An Icy Summit
Winter rushes in and steals the warmth out of the air
With every snowy step I make in haste, I am aware
Of the seasons of the time gone by
Of the wind, that wiggles its way through my stockings
to my thighs, once warm beneath
your touch
around your face, around your frame
Now the starkness of solitude burns cold and
reaches in,
beyond my skin,
straight to my bones,
which rattle once again.
Like fingers thawing from frozen
Burning hotter than the sun,
Cold fears the heat;
she knows,
and digs her heels in when she comes.
For Winter’s wind carries both memories of warmer days
And frostbite all at once.
I tried writing something fictional but ended up just writing about my struggle with anxiety and melancholia. Things got really personal really quickly. This is probably the most raw piece of writing I have done. I wrote it in an hour, saved it, and haven't looked at it until tonight. Feeling a little vulnerable posting it, but I feel like I should. So here it is.
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It was like when you wake up and notice that
your arm has fallen asleep. It starts first with the pain of pins and needles.
Your heart beats faster. Anxiety. Soon, though, you succumb to the familiarity
of the pain. Your arm disappears. Melancholia. It started like that, too.
Butterflies she thought were caused by a midterm that never went away. Things
began to get more and more difficult. Dressing in the morning became
impossible. It seemed she had been fed caterpillars – it was in her genes to
struggle with anxiety – and they had finally all decided to hatch from their
cocoons. But moths have short life spans, and soon she was left with the
carcasses her anxieties left behind. Or perhaps she grew used to them. Soon the
pins and needles faded.
She sat numbly thumbing the
edge of her Norton Anthology of English Literature, staring just beyond, or
maybe just before, the words on the page. Everything went a lovely kind of
fuzzy. She was trying to feel but everything seemed muted. The black words on
the page faded to grey, and the white behind it followed suit. She read a line
of Shakespeare. Nothing. She took a sip of her coffee, god how she loved
coffee, and still nothing. She was trying to shake the melancholia that had
recently overtaken her. Everything around her looked grey and her coffee tasted
like it had been roasted for a few minutes too long and her books didn’t smell
as lovely as they once did.
It’s hard to get a grip when
your hand is asleep, but the blood flows so long as the heart pumps. It is only
a matter of time until the satin sheets run smoothly between her fingers and
his stubble scratches her palms and she can truly feel again.
Peppermint tea, she thought.
Stretch marks and battle scars
I want to write something really profound about how seasons have changed not only in nature — from summer to fall and now on to winter — but also in my life, how my body is an ever present testament to that fact, and that you can’t hold on to anything in life (with the exception of my love handles). But I am not as graceful as I like to think I am. And though words don’t often evade me — here I am: wordless, covered in stretch marks and scars from scratched mosquito bites from months ago, and faced with the reality that all I’ve got are memories, a tan that is fading fast and a philosophy paper due on Friday. And maybe I’m okay with that, the fact that I can’t rely on anything to stay the same, especially not me. Maybe I find comfort in the fact that nothing is certain — not even uncertainty itself.
On death and dying far too young:
beauty never fades —
time may strip away the polish
chip at the surface,
like a river refining each stone at its bed
with every sweeping motion.
Regardless of its form,
whether unified or scattered
like particles in the vast cosmos,
beauty shall always remain.
Cherish in your hearts the dust
that has so graciously fallen from the source
and settled within you,
store it up in your mind and never forget
as she rests in peace.
As her beauty rests in the pieces
spread out amongst all of us who bore witness to
the beauty that she was
the beauty that she is
the beauty that she shall remain
— beauty never fades.
some thoughts
I have been rendered into but a mere mirror image, a mirage, of who I once was. Although I look the same (give or take a couple pounds and a few inches of hair), and although I have never for a moment ceased to exist, somewhere along the way the person “I am” turned into the person “I was”. It was not an experience to be had altogether at one time, but rather, slowly, layer by layer I was stripped away to reveal something entirely new. Sometimes voluntarily I would peel off pieces of my former persona, other times my schema would be left on the pavement as wounded skin remains with a scraped knee. But sometimes, and most times, the winds of time would gracefully sweep past me gently removing the excess and unneeded surface of self that had been rendered into dust by the new formation of ideas and ideals that now found my identity.
It is a curious thought to ponder, though. For in reality all of the cells that made up the material me have since died and been replaced, but it is my consciousness that remains. I am a doppelganger of my past-self, a look-alike with a shared stream of consciousness. A similar history with memories that fade just as quickly as they come, and that are skewed with the same ease as a politician’s promises amidst a campaign. To believe life is experienced by one body throughout time is a flawed way to think, it is like the ship of Theseus — when every last piece of it’s original build has been replaced in repair, is it the same ship? Not clearly. Am I the same person? Again, the answer is not clear. In the same way, is it fair to believe that just because my consciousness does not take physical form (save through their creation via brain cells) that it is impermeable to the inevitability of renewal? Am I the same person? Again, the answer is not clear.
Who I am is not who I was, but without who I was I cannot be who I am. They are unequivocally and necessarily separate, but muddled together by the murky waters of time and circumstance that ebb and flow through me. Eroding away the river walls in the streams of my consciousness; forming new pathways as they meander through my very mind.Through it all I am forced to maintain an identity with steadfast hopes and dreams unshakable to catastrophe and impervious to turbulence that comes thereafter. Though I am a ship with the same name, every last piece of me has been removed and repaired, I am forced to venture down my ever-changing stream of consciousness and experience life.
Why, hello there.
Now, I have had a tumblr account for a number of years, and for the most part any type of blog post or rant that I thought up I posted to that site. But I have decided to create this blog specifically for writing. And so here we are. I am devoting the next 8 months to trying my hat at creative writing, and I very well may fail. But if you (oh, unknown person, sitting on the other side of your computer screen/mom) would like to follow along as I fumble my way through trying to find my voice in writing then please do join me. I am going to be posting some older things I wrote in either high school or my first year of university as well (most of which are very unclear in an attempt to be artsy and profound), and even though they are a little embarrassing I feel the need to post them here still. So gawk if you must, but writing is a process and this is the means to pursuing it. So welcome to the process. If you have tips or wishes or ideas or nice things to say, please feel free to comment! I will graciously accept.
Warm regards,
Rachael
Now, I have had a tumblr account for a number of years, and for the most part any type of blog post or rant that I thought up I posted to that site. But I have decided to create this blog specifically for writing. And so here we are. I am devoting the next 8 months to trying my hat at creative writing, and I very well may fail. But if you (oh, unknown person, sitting on the other side of your computer screen/mom) would like to follow along as I fumble my way through trying to find my voice in writing then please do join me. I am going to be posting some older things I wrote in either high school or my first year of university as well (most of which are very unclear in an attempt to be artsy and profound), and even though they are a little embarrassing I feel the need to post them here still. So gawk if you must, but writing is a process and this is the means to pursuing it. So welcome to the process. If you have tips or wishes or ideas or nice things to say, please feel free to comment! I will graciously accept.
Warm regards,
Rachael
