A piece of you.

Folie a Deux

The sky was clear enough to see the hints of pink and orange peeking through the scattered clouds. It was a beautiful sight, really. She had her palms pressed up against her cheeks and her elbows leaned against the windowsill as she admired the colors fade into a dark, starry, night sky. Sometimes, she’d sneak out and wiggle her toes through the grass, or the wind would blow through her hair, untangling the loose knots that fell across her shoulders. There were even some nights where she lied down on the grass and fell asleep, not wanted to lose touch with the beauty surrounding her. In the morning, she would rise up with the sun, hearing the birds chirp a soft, sweet melody. In the end though, she had to return to the walls that held her prisoner for what seemed like years and decades until night. Instead of hearing the trees rustle through the wind, she heard the clattering of keyboards as people typed away furiously at their computers, caring more about their notifications than the world around them. To them, nature is nothing but dirt we kick around, and while she watches life outside the walls from her windowsill, everybody else watches ‘life’ from a meaningless television screen.

The Aftermath.

He walks

Like the night, steeped

In rich darkness and coroneted with the stars

That circle in his being.

A foot, treading lightly

Over skin, 

And flesh, 

And sinew

Movement a forethought to the aftermath of calamity

Each step a breath

A sigh, a rest

A whisper in the glade of human hearts

Of peace

Of joy triumphant

Of life

Swelling in all the places

Festering beneath the bone of being

A restless hammer

Banging

Against the endless anvil of movement, 

And sound

A song, a step

A heartbeat.

Flowing through his veins.

He walks. 

I walk.

Viral Spiral

Poor wandering fool at a loss at the crossroads
squinted eyes made to witness open sky
blinded by tunnel visions of the future
afraid to pick up your own spade
to strike the earth and make your mark

and yet the granite facades beckon
daring one who dares not to be daring
trade away hearth and home certainty
for a pack on your back and a weather-worn lantern
down a road unsupported and free to collapse
but a free road by that very virtue

Look not to your lack of equipment
the tools will come if you have soul
a fool not for fear but for daring
to contradict the way the world turns
with a laugh and a click of your heels
alter the spin of the earth once more
others like you walked the earth before
were why the world spins as it does what’s more

Weave through webbed networks
subsist on or resist the systems stumbled across
never stop leaping, from sinkholes onto trampolines
if your eyes are the color of mine
if your feet are flinty
drawing sparks from stone with every step
inadvertently burning the ash-ready

then caper weightless, fire flickering from your passage
a comet soaring and ricochet roaring heralding new morning
a sparkling satellite rearranging constellations
forecasting the falling stars that will burn and crash
with a ravaging soundless beauty

Fallen fools far from evidencing failure or futility
plant that seed of possibility, a persistent conviction
that if something can be imagined it can be realized
and every degree of success you obtain will make it seem
an eventuality coming up fast soon to be achieved
thanks to your selfless bold precedent

So pick up your pace and make the earth shake
rearrange the continents no matter how much they weigh
all you need is a lever and some clever applications
a vision and some spirit springing from a strong foundation

Late Night in New York City

It started raining. I strayed to the side of the sidewalk where the storefront’s awnings would protect the top of my head. I was sick of the rain. It never seemed to stop raining, and when it did, it didn’t last long enough to appreciate it. I started to hear the familiar sound of cars driving on wet asphalt next to me. Headlights projected the millions of tiny droplets of rain in front of them for a brief second. The usual musky air of New York City was starting to meld with the smell of rain. Suffice to say, I was not happy.

I walked inside my apartment on the 22nd floor and darkness swept over me. The lights were off. I cursed and panicked as I threw my soggy coat and bag onto the floor. I ran into the bathroom and turned the lights on. My eyes were immediately drawn to my best friend’s wrists bleeding onto the tile floor. There was a large deep red puddle, beckoning for help. I cursed a few more times and my breathing hitched up as the adrenaline started pumping harder than ever. 

The ambulance drove away and I flagged down a taxi as fast as possible. The thoughts flying through my head were a chaotic flock of birds. I couldn’t think each thought completely through before it was cut off by another, each fighting valiantly for attention. She would always turned the lights off when she did this. Something about the light reflecting off of the morality of the situation. She hadn’t been very well recently, but I didn’t think it was this bad. I thought it had gotten better with the adjustment of her medication.

