Rice Cake Writes

Rice Cake Rambles: ramblings about romance.

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 23:52:45 -0400

Rice Cake Rambles: ramblings about romance.:

He took my hand. A simple enough action really, no ulterior motives, no deep and provoking thought process, just the mechanical act of taking my own hand in his. In all honesty his hand was warm and a little slick from sweat, the fact that his sweaty hand was touching me should have triggered some…

Fair warning

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:37:17 -0400

NaNoWriMo is like in a half hour. And I think I’ll be using this to post whatever it is I end up working on. So far I have the main character: Antonia Isabelle Darrow. And her friend Garret who doesn’t have a last name as of yet.

they’re college kids who like to go lurking in abandoned medical facilities for fun. Antonia is bright but has no idea what she wants to do with her life, and is therefor kind of discontented with things, and Garret is from somewhere in the south because I wanted to give him an accent, and he’s a bit more simple minded than Toni (which is Antonia’s nick name) All he wants is to graduate move back down south and pick up the family business with his dad. (I’m thinking he’s going to have a big ass family and be very family oriented, and she’s gonna have more of a fractured family and want nothing more than to get the hell away from her Boston bound parents and go out to see the world, but her practicality is getting in the way of her happiness.)

Eventually there will be more characters, and I’m thinking some traveling (perhaps road tripping to see some mental facilities across the state? or grave hunting? something off beat that I’d be into)

You have been warned.

On the Subject of Hearts

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 23:23:50 -0400

She had given him her heart many years ago, though she doubted if he knew it. If he did, he certainly showed no sign that he carried the extra organ around with him. Even still, she knew he had it.

She could tell because there was a fleshy bloodied hole in her chest where it had been taken out. When she’d first given her heart to him, slipping it silently into his left coat pocket, the hole had ached and throbbed, as though it were looking for the organ that once pumped blood through her body. The pain had subsided since then, though on occasion she could feel the mess of sinew and tissue begin to ache anew.

As far as she knew, he hadn’t given his heart to anyone. He walked around smiling and happy, joking in a good manner. She’d never seen any sign that he suffered from the gaping chest cavity that she’d inflicted upon herself.

In all fairness she’d heard that people could trade hearts and suffer almost no pain at all, as if the new heart picked up right where the old one had left off. This of course was rare, considering the number of people who’s hearts rejected one another.

If a pair of hearts were beating to different rhythms they could still replace one another for a time, but eventually they would fall out of sync with the body’s natural system, and the hearts would have to be returned. She’d heard that returning hearts to their original place was especially painful, as the body tried to relearn how to be a single unit again.

She thought back to him, to the boy who had her heart. She wondered if he’d ever seen her heart sitting in his coat pocket, and if he had seen it, had he taken it out and kept it? Or had he thrown it away. She couldn’t say she would blame him for the latter, as she could fathom no reason one could need a second heart. Though on occasion, she wondered what it must be like to walk around with two rhythmic beats. Two vital organs. She hoped he still had her heart, not because she wanted it back, but because she was glad to know he would have a backup in case of emergency.

Electric Kettle

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 07:42:00 -0400

A red electric tea kettle. Boils water in under 90 seconds. Doesn’t make a hideous whistling noise when it’s done. Fits into tight spaces and is generally innocuous enough. As an avid drinker of all hot beverages, Molly should have been enamored with the cheeky little appliance.

As it was, she was standing with her back to the kitchen sink, leaning lightly against the counter with her arms crossed, glaring at the shiny red kettle. The issue was that she wanted tea, but refused to flick the little lighted switch that would set the water in the kettle to boil.

“Why are you glaring at the appliances?” Asked Bryce, her flat mate, as he came out of his room and into the kitchen, nudging her in the side with his to gain access to the sink.

“I want tea.” she made the statement as though it explained everything. Bryce turned to stare at her as he filled a plastic cup with water from the tap.

“And you’re attempting to boil the water with your mind?” he questioned trying his hardest not to straight up call her out on how ridiculous she was.

“No, you idiot. I don’t want to go near that thing. It’s vicious.” She looked at him crossly, and he found himself giggling at her slightly off kilter explanation.

“May I ask, what it ever did to you? It’s only an electric Kettle after all.”

“I was making tea yesterday and it burned my fricken arm!” she yelled, holding out her blistered left forearm as proof.

“Did you touch it while it was still hot?” Bryce asked, pulling her arm in for a closer look.

