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 |  A new year, a new blog, same mess of a writer. |
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It's been a while, but since the world is a mess, I might as well take a crack at this writing thing again.  I Write in 2019 ▼ 12 Stories in 12 Months ▼  |
Contest Entry for "The Flash Blog Contest - Closed"  Continuation of "Every Shut Eye Ain't Sleep" .Word Count: 793 There are many things that I regret. Contemplation comes when all that surrounds you are slabs of concrete and infinite silence. I was war made, and turned everyone I met into the same until there was nothing left, not even the cause. All I have to show for it is a cage. They have me locked in the basement of a prison somewhere out in the wastelands. Twenty-four hour solitary confinement with only one shaft of light to tell me that the world is not dead. The dust winds howl like ravenous wolves sometimes, sending little pieces of red sand through the grates up above. That is my only connection to the outside. I’ve had worse. It didn’t take me long to realize that the currency of imprisonment is treason to my principles. I am a model prisoner. For every bit of information I give them about the outfit, I am given a little something for my effort. A blanket for the coordinates to a holding space out in the deserts. Books for the name of an off-planet smuggler. A comb for old bases. Confessions of past crimes in order to bathe. Dignity at its finest. It took my darling older sister two years to visit. My only visitor. Dressed to the nines with her trademark impassive expression, she was always the best of us, and she never let us forget it. The first visit was to feed some question she needed answered in my failure. She had infiltrated the cause that she had left behind. She had taken the lives of everyone of that cause. She had taken our mother. And in the end, she had taken my freedom. Karen needed to see me locked in a box, her last discretion buried under miles of concrete and wires. Whatever it was she was looking for, she found, a flash of cruel satisfaction written all over her face as she left. When Karen comes back the second time, I know she’s there to kill me. A full tea service was provided with foodstuffs that could only be found from contraband hauls. The irony doesn't escape me. Tradition would have me serve her as she is my elder. Traditions that are ingrained in my very marrow. In practiced hand, I make the tea. I pour her cup first - one lump of sugar and a slice of lemon. Mine I take with nothing, savoring the rich flavors of smoky brew, the backnote a sweet tang that could only mean poison. She tells me that it’ll be alright. She made it painless. I was just a loose end that she needed to tidy up. Some things, she says, never change. Which is true. Some things would never change. Which is how I knew she wouldn’t come out of her protective tower unless it was for something she needed to see with her own eyes like capturing a loathsome sibling she had been hunting for years. Which is how I knew she would use the same poison from when we were young, and that she would kill me herself because she couldn’t trust anyone else to get such an important job done right. Which is how I knew she would need to add to my humiliation, have me make and serve the tea; and how I slipped my own poison, a mixture of book ink, red sand, and fibers from my prison-made blanket, into the teapot as the leaves steeped, only activated by the acid of her customary lemon wedge. As the realization of what was happening dawned in her eyes, her lungs began to fill with fluid. I held her as she gasped for breath. It had taken me years to get to her. A last-ditch effort for the cause as there was no one left but me. I did not take pleasure in watching the life drain from her eyes, so much like our mother’s, only a sense of relief as the medics and guards flooded my cell. The kill switch that protected her since her betrayal was triggered the moment her heart stopped beating. And with her death, every misdeed and hateful crime we had ever committed was released to the planet’s nexus. While they investigate her death, the guards took away everything but this book I write in and a small piece of pencil I had tucked away. They say the inquest should over soon. It doesn’t matter. I did what needed to be done. The price is that I will spend the rest of my days in this cell. The exhaustion in my bones has left me. All that is left is solace that it is over. There are many things I regret. Killing my sister is not one of them. |
| Date: 09.15.17 -- Day 54 Music: "When I Reach The Place I'm Going" / Wynonna Judd What's home? Is it a place? A town? A memory? I have no idea, to be honest. It's one of those things that I keep coming back to this week, and one of the things that's eluded me most of my life. My hometown is a state - California. That's my opening sales pitch whenever I start a workshop where you get that kind of question. It's easier to say than telling people I have no hometown or a handful of hometowns depending on your preference. Most of my childhood was spent on the road, in one form or another. Countless hours, sometimes days, in the backseat of a some four-door sedan. In that sense, I've never really had a constant or a touchstone to come back to when things got rough. As I've gotten older, my time staying in one place has lengthened, but that feeling that nothing will remain for long still lingers with me. I still have a few cardboard boxes filled with things from my last move five years ago. It's a peculiar type of mentality. Why unpack when you just