Unicorns, Rainbows, and Misery

The First Week

Very first week of classes, and we got a snow day. That's not even fair.

It's too soon to say if I'm going to enjoy the year or not. My initial impressions are that I'm probably going to enjoy two of my classes, two more will be pretty easy, and the last two I'll actually have to work. I go into more detail over here, but I'm tentatively prepared to say that it will be a happier semester than the last one.

If nothing else, I'm already in love with my Independent Study. I may end up on the radio before the semester is over I'll be writing a few scripts and have been offered the chance to read one of them. I just checked out a book by one of the people I'm researching as a jump start of sorts - if I like it, then I'll probably start my project with William Maxwell. I'm only a chapter in and  while I'm not into the plot yet, I really do enjoy the language and style.

At home, I've been having a ton of connectivity issues with my Internet. They sent a technician out here with a new modem, and that didn't fix the problem. It's not in my house (my grandfather is an electrician - we would know if the problem originated in our wires), and I don't think it's our service provider because we've had the problem longer than we've had them. I can only conclude that there's a faulty line somewhere.

It's been wrecking hell with my DLD articles, that's for sure >.> And it bothers me that I don't have a stable connection to do my homework on. It doesn't look like I can do anything about it though. Just keep calling every time the line goes down. If I don't answer a message for a while, that's probably why. You may consider yourselves forewarned

Personal Bits

Yesterday, my cat discovered my favorite Christmas present; an owl hat with little ears on the top and big eyes. He's terrified of it. I mean, he flipped his lid when he finally noticed it sitting on the handle of the exercise bike. Because I am a terrible person, I took it off and shook it at him a little. He fell off the bed in his haste to get away.

Today I put it on to see if that got the same reaction. It did not. He is perfectly fine with the sight of an owl eating my head, but not with a lumpy bundle of yarn with eyes on it.

Also yesterday; I can't recall how we got into this conversation, but Dr. Minnick starts mock-writing/ narrating my biography for me. And if I ever do publish this book of mine, the line he gave me is so going into the "About the Author" page:

"I like unicorns, rainbows, and misery."

Doesn't that just sum up everything about my writing?

Stara-Aquila informed me that her Pay it Forward gift arrived today. That leaves Creativity-Squared, Phaldus, ozzla, and travelgirlxx. I'll get there when I get there

Around dA

The Saturday Spotlight is upon the newly-ticked OfOneSoul!

DailyLitDeviations is hosting a Colors Contest. Deadline is February 28th.

This is pretty cool and you should all check it out and leave reviews of your favorite dA authors I'll be posting a few later on down the line so that I can add features to my reviews.

Alternate Universe Contest. I haven't decided if I want to hop on this bandwagon or not. If I do though, it will likely be with Autumn and Lawrence.

I've got some spare time this weekend, so if there's anything you'd like to hear read, I'd love to see it and submit it to Elocutionists. Things seem a bit slow over there.

Speaking of, I'm considering doing a little workshop on the "rules" of poetry, using audio recordings to illustrate the different types of pauses created by punctuation. Yes? No?

And don't foget to keep sending me DLD Suggestions! This is even more important because my Internet keeps breaking on me and that makes it very difficult to search for new pieces on my own.

And one more DLD-related thing; if you or someone you know has been a DLD recipient and is interested in taking part of our Saturday Spotlight interview, please feel free to let me know. The last few names I've contacted never responded and I'm not allowed to make up answers If you're genuinely interested and will respond to the questions in a timely manner, then I've got a few for you.

