Found: Another Work of Art via Tumblr

you fell in love as soon as we met

but i fell for you seven days before that

i glanced at you for three seconds and you blew me away

and over six hundred thousand seconds later

when i thought i had collected my confidence

you had already initiated conversation

i had never seen such an elegant being

i was in awe in every sense of the word

i was like a puzzle just shy of one million pieces

and my train of thought was the only one missing

you fill my chest with the sweetest air i have ever felt

yet i think if you take one more breath from my lungs

they will cave and infatuate themselves with my heart

we spoke again three weeks later (i think)

nothing could have stopped the stuttering of my words

i didn't know what it was about you

maybe it was your light vanilla scent

or your vibrant smile and autumn eyes

but you were beyond captivating and gorgeous

you were mine and i was yours

this was it

i love you,

i love you,

i love you.

h.c.

I'm not sure who H.C. is, but this was too beautiful not to share.

Beyonce is the Queen

For those of you who are living under a rock (jk, jk), Beyonce released an album on December 13th at midnight, without promoting it at all. It has sold 828,773 copies worldwide in just three days, as reported by Apple, and is the number one album in 104 countries. Basically, Beyonce is the queen. No one, in my opinion, can get on her level. I obviously have bought it, as much as I'm going on about it. And I can't stop listening to it. I just love it so much, and I love her. This is quickly turning into a post about my lady crush on Beyonce, but whatever. So far, my favorites are Pretty Hurts, Partition, Flawless, and Blue. I think they're on YouTube by now, so give them a listen and let me know what you think.

Six word stories

As usual, my brain is a jumbled mess of whatever happens to be going on in my life and whatever I have experienced that day. Today, like usual, it's more poems and tidbits from Tumblr. But more specifically, six word stories that (for me at least) leave you wanting more. Here are some of my favorites.

You deserve happiness. So I left.
She chased clouds hoping for rainbows.
Laughter long ago swallowed by shadows.
Do not laugh. We need dreamers.
Smoldering ashes. You stole my fire.

(These are all from the same blog and author) 

(These are just random finds on Tumblr)

I miss how you wanted me. 

You are somebody. Not some body.

The people you love become ghosts.

I discovered myself while discovering you.

Someone loving you doesn't fix you.

We all die with unanswered questions.

Under your finger tips, I matter.

Eye contact: how souls catch fire.

There are no winners, only survivors.

Hearts grow heavy with the sea.

But with you, it was different.

And finally, a Margaret Atwood quote: "There are mountains inside your skull," which comes from the longer quote:

at last you, will say
(maybe without speaking)

(there are mountains
inside your skull
garden and chaos, ocean
and hurricane; certain
corners of rooms, portraits
of great-grandmothers, curtains
of a particular shade;
your deserts; your private
dinosaurs; the first
woman)

all I need to know:
tell me
everything
just as it was
from the beginning.

Long Post Alert

I've been watching Slam Poetry for the better part of the night. Here are some of my favorites.

Actively Procrastinating

I find when I am actively avoiding doing something, whether it's homework or housework or whatever else is on my list of things to do, I happen to come across the most interesting things the internet has to offer. Justina knows I have a Tumblr blog as well as this one, but for those who don't know, Tumblr is a massive blogging platform that allows people to share and reblog and post things. (I recommend it, but just know that I created my blog in August of last year and I can't remember what I used to do with all my free time before it. It's very addicting.) Anyway, some of the blogs I follow post the most amazing things, like the poem in my last post, or some of the inspirational advice I've posted in the first few weeks of this blog. Today's little gold mine is this poem, called "For Women Who Are Difficult To Love" by Warsan Shire. You can listen to it here, read by Warsan: Audio

you are a horse running alone

and he tries to tame you

compares you to an impossible highway

to a burning house

says you are blinding him

that he could never leave you

forget you

want anything but you

you dizzy him, you are unbearable

every woman before or after you

is doused in your name

you fill his mouth

his teeth ache with memory of taste

his body just a long shadow seeking yours

but you are always too intense

frightening in the way you want him

unashamed and sacrificial

he tells you that no man can live up to the one who

lives in your head

and you tried to change didn't you?

closed your mouth more

tried to be softer

prettier

less volatile, less awake

but even when sleeping you could feel

him travelling away from you in his dreams

so what did you want to do love

split his head open?

you can't make homes out of human beings

someone should have already told you that

and if he wants to leave

then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love.

