My About Me won't fit in 1200 characters and I can't shave myself down to that, so I'm making this post to link in my profile. Here is unnecessary information about me:
My name is Abagail Grayce and I'm mostly a very peculiar young lady. However, people seem to like me, either for or in spite of these pecularities.
Music is quite dear to my heart and I have a peculiar taste in it. Though I like some good obnoxious rock, as most teenagers do, I tend to like obscure stuff no one has ever heard of by artists on independent, obscure labels. Besides these, I love classical music, opera, and musicals. I am almost always singing, whether I'm belting out Phantom of the Opera in the shower or humming something under my breath, and I'm sure everyone who has met me has wished, at one point or another, that I would just keep my music to myself.
I read quite a bit but, once again, have a very peculiar taste in books for a girl my age. My mother raised me to love books and I have always valued challenging reads. My favorite book in the entire universe is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I am constantly chomping my way through the classics and other favorites include Anna Karenina, Gone with the Wind, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights.
I love to adventure, taking long walks around town with iPod in hand and notebook at the ready. For a book nerd, I have a rather peculiar love for the outdoors and love to hike, camp, and backpack with my dad, who is my primary hiking buddy.
I am in a rather peculiar relationship with a rather peculiar boy is extremely wonderful. This relationship is peculiar because we both live on the complete opposite ends of the country from one another. But, since we're both romantics, we've made it through almost a year and half together (though being mature about the relationship can also be quite helpful).
My primary focus in life is to soak in all of the radiant things. While making long-term goals and making a good life for myself are the most important parts to enabling this, there are multitudes of little things I can do along the way to keep myself light-hearted. I take every opportunity to walk barefoot, try never to leave a sprinkler un-run-through, and, despite my crippling shynesss, always make an effort to strike up a conversation with my bus driver, lunch lady, or Kwik-E-Mart cashier.
That's enough of my ranting about my peculiarities. Go find someone normal to talk to! Or read my blog if you don't care for normality and would prefer to chew on a handful of slightly luminescent ideas.
(P.S. My original music list was much longer, so I have granted you the abridged version. You're welcome.)
Love,
Abagail
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
She is curled up
She is curled up on her bed with her legs all willy-nilly in a T-shirt that’s comfortably too large and shorts that are barely shorts and she hugs her knees to her chest and thinks and it isn’t really the sad kind of thinking but just the thinking and the wondering over how she became this thing that she is now and she clutches her Molly doll to her chest and remembers when she cradled her and dressed her and even bathed her and called her a baby and it’s so strange how, now, people are afraid she’ll make babies simply because she’s in love and how is it that her rosy little girl cheeks turned into this tired little pizza face and what is this aching in her breasts that plagues her for two weeks out of the month when it feels like someone has been pinching and twisting and beating her nipples and what is this aching and throbbing in her once little body that now has her doubled over, whimpering and moaning and what are all of these strange feelings and why must it all hurt so much? what are these tests she keeps failing and these expectations she disappoints when once every step seemed to be success and with every failure the people who now wag their fingers at her once would pick her up and dust her off and tell her she was only learning but she’s learned now and she should know better and there’s no excuse for her failures and how has it become this way? staring at the ceiling and whimpering as her breasts ache and her abdomen sears and tears apart inside of her and her face is itchy and feels like a disease and all of these raging hormones have her being watched like a criminal because any move she makes could end in pregnancy and where have the days gone? where have the days gone when boys and girls could be friends without point or expectation and where have the days gone when playing was playing and school was school and there was time for both and where have the days gone when we talked about what we wanted to be when we grew up and everyone told us we didn’t need to know yet and it was okay and it didn’t matter when now that they tell us failure to plan is a plan to fail and now we’re all doomed because we had too high of hopes and now we find we can’t reach them to figure out what they were from the start because we’ve forgotten everything so perfectly, forgotten what it was like to be pure and now I’m dirty with these strange new feelings and pains and greases and hormones all mixed up in this strange-smelling stew that is so very, very confusing and not so much upsetting as puzzling and maybe it’s a little sad to realize what we’ve lost but it’s more a matter of not understanding how we’ve become who we’ve become and I keep wondering and wondering and wondering how I became this and I say this not because I’m a thing or a beast or a mysterious creature but I’m not sure anymore if I’m a girl or a woman because I’m trapped in this strange middle phase between girl and woman and I’m too big now to be the first just like you can’t fit in one of those silly kiddy rides where your knees get all scrunched up but at the same time if I tried to fit into a woman’s pants they’d be those pants that sunk to my ankles and made everyone giggle behind their hands at my brightly colored underwear because I like to feel the slightest bit exciting beneath my clothes and I don’t want life to be that way where the excitement is all hidden under being old and grown up and nice looking I want wear my panties on the outside and my shirt under my bra and be irregular because I feel so irregular now so maybe if I’m extra irregular I can find some sort of normal to get me less confused. I never expected growing up to be like this. hmm.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Are you writing from the heart?
