiled and shrugged.  So what if I did?

"And though she be but little, she is fierce."

- William Shakespeare

Challenge Day 8

Remember that time when I said that I was going to do a daily writing challenge and then failed so miserably, but then kept writing based on those challenges anyway?  This is day eight.  For the record, I'm not too keen on writing this bit especially because I had no idea where the superhero post was going, and now I have to make up a back story?!  Back story is haaaaard....

Day 8: Write a prequel to that superhero.  Pre-superhero life.  Maybe their childhood.

On Electrolexi's eighteen birthday, her mother sat her down in the living room.  Electrostatic, Lexi's mother, looked like she had just swallowed a koala, and though it was fuzzy, it seemed to want to claw its way out of the woman's throat.  After the whole Iris VI fiasco a couple weeks ago, Lexi wasn't really sure what her mother had to say to her that could possibly be good.  Especially not with that face she was wearing.

"Mom, are you okay?  You look like you're going to throw up or something," Electrolexi said.  Despite it being her birthday, she was still the type of person who put the concerns of other people in front of her own.  Plus this was the woman who gave her life, and that had to count for something.

"Yeah, sweetie, I'm fine," Electrostatic replied, staring off into some space just past her daughter's head before gulping down the koala in her throat.  "But we need to talk."

"Are you...are you breaking up with me?" Electrolexi deadpanned.

"Alexandra, be serious.  This is important," her mother said, her eyebrows scrunching together in frustration.

"Okay, okay, what's this all about?"

"I have to tell you who your father is," Electrostatic blurted out.  The words sent an unintentional shock through the coffee table Electrostatic had decided to sit upon, and Electrolexi heard the piece of furniture give a little whimper.  The shock extended, of course, to Electrolexi herself, though not quite so literally.

"I, um, what?" was all that Electrolexi could really manage at that point.  "He's Superman, isn't he?!"

Electrostatic took a deep breath.  She didn't seem to be listening up until the point when Superman was mentioned, and the look that she gave Electrolexi was one that said "Come on, really?" without actually verbalizing it.

"Your father is Bad Horse."

"My father...what?  I think I heard you wrong, I could have sworn you said that he was Bad Horse."

"He is Bad Horse."

"Who the hell is Bad Horse?"

"He's...a horse.  Who's bad."

"You kinda have to give me a little more to go on than that, Mom," Electrolexi prompted.  The sinking feeling in her gut told her that whoever this Bad Horse was, he probably wasn't a cool superhero that was going to end up giving her some special superhero training when she came of age and came into her extra powers bestowed upon by him.

"He's the Thoroughbred of Sin," Electrostatic said, hiding her face in her hands.

For some reason, it was at this point when it dawned upon Electrolexi: "He's a horse, isn't he?"

Electrostatic looked up from her palms and nodded once gravely.

"My father's a HORSE?"

"A bad horse.  A very very bad horse."

Well, that explained nothing at all....

"I wanna do great things, you know?  I wanna be an achiever, like Bad Horse."

- Doctor Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog

Braaaaaiiiins....

"I have a brain, but it isn't mine."

Grant was something of a collector, you would say.  Lining the shelves of his office were jars with wrinkled up balls of rubber floating inside an unidentifiable fluid.  Each of the jars had a neat little label attached to the front of it so he always knew which brain he was playing around with whenever he chose to shake things up a little bit.

Tara wasn't sure whether she should laugh or if she should remain straight faced as she sat in the chair across the desk from Grant.  Behind Grant were the five levels of shelving, each shelf packed with brains.  If the zombie apocalypse ever occurred, they could always send the zombies here and this office alone would feed the brain eaters for a week.

So she settled on clearing her throat uncomfortably and shifting her grip on the briefcase that was balanced on her lap.

"Um, excuse me?" she asked, pretending she hadn't heard what he said correctly.

"I have a brain...but it isn't mine," Grant repeated, this time with a gesture to the jars behind him.  There was no mistaking the poorly timed joke this time, and Tara choked back the bile climbing the back of her throat.  "Anyway, as I was saying, we're on the cutting edge of brain technology so I've had the responsibility of poking around the folds of the actual brains and learning what exactly goes where and what we can fiddle around with."  Grant said all this at a speed that slightly exceeded the speed limit for casual conversation, and indicated that he assumed Tara knew what he was talking about.

Which she didn't.

But he didn't need to know that.

"Mr. Newman, I would appreciate it if you would keep your jokes in check," Tara said primly as she pulled a sheaf of paper out of her briefcase.  "And I wondered if you could look through this and tell me precisely whose brain wrote this document."

"I...I'm not sure that I'm the right person to talk to about something like this, I'm not really a paper read-y type of person," Grant said, holding up his hands, palms out, as if in surrender.

"Please, Mr. Newman, I insist.  You are, after all, the brains of this operation, so called."

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

I've been watching too much Dollhouse.  Luckily there's only one more episode left and then I get to figure out what new show I can use to procrastinate with.

"The vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people.  But the truth is that the massive processor known as the human brain is neither a literature organ or a math organ.  It is both and more."

- John Green

Challenge Day 7

That's right, folks!  It's time to celebrate, because here is the daily writing challenge!  I've finished a whole week's worth of the challenge in...about two months.  But we're not going to talk about that because today is a day of celebration!  Everyone should do a writing challenge and spread out the prompts like the last bits of butter in the container across an entire loaf of bread...it's all good!

Here we have Day 7: Create a superhero.  Have he/she save the day.  (We're not going to talk about the grammar mistake happening right before our very eyes, but I am going to shamelessly point it out.)

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

Electrolexi's superhero name wasn't her idea.  She had wanted a name that was cool.  Like "The Inanimator."  Or something like that.  But her superhero mom thought that it would be clever to use little bits of the young superhero's name.  Alexandra turned into Electrolexi.  No relation to Electrolux.  Or maybe there was.  Superhero family trees were always so complicated, you would never know who was related to whom unless there was a slight similarity in name.  Batman and Batgirl?  Definitely father and daughter.  Wait, that wasn't right...

Anyway, Electrolexi's superpower involved being able to communicate with inanimate objects.  This was not exactly a power that gained you recognition among the superhero community, it was on par with being able to transform into a puddle of water or creating marshmallows with your toes.  Something like that.  Electrolexi's mother could control electricity and her father...well, not even Electrolexi's mother would admit who he was, though Electrolexi suspected he was Superman, but that was partially a case of wishful thinking.

On a February morning, Electrolexi turned on the television in her mother's living room to see a screen announcing, "BREAKING NEWS!"

"We've just heard word from NASA that their latest rocket, Iris VI has been hijacked by an unknown entity.  We can posit that the person climbing into the cockpit and throwing the prep crew out a window is a man from the body type observed on the surveillance cameras, but nothing else can be assumed at this point.  Superman was on the scene to save the prep crew being thrown out of the rocket, but has since disappeared, it has been reported that a Bruce Wayne who was funding the rocket's expedition may be on the scene any minute now to consult.  We will keep you updated."

