Jouranl Keeping

I have toyed with the idea of making this blog more of a journal entry. I thought it would force me to write in it everyday and perhaps on later re-reading give me somewhat useable material for my short stories.

There used to be a time when I was an avid journal keeper. Every conversation, or most, every event in my little irrelevant teenage life was recorded. Every afternoon I would sit quietly in my room and write.

I would have the journals made of simple, unlined printing paper and bound in a hard cover laminated with a work of "art" of my own creation on the cover. The unlined paper, then, used to fill me with this overwhelming sense of freedom. I could write any way I wanted. I remember writing once with words all over the page, any which direction, until they started to over lap. I called it my "Free Flow Thought". Today there are names in those words that I simply don't recognize any more.

Now with the speed at which information is spread on the internet the question of how personal you make anything on here is a very important one. Obviously I can't exactly say all that I may want to. No angry venting in obscene language talking about how much I hate everything(yes I was a very angst filled teenager). I'll probably have to temper it a lot.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

We'll see what happens nah!

Standing still sometimes

you hear the whispers

as they pass

speaking of the past

you only remember while

standing still.



My outstretched arms

across the face of time

encircled hopes

as our world in words of wisdom;

of ages left

your lips even while they

promised no promises.

Still sometimes you'd

sneak your hand

around my hips

in sleep. I'd smile

and dream of nights

when you could dream

again.

Through love

I hoped to warm your heart

behind your broken memories and

masks.



At first you took me

without consent

softening silence

with kisses charged with

promises of contentment

and family.

I watched her spirit cry

sitting with death

in corners of our

living room.

I saw your eyes cloud with words

you had not spoken

while you called for me

with wrong names

and our world darkened.

Still I held your hand.



You toyed with my hope

cool strings against your fingers

strumming while I danced

for our audience to songs

I had not yet written.

My heart would dance in time

wondering at how

your words wandered

right through me

without seeing.

Always close enough to touch,

to hear, to feel

just a little before

your sabbatical shields glimmered

in the light of my laughter

loud enough to remind

you to pull back.



Your words became cruel

in short time

recounting rejections

in pronouncing my worth.

You marked my place

with secrets as your

promises lie across our bed.

Nightly prayers remained

cold, finding no faith

in me to grow.

Childless and barren hope

lay between us

substituting our lies

as we both waited

with pause

for something...

anything to grow.

Returning our deaths to the start

fertilise the grounds

we held on to

refusing to apologise for

even now.

You strangled all there was left of me.


Death comes in seconds.



It was with all this

in the midst of judas

kisses that passion turned

to ashes and my

power was born.

I will not apologise

as my feet fall within

new rhythms.

The songs within me

have burst out

in a tongue you

know very well...

not for your ears

or anyone elses.

It is the loudest of

silent cries within me,

the only thing

left to bloom

with time

untouched.



This song quiets and

swims with whispers

as they pass

singing of the past

I only remember while

standing still.

The Ugly Duckling

It's a story we all know. Looking back at this little children's story now I find I can still relate, still apply it to my life and my ways of thinking. Now I realise that it is not just the literal ugliness of the duckling that begged for a transformation. It was his entire essence, for lack of a better phrase.

He was different, unknowingly special, drifting silently at the back, moving just a little slower than those around him. He knew he was different and did not know what to do with that knowledge. He longed to belong where he just didn't fit. Of course this did not help his case at all. He continually tried to measure up, fighting to be the same as, on the same level with, equal to, those perhaps lower than he was and destined to be.

Sometimes I find myself acting like the ugly duckling. I know better. I know I am different. I don't fit, I don't think in the same way, my course is guided differently, in a different direction and to a different height to those around me. Yet I constantly ask myself..."how do I measure up?".


It's always the question at the back of my mind every time I see the blank page or the blank computer screen in front of me. I think about the writers I like to read. The books I have read that make me want, I mean really WANT, to turn the page. I think of the greats to the not so greats, to the "ooops we forgot you there"s and ask myself silently, almost in a whisper, Krys, hunny, how do you measure up to these people? Where am I within that range and further what am I going to do about it? I waddle awkwardly along, tripping over my feet and imagining the world as a wide space in which there is no room for me.

Lately I have been thinking, how does one measure anyway? What criterion are we expected to meet to satisfy the need to feel "part of"?

Do you measure against others?

I know every start is different. In life, not just writing now, I realise that where I am now, so eager to leave, to make the next step, is the pinnacle of someone elses life. They have spent their whole life working to get where I am only passing through. My top is not your top. My steps may mirror yours may even cover yours but in some way we will never really understand what the other is facing. That is the truth of it so no I cannot measure against others. Your interests are not mine. In my writing I want to write fiction. That means looking around me I can congratulate your news article and wish you well in your field. Read and enjoy your blog. Watch your face on TV and instead of thinking "I'm wasting time, that could have been me!" wish you well and do more writing...probably a story about the evil news writer..lol. I find I feel jealous sometimes. Slow and clumsy looking up and other gracefully gliding past me. That won't work. Measuring up to others just won't work.

