The Man in the Jewlery Box. (2)

This is my second installment of my April short story, and yet it's still not done. I'll be posting the third and final section on Sunday, which I know is in May, but really, it's a process (please feel free to give me all kinds of crap about that).

Quick question, do you want to see this piece in its edited, final drafted, glory? It's going to need a lot of work, but I'm confident that I can pull it off.
*It just frustrates me in pieces like this where things can go in so many different directions, and it's hard to pick the right one.

Sorry for rambling. I'll just let you read it.

It’s all on fire, the gold. The gold and the rubies and the diamonds are ensconced in a brilliance that might convince even God that Heaven is inferior.

                Dawn just flowered over the high-rises. The kind of dawn that can make you believe in anything, even through smog. My little box feels like it belongs on the point of a Christmas tree, rendering me slightly blind and ringing from the ferocity of sensory onslaught. People stand in crowds to see me all day, but on this morning, with this dawn giving birth to this brilliance, there are only a few stragglers who will see it. But maybe, maybe it’s better that way.

                In this box, for this week, I am a Tiffany’s employee. Tiffany’s defines itself by luxury. So I am to live in extravagance. Exotic and scrumptious foods are sent up to me three times a day on a silver and Tiffany blue platter. Since I am a tool in their promotional campaign, they want the public to take notice of this, and since people are easily influenced, they do. Crowds bigger than normal gather during mealtimes, more preoccupied with some strange man’s dinner than their own. So far I’ve been served expensive meats, cheeses, vegetables, soups, and salads, all on the first day.

                Luxury is biting me everywhere as I eye the lift’s doors, willing them to open, particularly a spiked pendant digging into my right thigh. I wait patiently for breakfast this morning, feeling slightly empty now that the angles have shifted and morning is just morning, no longer dawn. Luxury bit into me last night when, oddly enough, there was no bed to sleep on. Luxury keeps me on my toes, just thinking about the paycheck at the end of the week. Yet, luxury smells delicious as eggs, bacon, grapefruit, toast, and jam appear behind the lift’s doors. There’s a crowd gathering as I spear into the pink fruit.

Ineptitude.

It’s me against

The unbending pillars

Of an E spine,

A black lock,

An upper arm.

Crackling and jerky, stop and start palaver,

potential energy, kinetic energy, potential energy.

Tattooing some omnipresent smile in my eyes

When natural intensity is a slow death.

Filling up the time braiding fingers and modeling for all the invisible cameras in the air,

Calculating every limb down to the bone.

I’m procrastinating self-hatred, smashing it into the deadline

Eluding inevitable, farcical turning points

Because blueberries can never grow in an orchard.

Adult intervention is sacred, and two is the loneliest number.

Petitioning to participate just so the shock of spectatorship won’t make me reach out my

Roughed up hands

To draw black lines in the sand.

Cotton in the ears, bed on the brain.

The Man in the Jewlery Box. (1)

 April short story, unfinished and not too severely edited.

Happy Easter, :)

                “Ladies and gentlemen of Manhattan, I give to you, ‘The Man in the Jewelry Box!”

                The announcer’s voice is muffled by the thick glass and yards of Tiffany Blue velvet curtain. In one swift movement, the curtain drops, careening with abandon onto Fifth Avenue. I watch as a couple spry men in suits and Italian loafers sprint to catch it. I watch the audience clapping, but no sound reaches me in my cocoon of glass. I can’t hear anything but a pale rumble of city noise outside my confines.

                “And now for Tiffany’s newest Luxury Collection!”

                There’s a creaking and a sinister rushing sound above my head as the top of the box opens. I tuck my knees under me, close my eyes, and cover my cranium. It’s a terse moment before the pieces start to rain down upon me. The loud clatters of metal and jewel against glass fill up the whole world in a numbing frenzy. The box has been tested not to crack when the collection rains down, but I haven’t. Jagged edges of bracelets, earrings, and pendants bite at my hands as they make their quick descent into the space around me.

