All That I Am

I'm a writer. If three scenes of something called Icicle Man and however many parts of Murphy and Me we're up to at the moment hadn't clued you in, you've been living under a rock for about a year and a half. Or maybe just the half. Either way, it's pretty damn evident that I like to write fiction, and I think (hopefully without sounding arrogant) that I write well.

But that's not all that I am.

I am also a sister, a daughter, an aunt, an international, a woman (or young lady, or, hell, some days I'm still a kid at heart), a coffee lover, a tea snob, a traveler, a blogger, and a member of the world at large. I was also a soccer player, too, and still am an avid follower of sports. I'm into theater, too. I like musicals. There's more to me than just being a writer.

I bet there's more to you, too.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's your blog, and I'm not going to tell you what to put on it or in it or whatnot, because I wouldn't want someone to try and do that to me. I'd probably snark at them. We all start blogs for different reasons. And I have nothing against book reviews and blogs that help you become a better writer. I think that's great. My writing's not perfect (probably nowhere near, truthfully) and sometimes it's really helpful to have a place that you look to for answers, other than the ones you might pull off the internet or out of textbook. It's nice. It's like leaving a question in the comment box and then checking back later to find that someone actually answered you instead of letting you wallow in your own confusion.

The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is that, well, most of you - and I'm going to stick to being as general as I can because I know what it's like to be singled out unawares - are teenagers. And, if I remember back to a time not too long ago, I was one, too. There were some pretty interesting things happening in my life at the time. I was in high school, going through classes and generally thinking that I hated AP, ACE, and anything that had to do with the prospect of graduating by a certain number. I was also trying to query my first manuscript, the thing I've been working on (and am closer to finishing, but haven't gotten there yet, damn it) for six years.

Namely, there was a whole 'nother level of me ready and waiting to have a spin at the wheel. Granted, I didn't start blogging seriously (though, if you can call some of my posts serious, I'll send you some truffles) until the tail end of my first year of college. Mostly because it was something fun and mostly because, well, I see the world a little differently. Not just because I'm a different person than you, but because, well, I have this theory that if you stripped away the superficial stuff, you'd find that a lot of the real world problems are my problems, too. Just worded differently, if you will. With a different set of consequences.

That and I needed an outlet to generally rant about life when it got to be a little too much, and I don't surgarcoat things. Someone once upon a time called that refreshing.

I think what I'm trying to say is that no matter how interesting the book you're reviewing is, the person behind the blog is probably far more interesting than any made up character could be. Mostly because someone has to make them up. It takes a certain amount of courage (stupidity, too, in some cases) to blog about yourself to the general internet, and it looks really scary. It's like life, though. People are nice, and people would also just as soon add insult to injury, if they could.

We've seen one side of what you are, maybe let us see another side. A different side. The side that says, bring it on, world. I'm ready. Even, well, when you're not ready. But that's half the fun, really. And that's how you grow in more ways than one.

Icicle Man [Scene III]

The Icicle Man (Scene III)

Mari is wandering through the great hall of Jack’s ice palace, all glittery and shiny with ice and snow, though she does not shiver. There is a curious statue in the corner of and a marble fountain covered in ice of a man and a woman surrounded by elves and nymphs.

Mari: That’s funny. And creepy. Much like him, just chucking me in the hall and telling me he’d be back after he saw someone he hadn’t seen in a long time. It almost sounded like he missed her, or whoever it was. Could be a her. Could be a him. Elves aren’t picky, are they? (Pauses, eyeing the statue in the corner: a woman on her knees, head bowed) Or maybe they can’t love. Because they can’t feel. But why keep a woman frozen, unless…No. This – This must be the woman who was rude to him. And I thought he’d only told that to frighten me. But – But he… (Looks around for Jack. He is sitting on the rim of the fountain, hidden from her current view) I need to go. Before I do something stupid, preferably, like offend him by accident and he decides I’ll make a nice centerpiece for his table.

Jack: Just how big do you think my table is, dear?

