A Drop In The Ocean

Well ladies and gentlemen, in case you haven't heard I made it to California. In other news it is hot here and I don't understand why anywhere should be hot in NOVEMBER. I am a Chicago girl- this is entirely unnatural and I don't believe that I will ever actually get used to it. Ever.

Now on to tonight's ramblings. Lucky you! (Not really, but welcome to my inner thoughts anyway)

I titled the post tonight after a song by Ron Pope: A Drop in the Ocean

The reason is for the refrain:
A drop in the ocean, a change in the weather, I was praying that you and me might end up together
It's like wishing for rain as I stand in the desert, but I'm holding you closer than most
'cause you are my heaven

If you don't already know, I have a very vivid imagination, which can be a terror. But it can also be a thing of great beauty. Tonight there is supposed to be a meteor shower- a million shooting stars right above my head all night long. A million wishes to be made even though I'm supposed to be grown up by now. Forget that for a moment.

It got me thinking about all the wishes I make everyday. Most of the time I won't admit to myself that they are wishes, I can them vague hopes, but they mean the same thing to me.

Mostly I dream for myself a future. A wonderful man to come and take me away to see the world and take risks. A man who really loves me and wants to spend the rest of his life with me and doesn't mind that I dream about having a family and a big dog and converting a random building into a home because then it would be uniquely ours. My own personal price charming walked out of my own personal eden.
I dream of who I will become- a respected film maker- elegant, classy, a woman who radiates identity. The kind of woman who wears perfect red heels, beautifully fitted dresses, and smells on Chanel No 5.
I dream of a life together full of old, forgotten traditions, and warm banter, and sitting with him in the middle of nowhere, wrapped in his arms and showing him the letters I've been writing that now I see were for him. Loving each other perfectly and making our relationship work even though it is nearly impossible.

So yes, I dream strange, impossible dreams. I have a "perfect" life planned in my head. And I know that it will never happen. But I dream anyway, because it gives me something to look forwards to when I'm tired and lonely and afraid because I'm so trapped in my own head that it feels like I will never get out.

I'm a dreamer. I hope one day it gets me somewhere.

Something Useful

Hey guess what? I've found something that I learned in school that I've actually found useful for outside purpouses! It's called a brain dump and I'm pleased to bring it to your attencion.

It is what it sounds like- a simple spilling of whatevers in your head. You can do it on a cretain topic or just the first things that pop into your head. You can list of write sentences or doodle or rant. Just go. 

My teaches taught me this to help with essay topics in english (once) and essay questions in history (repeatedly). The reasoning of my english teacher was to find out what you care about enough to write about, and the rational os the history department was that if you wrote down everything you could think of about a question than chances are that something will be correct so they can give you credit on the test.

I personally use it for writing talks and creative writing, and thus have altered the technique a little bit (hence the doodles and listing). I love doinf this because when I just have ideas spinning in no useful order for a story or talk I can jjuat spit them out as they come and worry about deciphering them later and making them fit. My head is usually so full of random ideas or details about whatever I'm doing that I have to get it all out before I can actually think. So I ramble on a scrap page or the margins of a given outline, or open a clean page in my notebook, and go for it. Oddly enough it works- so I am greatful to my teachers for introducing the idea.

Point of this drabble? Tip from the writer's shop: keep the brain dump on file. Whenever you need to organize, inspire, or brainstorm, have at it and see if it helps. At the very least it may get rid of your writer's block and give you a good idea or phrase to work with.

ENJOY!

Let's Have Dinner

Heartbeat- the Fray

It's summer and I realize I haven't posted in a long time, but I also realize that no one actually reads this blog so I'm not quite so worried about that.
I've been either busy or sick or both so far this summer and I have a ton of stuff I need to do for school and I need a job and whatever.

The title tonight came from Sherlock on BBC again- "I'm sad tonight, let's have dinner." That's where I'm at right now. Just sad tonight. I'm stressed and sick and facing down the rest of my life, and it all makes me sad. It probably doesn't help that I've been on a lowered dose of my meds the last couple days since my bottle of pills ended up in my brother's room and no one noticed the switch until last night after I was in bed.

So yeah, I'm sad tonight, let's have dinner. Seriously. We can get a bad pizza or something and just sit and be quiet and everything will go away for a little while so that we have our own corner of the world.

