Southern Gothics

I love southern Gothics like I love air and if I could I would spend my entire life wasted on them. I found this cool piece the other day describing the genre and I'd like to share! My love for them is initially why I liked SPN in the first place because that really was the best description for it.

"The decaying ruins of the old American South are crawling with ghosts. Spirits stilted in time, haunting overgrown forests and hiding in forgotten places so overgrown with the unkillable greenery that they bear no resemblance to what they once were. It is just an ocean of trees, suffocated by the Japanese invasion of creeping vines. Time has stopped, and they have been left behind. Even the trunks of the strongest oak trees bend in defeat of the southern sun that would melt any other setting built of less resolve. Old plantation homes turn to dust that dances in the wind, carried off to parts unknown and leaving behind nothing but the legend once held within their walls. The creek of a rocking chair on an old wooden porch and footsteps crunching against gravel roads create a soundtrack to this journey.

Crumbling towns too small to grace the pages of any map becomes the stage for a cast of colorful characters who stand at the brink of a dying culture and look to the rest of the world with an unwavering pride and determination that can only be found in the Deep South. You won’t find a celebration of the southern belle on the arm of her handsome beau. Broken souls and broken bodies walk the desolate streets in rags passed down from better days. Our hero is an outsider, hindered by some grotesque abnormality of mind or body. Their world is a lonely one, plagued with a soul crushing sense of abandonment. They do not belong in this world because everything here fights to snatch away the innocence that society places such a high value on. But such a fleeting idea will turn to ash in their hands and slip right through their twisted little fingers.

Their world is a violent one. Tensions ride high on the backs of racism and classism and sometimes it is the wild and untamed children who must rise in revolt of the ideas of the bygone age of their ancestors. They balance on the edge of a knife, forced to balance naivety against desperation. Our heroes will soon learn what they are capable of in the face poverty and alienation."

403

Poetry

More poems because I've made myself and I'm too lazy. Sundays are corrupt. The curtains shift quietly with the breeze. Night is long but I am longer. I don't care for anything, right now. These poems tear me apart and I don't forget them.

Bath 5---Jen Silverman
If it’s one drink, it will be two. Wisteria tangling
around your wrists. Here is where you buried your

father. Here is where you buried your brother.
Here is where they will bury you, when the

time comes. No wonder you drink yourself down
toward the earth. Home is where the shovels lie.

Earth and earth and earth. Stones crowd your sleep.
Granite and salt, sand giving birth to

the fortress where even your lovers sigh. Silent
underfoot. You dream yourself toward them.

You are foxfire, you are phosphorescent. Your
mouth like whiskey. Your eyes like whiskey.

You baptize yourself in sorrow, again and again.
You baptize yourself with bourbon and brandy.

You swim downward, fast salmon, heedless, handsome,
death is in you, it has captured your ear. You have your

father’s jaw, your brother’s chin. When you were born
they bathed your small body with their fears.

Each scar they’d earned became manifest on your skin.
Their love aches like a badly set bone. When the river takes

you, it will be no new baptism. Just that same, ancient sacrifice.
Just that rush, that rushing, and then you are gone.