                It goes on for minutes, the pounding. Jewelry has long since started pooling around my legs, the box must be almost half full by now. As I press my forehead against the glass and peer out, the world seems hazier, less defined. The reflection of all this gold and silver is marring the clapping crowd fifty feel below.

                My week in the Jewelry Box has begun.

Gen. Y

I'm severely crunched for time today, so here's a quick poem for your enjoyment.

We are the inevitable roses that shoot from cement cracks,
Not all white. 
A new race of linguists, 
Our highly analytical minds translating every nuance 
From a language of pure egotism. 
We’re vain, colorblind philanthropists;
Uninformed and opinionated
Craving fame as well as infamy
Obsessed and appeased within the marriage of ambition and assumption.
Naiveté is our elixir,
Those without it break quickly and cleanly. 
We are young 
And we are roaring, 
Making art and making do
With your pacifying diversion, your shiny new toy. 
The final frontier is no longer the heavens. 
We will kill you with your own weapon.
We are Generation Y.

An Exploration of Attraction in Which I Quote John Green.

                He’s sitting not ten feet in front of me, emitting the sort of casual masculinity that reminds me of rope swings and the smell of pollen. That boy with the golden ears. And the golden neck. And the golden hands.

                It’s easy to think that he’s all golden, through and through, organs and everything. So easy, it’s practically second nature.

                When we’ve never spoken, it’s so easy to put words in his mouth. Paint him sensitive or outgoing or considerate or dangerous. Secretly taping a bit of heart-pounding potential to his back without him noticing.

                While I sneak around the sidelines of his life, I see something that isn’t there with every stolen glance. I see what it would be like to hold his hand, get drunk on his kiss, let him protect me from every predator.

                I can already smell the amalgamation of cologne and perfume as we stand with only inches between us, exchanging intense stares that only Shakespeare can describe.

In my mind he’s none other than the perfect hero with an innate knowledge of Chekov and all the right things to say. He’d build the fort before the war and always remember my birthday.

                And yet…

"What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person."
                -John Green (Paper Towns) [ßAn amazing book that I definitely recommend.]

                That golden ear belongs to a person.

                He’s. Not. A. Perfect. Hero.

                He’s a human with failures and shortcomings and peculiarities. Emotions far from Disney, opinions, and secrets all his own.

                He might think holding hands is uncomfortable. Maybe he won’t wear cologne and think Chekov is a brand of foreign chocolate. He very well might never say the right thing and forget my birthday until the day of.

                I don’t have creative control of his person. I’m a fool if I ever thought so.

Reality can be a suckerpunch to the gut, but it’s hardly boring. Maybe… just maybe I like it better that way.

Give The People What They Want ~ How To Write A Rough Draft

So in an attempt to actually give readers what they want, I turned to the little section on my homepage/dashboard thing that says ‘Top Searches.’ I wanted to know the desires of those few and far between folks who glance at my blog posts in a sort of stumbled upon glory.

                My only ‘top search’ was ‘How to write a rough draft.’

                Well since you’ve expressed interest in this area, I’m here to offer you my sought-after advice.

Step one:

JUST WRITE!

Step two:

Make a list of at least six ideas about what you want to write about, or where you want your story to end up, or any potential plot twists, or interesting information you want to include in your report.

Step three:

Pick one of the last ones.

Step four:

Write.

Step five:

Coffee break

Step six:

Write.

                Believe it or not, I know why you are searching this. I completely understand the stomach-churning, mind-numbing ferocity that can be the blank page. I know the feeling of stale heartbreak as you watch your great idea fizzle and die within a few sentences. I know the cold desolation of a world without ideas. And I also know why you’re turning to search engines with obvious searches like ‘how to write a rough draft’ because all these things heaped upon you are hindering your desire to put pen to paper.

                And even if you haven’t found this blog because of a search like this, I know you’ve felt writer’s block at one point or another. It’s cold and it’s clammy and it has the power to kill your dream… or your A on a term paper.

                So take my advice and laugh in the face of writers block. Seriously, show that douche what you’re made of. Write. Don’t apologize and don’t make excuses. Don’t care if it sucks. Edits will always be there for you.

