Month: November 2017

Fair Harborside (3)

whynotstayinLeave a comment

Read Fair Harborside (1) and Fair Harborside (2)

Amelia was city-made and city-grown. From where she lived the city was just a writhing mass, gridded like a chessboard, and full of monotony. Her circuits were overstimulated. She was surrounded by wires, cords, and progress. She was living modernity and on clear days she could almost feel like a part of the masses, she could almost feel like she interacted with them. Almost.

Frank wandered the city, cataloguing every face and type like a child seeing the world for the first time, walking a new language, but the people seemed to pass by him – no, look through him, like he didn’t matter. In truth, he began to think, do they really matter to me? But as he took another sharp corner, his mind clipped the edge of the building and then lodging was on his mind. He was in the right district given the signs hanging above doors and out from awnings, but he soon found he barely had enough money to stay the week out. How strange that what had had so much value previously in his life was so empty and useless in exchange here in Harborside.

Amelia was coming down from the clouds about to face the world for the first time, naive and one of the richest and rarest people in the city, but equally mysterious. Her mind had yet to grasp value; everything to her was bought and categorized away into an advanced filing system of uses. 

Photo Credit: ashleyhooper3d.wordpress.com

The sky filtered into her windows, if she reached out, the clouds almost reached back, but who cared about clouds when she was going down to the ground.

From Amelia’s window far above Harborside its postcard appearance was breathtaking, heart-stopping from the aerial view, perfectly aligned like an OCD wet dream – but beyond the picture perfect Harborside was its dark truth, its fingers, its slums. Where the roads wended their way around makeshift homes, bodies being consumed by the cobbles of the city. The roads staggered like a drunk artist’s footsteps. The slums belied truth, the reality of the city for the majority. The true artists, the ultimate image of life, a slow burn out. The truth was, the city moved too quickly for anyone – even the top Moguls and Traders – to live contentedly, too fast for them to not eventually blend into the tapestry of time, of the city.

But while Amelia’s elevator sunk level by level, Frank’s feet were dragging him from job to job, ebbing closer and closer to that blight, the narrow streets, the moss, the dark sky, the forgotten, the true heart of the city. The cost of living had drained Frank, his week was up. Once a private person, he now broadcasted all he could, he needed all the help he could get. He dreamed of the past. When he was well off in the country, people tipped their hat to him, they knew his name, they cared. He dreamed of a city long past, just emerging from the harbor, crawling onto land like a new life form, full of opportunity and riches. His feet were carrying him further from the monoliths of global life. From the masses that thrived on standing out from the crowd, from the masses who had found what they sought, or at least the veneer of what they dreamed.

A Barbie doll

faithfulomnivoreLeave a comment

A Barbie doll is perfect:

you can see it all over her.

She has lots of friends, it seems.

the list of names grows each day.

Image Credit: Amazon.com

With every new season

comes a new friend for Barbie,

and also a new Barbie.

The old ones are packed away

and forgotten.

There are so many to choose from,

who should we play with today?

Barbie dolls aren’t just for girls,

the boys love her too.

A Barbie doll is fake.

Be careful, Barbie,

If you stretch yourself too thin,

you’ll break.

Barbie does everything, it seems;

she tries so hard to not try.

 

She spends hours

making herself look effortless.

But Barbie isn’t special.

There are millions of other Barbie dolls,

they could buy her anywhere.

But she’s still Barbie,

so they don’t mind.

Barbie sparkles when she walks.

But when you get to know her, after a while,

she gets boring.

A Barbie doll shouldn’t talk,

so why does she talk so much?

Too much talk is bad.

Trends are temporary.

Yours has come,

when will it be gone?

I used to love Barbie

when I was younger and naive.

Not anymore.

A Barbie doll is plastic:

you can see right through her.

where the heart is

mariethearistocatLeave a comment

it’s true what they say,

home is where the heart is.

my heart lies in a small piece

of california

where fire has burnt the once green shrubbery.

where the air is thick and sweet,

like a gooey piece of my aunt’s famous cheesecake.

where my body knows the winds

of my neighborhood’s roads,

like the lines on my palm.