“Oh yeah I’m a moron who can’t learn to not tough things when they’re hot,” she said sarcastically. “Of course I didn’t touch it you dumbass.”

“Then how the hell did it happen?” He asked expectantly.

“I was reaching for something behind it and the steam burned the fuck out of my arm ” She growled.

Bryce sighed, walking over to the guilty appliance and flicked it’s switch smiling when the little red light that indicated it was warming popped on.

“Tell you what, I’ll make the tea, just quit glaring at the appliances.” he said.

“Fine,” Molly growled stalking over to the couch and plopping down with her book.

It was quiet for a while…

“Fucking OW!” she turned her head to see Bryce holding his arm and cursing under his breath.

“What happened?” she asked

“Fucking piece of shit burned me.” He said incredulously. Molly just laughed.

Overtime

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:41:06 -0400

She sat there, her feet curled up underneath her as she waited in the poorly padded chair. listening to the clock tick… tick… ticking away the minuets until the end of her shift. Ignoring the electric light of the computer screen in favor of picking at the dirt that had collected beneath her nails.

Fridays at the temp agency were the worst.

She snapped her gum running a hand through her poorly dyed purple and brown hair, not even bothered when her fingers snagged a rather painful tangle. Her heavily lined blue eyes lazily drifted to the clock, tick… tick… tick…

“Alex!” She heard her name as it was barked over the ugly grey walls of her cubicle. Great, Christine. It wasn’t that Christine was a terrible boss, lord knows Alex had worked for worse, it was just that Christine had a penchant for being all to happy about everything and being far too polite. It gave the impression that her smile might crack her face at any moment and she’d go on a horrific homicidal killing spree.

Slowly Alex unfolded herself from her position at her less than impressive pressboard desk and walked out into the maze of grey headed for the office on the outskirts of the peon field.

Alex tugged at the bottom of her poorly fitted clearly borrowed brown suit jacket, which she’d paired with a pair of tastefully stained faded jeans, hey it was Friday, and she’d be damned if she was going to put any more effort into this sorry excuse for a job than she had to.

“What’s up Christine?” she asked, feigning a smile and an upbeat intonation.

“Come in and close the door.” Christine said looking serious as though whatever she had to say was top secret and she couldn’t have anyone not on the secret list knowing about it. Alex raised a thin eyebrow as she shut the door and went to sit in the chair across from her boss.

She took in the knickknacks strewn about the desk and the depressing photo that should have been of family or a husband but instead was of her two grey hounds Harpo and Clem, the only family that Alex had ever heard Christine speak of.

“Alex I need you to do me an enormous favor,” Christine was leaning forward, doing the whole ‘we’re best friends routine’. Alex didn’t mind seeing as the only two friends her boss probably had were her dogs, and overall the woman was harmless. Besides, it never hurt to be in good with the boss.

“What do you need?” She asked, fiddling with the ring of keys she had clipped to the front belt loop of her jeans.

“I have a stack of placement reports that need to be done by tomorrow. Normally I’d stay and do them myself but I… well… I have something I have to do tonight” she said looking crossly at her hands as though whatever the thing was would be far too embarrassing to say allowed.

“You want me to stay late… and do the reports… on a friday” Alex’s face showed a sarcastic displeasure.

“Please Alex I wouldn’t ask you it’s just I really have this … Thing… tonight.” It was true, well about the normally not asking anyway. Christine practically lived at the office. It was like she soaked up happy powers from working there or something.

“What is so important about tonight?” Alex was curious, she’d never seen her boss so embarrassed about anything, not since the office Christmas party incident where she’d accidentally walked in on some interesting supply closet activities.

“I… I can’t say.”

“Christine…?” alex looked at her as if to say, ‘come on it can’t be that bad’.

“Fine. I have a date ok?”

Alex’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. The idea that a man might see fit to take her boss on a date skewing her view of the woman. It wasn’t that Christine wasn’t acceptable looking. It was more that she gave the impression that she was contented to live with the love of K-9 companions for the rest of her life. Alex looked at her boss, who was giving her the most sincere look of pleading.”

“Sure,” Alex said, standing up and straightening her jacket again before headed to the door. “But you owe me overtime for this.” She said the last as though she were giving up on plans because she was just too nice. In reality she couldn’t have given a shit, it’s not like she had plans that evening, besides, she was sure the work wouldn’t take long, and she knew that her office neighbor had a bottle of tequila stashed in her bottom desk drawer. She’d never even know it went missing.

