Stupid Cancer

"Stupid cancer. We all want a new car, a new phone. A person who has cancer only wants one thing... to survive. I know that a lot of you 'who think you're too cool' probably won't re-post this. But some of my friends will. Put this on your wall in honor of someone who died of cancer, survived, or who is fighting against it now."

Please bear in mind, I don't mean to offend anyone. My impossibly small base of readers doesn't justify controversy, but the fact that it's my blog and my viewpoint does. 

I'm not going to re-post this anywhere on Facebook, but not because I'm too cool, because I don't agree with it. It's almost offensive in its own painfully impersonal sentiment. Anything in honor of someone, even a Facebook post, deserves more respect than copy and paste. As for raising awareness, I'd like to think we as a society are aware of cancer, and making people more aware by re-posting a status won't change anything. Change requires more than that. Post a link to a site accepting donations instead, or better, donate money or time yourself.

Not everyone wants a new car or a new phone. There are other illnesses and problems that people suffer from. And from the people I've known with cancer, they want more than just to survive. Some only want to survive for their families and to be there for their children. Some want to teach people about what they're going through. And I'm sure some wouldn't complain if they got a new car or phone. I can't speak for everyone with cancer, because I don't know everyone with cancer, but I do know enough not to generalize. 

You want to make a difference? Go make a difference. Or at least post this instead: donate to the american cancer society

Thoughts

Writing in understandable lucid thoughts has proved once again to be far too difficult. So instead, think about the quote, "cheating at solitaire."

You're just cheating yourself. But you win, even though the value of winning has changed, don't you?  Who loses?

IDH

Hi everyone! So, if you avidly stalk my blog, which I very much hope you do, you'll notice a neat little picture has replaced my twitter picture as a sidebar ad. This is partly because I got into an irreconcilable fight with my twitter feed and it's stubbornly refusing to apologize, and partly because of illdownhill.

Illdownhill is a really cool blog, mainly about long boarding,  but basically about spreading the sensation of downhill euphoria, which works because, you know, I fall downhill a lot. Kidding. Maybe. Anyway, the writer is amazingly wonderful. It's well written, with neat videos and tee-shirts and adventures, so go check it out.

So go start a blog, or comment with a cool blog or website you want to share. If I like it, it'll get a cute little sidebar ad of its own.

Drawing

I wish I could draw. I wish I could put pencil to paper and coax out pictures. I wish I could paint the half eaten apple on the counter in front of me in brilliant watercolors. But I can't. My hands are clunky, and my fingers refuse to put what I can see in my mind on paper. So I write instead.

I write about the apple, forlorn. A warm autumn red on one side, fading into a fresh green on the other, with shades leaking in between. Its width surpasses its height, giving it a stout roundness.  A bite is missing on the left side, and rough whiteness interrupts the color. Shadows grace over the top, where the flesh dips to where the stem, stubby and short, proudly sprouts.

I cannot draw this apple for you.

Ghost Light

photo by  Paul Butzi

If you wait long enough after a show, everyone will leave. Some run out as soon as the curtain closes, eager to beat the others to the parking lot. Some stay to talk. Some chase after actors. But if you wait long enough, everyone leaves, taking their noise and presence with them, until the theater is perfectly empty.

If you wait long enough after a show, the magic floating in the air settles in a sparkling powder across the stage, gently dusting the armrests of seats and aisles. It's sticky and cool, and it leaves marks on your fingers, your skin, your clothes. Should you rub it on your hands, and drag it in dark streaks across your face, you'll shine and reek of memories that only you can see.

If you wait long enough after a show, the show disappears completely, every emotion you had drains out through your feet, into the floor, until you're so empty and realistic again that you're sure that the basement beneath you must be flooded with the emotions that've been left and forgotten, dripping through the seats and armrests and carpets and floors, leaking through the ceiling.

Then the ghost light. An elegant stand, gracefully made at the bottom builds up to nothing, a single bulb. It's suddenly there. Never to be seen backstage or before, just now, in this moment. The bulb is harsh, swollen, with a flaming filament that's hard to look at. It casts strange shadows, but as spectral as it is, there's a cleansing to it, forcing away all remnants of stage lighting, replacing the busy entertainment with this singularity. They say it's there for different things. That keeps away ghosts. That it scares off bad luck. That it wards off the sadness of a dark theater. That it keeps the theater running. That it's for safety. 

They say it gives the ghosts a chance to perform, to have the stage to themselves in the long, empty shadows.

