Writers Dreaming

1. We talked about the title of Maya Angelou's first autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. What did Angela say is the reason the caged bird sings? What does that mean? Do you agree with or understand that idea?
Angela said the reason the caged bird sings is because of "things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom." This means that while there is the free bird that "dares to claim the sky," there's also the bird that's caged and trapped by the "bars of rage." It can be related back to us as humans being trapped by many different things other than cages. We can be trapped by things such as school, jobs, families or friends, our ages or when we were born. I agree with this idea and understand it because I feel trapped, or "caged" by many different things sometimes. 

6. Angelou says she is comfortable using six or seven languages, has spoken at one time or another as many as twelve, and has been a teacher in at least three. Are you comfortable using another language? Which languages would you like to be fluent in? Why those? Or do you think speaking English is good enough because you live in America and that's all we should need to live here? Why?
I am not comfortable using another language, as I've only taken the required two units of foreign language to graduate high school and wasn't able to retain too much of the language learned. However, I would love to be able to speak in many different languages, as I think there are many that are much more beautiful and elegant compared to English. I would like to be fluent in French, due to the fact that it's the "language of love" and it just sounds cool to begin with. I also would like to be fluent in Latin, even though that's a much more difficult language, but most languages are derived from Latin, so the basis is the same. Also, it'd be easier to understand the scientific naming behind animals, and also for other scientific purposes. Another language I'd like to know is Russian or German, whichever one doesn't matter. They both sound harsh to speak and are extremely foreign, but I think speaking in such a brash tongue would be fun at some times, even if you have to use some phlegm. I don't think speaking English is good enough for America. As Americans, we are, or should be, accepting of others, and to be able to communicate effectively with them, we need to know how to speak some of their language. To think that English is good enough is ignorant and close minded. And cussing someone out in a foreign language is much more fun and interesting than in English.

10. Angelou quotes Nathaniel West as saying, "Easy reading is damned hard writing," and says writing is "just hard work, you know?" Do you agree with this? What is easiest and hardest to you about writing? Is writing hard work?
I agree with that fact because there are some pieces of writing that can be very difficult to read if the terminology is difficult or long words are used that the target audience won't understand. Making the sentences "flow" and connect with ease is difficult for the author, but it will result in "easy reading." The easiest in writing for me is random ideas that can spur from anything or anyone, and utilizing them to be a tidbit of a story or inspiration for a character or a character trait or flaw. Meanwhile, the hardest thing is not repeating words and using words that make me sound more intelligent than I think I am. Writing is hard work, because you have to use it to communicate something to someone else, whether it be an assignment for English homework or for someone who's deaf and you want to describe how something sounds for them. 

11. Angelou mentions being told that "one can't really learn after one is twenty-five." Do you think the older you get the harder it is to try or learn new things? Or do you think being older means you're more focused on what's important and not distracted by things that keep you from learning?The way this question could be answered is more a matter of opinion with a mix of scientific fact, I believe. It is true that the older you get, the harder it becomes to learn things. The phrase "can't teach an old dog new tricks" comes to mind when I think of this. Even as teenagers it's harder to learn new things. Your brain finishes its development around the age of twenty-five, which is probably the origination of that statement. This would make it harder to learn something, or unlearn something that's been ingrained into your mind, but not impossible. I think once some people leave school, they think they're finished with learning and don't want to do anymore of it, and get distracted from learning new things. But the thing is, you can keep learning things. It may take you a little bit longer to learn it, but it's still possible. 

Mysterious Colors

The mid-November sky had transitioned into a deep mesmerizing red. Her stained lips curled into a knowing smirk, while her painted delicate fingers curled around a thin champagne flute. Her face was void of expression, but her tight grip on the glass gave a hint towards her attitude towards the tricky situation at hand. The haze of anger was slowly creeping in through the corners of her vision, as she cast a quick glance around the room. The woman delicately sat herself upon the velvet cushion and crossed her legs, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. Her pulse pounded through her veins as she opened her lipsticked mouth to speak to the other figure in the room.

"I didn't know white stained so easily," she remarked, as a fluffy Persian jumped up to join her on the couch, letting out a rumbling purr. She ran her fingers through its thick fur as the cat laid itself daintily upon a throw pillow. There no reply, and the only noise that could be heard was static from the radio in the kitchen. Her visage was pale and blank; no emotion could be read from it. The attitude in the room was frosty as the woman grew frustrated with her speechless companion. Keeping a blank face was key, though, and she looked past the ivory drapes towards the crisp snow falling in blankets outside. 

