Carry

Some days you just
flash forward and you realize that,
holy crap, I've got sixty more years of this.
And then you wonder what sixty years feel like, because
whatever small amount you've acquired by this point is basically
laughable.
That's sixty years of taking walks,
sixty years of cold winters,
sixty years of walking into a sketchy Walgreen's and
staring at empty aisles. Completely normal things.
Maybe you'll walk in someday with a kid on you
arm. And then your kid's kid.
Maybe you'll go walking in a park
and have them slung behind you
piggy back.
Carry them like you
carry those sixty years past
on your shoulders.

I can't turn it off.

This lamp is too bright in my room.
It used to be comfortably dim, no
unfounded aggression, just
beautiful lulling complacency.
This lamp is too bright. It slaughters the
mood and imposes hope. I liked it
better when it was just quiet and
lifeless and dim, because
like calls to
like,
does it not?

Maybe she will find it again

(This sort of shares some themes with my post from last week, hope y'all will bear with it)

Years ago, her muse left her...or she left her muse, neither is very clear on how it happened.

But happen it did, and her pages are black and white and dead…

She drags them from their slumber, bringing back what ought to be gone.

She can’t help trying to resurrect the words., the pages of what once was.

So she sits at her desk; she sits on her porch, on a nature trail, in the back of her car, waiting and praying and chanting around the flimsy manuscript dead before its time.

Some days she thinks about her muse, and where it must have gotten to.

Perhaps Fiji; it’s supposed to be nice this time of year….well, any time of year.

The muse is gone, though, and she remains.

How many spells will it take, how many bouts of dark magic?

What will it take to earn her passage to far off island in the sea?



-Kat

At The End Of The Row

Black white and bare, the photographs; stripped of their significance by the shining floor and lifeless walls.

She walks into the museum late, almost does not get in.

And she knows where she’s headed: to the black white pictures in her long dark dress, black floor white wall room.

In all her uniformity with the palate of the pictures, she bears unspeakable eccentricity.

The people in the photographs are long dead, and she the necromancer.

She only looks, she does not touch; touching is wrong.

At the end of the row, the picture is empty.

Museum closed, the lights flick dark; she takes her place.

Bowing her head in mourning.

All the haunting frozen moments, and she among them waits.

For Richer For Poorer

http://nowheremind.tumblr.com/post/10458542192

They know her too, but not by name; to them, she is only Flower Girl.

The flowers stay beige and still, and they rustle as she runs to the bus stop.

She lives far away from the city; no one wears the long red coats, no one sells flowers out of wicker baskets.

Beige flowers are not for the life of the rust-railed, drab-suited men and women hailing from the glittery buildings.

But every day she waits at the bus stop, basket empty, basket full, and she knows the people.

She knows the woman that comes with her phone attached, whose ringtone prompts reflex, whose eyes glitter with the light of her screen.

She knows the man and his two children he takes to work in the big glass grocery store, because they always come back with two lollipops reward.

She knows the elderly couple that hobbles to the metal bench and falls into it, even when it rains.

In good times and bad, sickness, health, joy and sorrow.

They sit at that bus stop and wait to go home.

And then, as you were always meant to, you tell her the story of your life.

The streets are dark and damp and uneven, as they are apt to be this time of year. The cobblestones were once paved straight, but those days are over and we are resigned to the grumbling of the squeaky unoiled horse carts through the town.

Do come in. It's going to rain again soon, I think. You can feel it in the air. Mind the step.

Have you been traveling long? Of course you have. Sit down, won't you? I'll get tea.

Fires burn in the fireplaces, lovely and simmering. Smoke claws out of the chimneys, only to be devoured by the saturated air.

Grey or chamomile? Do you have a preference? Oh dear, I've lost the teapot. It'll only be a second, you just rest there.

The chair is so warm and the day is so long. The fabric is so worn and the night is so muted.

There we go. The kettle's only, it'll only be a mo. Say, what's your name? I don't think I caught it. Oh here, take the blanket, love. Right on the arm of your chair---there you go. That's better, isn't it? Sorry, I was asking your name. What was it?

Her voice is gentle yet with substance. She is the kind of woman that does not get wrinkled nor weathered, but is instead halfheartedly creased before the world decides that it liked her better without all the folds and consents to leave her as she is. Her cheeks are still full and dimpled, the kind of cheeks where you can still almost see the youth, if you work hard enough to see it.

Oh that's a gorgeous name, that is. You're from the north, with a name like that. What brings you out so far?

The rain taps tentatively on the roof, seeing if it is welcome.