Features and Reviews

I mentioned it in one of my bullet points up there, but here's a better explanation. The Review Project isn't about commenting on a specific piece, but on a writer as a whole. Who they are, their collective style. Admittedly, I seem to like individual pieces more than entire galleries, but there are some names out there I know well enough as writers to leave a few words:

aprilwednesday

Like her name, aprilwednesday's work is charming and delightful. Even when it's sad, it's like one of those cute little rain clouds with an unhappy face. This is the sort of writing you find on faded letters in a forgotten attic on top of somebodies old wedding dress.

the sepia selfShe always did love the idea of coffee - the smell of it, the feel of it, the way it made her seem sophisticated whenever she made it. She loved the way it looked when the milk made patterns in the steaming sepia liquid before disappearing into the foam.
But she hated the taste.
And it was the same with cigarettes. She always wanted to be a smoker, to carry fancy cigarettes and fancier lighters and to be able to 'pop out for a smoke', but, as hard as she tried to force the addiction, she got nothing from cigarettes except a pounding headache and the urge to never touch them again.
And oh, how she wanted to go to parties. She wanted to sip champagne and wear slinky black dresses and be asked to dance by talldarkhandsome young men and they'd twirl the night away to smooth jazz, played live of course, and she would have legions of admirers after her, begging for her hand, but she'd turn them all down with a tinkling laugh because who would ever want to settle down when they had a l morningssunday.
the croissant crumbles in my fingers
buttery flakes drift towards mismatched
china
and your lips are stained with
strawberry jam.
monday.
sleep clings to your eyes
like a shadow
and i watch you breathe, while
i trace your collarbone with
tired fingers.
tuesday.
we wake before the alarm
and count how many times the
neighbor's dog barks
before she finally lets him in.
your soft laugh blends perfectly into
the early morning sun.
wednesday.
your fingers trace the curve
of my spine
the old window rattles
in the wind
and i press my cold toes against your leg.
thursday.
half asleep
i mumble how the faded, flowery wallpaper
looks pretty in the sun.
you tell me i look prettier.
friday.
i tickle your cheek with my eyelashes
and make my fingers do
ski jumps
off your nose
and wonder out loud why
the room smells like oranges
[you tell me you ate some
         for a midnight snack.]
saturday.
linen wanderlustshe was a  s e v e n t e e n  year old girl from nowhere [or was it everywhere?] with dark hair and long eyelashes and skin that was always pale white. when she was young she played in the poppy fields of greece and when she got older her tongue started yearning to speak italian and russian so that she could travel to other far off places.
she was born on a friday between two ice storms, and the first word she ever heard was  b e a u t y. her mama told her that when she first opened her dark blue eyes, her pupil was surrounded by a ring of pure white. the blue stayed but the white turned to green [and from then on her eyes were always her favorite feature].
she always had nightmares, never good dreams, but maybe that's because she could never stop  d r e a m i n g  with her eyes open.  all she ever wanted was dirt roads and stars and mud under her fingernails.
[maybe one day, when she's older, she'll take a crinkly old map and

BeyondJen

BeyondJen's work has this soft edge to it that I don't really know how to verbalize. I believe I once compared it to winter – something about her words and poetry especially leaves me feeling faintly cold even as they whisper into my ear.

