"Pull Me In" ~ Spence

The lead singer of Spence reached out to me on facebook asking me to check out his bands page. I did and I 'liked' it because I really did like it. I then pointed him in the direction of my blog, he started following it and we've continued being friends on-line ever since. If you guys enjoy this song, please find Spence on facebook and click the 'like' button. I have a link at the bottom of this post so just click the play button, listen, click the link at the bottom of the post, sign into facebook, click 'like' and you're done. Easy huh?

Spence facebook link:   http://www.facebook.com/#!/SpenceTheBand

P.S. Yes, Daniel is my friend, but he didn't ask me to do this. I just think he and his band deserve the referral. They just got a record deal and as I understand it are either touring now or will be very shortly, so be sure to see where they are at and go and see them!

Meet the Writer

This week was very busy, which seems to be becoming my normal week, that’s fine with me, ever the shying violet, I realize that I need to develop social skills, including: small talk, introducing myself and the like.
So, on with my report, yesterday I somehow got the bright idea to bring one of my blog poems to my writers group last night. I thought it would be fun, after all I was growing confident in my poetic abilities, and the next step in my mind is to read it aloud. After some thought I decided to pick one of my favorites, I thought picking a poem that I’m confident in might make the new experience easier when the nervousness of doing something new brings. Then the moment came and I thought I had lost my sanity. The writer group is comprised of people who would never do something to hurt me, not terribly anyways, so it was not really the fear of the people saying something, just what they would think. Oh, my gosh: that was a terrible poem! She needs to stick with fiction, and thoughts along those lines were my fear, which might seem silly to you, dear reader, but what made it so terrible, would be that I would agree with them, I don’t consider myself a poet: so what am I doing bringing my therapeutic scribbling to them? I got through it though, and they enjoyed it. I actually read it twice because some of the people were not at the table and because it was so short no one minded me reading it again. So, it was scary, but I got it done!
The other thing that happened this week that I want to mention to the five people who read my blog (thank you for reading it by the way,) my Mama and I went to Starbucks to meet with a writer, not to read our work or anything, just a social thing, and it was very nice. We got to know each other a little better and it was great. During our writing group meetings we don’t really have time to talk, and even during the “socializing time” there are certain voices that tend to dominate over the others. It was a refreshing change and it’s just nice to know that I have a friend in a fellow writer.

The Wedding

The event in this video happened after one of my longest standing friends, Abby just got married. After the ceremony we, the guests were told to stand on the patio, shortest in front, tallest in back for a picture, and we more or less listened. The bride and groom came outside and we and the bride were surprised when the groom left the bride on the patio and started to dance along with the bridesmaids and groomsmen and others. Abby is a dancer, so this was the best surprise for her.
  At 2:50 you can see me to the far right. I'm wearing a floppy white hat and I'm behind and between the guy with the tuxedo and glasses, and the woman with a dark patterned dress and sunglasses.

Last Day

Today is the day before my eighteenth birthday. Not only is it the last day I shall be this age, but it is also the last day I shall be a child as far as the law is concerned. It’s a big thing, according to many. Lots of people mark their eighteenth birthday by doing something they weren’t able to do while they were children, such as going to an R rated movie, or buying a pack of cigarettes, not to smoke them, just because you can. I’ve decided to reflect on what I’ve learned before I turn eighteen.

If there is one thing that I have learned during the last seventeen years of my life, it’s that you can always be a kid inside, even while you’re dealing with adult issues. People that look upon the world with the eyes of a child laugh more and cry less. They are more content because they know what makes them happy. People with child’s eyes can cut through the drama and see the heart of a problem. Children know life is simple and that life should be fun instead of hard and cruel. Adults make the world hard, not the world.

I’m facing my adult life with the determination to keep my child’s eyes well taken care of, instead of letting them be blinded by “obligations”, and “responsibilities”.

As long as we live, we learn, and as long as we learn, we make mistakes. Making mistakes is a part of being alive, so why sweat it? Why tangle ourselves in the delusion that life is hard when we hold the key to making it simple? When you hurt someone, you apologize. When you fall, you get back up and clean you wounds and heal. When someone hurts you don’t let them hurt you again; whether that means talking it out, avoiding that subject, or avoiding that person all together.