                Sincerely,

                Jade-The-Slightly-Harsh-Motivational-Speaker.

                (April short story sometime next week.)

Hungry

This passge is the lovechild of my current obsession with The Glass Castle (a memoir by Jeannette Walls) and my own angry hunger (due to my fasting for Lent.)
I highly recommend reading TGC.
&&&&
My hunger doesn’t just growl, it roars. 

The way I live, you’d think I’d be used to it. With Daddy laid off again we’ve all gotta sacrifice a little. But it seems I’ve been sacrificin my whole life. Ya know? It’s high time we had a pot of chili on the stove and a few slabs of cornbread baking in the oven.

 Me, I’ve always been the only one in the family with an appetite. If I could control the thing, I would, truly. But my hunger isn’t just some frustrated thing rollin around in my stomach. It’s a furious beast, one that not only paces and tears around my poor stomach, but also expands and moves and prowls about my entire body, squeezing every organ it can.

 That’s why it’s always been my dream to get outta this rinky dink shack and be chef out in the big city. I bet chefs are some of the most well-fed folks on the planet, on account of all the food they gotta deal with every single day.

 My sis Ginny says it’s a stupid dream, says there ain’t no way I’m getting outta this town. She screws up her mouth when she says this, raises her eyebrows too, like she’s so wise and I’m so dumb. I suppose she thinks this makes me wanna quit, cause there ain’t a lotta folks believing in me. Maybe she thinks that, but it just makes me itch for the city more, itch for the shiny silver surfaces of restaurant kitchens. No, I’m not just itchy, I’m hungry. Hungry for those dreams like I’m hungry for a piece of blueberry pie. And I’ll get ‘em. I ain’t gonna have this beast roamin around inside a’me my whole life. Someday I’ll be full.

A Sonnet for your Troubles.

We came out laughing, some more than others.

I dreamed of nothing like she said I would.

My throat burns like fire, so does my brother’s.

Water, my dearest friend, is a falsehood.

Part of me is in the trash, or a jar.

They’re distracting me with some dumb cartoon.

Hysteria enough for my memoir

Drenches these white, white floors this afternoon.

They’re wheeling us out now, there’s time to keep.

Helpful, falsetto voices hurt my ears.

His stony silence says it wasn’t cheap.

Out in the sun, we’re ragged pioneers.

Back in these covers, no one will intrude.

God, the only thing I miss is the food.

The DR

I recently went on a week long vacation to the Dominican Republic, which is the country that shares the island of Hispanola with Haiti. These are the passages that I actually took down while I was there. As you can see there's only two. And they're short. You can see why I need this blog.

However, I was writing letters to my cousin/best friend every day I was there as well. So, it's not that pathetic.

The bathroom is small, about three times as high as it is wide. Painted off-white with a floor of graying tile. When the door closes, it’s completely closed off. Even the crack between the door and floor is so miniscule that you can’t see light through it.

                Enclosed in a room like that, I can’t help but think of places like Auschwitz and basement cellars, that infamous room where they executed the Romanovs.

                It is a room to die in.

Auto industry workers from Michigan
and their teenage children.
Sweaty sunglasses, limp ponytails,
and faded, hometown tee shirts.
Riding on open-air caravan
down a rough Dominican street.
The paint industry must be booming here.
Every single house is slathered in
bold oranges and blues,
soft greens, adorable pinks.
A tiny, brown girl in front of her family’s
green and blue shack
waves a little at the tourists in the busses
before
scrunching her face and
thrusting her arm
likes she’s throwing something
far and forcefully,
even though her hand’s empty.
Maybe she’s pretending to throw rocks
at these over-privileged tourists,
all nice and wrapped in a cushioned bus.
Maybe she hates us.
The bitchy, over-privilidged-tourist-voice in my head says
something along the lines of
‘Quit it, we’re boosting your economy,’
But the real voice in my head says
‘Yeah, I’d probably hate us too.’

Here's a few pictures of the houses I mentioned:

Colorful right? They're all like that. I think that was what surprised me the most.