Why I Believed, As A Child, that People Had Sex in Bathrooms--- Cecilia Woloch

Because they loved one another, I guessed.
Because they had seven kids and there wasn't
a door in that house that was ever locked —
except for the bathroom door, that door
with the devil’s face, two horns like flame
flaring up in the grain of the wood
(or did we only imagine that shape?)
which meant the devil could watch you pee,
the devil could see you naked.
Because that’s where people took off their clothes
and you had to undress for sex, I’d heard,
whatever sex was — lots of kissing and other stuff
I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
Because at night, when I was scared, I just
climbed into my parents’ bed. Sometimes
other kids were there, too, and we slept
in a tangle of sheets and bodies, breath;
a full ashtray on the nightstand; our father’s
work clothes hung over a chair; our mother’s
damp cotton nightgown twisted around her legs.
Because when I heard babies were made from sex
and sex was something that happened in bed,
I thought: No, the babies are already there
in the bed. And more babies came.
Because the only door that was ever locked
was the bathroom door — those two inside
in the steam of his bath, her hairspray’s mist,
because sometimes I knocked and was let in.
And my father lay in the tub, his whole dark body
under water, like some beautiful statue I’d seen.
And my mother stood at the mirror, fixing her hair,
or she’d put down the lid of the toilet
and perched there, talking to him.
Because maybe this was their refuge from us —
though they never tried to keep us away.
Because my mother told me once
that every time they came home from the hospital
with a brand new baby, they laughed
and fell in love all over again
and couldn't wait to start making more.
Should this have confused me? It did not.
Because I saw how he kissed the back of her neck
and pulled her, giggling, into his lap;
how she tucked her chin and looked up at him
through her eyelashes, smiling, sly.
So I reasoned whatever sex they had, they had
in the bathroom — those steamy hours
when we heard them singing to one another
then whispering, and the door stayed locked.
Because I can still picture them, languid, there,
and beautiful and young — though I had no idea
how young they were — my mother
soaping my father’s back; her dark hair
slipping out of its pins.
Because what was sex, after that? I didn’t know
he would ever die, this god in a body, strong as god,
or that she would one day hang her head
over the bathroom sink to weep. I was a child,
only one of their children. Love was clean.
Babies came from singing. The devil was wood
and had no eyes.

Poetry

"My hobbies include
Editing my life story
Hiding behind metaphors
And trying to convince my shadow
That I’m someone worth following”

----Rudy Franscisco, from "My Honest Poem"

Ok, in clarification that I don't view myself as any special snowflake or anything for quoting generally obscure  poetry, and the fact that I'm going to talk about some of my favorites---but in all honesty, I really do enjoy poetry. I'm picky and to be honest, half the time I don't understand what I'm reading or don't understand it until later, but I think it's beautiful and sharp and poignant. At least, the ones that have meaning to me on a deep and personal level.

The thing about poetry is that everyone has their own interpretation and experience with a poem. That it can mean one thing or many to one person and be seen as an entirely different portrayal by another is one of my favorite things about the complexity and craft of poetry; and that I have read poems that have given me goosebumps by the honesty in them, or by reducing me into tears because sometimes reading them can be painful and true, is another. 

I wouldn't consider myself a snob in poetry, simply because I haven't read enough or studied it enough to know everything. I like what I like; I appreciate what I can; and I criticize as fairly as I can. My tastes can be somewhat generic, perhaps---I love Cummings and Plath, Crane and Poe; Hughes, Shakespeare, Eliot, Silverstein, Frost. 

I also really love listening to spoken. Sarah Kay, Dana Gilmore, Shira Erlichman, Kai Davis, Camonghne Felix, Yani Mo. Alllll women, interestingly enough.

Anyway, let me share some of my favorites so I can get enough words!
Nostalgia - Alberto Blanco

There is the sky. Now I can see it.

There is the open sky
waiting for the best I can give.

Left behind are parents,
friends, givers of advice...

The dream toys of childhood,
the tree of desire,
night in the depths of the pool,
the park that witnessed our first kiss...

I see it all in the distance
like a body that awakens
in a remote part of the landscape.
I look at it as if it were false.

We have arrived at life
by saying farewell to everything we've loved,
to that which was given,
to all those we love.

But there, at this moment, is the sky.

The World Does Not Belong to You, Though You Belong to the World,

for this is not a marriage,
living. Only you have
given your hand and
climbed into the carriage
of Morning. Where do you
think you’re going? Morning
owes you nothing. She is

fickle, she is strong. Only
to Morning does Morning
belong. As she takes you
into the day, onto the old
wide way of the world, she
sings so intimate a song you
may begin to believe she

loves you. You may even
come to believe you somehow
guide her along sometimes,
but you are wrong.
You think you are a pitcher
taking the mound, but it’s
the other way around.

—Todd Boss, from yellowrocket: Poems (W. W. Norton & Co., 2008)

story time

In the post below, I talked about the story I wrote for my friend. I'm too lazy to blog anything else. So I'll post this here. Names changed for reasons.

It's dark by the time we're out of the movie theater  It's always dark by the time we're out--and that's good, that means night driving. That's the best part.

