My Novel!

http://figment.com/books/324974-Antebellum-

The second half will be uploaded next week!

Student, Father, Former Drug Dealer

It’s dark when we leave — it’s almost always dark when we leave because I have an evening class and am not available for giving rides until at least seven p.m. John[i] doesn’t mind, because I’m his only ride, and he’s not going to complain when I’m taking two hours out of my day to help him out. He always offers to pay for the gas, and I’m a broke college student so I can never refuse.

In the winter, we have to sit in the parking lot defrosting the windows for ten minutes before easing onto 99W. I’ve only known John since September, but we’ve gone to parties together, have been on high late night Wal-Mart runs for munchies, and I’ve patched him up after various accidents, and he’s an easy guy to like, and he’s been a better friend in three months than some of my high school buddies were in four years.

From dorm to UC

When I made the arduous trek from my dorm to the Bistro for a candy bar, I realized it's hard to eavesdrop on conversations nowadays, because most conversations happen over text. Regardless, I buckled up and tried to sneak behind a curly-haired jock and his friend as they walked in front of me.

The first thing I could clearly hear from either of them was "RON! RONNIE! DID YOU GO SWIMMING?" as they walked past the open windows of Clark. There was no responding shout, so I took it to mean their friend was not home. The shouts stopped.

Until they saw Charles.

A stranger for my hamster

I smuggled a hamster into the dorms. I was rather crafty about it. I snuck her in in a plastic bin, lined with sheets, so it looked like I was transporting bedding.

But alas, she was discovered during a fire drill, and I she and I had to part company.

I posted on craigslist, not asking a lot of money for her, just a good home with the promise they would take good care of her.

I was contacted by a woman who said she would love to have Lady Calliope of Sockshire as a present for her daughter's birthday. We agreed on a price, and a day and time and place to meet.

It was kind of awkward, looking for her on a rare sunny day. We triangulated positions based on what house she was at, and I ran into her behind the Masters of Fine Arts building. She had her daughters with her. For a second it reminded me of my mom, my sister and I, how we probably look when we're out anywhere together. Her two daughters were most definitely hers, and looked like they were the same number of years apart that me and my sister were.

"Willa?"

#7 : The Fine Art of Collecting Feathers

This is more or less an excerpt from the longer piece I have written, that will most likely be turned into my personal essay. So as you read keep in mind I yoinked it mid-draft and put two paragraphs up here.

It was a hawk feather. Creamy light, light sandy brown with bands and spots of black. I didn't have any hawk feathers and could appreciate how rare a find this was. It was a gift from an elusive predator. I loved the dry little noises my nails made as they ran over the tightly packed barbs. The vane curled under a small finger the downy afterfeather tickled my chin -- I didn't believe feathers tickled you, but I believed the feather wouldn't be clean until it was back at home, tucked into the Wilhelmina Peppermint tin along with crow, blue jay, and starling plumage I had collected over the years.

Birds drop their feathers everywhere. In the Amazon they are bright greens and brilliant reds, and the people who live there make headdresses and adornments from them. In pet stores they are swept into the garbage, perhaps are collected by an eccentric employee. In parks the feathers go unnoticed and are snatched by the wing and blown into lakes and ponds. In the forests and the jungles and everywhere else birds drop their feathers, and a piece of the sky falls so that humans may be able to hold it and envy the one freedom that is not theirs.


Really don't like how that last part is worded, so it's being scrapped.

Post Script: This is what a Wilhelmina Peppermint tin is. The peppermints are made in the likeness of Queen Wilhelmina of Holland.

On the fad of Hipsters

In short, this is how
I feel about hipsters

Oh my dear sweet insert-something-you've-never-heard-of. Hipsters bug the shit out of me (as I assume they do most everyone, even other hipsters). I feel that this hipster fad has given thrift stores a bad name (or a good one, considering how many people now shop at them to dress ironically). There are many things hipsters have ruined. If you like something that is obscure, or that people have not yet heard of, you are immediately decried as a hipster. I feel there is a "Yo Dawg" [see here if you are not meme savvy] worthy level of irony to being a hipster; you can only be a hipster if you don't like hipsters, or claim not to be one, but they're goddamn everywhere, thereby making them not hipster; they all dress the same, making it mainstream, negating any hipster status. Even more ironically are those who could be called "true hipsters," i.e. those who genuinely like obscure things and are not liking them merely for the fact that no one else likes them, hate being called hipsters even worse (I have often been called a hipster, because I like things people have never heard of, and I'm from California -- this fact alone somehow makes me 15% hipster).

