Days 3 & 4

I read somewhere that it takes 66 days to form a new habit. In the interest of getting into the habit of blogging regularly, I plan to publish one post a day for the next 66 days, finishing up on October 13, 2020. Content-wise, each day's post can include anything that crosses my mind and that I hope will spark something in yours, whether poetry, prose, art, or the occasional rant. Here's to 66 days of finding something to say :)

Just two days in, I've managed to skip a day. How very on-brand for me. (In my defense, I was moving to a different state, I didn't know the Wi-Fi password of where I was staying, yada yada yada. On with the content.)

Here, then, are what would have been the entries for Day 3 and Day 4. Consider it a double-feature (and not a belated addition):

Like Glass Breaking

I spoke without thinking
Accusation ringing out
Harsh, hanging in the air
Making distance between us
There is a silence after harsh words
The opposite of the silence after storm
Like an unresolved chord resounding
Long after the song is ended
And the pianist wishes he could sink
Through the floor into the abyss
Away from the flinching audience

If I could see my words they would look
Like glass breaking
Shattering across a brittle tile floor
Bright shards, bright shards
Brought about by a trembling hand

They say we can eat our words
But we can only ever taste them
On their way out into the air
Never can we swallow them down again
I would eat them, I would chew
The broken glass
I would swallow down the bright shards
To stop them from piercing you

Ah, your glass-window eyes
I have shattered the window-panes with a word
Ah, your butterfly-soul
I have crushed your iridescent wings
Ah, your heart of gold
Worthy of words like apples of gold in hangings of silver 

I broke a part of you today
I cannot take back the jangling discord, the ugly sound
Like glass breaking
So I gather the broken pieces in my hands
And lay them before you
A glittering heap of destruction
In all its transparent shame
See through the shards to me, I beg of you

Forgive me
Forgive me

 

 

Night-Kingdom

There was a time I held the strings

And moved the puppets from the wings

There was a time I set the tinfoil crowns

On painted puppet kings

 

Once upon a time I ruled the world.

 

I built my kingdom late at night

Hammer and chisel, saw and knife

Working all night long

By the light of the moon and the stars

Working till the morning light

 

There was a time my kingdom stood

Made of cardboard, paper, wood

Every turret a cereal box

And every flag a white handkerchief

Ironwork of paperclips and staples

Underneath the dining table

A blanket pulled low over the side

Whenever I wanted to hide

 

And I wondered what I’d built before all night

With the moonlight through the window

Turning kingdoms dark and bright

 

Once upon a time my kingdom stood.

 

 

 

Till tomorrow,

Clara 

Day 2

I read somewhere that it takes 66 days to form a new habit. In the interest of getting into the habit of blogging regularly, I plan to publish one post a day for the next 66 days, finishing up on October 13, 2020. Content-wise, each day's post can include anything that crosses my mind and that I hope will spark something in yours, whether poetry, prose, art, or the occasional rant. Here's to 66 days of finding something to say :)

For Day 2, a poem:

 

Genesis, a Beginning

Genesis, a beginning:
“Let there be light”
And there was light.
And the light he called Day
And the darkness he called Night
And there was evening and morning
The first day

Genesis, a beginning—
We begin to begin again—
But how many false starts lay
Between the hand and the pen,
Between the pen and the paper,
Between the paper and the words,
Between the words and the silences?

So many dimly remembered worlds
Forgotten before they were born

Genesis, a beginning
At the start of every day
Sunrise in a lovely, broken world
So bright and so brittle
Too much and too little
We begin and end with the sun

We breathe in to remember
We breathe out to forget
We breathe in to remember
We breathe out to forget
We breathe in to remember
An echo in the rise and fall:

“Let there be light”
And there was light.

 

 

 

Till tomorrow,

Clara

Day 1

I read somewhere that it takes 66 days to form a new habit. In the interest of getting into the habit of blogging regularly, I plan to publish one post a day for the next 66 days, finishing up on October 13, 2020. Content-wise, each day's post can include anything that crosses my mind and that I hope will spark something in yours, whether poetry, prose, art, or the occasional rant. Here's to 66 days of finding something to say :)

For Day 1, an untitled poem:

 

To the boy in the blue raincoat,

Straight and tall against a greying sky—

 

I saw you through the window of the bus

And sat and let the thought pass by

That when you’re that tall

You don’t walk, you stride

With nothing to hide

 

You kept straight ahead, not looking back

And I—

I stayed in my seat on the bus

It looked like rain

 

But in that split-second—

Fleeting, going, gone—

I would have given anything

To know you would have stopped for me

If I called out your name

To be walking next to you

Wherever you were going—

I’d be struggling to keep up

But you might have slowed down

 

You didn’t turn your head to look

Till the bus turned the corner

And then you were out of sight

All too soon, out of mind

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere

For someone else to find

 

It was three seconds, maybe four

I was late for work already

I felt the first few raindrops

 And walked a little faster

 

But I’ve been staring straight ahead

For half an hour now

Not hearing the voices on the phones—

“How may I direct your call”—

I blink—

Why are the walls still standing?

