Cheese

Just a short story. Enjoy!

That must be it. The cheese. How could I have left it? And I haven’t driven the car in two weeks either. I lean over the console, and rummage around in the back seat, trying to find it. The stench wafts around my head, hovering, it feels like. Death’s ghost couldn’t smell worse than this. My mother’s home made parmesan. Upon pushing the car seat aside, I find Annie’s stash of animal crackers, which, of course, are stale, and now in little crumbs. Groaning, I roll down the window. The stuffy cheese air is making my head hurt now. Leaning back up into the driver’s seat, I gasp for air from the soft breeze outside. Then back into the almost sticky dirty sock-scented car.

I am a mother of four. You’d think it gets easier after the first one or two, but no. It doesn’t. You start doing stupid things, or, in this case, forgetting to do stupid things, like take the cheese out of the car before it’s already pungent smell grows worse, and infests all of your upholstery. But no. Let it sit in your car for two weeks, grow some mold, bake a bit in the summer sun, and then find it and take it out. Except for the fact that I can’t find the darn stuff. It seems to be hiding to spite me. The smell says, “Ha! This is what you get, Jen. This is what you get for leaving your mothers gift in your car! Your mother’s gift! That she made, just for you! You are a selfish child, not appreciating your mother.” And heavens to Betsy, does it stink!

I have finally decided to actually get out of the front seat, and look for it, since my sideways digging doesn’t seem to be working out. I reach under the seats in my van, and feel around a bit. A piece of plastic touches my fingers and I grab it and yank, hoping that it is the bag with the cheese. The stench fills my nostrils again, making me blink, and my breath catch. But what I have grabbed is not the cheese. No, it is just a bag. The cheese is taunting me. I swear…

Finally! I have found it. I think I need a gas mask.

“Mommy! What’s that?” My five year old, Jenny, runs up behind me and grabs my leg.

“This? This is some cheese mommy left in the car a while ago..”

I should have guessed. As soon as I said cheese…

“JENNY! COME BACK!” She had grabbed the foul-smelling glob from my hand, and run to the side of the house. And, as inevitable as her taking the cheese, by the time I had gotten there, she had already eaten half of the hellish mush.

“It’s not so bad, mommy! It’s just a little—BLEAHHH!”

Lord, help us…

Christmas

Christmas. A time when lights gleam through chilly night air, and a hot cup of cocoa paired with carols can soften even the hardest of hearts. A time when the moon glows off the frosted ground at night and the stars sparkle in children’s eyes as they await the magical day of the year when everyone is jolly and full of the spirit of giving.

Christmas. A time of noise and chaos. A time where the stress of keeping track of every family member, for gifts, food, and space to stay can become overwhelming. A time when the money is tight, and the lines are long, and everyone wishes they could just get by to the rest of the year.

Christmas. A time when the homeless are reminded that the world still cares, even if it is for just a month or two. A time when a child receives a present for the first time in years. A time when memories of love are really made.

Christmas. A time when the streets get colder, and the wish for family gets stronger. A time when the empty spaces seem deeper, and the holes needing filling get bigger. A time when love is appreciated all the more.

Christmas. A time of imperfection, lost in a desire to be perfect. To buy the perfect gift, to serve the perfect meal. A time when we may give, but it may only be to ease guilt, or improve self worth. A time when we forget. The reasons are long gone. So why remember? Why remember something so small as a tiny babe, born on a forgotten day to an unmarried teenage mother?

Christmas. Love. Scandal. Noise.

A fourteen-year-old girl, nine months pregnant with her first child travels with her soon-to-be husband to a town called Bethlehem. Unfortunately, so many others are traveling there now as well, and as they have arrived at a very late hour, every space, including the servants’ quarters, is filled with guests. I watch from my window as the young man pleads with the innkeeper to find space. His face is tired and dusty, and his shoes worn through the soles, but it is not for himself that he pleads. It is for her.

“I have no rooms!” the innkeeper’s voice raises in anguish. “Even if I did, I would not house a slut and you! You should be ashamed of yourself. Stone her, and cleanse your families honor.” He slams the door. The man, Joseph, turns, and takes the girl’s hand, patting it lovingly.

“You know this is not easy for me either,” he says, as he looks up into her face, and gently brushes away a tear from her eyelashes. “Mary, you know I love you, and I would do anything for you.” Mary looks down into his large brown eyes, and smiles.

