The Mall
I sit still
And the world rushes past me.
On my right, the people rush North.
On my left, the people rush South.
If I try to watch
I find myself spinning
spinning
dizzy
too many colors
too many faces
too many voices.
All I can do
is wait
until the rush stops
And then sneak away home.
-JLS
5/26/13
I have always written stories or poems, almost all my life. I didn’t realize that not everyone does this. Only recently did it dawn on me.
Does that mean my career calling should be to be a writer? I have been spending 37 years trying to figure out what I should be when I grow up.
Is writing the answer?
“The Worst Snow Storm!”
Commentary: My first book.
I made my first book a long, long time ago (but in this galaxy). It had a cohesive plot, but questionable spelling choices. You’ll have to excuse that fact–I had no editor, and was only in elementary school myself. It even had characters of varying ethnicities–one family was white, the other was black. That must have been the influence of 1970’s and 1980’s cartoons, which all had a token black character on the cast, because I didn’t even know any African-Americans at that age. The story wasn’t a school project or anything. I just made it all on my own, at home. I was very proud of it, because my mom put it in the scrapbook.
“Bobby Jones and Marty Cargo one day planned to play on that day. But they had a snow storm.”
Wow. Snow’s so thick, I can’t see a thing!
All through school, I would write stories every chance I could for class assignments. It made an assignment easy for me to complete. I would also write at home, just for myself. I would skip lunch during high school to write in the computer lab (much less chance of getting picked on or having food thrown at you). When I had a big depression my senior year, I became a prolific poet. I took lots of English classes as electives. I took the AP English class, but not the placement exam. I even took a one week summer writing workshop held at a local college.
“They asked their moms’. Their moms’ said, “No! You cannot go out.”
Smart moms.
One of my favorite teachers was my English teacher. We will call him Mr. C. He also happened to be the adviser for the newly formed school newspaper. I wrote a story or two for it. The next year, I ended up as the Co-Editor, which I actually really enjoyed. It was just kind of a happy accident that I ended up with that position (and because no one else wanted it). It helped to make my college applications not look so naked.
“But they went out anyway far, far away. And they built a snowman. While they were building a snowman it started to snow.”
In college I was busy, but I still wrote. During that time, I wrote one of my favorite stories. It is kind of goth. I used poetry at that time to once again get me through depression. I was a Communications major, with an emphasis on Radio and TV Broadcasting. I filled in the gaps between classes for my major and prerequisites with English and Psychology classes. I took so many English classes that the head of the department told me to make it my minor. He let me do an independent study to work on some stories and get a 400-level class on my transcript. (That would be an unfinished story that wasn’t good, and I wish I wouldn’t have wasted time on it.) (I could have minored in Psychology as well, but I didn’t want to have to take a statistics class, which was required to have it be an actual official minor.)
“After they were done with the snowman, they were very, very cold. They would go home, but it was too far away.”
Damn, look at those goosebumps. They were REALLY cold.
My first full-time job, I found other creative-minded types. We read each other’s old stories. We wrote and emailed poems to each other throughout the day. They also were interested in dream interpretation, as I had been for years.
“When Bobby’s dad woke up, Bobby’s mom told him that Bobby was gone. And when Marty’s dad came home from work Marty’s mom told him that Marty was gone.”
The mom’s sure look happy about that.
Really, the only time I can remember not writing was while my mom was sick. I spent one evening a week doing her grocery shopping for her, two nights doing her laundry, and usually taking her to a doctor’s appointment as well. And I worked 40hrs a week, plus a 2hr daily commute. She about killed me. I didn’t have time to write at that time. I didn’t even have time to think. Even though she got a clean bill of health a few years after she was diagnosed, I was still doing all those errands for her. I had to put an end to it when my son was born. Literally, like 10 minutes after I walked into my house from the hospital.
“So they went out and looked and looked for their boys.”
Sorry. Too lazy to re-scan.
I went back to work after my maternity leave on the exact same day my company filed for bankruptcy. I also went back in a new position (my former lateral position that I had interviewed to get back into had been eliminated while I was off, so I was starting a new lateral position. Got all that?) where I got to work on one of the company’s blogs. It was fun. I found out a co-worker had a personal blog. This peaked my interest. Plus, I could read the writing on the wall. I knew I needed to add some new mad skills to my resume. So, I started this blog, got on Facebook and LinkedIn, and figured out how to actually use my Twitter account.
“They found their boys and picked them up and took them home.”
Wow, frozen solid.