I fell from my cliff of thoughts back to the inside of the taxi, which could be identified as old from the condition of the upholstery, and the pungent smell. I heard a voice about arriving at our destination, which I figured was the driver, and I fumbled with my wallet and handed the driver an amount of cash that I assumed covered the fair, from the widening of his eyes. I slid off of my seat and out of the backseat of the cab. I slammed the door and took in my surroundings.

It was still raining. I was sick of the rain.

-Raphael Schnee

She had the killer pressed upon her skin. Powerless.

The pain will be gone soon, she thought, and so she took the killer and gave it its power.

Her wrist, dripping with blood, numbed the pain in her heart. It only took seconds for the pain to come back.

Harder, she thought to herself, Then pain will leave with me.

In one swift motion, she let the killer do its killing.

a fire for the end wall
for the sea 
and for hotels 
there is a fire in your hands 
in your head there is a fire and 
in my 
in my 
in my mind 
there is only ash and soot 
and in my body there is only 
burning

Ivory keys.

Ivory keys, playing softly, pressed tenderly, they toy with my ears, melodies, simple and pure, white and gold, black and azure, soft and bold, spinning webs, of colour and light. Jamie Harrison

Speech: Survival

SURVIVAL If there is one thing that Biology lectures and lab has taught me, it’s that organisms that are not adapted to their environment are likely to die out, and the ones who are best adapted will survive and reproduce offspring with the favored genes. This science talk can be applied to many different aspects of life. I know as of right now I’m currently experiencing a well -established game of survival, also known as college. There is a huge pool of genes, put into an enclosed population and the semester starts off with a bang, letting the game of survival begin!  Now in all seriousness if you fail college you don’t actually die, whereas if you fail life you will, but failing college can seem pretty darn close to failing at life and it’s astounding to see what lengths students will go, just to receive that perfect letter grade. I’ve seen things that are hard to picture, and I’ve experienced quite a few myself. I’ve met students who study while showering, taking their note cards and plastering them up onto the shower wall until the graphite becomes illegible. I’ve heard of waking up at “3 a.m. because there are no distractions so I can get my work done” and I’ve also seen the infamous camp-out at the library, where you could swear that the student could make a house out of the books they brought with them. Students try to do anything they can to get ahead. It’s almost scary to what lengths we will go to just to make sure we survive this game. It’s truly starting to become a competition. Who has the worst work load and who has the best survival skills to manage their work load? I myself just experienced an awful week which included four exams, two quizzes, seven hours’ worth of homework due, two lab reports, and some reading to do for a paper. I look back upon it and wonder how I even accomplished studying for all of those tests, finding time to read all of those pages. I worked very hard… and I forced myself to chug down Mean Bean Java Monster to stay awake all night studying and I still didn’t get the grade I was looking for. “Work harder! Find more time! Study more!”  These are the responses that friends and other students will make as you complain about how “hard the test was” or how “hard you studied and still didn’t do well.” Yet we basically are asking for that kind of feedback when we complain about how we aren’t surviving the game of college. I believe that all methods of surviving are different for everyone. What’s good for my best friend, might not be good for me, and what’s good for the girl sitting behind me in Calculus, might not be good for the boy sitting to the right of me in Chemistry. It can be really easy to tell somebody your method of surviving thinking that it might work for them. It’s downright easy to say “work harder” to someone when you yourself aren’t working at full capacity. We all try different things to win and survive. Five hour energy shots, no sleep, lots of sleep, study groups, study guides, tutoring, note cards, reading the chapter, highlighting the power points, complaining, and complaining some more. What it comes down to is I’ll survive my way, and you’ll survive your way, and maybe we’ll come out on top or with a degree. Survival can be really tough though. Little things can get in the way, such as getting a bad grade, or big things can get in the way, such as learning disabilities, or depression.  It can be hard to survive when you don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. There were various times where I wanted to give up and give in and in some ways I did. Every day I have a constant worry for my parents. My father is diagnosed with prostate cancer, and is now on his second round of chemotherapy and I pray to God, every day, that he’ll be alive to see me graduate, that eventually he will be able to walk me down the aisle and give me away. My mother is diagnosed with crippling arthritis, and sometimes won’t get out of bed for days because the pain hurts her joints too much. In more ways than one, I occasionally feel like I have to be the parent and that burden on top of going to college can sometimes be overwhelming. My family, living off disability, doesn’t have a lot of money for me to afford a great education at DeSales, so I take out private loans just to pay off the difference, and that in itself is scary; to know that by the time I graduate I will be responsible for $60,000 of debt. The pressure to find a high-paying career and still be happy with what I do is higher than ever, not to mention the ever downward spiraling economy where more and more adults are competing for jobs against college-graduates. Bad grade after bad grade I felt like there was no end to the tunnel. I felt that there was no possible way to escape the burden I felt upon my shoulders, and at the same time I didn’t want to tell anyone of my problems. Why should I complain to people when I think about all of the kids who don’t even get a chance at formal education? I should consider myself lucky and be grateful for what I have. I told no one and felt alone in more ways than one.  