Newspaper

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:43:06 -0400

Richard Klein. It was the name on his office door, etched into the black plastic in crisp white letters. It was the name on his marriage license uniting him with his high school sweet heart for better or for worse, then again, it was also the name signed to the bottom of the divorce papers.

The name had shown up in numerous bylines at The Phoenix, and several other publications. And if he had to guess, he’d say that he most often saw his name in newsprint, as a sharp reminder that his job was to inform the city, to be an integral part of the information network that had become his life.

Looking back it was hard to think of a time where his devotion hadn’t been to the newspaper business. It had been his career, and it had certainly been the deciding factor that brought about the end of a 12 year marriage.

Richard would be the first to admit that he felt more married to his job at The Phoenix than he’d ever felt toward his ex-wife Katherine. After all, his job didn’t complain when he worked long hours, or when he answered the phone during dinner, or sex for that matter. In fact it had seemed to him that every time he and Katherine fought, his job was there to sooth the wounds and piece him back together.

His editor was always prepared with another story for him, with another assignment to send him on, with another set of statements to fact check. Whenever he needed a distraction from life, whenever he needed to get away from reality, The Phoenix was there with a headline that needed to be written.

This was of course before The Phoenix had gone bankrupt. It wasn’t that the paper had been irresponsible fiscally, and it certainly wasn’t for lack of advertisers. On top of that the paper had a fairly strong readership, but it was no longer a golden age for print journalism, no those days were long gone.

The fact of the matter was that the paper just could not keep up with the popularity of internet search engines, and it simply hadn’t been prepared to make the jump to an online journalism source.

It was this change that had brought Richard to his office, he’d spent the day looking at the grey walls of his office, taking stock of the 30 years he’d spent behind the same beat up desk, writing story after story after story.

Stories that would change the lives of thousands of readers, stories that would detail the gradual change of time in a never ending flow of newsprint that seemed to drip of the page and into his own life. Richard sighed as he thought about how these stories had changed his own life, or at least whatever life he may have had.

His mind wandered to a place he didn’t let it go very often. It was a place buried in the very back of his mind behind a door labeled “What If”, Behind the door were countless scenarios of what could have been; what if he’d stayed with Katherine? What if he’d had kids? What if the business hadn’t gone under? And the most frightening: what if he’d never gotten into the newspaper business to begin with?

He didn’t like to think about these scenarios, they made him feel as though his life was worthless. Worse yet, he feared that maybe these scenarios were all better than the life he’d pigeon holed himself in. The life of news stories that had effectively shaped his life into something that had become obsolete.

fighting over the paper

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:40:05 -0400

It wasn’t unusual, their silence. In fact to some invariable degree it was necessary. Surely without silence they would be reduced to one of their all to common arguments about politics, or economics, or the color of the kitchen, or as it was only hours earlier, the proper height of a lawn’s grass.

So they sat there, her reading the obituaries, and him reading about the latest natural disaster. He spoke as she brought her steaming chai tea to her lips.

“Switch papers with me?” she quirked an eyebrow at his request not looking away from her own section of the day’s paper.

“No. I haven’t finished yet,” her voice was flat and even leaving no room for argument, not that this would stop him from trying.

“Come on Morigan,” his voice was dipping into the childishly selfish whine that she so detested.

“Aiden, when I’m finished I will give it to you, but until then, shut up!” her voice had deepened into a growl, something he knew should serve as a warning to him, that pursuing the subject would not end well.

Aiden quieted raising his section of the paper to cover his face. He lowered it so his eyes were above the fold. As he looked at Morigan’s focused face, a mischievous lopsided grin made it to his own.

“Hey, you know… we could read the paper together,” She looked up at him then, her face carrying a critical expression as she assessed his new proposal.

“And why should I do that when I already have the paper? I hardly see what you have to bargain with.” Her words were a challenge. A challenge she knew he would accept.

Aiden stuck his bottom lip out, making his best puppy dog face. Morigan groaned… she hated that face, hated even more the fact that she still couldn’t resist it. “Fine!” she growled as she shifted over to him holding the paper between them. Aiden held onto his side of the paper, slowly inching closer to her.

“Hey Morigan?” she turned her head to face him only to be met with his lips in a surprise kiss.

“What the HELL!” She looked at him incredulously and he simply grinned at her. And that’s when she noticed her hands were no longer on the obituaries. Aiden laughed holding the paper just out of her reach as she attempted to snatch it back.

Morigan growled… oh this was going to be yet another of their small wars.