Useless

I can't write tonight. Everything refuses to be acknowledged and made coherent. My fingers stumble and protest, and my mind remains tangled. The haunting feeling doesn't go away, nor can I explain it.

Greyscale

     I pushed hard, breathing heavily. It was the last escape I would have before the cold took away my freedom. The air in the tires was low, and I held tightly against its threat of wobbling, my hands raw from gripping the handlebars. I didn't take my usual path into the woods, choosing instead the pavement, a promising shot to the next town over. Premature leaves lay dead on the ground, like teasers to the foliage soon to unfold in the green canopy overhead. A goal wedged it's way into my head. To the river, chanted my mind, I have to make it to the river. How beautiful it'll be. Just another mile or two. It'll be perfect.

     I saw the edges of the bridge before anything else, and let myself coast to it. My heart was pounding, and sweat dripped in streaks framing my face. I wanted to press myself against the edge and let a breeze brush against my skin. I stopped the bike, and slipped off, kicking out the kickstand in a single, well rehearsed movement, but it wasn't right.

     There was no breeze, and nobody else. Just an empty bridge of unforgiving concrete. I wrapped my hands around the bars of the side, the dark metal hauntingly cool to my fevered touch, and tried to lean out. The river had been battered and flooded by the rain days before, leaving the banks scarred and sick. It was suddenly cloudy greys and lifeless blacks, and I felt trapped and drained.

     I sat on the bench for a minute with a sip or two of water, before heading back without any real promise or direction.

FeedBurner

So, apparently, FeedBurner is working now, but I really don't like it so far.

1. The layout is ugly and gross.
2. You can't see pictures, if I post any.
3. It doesn't update you about posts, just once a day if I post. Which means that you won't get an email for this post if it already sent you one today, you'll just get an ugly hunk tomorrow at a random time.
4. I can't track or control that feed. It's not very user friendly.
5. You can't comment on anything. 
6. It doesn't do what I want. 

Might this result in the removal of FeedBurner? Probably. I'll see what it does to my stats this week first.

Theater

I stand outside the doors, and pause for a moment. I have to go in, I need to. It's unfamiliar still, the air is too still, the doors aren't as heavy. I push gently, and slip inside. They close quickly behind me, sealing in darkness, and I realize the lights are off. The only door to the outside world is that behind me, spilling in warm light around my ankles from underneath, barely reaching the backs of the seats. The stage at the far end is lost completely.

I suddenly realize that I'm completely alone for the first time in a new theater. I pull out my phone to use as a flashlight, but the dim glow proves useless. My fingertips reach across the back wall, barely daring to leave my little spot of light until I find the switch. There are two buttons. Normal and panic. Holding my breath, I tap panic.

The lights come on after a moment, but the theater still feels strange. Nervously, I walk down to the pit and grab the jacket I left. Standing there, I pause. The wings are left in perfect darkness, and the mezzanine towers above the back seats with eerie shadows. I try to convince myself that this is where I'm supposed to be, this is my theater now, this is where I'll perform. But I can't. The seats look blank and empty, the whole place feels startlingly foreign. There's a gentle well-known breeze of the air conditioner, but it does little to comfort me. Slipping on the jacket,  I cross up through the seats quickly, tapping back to normal as I exit.

Following

Hello dear reader! A bit of a personal update on OrganizedChaos instead of a real post tonight. A few of you have mentioned following this blog, which is lovely and possible...

Option One. Blogger seems to like other bloggers, so technically, you need an "official google account" to create a blog and be a "real" follower of mine. It's free and fun and then we can all have blogs together and do bloggish stuff. But keeping a blog is a time-suck. So...

Option Two. You take the advice of my personal resident geek troll, and set up an RSS feed for yourself. Which is really tricky. But I love you all very much, SO I MADE IT EASY PEASY. There's now a NEATO new box over on the right side here called "follow by email."

Type in your email, answer the random squiggly security thing so you're not a robot, and then confirm it. Then, whenever I write a new post, it'll send you a nice little email saying "Reagan wrote something lovely, go read it!" or along those lines, and if I don't write anything, which would be very sad, it won't bother you, and you can unsubscribe at any time, which won't hurt my feelings much.

Anyway, it's pretty great. Though really, keep checking around here, for updates and new layouts and tweets and all that jazz. Plus, Google would pay me if I had enough web traffic, which would be awesome, right?

