I am not what you call me, but what I answer to – African Proverb
The majority of us have been ordered the phrase, “Act your age.” Usually this is said in some social situation or after you made a mistake where you acted on an impulse. I think we sometimes have this idea of how we should act all the time and what’s appropriate that we reach a point where we stop forget our true self. We push it away for more important or “grown up” things and we lose touch.
This will be one of the only things I ever re-blog. I wish I wrote it:
Date a girl who writes.
Date a girl who may never wear completely clean clothes, because of coffee stains and ink spills. She’ll have many problems with her closet space, and her laptop is never boring because there are so many words, so many worlds that she’s cluttered amidst the space. Tabs open filled with obscure and popular music. Interesting factoids about Catherine the Great, and the immortality of jellyfish. Laugh it off when she tells you that she forgot to clean her room, that her clothes are lost among the binders so it’ll take her longer to get ready, that her shoes hidden under the mountain of broken Bic pens and the refurbished laptop that she’s saved for ever since she was twelve.
Kiss her under the lamppost, when it’s raining. Tell her your definition of love.
Find a girl who writes. You’ll know that she has a sense of humor, a sense of empathy and kindness, and that she will dream up worlds, universes for you. She’s the one with the faintest of shadows underneath her eyelids, the one who smells of coffee and Coca-cola and jasmine green tea. You see that girl hunched over a notebook. That’s the writer. With her fingers occasionally smudged with charcoal, with ink that will travel onto your hands when you interlock your fingers with her’s. She will never stop, churning out adventures, of traitors and heroes. Darkness and light. Fear and love. That’s the writer. She can never resist filling a blank page with words, whatever the color of the page is.
She’s the girl reading while waiting for her coffee and tea. She’s the quiet girl with her music turned up loud (or impossibly quiet), separating the two of you by an ocean of crescendos and decrescendos as she’s thinking of the perfect words. If you take a peek at her cup, the tea or coffee’s already cold. She’s already forgotten it.
Use a pick-up line with her if she doesn’t look to busy.
If she raises her head, offer to buy her another cup of coffee. Or of tea. She’ll repay you with stories. If she closes her laptop, give her your critique of Tolstoy, and your best theories of Hannibal and the Crossing. Tell her your characters, your dreams, and ask if she gotten through her first novel.
It is hard to date a girl who writes. But be patient with her. Give her books for her birthday, pretty notebooks for Christmas and for anniversaries, moleskins and bookmarks and many, many books. Give her the gift of words, for writers are talkative people, and they are verbose in their thanks. Let her know that you’re behind her every step of the way, for the lines between fiction and reality are fluid.
She’ll give you a chance.
Don’t lie to her. She’ll understand the syntax behind your words. She’ll be disappointed by your lies, but a girl who writes will understand. She’ll understand that sometimes even the greatest heroes fail, and that happy endings take time, both in fiction and reality. She’s realistic. A girl who writes isn’t impatient; she will understand your flaws. She will cherish them, because a girl who writes will understand plot. She’ll understand that endings happen for better or for worst.
A girl who writes will not expect perfection from you. Her narratives are rich, her characters are multifaceted because of interesting flaws. She’ll understand that a good book does not have perfect characters; villains and tragic flaws are the salt of books. She’ll understand trouble, because it spices up her story. No author wants an invincible hero; the girl who writes will understand that you are only human.
Be her compatriot, be her darling, her love, her dream, her world.
If you find a girl who writes, keep her close. If you find her at two AM, typing furiously, the neon gaze of the light illuminating her furrowed forehead, place a blanket gently on her so that she does not catch a chill. Make her a pot of tea, and sit with her. You may lose her to her world for a few moments, but she will come back to you, brimming with treasure. You will believe in her every single time, the two of you illuminated only by the computer screen, but invincible in the darkness.
She is your Shahrazad. When you are afraid of the dark, she will guide you, her words turning into lanterns, turning into lights and stars and candles that will guide you through your darkest times. She’ll be the one to save you.
She’ll whisk you away on a hot air balloon, and you will be smitten with her. She’s mischievous, frisky, yet she’s quiet and when she has to kill off a lovely character, when she cries, hold her and tell her that it will be alright.
You will propose to her. Maybe on a boat in the ocean, maybe in a little cottage in the Appalachian Mountains. Maybe in New York City. Maybe Chicago. Baltimore. Maybe outside her publisher’s office. Because she’s radiant, wherever she goes. Maybe even outside of a cinema where the two of you kiss in the rain. She’ll say that it is overused and clichéd, but the glint in her eyes will tell you that she appreciates it all the same.
You will smile hard as she talks a mile a second, and your heart will skip a beat when she holds your hand and she will write stories of your lives together. She’ll hold you close and whisper secrets into your ears. She’s lovely, remember that. She’s self made and she’s brilliant. Her names for the children might be terrible, but you’ll be okay with that. A girl who writes will tell your children fantastical stories.