That's a right far journey ahead of you, then. Oop, I think that's the kettle, let me just check on that. One second, is all.

And then it comes down, faster and faster, gaining confidence and speed.

Looks just about there. Chamomile, you said? Dear Lord, listen to that roof. I told you it would rain.

And then it barrels without abandon onto that little thatched roof, and for a moment it is surprising that it does not collapse inward with the pressure, but it holds strong. 
How old is that woman, that woman standing over the kettle? No one knows. There is no way to know, and somehow it is clear that she is not about to reveal that bit of information to anyone. There is no reason to care about that kind of information, anyway. She is not a creature that ages, only one that matures.

There we go. Here's a cup for you, is that warm enough? Breathe in the steam, it's good for you. Now, dear, tell me about everything. From the day you were born until this very moment. On nights like these, it's good to have a talk, don't you think?

The day so long, the night so muted. The rain so sharp, the tea so soft.

These are the nights where nostalgia lurks.
These are the nights where stories reign.

Fantastical Fridays (6) In Which Publishing Crawl Is A Thing

So this will probably be the last Friday post for a while...I'd like to have a lot of time to talk about this stuff that I care about, and I'm not getting that time right now, so I will wait until the crazy blows over and I'll see how things proceed.

So today will be pretty short. As has become the fashion of things, I suppose...

Here is a beautiful blog that y'all should check out:

http://www.publishingcrawl.com/

What is this strange and barely introduced link, you wonder?

Ah, grasshopper. It is a meetingplace of the brains of YA (just the brains, the authors and agents and editors stay at home). They drink tea and silently muse about the workings of writing and books and sometimes the publishing industry, and when their silent musing is over they exchange it into an uneven mixture of quarters and pennies and use the currency to purchase gorgeous words from the tiny word people that live in the clouds. And then these beautiful people on Publishing Crawl take their hard-earned gorgeousness and splurt it all into a series of blog posts for the general folk of the world.

So thank them for it, and head on over to take a look.

Wheeee!

-Kat

It Feels So Long Ago

Do you remember when we walked in
to the future and you let
go of my hand?
I don't know who let go
first. But
I do
know I'll never see you again.
I can't. Every day I think
of that hand I know
you less and
      less
because, darling,
I have heard the tales.
I have heard all the tales.
And darling, I cannot forget those tales.

Fantastical Fridays (5) --- In Which I Am Obsessed With Paint

It's been crazy week and I'm still a bit deaf from people yelling in my face for an hour before I went home, but I just found this music video and it is gorgeous. Best lyric video ever.

Now I actually have to go back and listen to the song. Whoops. Missed that part.

Short post, but, y'know, PAINT. You're welcome.

-Kat

And he knows you too.

You know him; he is the spirit of the waters, he is the voice of the deep. Down and down you go. You know his face, you know his eyes. Whiskered and sunken, writhing in gritty shadow upon the ocean floor.

Once when the world was bare, he clothed it. When the world was dark he roared; when the world was light he whispered. He fell in love with the great rock in the sky, and they waltz each other to sleep.

You know this being, this grandfather of grandfathers, this baritone of silent arias that hum along the sands.

Once he thought he was the sky; fleeting and wind-struck, dragged along by the images of clouds across his skin. But they pulled him and pulled him...one day they let go, and he found himself barreling back in the other direction, realizing that he was anchored. For better or worse, he was anchored to the earth, and this did not bother him as much as it might have.

You know this king, this god of waters; Neptune, Sea Dragon; Lord of the Nile, Lord of the Styx. You know this man because his is the heart that keeps yours beating.

Once he tore at the earth for thousands of years until it yielded. Once he crashed upon the sands and ravished its people. Once he was the calmest thing upon the planet; one touch would ripple on for miles unchallenged.

You know this man, guardian of the deep.

http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Wave-Sold/290387/175619/view

-Kat

Fantastical Friday (4)

...otherwise known as Three German Songs You Should Be Listening To Even If You Don't Speak German.

Okay, the first one isn't actually a song but it has music in the background sooooo...

Classic unintelligible German. Gotta love it.

Next is what I can only explain as The German Version of Gangnam Style If Gangnam Style Took Place In A Grocery Store. "Supergeil" basically means "super cool" in this context.

And then here's just a beautiful song that has a really adorable music video. Cheers. 

I mean, Proust...

So viele Lieder! Ja, es ist die Beste. Ich weiss.

Auf Wiedersehen!

-Kat

Yes It Is Sunday Not Saturday So In Conclusion, Socks.

So, this happened.

...and then this happened.