"Ahem, 'scuse me, but could you 'old me a bit lighter?" coughed the television remote.

"Oh!  Sorry..." mumbled Electrolexi.  She hadn't even realized that she was gripping it white-knuckled.

Without a fully formed plan, Electrolexi grabbed her cape and ran out the door.  About halfway down her block, she got a stitch in her side and had to slow down to a brisk walk as she passed the bus that she would normally be taking to her high school.  Chances are if she failed in whatever she wasn't planning on doing, her mother would kill her for skipping school to save the world anyway.

By the time she got to NASA, Electrolexi had a vague idea of what she should do.

"Hey!  You can't be in here!" a bespectacled man yelled at her as she rushed down the hall to the control room.

"Trust me, I've got this handled!" she bellowed over her shoulder.  Though she probably wasn't the most convincing person the man had heard, considering she was a lanky teenaged girl running full speed down a hallway toward the control room of a gigantic rocket, but what did that matter anyway?

Barreling into the control room, Electrolexi yelled at the top of her lungs, "Let me talk to the rocket!"

A group of rocket scientists turned from their computer screens to take in the teenaged girl standing inside the door and panting to catch her breath.  None of them smiled, none of them found this even remotely funny.  There was an unknown man in the cockpit of the rocket and this silly girl was demanding that she be allowed to "talk to the rocket"?

"Pardon me, little girl, but who do you think you are?" asked a white-haired man closest to the door where Electrolexi was still panting.

"I'm Electrolexi.  Trust me.  I've got this.  Give me a microphone."

The rocket scientists were all so baffled by the presence of a teenager in their control room, they just handed her a microphone without any further questions.  The white-haired man snickered a little bit and shook his head before settling back into his seat.

Closing her eyes and concentrating, Electrolexi tuned into what she figured was the rocket's voice singing a tuneless ditty without words as it prepared to take off.  It didn't really care who was piloting it, it just wanted to fly.

"Hey, Iris?  Iris VI?  This is Electrolexi, can you hear me?"

"Electrolexi?  I don't think I know you.  Are you friends with the president?" the rocket asked, halting her song rather abruptly when she was interrupted.

"Yeah, we'll go with that.  Okay, I need you to stay put, alright?  If you get clearance for take-off, it's not from us."

"Right-o!"

Electrolexi let out a breath that she hadn't realized she had been holding.  That was easy.  Too easy...

To be continued...?

Bring in the Evidence

This morning I found an evidence bag in the refrigerator (I'm not even kidding, the first shelf in front of my face: evidence bag).  It had come from a cold case, and considering I had never interacted with an evidence bag before in my life, I had some difficultly getting it open.  It was sealed, and not with tape, but with some complicated sealing process.  So I ended up taking a knife to it.  The odors from the contents of the bag wafted out of the plastic, filling up the house with the smell.  My mom would probably kill me and put me in a body bag for doing this, but I didn't care.  I was seized by a hunger I only ever felt in the mornings, a savage hunger to break my fast from over eight hours of sleeping.  So I slapped the evidence on a plate and shoved it into the microwave, listening to the pop and bubble as the microwave warmed it from the inside out.  Steam lifted from the surface when I pulled it out of the microwave as I cut into it.  Juices ran down my chin, and I stuck out my tongue to lick the juices off my face.  So delicious as I savored the cornucopia of flavors bursting on my taste buds, I realized that I would never be able to eat anything else ever again.

Mmm...pizza.

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

Well, I was going to talk about how I can't possibly talk about the Academy Awards because I haven't seen the majority of the movies that have been nominated, but when I opened the fridge and saw that evidence bag, it was obvious that I needed to write about that.  I mean, which would you rather hear?

"This morning I found an evidence bag in the refrigerator"

OR

"So I've only seen maybe three movies that have been nominated for Oscars.  I mean, that's counting animated film and screenplay and all that...I've only seen one Best Picture nominee."

Exactly what I thought.  Glad I could oblige.

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Saving Snickers

(based on a picture from my Writing Inspiration board on Pinterest)

Source: facebook.com via Katie on Pinterest

Snickers didn't want to be saved.  Having accomplished the miraculous feat of making a break from the green Victorian on Vine and scampering across the stretch of front lawn, Snickers had scrabbled up a tree on the parkway and now there was this grown man wearing spandex reaching towards him.  Snickers would have none of this.  Unsheathing his claws, Snickers brandished them at the man with all the threat his little bell-collared self could muster.

"Come on, Snickers, just come on over here," the man was saying as he clutched at the trunk of the tree and reached out for the cat.  The old woman who lived in the green Victorian and provided Snickers with cat nip every week on Friday stood at the base of the tree, looking up.  She tilted her head so far back her big round glasses slid up the slope of her nose and rested on her face.  Snickers fostered little pity for the old woman who had her young grandchildren come visit on the weekends and pull his tail.

"Why don't you fly, Superman?" yelled a skateboard-toting boy from the sidewalk.  The man in spandex ignored this jibe because evidently he didn't deem it necessary to rise to this occasion.  In Snickers' opinion, the man in spandex would probably be able to better coax his feline self to come down if he displayed some level of inhuman skill.  Lex Luthor must have had the day off otherwise why would this man who called himself "Superman" be climbing a tree to retrieve a cat?

Snickers did not find this amusing.  He bristled at the hand reaching towards him and promptly slashed it across the knuckles, drawing blood and leaving little carvings of parallel lines across the hero's extremities.  Superman immediately stuffed his bleeding fingers in his mouth to stifle the un-super hero-like curse that threatened to escape.

"Come here, Snickers, Granny's got a nice new ball of yarn for you to play with if you come down," the old woman beckoned, her face still tilted to the sky and her eyes squinting through her glasses at the bristling ball of fuzz that was Snickers who was still unconvinced that his adventure needed to end here and now.

Superman pulled his fingers out of his mouth and slowly returned his grip to the tree branch where Snickers was standing.  His face seemed to soften into a guilty expression and he looked at Snickers, speaking softly,  "Look, Snickers.  Let me level with you.  I'm kinda not having the greatest day.  Lois is moving out to focus on her career, Lex Luthor TP-ed the Fortress of Solitude, and I have a wicked hangover, so if you could just come on down, you'd really be doing me a favor."

The man in spandex let that sink into Snickers' little cat head and little cat thoughts.  He could see that Snickers was relaxing his muscles, toning down the bristles.  The cat's eyes softened and his scowl relaxed into a far more neutral expression.  Which is when Superman reached out and picked up Snickers with a grab as fast as a speeding bullet, realizing only too late that Snickers still had his claws out.

"If cats looked like frogs, we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are.  Style.  That's what people remember."

- Terry Pratchett

Selfish or Selfless?