While hanging out at home with my son, I found more time to blog regularly than I would have anticipated having. Regularly publishing posts got me followers. Followers made me try to think up more content. This made me dig out an old story from high school, my only intent being to jazz it up a little, then post it on my blog.
That led to me deciding that I might be able to combine it with more short stories, and do one of those self-publishing dealios.
In 6 months time, that has led to me finishing 2 young-adult (short) novels, and starting a third in the trilogy, with plans for 2 bonus books.
My original goal is to have one self-published by year’s end. I am thinking the writing may be the easiest part of the equation. I don’t know anything about royalties or percentages or designing book covers, etc. And at first, well, I thought an e-book would be good enough to fulfill a dream.
But, well, a physical book with a cover with my name on it, filled with words spilled forth from my brain, is so tempting I can taste it. That was my first vision when I made that book out of crayons and pencil.
Trust me, when I get to that point, you will all know. imnotstalkingyou.com will be book-hawking central.
You know, I have also always had a love to art (drawing, painting, photography). Hmmm, maybe that is my real calling…
“They got home and laid their boys down, covered them up, and gave them some soup.”
This story has been sponsored by Campbell’s Soup. Mmm-Mmm Good.
AN ENCHANTED BOTTLE AND THE IVORY CUPBOARD
By: JLF
2/28/95
Help Me! Help Me!
I don’t know what’s wrong with me!
What is this strange feeling?
Is it a headache, a stomach ache
A new strain of flu?
Why do I feel this way?
What–wait…
Is this happiness,
is this what it feels like
to be happy?
I don’t have any worries,
And even the worries I can think of
Just don’t seem to bother me
This fine winter evening.
The music from the radio
Seems to flow into me
And through my veins,
Electrifying me and making me glow
all over.
I want to capture this feeling
into an enchanted bottle.
I want to seal it up tight
And lock it away in an ivory cupboard,
Where I can save it
For a dark, hazy day of sadness
When I can take out the bottle
And remember what happiness was like.
I haven’t felt like this in so long
in a sense too far gone from love
That don’t last forever
Something’s gotta turn out right
–“Got Me Wrong” by Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains)
[A million thanks to my friend Jill for helping me to identify this song from a pivotal time in my life many years afterwards. How I told her “I am looking for a song with the words ‘I haven’t felt like this in so long’, and she asked me if it was sung by two people, and figured out almost instantly it was Alice in Chains, I will never understand, but I am eternally grateful.]
I always measure my experiences in life to how they would be portrayed on a sitcom. As you might expect, my own experiences often play out much differently than in TV Land. College would be one of these.
College sucked. On TV, everyone is always a joiner who participates in every student activity. They make friends they will have for the rest of their lives. They go to parties. They learn to be deep thinkers. They find their soul mate.
Me? Not so much. I was a commuter with no car for 3 out of my 4 years of college. While waiting for my ride home every day, I had to kill hours in the library. There are only two friends that I made in college that I still keep in touch with. I never went to a single party. I am not a natural-born joiner. I joined some sort of academic fraternity that never had any activities just so that I could get a sweatshirt with Greek letters on it. Then I felt self-conscious in it and never wore it. I submitted some of the depressing poetry I wrote while killing time in the library anonymously to the college literary magazine. They published a couple.
My two closest friends were at two other colleges in two different states. It made for a very lonely time in my life. My best friend came back home after her freshmen year (she HAD found the parties), which was better. But she was attending the university across town, so we never saw each other except at night.
I also had an undiagnosed, then diagnosed, stomach problem during this time as well. So I felt miserable physically as well as mentally!
It was overall the loneliest year of my life. I don’t really think I look forward to coming back in the fall. -JLF 4/27/95
My other friend, my asbestos friend, had an even worse college experience than me. I told her this week how I was going through my old college free-writes to get a true sense of the misery to work on my new story (and this blog post). Her reply?
“I don’t think I could relive that time. I’ve blocked much of it out & I think that’s for the best.”
She has told me a few of her great miserable stories, including being sick with mono and all alone, and donating so much blood for money that she passed out in the parking lot at the donation place. (Those are two separate occasions. I think.) But my favorite story is the one where she takes her life back into her own hands. It’s the story where during her last semester she realizes college is making her miserable and she is an adult. She has her own job and her own place to live. She just leaves the campus and never turns back. She is my hero:)
I did not leave. I stayed, hoping to get my MRS. degree. I only went to college because my mom told me I had to either do that or get a job. I had gone to school for K-12 years. I had never had a job. I picked the option I was familiar with. I should have got a job. Now I have a Bachelor’s Degree and I am applying to entry-level store jobs at Meijer, Cash Advance, and Family Video. And they are not hiring me.
