Why Authors Matter

The past weekend has been rough. I am in the wake of graduating and for the first time since I began my collegiate career I was told a research paper I wrote was not worthy of any grade value. As a writer, any type of writing I present to a world is a jewel I crafted, and to find this jewel worthless in fact made me feel worthless. I won’t go into details over the debacle I had with the teacher over the issue, for those matters and problems are private, but it wore on me so much that I allowed my other classwork to slip into oblivion. As with the previous post, I took solace in books and quotes I once read. I surrounded myself with those words to block out the pending break within myself.

                The last post remains in the construction zone of crafting words to page; I cannot finish. I buried myself in the trenches of painful mistakes and plummeted beneath the rosary for all my sins outweighed my penance. Yet, as I rummaged through Facebook a familiar face appeared through a Huffington Post story, the one of J.K. Rowling.

                Now, I know that Rowling is not a great American Author, but she is an Author of great integrity to her craft. I remember, in my youth, I found myself captivated by Harry Potter, and his ability to prevail despite what he appeared as. I clicked on her article, and found her words once again resonating with who I was as an individual. I didn’t need to give up, I just needed to stand up and find who I was in the world today, even if that didn’t coincide with what others thought of me.

                Author’s words are needed. Whether a place to find a solemn friend, or a castle to build your life around, or even a man that burns barns for injustice; we need words.

                The link is at the bottom of the page to the story. If you are struggling, I hope you find her words a ledge to help yourself up.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/04/jk-rowling-tweets-fan_n_7203772.html?1430748582=&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

The Fault in Failure

“If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

                Often, in recovery of any certain rejection, I call to remembrance the words of Sylvia Plath.  I don’t know exactly why, but I find comfort in her dismal obscure perception of the way the world felt for her. Perhaps it is our shared antisocial tendencies and bouts of depression (especially in the aftermath of failure) but I take the scenes of, “The Bell Jar” like lucid dreaming in the scope of my dreary thoughts.

                

Sympathy for the Desire

Upon reading some of the comments in the discussion forum,  I found myself wondering why people spewed such vile words against Blanche.  Of course, Blanche lived in her fantasy of a life where she was the young debutante with a line of suitors waiting to marry her,  and her affair with a student is ostentatious to say the least, but I can’t help but feel the loss within her tainted soul that caused her to become a woman afraid of aging.

If someone has never lost a significant person in their lives, and felt the empty cold grasp on their shoulder with every memory, they can’t understand Blanche. She is not a character who created cruel choices, but the reaction of desperate circumstances. Simply, death changes you. Seeing someone who you once talked to, cared for, and love become a breathless corpse alters the characteristics you would have had if you never saw it. I am not talking about going to a funeral, but seeing the “soul” leave the body, as it were. Physically watching that, or even watching someone come to the brink of it, changes your perspective on life. Maybe I have sympathy for the devil, or maybe I have seen more than I care to admit, but try watching this clip again until you feel her hollow heart reaching for some sort of comfort to fill an inescapable void. 

Death, The Gentleman

Death dropped by and sat on the porch in the midafternoon as the supple chill morning of May nipped the bud of spring, opened from the bosom of the seed to the shirt line of the petal, and blossomed to the advent of sunrays.  He sipped tea gingerly as he swayed, creaking the rusted plates of the swing in tempo to the chimes placed intermittently on the veranda, each column copied white and caught with the grey tufts of dust brought present by the Midwestern wind.

Warmth brewed over the battered wood when afternoon in its peak shooed away the shadow, empting just the speckled dark glint from the posts surrounding.   Death’s rustic cloud hovered over the bridge game between Mother and the Lady, who cackled and cooed at the rise and fall of partnerships.  Mother shuffled the deck as the Lady lifted her delicate hand, feebly pouring the milk into her of cup to procure not chipping the other side where the artisan painted the rose. 

A hummingbird fluttered in rarity to the oval bush, brushing the hems of its wings to the hue resembling the blades of grass after the chopping of the mower, newly brightened and refined in green by chipping at the unwanted pieces.  The blue body of the bird nestled in pause to catch a berry, but withdrew with haste at the sight of Death; a universal language in an unspoken dialect. So, the miniscule bird twittered away before all of Mother’s cards were dealt.

The lady’s lavender gown began to crease  while the white heat bore on her shoulder. She opened her fan, her fingers dewing the end from the perspiration, and waved for relief. She suddenly snapped the end together in fold. Mother jumped with a start and paused to look at her grievance, but gave it no consequence to her illusion of indifference. She noted the Lady’s impermanence of yellowing flesh, hastily powdered such a brilliant pale to mask the appearance that life gives when it has found an unreasonable suitor in the midst of the body. Mother’s permed mousy brunette up-do flopped from either side while she shook her head and uttered one sigh to Death before picking her cards back up to resume the.

The shadow of evening recaptured the lawn into a grey and inched onto the porch before settling on the maudlin mauve doorway as the Lady folded her cards in gesture of retreat to an almost match game.  She knew that stars would trickle down the setting and burst in the break of dawn before Mother would unhinge a game, so it was best to settle for the evening.  Death hunkered over the table, observing intently as the two finished the last of their tea. The lady scooped the cards into her lace covered lap and stacked them neatly on the table before standing with her mother to adjourn in the kitchen.

