Rememory

I was looking through old drafts of blog posts, and I found this one. Apparently I never posted it, or, if I did, I went to edit it later and never put it back up. An essay from my junior year of high school.

I am in their house, his house, but the doors are twice my height. My sisters wear large pink dresses, layers of tulle bursting around their legs. They wobble about, unable to support their heavy crowns. Although I must stand on tiptoes to see over the couch, the dresses are too small. I leave the other girls and go upstairs, looking for him. I find him using the computer in the kitchen. I sit next to him, on the same chair but barely touching, and he shows me how to fight with animated soldiers.

He races up the hill in my backyard and I chase him, trying to release the competitive spirit that he has been coaxing from me all night. He trips over a tree root and slows, I slam into him, we tumble down. He catches himself on his elbows before landing above me, but his leg still comes down on mine and I groan. I look down, trying to disentangle, and I see his pale, pale arms, glowing in the barely-there moonlight.

The moon is above us, and we are silhouetted in its light. I dance down the middle of the street, ignoring the glass shards in my hand, forgetting that I’m leaving tomorrow. I dangle the spicy mint he wants so badly in front of his face before snatching it away as he lunges and I twirl down the street, singing “mine, mine, mine.” He gives up, returning to the sidewalk, but I continue to twirl and joy under the dull moon. Then he is beside me, grabbing me, pulling me over and a car runs by so fast I can barely see it, so close I can almost touch it. He saves me. Our mothers say that now we have to get married, like the rescued damsels in distress do in all the stories, and our blushes are hidden by the dangerous darkness. I still do not give him the mint.

We are back, before it all, in Iona, where the beach is close and the tide closer. My sister hit him earlier, and he didn’t hit her back, because he never hurt anyone, not back then. He has taught me to fight the way I could, has taught me not to flinch from pain by hurling ping-pong ball after ping-pong ball right at me, but would never hit a girl, would never hurt a soul, would always save my life. I trust his goodness. Our families are on the couches, spread out and close together, and we play a card game that is more laughing than thinking. I am wet for the first time. I notice, but I don’t know what it means. When I go to the bathroom later, there is a bloody spot on the inside of his basketball shorts, the ones I wear because my luggage is lost. My mother gives me Motrin and a bulky pad and cleans the shorts and tells me that I am a woman now, and I wear her sweatpants to bed and think but I am still twelve, and I am confused by all this growing up when all I really want is to play another round of cards.

I lie in bed that night in a room with my sisters but in my own bed because now I am special, now I am old. I realize, as the last bit of wakefulness leaves me, that my body has just told me that it is ready for sex, for love, for children. I try to picture it, but I don’t know how. The next day, I examine the books in the house until I find one with vivid sex scenes, perfectly specific, and I read until I can see it in my head and have to put the book down because the image disgusts me.

I am fifteen now and he is naked, above me around me within me, sweating, panting, shaking arms dark and glowing in the dim lamplight. I toss and turn, the visual plaguing me even though it has not happened and is based entirely on imaginings, but it makes my insides warm in a way that no other dreams do, and I decide not to chase it away.

It is snowing, and he is at my house, and we chase and run with a flock of children, throwing snowballs, and I see him break a window but he doesn’t know I saw. When the window is found later, no one ever knows that it was him. He wrestles his sister who is less than half his size after she calls him weak and emasculated and worthless. He is pushing her, tugging her, pinning her down with the arms that hold him over above within me. She claws at him, writhes, but cannot escape, and he tries to smother her with a pillow. I scream.

I can never marry him, never be with him, says my mother, because he is angry and only knows how to hit. That’s what comes of having a father like his.

I am sprawled across a couch in my basement, the gangling limbs that I’ve finally come to control and love and cherish stretching all the way from armrest to armrest. He is seated on the other couch, joystick in his hands, voice calm, steering an animated car around and around an animated track, destroying competitor after competitor as he tells me that he and his girlfriend broke up because he got angry and didn’t know what to do, that it just comes out, that, that now he’s not allowed to drive because his mother saw him hit his sister. “I don’t know why it happens,” he tells me, looking only at the television. “I can’t control it, can’t see it coming, I just get angry, sometimes.”

He breaks things.

We stand in the lights of the subway car, close together although it is late and the car is empty, falling into each other with each bump and curve and turn and stop. His eyes go transparent, the pale green-blue washed out by the bright bright lights, and I can see through him and into him and he is mine and I love him and I want him but I know he is not safe.

I bike down roads less than a mile from home but they are foreign now. I go faster and faster, imagining monsters on my tail, fighting to get away, fighting the urge to go to his house and throw rocks at his window and cry that I want him and need him and beg him to hold me. I cannot go there, cannot do that, cannot let him know because even if he loves me, even if he wants me, I cannot have him. I pedal, and I cry, and I pray, seriously for the first time in my life, that this hurt can go away, that this love can run its course and leave me because I am too feeble to fight him and to weak to let go. I must not love a boy who is dangerous.

An Actually Somewhat Grand Finale

My last day of high school is now over.

Well, technically, it's still underway--I have a month of internship before I graduate. But no more classes. No more awkward lunches with Peter (though, really, I need to just get comfortable talking to him, because if I don't get over myself prom is going to have a high suckiness potential). No more terrible talent shows, no more "quiet in the halls", no more permissions to enter public spaces of the building.

Not that hacking is going to be allowed, just that it'll be different. I look forward to the entire experience.

That said: no more homework, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks.

On the plus side, though, my beloved friend Julie wrote me a poem that was read aloud during the pilgrimage. I'm typing it up here so that I don't lose it, because it was far to sweet and far to lovely for me to let myself forget it.

Her name's but one way she is always known:
Her purple hair, her brains, her happy tone,
What other ways are there, the color green?
That, too, is a descriptor often seen.
And our Tea towers over most of us,
Though when we comment, she may make a fuss
And say she'd not prefer to be so tall.
Admittedly, she tends to trip and fall,
The only little drawback to her height.
I know that she has college in her sight;
She'll be somewhere in [redacted] in a year,
or sunny Cali. She's a pioneer
and has a plan for the electric grid:
Flow batteries! She just received a bid
To spend two years and start a company,
That's far beyond the reach of you and me.
Between these two she now will have to choose:
Start college, save the world? She cannot lose!
Oh, our Tea, we all know, does love to read
Those math and physics texts, though she will plead:
It doesn't suit her to be just a geek;
Conviction's what you hear when she does speak.
Politically, her goal is women's rights:
One of her main concerns is thus the plights
That girls, when in her field, will sometimes face.
Impostor syndrome: they feel out of place
And never understand what they can do.
She says: if I can do it, you can, too!
In many classes, Tea, she always draws;
Her doodles on her paper are not flaws,
They're simply an expression of her thought,
And still she takes her nots. She really ought
to concentrate a little more in class,
But does well anyway: give her a pass!
Before she graduates and leaves this school,
She'll be on internship at someplace cool:
For four weeks she'll be in a bio lab 
And know cells microscopic as a dab.
Before I also say goodbye and leave,
I'll tell her she'll succeed---to just believe.


This continues to make me all warm and fuzzy inside. It also seems to sum up a lot of what I do, which makes me love Julie all the more for knowing me so well. For the record, any of the rhymes/syllable counts that sound silly were created by me in an attempt to account for changes in my name and location.

I also wrote my own little piece for Yuma.

Oh dear Yuma, from not quite here, his hair's
Not long nor short and neither is it fair---
It's black! His glasses once were rimmed in wire
But then they broke. He used some glue and fire
To make them whole, but bought a different pair.
Today, more stylish glasses he does wear.
He serenades beloved Gin upon
His uke or small guitar. When she bent on 
A-polishing his nails, she made them shine
Gray-silver like robots of his design.
Each week he spends much time a-working hard
To train the frosh to be of high regard.
I say---a lab partner beyond compare
Except, perhaps, in Gretchen, to be fair.
He's great at stats and all things math. I think
His random samples are quite neat. The clink
Or thud of Frisbee falling to the ground---
It is to him familiar a sound.
I wish you luck in measuring the height
Of rolling coins. Do keep your smile bright.


I think I should win some sort of prize for the number of hints to my identity I managed to squeeze into it without being obvious about the hintiness to people other than Yuma. Regardless, the pilgrimage was quite fun, and now I've got the poems recorded for posterity. Good is good.

