I can't even come up with a title for this...

For an English major, I feel remarkably incoherent most of the time. I have these ideas, and I know how to express them in words, but the words always come out jumbled up and tangled, like a box filled with yarn that some cat got into. That previous (and incredibly cliche) image is exactly what I'm talking about. As soon as my fingers hit the keys and I see my words on this glowing screen, I realize that that isn't what I want to say at all. What I think I mean and what I actually mean I have become two separate entities, and I'm not sure how to make them into one. Sometimes I'm not sure what language I'm expressing myself in, if any, and if I'm expressing myself at all. I'm effectively mute, and I don't know what that means, exactly.
Words used to be one of the easiest things in the whole damn world. As a child, I would take them apart, and string them back together again. Instead of sand or Lego castles, I built my castles out of words. They were a toy, and yet they were more than a toy. They were my security blanket, my favorite stuffed animal, my kiss goodnight, and my lullaby. For as long as I can remember, words were my reality.
Lately, however, I haven't been able to use words as well as I used to. It seems like they haven't had the same effect. They just don't fit anymore. I don't know what's changed, but I can't write and recognize my words as my own anymore. They feel cold and unfamiliar, like someone's changed them right in front of me. Maybe I don't understand my own ideas. Maybe I have less ability than I thought. I don't know, anymore. And I even if I did, I wouldn't know how to write it so that you'd understand.

You Remember. . .

I love my life now, I really do. But sometimes I can't
help but wish for childhood again, back when things
were simple and honest; when third grade math
problems were my biggest concern. I could sled down
Levagood hill every time the snow fell and run around
Great Grandma Babel's back yard, jumping like Catwoman
and screaming like a banshee. Back then, a candy bar was
the best thing in the whole world and
Mom could always fix my biggest mistakes.
I think these guys said it best.

It Never Comes Again

There are gains for all our losses,
There are balms for all our pain;
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.

We are stronger, and are better,
Under manhood's firmer reign;
Still we feel that something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will never come again.

Something beautiful is vanished,
And we sigh for it in vain:
We behold it everywhere,
On the earth and in the air
But it never comes again.

     - Richard Henry Stoddard


Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost

Perhaps the soul's melody is a live cat on a George Foreman grill...

Kat is much better at sharing her soul than I am.
I used to write a lot more than I do, work longer on it, and let people read it. But my writing is fragmented, incoherent, and sometimes I prefer it that way. Don't get me wrong, I know how to shape a good essay or a good letter but my real writing is sporadic at best, and when I edit I have to analyze. It all feels fake to me, the extra words are so empty. Each one feels so rigid, so callous. Mostly I'm afraid. I'm scared that if I analyze my thoughts and feelings all the things I remember and love won't mean anything, and that would be the most empty feeling of all. I don't know if I could handle that. This shouldn't matter to me as much as it does, since only about three people read this blog, and the other two know me better than I know myself.

Its strange the things you remember. . .and stranger the memories that inspire you. I first watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Beth and Katie as we lapped up the last of ice cream sandwiches that dripped down our wrists and stuck cakey brown to our fingertips. I still eat ice cream sandwiches every once and awhile and I own two seasons of Buffy now, but I miss the thick sticky air and the effortless friendship of that afternoon. Nothing is the same twice.
I really miss the days when mountain dew was just crappy. Its actually not that bad but the aftertaste always stings the back of my throat so it goes down hard. I imagine liquor is the same way. But now the green label is a bittersweet comfort that makes me want to cry in the bottle as it reminds me of a smile I'll never see again.

The strangest thing is how love can terrify and inspire all in the same moment. Sometimes my feelings are so exuberant they make me doubt everything and want to escape my own mind. But without his silent coaxing and indescribable love I wouldn't even be able to type this out. That may not seem like much courage to some but all of it means the world to me.

- Stef (who wishes she could claim that "cat on a grill" quote, but its borrowed)

Daydreams of the Ugly Duckling

I saw the movie Enchanted today. It was cute, and I was amused by it, even though all of my friends that have seen it thought it was idiotic. (I'm immature, what can I say?) But because the movie was all about fairy tales, it unearthed the part of me that's still 6 years old. I grew up with beautiful books and stories, but from a young age, I always preferred fairy tales. Not just the Disney ones, although of course I grew up watching Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and many, many others, countless times, (my favorite movie with a "princess" in it was Beauty and the Beast: Belle loved to read and she was a brunette; for a 5 year old that's a huge deal), but also the real fairy tales: the (somewhat) unsanitized tales of princes that fight gigantic ogres with terrifyingly bad breath, the beautiful princesses who were sometimes in league with witches and demons, the youngest sons of farmers or woodcutters who were somehow the bravest and the strongest and the kindest in the land who always win in the end, the mythical creatures in the equally mythical and mysterious, dangerous, dark forests, and the entire magical world. I adored fairy tales. I read everyone I could find. The library of my elementary school, had the entire collection of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books (The Blue Book, The Red Book, The Green Book, The Yellow Book, the Violet Book, The Chartruese Book, The Salmon Book, etc. ...) and I read all of them at least two times. (I also read and reread and reread and reread Hans Christian Anderson and the children's version of the Brother's Grimm.) Back then (and, alright, now) fairy tales were my only means of escape from a cruel and inhospitible world, and they very quickly became my reality. There are no divorces in fairy tales. Young girls who have sad and lonely childhoods grow up to be the most beautiful women in the world, whom everyone adores. The ugly duckling always becomes the swan. She has to; that's the way it's written. I began to see the world in terms of good and evil, with the strictest ethics that I learned from my books. But at the same time, they taught me that even the lowliest was capable of the greatest good; that even I was capable of good. Fairy tales have their own view of justice: the evil die or are horribly punished, while the good get their happily-ever-afters. I saw that in my books, and I dreamed that it would somehow get applied to the real world. I guess I still do. But more so then the justice, and the safety, I retreated into stories for the wonders they possessed. In fairy tales, the mundane and supernatural walk together like twin brothers. And just like twins, sometimes you don't know which is which. The supernatural becomes mundane and the mundane becomes something supernatural. In fairy tales wonderful, beautiful, magical, miraculous events take place every day. I don't regret my reclusion into fantasy; it gave me so much more that reality never could. It awakened in me a great sense of wonder, for somewhere, everywhere, there was something fantastic happening, even if I couldn't see it. They made me search my back yard and the nearby park for leprechauns. Fairy tales allowed me to see the magic that I desperately needed; and they taught me to cherish every living thing, for life has a magic of its own, far more powerful than any spell. They made me into the idiotically optimistic person I am today. For a time I recanted my beliefs in fairy tales: those years were the hardest and saddest in my life. I've grown older and become this strange girl-woman hybrid, and now I can see the beauty and the truth in my old daydreams. Crutch for reality they may be, but fairy tales only add hope, wonder and magic to this world: things we need more than we know.
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. "-G.K. Chesterton
Kathleen, the (ex?) Disney Princess