Movin' On Up

I would like to officially announce that Blustery Day will be moving to a new home. It is time to move on to bigger and better things, but in my heart, this will always be where the magic started. It's been swell.

*wipes tear*

Narrator: And so we come to the last chapter, in which Pooh and Christopher Robin go to the enchanted part of the forest, and we say goodbye. 

Winnie the Pooh: Goodbye? Oh no, please. Can't we just go back to page one and start all over again? 

Narrator: Sorry, Pooh, but all stories have an ending, you know. 

Winnie the Pooh: Oh, bother. 

From Up Here

From up here,

you can tell that 

the earth is round.

You can imagine

that great sloping 

curve in the distance.

From up here,

you can tell that

the earth spins

around the sun—

that the clouds

are only just

the beginning.

From up here,

great sprawling rivers

can fit in the space

between your fingers

and you can watch

the sun making 

its burning arch

across the sky.

And suddenly—

you feel very small

in comparison.

In Light of This

A shadowed earth—
the darkness painting and covering
its dips and swells,
its plains and shady forests.
Erratic spider webs of dotted light
are a beacon of humanity.
They reach for one another—
tendriled arms of mottled amber,
green and yellow fade
and are consumed in darkness.
Yet elsewhere—
even in the purest of the black,
there remains a persistent cluster
of light, like a rebellious celebration.
And the pulse of this lighted center
is living and spreading.
Until the black is not so dark
and the surface of the world
is cased in golden netting.
And then you can see
how we have made this place our home.
And it seems
that perhaps we are better in the dark.
That when given the chance, we make our light.
And it is truly beautiful.

By the way...

One half of a peach is all I need.
And a handful of sunflower seeds will be enough.

And I have always wanted a rocking chair—
Since you asked, I would want it to creak
When I rocked back and forth, like it knew
that I only wanted it to talk me to sleep.

Three hundred pages are all I need.
And if not, two hundred will be enough.

And I have always wanted to write,
Since you asked. A thick tome that would
Rest on a back corner shelf where its gold
Embossed letters would shine on their own.

Two gold hoop earrings are all I need.
And my frizzy brown hair will be enough.

And I have always wanted to see what it’s like,
Since you asked, to cut all of it off— feel my fuzzy
trimmed scalp and know that you like me the same
as when my hair, tangled in gold, made me beautiful.

Four or five centuries of knowledge are all I need.
And a simple white T-shirt will be enough.

And I know I can’t dance or sing well.
Since you asked, I do both anyway.
And now you know who I am
And I hope
that for you,
it is enough.

Sure

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.

"Pooh!" he whispered.

"Yes, Piglet?"

"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

- Winnie the Pooh

I just wanted to be sure of you
Just to know you were there
So I reached out my arm to touch you
And found that you were

I just wanted to be sure of you
Sure that you’ll always be my friend
So I laced my hand with yours
And found that you are

I just wanted to be sure of you
To know that I’m not really alone
So I sat down beside you
And found that if
I am sure of one thing,
It is that I am sure of you

If It Is True

If it is true
that you noticed
how my eyelashes sometimes
get tangled at the corners,
then you must see me.

If it is true
that you listened
when I hummed so softly
to myself that day,
then you must hear me.

If it is true
that you laughed
with me when I stumbled
momentarily in the wrong direction,
then you must know me.

And if it is true
that you turned me around
and saw the ends of my lashes curl,
heard my secret song,
knew my funny missteps,
then you must love me.

What The Kids Are Watching

Every human being is entitled to four basic rights: the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the right to excessive battles over the television set. In a house of seven people, and only two TV sets, I have had to tap deep into my most primal instincts when it comes to television survival. Because my younger siblings outnumber me about four-to-one, I have remained in a never ending vortex of children’s shows, even as my friends began to move on from Nickelodeon to VH1. This exposure to the children’s shows of the past and today’s more modern equivalents has caused me to notice a dramatic change in the world of children’s programming.

