It's Nice to Be Alive

Everyone says the stars are brightest on the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.

From a scientific standpoint, I'm sure they're right. But somehow, tonight, the stars seemed brighter. There is a crispness to the air, an iciness that shivers down your throat and burrows into a crevice of your lungs, lending a sort of sheen to every hovering cloud of your misted breath. You can hear the whoops and yells of revelers, the answering whine of police cars rushing to scenes of drunken misadventures, the sharp, canon-fire BANG of fireworks echoing out across the night sky.

Maybe some day, when I'm older, I will listen to classy jazz songs and sip elegant Whiskey Sours and Diamond Martinis from silver glasses as I silently herald the coming new year. But I'm not some vague, faceless, classy adult just yet. I'm a ridiculous teenaged girl, my skin rife with acne and my nails chipped with nail polish, who watched the Star Trek 2009 movie for the millionth time tonight while sipping a cocktail made with Sunny-D and sparkling apple cider. I will be leaving no perfectly-smudged lipstick kisses on stranger's lips tonight, won't be popping any shimmering silver party poppers. But despite that, I can still smell the gunpowder in the night air. A side effect of the fireworks, I suppose- faint, but noticeable.

I actually don't remember what I did for New Year's last year. Can't recall if there were any specific songs played or resolutions said, have no clue if any sparkling-something was poured or countdowns made. But I do know everything that came after New Year's Eve, all that occurred in 2013. I can remember the smiles and tears and laughter and screams, the afternoons spent wandering around forests and reading to my grandmother, volunteering with dogs and pointedly ignoring my sister. I know that I have made it through a messy, immature, formative year. This is the year I changed my handwriting, discovered red lipstick and learned the chemical composition of gunpowder.

And even if, years from now, my handwriting has changed once more and I no longer wear red lipstick- if I've become that "classy", jazz-listening, Whiskey-sour-sipping lady, I will still smell the gunpowder in the rapid fire POP of my party poppers- faint, but noticeable.

And I will remember the little house at the end of the lane, with it's shared bedrooms and dog-haired carpets. I will remember what I survived in 2013, and I will remember the composition of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate.

Here's hoping 2014 makes a bang for all of us.

The Faint (but Pretty) Smell of Vanilla

There was an old white farmhouse along the main road to my home.

Two stories with a big black door and white columns hunched like a crone's shoulders. No real driveway, per se, just an indent in the raised curb wide enough for a car and warped piece of metal that may have, at some point, been a gate. The house was weedy and overgrown, brick chips littering the yard and streaks of brown along the walls where the paint had dried and chipped away. It was, in a single word, ramshackle.

And I loved it from the first time I saw it.

It was the kind of house that kids discover in movies, that warrants ouija boards and salt lines. It looked like behind it's slowly-sagging garage there might be a secret garden, or perhaps a long-rotted body; that was the kind of intriguing enigmity it had. Sometimes I saw bikes sprawled out along the faint impression of a maybe-driveway, and once or twice there was a big gray truck. But I ignored it and simply wondered what it would be like inside, what back door I could slip through, what abandoned memorabilia might lay scattered within. I kept thinking that once my bike was fixed, once it's disused tires were re-pumped, I could bike out there by myself one day and hide the bike behind the garage, bring my camera and best boots and just wander up and down the stairs.

My love of the house was no real secret- I'm a bit rubbish at concealing what I find interesting or lovely. And almost every time we passed it, I'd mention it to whomever was driving. Once or twice I even talked to my aunt or mom about going to visit it together in an attempt to lessen their concerns- but they inevitably clammed up once I mentioned going inside or, heaven forbid, going upstairs.
So after a while I let it be and stopped bringing it up. But whenever we were driving home I would always look up from my book or pause the conversation to just watch as it flicked past, it's distant glass windows full of secret rooms and mysteries.

Was it childish? Yeah, I know it was. But with a house like that, who couldn't be childish?


Today, however, on a ride home from an impromptu breakfast run, I saw something odd behind the copse of trees that ringed the wild yard. I saw a flash of fresh wood, of bright wood, the young underbelly that you can always find within a splintered board. And, mid-sentence, I gasped (yes, I actually gasped) because it was gone. The house was little more than a pile of brick and wood chips, shattered glass and brass nails. And there, to the side of the still-standing garage, was the gray truck. And besides that, a bright orange excavator.