A Very Much Not Grand Finale

Well, I've finished my last high school homework assignment. It's a piece of almost-shit. The characters are still trying to find consistency, the events don't quite flow, the end isn't really even the almost-ending that short stories can get away with. But I'm sleepy, and I'll still pass the class just so long as I find something to hand in. Thus:

Sarah and Charlie were sitting in the airport. She sat up straight, her ankles crossed, her back not in contact with the back of the chair. Her straight brown hair was in a low, smooth ponytail. Her clothes managed to look neat and unwrinkled despite the four hours they’d just spent in the air. Charlie was pressed back, as far as he could go. His legs were stretched out in front of him, his arms fanned out onto the back of the two adjacent seats, Sarah’s included. He looked tired at best, exhausted at worst. His hair—also brown, also straight—was overgrown, half covering his eyes. He made no effort to remove it.

“This is crazy,” said Charlie.

Sarah remained quiet, her lips tight together.

“Seriously, what are we doing?”

“Waiting for the van service,” said Sarah.

“You know that isn't what I meant.”

She ignored him and removed a folder of travel information, pulled out a paper labeled “Airport Transportation,” then used her cell phone to call the number.

Charlie, now, was the stationary one.

“It's waiting outside,” she said, standing up, her back remaining in a forced straight line. “Come on.”

They didn't talk at all during the van ride; they merely looked out the windows. Sarah's eyes focused on each building, and she seemed to be cataloguing everything as it flashed by. Charlie's hair was still in front of his eyes, which were open but not moving in time with the van.

They eventually arrived at the house they'd be staying in. They walked together down the halls, peering into each bedroom. There was the master—large, well-furnished, where their parents would stay when they arrived. A second room had a queen bed and was covered in pastels. It bore a remarkable resemblance to Sarah's bedroom back at home. The next room had two twins, and the entire space was bright. The walls were a deep red, the bedspreads yellow.

“This would be Sia's room.”

“Charlie.” Sarah's voice was sharp.

“It's just like her. She always says her favorite color is 'sun.'”

“Said.”

“What?”

“It's 'said,' Charlie. She always said.”

“Do we have to do that?”

“You can't just pretend she's not dead,” said Sarah, her voice still even.

“Well.” Charlie took a breath, paused for a moment, searching for the words.

“You can't just pretend she never existed.”

“I'm not trying to pretend that.”

“Then why do you get angry as soon as I mention her?” Charlie's voice, unlike Sarah's, was raised.

Sarah inhaled and exhaled slowly.

“Why?” His voice broke in the middle of the short word, slipping up an octave.

“Because for whatever reason, Mom and Dad decided to send us off on this godforsaken vacation while they sorted out the details. They want us to be happy. Sia would be screaming at us to be happy. And I can't be happy when I think about what happened to her.”

“Then think about her before!”

“It's not that easy!”

“Really? I thought controlling her own thoughts would be easy for Ms. Always-in-Control?”

Sarah turned away from him and walked to the room she'd claimed as hers.

The next morning, the two ate breakfast silently—Sarah an omelette cooked perfectly, Charlie an overflowing bowl of cereal. He pushed his hair back a few times and looked at her. He opened his mouth to speak a few times, but seemed to decide against it. She kept her eyes trained on the food, following each bite as it entered her mouth. She finished eating, washed her plate and pan, then went to the door.

“Charlie, I'm going for a walk.”

“Okay.”

“I'll be back later.”

“Okay.”

She walked down the unfamiliar streets for quite some time. The houses varied—in some places, they were simple, cookie-cutter imitations of their neighbors, but in others, they towered behind hedges, each home sculpted differently. Sarah didn't look at the houses, though. Her eyes focused directly ahead, and she walked with even steps, carefully. She didn't know where she was going, not really; she only knew that she had to go somewhere.

She walked on. She walked past neighborhoods and streams, coffeeshops and boutiques, locals and visitors. She saw what she passed, but could not recollect where she'd been even moments before. At some point, she reached a road with an end. The dead end turned into a parking lot, and nested next to this parking lot was a small church.

It wasn't grand at all, just a simple stucco building painted the same color as those around it. Sarah wouldn't have known it for a church at all if not for a billboard behind glass outside.
Sarah had never been one for churches. Dead men on crosses seemed silly, the lessons of the Bible seemed unnecessary explanations for innate wrongs. Yet here she was, at the end of a walk, and here was the church, at the end of a road, so she walked up to the door and entered.
She hadn't realized while she was walking that there was sound, but when the door thudded shut behind her she was startled to discover that here it was silent, quieter than breakfast, quieter than she had been these past days. The windows were dusty and almost-dark, and the light flooded out from them as a dull gold. The pews were empty but for evenly spaced Bibles, and at the front of the room stood an intricate cross, the very sort that usually made Sarah uncomfortable.

Here, though, it fit. She walked forward, her steps echoing through the room without breaking the calm. When she reached the front, she sat down slowly, crossing her legs like a child—like Sia—would sit. She sat there for a long time—seconds, minutes, maybe hours. Her head was tilted up, her body every bit as still as it had been. After a time, though, she began to move. Her spine drooped, her eyes dropped, her hands fell to the ground. She began to cry—quietly, but with tears—and then to shake. Her hands clutched at the floor as she let the rest of her self release, quake, and then calm.

After a time—minutes, seconds, or hours—her tears stopped and her body stilled. She looked up, again, at the cross she still didn't quite understand. “Take care of her,” she whispered.”
“Take care of her,” she said again, louder this time.

She turned and walked out of the church, then walked back to the house, step after step after step. Charlie was inside, still at the table, an empty bowl of cereal in front of him. He spun his spoon, round and round and round, and he peered at a spot on the table in front of the bowl.

“Charlie?” said Sarah.

He looked up.

“I'm home.”

Today

• I found this really awesome applied math paper called "Forecasting Hourly Electricity Using Time-Varying Splines."
• I read half of said paper before recalling that I should be doing more pressing homework.
• I wrote about half a sentence more on my "better get done in the next few weeks" paper. Note to self: work faster.
• I rewrote my abstract (will anyone notice if it doesn't match the one on the poster?)
• I sent an email stating that my poster is free-standing.
• I took an accidental 1.5 hour nap. I got out of the shower, wrapped myself up in a towel and began to read Act II of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." The next thing I knew, I was lying groggily on my side and Shelby was saying "If you don't respond to the question of when you're eating dinner, I'm going to unwrap you." I fortunately discovered that I only have three pages of the act left.
• I ate dinner with my mother. We talked about how I've already picked up the MIT habit of referring to everything by either an acronym or a number.
• I freaked out about how much work I had to do.
• I decided I really like applied math and drew up more drafts of courses. If I take the math courses, plus the energy studies program, the 5 electrical engineering courses I want to take and the flex major in physics, I will have a reasonable schedule (4 courses a semester (yes, I factored in HASS and GIRs). If I do the focused option, it would result in overloading. I suppose this is something I can worry about in another 1.5 years, once I've taken more of these courses and have a better idea of what I actually enjoy.
• I wrote a blog post.
• I became hungry and went to eat more food.

Well, I will anyway.

Promiscuity vs. Abstinence; Science vs. Religion: Two Issues, One Fight

I'd had a few requests for my paper, so I'm going to post it. I plan on following it with a discussion on what I actually agree with from it. It should also be noted that I'm not sure why I'm doing this, as the paper was not, overall, that readable, and while I'm glad I've finished writing it, I'm still not sure I actually like it.

Regardless:

Modern technology has rendered virgin brides obsolete. It used to be that abstaining from sex until marriage prevented spread of sexually transmitted diseases, but this is not so in a world where condoms are commonplace. It used to be that a virginal bride was the only guarantee that a man’s child was his own, but this is not so in a time where technology can evaluate parentage. It is no longer even true the virginity is identifiable; if one wishes to practice deceit, surgeries can restore the hymen to all of its former glory. For hundreds of years, if not more, there has existed a paradigm in which women are expected to remain chaste until marriage. This “is a tenet of nearly all religions” (Stephey), but this particular sort of ideology had an altogether practical purpose: keeping bloodlines clean, preventing disease, and insuring that children had two parents. Technological development, though, has virtually eliminated these issues. In modern-day America, virginity is unnecessary.

