Invention vs Discovery

"This is a great idea for a book," I thought, lying in bed in the dark. I ran the characters through my mind again and could see the book on shelves in elementary schools everywhere. It would be the next big thing for kids my age, a rite of passage like the Magic Tree House series or the ever-fading Boxcar Children. It was fourth grade, and I was going to write this book. And I was going to be famous.

I waited and waited for a fiction writing assignment to come up in class, and when it did I would write the novel and turn it in and the student teacher would be so blown away that she'd sweep me and my novel off to get published.

I never wrote the novel, though I narrated it (and three additional books in the series) to myself in bed at night or on road trips to distant family gatherings in the far-off city of Ogden. But it never left my head.


I knew I had a good singing voice, though it wasn't as fabulous as my friend's. I knew one day I'd walk into an audition and shock the casting table with my hidden talent.

"Who is this girl and where did she get that voice?!" They'd say and cast me on the spot.

I waited until my junior high musical production class, in which we did a musical review of sorts, to reveal my secret singing ability in my first on-stage solo. My friend had a duet with another girl in the same production. We put up the show. I sang. She sang. My parents came up to me afterwards and told me how amazing and professional she sounded.

I decided musical theatre would never be my forte.


When I'd started taking piano lessons I realized I was naturally relatively decent at it. This skill surpassed any my mother or grandmother had in the area, and exceeded that of my non-lesson taking friends. Satisfied in my ability, I stopped practicing. This nudge toward talent would suit me well enough.


The friend with the incredible singing voice has been in my life for years. She's very driven, very motivated, very confident. She always said she would do everything she could to be as good at theatre as she possibly could--knowing if she became as proficient as possible, she would, in comparison, exceed the ability of her peers in the field by miles. She believed being her personal best would equate to her being the overall best. And she was determined to reach that goal.

Meanwhile, I constantly resigned myself to not being in the same league as these people who shared my interests, or that I was so substantially better that I didn't need to constantly tune and tone my skills. Where I was was where I was meant to be.

And then I started doing improv.

For the first time in my life I had that desire to try, to actively work on this inkling of talent crumbled up with lint in my pocket, and to build it into a castle I could inhabit and from which reign and rule. I wanted to learn and grow and excel and become more advanced like the more seasoned players in the troupe.

For the first time in my life I wanted to work for something.


There's a quote the internet attributes to John Lennon which has started to rub me wrong: "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

I understand why it is continually super-imposed onto images of sunsets and forest glades. I understand that the world takes it to mean that "Life happens when you least expect it," or "You can't control a lot of things that creep up in life," or, the every popular, "You'll find the right guy when you stop looking." I get that.

But I disagree.

To me this implies a passive, almost existential quality to life: that life is a river and we're in a little boat with no oars or paddles and we just...float. If you hit a rock, hey. You were meant to hit that rock. If you drift down the left fork when you'd hoped for the right, hey. You needed that tributary more.

I've lived my life that way, relying on fate and happenstance and circumstance and serendipity, I've lived with that mentality of life just happening to you--I've shelved my dreams of novel writing from a young age because it was not required for me to attempt it for a grade. I've given up on learning musical theatre because my voice, as an adolescent, was not naturally Broadway ready. I've quit musical instruments because it would take effort to become the kind of person who could sit down and play anything. It was enough to be able to play something, however basic that something be.

I wanted life to happen to me. As perfectly imperfect as I was naturally. I expected it would. I expected people would notice me in a quiet solitude and sense my potential and ability. They would find me out and bring my skill to light and life would be a landslide of good-fortune and fame and prestige.

And then I started doing improv.

There's a principle in improvisational theatre referred to as "invention vs discovery." The essence of this is that a good, strong scene is one that develops naturally between the actors and their relationship with each other through their characters. If each player focuses on the realities of their character and their relationship to the other players upon the stage, humor and a thematic direction for the scene will naturally crop up into being out of that action--discovery.

Invention, on the other hand, kills a scene. Invention is an actor running into a scene with an arsenal of jokes in his pocket he is determined to deliver, regardless of the dynamic of the relationship with his partner. Invention is best summarized by the "Michael Scarn" construct, which (for anyone who has scene a few seasons of The Office) is the improv actor who pulls out a gun in every scene when he runs out of ideas--because the actor focusing on invention focuses on ideas and what he can do to be a humorous aspect, what he can do to impact the scene for his own end, rather than supporting and building up his teammates even if that means taking a "fall" and setting others up for jokes and possibly not getting to deliver your own. Pulling a "gun" out in a scene is invention. It kills the relationship between characters and leaves the scene in shambles but, hey, at least they got a couple short-lived laughs and a smidge more attention.

Invention comes from being self-focused. How can I be funny to the audience? How can I get a huge laugh/applause? How can I make an impact?

Discovery is about participation. That's it. Discovery is about actively working with your fellow actors and doing something to build them and, in turn, the scene.

A life well lived is a life lived in discovery, a life in which you work everyday to build others and their situations to a higher point than where you found them, where you actively strive to contribute something that doesn't reflect directly back to you. A life of invention is a life of pompous pride, a life of knowing you're as good--the scene is as good-- as you/it will ever be, and you just have to stand there and spew things out and it will work to your advantage.


If there's anything I've learned in the last two years, it's that there is no pearl without the oyster. There is no glory without work. Pearls don't roll around the ocean floor waiting to be scooped up in droves. They have to be pried from a sealed shell--there has to be pressure and work and time.