Anna sat in her bedroom, painting her toenails the darkest shade of blue she owned.  She was crunched up in a position that in any other situation would have been considered uncomfortable, but when it comes to painting one's toenails, one discovers the ability to contort one's body into the strangest shapes in order to reach every angle of that tiny little nail.  The music drifting from her laptop was provided by her most random Pandora station because she didn't much feel like listening to Christmas music despite the nearness of the holiday.

At that moment, there was a knock on her door.  And while she was silently narrating her life in the third person, she briefly pondered the idea of a knock arriving on a door.  It was a odd phrase because a knock wasn't a thing, so it couldn't exactly sit on a door, it was more of an event that happened without the door's knowledge or consent.  So shouldn't a knock "accost" a door?  Rather than just "be" on a door?  Anna shook her head to dislodge such narrative thoughts.

"Come in."

"You sure?" said a male voice from the the other side of the door.  He poked his head around the door and raised his eyebrows at Anna who rolled her eyes and waved impatiently at him to make a decision about whether he was entering or not.  Taking that as his cue to "stay or go," Rhys let himself in and sidled over to Anna's desk chair which he flipped around and settled into, doing all this before saying, "So how are you?"

"I'm just grand," Anna mumbled, flicking another coat of polish on her pinkie toe.  "I'm alive."

"And how are you handling your first break-up, sweetie?" he asked, leaning forward in his chair and tilting his head at an awkward angle so he could catch Anna's eyes which were bent down to concentrate on her toenails.

"I'm fine, no thanks to you, selfless bastard," Anna said, deigning to look up at Rhys and flash him a vicious smile.  "Can I refer to you as that from now on?  'Selfless bastard'?"

"I think the official term is 'selfish bastard,' darling," Rhys commented dryly.

"Yeah, but you're not really, that being why I would want to call you 'selfless bastard.'  Plus I enjoy the mislead in making people think that I was made a mistake of calling you the wrong thing," she said, twisting the cap on her nail polish and nodding in satisfaction.  Only half of that satisfaction really being in finding a new term of "endearment" for Rhys that she was pleased with.  "It pleases me that I can speak about you in an unexpected way."

"Do what makes you happy."

A silence fell over the conversation at that point, because that was always his advice, and that was always the advice that ended any argument about what Anna should do whether it be for her choice of dinner or choice of classes for the next semester.  Her happiness was always one of Rhys' top priorities, even though Anna argued that he should do what made him happy every now and again, and that was when she was met with "Making you happy makes me happy."  Which Anna should have smacked him for or maybe rolled her eyes at, but it always worked.  And that was why he ended things, because ultimately it felt like even if in the shortrun she was grumpy, painting her nails dark colors and listening to moody music, in the longrun it's what would make her happy.  And she couldn't even hate him for it.

"I am a greedy, selfish bastard.  I want the fact that I existed to mean something."

- Harry Chapin 

Grounded

On the morning of takeoff, the air was so filled with fog it would have put Natasha Bedingfeld's "pocket full of sunshine" to shame.  We could barely see the runway where we were standing let alone the lights bordering it.  I just figured my vision was blurring because I'd always been afraid of how tall I was, and seeing the ground blur in a gray blanket and losing sight of my feet seemed like a logical extension of my terror.

That morning you were already questioning whether flying with me was a good idea in the first place while I warmed up my arms by stretching them out and trying to flap them around.  These questions swirling around inside your head like a little kid's science project were muted, and I wouldn't have been able to hear them over the fog anyway.  One thing I knew: if you were flying, I was flying.

And I used to think that I was already flying around because standing in the middle of a runway in fog already feels like walking on clouds, so why did I feel so rooted?  My arms made pretty pathetic wings, all scrawny and featherless, but you never saw that as a problem because you subscribed to the belief that all you had to do was throw yourself at the ground and miss.  I was trying not to think about what would happen if I didn't miss, because I didn't know if trying to purposely miss would defeat the purpose of missing in the first place.

But even if I didn't miss the ground, I would miss you.  So I guess it's lucky that morning we were grounded even if takeoff is still in your flight plan.

Thank you to Sunday Scribblings for the prompt: Grounded.

"And if I'm flying solo

at least I'm flying free.  

To those who'd ground me, 

take a message back from me.  

Tell them how I am

defying gravity."

- "Defying Gravity" from "Wicked"

The Cake

“I’m going to make you a cake that looks like a Band-Aid, but it might end up looking more like a penis, so even better!” Elisa let out a laugh as she said it, causing Anna to shake her head.

“Yeah, okay, Elisa,” Anna said, heading out the door in her striped work uniform shirt and matching skort.

Little did she know that when she arrived home in the darker hours of the evening after sunset, she would be greeted by said cake on the dining room table.  It was exactly what Elisa had said, a Band-Aid cake, but with the shape and the color, it ended up looking a lot more like a penis than a Band-Aid.  Then there was the contributing factor that that was something Anna had on her mind anyway.  The cake was surrounded by candles artfully arranged on top of stacks of books and circling the Band-Aid/penis cake.  On the table in front of it was a brightly colored Post-It note that read “Eat your heart out.  Don’t forget to swallow.”

“Elisa, what did you do…” Anna mumbled, shaking her head at her roommate’s idea of a cathartic binge eating of oddly shaped baked goods.

There was no point in inviting Elisa to help her eat the cake since she was probably out with her current boyfriend, so Anna was left with a paper plate, a napkin, a fork, and the cake.  Nothing but her feelings and sugar to keep her company.

She supposed she should be thanking Elisa for thinking of her, but there was some small part of her that wondered if it was an act of mercy because if Anna went into a diabetic coma, then not only would it put her out of her misery but Elisa also wouldn’t have to deal with the moping of a recently single roommate.  She supposed that there were worse ways to go than by sugar overload and since “she had nothing left to live for,” it was probably the least cliché way of going short of tying a silly straw around her throat and seeing if that worked.  Besides, tying a silly straw around anything would probably take more effort than was worth expending on a potentially failing pursuit.

Part of what angered her about the whole situation was how cliché her feelings were.  Two things couldn’t possibly be more cliché and those were being in love, and being heartbroken.  The fact that she could be upset about feeling a cliché just went to show her that she was more worried about how her emotions measured up in the “universal condition” than she was about dealing with whatever those feelings meant.  That probably had to do with the fact that she was a writer, and as a writer you write things (go figure).  But since heartbreak is a universal thing, everyone feels it at some point, is there really something new to say about it?  How was she supposed to explain how she felt without using tired phrases that didn’t mean anything anymore?  Then again, she ran into the same problem when she was happy and in love too.  So there really was no winning.

Anna grabbed the plate with the cake on it and re-located it to the coffee table, settling down into a pretzel position on the floor next to it.  She looked at the cake accusingly for about a minute before stabbing it with a fork.

“Well, might as well put something in my mouth.”

