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Movies 2005-2006
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Faygo
Starring: Bill Feitag, Eliot Lucas, Josh Frock, Rory Behrens
Directing/Camera: Darn near everyone
Editing: Eliot Lucas
Music: Bill Freitag
Movie used courtesy of http:whatever.comicgen.com
Showing posts with label 2005-2006. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2005-2006. Show all posts
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Graphics 2005-2006
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Collages
(Mixed media)
Katie Kaiser
Twisted Butterfly
(Mixed media)
Katie Kaiser
Wild Berries
(Mixed media)
Katie Kaiser
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Paintings 2005-2006
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Figure Painging
(Acrylic and gel medium)
Crystal Weller
Still Life/Illusions of Paint
(Acrylic and gel medium)
Crystal Weller
Three Way Master Study - Study after Vermeer, Degas, and Matisse
(Acrylic)
Crystal Weller
Red Onion
(Acrylic on hardboard)
Crystal Weller
Wild Things Mural-Parrot
(Acrylic on hardboard)
Crystal Weller
Vessel II
Nicole Fisher
Vessel IV
Nicole Fisher
Vessel VI
Nicole Fisher
Vessel VII
Nicole Fisher
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Photographs 2005-2006
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Falls 094
Russ Berkeley
Falls 088
Russ Berkeley
Falls 014
Russ Berkeley
Falls 003
Russ Berkeley
Falls 095
Russ Berkeley
Bird
Katie Kaiser
Chicago 011
Yifan Zhao
Chicago 037
Yifan Zhao
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Short Stories 2005-2007
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The Stranger in the Box
ByAlyson Guthrie
The roses were red as blood, and trembled in her sweaty, shaky hands. Helen walked over to the long, black box, and placed three roses on top of it. Somehow, thirty years had gone by, and the man she thought she knew in the box, was now a stranger. She stepped back, and watched as the people started to leave the cemetery. She wanted to tell people her secret. She wanted them to know how confused and regretful she felt. Tears of melancholy trickled down her cheeks as she turned around to leave the cemetery that bright, spring morning. Helen closed her eyes, and was taken back to the beginning; back to the beginning of the end.
It started in Dr. Robinson’s office, right after Christmas. It was after that cold week in December, when the messy, confused son came home from college with a basket full of dirty laundry, and the happily married daughter came home, instead of visiting the in-laws. Everything was picture perfect, as if it came from a page of GoodHousekeeping, which Helen read and tried to emulate religiously. That unfortunate day after Christmas, Dr. Robinson said the words Helen and Tom had feared for months. “Tom, the cancer has spread. Tom, you have a few months left. Helen, it is best for you and Tom to decide where and how Tom would like to spend his time.” Helen hated the way the doctor used their names in every sentence. “Why do people do that?” Helen thought to herself. “I already know who Tom is. He’s my husband, and he’s going to die.”
The seven minute ride home from the doctor’s office was filled with nothing. No words. No looks. The somber atmosphere suffocated Helen. She looked over at Tom as he lit a cigarette, and rolled the window down. “You son of a bitch,” Helen thought to herself. Tom inhaled the pollution that was taking his life, and by the time he pulled into their driveway, Helen felt guilty for calling Tom such a cruel name. “I should have made him stop,” she thought. Helen opened the door, and looked at her perfect home. The couch, walls, and carpet blended together. There were no rings on the coffee table, no dust on the mantle, and the house smelled of potpourri and detergent. Helen’s perfect home was now contaminated with Tom’s illness, and the pressure to plan the perfect ending for what Helen thought had been a perfect marriage started to sink in.
As the days went by, Tom became more distant. He spent most days in the garage, where he had once built his daughter’s crib, polished his son’s first bike, and hid his daughter’s new car. Helen spent her days on the telephone, planning Tom’s funeral. “I wonder what kind of widow I’ll be,” Helen thought to herself as she planned the menu. “I was always such a good wife.” She thought about all of the widows she knew. There was Elizabeth, who had found a new, younger husband, Kathy, who spent her days volunteering for her church, and Sylvia. Sylvia simply disappeared. She left their little community, and never looked back. “That one won’t be me,” Helen thought. “I’ll be the devoted mother widow. Yeah, the one who’s the best mother and someday Grandmother. Oh, I can’t wait to be a Grandma. I wonder what type of Grandmother I’ll be.” Before Helen could think of all the Grandmothers she knew, her thoughts were interrupted by a loud pounding sound.
Helen looked out of her spotless, kitchen window until she found where the noise was coming from. She walked outside to the garage, and found Tom pounding on a piece of wood. “What on earth are you doing?” Helen shouted over the noise. Tom stopped pounding, and set his hammer down. He looked at his wife, standing in the doorway with her hands on her thick hips. “Who is this woman?” Tom wondered. He thought about the first time he had met Helen. As far back as Tom could remember she was a perfectionist. She always played the perfect role. She was the perfect daughter, the perfect student, and now the perfect wife. In a couple of weeks, she would be the perfect widow. Tom looked down at his piece of wood. “I’m just makin’ you something, Helen.” As he looked back up at her, she was already out the door, and back on the phone, calling the funeral director.
As Tom’s breaths became more rapid and short, he spent more and more time in the garage. The pounding and wheezing never seemed to quit, but Helen didn’t really notice. When he quit going to the garage, Helen knew it was almost time. Then one night, it happened. Helen woke up bright and early that Thursday morning to Tom’s lifeless body. As she looked at his face, she felt nothing. “Why am I so numb?” she thought. “Aren’t I supposed to cry?” She ran her hand along his face, and body. In his hand rested an envelope, with her name written on the front of it.
Helen slowly opened the envelope, and read what it said:
“My dearest Helen,
I knew that tonight would be my last, so I wrote you this letter. Over the past thirty years, we have become Helen and Tom. Our names roll off everyone’s lips so easily, and on the surface we know who we are. I am Tom. I am a father of two, a husband, and run my own carpentry business. You are Helen. You are a wife, mother, PTA member, and you work with the sisters of charity at our church. I am Tom, and you are Helen. That’s it. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t really know you. What’s your favorite book? If you could pick one place to go, where would it be? What inspires you? Helen, what is your favorite color? I don’t know. That is why I have done this. Underneath the bed, you will find a box. Inside the box will be your final instructions.”
Helen looked at the words on the paper in disbelief. Then, the tears started to flow. She rolled off of the bed, and called an ambulance in sobs. Helen hung up the phone, and threw it across the bedroom. “Who have I become?” she screamed. The ambulance workers found Helen on the floor, curled up in a ball. They helped her out of the room, and Helen spent the next few days in a haze. She got through the funeral, but could only think of the letter, and what could be under the bed. When the funeral was over, and everyone had left, Helen walked into the bedroom, got on her hands and knees, and searched for the box.
When Helen found it, she traced her fingers along the smooth, intricate wood work. The box was small, beautiful, and exhibited the talent Tom had once had. On the front of the box, Tom carved a car, a moon, and a heart. Helen slowly opened it, and found a piece of paper and a key. The paper read, “Go to the garage, and use this key to open the bottom cabinet closest to the door.” Helen forced herself to follow the instructions, and inside the cabinet she found two suitcases and another note. Helen had trouble reading the note, as tears slid onto the paper, and smeared the ink. Helen slowly read the words out loud. “This is my suitcase for the trip I always wanted. Inside you will find everything I would have needed. Will you take me there, Helen? Inside the cabinet you will find another suitcase with a map for our trip. Fill your suitcase with whatever your need. Fill it with memories and love, but most of all, fill it with you. Inside my suitcase, you will find the real me. I hope that someday, you will find the real you.”
Helen opened the suitcase, and saw the man she had married for the first time. She saw an old picture of her and Tom sipping a milk shake at the Tasty Freeze, a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a book Helen didn’t even know Tom had read, a tape filled with Tom’s favorite songs, and a clean pair of underwear. “Okay, Tom,” Helen whispered, “Let’s go on our trip.” One week later, Helen got into her car with the two suitcases. She started the engine, set out the map, and popped Tom’s cassette into the tape player. As Helen rolled across the country, she and Tom saw everything; everything that had been hidden for the past thirty years.
Twisted Fate
By Andrew Ode
Collin’s bitter past followed him as he leaned into the raw wind.
“I’m getting out of here. I’m never coming back. No one will ever hear of Collin Blunt ever again. From now on, I’ll be Collin Stevens, a southern man from Alabama looking to explore the country. Ya… that’ll work”
“But were will I go? Washington? No, out of the contiguous states. Maybe Alaska, Canada, somewhere north of here. Well, I ain’t getting anywhere by just standing. Time to put these legs to use.”
Collin’s uneasy mind wandered and rationalized his reasons for leaving as he walked down the expansion of highway against the cruel wind. The same bitter, harsh wind that was blowing the night he witnessed his father’s brutal murder. Collin’s expression turned somber as he recalled that night.
“You owe us some money Mr. Blunt,” threatened a man with muscles bulging out of every part of his body.
Standing in this man’s shadow, “Y-y-yes, I know,” stammered Collin’s father, “b-but, but surely there must be something that we can do for the moment, seeing as I don’t quite have the money at the moment, but can get it first thing next week.”