As young teenagers, many of my contemporaries and I were exposed to what would become the first waves of the “pre-teen” movement in the entertainment industry. Prior to this, we were seemingly pigeonholed into the extremes, flipping channels between Blue’s Clues and MTV Hits. It was not until the likes of shows such as Lizzie Maguire and Boy Meets World that we were introduced to a type of show that was at once more mature than the slow-paced programs of childhood, and less graphic than the adult shows of the time. From this breed of children’s programming came the phenomenon of pre-teen based shows like Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, and more recently, the High School Musical craze. Finally, the children who were at that awkward stage between childhood and adulthood had something to watch that covered tough issues like peer pressure, smoking, and romantic relationships, without being inappropriate. The entertainment industry had struck gold, but this wave of success has led to the elimination of programming for the younger age group, and therein lies the issue.

In my own home, the effects of this pre-teen movement are quite apparent. I have witnessed my six-year-old brother switch from Dora the Explorer to Seventh Heaven in what seems like overnight. Though inevitable, this switch from the infantile to the mature is one that is meant to occur during the transitive period of the early teen years, not during kindergarten. Parents must consider that informing their children about the challenges they will face as they grow up is an important conversation to have, but it is unnecessary and unwarranted to do so at such a young age. However, many of these shows raise questions that do not and should not concern the small children who watch them. In almost every episode of Nickelodeon’s sitcom Drake and Josh, young viewers are shown the character of Drake, a rakish heartthrob who is girl-obsessed and is seen kissing and dating many different girls in the course of one episode. My young cousin who watches the show ever refers to Drake as her “crush.” It is rare to find such young children thinking in romantic terms, which are prompted by this representation of Drake as a blatant object of affection, rather than an ordinary character who happens to be a boy.

Another means of exploitation with the children’s programming industry lies in its film audience. For my brother’s tenth birthday, I took him to see the movie Robots and was surprised by how clever and poignant it turned out to be. I was even further surprised when I discovered that my brother had found it “boring.” Upon a second viewing, I realized that much of what I had found enjoyable about the movie were the many jokes and innuendos aimed at a much older audience than that of my younger brother. Much of the childish humor from children’s movies have been eliminated and replaced with subtle, adult oriented jokes, and regurgitated under the guise of a children’s film. The industry has given children a reason to want to see these movies, and parents a reason to want to take their children to see them. This promotes further confusion and ambiguity about what is and is not appropriate for the children who fall into the age group between toddlers and pre-teens.

In the short amount of time between my childhood and that of my brothers and sister’s childhood, the whole industry had changed and the change was not necessarily for the better. The entertainment industry must re-evaluate children’s programs to make them more consistent with their targeted age groups. The failure to do this could result in a loss of innocence and a desensitization to mature and important issues starting from a young age. The introduction of the pre-teen show is one that is beneficial for that age group, but should not be geared at children younger than the pre-teen age. I believe that a compromise could be reached by the industry that satisfies children’s interests with their social and emotional development. Parents have a responsibility to monitor what their children see on TV and in the movies and if these steps are taken, being concerned about what the kids are watching could become a thing of the past.

Ghazal

With the might of God I clear this altar.
And the bounties of life splatter dumbly from this wasted altar.

The seeds of ripe peaches have no roots to bind souls with,
So long as they teeter far above on the edge of an obstinate altar.

Cornucopia entrails make gluttons out of birds.
Let us clear them away from this violated altar.

Snap white cloths made from beggar’s robes in their place.
Strip the jewels and luxurious shine from this altar.

Demons with selfish eyes— broken from their terrible fall—
Tremble as the morning canticle breaks over stone altars.

The elite Roman deities with their greedy, glazed meats
will dine hungry tonight— choking on sanctified bread at their altars.

I saw the angel Gabriel and I never paused in wonder.
Well, the mighty look much smaller from the dais of an altar.

I'm Published!

Check it out!

The View

(written while several thousand feet in the air)

the ground is a confused checkerboard

all crooked lines 

and rows of trees

like winding scars

the rivers carve their paths;

puddled blood 

in an open wound

here and there

a hair's-breadth 

highway line

points onwards and away

clouds are torn

off clumps of feathery down

suspended planes

of snow

with grooves like

a traveler's shoe prints

A Haiku

consumerism

the heartbeat of here and now

don't buy into it

I Can...

