(Very) Small Injustices

Day 5: A story revolving around an object in your room

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The picture was crooked, but the doorknob said nothing.

In his entire life here, during countless tenants, the pictures were almost always crooked, and few things in his small domain bothered him more.

Still, he said nothing.

The newest tenant was nothing special; she mostly kept quiet, made food that usually smelled good, though sometimes her kitchen experiments ended in disaster. She had questionable taste in music, but he didn’t much mind. And she hated vacuuming, but the door knob didn’t blame her; it didn’t seem a particularly rewarding task. Besides, the current vacuum was an uppity bitch.

But he just couldn’t get over the picture frame. He supposed it could have been something about the way the building had settled over the years, though he doubted it. It was a fine building, all brick and refurbished wood.

The door knob had been an early addition to the building, salvaged from one being torn down half a block away. He narrowly escaped the purgatory of a flea market to come here, where he spent his days quietly fuming over small injustices.

He was very rarely polished or cleaned, and he always noticed first when the door’s hinges started squeaking. There was the matter of his neighbor the vacuum, of course, and  that of the constant blinding he endured by various jackets. If he had to pick just one thing, though, it was that crooked picture of a man hunched over playing a guitar.

Still, the doorknob said nothing.

Tags: 30 day creative writing challenge, creative writing

Lyrics

Remember that time I said I’d post something new everyday, then missed two (almost three!) in a row. Yeaaah. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. In the meantime, posted juuust under the wire….

Day 4: A (terrible) poem using the words: blue, mistrust, half, twang

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Looking toward the lake, out of the blue
He remembered a lyric he thought that he knew,

A tune lost from rotation, gone without a trace
Leaving only echos of the twang, of the symbol and bass

Mistrusting his own memory he tried to recall
Whether the singer meant simply to trip or to fall

He used the word stumble, which as you well know,
could mean half-slip, keel over, or plummet down below.

In the end it seemed this didn’t much matter,
Though the girl in the song made quite a clatter,

Yes, in fact it seemed rude to write a whole verse,
Just to poke fun at some clumsy girl’s curse.

Tags: 30 day creative writing challenge, creative writing, music, poetry

Let’s start from the very beginning

On Tumblr today I saw a 30 day creative writing challenge, and I’ve decided I’m taking the plunge during April.

Day 1: Rewrite a classic fairy tale

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She lay awake replaying the night in her head. After the dinner plates were cleared and the fire stoked, her family moved into the drawing room for drinks and amusement. Tonight’s consisted of hurling insults through the open door at the help who were mending stockings and wondering why they didn’t simply buy new ones.

But Cinderella knew why they didn’t. It wasn’t money or scarcity. They needed to make fun of her, and were running low on ammunition. As a child, it had been that she was an orphan, then it was her pimples and lanky frame. She grew out of the latter, and the former faded into the past as she approached adulthood.

She was prettier than they were, even without silk stockings and a painted face, and they knew it.

They resorted instead to embarrassment, so the entertainment of the night thus focused on the many holes in their stockings that they had somehow neglected to mend for weeks and weeks.

“Nearly done, dearest?” Her stepmother was already half in the bag. “I do love nothing more than working with odor.”

Surely the neighbors 2 miles away could hear her stepsisters loon laughing. ”Did I say odor? Silly me, I meant ardor.” Cinderella decided then she would call the stable boy to carry the woman to bed, speaking of  odor…

The shouts devolved into thinly veiled threats of violence and if the stockings became any shorter, or changed color or shape. She didn’t respond, but couldn’t ignore the barrage two rooms away. Their voices seemed to be amplified in the largely empty mansion, devoid of visitors for many years.

Twelve years, to be exact. She sometimes let herself wonder if they still kept track.

The evening ended with a crescendo of bawdy songs based on Cinderella’s stained clothes and well worn shoes, with a chorus of “there’s nothing here for you!” seeming to echo through the house hours later.

Waves of misplaced anger fought with the moonlight for her attention and she realized she wouldn’t be sleeping this night.  She sat up, looking to the embers still alive in the hearth, giving a warm glow to her quarters. She stretched on her sorry little mattress and thought again of the final refrain.

Her stepmother was right, of course. Nostalgia kept her where she was, fear kept her doing her chores.