However, in this same country, the abstinence movement is growing in strength. This group advocates for a complete lack of sex—and often sexual activity—prior to marriage. Members of the movement preach that a woman who has consensual premarital sex is a “broken victim” (Valenti 44) whose sexuality has become a metaphorical “poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker” (41). Never mind that this woman is likely left with few physical marks—her chastity has been destroyed, and she now lacks her nascent goodness. By proclaiming that “sexual purity” is a “substitute … for real morality” (39), the virginity movement perpetuates the idea that a virgin bride is a necessity; no man should wish to marry an immoral woman, and, in the eyes of the movement, sex is all that it takes. Modern members of the virginity movement also fight for abstinence-only sex education, which avoids any teaching of contraceptives, and often include false scientific information. These programs typically “have a background in or connection to Christian organizations” (Kanabus). This exclusion of science in a religion-based discussion of sexuality is indicative of the degree to which modern Christianity pushes back against science. The abstinence movement has become not just a moral issue, but a microcosm of the constant battle between religious rule and scientific progress.

This fight is one that is believed to have begun “when Christianity began to obtain political power,” and it exists with “the expansive force of human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other” (Draper). This struggle manifests itself in many ways, but it had a particularly strong presence during the 16th century, when the Catholic Church “was under considerable threat … [from] the Protestant Reformation” (Jordan). Fearful of allowing anything to subvert their power, church leaders executed Giordano Bruno, burning him at the stake for attempting to popularize the Copernican model of the universe, which placed the sun, rather than Earth, at the center of our solar system—a theory “contrary to Holy Scripture” (de Santillana 313). Galileo, the man who found proof for this idea, was eventually forced to swear to “abandon the false opinion that the Sun is the center of the world and is immovable” (312). Religion, in an attempt to maintain political control, stood directly against the cause of science. The philosophy of Young Earth Creationism has followed a similar—albeit somewhat less dramatic—path, with the belief that God created earth some 6000 years ago in conflict with confirmed scientific findings (“Biblical”). The pattern occurs with relatively high frequency; something from scripture is questioned and there is a split as to what is believed. Invariably, the religious take up arms against the science just as the science gathers enough strength to discount some portion of traditional theology.

It seems somewhat illogical, though, that this is the same issue at the root of the abstinence movement. The members of the movement, however, seem to have no difficulty accepting this idea. There is a considerable Christian history of lashing out against technological developments perceived as creating a benefit to sexual activity. It was the push against premarital sex that gave Gardasil, a vaccine against the sexually transmitted Human Papilloma Virus, the nickname the Promiscuity Vaccine, as it was believed by many that young women “may see [the vaccine] as a license to engage in premarital sex” (Gibbs). This fear has been versed again and again, about “introducing anesthesia during childbirth, or using penicillin to treat syphilis” (Gibbs). It was the belief of staunch Christians that sinners ought to suffer for their sins—regardless of the fact that the definition of fornication as a sin may have originated because of the associated health benefits in a pre-technology society. This makes it quite clear that, from the side of the Abstinence Movement, modern technology is a threat.

This is likely because the original practical purposes of abstinence have been buried beneath a sea of religious doctrine as a result of attempts to make people actually abstain. From the time that Christianity was first codified into the Bible, the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians has been included (Pitre). This book contains direct statements against premarital sex, warning the faithful to “[f]lee fornication” (6:18), as “fornicators”—those who engage in premarital sex—are among those who “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (6:9). These words and others, after a considerable quantity of time had passed, governed life in Puritan America. This is the setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and purity from sin is a state that most of the novel's characters try and fail to reach. Closely related as purity and virginity frequently are, virginity is only explicitly discussed once, in reference to the young virgins who flock to the minister. These women are “victims of a passion so imbued with religious sentiment that they imagin[e] it to be all religion, and br[ing] it openly, in their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice before the alter” (118-9). There is the “white” of purity linked with the more sexual “bosoms,” but, more importantly, there is the conflation of religion and sexuality; “passion” applies equally well to religious fervor and sexual acts. For virgins, Christianity is this passion, because religion, like virginity, is good. It is unclear whether Hawthorne considers this the truth of the matter—the passion is “imagined … to be all religion” rather than simply being so, but it does proclaim that passion is something to be “sacrifice[d] before the alter”—to succeed religiously, sexuality must be surrendered, and, prior to marriage, virginity is the way to assure this. Religion promulgates the desire for abstinence, replacing the initial practicality of abstinence with something much less earthly, lacking the more rational reasoning that may have driven the creation of the original laws.

Just how important virginity became can be seen in Tess of the D'ubervilles. Tess, the heroine of the novel, is raped by a nobleman and eventually gives birth to a sickly child who soon dies. She keeps the identity of the father a secret, as well as her own unwillingness, so it is difficult to determine if the magnitude of the villagers' opprobrium would have differed had they known the truth. Tess eventually marries Angel, who is the son of a minister but elected not to enter the clergy. When Angel speaks with his father about what the woman he marries ought to be like, it exemplifies the link between goodness and chastity and shows that these views were present in the late Victorian era. Angel's father suggests “a pure and saintly woman,” and Angel agrees with the parallel “good and devout” (200), clearly connecting purity with both “goodness” and, in general, any “truly Christian woman” (199). When Angel goes on to reject Tess because of her previous defilement, his name adds a quantity of religious sanctity to his actions—a religious stamp on the idea that the loss of virginity is all that it takes to become undesirable, even is this loss is the result of rape. Angel's behavior is indicative of the oversimplification of women's morality that Valenti points out in modern America: virgins are good and sexually active unmarried women the opposite. The book also demonstrates that the ideal of pureness had somewhat overtaken its religious basis; although Angel was willing to forgive Tess' lack of intellectual knowledge of religion, it took many years for him to forgive a sin that she did not bring down upon herself. It should be noted, again, that it was neither the child nor any particular risk of disease that bothered Angel; it was the fact that his Tess was not the “pure” Christian woman he believed her to be.

The idea that abstinence is driven primarily by religion and associated religious morality is one that exists strongly in modern America, centuries after Tess' story took place and an ocean away. Organizations within the abstinence movement make no secret of the fact that their commitment to religion comes before all else. True Love Waits, for example, is an abstinence organization that, as of 2004, had received 400,000 pledge cards. Signing a pledge on the internet or in person involves making five commitments, to “god,” “yourself,” “family,” “friends,” and “future mate and children.” Each commitment is explained using a quote from the Bible, because even after all these years, Christian doctrine is still considered the primary motivator for premarital abstinence. Religious educators do their best to get the ideas across early—Souther Baptist churches teach youth that “[s]ex is dirty” from before they even know what sex is (Baines). At the same time, scientific progress is denied and misinformation is spread in the name of sexual education (Connolly). Organizations fighting HIV must regularly struggle with the fact that, because “according to church teaching … sex before marriage is wrong” (Rochman), many people—including Pope Benedict XVI (Butt)—do not support providing condoms to stop the spread of HIV, as this would be tacit acceptance of premarital sex.

Science, however, marches on. The development of the internet makes it harder for abstinence education programs to spread misinformation. Contraceptives are being developed for the opposite gender (Schieszer), and Pope Benedict actually changed his mind on the role of condoms in disease prevention (Randall). At the same time, however, the ever more present media has enabled sexualization of younger individuals (Durham); it seems that there is more to protecting youth than merely preserving their virginity. By shutting abstinence so thoroughly out of the purview of secular logic, it has become that much more difficult for those creating new developments to insure that people are protecting themselves and their partners. As it stands now, the only true way to escape the stigma that is attached to sexuality—a stigma that is only the echo of that in Puritan America and Victorian England—is to follow in the path of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Orlando becomes sexually involved with a number of individuals, and lives by the motto “Life! A Lover!” (244), finding each within the other. Orlando is able to be relatively promiscuous without being scorned because of her complete disregard for gender norms—this is a character who literally changes characters halfway through the text—and her immortality, which allows her to exist as someone somewhat separate from the cultural rules of her era. In today's actual America, however, the battle continues; the religious man the battlements in defense of ideology that is has lost its purpose when under the fire of development.