I want a castle full of pearls. I want a life that I've built and worked for. I want to be recognized as someone who did her best, not as someone who was the best. I don't want to go back to a life spent leaving doors closed because my key didn't open the lock on the first try. I want a life I've actively participated in, a life of discovery and creation where my input builds the outcome, rather than a life on a cardboard throne spent expressing lamentations that no one has noticed how great I am at sitting yet.

Life happens when you make it happen, and I think that's what Lennon intended if/when he said that. I want to act and not be acted upon. I want a life of beauty and fulfillment, a life of discovery.

I want pearls.

In Secret

A Facebook friend posted this today.

Erring on the side of caution, should the technologies of the internet deem the photo unfit to display, it says the following: "A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." -Franz Kafka

I've been feeling very off lately. And it should be no shock to me that the majority of this feeling stems from the fact I haven't sat down and jotting something casually for the sake of merely jotting in a long time. Last night I desperately wanted to write in a journal, but I knew the task would cut more out of my sleep schedule than I was able to allow.

But I miss it. I miss this. And it's occurring to me that though I set out for this blog to be everything but a "here's how my life's going yolo" kind of media, it can still have aspects of that.

Theatre school has made me stop watching movies to watch movies, and I mean that in the sense that the things I've learned have effected my view, not that my professors have some sort of iron fist over my personal entertainment options. I watch movies and pay attention to the costumes, watching for inconsistencies or themes. I look for metaphor in basic on screen conversations, taking apart the dialogue as though it were a play on the page before me and I'm equipped with a series of colored pencils. I watch character choice and subtleties that speak to an internal monologue or objective.

I watched a Tom Felton movie the other night because, as Boy Aaron said, girls are prone to obsess over celebrities. His portrayal of the character was so compelling, even though he played a sickly, naive, exuberant 1800's chap. I couldn't get over the performance. So I watched it again. To be honest, in both sittings we never quite finished the movie, but the second time around, aware of where the stroyline would take us, I caught blow after blow of metaphor and foreshadowing that were so subtle I honestly hadn't caught them the night before. I started taking note of which characters referenced water the most, how often death became a casually passing topic, and it was amazing.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I'm in need of one of those therapeutic writing sessions so this is what you get, internet and Sydney.

I just like the idea of people being intellectual in their creativity, of there being more behind the beauty besides a natural gift at depicting it. I like knowing I can take a spade and push the topsoil away, and that there will be soil beneath rather than overturned, hollow crates.

carefree summer

"I don't believe in signs, Erica."

I faltered mid sentence and glanced at her briefly before turning back to the road. "You don't believe in signs?" I had to assure I'd heard her right.

"No. You're always talking about things like they're signs and I don't believe in signs."

Perhaps it's my innate skills of word working that has me constantly searching for deeper meaning in the text of life. Perhaps, in the way more analytical folks see patterns and numbers in the day to day things, writers and dreamers search for the metaphor within. That's what separates the disciplines; empirical vs spiritual. The deduction of how things work rather than why things work and what it all means. It's the artist in me. It's the religionist in me. It's what keeps me optimistic--my constant search for a clue of destiny, fate, the best to come.

There are moments in my life where I've felt what I believe to be pure peace, true joy, perfection even. But these moments are just that, moments, so the teaser of possibilities fades away, appearing only so I'll recognize it when I do finally stumble upon it. They'd come when I would read. I got into "chapter books" and novels in elementary because they made me feel something; dropped me in this world I didn't know about, took me places, had me experience things I never did. I would feel free, liberated, carefree, alive. It happens when I listen to Jason Mraz after any amount of time without hearing his angelic tones. It happens when I take the stage under another person's name. But it never stays. The book ends and it's over, the song ends and I'm empty, the show's done and the character evaporates into the vapor cloud that possessed me. I've wanted to capture it for years. I started writing a book in ninth grade that was/is titled in all my saved documents of it "carefree summer," because I wanted to write a book that embodied that feeling, that breezy life they always had in books (breezy naturally meaning feel-good, not simple and without adversity). I wanted to harness that peace, that joy, and maybe give myself the ability to keep it otherwise.

I've been muddled the past couple weeks. The semester is progressing, I'm growing more established in the new routines of my job at a credit union, the elementary school musical I'm directing is coming to the apex, and I don't know what I'm doing with my life.

I want to teach theatre. I won't find a job in that. I won't get paid for it. And should I be lucky enough to score a spot in the field, it's not a job I leave at work. Theatre doesn't stop, especially when you're the one running it all. I don't want to teach English. I'd be good at it. I can see that, but I've never wanted to, that's never been my desire. I want to write. I want to change my double major to creative writing and learn the things I really want to know to accomplish that part of my dreams. I won't find a job in that. If I happen to write something worth publishing, it's not going to rake in billions of dollars unless it somehow becomes the next teen fandom. I want to go on a mission, but I don't want to quit this job and lose that money and drop my schooling and....

Everything's just felt so wrong. Like the credit union was a mistake. Like taking generals this semester to get my associates done was the wrong course. Like I should have stayed home today.

But not this week. I can't pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but I'm going to guess it started Monday. I drove out to Ogden, and now that I do that regularly I've grown tired of the one CD I've been listening to for a couple weeks, when it usually takes a month or so before over-kill settles in. I popped in a recording of a Pickleville Playhouse melodrama and listened to the music and selected scenes of dialogue from the show, my insides burning with this excitement and happiness.

