before the storm

by Jessica

As a black cloud decends

and a chilling wind

sifts wildly through the trees

an hundred ravens seen high above

catch their wings on the air

and spill from the North

towards the lighter horizon

where the sun gives the impression

of setting in the stroke of a peach cloud

against a pale blue sky.

The Finch Family

Once upon a time there was a family whose name was Finch.

Mrs. Finch was exceedingly fond of large hats, particularly the kinds with extravagant plumes in them. The bigger the hat and the bigger the plume was all the better for her. She was always on the lookout for hats, plumes, and hats with plumes which surpassed the ones she already owned in size. Her biggest fear was that someone in the world owned a hat and plume bigger than her biggest one, and that she would be put to terrible shame by this person, whoever it might be.

Mr. Finch appreciated bow ties, but only white ones with black polka dots, or black ones with white polka dots. You may think that there is not much variety in only liking bowties of those natures, which would make Mr. Finch rather boring in his like of bowties; but in fact there are many, many different types of black bowties with white polka dots and white bow ties with black polka dots.

Greta Finch was the eldest girl and the eldest child in the immediate Finch family. She had straight dark brown hair down to her thighs and light green eyes which always seemed to be focused elsewhere from the present. She appreciated two things: books, and reading them. If she was not reading, she was arranging her immense book collection or else deeply considering matters of books rather than paying attention to any sort of reality, except how reality pertained to books. That said, she was not the dreamy sort at all: to the contrary she was much more mournful of her situation in life and how it was not much like princess so-and-so who lived in such-and-such large castle and was married by prince whoever to carry on a life of bliss.

Edward Finch was very tall and was not much more than skin and bones. He possessed an affinity for being up and on top of things, and was frequently worrying whatever females were about by climbing all climbable anythings. He was a quiet lad who mostly kept to himself, though ate everything in sight and when he was not he was always wishing there was something in sight to be eaten.

Evelyn Finch had long, blonde, wavy hair and big dark brown eyes. She was always dressed all in black or very dark grey with a simple bow or two in her hair. She was an asker of accusing questions as well as a desirer of all she set her deep eyes on. Evelyn collected many, many different things. In fact, she had a collection of what must have been everything except for hats, plumes, bowties, and books. Her favorite collection was her sixteen jars of bacteria cultures, which she kept and fed as if they were her own pets.

Victor Finch wore very big, round glasses and liked to believe he was the number one most reliable source of all that there was to know in the world. If someone instructed him, he would rebuke the instructor and tell him otherwise, though what he assumed to be the truth was often a quite absurdly drawn conclusion. However, if he was able to find that the encyclopedia said otherwise (which he only consulted once a conversation had been had where he was not sure of something which he had just stated as fact, particularly if the person he stated it to disagreed), then he would slowly but surely wrap his head around the new idea and adopt it as his own and soon declare that he never thought otherwise.

The Finch family lived in a modest home right in the very middle of Fanghorn Avenue. The downstairs consisted of a parlor, kitchen, dining room, powder room, and a small cupboard for the placement of articles of warmth from the cold in the winter, which was located in the passage. Upstairs (the steps leading to and from which located next-door to the aforementioned cupboard), were four bedrooms. One for Mr. and Mrs. Finch, one for Greta and Evelyn, one for Edward and Victor, and one for guests when guests came, but otherwise for collection overflow on behalf of Mr. Finch, Mrs. Finch, Greta, and Evelyn (all of whom would have rather kept all of each collection in his or her room, but ran out of space). Edward and Victor, wanting to share in the equal subdivision of the spare room, collected odds and ends precisely for the purpose of storing when no guests were around. Edward, without giving much thought to it, collected many ounces of dust lying around the house (causing Mrs. Finch to keep her sanity in check in the most mundane respects of furniture dusting), and Victor had the clever idea of cutting out encyclopedia articles which he thought he might read in the future when he got around to it, (of course, Mr. Finch was not of the knowledge of this defacement) and putting them in spare jars which Evelyn discarded when any particular culture grew too big for it. This resulted in Victor not wanting to actually read the articles because to pull them back out again would render the entire time reading a time spent smelling nothing short of the most awful stench in the world, which was impossible to wash out of the jars. There was also a bathroom up stairs which everyone shared, though everyone complained considerably of everyone else taking much too long in the bathroom doing various and sundry preparations and primpings which were necessary to the party concerned with doing preparations and primpings, but were absolutely ridiculous to all who were affected by not being able to use the bathroom at the time they wished to.