Between You and Me

Between you and me and the Internet, let me just say that I'm scared approximately out of my mind, so I'm not really sure where my mind is going because when I'm thinking I'm thinking down eight different paths, and I can't follow any one of them to their logical conclusion because that's when I realize I don't know.

Anything, really.

So between you and me and the Internet, allow me to say that publishing these fears and emotions across an open forum where anyone who can use Google and knows my name will find it scares me just as much as any one of the pages in my choose-your-own-adventure book.

Between you and me and the Internet, I want to move to the city with you so I can see the skyscrapers in the reflection of your glasses.  I want to find that greasy spoon diner where we can go for breakfast every week and where the coffee tastes like mud, but you drink it anyway, and I make fun of you because tea is so much better.  Or hot chocolate.  I want to curl up on a threadbare couch with barely any cushion to it and sleep curled up in your arms because it's safest there.

Between you and me and the Internet, I want to spend days going through every single one of my Poem-A-Days and tack them all over our walls just so I can see if they'd be good for wallpaper.  I want to read your poetry all the time or at least keep it in my purse for rainy days.  I want to drive you to work and drop you off on the corner and do circles around the block until I need to pick you up again.  I want desperately to make out on public transportation and claim no regrets because I don't think I could ever be ashamed of that.

Between you and me and the Internet, I hate the carpet in your basement, or at least I don't like it as much as you seem to, but I would be willing to sit on that floor if it meant sitting with you.

Between you and me and the Internet, I love you like mad and all it takes is a Facebook post to make it official.

Thank you to Sunday Scribblings for the prompt: Between You and Me.

Waiting by the Phone

"I'll call you on Monday," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets along with the little slip of paper that held her phone number.  With that, he walked away in his stolen bowling shoes.

That was 48 hours ago.

On Monday, Jenny woke up at dawn because of the nerves.  The sun slanted through her bedroom window, hitting her strategically in the eye as if it had planned its intrusion into her sleep.  Of course, the sun didn't really much care whether Jenny was awake or sleeping in someone else's bed, it was going to shine wherever it damn well pleased.  Anyway, when Jenny woke up, her tummy was doing somersaults up and down her middle so she held it steady as she brushed her teeth and took a shower.

Jenny wasn't much of a breakfast eater, but when her mother slid a plate of bacon and eggs onto the table in front of her, she couldn't very well say no.

"So what are you going to do today, Jenny?" her mother asked, cocking a hip as she fried up some eggs for Jenny's father who liked his eggs runny, a preference that his wife never fully understood.

"Oh, this and that.  I think I'm just going to hang out here for a while, I need some time to recharge," Jenny said, waving her fork around vaguely as if indicating some abstract plans she may have in the near future.  And that was the end of her mother's questioning.  One simple question, and Jenny was left to shovel scrambled eggs and bacon into her minty toothbrushed mouth.  Oh well.

Once Jenny's mother was safely off to work and Jenny's father was locked up in his office where he was working on his novel, Jenny dragged a dining room chair to the wall next to the phone.  The family phone was practically a museum piece, one of those plastic wall hanging ones.  Luckily they had upgraded from the rotary number dial, but it still hung on the wall, the listening and talking piece chained to the wall piece by a stretchy curly cord.

This was the phone number that Jenny had given the boy.  Something had lapsed in her brain, and she had forgotten that she owned a cell phone, so texting and calling on that was out.  Oops.  If she had told her mother this predicament, her mother would have been astounded that Jenny could be so stupid considering her phone was practically surgically attached to her hand at all times while she texted the day away.  Basically her mother would have marveled at Jenny's idiocy, and it would have been completely warranted.

Jenny could feel the chairs's cushion warming underneath her butt.  She crossed her arms and stared at the phone, pausing to check the time on the microwave clock.  8:00 AM.  Well, it was summer, so he was probably only getting up just now.  That gave him to climb out of bed...brush his teeth...maybe run damp hands through his bed head, and call...NOW!

The phone remained still, hanging from the cradle on the wall.

8:02 AM.

Maybe he showered instead of damp hand combing.  So he'd have to take off his pajamas and run the water so it got warm, then climb into the shower...wash his hair and all the clever little places that contained odors...then he had to get out of the shower...dry off...go back to his room and get dressed.  Then maybe he combed his hair.

8:22 AM.  The phone didn't ring.

Maybe he ate breakfast first.  And when he ate breakfast, he made himself a really elaborate breakfast with freshly squeezed orange juice, French toast, eggs, bacon AND sausage.  He was a teenage boy, it was morning, and he was hungry.  So he needed to make this breakfast himself after feeding the dog.  Then he'd set up a table setting with a fresh flower that he had to go out into the backyard to retrieve.  And because he was a good son and didn't want to put his mother out, he would clean his own dishes.  By hand.  And after all that he would have to dry all his dishes and put them away too.

9:14 AM.  Nothing.

Jenny rocked back on the dining room chair's back legs, thinking.  What else would he have to do outside of call her?  Wasn't he wondering what she was thinking just as much as she was wondering what he was thinking?  I mean, was he upset that his school's football team had lost and her's had won?  Wasn't he thinking that he wanted another custom made hot dog from her school's free hot dog stand?  Jenny had been absolutely certain that they had connected.  They shared the same disdain for ketchup on hot dogs and had given his best friend a hard time about including ketchup in the "everything" on his dog.  They had all laughed and he had looked at her and smiled.  She could remember just about everything that he had said that night, and she sat next to the phone while she analyzed every pause, glance, and word.

9:52 AM.  Nada.

Jenny let out a sigh.  Maybe he was cleaning his room?  He was a boy.  Unlikely.  Maybe she needed to clean her room?  No.  She couldn't allow the chance of him having to leave a message on the family answering machine.  She would never hear the end of it if that happened.  Jenny bit her lip thoughtfully, staring even more intently at the piece of plastic that was quickly becoming more of an enemy than she ever could have previously imagined.  If he didn't call in the next ten minutes, she would go to the mall with Stacy. Ten minutes.  He had ten minutes to call.

10:02 AM.  Nope.

Jenny took a breath, steeling herself.  She pulled herself up off the dining room chair, peeling her pajama pants off the chair's cushion and shuffling back to her room to get dressed and brush her teeth again.  She fluffed her hair, grabbed her purse and her cell phone.  As she headed out the front door, Jenny dialed Stacy.

10:41 AM.  The phone rang.

"I'm tired of waiting by the phone, and second-guessing what a guy says and trusting someone not to hurt me.  Again.  I've been storming the relationship castle for fifteen years, and I still don't have my prince.  I've got a bunch of battle scars from the field and I want to go home and nurse my wounds.  I don't want to fight anymore."

- Kim Gruenenfelder

My Life as a Poet

So this morning I saw on my blog feed list thing that Poets United has a feature called "Life of a Poet."  Though this is an interview type feature, I decided that I should do something similar for my blog and talk about what I'd like my life to look like if I was just a poet.  Here goes some fictional imagining.

