Alone

Alone doesn't mean "not with other people."
I have experienced alone.
Alone is when you are utterly isolated in mind and soul.
Alone is like an oceanless beach, dry and safe,
but without danger, what is "safe"?
When you are alone in body, you can dance and be yourself.
It's only when the others arrive that you hole yourself away
where you can hide in plain sight.
Some have wondered what the weight of the soul is.
Alone can give you that answer.
It is as large-heavy-dense as you need it to be in order to escape.
Alone is not bad.
It is you as you know yourself.
It doesn't mean "no friends".
It can mean no peers.
It can mean retreating until you feel
you can share who you are.
Alone is reached by yourself,
an independent achievement.
Alone is okay.

Simplicity

A quiet drop still ripples in a busy pond.

To write

Have you ever watched someone write?
Have you ever identified those born calligraphic, with their long liquid strokes, holding the pen like a delicate canary bone, creating art with every waltzing dance of their wrist?
How about those who are destined writers, with their fevered devotion to the words spilling onto the page, with no care to the formation of individual letters, just an energy and tempo so intent?
Have you ever watched those who never learned the fluent language that wrists share with fingers, which translate to the foreign language of the pen? They bend over the paper, fists clenched about the pen, with their mouths agape as they clumsily transfer their thoughts doggedly and with much effort.
Strong hands, soft palms, angled wrists, fingers bent just-so.
Writing might be one of the characteristics of advanced society, but it would be nothing were it not for the thick, thin, strong, weak wrists which faithfully translate thoughts shallow and profound.
These are beautiful things.

Creative Writing Club

Well, I have many excuses for not writing. I have been very, very busy these past few weeks, what with Art Club, Yearbook, SAGL, driving, riding, training, and Creative Writing.
Speaking of Creative Writing, last night I had a poetry reading at the Confed Center. We all did very well. I look forward to being part of the group again next year!

The event ended at 9:00 pm, and I was planning on going straight home to go to bed, but my friend Al1 and Al2 invited me over to Al2's house to watch a movie. Well, I could not resist. Instead of going to bed early, I stayed up until 12:30. We didn't even end up watching the movie; we just sat around and talked for hours! That's how you know you have good friends: you can talk for hours about a variety of topics without getting bored. We don't need booze to have a good time, unlike the curmudgeons of my age group. Having a group of intelligent and zany minds is enough entertainment for me.
At any rate, Al1 told an awesome story. Here goes:
Al1's dad has a friend who has a son with high functioning Down Syndrome, enabling her to leave her son home alone while she goes to work during the day. On one particular day, she left for work as usual, leaving her son at home for the day. All was well until about two hours into her work day, when she received a somewhat panicked phone call from her son. "Mom! Mom! Mom!" "What's the matter, honey?" "There's a troll in the closet! A TROLL IN THE CLOSET!" Of course, she assumed that he was just doofing around as everyone is known to do on occasion. "Okay. I'll check it out when I come home, okay?"
A few hours later, she walked into her house, to find that the front hall closet had been barricaded by her writing desk, and her son was pushing against it to keep the closet door shut. The closet door was rattling and shaking, and her first reaction was to think 'Hmmm... That must be a big raccoon or something.' She convinced her son to pull the desk out of the way, and she carefully opened the door to find.... a midget in the closet! He was a Jehovah's Witness, and he had apparently been doing his rounds when he knocked on the door, and was pulled inside and stuffed into the front hall closet having been mistaken for a troll.

What a silly little person!

Famine

Sing sweetly, sap, and
Sickening,
Out here among the flowers.
Eyes to the sky,
Filled like a pie,
Where crows and locusts
Glower.

Now swooping down,
These morbid clowns
Do set upon a shower
Of buckwheat, rye, and corn flowers
All grain gone,
Work of hours.

Now eyes awake
With sweating palms
The farmer loses sleep
And paranoid of living storms
That do his harvest
Reap.