...change diapers like it’s nobody’s business

put my hair in a French braid

make pizza (it’s awesome)

read a book in under twenty-four hours

alphabetize just about anything

kick butt at soccer

tell stories

dance embarrassingly

twirl my spaghetti with a spoon

paint my nails like a pro

eat a whole bag of sunflower seeds by myself

explain sixteenth century politics (true story)

pronounce “mozzarella” the correct way

and spike a badminton birdie like it’s my job. 

And that is just the short list.

Life

“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

~Mary Oliver

There isn’t enough time. This simple thought is at once a source of dread and excitement. What will I do? Where will I go? I want to do everything. I want to explore ancient ruins and I want to live on a deserted island. I want to eat a real mango and drink from a hollow coconut shell. I want to never see another car or building or paved road again; just endless dewy grass. I want to walk briskly through the streets of New York in a long black coat with red shoes. I want to be a mother. I want to learn to juggle. I want to be a ballerina in George Balanchine’s company. I want to take my shoes off and slosh through rain that has warmed over the hot stones of a street in Naples. Or I could write until my hands fell off and I’d have to use my toes. I want to stay at home and read late into the night and never leave.

There isn’t enough time! Not even close.

Is it acceptable to spend so much time waiting for your life to start? I don’t know. Maybe in the end, the waiting and dreaming is what makes it all worth something.

Varnish

That acrid smell
a burning, noxious
unwelcome stench

Peels you, rubs you away
Dissolved

Now clean and square
her fingernail
is primed and ready

Prickling black bristles
drag your shining gloss
like a red red gem—
you bleed pigment
over solid planes

All week she had picked
you, chipped
you, bit
you, spit
you into a pile of dead, red
flakes

Now you gleam,
a liquid soul sacrificed
over half-moon altars

A covenant spun in glass

Healing Day

Today was stressful and filled with laughter.

Imagine a classroom. Its ten students sitting at their formica desks in circle formation as they dissect and analyze the contents of their latest reading assignment. Now image that same classroom of mature-beyond-their-years AP English students all doubled over, laughing hard enough to burst veins and send fat tears rolling down smiling cheeks. Today, this was my class.

Every once in a while, you will have moments like these when it seems like all the pressure and stress that each of us has been holding in for weeks and months and even years just comes bursting out. Sometimes it comes in laughter, sometimes tears, sometimes both. But after the laughter has died off and the tears have been dried, you begin to feel better... you feel healed. You realize that we really are all in this together and it is times like these that remind you of how close we have all become over these past four years of high school. Oh Faulkner! (It's an inside joke, you wouldn't understand).


Today was a healing day.

Good Day

Today was a hard day.

The kind of day you dread all week-- you have papers due, tests to take, essays to write, and that's just the "in-school" stuff! But at the end of the day, I feel victorious. That AP Euro test? Piece of cake. That in class essay? Nailed it. That college essay work shop where you unexpectedly had to give a ten minute presentation in front of the whole grade? No problema.

It's the days like today that test your every nerve, but once you've reached that glorious plateau, the confidence you gain is worth the sweat and tears. It's that sense of accomplishment, when you know you've done your best at a daunting task (or in this case, daunting tasks), that gives you the chutzpah you need to call that hard day a good day.

Today was a good day.

Breaking up is hard to do

we are new
like a crisp pillow sham
like an apple (still stemmed)
like the unbroken filament of a light bulb.

we are over
like a curtain-close bow
like an arrow’s quivering tail
like the very end of a jungle vine.

this is pain
like a size-too-small shoe
like an underwater breath
like the sting of crushed bleeding lips.

as this fades
as the heavy stomach pain fades
you feel the numbing kiss
of Apathy.

She mends you
you welcome Her
like a flood soothes
the scorching desert

and you are strong
like a fallen tree—now immovable in the soil
like an old patch of scarred skin
like the thick membrane tissue of your broken beating heart.

Toothbrush

March 2008

“Mom, where’s my toothbrush?”

“Did you check in the bathroom?”

Did I check in the bathroom? Cue exasperated sigh. Clearly, Mom is going to be of little help in this quest. I am on my own.
My mind begins whirling through all the possible scenarios. I quickly rule out burglary (who would want to steal a toothbrush?) and alien abduction. Could this have been my own doing? Did I lose my toothbrush?

I consider pulling each of The Siblings aside for individual interrogations. The divide-and-conquer method has won victories for me in the past, but I have little reason to suspect them this time.

