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.

Home Is What The Heart Is

I challenge you to take a moment now and ask yourself when you first felt at home with yourself. It doesn't have to be one of those wide-awakening moments where you felt fully liberated from insecreities. No. I mean that moment in high school you were suddenly confident walking in your own shoes, or that day in elementary school you had to hold your own.

I did this a few weeks ago, pin-pointed the moment I was home, and I haven't been able to let go of the idea that who I am at this precise moment is founded on one simple occurance.

And I know it sounds pathetic to say I was able as an early adolecent to stand tall because I had my ears wrapped around music by one specific artist. I tried to ignore the notion. There had to be another time I felt at home. Jason Mraz isn't my first notion of inner home, is he?

But I dug, and as obsurd as that makes me, it's the truth. And I stand by it.

Morrissey once said (to paraphrase) "There is one artist that comes into your life at the right moment-at that age-and they change you. And from then on, nothing they ever do can be wrong."

I've analyzed myself over the past few years over how I feel more akin to Mraz's first studio album Waiting for My Rocket to Come or his second studio album Mr. A-Z, and it has recently occured to me that I have given these releases significant importance because they were the first I had. They were the ones that seeped into my heart and created a foundation on which I build my confidence.

The way I see it is, up until 2005, my personality and my strength were swimming about in my body, with no stable place to take root and grow; and something with this man and his music pulled me together. He was like the mortar, cementing bricks of my foundation. For the years interviening I have built more to myself; I have customized who I am and what I believe and what I do and what I love, making the wall of personal definition higher and higher. But it's founded on the base he helped me create.

I think I forget I've built this inner home. I get caught up in the world and all the levels of my towering fortress, and just when I begin to be submerged by all that surrounds me-without even realizing I'm drowning-his song comes in and my heart takes flight, as though the base of my being is reaching out, shaking the structure to remind me who I am and how beautiful that is. And how beautiful it continues to become.

You can laugh at me, and mock me for loving this tree-hugging planet-saving music-playing nomad; but that is just who he has become. That is the result of all his brick laying since he played coffee shops Thursday nights. He is transparent, showing the world in love and song what his inner fortress holds.

And it's only because he's so willing to share and create that I can lean back and say I'm building myself, and say I have an identity. It's just still under construction.

If I never saw him perform live again for the rest of my life, it would disappoint me more than the world. But at the same time I don't need to see his love manifested live. Each cord, each note, each scat is manifestation enough.

I just hope I can find a way, once I know myself, to be so purely open and share the fiber of who I am.

I hope to rescue someone, the way he rescued me.

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.

To all the Michael J Fox’s:

I love you. I mean, I love you each individually, not as a collective group. I’ve only lumped you in a group because I realized a few short days ago that there is one common attribute relative to my feelings toward you: your euphoric charisma.

I’m a sucker for it, look at me. I’ve fallen for enough of you that not only can I put you in a group, but I can confidently title the group. To be fair, I could be addressing this confession to all the Jason Mraz’s out there, but biologically Michael J Fox came first. To me, he is the original. And the forerunner of charisma must be properly respected.

But now that I’ve got you all together and it’s all out in the open, I find I must confess the issue with my love. You see, I’m not the one for you. Any of you. As much as your charisma sways me, as much as I admire the look on your face when you’re reciting scripted lines, as much as I want to hug you every time you do a back flip or jump onto the kitchen counter, as much as my heart seeps red hot blood through my veins each time you say something singularly to me, I’m not right for you.

And I know you expect me to say “It’s not you, it’s me; I shouldn’t keep barking up the wrong tree,” but that would be a lie. It is you. You ARE the issue. You see, one of the contributing factors to your euphoric charisma is that each of you is a performer. And whether filtered by screen or delivered live directly to my face, you know I’m absorbing you—I’m taking it in like crazy. And you play to it. I’m not right for you because I’m a different performer than you. I don’t analyze my surroundings and react in an appropriate way. I pretend to. But really I invest in my surroundings and place the upmost confidence in my judgment, forgetting there are souls like you that will bend the surroundings.

You do realize you bring this upon yourself, of course. It’s the winking, the leaning in to whisper, the letting your arm linger at my side or holding my hand too long. It’s the singing my name and the secret eye contact and the fact that you just stick around.

As much as I claim to be mature and highly trained, my biology is not willing to shut down when you, the Michael J Fox’s, come around. Maybe if you weren’t so fit and beautiful my hormones could be still long enough for my mind to compute that the thing I love most about you is the very thing that would inevitably keep us apart: your euphoric charisma.

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.

It takes no time to fall in love, but...

I'll never forget the moment he started meaning something to me: the moment we met. The moment I realized his cute, matured face was the most perfect of its kind. The moment he spoke, the moment he smiled, the confidence with which he held himself. The way I wasn't bothered that he wasn't miraculously toned. His tight pants. His charisma. His eyes.

I could feel how easily we could be something -or more than something. I knew if he would realize it and act, that nothing would keep us from breaking the bonds of solitude and becoming one together. I loved him, coffee cup aside. If ever a girl had such an immediate, over-whelming, all encompassing crush, it surely was secondary to the emotion brewing in me. Surely none loved more than I him.

I will never forget the comfort he instilled with mere eye contact; I'll never forget how his presence infused confidence in myself and allowed me to be true to who I am.

I'll never forget that he loved Jason Mraz, or the way he smiled when I told a room full of harsh eyes that Mraz is my favorite. I'll never forget that he studied at the same performance school as Mraz did for a year. I'll never forget that finally, someone so perfect had such a connection to my heart.

I'll never forget the way the word blazed as I scrolled down his page. Interested in:

Men.

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.