PlowIt's finally snowing again,
blankets of peace falling
with a freshness that lacks innocence.
Nearly forgotten, they're here as expected,
clearing the streets,
trying to push aside all the worry
that makes things unsafe, but
the steel mouth askew grates against my heart;
its thick bass scrape pushing more than piles of white aside,
it pushes my blood aside too,
piling it up in the corner of this pumping vessel that falters,
ice-caked and bitten, stiffened,
and keeps faltering,
again,
and again,
and again,
until the air is silent
and the street no longer shivers in torture.
The only evidence is the blanket of white
that keeps falling,
like fluffy stuffing that's been yanked out.
All is silent,
except the fond memories that peel away
from my heart in little shreds,
and the plows, scraping fresh wounds again.
--
1/20/2012, 1/22/2012
Copyright © 2012 Jen Fowler
All Rights Reserved MapsRed and blue and green and black veins stretch
across pages, spider-webbing out across expanses,
across golden fields, green pastures,
and evergreen blanketed hillsides
that reach towards mountain tops.
The cardinal nor the rose can claim us.
We are more free than these boundaries insist upon,
free to break through their dashed lines;
it's all just an illusion, like so much else
between destinations and dreams.
We speak of wants and desires so freely
until we submit to being folded into creases,
never neatly, and always with a struggle
to open up and expand beyond outstretched arms.
Our seams will never touch like this, never flourish
into roots of family trees in gardens of our choosing.
I wish the wind would whisk us away on clear currents,
and toss us to fate and chance; hardships be damned!
Why do we never take our chances one step further,
testing the strength of our confines?
--
1/27/2012
Copyright © 2012 Jen Fowler
All Rights Reserved The Fall of Autumni felt a crack rip through my insides
veining down the interior of my heart
spiderwebbing out like the roots of a tree
unearthing a reminder that it could all be lost so quickly
a turn of the seasons, falling from family branches
as it already had for me
i felt the reverberations of the splinter
sending slivers out into the fear
not for me but for those I love
and for those they love more so than any other
because love is like that
i felt the helplessness of the autumn set in
letting loose the leaves from fragile twigs
draining color from the foliage of families
and quietly preparing for the turn into the dirt
because everything is deciduous here
i prayed for an indian summer
anything to prolong the someday expected
to extend the beauty this life seeds and protects
so shallow roots could burrow deeper before the cold sets in
as it already had for her
--
9/28/2011

callerofcrows

callerofcrows is an author I really don't comment upon enough, though it seems like I've enjoyed reading every piece that I've stumbled into with her lit tag on it. Her words are like fresh air and often leave me pondering.

DaydreamerIn a perpendicular universe,
I own a bakery.
I sing in Spanish
while I waltz with croissants,
pie-crusts spinning out like
skirts made for twirling.
And in the next little world
one reality to the right,
I own a vineyard.
Such sultry red wines,
sweet greens,
subtle yellows
from my dark Tuscan soil
are happily grown.
In the future is my orchard,
where my peaches are sweeter
than the Georgian summer,
while the trees sprawl over
the foothills of Vermont.
In the present moments
between blinking slow,
I find the blueprints for such things
and store them for tomorrow. Two-TonedSepia,
like you,
it's pronounced two ways.
Seep-ee-ah.
Long, slow,
a sleepy murmur drawn.
It reminds me of your patience
when you held me
as I sobbed into your scarf,
your voice leaving me warm,
brown along the edges.
Sep-ee-ah.
Short.
Curt.
A sterner picture
of soldiers long dead,
a reprimand.
A glare.
This is how you tell me
I'm wrong--
sharp as a bayonet,
the edge of your mouth
a gun.
Warm.
Sharp.
Tight-eyed.
Welcoming.
I could hold it
in my mouth either way,
and you are both. MusingI'm too young to spend my life
running from the thunder,
staring at the kitchen walls wondering
how life would be different
if they weren't the same color.

colbalt-rain

I really like this author, even though I'm always misspelling her name. I've tried to suggest her for a DD twice, and both times I've been beaten to the punch by someone else. On the exact pieces I was planning to suggest too colbalt-rain writes dark themes, but always puts a ray of light somewhere in there.

:thumb332933322: :thumb336171877: :thumb312671160:

SocraticSynapses

This was one of the first authors I can recall reading on dA. I still go back and read Distinction every few months because I've never gotten over how gorgeous it is. Always imagistic, always thoughtful, and always a beautiful read, SocraticSynapses never disappoints.