Photo Credit: intercine.net

where my parents squabble over the air conditioning

because “it is way too hot in this car!”

where i can hear my dogs bark

from down the street

just like they can hear the rolling tires

of our mighty, little minivan

turning around the last corner.

where my bed is cool,

despite the melting heat outside.

home is coke on ice

and cereal boxes

spread across the countertops.

home is how i can walk into my room

and pick up a book i was reading before i left.

home is where i wake up from

my cat meowing outside my door.

but, i still know,

after all these months,

not to let him in

or he’ll be scratching at the door

to be let out in ten minutes.

home is my broken closet and messy garage.

but, when i move away for good,

home will be in the way

my parents stick their hands out the window

when we’re driving,

the way my dogs bark

more at paper in the wind

then people at the door.

it’ll be in the way my heart warms

when I see my city’s name pop up

on the freeway

and all the times

i’ve laughed at dad jokes

and silly faces.

for my home is in the smiles

and eyes

and teeth

and hair

and hands

and paws

and hearts of those

whom i love the most.

All My Fault

rufusdespacitoLeave a comment

All I can think is it’s my fault.

The heart beating as one, eyes seeing as one, love and devotion for the sport and for each other connecting as one, but all of this is leaving, disappearing when all I can think when I’m lying alone, is that it is my fault.

I can hear the hooves beating maybe way up above me but that is not where they are supposed to be, that is not where she is supposed to be, she is supposed to be next to me, down here, in my arms, not up there in the heaven, away from me and my life but as I’m drifting away in my emotions all I can think is it is my fault.

Even with all the people dying, and the children crying, and the murders, shootings, and the bombings happening in the world, all I can think is that it is my fault.

The disease creeps up on her like a kidnapper sneaks up on his kid, the beautiful angel, my best friend, all I can think is that it is my fault.

Maybe if I had checked her temperature again, or her nose, or her stomach it wouldn’t be my fault, but I didn’t; I left in a hurry, not thinking about the consequences, not thinking about what my life was for six years; not thinking at all, and I was the last person to ride her, to see her, before my trainer came, the vet came, and all the sirens and gunshots and noise in the world froze, and time came to a stop, the world stopped its rotation, the crickets froze their legs, my heart took its final beat before I was told the news… My mom spoke very slow but the words crept up to me, I tried to bat them away but they fought back throwing me against the wall forcing me to listen to what I thought was the impossible, I kicked and I screamed and I thrust myself away from the inevitable but the words felt like ice against my heart, “she’s sick,” she says and from then on the only thing that matters, the only thing that is keeping me up at night, and keeps my heart racing is that it is my fault.

And if this truly is the end, I know I need to be by her side, away from the noise and the chaos, and everything else because she is what matters, my best friend, the only one that would listen, who I can talk endlessly to, I can trust with my life and darkest secrets, because even when the clocks stop turning and the world stops moving, and the sun stops shining, and the birds stop chirping, and the people stop talking, and the hearts stop beating, and the voices quiet, and the earth fades away, admitting the darkening, skin crawling silence, it will still be my fault.

 

Prisma<3 From: sanaapharayrastables.com

 

Fair Harborside (2)

whynotstayinLeave a comment

Read Part 1 here

Below Amelia and beyond the borders of her glass and marble version of the city, the eyes of the workers were cast in coal and ash. Those of the slums were fading out of being, becoming just blurs, wisps of subconscious, hollow. They were being emptied of dreams, emptied of light, emptied of value. They looked – with light-burned, cataracted eyes, weary and broken from too many hours in front of a forge – toward the city they had dreamed of, the one they believed in, the one they were now part of, the one now using them as a whetstone to hone itself upon. They looked upon a city alien and yet familiar; one that shared the same name, shared a people, but was separated by a wall of prosperity, an insurmountable barrier of capital value.

Rising above Frank was the very tangible feeling of success and dreams realized. Above him – wrapped in their own private worlds, curtained off from each other – lay the world of Traders and Merchants and Moguls. There was no lost space, everything was worked to perfection, commodified and able to be owned. People had become slaves to their Ikea nesting instinct, they simply filled the space given, even the ultimate consumers did not own their space. The streets were wide and clear, everything at a crisp ironed angle, a city of well pressed pants. Those who walked them did not know each other beyond image: a Trader by the scale lapel pin, an Artist by the garish socks, an Economist by the gloves, a Mogul by the hat. On the great rising monoliths movies and media played, any new information came from those gargantuan marble monoliths. The world beyond Harborside was found in those rising towers of media.

