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yrfriendliz:

Emily’s post reminded me to remind YOU GUYS to keep working on (or start? or think about?) your contribution to our latest chapbook:

“LIFE IS PRECIOUS, AND GOD, AND THE BIBLE”*

We’re looking for:

• poems
• artwork (plz send jpg, png, tiff, etc as attachment thx!)
• short essays (fiction or nonfiction, less than 500 words or so). Good examples are here and here
• “experiments”

Your submission should focus on rituals (personal, sanctioned, etc), personal beliefs, religion, etc. We’re pretty whatever about most things so if you think it might fit, send it over.

We had so much fun writing our own, short, jokey one that we thought why not go one step further and start publishing collections with some other, better writers in them?

Email submissions to liz [dot] taddonio at G MAIL by February 29. We’ll get it out for Spring. If you have questions, send me an ask message or an email.

Feel free to reblog or send permalink to anyone who might be interested, this is not a closed club. We’ll only reject submissions if we have too much and it balloons into a novel.

Thanks so much!

*Mr. Show is a big life-spiration for us. Check out 1:35-2:15.

(image via emilygould)

• musicians
• eloquent speakers
• writers

On that note, I have a difficult time considering myself a “writer.” Not sure if that’s because I don’t feel I have enough experience or if I’m not as confident in what I have so far. For the most part, English majors or enthusiasts have read a lot more/probably better books than I have and it makes me feel inferior as ~someone who writes~.

I struggle with labeling myself as anything. It’s not even a rebellion against labels, but too often there’s not a category I fit into. It bothers me in a sense. 

Once again, I feel lost. Not unhappy, or unambitious—but definitely disoriented. 

A girl with pearls in her eyes sat in the grass waiting for the sun to come up. A lash fell from her eyelid not but a night before and she woke in the middle of the morning screaming in pain. There was nothing she could do. The street lights glimmered and flickered until the slightest bit of light rose from the sky. Orange and blue filtered through her majestic gems into a reflective shimmer of grayer rays.

Once it was noon she opened her mouth and eyes, fighting for sight and a revisited balance to her everyday life. Cupping her hands over her face, she tilted her head forward and then back, and then forward again. Squeezing her expression into a ball of uncertainty, her fingers marveled at the soft, flawless beads her body had released, finally. Still blind, she smiled and sooner came to realize in this moment that her curse was in turn a gift. The most precious gift of all, in fact.

Standing on her own two feet, she dropped the pearls into a purse pocket. She slid her hands across the cold, solid cane that kept her from falling over. Little did she know, her bag was torn with several holes, and anything smaller than a dime fell through.

Spring was around the corner, and a flower unbeknown to man would emerge from the earth. A child would marvel at the sight of it, smelling its heavenly perfume.

Few times did ever a single tear stream down her cheek. Besides all those cold winds and allergy ridden sneezes in the middle of the night, there were only but a few. The most significant of which was a Christmas night before all the angst and insecurity.

When her mother was trying out different gods and sanctuaries, a great statue of the crucifixion scene in all its wood and golden glory looked down upon the eyes of the wicked and blessed alike. The priest told the story of his uncle who allowed the children to tear up their gifts, breaking them to bits before tossing them into the fire pit behind him. And then an angel herself sang of the night the child of God was born. Even though this wasn’t any new information—the birth of Christ, or three wise men—it all felt so fresh, so raw, so extraordinary. As though she could imagine being the virgin mother in that predicament, and how peaceful it was supposed to be. There must have been humbleness in giving birth to a savior who had no faults and no convictions. It was a perfect story; a perfect baby born humbly in the inn.

A single tear fell from her cheek.

Tonight was not at all peaceful. She had no delight or hope or grasp of perfection. Her hand slipped between her thighs, autonomously. Out of habit even. She pictured the face of her past lover in a sea of glimmering crystals, framed in the memory of the night they devoted themselves to one another. In three weeks’ time she shed a lifetime of tears.

Only a single tear fell from her cheek on this night. Only one song was playing in her head.