The black shadows grew longer as the night deepened. It wasn't until the hands on the clock were both on the 12 that the dark silhouette spoke up. "You shouldn't have done that," it remarked, and tendrils of smoke twirl about in the air above their head. No response came from the woman, but her face grew to become sheepish, and she wrapped her leather jacket more tightly around her, and checked her watch out of habit. "I had no choice," she finally replied darkly, and a raven's raucous cry could be heard from outside. "We always have a choice, Morticia," the other countered ominously. The woman looked up through thick lashes as the stranger creeped lithely like a panther out from the dark side of the room. 

Green eyes stared accusingly as she began to move about the room. The first woman wouldn't have been surprised if shards of emerald pierced her through. "Kelly, he would've killed us both," she reminded her, and plucked an olive off of a toothpick from an empty glass on the table beside her. "If someone didn't know better, they'd say you were envious of his position." The second woman who'd been addressed as Kelly turned with wide eyes to her friend. "Your opinion is jaded, and someone would probably say that you were only in it for the money," Kelly's voice spat poison almost as venomous as a viper's. "Come on, we have to leave. Surely someone's noticed his absence, and the gardener will be by in the morning to trim the pines." Morticia didn't argue, as she suspected there was another reason behind Kelly wanted to leave now, as her face was tinged a faint virescent. 

The pair gathered their belongings and made their way out through the thick snow to the car, and drove off, disappearing into the night and leaving behind nothing but memories. 

Painted Poetry

Haiku

Horizon Glow

As the night hours pass

The glow of the horizon

Will come to wake me

Sun Dried Tomato

My mother owns a garden

Where tomatoes of all sizes

Grow ripe in the sun

Merlot 

Delicate fingers

Raise a glass to red stained lips

In a toast to death

Acrostic

Mermaid's Tale

Myths are called myths for a reason, though
Everyone would like to prove one wrong,
Right?
Many times, we're told to start with the basics, like
Atlantis, Bigfoot, Chupacabra, the list goes on and on
Including the infamous Loch Ness Monster, but
Don't forget about mermaids, their existence having been questioned
Since days of old

Two groups are made up of believers and nonbelievers
Alas, if the latter happen to find themselves in a moonlit bay on a quiet evening,
Let's hope their beliefs are the ones that are true, or
Else they might wind up face to face with the contradiction to their belief

Free Verse

Traveling Blues

The traveler's eyes were crinkled at the corners

His skin worn, wrinkled, and leathery

His boots caked with mud from crossing the Blue Nile's sandy shores

The color of his Rapture Blue irises

Nearly matched the September Skies they'd watched for many years

He could finally say that now that he'd seen everything, he was as Right as Rain

Thunderstorm

It begins with the dark, charcoal gray clouds

Their anger has been building up for days, weeks, maybe even months

They blot out the celestial bodies in the sky with a passionate fury,

Only promising the release of these innocents once their fury is sated

Next comes the low rolling thunder that shakes me to my bones

It rattles the cages of the dead and echoes in the chests of the living

Following the thunder comes the sharp sting of lightening, it's fleeting appearance often leaving something burning or broken in its wake

After this argument comes a raging downpour, the rain cascading down in rivers and streams and leaving lakes and oceans

The water cleanses the anger and impurities from what has been angering the skies with such ferocity

And when the clouds are finally satisfied, the rain relents its force, and leaves the world green again

The Disappearance of a Girl

It was a day before my seventh birthday when my sister left. No, she didn't die, as many slowly began to believe when days turned to months, and months to years. She just vanished. Evaporated. Dematerialized. Ceased to exist. Gone. She had been 13 years of age at the time. The reason behind the eight years of difference between our ages was because my parents got married due to my mother's unexpected pregnancy with my older sister. While her birth was erratic and unplanned, mine was perfectly thought out. I guess that could be used to describe how we lived our lives; ever since I can remember she had been crazy and hard to control. My mother always complained of how much of a handful she was. Several times my parents took her to be tested for ADHD or some other disorder they could blame for her wildness. The tests always came back negative, and my parents refused to blame themselves. They restricted her as best as they could, but their stamina was quickly exhausted. I was the exact opposite, as you may have guessed. Quiet, calm, and collected were just a few of the words used to describe me when my parents visited my teachers at school. Sometimes I was too quiet, and it concerned my instructors. I didn't like to interact with the other children in class. It's not that I didn't like them, they just weren't interesting to me. My parents were too busy with Lillian to be concerned with my lack of friends, and I was content enough that they didn't see a reason to be concerned. 