distinctionThis is what I cannot understand.
There is an understanding that nothing is ever black and white. Good can be achieved through bad means, what's wrong can sometimes be right, and if you turn right for long enough, you eventually go left. Boys can be girls who fall in love with girls who sometimes think they are boys and the lines between everything end up irreversibly blurred.
Or so I've always thought.
But this is a line that cannot be blurred. This is the only remaining clear-cut line that separates black from white as perfectly as a color wheel. And that is the fact that everything is until it isn't. We are until we aren't. We breathe until we don't. We live until we die. There is no gray area, no matter what the talk of doctors and comas and life support and brain death might say. Your heart beats until it doesn't.
This goes beyond just life and death. Emotions are until they aren't. As are moments, definitions, seasons. Two people falling in love, well, some of them inevitably cra the science of usacceleration = gravitational pull / mass
You didn’t send my heartbeat into a frenzy the first time I saw you. It was a month or two before I started feeling the little palpitations inside my chest and made sure that my hand accidentally brushed against yours every now and then.
(I wanted to make sure you got used to the feeling of my atoms colliding with yours.)
I told myself it was stupid and simply physical. You weren’t pulling my heart strings, you were toying with my belt buckle by smiling at me across the room and asking me to spend time with you on a Saturday afternoon. I was sold by the time you pulled into my driveway and my name slipped from between your lips.
(Sweaty palms and twisted vocal chords told me no one said it quite like you.)
I promised myself this was strictly a one-way thing. I feigned like I felt nothing, and in my nervousness I became the witty jackass. You laughed at my barbed-wire jokes and sped through a red light while I was watching sciamachyi.
i buried a boy late last summer and
let the cicadas sing his worries to sleep before i
covered his bones with the maple's fall leaves;
he was silent and pale beneath their amber colors
ii.
winter crept over us like a shadow and
every night i shivered with my secrets for warmth;
i kept my windows closed but his howling
on the wind begged for my touch
iii.
i thawed my heart on a clothesline in may
let a new body into my bed; i kissed its spine
until i understood the language of its thighs and sighs
and forgot the spice of his breath on my tongue
iv.
there is a starling outside my bedroom who built
a nest in my gutter and hatched chicks like treasures;
their coos echo in the morning and when i was half-asleep
i swore their feathers shone like his hair in the rising sun
v.
summer roared with the thunderstorms until
lightning struck the stars from the skies; her words
fell hushed when i pushed the earth from his limbs
and breathed life back into his shoreline eyes

Nichrysalis

Though I already enjoyed his poetry, I've come to enjoy reading from Nichrysalis even more since he began his Bitlets project, little pieces and shards reflecting everything from the most profound to the most mundane facets of everyday life. His reading voice isn't half bad either.

Only as Old"Frail bones predict what fragile minds can't detect,"
He trailed off slowly, "And my bones are achin'."
The air around me hung low and depressed,
Sticking to the back of my throat like a stormy syrup
I'd tried to swallow down.
I peered out the kitchen window
And caught an inklet of patched-over-grey sky;
I wondered what was in store for the day.
Impartial to the gloom outside, we stepped out onto the back porch;
Grandpa wobbled out with his cane in hand and we waited.
In the hushed stillness the trees traded birds—
Robins, swallows, whippoorwills, and cardinals.
If you squinted hard enough at the sullen shrubbery,
You could spot the caterpillar creeping to the underside of the leaf.
That's when I looked at Grandpa,
And saw through his eyes nature receding
At his prescience of a storm.
"Grandpa, how do you always know?"
He chuckled and simply said: "The world tells me."
It was left at that, but years later I have found
That the world is only as old as the person to whom you speak. Retrograde          Scents from inside the suit intertwined their intentions with the sights of tangled and tessellated hair illumed by firefly LED's, spiking my circulation with memories and murmurs of dopamine.
          I took her by the gaze; she steered her sight away from mine. I led her through a glance that involved no scuffling of hands.
          She was one of two wayward strangers passing in the cosmos; two separate glances met as objects in motion tending to motion. People aren't the same however.
          Drifter was the term we were known as, people cast off of vessels and ships, mostly by accident, condemned to trudge about the universe until starvation kicked in or their oxygen-starved filters were finally incapable of operating. My unplanned departure from the mysteriously flaming Bitlets 12If hitchhikers were any younger
they'd skip hopscotch across
states and provinces; instead
they play four-square
in the same four counties
close to their home town
because they lost their sense of wanderlust
when they bought a map of North America
and drew stars on where they wanted to go,
but never made the effort to take it
out of the glove compartment.

Six more to come next week!