If the world I imagine was real than tonight I would build a fire and call up a friend and he would put an arm around my shoulders and we would sit and enjoy each other's company, maybe call for takeout eventually and tell stupid stories. It's not a complex fantasy, just one that feels out of reach right now because everyone wants an explanation when you call and only one friend understands the existing thing and another the huggy thing and I am incapable of morphing them together at this point in time. Chances are if I did they would actually become a chatty no-contact person and I would be sitting there thinking "well that's not at all helpful".

The Fan Fiction Bug

Earlier this year my friend Anna truly introduced me to fan fiction. I have been thoroughly intrigued and entertained by the good work I have found as a result, and saddened at the notion of the original writers weeping and turning in their graves over the bad ones (and there have been some).

I have taken, more often in the last months or so, to writing my own attempts at fan fiction. So far I have published one, for it is difficult to force this type of writing and my time and inspiration have been mutually exclusive of late. today though, I have currents 5 fics spinning in my head and need to get to writing already. I wish I could publish more of the work I have completed (which is not much), but I wrote out of chronological order and so I would be publishing about characters I have yet to introduce the Sherlock fan fiction community to (since they are a product of my own mind) and that would only confuse people. To give you an idea of the jump, I married these characters off to other respective characters in the series. Cute, but hard to appreciate if you have never met them before. Lucky for me, I do know them so I can enjoy the world I have crated for myself and the little fluff I conjure up.

I know no one is probably reading this, but if you would be interested in my fics eventually, comment and I will either post them here or send you a link to my fic profile so you can see them.

So Came the Summer

I Graduated! On to new adventures that we call life- new destinations, new stories, new people and challenges. I'm excited, and a little scared. The whole thing is pretty bizarre. But hey, we made it. And I'd like to thank the friends, family, and teachers who patiently put up with us all up to that point and supported and inspired us. The people who were there in our best and worst moments with a smile and a calm hand, telling us to let go and jut spread our wings a little bit further to catch the rising winds.

Ladies and gentlemen, we survived. Now let us offer our thanks for the grace and good angles that brought us here.

Mazel Tov!!!

From the Trenches

Only a few more weeks ladies and gentlemen. In a few weeks I will be graduated and moving on to, hopefully, bigger and better things. If I can get through these next few weeks that is.

I have projects coming out of my ears and college is up in the air, again, taking off just when I thought it was coming in for a landing.

Prom is this week, and I still need shoes and a belt for my dress.

I'm just generally stressed and unsure about life in general right now.

Hopefully though, if I can get through this next part of my life, there will be something for me in the field I want, with people I love, and I life that I will be happy with. I'm going to have to trust that God knows what he's doing with this and work my butt off to get all this school work done before the AP tests.

Prayers would be much appreciated.

Thanks

All My Secrets

Song- Echo by Jason Walker

"I don't count"- Molly from Sherlock

One day, I'm going to find the time, and the place, and the person to tell all my secrets. Everything. and it's going to hurt. Telling secrets does, trying to explain the contents of your heart, what it means to be you, to hurt in only the ways that you can hurt.

You want to know something great about life? There is somewhere, someone who gets it. Someone who can see you, someone who probably "doesn't count" in your life by their own estimation. That person is so important, so beautiful. It is a gift, an amazing GIFT it really be seen by someone, and that should never be underestimated.

Dear beautiful, you who understand,
thank you. thank you for seeing me, even though you have never met me, and never will by all probability. Thank you for explaining when people don't see. They still don't, but I appreciate that you tried, and that you get it. You understand heartbreak, and fear, and detachment. You know death, and hurt, and what real friendship is, and what it means to believe in someone, even when they tell you that you shouldn't. It's wonderful to see that someone else in my vein of explanation can see. One day, I want to shake your hand. All of you.

You are brilliant!!!


Yes, it means that much. My secrets on display for all the world, even though they don't know that they are mine.

Yes my friends, somebody gets it. And they will show the world.

Now we just need to learn to observe.

Tell me your secrets.

Let me tell you mine.

Spring Break

I am so happy that i finally made it to Spring Break. It didn't solve all my problems, I still procrastinated and so have multiple projects to do tomorrow, but it is so nice to have some time off!!!

I watched and read enough Sherlock that I can now try and write my own (in progress), realized there is series 2 to look forward to at some point, and today I got the stuff to make myself a prom dress. I hadn't seriously planned on making my own dress, but after shopping, and failing, I found a non prom design that i love and am making a prom dress because it's ME. It's classy. It's sophisticated. It's elegant. Everything I wanted. :) Now all I have to do is figure out how to sew it, which hopefully mom mom can teach me how to work with the pattern.

