posted 01.06.02
~~I confess, I didn't lead a particularly tortured youth. I imagine that my issues were standard ones: parents' divorced, aunt (parental unit) and i didn't get along all the time, first boyfriend was really possessive. I consumed an enormous amount of paper, graphite, and floppy disk space keeping journals during 8th and 9th grade (age 13 and 14), out of boredom or anger, both of which i suffered a fair amount of. Eventually i had to spend more time doing homework, and then I got a computer that could run the internet, so i spent more time on aim and less time being depressively introspective. Still do it occasionally, though, and it's very therapeutic.
A friend who used to nag me about smothering my emotions commented thusly on the above:
Him: hey, being depressingly introspective helps clean out the office :-)
Me: yeah yeah -shoves more emotional baggage into the cramped office, then slams the door real quick-
Him: I'm more or less certain I spend most of my life in a state of depressing introspectiveness
Me: whatever works for you, dear
Him: yup.
On to the works, more commentary later.~~
song, circa 1996.
There’s a little girl somewhere who’s been crying but no one cares / She’s got no one to turn to / And she doesn’t understand what’s going on in any of her lives / She still hasn’t learned to / Be everything that everyone wants her to be / And stil be herself she can’t see / What’s right or wrong or what to do about it all // (chorus inserted later: Cry, cry, cry, little girl / Sigh, sigh, sigh, little girl / Don’t you hide your tears from yourself / Just hide them from the world ) She doesn’t know how to tell you / What she wants to say / Why can’t she think clearly / too mixed up today / It’s all happening too fast and all she can do is cry, cry // And now it’s hours later and she’s feeling redeemed / Life isn’t as confusing as it once seemed / She took the time to cry, to let it all out / Now she sees there’s nothing left for her to cry about / She doesn’t have all the answers, not yet and never will / But she’s learning how to live with herself // Maybe this little girl isn’t little after all / She could be six or sixty three / Who is this girl? We’ll never know / she could be you, but more often she’s me / She thought that she was stupid and worthless, but no / She was really beautiful, only no one told her so // But she’s all better now, she’s made her peace with God / She’s happy now / She’s happy with herself/ See me smile
~~I like that one alright. i distinctly recall showing it to my aunt and her asking in her professor way what i was upset about, and saying that it was a serious matter if i thought i had multiple lives. i don't remember, and i might not have even known clearly at the time, what sparked this song. I'd often write narrative journals describing the particulars of an event or problem, trying to analyze my feelings about something, but this time i just wanted to get my emotions out. I just showed this to a friend, which sparked the following IM exchange:
Him: so is the end supposed to be a false smile or a real one?
Me: ah, i will reply to your question as any artiste would: it's different for different listeners; your interpretation. honestly, it was a real smile - i really did make my peace by the end of the song.
Him: impressive that
Me: my experience as a thirteen year old girl was that as intense as my depression/anger/whatever was, i was pretty resilient
Him: i could kill a forest and still lack that serenity
Me: oh, i wasn't perfect, but i was calm enough to get back to doing stuff other than pouting.
To skip ahead a few years but stick with the same basic genre, here's a song dated 03.17.01. I don't remember what sparked it; senior year of high school, hadn't seen my long-distance love interest in a while, might have been low on estrogen...i just remember that i wrote it while i was trying to fall asleep in the daybed in the room my computer was in - i'd been having trouble sleeping for awhile, as happened occasionally during high school, so i might have been trying to see if a different bed would help. anyway, here we go:
I’ll cry myself to sleep again tonight / I don’t know what’s wrong, but something isn’t right / I’m cold and shaking, sleep won’t come / What should I do? What have I done? // (chorus) Do I need to talk about it? / to cry and speak and shout it? / I’d rather live without it / but you could be my savior / These fears I’ll just compress / Like the tears I repress / They’ll someday be redressed / But I’ll deal with that later // I want to reach out, but I’m scared / I don’t want questions, I don’t want pity, Don’t want to hear how much you care / But still I need a touch / Would it be asking too much / to sit with you in silence? // (chorus) // Tomorrows come as yesterdays die / If it’s a good day I’ll forget to ask why / But these feelings, they don’t leave so easily / The demon may sleep, but he’ll be back to haunt me // ~~On a cheerier note, because i swear i wasn't always depressed - in fact, i was generally pretty cheery - next is a happy pagany song from summer 2000. the tune came into my head as i was walking through the little patch of woods between the chapel and science drive on the way to my math class one afternoon. i like the tune much more than the words, and i tried to add more verses, but the metre is so confounded and the rhyme is pretty constrictive.