Works Cited
Baines, Steven. “Sex and the Church --- Teaching Abstinence in a World Awash with Sex.” General Board of Church & Society of The United Methodist Church. 19 Dec. 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

The Bible. King James Vers. Project Gutenberg. Literary Archive Foundation, 1 Aug. 1989. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

“Biblical Young Earth Creationism.” Northwest Creation Network. Web. 7 Jan. 2011.

Connolly, Ceci. “Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says.” Washington Post 2 Dec. 2004: A01. Web. 7 Jan. 2011.

Draper, John William. Preface. History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. By Draper. Comp. Charles Keller and David Widger. Project Gutenberg. Literary Archive Foundation, 21 Aug. 2008. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

Durham, M. Gigi. The Lolita Effect. Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2008. Print.

Gibbs, Nancy. “Defusing the War Over the 'Promiscuity' Vaccine.” Time 21 Jun. 2006. Web. 5 Dec. 2010.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'ubervilles. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2009. Print.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2009. Print.

Jordan, Robin. “Galileo Galilei vs the Church: Incompatibility of Science and Religion.” Florida Atlantic University, Fort Lauderdale. FAU Science Courses. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

Kanabus, Annabel, et al. “Abstinence and Sex Education.” Avert. 2011. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

Pitre, Brant. Outline. “The Origin of the Bible.” Catholic Productions. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

Randall, David and Roberts, Genevieve. “Pope Signals Historic Leap in Fight Against Aids.” The Independent 21 Nov. 2010. Web. 7 Jan. 2011.

Rochman, Sue. “Sex, Abstinence, and the Church.” HIVPlus Mag Feb. 2004: Web. 6 Jan. 2011.
de Santillana, Giorgio. The Crime of Galileo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976, pp. 312-313.

Schieszer, John. “Male Birth Control Pill Soon a Reality.” MSNBC 1 Oct. 2010. Web. 7 Jan 2011.

Stephey, M. J. “A Brief History of: Abstinence.” Time 19 Feb. 2009: Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

“True Love Waits.” Lifeway. 2007. Web. 5 Dec. 2010

Valenti, Jessica. The Purity Myth. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2009. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1973. Print.

Why are English papers so much work?

Because I devote hours and hours (and pages and pages) to the following drivel:

The intersections of morality, religion, and sex.

How does an individual define what is right? When people choose a path, what makes them determine in which direction they want to bend? Society influences, yes, but in what ways? How so?

The power of religion. Decisions are made around it, people join or flee it. Yet it is defined, more often than not, but the individual.

Religion and the conscience. How do we decide things?

Tess of the D'bervilles

-innocence destroyed by rape

-rape defines a marriage

The Purity Myth

-goodness of women is defined entirely by what they have between their legs.

But is it? Really? Truly? The fallen woman can be seen in so many places, but she redeems herself in the eyes of the reader. But what is redemption for the men?

Gender and atonement: what sins are worth a life?

Jane Eyre—he's redeemed himself, but has she?

Orlando—a man, a woman, both at once, but he is not a man who ever needs redeeming

Tess of the D'ubervilles—Tess, obviously, spends a lifetime trying to make up for a sin that wasn't hers, but it seems, in the end, that it is religion understanding, not atonement, that drives her (with the death of her 'husband' she returns to her husband). For Alec, though, what is there? He turns to religion, then believes that the only way he can make it up is through marriage, a life's commitment.

Redemption is sacrifice.

What is it that makes an individual good? How do people define what is right and what is wrong, and to what extent is this dichotomy of thought present in our everyday lives?

The Purity Myth, by Jessica Valenti, centers on the idea that the societal perception of a woman's morality stems entirely from her chastity. No quality is as important, no trait as worth protecting, as virginity.

Is this true? Judging by the books, the answer is resoundingly yes. In Tess of the D'ubervilles, we have a woman who, after she is raped, is a ruined woman; her eventual marriage falls apart, her life is spent searching for redemption.

When old books—centuries old, not whatever your grandmother considered popular literature—are read, it becomes very clear that from a modern perspective, with its own take on what is morally upstanding and politically correct, the good can be far more evil than the author intended. Who today would consider the ivory trade savory, the oft-said 'nigger' polite? This is made even more clear when considering opinions that haven't changed. In past centuries, marriage has shifted away from a sacred institution, defined by God.

The lack of stagnation in moral perceptions is demonstrated clearly by shifting perceptions of marriage. In days of yore, marriage was defined by sex.

You should see how much worse the handwritten crap is.

Today, Today

Oh Friday. Beautiful Friday, lovely day at the end of an oh-so-lovely week.

Someone said something funny during Chem. But I don't remember what it was. It was probably something about how if you sit on a pencil hard enough and for long enough, you make diamonds. Fun fact!

Please disregard that at the forces that can be provided by the human body, this would take millions of years.

I'm currently at Cammie's house, hanging out with her and Kathrya. We're making cookie dough. To eat, like, just the dough. It's gonna be delicious.

I'm going to mention Nyx now. And the fact that I have an English essay to write this weekend. Because I'm trying to even out the tag numbers, even now.

Frisbee club was fun. Ginny is indecisive about everything, but it's a trait that's adorable in her and obnoxious in Rube. It's odd, how that happens.

Doughnut Fun

Today, Ginny and Yuma came over. We made doughnuts. It was fun.

Apparently donut and doughnut are both acceptable spellings of this delicious food. I blame dukin' donuts. I also apparently make all of my paragraphs of my college essays too short, and admissions officers will see this and assume that my writing is imperfect, when I see the shorter paragraphs as a way to hold attention.

I think I've been reading internet news for too long.

Anyways, the donuts (yes, I am defaulting to the one with less letters) were a lot of fun, and the recipe worked out well, though I'd recommend halving the amount of nutmeg. Also, for future reference, the sugar is 7/8s of a cup, or something along those lines. It took the three of us, gifted math students that we are, an age to go from the recipe's grams to our manageable cups.

We are so talented.

Also, Ginny? I tell you this now so that you'll blush less if it gets brought up in person. During dinner tonight, Dad said, "How long have Jennn"

"Ginny"

"Yes, how long have she and Yuma been a, how do you say it these days? An item?"

"I thought they were just friends," said Mom.

"They are," I said, then gave Dad a funny look.

"So why isn't she allowed to go to his house again?"

"Because he's a boy."

"Right."

Your Beloved Tea...

Is depressed. Again.

Fuck.

In other news, Rube is engaging in a cyber-barage of friendliness, and I've set a busy auto-reply to avoid him. Because I'm conniving like that.

Yay!

Now I'm trying to write a prewrite, which is a surprisingly difficult endeaver. Especially considering that all I really want to do is curl up and sleep.

I blame college-related stress. I could do a long drawnout I-feel-like-I'm-losing-control-of-my-life, thing, but I think I'll just link to this post instead. Bubbles summed it up rather nicely.

Gretchen's "no one should be allowed to leave people in suspense for that long" was pretty good as well. Please, please let the early application work out. I don't want to spend any more time than I have to with an entirely mysterious future.

Aside from that is the not-good-enough grade in English, which, in the scheme of things, and considering my really, really good AP science grades, shouldn't be an issue, but still bothers me.

That sentence makes no sense.

I'm going to cover it up with a cauldron-full of faked enthusiasm, then go write a paper. I'm (not really) looking forward to it.

The Silent Boy

The first part of a story that will hopefully grow longer:

When he was born, nobody heard his cries.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

In November, Lana found(knew) that she was pregnant. She told her husband David. He rejoiced. They held each other and were happy.

In March, the small swell between her breasts and her hips began to grow. She rounded like an overripe balloon. Her husband stood behind her, her back pressed against his front. He pushed(slid) under her shirt, splaying(spreading fanning stretching) his fingers across. The fetus(baby child) kicked. He felt it. She smiled.

In April, the kicking stopped. David lay for hours with his ear on Lana's watermelon(cantaloupe) stomach. She shook and swore that she was feeling the rumble of a body inside her, but David could not hear it, could not see it, could not feel it.

In May, Lana was kicked and David was nothing. He(they) touched to make him feel it, made love to make him feel it within her. She shook and David was empty. The ultrasound moved but the heart was missing.

In June, David argued with the obstetrician. He wanted the baby gone before Lana felt the pain.

Lana refused to believe that the baby was dead. She swore that she would try to nurse the dead child before she let him be put in the ground, swore that his life remained.

David cried for the sadness that Lana would feel.