“Ya? And that’s what you’ve been saying for the past three weeks Mr. Blunt,” added a second man, whose bulk even overshadowed the first.
“And seeing as this is business and you’ve fallen behind on your payments,” finished the first man, his scar almost flashing in the moonlight, “a price must be paid. Nothing money can help with. You see, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Miotto believes that the only true price that should get paid is pain.”
The mountain of a man interrupted, “But unfortunately for you, Mr. Miotto wants a little more payment from you than just a few broken bones.”
“And-and what-what would that be ex-exactly?” cowered Collin’s father, already knowing the answer.
Sick, twisted grins crossed both men’s faces as the first crooned, “Your life!”
Hiding in the bushes, Collin heard everything. Collin watched, horrified, as the crowbars were raised and glinted in the moonlight. Collin couldn’t move, his feet were nailed to the ground; he couldn’t scream; his voice ran away without his body; he couldn’t look away, only watch as his dad’s life was beaten out of him.
As his dad laid dying, the scarred man grinned, “Don’t worry Mr. Blunt, your son will soon share your same fate. Mr. Miotto believes in the old saying ‘Like Father, Like Son’.”
Before the final blow was dealt, Collin’s father looked up for anything to help him and caught his son’s eye by surprise. In that moment, one thought went through Collin’s mind. He could it hear as clear as if his father were whispering in his ear, “Run!”
Right then, the paralysis that held him frozen in time, broke. Collin heeded his father’s words and ran; he ran like his life depended on it, which it did. He started to hear his father’s scream, but the howling, bitter wind broke it off. He ran. He didn’t know what he was going to do, where he was going to go. But he did know he had to get out of Mr. Miotto’s grasp.
So caught up in the horrifying memory, Collin did not even realize that a semi had pulled up beside him.
“Hey, buddy, you alright?” asked the husky driver, “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Huh? Um, ya. Hey, could you give me a lift?”
“Sure, hop in, been getting lonely, could use a little company. Going anywhere specific?”
“Nope, just away from here.”
“Been there myself my friend,” the truck driver said as he put his big rig into gear. “Heading to Canada, got transferred. There’s a good job up there if you’re in the market?”
“Actually, a job in Canada sounds pretty good to me,” Collin responded, thinking his luck may change and he could come out of this whole ordeal just fine. “What kind of work?”
“Oh, you know, menial labor for this big shot. Grunt stuff, doesn’t really take any skills”
“Sounds perfect. You don’t mind if I just tag along.”
“Nope, sounds good to me.”
“Thanks, you’re a great help.”
“No problem, us little guys gotta look out for one another.” The driver smiled as he extended his big hand toward Collin. “The name’s Tim Bruscher.”
“Collin Bl-, Collin Stevens,”Collin corrected as he took the big man’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Same here, Collin”
The truck headed its long haul to the north with a shipment going to Canada with Collin’s hope for a better life in tow. On the back door of the truck, an emblem blazed in the setting sun, twin dragons entwined around a katana, below it, Miotto’s Shipping.
Bored to Death
By MacKenzie Trask
Jackie stepped one foot out of her car when she heard a hoarse shout.
“Get away from your car! Move, quickly!” The voice shouted urgently.
She had just parked her car in the bottom level of the parking garage when the man started yelling. With a bewildered look on her face, Jackie took a step back towards the car, not knowing what to expect. Suddenly she smelled it. Smoke, a long line of it running straight to her car! She screamed, grabbed for her purse and ran away as fast as she could. Her fast wasn’t fast enough however, when she collided with the arms of the stranger and was hurled into the air and backwards fifteen feet.
The man coughed and rolled over groaning. “Are you all right ma’am?” He asked in a deep raspy voice. There was no response—Jackie had passed out.
Three hours later, Jackie moaned and clutched at her head. Slowly she opened her eyes, her vision swimming unsteadily. Suddenly everything came into focus and she sat bolt upright in bed, not considering the ramifications of her wound and promptly collapsed backwards again biting her lip.
“You might want to lie still for a while, Ms. Flaun. Your head took a nasty hit on the pavement after the explosion. I’m afraid your car is gone as well.” It was the same deep raspy voice that Jackie had heard before her car blew up.
“I remember you, vaguely. I’m so sorry, but you were the man who yelled at me to get away from the car, weren’t you?” She murmured in a whisper-soft voice. When he only nodded, his smoldering brown eyes fixed on hers, Jackie blushed and averted her gaze, but not before enjoying what she had seen. The man, whoever he was, had a body like one of the ancient Roman gods. His hair was a dark silky brown and he appeared as fit as, if not more than, she. A closer look revealed carefully manicured hands and a high fashion sense befitting a man his age.
“My name is Peter, Peter Rankle. The doctor says that you have a mild concussion and some slight singeing from the explosion, but that you’ll be right as rain in a day or two. Until then, I’m just your friendly Superman here to save the day.” His cheeky grin made her laugh outright.
Surprising that I enjoy his presence so much? Jackie mused silently, or just chemistry? Who knew, but until then, this Peter seemed like a nice enough man.
Checking out of the hospital was going to be a pain, literally. Jackie groaned that thought quietly and elicited a laugh from Peter. “I’ll take care of you.”
Those five words held a wealth of meaning that stunned her a week ago, and they still affected her thinking like a powerful aphrodisiac. Their courtship had steadily progressed in that event filled week. The horror of a near-death, losing her car, falling madly in love—wait, love?
Not one to question her good fortune, Jackie took the relationship step by step, and without realizing, three weeks had gone by. She did everything she could to keep their partnership interesting.
Chancing upon Peter at a moment when his guard was down was a surefire way to get a rise out of him, however impossible it seemed to catch him. One morning, Jackie happened to catch him unawares and threw both arms exuberantly around his neck. What happened next was too fast for her to see or comprehend. Peter took one muscle bound arm and deliberately tossed Jackie to the floor.
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times,” Peter shouted menacingly, “don’t interrupt me while I’m working!”
Jackie nodded contritely, her fear-filled eyes averted carefully onto the floor. Don’t do anything else stupid or you’ll really lose him, she told herself fiercely, valuing even a smile or good thought from him over her own self-esteem.
Before long, the "incident" as she had deemed to refer to the fight in her mind, had faded. Now it was all Jackie could do to keep Peter’s attention. She caught his gaze wandering lustfully, and barely kept track of the females he sought out while in her company. Peter seemed to be performing tests on her will power and endurance to see which would crack first. Then it happened.
“Happy one month anniversary, sweetheart!” Peter had brought her chocolates. Again. “I just wanted to show you how much I appreciate you.” Jackie nodded her assent, golden curls bouncing around slim shoulders.
“Peter, there’s something I need to tell you.” Abruptly her tone was frosty and very serious. “I don’t think I can keep the charade up. I love you and yet you seem bored…” Jackie broke off with a soft cry of fear at the rage filling his once handsome eyes.
“You cow! Don’t even think about ending it, not here, not now, not EVER!” His closed fist had the effect of a club being swung at her head—hard. Jackie crumpled to the floor in utter shock.
“No, Peter, no, I just wanted to tell you that your present is in the garage! Stop it now!” Jackie lay sobbing as she dragged her body over the smooth, cold tiles of the kitchen, desperately searching for any excuse to delay his unabated wrath. He kicked her again and again with a ferocious intensity that was terrifying in itself. Close to her breaking point, the last thing Jackie saw before she passed out was the mad glint in his eyes. “Please….” darkness.
Pain like a thousand knives piercing her skull woke Jackie. Instinctively she whimpered and tried curling herself up into a protective ball. The ropes binding her hands and feet made it impossible. Bounce, bounce, she whacked her protesting head on the floor and realized that she was moving. Jackie shook her head willing the awful darkness not to claim her again and succeeded barely.
The screech of tires on pavement wasn’t lost to her. Perhaps she would be let loose now? What had she done to Peter? They had been falling in love, hadn’t they? Slam! The driver’s door shut fiercely and the back door almost fell off of the hinges at the force of the jerk.
“I really did enjoy you while we lasted, but I guess we all get a little bored now and then, eh, sugar plum?” Peter, his teasing, lilting voice, once thoroughly satisfying, now desperately terrifying, slithered in and out of her ears. Jackie opened her mouth to scream, but her breath was slashed as quick as her throat.
Bemusedly, Peter watched the light brighten then fade from her eyes as if a star had died all the while wiping the machete blade off on her pants. As her life blood poured out onto the ground around him, he took a match, carefully lit it, and threw it into the back of the van soaked clear to the tank with gasoline.
One week later a woman going to her car noticed a man running towards her frantically waving his arms in the air. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air and she noticed something not right. KABOOM! Her car blew sky high in the air and she could only watch in stunned shock before the man yanked her out of the way of the flying debris.
Carefully reviewing the notes in his mind as he approached the shapely brunette Amanda, Peter hoped she’d be more of a challenge than dreary old Jackie.
“Hello, my name is Peter.”