“Even in his heart the devil has to know the water level. Are you writing from the heart?”
This line is from a really lovely song by Sufjan Stevens. I won’t go into a lengthy interpretation of the song, but it’s basically in two parts. The first half is about the Chicago World’s Fair (the album is about the state of Illinois) and talks about how the inspiration for invention is often a tool of greedy consumerism. The second half is a personal reflection and describes a dream about the Illinois poet Carl Sandburg. I love this quote because it’s basically saying that it is of no consequence as to whether or not what you’re writing is good or evil, light or dark. What matters is that it is from your heart.
Are you writing from the heart? This is such a difficult question to approach with ourselves because it’s so hard to be objective. If words begin to flow with ease and the act of putting them on paper is simple, we may begin to belief that we are saying what we mean. But are these words coming from our brain, so intellectually sterile that it can produce mere thoughts? Or are they coming from our heart, the thing with which we can offer up not just what we mean, but what we feel?
When writers give advice on writing stories or novels, one of the most popular pieces of advice is to “write what you know.” Many people find this useless because if we wrote only what we knew, our stories would be mere autobiographies. The act of writing is to transport yourself into a new pair of shoes, a new life. So why write what you know? Why not write what you want to write? And I think both are okay. Because, in my life, my father has not yet died and I certainly haven’t stopped anyone from committing suicide and I certainly haven’t hated or caused the death of a sibling. These are not things that I know. But I feel that, when writing about these things, I do know. Because, in order to paint a picture of mere events, the most important thing to include is the heart of the matter. My father has never died, but I do know the pain of loss. In describing the event, I can take a certain night that really did occur where something bad really did happen and, rather than writing it exactly, I can fill in the major events with characters and situations. But the details remain the same. The lighting of the room, the sleepless night, the heart dropping rapidly in her chest. This is how to write from the heart, I believe.
It is so very frustrating to write of things I’ve never felt. In the story I’m working on now, I started writing of a little girl who hates. Perhaps, deep down, she doesn’t truly hate. For, in my opinion, hate is the deepest form of dislike and there is amount of common tolerance involved in it. But, at this point, this child is so immersed in her pain and anger that she can find no redemption from her hate. I don’t know her well enough to know her heart for sure yet. With this, I’m not really writing what I know. I’ve never hated anyone. I cannot understand hate. But she does and, in the beginning, that was going to be my whole story. But when I wrote, I found myself writing like a robot, my passion staying put. So I’ve begun to write about her finding life and learning to love. That’s what I can write about from my heart and really mean it. And do you know what? This is the longest story I’ve written and I actually know where I’d like to go with it.
In this story, I felt that I would like to include a mild sexual scene, but was concerned about doing so, since I intend to show the story to adults in my life and feared after their reaction if they should realize that I had created such a scene. However, in my mind, the scene is not just mindless mating, but has real passion and romantic context and is an important part of showing the evolution of the relationship between two people. I felt it would help to bridge a lot of the gap between the beginning of love and the real, trusting relationship that I wanted to see evolve between the two people. But, in the end, all it comes down to is where the story is in my heart. In my brain, I’m afraid to give anyone the opportunity to judge me for what I’ve written. But, in my heart, I know this is a part of the story that needs to be told.