 

A modern-day Eurydice

I dare you to glance back at me

And sink me in the depths where I belong

Consign me to the hell that I deserve

To castles built of sticks and stones

Where I can bind my broken bones

Where I can wonder why I cared

If you looked back for a moment—

 

One throwaway day in February

When the sky was cloudy

And it looked like rain

 

 

Till tomorrow,

Clara

Born of Ragged Perfection

My writing process has never been very systematic. Despite all the structure I impose on myself at later stages in the process, my initial thoughts tend to flow best without too many rules to hem them in.  Nowhere does this haphazardness show up more than in my first drafts of poems and songs, which can read more like lists of brain-stormed images and metaphors than anything resembling meaning.

Case in point, this first draft:

The lines read as follows (cross-outs replicated):

And this is born of ragged perfection

Edges of a glimpse of glory

Past the never-ending story

Running off the gold-dipped (gilted) pages

Into chasms down below

There's an edge and there's the fraying

Threads unraveled, never staying

Put--unraveling bit by bit as long

as motion we're in motion

Stand still and

Bit by bit the thread unwinds

Stretching out in life and time

Peaks and va

Zig-zagged edges, then the stil

winds and turns

Scarlet threads within the maze

till the waves all straighten out

Every leaving naught to chance or doubt

The scarlet cord hung down a city wall

Straightens, flattens, turns into a line

Flatlining on the heart monitor--

No mo All stands still.

 

 

So this fragment definitely has some potential. There're some phrases I really like, one of which became the title of this blog post. The extended metaphor of a fraying thread representing a human life I also appreciate. As long as we're in motion we unravel. 

 

These lines were written as the second half of a song which takes place in the second half of a musical that I started writing at fourteen and promptly forgot about as soon as freshman year of high school started rearing its ugly head. Blech, high school. Revisiting the half-finished musical years later, I found the song's lyrics predictably terrible, sounding as if they were written by an angsty fourteen-year-old, mainly because they were written by an angsty fourteen-year-old. But the lyrics weren't irredeemably terrible: they were bursting with potential. I just needed to breathe new life into them. Hence the lines above.

 

I'll be honest: I didn't end up using this fragment at all. Nada. None of it.

 

At least not the way I was expecting to.

 

None of these lines made it into the final cut of the song. Introducing a new metaphor about the unwinding thread of life so close to the end of the song turned out to be confusing and unnecessary. 

 

What, then, was the use of writing these lines?

 

Potential.

 

Potential yet to be actualized.

 

The tingly-in-the-fingertips feeling of almost-thereness that I get when I read them. The snapshots of memories that spring to mind as I scan each line--fleeting, going, gone. The reminder that not everything I write needs to see the light of day, and that I write for all the shadows in between the page and the reader. Being able to determine that these lines turned out to be useless for the project they were intended for encourages me, because I am now assured that I know my vision for the musical well enough to know what not to include--even after years not working on it!

I realize that this isn't the most helpful post for aspiring writers. Hey, guess what? Some stuff you write might be completely useless, and the lines you like the most might just be the ones you have no use for. Not exactly an encouraging message. The only advice I could give at the end of this would be that if you, like me, have piles of throwaway scribblings that you're still holding onto, even though you feel like you should get rid of them--keep them with you a little longer.  Give your words time to breathe. Look at them with fresh eyes once you've forgotten what you wrote.

All will be well. All in time.

 

 

 

Till next time,

Clara

 

After All This Time

Darlings, it has been quite the hiatus. Aside from an angsty ramble of a letter to myself that I published a few weeks ago (and I refuse to believe that garbage exists, much less that I posted it on the interwebs. Denial is a heck of a drug.)I haven't blogged for three years now. Yikes. Life, ya know.

In our time apart (and in no particular order), I have:

• graduated college (woot woot!)
• applied and been accepted to law school, which starts this fall
• Finished a 300+ page Percy Jackson fanfic
• Staunchly refused to edit said fanfic for over a year
• Started a sequel to said fanfic (not having edited it)
• Questioned some life decisions
• Wrote a bunch of mostly sad poems to distract myself
• Started writing a musical because why not
• Escaped some more problems (see above note on denial in the first paragraph. I'll wait.)

As you can see, I've been quite productive, all things considered.In addition to all the writing, my days have been spent (1)doing an absurd amount of online shopping; (2) altering so many clothes in my attempts at tailored, vintage perfection; (3)discovering indie folk bands on Spotify. Again, productivity.

Oh, and did I mention the *GLOBAL PANDEMIC* that I'm currently living through right now? 

2020, what a year. It's been surreal as a recent grad to watch the world fall apart and come together like a chaotic pulsing heart. Who knows what the other side of this will look like. It was partially to journal my impressions of this wild time that I decided to take up blogging again. One day, I'll want to look back and retrace what I was thinking when all this went down...or will I?

Going forward, this blog will look a little different. I plan to organize posts better into categories and to have pages for each of my WIPs, where I'll post chapters and "behind-the-scenes" types of posts about the writing and editing process. My little corner of the internet here did start out as a writing-focused blog, and I intend to keep it that way. The changes will focus on how to make my content more accessible to y'all and more personal to me. I want to share what my works mean to me, not just what they contain and why they were written. For someone who delays feeling her emotions till she's had time to process everything else, and who hates revealing personal things, this'll be a *fun* challenge for me. But hey, there's a first time for everything. 

