AibellFaeire's Xanga

A Most Outrageous Vanity

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:42:39 GMT

It all - every little thing - reverts back to that singular question. Who Am I?

Nothing else matters except that little field of poppies. Even when other things are important, even when that thought does not enter our pretty little minds, it is the driving force behind us. Does the bullet know the gun?

I guess the fact is, we don't none of us know a damned thing. We are all narcissists, pining in the dark.

I'm A Bad Big Sister

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:50:55 GMT

No, it's true. My little sister is possibly the quirkiest, most original human being I've ever met. She told me once that if she had a terminal illness and knew she was going to die, the night before they unplugged the life support, she would swallow a cheap, plastic toy - like the ones that come in McDonald's Happy Meals. She would then donate her body to study at a university. That way when the team of students that gave her the autopsy opened up her stomach, all the other students would wonder why their cadavers didn't come with prizes.

Always thinking of the greater good, that's my baby sister.

Well, picture this lovely beacon of wide-eyed innocence *cough* sitting on the couch beside me. It had to have been April or May. She had to have been six and I was nine. I was watching my favorite show, which at the time was probably Degrassi or something ridiculous, and my beautiful little sister was being... singularly the most obnoxious person in the world.

"Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!"

"What, Anna? What do you want?"

"What's that guy doing?"

"He's mad because he just found out his girlfriend cheated on him."

"What's cheating?"

"She kissed another boy."

"Why?"

"Because she's a terrible person."

"Oh... what's he gonna do?"

"I don't know, Anna, why don't you watch the show and we'll find out together, shall we?"

"Boy, he looks mad. How mad do you think he is? Have you ever been that mad?"

"I'm approaching it, yes."

"Do you think he's cute? Would you kiss him? What's he doing now? Oh man, is that her? Is that the girl? Is he gonna hit her? You're not supposed to hit people. Mommy says never, ever, ever hit people. Why's she crying? What's he doing? Who's that guy? What's gonna -"

"SANTA DOESN'T EXIST!"

Her jaw dropped and she stared at me and immediately burst into tears and ran out of the room. Daddy yelled at me later but hey... I got to finish the show.

Merry Christmas, Everybody.

The Sermon

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:17:07 GMT

You are always late and final
Like punctuation
And through the glittered glass
I can see that the cold has made your cheeks
Rosy and sweet, like peppermint candy
You Are My Sunday Morning.

You can see the daylight wandering in,
And someone's preaching hellfire
And I find my only salvation
Not in the Light of the World
But in the shadows on your face.

But my fingers, laced like cyanide with his,
Say you're not mine.
This pressure in my lungs says they are lying, lying, lying.
But they are lying physically,
And that means more, I think, than feeling,
Even if it's true.

Don't look back
I'm made of salt not strength
Not at all the pillar you thought I was
And what you need,
I hope you find.

I love him.

Part One

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:10:29 GMT

She arrives on a plane made of tin and wire. It’s not safe, she thinks, to be this high. For some reason, that does not scare her. It comforts her, to not be safe, for once. Like climbing trees or jumping off cliffs into the ocean – sometimes you are closest to the world when you are closest to danger.

It lands – strange that a noun should become a verb for such a thing. A flight attendant with a cute dimple grabs her elbow to stop her from falling over as she stands on her tip toes to get her bag. She smiles, and so does the attendant. She wonders her name, but doesn’t ask or read her tag. Sometimes it’s better not knowing.

He is not in the airport terminal waiting for her and neither is her luggage. She is not sure which disappoints her more – the loss of her clothing, toothbrush, and other necessary items, or the fact that she has been expecting to see Him right off the plane and He is not there.

She walks with her carryon bag – which holds a trashy romance novel, a pack of gum, her iPod, and absolutely nothing essential to living for a weekend – outside into the sun. There is sunshine where she’s from, of course, but it hides behind pine trees and an overhanging sense of ensnarement like a net. The sun here feels brighter, hotter, closer. She almost wants to reach out and touch it, grab it, put it in her pocket and eat it later like a Skittle. She wishes instantly that she was wearing shorts instead of these fucking jeans.

And then she sees him, leaning against His car in a suit with the sleeves rolled up and the jacket flung over his shoulder, hanging there by his index finger like a grappling hook. He has sunglasses that cover most of his face and a cigarette gritted in his lips like its one of his appendages and He is staring directly at her and suddenly she is glad that she is not wearing those shorts. She doesn’t need to be any more exposed.

***

So. Can I just say. That I am incredibly. Marvelously. And blissfully. Ecstatic. Why? Because what you've just read is something that, along with 46 other pages of imperfect, joyful, pseudo-philosophical, pretentious, but maybe slightly wonderful writing, I am holding in my hands right now.

Well, right now I'm typing. But a few seconds ago, before I was typing, I held it in my hands. And maybe smelled it a little. Unless that's creepy, in which case I totally did not.