If I was a poet and nothing else, I would live in a city.  Probably Chicago because I don't think I could get myself to move to New York, just because it's a matter of principle that I should display disdain toward the "big apple."  I would live in a tiny apartment with one bedroom and a drippy ceiling in the kitchen.  My living room window would look out at a tree-lined one-way street.  I would have to sleep on a double bed because anything bigger wouldn't fit in my bedroom comfortably, and I would have an east facing window so the sun will slant over my face and wake me up when the heat gets uncomfortable over my eyelids.

In the morning I'll wake up and pull on whatever t-shirt and pants are within arm's reach.  I'll pull my hair up and off my face by twisting it up with a pen.  I'll wear my glasses, of course, and pull my beat up messenger bag that's already packed and walk out the door, taking to the sidewalk.  The walk will always be nice, even if it's raining because the people I'll pass will be friendly enough to smile and sometimes stop to chat, but not that weird middle ground where you just mumble "hi" and keep walking.  They'll all understand that when they ask "how are you?" I will answer honestly and sometimes at length.  And that I'll really care when I ask the same question back.

I'll go to my favorite little coffee shop where I'll eat a blueberry muffin and drink a mug of hot chocolate every morning, but sometimes I'll shake things up and drink chai or order a cinnomon roll or maybe a freshly baked croissant.  I'll sit at the same table every morning and all of the employees of the coffee shop will know who I am, even the owner will come over to say hello.  I'd have the same tattered notebook every morning, maybe it'll be leather bound or maybe it'll be a composition notebook that's frayed around the edges of the cardboard cover.  I would write with a Bic crystal pen because fancy pens would just get smashed in my bag.  Visitors to the coffee shop would muse about what I was writing, and they would even make up stories about what they thought I was writing, some of the regulars will know my name, but will be too bashful to talk to me.

After breakfast, I would probably wander the streets looking around and window shopping.  I'll take a different route every morning.  Maybe I'll even ride the El all day one day.  I'll spend time in the museums, taking notes on things that I learn, and visiting some exhibits so often that I memorize what the little placards say.  I'll sit on a corner of State street and watch the shoppers, taking special note of who frequents which stores and following around the most interesting people.  I'll go to a tourist spot and observe non-Chicago-natives.  On nice days I'll even visit the beach and draw sketches of pigeons and waves and maybe some stick figure sun bathers.

I'll eat a proper lunch at a small sandwich shop or a diner that I pass on my wanderings.  It'll be a surprise every day, and I'll try whatever the man at the counter suggests even if it features sauer kraut because lunch should be spontaneous.  I'll sit in a park and eat whatever I bought and skip rocks in fountains.

In the afternoon I'll run errands.  Pick up dry cleaning if I have it, buy another gallon of milk because I finished off the last of it at midnight the night before, replenish my stock of honey sesame sticks because I always manage to run out at the least convenient times, and maybe meet up with a friend for coffee.  By this time I'll probably drink coffee because I'll be all grown up.  I'll listen to speakers and go to free events mostly because I won't have any money to spare, but also because I'll want to keep learning forever.

In the evening I'll read with a glass of wine under the glow of a single reading lamp.  The rest of the room will be hidden in shadow.  I'll eat dinner on my own and maybe dance a little while I'm making it.  And after watching a movie or a random television show on my TV that has a dysfunctional color tube or whatever, I'll settle into bed to cuddle and fall asleep.

"A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman."

- Wallace Stevens

The Notebook (but not the one you're thinking)

Today I thought I'd free write based on a first line that I had to write for my fiction class.

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The notebook was wedged between two editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica and it looked like it hadn't moved until years.  Until now.  I didn't even notice it until I pulled an encyclopedia off the shelf and it attacked me.  When I say "it," I mean the notebook.  It propelled itself at my face and the corner hit me square in my forehead.  No doubt I would have a bruise between my eyes.

Rubbing the spot, I bent down to pick up my assailant, taking special note of the marbled cover.  It was a classic Mead composition book that was worn around the edges.  The binding seemed to be detaching itself from the cover and the majority of the pages were covered in a spidery spindly handwriting.  It looked like a line of spiders had been smashed between the pages, and on nearly every page.

I'm not one to intrude upon a person's personal affairs, but when faced with a notebook that was in a public library, I could definitely argue that it was public property.  At this point, I could consider this notebook just another library book.  Public property.  So basically, I was completely within my rights when I opened it and read a couple pages.

It was good stuff.  As it turns out, it was a personal journal about someone's life.  Some girl talking about her break up with some guy and how she was coping.  There were even a couple of really good lines describing her make outs with various men in bars.  And every now and again there were sections where she made out with other women.  Apparently this writer was a wild woman after she got rid of that ball and chain of hers.  But she kept going back to thinking about her old guy.  When she had been having so much fun with her random hook-ups and nights out with the girls, she kept thinking about the guy.

I sat down on the floor of the aisle, leaning up against one of the bookshelves.  Barely anyone came down this aisle, so it wasn't like I'd be in the way.  I felt like I should have had a bowl of popcorn to go with this fascinating read.  The writer was starting to have difficulty with her job when I realized that I should probably get home before my roommate started calling the cops and my parents (in that order) to report that I was missing.  I shoved the notebook into my bag and bustled out of the library, walking the half a mile to my apartment.  At least back home I could have some of that popcorn.

"You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas.  I've only ever had one."

- Albert Einstein

Wednesday it was a revolver

For my fiction class, we're required to write five openings for pieces of fiction and post them on our class blog.  I'm really impressed by some of the stuff we come up with, because I know if I had to come up with a story that belongs to my opening, I wouldn't know what I was writing.  Mostly because I know that it's just an opening, so I can do whatever craziness I want and I don't actually have to commit to it.  I was going to steal an opening from one of my classmates to write this blog post, but then I thought that might be creatively immoral, so instead I'm using one of my own lines.  Yay free writing!

On another note, Poem-a-Day March is in the planning stages.  I've asked my good friend Claire of Musings of a Rhythm Junkie to be my Poem Keeper for the month, and she's going to set me a challenge akin to my "love poem a week" challenge for February.  I'm really excited because it should be a good month!

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Monday it was roses, Tuesday it was chocolates, Wednesday it was a revolver.  The boxes just showed up on Frank's doorstep with no explanation, stamp or return address.  He flattered himself to believe that they came from a secret admirer, but he would have hoped that she would reveal herself by now.

It had been three days and the most unexpected gift arrived on Frank's doorstep.  Packed in with those foam peanuts and some stray Easter grass was this old-time revolver.  Fully loaded.  No note, no nothing, just like the roses and the chocolates from the previous days.  Frank replaced the revolver in its nest and crossed to the front window, parting the curtains just enough to peek down the street.  Nothing unusual or out of place, just the neighbor kids playing in a sprinkler out on their front lawn.  And Mr. Perkins sitting on his front porch like he did every evening in July, paying homage to an older time when porch sitting was a pastime.