Upon gazing anything hipster an immediate annoyance wells within me to the point where I have to choose between biting my lip (making it bleed) and trying to find some humor in the disgustingly ironic situation. Perhaps the most offending item of hipster sub-culture (don't call us a subculture, subculture is so mainstream) are the thick-rimmed glasses whose style, three years ago, was laughed at for being garish and reminiscent of a late '70's to early 80's pencil-necked nerd. It is a style that has become grossly popularized by celebrities. As if this obnoxiously retro style weren't bad enough, hipster had the gall to just go about wearing this hideous things without any lenses in them. It reminds me of a girl in my kindergarten class who showed up to class one day wearing glasses with no lenses, claiming she needed glasses now because she looked at the sun too long (because we all thought glasses were cool, until we had to get them). I remember being so mad at her for lying straight to everyone's face, and I wondered why the hell everyone was going along with it when clearly she didn't need those glasses at all (I even stuck my finger through the empty frames and wiggled it in front of her face, going see? She doesn't even need them!). That is not, however, why I hate hipster glasses. I hate hipster glasses on the grounds that a) it is stupid to  wear such an ugly style that one out of every three hundred people can pull off, and b) that it is so beyond ridiculous to wear plastic frames with no lenses.

On messy rooms

There are, as I see it, several advantages to keeping a room untidy.

No one can steal anything from you. They look at the piles of papers, heaps of clothes, stacks of clutters to either side of that narrow path going from door to bed and see an incomprehensible tangle of mess. But to you, ah, there is organization. You alone know there is money tucked into books, important papers mixed with scrap, priceless gems mingled with plastic jewelry.

I'm sure that sounds rather paranoid, but to an older sibling distrustful of a sister four years my junior, and a brother even younger than that, this is perfectly rational. If I have to trip and stumble and sprain my ankles to find something, they won't even bother looking for it in the first place.

A messy room is a quiet way of saying "uh, no thank you" to social interaction. And also parental order. I cleaned my room maybe four times a year, when I was a) forced to, b) bribed to, c) was bored and it was raining and I had no books to read (often because all the good ones were buried) or d) thought maybe I would find enough change lying around to buy a candy bar. I claimed I could not function with a clean room; that is still true, somewhat: if things are organized and put in proper places, I completely forget about them. That homework I had to turn in? Oh, it was in my desk drawer. That pair of really nice jeans? I put them in the dresser when I cleaned up my room last time, six months ago. The one necklace I own? Tossed responsibly into a jewelry box. Well, no wonder I couldn't find it. It was put away somewhere that made sense for it to be.

What they don't tell you about college

I've got to say, I'm pretty sure some of my elders just lied straight to my face about college. My councilor said no school would accept me with one lonely D on a transcript of A's and B's (well I'm here now so there's lie No. 1). All my teachers said it would be a hundred times harder (which it isn't). Someone somewhere said standards were a lot higher, impossible even (I have yet to encounter this). Everyone said I would be writing a million essays, be reading 200 pages a week, be stressing about everything all the time, and never have any free time. All lies. I don't know why anyone bothers lying about college life; it means we just get to go "huh, guess they were wrong."

What they don't tell you about college is that it's easy. My hardest class has been the math related one (because I am absolute rubbish at math) and it was something I only had to do once, as a requirement. Everything else has been easy. I've had no trouble keeping up on essays, although I am a master procrastinator.

What they don't tell you about college is that procrastination doesn't kill you. I have not procrastinated on exactly three papers. Some papers and projects I have put off even required research; professors claim it isn't something you can do in a day, but it most certainly is, even if you aren't very diligent about it. I would not recommend this to anyone other than a master procrastinator. I personally can whip out a draft of an essay in 15 minutes if I really put my mind to it, so if you do not possess the same prowess I suggest you take a more scheduled route.

What they don't tell you about college is the suckage of dorm life. Sharing a room was not a problem for me (I have a younger sister) but sharing a wall, and a hallway, and a bathroom was. The boys to either side of my room were loud and disrespectful of my polite pleas to shut off their music if I was napping; they would play Halo and other shooting games at full volume, screaming "TAKE THAT BE-YACH!" so loud I could hear it through headphones; and on several occasions the wall would shake with an ominous rhythm that left no imagination as to what was going on in the bed next door. The hallway was never quiet when it should have been; people seemed not to understand that when a garbage is full, you take your garbage somewhere else; football players would shout to each other from opposite ends at the most inconvenient times (headphones, it seems, are useless against young males with no self-restraint).  Girls would blare music when all I wanted to do was soak in the hot water after a long day hunched at my desk; hair would clog the drains and people would ignore this fact and keep using the shower anyways; cosmetics and hair straighteners would clutter the shelf above the sinks and leave no room for anyone else's toiletries.