Compilation of 2 No Doubt drawings I made while in college
I had my first boyfriend for a month my freshmen year. After it ended, from my old writings, I seemed to be lonelier than before.
When I was in high school, I had a few hours after school everyday before my mom got home from work that was my time to myself. In college, I had no privacy. My mom was my ride. If she was home I was home and she drove me nuts. (This is probably the only way my college experience was worse than my asbestos friend’s.) My bedroom didn’t even have a door. I would stay up late to do homework, and find myself watching Beavis & Butthead marathons on MTV instead. I always said that I could feel my brain cells rotting away as I watched that show. I think it helped numb my depression. Then my mom, who always slept on the couch in the living room where the only TV was, would wake up. (Yes, I went to college in the Dark Ages. My college had text-only Internet my freshmen year!) She would ask me,”Are you watching Beaver & Buttface?” I mostly watched it for the music videos, which sucks, because any version released on DVD has only limited music videos. How much did I watch them? Here are a poem and some fan artwork from that time:
Lovin’ the Boys
By: JLF
3/7/95
If I make a video
Can I get on that show?
First I would have to make
A really cool video
You know,
One with lots of guitars,
And riffs, and drums.
I would stumble around
In a really short dress
And scream all the words
Really, really loud.
I would put in some shots
Of farm animals and livestock,
And throw in a toilet
(To give them something to talk about).
Then I would send it to New York,
To that video channel,
And wait every day & every night
For them to put my video on that show.
They could sit there on their couch
In their dirty T-shirts & stinky shorts
And watch my video.
That dark-haired guy and his dumb-blond friend
Could belch and fart
And yell “Fire! Fire!”
Then they would deem my video
As “Cool” or “Sucks”,
By how short my dress was,
How loud I yelled,
And the fact my video had only one
Toilet in it.
But I would be happy
Because I got to see my video,
With one of those yellow, pointy
signs with their names in it
In the corner of the screen.
And that would make it worthwhile. . .
Illustration I made based on a video that Beavis & Butthead mocked. (My son likes this pic a lot. Maybe I should be concerned about that.)
I ended up getting an on-campus job, so I started interacting with my classmates a little more. It also got me out of the library. I got paid (!) to wait for my ride. That helped a little.
Then I got a better boyfriend. I couldn’t find him at college, because he was still in high school. (I should have flunked!) Those who know me know he is now my husband.
Then I got an off-campus job too, in addition to those other things. My best friend worked at the convenience store too, and helped me get the job. People who know me know it was one of my favorite jobs. I liked it so well that I saved up my earnings over the summer so that I could buy a car so that in the fall I could keep the job while I finished college. (Most people get a job to get a car. I got a car to keep a job.)
I should become a writer like Erma Bombeck & just write about “stuff”. -JLF (found in an old college notebook)
So, ya, college sucked for me. I can enthusiastically say that not everyone enjoys themselves at college. Accept this post and the accompanying writings below as evidence. Probably the worst time of my life. When my son gets old enough, I don’t know how I will ever be able to keep from talking negatively about it. I kind of feel about it the way I do about the Lord of the Rings films. I want my time and money back. I want my four years and my $18,000 back (I got a lot of scholarships).
Untitled
By: JLF
4/8/95
There’s a party tonight
General Admission – $2
There’s a party tonight
Everyone Welcome
Are you going to the party tonight?
I don’t think they mean me
Are you going to the party tonight?
Everyone would be happier if I didn’t
Everyone’s going
But I am not
Everyone’s going
I’ll stay home and listen
to my own silence.
Sometimes a person
has to look through the thick, black
copier ink lettering
And realize that circumstances
and situations and history
are the things that really predict
who will attend the ball
and who will stay home.
The Driving Rain
By: JLF
It is 9:06PM. It’s raining. I have a half a tank of gas. Will this be the night. Will this be the night I keep going and don’t look back?
I could change my life right now. It would be just as easy as changing channels on the television. I can see all my different options spread out in front of me, and the television channels just keep going. There is the music video channel, blaring sounds and images. There is Channel 25. All Hitler, All the time. The third reicht of the Chicago area. Heil! Channel 25. Then the weather channel. Do I want rain or do I want sunshine? Which road will lead me to what type of weather?