As I begin to pace sociopath-like through the house in search of my missing toothbrush, the high squeals of childish laughter and the hissing of a hose diverts my attention outdoors. I squint through the glare of the sun and wave to The Siblings as they spray down the grimy anterior of Mom’s minivan and my own “grandma-tested-teenager-approved” Toyota Camry. How wonderfully innocent they look, running through the iridescent arch of the water spewing from the hose. Beside them, a faded bucket filled with sudsy rags and brushes lies neglected in the grass. I feel instantly guilty. How could I have suspected The Siblings of taking my toothbrush, when all along they had been outside, innocently washing…

Oh no.

They wouldn’t. They couldn’t have.

My horror begins to escalate as I catapult off the front porch and make my way towards the vile bucket of grime. I dump its contents onto the crumbling driveway and as the soap begins to clear, I see it. My toothbrush. Its aqua blue handle stands out in stark contrast with the white lather of car cleaner and the muddy water, mocking me for my naivety. How could I have missed this? My embarrassment grows as I think about the smug pride I had felt when, not fifteen minutes ago, I was cleverly ripping off a kindergartener in exchange for a vacuumed and scrubbed car. The joke was clearly on me.

With the fires of hell burning from my retinas I turn my wrathful vengeance to the soapy fiesta that is The Siblings, post-carwash.

“WHO DID THIS?” I wonder briefly if the neighbors can hear me before deciding that I don’t particularly care.

“Who did what?” I take a deep breath and compose myself.

“Which one of you took my toothbrush to wash the car?” Silence.

And then, “We needed it to do the tires.”

Bandwidth

I linger in a digital world
which dazzles like a champagne flute
whose blush of amber liquid
casts you into wet unknowns.
This place of digital knowledge
is a synchronized illusion-
where reality is porcelain
tattooed with broken fault lines.

But the buzzing haze
of hard-drive space
drowns out pleasant digital dreams.
And the taste of wire cords
is laced with electric conversation.
Here, every question has been asked
(and answered) by an unseen cyber deity.

In this digital environment
you have everything there is
but nothing that you need.

Wild

I am golden brown
Tanned feet, hands
Hersey's kiss hair
The shaking drumbeat
of thunder
Sharp shards of cracking
light simmering across the sky
The jungle of my hair
is separating, growing
standing on point
Each follicle
a quivering shape-
the air breathes moisture
into every strand
Frizz, static, curls,
twisting whorls of untamed
disaster.

Never Forget

God bless America.

Oh, Bother

• Ignorant people (the kind who are ignorant by choice, not by circumstance) are perhaps the most infuriating and obnoxious sort of people out there. Fortunately for me, my school is full of them. *sigh*
• Sarah Palin kind-of-sort-of if-you-tilt-your-head-to-the-side-and-squint looks like my mom… and my grandma is telling everybody and their mailman about it.
• Speaking of Sarah Palin, it is not possible for anyone who is concerned about the role of women in our society to question her ability to simultaneously have children and be the vice president. This kind of mentality is not only a sexist view of working women, it is an affront to the stay-home fathers and husbands of those working women whose competence is questioned because the woman who would traditionally have been doing their job has a different career. Women are perfectly capable of producing high quality work at their jobs, without losing the title of ‘mother’ or abandoning their family, just as men are perfectly capable of staying home with their children, and taking care of the hundreds of other tasks involved in raising a family. Either way, it is a team effort. The Palin family will not disintegrate if Sarah is elected. In fact, they seem better off than many families who are not fortunate enough to have two loving and capable parents who are secure enough in themselves and their families to sustain a role reversal. (If it can even be called a reversal… Sarah has been a working mom for many years prior to her candidacy—all the more proof that her family will be just fine.)
• I love my sister, I really do. She is absolutely irreplaceable. But when she rolls her eyes and feigns apathy during an argument, I just about want to bring her back to the store for a refund.
• My Sarah Palin look-a-like mom continues to introduce me to complete strangers (who could not care less about my extracurricular activities) as the “Editor in Chief of the school newspaper”. This is even more embarrassing than when she asks the tour guides during college visits (in front of the whole group) “how many students attend Catholic mass on Sunday, because my daughter’s faith is very important to her”. *slams head on desk*
• I have heard that the torture methods used at Guantanamo Bay included forcing the inmates to do obnoxiously long math homework. This does’t surprise me considering that they do the same thing at my torture chamber… I mean, high school.