“I know.”

“Mary? Joseph?” Joseph straightens himself, stepping quickly away from the donkey.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Martha. My husband is the innkeeper. I’m afraid he was a bit harsh with you. He has had a hard night. We do have somewhere you can stay, but let me warn you, it will not at all be comfortable,” I say, with some resign.

“I will not stay unless your husband approves,” Joseph states. “This is his property, and I will not intrude without his consent.” I nod. “Thank you for your offer though.”

“Let me get him. Don’t leave.”

I push back through the door, back into the stuffy main room. A man, probably drunk, stumbles in front of me, yelling, like all the rest of the men, about the cursed census that is messing up all of their lives. I grab his shoulders, steadying him, and push him toward a chair. My husband is in the corner, talking to one of my maids. I see her giggle, and blush, and then glance in my direction. Her eyes grow, and she rushes off into the kitchen. Pretending to not have seen this exchange, I approach my husband.

“I have a proposal for you,” I state, almost in a cold manner.

“What?” he slurs back. He is drunk as well.

“The pregnant woman and her husband. Let them stay in our stable.”

“The whore and her betrothed?” he spits. “Why would I let them stay anywhere near my inn. They will only dirty its walls.”

I lower my voice and speak nearer to his ear. “You’re one to talk about dirtying the place up. Just because they are my maids doesn’t make it any more clean.”

My voice sobers him up a bit, and he finally harrumphs consent. I push my way back out to Mary and Joseph.

“My husband is sorry for his earlier behavior, and is sorry for our lack of space.” I can see in Mary’s questioning eyes that she doesn’t believe me, but there isn’t much more I can do. “He would like to extend our stable to you as a place to stay. We have just had fresh hay laid, so although it may not be comfortable, it will at least be clean.”

Joseph takes my hand, and kisses it. “Thank you very much. We are both grateful for yours and your husband’s compassion.”

Smiling at him, I reach for a torch above the inn door, and lead them to our stable. Mary has now dismounted their donkey, and is wobbling slightly with the weight of the baby. I pull the large piece of wood out of the latches on the door, and Joseph helps me to heave the large doors open. Looking around, everything seems, as much as possible, useable. I use my torch to light a few lanterns inside, and watch the light flicker off of the crisp yellow straw. A cow lows at the sight of the flame, so I back slowly out. I can hear the chickens clucking, and the horses pawing at this unexpected disturbance. The hogs munch happily on scraps that the maid has brought out, and the rest of the animals either look on in curiosity, or just altogether ignore the situation.

No, it’s not right that they should be housed here, but this is all we have. And a woman as pregnant as she is shouldn’t be without a place to rest.

Mary sits wearily on the hay, and looks to me. “Thank you.”

And at that, I close the door. There are some linens in the corner they can use for cover, and I shall bring them food in the morning. Yes, I shall make them something to make up for this poor housing arrangement…

Christmas. Unexpected.

Incoherent Prayer

Life. How can something be so painful, and yet so healing? So complex and yet so simple. So beautiful, and yet so devastatingly disgusting? “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18) In all things we give thanks. All things. Thank God for the smell of the freshly fallen autumn leaves, and the feeling of cool rain on your skin. At the same time, praise Him for the knees you scraped while climbing the trees, and the flood that came with the rain. Is that it? Or is it that we praise Him for what we gained from scraping our knees and drowning in the water? And how can one pray without ceasing? My life has been less than a prayer to God. Maybe a plea of a whining child, but not a praise. Not a prayer.

So many times I feel myself at a loss for words. I find myself distracted, or unable to express coherent thought. And the only way I can say what I want to is through writing. Can I write prayer to God? If I do, it will probably end up like this; an endless thought, that runs together, again incoherently. Writing has been my form of expression for so long. I can say how I feel, and then if I can’t say it in writing, I can find music that says it. Maybe not in the words, but somehow the melody, sometimes, takes me and rolls my heart out like a map.