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Poetry 2005-2006
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Forensics
By Nick Elits
The highway stretched out far into the freezing distance
Our travels made us weary and we longed for home
A car sat quite and solemn near a Bridge
Nestled in the security of the snow
It was freshly abandoned and still warm from its occupants
Under each Bridge was a new body which told its own fleshly tale
And each story told only of the deed that had been done
Masking the details in obscurity
The sun was smothered by dark foreboding clouds
They foretold the beginning of the end
The Earthly machine in the dead of winter
Began to cave in upon itself
Once so efficient and bureaucratic
It now struggled to sustain its own existence
Society started to crumble
The wrench in the machine was too hard to find
And it bled to death
The harsh reality of the revelation was frightening
I felt alone in my madness so I reached out for you
You gave me your comfort and I asked for a kiss
Because “the end of the world is surely upon us”
You held my hand and said “fall into it” and I did
I was afraid …I was afraid of the machine
I was afraid of what we’d become
And if the machine wasn’t going to let me be
Then maybe it better I not be
So from that day on I let my body tell the story
The forensic artists will know what I have done
They will see my deeds but like the others I will wear my mask
Keeping the details somewhere deep in the bowels of Oblivion
I will be one more body floating down the River Styx
For it not worth my Soul
To have the latest medical technology
For it not worth my Soul
To have mastered the elements
For it not worth my Soul
To be Sane
So here I float Upon the River Styx
Waiting to be judged…
Because the machine is society and the wrench is Science
Science is the vehicle by which we lose faith
And when the magic is gone we will cease
to live
Our sole concern will be for the product of the machine
Which is the existence of itself.
Ghost Dance
By Nick Eltis
While traveling from Sioux Falls to Spencer
I heard a roaring crash on the highway
Like stumbling onto an unseen disaster
A cluster of bodies around me lay
The whiskey and blood, they run hand in hand
Exhausted by the fuming man-made flames
Our metal beast slain, strewn about the land
God, let the doctors remember our names
There are plenty of reasons to lament
Me and my lady will die where we lay
Good luck to those who survive this event
Tis’ fate hath decided our judgment day
We danced all night, as if danseurs from France
A Tango, a Waltz, a brilliant dance
Letter to a Friend
By Nick Eltis
Within the last few years We’ve grown apart
Our faces have become more like our fathers’
And our minds more like our mentors’
We have moved on
Making new friends to fill in the gaps
That have been left empty by our absences
Losing memories of each other every day
Like lambs to the slaughter
Our innocence has also been carried off
By news broadcasts and x-rated movies
Our knowledge has corrupted us both
Let us sleep again like children
Let our thoughts be pure again like saints
Let our actions again be sincere
For we have lost these virtues over time
These changes are not for the better
They’ve hindered our spirits
From becoming what we were truly meant to be
Caring, loving, honest human beings
The River
By Nick Eltis
My mind is like a river Keep on thinking or I’ll die
Flood the city with racing thoughts
Keep the currents rushing by
Do not dam my precious river
Let my thoughts submerge my brain
Let them trickle down my frontal lobe
And not down my bath tub drain
Let my brainwork form an ocean
So I’ll have a place to swim
I’ll build myself a battleship
And sail the seas within
And if my little river stops
Somewhere inside my head
It will be that day that you can say
The boy is surely dead.
Really Living
By Carol Graf
How about fishing on the banks of the Uncompahgre
releasing your spirit among the Havasupai
yahooing at dawn on the Wapsipinicon
canoeing into the moody woods of the Housatonic
panscoping all the lights around nighttime Lake Pontchartrain
interloping among hang-outs, haunts, and hollows in Piscataquis Parish
harkening to the trains softly clattering through rundown Conshohocken
just marking time amid the sights and smells and sounds of downtown McConnellsburg
invading cluttered bookstalls and lettered halls at Beloit or Fordham
wading into sensuous literary currents at St. Norbert or Putnam
aaahhh .......that would be really living
But how about
catching a ho-hum ride across dead ugly dull stubbly brown flatlands to Marvin, South Dakota
hah hah.......would that be really living
What is it that matters
Which is it that delights
Friends matter
With friends, even a short trip to Marvin is really living
Without friends, even a trip offering new thrills and skills is not
My Wife, My Son, My Family
By James Ingram
The scent of orange fills my nose,
A reminder of my freshly washed hair.
She cuddles up next to my back,
Her arm over me like a comforting blanket.
As I lay there, half asleep,
I can feel her stomach moving.
And it takes me back five years,
Back to when she carried our first son.
She would hold me like this,
The lingering smell of her soap.
Washing over me like a wave of cucumber-melon,
Cocooning me in her cleanliness.
When I would begin to doze,
I would feel our unborn child kicking her.
I could feel his hands and feet thumping,
Ever so lightly into my back.
It felt like the bass from a stereo,
Which rattles your eardrums and shakes your bones.
Only far softer, a gentle reminder of his presence,
Good night kisses for dad, night time beating for mom.
As I snoozed,cushioned in her warmth,
And assaulted by his vigor.
I could gaze out the window,
And watch the soft snow drift down onto the quiet earth.
As they passed before my eyes,
I could see each tiny snowflake.
Dancing like a miniature ballerina,
To the music of my son’s ever increasing tempo.
Then she would roll over to get more comfortable,
And I would follow her, wrapping my body around hers.
The smell of her hair, the scent of strawberries,
Caressing my nostrils with their teasing fragrance.
She would sigh as I enfolded her,
Her body molding to mine like so much putty.
As I closed my eyes and entered the blissful world of sleep,
I could feel him already starting to rat-atat-tat on my hands.<>
Genunie
By Jen Olson
in a city
so large
and full of silence
in a city
so hurt
and full of injured
crying
in a city
so lost
and filled with
empty souls
it is amazing that
people don’t understand
something as simple
as a tear.
Moot Moosings
By Jen Olson
“who do you want to screw,
marilyn manson or rob zombie?”
he says with a psychotic psychologist’s voice.
thechoice is between a greasy eel
and a screaming snail.
and like a calculus problem,
my mind cannot process it.
not a delicious or desirable consideration,
sleeping with either of them.
to cut off an arm or leg,
the question is really this.
the arm, i think,
because i hate heavy objects.
just like i hate heavy subjects.
a collection of moot musings,
these questions of screwing.
we talk about other useless things,
ruling Iceland and becoming syphilis,
choosing celebrity underwear.
like chimps avoiding experiments,
we skirt the truth.
no Navy and lost keys,
no broken engagements or DUIs.
this sugar coated conversation is our raft,
helping us to drift away from solid things.
i wonder if he is serious,
if he could ever really leave this world
to become an astronaut.
or if I would really make a good Buddhist,
silently contemplating without insane emotions
that define my being.
And someday, maybe soon,
the night will not draw to a close
with darkness
signaling the long resisted end to today’s charade.
in a few minutes i will drift back to my dorm room
and he will stroll back to the ship.
but i know this conversation will continue,
at another time, with the same friend, in a different mindset,
even if it involves screwing marilyn manson.
My Future Isn’t Here
By Jen Olson
Whimsically floating,
she glints like a child,
alone in her vision.
“I’m going to New York
to play in traffic.”
A picture of vivaciousness,
stirred with the impulsive.
Grounded in stone and responsibilities.
And like a bird’s flight,
she means now, today.
Face jumping like a bee,
sporadic excitement flowing,
she grabs the lemon raincoat.
“I’m gonna taste a vendor’s hot dog
and look in Madonna’s window.”
I hate hot dogs.
She sings about carriages
and living in the park.
Of disco ball Fridays,
and philosophical book clubs.
“Central Park is the place.
The only place to live.”
And she might be able to do it,
dusting the crowd with dreams.
Silence.
“I need to go.
I am suffocating here.”
She dreams of how her curtains,
her swirly, homemade curtains,
could brush the trees in the park.
And like a cloud,
dust puffs in from the window,
proving her point.
Rain is coming, be practical.
“I must bring the book,”
and in goes Confessions of a Viagra Addict,
her reason for the Calculus grade.
There is always a reason,
she says belligerently.
And I believe it.
Aging underwear tossed in,
surrounded by mismatched earrings.
Her toothbrush forgotten,
shoved under the bed,
comforting an abandoned shoe.
“I need the perfect perfume.”
Desperate for Normalcy.
As the excitement starts to fade,
she drifts away mistily.
Taking the dreams.
The raincoat is folded back,
gingerly placed in a chest.
And when everything is put way,
the magic is gone with the dust.
I can’t go.
“But neither can you stay,”
she says from the back of my mind,
momentarily pacified by oncoming dusk.
As I fight back the excitement,
the crazed impulses,
I know the time is coming.
Endings
By Jen Olson
Trick me, use me, teach me, she screams in my head,
silent except for the grim laugh shining from her eyes.
Excitement courses through my veins,
defining her fear and my direction.
Her naked body glistens with sweat,
a tribute to some god long forgotten
in the journey from that insignificant town
where that sweet-faced boy was found,
hanging from the lone light fixture
in a room desolate and haunted by drooping promises.
Promises that I could stop,
that I would think about something other
than the cheap steel pressed against my throat
as my innocence was ripped away,
just as hers is about to be,
any lingering trace of youth.
