Final Post.....*sigh*

A silly little sestina...

The Language of Love

I cannot live without my piano,
Or even without any kind of music.
I learned my first song in the key of C
And no, I can’t play it for you
But if he asks, I might play it for him
Because he is the one I love.

He doesn’t know that he is the one I love.
Instead of me, the piano
Can tell him.
It’s easier to speak through music.
And let me tell you,
I can do it in the key of C.

With a song, hopefully he will see
That my love
Is not for you,
Or even for my piano,
Or even for my music,
But only for him.

The reason is him,
The reason I would cross the deep blue sea
And spend hours writing music
To express my love
On a baby grand piano
And sing “I only have eyes for you.”

It is for not you,
It is for him.
That I sit at my piano
And try to seize
Those perfect words, chosen out of love
That can only be spoken through the language of music.

Because only through music
Will I be able to tell you
That my love
For him
Reaches farther than I can see
But all I have is my piano.

The little black piano in the corner that plays the sweetest music
Is the only thing I see when I look at you,
Because it reminds me of him, the one I love.

Creative Writing: Flash Fiction

My attempt to follow Hemingway's flash fiction structure. Here goes...


Missing: 17 year old Sarah Adams. Last seen on Saturday night with 21 year old Timothy Jones.

Creative Writing Revision

Poetry and I still aren't buddies, but I'm trying to improve. I posted the original a few months ago, but here it is: http://pourleschats.blogspot.com/2010/09/creative-writing-post-3.html

Evacuation

The TV show vanished with a bang,
A bottle of purple nail polish slipped out of my hand
As a split-second flash of lightening put the sun to shame.

My bare feet pounded the hardwood floor in search of the front yard.
Black, fluffy ash already rained in the streets,
The bitter smell of smoke overtook the dry desert air.

We might have hours, we might have only minutes.
We ran to the car and peeled out the of the garage
We turned right back; the flames were already climbing the hill.

Spectators clogged the streets.
Helicopters dumped water from the nearby lake,
Yet fire retardant turned the neighborhood a vibrant orange.

My parents grabbed the pets while I snatched the photo albums.
Cars were full of belongings, but nobody wanted to leave.
Garden houses were the only weapons.

The fire leaped the roads, like a lion chasing its prey.
News crews bolted through the yards.
I jumped in the backseat with a handful of clothes and a meowing cat.

The orange glow on the black hills grew smaller in the rear view mirror.
And the night stood still until finally
The sunrise became the only orange glow.

Creative Writing Post #8

#6-list poem of a place


Ohio

It's summer, and the corn is knee high by the fourth of July
while the Amish children are running barefoot through the fields.
It's fall, and the trees are on fire with dying leaves
while everyone dons their scarlet & grey apparel.
It's winter and three feet of snow is gently falling from heaven
while the heaviest coat still leaves you wishing for dairy bars & humid days at Lake Erie.
It's spring and the sleepy grass stretches its blades above the melting snow
while the inevitable road construction delays traffic again.

Creative Writing Post #7

The Many Lives of Cheese

1 1. I can’t eat cheese anymore. Cheese is the carcass of milk. At least I read that in a book once, and now I’m totally grossed out.

2. 2. *Sniff, sniff* ….cheese? Is that you? *sniff, sniff, sniff* Oh cheese, I want the cheese so bad I need the cheese where is the cheese I can’t find you cheese! Where are you you’re my best friend I need that cheese *sniff, sniff, * cheese cheese cheese I finally found you! *SNAP*

3. 3. Um, cheese has like, a billion grams of saturated fat. How in the world am I supposed to fit into my skin tight size zero dress if I eat cheese! It’s like, so bad for you! Isn’t it from a cow or something? Yeah, I think I’m a vegetarian. And I don’t eat things with fat. I will be in that size zero dress and I will be Prom queen! Gosh Ashley, quit trying to sabotage me!

4. 4. The only thing that matter to me about cheese is putting on my cheesehead hat and rooting for my Green Bay Packers!

5. 5. Ah, oui! Le fromage! Oh j’adore le fromage! Oui, oui, oui ! Chaque matin, je prends une baguette avec un peu de Brie. La France a le meilleur fromage dans le monde! Le fromage est très bon avec un verre de vin aussi. Je vive pour le fromage !

6. 6. Ahhh, man ! Who cut the cheese ? Gross, dude !

7. 7. Cheese is my comfort food. I could eat all day everyday! Cheddar, swiss, parmesan, colby jack, all kinds of cheese. Cheese is the key to my heart. Pizza, lasagna, macaroni and cheese, nachos, cream cheese. CHEESE!

