fyeahenglishmajorarmadillo:

[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating black and grey. Foreground — a picture of an armadillo. Top text: “’…the dichotomy presented by this visceral juxtaposition…’” Bottom text: “EVERY PAPER, A+”]

Every paper in my Brit. Lit. class.

m-shapes:

Poetry had left me several days before—
left our whole damn apartment a mess.
“Thees” and “thous” were strung across the ceiling
like spit wads, a careless collage of phrases—
his last big bash, before our eventual collapse.

He didn’t even bother to clean up the ink smears
across the wooden floor where he kissed me—
my knees, elbows, and nose—and when he kissed my mouth,
his words swelled as they slid down my throat,
causing me to choke.

I rushed to the toilet, huck-yacking
“halcyon”, “scintilla”, “mellifluous” and the final letters of “ethereal”
came out with a projectile splat on the side of the bowl.

“Eh,” I flushed, “Prose is a better lover, anyway.”

I talked about Anna Karenina and writing with Rebecca today for about half an hour on my way to work.

Anna Karenina is the first novel that we’ve (sort of) read together, out of what I hope to be many more. It was really exciting for me to hear her tell me what she liked about the book so far, and what she didn’t like. She still has—by my estimate—about 260 pages to go, but I’ve enjoyed watching her form opinions about the book and the characters therein. She told me that she’s having trouble reading it sometimes, because she can’t stand Anna and Vronsky. I totally get that! I think that her dislike for those characters stems from her discomfort with their proud and selfish personalities, and their relationship borne out of what is never love.

We also talked about writing. I talked about why I enjoy it so much sometimes, and she talked about how writing isn’t a natural form of expression for her. It’s something that she’s working at, though. I think that, as writers, we’re all working at it. I don’t think that anyone was born in the midst of penning their Cien Años de Soledad or their Light in August. Writing is work, even when it comes easy.

I’m discovering that, for me, writing is just an outlet for my damnable hunger to be known and understood.

I really like to write letters. I have a notebook solely for letter-writing, and I only use certain writing utensils. I like putting my thoughts and words and feelings onto a page for someone; sometimes carefully and intentionally, sometimes quickly and rambling. I get a different sense when writing a letter then when I write something for mass consumption or for myself.

I think that letters are more intimate than conversation. I’ll talk to darned-near anyone if I have to. I say word after insincere word to strangers all evening at work, and often at school as well, and I feel like my spoken words lose their potency and value. They’re commonplace. Humdrum. Diluted. I share them indiscriminately.

I don’t write a letter to just anyone. My written words are, I think, reserved for the people in my life that I care about the most. I differentiate, here, between written and typed word. Typing is a weird, mechanical process for me. Writing is an artful, conscious act. Then there’s the tangible aspect of a letter—spoken words sublimate into nothing once they reach the air.

We can feel their effect, but we can never hold those words. They are word-ghosts. If I mail you a letter, you can see me and touch me. You can read and reread my heart on the page; my written words grant me a sort of half-presence even in my absence. Years from now, if you’ve kept the things I’ve written for you, you’ll still have a piece of me crystallized at age 23.

Letters are intentional. I can hold a conversation without any effort or purpose, but I can’t accidentally drive to the post office at two in the afternoon and spend forty-four cents in dimes, nickels and pennies from the change in my car’s armrest to purchase a stamp to mail the letter that I did not just accidentally write.

I’d love to receive letters in the mail. How exciting is it to see someone’s familiar handwriting on an envelope? To see how they write my name? To know that, when I open up that envelope, there’s a piece of that person waiting to reveal itself to me?