love, read, write

listen:
i will be your first snowfall.
bits of my heart will float to your earth
in moments of fateful gravity,
blessing your world with my far-reaching arms.

the day i come to you i will be a swan of the weather
to cover you with the cold of my wings, drape my feathers
over your shoulders with grace and
deliberation, stitch my silent dreams to the
nape of your neck, my plumage your umbrella.

and when kingdom comes it will be me
who creates it for you in a gradient of blue to white,
warm to night, sharp to soft in the crevices of your body.
i’ll transform your world into a sky-floating palace
of plains and hills of simplistic beauty,
carve you fields of suspended, pure silence
full to the brim of your eyes.

as evening drifts near i’ll hang in the time-dense air
little ornaments of ivory. i’ll tuck into each crystal
lullabies of deer treading through blank slate
silent hand-made forests making
music with the muffled crinkles of their
weight in the snow and you will cry,
and i will blow on your cheeks;
it will be beautiful.

you will feel me shaping peace
into the spaces between your fingers,
splattering stars into the sky until they slip from its loose grasp
to create a gravity-orchestrated symphony of lights -

that will be me;
i’ll be that first snowfall.

no fall was ever truly
yours until the moment i came tearing the clouds apart
in winds full of ice stars,
when i kissed your nose in a burst of cold that you knew:
the world never existed until that moment.
no empire preceded;
no snowfall before me.

for years i lived with others,
in others, as others in a sense that my identity
was not mine unless there was someone else
upon which to see my reflection.
i had constantly sought mirrors in others’ reactions
to my every move and word as if alone,
my marks of life were too fragile to exist.
the reflections were often faulty, as others often are
when you are trying to see yourself through a remote lens
(i did not know that the identity which i wanted to see
was in fact right where i was, stitched into me)
so i lived, tormented and twisted with the gnarly veins of
discolored and misshapen refractions tightening themselves
into my eyes so that all i could see was the world
through a rotten net that i had let others sew onto me.

today i live alone.
the word still stings me like a faulty
claim about my identity, as if it is a negativity which i cannot afford,
but i now know better. because alone is a good thing,
alone in myself.
i live with myself, in myself,
as myself now, in a sense that my identity is solely mine
and i look to no other for any sort of reflection of my existence
because i stand before myself in a mirror
which i look through, alone,
and see the beauty that lies within and without me,
the person that i am when i do not look to others,
the identity which i create based upon myself
and my ideas. i look now to myself for my name,
a name which i can say with my own mouth,
create my own syllables,
and sing it out to the world without
waiting for a response or an echo.

00. preface

Babies are born crying. I don’t know much about biology or baby science or whatever it is, but it’s strange to me that from the moment we are birthed into this world, we begin with tears. It’s kind of funny, actually--the whole process of birth seems like an excruciating pain from beginning to end. There we are, watching footage of what people call “the miracle of creating another human” but it’s all bullshit because there’s nothing more uncomfortable than watching a shaky, timestamped-in-the-bottom-left-corner, low resolution video of your mother screaming from the most intense physical pain she will ever feel in her entire life while you emerge, bloody and bawling like there’s no tomorrow. Fleeting to and fro from any clear line of vision are a bunch of masked humans, trying to deal with the situation as calmly as possible so that no one dies. The beauty of birth.

Since my chaotic beginnings, I’ve contemplated the idea of existence quite a bit. To date I have reached no conclusions. The purpose that someone claims to find in their life seems only to be a sort of self-conceived phenomenon. There is, as far as my records show, no definitive answer to why anyone is alive or, for that matter, what we’re supposed to do during our unfortunate time here.

But when you’re young, things are new and exciting. There is this inherent element of amazement stitched to our core and whenever we see something new and inviting, that little ball of amazement bursts in our chests. As a child, you keep discovering these new, cool things in the materialistic world we’ve created for ourselves. For several years, the goods of life far outweigh the bad. Little hiccups in childhood friendships may cause remorse, but all tears can be quickly remedied with enough Lego Star Wars sets.

(You really can buy happiness for kids. I don’t care what the pseudo-optimists say.)

Things get old fast, though. If the first few years of life are devoted to discovering and appreciating the good sides of the materialistic world, the rest is filled with discovering throat-constricting expectations and constraints of society while also feeling remorse for not being able to satisfy our materialistic desires under this hyper-capitalist society designed for the already successful.

Emotional development is irrelevant. It occurs organically regardless of the societal structure. Interaction between people will probably never change--love, greed, anger, fear, sorrow, happiness. What matters is the frequency of each emotion and which emotion drives oneself to the framework of success designed by the type of civilization that one lives in.

But I diverge. My point? Life is cold and ruthless. The older you get, the more daunting and unavoidable that reality becomes.