What they don't tell you about college is that it is a mixed bags. It is neither one way nor the other, and you just have to bumble your way through it hoping to get something right.

My first horseback riding lesson

That hill was the only thing standing between me and the love of my life, and I couldn't help but be a little terrified. The thing was freaking  huge, covered in loose gravel, and, despite my parents being the most trustworthy beings I knew, some deep part of me was still convinced the car would slip and slide backwards and we would crash to our deaths.

The stable must have had the same problem at some point, because there was a side road that did a slow wrap-around to the parking lot (in the loosest sense of the word) that was wedged against the paddocks. My mom took that road, and instead of agonizing over a horrible vehicular death, I was left to squirm in my seat, twisting around in my seat belt looking at all the horses and wondering which one I would get to ride. Hopefully none of the dreary prospects out here: there was a draft horse, a pony, a mule, a tall gelding half asleep. None were appealing. This was something I never got to do, still couldn't quite believe I was getting to do it. I didn't want to spend the hour on an unwieldy Clydesdale or dwarfish pony. I'd ridden enough ponies at petty zoos, thank you very much.

We parked in front of another set of white-fenced paddocks, mostly empty. I admired a lovely chestnut at the far end of the row before throwing off my seat belt and whipping the sliding door open, launching myself out of the car and landing with a crunch of gravel and a cloud of dust. Oregon had decided to grace this momentous occasion with a rare sunny day. It was late afternoon, and the sunlight shafted over the stables and indoor riding arena.

I waited at the back of the car, more annoyed right now that I had siblings than when my sister bit me when I was eight, or when my brother kept us up at night with his wailing as an infant.

"C'mon!"

I suppose my mom may have been frustrated at my impatience, but I was saved from any reprimand by the appearance of the instructor, Matt.

He smiled at me, I grinned back, feeling a little bit like an idiot because I couldn't stop grinning. Matt said a few things to my mom. She and my siblings were welcome to wait in the house, or they could come to the arena and sit in the office to watch. We parted, my family for the arena, Matt and I for the stables.

I was  hoping to ride a white horse and was a little disappointed when I got a dark brown mare named Rose, but I was freaking getting to ride a horse, I wasn't going to make a single complaint.

"This is Rose. She's a little stubborn, so don't be afraid to kick her." Matt gave me her lead line, and then just left me there holding her while he retrieved the tack.

My hands shook, were cold with sweat and I had to hold the rope tight. Matt brought the tack out and set it on the ground near Rose. He took the rope from me, tied it around the bars of an empty stall and beckoned me to follow him to the tack room.

"Here's your saddle. Can you carry it?"

Throwing My Sister Under the Bus

I want to say it was about 2003, maybe 2002. All I know is that it was one of the last few years we lived in Oregon before moving to California. We lived in a three bedroom apartment in a small complex across the street from the Nike headquarters in Beaverton. It was an unremarkable Oregon day, not quite sunny, most likely overcast, but not with a chance of rain. It was cold, but not cold enough to need more than a light sweater, and we were going to be running around anyways and knew we'd regret taking anything thicker. Such is the curse of playing outside in Oregon.

It was a weekend and my sister and I were craving some mischief, as all children are wont to do on weekends. We had a few other friends at the complex, children we had stumbled upon during the summer as they drew on the sidewalk in the shade of the three-story buildings and plumb trees. I don't recall who exactly came with us that day, only that there weren't more than five of us, if even that many, and that I was the definite ringleader.

Our day did not start off with mischief. We sprinted through the field that ran parallel to the apartments, a wide swath of tall native grass with power lines towering overhead. This field separated a townhouse complex from our apartments, and it was a favorite for us to play in; sometimes, people from the townhouses who had dogs brought them to the field and let us play with them. I trotted along a cracked and beaten dirt path hoping to see Bob and Emma, our two favorite dogs from the townhouses.