Ah, yes it has been a long road to this dingy motel
in a long series of crusty bedspreads and dripping sinks,
of dirty whores and empty sacks, sprinkled with cocaine.
My one remaining textbook, a nod to that small college town,
the town I deserted in blind desperation,
acts as her head rest,
and grainy ropes tie her to tonight’s fate.
And she doesn’t even allow one singular tear to shine for me.
Because we were both dead, long before the light deserted us,
long before the gruesome church bells could save us,
long before this moment of silent comprehension could illuminate the truths of the past.
Simple Silence
By Jen Olson
i watched a solo
brown leaf meander
to the ground
in no hurry
and felt grateful
that something so simple
was the most beautiful thing I had seen
in a long time.
Smiling Alone
By Jen Olson
I saw you
alone in your crimson
colored glory
awake from nostalgias long
left behind in
the rush to
find a new
day a
new life.
I heard you
speak like no
one I had
ever heard
and it occurred
to me
that I understood
your wonder
even if not
your words.
Serenity in Unusual Places
By Jen Olson
Its funny how nothingness
is strangely amusing. As if sitting comatose, perched
lazily on a cushion is sane. Thinking about prancing in
Caribbean waters like a dreary snowplow driver.
As if staring,
with a blank mind and vision,
at the expansive sky is enlightening. The bland expression
and tired mind create a world that is simplistic and conflicting.
Like a wilting flower, drizzled with water,
that floods and dies. A moment of nothing is salvation.
Yet overpowering. I smile
at the Sunday mornings that turn into
afternoons, laying snuggled in fleece and down. Swimming in warmth
and satisfaction. Or
the ten minute flop breaks in between real life spent
face down on a fluffy rug, dreaming
about dreaming. Leaves blowing in the wind.
Laying in the park, watching the dust. A windy twirl with pillow
in the middle of a kitchen. A gift of lightness that is like wings to take my mind away.
Serenity in unusual places.
Pretty Things
By Jen Olson
he crumpled
himself in to the
moist plastic
seat
grasping a
book with
antiqued pages
and a dirt
smothered pink
cover
I
wondered if
he was a
blooming artist
or a collector
of
things to look
old
I wondered
if he
knew about
truth and
beauty or if he
skirted it I
wondered if it was
important
enough
to
wonder.
Never For Feeling
By Jen Olson
If you never touch me again
With pearly white knuckles
Ground soundly and firmly against
A fake brand of designer cream
And if sunlight never softens
Once tan and streaming skin
With clouds forever shining against pavement
And if air forgets
never finds a path of sweet release
To reach my lungs
Then I will stop in this moment
In a haze of chatter
movement color in the background
Sitting in a beige square
Surrounded by ground mahogany and
Paper-cut smiles
Discussing death and the nature of clocks
Buzzing by and ants trouping in the salty
Dirt and I will know
That the small insignificant crystals
Of snow floating by the
Window mean more than this. And yet
Not enough.
More of Nothing
By Jen Olson
i saw a
man
on the train
with deep
eyes
that stared into
mine
without a
smile
or any disconcernable
amount of
emotion
just stared
lost
i looked towards a
more
interesting sight
green with
a
hint of
sunshine and when
i
looked back
he
was gone
and other eyes
were
looking back at
me
and I realized
i
missed
the emptiness
of the
blank communication.
Exhausted Air
By Jen Olson
The chattering hum of the television
drones out my thoughts with the constant chatter
of others living a life.
As if those people know about life.
And the florescent lights glare off my page,
guiding my eyes
to more interesting pictures, showing me
a world that doesn’t include linguistics.
This struggle
parades with zoning eyes
and a sketchy mind.
There is no biology.
Only crazy people searching for something of value.
Homework. Sunshine. Socks.
As if you could really find it.
And what would you do if you did?
Die of boredom. Questing and pretending.
Like a ripping hangover morning,
the night before is doomed to be forgotten.
Homework is listless.
Professors share their life, for what it’s worth.
And I never know what to do with this burden
of expectations.
Precious knowledge. Garbled futures.
Reality is the crusty mac n’ cheese pan,
waiting to be scrubbed.
The mountains of snow blocking escape.
Or the awkward, decaying smell crawls from the vent.
I am alone with myself,
consumed by exhausted air.
And my eyes drift back to the page,
uninviting the cramped typing that thumbs through my brain.
The cheesing grin of a third grader stares back,
demanding empathy and curiosity.
And I begin to read again.
Wasted Foreplay
By Jen Olson
I love it when he calls me beautiful.
As if he loves me and I am the most lovely woman
in the world. As if these moments are real. What a fake.
He sleeps with a fifteen year old. He dreams of money and suits
but wastes life on Morgan and acid. All his dreams are already
dead. Twenty-one years of wasted experiences. There is no love.
And he calls me to know success without
being a part of it. He fears normal. I fear jail.
Our endless banter is wasted foreplay. Like flirting with a plant.
It doesn’t hurt. It surprises me how much it doesn’t hurt.
And when he calls me to tell me about his newest date
with captivity, I snidely make some insipid comment about real life.
When I actually don’t know what that is. As I push away a misty sense of jealousy.
Because he is everything I want to be
when I feel compelled to crash off the road of reality,
slamming my head to Metallica’s “No Remorse.”
I will hand in my homework on time.
He will show up smashed to work on Tuesday.
And I will love it when he calls me beautiful.
Sinking
By Lara Steen
Plummeting, I fall lower and lower.
Nothing seems to matter anymore.
I slowly sink into oblivion.
And time stops.
Trying to look out from the shroud
And discover I can’t see an opening.
I flounder and claw
But to no avail.
Screaming as no sound comes out
I reach out blindly and find you.
Clinging for all I’m worth,
Hoping you will be solace.
For a time everything is better,
But then it continues downhill.
Yet again I am left alone.
Sinking into blackness.
Spiraling
Downward
Fast.
Taste of Steel
By Lara Steen
Nothing feels better
than the quick bite of steel
being drug across delicate white skin
where green veins flow back and forth
with fresh blood ready to be spilled in a long thin line.
It’s like a high
that can’t be replicated.
It’s better than the first time
you took a hit. Better than
the first time you were fucked.
A euphoria
that takes you over and over
every time you taste the blade.
The release comes swift and you
Watch your life trickling down your arm
What Women Want to Hear
By Lara Steen
He said, “You’re beautiful.”
She promptly laughed in his face.
He said, “You smell delicious.”
She glared viciously.
He said, “You makemy day.”
She ignored him entirely.
He said, “You complete me.”
She snorted in disgust.
He said, “My God Woman, What do you want to hear?!”
She rolled her eyes and blew out an enormous sigh.
He said, “I love you.”
She screamed in delight.
Hesaid, “What?”
She jumped into his arms and said –
“Finally, just what I wanted to hear.”
“who do you want to screw,
marilyn manson or rob zombie?”
he says with a psychotic psychologist’s voice.
thechoice is between a greasy eel
and a screaming snail.
and like a calculus problem,
my mind cannot process it.
not a delicious or desirable consideration,
sleeping with either of them.
to cut off an arm or leg,
the question is really this.
the arm, i think,
because i hate heavy objects.
just like i hate heavy subjects.
a collection of moot musings,
these questions of screwing.
we talk about other useless things,
ruling Iceland and becoming syphilis,
choosing celebrity underwear.
like chimps avoiding experiments,
we skirt the truth.
no Navy and lost keys,
no broken engagements or DUIs.
this sugar coated conversation is our raft,
helping us to drift away from solid things.
i wonder if he is serious,
if he could ever really leave this world
to become an astronaut.
or if I would really make a good Buddhist,
silently contemplating without insane emotions
that define my being.
And someday, maybe soon,
the night will not draw to a close
with darkness
signaling the long resisted end to today’s charade.
in a few minutes i will drift back to my dorm room
and he will stroll back to the ship.
but i know this conversation will continue,
at another time, with the same friend, in a different mindset,
even if it involves screwing marilyn manson.
My Future Isn’t Here
By Jen Olson
Whimsically floating,
she glints like a child,
alone in her vision.
“I’m going to New York
to play in traffic.”
A picture of vivaciousness,
stirred with the impulsive.
Grounded in stone and responsibilities.
And like a bird’s flight,
she means now, today.
Face jumping like a bee,
sporadic excitement flowing,
she grabs the lemon raincoat.
“I’m gonna taste a vendor’s hot dog
and look in Madonna’s window.”
I hate hot dogs.
She sings about carriages
and living in the park.
Of disco ball Fridays,
and philosophical book clubs.
“Central Park is the place.
The only place to live.”
And she might be able to do it,
dusting the crowd with dreams.
Silence.
“I need to go.
I am suffocating here.”
She dreams of how her curtains,
her swirly, homemade curtains,
could brush the trees in the park.
And like a cloud,
dust puffs in from the window,
proving her point.
Rain is coming, be practical.
“I must bring the book,”
and in goes Confessions of a Viagra Addict,
her reason for the Calculus grade.
There is always a reason,
she says belligerently.
And I believe it.
Aging underwear tossed in,
surrounded by mismatched earrings.
Her toothbrush forgotten,
shoved under the bed,
comforting an abandoned shoe.