I’ve been dreaming of a stranger. I can never fully capture who this stranger is—just that he or she is significant in my romantic affairs. “Romantic affairs.” Guess I’m still a bit groggy. When I wake up, I have no narrative to fall back on, no words to cling to, nor image to re-imagine. Instead I’m left with this very vague sense of memory, much like the smell of vanilla making me smile about a different time that I don’t particularly have an explanation for. Yesterday morning I woke up to my alarm tone, which was simultaneously acting as a sound cue for fireworks. Not even literal fireworks, but that sort of celebratory metaphor for fireworks. My stranger and I were in love, or whatever the equivalent is that I’ve conjured up in my head as one of the not-so-few people in this world who’ve yet to experience that ultimate emotion. Today I woke up with a dropped stomach, leading me to believe that something went awry in this completely subconscious relationship. 

I can’t shake the daunting feeling that it was all my fault.

Everybody hates me. Now don’t even try to persuade me otherwise! I know what I know and I know that anyone who’s anyone hates my freaking guts and it just sucks! It sucks. Sucks so hard. Fuck Friday. Ya know, everyone actually loved Friday until Rebecca Black got tangled up in that horrible internet meme. Now Friday is a joke. I’d rather be the butt of a joke than me. Oh Sunday gets all the credit, doesn’t he? Day of rest, Sabbath day, no one gets mail…blah blah BLAH. No one ever says, “Oh poor Monday. Doesn’t deserve to be a scape goat.” No. All those motherfuckers are thinking, “Thank whatever god or civilization that came up with MONDAY. Just think. It could’ve been me.”

Yeah well you know what? It is me. My name is Monday and you probably hate me. And the funny thing is I’m starting to hate you too. Because who told you to hate Monday? Your parents, your school systems, your boss? No. You’re an ignorant piece of human who thinks blaming a DAY OF THE WEEK for your problems and stresses will get you by. You know how I know it won’t? Because next time I come around, you’re whining about the same BS you were last week. Aren’t you just doing wonders for yourself? Yeah right. Discrimination is what it is. Your kind is full of it. You eat that shit up like some skinny black kid in a third world country who doesn’t even worry about what a working class moron says on his lunch break about how awful Mondays are.

That’s right. Fuck you and your working class privilege. I see what goes on around the world for approximately 1248 hours every year and you know what’s sad? When I said everybody hates me, I only was really referring to the assholes who get up for work or an education after the weekend that they mostly spent unproductively. No one else even counts except for you dipshits. You happy about that? Not that it matters, you can just blame it on your politicians and your parents. Grow the fuck up. Ignore everything for all I care, but quit complaining about bullshit like, “I have an essay coming up that I haven’t started” or “Man, this traffic sucks balls.” Your life is so fuckin’ hard.

Especially with a solid ending like that. HUZZAH! It’s been a while since I’ve been creative because I lost a reason to sit there and just make something. Motivation is an awesome thing and finishing this is a great incentive to want to finish more.

This is exciting. Small, but exciting.

Maybe I should have just stayed awake after I turned in my writing portfolio today. At least then I would have been tired at a decent hour. While some people in my time zone are waking up for school or work I’m sitting here trying to sing very softly because it’s quiet hours and I don’t want to disturb the people sleeping in the rooms on either side of me.

It utterly astonished me how many people in my class didn’t even bother showing up to turn in their final essay revisions. That’s all we’ve been doing this semester…and you fail the class after all that work? Perhaps they didn’t do work the last four months. I don’t understand why you would come to class twice a week and then choose to not even turn in the folder that’s worth 65% of your grade. My professor was pretty great too, but even when we were filling out evaluations people were complaining. “It was repetitive…four essays on globalization.” Are you kidding me? There are only a million aspects of it that we went over in class alone. I know I researched into more specific points that were interesting to me.

I can’t get angry over someone else’s mediocrity though. There are people who are engaged in the material and those who don’t bother to put in any effort. I can’t say I’m a perfect student—I procrastinate with the majority of those I’m surrounded by. If you have plans, great. At least I’m trying to get my money’s worth by going to school…and actually learning something. I just didn’t expect so many people here (not that many in retrospect but I notice it nonetheless) to seriously waste their time and money by sitting there and not caring in the slightest.