Because that is the best part about a girl who writes. She has imagination and she has courage, and it will be enough. She’ll save you in the oceans of her dreams, and she’ll be your catharsis and your 11:11. She’ll be your firebird and she’ll be your knight, and she’ll become your world, in the curve of her smile, in the hazel of her eye the half-dimple on her face, the words that are pouring out of her, a torrent, a wave, a crescendo - so many sensations that you will be left breathless by a girl who writes.
Maybe she’s not the best at grammar, but that is okay.
Date a girl who writes because you deserve it. She’s witty, she’s empathetic, enigmatic at times and she’s lovely. She’s got the most colorful life. She may be living in NYC or she may be living in a small cottage. Date a girl who writes because a girl who writes reads.
A girl who writes will understand reality. She’ll be infuriating at times, and maybe sometimes you will hate her. Sometimes she will hate you too. But a girl who writes understands human nature, and she will understand that you are weak. She will not leave on the Midnight Train the first moment that things go sour. She will understand that real life isn’t like a story, because while she works in stories, she lives in reality.
Date a girl who writes.
Because there is nothing better then a girl who writes.
(via dubdee23)
What do I want out of this semester? It seems like a funny question to ask, I mean don’t students all want the same things? To get good grades, not have school become overwhelming, and hopefully have some fun during the semester. It occurs to me as I was writing this that we as students have been asking the wrong question. We should be asking what I need to do, because the growth is in the process and not in the end goal. There are countless ways to get to an end goal but if we do the same thing every time then we’re not changing but stuck. One of the goals I feel that IDEA classes offer is to get unstuck from our habits and find new and better ones.
Last week our IDEA 1100 class did an exercise in freestyle rap. I am sure I was not the only one who had a mini heart attack when our facilitator informed us of the day’s activity. Thinking back now it seems kind of silly to be as worried as I was initially, it wasn’t as if our class was going to do a show or be recorded and used my lack of rapping skills as blackmail. It was a great exercise for me, in terms of reminding myself to get out of my own way. It was fantastic to be able to do as much or as little as possible but everyone had to say something when the mic got to them. For the second round all we had to do was make a noise, and for some reason this was one of the most pressurized things I’ve had to do in the New Year. All over making a fucking noise, when we breathe that’s a noise, when we were kids we made noise like it was our jobs. I feel like one of the purposes of this class and IDEA as a whole is to rediscover things we did as kids as do the grown up version of those things. In the case of last week it was making noises and turning it into an attempt to freestyle rap and beat box. I feel this is important because it sucks when our version of playing is watching television.
Thirty Years Ago:
Superhuman and human relationships are nothing new. Little fanfare in most cases. However, when the superhuman involved happens to be one of the most controversial super heroines in recent memory, it turns into a monster deal.
Twelve Years Ago:
Gabriel Knight sits on the concrete steps of St. Francis School for the Young and Gifted. Or as outsiders see it, the school for the pampered. The autumn wind cuts through Gabriel’s tweed jacket like a laser. It does not shake the smile from his face though. A year ago, he instead of sitting on the steps he would rush inside his classroom to hide before anyone else arrived. He knew all the hiding spots during the open times between classes. A haven where the school would not engulf him. But that was before he found a friend.
Recently I overheard two mothers discussing Christmas. One mother told the other that her son asked her if she could text Santa to tell him that he has been good. My initial thoughts in no order:
1. That is cute.
2. I should tweet this.
3. If I was her son I would be wondering how my mom has Santa’s number. Does this mean I have the coolest parents ever? Clearly.
4. I feel old.
Greeting cards are the ground beef of words
instead of saying how we really feel
we fall back on a generic safe statement
who wants to be safe?
Friendship is supposed to be courageous
so instead of a greeting card
here is a poem:
For Act I click here.
Dan and Steven have parted ways on their walk home. When Dan reaches the front of his house he notices a boy sitting on his front steps. The boy is dressed in a school uniform with a pin of a skull on his jacket lapel. Dan has never seen this boy before. This boy is more than he appears to be. The boy is on the front steps because Dan needs his help whether he realizes it or not. The only problem is Dan is not sure if any of this is real. But for a twelve year old when does that matter?
The music blares through the apartment, “She don’t believe in shooting stars, but she believe in shoes and cars.” Katie Holt had enough, this stopped being cute a month ago, she thought to herself. She marches into her roommate’s room without an invitation. All of her senses are assaulted when she walks in. The music booms, the only light is provided by a computer screen, and the smell assaults her senses. Stale air, old pizza, and an assortment of empty bottles and cans. She kicks over a pile of laundry that has been building up for a month. Her roommate Brooklyn Jacoby does not even bother to turn around.
I'm a nomadic student, whose current major is Creative Writing. My smile has been described as, "It makes sense that you're not a virgin." I am a former athlete who is now a writer, rookie stand-up comedian and slam poet. I believe that the best art doesn't come from a need but rather, a response to a need.
Everyone seems to like me, except for those who don't.
Co-creator of This is Why we Can't Have Nice Things: http://wedontaskformuch.wordpress.com
😳 As @SHAQ would say ! :: http://bit.ly/ZkNRsb
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