Date a Girl Who Reads...

A note to readers: I'm aware that I have already posted today. I found this a short while ago while stumbling (www.stumbleupon.com), and I fell in love with it. I have no idea who wrote it or said it, but I can't tell you how much it means to me for someone to recognize all of the things that come from appreciating words.


"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

Love is free; take as much as you need.

I am beginning to feel relevant.

Reason being because I am suddenly realizing how many people depend on me for things. People ask favors of me, ask for me to help, ask for me to do. I am starting to believe that I actually have things to offer those around me.

Feeling relevant is pretty nice. It's a refreshing change from the old "Do I have anything to offer?" feeling I used to dread waking up to.

The internship is going very well, despite the fact that I have only been at it for a week. Already, I have written two stories and sent them to be edited and fact-checked.

It is mildly surprising when I look back on the past couple of weeks. In so many words, the past 14 days have been something of a tumultuous whirlwind of...crap and flowers.

Crap because it was stressful and, at times, discouraging. Flowers because I am finally starting to come to some very significant realizations.

Crap and flowers...hehehe.

Through thorns to the stars

A week ago, I graduated from college.

It's hard to believe, really. I can't seem to grasp the idea that four years ago, I was still in high school. Four years is such a long time...

When you think about it, four years can comprise a lifetime of meaningful events. People fall in love, they die, they get married, have children, get jobs, lose jobs, buy new cars, have more children, move into homes, go skydiving, fly in a plane for the first time, lose love, find love again, graduate...

For me, the past four years have been the most hectic of my life. I've been in the hospital twice; I have lost family members who mean the moon and stars to me; I loved a couple of times and had my heart broken; I have met people who I know that distance or time will not change the way I feel about them or the way they feel about me; I have lived above a garage, in a trailer, a townhouse, an apartment; I have gotten sunburns and scrapes and bruises, but no broken bones; I have discovered slam poetry; I have discovered my voice.

But still, I have not found the final me.

I am content with this. I am content knowing that I still have things to learn about myself and the world around me. I am happy knowing that the people who I learned from in school (both peers and professors) could not teach me everything there is to know about who I am and what I have to say and what effects I had, have, or will have on the world.

I am happy knowing that there is still more to be created and molded and added to the messy, haphazard pile of opinions and beliefs and neuroses and fears, loves, and hates that make up who I am. This person I have become, with all the influences I could have hoped for or prayed against, is who I am now. The who that I am now is the who that I am worried about.

Who I was yesterday is different than the me I am today. Yesterday I was me. Now I am me. Tomorrow I will be me.

Me me me me me, I I I I I.

Did you know that "I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the human language?

I am.

Fiction: 1 "Sonny's Colors"

A note to readers: This was written for a literature class in my sophomore year at A&M. This is written from the perspective of a character in another story, titled "Sonny's Blues," written by James Baldwin. Please, PLEASE let me know what you think. On that note, here goes.

Bliss.

The sharp, slanted edge of the needle slid past the thick, ebony layers of my skin.  I gasped, my eyes clenching tightly shut.  I pressed my finger hard down on the plunger of the syringe, wanting the drug to hit quickly.  There was most definitely no way of turning back now.  I was in for the long haul, and I thought I was ready for what was going to come my way.  But waiting felt like a century when, in reality, it was only a few seconds till it started taking its true effect.

My head lolled forward, a heavy weight as my chin hit my chest.  I was beginning to understand why they called it being “on the nod.”  My arms and legs felt heavier than normal.  They swayed just slightly at my sides.  I don’t even remember the sound of the syringe hitting the floor.  Warmth spread through my body, slowly at first, then faster and faster until it was burning at my fingertips, toes, and along the outside shell of skin at my ears.  When the heat faded, it left behind little trails of tingling sensations that made me smile something goofy.  I probably looked a damn fool; something like a blind man in a garden, my eyes shut and my mouth shifted into a curve of content and what is clear to me now as mock happiness.  For the first time in a long while, I felt good about the world, and I felt good about me.

That was the first time that horse found itself running rampant through my body.  To be quite honest, I was scared shitless.  I had been told by my pal Johnny Mack from the club down on North Main Street what would happen, that I would just “feel good about everything” afterward, that it was the closest damned thing to “being born again.”  Of which, I am not really sure how Johnny Mack would know, but the assumption felt pretty accurate to me, so I went along with it. 

When the horse went wild; when it discovered the planes of the body that had never been touched before by any man-made substance, I felt like I was taking my first breath of life.  I felt like I knew everything and nothing all in one moment of pure, uninterrupted…

Bliss.

At least that is what it was like in the beginning.  After that, as is per usual when life settles into a person’s being, it was all downhill from there.