Look

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:56:05 -0400

Janet looked at the sand under her feet, it was warm outside in the sun. She and Shane had gone searching for sand crabs in the heat of a July afternoon. Janet had pulled her thick brown curls high up on her head in a pony tail, an attempt at staving off the summer humidity.

Shane stood several paces away looking intently at the sand, Janet noticed with a small smile that the back of his neck was very very red, even against the slowly setting sun. His shaggy auburn hair was tousled from their earlier rough housing in the water, it had dried in tufts that stuck out every which way, Janet thought it looked much like he had been in a fight with a hairdryer and too much mousse. She turned her attention from her search to the setting orb in the distance. She stood captivated by the play of reds and pinks as they sparkled, reflecting off the oceans waves. To her it seemed as though the water were cradling the sun, hushing it to sleep much like a mother would rock a child into slumber.

“Janet! Janet! Look over here!” Shane shouted from several yards away. He was on his knees his back to her. She rolled her eyes, smiling. She assumed he had found one of the illusive sand crabs that they had been scouring the beach for since early afternoon. She jogged to him slowly the sand moving like liquid beneath her feet. She had a brief thought that this must be what it feels like to walk on water, but pushed it aside as she reached her companion.

Upon hearing Janet stop, Shane stood and turned to face her, his hands cupped obscuring the view of his mysterious find. Shane smiled, a flash of crooked but white teeth.

“Did you catch one?” she asked eagerly, instantly regressing from seventeen to seven.

“Nope,” his smile widened.

“Then what did you call me over here for?” her brow creased in confusion, one of the many adorable things about her that he loved to provoke.

“Come closer and I’ll show you.” he brought his cupped hands up as Janet moved close enough that their shoulders were touching, and she could take comfort in the warmth it provided in the setting sun.

“C’mon Shane, quit being a butt and let me see.” she poked him gently in the side as she whined, making shane laugh softly.

“Alright, alright, but you have to be quiet,” she nodded quieting as a warm breeze rustled the folds of her yellow sundress.

Shane moved his left hand slowly, whatever was in his hand moved when the last rays of the setting sun touched it. When his hand had moved completely, she smiled, her face lighting up brighter than the sun before them. There in Shane’s hand was a small muddy green sea turtle, It’s head withdrawn deep into it’s hard protective shell.

“He’s so cute” she breathed softly, her voice holding the wonderment of a small child.

He loved seeing her like this. She looked so innocent, so at peace. Her face held none of the quiet cynicism that she had acquired from years in foster care. The sun had long since sunk beneath the swell of the sea, and the small green head of the turtle had reappeared as it crawled across Shane’s hand into Janet’s waiting one.

After a few more moments in silence with their new found friend, Janet set the turtle down at the waters edge, watching it quickly crawl to the receding tide.

“We should be getting back,” her voice was soft and a little sad, but Shane knew it was just that her childish relapse was fading. Her hazel eyes sought out his murky brown ones.

“yeah, lets go home,” Shane held out his hand to her and she took it a soft blush creeping up her cheeks, hidden by the shadow of night. They walked back in silence, simply enjoying one another’s company, happy to come running when the other yelled ‘look’.

A dual angled sensory scene

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:47:05 -0400

It’s cold, colder than I’m used to, but then again maybe it’s the rain that’s now soaking into my skin that’s making me shiver. I love the rain, I love the way it smells. It smells clean, not chemical clean, but the natural smell of new beginnings that only a good storm can bring. Some people say rain is sad, that the sky is crying, but who says that crying has to be a sad sport? People seem to forget that the rain can be tears of joy. Leave it to me to find an optimistic end in an otherwise dreary day.

There is no denying that it looks pretty terrible out. The sky is a somber grey and even the buildings look dull and sagging, hardly the kind of day any normal person would want to go out into. Even still, I had put on my black combat boots, still stiff from their minimal use, and ventured out into the weather. Everyone around me has their head down, eyes taking in the fascinating details of the pavement. I’ve got my face up to the sky my eyes closed and my mouth open tongue out tasting the rain letting it wash away the mistakes and ready to start new.

I’m standing outside, and it’s raining out, but I’m safe under the overhang of my building, more importantly my cigarettes are dry. I don’t mind it out here, I like to people watch. On wet days like this pretty much everyone keeps their head down. They scurry quickly like ants in and out of buildings trying desperately to escape the rain. Yeah good luck with that. It’s starting to pour out here.