As the women arose to take heed of the handle and push into the drawing room, the effects laden with the aroma of a crisp sovereign night with the hint of a bakery just down the corner, they saw death in line for entrance; paused for invitation.  Yet, how indelicately a visitor becomes an intruder from porch to doorway; the same plane in different character.   The necessity of familiarity in the appearance of a house turns captive from the privacy of the home.  They knew this now stranger; they had entertained him all day. Death was a gentleman. So, as the mother took clasp of the lady’s shrinking hand and squeezed tightly in reassurance, she offered Death a toe into the living area.

Death swooped past both of them and clunked upstairs, knocking before entering the Father’s bedside. When the Father saw who it was, he smiled, and said, “Hello, I have been expecting you all day.”

My Rendezvous with the Careless People

                Fitzgerald portrays a cast of characters in “The Great Gatsby,” as well as his short story, “Winter Dreams” as a people so enchanted by the prestige attribute of life in high society,  that they lose the value of humanity in the royal ambiance of America high class. They are a careless people, as asserted by Nick. However, careless people entranced by the flickering momentum of life does not seclude itself to the wealthy; it permeates throughout the factions of income into the “devil may care” who allot themselves to the party, and not the breathing transposition of life. They are in corporations, streaming crowds at concerts, raising glasses at night clubs. And, for a crisp inhale, I found myself amongst the careless people.

                A six year retreat brings us back to the beginning.  The twenty-one birth burned out into the hallowed night of September’s tremble into the fall.  I met them through a mutual friend; I met him. As an observer by nature of being; I watched eagerly at their reproach for the conventions of morality, at least the morality I latched onto. They went from one relationship into the next, often intermixing lovers in transition from one heartbreak to the next. They were local musicians; lovers of art and gobblers of all things intoxicating. They cheated one moment, and spoke of abiding and unwavering love the next.  They used the world and the people closest to them in such a way as to belittle the idea of a strangers kindness.  They never seemed to care for anything other than the excitement of the moment, but with the domino of dramatic tales, I suppose those moments eclipsed the other until the blindness became sight.  I saw them all as careless, except him. 

                He seemed indifferent to the whims of those surrounding, somehow superior, or it was his insistent attention to me that I overlooked his misgivings.  I showered the seed of a chance into the malformed bloom of a thorny bush with no flowers.  A crushing decision in retrospect, but when you are surrounded by a careless people; you often give shape to their shadow. 

                He spoke a lot of honor, but honored nothing. The admiration transpired through the years into a lofty transgression, seething life on the prospect of furthering into beating romance.  Yet, the void of a careless people, who endured unto just one careless person, leaves the un-satiating ambivalence of something that might be. It is there, hungering cowardly at the infinite idea of letting it all go.  The shimmering gold that glints from the depth of a tunnel is what keeps us mining, and I kept hoping that I could imprint on the intangible.

                Sitting here, just a day after the realization of the destruction a careless person leaves in the wake of my careful heart, I understand.  I hated Fitzgerald’s stories for some time, until I realized I was a part of them. We all are. 

..You Won't Like Gatsby, But Keep Going

I read Fitzgerald's, "The Great Gatsby" my junior year of high school. And while, there was something intangibly haunting about the writing that kept me intrigued,  I couldn't help but think, "Hey, these aren't great people in this supposedly great book."



However, just like John Greene, The Fault in our Stars superstar suggests, you aren't supposed to like them. They are amoral, vapid, backstabbing, greedy, void characters in every sense and aspect besides the way in which Fitzgerald captures their human indecency in an exposed naivete. Even Nick, who in the beginning will seem like just a nice guy who got mixed up with these crazy characters proves just as sank as the rest. But if you think about it, aren't we all indecent humans trying to gauge our bit of pristine life in the branch of consumerism?



Take a look at television's Gossip Girl, which is modeled after Fitzgerald's novels. We envy and relish this lavish world while the people within sabotage each other. If they weren't covered in jewels and Dior, we would call them "trashy" people. We will supplement any type of personality for the glimmer of crusted gold.



Then again, What is the American Dream but a mirage?

The Search For Solitude or Matrimony in Women Write

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the
love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not
approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the
world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. 

*********************************************************

The day rose gingerly and pressed upon my eyes with vigilance, causing me to rise. I took in the air swiftly and brought myself to meet the warmth brought by the brilliance of melted lights dripping down in rays from the faucet of sun. 

I write often, and think on that as being a woman in a writing world. Women, subjected to the bigotry of a lesser forseen value, often times find themselves estranged and in solitude to be able to expand creatively. Emily Dickinson, for one, spent her life burdened to the peril of unrequited love. As well the Bronte sisters had little of marriage. Even J.K. Rowling only wrote Harry Potter after she had loved and lost. I leave myself to the quandary, Is being well in writing as a woman to be alone?

So, when reading on Edna Millay, I instantly wondered on to her life socially. It seems, from reading online, that though she was married, her life was not accounted for one but many affairs during a self proclaimed open marriage.

So, once again, I sit beside myself....and ponder. 

The Drench of Snow in Spring

Bent on Waters in peripheral view
Lands scaping wide to breach with world
A comfort

Shards splinter the flaked white covering
Yearning outstretched for the sun
What is death of life in winters arms
Without the knowing of Spring?