She dressed several hours before her day usually started and walked from the house, swiping a breakfast of hard cheese and tart apples as she went.

As she reached the base of the valley that would lead her to the village, she turned around soaked in the view of her father’s house, enveloped in fog and darkness, in bitterness and grief.

Maybe nostalgia wasn’t worth the trouble.

Tags: 30 day creative writing challenge, cinderella, creative writing, fairy tales

Sobbing In My Car: The Playlist

Everyone has a Workout playlist, an I Need to Feel Happy playlist, Cathartic Breakup Songs playlist, and the songs From High School That I Embarrassingly Will Love Forever.

But I think another playlist, which I’ve been slowly making for  myself over the past few years should be added to everyone’s repertoire: Sobbing in My Car Songs. It all started because of a scene from season 1 of Glee (iknowshutup) wherein Emma is sitting in her car in the pouring rain, sobbing and singing along to All by Myself.

Now, while I have rarely done this exact thing, this scene has come back to me several times over the years and thus the Sobbing in My Car playlist was born. Here are some highlights, in no particular order:

Solitaire – The Carpenters

Solitaire’s the only game in town
And every road that takes him, takes him down

This is a depressing song and really exemplifies the “I will be alone forever!” section of the Sobbing In My Car playlist. I own two Carpenters records on vinyl (hipsterrrrrrr), but sadly Solitaire isn’t on either one. I know I’d play it all the damn time if I did, so maybe it’s better for the impression I leave for my neighbors that I’m not the weird girl in the basement (LITERALLY) who plays sad, lonely person songs all the time.

Not Over You – Gavin DeGraw

If you ask me how I’m doing I will say I’m doing just fine
I will lie and say that you’re not on my mind

Ok, this is a bit of a cheese-fest pick, but I can’t help it. It’s maybe a bit more cathartic than the others, I think, and its a recent addition I can’t get out of my head. It also really succinctly sums up the gut punch of having that conversation with someone you can’t quite get over. Ugh.

Every Time We Say Goodbye – Every. Damn. Version.

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little

This song, like the others is just so sad to the very core of your everything. Also this particular song for me is loaded a bit because I have tried for YEARS to find the exact version that is in The Parent Trap (LiLo version, BITCHES) when the twins are saying goodbye at the Napa house IN THE POURING RAIN. Wow! CIRCULAR LOGIC I AM IN YOU.

Honorable Mentions:

A Blossom Fell by Nat King Cole
Selfless, Cold and Composed by Ben Folds

Anyone else have a playlist like this, even if it’s just in your head? Let’s share the sadness in the comment section, and be upbeat on some other rainy Friday.

Tags: heartbreak, music, playlists

Christmas, Don’t Be Late!

The Workplace has satellite radio, which regrettably is currently set to a Christmas station. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas music. But I obviously like my own selection of Christmas music, most of which is NEVER PLAYED on this station.

Also regrettable are the most played songs: Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer, Where are You Christmas? by Faith Hill, Blue Christmas by Elvis (which I maintain is AWFUL, despite nearly everyone’s opinions to the contrary). And then the absolute worst: Jingle Bells to the tune of dog barks. I kid you not.

Most of this station is torture, but there is the occasional bright spot. Hanson (Yes. DEAL.), Bing Crosby, anything from the Peanuts soundtrack (including the mostly out of tune children in Christmastime Is Here), and of course the seminal classic Christmas Don’t be Late by the Chipmunks.

 

Ok, mea culpa time. I realize at the beginning of this post I was bemoaning cheese and now I’m glorifying in the small furry creature variety. I am sorry.

I like cheesy Christmas music, but it has to be the right kind of cheese (though we can all agree the dog barking can die a horrible death, right?). The Chipmunks have the nostalgia factor, as well as a catchy and unique song. There’s nothing interesting about the dogs barking jingle bells, and really no point to Grandma getting run over by reindeer. (To say nothing of the fact that that shit would never happen on Rudolph’s watch. He is nothing if not Pro-Grandma.)