My mom cut off from the conversation as we drove past. She didn't necessarily get how enchanted I was with the concept of the house, but she knew I was enchanted.
My eyes watered a little.

But then, we were back to picking and choosing from our plethora of menial topics and the house was behind us. And then we were home, and I showered, and forgot about it.
I realized, suddenly, that I had no pictures of it. I'd never taken any, not even a blurry drive-by, and it was unlikely I would ever find one online or in the papers.

That was when I sat down and wrote this.

I'm still surprised at how easily I forgot about it. How the eradication of something that I was fascinated by for such a long a time could be so effortlessly dismissed. And it made me sad about how I never took the initiative with the house, how I took it's continued presence for granted, how I'll never be able to climb the creaking stair or peek through the stained windows. And I know, of course, that it wouldn't be that enchanted- that I was more likely to find beer bottles than decades-old mysteries. But the house was so effortlessly romantic that I probably would've loved it just as much if it had nothing but peeling walls and floors plastered with old dirty magazines.

I mean, I probably would've scooted the magazines to the side a bit. But I don't think it would have diminished any less in my appraisal of it.


But my dismissal of it, how easily I would forget to prioritize it's exploration, how someone must've forgotten about the house in the first place to let it achieve it's state of disrepair- despite how grand it must've once been, how elegant it must've once seen, sitting stately by the road. How does one forget about a whole house?

And as I thought about that I remembered a line from my most recent addiction, a podcast called Welcome to Night Vale (which is just fantastic and everyone should listen to at least once):

"[But then] you move on. And the event is behind you. And you may find that, as time passes, you remember it less and less—or not at all, in my case. And you are left with nothing but a powerful wonder at the fleeting nature of even the most important things in life— and the faint, but pretty, smell of vanilla."

And the line struck me as freakishly accurate, scarily resonant, And it brought to mind another, better known quote, by the graffiti artist Banksy- "-they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

And both those lines made me sad. Because I know that time passes and memories, thoughts and priorities fade. People come and go, "home" can turn into a condo or a mansion or the back of your car. Nothing is truly concrete in life, and everything will crumble in the tsunami of time. But coming to terms with the inevitable destruction and second death of this world, of this life, is a lot different than accepting it. Which isn't to say I'll attempt to defy a force so infallible as time- better people than I have attempted, and Lord knows that way lay madness. I'm just not entirely comfortable with it, not just yet.

That's okay, though. I'm only a teenager. I've got years and years for people to come and go, for home to change it's definition another dozen times, to find more old houses and forget to explore them until it is again too late.
I've got years to grow accustomed to that faint, but pretty, smell of vanilla.

1 Step Forward, 715 Miles Back

In hindsight, I'm not sure what I expected out of this move.

Did I really think a brand new house would magically erase all my father's actions? My mother's inaction? My sister's abuse? My saccharine affability?
I guess I just hadn't cared.

Now, of course, it's all hitting the fan. Tears and screaming and threats to move out- the whole 9 yards. And I am left berating myself, yet again (god if this doesn't reek of deja-vu), for not seeing the signs. For not making the right predictions. For leaving when I should have been there, and for being there when I should have left. Shit, I'm getting all pseudo-poetic.

My mother is behaving too much like my father. In short: unacceptably. She's said things she has no right to, and has made accusations that have no basis.

I was going to say I'm not overflowing with fondness for her right now but.
I don't know what to do.
I'm caught in the middle again.
I've heard from my sister, of course, and my mom really has said some downright disgusting things, yes.
But I don't know what to do because this family is already broken so what do people expect me to do how am I supposed to be the go-between, supposed to be "Switzerland" again?

I'm not sure who I'm siding with and I don't think I can side with someone and yes
yes that is pathetic
yes that is deplorable
yes, I should be strong enough smart enough good enough to pick a side and stick with it
But I don't think I am
and I don't know who to help

I didn't confront mom when she came home
everyone's tip toeing again, saying nothing and playing dollhouse for some invisible puppet master, the tension stringing up our joints and pulling at the edges of our lips
I was going to tell her, did you know?
I was going to look her in the eye and say
"What you said was unacceptable, and there is no excuse for it. You know what that means to your daughter, I don't care how angry you were. That is not acceptable."