Mari: (Muttering) Of course he’s here. (Louder) Bigger than mine, at least.

Jack: Anything’s bigger than that pine chip in your cottage. (He comes out from behind the fountain) Oh. You found the statue.

Mari: Yeah. Who is it?

Jack: Oh, no one that you know.

Mari: I guess. I didn’t see her face.

Jack: Some things are better left unseen, dear. Trust me.

Mari: You ask me to do that a lot, you know. Trust you.

Jack: (Innocently) I’m a sprite. What’s not to trust?

Mari: (Motioning around her) Everything.

Jack: Well. I see. Have a seat on the fountain, dear, and I’ll be right back. (Strides off stage, muttering and twitching)

Mari sits on the fountain and cranes her neck to see the faces of the man and woman.

Mari: He looks familiar, now that I think about it. Like I’ve seen him before, in picture books. A man in long robes with a sweet face, cheeks red and nose always cold. And he’s sometimes with a woman. She has a crown of flowers in her hair, dressed in green and brown. Earth tones. Like summer. (She stands on the fountain basin to get a closer look) Oh. That’s Mother Earth, Mother Summer to some, and Father Winter. The elves are his to help him create the snow and ice, and the nymphs are there to help Mother Earth when spring and summer come. This is Vixen, Mother Earth’s chief herald and helper, so where’s….Where is Father Winter’s?

Jack returns with a box he places gently on the fountain basin ledge.

Jack: Amusing yourself, darling?

Mari: Why aren’t you on here?

Jack: I’m arrogant, dear, not egotistical.

Mari: (Lowering herself to sit on the bench, mindful of the box) You built this?

Jack: We pay homage to those who created us.

Mari: He’s your father?

Jack: (Snappy) I never said that. I said we pay homage to those who created us.

Mari: So you’re not related?

Jack: We do not operate as mortals. We do not have the same rules.

Mari: Obviously. We have some and you don’t.

Jack: (Annoyed) Listen with your ears, Mari. We do not have the same rules does not mean we are lawless creatures.

Mari: (Slowly) Really? Then what about her? What rule did she break? (Pointing to the statue in the corner)

Jack: (Flinging the box away as he stands) When someone offers you the chance to not freeze to death through simple kindness, you take it! You do not scorn him because he comes to you in the guise of an old man, bent and broken. Her heart was always as cold as the ice I lovingly shape.

Mari: How do you know?

Jack: Like calls to like.

Mari: What am I doing here, then? I don’t have a heart of ice and snow.

Jack: (Patiently) You, dear, are one of the piper’s children.

Mari: (Frustrated) You keep saying that and I don’t know what it means. I know my mother. I wasn’t taken as a child.

Jack: And your mother?

Mari: No! No, you’re grasping. There is nothing in me that should call to you.

Jack: Why, Mari?

Mari: Because I don’t freeze people for the hell of it! I don’t trick them into coming to palaces of ice out of misplaced manners. And I’m not a damned piper’s child!

Jack: (Flatly) Piper’s child.

Mari: Screw you, Jack Frost. I want to go home. I should have been back by now and my mother/

Jack: Knows where you are.

Mari: What?

Jack: Your mother knows where you are.

Mari: And she just let you walk back out without a fight?

Jack: She, unlike you, knows more than well what I am capable of. (Leans in close) And what I can do if truly provoked. Frost so thick you’ll be either stuck inside or out. And those poor pigs, with the ground so frozen to bury them if they die. Don’t think I won’t. Push me, Mari, and it might not be you I snap at.

Mari: (Backs up and turns away) Why me? (Turns) Why me, Jack? And don’t say/

Jack: (Flatly) You are one of the piper’s children. (Mari screams in frustration) And I am the icicle man. Like calls to like.

Mari: I’m human! You, you are the one that brings the frost and kills those too weak to weather the coming winter! (Stalking closer to him) You don’t feel. You don’t feel anywhere near what a human does and you probably couldn’t if you tried.

Jack: What did you say?