Christmas Don’t Be Late is an old song, written in 1958, that we’ve all heard a million times. But that’s part of the reason we love it. It still seems so impromtu despite the fact we all know the ALVIIIIIIIIN freak-out is coming. And the song doesn’t make sense, of course, because there’s no way Christmas can actually BE late. It’s really more about the fact that anticipation and excitement are as big a part of holidays as the big event itself which, incidentally, is the theme of most Christmas songs.

All of this is to say, Happy beginning of the holiday season! I’m excited for snow and hot chocolate and getting sick of Christmas songs and falling in love with new ones. What’s your favorite (or least favorite, as the case may be) Christmas song?

—

As an aside: when I was looking at the video above on YouTube, the most liked comment was, “WHY IS DAVE ALWAYS SO PISSED.”

Indeed, random commenter. Indeed.

—-

I wrote this last week before this fantastic thing happened:

 

Two Heroes right there.

Tags: Christmas, Christmas music, holidays, The Chipmunks

Brought to You by the Letter U

In my quest to write more on this here blog, I’ve been re-acquainting myself with WordPress. Yesterday I noticed that under the Categories….uh…category, there was one listing. I clicked, not remembering what category I used for an old post and found the only category any of my blogs were listed under was “Uncategorized.”

The brilliance of this for personal blogs is astounding. It encapsulates the idea that your writing, thoughts, your very being is at once nothing and everything. Posted here is nothing while at the same time infinite somethings.

Insert Kristin’s mind Asploding.

This is one of those ideas that completely excites and fills me with terror. On one hand it says, “Hey you, yeah you there! You are rather insignificant. Maybe don’t worry about proofreading so much.” But it (or It, as the case may be. Who can know?) completely contradicts its own premise, because it recognizes the nobody. How can you be a nobody, if somebody points at you, seeing you for the sham you are.

Sit with that for a while, would you? Oh, and you’re an unimportant, significant, beautiful twat, by the way.

I’m gonna go mop up some gray matter now.

Past/Present/Future Imperfect

Does anyone else find this picture terrifying?

Not in the sense of “OMG, ALIEN CHILDREN CONVERGING UPON US, RUUUUUUN!!!!” But in a generally creepy kind of way? Maybe it’s just my public school upbringing, but for whatever reason, lots of people dressed EXACTLY the same always kind of wigs me out.

Or maybe I have a phobia of track suits.

*****

Earlier tonight I got distracted by Steinbeck. I read East of Eden last summer over the course of about a month. I would walk to a park near my apartment almost daily, drinking in the prose of a long dead, much celebrated author. I lounged on the cool grass or in the shade of the few trees, reflecting upon an earlier time in my life. I had to read Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath during High School, and quite honestly, didn’t care for either. I think it was an effect of High School; some sort of disorder begotten upon all high school students that entails that you must hate, or at the very least, mildly despise whatever you’re required to read for a grade.

All of this is to say I adored and continue to adore East of Eden. I revisit sections randomly when sitting bored in my apartment. It’s affecting like few other books (for me, at least) are. It’s an epic in the true sense of the word, that takes true persistence to get through, but is completely worth the time.

It’s also the kind of book that makes me want to simultaneously quit writing and also to continue to try and unseat Steinbeck as the great American author.

*****

Today on the radio I heard my favorite poet on Talk of the Nation. I ate lunch in a parking lot in my car with my windows rolled down, for the first time since the early fall. Billy Collins is my favorite poet. This paragraph perhaps suggests that I am a rabid consumer of poetry.

I’m not.

To me, Collins just is the best. Both because his actual poetry is affecting and actually good, and due to the fact that his attitude about poetry is about what it should be; one of admiration, but not of obsession or complete devotion.

In other words: poetry is great, but there are other pretty great things too. Get. Over. Your. Self.

Collins’ writing is the other (from Steinbeck) that I can get utterly lost within. I may be just a weird fangirl, but it’s true, and that’s just fine.

*****

I started this post a long time ago, as in May. This last section is the only part I’ve added. The picture is a bit random, but whatever. It still creeps me out.

I think it’s fitting to post this, as apparently I was caught up in the writing of others at the time, but not too focused on my own. I’m trying hard to change that, starting right now. This space will see a lot more attention, and collect way less dust. I promise.

Stick around. Let’s laugh together for a while and talk about our favorite books and drink too much coffee. There are worse ways to live, right?