"What the hell..." Frank grumbled under his breath, lumbering back to the box on his kitchen table.  He sunk his hands in amongst (don't you dare tell me that isn't a word, Chrome, you know damn well it is) the packing peanuts and felt around for anything he might have missed.  His knuckles bumped against the cold metal of the revolver as he felt around on the bottom of the box where something smooth separated him from the divide between layers of cardboard.  Latching on to it, Frank brought the thing out into the light.

The thing just happened to be an envelope, making Wednesday's delivery starkly different from Monday's and Tuesday's.  The envelope held no markings, no postage, no address, except it was sealed with a tri-colored fleur-de-lis.  It looked like it had been made with a rubber stamp, the colors blending in to each other.  Frank tore open the envelope and pulled out the card, reading the single word of the message written upon it in a sophisticated script:  "Run."

Frank's eyebrows furrowed, and it almost looked as if he was about to take the message seriously and run.  His eyes held a terror he hadn't felt since he had broken up with his homicidal girlfriend for the last time, and his body tensed.  But just at the moment when it seemed like Frank would jump through his front window and start a mad spring to Somewhere Else, the envelope and the card fell from his hand.

"Pssh."  Frank let the air out of his mouth, looking at the card skeptically as if the card really thought he would take it seriously.

He stuck a cigarette between his lips and raised his lighter to the tip when there was a knock on the door.  For a brief moment, Frank regretted not listening to the card.  The moment immediately following that one brief moment told Frank that he was ridiculous.  Just as a precaution, Frank picked up the revolver and held it out in front of him as he turned the doorknob and wrenched open his front door.

The woman standing on his doorstep looked at the revolver and was unimpressed.  She didn't even flinch.  "What's that, a museum piece?"  She laughed at her own joke and sidled around Frank and into the house.

The Rainmaker

It always sounded like thunder whenever anyone walked down this particular hallway.  Other meteorological beings liked to joke that the thunder was the sound made when the angels went bowling up in heaven, but all the children knew where the thunder actually came from.  And it was mostly because Reyes had butterfingers.

Reyes was the only one who worked in the Rain Lab, which was a good thing because chances were that no one would be able to work with him as he rushed from station to station in the small gray-painted room.  There was one window, and that was a false one made by Reyes' niece.  It was made out of paper cut and glued together and covered in glitter, showing the world as it would have been outside.  A rolling hill and a bright yellow sun which contrasted Reyes' usual frantic demeanor.

The Rain Lab was a curious place.  Three out of the four walls were covered from floor to ceiling with strange and complicated looking machinery made up of brightly colored knobs and buttons and cranks and switches. The fourth wall was a large shelving unit.  Each shelf was packed with boxes of varying sizes.  Shoeboxes, little jewelry boxes, and some the same size as a small person, and each box had a little yellow tag hanging off of them with printed descriptions of the contents.  One larger box was labelled "monsoon" and nothing else.  In the center of the room there was a hexagon-shaped console of sorts with a periscope attached to the outer bars of the console.  This periscope was lowered rather than raised so the Rainmaker could see the results of his work.  And I say "his" because the Rainmaker position had run in the male line of Reyes' family for about six generations now, so it was almost always assumed that the Rainmaker would be a man.  Anyway...

Today Reyes was in the process of making a snow storm for the Midwest region of the United States.  After turning a couple knobs and blowing a whistle or two, it seemed as if everything was going smoothly.  Reyes ran a hand through his sandy brown hair, ruffling it absentmindedly as he puzzled out what to do next.  He'd been perfecting this snowstorm for about a week now, and he wanted to have it ready for the Christmas holiday, but it just wasn't looking too great at the moment.  Reyes' stormy gray eyes found the piece of loose leaf paper sitting on the center console, a letter from a little girl in Chicago asking for a White Christmas.  And not just the Bing Crosby movie.  Picking it up, Reyes skimmed the scrawly writing again in search of some clue that would help him finish up this picturesque snow storm.

"And it would be really great if the snow would sparkle in the moonlight.  Okay, thanks!"

Sparkle.  Reyes leaned up against the center console and stared off at the window his niece had made for him.  The carefully cut rays of the sun, the crayon smudges that made up the hills and the glitter everywhere.  Glitter.  Reyes leapt to his feet (don't give me that, Google Chrome, you know "leapt" is a word...) as if something had bit him and he tore the handmade window off the wall, scraping some of the glitter into his palm.

"This should do the trick!" he announced to no one in particular as he scrambled across the room to a suction pipe under which he held his glitter speckled palm.  The pipe sucked up the glitter and the machine swallowed the little specks, making a satisfying clunking sound as it churned out a quality snowstorm into a milkcrate sized box.  Reyes grinned and packaged up the storm, labeling it for Christmas Eve before settling down to enjoy a nice cup of hot chocolate after a hard day's work.

"I wonder what it's like to be the rainmaker.

I wonder what it's like to know that I make the rain.

I'd store it in boxes with little yellow tags on every one.

And you can come see them when I'm...done..."

- Matchbox 20 "Real World"

Eyes on the 30th

Today is September 30th, which means a number of slightly significant things:
1. It's the end of my first full month of my senior year.  Which is not okay for several reasons, but we're not going to talk about that.
2. It's the end of the month, which means I have to make a new bulletin board for October.  Luckily, I was struck by inspiration and I made a bulletin board about Banned Books Week (which ends tomorrow, but whatever).  It's a pretty awesome board, if I do say so myself.
3. Today is the last day of Poem-a-Day September.

So this September I successfully wrote one poem each day.  Surprising, because my commitment to projects is shakey (as demonstrated by my commitment to writing a daily blog post...), but as of tomorrow I will be in the possession of 30 new original poems by me.  Rough drafts, of course, but that's a pretty decent number.

It has been suggested to me by a couple people that I continue my poem-a-day project for an entire year.  This suggestion intrigues me because the idea of having a whole 366 (because 2012 is a leap year) poems by next September is a really interesting concept.  Just the thought of having 366 of anything is strange to me.  366 rough drafts of 366 different poems.  I don't even know if I know enough words to fill up that many pages.  Plus if I continue my habit of writing my poems during my business classes, my grades may not like me very much.  This idea is also daunting just because I'm not sure I have enough ideas for all that considering when I look back at a couple days in September, I used itunes to write poems for me.  It got that bad one day.  Bright side, I struggled through it and wrote something anyway.  I'm wondering if I take the challenge...would my poetry get any better?  Because I wonder if I just keep writing daily, won't I just be stuck in the same mindset over and over again and write the same quality poetry?  As if I'll be stuck in the same spot writing-wise.  Because how can I really get better if I don't let myself revise?  Then again, if I let myself revise right away, that probably wouldn't make Writer Brianna feel much better.  Anyway.  It's something to think about.