...against earnings?
Well since I have not really gained much from my publishing I guess that approach would just be silly.

...against your own goals?

This is tricky cause then...do I look to where I want to be? or where I have been? I have set my goals. If my degree was any indication of my personal strength then I am super strong. In the end I almost gave up. I was thinking, this is taking too long, I won't be able to use a degree in Literature any way, what the hell was I thinking, maybe I should do another, I'm tired, maybe i don't need one at all. I thought everything except...
I can do this!

From now on I've decided to measure up with myself. Look at where I am, where I want to go and how I'm going to get there and turn a blind eye to external factors around me.

I am a strong spirit guided by even stronger spirits. I have the power to rise from ashes and shine brilliantly. Maybe today I am an ugly duckling but something in me knows that soon I'll blind the world with beauty.

Puzzlement

Most stories come to the writer like a puzzle does. The box is the intention to create, the inspiration that comes like a present, unexpected in different sizes. Inside of that the idea, the character, the setting, a sentence or two jingle around in wait of a master puzzler to place them just....so, in the perfect position, till they reflect something complete and completely beautiful in it's solidity.

The difference is that, unlike the puzzles that come in boxes, the writer's puzzle has no clear number of pieces and no definite picture to create. Imagine the puzzle in which there is one piece left after you've completed the picture. A center piece, with a splotch of grey in no definitive shape, is looming in the shadows just out of reach of the lamp light.

Trying to write my latest "piece" feels just like this. The working and reworking of the pieces, nice pieces with clear lines to fit, seemed easy enough. They were already steadily becoming more visible for the last 4 years. I came close to finishing many times only to realize another piece, grey, shapeless, left out.

To some writers this puzzle is a challenge. No two writers would create the same story, novel, "picture" when presented with the same pieces. Teachers of creative writing classes offer this as exercise in their classes. A list of random words, images, sounds are presented for the class to "create something". The possibilities are endless. This thought is of course deeply inspirational and completely frightening. It is here where the pictures blur, the pieces loose color and for some they may as well have each piece from a different puzzle altogether in front of them.

This story is my baby. It is the one that constantly dangles in my mind, stopping any other creative ideas from coming. It whispers to me when I sleep. It wraps itself in time, both real and fictional. It adds pieces to the picture, or removes them when I'm not paying attention. Id sit to continue writing and realize that this is not the story at all. This is not what my character does nor does it link fluently with that they did before, this is a new piece of this puzzle. It is the shifting puzzle that can't seem to choose a picture once and for all.

This piece is my baby.

Fear the World

In the last year living in Trinidad I have been attacked or witnessed others attacked more than 6 times. Some were very violent, some involved guns, robbery, blood, inhumane reactions. My home was broken into, I was robbed in front of my door, I was robbed on my way home, robbed in a foreign country, attacked in other ways by people claiming to love me. I took each with stride and thought I was ok. Now I find myself cracking for the first time and I really don’t know how to handle it. This is not a case of being involved in wrong doing, No-one around me was specifically targeted in the more violent attacks, at least not that I knew. Going about, working hard and minding my own business only to have a gun pointed at my head.
I think now I can say very clearly…I am very, very scared.


My life is now an ungoing series of anxious moments. Jumping up in the night at every bump, every thump, every rattle of leaves, banging door, or metal sound. Quite a lot of work if you live with close neighbors, many trees, many more pigeons outside and two active kittens. I’ve installed an alarm system and burglar proof. Yet every night I expect to find a gunman in my living room.


Today I walked out to a shop on the corner from work. A little Chinese grocery. A man walked in, walked across looking down every isle his hand in his pocket under his shirt. He turns to the cashier
“Chinee you alone here?”
I start trembling. The cashier does not look up or reply. The man asks louder
“Aye you alone here Chinee?”
The cashier mumbles yes. By this time I am ready to jump out of my skin. My eyes dart nervously between the man’s hidden hand, his face, the cashier’s face, the door, the others in line and the money outstretched in my hand willing it into the register so I can leave. All this is a matter or moments before
“So you taking goods then?”
I felt my body sigh as I realising he was a delivery man. Still I all but ran out the door muttering keep the change.


On the walk down to the shop I had noticed a strange car pulling up to the curb. I ignored It and quickened my pace. There was a house just a couple feet in front of the where the car stopped. The yard was overgrown, the windows boarded up, no light seemed to be in the house except from the space of the door which I could not say for certain was even hanging. A man appeared as I glanced up, three quarter jeans, striped t-shirt, all three sizes too big. Again his hand hidden under the shirt. He did not look homeless but not very far from it either. As I passed between the man and the parked car I was aware suddenly that on this heavily populated commercial street no one else was on the road. Again I quickened my pace, barely avoiding the rain filled holes in the pavement grabbing at my feet. Coming back to the office, already shaken by the shop incident I stood inside the gate and tried calling a friend. The same striped t-shirt guy appears again, smiles at me, hand still under his shirt and seemed to quicken his pace toward the gate of my office. Fear paralyzed me as it always does. He walked past and I ran inside.