Anyway, I love your comments. Remember, I take criticism pretty well, and I take praise pretty well too.

9/11

     In an old notebook of mine, I found a scribble, a quick note of a flag I'd passed on the highway once. It grabbed me enough to mark it on paper, but I couldn't remember what grabbed me about it until today. It's a tall flagpole, set on the top of a dark cliff that towers on the side of highway. The rocky top leaves it strangely alone, without trees or shrubbery. I wrote when there was snow settled on the ground, making a stark greyscale against the softly faded reds and blues. The cars rushed passed it, and in the fleeting moment of my passing, I caught it without much wind, simply hanging, lonely at the top of the cliff. It seemed to stand with pride in its subtle gentle flutter. Today again I passed it. It stands without concept of time. The wind pulled it out, and let its stripes and stars wave and flutter, in glory for all it represented, alone at the top of its hill.

What Bothers Me

Scraps of black tire litter the side of highway, dead and ragged. They're torn into pieces, scarred victims of speed and recklessness, trailing skids of black rubber on the pavement around them, alike the splattered blood of roadkill. What bothers me is not the roadkill, nor the tires. What bothers me is that I'm more intrigued by the novelty of the tires.

Someday.

I hate awkward books. Books in awkward proportions. When they're too fat for their width, or too flimsy for their height, they sit awkwardly in your elbow as though they'd rather not be there. Books with terrible pages. They smell fake and rubbery, and threaten to tear like tissue paper. The thin paper make uncomfortable sounds as your fingertips brush it, and the words are distracted by the transparency through to the words on the next page. Glue seeps from the binding onto the pages with a strange stretchiness. The whole book feels wrong, more like an unbalanced brick.

I'm going to write a book, and it's going to be perfect. Its going to be just thick enough to hold by the spine in one hand, and cradle perfectly in a arm. The pages will be thick enough to hold their own story with promise, without being cardstock-ish, the edges of which will line up perfectly, and when you run your fingers along them, there will be no squeaks, but a sound like whispers, like the book is already speaking too you. It'll smell like libraries and mystery, and readers will check to see if anyone's watching before pressing their noses between pages to the binding, to smell it, and I'll be in love with it.

As much as I love OrganizedChaos here, I wish it could be tangible. Someday.

Read Through

We play with words through the first read through. They still feel new, deliciously unfamiliar in our mouths. The monologues tell different stories, which, hearing for the first time, sounds clunky and promising, like unpolished stones. The girl next to me begins, telling a story, "The Sounds You Make," a monologue about the sound, the tiny exhale or disapproval an unnamed character makes to scold her.

My heart freezes slowly, it sounds a touch too familiar. I had a boy who made a noise like that. Whenever I did something wrong, or that he didn't like, he wouldn't scold, or correct. He'd just breathe, a little sigh, and he'd say, "Reagan." It made me hate him, with every ounce of my being, but at the same time, it made me hate myself. Because he didn't yell at me, or leave me, he'd keep it all in this little sigh, and I'd hate myself for not being forgiving or understanding like that. But it wasn't forgiving or understanding, it was awful. Whenever he sighed like that, I'd freeze, like a child who's just been caught doing something wrong. Whenever we weren't together, or it wasn't quiet enough for his breath to make impact, Reagan became his sigh. Just his disapproving "Reagan" was all it took to stop me, to burst any bubble I was floating in, and bring me back down to earth. Reagan became a bad word. Something to avoid. It wasn't my name anymore, it was a scolding. Reagan. When he was happy with me, he used nicknames. I was babygirl. I was sweetheart. I was doll.

So I loved nicknames. I loved my fantasy world where everything was sweet and fake. I loved my hypocoristic names. But eventually, I became Reagan all the time. And then he left. Other people called me Reagan, and didn't understand when I cringed, or apologized, or assumed something was wrong. I tried to stop a friend of mine once, when he insisted on using my name, but he refused to be corrected. "That's your name," he said, "and that's what I'll call you, and you'll call me by my name." I asked him to explain, I couldn't understand, but it was simple. "Because I like my name."

I'm Reagan again now. I've come to love my name again, and love being called by it. It's endearment now, it's special again. But I remember the sound too well. The sigh meant for scolding. And I hate the monologue and I love the monologue for making my heart freeze, in a way all too familiar.

Pretty

The girls here make me happy. They don't have to shave everyday or pluck obsessively or bleach unrealistically. They're all so comfortable being human. They're the prettiest people I know, pretty just isn't plastic.