After all of my hard work and all of my determination it still wasn’t paying off. I would talk to my friends who were very supportive at first, but I could see them grow weary with each passing day as things didn’t improve. Eventually I only half tried, only putting in half the effort. I took a Chemistry test with the mentality that it wouldn’t matter if I studied really hard for hours or if I studied ten minutes beforehand; that I was still going to fail. It wasn’t surprising when I got the failing grade back. My friends didn’t know what to do. My father was just placed into the hospital for his chemotherapy, my grades were failing, and I started to fall into some sort of depression. I began to self-harm in December, but things had escalated to the point where I was doing it almost every day. I had told a select few friends, but friends aren’t professionals, and while they are supportive for you in more ways than one, they cannot give you the same benefit as a professional. Self-harming was a way to release all of that pent up anger and resentment I felt toward bad grades, toward the inadequacy I felt  in myself and in my home-life.  It was a way to rid the pressure of being the best and striving to be the best and still not making it, no matter how hard I seemed to be trying. Self-harming made me realize that I compare myself tremendously to others, always in the worst ways. I like to feel in control of my life, and it seemed that I couldn’t control my grades no matter how hard I studied. My survival techniques weren’t exactly working. And while I knew self-harming wasn’t the way out, it was something that I could control; and I didn’t want to give that up. I eventually took pills. I didn’t take these pills with the intention of suicide. I took these pills to feel numb to the pain, now both in my heart and on my wrists. It seemed nothing would ease the pain. I reached out to a friend, who made me reach out to an RA who then reported me to the head of Reslife staff and then ultimately to the counselors. Self-harming was really getting in the way of everything I held dear. My relationship ended because of it, my friendships weakened, my grades still suffered, and my arms now have brutal scars which will always serve as a reminder of the poor choices I made. I eventually got the help I needed and the people I needed to talk to in order to realize different ways of coping with stress. And while even though every day still seems to be a struggle to stay clean of self-harm, I have a new found determination and a new found support to help me achieve my goals. When things seem their bleakest, and you can’t seem to find the light at the end of the tunnel, just know that there are people out there who do care about your well-being. After struggling with self-harm I had so many strangers come and support me. People took time out of their busy days and nights to talk with me and pray for me. People I didn’t even know were willing to sacrifice their time just so I could see that I really wasn’t alone and that people really did care about me. While I still struggle day to day with the addiction of self-harm, I know deep down that I have many people who are there to help me if I ever needed them and I know I can rely on them for support if there ever came a time when I didn’t feel strong enough. I realize now that it’s okay to lean on someone else when you feel like you can’t make it through. There are still good people in the world and all you have to do is ask and you will be heard. My RA Melissa Butner sponsored a hall program called “Chain Reaction of Kindness.” The idea is to write up positive post it notes and post them wherever you would like them to be read. You could post them for yourself, or in totally random places where anyone can find them. These notes are meant to embody positive thinking, while at the same time start a chain reaction of kindness. I’ll admit, I was a bit skeptical at first, but I really liked the idea of colorful post it notes, so I made a few for myself and a few for random posting around the DeSales University Center. The very next day, after I had placed one down at a computer I was sitting at, I came back to see a girl holding it, with a smile on her face. I smiled and asked her “What’s that? What’s it say?” She answered back “Don’t worry. Somebody cares about you, I promise.” She smiled and tucked it away in her books and in that very moment I felt extremely happy that I had made someone’s life feel a little bit more valuable, I had made their day a little bit better, and I had started a chain reaction of kindness. Remember… there are faces in the crowd that drift past you every day, and while you may not be able to see it, some of those faces are people with skeletons in their closets, feelings that they’re trying to deal with and maybe are struggling to do so. Everyone has a survival story, but some people might need help surviving it. If you help one person, they might help another, who might help two more, and so forth, starting a chain reaction. We may not survive this game called life alone, but together nothing is impossible.