But in the slums – from the roofs of their squat and makeshift shanties – the workers could just glimpse the edges of media. Their world was full of cracked screens and secondhand news. People were cramped, the heartbeat of one encroached on the next. The global world had all but disappeared to them, where they had come from was being wrung from them as they became just another road stone in the city. The cultural identities they had brought with them, had created neighborhoods around, had found their first jobs with were bleeding away. They were becoming the masses of the city, overwhelmed by the need for money, the vast cost of living had ensnared them, had separated them and pinned them by the wings. 

Photo Credit: pinterest.com

But the global world existed only in the harbor with the monoliths of media, with the bustle of trade, it was rich and thriving in the harbor. Money was not lacking, it seemed as if the less work one did the more money filled their coffers.

Frank was well off for a country boy, so when he docked in the sand of the fish market – the only place his little decrepit rented dinghy could -he was sure he could do anything he could possibly hope for. As he jumped from the boat he sunk to the knee into rotting, bloated, sun-blistered fish waste. His nose crinkled, What a welcome. He trudged upward into the city, tapping his breast pocket with a light rhythm. As he reached the paving stones his tapping ceased, he could not crane his head far enough, the city just kept going. The longer he stared the more his past months at sea ebbed away with the tide; his past was being drowned out by the sounds, the smells, and the people. The city was made of individuals from the ground, Frank was just another one of them, just another in a sea of people striving to flourish as themselves, he was just dressed a little more shabbily, a little more wide eyed, a little more idealistic, he was just a little bit poorer, he was just woefully unprepared. So he set out to wander the city, to find himself, or lose himself.

Fair Harborside (1)

whynotstayinLeave a comment

It was dingy as hell, not recognizable as the city everyone saw in the postcards: moss and algae crept down the walls; the side streets were lined with open sewers; the factories ran all hours of the day, belching out waste and haze. Soot streaked down the faces of the workers whose hands were cracked and brown with exposure. What little they had they called home, whether roof or coat, they took what they could. They struggled through narrow congested streets, seemingly stuck in the past — a bygone era, that had long since been passed by the rest of the city — an open sore without medicine.

On these congested streets lived all manner of discard: tech no longer current, factory waste, dreams of fame and fortune, the relics of the country people once left, heirlooms of cultures long swallowed. But as the streets turned oceanside they widened and lightened, the haze of smog dropping away the closer one moved to the harbor, the mecca of trade, the jewel of the city, the picture perfect postcard. Harborside was a world of glass and gold that rose high enough that those with bloodshot eyes and wasted dreams believed that maybe it reached heaven.

The city of Harborside was rich, modern, urban, cultured, and only surface deep. Every man, woman, and child that lived in the skyward reaching world was a dreamer, a planner, a story. Their streets were lined with rare plants and their roads paved with exotic shell. Every home was its own, sitting pretty at the height of progress. They would want for nothing and everything.

Such severance was there in the city of Harborside that it was as if a blight, a disease, had been stretching out from the landward outskirts of the city but had abruptly hit a vaccine three quarters of the way toward the harbor. It was as if an immunization had been injected into the sea and had spread to the seafront but had been content to protect the few.

Photo Credit: steemit.com

Life was bobbing at a sea-sickening rate as Frank finally found the city. He had taken every form of transport available to him: car, bus, train, plane, his own two aching feet, bicycle, and finally boat. As the city rose over the bow of the leaky, decades-old fishing boat, the tug behind his gut seemed to loosen. The folded postcard in his breast pocket was a molten brand of hope and childlike optimism on his heart.

Life had ground to an overly warm stagnate existence for Amelia. Trapped above the cloud level – in a glass box – Amelia had the entire world at her fingertips. She was at the height of modern technology, she was as mapped out as the best planned city. There was no one like her, there never had been another like her, nor would there ever be one like her. She was a road map. She was not her own. She was caught, ensnared. Made and unmade.

My Annoyance With Ticket Scalping

maydaygaskarth1 Comment

As someone who loves to go to concerts and broadway musicals, I absolutely hate when people take advantage of people’s love for these to get extra money.