            Gabby and I have a ritual and it is usually some variation of Starbucks-movie-Taco Bell-driving. I can't differentiate between one night and the next in my memories. It's more like it's just one night, and it has never ended, continuous and simply one in my memory. The details get confused. They switch around to different times and places they're not supposed to be. They're versatile,  I've never tried to fix them---what does it even matter?

            But tonight we go to Hy-Vee. I'm going to say that this is the night we go to Hy-Vee for the first time, a new check-mark in tradition. We're looking for a friend of mine, but it turns out that she doesn't get off until later, so we start actually looking for food, wander over to the bakery section where she starts to freak out about what processed pastries to get because we're going to go on a little gift delivery service to our friends (we have about eight if we add them together) and their parents. We end up agreeing on Zebra-Cakes and Twinkies and because we are especially juvenile Gabby gets us the Welch's sparkly grape stuff that comes in the glass wine bottle. By the end of the night it's going to look like Oscar from Sesame Street lived in there. I noticed her eyeing the shrimp earlier at Hy-Vee suspiciously. That's because she's afraid that if she eats them they'll somehow pop back into life in her mouth.

            After our first stop (a drop-off to Katie's parents, whose mother drinks a glass of wine every night and cooks fancy food with foreign names and whose father is about 5'4) we start driving around some more, and the conversation leads to this:

            "Ok," Gabby starts, "so when we go on our road trip to Canada we both agree that we're staying somewhere with Magic Fingers, and I get first dibs on all the attractive men because you love me and we'll eat lots of junk food and get FAT which already happens when I got to the Zaputil house."

            I turn off of Collins near Noelridge, which turns out to be a bitch because the speed limit is 25 and there's some Popo crawling around, searching for dumb miscreants like us. "Agreed. It's going to be like Stand By Me only with an actual car and more bodies."

            She laughs, gets the reference. I'd always found it weird that the movies we could relate to were about lower class pubescent middle school boys from the 60's. Gabby wants me to drop her off at the park some time so she can sit there alone and watch Stand By Me on one of our portable DVD readers. I'm willing, but I still can't decide on whether or not if I'm going to 'forget' her after I leave her there. 

            We stop at Anna's next. There was this giant bucket of popcorn sitting in the back that Gabby had gotten for free at the Collins Road Theatre but never finished, and it sat there greasy and expectant. I parked on the side of the street and she ran out and threw it all around the yard, kind of flailing on the snow and then setting the bucket neatly on the front porch. I'm laughing because it's the stupidest thing and it's so small but that's the whole point of these car rides, small adventures.

            "We have no friends," Gabby gasps as she lets out a never round of laughter. She's got this crazy hair-do, black curls that sprawl everywhere, and she says it's because they're full of secrets. I start laughing because it's so true and so awful. Long story short: we only have eight friends because we excommunicated the other five, and the really mean part about is that some of them don't even know. We're not very nice people. We're Mean Girls without the actual cojones to be outright mean.  

            We're the pair that sometimes takes passengers on our little adventures, but only for a little bit until we genuinely get bored. At Homecoming, when she saw who we'd be eating with, she told me to gun it in reverse. "I'm not even joking, let's leave," she'd said. I had started laughing. She accused me of thinking she was joking. I told her I was laughing because I knew she was dead serious.

            So then it's the third stop and that involves us scaring the hell out of poor Sarah's mother by creeping up on their porch because Gabby didn't know if Sarah was home and leaving a careful snack on their unlit porch. We felt bad about it until Sarah texted us twenty minutes later---thx 4 the snack lol.

            Then there's nothing left for us to give. We have no friends.

            So we drive to some random parking lot or another. I think this was the time we went to Franklin. And it's winter, so I start acting like an idiot and pull donuts in the empty lot, which makes us laugh and scream (I momentarily lose control for about five seconds, and that's the moment when I'm actually just screaming).

            It's just us. A true friend is someone you can talk about with for anything, laugh about anything with, but most importantly share silence with. It's quiet except for the gentle muted roar of the highway, far away from us. Escape routes. Roads to take us places.