When I was thirteen, I dreamed that I died. Mama told me that it was my self-consciouses way of acknowledging that my life and body were changing from girl to woman and I wouldn’t be able to go back again. In a sense my childhood was dying, but she said “with every end there is a beginning.” My childhood would be over, and I would be an adult, there is no way to turn back the clock. I will go to college, get some degrees and do things no child could ever do. I will not be able to go outside after a rainstorm and throw mud at my brothers unless I wanted to be put in the psycho ward. There are things I can never do again; but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun like a child, smile and laugh like a child, and be carefree whenever the opportunity presents itself.

With this last essay as the seventeen-year-old me, I bid you farewell.

When They First Met

Jessica was exited the High School bus. She and her family had just moved into town and this was her first day at school. She came up to the brick building that resembled a prison; it even had bars in the windows.
As she stepped inside, the over-cooled air seemed to assault the exposed skin on her face, arms and hands. Thank goodness she had been thoughtful enough to wear jeans today.
She managed to find her first class without too much difficulty, and took a seat just moments before the bell rang; which didn't give anyone time to speak to her, and that was okay with her.
Jessica had always gone to public school, but she had never been able to find any long lasting friendships. She had always been different, even when she was little. She hadn't played with dolls, nor had she ridden a pink bicycle with streamers coming out of the handle bars like all the normal little girls. Jessica had liked to play with toy cars and she had ridden a black mountain bike as soon as she was big enough.
Whenever she met kids her age, it would start out fine, Jessica wasn't an unlikable person, then the differences started to show and something would come up that would cause everyone to be uncomfortable around her and they'd leave.
Now that she was in High School, she was just as different as ever, and she had no reason to expect making friends to be any better than it had been in the past.
Getting to her second class wasn't as easy as the first. When the first bell rang, she finally gave in and decided to approach someone.
Looking around, she saw another girl closing her locker.
Walking up to her, Jessica asked where room 24 A was located.
The girl seemed to be older than Jessica by at least a year; she gave some clean cut directions to the classroom.
After thanking the girl, Jessica introduced herself; the other girl said she was named Grace.
As they parted, Jessica had no way of knowing that Grace would prove to be the best kind of friend one could have.

This is What You Get

This is what you get with me
What you get is what you see
I don’t ask for much
My demands are such
That an honest person can
Keep it all in han’.

This is what you get with me
Just be who you were meant to be
Then I choose to stay
Or to walk and keep away.
Keep honest and
Find your place to stand
I cannot find
it for you; I do not wish to bind
Myself to you
If you don’t know if you can be true.

This is what you get with me,
There isn’t much to see
My cards are on the table
For anyone who is able
There are no games to play
The price to lose, I can’t pay.

This is what you get with me
What you get is what you see.

Photo Albums

Now a day’s everybody is going digital with everything. I find myself asking: Is this a good thing?
It seems to me that people who do their billing, banking, picture taking, writing, communication and filming all digitally are just one Super Virus away from becoming nobody. I don’t read much science fiction, but I’m sure that there is some author somewhere who has addressed the issue of a technologically advanced species that lost everything in a major power shortage, and everybody was reduced to a very primitive way of living. These people forgot who they were and where they came from and went back to telling stories about gods who control everything that happens, because that will seem more logical than microorganisms, atoms and neutrons. Because these people forgot their own histories they became in essence, nothing…

I’m not about to go into all of that, I’m not predicting that something like that will happen, I’m just planning upon making a smaller point, that will demonstrate that going digital is not necessarily a good thing.

Photos

I love my families albums, I love being able to just sit down and remember things that happened, and even the things that I was too young to remember, I like to imagine that I can. I’m not capable of relating how much these albums mean to my family and I. The ability to recount events and recall old conversations and events that we shared together helps us stay strong as a family, and helps bring forth our individuality.
Another thing I don’t think I could ever live without is our old family portraits. I can’t remember a time when Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Mezzano didn’t gaze down at me from a wall in my families home. Although I never met them, it’s a constant and comforting reminder that I am a part of a family; that a piece of those two people lives in me, and I feel as if as long as they hang on the wall, they will always be alive as well.
I feel similarly about the photo albums, except they have me and people that I know and have met in them, I can’t help but feel as long as they are there, I will always live on. My history and my story will always be there for someone else to see long after I’m gone. It gives me a sense of long lasting security. I will never disappear. I will always be there in those happy, or angry, or frustrating moments, it’s captured right there in that second.