How does one actually tell people how they feel? And yet, we are required to. If we never told anyone how we felt, nothing would ever get done. I heard someone say that emotion was overrated, and, at the moment, I am almost inclined to believe him. But then, emotion makes up so much of our lives, and if it weren’t a part of human existence, we would just be robots without a purpose. God gave us emotion for a reason, right? What makes music so wonderful? The emotion in it. From punk rock or classical, the reason we enjoy music is because of what it makes us feel, and the emotion that the artist has invested in it. Had we no emotion, music would be a string of noises with no purpose and no meaning. And why do we react to things that people write? We react positively or negatively because of the emotion it makes us feel, or the emotion (or lack there of) in their writing.

So this is how I convey how I feel: my words. Rarely will I tell you how I feel to your face. I’m not quite sure why it is. For some reason, I am more comfortable pouring myself out in writing. If you read how I feel, for some reason, it isn’t as hard. Maybe I’m hiding behind the letters, stuck in the crook of the “s” like a little kid hiding behind her mommy on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing, and when I’m writing it, I can revise as many times as I want to before it is read, so I don’t say the wrong things.

Life. God put me here for a reason, right? I’m not just here to be used and thrown away, right? I will learn. I will learn to wait. I will learn to pray, and to make my life a prayer. I praise God for this confusion. God, I don’t know what you are doing with my life right now, but I pray that you will teach me to wait and see. I thank you for whatever it is, and I pray that you will give me the strength to praise you through the scraped knees and floods of this life.

Hello!

So... two weeks into college and I am loving it. It's amazing. I love my classes- they are so interesting. I love the people I hang out with (I want to meet more, though!), and I love the atmosphere. It's new, and it feels so much better than high school. I feel like I fit in, and can be whoever I want to be, without feeling like I'm being judged for who I am. Life is good right now.

A Choice

I waited too long. It’s the waiting that made the difference too. Had I said something, done something, acted like something more than an idiot, maybe, maybe something could have changed. I waited. I waited for the opportune moment, for the appropriate time. There never was one. It was never right, never okay. It makes me think, though. If we spend all of our lives waiting for the right time, will it ever come?

I made a choice today. Whether consciously or not, I made a choice. Maybe it was best, I’ll never know, because I never took the step. So many times before, I have been the one to take a step, to put myself out there, and to make myself vulnerable. Maybe I was hoping that this time, this time maybe someone would do that for me. But as someone once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” And I’ll never know if it would have been different if I had.

We watched a movie tonight: The Time Machine. The main character in the movie asks the question, “Why can’t we change the past?” The answer is something along the lines of: we cannot change the past because the future, or the present, is a direct result of what happened in the past, and therefore, it cannot be changed. So the fact that I am sitting here now regretting the choice that I made is a direct result, consequently, of the choice that I made. The only way I could change it is to use what time I have now to choose to say what I kept within my head before.

Unfortunately though, I have waited too long and have run out of time to express what I wished to say. I could say something now, but the use of it would be next to the usefulness of a ‘screen door on a submarine’. I waited. I waited for the right moment, the right time. In my wait though, time never changed for me. Things were never right just because I wanted them to be. I did nothing to change the future, and now I sit here, looking at the past, with only “what if…” to haunt me.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to me! Today we're in Disney World. It is gargantuan! My mind can barely apprehend the size of this place. And we haven't even been in the actual park yet. I'm used to amusement parks being "Eliches" sized, so for me this is crazy. It's like an entire city. Along with today being pretty exciting, I saw one of the coolest things in my entire life yesterday.
We were at the beach walking along the shore, letting the waves splash up around our toes, and picking up the occasional seashell. We meandered pretty far in one direction down the sand, and then began to wander back. The tide was coming in, pushing us closer to the thatched-roofed porches of the beach houses. After we were pretty far past in the other direction from where we had started originally, we found a shady spot next to one of these porches, pulled up a palm leaf and sat down(literally, I sat on a palm leaf. No one else did, but I'm cool like that.) We were waiting. we knew what we were waiting for, but to just look at us, we were lazy beach bums who were tired of walking. My mother and i made silly shapes and pictures in the soft white sand while we waited. My dad took a nap, and Susan... well, susan did whatever it is that Susans do. (Which means I have no idea what she was doing.) Finally it was time. 4:58. We stood up, brushed off the sticky sand, and walked closer to the water, which was still rising, to get a better view. Standing there, with the waves lapping at my feet, and the ocean's constant breeze whipping my hair around my face, I watched, at 5:02, a small ball of fire rise into the sky. The shuttle had launched. My tourist's instincts kicked in, and my camera was clicking. I watched it cut through the blue sky, leaving a white trail of smoke and steam behind it. It was so unlike anything I had ever seen. It flew higher and higher, until it was no longer visible. If I turned my head the right direction, I could hear "boom-boom-boom". The sound of the shuttle breaking the sound barrier. It was awesome. Something I will probably only see once in my life. It was just by chance that our vacation was at the same time as the launch, but I am so glad it was.
Since this vacation is bound to continue to be exciting, I won't post pictures until the end, but on June 8th or 9th ish, be watching!