And it hasn't stopped all week. I'm addicted to it, to this feeling of feeling good. I can't get enough of this carefree summer, and other than the minor set back when an elementary school student left me a rather insulting note, this feeling hasn't gone away. I've gone from school to work to Friendsday to rehearsal to a live theatre production to lounging in my friends' apartment/duplex, and it hasn't gone away. I've been swarmed in this carefree summer all week, and I don't know what I did to get it, but it suddenly occurred to me I'm living that life I've been craving from the beginning. I'm at that point of peace and joy.

So I'm living in it. I'm taking it as a sign that things are right, here. That I'm where I'm meant to be standing regardless of what I thought now would look like. I'm taking this moment for all it is. And next semester can come when it comes. My next show will come when it's time. A mission will come when it's right. I don't need to plan ahead or worry about tomorrow. I need to lift where I stand in today and keep this carefree summer before it goes away.

I don't know what to write today. 

It seems I've cycled back through to a realm in which I've lost the words. A realm that isn't pleasant to dwell in, mind you, and one I don't make a practice of visiting much. 

I started watching Lord of the Rings. 

It was last week, and I scrambled to finish an essay I should have written a good four weeks beforehand, knowing my friends were gathered at a house several blocks away watching hobbits and dwarves sing and adventure. Thankfully they'd started the movie late, so I made it in time to leave the Shire.

But I've never been much of a fan. I've never seen Lord of the Rings, other than several parts multiple times (how I manage to walk into the room or change the channel during the same battle sequence as often as six times is beyond me). I went because 1) it was the cool kids. The cool kids were watching the movie, and I'm sorry, but I'm part of the cool kids for once so I make an effort to participate in their outings. 

Or innings, rather.

2) We, the cool kids, were going to the midnight premier the following night of the Hobbit. For contingency's sake we'd scheduled it like this. So I went. So I wouldn't be lost.

And both that night and the following night in the theater behind two friends in hobbit garb, I was a goner. That rascal Peter Jackson, that sly dog Tolkien sucked me in. 

I miss imagination. I miss reading epics, I miss the formulation of something other than contemporary life swirling through my mind. I miss difference. I miss clarity and uniqueness and beauty. 

I want it. I want to write, I want to read, I want to watch and feel something. I want something, my heart constricting with the idea that I have nothing--which is false in every sense of the phrase, but as is said in the play Seminar, paraphrased because I can't manage to find my copy of the script, "Writer's need to feel something to write."

I haven't been feeling much lately. And now all I feel is that ache to feel, that need to feel. It's not really much, but I suppose it's enough. 

I hardly even know what this means.

"Grab your shovel." She said.

"Why?"

"We're going to need them when the rocks get deep."

After the rain when the grass gets slick and I wonder briefly how it'll react with my shoes, we trope into the trees with the shovels from the shed out back, nothing dry but our persons, the construction of the shed lending to frequent leaking. It starts again, it all starts up again. The digging and the groaning and general wondering why it is she drags me here, why it is we do this.

But we do. She hops over a mud puddle and shrieks through the trees. 

We do it. We do it all again.

"Grace." I mutter when she gets on hands and knees. Those stains from last rain still etched upon her clothes back at the house. She flashes back a smile, having forsaken the shovel, thrusting her hands into the dirt. I can feel the grit under my fingernails by watching her, ghost memories flinting past my eyes like gnats. It happened here.

"Grace." I say louder, watching her back muscles strain as she fanatically scoops the mud. "Grace!"

I realize I'm clutching my shovel; I look at it for a moment, the evergreen of the damp woods blurring into silence for a moment. I start up the trail past her, leaving her to toil with what's already been done.

It takes her a moment to catch me, her eyes still widened with that near maniacal gleam, confusion etched under the mud scaling her face. 

"We've done that one before." 

She watches me, follows me, her gaze calmed but still misunderstanding. 

"We've what?"

"We've done that one before!" I find myself frustrated at her as she stops short and slumps down. She looks at me, at my shovel, and sighs.

"Mine's still back there." Grace points with an unenergetic hand into the trees. 

Our eyes hold space for a long time, then hers start to flint down the hill. 

"We've done that one before."

"Can I go get it?"

"We've done that one before."

We're overlapping each other in speech, her eyes darting back the direction we've come with each alternate beat of her heart. She inches towards it.

"Just let me go get it."

"We've done that before, Grace."

"I'm just going to get it."

I wait a few hours, the sun's breached through the canopy, warming my body, drying my mud crusted grass stained shoes. I grab the old shovel and make a few attempts in the dirt at the base of the tree. We never get much progress, not when the ground dries, and not when she stays far behind. I weave back down through the trees, passing her in her digging, unaware that I'm there or that I know. It'll rain again, and she'll drag me out, but we won't make it too far. We never do. She likes where we've been more than where we're going. 

Even if all that's there is just dirt. 