“I need the perfect perfume.”
Desperate for Normalcy.
As the excitement starts to fade,
she drifts away mistily.
Taking the dreams.
The raincoat is folded back,
gingerly placed in a chest.
And when everything is put way,
the magic is gone with the dust.
I can’t go.
“But neither can you stay,”
she says from the back of my mind,
momentarily pacified by oncoming dusk.
As I fight back the excitement,
the crazed impulses,
I know the time is coming.
Endings
By Jen Olson
Trick me, use me, teach me, she screams in my head,
silent except for the grim laugh shining from her eyes.
Excitement courses through my veins,
defining her fear and my direction.
Her naked body glistens with sweat,
a tribute to some god long forgotten
in the journey from that insignificant town
where that sweet-faced boy was found,
hanging from the lone light fixture
in a room desolate and haunted by drooping promises.
Promises that I could stop,
that I would think about something other
than the cheap steel pressed against my throat
as my innocence was ripped away,
just as hers is about to be,
any lingering trace of youth.
Ah, yes it has been a long road to this dingy motel
in a long series of crusty bedspreads and dripping sinks,
of dirty whores and empty sacks, sprinkled with cocaine.
My one remaining textbook, a nod to that small college town,
the town I deserted in blind desperation,
acts as her head rest,
and grainy ropes tie her to tonight’s fate.
And she doesn’t even allow one singular tear to shine for me.
Because we were both dead, long before the light deserted us,
long before the gruesome church bells could save us,
long before this moment of silent comprehension could illuminate the truths of the past.
Simple Silence
By Jen Olson
i watched a solo
brown leaf meander
to the ground
in no hurry
and felt grateful
that something so simple
was the most beautiful thing I had seen
in a long time.
Smiling Alone
By Jen Olson
I saw you
alone in your crimson
colored glory
awake from nostalgias long
left behind in
the rush to
find a new
day a
new life.
I heard you
speak like no
one I had
ever heard
and it occurred
to me
that I understood
your wonder
even if not
your words.
Serenity in Unusual Places
By Jen Olson
Its funny how nothingness
is strangely amusing. As if sitting comatose, perched
lazily on a cushion is sane. Thinking about prancing in
Caribbean waters like a dreary snowplow driver.
As if staring,
with a blank mind and vision,
at the expansive sky is enlightening. The bland expression
and tired mind create a world that is simplistic and conflicting.
Like a wilting flower, drizzled with water,
that floods and dies. A moment of nothing is salvation.
Yet overpowering. I smile
at the Sunday mornings that turn into
afternoons, laying snuggled in fleece and down. Swimming in warmth
and satisfaction. Or
the ten minute flop breaks in between real life spent
face down on a fluffy rug, dreaming
about dreaming. Leaves blowing in the wind.
Laying in the park, watching the dust. A windy twirl with pillow
in the middle of a kitchen. A gift of lightness that is like wings to take my mind away.
Serenity in unusual places.
Pretty Things
By Jen Olson
he crumpled
himself in to the
moist plastic
seat
grasping a
book with
antiqued pages
and a dirt
smothered pink
cover
I
wondered if
he was a
blooming artist
or a collector
of
things to look
old
I wondered
if he
knew about
truth and
beauty or if he
skirted it I
wondered if it was
important
enough
to
wonder.
Never For Feeling
By Jen Olson
If you never touch me again
With pearly white knuckles
Ground soundly and firmly against
A fake brand of designer cream
And if sunlight never softens
Once tan and streaming skin
With clouds forever shining against pavement
And if air forgets
never finds a path of sweet release
To reach my lungs
Then I will stop in this moment
In a haze of chatter
movement color in the background
Sitting in a beige square
Surrounded by ground mahogany and
Paper-cut smiles
Discussing death and the nature of clocks
Buzzing by and ants trouping in the salty
Dirt and I will know
That the small insignificant crystals
Of snow floating by the
Window mean more than this. And yet
Not enough.
More of Nothing
By Jen Olson
i saw a
man
on the train
with deep
eyes
that stared into
mine
without a
smile
or any disconcernable
amount of
emotion
just stared
lost
i looked towards a
more
interesting sight
green with
a
hint of
sunshine and when
i
looked back
he
was gone
and other eyes
were
looking back at
me
and I realized
i
missed
the emptiness
of the
blank communication.
Exhausted Air
By Jen Olson
The chattering hum of the television
drones out my thoughts with the constant chatter
of others living a life.
As if those people know about life.
And the florescent lights glare off my page,
guiding my eyes
to more interesting pictures, showing me
a world that doesn’t include linguistics.
This struggle
parades with zoning eyes
and a sketchy mind.
There is no biology.
Only crazy people searching for something of value.
Homework. Sunshine. Socks.
As if you could really find it.
And what would you do if you did?
Die of boredom. Questing and pretending.
Like a ripping hangover morning,
the night before is doomed to be forgotten.
Homework is listless.
Professors share their life, for what it’s worth.
And I never know what to do with this burden
of expectations.
Precious knowledge. Garbled futures.
Reality is the crusty mac n’ cheese pan,
waiting to be scrubbed.
The mountains of snow blocking escape.
Or the awkward, decaying smell crawls from the vent.
I am alone with myself,
consumed by exhausted air.
And my eyes drift back to the page,
uninviting the cramped typing that thumbs through my brain.
The cheesing grin of a third grader stares back,
demanding empathy and curiosity.
And I begin to read again.
Wasted Foreplay
By Jen Olson
I love it when he calls me beautiful.
As if he loves me and I am the most lovely woman
in the world. As if these moments are real. What a fake.
He sleeps with a fifteen year old. He dreams of money and suits
but wastes life on Morgan and acid. All his dreams are already
dead. Twenty-one years of wasted experiences. There is no love.
And he calls me to know success without
being a part of it. He fears normal. I fear jail.
Our endless banter is wasted foreplay. Like flirting with a plant.
It doesn’t hurt. It surprises me how much it doesn’t hurt.
And when he calls me to tell me about his newest date
with captivity, I snidely make some insipid comment about real life.
When I actually don’t know what that is. As I push away a misty sense of jealousy.
Because he is everything I want to be
when I feel compelled to crash off the road of reality,
slamming my head to Metallica’s “No Remorse.”
I will hand in my homework on time.
He will show up smashed to work on Tuesday.
And I will love it when he calls me beautiful.
Sinking
By Lara Steen
Plummeting, I fall lower and lower.
Nothing seems to matter anymore.
I slowly sink into oblivion.
And time stops.
Trying to look out from the shroud
And discover I can’t see an opening.
I flounder and claw
But to no avail.
Screaming as no sound comes out
I reach out blindly and find you.
Clinging for all I’m worth,
Hoping you will be solace.
For a time everything is better,
But then it continues downhill.
Yet again I am left alone.
Sinking into blackness.
Spiraling
Downward
Fast.
Taste of Steel
By Lara Steen
Nothing feels better
than the quick bite of steel
being drug across delicate white skin
where green veins flow back and forth
with fresh blood ready to be spilled in a long thin line.
It’s like a high
that can’t be replicated.
It’s better than the first time
you took a hit. Better than
the first time you were fucked.
A euphoria
that takes you over and over
every time you taste the blade.
The release comes swift and you
Watch your life trickling down your arm
What Women Want to Hear
By Lara Steen
He said, “You’re beautiful.”
She promptly laughed in his face.
He said, “You smell delicious.”
She glared viciously.
He said, “You makemy day.”
She ignored him entirely.
He said, “You complete me.”
She snorted in disgust.
He said, “My God Woman, What do you want to hear?!”
She rolled her eyes and blew out an enormous sigh.
He said, “I love you.”
She screamed in delight.
Hesaid, “What?”
She jumped into his arms and said –
“Finally, just what I wanted to hear.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Essays 2005-2006
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
'Til Death Do Us Part
Andrea Mills
A lot of things died. Marriage is supposed to be the beginning of new life, a life that is excited and enhanced by the unity between a husband and wife. To my surprise, my marriage was the beginning of a new life, all right. My dream marriage became one of my worst nightmares. Eventually, my soul began to die. Staying in a bad marriage is worse than getting a divorce because a bad marriage eventually creates destructive feelings, is bad for the children, gives a bad example of marriage, and results in hiding things and lying to family and friends in order to make things appear ok. In addition, staying builds emotional scars, which result in major problems in both a person’s emotional and physical health.
