I'd give anything

to be right here.

It's been a drab hangover, argumentative, and long day.  But here is a nugget of beauty...the same sort of beauty that is everywhere if I'm looking.  Today I didn't look and I wish I had, but tomorrow is a new day.  Tomorrow I will trust myself enough to look.

Good night,

Chelsea

(photo credit through papertissue.tumblr)

A Poem for Beach People

I'm reading the Complete Works of Elizabeth Bishop and came across this awesome poem.  I haven't been to the beach in ages it seems, but this poem took me there right away.  It's beautiful!!  So I thought I'd share so you can have a little beach time on this chilly January day.

The Sandpiper

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat.  On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them,
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards.  As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist.  And then the world is
minute and vast and clear.  The tide
is higher or lower.  He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray,
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

--Elizabeth Bishop from the collection Questions of Travel

I really connected with how preoccupied the sandpiper is too because, this being my last semester of college, naturally, its INSANE!  I feel like I'm caught up in the looking and the waiting and the waiting.  I'm so excited about what's coming next that I tend to forget about what's here right now.  Regardless, it's a great poem with evocative images and descriptions that I think are spot on.

Have a great day y'all,

Chelsea

GREAT NEWS!!

My awesome, amazing boyfriend - TREY NASH- got into the pharmacy school at Auburn!!  I'm so proud of him and so happy and so AHHHHH!!  That means we're moving to Alabama in August!  I'm stoked for the ensuing apartment hunting and best of all exploring a new place!!!!

From My Odd World Of Writing to Yours

Hello Everybody!!

I thought I'd start with a picture of the Laocoon sculpture.  My professor brought it up in class today and until then I'd completely forgotten I've seen this beautiful piece of art in person at the Vatican Museum in Rome.  Now I can't stop thinking about it.  It's such a passionate piece of art and perfects something I strive for in my writing all the time.  It's powerful and elegant and so emotional.  I love it.

Next-- I'm thinking it's about time to share some of my fiction writing with you.  To start us off, here's a "short short" (a piece of fiction that's around 300 words give or take a little).


Experiments in Lewisburg, Ohio

In the summer we would roll up our pants and wade in the river that cut across our farm in Lewisburg, Ohio, trying to catch crawfish, upending rocks and splashing and screaming if we thought we saw a snake.  Bernie was my best friend back then.  We came up with the greatest plans.

            When we were eight we decided that chickens not being able to fly just had to be a hoax.  All birds could fly, that much we knew.  The idea came to us when we were jumping on the trampoline one day, pretending to be rockets, seeing who could shoot up the fastest.  When my mom went to the grocery store that afternoon we got started.  We visited the henhouse and chose the chicken that we thought had the best looking wings.  “Oh yeah,” Bernie said, when I pointed out the hen, “That old biddy can fly.”

            We put the hen carefully on the trampoline and climbed up after her.  We walked gently towards the nervous, clucking bird.  Bernie’s eyes locked with mine and we grabbed each other’s hands, making a bridge over the bird.  “NOW!” I shouted.

            We jumped at the same time as high as we could, landing deep in the surface of the trampoline.  We dropped our hands and then rolled apart just in time to see the chicken soaring into the air squawking and flapping her wings uselessly against the bright blue summer sky.  She plummeted back down and we heard two sickening cracks in quick succession as the chicken’s legs broke on impact.  The hen didn’t make any more noise.  She was breathing heavily and her eyes were glazed over.  “Oh shit,” said Bernie, “That bird sure as hell can’t fly.”

            Dinner that night was chicken cooked in garlic and lemon with our least favorite vegetable, peas.  Bernie was making a funny face when Mom put the plates down in front of us and I felt a hard knocking against the insides of my stomach.  “Eat up girls,” my Mom said, “I want to see clean plates.” 




I'm really enjoying this form of fiction writing (new to me this semester) because you can be as flat out crazy as you want and the short short just lets you.  There are no rules to writing a piece of short short fiction.  You should try one yourself.  It's a lot of fun.  Let me know how they go!