Mari: (Drawing herself up) You couldn’t be human if you tried.

Jack: Is that a challenge, dear?

Mari: Yes.

Jack: What do I get if I win?

Mari: (Shrug) I’ll believe I’m a piper’s child and take whatever place I’m supposed to. If I win, my mother and I don’t see you ever again.

Jack: Truly ever, dear?

Mari: Ever, Jack.

Jack: Just to play human?

Mari: Be human, Jack. With everything that includes. Every last stupid emotion and human meaning.

Jack: (Grinning fiercely) Lovely, dear. I’ll take that little challenge of yours.

Mari: Fine. (Holds out her hand)

Jack cackles, leaning forward to kiss Mari’s neck. She screams; the lights plunge to darkness)

Icicle Man [Scene II]

[The second scene for Icicle Man or The Icicle Man, depending on where you first read it (BB or elsewhere)]

HANNAH: That girl is useless. Should have been back by now to see to the animals. Walk’s not that far. One would think I’d raised her better than to go wandering off without so much as remembering she needs to come back. (Throwing slop from a bucket into the pig trough, fully concentrating and not noticing Jack sitting on the pig pen fence.)

JACK: The piper’s children are slow to return.

HANNAH: (Glances at him) Piper’s children? Mari ain’t no piper’s child and watch out for them pigs, they bite sometime.

JACK: That’s life, darling. Most things bite.

HANNAH: (Puts down her bucket) What do you want, Jack?

JACK: (Brightening) You remember me.

HANNAH: Everyone knows of you. You live in these woods, you have to.

JACK: Your daughter didn’t.

HANNAH: (Pauses) How do you know my Mari?

JACK: Everyone knows of you, you live in these woods you have to.

HANNAH: She never made it to my mother’s, did she?

JACK: Not quite, darling. Not quite. She ran into the Father’s herald and he, well, convinced her it would be rude to not accept his invitation to see his latest works of ice.

HANNAH: So you’ve got her.

JACK: (Calmly) In a manner of speaking, yes.

HANNAH: Give her back!

JACK: (Slides off the fence) Now, Hannah, wouldn’t want you to forget what happens when something’s demanded of me. And so rudely, too.

HANNAH: You know I’ve never been anything but kind to you, Jack. I have been since I first met you.

JACK: Rather unfortunate that was, you getting turned out and all that. And in the coldest part of winter, too. Dear, if you hadn’t been found by a certain someone, well, things might have turned out differently.

HANNAH: I know that.

JACK: Good, then you’ll remember to keep a handle on your tongue.

HANNAH: (Tiredly) What do you want with her, Jack?

JACK: I don’t quite know yet. Give me some time, there’s a dear.

HANNAH: What do you want with her, Jack?

JACK: (Peevish) I don’t know yet, Hannah. I don’t. Maybe I want her company, maybe her opinion on where to hang my newest sculpture? In the dining room or the front hall, next to that statue that looks remarkably like/

HANNAH: Don’t!

JACK: (Walking to her, leaning in close) Don’t what?

HANNAH: Don’t bring her into this.

JACK: She has a name, dear.

HANNAH: Don’t – Don’t bring Megan into this.

JACK: (Caressing her cheek) Was that so hard? It was, wasn’t it? But I don’t understand why. You never liked your step-sister, did you, Hannah? And when your step-mother send you out into the cold, alone and defenseless, she never expected you to return, much less endowed like a queen. So she sent her own daughter out, hoping to reap the rewards, and then what happened, hm? Rude, selfish, she was a nasty girl, wasn’t she, Hannah? And when she met me, well, I wouldn’t put up with it. I made her body match the cold heart she already had, didn’t I? And your step-mother, oh how she wept and wept when her daughter didn’t return, and the temperature dropped and it grew dark. No one came looking for her, so I kept her. And you – You were secretly happy weren’t you? Megan was gone and you moved away, met a man, and had only one child. And moved here. Where is your dowry, Hannah? Where is your legacy?