In July, Lana went into labor. David rushed her to the hospital. The way a good husband(father) should. Lana pushed for a day and half a night.

In August, the other half of the night came, fast and hard. David held her hand, and she screamed the silent scream of the undead. The baby came. His mouth fell open as the medic held the child in his sterile arms. The baby shook ore than a dead child should. David hater of horror cringed at the sight.

Lana held open her arms. She reached for the child. When he touched her skin, Lana began to shake again, as his cries sounded behind her ears. She put him to her breast. He squabbled closer to nurse, and his little mouth began to work.

Only Lana heard him as he sucked her tit(teat breast).

David put a hand on his wife, a finger brushing the child to ask her to give in to death. When his hand came down, he heard it to, the suck suck sucking of a silent mouth.

When Lana and David brought Christopher home, they held him always, for as soon as they put him down, his cries vanished.

In September, in October, in forever, Christopher grew.

Things I Love

Zsa claims (probably rightly) that she could very easily make a list of 1,000 things that make me happy.

One of these things is the adorable french exchange student (graduate, I think) in my lab, who speaks with a heavy accent and is confused by English keyboards, but is still willing to run a computer program to find various Gibbs energies for me, and then spend at least a minute typing "good luck!" into the email he sends me.

I love science.

Holy Bejeesus

I'm leaving tomorrow morning. This is absolutely completely and utterly terrifying. Completely mind-boggling. I just need to focus on being excited, because I started getting homesick in advanced last night, and that just qualifies as generally bad, and I feel like while I'm at RSI it will be harder to get Rube/Ginny to tell me to stop it, since they won't be there, although I suppose Rube sort of will, even if I may not actually get to see him, and I'm sure that if I call Ginny and beg a teeny bit she'll talk to me, so I guess I don't really need to worry about that.

Oh, and, right, yeah, I'm leaving? I haven't finished my essay, and I haven't even bought all the stuff I need to bring, and I've barely started packing, and I don't even have any bags at all (although I did get (and hide) my traveler's checks). Anyone who would like to squeeze in a final goodbye, come by this afternoon or evening. Also, that includes Nyx. And Cammie, who wanted me to mention her.

The Whole Extended Shebang

The Prompt:

Take Me To the River

For your final assignment of the year, I'd like to give you a chance to play some more with language and here, fiction. Like Twain, you'll create a picaresque/episodic short story that includes at least two (more if you like) shorter stories, based in some way on your freewrites over the past weeks, woven together by geographical motif and by some theme. If none of these will work, you're welcome to create new episodes.

To assemble this, then you might consider all of your freewrites, or a tleast their spirit, and how they might work together. Let your brain go loose, and thread through your thinking your geographical place- or another just as familiar and evocative. You might attemplt a classic, satiric, picaresque anti-hero; the most true picaro ranks low in social class and grapples with a corrupt society. Then again, you might now. Up to you.

You'll have noticed that Twain doesn't make a huge attempt to transition gently into his episodes; that's characteristic of picaresque fiction that you'll find in novels like Moll Flanders and Tom Jones and Candide. You also should feel free to shift somewhat abruptly, so long as your geographical location smooths the way and your overarching theme is present. Notice I didn't say obvious. We don't want to hit with a two-by-four!

Your tone can swing; consider how Twain's tone moves from the lyrical description of nights on the river to his rolloicking narration of Huck's attempt at disguising himself as a girl. In the same way your piece might move from clearly autobiographical, non-fictional pieces to those that are just as clearly fictional- or at least hyperbolized or altered significantly.

Tina and I sat at the counter in her living room, a counter that looked rather like a bar, and could have been convincingly said to be one, if shot from the right angle, provided that Tina and I were not spinning the seats around and around, kicking each other with each rotation, laughing from the sheer joy of being seven years old and happy.

After a few more spins I was clutching the counter. "I'm dizzy," I said.

"I'm," she said, turning once more before kicking her feet out and stopping against my chair. "Not. But I can stop."

"Good."

"You always get dizzy first."

"I don't get as much practice."

"No, you're a dizzy monster."

"A what?"

"A dizzy monster!" Tina hopped from the stool, picked up a discarded dress-up scarf, and began to twirl in circles again. "Blerrrgh." She attempted to grumble the sound in the back of her throat. She twirled over to me and pulled at my arms; unlike her, my feet were only inches from the ground, so I easily joined her motion.

"I'm a dizzy monster," I said.

"Oh no! Don't make me dizzy."

"I will too!"

"No you won't! I don't get dizzy. I'm magic."

"I'm magic. I'm a monster."

"Monsters can't talk."

As always, I went with her rules. "Blergonna eat youarghh."

"That's talking."

I stopped spinning. "I don't like not talking."

She stopped too. "Fine. Let's make a song."

"Do we have to?"

"Yes."

"What kind of song?"

Tina started to sing. "We are on a boat."

"Sailing on the sea," I said, repeating her melody.

"Lots of waves."

"I'm getting dizzy."

She gave me a dirty look before continuing. "I'm on a boat."

"We did this part already."

"Sing!"

"No."

"Fine. Let's play a game."

"What game?"

"You can pick."

"I can?"

"Sure."

"Let's play orphans."

"But we always play orphans."

"We can play escaping orphans."

"Only if we actually get to escape."

"We'll see."

"We have to escape!"

"You can't decide in the beginning!"

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Fine. Outside?"

"Okay."

We went through the door behind the bar and lay down on the patio.

"Guess what," said Tina.

"What?"

"My butt hurts."

"That's 'cause you're an orphan."

"No, it's cause I need to fart."

"Tina, you're ruining it!"

She blew raspberries, then, in an attempt to create louder noise, she brought her forearm to her mouth.

"Tina, The Giant will hear!"

"I'm not Tina, I'm Annie."

"You're always Annie."

"That's cause it's the best name."

"I want to be Annie."

"Annie isn't tall. You're Mary."

"How come Mary is tall?"

"Stop arguing, The Giant will hear."

I decided it was time for us to wake up. I reached over and poked her.

"What?"

"The Giant isn't here, we should escape."

"Okay, let's go."

She crawled to the edge of the patio and then began to roll down the grass. I sat at the edge, indecisive. She stopped, sat up. "Come on!"

"I don't think I'm supposed to roll."

"Why not?"

"I'm just not."

"But you're too big. He'll see you."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Now, come here!"

I stretched out on the grass and began to push myself along, over over over, until I bumped into her. She rolled more, and I followed, rolling and rolling. She stopped a few feet before a tree, and I slammed into her. She went forward, then yelled.

"Oh no! The Giant!" I said.

"You broke it!"

"What?"

"You made me break my fairy houses!"

"Did not."

"Did too! Look." She sat up, and I followed. There were shattered remains of houses in the imprint of her body. The leaf roofs had fallen to the ground, and were lying about the houses, slightly crumpled, very browned. Half the twigs were snapped, littered about. Some had merely fallen from where they had been pushed carefully into the ground, and the rest had merely been pushed somewhat further in. I felt sorry for the houses, but it still was not my fault.

"You made me roll."

"You didn't stop."

"That's why I'm not supposed to roll."

"That's stupid."

"Is not."

"You broke my fairy houses!"

"No, I didn't!"

"Yes, you did!"

"I don't care."

"I care."

"They're stupid. Fairies don't actually live in them."

At that, Tina stood up. "I quit."

"What?"

"There are fairies."

"No."

"I say there are."

"But how do you know?"

"I can feel it."

"What do you mean?"

"I can feel them at night. I look out the window, and I feel them."

"You see them?"

"I feel them. They plant little flowers outside of their houses, and every night they grow and grow until they touch the sky."

"The houses?"

"No, the flowers."

I looked up. The sky seemed very far away. "That's tall."

"Yup."

"Do they really get that big?" I was still staring up above me, trying to figure out just how far away the sky was. I couldn't seem to describe it using any words I knew.

"They grow forever."

"Wow." I was quiet.

"Now they won't grow."

"Huh?"

"You crushed them and they won't grow."

"We can build them again."

"Later," she said, and got up off the ground. Standing, she managed to be taller than my seated form. I stood up, towering above her again, and she tugged my hand. "Come on. Let's go play."

Vignette 2

I stood at the corner of Tina's yard, armed with a towel that had a piece of fabric sewn onto the side that could be used to actually hold the towel itself, creating a bag that was just large enough to hold my bathing suit, her birthday present, and, of course, the swimsuit itself.