Feelings of inadequacy, resentment, and bitterness are very common when a person is in a bad marriage and tries to keep everything together and make the marriage work. I felt that I could fix everything when needed. I thought that if I was a good wife and mother, created a beautiful home, and had a great career, then my husband wouldn’t want or need to continue the lifestyle that he had been leading anymore. Boy, was I wrong! Nothing I was doing made a difference. It didn’t matter how hard I tried. I just couldn’t change him. I began to feel very inadequate, as do other people with the same marital situations. Brooklyn Stevens, whom I had a personal interview with, felt some of these very same emotions. Stevens was living with both mental and physical abuse from her husband, and I was living with my husband’s addiction to alcohol and drugs. In another personal interview with Abby Shillingstad, I found that she was also a victim of emotional and physical abuse. Her husband was a very controlling man. From the clothes she wore to the color of her hair, he made the decisions. He told her that she was too fat, which left her feeling inadequate and self-conscious. In addition, for a long time, Stevens’ husband convinced her that she would be nothing without him, and she needed his money to survive (Shillingstad). We were all living a life that we did not want. I would ask God if I had done something to deserve this kind of a marriage. It took a long time for me to wake up and smell the coffee. By that time, I was so bitter at my husband for the things that he was doing to destroy our marriage that I would say things to try to make him feel like a loser, or at least bad enough that he wouldn’t want to continue to abuse alcohol and drugs. He would always promise that it would never happen again. Unfortunately, that was a promise that he never kept. I resented him and his actions deeply.
I always believed that staying together for the children’s sake was the right thing to do. Whatever gave me that idea? In hindsight, that was the worst thing I could have done for them. Shillingstad admitted that she stayed in her bad marriage for her children as well. But something good did come out of her marriage, and that was having all of her children. For that gift, she is thankful. However, she does admit that her oldest daughter has also recently become a victim of her husband’s controlling abuse. This angers Abby (Shillingstad). Stevens thought that having children would have made things better in her marriage. She didn’t end up having children and is very thankful for that now (Stevens). In my situation, allowing my children to see the things that their father was doing and then watch my reactions to them scared them and made them feel like their family and home were no longer secure or stable. But I thought that I was hiding everything well. For example, on many occasions when my husband would go on a binge, he would not come home at night, sometimes for two or three days at a time. I would get up early and set a cereal bowl on the counter, put a little bit of milk in it with a spoon, and open up the newspaper, so when the kids got up it would look like their dad had been home. Then I would tell them that he had already left for work. Sometimes I would tell them that Dad was working out of town, so he had to spend the night somewhere else. I would just keep making up lies as needed to cover up what was really going on. The kids got older and started to really question what was happening. I still continued to cover up everything. They were probably thinking if Dad was just working really long hours, then why was Mom so furious with him and not speaking to him when he got home?
If I had ended the marriage when the kids were younger, it would have been easier for the kids to adjust. I could have explained what the problems were and why things needed to change. Children are much more forgiving when they are younger than when they become teenagers. By doing it when they were young, I could have prevented many lies. Because of all the cover-ups, my kids thought that I was divorcing a saint. I don’t regret never bad-mouthing their dad, but it really gave them a false image of him. Now as teenagers, there are so many more issues for them to deal with, such as being embarrassed to tell their friends, thinking they need to choose sides, threatening to move out of the house if I didn’t let Dad come back, and not trusting me after I told them that I had been covering everything up. They said if I was lying then, how did they know I wasn’t lying now? In different ways and through different eyes, I realized that the divorce was worse now than it would have been when they were toddlers.
When raising my children, I wanted to teach them good examples by living good examples. But in retrospect, I wasn’t setting a very good example of how marriage should be. Some important aspects in a good marriage are love, trust, and unity. The kids weren’t seeing much of this. My husband was a master manipulator. Therefore, trust was something I can honestly say I never had with him. Shillingstad’s husband was also a habitual liar. He could always put on a super show in front of other people to make himself appear to be a great guy. But behind closed doors it was a different story (Shillingstad). As a result of the absence of trust in my marriage, the love began to fade immensely. When there is no trust and the love starts fading, the unity of the marriage begins to split. These are the things that the kids were seeing. I tried very hard to cover these things up. It’s not that I was purposely trying to hurt them by pretending; actually, I thought I was protecting them at the time. As it turned out, I realized all of my theories on doing what was better for the kids were inane. What I thought was a good example was actually setting a very bad example of what a marriage should be like.
My children were not the only people that I concealed events of my bad marriage from. My siblings, parents, friends, and clients all got the same kind of lies and cover-ups about what was really going on. Stevens told me that she also hid everything from family and friends. She even took blame for things in order to make it appear that things were her fault instead of his. In addition, she poured herself into her work so that she did not have to be home. Although our situations were a little different, I also worked very long hours at my salon, did some volunteer work, and spent a lot of time with my siblings and close friends. Stevens stayed away so she didn’t have to be home with her husband (Stevens), whereas I stayed away in order to pass time so that I wasn’t sitting at home waiting to see if he was going to come home or not. Some nights I thought I would literally go crazy waiting for him to come home. I don’t think I even heard half of what the kids said to me on those nights. Maybe my family and friends all knew what was really going on, but I thought that I was hiding it well.
Another, and probably the most serious, consequence of staying in my bad marriage is the emotional toll it took on me. Stevens claims that her marital troubles led to unhealthy emotional problems for her as well. There were times that she actually feared for her life. On one occasion, she told her husband to just go ahead and kill her (Stevens). Shillingstad was tormented by physical abuse as well. On one occasion, she had to call the police for protection (Shillingstad). In contrast, I was not being physically abused and fearing for my life, but even so, there were so many times during my marriage that I wished I were dead. Then I would feel terrible because there was no way that I wanted to leave my children or for them to lose their mother. That’s when I started thinking that we would all be better off if my husband would just get in a car accident and die. These thoughts were so awful that I could not believe they were coming out of my mind. I thought that I was a good person and a good Christian. But how could I be if I was thinking like this? This is how messed up the spouses of the abusers get. Also, my religious belief that divorce was a sin was another key factor in staying as long as I did. I knew that I needed to get out and never look back, but I had this cloud above my head with all kinds of thoughts. What would God think? Would he forgive me? Would I still be a Christian? I got so depressed and plagued with anxiety that I felt like I was sinking farther into the hell-hole of life. These problems led to insomnia and very poor eating habits. Trying to work full time, raise the kids, and keep the salon and home running while my health was failing really were taking its toll on me. The emotional stress was now turning into very serious physical problems as well. It got so bad that I ended up in the doctor’s office almost every other day. My doctors told me that I needed to get rid of the stress in my life before it killed me. I knew that they were right, but I felt that I needed to be tough and suck it up.
Then one day my body and mind both gave up. I was no longer able to carry on the charade anymore. I couldn’t take care of myself, let alone my family, anymore. I was not eating at all and I was only getting about two to three hours of sleeps a night. It took a lot of hospitalization and therapy to get me back to myself.
For many people that have stayed in a bad marriage, destructive feelings have developed, and children have been harmed. They put on a facade of their marriage. They have a lifetime of physical as well as emotional scars that they will carry around. I have given ample evidence of this. No one will ever be able to convince me now that staying in my marriage as long as I did was a good idea.
Work Cited
Stevens, Brooklyn. Personal Interview. 12 August 2005.
Abby, Shillingstad. Personal Interview. 15 August 2005.
In the Dark Woods: Abuse Themes in Common Fairy Tales
Anna Roberts
In modern parlance, the phrase "fairy tale" has come to mean different things; at best, a fairy tale is a story that begins with "once upon a time" and ends with "happily ever after." It evokes images of beautiful heroines, brave heroes, and adventures long ago and far away. At worst, we use the term to mean an untruth, a falsehood so incredible that only a child would believe it. The tales out of the older traditions, however, are more than flights of fancy or pretty lies. "The fairy tale journey...can be seen as a metaphor for the therapeutic journey into the depths of the soul" (Windling, Introduction 15). Stories out of the oral tradition were told "not only to entertain but to teach: to show listeners that they were not alone, to communicate societal attitudes towards topics deemed unspeakable in open society, and to present possible solutions through the metaphor of magic" (Pinlinovsky). In her article "Ashes, Blood and the Slipper of Glass, Terri Windling writes: "[Fairy tales] plunge heroines and heroes into the dark wood, into danger and despair and enchantment and deception, and only then offer them the tools to save themselves." A handful of contemporary writers, including Midori Snyder, Jane Yolen and Terri Windling, restore the fairy tale to the dark wood; they use fairy tale language, imagery and magic to delve into topics we deem too frightening or uncomfortable for open discussion, in particular the theme of child abuse.
Fairy and folk tales are a natural source of material for writers who wish to examine abuse themes. The tales most familiar to contemporary Western readers have been watered down by their recorders (Warner 351) and by Hollywood's renditions, but still include old women who terrorize the young women they look after, fathers who leave their children in the woods to die, and stepmothers who give their husbands' children poisoned apples. The more graphic tales often contain an undercurrent of violence, incest and sexual abuse. "However common such abuse may have been among our European forebears, their frequent use of incest motifs in folktales and their graphic descriptions of the victims' subsequent suffering indicate that the associated fears and anxieties were both widespread and deep" (Ashliman). In her essay "The Hero's Journey," Midori Snyder says that in folk and fairy tales, "abstract ideas are represented by concrete images" (31). Folk tales couch the unspeakable in images of the dark forest, of heroes riding to battle, of young women locked in towers. "Traditional storytellers have used terrifying events to create the emotional experience of grief and abandonment" (Snyder, Journey 32).