All in all the Finch family lived their lives in the same way as you might live yours or I might live mine: with the sense that they are just simply living day by day as is best known to them, without giving much thought over to any sort of comparison with other families or other ways of life which may or may not be considered more normal or more abnormal. Did not the Finch family have friends? Surely. Did they spend time outside their home? Almost certainly. But those are other stories for other times.

Come True

The layers of beauty surround me
As I sit here alone
We both know who created this
Now I want you to be here
To share this with me
And not just now, but forever more

The quiet here is thrilling
But the scratching of my pen
Reminds me of where my heart has been
I can hear your whispers
From far away in my ear
Will you ever walk the path with me?

I’m afraid to write about you
Afraid it is not due
Scared to wish on a melody
For fear it won’t come true

I find myself pondering
Why it changes so suddenly
Will inspiration ever find me?
I feel my soul unwinding
Hiding behind a story book
Perhaps the tale should not be told

One day I want to be lost
In the sea of your eyes forever
And in the sounds of your stunning harmonies
You’ll never believe the affections
That sprung from our recent farewell
Ever since I’ve been blind to everything…

If you want to hold
My heart in your arms
Just tell me, I’ll let you
I know you’ll do it no harm

~JCB

Lilia

The meadow was green, full of beautiful weeds, wildflowers, wisteria and unkempt shrubbery. A miniscule waterfall poured delicately off a brown stone ridge. Moss lay in patches around the flat rocks by the shore of the stream, the sun shined as it was meant to. It showed off the radiance of all things green which were in the meadow; it shimmered on the stream, darted and danced between the waves of the waterfall.

A small girl sat on the water’s edge, feet in the water, pen in hand and a book of blank paper on her lap. Her long, wispy dark brown hair rippled as a gentle breeze whistled through the leaves of the brush. She wrote fast, intensely, and powerfully. A whippoorwill called from the top of the stone from which the waterfall descended, but this was a quiet she craved.

Mindlessness

There are certain things I love doing, that I just cannot bring myself to put on my “interests” or “hobbies” list. I’m not embarrassed. That’s ridiculous. But…there is some reason or another. Things like: clipping my nails, blow drying my hair, driving, dancing outside in the middle of the night, and being alone in complete quiet.

Ultimately I suppose it comes down to mindlessness. I really appreciate it. That sounds bad…shouldn’t I really like stretching my cognitive abilities? Well, I do. There’s no doubt about that. I enjoy feeling like the gears in my brain are really chugging away (if gears do that…you know what I mean…perhaps I am getting my imagery mixed up, but whatever). But I feel like my brain is like that all the time. It’s as if I’m running endlessly, never taking a break to just sit down and catch my breath, to let my muscles rest. Sure, if I sit down for a long enough time, I get antsy again, and get up and run. But rests are wonderful things.

Clipping my nails, filing my nails…it’s the epitome of mindlessness, in my opinion. I just do it. I’m doing something physical, working on something, and thinking about nothing. I wish I had more nails, or just more activities that were like clipping nails. Watching TV or playing video games just don’t do it for me. I get really wrapped up in television or movies, and when I play video games, I constantly am feeling like I should be doing something else. Clipping my nails is of such benefit to me and others…makes it easier to play guitar and piano, preventing myself from bending the nails back when they’re wet, makes them nicer-looking, and puts a stop to any lethal scratching I may inflict during water polo (you can thank me in the comments section).