Sunday thoughts

I didn't write in my journal for a year. I'm thankful, now, because I really wasn't in a place that I'd like the generations to find themselves reading about. My head just wasn't screwed on right. I started writing last November, when I had my 'coming to Christ' moment. My green Mickey Mouse journal goes from June 2011 to June 2012, the only entry I wrote during my 'dark period.' Then it kicks up in November. At this same time I began reading the Book of Mormon because, well, as the kind diligent Mormon I am, I never have. A few verses in a stumbled upon a verse I very much adored. You have to know me, if you don't by now: I love words. Words, words, words are of highest priority. I love music for the words, I love writing for the words, I love humor for the words. They're my kinfolk and confidants. "And I know that the record which I make is true; and I make it with mine own hand; and I make it according to my knowledge." -1 Nephi 1:3 More than that, I only know what I know. And as I said in that short musing that got published in Weber State's undergrad book Metaphor (paraphrased because I'm lazy): Words are the only means I have to communicate visually to the outside world what I see in my head. I wrote the above verse in the front of my journal. It just...it fit, you know? I know that the record which I make is true, and I make it with my own hand, according to my knowledge. Nephi later says he doesn't know everything, but he knows enough. All I have to give is all I have. It's not everything; it's enough. I filled that journal quite quickly, and started a new one February. I find it funny that three years span the first half of my Mickey Mouse journal, and three months fill the second. I randomly opened the Book of Mormon one night, and found another verse to put at the forefront of this new journal, and it's this one that inclined me to type this blog post: "Now in this thing we do rejoice; and we labor diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents. "For, for this intent have we written these things, that they may know that we knew of Christ, and we had a hope of his glory..." -Jacob 4:3-4 I want it to be that way with everything. With who I am, with what I saw, with what I write, with what I emit. That they may know that I know of Christ, and have a hope of his glory. Maybe it's powerful to me because it explicitly speaks about writing. maybe it's one of those things that don't connect with everyone the same way, but I just knew I felt something just now, and that I had twenty minutes until church started so why not share it. I want to live my life with the gospel on my sleeve as openly as my heart is. I'm so constantly in a state of readiness to hand my heart over; I should be the same with my testimony.

This was hard to write with Take On Me stuck in my head.

I dreamed I wrote a song in my sleep last night.

My best friend and I signed up last minute for an open mic/battle of the bands type thing, and showed up unprepared. We had to perform three songs.

I started hitting some beat on a folded up card table and just sang anything and everything. It became a wonder of a song, stripped down to my vocals and the beat I created, a phantom piano somehow chiming in. It was completely impromptu and it went on for at least six minutes. And it was, in that moment, as grandeous in beautiful simplicity as Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is in complexity.

And when it ended the crowd was amazed, one band much closer to fame than us even remarking "Can we try that song?"


And I woke up feeling unaccomplished and lacking.

I've forgotten creativity.

My sophomore year of high school I took a hiatus from life and stewed in the books I was assigned to read for English and the pieces we wrote and the character complexities for the book I've still yet to write. I observed the world and scripted it, in notes to myself or musings. I swam with creative fish. I forsook participating in reality.

I've started doing the opposite. I'm so absorbed in the moment, keeping a keen ear on conversation, reworking my humor to be the quick spit-fire it used to be (it's more fitting for improv), realizing that my life is founded on the choices I make in these days...I'm trying to do it right.

And I've forgotten creativity.

I felt so unaccomplished and lacking because I used to do things like that; not compose brilliant songs that would rake in all the Grammys, but I used to write lyrics and simple tunes in my head. I used to create with my mind constantly. And don't get me wrong, I still do that. I've come up with three improv characters this weekend alone, but all the tried and true methods I used to employ I've somehow discarded with the trash.

And I'm not complete anymore.


That's one thing I've been learning a lot of lately; completion. I need theatre in my life, I need elaborate creativity that an audience or reader only barely scratches the surface of. I need words, words, words. I need to be happy. I need to be with someone who knows he wants to be with me. I need to clean my room. I'm discovering all of these things I never thought would matter that are now suddenly more important than remembering which song they're playing on the radio.

I was concerned that I've been out of commission these past two months; that since November I've written two notebooks full and at least forty blog posts on creative/personal things my mind sees fit to craft. I was concerned I haven't been channeling that spirit at a time where I should have felt so very much.

And maybe that's a sign these roads were never right to begin with. Maybe that's a sign what crept up on the path wouldn't complete me. Maybe we have to live mistakes to learn.


**

(I wrote this Friday):

Remember when we thought we knew
And it would slip in place like fitted shoes
Worn with years of walking, moulded to our arch?
We fantasized and dreamt and planned
For years and things without our hands
As though we had exception to make of ourselves.

And then the courses shifted short;
We stood aghast with ill report
That life could so destroyed become.
Foolish acts of foolish minds,
Disbelief falls fast in kind
That mortal men can plot a fate
Assured from the starting gate
And all would be a bliss, a bless,
A simple unchallenging test
For happiness to come.
That God would take the easy road
And let us carry less a load
To ease the journey home.

There's beauty in intricacy,
Art in surprise.
We'd give it up if it meant smoother skies?
Or strive to be complacent, set
In the plan that God sent
And learn in whatsoever state I am,
Therewith to be content.

**


I like how clouds have shadows. And how like Peter Pan that can't manage to catch them. No amount of sewing could bring a cloud near enough it's shadow. So they drift gracefully in a cerulean sky, smiling at me and my camera with the full memory, pulling apart angel hair, casting dark spots on the patchwork.

So I live in a meadow; a stationary existence, watching time pass with the faint current of the sky, amazed and afraid at the limitless expanse above me, beyond this air ships and the seal that keeps them earthbound. And the sun keeps shinning, and I keep acknowledging it's there, and the clouds cover me moment after quiet moment, and the light dims but persists. The light always persists.

And even clouds have dark sides. Even clouds have shadows. Even clouds can block the sun.

So good can't always be good. Every cloud has a shadow, whether it casts over me or not. And there's nothing that can stop the way they wander.

This is the Life

I keep wanting to post something but I'm not sure what I want it to be about exactly...

Often times I don't really plan what I say, it just stems from some place in my mind or my heart and somehow works its way into a vague poem that cohesively makes sense, or a short story that somehow has a moral.

That's kind of how I live my life. What happens happens; I don't really....try.