I often walk alone in the forest late at night / Lo, on the path in front of me / A light I see / What light! / My heart takes fright / The flame ducks in and out of sight / My soul takes flight / It is the spirit of the night //
She lifts herself from ancient waters flowing ‘neath a well / Nourishing life in all its forms / All that is born / Does dwell / Within her spell / The river goddess bids them well / See Nature swell / to sing her praises as with bells
~~I was stuck between embarrassment at my feeble creative effort and wanting to share something that made me happy, so i wasn't sure whether or not to share the song with anyone, but the darned thing was stuck in my head and i was humming it in the stairwell, so one of my friends heard it. I'm not so self-conscious about my "creations" anymore, as you might gather by the fact that i'm posting them online, because i don't hold very high standards for myself when it comes to artistic things. at least i give it a try on occasion! :) Thinking of PreCollege reminds me of the poem i wrote about my Calculus class. I could never find it, and I don't remember anything about it at all except describing how the clock didn't move, but it was pretty good, i think. Calculus was a bloody bore - two hours every afternoon! But the professor was a nice guy...anyway, back to writings...On the subject of nature, here’s a little bit of creative writing/social criticism dated 6.02.98.
I am enjoying the storm. The lightening that flickers seems far away and powerless compared to the bulb above me. When the wind blows, the trees rustle so loudly I can’t hear anything else but the crickets and birds. Every so often a lightning bug stands out against the darkening green and blue background. The groanings and chattings and comings and going of the humans – my family – are the only things distracting me from observing nature. A person is considered odd if he or she retreats into observing nature rather than join the incessant mutterings of nothing that plague, if not give substance to, society. Ah, to have been an uncivilized peasant, a savage, or even to have lived in a time when life was simpler. We hurry and scurry and lead our little lives forsaking that which we truly need. Once in a long while the nature we have tried to repress must be satisfied. And so we stop for a brief moment, and look at the trees, through glass that keeps us isolated in our air-conditioned, artificially lighted, expensively furnished monuments of human advancement, ironically referred to as “homes.” If the movement of a bird, or the swaying of a tree, or the brilliance of a flower’s pigmentation beckons us out, we may occasionally silence our minds to our own occupations and indulge in glorious communion with Earth.
~~Whoo. I think i was more annoyed with people than in love with nature when i was writing this. but it has some decent turns of phrase, and seems almost genuine, which is a stretch for someone who so despises gushy nature poems that lack a point. I came up with some other works of "creative writing," that i think i have on my computer back at school, so i might add them later - a short story about a safari hunt, and a poem about religious crisis (remind me to post my testimony of faith under essays when i get back to school as well. now that i'm finished with my term as deacon i'm less worried about being found out.) Anyway, i submitted those two writings to my high school's literary Magazine, The Stallion, and neither got in, which was a bit discouraging. Not that i felt threatened by the impressive caliber of works that were ranked higher than mine. I'm fairly sure that working on the staff in 9th grade fostered my aversion for "creative" writing, since most of the stuff we had to read was either sappy love poetry, self-pitying "you broke my heart!" poetry, vindictive yet uninspiring "you broke my heart, now pay, suckah!" poetry, or completely incoherent.
~~Speaking of love-related poetry, remember that possessive boyfriend i mentioned at the top of the page? I've since learned a few things about that mess: first, he wasn't being a possessive boyfriend, he was being a normal boyfriend; boyfriends are just possessive by nature. solution: no more boyfriends for Rachel. second, he's a nice guy who has a personality. i was too emotionally attached to him and too intoxicated by "first love" (i.e. addicted to making out with him) to notice at the time. Anyway, i sort of stumbled on the relationship in the first place and didn't know what the hell was going on, but i realized something was wrong when i started having dreams about killing him. I wanted to break up with him about four months after we started dating, but i wasn't assertive enough, not certain if i would be doing the right thing, or how i'd even do it. While worrying and writing one day, however, my inner wannabeasexybitchyrockstar self came up with a perfect way to do it:
It breaks my heart to hurt you, but I don’t know what else to do / No one said I would always be kind, except maybe you / Baby, in this life you have to learn how to choose/ And when you choose to love me, you’re gonna lose // (chorus) This is the way I am, this is me babe, this is me and / I can’t change the way I am, not even for you, no // I know you think I’m not the same girl you once knew / Maybe you’re right, cause baby the truth is I’m not ready for you / I know you really love me, and believe me I loved you too / But I’m a little too young, it’s a little too soon, I’m a little bit scared and I don’t want to / Lead you on any further down this dead-end road and I know I sound / like an immature brat, well maybe I am that, so let’s just say good bye // (chorus) // I would if I could believe me babe, I would if I could believe me / it’s not about you, it’s my own selfishness, so just let me go, no tears / it breaks my heart to hurt you, but there’s nothing else to do
~~At least i'm honest in private. I somehow managed to extricate myself from the relationship for good about seven months later. Learned a lot from that. At this point I'd like to say that putting all this together is vastly amusing and exhilirating for me. Hope no one minds my candidness - it's more likely that you'll be bored, but hey, i warned you that this page was going to be filled with my self-absorbed whines, right?