I also like things like showering and shaving my legs. Sorry if that’s TMI for some people, but you must understand that I just like that mindless time. Because doing stuff that takes no brain leaves my brain to be opened. I come up with my best ideas for songs, stories, businesses, et cetera, while lathering my hair, getting soap in my eyes, or making funny shapes with my shaving cream (I am really a pro at making many different sculptures as I squirt the shaving cream out…I entertain myself very well). The problem with coming up with such a huge wave of ideas is that you can’t really document any of them in the bathtub. I suppose I could take all my hair that falls out and twist them into a musical staff and music notes, and write down ideas with my shaving cream on the walls…but that would take a lot longer than it would if I just finished the shower, wouldn’t it? Yeah. *sigh* Plus not being able to really read music, as well as my hair having a tendency to just curl up after a while, present problems. Shaving cream likes to melt.

Whatever.

I like dancing, that’s a given. I don’t think I’ve met a girl who doesn’t. I really like it when guys like dancing, too. It was pretty awesome to see all the guys who showed up at the cotillion-style dance class at the homeschool conference. It was even more awesome to see the very few guys who were AMAZING. It let me hope for my generation. Perhaps I will marry a guy who will go dancing with me!

As for dancing outside in the middle of the night, I’d say it is the epitome of freedom…so I don’t know why I just told the whole world I do it. Might as well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But I do it because the night is stimulating; the air is clear, crisp, and electrifying. No human is watching. The moonlight shines down like a single spotlight…the stars are my audience, the cool grass is my stage, the crickets and the frogs are my music. I dance without a care in the world. I get warm and breathless, my muscles begin to feel strained, and the beads of sweat begin to surface on my brow. The soft breeze cools me, and I want nothing else but to stay out there forever…

Death is just the easy way to escape. The weather recently has reminded me about this story about a boy and a girl. Simple enough, I suppose. They grow older and fall in love. The boy is poor, the girl is rich. While she goes away to school for her later teen years, the boy, a couple years older, determines to spend the time when they are separated in hard labor, working to make enough to support her. Of course, he knows what she’s used to and is willing to do whatever he can to get as close to matching it as possible. When she comes back from school, three or four years later, he is proud of himself. They meet, and she seems preoccupied. He plans to come over to her house later and propose. He does, but he finds her in the parlor talking with another man—a rich one—who has his arm around the girl. The girl announces, slightly embarrassed and grimly, that she and the rich man are engaged. The boy falls into devastation, and that’s a very understate-ish understatement. He had worked all these years, FOR HER. And now what? She rejects him. Unintentionally, but he can never have her now. He never even tries again. He just crawls into a hole, gives up. However, he’s developed a habit of working hard. In ten years, he’s pretty well off. He’s been keeping track of the girl now. She married the other man and they moved to a house on the lake. One night, the husband leaves for a business meeting. The girl is at home alone. She goes out to enjoy the moonlit night, and comes back into her dark living room. Something in the shadows moves—it is the boy, now fully a man, dressed nicely. His eyebrows are turned down. In his hands is a pistol. The girl is shocked. Her voice trembles as they talk. His is calm and confident. He thinks he wants her love…but in that conversation, he realizes that all he wants is for her to know what he did for her, what he always wanted, and how she carelessly and heartlessly ripped his chest opened, pulled his heart out, and threw it out the window where it was driven to the bottom of the river. The husband comes back home. The man confronts the husband and shoots him soon after. The girl screams, asking what the man wants from her. Now the man comes to his senses…he’s only hurt her more. She hurt him, but he swore long ago he would never hurt her. He’s gone back on the promise. His life is turmoil, and the moment is happening so fast around him, he feels dizzy. With quaking hands he turns the gun on himself. It would make things better for the girl if he was gone as well. He shoots himself in the head. What he doesn’t know is that he’s hurt the girl even more than he could ever imagine. The girl is confused, bewildered…this was not what was supposed to happen this evening! All she can see, though, is what is right in front of her, and that’s any meaning in her life now has surely vanished, and vanished tragically. Impulsively, she grabs the pistol from the man, lets out one last sob…and shoots herself.

