The Voice of the Beholder.

I run & write & laugh with an open mind; and you should know I am stuck in between trying to live my life and run from it. All written work here is my own, unless otherwise specified.

[littlecartography]

On a dark bus headed towards my hometown with a grocery bag of pear cider and fresh flowers for my mom. And Sufjan Stevens is playing through my headphones and I can just make out the low rumble of soft conversation in the background. Tonight I’ll celebrate Friendsgiving with people I’ve known...

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

Stepping Out

This is something I wrote when I first began this journey, and now, as I am about to go back home, It's so strange to look back and read it and reflect on the person I was when I wrote it:

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I can never quite catch the exact moment when the plane leaves the ground.

I can feel the pressure, pushing my head back against the seat, as the plane speeds up in its taxi; I hear the wind rush past, I watch the ground closely, but before I can catch it, before I can feel the wheels leave the runway, the ground is hovering hundreds of miles below me and the clouds become palpable balls of fluff beneath my window.

I'm leaving. There are so many ways to process that.

As the aircraft took is last turn onto the final stretch of runway, half of me wanted to yell for the pilot to stop it in midair so I could jump out and drift back down to everything that's comfortable.

I need more time. I haven't shown my family adequately enough that I love them. I haven't been Superman to my younger siblings. I wonder if, while I am eating beans and rice at a table across the ocean, they will blurt out in the middle of the family dinner minus one that they miss me. I have no way of knowing, because somewhere, I lost track of the treasure of time and now the three of us are all nearly adults who keep our feelings to ourselves while we should still be kids setting up the tent in the living room and asking to have family sleepovers complete with oat squares and apple slices.

Where did the time go? Where does the time go, actually, because it just keeps on going? Sometimes, I've learned, that is something to mourn and other times time's swift ace is something to rejoice in - for instance, when you miss someone. And I know I will be missing numerous people, if I even have the time to stop and ponder how vast the distance is.

I always wanted to grow up, more than anything else - when I look back, the desire to be an independent woman with an apartment and a credit card overshadows every other desire I ever had as a child. I didn't ever imagine that growing up, in a sense, means being lonely; when you grow up you realize everyone around you is just trying to find themselves because I guess you have to do that before you can find anybody else to bridge that great chasm of loneliness.

So here I am, on this flight to a foreign country, and I am still thinking of myself as a little girl when all the strangers on this plane are looking at me and seeing a woman with which they associate responsibilities, and damnit I can't stop looking around for someone's hand to hold when the plane lands.

It's an uncomfortable skin to be in. Maybe on the flight back home, I won't be so oddly stuck in between.

[bloodorangemoon]

I am finally back in my homeland of Peru after 10 years abroad! Words can’t describe the feeling of walking through Machu Picchu again and hearing Quechua spoken around me. Peru is definitely the most magical place in the world, the energy here is amazing and the people are so kind it brings tears to my eyes. I also know where my love of colors and hats and textiles comes from… I’m in heaven! Sending you all love as I soak up the abundance of Pacha Mama and make coca offerings to the Apus. Lots of love, Nat

[abstractdreamer]

You never feel this alone When the weather Is warmer

-But

There is nothing like cold and numb hands To make you feel like they should be held By someone other than nature

Empathy for the seasons, you change when they do What those winter trees wouldn’t give to be covered By the leaves...

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

I go back to October sometimes

You can catch me standing often at the corner of April and May, pointing in the direction of October while the rain is dousing the lamp posts and pooling in my skirt like a puddle of favourite memories.

Like the mirror Alice was warned against, I glance down into them and lose myself

In orange campfire stares and laughter yellow, blood red offspring of trees about to lose their lives for the winter Crisp, like Gatsby described, I am back there holding his hand for the first time and the last, bumping shoulders as he pulls me through a corn maze that never much interested me when I was a child, but now, at 17, seems like the stairway to heaven.

It is not the boy himself that brings me back, that lures me into October's sweet seduction. It is the fabric of his plaid sweater, a tingling flame against my bare skin, soft and alluring, bold yet sinfully comfortable, like the mischief that betrayed me every childhood Sunday morning when I would catch the unmistakable smell of hot cakes drifting up the stairs and into my dissolving dreams, succulent and tantalizing, always enough to make me get up and investigate.  

Sometimes, upon waking up alone, I can still discover a dollop of syrup I missed on the corner of my mouth, Aunt Gemima's buttery recipe. Longing to relive that life, I pour a bottle on my burnt toast, but even an extra drizzle won't make the bread any less bland or Sunday mornings any less lonely.

To squeeze in a weekly sermon, to keep myself saved I suppose, I scribble a reflection on the front page of Parks&Recreation: Is not my life just a collection of memories? A golden box in which all the months I've been breathing culminate in one rambling story, where October tells winning tale 18 times over. They are the best sellers, hung on my peeling walls, giving color to my tiny apartment, filling my bookshelves.

Someday they will fall down like everything else we find a way to convince ourselves is indestructible,

but until them I'll reread them again and again, turning over each leaf like it is the first time I have ever watched it fall.