Then Pinterest invaded and totally bested any idea I could have come up with: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/511299363918297564/ (for those that like the mildly creepy)

So I just decided to write about socks. No creepy, because that was already taken. And then I thought about it. And then I wrote things.

---

i read a book in

God knows what grade.

it was Gooney Bird Greene, and every time i use the word

"suddenly"

i think of her.

because here is the thing about Gooney Bird Green.

she does not mind being herself.

she adores it. she will wear tutus to school.

she will interrupt class with the world's greatest story.

she will wear mismatched socks.

i remember when my mom did the laundry,

she would have me sort the socks sometimes,

and she had this special way of folding them in on themselves

so that the pairs would

stay pairs,

green by green

blue by blue.

i wore them, hitched up over

my tiny elementary school shoes,

with all the stubborn pride that

a person can be born with.

that was the year i was interviewed

by the school broadcast. the teacher

who ran it remembered me after that, 

and

in the crowning era of

third grade, i was part of broadcast.

i helped mainly with post production,

making sure the

audio lined up with the

video. it wasn't much, but 

i loved it.

sixth grade, he was my tech teacher, and he remembered me.

seventh grade, i watched the jr high broadcast, wondering, waiting.

and then there was eighth grade, and i was in broadcast.

i did the editing.

it was filmed live, so it was 

different.

but 

i still loved it.

the year wound down.

i remember one day my teacher said that he

still remembered that little girl with

mismatched socks;

he told me this,

beaming,

and i laughed and looked down

all my socks were black, so

it didn't matter anymore.

but for a moment, i remembered

that girl too, so proud

so young so inspired.

then i turned and

sat down and

started prepping,

watched the clock wind down

until the microphones went live.

-kat

Fanciful Fridays (3)

"Darcy can go play Whack-A-Mole in the corner by himself." 

So remember when I mentioned Pride and Prejudice in that first post?

Well...I haven't actually read it.

*ducks, hands cover face*

I've seen parts of the BBC adaptions (which are GORGEOUS). I know that's not the same thing as the novel, but I WILL get around to it. I will.

But in the meantime? Let me tell you how it showed up on my radar at all. Because if there is one thing about me you should know, it is that I was not initially drawn towards classical novels, much less classical romance novels (I'm more of a fantasy girl).

Well, it started one day when I was perusing the internet as usual...

You know what? No one has time for this. Short version: the Lizzie Bennett Diaries came along and my brain exploded and I love, I love, I loved it *.

Imagine Pride and Prejudice, noted classical romance novel, adapted into a sassy nerdy vlog (video-blog) version and...

BAM. 

Magic.

Watch the episodes, folks. All the episodes. Feel the feelings, laugh the laughs. Super highly recommended.

Maybe it will even get people like me interested in P&P, who knows? It certainly already has.

-Kat

* "I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you."

-2005 adaption of Pride and Prejudice

It Started

Because my car broke down 20 miles from the airport, and because you were stranded at the gas station with a wrinkled airplane ticket in your hand.

...Because my tire gave out.

...Because your brother abandoned you there.

Because I'd forgotten to go to the shop the day before.

Because you didn't understand why your brother was driving so slowly.

Because I was loaded down with work meetings.

Because you never really understood anything about your brother.

Because the previous night I'd spent four hours on the phone and I missed the meeting that was supposed to happen then.

Because you'd really only known your brother since his dad married your mom, and then again you'd never really known him anyway.

Because my friend had called in a panic.

Because there'd been a rough breakup about three months previously and you didn't really want to talk to your new sibling. Hell, you didn't want to talk to anyone.

Because her boyfriend had cheated on her and she didn't know what to do and frankly I didn't either but you know, I talked, and the time sort of ate itself away.

Because you thought your parents would always love each other. They said that they'd always love each other. And you believed them.

Because I didn't want to lose her.

Because you'd never been hurt.

Because I'd been hurt before.

...Because everything mattered. Every misstep and every falter.

Because of everything, our story has a beginning. 

-Kat

Couldn't find a picture soooooo STARS yay so pretty
background-pictures.picphotos.net

Fanciful Fridays (2)

FANCIFUL FRIDAYS:

"You have these boys in handcuffs. In a HIGH SCHOOL, Mr. Turner."

I think I like this title much better than last weeks. Imma keep it like this.

Low on time here, so let's cut to the chase:

OCTOBER SKY

Man, for Christina and I at least, that is a loaded movie title. We were in the same science class once where the teacher played it at least three separate times throughout the year. We can quote parts of it. It's kind of ridiculous.