I still need a date- and that's a whole other problem. In a perfect world, I could get the Sherlock form Sherlock (the character actually) to be my date, and we wouldn't be going to prom, just to dinner and then dancing, and he would be closer to my age. But this is not a perfect world, I am only 18, and I don't live in Britain.

Could the boys my age hurry up and get cute already? I mean come ON!!!

College wants a decision, and I don't want to give them one. I want to learn stuff, but really right now I just want to travel. I WANT TO SEE THE WORLD!!! Skip college, I want to be working on my movies already, using the beauty of the world that we live in to spin stories, meet incredible, creative and passionate people, and get on with something interesting. I'm ready to be successful and do important work, and start working on the great plans I have- like making movies, traveling, writing, converting a random building into a house, starting over. LIVE.

I WANT TO LIVE A LIFE BEYOND THE WALLS I MADE FOR MYSELF.

Can I have that life?

Please?

I will try to be patient.

Our Song

I was watching Doctor Who videos on YouTube today (and yesterday- but that's beside the point) and I found a bunch of fan videos of clips set to music. My favorites were set to Anyway You Want It and Cable Car. They went so well with each other, telling the story so well, that I started thinking about a what songs and clips would be in my videos with my friends and I. Would they be sad and sweet, or funny? Would they be all music? Or have voice overlays too?
I wish I could show pieces of my heart and soul like YouTube videos. Tell a story in 4 min. Make it deep and soulful. Make someone feel the way a few stupid clips and a good lyric make me feel- like my heart os skipping. Stopping. Being caught in my chest.
I wish it were that easy to pour myself out. I envy people who are emotional sometimes. I feel differently than other people. I don't have a ton of visual responses. I can share positive responses more easily, but I can't share the way i care about people, or when I'm upset unless I'm having an all out breakdown- and even then, if it doesn't seem right to me- I try to suppress it.
Tomorrow I think I'm going to start a new project. I'm going to think about songs for people. I'm going to watch videos in my head, and maybe try to explain them one of these days. That's another day's issue.

Published

I've been thinking about my writing lately, mostly because of creative writing class, but it's got me wondering about sharing my work. My original plan was to spam the Lit Mag at school with a hundred poems at the end of the year, but I'm re-thinking that right now. When I finish something I like what I've written and part of me wants other people to see it and know that it's mine. So I've been looking into other options.

We are required to make a poetry book for class complete with pictures, profiles, the who shebang. I am wondering if I could go and make that incredibly long and just make things interesting for my teacher (Ok, so I want to cause a little trouble. You really hadn't noticed?). I'd enjoy doing it, so why not? 

I also looked into either opening a 4th blog (not that the other two I have right now are that great) and making it totally devoted to my creative writing. What I worry about here is someone plagerizing me. Which, normally I wouldn't care to much, but I really put heart into these things and I'm not ok with you taking credit for my life. That crosses a line.

Or I could join some website like poetry.com or fanfic.net or devianart (or some combination there of). I'm not particularly fond of any of those sites. Though I do put up with the first two just because of content. 

The truth is that I don't know what I want to do, because as much as I want to share my work I want to preserve my aminimity so that I can do things like submit a hundred poems at a time and see what happens. Or totally shock people by casually writing something really cool while they sit there thinking "what? you write?". It gives me greater opportunity to blow people's minds. But if I share then I have access to more minds in order to take them by surprise. It's some trade off.

Heartbeat

Have you ever considered a heartbeat? It's that most basic sign of life that we have- more important even than breathing. It's the beating of our hearts that ensures us that we are indeed here, not dreaming some impossible dream, that we are not some figment of our own imagination. I think that's why I'm so drawn to them. When I'm scared or rushing around I don't have to try to hear it- I can feel the blood pulsing through my veins and it feels good to know that everything is fine.
We crave finding that in ourselves and others. It's so easy to loose that connection and start to wonder if the people around us are really there or if we are the only person alive in the universe, and even though we know that we aren't, and our minds tell us that there are 6 billion people on this planet and 20 something that you can see right now, even so we still doubt it. If you can find someone else's heartbeat it's like their pulse is your only connection to another living thing- and it feels good. It's all about contact, interacting with another person.
I heard once that Americans need the most personal space of anyone in the world. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. The idea of touch is lost to Americans. We just don't understand it. As much as we want human contact, we fear it.
Something as simple as running into someone in the hallway makes us panic- as if the touch could be deadly. I think we get shocked by the collision of our respective universes- the idea that someone else could exist on their own completely apart from ourselves- that even people we don't know can make contact with us that easily.
It begs the question: what are we so afraid of. Why does the idea of genuine contact with anther human being terrify us? We're not the only culture that has been lied to about human connection, so why are we the ones that are terrified?