And
I didn't
and suddenly i'm 12 all over again and i'm getting my dad a beer with a smile on my lips and a blankness in my eyes because I don't want to but I don't know what else to do how else to help what can a girl even do when she's got the bitter waft of alcohol pinning her like butterfly and the soft sound of her sister crying digging it's way into her ears, winding through the soft highways of her brain until it pricks the corners of her eyes and turns the room into a salt-sour blur

I have not changed
I am still as weak and needlessly amiable as ever
I'm like a sheep

So now I'm stuck in a house that is no longer called home, stretched by two sides that I cannot decide between and my sister's soft assurance of "I'm moving in with auntie" still furling it's way into my ears.

I thought our family was going to be better
i was supposed to help
where did i go wrong
what did i not do




what do i do?

sorry for being such a self-loathing teenaged cliche

I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly to be Fearful of (Being) the Night

I am tired, dissatisfied and a phenomenally shitty writer.

As is evident by my fantastically rambly opener.

Only Living Ghost to Grace the Hall

Today is my sister's 18th birthday.


I wrote her a long letter, last night. Sort of in-re to a letter she wrote me a few weeks ago. Her's wasn't that long, to be honest, but it was. Illuminating, I suppose, if you'll pardon the Lizzie Bennet reference. She said that I loved her when no one else did. Said that it would've been easier for me to have hated her at certain times.

I hadn't been aware there had been a time when she hadn't been loved.
And now that I know otherwise, I'm sad.

summer.

i. fill your sink with cold water. put on a tank top, or sports bra, or nothing at all. shave your arms. shave all of your arms; the tops and the undersides and the little hairs on your shoulders. marvel at how cool it feels to put shirts on. rub your arms in circles every now and then. smile.

ii. walk to your nearest bookstore. or target. or supermarket. find the book section and make a small stack of the ones you’d like to read. sit down in the aisle and start reading until you’re kicked out or grow tired of it. smile at everyone who stares at you. offer them one of your books.

iii. wake up and decide that today is a day for a pillow fort. do so spontaneously and with no real knowledge of proper pillow-fort assembly. steal all pillows and blankets regardless, and attempt to make one by the kitchen table. sneak in some books, music and snacks. watch netflix until you fall asleep.

i should go

have you ever wanted to climb a tree

chain link fence

mountain

roof

and scream until your cheeks are flushed and your hair is a rats nest and your vocal chords feel like they're bleeding but you just keep  

s c r e a m i n g

because you think it is good

it will help

you want to hope with all your shriveled heart that the sound waves will sweep up upon the shore of your angry anxieties and wash it away into the changing tide

you scream because you want to see the bubbles blossoming from your mouth

like to imagine them popping when the reach surface

giving voice to the troubles that have nested within your head

have you ever wanted to run for the sake of  l e a v i n g

for abandoning poisonous people and their problems

for the feeling of burnt-asphalt-heels

for the hell of it

have you ever seen the sun beat down on your neck

and think "I could do so much"

have you ever realized

alone in a sunny town

that there is nothing stopping you

you could climb that fence

you could give that scream

you could run to the beach 

you could steal a car

you could drive and drive and drive

change your name

your face

your hair

could leave for anywhere

you could be different

there is nothing stopping you from turning off this computer

from leaving these screens

from taking $20 in one hand a roadmap in the other

and running not out of cruelty

but rather

for the hell of it

Dear God IT'S ALIVE

*cue dramatic thunder and pipe-organ music*

Anywho, yes, I am alive despite not posting to this blog in a while. Sorry. Bad habits die hard. For the numerous people invested in my life- oh. Wait.

Sorry, that's supposed to be sarcasm. But people are, supposedly, reading this blog now? Why, I've no clue, but their presence is not unacknowledged or unappreciated. Shout out to the lovely ladies Kristen and Miranda for enduring my teenage ennui and far-too-purple prose! Everyone who reads this blog deserves a ton of ice cream for their troubles. Though Ms. Claire may get 2 cartons because I think she puts up with the majority of my teenage idiocy. (Thanks Claire c :)

Ben & Jerry's for everyone!! Or whatever your preferred ice cream brand is < 3

But update! Things are better here at Casa de Alice. My mother has come to the realization that I'm not socially stunted, my aunt is off on a weekend getaway and my sister is as adorable as ever. And, apparently, not going to college. Or at least not yet.