My grandmother and I saw “The Soloist” on Saturday. I know I shouldn’t really discuss it until I’ve read the book, but some thoughts I had about it seem relevant to this, so I’m going for it anyhow. (I’m just going to leap straight into it, so if you don’t know what it’s about, Google is your friend.) Basically, Steve initially seems to see Nathaniel as a simple source of popular interest, someone the masses will be interested in, a prime subject for his column. As an outside observer, I feel that journalists often seem to adopt this mindset. They can write a beautiful piece about a beautiful person because they know people will like it, but are all of these sentimental words and lovely phrases coming from their desire to appeal to an audience, or really coming from their own hearts? Nathaniel would not appear, in person, to many people who probably smiled warmly throughout his column, to be very beautiful. He dresses in all kinds of odds and ends, carries around a grungy shopping cart piled high with junk, and probably doesn’t smell very good. His moods fluctuate rapidly and a normal conversation is hard to come by with him. To a person who had not met him in the flesh, Steve’s lovely little column about this lovely little homeless master cellist would not prepare them for the reality of who he is. Through the movie, Steve continually tries to transform Nathaniel into this functional person so he can become the master musician he was always meant to be, but it doesn’t work because that‘s not who he is. After we left the movie, rather than commenting on the musical aspect of the movie (which I had assumed she would, being the classical music guru that she is), my grandma said “Well, the moral of the story is that you can’t make a person who you want them to be.”
In my opinion, the rules of writing are rules for life. You don’t have to have experienced what another person has in order to offer them your sympathy, but if you can draw the basic feelings they’re having from your heart, then you can connect with them, just as you can connect with a character who is experiencing something you haven’t. Furthermore, sometimes you feel you need to do things that you fear, whether of the possible repercussions or of being judged, but, in the end, it is most important to follow your heart over your head. And, finally (and most importantly), you can’t make writing be something it’s not, or it’s insincere. Then it’s not written from the heart, but simply from a very creative head. Similarly, you can’t make a person into someone they’re not or else they’re fake. Just as you must write from the heart, you must also live from the heart.
This line is from a really lovely song by Sufjan Stevens. I won’t go into a lengthy interpretation of the song, but it’s basically in two parts. The first half is about the Chicago World’s Fair (the album is about the state of Illinois) and talks about how the inspiration for invention is often a tool of greedy consumerism. The second half is a personal reflection and describes a dream about the Illinois poet Carl Sandburg. I love this quote because it’s basically saying that it is of no consequence as to whether or not what you’re writing is good or evil, light or dark. What matters is that it is from your heart.
Are you writing from the heart? This is such a difficult question to approach with ourselves because it’s so hard to be objective. If words begin to flow with ease and the act of putting them on paper is simple, we may begin to belief that we are saying what we mean. But are these words coming from our brain, so intellectually sterile that it can produce mere thoughts? Or are they coming from our heart, the thing with which we can offer up not just what we mean, but what we feel?
When writers give advice on writing stories or novels, one of the most popular pieces of advice is to “write what you know.” Many people find this useless because if we wrote only what we knew, our stories would be mere autobiographies. The act of writing is to transport yourself into a new pair of shoes, a new life. So why write what you know? Why not write what you want to write? And I think both are okay. Because, in my life, my father has not yet died and I certainly haven’t stopped anyone from committing suicide and I certainly haven’t hated or caused the death of a sibling. These are not things that I know. But I feel that, when writing about these things, I do know. Because, in order to paint a picture of mere events, the most important thing to include is the heart of the matter. My father has never died, but I do know the pain of loss. In describing the event, I can take a certain night that really did occur where something bad really did happen and, rather than writing it exactly, I can fill in the major events with characters and situations. But the details remain the same. The lighting of the room, the sleepless night, the heart dropping rapidly in her chest. This is how to write from the heart, I believe.
It is so very frustrating to write of things I’ve never felt. In the story I’m working on now, I started writing of a little girl who hates. Perhaps, deep down, she doesn’t truly hate. For, in my opinion, hate is the deepest form of dislike and there is amount of common tolerance involved in it. But, at this point, this child is so immersed in her pain and anger that she can find no redemption from her hate. I don’t know her well enough to know her heart for sure yet. With this, I’m not really writing what I know. I’ve never hated anyone. I cannot understand hate. But she does and, in the beginning, that was going to be my whole story. But when I wrote, I found myself writing like a robot, my passion staying put. So I’ve begun to write about her finding life and learning to love. That’s what I can write about from my heart and really mean it. And do you know what? This is the longest story I’ve written and I actually know where I’d like to go with it.