Here's to new beginnings.
Here's to tweaking things that don't work.
Here's to taking ourselves with a grain of salt and never missing the comic relief in any disaster.

Thanks for sticking around for so long, my loves. And if you're new here, thanks for checking out this mess and reading this far! 
To close out this post, enjoy an assortment of photos that seemed to fit, complete with vague explanations:

Moi. Your favorite sporadic rambler.

 

From my notes app not too long ago. A whole mood.

 

Quarantine = free time that MUST be spent inside. Ergo, art.

   
And finally, a tiny video showcasing my handy-dandy mask-and-scarf-holding-contraption (new name suggestions appreciated). We're all in this crazy time together--might as well have some fun with it.

Till next time,

Clara

Dear Future Clara

Dear Future Clara,

What even is this but a motley mismanagement of words. My dear, my dear. You write without knowing where the words are going, only that it’s been too long since you’ve created anything and the overwhelming urge to vomit words on a page must be satisfied. Let there be light. Let there be madness.Let there be.

 

And you scan the paragraph you just wrote, and it strikes you how pretentious you sound, but you keep writing anyway because no one will ever read this but you and maybe two people and a super-advanced NYC subway rat on the internet, and let’s be honest—your future self could use a laugh. In the distant future when you somehow learn to stop taking yourself too seriously, you will appreciate this mindless verbiage and you will be glad you took the time to do something pointless and stupid and time-consuming. At least I hope you will.

Prose. Prose is the problem because you feel like you have to be candid and honest with yourself when you write in prose. Ambiguous fragments strung together into an indecipherable poem? The angst. The power. The presence. But prose demands substance as well as style, and it makes it harder to disguise a lack of either. So in typical you-fashion, you get around the problem of prose by hiding behind metaphors that take on a life of their own, writing in slow downward spirals that never quite hit rock-bottom. Cue self-referential example. How meta.

Were you making a point in any of this?

You will find your own voice as a writer. Eventually, you will stop having to hide behind ambiguity and purple prose. Your words will be a finely tempered steel blade, cutting to the heart of the matter with clean precision. You’ll stop dithering. You’ll stop second-guessing. You’ll stop toning yourself down on the page.You'll stop hyping yourself up on the page. Halfway between the Slump and the Mania, you will flow on the page, and your words will be made of breath and blood and bone.

But until then, you find refuge behind a wall of words, and you succumb to the need to write angsty poetry as is your birthright as a teenager because for the next almost-two-months, that’s still true.

Eyelids drooping
A slight tremor in the fingers
Betrays the weariness of nights spent awake till the early hours of the morning
A silent vigil spent reading and re-reading
Regrets already forming but realization delayed
Was it worth it all?
Of course it was, for the time being
Let tomorrow worry about itself, no need to chase it down
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble

That was terrible. You actually hate that, at least in the moment. Maybe it’ll grow on you, and maybe if it does that will simply confirm your worst suspicions about your lack of taste. Who’s to say?

But pointlessness for its own sake, though it does have its charms, tends to get old after a while. And you’re bored right now of the immense pointlessness of this first letter because you had grand fantasies of its being a profound exercise in self-reflection and instead it is a steaming pile of garbage wrapped up in pretty language. Ahahahahahahahahahahaha the idiocy of it all.

More to come later.

Much love,

Past Clara

FanFest: The Gamble of Orpheus

Hi everyone!

Thanks for keeping up with this rather sporadic poster, and for being willing to beta-read my fanfiction, The Gamble of Orpheus. So first, a few general tips and guidelines about the fanfiction:

• The Gamble of Orpheus is intended to be a full-length fanfiction of at least 50,000 words. Also, it is a sequel to a previously written work, The Son of Hestia. I will be happy to email the prequel to those of you who might be interested, but it is not necessary to read the works in order to follow the plot of either one.

• The Gamble of Orpheus contains the following additions/inconsistencies with the PJO canon:

• Children of the Big Three, though rare, are possible.

• The exception to the "Demigods can't use technology" rule is known as "godly immunity": if a half-blood is using technology to exercise a godly ability, he or she is shielded from the effects. As soon as the technology is no longer necessary to help with the godly ability, it attracts monsters again.

• The virgin goddess, Hestia, has claimed certain heroes (demigod and mortal) as her children. Together, these chosen by the goddess form a loose network of communication across the United States.

That being said, here's the blurb for The Gamble of Orpheus:

The ancient Greek myths are back, if anyone's there to watch them play out. Alex is Orpheus. Lauren is Eurydice. Kira is missing. And James is just about to lose it. Can an ending be rewritten thousands of years later? Can a teenager bargain with the Lord of the Dead? And can all four half-bloods stay alive long enough to see the end of the story? Not if the gods of Olympus have anything to say about it.

And here's the first two chapters (more to come later); enjoy! Please see the guidelines below the excerpt for feedback procedures before commenting. Thanks!