have to repack later? Why hang anything on the walls when you're just gonna need to patch those holes later? Why get attached to an apartment when you're going to leave it behind in a year or two? Honestly, I don't know why I'm still set in that mode when I haven't lived that life for a while. Maybe it's too ingrained in my memory to turn it off. I think the thing that scares me the most is the idea that those roads are my constant. I felt safest there as a kid. Life was chaotic enough when my family stood still. Walls meant fewer places to run and hide. But tires on the pavement meant that there were possibilities as long as there was pavement underneath the tires. I often did homework in the backseat while my mother and I delivered medical reports for my dad before the age of the internet and we were too strapped for cash to hire a service. It was during one of those trips that I saw the prettiest sunset of my life on near barren field when the sun blanketed the sky in golden hues. I slept there in the front when we had to go visit my grandfather in the hospital on weekends after he was diagnosed with cancer or when we'd check on the house bore our name but was no longer ours. The most boring trip was always the one from Kern Valley to San Francisco. Nothing to look at but endless brown hills. The clouds, however, would put on a show if you looked up at just the right time. Driving into Owens Valley was, and remains, a time for existential crisis which can be mimicked by staying at any Best Western hotel. Many a road trip down Lancaster way has convinced me that California City is most likely haunted. Like the entire town is haunted, no joke. Crossing the Bay Bridge into San Francisco is like exhaling normalcy and inhaling the bay saltwater, The City, and all that it entails. The most beautiful and potentially deadly drive remains taking PCH from its southern point to its highest point. It's lovely having the ocean as your wing man. I know all these roads by heart, having driven them multiple times, with a multitude of company. The problem is...you cannot build lasting dreams on the road. So what is home? If it's a house or some place to set down roots, I haven't found it yet. Maybe it's one of those lifelong pursuits where the journey is more than the destination. I think I'm closer now to that answer now that I'm away from California. But the state will forever be in my bones and on those roads. I can recall them with almost perfect clarity, each ride and each song on the cassette deck. Those roads made me. What they made me into, I don't know. But I imagine when my body breaks down and nearly turns to dust, you'll find bits of that Golden State asphalt floating around in there. Maybe finding home is accepting that as my truth. Or maybe home is still out there and I just need to search a bit longer. |
| Date: 09.09.17 -- Day 53 Music: "Diamonds" / Laura Mvula Sometimes the grass ain't greener on the other side Maybe the sky is clearer in another place It rained yesterday. That is usually not a big deal in the Pacific Northwest, but there have been a series of fires that have made the air quality dreadful. There was ash in the air and the smell of smoke everywhere, and I live north enough where that shouldn't have been a problem, and yet... So yesterday as I was out running errands, it began to rain for the first time in months. For a moment I just tipped my head back, eyes closed, and let it fall on my face. I didn't know how much I had missed the feel of it until the droplets were landing on my skin. It did wonders for the air. The rain came only for a short while, but it was enough to make it feel like autumn and bring some people out on the town again. It also cleansed me as well. It was only for a moment. But for the wondrous moment I felt somewhat whole again. A small breeze came through, bringing in the scent of salt water from the bay. It's those sudden moments that make putting one foot in front of the other a little less daunting than before. Waiting for a day of change to come And you're beautiful, dancing in a gloomy storm For the last couple of days, there's been this barrier between me and my emotions. Not quite numb, just like I've piled everything into a mound and threw a makeshift blanket over it to not have to see the mess anymore. It's an odd feeling, this disconnect from everything. There are moments when things peek through. The sensation of wanting to cry. The sense of peace while in the rain. The muted frustration of being up another night to watch the sun rise. I don't know why everything is behind a cloud. I mean, I do. But I don't know how. The thing that kind of worries me, in a foggy sorta way, is what will happen when the cloud passes. Will it be this big crash? Or just a sudden sinking feeling? Shame? Anger? Sadness? Will it happen sooner rather than later? I have this weird idea that maybe I'm just this raw mess of a person, but I have no emotional lexicon for it so my brain just defaulted to this abstract state. But you got diamonds under your feet But you got diamonds in your heart She was buried yesterday. I think, on instinct, I knew the moment it happened. Or maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part. Before the cloud, I was angry. At her. At my brother. I was mad that she didn't get the redemption she needed to go through to make things better. This isn't one of those films where the person hits bottom, realizing the work they need to do, and makes it out the other side. Sometimes bottom is just death. And I cannot help but see this countdown clock on some of the others around me. That want to beg them to get help now. To make that leap now. It's a disease. A curse. It shreds and destroys me every time. And the only way it works is if the person wants the help. That's the most difficult part. Because it could be years, decades, before they're ready. A large part of me thinks I should be thankful for the cloud. I've been able to function. Lost in grief is just lost in grief. The cloud keeps me moving. Keeps me functional. Maybe that's what I need right now. My hope is that the cloud isn't like the rain yesterday that only stays for a fleeting moment. For this second, muted is good, and I'll take it. |