Summertime and the livin' is easy...

For the first time in a long time, I am really, truly excited. For what is to come in my life, and for what I have been doing. I am going to college (yipes!) in the fall, and this is such a big step for me. I am really excited for the opportunities that are to come, and for everything I'll be experiencing. My prayer is that I will be able to have the work ethic, and the attention span to succeed. Next, we are going to Florida tomorrow! I haven't ever been to Disney Land, so I'm super excited!!! Another thing is the writer's guild that I have been a part of for, well, the last few days now. (Thank you David and Steven) I am really excited to get involved in this, and to improve upon my writing and to read other's stuff, and...and...AH! I'm really excited. I have a kind of happy bubble right now! So many things are changing, but at the same time, everything seems to be coming together. To quote Bobby Child "Things are looking up. I've been looking the landscape over, and it's covered in four-leaf clover. Oh things are looking up..."

Here:

The Violin of Trouble (tell me what you think... should I do more?)

*preface*
It makes more sense when it is in the different fonts that it's in originally, but this is the gist.

Layne Jacobson. L-A-Y-N-E. Age 18. June 19, 1990. Destination? Denver. Or was it Dallas? I think it was Denver. African-American. Well… partially at least. Eye color: blue. ‘Choo ain’t no black kid! Ya’ got blue eyes, dumb ass! Address: none. Where were you born, dear? In what city? You at least have to know where you grew up! I grew up everywhere. I don’t know where I was born. Australia? Vietnam? Africa? I lived in New York for two years, but I wasn’t never anywhere permanent. Wasn’t never? Wasn’t ever. Parents or legal guardians? None. None? I’m 18, ain’t I? …I guess… Okay, you’re free to go.
----------------------------
She walked past the ticket woman, whose eyes she could feel following her past the peeling gray walls, and down onto the walkway. Since when did they start asking all of these questions? Or was it just her? Ah well. Her ratty blue suitcase clunked along behind her, down several stairs, to the train stop. Layne looked at the ground, as if avoiding eye contact with anyone else who wanted to stare at the incongruity between her skin and her eyes. There were fading yellow paint lines on the cement that were supposed to show where you had to stand in order to not be turned into a pancake by passing trains, but people stood past them anyhow. She sighed, and flopped onto a nearby bench. Its hard surface provided a temporary resting place, and gave her somewhere to set up. Several brightly clad old women pushed past, chattering feverishly about so-and-so’s new quilt club. Layne rolled her eyes. She reached across her shoulder, and gently tugged off the strap of her violin case. Laying it across her lap, she unlatched it, and lovingly lifted her soul, her beloved instrument from the tattered and worn velvet of the case. Laying the case on the ground, she began to play, slowly at first, adjusting each string, and tuning its pitches, and when it was adjusted, she plucked out a few notes, and then started. Her bow pulled the sound from the strings; lighter, softer, darker, harder: the melody danced off the scratched wood of her fiddle. The phantom tune reflected its origin: “The Graveyard”, from The Phantom of the Opera. She played it well, with only slight self-added nuances that had formed with time. A young boy stopped, staring at her hands, and then was quickly pulled away by his mother. Two tall businessmen stopped for a bit, threw a few dollars into the case, and then walked on.
Finally, her train was there. Layne grabbed the bills and some loose change that a few others had thrown in, shoved it in her pocket, and carefully laid her violin back into its case. She stood, her knees popping as she did so. Slinging the case back across her back, she walked to the door of the train. She jammed the handle of the blue bag back into itself, and handed it up to the doorman.
“You want me ta’ take yo’ case, too?” he asked.
“Nah. I’ll keep it with me.”
“Whateva’ floats ya’ boat, lady,” he remarked, as he grabbed a large black suitcase.
Layne pulled herself up the stairs, onto the train. Her knees again cracked as if to remind her of her past, of everything she was trying to get away from.
------------------------