They weren't there, so our ensemble played in the small stand of trees instead. We had a fort there that we maintained: we scavenged cardboard from the recycling dumpsters, turning a ring of trees and grass into a grand palace with a floor you could sit on and walls that blocked the wind and prying eyes. It smelled a little like urine and we were concerned a bum or some raccoon had starting living in it. But our line of defense, the untamable black berry bushes, had grown over the entrance and we soon were tired of beating them into place while at the same time trying not to let the sharp points rake across our thin sweaters. We raced to one of the marshes instead.

Now, the location of this marsh was rather important. Our apartment complex was in two sections, the second section backed up to the townhouses and was only accessible from the main part of the complex. The marsh touched both the townhouse complex and this second, smaller part of our complex. It was at this juncture that a wicked idea started to form in my mind. The marsh smelled bad and there wasn't any water in it, which meant no tadpoles or frogs to catch, and I wasn't in the mood to wallow in the mud and become one with the sharp, stubby  marsh plants.

I will admit upfront that I was a terrible older sister that day.

Memory Quotes

I attempted to make this the background for this blog, but it ended up not looking very good.

Just some cool quotes about memory.

Uneven Pavement Under a Green Sky

note: this is a fictional short story

Uneven Pavement Under a Green Sky

Pulling a half broken wagon down the cracked center line of an endless highway in a nameless landscape withering under the last rays of a dying sun. Waiting for the wagon to break. Waiting for the road to end. Waiting to overheat. Waiting to die. Waiting for someone he knows isn't coming.

Waiting to be saved.

Pushes forward through the baked hills searching for a tree to rest under, but they are all too far in the distance, and his feet are sore, and he is running low on water, and the wagon is about to break. It finally catches and breaks and jerks him to the ground. He takes the spilled bag and puts it on his shoulders and keeps walking down that cracked center line of that endless highway stretching through a nameless landscape withering under the last rays of a dying sun. Waits for the road to end.

Waits to be saved.

Waits to die.

Well, to tell you the truth. . .

One of the clearest, earliest memories that I have is of my first day of kindergarten. It was a sunny day (a bit of a miracle for Oregon) and I remember picking out my absolutely favorite dress to wear for the occasion. I think it was pink, with little stripes, of a material more like a sweater than anything formal (typical of dresses for kids). I was missing a few teeth (a fact of which I was rather proud) and my parents took a few pictures of me in front of one of the school murals. The wall was rough and bumpy under the layers of turquoise paint, a scene in the Native American style, with a forest and salmon. I was a bit jittery, but kindergarten only met for half days, and I had spent the morning with my mother grocery shopping and making lunch (I was in the afternoon class).

The next most vivid thing I remember about that day was my teacher, an older woman with a mess of grey and white hair, how kind and welcoming she was of everyone. She was what I imagined grandmothers should be like (and not like the one absent from my family for, at five, reasons my mother wasn't willing to share). Mrs. Tucker, or Señora Tucker, because I was in the bilingual program and would be learning mostly Spanish .

About me

here is my shameless self-promotion of my art and photo prints:

Gallery

Prints

I cannot accurately express in words how much I love writing fiction. One might say, "but you're a writer, of course you can!" to which I would reply, "well, can you describe how you love your mother? your father? your friends? your lover?" If you can, just keep in mind it is not an accurate representation of what you feel for that person, and as all writers know (and have been told a million times over -- if this is news to you, you haven't been in the game very long) you must show, not tell. Now, that is a completely unfair thing to say to someone, because words do, by definition, tell people things. I guess, then, that the trick is being able to mercilessly dominate words until their ability to show greatly precedes their ability to tell.

I've been writing stories for just about half my life (which, considering I am only going to be 20 this year, quite a while). It started in elementary school; I always made up little stories about things in my head, like the dinosaurs on my ruler, or little stick and bark chip people we made at recess. But it wasn't until fifth grade that I first put a story to paper, and it was for a young writers conference in Portland, at the community college (I think it was at PCC, but I was there by myself with no one I knew so I was a bit too nervous to pay attention). I am not ashamed to say that I sucked by comparison to most of the kids I met there, but I can also say that I was the youngest in my little sub-group. After that conference I certainly caught the writing bug, and have been writing (and, thank goodness, improving!) since then. I still have stories I wrote (and didn't finish, alas) in middle school, which are atrocious and self-serving compared to what I can write now. Granted, I'll probably never show them to anyone, expect maybe to show them how not to write.



I'm sure I've gone on about myself long enough. Enjoy some kittens now!