            I think about the where and when and how. The truth is it's nights like these that remind me that it's OK to be a stupid kid once in a while. I remember what it was like to be 13 and pining to be 16. I'm not 13 anymore. I remember Gabby at 13 and 14 and how she was already planning her emergency exits. Which was kind of like Gabby when she went through what she calls her lesbian-looking phase at the end of sophomore year, the one where she didn't shave her legs for, like, two months. But considering my whole middle school career was my lesbian-looking phase I didn't have much leg to stand on.

We go driving at night because we're challenging tomorrow. We drink stupid Welch's wine because we don't want to drink the real thing. Gabby's mom still tucks her in.

            That's why I'm fond of these nights. It's one long road in my memory, all these city lights and conversations and passing places. Sometimes I think that maybe that's the trick, getting myself onto the right road. I hope that even when Gabby goes a different route, she's still always shotgun. That's friendship.

            At the end of the night, when I'm dropping her off, I say, "I love you."

            Gabby says: "No."

Woops

This year I was supposed to do NanoWrimo in November. For those of you who don't know, Nanowrimo is an online annual event where for one month, writers from all around the world try to pen a novel down with 50,000 words or more. It's online community, but there are lots of real-life events too.

Today I opened the file to where I was supposed to save all my word counts.

There was zero.

I laughed, a little spooked. You start something a couple of months ago, promising yourself you'll get it in one---end up with not even a fifth of that amount, and with about three fold that of time passing. I wondered just where the hell that time went, if I had put into the wrong pocket of some sort, lost between one place and the next. It actually made me shiver, how fast things were going.

This is why I don't even attempt at New Year's Resolutions. Setting up a predetermined window of time to which you're going to accomplish something does nothing. If you want something, don't just start it because it's the beginning of the new year, something most people consider a fresh start. Do it now. You need to try at the worst possible time because if you can pull through something when everything around you is blowing a stack, then quite possibly you can succeed. 

Today I got a really nice message from a friend mother's about a story I wrote which had her daughter as one of the main people. She encouraged me to keep writing, and that I was doing a great job. I was humbled and ecstatic. It means a lot to me that she put in the time and energy into writing me and sending me something at all.

Usually, I find my crippling fears of failure and seeing other people's successes as a good enabler to motivating me to try to do a good job, to try to do something with my life. I've got my parents to make proud, but don't we all? That's not to say their acknowledgement isn't important, because when I'm fishing for compliments to make myself feel good, they're the first people I go to so I can preen. 

But for some people I have to work for their respect and recognition. Remember in that movie Hot Rod where the main character, Rod, is always fighting with his step-dad, because he is fighting desperately for his step-fathers approval, and is always screaming things like "AND YOU WILL RESPECT ME!" Pictures for visual explanation below:

That? That's pretty much how I feel when I want someone to like me or my work. And it's terrible. But when they do acknowledge me, like my friend's mom today, well---sometimes I find it's all worth it. 

More on Music

While I'm still on this tangent.

I've always wished I could have been a musician. I don't tell people that, but it's true. It's really good for your mind, and it's great for helping people. I know that at the U of I, musicians are often some of the best entertainers and comforters for the kids who are diagnosed with cancer.

Music is a place where there are no words for.

Since I write (in contrast of being a writer---you actually have to actively write to be such, hahahaha /cries) I understand that sometimes there are no words for what you want to convey. Writer's paint rooms of images and pray for the readers to get to the image and feeling their trying to convey. With music,  I feel that it's more a direct link. That the emotions and feelings are right there. With writing, their is more room for interpretation, and for emotions where there are no words for, music fills that emptiness. With words you can only shape such by measuring it's vastness, and even then, it is only qualitative data.

And I think that other people understand.

Look, everyone is kind of in general agreement that music lately has gone down in quality--- the music industry literally has the common pop song down to a formula. So it's interesting to see that classic/acoustic cover of pop songs are so popular. Gangnam Style may be a massive hit, with its 1.1 billion views and lead as Youtube's most popular video, but the four million people who have seen this acoustic version of Psy's magnum opus would agree that slower, more natural version is infinitely better.