She has a book called Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth, which I have ordered and am currently waiting for it to arrive. Some of her other poems and words of wisdom are also amazing; I'll post my favorites below.

“My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.”

“two people who were once very close can
without blame
or grand betrayal
become strangers.
perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.”

“make love
like you have no
secrets
like you’ve
never been
left
never been
hurt
like the world
don’t owe you a
single
wretched
thing.”

“Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.”

“It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.”

“the year of letting go, of understanding loss. grace. of the word ‘no’ and also being able to say ‘you are not kind’. the year of humanity/humility. when the whole world couldn’t get out of bed. everyone i’ve met this year, says the same thing ‘you are so easy to be around, how do you do that?’. the year i broke open and dug out all the rot with own hands. the year i learnt small talk. and how to smile at strangers. the year i understood that i am my best when i reach out and ask ‘do you want to be my friend?’. the year of sugar, everywhere. softness. sweetness. honey honey. the year of being alone, and learning how much i like it. the year of hugging people i don’t know, because i want to know them. the year i made peace and love, right here.”

Persephone Lied

The truth is, I was bored.

My mother blissing ahead of me, rosebuds rising in her footsteps,
And I skulking behind, thinking,
Oh look. She walks in beauty.
Again.

Her power could boil rivers, if she chose.
She doesn’t choose. She scatters
Heliotrope behind her.

And me, I’ve no powers. I think she’d like
A decorative daughter. A link to the humans
She feeds with her scattered wheat.
A daughter wed to a swineherd’s just the thing
To show that Demeter’s a down-to-earth
Kind of goddess.

Do you know what swineherds talk about?
Swine.
Diseases of, ways to cook;
“That ‘un’s got no milk for ‘er shoats;
Him, there, he’s got boggy trotters.”

And when he leaned in, smiling,
While we sat in a bower sagged with Mother’s honeysuckle,
When he said, “Now,
My herd’s growing and I’m thinking I could feed a wife—”
That’s when I snapped, I howled, I ran.

And when a hole opened up, a beautiful black, in all the pastels of my mother’s sowing.
Let me fix the lie: Nobody grabbed, nobody pulled.
I jumped.

I thought it was a tiny earthquake,
Thought I was killing myself,
Starting a long journey to Hades.
It was a more direct trip
Than I’d imagined—
I landed in his lap.

He just looked at me, said “Well,”
And kept driving his chariot down,
Flicked his leather reins near my face.
He did not give me flowers.
He never spoke of pigs.

Didn’t speak much at all. Just took me down in darkness
And did dark things.
I liked them.

I stumbled through his grey gardens, after,
Sore and smiling.
And the gardener said, “Little girl,
Little sunlit flower,
You belong in the world above.
Trust that they’ll come for you,
But while you wait
Don’t eat the food of the dead, for it will trap you here.”
And I said give me the fucking fruit.

But when I ate I could hear her howling,
See her spreading winter on the world.
My poor mother, who missed me after all;
My poor swineherd, starving.
Huddled up for warmth with the few he hadn’t eaten.

I spat out half the seeds.

So now I suffer through the summers,
Smile at the swineherd who tells me
Which shoat is off its feed.
Smile at my mother and walk behind her.
My powers have come to me now, and in her candy-colored wake I scatter
Sundew and flytrap, nettles and belladonna.

I smile and wait for November,
For when I come back to you.
Your clever cold hands and your hard black boots.
I don’t ask what the leather is made from.

