Origin Story

I’ve been entering the Writers of the Future contest for a year now, and I’ve earned three consecutive Silver Honorable Mentions. I’m eager to win, and sometimes I imagine I’m at the awards gala, giving my acceptance speech. What would I say? Who would I thank?

Every time I imagine this, it gets me thinking more broadly: What’s my writer story? How did I get started, and who were the mentors and supporters that got me where I am today?

So since it’s been on my mind, I’d like to share my own origin story.

Mimicry

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery.

I say flattery is merely an exercise in form.

And where this intersects art is the domain of mimicry (in poetry).

Posting Poems

Or, A Title with Too Many Puns

Have you looked at the sidebar recently? If you have, there’s a good chance you noticed a new little picture promoting a Kickstarter campaign I started about a week ago: The goal is to create 100 poems, each of them inspired by a backer’s writing prompt, handwritten on a postcard, and illustrated with a watercolor painting before being put in the mail.

And…I hesitated to share it here. On the one hand, this my platform, why shouldn’t I? But then I remembered last year I heavily promoted a similar project here, and it ended up being unsuccessful, and I didn’t want to risk making my blog readers feel spammed by another failed project. Worse: I felt vulnerable putting it out there again, because my first attempt was a failure. So mum was the word. At least, until today.

ugly words

ugly words are little and small
it’s no wonder I can’t say them at all

— catch the whole poem at Silent Soliloquy here

Psst! Do you like music?

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted–first I got sidetracked when I was told my thesis was due earlier than anticipated (by a month! but don’t worry, I finished it–and passed my defense), and then I had to catch up on homework, and then I’ve been attending a YOGA for Youth teacher training and it’s been busy (forty hours? two weekends? check!).

Excuses, excuses, of course, but it’s my way of saying if I could have been here, sharing ideas and experiences with all of you, I would have been. =)

I’m still in a frenzied state, of course, attempting to stay on top of everything as graduation and Teach for America barrel toward me, but I want to take a quick moment to share something with you–call it my three-day-early throwback Thursday.

A Shot of Stress

As part of my Year of Re-creation, I’m embarking on a journey to reclaim stress and change how I respond to it at a physiological level. This sounds like a daunting task–I mean, seriously, changing physiology?–but it’s actually an application of the age-old adage “mind over matter”: By adopting a new stress mindset, my body will learn to react to stress in a new, more empowering manner.

So if this isn’t alchemy, I don’t know what is.

But magic or not, the first step begins now.

For the Love of Books

It’s Valentine’s Day, and since my husband-to-be and I are still some 1600 miles apart and both generally loathe the holiday anyways, I figured I’d play around with some of my other loves–such as my love of books, both writing them and reading them.

Because, honestly, who wants a box of chocolate when you can be given a book?

Fireworks on Display

I am a body of light / let this be my cocoon

Sometimes I want and sometimes I need and sometimes all I can do is smolder. I once wrote a poem (and it later became the first I’d ever perform) called “Waiting for Exposition“:

It’s like watching fireworks being / launched into the sky / on the Fourth of July. / I know well enough to expect / explosions // … // I know I’m no firework / no explosive / no lightshow / yet I still feel the fuse / burning down my crown like kundalini / I can feel the altitudes fall around me / as I soar higher from this drug that / sane people call oxygen and / psychiatrists call life.

Ask Rachel

I don’t watch the news–the news is depressing. It’s one bad story after another, and the points of importance are pushed aside for the next sensational headline.

Instead I follow stories. I try to understand the exposition, the unwritten prologue, the implications of chapter three, the critical reviews of the page-turning epilogue. And lately, I’ve been reading from a new library–rather than merely perusing the shelves of LGBT identity, Jewish / American intersectionality, and the occasional op-ed on immigration, redistricting, and presidential campaigns, lately I’ve been reading about race.

Here I’ve found more stories, maybe, than I bargained for (and as I write this, I’m reminded of some good advice to beware of the danger of a single story): there are tragedies with names like Travon Martin, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice; settings as varied as McKinney and Ferguson and Baltimore; and narratives simple and complex, like Black Lives Matter.

But the story today that’s swimming through my newsfeed is none of these.

The setting is Spokane, and Rachel is her name.

Mental Malfunctioning

The dog days of summer are upon me, but instead of howling at the moon, I’m lying curled up in my bed without the energy or motivation to get to all these things I want to do. I’m making steady yet slow progress, but I can’t seem to get into what’s most important.

I watched a brief video the other day by Josh Davis, talking about “When to Skip Something On Your To-Do List,” and his advice is simple: If your mental energy doesn’t match the task, then stop. Put that energy where it’ll be most effective and come back to the other tasks when you’re mentally prepared to efficiently work on them.

But, see, this is where my mind starts to malfunction.