Take the piano for instance: I had a natural knack for it. My fingers were crafted to tickle the ivories, and they generally were good at it. My mind's connection to the muscle memory of playing a piece was very strong, and once I nailed it down I could whip it out at any moment at any speed.

I was good.

So I didn't practice.

Take my GPA for instance: I was kicked out of Honors English my ninth grade year because, being naturally gifted with words, I focused my energies on my weaknesses like science and math. So I didn't maintain the B grade level to stay in the class.

So they kicked me out. And other than one terrible science grade my ninth grade year, my lowest grades--college included--are in English courses.

Because I don't try.

I fell for the system of blogging because when it comes to writing I'm not one for revision. With few exceptions, when I write something I consider it completed and publishable in that exact moment. With a blog I can do that. I can write something and send it into the world seconds later. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to try.

Even now I don't know what exactly it is I'm getting at. I'm just writing.

That's why I hated literary criticism and analyzing poetry and what not. Because to me, people wrote the way they read, people wrote the way I wrote, which was the way I read. It's late so let me repeat that sentence in another way: I always imagined the author took as much thought to write as it took me to read. I don't know what's coming, I discover it the farther down the page I go. So, obviously, must the writer upon penning it.

I viewed writing as more of an archaeological work, slowly dusting off evidence by degrees, never truly aware of what was being uncovered until at last there lay a skeleton of sorts. And in that moment every little aspect prior to would make ultimate sense. The work would be completed, understood, and beautiful.

And for me, quite often, it works that way. Spoiler alert, the prose piece that was published in Weber's undergraduate literary book Metaphor was one of those instances where I sat and wrote, and as the end came I realized all the symbolism with the cold hands and a reserved, almost cold life, and the bright vivacious man warming my hands both metaphorically and literally.

That's one reason it's one of my favorite things I've written lately. Because it somehow resulted in so much meaning.

I don't plan my writing. Which is why it hurt when the words went away last year. For so long the one thing that had always been near effortless was suddenly a barren wasteland I couldn't cross. And I kept wanting to talk about it, write about it, but the words weren't there. There were never enough words, and they wouldn't file into place the way they used to, gathering together at the close to mean something more than the stammerings of a young adult.




I'm tired and sick of this post.

I keep coming back to the diner. I guess I'll write it. maybe the words know something I don't.



I watched her from my seat at the bar, feet dangling, one hand holding my chin up in the way I keep assuming is sexy; I don't know how I'd fare if someone told me it was otherwise. She didn't seem to notice me, and I didn't seem to mind. Not everyone you recognize needs to be verbally acknowledged. Sometimes it's enough to stare from a distance for a moment or so and then calmly return to the life you developed in their absence, knowing full well they would do the same. Some bridges don't burn, they just get overgrown, and you wonder what the trouble would be in moving the foliage and crossing once more. Sometimes you think to take the risk.

And sometimes you make it halfway and change your mind, allowing the underbrush to envelop the faded wood boards again, sucking that piece of your past back into the recesses of the forest of your mind where you now fail to tread.

But I didn't need that with her. I didn't need to contemplate the bridge. I knew her well enough, remembered her well enough, even with a bridge left dilapidated and forgone. I hadn't even realized I'd crossed the bridge, really. It had taken until seeing her to realize how far we'd come, my feet and I, how much distance lay between us and that once field of green. I had an image of myself, back then. A vision of perfection, what "adult" me would entail, and it took seeing her, across the greasy diner in the booth that should be hosed down, to realize I'd reached that moment. I'd become that vision, else why would I see myself as such a distant figure? Else why would I see what used to be me sitting in an awkward solitude by the window?


It hit me this weekend, and today, but so expediently on Friday, when suddenly every thread was cut. Suddenly all the safety nets that tethered me to that frightened chubby girl hiding in a Jason Mraz tee shirt were broken and dangling as memories from the four gray walls that suspended me. Suddenly my limitations were nothing. Suddenly the expanse before me was more vast and beautiful than it had ever been.

Suddenly I...was alive.

I forgot until this moment: there's a scene in Home Alone where Kevin yells out "I'm not afraid anymore! Do you hear me? I'm not afraid anymore!" (and then he sees the creepy shovel dragging neighbor and runs away screaming).

But my life has reached that moment. The Macaulay Culkin in my mind keeps yelling "I'm not afraid anymore! Do you hear me? I'm not afraid anymore!" and I can't help but feel it with each breath. It's invigorating, this concept of being alive. This ability to share what's on my mind with anyone nearby, not questioning how they'll interpret what I'm saying, but simply saying it as though they've known me for ages. It's not caring if my odd dancing scares boys away, but embracing that this is how I'm happy in a movement setting. It's not chickening out when the attractive mid-twenties man from corporate talks to you briefly and not shying away from asking if he's single. It's taking the moment you have and making the best of it. It's not waiting for the "next time" that won't happen or won't happen the same way. It's being grateful for all my big mistakes as much as I am for all the little blessings, because each makes me what I am. It's knowing there's someone out there who will accept all of me, and that hiding it won't keep hurt from happening. It's understanding that hurt happens, that love isn't right the first time, that people can say things they possibly mean and everything can look good on paper, but when it comes down to it it just doesn't work.

It's believing that something will work. It's hoping that I can have all I want and deserve in this lifetime, that God won't let me be the crazy rat lady because I think varmints are adorable and I'm allergic to cats. It's throwing caution to the wind. It's living the way he does, maybe not exactly, but enough to feel the breeze. It's accepting what I am and embracing what I want, and greeting the universe with this understanding, and paying it forward and keeping from bottling it up. It's about being present and in the now and ready for destiny, even if it's just so I can make another mistake.