HANNAH: It’s set aside for Mari. When she marries.

JACK: If she marries, you mean.

HANNAH: Shut up.

JACK: Manners, darling.

HANNAH: Jack, if there was anyone who could get away with telling you to stuff it, it would be me and mine.

JACK: Eh. You’re grasping, Hannah.

HANNAH: And you’ve attempted to fall for a human, unless I’m mistaken.

JACK: (Peeved) Shut up.

HANNAH: (Placidly) Manners, Jack. And admit it; that’s why you took Mari. Because you liked her.

JACK: She reminds me of the piper’s children.

HANNAH: Jack, every child reminds you of the piper’s children.

JACK: She stays with me until I’m done with her.

HANNAH: If you harm one hair on that girl’s head, I’ll/

JACK: You’ll what, Hannah? You will what? You forget too easily who and what I am. What I can do and what I can take. You daughter will do for now, but you might want to start sleeping with the pigs, as you never know when a cold snap might crop up. Wouldn’t want them to freeze, would we? (Leans in close again) Do not forget, Hannah. You are human. I am something entirely different. (Kisses her cheek and strides off, mixing with the snowflakes as he does so)

HANNAH: If ever a child should have been stole, there was one. (Looks to the sky) Watch my daughter, Father. Jack Frost can’t be trusted with a warm heart, even one that’s begun to melt his own.

One and Twenty

Then: Cat, Music, and Care Bear required.

There's just something about saying one and twenty instead of twenty-one that makes me smile in that little way. Don't ask because I really can't explain it.

I know that last year I did this whole big post where I talked about my year in review, and then kind of looked ahead to what it was going to be like to be twenty. I wrote that in my corner single in Jackson, back in New York, shortly after getting a tattoo and accepted in the study abroad program for Wales. One whole year later, I'm sitting in my single with an en suite bathroom in Carmarthen, Wales, and I'm staring my birthday in the face. And I thought about doing another year in review type of thing where I made it a little easier to keep track of events by going month by month, maybe adding some pictures, and I was sitting there planning and creating and I more or less decided that I didn't want to do that.

It would be a lie to say it hadn't been an interesting year. I was a little out of my depth at times (Two Cities, anyone? The chemist trying to be an economist and sociologist?) and I nearly spazzed out completely on an occasion or two, but I bucked it up, got some assistance, and finished out the year strong. My adviser was a wonderful help - the one line he said to me, when I was freaking out about organic II, This is not beyond you, I wrote into my novel - and my family, as always, was with me, too.

They're still with me, even though they're three thousand miles across an ocean and I call them twice a week.

Twenty-one is that magic number in the States, the one that says you can legally consume alcohol. Europe in general? Well, people have been drinking for about two years already, by that time, so it's not that big of a deal, and it's not that big of a deal to me, either. I'm a big fan of hand-pulled cask ales, but, I'm not really interested in getting so inebriated that you can't remember what you did the night before, let alone who you did it with.

On another note, my drivers license expires tomorrow. Mostly so NYS DMV can give me a new one that doesn't say Under 21 in red down the side of my picture. That picture? I was sixteen when they took that.

Which seems like a long time ago now, truthfully.

If you ask me what I want for my birthday, I'm going to tell you that I don't want much, if anything at all. I'm currently living in a foreign country for another month; my mother has come visit me in said foreign country; I've had another year of good health and good fortune (I do count when I fell down the stairs at work and didn't break anything incredibly good fortune); I've made great friends while I've been over here, and I've made memories to last me the rest of my life.

I've been handed an amazing opportunity so far, one that I'm pretty sure I've done a good job of making the most of. And maybe that's all I can do, at this point, is take each year that I'm given and continue to make the most of it. We only get one ride on life, and it's what you do to make your ticket count that matters. You don't have to live loud to live big, but the important part is that you remember to live.

So, I propose a toast. Not just to me for tomorrow when I turn another year older (and possibly wiser, too) but to all of us, who take it one day at a time and leave no open space unwandered. Here's to another year of good health, good fortune, and plenty of opportunities to come your way. Cheers.