I was there for Tina's eighth birthday. I'd spent so much time trying to find the towel, which she'd given me for my own birthday two months previously, that I was running late. The yard was full of girls, her friends, all of them small and blonde, mysterious and unknown and entirely unreachable. There were many of them, and I couldn't see Tina in the flood of unfamiliar faces, so hugged my own mother goodbye and went inside to find Tina's. She was in the kitchen, unloading bags of groceries.

"Hello Mrs. Bloom."

"Hi Shelby. Why aren't you outside?"

"I have to put on my bathing suit."

"Tina's upstairs changing, if you want to go there."

"Okay." I turned to leave. "Here's my present."

"I'll make sure she gets it."

"Good." I turned, left the kitchen, and went upstairs. I pushed open Tina's door while simultaneously greeting her. I didn't see her for a moment, then spotted her standing just inside her closet, wearing only the bottom half of her swimsuit with her hands on her hips. "Hi, Tina," I said again.

This time she responded. "I can't find it."

"Find what?"

"The other half."

"Wasn't that the one your brother used for the Happy Half-Birthday Halloween thing he went to?"

"Oh! Yes! I'll go get it." She turned, walked around me, and went out into the hall. "I forgot how you're smart."

I began turning my towel-bag inside out to get my suit.

"See you later," she said, shutting the door behind her.

"Yeah, I'll have to..." I trailed off. She was already gone.

I walked over to the window after I'd changed. Tina was rolling down the hill again, and three other girls were following her down, laughing and smiling. There was a group of girls in the tree, another with their legs in the pool, and another kicking their legs in the hot sun where Tina and I had been sleeping mere weeks before. They were happy, all of them, no playing of orphans, no getting sick from twirling. Perhaps if I was there, with the girls, it would be fun for me, too.

I went downstairs, outside. When I was closer, I was still taller than them, but they somehow felt bigger. I didn't know them, and Tina was busy, so they all continued their games as I walked towards the tree where Tina kept her fairy houses. I sat down to look at them, but the ground was empty. I looked for the bits of leaves and scraps of wood, and I finally found them in a small knot in the tree, stacked up neatly. I pulled them out and carefully, precisely, constructed a tiny house. It had three wooden walls, one with a tiny peephole, just big enough for a miniscule eye. I placed a leaf in the middle, the first floor, then another on top, to mark the roof. I was glad that faeries were light, because even the breeze was almost enough to knock it over. I watched the house for a time, hoping that, just this once, the faeries would forget that I was here and come during the day, that they could plant their flowers, and that the stems could rise up and up until they covered me up and I would stand still, perfectly still, a part of the tree, and Tina would come over and visit me because she loved the faeries' plants, but the people were too loud for us to truly disappear.

A pair of girls came up behind me, looking over my shoulder. "What's that?"

"A faerie house."

"Why would you build that?"

"Tina likes them," was all I said.

"That's stupid, faeries aren't real," said one of the girls, and the other nodded her assent.

"But if people think that they are," I said, "maybe..."

They laughed, and ran to Tina, and I couldn't quite hear them, but I saw Tina laugh too, and then she looked at me in a way that said that I'd done something wrong, only I didn't know what it was. I stayed with the house for a time, trying to adjust it so that with each rush of children, it still stayed upright. Then Tina's mother came out, carrying an armful of shaving cream cans, one for each child. I tried to stay by my house, but she called me over, and I accepted my very own can. It was light green, and it said on the front that the insides would smell like mint. When she blew a whistle and the girls began to scream, I sprayed a bit into my hand. It sat there for a moment, a dark gel, then began to grow. It grew and grew, spreading and stretching, turning while and filling with air until it towered above me hand. I put another drop on top, which sunk in that began to grow as well. I thought that the faeries would have liked to see it, the sticky stuff that could match their flowers.

Vignette 4

We were ten, and still at different schools, but Tina still came over every so often. On this day, we sat together under a tree in my backyard.

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

"I dunno, what do you want to do?"

"I dunno, what do you want to do?"

"I dunno, what do you want do do?"

I laughed. "Remember back when we would build faerie houses every time we visited?"

"Yeah, you said they were for babies."

"I was just saying that, though. I still liked building them."

"I know! You started building one when I had all my friends over, and they were like, wow, that girl is so weird."

"Hey!"

"They said it, not me."

"Fine, I won't get angry then. At least, not this time."

"You never get angry."

"Maybe someday I will."

She shrugged, doubtful. "So, what do you want to do?"

"I dunno."

"We could build faerie houses, like we used to."

"Do you want to?"

"Sure. You want to try to get some sticks?"

"Okay, you go for the flower petals. We'll regroup in seven minutes."

"Seven?"

"Ten is too many, and five isn't enough."

She thought about it for a moment, then nodded. "Sounds good."

I went to some bushes in the neighbor's yard, forsythia that had long ago stopped blooming, and broke off a leafless bottom branch. I scavenged around a birch in the front and a dogwood in the back, looking for branches that felt right. When we regrouped, Tina was holding a pile of petals as well as a few interesting leaves. We sat in some dirt near the wall of the house where we couldn't be seen from the windows. She passed me bits of daisies and I handed her discarded daffodil stalks.

Her constructions were tiny but complicated. She put twigs in a criss-cross and placed a single flower into each and every one, crafting rainbow walls more fragile than glass. I built one like a tiny wigwam, with sticks in a round circle, ferns woven in and out, and a maple leaf on the top. I built my next out of shreds of bark pushed against each other like playing cards, trying to match her fragility, while she followed my Native American idea and constructed a teepee. We soon had a small village constructed of barely there houses, of trees without trunks and tiny platters of inedible food. We divided our halves with a small indent, a river that would bring water to the whole village. When we were done, our supplies exhausted, I sat back. She continued to trace her finger along the tiny, waterless river.

"Do you think any will come?" I said.

She was silent.

"I mean, I know they don't exist, but a girl can always dream."

She still didn't speak, and as her finger reached the base of the river, right next to her knee, she let it stop and looked up at me. "I'm moving."

"Do you want to swap spots? It's pretty comfortable here."

"No, I mean, I'm moving to a new house."

Now it was my turn to look at her.

"It's in California. The trees are funny there, all big, and you can't reach the branches even if you try."

"California is far away."

"Yeah."

"When are you leaving."

"Tomorrow."

"Oh." Tomorrow was very, very soon. "You hadn't mentioned it."

"I don't like thinking about it."

We sat in silence. I began to trace the path of the river, as she had before, then stopped and began to create a second river surrounding my half of the village. Tina was unmoving.

"Do you think," she said "that these will grow?"

"The rivers?"

"No, the faerie houses. Will they put down roots and grow flowers that touch the sky?"

"Maybe."

"You have to look."

"I'll look at night, when they grow."

"It'll grow big enough for you to visit me."

"In California?"

"Yes."

We were silent again, and I looked over to where the sun was, since I knew that was west, and looked for California. The farthest I saw was Long Island. "Tina?"

"Yes?'

"Did the ones in your yard ever truly grow?"

"No."

"This one won't either, will it."

She looked at me, and she said the same hopeless word as before.

Vignette 5

Tina had been gone for two years when we finally, finally got to visit her. We arrived first to a restaurant in San Francisco, where she now lived. San Francisco was big. Everything was bigger than it was at home, where there was nothing but empty space, big green yards, and the occasional house. But there was a beach near the restaurant, a little sliver of the outdoors, and after we ate, our parents let us leave, and we began to walk.

We were in middle school by then, and we were old and all grown up, so we tried to talk instead of play. We walked from one jetty to the next and back, sharing words of growing up, of her friends back home whose names I've finally learned, of the hopelessness of middle school boys. We tried to talk of who we were becoming, but we were soon back to where we once were. We recounted a thousand childhood games in precise detail, the name of every pirate ship, the each daydream of a lonely orphan. I thought about suggesting play-acting again, but it somehow felt as if here was not the place.

After many lengths, we returned to our families. Her brother, who still only toddled, had surrounded herself with tiny piles of sticks, and my sister, Ella, who was already in elementary school had placed leaves on them, trying to make them beautiful. We sat with them for a time, adding layers, shifting piles, until we'd created another miniature world, this one decorated with shells in place of petals.