It's making mistakes and taking truths from the ashes of my expectations. It's moving forward, living up, making mountains.





Sometimes songs don't directly apply unless you're me. But I love this song so I'm embedding it anyway.

Exposition

People are always saying you're the author of your own life, you write your destiny.

Yes and no.

Life is like a novel, life is a story, but if you were the author you'd know what was coming next. You'd know what course would get you from point A to point B. You'd be the one creating it. There would be no need for faith or trust or error, because if you knew everything--if you were writing your life--you'd know the end. You know what to avoid and what to strive for.

You're the author of your actions. You're the embodiment of a character. You are victim to traversing through a realm scripted by another and choosing and succeeding and falling as you may. You are lenient on exposition, exposition only the author can provide. You can convince yourself all you want that you know what's coming next, but how could you really?

This is not your novel. This is your chapter, your moment in a volume that will span the dawn of man to the demise of evil and beyond. Your part is as integral as the others, with regards to the furthering of the plot and the benefit of other characters. But fundamentally, you are all the same. You are all as unknowledgeable as the rest, you are all moving through space trying to pen something worthwhile of yourself.

But you can't.

Not without the author.



More or less I'm using a literary metaphor for God, if you missed it. To speak plainly, for I feel the inclination to do so, it occurred to me how little I know. I've been waiting. I've done what the author has hinted and I've stuck around; I've waited. This weekend I gleaned some information I'd been lacking for several weeks, information I rather considered vital, information that has brought me back to a state of peace or homeostasis. I was wondering over the idea of why it took so long for me to learn that, why those simple statements were spared from my ears for such a length of time.

And the word popped into my head: exposition.

In my acting class we're studying performance of monologues, and one thing the teacher keeps stressing is 'why now.' Why does this character need to say this now? People don't walk around telling their darkest secrets or spilling their hearts out or rampaging at a constant rate. There is something that has brought them to that moment. What brought it about? Why now?

I'm not the author here. I'm not the author and God doesn't take the monotonous path of foreshadowing in a Rowling-like fashion each pivotal moment of my life. He will answer me if I ask, He will extend a hand in help, but He is all knowing. He is Creator and Master, and He knows when to plant seeds and when to let truth bloom. He knows when 'wait' will suffice, and when exposition should be delivered.

How can I not trust this? How can I not trust that though I stumble in a whirlpool of menial things, my mind stretching far from the here and now, crafting ideals and hopes for puddles beyond my residence, how can I not trust He understands my story? How can I not trust He's mulled for centuries how to unravel my tale and deliver my potential. How can I deny Him the opportunity of instigating and witnessing so great a story unfold?

How can I deny the author the pleasure of allowing a character to fulfill her course and contribute to his novel as only she was meant to? How can I dare try to write something better?

Tracks in the Snow

Everyone knows it's going to hurt, but at least we'll get hurt trying.

I've always loved the snow, the way my perception becomes as though I'm locked in a log cabin, away from the world, snow cementing and nestling me into a safe-haven of contrasting warmth and frost. There is something enlivening to my soul when the earth becomes synonymous with the heavens, when I find myself in the middle of a cylinder of white, from my feet to as far back as I can lean my head. When the horizon vanishes, when it's white into infinity, I find myself at home.

I want to curl up on a windowsill and scribble in petite cursive all the workings of my mind, all the actions of my capacities, with my knees scrunched to my chest and the knowledge that I have nothing to do--no responsibility, no obligation, no plans--aside from absorbing the snow piling up against the window, taking breaths of the winter seeping through the double-pane glass.

It's a Virginia moment, one I haven't had for a long while. It's the desire for solitude, desire for cleanliness, desire for change and difference and peace; a certain sort of peace, an altered sort of peace from that which shrouds me constantly of late. Not the peace that life is working, life is right, and I am where I'm meant to be, the peace that makes words come, the peace that opens all the crevices of my soul up to the winds of words that dwell on snow drifts and swirl past in a haze. The kind of peace that brings longevity to my seldom failing heart and like a bellows feeds and fodders my spirit into a realm of knowledge, understanding, and creativity.

Perhaps the snow didn't bring it on, but is rather accenting the notion I've been skating with all week: that initial peace of correctness and joy. It presses in around me like a signifying beacon that here is where I should be, here is correct, here is beautiful like the snow.

I once imagined walking in a snow-crusted world, my hands in my coat pockets, unfeeling of the cold. My boots leaving soft prints in the unbroken ground as I traveled with head high, truly seeing the world, taking in the contrast of bark against scarves of snow draped round the trees, spying in the distance the faded existence of the forest, snowfall lending a whitewash across my senses, leaving the wilderness a duller version of itself, the colors faded and masked in a sepia grey scale, with an eternal light bouncing off of the winter it was shrouded by.

It's in these daydreams I picture the Indians. I draw back to childhood fascination of the natives to this land, and the early settlers that greeted and uprooted them. I read one book twice, Indian Captive, about a young blonde-haired girl taken captive by the natives and adopted into their culture. I imagine being her, or a beautiful red-skinned Pocahontas, taking to the woods by snowfall, at peace and at one with the land. My hand falls to the trunk of a tree and a remembrance of life rushes through my nerves to my core, and I'm half tempted to sit in the snow bank, to stay here and abide and breath this life and love. To stay until the snow fades away, a thought that never dawns in this daydream or the next, that the snow shall pass. A desire to partake of this world so often stranger to me.