October Sky is the movie adaption of the memoir Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam Jr. A bunch of boys set off rockets and things and it's a great movie and everything but

ahhhhhhhhhhh the soundtrack. The soundtrack the soundtrack the soundtrack.

Some of the most gorgeous music I've ever heard. We all agreed that it basically MADE the movie.

Here. Listen. Right now.
DO IT.

If I put the whole soundtrack here I'd never finish this post, but by all means, PLEASE spend your entire day traipsing around the internet looking for all things October Sky.

Now excuse me. I'm going to go listen to good music and feel feelings.

-Kat

The Things He Painted

I do not know much about him, but I do know that he was a painter.

The best kind of painter. The old man that sat on the street and covered his canvas whenever anyone walked by. The kind that still had sandy hair when he was sixty with a shortish beard to match. The kind that forgot to smile until you reminded him. But he'd laugh anytime you told a joke, even if you both knew it was awful, and he had a hug for anyone that needed it.

He'd go out to the bars. The barkeeps all knew his name, and they smiled when he came in, gave him his usual, and forgot about him. He'd make friends for the evening, swear he'd keep in touch, then go home alone. He had another canvas for when he was drunk, and he always insisted that he painted better when the world was blurry, and the sober grey of the daytime markets didn't fog his mind. He didn't show the drunk canvas to anyone either, but he seemed happier with the results than the day canvas.

His night brushes were smashed, twisted, and snapped. His day brushes were pristine, ordered by size in a tiny box attached to the leg of his easel. I don't know for sure, but I would say that both sets of brushes loved him equally, if they could love at all.

He was hungover in the mornings, and he could barely bring himself to paint at all. He hadn't seen a sunrise in twenty years without cursing at it. He was usually too far down a bottle to see the sunsets.

The day after the accident was the first time I saw his canvases. He stacked them tall in his closet, in his spare bedroom. He started stacking them in the bathroom towards the end.

It didn't matter where he put them because, Christ, that man was a genius.

His day canvases depicted anything and everything. Green, smeared landscapes. Mountains that kissed the clouds, and clouds that tumbled across the earth. Worlds aflame, skies athunder. Blackened voids. Brilliant stars. All painted with expert hands. I could sell them for a fortune, if I wanted.

I knew he kept his drunk canvases underneath the floorboards. I found them in an hour, after bending one of my nails and snapping a paintbrush I tried to wedge underneath the wood. I found the space at last. Only one canvas lay beneath.

There were rumors abound on what he painted those nights. His wife lost at sea, his sister lost to disease. The marketplace, or the charming barkeep Saturday nights. God, maybe. The King. Some fling of his in recent years, although everyone knew he hadn't taken a girl home for ages.

But painted over and over on the one canvas was the same image: an orange orb wavering before the bleak horizon. Pink flew in every direction like a cape. Deep yellows, soft reds. A soft suffusion, scalding spark.

To this day, I'm not sure whether he meant to paint the morning or the evening. End or beginning. Sunrise or sunset.

Nature is ambiguous that way.

http://rusticmeetsvintage.tumblr.com/post/25429194999/hans-blomquist-the-natural-home

-Kat

Fanatic Fridays (1)

“He's probably their battle poet, too."

"You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?"

"No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy....When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode.”

Fanatic Fridays (because what am I even supposed to call this)---

Quick description: where I mostly fangirl about amazing things y’all should check out. Sometimes these will be long. Sometimes short. This has far more to do with how much time I have and far less to do with the amount of awesome contained in said object. Will usually start with a quote from the thing I will be raving about.

*hem hem*

*gestures towards beginning of post*

So. Shall we.

The first victim is the Wee Free Men series by Terry Pratchett which I hold at the level of saintdom, personally. It would be impossible and a trifle embarrassing to tell you all the times and places I have been laughing behind one of Terry Pratchett’s books (with my mother staring at me wondering whether her daughter was possessed).

Short version: 9 year old girl of awesome Tiffany Aching decides to be a witch, befriends a bunch of tiny kick-butt blue guys in kilts (and a talking frog), and heads off to battle this sketchy queen (using a frying pan) in an awesome black-and-white dreamland of creepiness.

Why should you read this dashingly handsome, winningly charming, 375 page piece of hotness? For the epic Scottish accents. For the Tiffany sass--she is unquestionably my favorite protagonist in the history of ever. For Terry Pratchett being a little smart-aleck. For laughing out loud on an airplane and making everyone question your sanity (oops, did I say that?).

Please read it please please pleaaaase *puppy eyes*

Maybe this is not for everyone. This is not exactly the charming Pride & Prejudice pedestal of beauty--and I love P&P. This is for y’all crazy folks out there who’d love a dash more crazy. Also, sassy witches.