This time, I did not bother to ask Tina if she thought our plants would grow.

Vignette 6

In high school, one develops these annoying chores, one of which is babysitting one's younger sister. I usually did this by ignoring her, and this evening was no different. I was on the computer in the living room, using an instant messenger to pretend that I wasn't stuck at home. For once, Tina was online. I said "Hello."

She responded. "hi wats up"

I said, "Oh, not much, and you?"

"sum stuf. nm. g2g."

I had to look up her abbreviations online. I didn't talk like her anymore, didn't think like her. I'd tried to talk with her before, and it was always the same; I'd try to reminisce, and she'd use such cryptic terminology that I soon became utterly lost.

I stood up from the computer and went looking for Ella. She wasn't in her room, wasn't in the basement, or watching TV, or even in my room. I went into the kitchen to use the phone to call Mom, certain that I'd lost my sister, when I finally spotter her outside.

She was sitting beneath the tree in the backyard, staring at a house of sticks that she built yesterday, filled with with flowers and little pieces of popsicle. It began to rain, but she still sat there, so I went outside to bring her in. As I got closer, I heard her talking.

"Priscilla, how are you today? And your son? Did he like the cold sugar? It's my favorite. Are you happy here? Would you prefer to be by the shed?"

"Ella?" I said.

She looked up at me, smiling. "They talk to me."

I stopped, and the rains began to pool on the tops of my ears and slide slowly, slowly down.

"They talk to me, Shelby. I can hear them."

"They don't exist."

"Yes, they do! They're here. I can feel them."

"You can?"

"Come here. You can feel them, too."

I walked closer, and she tugged my hand, pulling me down. Her tiny palms were damp with rainwater.

"Look, Shelby. See them?"

The house was small, smaller than small. She'd worked on it carefully, each twig elegant, each leaf precise. She'd even crafted furnisher, a feat that Tina and I had never managed.

The faeries weren't there at that moment, she said to me, but when they did, the house would be alive, and the twigs would stand, and tiny little flowers would grow around it. The flowers would grow until they touched her knees, her waist, her shoulders and her brow, until they wrapped up around and stretched up and over the tree, over the house, up and up until they circled the very stars.

She said it would grow soon, because it was raining, but that we needed to be very still.

We sat together and watched until it was too dark to see, and the twigs and branches and flowers had sunk deep into the all-consuming mud.

I'm Back and In Business

Well, I'm in buisiness in if going to do library to study and do homework because the house has been inundated by members of the extended family counts as business, and I say that it does.

It's good to be back. I was gone for quite some time because, as I explained in my previous post, I was busy making an animation.



And there, my darlings, is said animation. Hooray for being done! Hooray for staying up past midnight to finish! Also, hooray for book awards, for taking two hours out of my animation time (it's okay, I got cool books. Yay Shakespeare!)

I'm still a bit sleepy, which manifests in some rather severe overenthusiasm. I apologize.

My Time is Devoted to Video

For English, we have to make a thirty-second visual. I've elected to make a thirty second animation, using the computer, of said visual. So far, I've had three false starts (I'd picked a scheme that was beyond my meager abilities).

There is one of them, embedded above. Now I'm working on another, in which we see kids just sitting in a classroom, occasionally raising hands, and we see both their thought bubbles and how pissed off random gifted kid gets when his teacher, after he asks too many questions, begins to ignore him. In this one, I plan to actually animate the people, which should be a big help.

Muddy Waters

The two of us stood at the edge of the road. The pavement was hot, hot enough that I could feel it through the thick calluses on my bare feet. The street we stood on was lined with trees, it’s entire surface coated in the mottled shadows of leaves. We were in the edge of this darkness, at the barrier.

In front of us, to the left and right, was a stone wall. The wall was unbroken, unworn by time or use. The stones fit perfectly next to each other, the cement was smooth, and the barrier, despite the fact it came up barely past my waist, seemed insurmountable. We had been walking alongside the wall for a time, as we had finally turned left from Julie’s house and gone away from the beach, and now, right here, there was a wall.

In the wall, at the place where we had stopped, was a gap. It was as wide as the three of us if we stood shoulder to shoulder, so a hair wider than the usual door. The sunlight seemed to push outwards from the smooth lawn beyond, and the only thing blocking us was a single chain hanging across the gap. The lawn was small, barely bigger than my garage, but at the end was a wooden dock that glowed in that way that metal ones couldn’t, and beyond that, the mud.

“I want to go in,” said Karen.

“I really don’t think we should, though.”

“But it looks so nice.”

“It’s somebody’s yard, though,” I said.

“I want to feel the sun,” said Karen. “I’m going in.”

She ducked under the chain and turned around, expectant. I looked at Julie.

“You go,” she said.

I considered ducking the chain, but a closed gate was a closed gate, so I went to the wall, the smooth-cut wall, pushed my arms on it, and hoisted myself up. My ankle caught on the corner, and I felt a slight snag before my entire foot caught, and I tumbled off of the wall into the light grass. I stood up immediately and looked out at the lot. The grass, even while I stood on it, seemed unreal, but the dock looked as if it would be more tangible. I walked towards it, to it, stepped onto it. I could feel Karen, who stood still by the gate, watching me. I stepped forward again. I moved closer to the shore, then closer, and then I was at the edge of the dock. I looked down to see the water and discovered that it was mud, dark and thick. I bent, picked up a pebble, and dropped it into the muck. It rested on the surface, not rippling, not sinking. I stared at it, entranced.

Karen came up behind me. “What are you doing?”

“Look.”

She moved next to me, then looked down at the rock.
We stood in silence. I looked up, following the muck. There was water, out there, but the mudflat stretched out all the way to the island in the middle of the river. I looked at it, wondering what was there. Karen’s eyes were still on the pebble, and her gaze was calculating.

“Do you think,” she asked, “that it could hold us, too?”

“Probably not.”

“But would we sink all of the way?”

“I dunno.”

“I’m going to try it.”

“But you’ll get your pants dirty.”

“Fine.” She undid the tie and took them off, hanging them on a support. “I’m going in.”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“I’m taller than you. If we’re testing for the bottom, I should go first, because I’m less likely to sink over my head.”

“Okay.” She looked at me expectantly.

I shucked my own pants and hung them atop hers before sitting on the edge of the dock. I stuck my legs out in front of me, not touching the mud.

“That won’t work.”

I made an annoyed noise, then began to lower my heels. The right made contact first. The mud was cool. It held under my foot, its surface bending as I pressed downwards. I lowered the other foot, pointed my toes, and slipped in.

“Do you feel a bottom?”

“Not really, but…” I wiggled my toes around a bit, feeling the chilled pressure along my skin, between my toes.

“But what?”

“It feels strong.”

“What?”

“We won’t sink.”

“If you say so.” She prepared to leap in.

“Don’t jump.”

She came and sat next to me, pressed in her feet, then stood. She sunk slowly until the mud was just past her knees. She lifted her leg, stepped forward, then looked back at me.
I stood, and I sank. The mud rose, slowly, pushing up and up till it stopped, about a foot higher than it had started. I lifted my left foot, pulling against it, then cleared the surface. The mud sucked into place beneath me, and my foot felt suddenly free. I lowered it again, this time further, and repeated the process with my right leg. Whenever my leg came up, the mud was dirty, grasping, grimy. When it went in, it was calm and warm and good.

Karen had already progressed a good ten feet. “Are you coming or not?”

“Coming where?”

“The Island.”

“Oh.” I stayed where I was, wiggling my toes, feeling. “Isn’t the mud enough?”

The Ohhhh Man

The group of us were as tight as cat-dog, the animated Siamese twin gone wrong in Karen’s favorite TV show—if anything, we were tighter, as we would never dream of fighting. After all, we were ten years old, double digits, and well beyond such a juvenile activity.

On this particular day, it was morning, an August morning that, even while the nighttime cool attempted to settle in, the sticky warmth to come was visible in the clear sky that had already hit its bluest. I was up early, more or less, but I was almost finished with my fourth read-through of Half Magic, so I’d spent a few hours reading it before I picked up the phone to call Karen.