As I look out into the puddle ridden lot I see the oddity in the situation. There’s one person, a girl, she’s standing in a puddle, I can only imagine that her black combat boots are keeping her feet safe from the water she’s standing in.

There’s something different about her reaction to the weather. She isn’t moving or trying to avoid the pummeling from the sky. Instead she’s standing still, with her head tilted back and her mouth open. She reminds me of a 5-year-old standing in awe of the rain, trying to catch it on her tongue.

I can tell that the rain has soaked her dark hoodie and that she’s shivering. There’s a fine tremor that I can barley detect. She closes her mouth, and I watch as her lips curved up in a sort of smile before she starts to walk away. Weird.

The importance of people as life rafts.

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:32:06 -0400

It’s like swimming in the ocean, the catch is that you don’t know how to swim, and your struggling trying to stay afloat, swallowing mouthfuls of salt water and trying not to choke on the air you do manage to get into your lungs.

Like every living thing the only thing your body really and truly wants is to keep living. Keep delivering oxygen to the lungs, keep pumping blood to the rest of the body, keep all of your organs functioning. When you’re drowning, all you can think is ‘breath’, even when what you have to breath in is liquid.

Even when your lungs stop working, when your heart beat slows so much that you can’t make your body work to stay above the water, the neurons in your brain keep firing the synapses flood with electricity in a last ditch attempt to keep the body alive.

even with all of this, the only thing one can hope for, is that someone will throw you a life raft, and push the life back into you.

The Man on the Table

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 06:32:05 -0400

He had hands like her father’s, they were rough, riddled with callouses and scars. The mark of a true craftsmen. She wondered briefly as she examined his fingernails, what kind of work he did. Some sort of industrial labor, she guessed.

His face was pleasant, not something that she would have been inclined to chase after, but pleasant none the less. He had a strong jaw line peppered with dark facial hair that served to give him the “I wrestle bears with my bare hands” look. She decided he must have been a fan of camping.

Looking now at his eyes, she noted that they were a clear blue color, like a cloudless midday sky. his neck was thick and solid, indicating that he most likely did a good deal of lifting heavy objects.

His skin was clear, and he had a nice olive complexion, she guessed he was of some sort of Mediterranean descent.

She spent a total of 20 minuets looking him over up and down as he lay there on the table, before securing John Doe’s toe tag, and moving him from the metal examiners table and returning him to his death drawer

Bad Things

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:07:06 -0400

When I was little my mother would scold me, she’d say: “Sophie, don’t go near the stove, bad things will happen” or “Sophie don’t play near the street, bad things will happen.”

It was always “bad things will happen”. Never ‘you might burn yourself’ or ‘a car could hit you’, always the ever so ominous “bad things”

As a child I used to wonder what exactly those bad things were that my mother would worry about so much. At the time the worst thing I could think of was that if I did the things she warned me about, a monster would come and take me away.

after all, that would be a bad thing.

As I got older I learned that keeping away from hot things would keep you from getting burned and that I wasn’t stronger than a speeding car, but my mother never changed the words in her warnings, “Don’t talk back to you’re teachers Sophie, or bad things will happen”, “Don’t Ride your bike without a helmet Sophie or bad things will happen.”

I was old enough then to know that she meant that my actions had consequences and that I certainly wasn’t invincible.

My mother went missing a month ago, she was last seen speeding in her beat up Honda Civic, witnesses say she just disappeared.

She never did tell me what she meant by “bad things”.

A new and deeper ache

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:06:05 -0400

There’s an aching in my chest again… It’s not the normal aching.

It’s not the ache of loss, of leaving, of forgetting

It’s not the ache of longing, of remembering, of reminiscing

This is not the ache of heartache, nor emptiness, nor yearning

This is not the ache of loneliness, though I do feel that it holds a similar silver and grey hue.

This is not the ache.

This is an ache that speaks in volumes, in words, in syllables, in phrases. In long and short breaths.

This is the ache that forces you to feel each heart valve open and close and open again, to a beat that mimics a carrion’s wings

This is the ache that feels as though your skin is splitting, as though the stars in your eyes are burning and bursting and dying.

This ache has every sensation of every touch that every finger pad has traced, it burns in a place inside that does not exist,

This, my Dear, is the ache.

The ache of having to feel all of it, the whole world, so deeply,

and all at once

How to Dive

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:21:05 -0400

Splashing. Giggling. Sharp Rocks. Encouraging Faces. Rushing water. Looking back it was all rather thrilling. My arms were wrapped tightly around the wooden beams that were meant to keep people on the other side of the bridge, the safe side of the bridge. Even with that knowledge, that safety was only a well thought good decision away, I stood there. Little 7 year old me, A fear of heights, and facing a 40 foot drop with only a thin lip of wood to keep me from falling.