I am not really sure why I chose to start with heroine.  I had an exotic variety of drugs laid out before me that day in the back of a Volkswagen van, and I decided to go with the dulled needle at the end of the rug.  It was calling to me, it seemed; I was drawn to its fatal promises.  The disease possibilities were endless.

This was two months after I left my mother’s house to live with Isabel’s family.  The conversation I had had with my older brother after my father’s funeral left me in a certain state of awareness.  I knew that going into a career for music probably wasn’t my best bet, but I had been wanting it real bad for quite a long time then.  I was good at what I did on the piano, and people knew it when they looked at my hands.  I have long fingers and small palms, good for reaching chords that not many people could reach.  But a musician’s life was to be a hard one, whether you were good at what you did or not. 

This is why I went into the navy before I ran off to some music Mecca to pave my way to stardom.  I was too young by a year or so at the time, but they didn’t care.  As long as you told them that you were aged right, and that you really wanted to serve your country, you were admitted.  I got slapped around quite a bit in the first few months until I took a heavy-fisted swing at a two-ton private- with an overbite and a beer gut that swung both ways when he walked- who called me a ‘nigger.’  They knew I could handle myself right then, and Marshall (the two-ton idiot) and his gang took me in.

By then I had quite an unhealthy addiction to the junk I had shot into my left arm only a few months before.  I was doing it every other day, sometimes more, sometimes less.  The skag came from a dealer within my camp who got it from some guy he saw when he was on leave before we were shipped to Greece.  Because I had saved his ass when a lieutenant almost found his stash, he decided to split it entirely with me for a small price.  I never told him that I saved him just for that purpose.

A couple of years later when I got kicked out of the navy for going on the nod while I was assigned guard duty, I met back up with Johnny Mack and a few of our old pals.  We would shoot up, ride the high, then bang and strum and blow away at our instruments till dawn.  All of us worked during the day at various establishments in the city, so it was easy for us to live life this way. 

After going about like this for a few months, I started finding myself needing the heroine more than I was actually wanting it.  Without shooting up after a short time, I would start getting withdrawals.  I would go into little spurts of cold sweats coupled with goose bumps; I was irritable, shaky, and skittish.  Just like the first time I decided to shoot up, I was scared shitless.

I packed up and went back to NYC to work and to try and get off the horse while I was at it.  But the need for the drug was too strong, and I did not have the will to throw it off all at once.  Sometimes I found myself shooting up with the remnants of an old fix just to get a little bit of a high until I got some more to finish the job.  I was killing myself.  And the worst part about it was that I knew what I was doing.

I knew very well that I was shooting my own death into my veins.  I knew that it was killing me slowly and quickly at the same time.  I knew that I needed to get help from someone who cared.  I needed help from someone who knew what to do for me.

So I checked myself into a rehab clinic outside of New York City and started the long and very painful process of getting my ass back into shape.  It was hard, to say the least.  The meetings, the detoxifying processes, the cruel nurses, and the pitiless doctors all made me want the poison more and more.  I was rude, spiteful, violent, and lethargic.  I would not open up to anyone that I came into contact with, not even those who had been through what I was going through right at that moment.  I did not want to know how they felt since it was over.  I did not want to know that it all gets better after this.  I did not want to talk to anyone who wanted to talk to me.  I felt that the world was against me in all ways, that I was alone in my recovery, that I did not have anyone anymore.

But as it turns out, I was wrong.  The people who had been trying to get me to open up to them made me realize that I was forcing myself into loneliness.  They explained to me that they were not there because of sadistic ill-intent.  I was reassured that these people, these gentle nurses and these sympathetic doctors, they were there for me and all the other junkies finding refuge in their establishment.  In the end, that is what fueled my desire to be normal again.

            When I finally finished my rehabilitation, I decided to move back to New York City and reconnect with my brother.  I discovered that he and Isabel were doing well and that their children were growing up quickly.  It made me wonder, seeing them, what all I missed when I was away.  Abe and I fought quite a bit in the first few months.  We never physically hurt each other, of course, but the emotional damage was enough to make up for it.

            One night, after a good talk between the two of us, Abe and I went down to the only nightclub on a short, dark street, downtown.  Weaseling in past all the movers and shakers, the drug-takers and the money-makers, we made our way to the main floor.  Creole, a man I had met while I was in rehab, came to greet us properly.  My brother seemed lost in the dim lights of the club, squinting to avoid getting smoke in his eyes, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat.  I caught his eye and smiled briefly before being dragged up and onto the stage.  Sitting at the piano, I looked out into the crowd, trying to find Abe.  When the lights flashed, drowning out everything but the instrument before me, I shook my head and turned back.  The bar hushed, and a silence thick like molasses hung over the crowd.  The only thing I could hear was the buzz of the lights overhead and the heavy breathing of my band mates behind me.  They were waiting for something.  And after a moment, I turned and found them all staring at me, smiling.  They were waiting for me.