There is love in my person, there is passion and acceptance to the extent that I could fling myself from this window to thwump with a puff of powder into the white beyond. I want to run away, I want to find Virginia, but not for a lack of satisfaction with where I stand, as it has been so often before. I want to take flight for the romance of discovering the white and feeling the possibilities that await awakened by the falling cold. I want to discover all that lies, buried and masked in the demeanor of the season.

I want to thrive within my situation. I want to sing of truth.

"24 And now I speak unto all the ends of the earth--that if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief."

-Moroni 10:24


I check up on myself every once in a while, see how I'm standing compared to where I was. It was November, and I checked the list to the right that shows my posts through year and months. It was depressing to see I was a long ways off from the 40's I'd been reaching with no qualms for the past two years.

I felt insufficient.

But suddenly I had so much to write about and so many ways to script it: the words came back.

It's because faith and application of it came back.

I realized this a few months ago, that I'd added some five pages to my manuscript during the summer purgatory, whereas the year before I'd jotted near sixty pages plus a notebook of extensive backstory and side details I'll probably never divulge. I realized, though the words may still be around, they aren't as free flowing as when I'm plowing a prosperous field and sowing spiritual oats. It takes me three times as long to locate them.

I acknowledged this, yes, and continued merrily on my stagnant way.

Which, as a side feature to mirror the slew of nonsense yesterday's post entailed, imagine a stagnant body of water. It could be beautiful; I'd assume most are at the beginnings. But add whether and algae and seasons and animal droppings--with nowhere to leach out to, it festers in itself. It's revolting. I hadn't really thought about it before, though I've used the term stagnant in my internal monologue for weeks. Its got quite the disturbing connotation. And denotation.

If we're being honest, I don't remember which is which.

#englishmajor

The family had settled in for family scripture study, which isn't the most common of practice, and something that I partially don't see the point in because I never keep up with the reader. I always pause at some point to mark a verse in my specific, unique, meaningful way, and catch up some twenty verses later.

This was one such case, but it was worth it, because it clarified what I'd been musing for months and vocalizing on occasion.

"...if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief."

"...if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief."

Yes, I found many musable topics in November, but I also found Christ and rekindled my belief.

And the words came back.

The experience of losing the words and having them return taught me two things: 1) if one doesn't work for the Lord's purpose, one can lose one's gifts; 2) I'm not a writer. That isn't something innate bred in me like my eye color or that freckle on my ring finger. It's not something I'll carry and keep regardless where I tread. The Lord made me a writer. He opens the floodgates through which the words flow and frolic and dance and arrive.

What this means is I can't afford to lose the Lord in my life. I can't afford to dwell in unbelief. I can't survive if he takes away the words.

My favorite lyrical sentence of all time (and this is a drastic statement because there are many a Jason Mraz lyric that are utterly beautiful) is from the Hudson Taylor song "Wont' Back Down." It's my life wrapped up in one sentence. It hits so truly home that if I ever in a million years got a tattoo, that would be the one thing I could visualize myself scripting to my skin. You've probably read it before: it's the subtitle to my blog.

"Take my words, they're all I have."

Losing the words this year forced me to realize that I am nothing without them. I am nothing without the Lord. The only way I could carve a way through this life is through the pen and what it produces. I'm not an actor. I'm hardly a teacher. Everything I am stems from everything I write. I've constantly fallen back on my ability with words.

I can't afford to be idle, at least not with the gospel. If I ever place something below another, the gospel must be what stays afloat. If all I am is possible through the words, and He controls the words, without him I am nothing.

Perhaps this is redundant. Perhaps I didn't articulate it with the smoothness I had hoped. I'm just trying to say what I know now, what I had to learn to cease the circling. Words may be all I have, but that I won't have them if I have unbelief in Christ.

stumbling block

It's like I can write one good thing every month. I've exerted all I have in me to be creative. I feel like by being given no limitations I am limited and caught in not knowing where to begin. I have guidelines that are serving as straight-jacket tendons that constrict the concourses of my mind until I'm sprawled about the bed begging from something to come out of me but the desire to submit to sleep.

My issue, I've now decided, is that what must be written must be performed. At the present pinnacle my words are not scribbles in a notebook or musings on the web. I am accountable for what I create.

And creativity is afraid of criticism. So it's running and screaming and kicking me and killing me and demanding I forsake these commitments and stay in bed a while longer, and scrub my hair a tad cleaner and focus on not demanding anything of myself.

My talent and best friend has become the fanged monster one must coax from the closet for the kill. It no longer walks by my side, but drags me back by my coattails demanding submission. It tells me I don't work that way, I can't write that way, I can't be that way, give up.

I want to push forward so badly. I want to do and be and enjoy and amaze. It breaks me up to realize the remainder of my being is against these petty dreams.

Be gone, believer. Dismiss the dreamer. Walk back down the path you have trod.
These thoughts are like cannons that kill all should come
Stop quick. Forget this old home.

Waves and the Both of Us

I'm awake. It's like that hour was an exfoliating scrub to my soul; all the dead cells and dust particles were scourged from the crevices and creases and washed with a gush of water. I was held fast against a wall of force that ripped the ill-intentioned from me. I was scrubbed down and power rinsed. I fell to my knees, wet. By weaving our souls together as one and challenging to open to the world I became awake.

Even through my headphones, through this new album, I'm swimming. I'm swimming in awareness and it crashes gently against me like tender waves. The torrent that cleansed me swept the clutter away, but water continued to fill the space, swirling in peace about me.