In this story, I felt that I would like to include a mild sexual scene, but was concerned about doing so, since I intend to show the story to adults in my life and feared after their reaction if they should realize that I had created such a scene. However, in my mind, the scene is not just mindless mating, but has real passion and romantic context and is an important part of showing the evolution of the relationship between two people. I felt it would help to bridge a lot of the gap between the beginning of love and the real, trusting relationship that I wanted to see evolve between the two people. But, in the end, all it comes down to is where the story is in my heart. In my brain, I’m afraid to give anyone the opportunity to judge me for what I’ve written. But, in my heart, I know this is a part of the story that needs to be told.
My grandmother and I saw “The Soloist” on Saturday. I know I shouldn’t really discuss it until I’ve read the book, but some thoughts I had about it seem relevant to this, so I’m going for it anyhow. (I’m just going to leap straight into it, so if you don’t know what it’s about, Google is your friend.) Basically, Steve initially seems to see Nathaniel as a simple source of popular interest, someone the masses will be interested in, a prime subject for his column. As an outside observer, I feel that journalists often seem to adopt this mindset. They can write a beautiful piece about a beautiful person because they know people will like it, but are all of these sentimental words and lovely phrases coming from their desire to appeal to an audience, or really coming from their own hearts? Nathaniel would not appear, in person, to many people who probably smiled warmly throughout his column, to be very beautiful. He dresses in all kinds of odds and ends, carries around a grungy shopping cart piled high with junk, and probably doesn’t smell very good. His moods fluctuate rapidly and a normal conversation is hard to come by with him. To a person who had not met him in the flesh, Steve’s lovely little column about this lovely little homeless master cellist would not prepare them for the reality of who he is. Through the movie, Steve continually tries to transform Nathaniel into this functional person so he can become the master musician he was always meant to be, but it doesn’t work because that‘s not who he is. After we left the movie, rather than commenting on the musical aspect of the movie (which I had assumed she would, being the classical music guru that she is), my grandma said “Well, the moral of the story is that you can’t make a person who you want them to be.”
In my opinion, the rules of writing are rules for life. You don’t have to have experienced what another person has in order to offer them your sympathy, but if you can draw the basic feelings they’re having from your heart, then you can connect with them, just as you can connect with a character who is experiencing something you haven’t. Furthermore, sometimes you feel you need to do things that you fear, whether of the possible repercussions or of being judged, but, in the end, it is most important to follow your heart over your head. And, finally (and most importantly), you can’t make writing be something it’s not, or it’s insincere. Then it’s not written from the heart, but simply from a very creative head. Similarly, you can’t make a person into someone they’re not or else they’re fake. Just as you must write from the heart, you must also live from the heart.
Friday, May 15, 2009
A Change of Season and a Change of Heart
Through the blinds, I can see the sky, the canvas on which pine branches are splashed in sharp green shades. It is an icy blue, hesitant to glow in this chill early morning. A slight wind blows, bending past the glass window through which I longingly gaze. “Where are you going?” it asks, beckoning me along. Nowhere, I think with a mental sigh. Trapped in a classroom, staring at a dull desk, daring to hope for imminent rescue. “Come along, then!” cry the birds. Oh, how I wish I could…The sunshine, in its radiance, smiles through the blinds. “Look at this beautiful day we’ve made just for you!” Oh, I know, I know! I silently whimper. How I long to enjoy it! What a pity it is to be stuck inside of a classroom, not even doing any work because all of mine is finished, simply itching and suffocating inside! Oh, what is the use? What is the use in desperately forcing a lovely book down the throats of idiots, yelling and scolding away when, outside, the world awaits? The lovely day, it was made just for me. But, oh, how trapped I am.
Winter has always been my favorite season. This was mostly brought about by my love for Christmas. But I also love rainy days, cold weather, hot cocoa, scarves and gloves, cuddling under blankets. I have always been very resistant to the cold weather and it has never much bothered me. But winter was so long this year. The cold weather dragged on, the rainy days soaked my clothes and left me trapped inside for so long. There were no walks to take, no adventures to go on. Just me and winter locked in an icy dream that seemed to go on forever.
I’ve never considered Autumn or Spring potentials for favorite seasons. They’re very nice ideas, but they just get lost in the transitions from season to season. Spring is that season that gets eaten up when winter hands over and, once winter has passed, we simply wait around to see if its hot enough to call it Summer yet. Fall happens, but people hardly notice it because everything is starting again. School, activities, rehearsals, etc. It’s a nice season, but it’s just a waiting period, a gradual til into the next extreme.