It is the rough (read: neanderthalic) draft of my novel. My baby. My heart and soul.

And you've just read the first scene.

CAN I GET AN AMEN?!

***

Edit: Yeah, this is a timestamp. You guys'll get over it. I'm excited! Haha.

Let There Be Light

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:47:36 GMT

I was born agnostic, raised an atheist, and probably will die before I find any faith. And maybe I can blame my parents for not dressing me up for church on Sundays, or making me say my nightly prayers. Maybe I missed out.

But I think I was happier this way than I would have been trying to live up to be something I'm not. Trying to make Big Daddy love me.

And this way my morals were figured out on my own. They weren't fed to me. I logicked them into existence. I said Thou shalt not kill. I said Thou shalt not steal. I decided not to hurt people, because it was the right thing, not because some scribbles on an old, dusty book told me to.

And maybe someday instead of putting my logical kindness on the big Cosmic Refrigerator, God'll stash it in his desk drawer to hide his shame at what his Daughter's created. Maybe he'll even bend me over his knee. Maybe figuring it out for yourself ain't what matters, maybe I'm wrong.

But at least I can say that it's a possibility. Can He? Faith is blindness, so I've read, you have to be uncertain in order to have faith, but can He or any of his followers let go of faith for a second and See?

To be honest, I'd rather learn than be trapped in my own omniscience.
I'd rather be fallible.

The Ones Who Didn't Matter

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:19:54 GMT

With him it was hypotheticals. What if what if what if.
Once he told me that if I kissed him, he would be okay with that, as long as I didn't tell anyone. I think he was afraid, not ashamed, afraid that once we told, it would be real. And then he would have to make or break it.
And another time he held my hand when I was scared, at the same moment as calling me a pussy. In that jibe, I heard, I want you. He would have only had to say it.
He waited so long for the right time, but it never was. I think now there's a reason for that.
And he played guitar like I've never heard it before or since, a silhouette of hypnotism.
Free from implications and pain, limbo is a comforting place to be sometimes, I expect. At least it was for him.

He took such a sharp turn, as was his wont, and decided that he loved me.
I am one of those girls - the ones who don't get hit on, but have strangers fall in love with them. He was not a stranger, but he didn't love me. He just thought so.
It was too soon, too soon, too soon. He knew what he wanted, which was something new after all those years of back and forth, but he wanted it too close and too fast and too much.
And yet it was simple, the way he needed. He wanted me because he wanted me.
There's no justification. There just is.

I kissed him in the back of the car where we were hiding from the drizzle and the party, and he kissed me back because that is what you do when a girl you've known forever kisses you. You kiss back.
I told him that it meant something to me. He touched my cheek and smiled and said nothing, and I knew that nothing would come of it.
Still, I waited weeks for him to say it. He could just be shy, the traitorous optimism in my head said. Et tu, hope?
If there's one thing I'll remember, it will be the rain. And I'll never smell cigar smoke without thinking of the way you taste.

I never loved them, not one of these three, but I could have.
It doesn't matter now.

Here In My Room

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:00:33 GMT

The home I find will have stairs that squeak and faucets that don't drip.
The house I find will have windows that lead to the roof, where my teenage daughter will sit and think that she's rebelling by doing so.
The house I find will settle gently into sleep, soft like the curve of the earth.
And maybe that's what home is. Settling. I don't know. I've never known.

Daddy says that where he lives will always be my home. I'll always have a place there.
Little sister says I'm selfish for moving home.

Mother kicked me out when I fought her. It's her house, she said, and she didn't want me in it.
So did everyone else. Whether because they didn't want me or because it was time to go.

Things will be different there.
Unless, of course, things are the same everywhere.

And love is a verb, here in my room.
Here in my room.

The End

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:52:48 GMT

Will measures time in songs. For instance, it takes him exactly the length of Red Hot Chili Pepper's album Blood Sugar Sex Magic to mow his lawn. It takes the first four songs on Mastodon's Leviathan to drive me home from his house, and the first three on Stone Temple Pilot's Purple to shower. So when I got into his car he said, "It should take Good Apollo I to get there," I knew what he was talking about.

My feet were freezing and they never really got warm and we talked about how excited he was to see Nikki. His new girlfriend. She lives in New York and was flying in for Christmas, to be with him. Hopefully she'll be moving here soon.

I don't think of her as "Will's new girlfriend." She's just Nikki. She's a girl. She's a friend. They just also happen to be dating.

I like them together. She makes him smile, and he makes her laugh. I was excited to see her, but I might have been more excited to see them together. Something about Will snaps into place when Nikki is home.

Here, I mean. I guess her home is New York, but I do that a lot. She belongs here, I think.

It was one o'clock in the morning before we got to the airport - which was empty of all people and creepy. Anyplace in the city without people is unnatural, airports especially. They're usually very busy places, and to see it so still was... disconcerting, to say the least. By the end of it, I was just waiting for the zombies.