Snyder employs these images in her retelling of "The Armless Maiden." The Grimms' version, titled "The Maiden Without Hands," begins with a poor miller who meets a stranger in the woods. The old man says that he'll make the miller rich if he promises " 'to give [the old man] what's behind [the] mill' " (Zipes 119). The miller, thinking that the old man means the apple tree that stands behind the mill, agrees in writing. The miller's wife tells the miller that the old man he met was the devil. " 'He didn't mean the apple tree but our daughter, who was behind the mill sweeping out the yard' " (Zipes 119). The devil, however, has no power over the daughter because of her purity; he tells the miller to take away the maiden's water so that she can't wash herself. But the maiden weeps on her hands, making them clean, and so the devil cannot touch her. The devil orders that the miller chop off the girl's hands. The maiden, seeing her father's dilemma, extends her hands so that her father may chop them off. But she weeps so much on the stumps that they're clean. The devil has to keep his promise to the miller even though he can't touch the girl. But the daughter tells her father that she can't stay with him anymore; she will go away and "depend on the kindness of the people to provide me with whatever I need" (Zipes 120). In her travels she meets a king, who falls in love with her and marries her. While the king is away at war, the girl gives birth to a boy; the devil, still trying to harm the girl, contrives to send news to the king that the girl has given birth to a changeling. When the king sends a reply telling his mother to protect his queen until he returns, the devil substitutes a letter of his own, telling the king's mother that she should kill the girl and her child. The king's mother refuses, and sends the girl away with her child tied to her back. The queen prays to be saved, and finds a cottage occupied by an angel sent to protect the girl and her child. The girl's hands are restored; the king finds the girl and their child after searching for seven years, when he comes across the cottage where they've been living. They celebrate a second wedding and live happily ever after (Zipes 118-123).
Snyder's story "The Armless Maiden" begins: "There once was a husband and wife who lived beside a great forest" (17). Snyder uses the familiar fairy tale beginning to draw her readers in, but the story leaves the impersonal narrative of the Grimms' fairy tale behind. Her version substitutes a brother for the father, and a jealous new wife for the devil. Her characters, unlike the Grimms', have names – the maiden is Marion, Richard is her brother, and Fiona is the new wife. The characters are more fully realized than those in the Grimms' text; in developing the characters, Snyder gives the reader people to identify with. Her plot deviates from the Grimms' version; the jealous wife commits heinous acts – killing Richard's dogs and murdering the son she's given Richard – and tells Richard that Marion is responsible. Richard is all too willing to believe Fiona; he chops Marion's arms off at the shoulders and leaves her in the woods to die (Snyder, Maiden 17-30).
The imagery Snyder employs is decidedly more graphic than that found in the fairy tales most readers are accustomed to: "Marion shook with fear...Richard's anguished cry had released her from Fiona's spell and now there was blood on her sheets, blood on the sleeves of her nightdress, and on her pillow was laid the body of her murdered nephew and a silver blade" (Snyder, Maiden 19). The Grimms' most graphic image is of the girl weeping on the stumps of her hands: "Then she extended both her hands and let [her father] chop them off. The devil came a third time, but she had wept so long and so much on the stumps that they too were all clean" (119-120). The maiden's blood is so pure it leaves no stain.
Snyder's storyline is more ambiguous than that of the more familiar tales. In the Grimms' version of the tale, the heroine is granted a "happily ever after" ending by an angel who comes to earth to save the maiden and her child; nothing is said of the maiden's father, who held the blade that chopped his daughter's hands off, or of the devil who ordered it to begin with (Zipes 123). Snyder's ending, however, is more vengeful and more ambiguous; Fiona, the brother's wife who in Snyder's retelling is the cause of Marion's troubles, is transformed into a thorny rosebush, while Marion saves her brother from being trapped by the thorns. And while the Prince finds Marion and begs her to come home, as he does in the Grimms' version, there is no clear-cut "happily ever after" ending. Marion says to the Prince: "When I first came to you, I was a creature of the woods. You pitied me and gave me shelter. But now I am a woman and you must court me as a woman" (Snyder, Maiden 28).
Snyder first encountered "The Armless Maiden" as told by a South African storyteller, Nongenile Masithatu Zenani (Snyder, Journey 32). In Zenani's telling, a widowed man tries to force his daughter to take his dead wife's place in his home and his bed. When the daughter refuses, he cuts off her arms and leaves her in the woods to die (Snyder, Journey 32). Snyder, fascinated by the story, began to research other versions of the tale. "There were versions told all over Europe and Asia, some less sexual in their tone, but every bit as gruesome" (Snyder, Journey 32). Snyder says that although she believes the "Armless Maiden" stories are about rites of passage, the narratives contain an echo of abuse. "Heroes may be impoverished or robbed of their royal birthrights, but rarely are they so vindictively mutilated before they are turned out into their journeys" (Snyder, Journey 33). The reader or listener is repulsed by the graphic violence of the tales, "not because such events never happen, but because they do" (Snyder, Journey 33).
Of her own retelling, Snyder says that she selected images from various versions of the "Armless Maiden" stories that convey the threat of abuse. However, the story is not about survival as a victim: "...rather it is about [the maiden's] journey as a committed traveller fully aware of her destination" (Snyder, Journey 33). Snyder wrote her version with the intention that the maiden's life would be restored, and that she would forgive her abusive brother. Snyder says that the need for healing that the story conveys is not simply for the abused, but for the abuser as well. "Abusers too are isolated by the shame and brutality of their violent acts" (Snyder, Journey 33). In forgiving her abusive brother, Marion "removes forever the corrupting taint of violence, allowing them both to continue in their new lives, unshackled by the past" (Snyder, Journey 33).
Snyder creates a scene in her retelling that does not appear in any of the traditional "Armless Maiden" narratives. In the earlier versions, the maiden's hands are miraculously restored, but the maiden is passive; in the Grimms' "The Maiden Without Hands," an angel is sent to look after the girl and her child, and the maiden's hands are restored "by the grace of God" (Zipes 122) in reward for her piety. Snyder's Marion, however, has to literally grab her restoration for herself; she bends to drink from a lake, and her baby, who is secured to her back by a cloth, falls into the water. Marion plunges in after him, and, nearly drowning herself, begs the spirit of the lake, in the form of a huge fish, to restore her arms so that she can save her child:
'As spirit of this lake, I would save you if you whish. Or I can save your child. You must choose,' said the fish, its whiskers quivering as it spoke.
'My arms,' Marion cried. "Give me hands and I will save us both!' (Snyder, Maiden 26).
Snyder says that this moment is Marion's first real step in her passage to adulthood, and her first step toward healing. "In one luminous moment, her past is restored, her present made manifest in the power of her hands, and her future assured, as she lifts her child out of the foaming water" (Journey 34). Marion's greatest asset is not piety; it is self-reliance. Unlike the Grimms' maiden, Marion bears her scars and reaches for healing in a way that no stock character can.
While Snyder leaves intact the magical aspects of the fairy tale, other writers purge the supernatural from their stories in order to bring home their themes. Jane Yolen's retelling of "Allerleirauh" is set, like Snyder's "The Armless Maiden" in the mythic past common to most fairy tales, but all other elements of the numinous, shared by traditional versions, are absent in Yolen's story.
The version of "Allerleirauh" told by the Brothers Grimm (called "All-Fur" or "All-Kinds-of Fur" in translation from German) begins with a king whose queen, on her deathbed, demands that he marry no one, unless she is as beautiful as the queen. The king promises; but no woman is found who is the dead queen's equal, except for the king's daughter. The king announces that he intends to marry her, "...for she is the living image of my dead wife" (Zipes 260). The daughter, frightened, tries to stall her father with impossible demands, but he meets each one. She is forced to flee to a neighboring kingdom disguised in a cloak of tattered furs. She works in the king's kitchen, and manages to catch the attention of the king with the enchanted dresses she's brought with her. They marry, and live happily ever after (Zipes 259-263).
The last sentence of the Grimm brothers' "All-Kinds-of-Fur" tells us that this story, like most fairy tales, has a happy ending. But the assurance that "they lived happily until they died," tacked onto a long account of abuse and suffering, is not convincing. The final sentence notwithstanding, this tale is a tragedy, a story that symbolically--but lucidly--portrays the unhappy life of a sexually abused child. (Ashliman)
Yolen's retelling is short and brutal. She explores the idea, in a few brief pages, that abuse is rarely an isolated incident. "As she has said in a discussion of this tale, 'while I wanted this to have a happy ending, the story insisted otherwise'" (qtd. by Pilinovsky). Yolen's story begins, as do the traditional versions, with the death of a queen. The promises the king makes, however, are different. He promises to love the baby that the queen died giving birth to – which he does not do in the traditional versions; it’s a promise he twists to suit himself as his daughter grows up. And in Yolen's retelling, the king's promise to marry no one unless the new wife is as beautiful as the queen is not extracted from him, but volunteered, unasked (Yolen 36-39).
A common motif in tales of threatened incest is the promise extracted from the king by his dying wife. This promise, combined in many tales with subsequent acts of the daughter, further helps to protect the father's reputation by shifting the responsibility for his incestuous advances elsewhere, most often to the deceased queen, since the king can fulfill the promise made at her behest only by marrying his own daughter. (Ashliman)
Helen Pilinovsky, in her article "Donkeyskin, Deerskin, Allerleirauh," writes, that Yolen's retelling "is a very interesting variation, removing, as it does, any onus of guilt from the easily scapegoated female figure" (Pilinovsky). Yolen holds the king, and no one else, accountable for the abuse of his daughter.