It’s not supposed to be that easy. That is not bliss; that is not escape. It’s just tragedy. Naivety, short-sightedness. People commit suicide every day, feeling surely that once their souls have escaped the world, everything will be okay…

I don't mean to leave you on such a negative note. No, I'm not feeling suicidal. Far from it! I was just illustrating something with my little story. Now I shall go and love my life some more!

Mine Eyes...or Whatever

Before moving on to the liberating matters, would anyone mind telling me what the fourth chord in the intro of "Love Song" by Sarah Bareilles-whateverhernameis? I don't think my piano has all the keys hers does-everything else sounds right but that.

And I really like comments, whether you read this entry or not. Especially if you rudely vote on my poll and left. It makes me angry.

Now, lets continue...

I love eyes. I have an obsession with them, I believe. I like drawing them and describing them and looking at them. I was smiling with great googoly-mougally giddiness as I was reading The Sea-Wolf by Jack London and came across this whole paragraph:

The eyes—and it was my destiny to know them well—were large and handsome, wide apart as the true artist’s are wide, sheltering under a heavy brow and arched over by thick black eyebrows. The eyes themselves were of that baffling protean gray which is never twice the same; which runs through many shades and colorings like intershot silk in sunshine; which is gray, dark and light, and greenish-gray, and sometimes of the clear azure of the deep sea. They were eyes that masked the soul with a thousand guises and that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the world on some wonderful adventure—eyes that could brood with the hopeless somberness of leaden skies, that could snap and crackle points of fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword, that could grow chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften and be all a-dance with lovelights, intense and masculine, luring and compelling, which as the same time fascinated and dominate women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and relief and sacrifice.

I really love that paragraph (though I never wish to surrender to eyes in sacrifice or anything, thank you very much). I love eyes (have I mentioned?). One particular person I know has these beautiful, stunning, radiant green eyes. I describe these green eyes in a book I am writing, I didn’t base the character off of the person I know, just the eyes. Here’s how I describe them:

Her heart was, for a moment, filled to the top with admiration for the green eyes, though she was not sure why such a thing would stir up a great bout of emotion in anyone. With the fear that she might melt away in the presence of the eyes, which to her were quite the equivalent of a sweet, mourning Celtic melody, she averted her own quickly.

Not as beautifully detailed as Jack London, but there you have it. I also like to draw eyes… I have a couple in my sketchbook. I’m not very visually artistic though, so they’re not too phenomenal or anything. I’m not visual ANYTHING, gosh darn it. I’m (according to my psychology teacher) kinesthetic-auditory. I learn and remember things by doing and listening, preferably at the same time. It’s so very nice to know that…

Anyway, I must run to class…I suppose we’ll watch Act II of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That should be fun. Hm…watching movies in Literature class…

~Jessica

Morning at the Lakehouse

Yesterday I went to improv and my aunt picked me up from there to come to Creedmoor, where she lives next door to my grandparents on the lake. It’s so nice up here. I decided to write about it this morning around 9:30ish, I suppose, and so I’ll use that here as my blog for the day:


The line of trees across the lake is nearly shadowed by the old and heartless fog, which, with a mighty fist, has taken over the land. Not a breeze blows-the bare trees are stagnant as they stand tall amongst the thick blanket of mist. The skeletal branches stretch in every odd direction, giving the impression of a demonic presence, an ominous spirit which manipulate and connives the beautiful land, making color fade to gray and summer turn to the dead of winter.

The lake, or what can be seen of it, is low. The drought has taken its toll, dooming all creatures relying on water. One does not realize the danger of the water famine till one looks at a lake which was once full, and sees what has happened to it as the water line recedes.