Also, it's perfectly acceptable to substitute Oreo Truffles and/or Sticky Toffee Pudding for birthday cake when applicable. They're both very delicious.

Oh, and one more thing before I forget completely (as this happens some years), to all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, have a very happy Thanksgiving in whatever way you celebrate.



Now: Backpack and Adventure Required

Things I Learned in High School

[In no particular order.]

- Taking independent study band sucks.

- Especially when you take it so you can take ACE US History, and normally this wouldn't be a big deal, only the ACE history book is so damned dry you'd expect it to light itself spontaneously on fire.

- Even though you have friends that you could tell anything to, there are some things that you simply can't tell them.

- When your math teacher and your sophomore English teacher are married to each other, it's a little difficult to get away with writing in a composition book in class because she knows it's the novel.

- It's okay to have the same teachers for multiple classes multiple years.

- Unless you sit there in AP English wondering why she couldn't have retired before you got there.

- Trumpet plungers were not meant to be thrown at the wall for entertainment, unless of course they were, and yours truly still has the record for the longest distance from the wall and Andrew has the record for how many times in a row he could get it to stick.

- Of course I have a band lesson this period, and not just because I want to miss class.

- It's okay to "kill" people if you're going to process them in Forensics class soon after.

- Though it's not very helpful when the dead body keeps squirming because he doesn't like bugs.

- How to hawk baked goods in the crowds on vintage weekend outside the bars because they were the easiest people to get to part with their pocket change.

- FYEX (First Year Experience) had to be the more worthless "class" ever.

- One of the trumpets falling off the risers every year during the first week of school.

- "A wooden clarinet is the orgasm of clarinets."

- Being Raggedy Ann for Halloween my senior year and lifeguarding IAC's still wearing my red, hand-made yarn wig.

- Powderpuff Football. Only we forgot most of the time to go for the flags as it was simpler to flat-out tackle people.

- Scuba diving in the pool.

- The massive bruise on the inside of my thigh from the giant's ladder in Lifetime Sports

- Jesse's face when he found out I'd sprained my ankle playing indoor soccer in the middle of basketball season.

- Though, the above didn't really matter because it's not like I played in the games, anyway.

- Having whooping cough as a sophomore and continuing on with life like I wasn't trying to hack up a lung simply by walking from class to class.

- My love of films can probably stem from film analysis sophomore year.

- I can write flash fiction; it might not come out very good or make much sense, but I can do it.

- I vowed never to take any more business classes ever after sophomore year.

- Though we made the family "dream" of having an ice cream boat kind of come true that year, with the magnets to prove it.

- My classmates weren't as unobservant as I once thought.

- Humming the Vonage theme song in public yields a lot of interesting looks from boys in leather jackets.

- Music Club trips to NYC were, in some ways, the highlight of the year.

- Riding three hours to Buffalo on a school bus was an interesting experience, especially for my rear end.

- I got really good at getting on the bus in the morning, leaning against the window, and falling back asleep for the twenty minutes it took to get to town.

- I cemented how easy it was to live out of a Jansport backpack on a daily basis, in an academic sense.

- It's a bad idea to let your friend fake-bleed you at the Freshman Humanities Renaissance Fair in the courtyard because it somehow leads to higher-ups thinking that you and two other girls have been cutting yourselves.

- In order to get out of there as soon as possible, showing said higher ups the slightly oozing patch of psoriasis you've digged open on your ankle will do the trick nicely.

- You might think you have things under control, but until you break out completely and totally in itchy bits that may or may not leave scars because of something that you have no genetic control over, you find out just how much you really have to keep your head high to live with things.

- I found out that, sometimes, when you really love someone, you let them go to make sure you don't hurt them.

- The above, however, does not ensure that they will be there when you return at a time convenient for you.

- Eating school food made me the fan of tacos that I am today.

- I think I wasn't too far into my sophomore year when I realized that I didn't want to be one of the popular girls; I just wanted to be me, whoever that was going to develop into.