Now this digital thing, I’m afraid of it quite frankly. I walk into people’s houses and there isn’t a single picture on the wall. Not a family portrait, or a school picture. It’s like these people are ghosts, these homes feel as empty and as expressionless as a hotel room. I immediately feel alien from these people; there isn’t a sign of them anywhere!
So when I hear that people have gone digital and their kids are rebelling against it, my immediate reaction is: “of course they are!! Why wouldn’t they?”
They’re growing up like ghosts. No wait, if they were ghosts, they would have a past, and they would be clinging to it. These children are without a past. When you’re growing up, you are constantly wondering “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?” It’s in human nature to ask these questions. To have a past gives you your identity, something that can never be stolen from you. Photos in easily accessible albums, and hanging on the walls were children can see it gives them a sense of security.
Growing up I know that man on the wall is my Great Grandpa. I know that my Great Grandpa immigrated to this country and married my Great Grandma. That's the greatest feeling in the world: to know that there is a place for you; to know that you are an essential member of a family. Even though they never met me, I am a part of my grandparents lineage, and they mine.
Humans need that sense of belonging, which is why it makes perfect sense that the kids are rebelling against the going-digital thing. What doesn’t make sense is the adult’s immediate willingness to strip themselves of their identity in their own homes.

Moving On

Moving On

Moving on is hard
Leaving the known
Is hard
For all you receive is unknown

We all put it off
No one likes a change.
We can no longer put it off
We need the change.

To keep life like this
Will suffocate us
To accept everything as is
Will mean the end for us.

I can’t stay with you
If you continue
To allow those who harm you
Around you.

I seeing you hurt everyday
By those who
Have the audacity to say
They love you.

I always ask myself: How can you hurt
Those you say you love?
I want “this take and hurt”
Way of love.

If this is the way it is
I will skim above
Any chance of
This so called “love.”

All that is left a web of lies
With mere whispers of the love
That first made the ties
Of a home of peaceful love.

So many tears fall
I fear there’s more to come
God can’t count them all
Yet each partake in who I shall become.

It is a burden on my heart and mind
I cannot fight your fight
I can’t cut the ropes that bind
Your will and might.

I walk away
So that I may breathe again
And I will pray
That you will learn to Fly again.

The Veil

The Echoes of past
Send vibes into the silent night
Unheard through the day
Now amplify at night
For the one who have ears to hear them.

As I lie awake,
Unsleeping, unceasing
Through the witching hour

A time, nature has it,
Those who live - sleep
Those who are dead, and those who never lived
Rule the frozen time of midnight.

My eyes gaze
Into the veil’s haze
Between this world and the other

I watch unblinkingly, nervousness grows
As those beyond the veil move
Some pass through an opening in time and space
into my world and bedroom.

I feel the watchfulness eyes of another on me
I change my gaze to look into my own room
A petite figure bends o’er me.

I feel a breeze across my face
When the veil reclaims this residence
Of the other place,
Out of my world and into the other
Which is also my own
From there I came from
There I shall be again.

Once my earthen body perishes,
I will learn again
To peer through the veil
To watch the living, as I now watch the dead.

Sweet16

As I approach my seventeenth birthday, I am reminded of my last birthday: my Sweet16.

A few weeks before my Sweet16 my Mama asked what I wanted as far as cake, party, a special dinner, or outing, whatever. I said, just a cake and presents, like every year, would be fine with me. My Mama was....concerned. She knows most girls have something special on their Sweet16 and I didn't seem to care. And, like always, whenever I do something that excludes people from outside my family, when it's customary to have someone from the outside become involved, she wondered if she was doing something wrong with me; she wasn't worried about what other people would think of her bringing me up, she was concerned that later I might regret not having some memories of an average Sweet16 party, making me have even fewer things in common with most girls of my generation.
I assured her (several times) that I really didn't care, "Even if I wanted to invite someone, who would I invite?? I don't have any close friends." Now that just opened a whole other can of worms inside my Mama's head. So I quickly added, "Having no friends isn't a bad thing....it just means that I don't have anybody that can stab me in the back." Once Mama stopped laughing, she had stopped worrying.