I could fall in love today. That's how open my heart is. I could fly, that's how free my soul sings.

One hour has changed me.

One hour to remind me why I can't resign from theatre, one hour to wipe clean the slate I've scribbled observations on -one hour to show me the slate is still good; I can still observe.

One hour to find myself the way I'll be once my spirit melts out of this vesicular state and finds havoc in the clouds. Warmth. Currents of energy. Connection. Bravery. Peace. Love.

And it's turning into the longing to be somewhere else. The longing to know other voices, to sense other trees, to walk different roads and call different names. It's turning into the longing to run away -to grow old and escape. Or to take a pen to paper, or don a mask of recitation. To create, either through the faculty of my mind or that of my entire being.

I'm awake, fresh, alert, ready to dash waves against stone until I'm looking at something as perfect as I feel. Something awake.

Memo from Corporate:

Greetings employees. As you may or may not know, writing is a genuine passion of mine, and something I look forward to having as a career -dare we say it- someday.

Most of you who have not slept through an English course will know that famous authors such as Mark Twain and Charles Dickens tried their hands at short stories. In fact, in the case of Mark Twain, began their writing career with these short stories.

You can, dear employees, imagine how I felt when I came across this writing contest for 17 Magazine. It is a short story contest. The coincidences here seemed too pronounced to ignore. I have since spent a month or so trying to find a topic on which to compose this [hopefully] soon-to-be-award-winning short story.

To the dismay of many, my subject smacked into me like a loopy pigeon yesterday as I walked to Institute. I constructed most of it in a text message draft as I crossed campus, and finished the rest that evening. The subject matter of this short story is quite unlike anything I've ever written. (Though if you read the previous post, you may be on the right track.)

I beseech you to take the time and assist me to greatness. The steps are easy, as follows:

1. Go to www.figment.com (Sorry if it's not hyperlinked. I still have absolutely no idea how that's done. But as an employee from Corperate, I am not about to openly admit this flaw. Read step 1 again omitting the parenthetical note.)

2. Create a Figment account. (It is very easy, and if you already have a Figment account, please, go on to step 3.)

3. Find my Figment page: http://figment.com/users?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search%5Bname_contains%5D=erica+farnes&x=0&y=0
(If this again fails to be hyperlinked, simply click "people" in the search bar in the upper right hand corner and type my name. I'm the only person who comes up. But it's my full name... So for those who aren't my facebook friends, search under Writings for "What I can't have". I also am the only result for that.)

4. Read my short story "What I Can't Have."

4 1/2. Attempt not to judge me for the subject matter.

5. Click the box that says "heart." (As You can see below I have attached a nice screen shot of what you will be looking at, the important part for step 5 being circled in purple.)



6. Tell all of your friends that won't be offended by my subject matter to follow the steps you just completed.

I hope you noticed, dear employees, that my short story takes approximately 2 minutes to read. That plus the time for the other steps is less than eight minutes, I would wager.

Thank you for your dedication and assistance. And if your assistance is not dedicated, do not fret. You have until January 30th. Congratulate yourself on this good deed. And get back to work or we'll start cutting hours again.

Sincerely,

Erica from Corporate

*to any Figment people that might read this and think I'm breaking the "entrants may not pay people...in exchange for votes" rule: I am not really the boss of these blog followers. I just thought it would be right funny if, instead of pathetically begging them to help me, I made it seem like I was a brute-headed Corperate employee sending another brute-headed Corperate memo.

See how witty I am? You can heart my short story, if you want. The steps are in the memo above.

20 Years of Snow

If this was paper the window glass would be rippled, and a waded pile of my mistakes would court the floor.

My ink flask would be nearly empty enough that my quill wouldn't reach, and the candle wick would wait patiently to be lit, as night is drawing fast.

I would push my wood chair back across the wood floor and would walk to the stone hearth.

The fire is dying, I kneel to kindle it, realizing now I'm distanced from the futility of writing that my fingers are stiff and still as boards. I flex them near the fire, shifting my rear to the floor, and forget all but warmth and soft smoke.

If I slept for twenty years would I remember any sorrow? Would the pile of mistakes still lump around?

I look in the corner, where the faded sun still lights on the desk, one final, timid paper peering back.

Would they matter, these crumpled notes of one line or less, would they make all the difference in twenty years?

I suddenly am impressed that in this instant I'm alone enough to have slept for twenty years. I'm as solitary as Rip upon awaking in the woods.

Why did he leave the mountain? Why did he force himself to find existence, to learn his wife was dead, to be heralded by the town?

I come to my feet and pace to the stairway, the room mirroring the place I imagined the black orphan servant girl to labor.

I wish I could go to the elementary school and scan the books until I've come across every novel I ever read in my years imprisoned there. I wish I could find the covers I've never forgotten and refresh the crafted titles.

This isn't paper,the glass isn't rippled,and my mistakes are erased as easily as the wind.

But I still court the lack of ability to write a narrative, a poem, a sentence or two, without sighing and backing it away.

I think I could write better in a solitary cabin, the sun dropping from my rippled window's sight. I'd have to learn better penmanship for the ink to prove well, but the fire would keep my eyes right.

I would write better if I'd slept for twenty years, alone and untethered and free. I'd have trees to walk through and snow to observe. I could live for twenty years with writing.

But I wake up each day in the same place, no mystery men with whom to bowl. I'll never be enchanted or abandoned enough to find solace in more than my mind. Literally, Rip van Winkle is pathetic proposition.

Mentally, I'm sleeping for twenty years now.