            My fingers struck the first chord, and for a moment, I was scared shitless once again.  Arms and legs, heavy with anxiety, I felt warmth rush through my bones, leaving a pleasant prickling sensation behind in its wake.  For the first time in a long while, I felt good about the world, and I felt good about me.

            When the music came streaming from my fingers, I felt like I had taken my first breath of life.  I felt like I was being born again, brought into the light, getting my third or fourth chance at redemption.  I felt like I knew everything and nothing all at the same time during one perfect moment of pure, uninterrupted, unspoiled…

Bliss.

Players only love you when they're playing.

When you are happy and in love, what seems to be is that your perfection is impenetrable.


I took the engagement pictures of a peer today. To say that doing this for Audrey and her fiancée, Michael, was an honor would be a definite understatement. As I am an aspiring photographer, I really could not have asked for a more compliant, easy-going first shoot. Audrey and Michael were happy and nearly perfect.


At the end of the day, I had somewhere close to 560 pictures of the couple in various places on campus and in downtown Bryan. I think it is fair to say that around 90 percent of the pictures had them smiling. As a friend, this is something I could never complain about. Funnily enough, as a photographer, my feelings are exactly the same. Looking back through the pictures now, I catch glimpses of pure, untainted happiness.


To say that I am not jealous of this obvious bliss would be a blatant lie. For those of my readers who know me well enough, you can probably stop reading now. The feelings I have about my own love life (or lack, thereof) are not unknown. Like most things, it is not a difficult feat to learn of my opinions on matters of love.


For those of you who have never had this conversation with me, you are about to get an earful (sure, like that's a surprise, right?).


My views on love are not unique. I want love. I want to be able to say I am in love, and the person I love loves me back with just as much fervor. I want to be a part of a we, not an I.


I know what most of you will say.
"Megan, don't rush it."
"Megan, you will find someone."
"Megan, don't let your life be defined by who you are or are not in love with."
"It will happen for you when you least expect it."
"You will find someone who is perfect for you. Someone who worships the ground you walk on and appreciates you for who you are."


Yeah? Okay. I am not saying that I am an impatient person. I am saying that I want to know what everyone around me has known. My eagerness to learn about things I am unsure of has always been a prominent personality trait of mine. This is also not to say that I am USING love as strictly a learning experience. I want love because I know what it can do for and to the heart and soul. I don't feel incomplete. It is, rather, that I feel like I am part of a whole. A whole that is incomplete.


My "we" has not been found yet. I want my "we." I want that person who will holds hands with me, watch old movies and kiss me on the forehead when I am acting ridiculous. I want that person who wants me, doesn't need me. Wanting is so much more different than needing. I have felt needed, and it is just far too much for one person to handle.


I do not, however, want someone who worships me. Quite frankly, I don't think I am all that spectacular in the first place. I'm loud, I'm crude, I curse like a sailor's mother and I am bossy. That being said, I wish someone would at least give me a chance.


I convinced myself that I was in love once. I had it in my head that what I felt for him had to be real because I had known him for so long before we dated. Oh, how I was wrong. I won't go as far into it as I really, honestly want to, but I have plenty to say about it.  My biggest regret in regards to my time with him is that it has changed the way I see him in almost every important way. I no longer see him as my best friend. I see him as that guy I dated who happens to still be hanging around.


Someone has made me feel disposable. I would never wish this feeling on anyone, any day. To feel disposable is to feel as if your purpose in life is irrelevant. I felt irrelevant. I felt used. I felt like my purpose in his life was to be a placeholder for something better.


I am not a pioneer when it comes to confidence, that's for damn sure, but I know I at least deserve more than that. I, at the very least, deserve to be treated as if I matter. I deserve to be treated as if what I have to say affects decisions and thoughts. I don't deserve that feeling, and I sure as hell will not accept that from anyone anymore.


I am a stronger person than that. I have great things to offer someone. If a person cannot appreciate me for that, then they shouldn't matter to me. They shouldn't, but they do.


I have a very difficult time giving up on people. Quite frankly, it causes me a lot more heartache than I am comfortable with. Despite the heartache, however, I continue to give people more and more chances. In fact, they probably get far more chances than they deserve. I wouldn't necessarily say this means I am a glutton for heartache. I just know how much another chance can mean and how much it can change things. Another chance can mean the difference between hate and love.


It might be time to start changing that part of me.