What does poetry mean to you?

Poetry is the goal I didn't score.

I love soccer. I love writing. Soccer, like writing, was always one of my "things" that I considered myself pretty good at. But despite my love of running down a dew-misted field, ball at my feet, despite my speed and powerful kick and aggressive defense, I was never very good at scoring goals. This was the detail I never mastered, even though I was good at most of the other aspects of soccer. Poetry is like my inability to score goals. I am a good writer, but for whatever reason, poetry was the one skill in my field that never stuck. Poetry is the ball soaring three feet too high. It is my foot getting stuck in the dirt before that final crucial kick. Poetry is unfamiliar territory.

simply joyful

it’s the poncho joke
that went too far

it’s the clumsy note of music
played by amateur fingers

it’s in the library smell
of untouched tomes and rifled pages

the soaring planes
of a vacuumed carpet

old worn-in cleats
freshly laundered sheets

the security
of familiar clutter

it's the telling of a story…
and having it told back

LOL

Laugh out loud
You know you should
You'd laugh out loud
if you knew you could

I'm laughing right now
but I'll brb,
I need someone else
to come laugh with me.

Pulsera

I love my bracelet. I love the spiraled wire and sturdy old typewriter keys, linked together during one of my aunt's more creative moments as a self-proclaimed jewelry artist. From each key dangles a bead and a charm. They are rather charming charms. They are miniature books, the pages encased in weathered silver. “A True Story”, one is labeled. Another, “My Story”. The last charm is an open book.
Each bead is different. Some are pink, some are green, some are the most opaque kind of purple that when seen over my skin look milky brown.
Two cup-of-tea charms plus a pair of spectacles complete this pulsera. All together, the beads and charms, linked by antique type writer keys spell B-O-O-K-I-S-H-!, which just about sums it up. My bracelet is one of a kind, it is sturdy, yet on occasion, a few charms will fall off, only to be quickly retrieved and mended. My bracelet is words, and books, and images. It is a little rusty in spots where it was left too long on a bathroom counter, but somehow the rust only enhances it—- my bracelet has lived a little and so, I think, have I.

(written 9/7/08)

Again with the changes

Changed the layout again. I felt it was time to live on the edge, you know, take life by the horns and all that.


Woah- this is all a little too much craziness for me, I'm going to go knit something and read a book.

What would you do if you could not write?

Where would it go? Where would all the thought, emotions, observations go? Would they fall by the wayside, forgotten? Would I implode with the bursting pressure of them, like an over-stretched balloon? Would my words die if they lost the immortality of being stained to paper? My writing is pain and passion, love, laughter, family. Would that cease to exist if I could not preserve it? I compare it to a soul. The soul is eternal. My words, my thoughts are eternal. To not write them down is not to say they never were. The air would thicken with the pregnant tendrils of my forbidden words. Unable to be contained in paper, my thoughts would simply drift away, eluding me; they would not die. But like the loss of a soul, it would be an agony to endure the separation.

(written 9/5/08)

Forget

I wish my mind was a tape recorder. I wish it was practical and socially acceptable to carry a notebook with me everywhere I went. To write as I think and document my every thought. To capture observations, put life’s minutiae down to ink and paper. Thoughts like gems, given permanence and physical evidence of their existence. Not retreating into the recesses of memory, forgotten.

The wastefulness of forgetting is a gnawing presence. I want to imprison my impressions of the world. Lock them up, freeze them forever, never forgetting. But I can’t. My thoughts are not gems for safeguarding. They are water, they are sand. They cannot be held in the palms of my hands. I forget, I always forget.

And then it's gone.

(written 9/4/08)

Harry Potter Bookmarks

I made up a couple of these Harry Potter bookmarks to use for my Deathly Hallows book.

The first contains one of my favorite quotes from the entire series. It is Dumbledore's last line in Deathly Hallows and it perfectly captures the conversation that had taken place between himself and Harry at King's Cross. More importantly however, I think that line was JKR's beautiful tribute to magic, reading, readers, and all the Harry Potter novels as a whole. Although the world of Harry Potter and the fictional characters we come to love so dearly are works of the mind and the imagination, it does not make them any less real.