Laaaaayne! LAAAAAYYNE! C’mon, kiddo. We gotta go. Where’s we goin’? Yo’ daddy got hisself into some trouble. C’mon! We gotta go! What’d he do? Stop asking questions. Get yo’ ass into some clothes and let’s go! Mama was pulling me across the floor and into my room. Are we comin’ back? We aren’t coming back. I’ll never see this yellow room, these flowered sheets again. Swwweeeet caaarooliine… daddy’s drunk again, and he’s flopping all over the place. Why you have to get drunk? Why you have ta’ mess everything up? I have friends here. I ain’t never had friends anywhere else. We move too much. I was shouting now, so mad that he could be so selfish. Well, ain’t you just a little sassy thing today? You stupid little girl. What do you know about life? You don’t know nuthin’. I otta teach you sumthin’. Get ‘cha smart fo’ the real world. C’mere, stupid. Let me tell ya’ what the real world does to you. C’mere. Don’t be afraid. I inched toward him, afraid to be anywhere close to him, but terrified not to do what he asked. Yo’ a little weirdo anyway. Anyone with eyes like those, claimin’ to be a black kid s’gotta be an oddball. C’mere. When the world sees someone who don’t fit in, they takes em’ and kicks em’ in the knees. Don’t let em’ get anywhere. Kick. Kick. Kick. Kick. Daddy! Daddy stoppit!!! I screamed. Mama screamed. Joe! That’s enough. The floor is dusty and stained, and smells of spilt beer and mud. My face presses into it, soaking in the scum; I feel like a puddle on the floor, unable to move myself. The room turns, and the pain in my knees subsides as I land in a cold, dark abyss.
-----------------------
The train jogged along, rattling the keys of a woman who had fallen asleep a few seats behind Layne. Biting her lip, Layne pushed her father to the back of her mind. The man was a drunkard and a coward. Why should she care what happens to him? Her mind told her to turn around; that he could barely tell her what city he was in let alone directions for her to get there. She had spoken to him on the phone earlier, and the words had fallen from his lips like slobber from the muzzle of a Great Dane. But he had no one else. There was no one else.
------------------------
Mama? Mama! Hello, this is 911 emergency. We just had a phone call from this location. Your name, please? …Mama! Sweetheart, we need your name. Where are you? 27 Elder Lane… I’m Layne. Layne, stay on the line. Our units will be there soon. What is the problem? My mama! I dunno what’s wrong! She’s… she’s on the floor. She’s not talkin’ or nuthin’. Is she breathing? I dunno! MAMA!!
------------------------
The soft velvet seats were worn with time, and their blue color had faded into a gray, with only a memory of blue left. Layne lay her violin case gently beneath the chairs, which rattled slightly on almost loose bolts. The floor was dusty, and the bases of the legs of the seats were caked with scum. Usually Layne would have cringed at laying her violin in such filth, but today her mind was elsewhere. A long white string lay, unraveled from someone’s clothing, on the grimy floor. Layne’s eyes followed it absently, their sapphire irises flashing.
Layne’s eyes had always caused her trouble. Her earliest memories were of threats, and snide comments about her eyes. Whether they were from her drunken father, who was constantly staggering about the house, bellowing rude comments to whomever stood in his way, or from her peers, who didn’t understand who this mismatched girl was, and why she was invading their already clear-cut cliques. Of course, the fact that her family was never in one house for longer than a few months was hard on her as well. She was a misfit. Eyes or not.
“Miss?” Layne jumped at the soft voice which had startled her out of her stupor. “Miss, I believe this is your stop,” said the young woman behind her, who had now maintained control of her rattling keys.
“Mine? Oh… yes. Thank you,” she muttered childishly. “I guess I should get off.”
-------------------------
Sometimes the world will take us as we are. Sometimes, though, we aren’t what they expected, and they have trouble seeing past what they didn’t want into who we are. No one lives without problems. It isn’t as if some of us float by, never feeling any pain, never breaking. We all hurt. But there are different types of pain, and although they may be similar, none of us feel things the same way. Yet, it’s all the same. All the same feelings, all the same hurt. How can it be, that someone’s drunkard father can feel the same way as his abused daughter. Can he feel her cringe at the beer on his breath? Does he cry at night because of his wish to be held, to be loved? But maybe that is why he drinks. To numb the pain. To wash it all away. In a broken family, could it be that their only point of contact is through their pain?