Oh. I’m on the road back home. But I still don’t have to go there. This road is so boring, so familiar. A person could die on a road like this and the drivers who travel it every day would probably not notice the body for months. Was the light I just went through green or read, not that it would really mater. The slick road is completely vacant of other cars. The only tire marks I can see on the wet pavement are in my rear view mirror. I could slip out of town now, right out of the city limits. No one would see me, no one would be the wiser.
God, to just keep driving. To have no pre-planned destination, no over-analyzed goals—it all sounds like a dream. For the first time since I walked into Kindergarten on Experience Day and was assigned a seat and pencils and crayons, I would be in charge for myself. New mothers complain about not having handbooks to care for their new children. It is too bad they don’t make handbooks for the children, to help figure out what is right for themselves. I feel like I have never done anything I truly wanted to in my entire life.
One more road until home. Is this it? Well, a few times I have done what I wanted. There was the time I went to the carnival by myself, and I kept playing games until I won a stuffed animal. But I felt as though everyone was staring at me because I was by myself. (I am always by myself. I am at this very moment.) I got a stuffed animal that day. But it wasn’t from the guy I flirted with or the games I tried the hardest at. I got my little stuffed bear from a crooked game and, even though I know that, I still think of him as a lucky charm.
Should someone as naïve as I be roaming around the nation’s highways? Probably not.
Ahh—I just passed the drive to my house. But it wasn’t a brave, meaningful decision of symbolism as I had hoped. I simply got too caught up in my petty thoughts. But there is always a last refuge of a coward. I click on my turn signal for the next road, like reflex. I will turn around and make my way back to the same house and my same room.
Tonight—tonight I just couldn’t do it. Rain can be romantic, but it is also scary. A half a tank of gas, well, maybe I’ll try it when there is a full tank. Maybe I’ll try it when I have more courage, or more caffeine coursing through my veins. Maybe I just need something more to run away from than familiarity.
So, I pull in the same driveway, unlock the same door with the same key, and walk through the living rom. I flick on the TV without even turning on a lamp, enjoying the flashes of blue that light up the room instead. I turn on the Weather Channel and see what it will be like tomorrow.
I hate life.
By: JLF
8/96
I hate life. I hate life. Life sucks so bad. My life is just one f***ing blackhole, which I don’t know what that is because I am too lazy & distracted to bother to read my astronomy book to bother to find out what a f***ing blackhole is! And why do I have to come back to f***ing school, which I f***ing hate! I have only had panic attacks while I had to go to school since I was in, like Kindergarten. I HATE SCHOOL! It makes me feel all yucky inside. It makes me feel dark & gloomy inside. It makes me feel like I do when I think about death–> DEATH, how stiffling & cold & lonely & empty it will be. That is what every second at school feels like to me…
At the moment it happened, the first shooting stars were crossing the sky – they were beginning to stream across like strings of jewels flung from another planet – and everyone was watching them. The smaller children were exclaiming in delight, while the older ones stood silent and enthralled. Here on the hill, where the valley people often came to watch the glittering night unfold, you could see the whole magic sweep around you, and you felt close to everything in the heavens. Other people, you knew, were standing on other hills on other worlds, watching even as you watched.
–Unknown (to me)*
Do you know what this quote is from? Oh, of course I KNOW.
I found it in a book I randomly took off the shelf in the middle school library. The paragraph above was the beginning of the book. I thought is sounded so awesome, that I copied it down. And I thought it was so great that I have kept it for all these years.
What book was that?
I don’t know. I didn’t write down the title.
What was the rest of the book about?
I tried to read it, but the rest of the book didn’t live up to that paragraph. So I stopped reading it. Like on page three.
So, you see, in my old age I can see the err of my youth. Even though I still do not intend to ever read the whole book, it would be a nice piece of mind to know WHAT THE BOOK WAS CALLED!!!
Something else kind of bone-headed I have done pertaining to this quote? I have never made another copy of the quote (until now). It is written in red ink on a piece of typing paper (yes, that is what it used to be called in the old days) & then folded up till it was 12th of it’s normal size. Not the easiest to find when you are searching through old boxes of wanna-be witchcraft non-precious gemstones and two filing cabinets containing everything you have written in your life, including elementary school reports.
So, by putting it on my blog, I accomplish two things at once.
1. Maybe someone out there will know what the quote is from (If I find out, I will totally give proper credit on this post).
2. I now have another copy of this quote that I can semi-easily find when I want it.
UPDATE!: * This has been identified first in the comments by Dane Jackson as being from “The Forgotten Door” by Alexander Key. Thank you to everyone for reading and helping me!
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