I don’t think I want to know.

-Spuffyduds

I love, love, love this poem. I think the only one that even comes close is What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn't A Pillar of Salt).

On Happiness

“Don’t ever put your happiness in someone else’s hands. 

They’ll drop it. They’ll drop it every time.” 

—  Christopher Barzak

I hadn't ever thought of anything like this. (Maybe one day I'll be able to coin my own inspirational thoughts that people will blog about, or post in Facebook statuses or on Twitter, but not today.) I am the only person who is in control of my happiness, which makes sense. When I depend on others to "make" me happy, I'm usually not. I can be happy because of other people, but they don't control my happiness. 

NaNoWriMo

So for those who might not know what that is, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, (November). And I just signed up. I'm excited, but also a bit apprehensive. I want to further the writing that I do in class and turn it into a novel. I have to write 50,000 words in just the month of November, so filling in the blanks from where my writing jumps from one subject to the next is what I'm going to do, since the writings I've already completed don't count. I'm hoping that by telling all of you here will keep me motivated and will make me want to write in my spare time. This project will give me something to do, something to focus my writing towards. And maybe I'll get a book out of it. Who knows, right?

The things I find on Tumblr

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

-Gary Provost

Found: Inspirational Advice For Writers

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me … is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

-Ira Glass

Stand By Me

This song has been playing in repeat all day in my head. I'm not sure how it got there originally, but it's not a bad song to have circling around my brain. 

Whenever you're in trouble won't you stand by me, oh now now stand by me. Oh stand by me, stand by me, stand by me.

These I Can Promise

The reason I titled my blog "What I Can Promise" is largely because of the Mark Twain Poem "These I Can Promise":

These I Can Promise - Mark Twain

I cannot promise you a life of sunshine; 

I cannot promise you riches, wealth or gold; 

I cannot promise you an easy pathway 

That leads away from change or growing old. 

But I can promise all my heart's devotion; 

A smile to chase away your tears of sorrow. 

A love that's true and ever growing; 

A hand to hold in your's through each tomorrow. 

I think this poem holds true to many people's idea of the future and the person they'd like to become. There are a lot of things in life that I can't promise. But I hope to be able to be there for the people in my life, to do all the things this poem lists, to be devoted, to help ease sorrow, to love, and to help someone get through the day. There are a lot of things I don't know, like how many miles it is to the moon, or what the population of Greece is, or what the meaning of life is (although I am starting to think that the meaning of life is to find the meaning in life, which is a whole complicated idea all in its own) but I do know that I have a lot of compassion, and I'd like to be able to share that with the people in my life.

The other reason why I named my blog "What I Can Promise" is because of what I mentioned earlier in class today. I want to make a difference in my life and the society that I live in. I've started that a bit with the work I'm doing with Umbrella, but I want to go further than that. I want to write articles about conflicts in the middle east and about feminism and how the world is entirely unfair. More importantly, I want those articles to be read and talked about, and maybe even change someones idea about something, to make them think in a different way then they did before. I remember the articles in The New York Times that I used to read, the articles in my father's copies of The Rolling Stones, articles in Reader's Digest that would be at my doctors office. All the articles that I remember impacted me in some way. They opened my mind to ideas that I was previously shut to. They made me think about life, how I was living it and how I wanted to begin living it. There are books that I've read that made me think as well. The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald, The Fault In Ours Stars - John Green, As I Lay Dying - Faulkner, Huck Finn - Twain, Where The Sidewalk Ends - Silverstein, Henry V - Shakespeare, The House on Mango Street - Cisneros, 1984 - Orwell, The Color Purple - Walker. Most of these were school assignments, but I ended up loving all of them and they changed me in a way. This is what I want to do with my life. I want to change someone, just by writing down an experience and developing it further, to explore the meaning behind it. This is the type of writer I hope to become.

Kaitlin