This pisses me off to an extreme. As someone who comes from a family with enough money, I shouldn’t be complaining about not having the money to go to these shows, and that’s not what I’m angry about. What I’m angry about is that originally the tickets to these shows are easily affordable, but not when greedy people buy these tickets and drastically increase the price to collect a few extra bucks from people.

Over the summer, Lana Del Rey announced a small concert in Anaheim, just twenty minutes from where I lived. I was ecstatic. I wanted to see her for the longest time, and my uncle had allowed me to attend the concert. The tickets were only fifty dollars, a reasonable price considering the majority of her fans are probably teenagers without jobs. I preordered the album, and at 9:59 I was ready to buy the tickets that went on sale at ten o’clock. Not even twenty seconds later, the tickets were sold out. It was upsetting, but when I checked every single resale site I could it only made me more furious. The tickets were being sold for ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. From fifty dollars to one thousand dollars. When I went on twitter in hopes to find someone nice enough to sell the tickets for a more reasonable price, they were all over 400 dollars.

I figured out that I wasn’t alone with my absolute annoyance over the dramatic resale of these tickets. It’s amazing how the people who were selling these tickets for unreasonable prices are probably the same people who complained about this same problem when they weren’t able to afford to go see their favorite musician.

For a more recent example, over the weekend my aunt was planning on buying tickets for Hamilton. Originally, the tickets are around $200, which is a reasonable price for the most popular show on Broadway. However, at resale pricing, tickets in the back row are sometimes at least $500.

Photo Credit: NYdailynews.com

It’s absolutely selfish, because these scalpers know how much people want to go to these shows, and how much people are willing to pay. People shouldn’t have to pay so much money to go to a show, especially when, in the end, the extra money is going to the seller and not even the show being played. It’s more bothersome that people actually end up paying these high costs for the shows, and only fuel these people’s beliefs that they can actually cheat people out of valuable money by manipulating their want to go enjoy these shows.

So, to everyone reselling these tickets at high prices to make a couple extra bucks: stop. Because as a sixteen year old girl who just wants to go rap concerts, historical musicals, or wear flower crowns at small Indie concerts, it’s upsetting when I can’t add some happiness into my life, because these tickets cost twenty times more than the amount in my checking account.

Closure.

faithfulomnivoreLeave a comment

For so long, I’d been hung up on you, I still cared.

I cared about what you would think of me, I wanted to know what you were up to. For so long, I was sad. I cried over you and over the parts of me that you came to know so well. You didn’t deserve to know me like that.

But I thought I knew you, too. It’s a strange feeling to have your perception of someone completely flipped in a matter of days, it makes your mind sort of dizzy.

And then I was sad about the friendship that was lost. We went from speaking every day for months to walking past each other without saying a word.

Then you messed up. And there was no one to blame but yourself and now I don’t see you at all.

At first I was confused about what happened, because the person I’d known would have never been so stupid. I thought that maybe you’d just changed since the time that I knew you, but now I realize that you didn’t change at all. I just didn’t know you in the first place.

So then you left again. And when you didn’t even try to reach out I thought maybe this time you’d be gone forever.

Photo Credit: WikiClipart.com

And just when I thought it was over, you showed up at my front door. You went on and on about how great your life has been and how happy you are and how much everyone will miss you. But you didn’t realize that by saying all of this it became so obvious just how embarrassed you are. You made yourself into more of a fool than you already were.

I started thinking about all of the things I wanted to say to you, all of the words I had planned out in my head for the past three months that could have put you in your place, but now I think you already know. Based on the fact that you spent so long trying to convince me that you’re better off, you only showed me that you were just trying to convince yourself. And I guess some things are better left unsaid.

Then you had to leave, so we said “goodbye” but I thought “good riddance.” You walked away and I didn’t start to cry like I had done before; I laughed.

I laughed for a long time and I smiled and I was happy because I knew that finally I was totally, completely done with you. Normally I would have told you that I hope you find happiness or good luck or some other thing you’re supposed to say when someone leaves, but I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been true. For the first time I can honestly say that I don’t care one bit about what you’re doing with your life and I don’t feel bad.

I did learn a lot from you, though. Thank you for helping me realize that I was right, that you don’t deserve to be in my life and you’re not worth all of the time I wasted. I’m not mad anymore.