My mother and I had one of our Talks tonight. The Talks aren't like the "Birds and the Bees Talk" insomuch as they're really awesome, impromptu discussions that just sort of happen and end up leaving me feeling happy and optimistic. You can see some of the aftereffects of another such Talk here and here. But we talked about the divorce and how awesome today was (the whole family [save for my aunt] watched the 70's movie of The Great Gatsby, with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in it. We took a shot of sparkling grape juice every time we heard "Old sport") and a lot of other things.

Hermit's United

Apparently, my mother has been peer-pressured into anxiety regarding my social skills.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

She's worried about me "only seeing the four walls of my room" and has begun to demand that I attend my sister's club meetings. Really? This isn't the first time I've explained to her that I don't spend my days curled into a ball in the corner of my room, talking to myself. I do actually have conversations and socialize on a daily basis. Just because I don't go over to people's houses doesn't mean I've become a hermit.

April 2013

There is a school outside of my window.
Between the crack in the trees, I can make out their flag pole.
(It's been half mast for 5 days straight.)

I Feel Springy, Oh-so Springy

I was going to construct a poetic post last night, regarding the utterly menial task of walking a dog in the middle of a cold rainstorm at 11PM.

But then I forgot about it, got tired, and went to bed instead.

Night Burns

Two little big boys used to sit together on the opposite side of the bus. They seemed like giants to me, at the time- back when I was soft and pink and constantly smelled of plastic perfume and salt.

They used to stare one another down, eyes disappearing behind thin eyebrows, as they bragged over who had the latest bedtime. They threw out half hours like paddles at a silent auction, each raise clipped to the tail of the last. "Well my dad lets me stay up till 9-" "Pfft, my mom lets me stay up till nine THIRTY."

 I had stared at them, across the aisle. Clutching my ugly red backpack (it wasn't pink, so it was automatically ugly by my standards), I cleared my throat and declared "My bedtime isn't till midnight."

Ink Lips, Paper Smile

Apparently, applying to high schools require certain things.

Such as essays.

Introducing, Purl Girl!

Ever since I was a fledgling knitter, there's something I've always wanted to do.
Guerrilla knitting.

Don't know what that is? Well, otherwise known as yarn bombing, graffiti knitting or yarnstorming, it looks a little something like this;

I went to a school last night.

Which was, ah

odd.


It was raining outside and I tried not to make that into an analogy. There was art along all the hallways and cauliflowers painted to look like brains and someone had painted a phrase in Gallifreyan. It was an open house, and there was a girl in a lettermen jacket, a gangly boy with bleached "coontail" bangs, a girl with fake glasses and purple Converse and a blonde boy in a plaid flannel shirt.

It felt like the opening of some Disney movie, or an equally cliched high school sitcom.

The principal had the same name as a fish, and he talked to the entire open house down in the school's basement. It was dark down there, save for the glowing window of the vending machine in the back corner. It was odd, because I've been homeschooled for 7+ years, but I think I'm going to apply.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I don't know what it'll be like? Going to a school. I'm just too used to being by myself all day. I won't actually go until fall, it's too late for me to apply. But still.



I have no clue what I'm doing???

You'll Be Better (You'll Be Smarter)

I was really bad for a while, this Spring. Not for any good reason. Just apathetic and disgusted and sad and confused. So I started writing skewered words and thinking patchwork thoughts and I couldn't write anything worth reading, so I slapped "hiatus" on this blog and ran away into a secret where I could be broken in relatively silent solitude. And then I became doubly disgusted at myself for being so frayed, and I started doing what I always do when under duress.

I made some lists.

I'm Not Who I Used to Be

The best birthday I can remember was a long time ago. When I still lived in New York.

I was 6, maybe. Or 7. I don't know. But it'd snowed overnight, so when I woke up and looked out my window, our entire suburban street was blanketed in white.

It was early, or maybe just dark out, but my mother had snuck into my room in the night and tied mini chocolate bars to helium balloons, and scattered them across the floor of my room. They looked like a kelp forest of plastic pink ribbon and purple bubbles, bobbing gently against one another.