All in all, I find myself more and more enamored with Summer these days. It’s lighter later, so I can go on walks alone. I suppose I never factored this in before because I’ve only recently started going around town by myself. I’ll start bothering to do my hair soon, because the wind won’t mess it up. I can lounge in my room in shorts and a bra, simply enjoying the freedom of bare shoulders and shaven legs. I’m less resistant to the cold now and I find that being cold is so exhausting. To be hot is so easy. Simply strip and lay down. There are so many adventures to be had in the summer, so much time to be spent in the warmth of a summer evening. I’m beginning to love more and more that lazy, heavy contentedness that comes with each summer day, lined the buzzing excitement that says “You’re free. You can do anything, go anywhere…” In the summer, the world is at my feet.
Therefore, my dear Winter, do not find yourself disgraced by my infidelity! For I still hold in close affection your sweet, rushing winds and the freshness of the earth beneath your pelting storms. When, next year, you should creep in past your autumn veil to ice the dew once more, I shall be grateful for the change. I shall applaud your entrance, for Summer will have become tiring. But I cannot deny that the thought of Summer now fills me with a joy and excitement I had not felt before. Summer, I feel, is my new desire.
Winter has always been my favorite season. This was mostly brought about by my love for Christmas. But I also love rainy days, cold weather, hot cocoa, scarves and gloves, cuddling under blankets. I have always been very resistant to the cold weather and it has never much bothered me. But winter was so long this year. The cold weather dragged on, the rainy days soaked my clothes and left me trapped inside for so long. There were no walks to take, no adventures to go on. Just me and winter locked in an icy dream that seemed to go on forever.
I’ve never considered Autumn or Spring potentials for favorite seasons. They’re very nice ideas, but they just get lost in the transitions from season to season. Spring is that season that gets eaten up when winter hands over and, once winter has passed, we simply wait around to see if its hot enough to call it Summer yet. Fall happens, but people hardly notice it because everything is starting again. School, activities, rehearsals, etc. It’s a nice season, but it’s just a waiting period, a gradual til into the next extreme.
All in all, I find myself more and more enamored with Summer these days. It’s lighter later, so I can go on walks alone. I suppose I never factored this in before because I’ve only recently started going around town by myself. I’ll start bothering to do my hair soon, because the wind won’t mess it up. I can lounge in my room in shorts and a bra, simply enjoying the freedom of bare shoulders and shaven legs. I’m less resistant to the cold now and I find that being cold is so exhausting. To be hot is so easy. Simply strip and lay down. There are so many adventures to be had in the summer, so much time to be spent in the warmth of a summer evening. I’m beginning to love more and more that lazy, heavy contentedness that comes with each summer day, lined the buzzing excitement that says “You’re free. You can do anything, go anywhere…” In the summer, the world is at my feet.
Therefore, my dear Winter, do not find yourself disgraced by my infidelity! For I still hold in close affection your sweet, rushing winds and the freshness of the earth beneath your pelting storms. When, next year, you should creep in past your autumn veil to ice the dew once more, I shall be grateful for the change. I shall applaud your entrance, for Summer will have become tiring. But I cannot deny that the thought of Summer now fills me with a joy and excitement I had not felt before. Summer, I feel, is my new desire.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Open Book
I usually keep my blogs to MySpace, as it's a private, safe place for my thoughts. However, sometimes I write something less personal and more artistic and reflective that I'd like to share with more people. Example? My mother. However, I wouldn't want her reading half the things on my MySpace blog.
So, that brings us here to this blog. This will be my artistic blog, my blog that isn't wasted on trite, mopey rants about my shitty life. This blog will be reserved for the real thoughts that actually matter and, perhaps, a less important, but mildly amusing rant now and then.
So, without further ado, here is my open, purposeful, public blog. Let's cut the red ribbon so we can eat the damn cake already.
love and all of those sincere-sounding tidings,
blabagail.
So, that brings us here to this blog. This will be my artistic blog, my blog that isn't wasted on trite, mopey rants about my shitty life. This blog will be reserved for the real thoughts that actually matter and, perhaps, a less important, but mildly amusing rant now and then.
So, without further ado, here is my open, purposeful, public blog. Let's cut the red ribbon so we can eat the damn cake already.
love and all of those sincere-sounding tidings,
blabagail.
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