| Date: 09.05.17 -- Day 52 Music: "Bright Morning Stars" / Abigail Washburn My house is still in mourning. A soft kind of mourning that lingers in the bone like a morning damp mist. Her funeral is on Friday, but my mother is too unwell to travel and as her caretaker, I just can't. So the old songs come out. "Bright Morning Stars", "The Parting Glass", "Down By The River", and other laments from former deaths past. It is in these times that I am reminded of my mother's mother's people. While I grew up in house both firmly steeped in Filipino and Black traditions, it is my maternal grandmother's traditions we use to mourn, the roots of our Irish and Scottish Catholicism peaking through. These were the first songs I learned as child - laments, gospels, and three-part harmonies. It was one of the few times it seemed acceptable to grieve if you didn't have whisky in your hand. This morning, however, all I have is a cup of deep red hibiscus tea and the sound of a hymn at the back of my throat as I wait to greet the dawn. There was little sleep for me last night and have been up since 3am. My mother woke up with a deep cough in her chest and the inability to breathe. I have an ear for a cough like I have an ear for music. The wrong sound and I'm up from sleep in a flash. I don't sleep that well anyway, so being up with her isn't bad, although she hates waking me. In truth, it's just the life of a caretaker. One just sleeps with one ear open. This August marked seven years from my transition from part-time to full-time caretaker. She's my best friend, so any hardships are mitigated by my love for her. She's helped me through everything, so the least I can do is do the same. The one thing I fear about doing this work is seeing my future. My mother has been battling her illnesses since she was thirty; she turned sixty a few days ago. Even trying to do the best to stop the ravages of my genetics, there's a very good chance my own illness might progress to the point she's at now. It frightens me. It's not the death part; it's the dying part. Years of muscles and bones breaking down into nothing. Not knowing which organ system your body is going to fight today. Struggling to breathe. Struggling through thick mental fog. Struggling to stand. Struggling through unending pain. It is one my biggest fears. And yet, I get up every morning, and try to tackle it once more. I'm so tired though. I'm not even thirty yet, but I'm utterly exhausted of my broken body. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the sun does not wait on broken bodies. There are errands to run, calls to the doctor, post office drop-offs, funeral flowers to buy, pharmacy pick-ups, and so on. So I'll finish my cup of tea as the sun rises, and somewhere along the way, begin again. |
| Date: 09.02.17 -- Day 51 Music: None On the 29th of August, someone close to me died. It's hard to place grief into the right words. I'm not even sure there are words to express how I feel. I find myself in a combination of sorrow and angry and regret. G was like the sun at times, both as someone who made you smile at her warmth and would scald you when her anger overflowed onto the others around her. For years she has been battling addiction, and in that time, she burned many bridges as she refused to seek treatment. One of those bridges was with me. In many ways I loved her and hated her in equal measure. There are some things that no one should let slide and G did many of them. I've been preparing for her passing for years, and yet, with her passing, I am still in shock. It's hard to admit that a part of me thought there would be time for reconciliation. Maybe not with me, but for my nieces and nephew. With her mother and sisters. She had this impervious nature about her. No low was a low for long. She fought back death so many times. What should have been wake-up calls became inconveniences. It would have been easier if she had been a malicious person through and through, but she wasn't. Not always. There was a shine to G that drew people in. She was witty, artistic, and loving when she was sober. In the end the alcohol and the anger ate her up. Her heart just gave out. That's the part I keep coming back to. Her heart just couldn't handle it anymore and stopped. The biggest fear I have is for her eldest daughter, my niece. If there is sunshine personified, it's B. She's gone through so much, more than anyone should have to endure at such a young age. So much loss. So much pain. Yet she laughter and smile continues on. She's in that place of mourning where anything like sympathy feels like pity and she cannot stand pity. She's angry, rightfully so, and in so much grief. I want to fix it. I can't. I know I can't but that doesn't change the want to take her pain away. All I can do it wait for when she's ready to talk about it, and be there for everything else until that time comes. That's the hardest part of being away from family. When things like this happen, I'm not there to be with them. Grief is one of those things that just