As in the traditional versions, the king discovers that his daughter is the only woman as beautiful as his queen. But in Yolen's story, the princess does not make impossible demands of her father, and does not run away to escape. Yolen reminds her audience that certain magics are expected in fairy tales: "Now if this were truly a fairy tale...the princess would go outside to her mother's grave. And there, on her knees, she would learn a magic greater than any craft..." (39). Then Yolen abruptly rips those expectations away from her reader: "But this is not a fairy tale. The princess is married to her father and, always having wanted his love, does not question the manner of it. Except at night, late at night, when he is away from her bed and she is alone in the vastness of it" (39). Yolen's princess dies giving birth to a daughter "as lovely as her mother. The king knows he will not have to wait another thirteen years. It is an old story. Perhaps the oldest" (39).
Yolen's princess cannot expect a happy ending. The adults who might have stepped in are kept quiet out of fear of the king's retaliation. "Silence becomes the conspiracy; silence becomes the conspirators" (Yolen 39). This retelling is "a painfully insightful tale of what it is in society at large, and in the individual human spirit that makes such abuse possible" (Pilinovsky). The princess is representative of every child with a shameful secret, with no one willing to help, and no magic key for her escape.
Another folk tale with an underlying theme of abuse is "Donkey Skin". It is the same type of tale as "Allerleirauh", classified as Aarne-Thompson Type 510B, or Unnatural Love; Donkey Skin is very similar to "Allerleirauh." The version most familiar is Charles Perrault's, though it's been omitted from most fairy tale collections meant for children (Warner 351). Perrault's story begins with the same motif as "Allerleirauh," with a dying queen and a promise from the king to love no one unless she is as beautiful and worthy as the queen herself is. The king, in this case, has a magic donkey that excretes gold instead of dung; the princess' final "impossible demand" of her father is that he slaughter the donkey, the source of the his wealth, and have a cloak made from its skin. He does so, and the princess flees wrapped in the donkey skin cloak (Perrault). "For in this early fairy tale [Perrault] marks the daughter with her father's sin: the sign of the donkey conveys his lust. She becomes a beast, after her father has behaved like one" (Warner 325). In a panel discussion at WisCon 23 in Madison, Wisconsin, Terri Windling likened the cloak that Donkey Skin and Allerleirauh wear to the cloak of shame that covers the children of abuse: while the survivors of abuse spend their lives trying to escape it, it becomes a shield that protects them from being hurt again.
"Donkey Skin" shares the theme of incest with "Allerleirauh", but at the end of Perrault's tale, the king comes to his senses and appears at his daughter's wedding: "But neither the prince nor the many visiting kings appeared in such splendor as the bride's father, who now recognized his daughter and begged her forgiveness" (Perrault). By bringing him out of his madness, Perrault shifts all blame away from the king; he was crazed, and therefore not responsible for his actions.
Windling's prose poem "Donkeyskin" blends the traditional plot of the fairy tale with an account of a modern runaway teenager, shifting back and forth between the magical tale and the modern one. Windling uses the customary dream-like language and imagery of the fairy tale even in the harsh story of the contemporary girl; the poem is surreal but unflinching. Windling's retelling begins after the Maria Alvarez, the runaway, has fled. In Windling's tale, "the daughter is shown to have suffered actual abuse and not, as in the older tales, merely the threat of it" (Pilinovsky). Windling writes that some time after Maria has fled that "the bruise on her face has faded to yellow and she walks without limping" (Windling, Donkeyskin 297). "The explanation for her limp – a beating, a rape – is left to the discretion of the observer" (Pilinovsky). Windling never gives the father the chance to shift the blame away from himself, and her heroine goes on as do most survivors of abuse: trying to put the past behind her. "She pulls the donkeyskin back around her shoulders, taking comfort in the soft, familiar fur. She knows one day she will have to learn to live without it" (Windling, Donkeyskin 299).
In the hands of writers like Snyder, Yolen and Windling, the fairy tale is stripped of bright, sanitized veneer that most contemporary readers associate with the stories. In these writers' hands, stories of the fantastic become much more than escapist literature; they become vehicles for powerful truths about the dark forest we pass through on the road to adulthood, and the dangers that lurk there. "Once upon a time, they say, there was a girl . . . there was a boy . . . there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did . . . and what he did . . . and how they learned to survive it" (Windling, Ashes). These stories do not flinch from topics deemed taboo by our society; "they go to the very heart of truth. They've spoken the truth for a thousand years" (Windling, Ashes).
Works Cited
Ashliman, D.L. "Incest in Indo-European Folktales." Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts. Ed. D.L. Ashliman. 1997 http://www.pitt.edu~dash/incest.htm.
Perrault, Charles. "Donkey Skin." Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts. Ed. D.L. Ashliman.
Pilinovsky, Helen. "Donkeyskin, Deerskin, Allerleirauh: The Reality of the Fairy Tale." The Endicott Studio. Ed. Terri Windling. 2001 http://www.endicott-studio.com/fordnky.htm.
Snyder, Midori. "The Armless Maiden."The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 17-30.
Snyder, Midori. "The Hero's Journey."The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 31-34.
Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
Windling, Terri. "Ashes, Blood and the Slipper of Glass." The Edicott Studio. Ed. Terri Windling. 1997 http://www.endicott-studio.com/forashs.html
Windling, Terri. "Donkeyskin."The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 295-299.
Windling, Terri. "Introduction."The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 13-16.
Yolen, Jane. "Allerleirauh"The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 36-39.
Zipes, Jack, ed. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
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2005-2006
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Essays
Mills, Andrea - 'Til Death Do Us Part
Roberts, Anna - In the Dark Woods: Abuse Themes in Contemporary Fairy Tales
GraphicsKaiser, Katie - College - Twisted Butterfly - Wild Berries
Music
Forde, Stephen - Graduation - Someone to Love
Movies
Freitag, Bill; Lucas, Eliot; Frock, Josh; Behrens, Rory - Faygo
Roberts, Anna - In the Dark Woods: Abuse Themes in Contemporary Fairy Tales
Graphics
Music
Forde, Stephen - Graduation - Someone to Love
Movies
Freitag, Bill; Lucas, Eliot; Frock, Josh; Behrens, Rory - Faygo
Paintings
Fisher, Katie - Vessel II - Vessel IV - Vessel VI - Vessel VII
Weller, Crystal - Figure Painting (Acrylic and gel medium) - Still Life/Illusions of Paint (Acrylic and gel medium) - Three Way Master-Study after Vermeer Dagas Matisse (Acrylic) - Red Onion (Acrylic on hardboard) - Wild Things Mural Parrot (Acrylic on Hardboard)
Fisher, Katie - Vessel II - Vessel IV - Vessel VI - Vessel VII
Weller, Crystal - Figure Painting (Acrylic and gel medium) - Still Life/Illusions of Paint (Acrylic and gel medium) - Three Way Master-Study after Vermeer Dagas Matisse (Acrylic) - Red Onion (Acrylic on hardboard) - Wild Things Mural Parrot (Acrylic on Hardboard)
Photographs
Berkley, Russ - Falls 094 - Falls 088 - Falls 014 - Falls 003 - Falls 095
Kaiser, Katie - Bird
Yifan Zhao - Chicago 011 - Chicago 037
Kaiser, Katie - Bird
Yifan Zhao - Chicago 011 - Chicago 037
Poetry
Eltis, Nick - Forensics - Ghost Dance - Letter to a Friend - The River
Graf, Carol - Really Living
Ingram, James - My Wife - My Son - My Family
Olson, Jen - Genuine - Moot Moosings - My Future Isn't Here - Endings - Simple Silence - Smiling Alone - Serenity in Unusual Places - Pretty Things - Never for Feeling - More of Nothing - Exhausted Air - Wasted Foreplay
Steen, Lara - Sinking - Taste of Steel - What Woman Want to Hear
Short Stories
Guthrie, Alyson - The Stranger in the Box
Ode, Andrew - Twisted Fate
Trask, Mackenzie - Bored to Death
Website Compilation
Editorial Board: Katie Hodges, Lara Steen, and Penny Hanke
Web Designer: Jen Clarys and Michelle Sihrer
Original Web-site: Is no longer available.
Ingram, James - My Wife - My Son - My Family
Olson, Jen - Genuine - Moot Moosings - My Future Isn't Here - Endings - Simple Silence - Smiling Alone - Serenity in Unusual Places - Pretty Things - Never for Feeling - More of Nothing - Exhausted Air - Wasted Foreplay
Steen, Lara - Sinking - Taste of Steel - What Woman Want to Hear
Short Stories
Guthrie, Alyson - The Stranger in the Box
Ode, Andrew - Twisted Fate
Trask, Mackenzie - Bored to Death
Website Compilation
Editorial Board: Katie Hodges, Lara Steen, and Penny Hanke
Web Designer: Jen Clarys and Michelle Sihrer
Original Web-site: Is no longer available.
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