What's different about us?

But more importantly:

How do we fix it?

No, I'm not a Hermit... yet...

Have you ever watched Doctor Who? It's a British sci-fi show (wich just goes to show how incredibly nerdy I am), and something that's been on my mind a lot lately. I love that the show seems to say things that I could envision going through my head, being said by people like myself. One of may favorite lines is in the episode where they are on the Titanic (spaceship, not ocean liner) and the doctor tells one of the passengers that he and his friends are hermits. "Hermits united. We meet up every ten years or o and swap atories about caves."

I am not a hermit. Yet. I have to say though that the idea does have some appeal.

What prompted this is that today I was informed that for Humanities I would be forced to work in a group this quarter (and next quarter too, by the looks of it). I'm not thrilled. People are crazy. Serieously. And I don't have any real friends in that class anymore. So I'm going to have to just go up to some group of friends and say "hey, mind if I join you for the next few weeks?". AKWARD! I'm really good at working on my own. i'm relatively efficent when I choose to be, I'm my own master, and left to my own devices I do some pretty shnazzy things. Put me in a group, and you loose a lot of that.

So while I'm freaking out and considering dropping the class that was my favorite period of the day last semester, I'm really wishing taht Anna would join my class. Or I would know someone in 4th hour. Or I didn't have social anxiety. Or that I could work alone. Mostly that one.

The second reason that I'm loving the doctor right now (besides the fact that I'm probably on overload) is the appeal of having someone in my life the way that Donna has the doctor. I'm Clare, super nerd! Where's my alien in a blue box??? I want to see the universe. I don't know how to explain it... to live like I'm drowning in an idea, and that idea is life, living it so intensely that I can't breathe, and it sinks in so that every part of me is flooded with it, my lungs are full if the thought, and every blood cell has replaced it's oxygen and carbon dioxide with the tiniest molecules of it all. That's how I want to live, and that's what I see here. I see the promise of a different life and the promise of knowledge of life outside ourselves. Like I said, it's hard to explain.

Plotting

I have a rather devious plan.
You see, I dabble in creative writing. Ideally, I would make a career of it, probably a side career, but I don't see that happening as of yet.
What I can do though, is submit it random sources to access my skills. My plan is currently small. It involves so far only spamming the lit mag at school with as much poetry as I can assemble between now and the deadline, and submit them anonymously from an email address that I have created specifically for that purpose, and see what happens. I must say I believe I'm getting a bit to excited about this- it's further prompting my wish that the end of the year was here by now- then the lit mag would have been published and sitting in my backpack, and I would be laughing aloud at my own work.
As it is I am sitting watching Sherlock Holmes and, writing, and avoiding doing my art projects by any means possible, because finishing and touching up 9-10 art projects and studying for possible one of the worst finals I've taken to date don't sound at all appealing for some bizarre reason.
My friend Sam is graduating this week. Graduating, moving to Virginia, and finishing the semester of college that she already started taking her online. Part of me wishes that I could graduate with her, start something new, but I understand why I can't do that. It would force me into MCC (something that I WILL NOT do), mess up my place on PMT (something that I love), and leave me with half years of art, spanish, and stats (things which I have mixed feelings about).
It's sort of like the college-homeschool thing. Part of me understands that I could be a semester away from a liberal arts degree that I would have got from reading, something that I have a fondness for. I probably could have gotten highschool credit for it as well, but that's in the past now. My best friend Caryn holds that it wouldn't have been a good thing for me, and I'm inclined to believe her because she knows me better in some ways than I know myself. I think she would say the same about my graduating early. I would to. As much as I don't want to be in highschool anymore, I'm not ready to be gone. I have to grow up again, stop trying to run back to elementary school or wherever. I'm not in 3rd grade anymore, and no amount of stalling can change that, even if I wanted it to.