On our way home, Nikki happily ate the sandwiches I had made for her before leaving home (I knew she'd be hungry) and chattered to Will and I half-dozed, half-thought in the backseat. Something passing made a pattern of shadows on my coat, which lay on the seat behind me, but the pattern changed before I even thought to look up and see what was making it. It looked like fish scales, and I felt trapped and safe, Jonah in the belly of the whale.

The whole drive I wished that Clayton would be home when I got there, so that I could slip into bed with him, and he would drowsily ask me how the drive had gone, and despite his protest when my frigid feet wrapped themselves in his legs, he would pull me closer and kiss the top of my forehead with his eyes still closed. Natural. Peaceful. Mine.

Almost to my house to drop me off, Will started singing with the Foo Fighters' album that had replaced Coheed and Cambria on our drive back, to himself, like you would if no one was there and you didn't really realize you were mumbling the song that had been stuck in your head all day. I wish you only knew, how good it is to see you. To see you.

Nikki gently touched his hand with hers, private but not at all ashamed. I smiled.

If I had to write a memoir for my life so far, it would end with that moment - with Will's hand welded to his girl, and me dreaming about my boy, itching to call him and just hear his voice. Things come full circle after all.

It took us until the end of that song to get home.

Anniversary

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:12:00 GMT

I'm not really one for anniversaries. In fact, I forgot my own birthday once. Clayton and I celebrated six months together (which is not an anniversary, in case anyone's curious - anniversary comes from the Latin word for year, so it's not an anniversary, unless it's divisible by a full year) by watching movies and cuddling. No presents were exchanged, I'm pretty sure. S'not my style.

But this one's... giving me some trouble. I think.

I remember my last year anniversary with someone. That was when the fights started and we started going downhill. That exact day. Good way to celebrate, huh?

To be honest, I can't even remember if we'd had problems before then, but I remember, that's when it all culminated. That's when it became something I couldn't fix anymore. Neither of us could. Even when we fixed other problems, we couldn't take back the things we'd said then.

Thus far Clayton and I have... I won't say we've never fought, because I don't know if that would be a lie, but neither of us has said anything that could ruin this. We've gotten through the problems - arguments or otherwise, we've definitely had problems to get through - and thus far we've reached the other side of them better.

He always makes me better.

But then... I thought that about Will, too, and when I start to get comfortable in my relationship with Clayton, I think that... eleven months is still young. Nineteen years is still young. And I was just as comfortable with Will before our first anniversary...

December 29th will be three years exactly since I first realized I had a crush on Clayton. December 29th will be one year since he asked me to be his girlfriend.

I am excited because I love him and this means that... I don't know. That our relationship might hold actual legitimacy to other people. Not that I give a fuck what you think of Clayton and I, but a year is a benchmark of source that might tell people (all right, I admit - I'm mainly thinking of his mother, but that's another post...) that this isn't just puppy love, that we mean this. With everything we have.

But... maybe it's also a turning point in relationships. Where things start to be harder.

I've heard the term honeymoon phase, and I think we're well out of ours, but... maybe I'm just kidding myself.

All I know for sure is... is that I don't care. Because I'm not giving up, no matter how hard this gets. I'm way too stubborn and idealistic for that.

I'm his, savvy?

People Are Being Particularly Stupid Today

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:27:15 GMT

I can't talk to any more of them. So I turned off my phone. Apparently by doing so, I've killed the first born child of every household, poisoned the water supply, burned all the crops, and unleashed at least one if not all of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

My friends are absolutely astounded - at least the ones I talked to online today - that I could do such a thing with nary a backwards glance.Now if you want to get ahold of me, you'll have to... Well, actually, I don't give a shit what you do. If you really want to talk to me, you'll find a way, you clever, clever people, you.

I've heard a lot of talk about how today everyone's so connected, but they're also more disconnected from other people than they have been in the past. Not so, I say. In the past people were confined to the friends who were around them. Keeping up with someone was hard, so they really only made a handful of lifelong friends. What do I have right now? A handful of lifelong friends. I'd say most other people are the same. But because we're always connected somehow - e-mail, Facebook, or these goddamn cellphones (you whippersnappers and your phellytones!) - we're merely reminded more consistently about all the people we don't really give a flying fuck about. It appeals to our conscience and we feel terrible that we never connect with people anymore, when in reality, a true connection with anyone in any time period is something that is rare and to be cherished.

That or people really just don't care about each other anymore - but I make the argument that if they don't now, they never did.

But I guess that's not the point. The point is, having a cell phone was bugging me. I can't remember the last time I felt okay walking out of the house without the damn thing in my pocket. Oh, wait. It was before I owned it. I'm sick of getting random texts from people I don't even talk to so they can pretend we're catching up. I guess getting phone calls are okay, but no one does that anymore because they have texting. Why speak to someone when you can get your message across in 160 characters?

I miss actually being by myself.