~~Okay, back to nature-y stuff. I think this is from spring of junior year. explanations below.
Civilization surrounds me, but I escape to its very epicenter. Rough concrete under me, I hug my knees to my chest and feel the iron grate pushing up against the soles of my feet. I look ahead and wince at the wires that separate the tree lined horizon from the sky. A cheer goes up inside me for the few green tips that protrude above their electrical boundary. Or so it seems from this angle. From where i sit, across the hump of asphalt the concret i sit on has circled upon itself and binds the ugliness into a discrete area. But the grass, the wild grasses, with specks of white and orange and brown and seas of greens, pile on top of one another, pushing up and out in all directions, thriving because they are confined by nothing. But this field is all that remans wild, and it cannot hope to survive unscathed. The old trees that now inhabit only a thin line are there because the old guard wants them to be. If any of this meadow survives, it will be to please the whim of the new guard, who mock the land by killing it and naming their new habittats in honor of the dead. They replaces white flowers with white pillars, crystals of dew with crystalline windows, wide spaces with wide halls. ~~yeah, i'm a tree hugger. during high school, i lived in a neighborhood that had been built in the 70s, with the pretty-nice-but-not-ostentatios homes separated and adorned by lots of trees. the neighborhood was off of a two-lane highway with farms around it; by the late 90s, the sprawl of baltimore suburbia had made it more profitable by several orders of magnitude for farmers to sell land to developers than to keep their farms going. so a meadow (that one of my friends and i used to run in) has become covered with huge houses, not surrounded by any trees, just sitting there like so many monopoly houses. the irony: the new devlopment is called Churchville Meadows. i'm not so bothered by the fact that they built new homes near me - i mean, my neighborhood was at one point a farm too - as that they did it so tastelessly. I can see at least one major effect the heightened development is having on the environment: we regularly see deer and foxes in our backyard now. it's kind of cool, but definitely a sign that open spaces are dwindling.
~Just found another "poem" (i.e. peice of writing that attempts to be poetic but is actually prose). This one was conceived May 11, 2001, when our English teacher decided that our class would understand how the great Romantics wrote by sitting outside until we felt inspired to write a poem (which we'd better be inspired to do since we'd have to read them to the rest of the class at the end of the period). Mine sounds a bit morbid, but it can be easily explained by noting the date of it's conception - less than three weeks before I would graduate from high school, and boy was I ready to get out.
All that remains constant is that one little hole, a patch of blue in a swarm of green. Like an imitation of itself, like a magic-eye poster, the green runs and tangles upon itself, patterns emerging in the tone variation, but no clear objects to make out – only the blue. It’s a small patch, trespassed upon by one branch of the sea of trees that frame it. Not only the trees, but the noise and the people in the forefront try to hide the blue and distract me from it. But I have to see it, above the fray, I have to reach for it. It’s a light, cloudy blue, calm, almost dull, not rich and wild as it sometimes is, when the sun makes the colors dance. But I long for it because it is so wide, unbounded, free from these trees and this noise and this air I breathe in, day after day. It is not the patch of sky that these trees have captured, but rather, my vision they have limited. If I could be in the open somewhere, out of the claustrophobic, life-giving forest, I could see all of the sky at once maybe – no even then I couldn’t – my eyes, my own being, limits me. What I want most in the world, the freedom to fly away and make my existence my own, to rid myself of insects crawling over me, pollen choking me, trees hovering, holding me…impossible to grasp. I may grow taller, but never taller or stronger than the trees. I may grow wiser, but never wise enough. I didn’t ask to be part of this community, and I can’t escape. So I’ll watch my little patch of sky, lose myself in intoxication with its murky blue. November, 2001, in an airport - more evidence of my dorky love for learning, disdain for my former life as a cashier (which made Barbara Ehrenriech's speech resonate with me in an almost painful way - oy, I've got the middle-class guilt down pat), and my occasional antisocial nature (it comes out when I'm dealing with the masses).
My opiate
My public secret
My plunge in desparation, my education
Worn pages, dull pencil, furrowed brow (remember to breathe)
Get there when you get there (don’t push, remember to breathe)
Let the anger fade to focus
Don’t let it frustrate you, just focus, focus
Smile when you have to look up, but keep that nose buried,
Don’t let momma know about it
My opiate
My public secret
My plunge in desparation, my education
How do they do it day after day (remember to breathe)
On their feet they make their living (don’t push, remember to breathe)
If you lived that life you might learn some patience
But you’ll take silence over conversation
Smile when you have to look up, but keep that nose buried,
You know your momma knows all about it