*swoons with emotions*

*falls over*

*checks time, realizes amount of work to be done*

Imma just leave all that there. Your choice. But, you know.

picture from amazon.com

The sheep are the best, y’all. If nothing else, read it for the bumbling sheep.

-Kat

Some Beautiful Curiosities

A note---You may recognize the idea of memories in a bottle from Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, although I tried to use them differently than she did.

You walk inside. It smells musty, like dust of a thousand worlds, which it is. A man greets you at the front; short brown beard and eyes so far estranged from his skull they seem to be floating. Brilliant pale irises, receding dark hair.

You wait for him to welcome you inside, but that formality seems lost on him. He closes the door behind you and you cough on the dust.

“Look around,” he says.

You do. The shelves are lined with bottles, a myriad of stout and slim, sleek and ornate. You uncork one, and suddenly your

thoughts slide out from beneath you and

you are standing on a hill. You think you are standing on a hill.

The sun moves across the sky in half a minute. The moon follows suit. Waiting and waiting, endless days, stiff in awkward armor, palm sweating on a sword’s hilt. A dreamlike realness surrounds your thoughts. You are waiting for something. A void of hunger deepens in your stomach; heart beats, skin sweats in the layered armor and thick sunlight.

A hand yanks you from your reverie. He stares at you with those eyes of his, the bottle wrenched from your grasp.

“Not too long,” he snaps. “You live within these memories, but time moves faster. But Death does not leave you alone. His threat is as real and imminent as any other day.”

“I could have died in there?” you ask. Phantom hunger still pulses in your stomach.

“You could have died in there.”

“Oh.”

You uncork the next bottle much more warily, cocking the stopper at an angle. You enter a trance.

City streets. Loud. Obnoxious.

People talk over each other and shove through the sidewalks. Blinking lights, whizzing cars. You can still feel the shelves and the bottles next to you, but you can also feel the dark metropolis, equally real.

You sit to the side, faint, clothing tattered and fading, coin cup rattling. Time moves slower than on the hill, but still you can watch the people whizzing past. You can see the sun moving across the clouds; fading into the purgatory of the grey, unfeeling sky.

You are jolted from the vision with

a dull ache in your back from the hardness of the bricks,

a sting where the cement met your tailbone.

The man takes the bottle from you and hands you another one. Tinier than the rest, more translucent than the rest. It seems innocent; a youthful feeling of in-progress. Letting the bottle roll back and forth between your fingers, you ask the question.

“What is all of this?”

“Curiosities of mine.” He walks along the shelves as if they are his second home, which they probably are. “Some beautiful curiosities.”

“Explain them to me.”

He lowers his face to yours, but you can barely look him. Those pale, floating eyes; that softly folding face.

“They are lives,” he whispers. “Past lives, kept on shelves. All lives lived by one person.”

“Your lives?” you ask.

He seems amused. “Not mine. But I have seen them. Warriors and beggars. Wind-up assassins, floating prisons. I protected all of these until the time was right.” He nods toward the bottle in your hand. “Would you like it?”

“Maybe.”

“Take it. It’s yours.”

It seems irreverent to respond, so you just nod as you walk out the door.

You are barely down the uneven steps before the door opens again. You turn around, and

the man’s eyes are shining. The bottle

slips

from your fingers in surprise.

“You've forgotten all of it, haven't you?” he laughs. Laughs at you.

The bottle tumbles, tumbles to the earth.

His words rolling through your head.

You are so preoccupied that you do not notice the way the sky splinters,

as if it is being shattered by the kiss of unforgiving pavement.

-Kat

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/558235316285275477/
(and yes, I know it's from Alice in WL <3)

Monday Morning Mischief---About This Blog

Hey y'all...

Don't know if these Monday posts are going to become a thing or not. But hey. Here we go.

Christina had an idea a while back that the three of us should have a blog where we all weekly post stories. It took a couple of years, but we got there in the end.

So here's the deal. Each week we choose a theme. Maybe one of us will announce it in our post for the week, or maybe we'll keep up with the Mondays and announce it here.

Christina posts Tuesdays, Suzanne posts Thursdays, I (Kat) post Saturdays. Stories are under 1,000 except on rare occasions, and they all relate to the weekly theme.

THIS WEEK'S THEME: WHAT IS THE RELEVANCE OF THIS BLOG'S TITLE? WRITE A STORY EXPLAINING WHAT IT MEANS.

Am I forgetting anything? Yes? No? *looks around*

The game is on, folks.

-Kat