I remember vaguely that there were other children there, they flit like shadows across a memory that seems to have narrowed down to my singular focus on that inevitable dissent. The other kids were diving and disappearing into the dark water below, only to resurface moments later on the rocks anxious to have another go, they hadn’t yet come to understand the concept of danger and being afraid. Somewhere in my 7 years of life I had come to the conclusion that fear was healthy. That fear kept you safe. That without fear you were likely to fall victim to tragedy. And I’m sure, even today, that in some regards my 7 year old self was correct, that fear is indeed a way to stay safe.

Even knowing this, for some reason at that moment standing on that bridge, I had made a decision. I didn’t want to be safe. I didn’t want to follow societal rules, or wait to be told to cross the street. I wanted adventure. I wanted mystery. I wanted to experience the consequences of actions I had yet to act out. But mostly, I wanted to jump. And that, is when 7 year old me untangled herself from the wooden beams of safety, edged her toes to the end of the last thread of stability and dove into a life of poor decisions, messy mistakes, and more fun than a life of fear could ever provide.

The Storage Door

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:18:00 -0400

It’s quiet there, dark and cold, but quiet. It’s not a place that’s easily found, she knows that all too well. It’s nestled between two hornets nests of emotions, all the way in the back of her mind, behind a door labeled “storage”.

The first time she’d found it was when she was 7. She’d had to wade through the shallow sea of despair and trek through a forest of lonely before she’d come across the old dusty door with it’s frosted glass panel. Her cat, Mr. Winkle, had been hit by a car, and she had nearly lost herself in her own head.

Behind the door it’s pitch black, nearly impossible to see anything, but at the time of Mr. Winkles death there hadn’t been much to see anyway. Back then it had been a small area about the size of a broom closet just big enough for her small form to crawl into and close the door.

It had grown considerably since then.

In her teen years it had been the size of a small office, a hanging lightbulb that would flicker on and off hung from the center of the ceiling illuminating just enough of one corner to show a rickety looking wooden chair.

The room grew again in her college years, and again every time she’d stumble across it afterword.

She couldn’t be sure about the size of the room now, the flickering lightbulb only emitted a soft orange glow that lit the entryway of the place before it was swallowed by the thick curtain-like blackness. Everything seemed to get swallowed in the dark, every sound, color, even empty thoughts that would sometimes wander through the crack under the door.

She’d made a permanent residence in the “storage” room. She’d sit there for hours avoiding the hysteria waiting just outside the door. She told herself that if she left she might never be able to find it again, if she left the quiet space might be lost forever in the back of her mind.

All the while she wasn’t even aware that the Asylum nurses were spoon feeding her her tomato soup lunch.

Too

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:55:23 -0400

“You’re too fat”,

“You’re too skinny”,

“You’re too smart”,

“you’re too clueless”,

“you’re too tall”,

“You’re too tiny”,

“You’re too ugly”,

“You’re too slutty”.

I hear it every day. Groups of words strung together with tongue and cheek, created with the aim to subdivide people and place them into groups. The group that’s too trendy, the group that needs too desperately to get laid, the group that tries way too hard, and the group that’s too normal to merit any attention. Every way I look at, I can only draw one conclusion. Everybody is too… too.

Too.

The word is simple, comprised of only three letters and meant to convey that something has an overabundance of one characteristic or another. We use the word with little thought as to its impact on the human spirit. The word amplifies the adjective that follows. But it does so much more than that. Too, takes the adjective and warps it, changing it’s simple meaning from a simple description of an individuals character, and making it into a criticism of that persons sense of self.

Why can’t an individual be simply themselves, why must any show of character be immediately classified as being overly one thing or overly another

If you ask me, society has become too focused on too much too.

Moon Dance

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:37:37 -0400

I love the way the moon looks when I stare out my window, It’s rather cloudy out but the moon is so bright that it’s a blurred spot of yellow among an endless sea of indigo.

It’s a round rebellious spot on the darkened canvas of sky.

It says hope is there, hope is always there so long as the moon is out, even if it’s just a sliver, barely bigger than the tip of a child’s pinky finger.

And when the moon cannot be found, it’s a promise, a promise that the dark can’t last forever, and light is always around the corner.

The moon has always been a friendlier light.