In fact, I can simultaneously understand but also not understand why people believe in any kind of deity. It’s nice to lay the responsibility of life events on some sort of invisible but benevolent and sentient figure. That way, we can convince ourselves that the ruthless chance-happenings of life are somehow meant for the best. It’s actually incredibly smart that people have thought up this idea of religion. The basic framework for it is ingenious--no wonder it has such a large following. You lay off the blame and convince yourself everything’s going to be okay. Who’s not to sign up for that?

People like me, I guess. People who can’t do enough mind tricks to make themselves believe in something they cannot see; people who are too skeptical to put trust in an invisible figure; people who cannot make themselves join what has essentially become a cult following; people who are just too damn tired and sick of life to acknowledge any kind of greater purpose.

I used to think life was only cruel to me. That all of the bad things that happened to me were the acts of some sort of anti-God who wanted me to suffer as much as possible while I was alive. My thoughts weighed like heavy boulders digging into my back. On multiple occasions I met with unfortunate events that left me wondering why anything was worth doing. I felt isolated, like a little girl living alone on a deserted island, texting people through a flip-phone but knowing that I could never actually meet them because I was in an inherently different dimension.

I didn’t realize how universal this emotion was. Is life cruel or fair in giving everyone such crippling burdens?

It's been a while since I've actually written out a post in my own voice. Here I am. Lots of great (and also terrible) things have happened to me (and the world, sadly) since I have last posted as Celine. But I'm not going to go into that because that's a lot of words and emotional anguish and complications that I'm sure we've met with enough of (or at least, I have). Certain things do need to be said, but here on this blog isn't really the place for it.

Vague gesturing aside, I've decided to set forth for myself several loose goals for the year. On the personal level, I'll be focusing on my self-image and self-confidence (but pah, nobody's really interested in that here). With respect to literature and writing, I've decided to (1) continue writing (wow, shocker), but hopefully consistently, and (2) resume reading.

Over the years, my reading has decreased immensely. As much as I still love good writing, I can't confidently say I'm an "avid reader" anymore because of the infrequency with which I actually read books. Articles and short stories don't quite count to me. I haven't done "the curling up with a book and forgetting about time" kind of thing in a very long time. So hopefully, I'll pick that habit up again this year. Maybe that way I'll turn to a good book instead of the Internet when I'm stressed (bad habits of a millennial).

On the creation side of things, I have been dabbling in comic art for the past few weeks. I can't say I'm very good at drawing, though. I don't think I'm abysmally/helplessly terrible, but I definitely have a long ways to go until I can actually draw full on comics without feeling like they are lacking in sufficient publishable quality.

Previously, I thought of comics in a sort of condescending way, like a kids' medium for storytelling. Picture books for people who don't have the attention span to read "real books," if you will. Upon taking a writing seminar class at my college, however, I learned very quickly that comic art is just another form of artistic expression. Just as movies convey emotions and information through the visual and spoken form, so do comics express those same emotions and information through writing and visual art. There is a lot of theory behind what goes on between panels, what certain panel placements mean, to even the frequency of speech bubbles.

Sometimes, you have an idea that you think is best expressed in not just writing or art in isolation but together, as a sort of fusion. Writing supplies us with the rich, sensuous words that we call language. It allows readers to open up their own imagination to create a world of their own after being prompted by words strewn together by an "author." Visual art, however, supplies the viewer with the imagined world but gives the viewer to imagine the events surrounding the image. Art forces the viewer to expand a visual moment into a timeline, whereas writing forces the reader to expand a timeline into a series of visual moments. Beyond the superficial level, both media, in their different ways, require the spectator to extrapolate given facts to the emotional level. We speculate the intangibles, such as a character's nature, their personality, their voice, etc.

When combined, the two can create a really powerful medium. The amount of writing vs. art included in "comic art" really depends on the author/artist. It's almost like a spectrum. While we may think of the classic DC or Marvel comics as the "be all, end all" form of comic art, graphic novels can take on so many different forms. From picture books like The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick to the Nancy comics by Ernie Bushmiller, artists and authors can communicate so much through the fusion of art and writing. To think that I overlooked "comics" as a little kid's book makes me a little embarrassed. There's so much more to it than it seems, which I think is awesome.

I have a few story ideas that I think would be best expressed in comic form. Hopefully, I can practice my art skills to the point that I can comfortably draw people and settings, because I think the story ideas that I have are actually worth something (?). It's been a while since I've come up with a decent idea, so my comic plot sketches make me very excited. I'll just have to wait for my art skills to catch up, though. When they do, I might post them here as well. Yay for discovering new forms of artistic expression!

One of my ideas for a comic was a story which I now call "burden." After a long while of contemplation, I became impatient and decided to instead write burden as a prose short story. Because I am a busy student with lots of other responsibilities and the attention span of maybe a small squirrel, I am going to be posting "burden" in pieces. Kind of like a webcomic but a web-story? I don't know if that's a thing, but I'll be posting them in "chapters." Hopefully that will keep me writing (because I actually have a plot planned out for this one).

Eventually, I might rewrite "burden" as a webcomic, as I originally intended. I suppose it's never too late to pick up a new hobby and try to improve oneself (art, for me)!

