a novel

there are were two pumpkins outside our dorm room door this morning before the moist heat of fall buildings forced us to place them out of doors entirely. they read: INHER BEAUTY and A SAD STORY, BE. and in their moist melting they detail the statement my two roommates and i tried to make last night with our hair, our dress, and our handy-dandy eyeliner. "WE represent beauty" we replied to the countless number of questioning looks we got all night long. as "worldy beauty" i tried not to be seen without my cohorts, "biblical" and "inner" beauty. sadly a mini-skirt, skanky top, and layers of impersonal makeup does not seem costume worthy for our world today. while my outfit took the most work, it was meg, as "biblical beauty", who aroused the most curiosity. I guess taking the restrictive aspects of the bible literally enough to cover your hair, wear a DJellaba, and draw an x in eyeliner over your lips deserves to be note worthy. "we...

i read other people's writings. they are powerful. they are meaningful. they are full of life. and while i love the authors even more for what, and how, they write, my self esteem plummets. i get tired of writers block. i try to write poetry, yet what comes out is not "beautiful". while i wish it were, i know that's not the issue. I would be content if only i could address the deep issues cursing through my soul. And yet, every time i try they allude me. What comes out on paper, or in type, does not even graze the surface of the food issues, the beauty issues, and the identity shaking feminine-feminist issues that are convulsing inside of me. The concepts running through my head are different. Durkheim, Mill, Yoder... all good men but they aren't talking to my soul. Maybe that's why my recent papers are hard work and incoherent. i am scattered.

a pot of rice boiling on the stove. no geographic land-marks to locate. it gathers in twilights tradition. to divide cultural classifications a pile of homework sitting on the kitchen table. no consistency for orientation. it displays scattered division. to unite all conversation voices rising in argument or agreement definitions of identity enclosed in questions candle light breaks the pattern of day feminist self indivisible from feminine hearth a knife cutting through cucumber. no language in which to speak. it stands still to remember. to create a home of contradiction.

fall had broke. the weight was crushing all our shoulders. you could see people with their foreheads scraping the ground. i think i must have collected a garden worth of gravel in my hair. the last stretch was the worst. paper after paper added weight to the stack. you wouldn't think that 14 pieces of paper could be so heavy, but i swear there was so much dirt in my henna died hair that it was turning brown again. and then it broke. just like that. stress, stress, stress, and then nothing. i watched glee, triumph of love, stardust, and big bang theory all in one day. i knitted a pouch for my id because i felt like it. "me time" was on the schedule again. we had a four day weekend to shake all the gravel out of hair and straighten out our backs. lying down flat in the middle of a road staring at the stars helps with that. so do naps. and climbing mountains at midnight. though you might end up replacing the gravel with colored leaves. working with good food helps to clear t...