To anyone else this may have been a normal walk to the shop, to me it feels like my life was threatened twice. I don’t know how to cope with fear. I am not familiar with it. I don’t know how to stave paranoia, or reclaim innocence once lost. My world has all of a sudden become the most dangerous place to be. I spend a lot of time planning escape routes should something happen and at the same time knowing the fear would prevent me from moving making the plans futile. Losing sleep at night, hating public transport, driving with windows up simple things like these are new to me. Still I hear the stories of lizard like men slipping through burglar proof and through keyholes. No where is safe.


How do you not fear the world?

There is some secret power of love. The ability to change the world as you perceive it, recreating each moment as a lifetime shared of experience that the artist feels the need to express, to share with someone else. Experience cannot be shared, not in that way, not completely. It is the plague of the artist. This need to express of course brings you back to the realization that though you may try your best, moving and molding words the best you can, that it is impossible. Most times you are only able to articulate it in a way that satisfies you best after the moment has passed then it barely seems meaningful in articulation. Still to the writer it is worth it, always worth it. It becomes the haunt you can't ignore. It becomes the purpose of your life and consumes every thought, it becomes that mission that must be completed and you made even more dedicated. It becomes a passion.

Passion gives each breath a whole new power within you, every thought, every movement you make releases like a sigh that emotion, that white light energy for all the world to benefit from. It drives you and makes you want to live, want to see tomorrow what new word will manifest itself to you, in the sentence you've been writing for the past 4 years. Sometimes just this simple dynamic is the only thing that keeps you.

Realizing that, you inhale deeply, filling all space within you with all else out of you, releasing it slowly back to its place. You live. Grateful for the little things in that specific day.

Searching for Meanings

Nightflight - Aaron Pocock


As a child growing up I would look at everything around me and wish less than patiently to grow up and get away from it all. Adulthood meant freedom to me, doing what you want to do, for you, because you want to do it. Of course when I actually was faced with adulthood I realized that it is all one big same old and I wished again for the care free days as a child. When my biggest problem was which girl in the school yard thought I was too weird to talk to. Yes the problem of some girl in the school yard finding me too weird still exists literally, but now that aspect is laughable. I am too busy thinking about responsibilities, commitments, goals to worry about random people. In that way life is interesting, living behind my glass window, hardly ever looking lower than my 6' 4" eye line of sight people are so very easy to miss. However I find myself living still to please people I do consider dear to me, going to places I hate, nodding silent yeses when I want to scream, socializing when I'd be better entertained with a book. This is what defines adulthood for me something is wrong with a life like that. My problem now is the inescapable nature of life.

I'd like to leave.

At first the idea of leaving life would frighten me, I didn't understand it. Didn't understand my reasons. At fifteen sneaking to the roof of my high school and looking at the concrete below wondering if the drop will be enough was always daunting in after thought. The last thing I could afford would be more humiliation; a broken leg and then have to face my classmates. Then there are the ones who say suicide is for the cowardly, lol I think it might be my cowardice that has saved me so far. It takes an insurmountable bit of courage to even make the decision let alone execute it. Pushing past the point which your body defends itself. Willingly inflicting and bearing pain to face only unsurity about what happens next. I have not done anything else in this life that requires more courage than that. I am a runner, always have been. I'll probably be running very soon. These days it's gotten past the early childish reasons for running and suicide.

I'd like to stop.

Ever have those moments when the world seems to be screaming at you in cacophonies, when every child is crying, every vehicle blasting it's horn, every bird singing and the loudest, most invasive sound of all is the slow, heavy laden tick TOCK of the clock? Imagine feeling in your very being that you can't eat, you shouldn't sleep, the minutes are passing, marking every movement by time and the fact that it goes so fast without you in it. It can become the scariest thing in the world.

In my world I have no power, I seem to have no control over any factor that governs me and most frighteningly myself. I have control over my voice, and my words. It seems the only choice I have. Of course the two are interrelated so rendering me voiceless renders me choice-less and I have a problem with that. It is the one thing that breeds obsession in it's purest form. If there can really be anything described as pure obsession. I need to be heard. or at the very least given the chance to say what I need to say. This is why I write.

I know I have said a lot, my mother would faint if she sees this post but still, take a moment, forget the instinctive reactions, I need no sympathy, you do not understand, and I care less about your judgements take a moment and see what I mean when I say writing is my life. It is my life in the most literal of meanings. Without it, without the sense of freedom that it offers me this life caught constantly in a wicked changing past - for there is no present - is not worth living.

I have not lived up to my intentions of this blog since inviting readers. It is supposed to be my safe place to say as I please so that most importantly I can meet myself. So far I have written in betrayal of that promise, curbing words and sentences so as not to offend. I have suffered for this and so as of now I offer no apologies for anything I say or will say. This is me, there can be no substitute for my truth.

I am looking for my freedom.