My sister's disappearance hit me hard. We'd always had a special connection with each other. Or so I'd thought. Maybe we hadn't, and it was all in my head. During summer, on evenings that the moon was as round as a quarter, Lillian would sneak into my room and we'd climb out of my window. We'd dart through thick shrubbery and across silvery moonlit backyards in our thin pajamas and bare feet until we hit the treeing of Deephaven Woods. We used my window because it was right above the porch and adjacent to the porch was a strong, thick oak tree. In the autumn it would shed so many leaves, causing my father to threaten to retrieve the rusty ax from the shed and chop it down. This caused me to try to estimate how many rings would encircle its stump. Of course, my mother never let him. This had been her childhood home. Her parents died soon after Lillian's birth, so I never met them. After their death, however, my mother couldn't bear to part with the place, so, with a lot of bribing and convincing, my father agreed to move into the old place, but only if he could upgrade some of the appliances and other assorted things around the old Victorian. 

Each night we did this, Lillian would dare me to to follow her into the forest. She always promised that we'd catch a fairy or an elf, and if you didn't let them go, they'd turn you into an animal. I was always cautious and never believed her, but was afraid of being called chicken, so I always followed her. Between full moons, Lillian would make us extravagant flower crowns to wear on our journeys. When I asked her who had taught her to make them, she always claimed it was the fairies that she'd caught and befriended before I was able to come along. She'd tease me and tell me that we'd never caught any because they sensed my disbelief. "Alice," she'd begin sternly as she placed the smaller of the two crowns on my head, "do you promise me you'll believe this time?" Of course, wanting to keep my sister happy, I said yes. She would give me a look that gave me the impression she knew I was lying, but wasn't going to push it. Lillian would place her crown of larger blooms upon her curly, thick, auburn hair and peer out at me between long lashes with her uniquely silver eyes. This feature was one of the few things we had in common with each other, and one I was very proud of. We also shared the same deep scarlet colored hair, though hers was wild and curly and mine was straight and plain. My sister became the thing that I wanted to become, and the thing that I would always strive to escape the shadow of...until her disappearance, of course. 

As the months dripped into years, and the years crawled slowly by, the search that had been created to search for my lost sister dissipated. But I never gave up hope that she would someday return to us. Birthdays and holidays and celebrations all blended together after Lillian's disappearing act. Nothing was the same. I could tell even my parents were effected by her absence, but I could never tell if it was positively or negatively. As I grew older, Lillian began to fade into a thing of the past, as an imaginary friend does when your parents begin to tell you that there's really no one there, and you slowly outgrow them. 

The day came that I was going away for college. My father had finally convinced my mother to move out of her parents' house. They wouldn't know; they'd been dead for a while, and wouldn't find out to make her feel guilty for abandoning it. My parents moved to a lovely seashore cottage along the coast of the Atlantic, across the continent from where we'd lived our entire lives. There was that little nagging feeling in the back of my mind, as I assisted the movers with carrying the heavy cardboard boxes into the moving van for my parents, but I shoved it down and ignored it. My first year of college passed like a blur, and before I knew it, I felt the light breezes twirl my thin hair and dance across my freckled nose that promised the coming of warm weather. I'd told my parents that I'd be delighted to join them in the guest bedroom of their beach cottage. As I was speaking to my father the night before my plane departed from California to Virginia, he informed me that someone was finally buying our old Victorian. That nagging feeling I'd been repressing for the longest time finally resurfaced as I knew that I had to visit my childhood home for the last time before it was no longer mine. I told my parents I'd be catching a later flight, and, packed up my car to make the drive up. By noon the next day, I pulled up to the street next to it. Sure enough, as my father had told me, there was a large red sign screaming at me that the property had been sold. As I began up the front walk, memories played like little clips of scenes through my mind. There's the rock I tripped and scratched my forehead on, giving me the scar that I still have. And the remnants of the rose bushes my mother so fondly cherished and cared for. Stepping across the threshold brought up a cloud of dust and I had to step back outside to cough and wait for the air to clear. 

Searching the house didn't satisfy the nagging feeling, however, as I'd hoped. Instead, it seemed to me to be growing stronger. Remembering Lillian and our midnight trips to Deephaven Woods, I decided to take a trip over there. Trekking through overgrown backgrounds that had a cloying smell of flowers that had blossomed during April showers gave me the sense of being a child again. Reaching the treeline, the foliage seemed to reach out to me, desiring to pull me into its embrace. Entering tentatively, I felt as if I might suffocate underneath all the green that surrounded me. The ivy that encircled thick tree trunks appeared to be reaching their tendrils out to me, begging me to twine them through my fingers and wrap them through my hair. The sunlight fell through the overhanging of leaves and branches above and dappled the ground with golden spots. 