kind of confuses me. It's not death that scares me. Nor is this the first death of someone I've loved. It's the hope that a path to redemption is now gone. And I miss her. I missed her before she died. I find myself crying at the most random moments thinking about her. In grief I get this kind of frantic energy to work. I cleaned. I cooked. I built a bed from scratch. I caught up on paperwork. It's this kind of need to keep moving so I didn't have to think about the fact that she died. It was somewhere in the middle of building the bed that I lost all composure. The tears kept falling and I couldn't stop the sobs. Then my brain seems to freeze, resets, and continues to find more work to plow through. I just cannot seem to process the emotional ramifications of it all. My mother and I will start a novena tonight. It's one of those things that brings her solace, and I know the prayers to provide her that comfort. I don't know if it does for me anymore. It did once, the ritual of it. Now it just seems hollow. I can only hope that G is not longer in pain. That she can finally find the relief she spent her whole life searching for. I'm trying to remember the good days when her smile came easily and there was so much life ahead of her. Trying to remember moments that were not clouded with anger and disappointment. One day, I imagine, it won't be this pit of emotion. One day. To my sister. I will always hold a part of you with me. I'll be seeing you in every summer's day. May you find peace now. |
| Date: 08.25.17 -- Day 50 Music: "Happy Feelin's" / Maze I've got nothing but this song today. Enjoy.   |
| Date: 08.24.17 -- Day 49 Music: "Today" / Jefferson Airplane Today marks the thirty-day countdown to me going back to university. Gotta say, that seems incredibly daunting at this moment. I'm sitting here at my laptop, all patched to deal with a variety of muscle spasms, waiting for my green tea to finish steeping, wondering how in the world I'm going to be able to head to campus twice a week. It's funny how things can sound good at the time, yet can be pretty harsh in the light of day. This isn't to say I'm not going to do the thing. I am. I have to do the thing. My inner angels or demons or baseball coach or culture, whichever you prefer, demand that I do. I just wish it weren't such an uphill battle. So I'm going to do something that I probably shouldn't; I'm going to forget about it for a while. Today also marks forty-two days until the new NHL season starts. I'm ready for hockey to return. I might even make it to a live game this year. The funniest part about attending a game nowadays is that I have to travel to another country to see the game closest to me. It's kind of hilarious that Canada is my closest option, but the arena isn't bad, and the last time I went I didn't get flack for wearing the opposing team's jersey. The Anaheim Ducks will always be my team. Fun fact: I am the only Ducks fan in my family. My father and numerous amounts of my siblings are LA Kings fans (my little sister is also a Edmonton Oilers fan because her favorite local team - Bakersfield Condors - are their AHL farm team; they are my arch nemesis besides the Blackhawks so that makes for lively family conversations). My mother is a die-hard Detroit Red Wings fan. I've been to more Kings games than Ducks because I'm simply outnumbered, but I hope to rectify that some day. What will make this year interesting is the new expansion team out of Las Vegas. It's not my favorite city in the world, but seeing the start of a new team is intriguing. My little sister went to the new arena and said she liked it. Some of my friends want to do Vegas for vastly different reasons and are looking for someone to remain level-headed and sober. This is something I do often, mostly on accident, because I'm not a drinker or a party person but have a pathological need to make sure people get home safe. That's like a third of what I did while in Belfast, getting classmates back to the dorms from some wayward pub. However, with the chance to see a hockey game, I just might do the thing. Hockey makes up for a lot of things I'd rather not do. So there's a little of the good. A little of the bad. A little of something to look forward to. A little of something to dread. There's a lot of life just being itself. And I'm upright, so that's something too. I'll take it. |
| Date: 08.12.17 - Day 48 Music: "River" / The Belle Game I've played this song at least a hundred times this past week. My body has been a judas. My insurance has been playing games with my medications. One student in crisis; one making a difficult transition after graduating. It feels at times like I haven't been able to breathe, literally and metaphorically, because of the fires around me. But, by God, I had this song. There's something about Andrea Lo's voice that speaks to my soul. It's so nice, I listed it twice. One thing I've been able to do quite a bit of during my down time is outline. Outlining isn't one of my strengths, especially in the beginning. When a story springs on me, it's usually right in the middle. I have to move my mental camera to see what came first, and progress to how things will end. Maybe it's my brain or the stories, but I've actually been able to plot some recently. It's kind of amazing. I almost don't want to say anything out loud in case I'm going to jinx it. I like complicated characters. I like the unfurling of them as they work out things. Sometimes it's just the slog of an unending uphill battle, and sometimes it's the silence that finally gets them to work through their stuff. I'm working on two characters now, completely unrelated, but they share one particular trait in common, which focuses on the need to keep moving forward no matter the damage they've been served. The thing is, though courageous and life-saving at times, it also is its own kind of pain. There are consequences to not dealing with certain things, and a large part of their stories are about to getting to the bottom of those consequences. We write what we know, right? Maybe I'll absorb some of what that actually means someday. I'm just so tired. |
