It Helps if You're Insane

Another feeling ugly kind of day. :( And I have to catch up on my NaNoWriMo word count, while successfully avoiding doing my homework!

The beginning is my favorite:

In our land of Ozul, the only thing that has a memory as far back as the beginning of all is the waters. The galloping rivers, the crashing waterfalls, the clumsy streams, the drowsy lakes: each has a melody, one given to them by the sky. The rain has filled these places, the rivers that carry our boats to the ocean on its swift currents, the waterfalls that unthinking children play in, the pots in the tall grass waiting for a thirsty field man to take a sip. The rain has a way of taking the memories and cleansing them, not erasing, but replenishing what has been lost by time and the stomping footfalls of people.

I gave the rain a voice when I was her companion. Before my enchainment to the sky I thought I would love up close, the rain was a quiet thing, a timid dancer. Her light steps would land on the roof and plink out a delicate euphonious lullaby. I loved the rain. Standing in it, twirling in it, soiling my best and worst clothes by playing in it, I loved the harmlessness of its song. There were no floods, no lightning storms, and no thunder.

Lightning storms are as new to the people of Ozul as being dry again is new to me. They do not understand the blinding light that streaks in open veins across their beloved sky and they hate the cackle of thunder that crashes in the night, waking all to see what new destruction has occurred. I pity them for it because it is not going anywhere. There is a man in that sky who has lost his wife and he spends his days in a desperate search for the bounce of raven curls, the smooth twist of mouth, the ivory complexion as sweet as any cloud’s, and the thunderous temperament that belongs to his lover.

His lightning strikes Ozul as he peers down from his black clouds, illuminating what should be dark to spy his wife among the villagers below. Her laugh at continued freedom echoes in the mind of every frightened child. The thunder is her answer to his search. She mocks him with the sound. Sometimes he is close, but she slips through his overeager fingers like a bar of dripping soap.One day he may catch her and cease the battle of the skies between husband and wife. But these new storms, woken by his mischief, will not return to sleep. They will rage on after he is dead for a thousand years, ten thousand years, a million even. For the rain has a memory, and its memory is eternal.

Blue Lines

EDIT on my profile: Recently, I decided I was wrong and Walter Wellesley Smith was right. Big shocker there. Writing is opening a vein, I'll admit that much... I think the problem I haven't been finding the right ones. Sometimes things are so in sync and pounding along so rhythmically--the sound of my clack-clacking keyboard versus my warbling brain, singing words from my heart--that I begin to doubt it was any other way. Two thousand words later... I am stuck. Again. I never thought it was going to be easy. I guess I underestimated the power of words stuck in the back of my throat. Sometimes I feel like I'm choking on the story and some experience is going to be my Heimlich maneuver (sp?) so the ink soars and I am finally freed from this madness. Freedom is a long way off. :)

Tongue In Cheek... Or Not

Some people have told me that I assume that I'm right. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. I'm honestly unsure. All I know is that I'm tired of making excuses for others, pacifying them into their comfort zone, and hiding what I feel, because it may not be what others want to hear at that point in time.

It could be the falseness talking.

If others do not respect my beliefs, simply because they believe something different, why should I hide what I think? Is that the Christian way? I know Jesus said to turn the other cheek, give your enemies the chance to screw you over that second time with their screaming at the top of their lungs to cover up anything you could possibly want to say (or in this case, debate-hungry & aggressively-opinionated friends in their well-meant ways). But is this the extreme? Jesus took on the church for becoming corrupt in his time, but was this only because God had given him the authority to do so? Do I have the authority to question others or does that only reside with God? If I can speak out when atrocities are going on all around the world, can I speak out when my ideas are being trampled accidently by careless people? Does that make me too confident of my rightness, or too bossy, or too loud?

Questions flood my brain, synapses firing, but no answers accompany them.

My biggest fear is becoming the type of Christian people love to hate, because they are perceived as 'false,' and not part of the 'true' followers. I want to be true to God in everything that I do. I pray for patience in dealing with the people who try me most, and I use my writing to vent my intellectual overflow and my thirst to speak my mind when I become that quick-to-anger lackey of the devil, who speaks too harshly and too loudly, afraid of being unheard. Is silence weak, or the Christian way? I have found no evidence of either argument, except the amazing lover of my soul, who stood before his accusers with a still tongue and spoke not a word.

The thing I have personal evidence of is the astonishing pain of being misjudged because of my silence. I did not used to talk to peers at all becuase my words only succeeded in making them laugh at me. None of us cared if our opinions mattered, we thrived on hurting ourselves and others through our silver-tongued sparring and clever put-downs. The time for that is past, because now all my put-downs are received from the monster that is Unsilenced Unmasked Disregard, which is possibly worse than hate. I find hate irrational, but indifference is a kind of disrespect I cannot accept with the Spartan endurance that it requires.

I sit now with the music shrieking to cover the thoughts of yelling and cramming my thought into another's mind until it is all they can think of. It could be the power I wish to thrive on, the power of the phrase turned just right, and the tagline that forms your whole argument and makes it unforgettable and irresistable.

So people tell me that I assume I am right. Am I?