Happy Monday folks


Chelsea       

The most beautiful short story

I have fallen in love with Eudora Welty.  I had already read her collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, and her novella, The Robber Bridegroom, both of which I enjoyed, but she didn't skyrocket into my favorite authors (joining Steinbeck and Hemingway and Tim O'Brien) until I read the story

"First Love" in her collection The Wide Net.

The story was so beautiful it literally took my breath away.  It is not at all what I expected it to be from the title.  It was brilliantly crafted and the last line was the most well-placed I've seen in a short story in a long time.  This story is delicate in a way, yet so far-reaching, haunting, resonating in a part of my soul that often gets neglected.  I could tell from the words that were so carefully chosen that Welty loved her characters like a mother loves her own children and every single word in the story is an ode to her devotion to them.  I can honestly say I've never felt something quite like this after reading a short story.  If I had to compare the feeling to another short story I would say it's the most like I felt after reading "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" for the first time...but different.

You absolutely have to read this story.  It's incredible.

Have a beautiful night,

Chelsea

Happy Birthday to me!

I'm 22 today.  WHAT??  I know, I don't believe it either.  But nonetheless I'm excited.  I bought this as a little gift for myself from DELIA's

I LOVE IT!!!

I also got the best present ever from Trey...it's a 2 liter Camelbak...if you know me, you get it...I'm so excited to try it out on the trail.  Can't wait!!

The Camelbak has gotten me so pumped about the reunion NOLS trip in June: beautiful scenery, awesome new gear and best of all GREAT PEOPLE!!!  

I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday...Trey and I are headed to IHOP soon...yes, that's where I wanted by birthday dinner...I love pancakes.  : )

Chelsea

Inevitable

We all eventually let our parents down.

Then we say, "I don't give a damn what they think!"

Then that tiny place deep down inside that still wants your mom to bring you soup when you're sick cries.

Then one day, you get sick, make your own soup, and can be proud of your choices regardless of what they ever said.

(this was for sale on ebay...awesome)

Good luck making your own soup (even if you're 90 years old),

Chelsea

Yarn

I've been reading a lot of craft blogs lately and looking through tumblrs that all seem to revolve around a return to a woman's strength and creativity through sewing: an interesting concept considering how much women of the 20th century did to pull us away from the idea of a domestic sphere.  Even so there is a new edge to these crafty yarn-obsessed women with their knitted hats and their pillow stitching and scarf making.  They impress me and I'm not sure why.  Personally, I hate sewing.  I have very little patience for the detail-oriented process and I never learned to knit despite several attempts on my mom's part to teach me when I was little.  I've been thinking hard about this new (or at least new to me) trend.  At first I found myself resisting this idea of arts and crafts because I didn't think it was art that made a statement.  I thought it was simply an attempt to be "vintage" which is the new edgy it seems.  (And I really can't stand when people make/wear/buy vintage simply because it's vintage and currently "in").  Maybe it is.  However, the more I looked them over, the more I realized these are new thoughts and new ideas and while personally, I don't and probably won't ever identify myself with the "crafty" sorts of arts, I have a new appreciation for the women who dedicate themselves to this idea.  Here are some pictures from a blog I frequent called A Beautiful Mess .  This woman is the height of modern craft and while I find her dolls in homemade snow hats to be ridiculously creepy, I've begun to at least understand the work and dedication behind the process.

(this is a pic of her studio, which partly inspired the short fiction mentioned below)

I'm even making yarn an important "character" in the short story I'm currently writing.  We'll see how it turns out, but I like it so far.

Though I generally consider myself to be an open-minded person these craft blogs helped remind me that creativity comes in all shapes and sizes were a reminder to keep an open-mind even if it's not something I'm personally in to.  I think we all can use reminders like that now and then.

More true to my interest in art, I joined a reading group for Joyce's Ulysses.  I'm really excited about being able to read such a difficult novel/experiment/groundbreaking piece of literature with a group so we can talk it over!  Stream of consciousness writing absolutely fascinates me.

Have a lovely evening!  I'm finally out of holiday mode, so my posts will be much more frequent : )

Chelsea