My family came in to wake me up. I can't remember whether or not my dad was there. I was wearing my favorite blue nightgown, the one with a plastic picture of TinkerBell on the front, and my hair was still long back then. Down to my back, all straggly and sleep-mussed. I must've been missing a few teeth too- all the old Polaroid pictures we have of that morning show me with gap-toothed, surprised grins.

We had cinnamon rolls.


We don't eat them anymore.
Cinnamon rolls, that is.

Hiatus

I'm leaving this blog for a while and might not come back.
Just thought I ought to say as much, rather than have an unannounced dry-spell of posts (:

I never once dreamed

that I'd start writing poetry

Sure I did it when I was young

But as a teen, it seems so cliche to me.

I guess I'm just a cliche after all

I probably shouldn't be surprised

I apologize to anyone whose read these

I'm sure the shitty prose hurt their eyes

But you see, it's too ____ here

I don't even know how to define

how the wind pulses against the trees

or how the wires keep me in line

My head won't stop hurting

all these brown eyes accusing

Everyone is shouting

But this is too confusing.

God, I don't know what to do.

Is life always this way?

Maybe I should-no. Maybe? 

Or just save it for a later day?

My throat is loaded full of knives

And my shoulders stained with blood

They trace wings along my skin

Like I could fly away- 

(maybe I should)

I don’t think I’m right, or okay
my head is screwed on the wrong way
and I keep sleeping my life away
(I don’t know what’s going on today.)

for you ♥

I think
I am in love with you?
and darling, for me
that’s something quite new

I’ve never done this
so do please forgive
if I blush when you notice
just how widely I grin

and of course it’s for you
my one and only love
that I smile and skip
(you make me feel overwhelmed)

and I do hope you’ll forgive
if I stare at you too long
but features like yours
deserve their own theme song

which is silly, I know
but I’m a silly girl
and I’m sorry if it’s a bother?
But you’re my whole world.

so do please forgive me
(this is something quite new)
But I’m a reasonably certain
that I’m in love with you.

paradoxical darling.

i’m hungry but there’s nothing worth eating
bored, but there’s nothing worth reading
tired, but it’s no use sleeping
lonely, but- no, not even.
hollow, mostly- but not.
i’m a paradoxical darling
and that title’s all I’ve got

since the rain is too bright here
for my thoughts to act right here
I thought this was better?
but nothing has changed.
I’m still hollow-paradoxical
winter-rain-gasoline
paper girl, strike a match
watch me burn up in a flash

(maybe then the boredom
will leave me?)

Optimist - An Update in Pictures

(Went to downtown Nashville today and decided I may as well make a normal blog entry for once.
And, y'know.
Let people know I'm not dead.)

We went to lunch at the Capitol Grille in the Hermitage Hotel. It was this really swanky place, and the bellhop who held the door for us was wearing a top hat. I ordered a banana chocolate creme puff for desert. It came with a football of hazelnut ice cream and a thin slab of gold-drizzled chocolate. 

(all of us loved the hand lotion in the hotel bathroom)

Afterwards we walked to the infamous Hatch Print Shop, a huge, long store filled with old band and promotional posters. It smelled like ink and chicken sandwiches, and floorboards were delightfully wonky and creaky.

 (The cat liked to hide behind the Ed Sheeran posters.)

After we bought a bunch of posters for random things and was given some free promotional bookmarks, we stumbled across an improbable relic of the Music City- a record store.

There was a whole wall of cassette tapes. I hadn't seen the things since I was 6 maybe- 'used to have one of those portable Sony players.

After the record store, we wandered some more. Found a neon sign advertising an RV resort in the middle of a city block.

Then we wandered over to the Bridgestone Arena. It was impossibly big, and there were lot of tourist-y little things in the giftshop. And a crap ton of adverts for the TV show Nashville.

Saw some city school kids- which was mildly disconcerting. You just don't expect to see kids in the middle of a city. Cities seem like the Adult World, like you must be 18 or older to enter. It was odd.

Found a streetlamp with gargoyle legs. Wish I could've gotten a better picture.

And finally, I got my haircut the other day. It's really, really short- it's only ever been this short when I was about 11 or so. It makes me look like a brunette Tinker Bell at times.