| Date: 07.31.17 -- Day 47 Music: "Take Me As I Am" / Henry Ford So I'm doing that thing again. I had a short story I am in the stages of writing, which incidentally matches with one of the worlds I created long ago. That story was going to be a one-off. But then I thought of another story, which is probably going to end up be a novella. I mean, I should have known this was going to happen. Outlining is about asking questions. A writer is poking and pushing at the plot and the characters to understand what's happening. A push can get a scene to unfurl in the mind. At least that's what happens to me. So I pushed a short story, which spawned a novella, and poking that novella spawned another novella, and that novella spawned a campfire with my favorite writing partner in the world. At first, I was fighting it because I had a goal, damn it. But now it's about letting that goal float away for another time because, honestly, my brain could use a little love. The thing is I love world-building. Probably a little too much. If you ever have trouble with that aspect of writing, I'm your girl. There's just so much potential. Doing these stories is bringing me back to this world that is complicated and strange and complex, yet it is all too familiar. One of the biggest reasons why my brain decided that this was the time to come back to it was the fact that I have better questions than I did eight years ago. I've written more, I know more about the craft of writing, and I understand some of the pitfalls I had before. So tackling this again feels nice, different. I feel like I can do this story justice. If only I could chill with the new story ideas... |
| Date: 07.22.17 -- Day 46 Music: "I Found" (Mahogany Session) / Amber Run featuring London Contemporary Voices This particular song haunts me. Maybe it's the chapel or just the atmosphere, but this is just a lovely, lovely song. I found myself missing choir practice, which is strange because of my love/hate relationship with choir, but the arrangement of this song is beautiful as anything. If you're into acoustics, a cappella, or just striped down versions of songs, I cannot hype Mahogany Sessions on Youtube enough. You might be surprised what musicians and singers have done a gig or two on there. Definitely worth a listen.  Life is funny. Sometimes in the humorous ha-ha jokes kind of way, and sometimes in the bitter laughter kind of way. This past week has definitely been the later. In these trying times, as my grandfather use to say. Sometimes I wish I could jump off this ride of life and catch my breath because there is only so much bitter laughter one can do before things get to be exhausting. And trying to find that balance in life, through the ups and downs of chaos, can be a pretty big challenge. Let's be honest, it just kind of flat out sucks. I try to remember it's the little things that help sometimes. I made a few jars of overnight oats, experimenting with a consistency that I liked. The recipes are meant for flat oats, but of course, there were only steel-cut on hand. Sometimes you just got to roll with what you got. I like them. It's covered me for meals that I would have just skipped because the physically pain of standing and cooking was just too much. I have this tendency to not eat when I'm in pain; it's a bad habit I've trying to work on. So I'm going to count that as a win. My father's hip surgery went well. Hopefully, it'll be his last. He's upbeat, hasn't had to shave for work in a minute, and is catching up on shows he missed. From the texts he has sent me and brief conversations, he's actually seems...happy? For a person who isn't necessarily the most jovial of people and just under the knife, he's doing well. So that's definitely a win. My mother wants to go to Norway in a couple of years. She starts a new treatment to help with her lungs in about a month, so the hope is that in 2019 she'll be much better, and that my brothers and their families and I will hop on a plane and head for Norway. I'm excited because she's excited. She's making plans, trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel in what have been the roughest years of her illnesses. It's a big win. My niece got her driver's permit. Two of my students got back from their family road trip safely. I got some new tea that tastes quite lovely. Some rain might be coming in, hopefully it'll help the fires up north. I still have two months before I need to head back to life in academia. All wins, big and small. There is point where the pain of life seems never-ending like a continuous wave that never seems to fully crest. But there is happiness there, too. Maybe it's not constant. Maybe it's just moments. But it's those moments that shine the brightest. And as balancing life becomes more difficult, one must pull out those moments, those memories to get through the next trial. So I'm going to hold on to these wins, try to remember them when things get tough, and continue forward, one step at a time. |
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Week 1: December 31st - January 6th:
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