I don't know what was leading me, or how I knew which way to go, but it seemed to me that I was following some secret path. I had no idea how deep I was in the woods, or how far they went before the next field. As I continued on, I had no idea why I'd even ventured in, but my curiosity was too strong to turn back. Besides, I don't believe I could've found my way back to begin with. As the sunlight overhead began to fade, a spark of fear ignited in my chest. I'd spent to long here, and I needed to get back. I'd missed the flight to Virginia, and who knew what kind of creatures called this forest their home? But I'd come this far, and I wasn't about to turn back now. Curling my hands into fists which dug my nails into my palms, I continued on until all light had gone and I couldn't see my hand in front of me.

In pitch black situations, you tend to notice every little light that's winking at you. So it wasn't difficult to notice the little bluish light that seemed to be bouncing slightly in the air. It wasn't obvious at first, but as I started towards it, it grew lighter. But I never seemed to reach the light or close the distance between it and me. I was about to give up and claim it a figment of my flustered and worried mind when it finally appeared to be growing closer. Breaking into a faster walking pace, I tried my best to climb through the undergrowth and under low hanging branches that were heavy with leaves. Once or twice I froze in place and almost ceased moving forward due to strange noises nearby that I couldn't decipher if I was to become a predator's next meal. As the light continued to increase in size, I slowed and wondered what awaited with the light for the first time. Was it like the Anglerfish, in which they used the lights attached to their heads to lure their prey closer to their imminent doom? There was no way to tell unless I saw what it was. Moving forward and pushing aside some branches, I came across a scene that caused my heart to skip a beat. 

Before me was a beautiful fox. She was sitting upon a large rock, her tail tucked neatly over her paws. I wasn't sure how I knew it was a vixen, but it just seemed to me that she was. Her head was lowered and her eyes were closed, and it looked as if she was concentrating on something. But that didn't seem right, as foxes weren't the type to concentrate on things. Casting a quick glance around for the source of the light that had guided me here, I realized that the fox seemed to be the source of light. But that couldn't be right either; foxes didn't glow. Stepping into the little clearing, I move so I'm standing before the fox. I wait for what seems forever, but what must've been only a moment, as the light slowly begins to fade until it's only a dim beacon. As the light fades, the fox lifts its head until its level with mine. I didn't realize how high up she'd been sitting on the rock, until I realized she was eye level with me. Either that, or I didn't realize how short I was. As I waited another moment that dragged on for what was longer than a moment, the fox snapped her eyelids open and cast a pair of strangely familiar silver eyes on me. I inhaled sharply and took a stumbling step backwards as if I'd been struck. Then, the light was gone and I was left in the dark. 

Author’s Note:

This story is about a little fox figurine that I received as a child. Foxes are my favorite animal, and a unique creature that I’ve always admired. 

I am... Emily Crocker

I am…

I am the blonde who wishes to be brunette, the eldest of three daughters, raised in a dead end college town, desperate to break free.

I am the teenage adult with Peter Pan Syndrome, the hater of my name, and eternally indecisive about the choices of life and what it has to offer.

I am the home to the heart of Kyle, the one who mere words cannot do justice.

I am the architect of unstable forts that shelter from the harshness of reality, my imagination blocking out the crippling anxiety from poking its head through the cracks in my foundation.

I am the host to endless galaxies in my eyes, a labyrinthine forest in my head, and a golden meadow in my heart to contrast my black state of mind.

I am the caregiver and admirer of animals of all sorts, relating more to those with whom no communication can be made but gestures and a variety of noises.

I am the songs hummed softly while carrying out daily mundane tasks, the low pulsing bassline of the music playing through tangled earbuds, the song that’s been on constant repeat for days upon days.

I am the blank pages of a freshly bought journal, ready and awaiting creative thoughts to be scribbled haphazardly, the black ink pen that cannot keep up with a hurtling train of thought.  

I am the warm mug grasped tightly between cold, pale fingers painted with black polish, an oversized sweater and black jeans, the worn black leather jacket that seems to complete every outfit.

I am the faked accents and pompous attitude when feeling silly, the witty retorts and clever sarcasm that comes so easily to mind.

I am the chaos of a bustling, sleepless city, the gray, overcast sky and angry black clouds filled with rain, ready to unleash their fury upon the ground below, the thunderstorms that shake bones and echo in your chest.

I am the memories of a long forgotten friend fading into nothingness, the once relied upon confidant who was lowered in ranks until inevitable loss came around.

I am late night movie marathons with Chinese takeout, nestled away among thick, fluffy blankets, joined by Jasper the Okapi and Franklin the Poro.

I am worn and used books with dog-eared pages, favorite passages and quotes underlined and highlighted, yellowing and aging with years and usage.

I am the desire to have a talent in something, but always turns up a failure, the hopes and resolutions of a New Year, but the disappointment and incomplete check-lists at the end.

I am 18 going on 19, a blank canvas awaiting the scars and decorations of the coming years to remind me of how far I’ve come and of my strength to make it even farther.