---------------------------------------------Creativity Time-------------------------------------------------

Choose one of your physical features and write about how you can change or disguise that feature. (Thanks, http://creativewritingprompts.com/)

Eyes.
I have green eyes.  I don't care what anyone tells me, they're green.  If you choose to argue with me, I will just stomp my foot and insist that they're green.  Anyone who says that my eyes are blue will receive the silent treatment for a good day or so.  I don't really time it, but they would deserve it.

I can easily disguise my green eyes with contacts.  No one would suspect it either because they all expect me to have blue eyes anyway.  So I can wear blue contacts.  Or maybe brown, that would throw everyone off.  Then there's also the fairly simple disguise of mirrored sunglasses.  Or my everyday glasses, because how many people really look past someone's first set of eyes anyway?  And changing my eyes?  Well, they can dye eyes in the Emerald City, so why not in real life?  I feel like this should be something that goes along with laser eye surgery.

It's all about misdirection.  If I wear something particularly outrageous, no one's going to notice the color of my eyes.  I'm thinking feathers and sequins should do the trick.  There's also the "Hey look!  What's that over there?!" misdirection trick.  I have a feeling that everyone around me will fall for that one.  I know I would...

"The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake."

- Leonardo da Vinci

Forget You?

"The calendar says March 10th, but the last day you remember is March 1st."  (Thank you, Twitter!)

I woke up on someone's couch.  It was this squat puke green number with the stuffing oozing out of one of the arms and I was sprawled out across it.  I blinked a couple times in an attempt to get my bearings right up until I realized that my glasses weren't jammed onto my face in their usual position.  As I sat up, the room swayed around me.  I closed my eyes and felt around on the floor next to the couch for my glasses, coming upon them only after nudging aside what I hoped was a dog's chew toy.

Once my glasses were in place, it was much easier to get a handle on where I could possibly be.  One side of the room was made up entirely of very dirty windows that looked out on a rusted metal fire escape.  The walls of the room were plastered with old movie posters and torn up wallpaper.

"Where...am I?" I croaked, discovering only then my sore throat and the fact that I must not have spoken in a good amount of time.

It was then when I saw the day-by-day calendar lying on the coffee table next to my makeshift bed.  March 10th.  March 10th?  That couldn't possibly be right.  It had to be some sort of joke.  I grabbed my hair and squeezed my eyes shut trying to remember the last date I could.

March 1st.  Again.  It couldn't be right.  March 1st.  My best friend's birthday.  What had we done that night?

I wrenched my eyes open and surveyed my surroundings again.  Same movie posters, same torn wallpaper, same dirty windows, and a half empty coffee mug on the table near the calendar.  Non-descript, and virtually harmless.  Hopefully.  I examined my arms, looking for some sign that I had been abducted or kidnapped or beaten brutally and then sent into a nine day coma.  No luck.  I did find a stamp on my hand in the shape of a fleur-de-lis, but that could be from anything, right?  I searched the pockets of my jeans and found my cell phone (dead), a wad of singles, a crushed gum wrapper, a penny, and an arcade token.  Leaving me with...no indication as to what I had done nine days ago or what I was doing here right now.

And leaving me essentially...at a loss.

That is, until there was a rattling at the door.  Someone stuck a key into the door and turned it, allowing them entrance into whatever prison or haven this might be for me.  I opted for the most logical method of defense: playing dead.  I flung myself back across the rundown couch and promptly shut my eyes, realizing almost too late that I was still wearing my glasses, giving me about a half a second to throw them onto the coffee table and return to my sleeping position before the stranger came walking towards me.  I froze, expecting the person to turn and walk away at any moment, but I could hear them coming closer until they were kneeling on the floor next to me.  I felt gentle fingers brushing the hair off my face and heard an exhale of breath before they stood and retreated, leaving me where I was.  I could hear the stranger rummaging about in one of the connected rooms, but they collected whatever it was they meant to get and left without a word (which makes sense considering they believed me to be asleep.  Or dead...).

Once I heard the lock click, I bolted from the couch, grabbing my glasses as I set off to explore this place where I had woken up after days of whatever it was.  The kitchen was just as sad as the living room where I had awoken, with dirty dishes in the sink and very small amounts of food in the refrigerator.  There was only one bedroom which was dark, but fairly neat.  The bathroom I left for last because I figured it would be the most revealing.  And I was right.  When I opened up the medicine cabinet, I found the usual aspirin and Band-Aids, but I also found a single prescription bottle made out for Keri Kalman (thank you, random name generator...) as well as nail polish remover and a modest collection of earrings.

So I had been kidnapped by a woman.  Okay.  I could deal with this.  I was sure I could take her.
But then there was that hair brushing thing.  And she took care of my glasses.  No kidnapper would be that worried about their prisoner.  Unless they wanted their prisoner for other things that they needed to be kept alive for...like ransom...or being sold into slavery.  I wasn't sure my parents would pay a ransom, and slavery was out of the question, so my only conclusion was that I would have to escape.  Unless this Keri Kalman had saved me from something worse.  The apartment was modest, and may have looked rundown, but all signs pointed to the resident being good-hearted or at least having good taste in movies.

March 1st.  March 1st...it was Marcella's 21st birthday.  We thought we'd go out with some friends and make a tour of the bars and clubs in town.  Your average 21st birthday celebration.  We had about three of mine and Marcella's mutual friends with us, and we had hopped three bars.  We were feeling a little tipsy by this point.  It was my idea to check out this new club in town...

"Come on, guys, it'll be fun," I giggled, grabbing Marcella's hand and making my best puppy dog eyes at her.  "Marcie...pleeeeaaaaase?"


Marcella was willing to do just about anything at that point, but our friends decided that it was high time that they went home.


"Fine!" I called after them, my interest turning swiftly back to the peeling paint on the front of the new club's door.  You would think that they would repaint before opening said door for business, but apparently not.


I dragged Marcella inside only to discover that the club was dark, the only light coming from the green strobe light at the front of the place where the DJ was playing some strange music that seemed to combine an Irish jig with your typical rap beat.  I may have been further gone than I thought at the time, but I could have sworn that I saw a guy with goat legs approach me and Marcella, shoving a Solo cup of some liquid into my hands and taking Marcella out onto the dance floor.  I looked down at the cup that I had taken out of reflex and bent my head to sniff the liquid.  It smelled like a mix between honey and roses, and the second the scent hit my nostrils, it was all I could do to keep myself from drinking it all in a single gulp.  The substance called to me.  "Drink me!"  It was like the bottle from Alice in Wonderland had a voice and was conspiring against me to be rude to this random guy.  But he and Marcella were halfway across the dance floor and it didn't look like they were coming back anytime soon.  Why not?  "Just a sip" turned into "finishing it off" and then I was being handed another cup by hands I didn't recognize.  By this time Marcella and the guy were nowhere in sight.  The last thing I remembered was throwing my third cup of the same sweet liquid into a trash can and giggling maniacally as I climbed up onto the bar...