- How not to sugarcoat things.

- Sunday in the Park with George is a truly awful musical when you're eighteen and there's such shows like Avenue Q and Monty Python's Spamalot to be seen instead.

- I don't like rye bread, and while it might look similar to wheat, it sure as shit isn't.

- Never had the urge to drink illegally while in high school.

- High school is a different ball game that takes a bit to get used to, and it doesn't help when you're about as down as you could get when you get in there.

- I learned how to temporarily shut up and go with the flow because that's what it took to do a good job on a job that needed to get done.

- You can be a bit busted if you know how to sit there and superglue yourself back together while paying attention in math.

- How not to give a damn about certain things.

- How to make my mom understand that being in the nineties in calculus might not be something that I achieve, and how to settle for high eighties when I'm still trying my best.

- How to play alto saxophone because who ever heard of a clarinet in jazz band?

- The opening to Colt 45 while tooling around the nation's capital for senior trip.

- That it's kind of cool to think about double calculus as double potions, but it's nowhere near as cool.

- I can't stand Ernest Hemingway.

- How cool having a sister is, and how much we do, despite our age difference, have in common.

- Going to Open House still in a uniform and cleats is perfectly acceptable.

- Trying to get to first base in softball to listen to your dad give you advice and tell you bad jokes to make you giggle.

- There are things in life more important than soccer.

- The new basketball uniform shorts were the most comfortable things in the world.

- Riding on the bus with the baseball team wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

- Riding the bus, period, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.

- How to feel like you're stretched in fifty different directions, but still together enough to get everything finished that you need to, and well enough that nobody thinks twice about it.

- There's only so many times that you can say, "Eh, tomorrow" because your tomorrows start to run out.

- What it feels like to finish something significant.

- Writing a senior thesis in five weeks absolutely sucks.

- Being yourself, no matter how crazy and unconventional that might be, is so much easier and so much more worth it than trying to be anyone else.

- I'm about as bad at economics as I am at math.

- I like dressing up and looking decidedly female every now and then.

- Coffee is not only lovely, but also a necessity.

- Going to Europe and then returning and having the opening night and subsequent three performances of the school play when you have no voice makes life very, very interesting.

- Graduation is one of those things that always seems like it'll never get there, and then when it's looming, you wonder where the time's gone.

- A locker only holds so much stuff before it decides it won't shut, open, or even move.

- The instructions, "Put in your combination and then continue to turn like a doorknob" would have been really helpful that first time standing by 477 and wondering how to get into it.

- I don't think I was ever late to English my first year because my locker was right across the hall from the English room.

- I took one art class, and that was more than enough for my four years in that building.

- Sadly, cafeteria food doesn't get much better when you hit high school.

- Cafeteria's came with vending machines.

- Get there early enough so that you have a parking space.

- Doesn't matter what kind of car you drive, just as long as you have one to drive.

- How I ever passed my Earth Science regents is beyond me because there were eight seniors in a class of sophomores, and most of us, since it was the end of the day, slept through most of it.

- AP Calculus, AP Economics, and AP English was going to be the death of me my senior year.

- New York State Regents are, for a lack of a better phrase, the shitty things on the face of the Earth.

- The SAT's are just as bad as everyone says they are.

- Giving blood is fun. What's not so fun is passing out and scaring the living bejeezus out of your two best guy friends when you fall out of your chair.

- Playing softball after giving blood is always advisable - when half the team has done it, what else can you do?

- Things weren't always easy. Do the best you could, and hope for the rest to sort itself out.

- NYSSMA is a great excuse to miss school, though they'll flay you alive when you have whooping cough and are trying not to hack up a lung while you play classical music.

- When in NYC, one must visit in a Starbucks. That is nonnegotiable.

- I was the band geek, the writer, the athlete, and the chick with enough brains to graduate tenth out of ninety-seven. It hasn't always been easy, but if you stick to what you know and follow your instincts, the end result is pretty good.