Music speaks to us on a raw and personal level. When I write, I try to listen to something that helps me connect my writing better just to get on that level that music provides. While there is beauty in both expressions, music can speak without words. And that's kind of amazing, to me, to someone whose trying to build a life on a craft that uses entirely words.

I mean how often do stories bring tears to your eyes by their sentence structure alone? Usually it's the story that brings such an effect to people. But with music, it's both. And it happens often. There is a difference between reading about tragedy and then actually listening to it, and that difference is something between reality and simply telling stories. Music does both.

I wish I was a musician. I'd probably pay something sexy, like a guitar.

I've always noticed that

people are shy to share their writing and art. When you hand someone your paper you spent five hours pouring your heart and soul into it, there is implacable stress that comes with. You're nervous, you want them to like it--like you. This is is a part of you, a piece of your soul you've handed them. What is written in their hands is also written on your heart, and sharing something that is of yourself, the essence, is terrifying. Sometimes what you create scares you, so you try to demolish.

When you go through someone else's art or writing or photography, you're seeing something you're not necessarily supposed to see. People are unearthed by their own hands, their creation. It's a sneak peek through a door they're afraid to open. We are so scared about who we are.

I've hated almost everything I've ever written. I've never shown anyone what I've actually enjoyed. What I've made is what I am, it belongs to me. I'm bad at opening up.

But I'm trying to do better, which is the most you can expect out of anyone, really. Working on some more projects, filing through the oldies to see who I was when I wrote this and that. I find it strange to see the kind of person I once was in contrast to who I am. I find it relieving.

It's OK to be scared about sharing your stuff. That's you, that's human. But don't be afraid to write or draw or sing for yourself. I suppose, that while the goal is to have your works known and contributed to the skeptic eyes of people, that in the end the number one person you'll have to answer to is yourself.

Virgil tried to burn his own work. Michelangelo threw away thousands of his own drawings. It's natural to dislike what you've created, the best of them did. But don't you ever stop creating. There is one quote I really enjoy from Kurt Vonnegut:

“ The arts are not a way of making a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."
— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, 2005 

You will have created something. And what is more beautiful than creation?

I think a lot

about writing. I'm not a very good writer, but I'm definitely not the worst. I hate almost everything I've ever written, which my mom says is good. That all the best writer's do, because that's how they make progress, knowing they've got to be better. Sometimes I don't know if I can. 

I actually like these blog posts a lot. In a way, they're almost therapeutic, getting my thoughts out into the air, having to actually think when I write my argument. I like how sometimes I'll start with the opinion at one end of the argument, and as I do my research and try to form my opinion it actually changes by the end of the article, because I've actually taken the time to think about the choice I'm making on something. I suppose it's enlightening. It certainly is critical to me, as a writer, as a person.

The hardest thing about writing is actually doing it. Ideas will come and go through out the day, but it takes an insurmountable determination to start penning things down. You probably know it. Doing something that feels impossible and then laughing when you're down. In athletics they say the time you should work the hardest is when you feel at you're absolute weakest, because that is when the training matters most, where it will kick in. It's true about writing.

I don't know where I stand as a writer compared to my peers. I don't know where I stand at all, and I'm either not comfortable enough with having someone critiquing my work or the people I actually do feel comfortable enough don't have enough experience/expertise to validate my writing. I love tough editors because they get you places. The thing about praise and success is that it gets you nowhere, builds this sense of security that is hard to get out of because it's safe---so you never move on to greater things.

I remember I won this contest for the Love My Library Contest. I won a NOOK, which was awesome, but I was also really embarrassed. I consider it one of my poorer essays. And I won, and was lavished with all this unmitigated praise and congratulations and I felt like such a fraud because the essay was actually pretty terrible. And then I had to read it at this groundbreaking ceremony downtown, and I just felt bad. Resist the urge to publicly apologize bad, and I ran off the stage when everyone was clapping. Oh man, and then people personally congratulated me after, and I did not deserve that. I smiled and thanked them, but inside I was handling it badly.

As a writer, it's not as though I don't like winning. But only when I feel like it's deserved. And how the hell am I supposed to know when something is deserved when I can't even honestly tell how good something I write is? Because this is important to me. I want to be a better writer.

Also, scholarships, which pretty sums up my life right now.