I kind of like it.

Idle Teen

I ate melted brie for dinner tonight and set a poptart on fire. I've been drinking milk out of tea cups and handfuls of cereals out of their boxes and there's an awful lot of warning signs that I'm falling into deterioration again.

Which, y'know

Would suck.

I got my hair cut super-short today and I look like a brunette Tinker Bell. My mother is making noises about ditching my homeschooling and attending a public high school next year, and I have the irrational fear people will mock me for having a "butch" haircut.

(I don't have a very good track record with public school kids)

For some reason an awful lot of strangers have been complimenting me tonight and it made me smile and grab fists of my (short) hair and cradle my grin into my hands because I've never known how to respond to compliments, and a whole tsunami of them renders me absolutely incompetent. Except for squealing and flailing my arms about- but that seems pretty incompetent to me anyways.

But it reminded me of all the times I've stared into the mirror, or into the synthetic-white-page of a text document, and berated myself. The times I've told myself "you're fucking worthless." or "you're an absolute idiot, what the hell do you expect to accomplish in life?" or "no wonder you don't have any friends- who'd want to be friends with a piece of shit like you?"

Self confidence, thou art not a common word to my ears.

Basically I used to get really upset with myself and sort of cuss myself out which is really depressing in retrospect and probably not the least bit mentally sound? But it worked, in it's own weird, derogatory way, and I sort of ended up programming myself to hate myself. My sister recently asked if I loved myself, and I said that for the most part, I'm apathetic towards myself. With occasional, seldom bursts of pride. So she asked if I'd ever really loved myself, and I told her the truth.
Which was no.

Which isn't good or healthy, I suppose, but I am a teenager and I'm of the general impression that self-loathing just comes with the territory. So it's kind of a shock to me on the few nights like these, when I look into the mirror and don't immediately recoil from what I see. It's a surprise when I smile and don't mind the reflection that grins back at me. Because sometimes, some few, glorious times like these, I get to like myself. I get to think, "you're pretty nice" or "you're an okay writer" or "wow nice bone structure there girl. A+ on your genetic makeup". Because really, I've got a decent set of cheekbones on me. And that's pretty cool.

Maybe someday I'll be courageous enough (or, perhaps, naïve enough) to love myself, really, truly and unconditionally.

But for now, I think occasional bouts of self-like is a good start.



(Wow this is very depressing in hindsight basically it's just me talking about my inability to love myself yikes)

love you, liar.

I could be better if you told me to

'cause there's not many people like me and you

and I get tired sometimes but baby I swear

I'll stay up all night if you give me a dare

I waited up till dawn just to see how you'd look

and you laughed sadly- your head frantically shook

so I smiled along, hard cheekbone-stretch

I'll pretend to be normal, when really, you're the best

you're the better of this duo- 

but I think you already knew

after all, how could someone like me 

be friends with someone like you?

Sweet N o t h i n g s

i'm ripping apart and i'm breaking at the seams

i'm forwards backwards falling

and i'm drowning in my dreams

there's blood on my breasts and
a weight on my chest and
when i breathe in,
my heart takes a  r e s t.

it stutters and i struggle
and heave the air back out
for the hummingbird-beat
that I can't cope without.
and so i'm left gasping,
stopping starting  p a u s e.

love letters.

You write to her every day. Sometimes it's little things, like "You're the loveliest person I've ever seen". But some times, you write pages and pages. Word after word spilling out of your heart, bleeding out red ink onto the lines of your torn notebook paper. Sometimes, if you think she might like one of them, you fold the page into an envelope and slip it through the slats of her locker.

Tape it to the top of her desk.

Wrap it around her water bottle at lunchtime, when her back is turned.

You always scribble a heart on the peak of the envelope, forcing the heart to split in half once she opens it. Lets her break the crease on your ever-quiet heart, lets her hear the words you're too petrified and too mystified to speak aloud. 

The Fictional Church of The World Wide Web

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.
Well, not really.

I don't actually want forgiveness from anyone's father, and I fully intend on being a sinner for the rest of my foreseeably odd life. But I want to make a confession, and like any American, I've been conditioned by the media that all confessions must be preceded by that timeless phrase.
So.

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.