Harry will always be real to me.




The second bookmark is actually a quote I got from an interview with Daniel Radcliffe. These were the words Anton Chekhov used to describe the woman who he eventually came to marry, and I thought it fit perfectly with the way I felt during and after Deathly Hallows was released and the Harry Potter novels came to an end. Though the conclusion of the books didn't literally end my life, they did make up a huge part of my childhood and teen years and when I finished them, it was like ending a chapter in my life... that is, a glorious, magical, and unforgettable chapter of my life!

Change

In light of my recent neglect of Blustery Day, I've decided to do this new layout, sans Winnie the Pooh (I still love you big guy). I felt that just because I was inspired to write the blog based on a Winnie the Pooh song, I didn't have to plaster the poor guy all over it! So here it is, Blustery Day in her brand spankin' new outfit, ready to take on the world (how epic!!). Hope you like it! (And by "you" I mean "me").

Staying Above Water

One of those strangely vivid yet hard to place memories I have from my childhood is watching an older man— I don’t know who— floating in the water while I was swimming next to him and trying to mimic his movements. I remember watching him expand his chest and exhale while keeping his body afloat like it was the most precise and exacting of arts. No matter how accurately I recreated his technique, I found that it made no difference in the way I floated. But there he remained, bobbing in the water, only his face and stomach breaking the surface.

I Am Not What I Am

Right now, I look like one of those girls whose mascara has migrated from the tips of her lashes to the better half of her face. I look like one of those girls who cuts deep V-necks out of sweatshirts. Right now, my hair is straightened and my bangs aren't trapped in a clip away from my face. Right now, I am not what I am.

Oh, Bother

• Why can't people do simple things like wait on the lunch line without having to take an entourage of unsuspecting fools (me) with them to asuage their terrible insecurities about standing alone for ten freakin' minutes? It's just a lunch line, nobody is judging you for standing on it.
• I have a scar on my knee that looks like a weirdly discolored blotch of skin rather than the cool WWII battle scar I had intended it to look like... not cool
• I am allergic to AP Biology... no seriously. Every time I walk into the room I feel like I'm being sucked into a vortex of pollen and irritants that no common antihistamine could cure.
• At the rate this election is going, I wouldn't be entirely miffed if Obama and Hillary just pulled a Hamilton vs. Burr middle-of-the-woods duel. Hillary, feel free to loose that one.
• Andrew Jackson was a badass
• What the hell has NASA been up to all these years? Do they think they can just land on the moon and be done with it?
• Whoever manufactures school desks clearly has never had to simultaneously use a laptop, textbook, and notebook while hiding a cell phone underneath it all. I'm sorry but a 3x2 hunk of lacquered square footage just isn't going to cut it. And what's with the whole lovechild of a wood and plastic orgy look?

Enough

So the thing is, I’ve had enough of books.

I Wish

I wish I could go for a walk and be rid of the sight of pavement.

My Fantasy

I lay on my bed, down comforter exerting the slightest bit of pressure on my body. Eyes closed. The washing machine is on, towels gently rolling round and round, the sound like the heartbeat of an ancient oak tree. The subtle smell of the ocean and the periodic burst of air from the fan. Barefoot and stretched out, nestled between the pages of a book...I am content.

English Prostitution (no... the other kind)

Just whoring out some of my work from english class. This puppy is the result of a parallel literature study on Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. I decided to tell the story from Theresa Carmody's point of view. Her character plays Frank McCourt's first love but their relationship is short-lived due to Theresa's illness. So without further ado...