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

40

I think we could have been in love.

We were, for a little while. I think back on the many winter afternoons we spent doubled over with laughter against the walls in your hallway, laughing so hard we barely made it in the door, how I looked up at you in those moments and the happiness I felt took my breath away. I don't remember what we laughed about all those times.

How we just knew, and chose to never say, letting the silence create a shelter that we found every excuse to go to. It wasn't long before I called it home.

How we willed ourselves to go to parties and other social events like normal young adults, but every time we wound up back in the same places -- the tree house, the highway, your couch. We preferred to make bucket lists and create our own world rather than to wallow in the shallow one around us, yet we never ceased making plans to venture out into the real one.

Now I am here, across the ocean, and the real world is so vast. I don't like experiencing it without you. It is beautiful but it would be more so if ignited by your words, if lit by your eyes, if felt by your soul.

I am not saying that I miss you; do not confuse my intentions. We chose to break the silence a long time ago, and we are better because we have lost our shelter. I do not love you in the sense that I need you to kiss me goodnight.

I love you in the way that I see you in the ocean rocks, I taste your curiosity when I walk the streets of where I am. I love you in the way that I take pictures to show you later, when I return. Where I am you can not be and I wouldn't have it any other way; you are paving your own future for now within limestone walls; you will have your time to be where I am. I keep the polaroid picture you snapped of me on my desk to remind me that you found my goofiness so lovely that you felt the need to catch me off guard and guard the moment, and in the same way, you would love me if you were here even though I am lost and you are never so.

One day, back in December, you asked me if you could marry me when we were both 40 and still alone. It dawned on me today that now, at 18, I am 40 and my mind is longing to leave my body to be united with yours. It took crossing the ocean and positioning myself under a banana tree for me to realize what I have always known. 

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

___ Was Here

In June you had very blue eyes.

(I suppose you still do, but I'd have to ask someone else.)

I used to watch them sparkle and dart back and forth beneath your long eyelashes as the smoke billowed out of your mouth and danced across the table, towards me, while I silently compromised my whole life just to be with you.

It's not that I ever really wanted to know you; I only longed to touch you. Now I wish I would have known better, because there is a difference between being kissed and being cared for, and you've left me with nothing but your poison.

Your kisses whimper under my skin, my left knee tingling, reminding me every damned second I am awake that you were here. And I know I can not save who I am to you now, but I am sure as hell determined to save who I am from this day forward.

When September rolls around I suppose I will remember this afternoon in August, and I hope I will be a very different woman than I am at this moment. I hope I will be a woman who stands up and walks away when the only clear answer is "no," who fights against the objectification of women instead of contributing to it. At the very least, I hope I never see you again in the same light that I behold you now, even if your eyes are still as blue as they were in late June.

You open the door, without offering to walk me out, and still you expect me to thank you.

So thank you, you conceited, manipulative, beautiful ass, for teaching me the gravity of the difference between sex and love, so that I never confuse the two again.

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

Growing Up: A tradgedy

There was this girl, you see, and her name (I think) was Mackenzie. I met her at a neighborhood party when I first moved in, the one I dressed up real nice for, because it was my first one.

We were nine. 

I told her we were going to be friends, because she had pimples on her nose just like me. I liked going to her house because her mom let her wear makeup and mine did not, so we gave each other makeovers and strutted 'round the cul de sacs, whispering about the older boys playing basketball in their cutoff tees. I started playing sports, she didn't. I was always gone and she was always home. I promised to make time to see her and tell her all the secrets of my new life, repeating, "tomorrow, tomorrow," telling myself I had all the time in the world. We were thirteen.

I saw her for the first time in four years yesterday.

She peeked at me through her streaked bangs, her eyes lighting up once the years drooped off my face. "Emily!" she made a move toward me and then halted. Four years is a damn long time. She had obviously forgiven me; I wished she could teach me how.

His name was Noah. He was the first boy I ever liked more than a friend. Our parents loved each other in a curious way, and they took us to spend a Saturday night in their mansion when our heater stopped working. In the middle of the night, he snuck me into his bed with his rocket ship sheets and we giggled together about the fact that we were going to get married someday.

We were seven.

I liked playing video games with him. I hated video games, but I loved him with every beat of my innocent heart. One day I remember clearly, we were playing a medieval game whose name escapes me today, and, his arm linked through mine, he told me he was trying extra hard to save the princess because her name was Emily. I almost kissed him, but I didn't know how.

That same day, I heard my mother crying in Noah's kitchen and screaming at his mother, and we left their house in a hurry, momma yanking my arm from his. I didn't see him for ten years. After two, I stopped asking why. I see him occasionally around town now, and we smile at each other shyly, like two strangers meeting in an Alcoholic's Anonymous classroom. I heard his dad died of cancer last year. I can't help but think that maybe I could have done something.

  I visited Grandma this past fourth of July, which I've been doing for 18 years, and went out into the wide, windy yard to admire her beautiful flowers, her pride and joy. But when I looked out from the porch, a forest of weeds choked me from their sight, threatening and mauling each other, invading the field in which I used to play. I remember because Kara and I would always marvel at the gold horizon brimming over the short soybeans - at how far we could see, and the white farm houses in the distance, and Grandma would share gossip of the neighbors over there but to us they were just stories of characters living in a land far, far away.