Though it is the middle of winter, the leaves are still in a deep mass on the ground, damp with rain and the morning dew. I long to venture out of doors and finger them, letting warm, damp leaves, gritty with soil, fall through my fingers. However, I know the leaves are not warm, as they are in early autumn, but instead they are frigid and numbing to the touch.

I long for the pink and purple blooms on the trees that spring brings along with it. I yearn for the deep, shady greens of summer, the hot rays on my back as I plant herbs, water the garden and reap my fragrant harvest—oh, there’s nothing that smells quite as much like summer as warm basil does!

Even autumn beckons for me now—the smell of dead leaves tossed about by the cooling breeze. The weather becomes moderately cool again, and I have the inward desire for an arm around me or an antique chest locked with a heart-shaped key, containing love letters on parchment written in quill pen. Alas, that cannot be so now.

Winter simply does note appeal to me. Perhaps, if it snowed a couple of fee that for a week or so didn’t melt, and we could build snow forts and have snow ball wars and fun things like that, winter would seem worthwhile. The only things that are good about winter, to me, are Christmas (of course), but also warm citrus punch and ginger snaps, warm old-fashioned kitchens and dulcimers playing in the background. But those wintry associations I have not encountered in years, and it makes me wonder why I still make such a connection.


I want to get away. Not away in the context of hate or rebellion, just AWAY. I’m probably not going to college (I don’t see any reason to, except that WTCC doesn’t offer any upper-level music classes, so perhaps I could see if I can take some somewhere that does), so I’d like to do something, to go somewhere as just me, the individual Jessica-on-a-mission-to-do-something-liberating (if you haven’t noticed, that word is like my theme-song word). Even just to move somewhere for 6 months to a year, just to be away and do my “own thing.” A Wolf Park internship or practicum is an option (see sidebar, “favorite links.”). Also, I’d like to work at Gettysburg. I love the grounds there—it’s all so beautiful. When we went there, it had recently rained, and, even though I was much younger, I reveled in the beauty of the green grass and endless forests. I love caves, too. Mammoth Cave, Luray Caverns, anything else. I could give tours, become a cave inspector, or become a spelunker or spelunkist or spelunkerist (Joanna would say, “JESSICA, you got it right the FIRST time!!!”).

It’s so expensive to go to/live in a foreign country, namely Europe. I’d love to live in Stratford upon Avon in England for a while, or south Ireland or Scotland somewhere, or I could live in the Italian countryside and have a vineyard and learn music there, except I keep hearing and reading that the real estate market in Italy is atrocious.

Some of your know of my past obsession with Australia, and, really, I still like it there…perhaps I could get a job at the Australian Zoo, which always looks really cool on Animal Planet. Steve Irwin (*sniffle* I haven’t gotten over the sting-ray thing yet) worked there. I think that’s how he met his wife. If I take BIO 110 at WTCC, then I can take Zoology. It’s not a degree, but at least I’d have a little background info. And if I lived in Australia, I wouldn’t have to celebrate Australia Day all by myself anymore!

Well, I cannot go anywhere right now. I’m overwhelmed with scholastic obligations, I have zero mullah, and my grandparent’s cat, after an unasked for happy-pawing of my Seahawks sweatshirt, is asleep on my lap. I don’t really want to wake her up, because I’m cold and she’s warm.

I need a job. I’d like to work at a pet store or at a vet or at a music store or a book store. Marck was saying to me yesterday that if I worked at Pet Pad, I’d get my paycheck and go spend it all at Bert’s Music a couple doors down, and if I worked at Bert’s Music, then I’d get my paycheck and spend it all at Pet Pad. *sigh*. And by the way, if anyone can find the sheet music to “Love of My Life” by Queen, and bought it for me, I would love you forever (I guess), because I can play the intro and some of the bridge by ear, but the singer’s voice kind of presides over the piano in the rest of the song, and I can’t really hear what he’s playing. While you’re at it, can you please pay for a new piano for me (Steinway, if you can afford it)? It’s really hard to play piano on our piano, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, good bye!
~Jessica