Consumed
(Angela’s Ashes as told by Theresa Carmody)


I know that Mam is crying tonight. The house is moaning and groaning, not havin’ the stomach to withstand the rain and wind, and I can still hear her stifled sobs. I can’t sleep for all the pain in my chest, and the sounds of the house and Mam are making me think of dyin’.
Frank came by again today and all these thoughts of dyin’ are making me think of his family and his brothers and sister dyin’ and leaving him and his Mam and Da. I don’t want that to happen to me mother and father, but I think they’ve been expecting it for some time now. I can hear in the way Mam has been crying that she knows I’m not long for the world and sometimes when she thinks I’m sleeping, she prays to the Blessed Virgin to save my soul and take her instead of me. I don’t like it when she does that, it makes me think of the sad, desperate way that Mrs. O’Connell’s face looked after her son got sick and died. I hope my mother never looks the way Mrs. O’Connell looked, even if I do go off and leave her.
I saw Frank riding past the house this morning on his bike and I couldn’t help but envy him for it. I would have liked nothing better than to take a ride on that bike through the lanes of Limerick and let the wind blow cold on my feverish face. But even as the thought enters my mind I can hear the cough rising in my chest and soon I’m choking on it and I can hardly breathe for all the blood and mucus that rises from my lungs. This coughing wears me out and I can hardly stand for ten minutes without getting the nauseous feelin’ in my gut. Mother’s crying has stopped and I can hear her shuffling out of her chair by the fire and sliding her feet into the slippers Da bought for her last Christmas. She is coming down the hall now to my room and I close my eyes and pretend I’m sleeping. I don’t know why I do it; maybe I just don’t want to see the sad, desperate face on my mother.
The door groans on its hinges as Mam peeks around the frame to peer down at me lyin’ on the bed. I can’t see the look on her face because my eyes are shut but surely God can see her and maybe He’ll feel sorry for us. I don't think he will though because He didn’t feel sorry for Mrs. O’Connell and Mrs. McCourt and their babies, but I pray anyway because I have to believe.
Mam crosses the room and lays her hand on my forehead—not in the way she usually does to check for fever, but like she just wanted to make sure I was still hers. I can hear her press her hand to her mouth and then she’s gone and the creaky old door is closed and I’m alone. I’ve only been pretendin’ to sleep but I can hardly open my eyes again from the sadness and the fatigue, so I just keep them closed and drift off.
***
Frank is riding up the path on his bike again. Mam is out and Da is workin’ and we have the house to ourselves. He sits by my bed and holds my hand. For a long time it is silent and the air is bitterly cold, and I think of how nice Frank looks in his work uniform and how proud it makes me feel.
Are you strong enough to stand? he asks.
Only if you carry me.
When he bends to lift me from the bed, I can smell the cold air on his jacket. My heart instantly aches to feel the outside and I know that whenever I smell the autumn winds, I’ll think of Frank and his uniform jacket. I wonder if he’s takin’ me outside and I decide that I’ll love him forever if he does.
I just want to show ye somethin’, he explains.
Are we goin’ outside?
We are.
Is it someplace I know?
‘Tis.
He struggles to carry me down the stairs—I think I might be taller than him—and I bless him a million times for it. At the bottom of the stairs I start to cough and out comes the blood and the mucus and the heavy breathing, but I don’t mind it so much anymore. I can see that Frank is upset. I try to let my head stop spinning and I tell him I’ll be fine.
But I can see that he is looking at my eyes. I haven’t seen myself in a mirror for weeks but I can feel the sickness sinking my face and suckin’ the life from my flesh. He is scared and so am I.
Where did you want to take me? I remind him.
With my mother’s sad face on, he helps me through the door and it is rainin’ outside. The River Shannon is vibrating with the drops of water fallin’ on its surface. Everything is so green I can hardly stand the beauty of it and a light misty fog is risin’ from the ground while the heavens pour down from above.
We sit down right there in the doorway as I can hardly stand now from all the coughing. He holds me around the shoulders and if I hadn’t already decided to love him back in my room I would have done so then. I know how the other boys think of me and I know they would tease poor Frank right out of Limerick if they saw him here with me now and I feel very proud again. The mist from the rain blows against my face and I feel as if a great pressure has been taken off my body. I pray for a minute that heaven will look and feel just like a doorway in Limerick, Ireland during a rain shower.
We are there for an hour, two hours, three hours and for a long while I do nothin’ but cough my lungs dry and think that consumption is a perfect word for it. I ask Frank what he wanted to show me.
Just this, he says. I though it might be peaceful for you.
‘Tis.
And for now I am consumed by the way I feel about life and Frank and my family and Ireland and I think I am ready to die now. It won’t be long—a week or two at best. My mother will have the sad look and my father will hang the black mourning curtains at the windows. Frank will not ride up to the house anymore and the green couch in the parlor will most likely die from loneliness. The flames will consume my body and the earth will consume the ashes, but I know now what it is to be consumed by life and love and I won’t have it any other way. I have a full and heavy heart and I am bursting now with the joy of it and I know I will never have this again while I live. But I’ve had it and I know that its more than some will ever have, consumption or no. In this moment I have lived a true and completed life.
I am consumed.