Benevolent Experiencer

This is a fun test! If you have five or ten minutes, you should take it and see what it says about you! It's pretty accurate...

The Best Days

So today I found out what my senior song was. And this only makes the fact that I'm going soon more real. It's kinda hard, but at the same time I'm excited about it. The song is "The Best Days" by Graham Colton Band. High school has truly had some of the best days of my life. Plays and musicals and theatre in general. Marching band. Choir. It really is true what my dad says: You get out what you put in. I really have put my heart into what I have done. and it isn't the classes I will remember. It isn't the grades. It will be the memories made in the time I was there.

Ants Running

Tick, tock, says the clock. And yet, here I sit, not wanting to go. I have realized (actually I realized this today as I was waiting for a scene change) that time really is nonexistent. We have, over the last 100 years, increased our life spans to twice what it was, and yet we are still just like little ants, running around with no where to go, trying to get things finished. We have our 24 hours days, and even that isn't solid, as proven by Friday, the 29th, of this month, an extra day for the extra minutes that add up over four years. Anyhow, that's my deep thought for tonight.

Today, like I mentioned earlier, I was taking part in a play. Actually, the musical, Crazy for You, being put on by my school. It was a matinee for elementary/ middle schoolers. I remember as a kid, I loved watching the older kids in the plays. I was so fascinated by every single character, and I wished that I could be up there. Now, finally, after three years of doing behind the scene things such as set construction, makeup, and last year's stage crew, I am now one of the actors. Theatre has become part of who I am, and although I will be going on to bigger things than high school shows in college, I will miss these days. I hope that everyone, those who read this, and even those who don't, can take what time they do have, and make the most of it. I hope that somehow we can find where we are going, and make memories along the way, and not end up like ants running without a purpose.

Life

Well, this is life. A mish-mash of feelings, experiences, and memories. Now what do we do with it all? We can't just throw away something that is so beautiful and so amazing! It may get a little messy at times, but that is no reason to lose ourselves in the cacophony. On the contrary, when we are caught in this seemingly endless mess, we need to stop, and look at what beauty there really is in this muddle. Is a field of flowers organized? Are mountains symmetrical? Do the oceans wave to the same tune every day? No. But does that make them less beautiful? And why should this not apply to our lives? They may not line up quite the way we want them to, taking unexpected curves, and changing without notice, but maybe we need to see the virtue in what we have instead of chaining ourselves to walls that will eventually be removed anyhow. Maybe we should live the lives we have, and not hide, hoping they get better.

Big world, Small me.

High school has been great. And yet, after this year, it will be time to move on. How can it be done? It feels like I was just a freshman, learning the ropes of a new school. And now I'm leaving. It passes so fast. 

Just about everyone is asking me where I'm going after I'm done, what I'm doing, etc., and in case that question was on your mind, here's the answer: I don't know. I would like to go to UNC (University of Northern Colorado), and I got my acceptance letter just the other day from there, but I don't know. I feel so small looking out on a decision like this. Like I just shrank twenty sizes and can barely see past the end of my nose, let alone into my future to see where I should go to school. In times like these, it makes me glad to have a great big God that will show me where I'm going.

That's another thing: I have been holding a bible study/conversation starter at a local coffee shop on Wednesday mornings. I have taught myself some things, as well as hopefully touching at least some of the five people that have showed up. That's one goal in my life: to make a difference in someone else's life. Sometimes I feel small and insignificant, and I feel like if only I could even make a small impression on one person, I would have accomplished something. 

Which is another point to my writing. As I said before, I love to write. Sometimes to just get out feelings, and sometimes see feelings on others faces. Whether it is laughter or tears, if someone is touched by something I write, I feel like it was worth writing. 

So now I, as a senior in high school going into the big world, will write and live as if I were here to change someone's life, and maybe someone somewhere actually will be changed.

First of all...

I love to write. It's how all of my emotions come out, and how I relate to the world. I also love music; making music, and listening to it. My life is a piece of artwork that isn't even halfway done yet. There is a world out there for me to explore and figure out, and somehow I will attempt to capture it and press it into paper. So here I go!