My face flushed under the tears coming quickly and silently, a growing voice demanding, "How long has it really been? What is the time and where has it gone?" It bleated and rose the entire drive home, and I could feel wrinkles manifest themselves on my broken heart. I am old, and I do not want to be any older than I am now. And all the times my grandpa had told me stories that started with "60 years ago..." became an undeniable part of my reality.

I drank for the very first time the next night.

[His name is Zach, I think. I slept with him six nights ago. We didn't have sex, but he is the first boy I've ever shared a bed with. I was extremely drunk and he had very pretty eyes. He said I did, too. There were no rocket ship sheets, and no giggling, and absolutely no promises of getting married one day. There were no promises at all, except that he wouldn't even touch me while I slept, but I couldn't anyway.]

I thought of Romeo and Juliet, and figured I am Juliet, minus the Romeo. The only thing keeping me alive is the daily struggle to keep my life from becoming a tragedy, in which the heroin dies well before her time.

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

The Recipe for You & Me

A lonely New Years and lots of “good morning’s,” remnants of her in every crook and corner. 20 movies unwatched (and counting), 6 unkept promises and chocolate chip cookies gone wrong like everything about us. A pinch of care (here and there) and a full serving of lust, 2 knives in the back countless memories collecting dust.

When I try to recreate you and me, there is passion, and shame, and a lot of nothingness

in between.

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

I am so sad, and very uncertain, and so inexplicably lonely.

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

Monsters

"There's nothing to be scared of," I said with faulty confidence, looking down into her young face. Her eyes stared up at me, big and brown and vulnerable. Even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. There were plenty of things to be scared about. "You'll realize that when you're my age." Another lie. The truth is, as you get older, there are more and more things to be afraid of, things she didn't know of at the innocent age of 6. Her fears consisted of monsters and thunderstorms and the occasional thought of somebody breaking in during the night. I tried to remember what it felt like to be 6, lying in bed and looking at the clock, frantically wondering if I would still be alive in the next half hour or if the monster would get me by then, caught between the superior inner struggle between running into mommy's room or putting on my big girl pants and sticking it out in the dark. But no, the memories come back easily but the feeling of fear does not. They are long gone, stuffed in the pockets of size extra-small Sunday dresses gathering dust at resale shops, and rotting away with my decaying baby teeth somewhere in the back of my mom's sock drawer ("someday you'll want those," she says.) She tugged at my hand. I told her I knew the dark was scary, and yes, she could go sleep in her big sister's room. She hugged me and I walked back downstairs and sat in the neutral darkness with all the monsters crouching under the couches, wishing they were real.

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

Have you ever been so infatuated by someone that you simply want to wrap up all of their thoughts, ideas and words into a package and carry it with you wherever you go?

[faceisamapoftheworld]

Two days ago I went snorkeling in the Bahamas, and I rode a catamaran out to the reef. It was about a 40 minute ride, and on the way out I passed the time by admiring the Bahamian landscape along the shores. As I watched the multi-million dollar homes speed past, followed by desolate nothingness...

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

Puzzle pieces and California

You’re the reason for my constant curiosity regarding California. I want you to know that when I inquired what you thought of all the snow here in Indiana, I wasn’t so much interested in your opinion of the weather as in your opinion of being closer to me. Three years ago you were just a name; a great name, that is, especially to me, an aspiring great. And then, about a week ago, you appeared in my basement, along with some other unfamiliar faces.

Isn’t it funny how that happens?

If I was comfortable with random sincerity, I would ask you what drew your eyes to me that night. From the way you looked me down and back up, and down and up again, I know better than to think you were just being polite and saying hello to the host. What was it that drew me to you, as well? Was it class, was it the thrill of a highly accomplished young man taking interest in me? Or was it, perhaps, the knowledge that you live far away and there is no time to waste?

Whatever it was, it grabbed me by the heart strings and strung me along next to you, glancing over my shoulder a few too many times that night, but never enough. And they can joke about how you’re a legend all they want, and I will most likely join in, but I will still go to the mall and wonder would you like that sweater? Would you admire the stars with me? How much are you really enjoying the snow, and would you care to stay?

now I know that we really do leave a small portion of ourselves with every person we meet, every soul that dares to look straight into our eyes.

[writeworld-blog]

It's impossible not to care.

Writer’s Block In one sentence is the spark of a story. Ignite. Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a memory about this sentence. Write something about this sentence. Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!

[alldelights]

His name was Robert & we were in the sixth grade. We joined the same bowling team because we were dating and that was the only way our parents would drive so we could see each other. Especially after my father saw him kiss me goodbye after a...

[edgeandvoidlit]

Staff Note: This is true.

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

I LOVE this.

[voiceofthebeholder-blog]

It's Sunday, November 11th, and I miss you softly and inevitably; which is a little bit better than missing you passionately and painfully, 

but not much.