Rooms

I love the way the color pallets shift in our house. I love to move from the cool, comfortable blues and greens and yellows in my room to the rich rusty colors in the living room, to the chocolate kitchen. The retro Mecca of black and white tile in the girl’s bathroom complements the light yellow and tan of the hall bathroom. The vibrant and impetuous not-quite neon green of the girl’s room contrasts the Americana blues and reds in the boy’s room. Mom and Dad’s room is the coolest summer night on the beach.

Happy March 20th!

St. Patrick's Day

Let us all take a moment out of our hectic lives to reflect on all the wonderful things Ireland has given us:

1. Jonathan Rhys Meyers... enough said.


2. Ooooh pretty


3. This picture which I have hanging in my room


4. Jonathan Rhys Meyers again for good luck


5. Frank McCourt and Angela's Ashes


6. Jonathan Rhys Meyers... this is getting out of hand


7. Newgrange


8. Irish Soda Bread (mmmm...)


9. Oscar Wilde and James Joyce (oh, literature. the things you do to me!)



10. Jonathan Rhys Meyers (sorry...can you blame me?)


HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!

Oh, Bother

• The Internet can spell-check me now. Do you know what I say to that? Funk you Internet! Maybe I just have an inexplicable desire to do a Google search of “the causes of the colt war”. Don’t judge me.
• This is a special shout out to Microsoft Word for auto-correcting the socially unacceptable yet highly relevant word “fuck” into “funk”…I kid you not. (See above rant on spell check).
• Here are some things that I would like to be, but alas, am not:

-Irish (What do you call someone who is obsessed with Irish culture? It’s not fair that Anglophiles get to have their own terminology!)

-An archaeologist of ancient civilizations (…I’m working on this one)

-An owner of a magnificent library (see this example and this one, but minus the old woman in the Hogwarts uniform)

-A ballerina (the George Balanchine kind, not the “I want to be a ballerina when I grow up” kind…although I think I have a better shot at the latter)

-Cured of my colloquial turrets (eg. “Dude”)

-To be continued (as in: this list will be continued at some point in the future)

• School sucks and there is neither an original nor quirky way to say this.
• The uppermost part of my index finger on my right hand is slightly bent to the right…how annoying.
• I recently had the misfortune of attending a guidance meeting about college and my “future” with my mother. Words cannot explain.
• Tomorrow is pi day and I wonder if pi tastes like sinful blackberries wrapped in heavenly crust, laced with the taste of warm honey and rhubarb, drizzled with…oh, um, I mean Happy Pi Day!

Blog?

When you really stop to think about it, Winnie the Pooh is probably the wisest, fictional stuffed bear you will ever encounter in your lifetime. It’s hard to believe, but the evidence is simply overwhelming. In fact, I will be so bold as to say that Ghandi had nothing on Winnie. (This Ghandi, not this one.)

Now, before you (whoever "you" are) get the wrong impression of me, I am not, nor have I ever considered myself one of those people who cling to overtly childish memorabilia even as the passing of time dictates that they should have stopped sleeping with a Hello Kitty (cringe) pillow many years ago. The reality of the situation is that my younger brothers and sisters were watching an old VHS (!!) of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and I have had that damned song stuck in my head for weeks. And henceforth, a blog would be born, and it would be christened Blustery Day. Not that I don’t appreciate the big Poohmister. (See above adulation.)

This brings us to the subject of my blog. Blustery Day is the result of several failed attempts to create a blog for myself (If a blog is deleted, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?). I have this unfounded fear that somehow a post I might make would offend some psychopathic blog enthusiast and he/she would hyperlink their way to my name and address and I would find myself the victim of a bloody massacre. However, my secret love of blogs and a dash of inspiration from a good friend have led me to making (and not deleting) Blustery Day.

I have no real plans for this as I have never really attempted something like this before. But I hope that in some way, this blog will help to make my life just a little less blustery.