I unwound the cord of the phone and began my attempts at communication. I had to dial three times, as whatever sticky substance resided under the keys did an even better job at getting buttons stuck during the summertime. The number finally went through, and Karen didn’t pick up. I hung up on the answering machine and called again. No response. I called a third time, and when I heard her younger brother announcing “we aren’t home right now, but Mom—uh, Sharon--says hi,” I dropped the phone back onto its base.

“Mom!”

“I’m outside,” she called back.

“What?”

“I’m outside!”

“Oh!” I put on sandals and went out the door. “I’m going to Karen’s. Sharon says hi.”

“Tell her the same. Call if you aren’t coming home for dinner.”

I walked past Mom, further down the yard, to a collapsed section of stone wall tucked behind the hedge. I went down the steps before closing my eyes and continuing. I stuck out my arms, always cautious, but I enjoyed the reminder that I could, in fact, truly make this walk with my eyes closed.

When my hands hit her gate, I opened my eyes again, pushed through, and ran further down the hill to her back door. I took off my shoes before unlatching it and entering.

“Hello?”

I heard nothing for a moment, followed by some loud thumps. Her dog, a black lab as wide as he was tall and with a tail thicker than my fist, was banging himself against the door to the kitchen. I followed him over and saw Karen’s mother with her arm deep in the freezer, digging.

“Hi Sharon.”

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

I shrugged. “My book was good.”

“That’s lovely.” She resumed shuffling through whatever was in the back of the fridge.

“Where’s Karen?”

“She’s with Anna. I think--” she grunted before finally yanking something out.

“Okay, thanks.”

“Finally got it.” She waved a chocolate bar at me. “I’d give you some, but I know your mother wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“Oh, right, Mom says ‘the same.’”

“Doesn’t she always?”

“Yes.”

She peeled back a section of wrapper. “Have fun at the beach.”

“What?”

“That’s where Karen and Anna went, the beach. At least, I think it was the beach, although it might have been Anna’s house, or maybe the Deli, but they’re out somewhere. They only left a little while ago, you could probably catch them.”

I nodded and left, this time through the garage, which I closed behind me using the keypad outside. I had barely made it out of Karen’s driveway before I saw the pair rushing towards me.

“Oh! Good! We were just coming to get you!”

“You were?”

“We saw,” began Karen, but she cut herself off with a breathless gasp, so Anna filled in.

“It was terrifying.”

“Crazy.”

“So scary.”

“What was it?”

“Oh.”

“Well.”

They looked at each other for a moment, then began to talk at the same time. “The omen,” said Karen, at the same time that Anna said “the box.”

“The what?”

“You mean we didn’t tell you?” said Karen.

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“About the omen!”

“You definitely didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because I think we did,” said Anna.

“I think I’d remember.”

“You never know, you could have forgotten,” said Karen.

“I wouldn’t forget.”

“Doesn’t everybody forget?” said Anna.

“Not me.”

“Well,” said Karen. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you. But, I don’t know, you might be better off not knowing.”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty scary story.”

“Tell me!”

“Well, are you sure you can handle it?”

“Yes!”

“Really sure?” added Anna.

“YES!”

“In that case,” began Karen, “we need a good location.”

“Does it really matter?”

“Of course it matters. I need to go right where we were, when it happened.”

“If you say so,” I said.

“We should go,” agreed Anna.

“Well, where was it?”

Anna looked at Karen, who appeared deep in thought. “The tree.”

“What tree?”

At this, Karen looked up. “The one by the tennis court, near the Sloat’s house.”

We walked together towards said tree, which was actually a network of trees, a pine hedge with a soft green coating hiding a spacious inside with the perfect concentration of large, sturdy branches.

“Anna,” I said, “I need a least a hint.”

“I’m no good at hints.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not. I’ll give too much away.”

“No hints,” said Karen. “You’ll find out when we get there. It’s only around the block.”

“It’s a big block.”

“It’s half the size of my old block,” said Anna.

“You’re old block was megabig, then.” I turned to Karen. “Tell me.”

“No.”

Then to Anna. “Tell me.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Fine.”

We walked in silence towards the trees, before crawling through our usual gap and settling ourselves among the branches. Karen was the littlest, so she was on a flimsier, higher branch. I was clumsy, so I was leaned against the trunk towards the middle of the tree, straddling a branch so thick it was practically a log. Anna was perched a few feet in front of me, where my log began to thin. To our left was an empty branch, somewhere between mine and Karen’s in sturdiness. When Harriet arrived later, the final fourth of our group, she would sit there, and we would hold court to plan the day’s attack upon the world.

For now, though, we were only three, and all I could see was a story that was shared by two.

“Now,” began Karen. “The story of the O Man. On this very morning, we saw him, for the first time, and this experience has—“

“I thought you said it was an omen,” I interrupted.

“No, I said O Man.”

“You definitely said omen.”

“No, I didn’t. Anna, did I say omen or O Man?”

“O Man.”

“Like I said,” continued Karen. “Today, on this very morning, we first saw the O Man.”

“If you’ve only just seen him, why do you call it the first time? It’s not like there are other times.”

“Do you want to hear or not?”

“I want to hear.”

“Then listen! Today, we first saw the O Man. Well, actually, we first saw the O Box. This box was large, and it was cardboard, and it was right there.” She pointed behind her, towards the house of the neighbor to whom these trees belonged.

“Where?”

“Right inside the tree wall.”

“Oh. It can’t have been a very big box.”

“It was.”

“But there’s not a stamp in the needles.”

“That’s ‘cause it blew away.”

“Oh, right.” That made sense. I hushed up and let her continue.

“First thing in the morning, Anna and I were walking towards the beach. Now, we weren’t going to come in here, because this is the thinking tree, but we heard this awful noise coming from the driveway of the house—”

“Was it a car?”

“Be quiet,” said Anna. “I can’t hear.”

“You don’t need to hear. You were there.”

They both shushed me, and Karen continued. “There was a crunching noise, a big, loud crunching noise.”

“Just like this,” said Anna, breaking a small stick off of the tree and rubbing it against its trunk, “but louder.”

“Exactly. Well, we heard this noise, and we didn’t know what it was, but it sounded dangerous, so we crawled into here and climbed up a tree to hide.”

“This tree?”

“No, the one closer. I wanted to see what was happening.” She paused. “Anyways, we climb up, and then, while we’re sitting up in the tree, the crunching gets even louder.”

Anna began to rub her stick against the tree again, for effect.

“Then, we see the box. It’s right underneath our tree, and it has a big red O on the top.”

“O like the letter, or Oh, like oh my gosh?”

“The first one. Why would someone put O-H on a box?”

“Maybe it’s their initials,” suggested Anna.

“Or maybe it’s not.”

“It could be, though,” I said. “Owen Heart, or Oliver Hephastus.”

Karen, who had been about to cut me off, looked confused. “Hephastus?”

“It’s this poisonous thing that miners get.”

“Well, this was a man, not a kid.”

“That wasn’t what I—never mind. Who was the man?”

“I’ll get to it. We’re sitting in that tree, and we’re hearing this noise, and we suddenly see the box, and that’s when we realize that the noise is getting louder, and maybe the noise is coming to take the box!”

“Why?”

“Well, what would you think? The box and the noise, both didn’t make sense, so they had to be together. Anyways, we rushed back through the branches, and we were moving so fast that if the man had seen us, he probably would have thought we were escaped monkeys or something, but then we were sitting further back, and then, through the tree, comes a man.”

“The O Man,” said Anna.

“He took the box,” said Karen, “put it in his car, and left.”

“I thought you said the crunching wasn’t a car.”

“I said it didn’t sound like a car. There’s a difference.”

“Oh. So, what do we do now?”

“I dunno,” said Anna. “But we could try to figure out who he is!”

“How? It’s not like we’re going to see him again,” said Karen, “but, well, maybe—now I don’t know that this would work, but it’s an idea—maybe he’s stopping at all of the trees like this, and there’s another box, with another letter, and they spell something.”

“But where are there other trees like this?” asked Anna.

“At that house on your street,” said Karen. “The one with the big fancy gate.”

“The one where you have to push buttons to get in?” I said.

“That’s it. I bet our O Man is going there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“We should go,” I said.

“We can eat lunch when we reach my house,” added Anna, “and we can stop and get Harriet on the way.”

“Good plan,” said Karen. “Ready?”

“Ready,” responded Anna and I in unison. The three of us high-fived, climbed down, and then began to walk.