I Am Your Master...

Your best friend's exotic pet adopts you as his real master.
(I would like to take a moment and thank Twitter for this prompt.  Well, not Twitter as a complete entity, but the place where I can get writing prompts on Twitter.  You know what I mean...)


I never really questioned why Courtney had a lemur.  It was just her pet.  She got it from some auction that her school had to benefit charity, and when I heard about it, I thought, "Hey cool!  That's awesome, they're auctioning off a lemur for charity!  That's great!"  It never really struck me as odd that it might take a little while to house train said lemur.

This is a picture of Orlando the lemur.  Found on Google.

She named the lemur "Orlando" for reasons unknown, and I came over nearly every day to help her train the thing.  And the thing about lemurs is that they're very stubborn.  Every time I put Orlando down into the litter box, he would cling to my arm like a small child.  Which I'm sure is endearing at appropriate moments, but when you know this lemur has a full bladder and is just waiting to pee on you...not a very good time to be clung to.  Because I don't want to be peed on.


All throughout the training process, I was forced to do most of the work because Courtney didn't want Orlando to start hating her or anything.  So I figured, "Why not?  I'm never going to see the thing again, I can just train it and leave."  Wrong.  So wrong.  In fact, just to illustrate how very wrong I was...Orlando laid a trap for me.  I kid you not, he strung up one of those tiger traps underneath the rug before you get to the door, and once I stepped on it, it pulled me up and I was just hanging up there in a net.  And then Orlando just stared at me in awe, probably jeering at me with his little orange lemur eyes.


But it wasn't a jeer that I saw in Orlando's eyes.  Oh no.  It was affection.  And my brain said, "Whaaaat?"  Not only had I just been prevented from leaving my friend's house, but a lemur was now holding me captive because he liked me?  I wasn't sure how to feel about it at all, but Orlando's brought me fruit and everything since I've been here in the net, and things are going pretty well...he just doesn't know about my Swiss army knife...

Window Eyes?

"Eyes are the windows to the soul."

I can't help but wonder about this.  First of all, there are a couple literal problems with that metaphor or saying, or whatever you call it.  Well, you can't see through eyes, whereas you can see through a window.  Because it's made of glass and clear.  Also, I wonder what you would see if you actually could see a person's soul through their eyes.  What does a soul look like, anyway?

I'm inclined to say that a soul looks like a flowy silvery type thing.  That is, if you're a good person.  If you're not, it would probably have some weight to it.  But because souls can fly, they definitely need to look not-too-solid.  In fact, it would probably make things in Harry Potter difficult if souls were inanimate objects.  Though that's interesting to think about, I'm not sure how I would feel if someone lost that object.  What if you could wear your soul on a necklace and it broke?  What then?

So eyes.  If they're the window to the soul, does that make our bodies houses?  Does the soul live with other things?  I can imagine the soul partying it up with some random white blood cells (which I really wanted to call "hemoglobin" right now, but I'm 99% certain that that would be wrong).  Or maybe the soul gets along better with "the mind."

Which brings up another interesting thought.  The mind is usually attributed to being stored in one's head, so why is it that the eyes are the windows to the soul?  [This is where I start making things up.]  This reminds me of the fact that back in the day (which is a precise moment in time, I know it) people used to believe that the soul was stored in a person's head and a person's mind was actually somewhere else.  Or maybe they believed that the soul and the mind were the same thing.  Which is something else entirely, but interesting nonetheless.

Eyes.  What's interesting about eyes is that if you look close enough, or let your eyes unfocus when you're looking at someone else's eyes, you can see the reflection of what they're seeing on the surface of their eyes.  I may be making that up too, but I know it works with sunglasses, so why not eyeballs too?  So that prompts the question (it doesn't beg the question because this website would get mad at me if I said that it did: http://begthequestion.info/  Yeah, I found that site on Google) that maybe what a person's soul looks like at any given moment is what they're seeing at that time.  Do the things around us reflect what's kept inside us?  I mean, I don't necessarily think that Jacques reflects my spleen, but maybe it has something (if only a little bit) to do with my soul or my mind.  I'm not really sure.

Plus, there are all these different literal and figurative and metaphorical meanings or definitions of the word "see," because what is it that we're actually seeing when we're looking at someone's eyes.  We're seeing color and an iris and some whites of the eyes.  But what we see is colored by our interpretation, so if we believe that we're looking into the other person's soul, then that's what we see.  But then does that mean that we define the souls of other people?  You know, when you see someone with really cold eyes and you say, "That person looks evil," does that mean that their soul is evil?  Or is it really just your subjective interpretation of what their eyes look like?  Besides, it doesn't seem right to judge someone based on their eye color, it's like judging someone based on their hair color.  Or the length of their toes.  And all of those are completely invalid except for the toe one because people with short toes are weird.

"Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot.  In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you."

- Oscar Wilde

Little Shop

[I'm lazy, so I'm not doing Hitchkratz's Guide to the Galaxy today.  And I take no credit for this idea, merely the execution of it.]

A young girl with golden blonde hair cropped closely against her head walked the damp sidewalk, clutching a wrinkled Post-It between her fingers.  Written on the Post-It were directions to an address that was scribbled along the bottom edge of the little square.  Having no idea where she was headed, the girl followed the directions as best she could through unfamiliar neighborhoods until she reached a small shop sandwiched between two tall apartment buildings.

"This is it?" she mumbled to herself, tilting her head backwards to see the top of the apartment buildings.  They had at least six stories worth of height on the shop that stood between them.

The shop itself looked a little squished, exactly how someone would imagine a piece of garlic would look just before being smashed in a garlic press.  The door was painted a particularly vivid shade of green, and the shutters on the two front windows were painted to match.

The girl approached the door hesitantly, putting her hand on the doorknob and surveying her surroundings before resolving to open the door.  Somewhere near the back of the shop, a bell rang, though it didn't seem to be connected to anything.

The inside of the shop seemed packed like a bag of Halloween candy with all manner of strange looking objects that the girl couldn't identify.  Luckily, the shop's proprietor was an older gentleman with cobwebby wisps of white hair attached to his scalp and a jack-o-lantern grin.

"Can I help you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

The girl was taken aback for a moment, but she managed to gather her wits about her.  Running a hand through her hair, the girl said, "I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for.  What have you got?"

The old man smiled kindly and opened up a glass front case behind the front counter of the shop.  Reaching in, he pulled out what could only be described as a pom-pom.  It was fuzzy around the edges, and a fetching shade of pale pink.  "This one isn't quite developed yet, still a bit fuzzy, but it's a good starter."

What did I get myself into? The girl nodded slowly.

[Posting for the sake of posting right now, but there will be more and better additions when I'm not sleepy.  Ready?  GO!]