Stay safe and happy, everyone!
And as always, happy reading/writing.

when the lights around you pulsate
like blaring sirens screaming sounds of
self-deprecating soul-crunching
sanity-sucking spitfire insults
flashing lights like “don’t move” or
“don’t stay” or “don’t do” or maybe
“don’t say that which you want to say because
you are not worth even an ounce of grain” you need to
sit down and
calm down and
look to the skies because
there is a great deal of zooming to do, sitting in front of that
blue-light screen on google maps dot com letting your
scrolling do the trick until you’re small,
smaller,
smallest,
invisible with the white swirls and the blue oceans and the green land
and the skies and all of eternity, of outer space embracing you in
like a mother cradling her child, tucking them in
at night--

so will the world to you.
small does not mean
meaningless it means that the eternities stretching within you
are worth countless but the screams around you sound
so soft, so easy,
so conquerable when you stand
just a little ways off
as the sky and stars cradle you in
their arms when you sleep and whisper
that every steep slope is only a speck
from afar.

i bought a star the other day
i thought it might change
something,
you know how it is.
people come and go but stars--
(i look up at the sky,
little droplets hanging on my
eyelashes)
stars, though.
stars are forever.

but i’ll feed that star, you know.
i’ll watch it grow.
you say i shouldn’t but i’ll prove you wrong
i’ll watch it show the world there is no song more powerful than
a growing star.

and it’ll be beautiful--oh,
i already hold my breath from the idea
of its celestial shimmer.
i’m telling you it’ll be so stunning you will forget to breathe
i’ll let it know of its beauty, i’ll feed it love,
i’ll feed it everything you don’t want it to eat,
i’ll do it all.

and one day (oh,
how i count down the days until
i can see the expression on your face),
you’ll see it in the sky
in all of its fantastic, teary-eyed
heart-wrenching love-striking
soul-moving inspirational glory and maybe,
maybe you will fall in love.

and it will break your heart, you know,
because this star does not shine for others,
it shines for itself
and it was me who made it so.

waves of thought
of concentration these ideas
they move around in my head
i want to express them i want to
do something,
something big.

but the waves leave
they recede into the
distance i forget what i should be
doing i am lost and i cannot
concentrate. my brain is scattered
like little shells broken into a million pieces
i cannot pick them up because
my mind does not
allow me and i
float
in the
distance
apart from my
thoughts,

little waves
lapping
on the shore
as i try
to catch them
with my
bare
hands.

she was beautiful.

not the
lipstick, pink blush sun-kissed
blonde hair, fair skin,
long locks of
golden laughter that
captures every passing man with her
blue eyes kind of
beautiful.

she betrayed
gravity with her
uneven cackles and
short-cut black-dyed
bedhead hairstyle,
dip into your soul and
listen to your worries kind of
coal-colored black eyes,
say what you need to hear
truthful yet cheerful
words whispered through those
bare, soft lips kind of
beautiful,

the kind that emerged fresh from
the insides of the flesh,
awe-inspiring and
jaw-dropping with her
knowing eyes, her
button-down, the complete and utter
disregard for
the sounds of dismay
(after all, who gives a shit
about what they say)
from people with the fear of
accepting that
she was a hero
for living in her own
universe-creating
life-changing
gaze-defying
beautiful way.

when the sun rises
my hands will grab it by
the shoulders, shaking it awake
one more time.

for meals i will feed it the soft breaths
of its children, little green arms that sway
with mother nature’s every sigh.

when it is ready i will carry it through the fields
to show it its worth, gesturing to
the stretching trees, the blushing flowers,
the endless life
which springs forth;

give it crisp water from the rivers to drink
so it remembers to be humble
in times where its power rings too strong,
when mother nature must run to cradle
the little green arms turned yellow with
too much of its gaze.

if the sun feels sorrow, i will
wipe its tears with the handkerchief
of the clouds, soft cotton that leaves
little pieces on the sun even afterwards,
softening the glow of its sparkling sad eyes.

the sun will tire, maybe
complain of its tasks,
perhaps lament its inability to see
the wondrous world of night and its
surreal, starry terrain.

again i will wipe its tears,
this time with a napkin made with
blades of grass once weaved together by
a bored mother nature sitting cross-legged
in a plain of dead flowers
forgetting her duties and playing with the weeds--
a treasure found floating alone in a lonely river.

when the sun contemplates the dangerous idea
of ends and no more beginnings i will
hold its hands and
bring it to a beautiful corner of the earth,
a place which borders reality and
the edges of dreams.

we will sit together
side by side
and i will hide
my burned hands behind my back
(and whisper into your soft,
blazing fire, tasting burnt skin
and sweet pain: “this is
you”) to watch the colors of the sky bloom
from soul-sucking navy blue to a passionate fuchsia
to a distant yellow as we watch you
sink lower into the horizon,
creating breathtaking beauty in your temporary goodbye
and a promise to return tomorrow.