Creative Writing Post #6

How to Become a Writer

You will hate writing from the beginning. Absolutely hate it. Your eyes will nearly overflow with tears when you hear the word "essay" slip from the mouth of your high school English teacher. You will whine and moan and throw a fit and write it at midnight, but pull out an A as usual. Your classmates may resent you for it. But you still hate writing. You'll hate it so much that you major in Nutrition once you get to college. You'll soon realize you'd write a thousand and one essays for your high school English teacher if it meant you didn't have to write another lab report. Sometimes you have to go to the dark side to realize you were in the light all along.

Suck it up and accept your destiny. In a whim of spontaneity, switch your major to English. At least you have time to finally take French classes again. Just don't major in French or suddenly you'll find yourself trying to pay your own tuition. Start wearing more scarves and skinny jeans. Don't be afraid to carry coffee to class, either. It can only help. But be prepared to regret everything when you find yourself trapped in a room by the professor with the tight plaid pants and swoopy hair. Take a deep breath...you were never here for the British Lit anyway. Leave that for the thick rimmed glasses and frizzy hair. You just want to write. Get a gig writing for the school newspaper so you can convince your parents you have some kind of future in writing. Damage control like this will frequently come in handy when people give you the "ick" and "have fun being poor" looks after you tell them what you're studying.

Whenever your writing is shared in class, always remind everyone that you wrote it late at night when you were exhausted so everyone knows you can write even better. Whenever you receive compliments, shrug them off like you think your awesome alliteration is no biggie when you really you're squealing with delight on the inside. Always stay calm, cool, and collected.

Most importantly, stick with creative nonfiction. Now no one has to know that you still have no idea what Shakespeare was talking about. Don't let the professor in the plaid pants fool you...thoroughly understanding Chaucer's deep down love of misogyny will get you nowhere but tenured in approximately 7-10 years. No thanks. Someday they'll be reading your works.

Creative Writing Post #5

Question #4

Cars

Quickly weaving between the other cars,
Turn on the stereo and let the tunes fly.
Warm sunshine cascades through the sunroof.
The cars in front suddenly slam on their brakes,
Crash.

Creative Writing Post #4

Question #6 (Write a piece of creative nonfiction in the form of "My Mother in Two Photographs"....)

She's the one sitting on my lap in the high school band room. No one else would've dared to sit on the lap of the girl with the frizzy french braids and railroad tracks for teeth. She's the one with the long blonde hair who played the flute, which was only a smidge cooler than my whiny clarinet. She even dragged me on dates with her boyfriend. The three of us would giggle over heaping bowls of ice cream and stay up late watching movies.

We were involved in every aspect of each others lives. My creamy mac n cheese would never taste as good as it does if we had not had that late night craving seven years ago in her ivy wallpaper covered kitchen. But no matter what we did, the party would always move to the little upright piano in the living room where we would play and sing the songs our grandparents would have danced to.

But it's the summer of 2006, and she's leaving me. Leaving me for the ominous brick buildings and cobblestone walkways of Otterbein College. We stood in the high school gymnasium, she in her red cap and gown and me in my blue and pink strapless dress. We're both grinning ear to ear, but I was crying on the inside. She had a new future to look forward to while I only had the weekends to escape our high school in the cornfields and visit her in the booming city.

It had been a long, bumpy road. I dated her ex-boyfriend which left me without a best friend for three months, and we had taught half our high school how to knit during South Pacific rehearsals. She stayed at Otterbein. I tearfully, yet joyfully, left rural Ohio for the humid beaches of North Carolina. She traveled to New Zealand and Fiji while I walked the dusty streets Mexico and explored Scotland. Our friendship lived on through postcards and Skype calls.

Port Columbus International Airport. It's Spring Break of 2010, and she's waiting with my parents, jumping in her black heels and holding a welcome home sign. I don't have braces anymore. Not only is she now going on dates with me and my boyfriend, but she's also my Maid of Honor. Soon she will be moving back to Columbus, and so will I. Back to the little upright piano in the living room.

Creative Writing Post #3

#5-(using the list of topics we made in class) write a story/poem/memoir in short sections leaving out information.


August 1, 2000

The flash of lighting and crack of thunder beckoned me outside.
Black, fluffy ash rained in the streets,
The smell of smoke overtook the dry desert air.
The family ran to the car and peeled out of the garage.
The flames were already climbing the hill.

Spectators clogged the streets.
Helicopters dumped water from the nearby lake.
Fire retardant turned the houses orange.
News crews ran through the yards.

Family members loaded the car,
I snatched the photo albums.
Garden hoses were the only weapons.
The orange glow creeped closer.

"It's too late, it leaped the road."
One more quick trip up the stairs.
The orange glow grew smaller in the rear view mirror,
But the fear grew larger.
The night stood still until finally
The sunrise became the only orange glow.

Creative Writing Question # 9

Imitation of "Girl"


Work

Make sure you scan everyone's insurance card and paperclip the copies to the chart; check the sign-in sheet constantly; don't let that call go to voicemail; file the doctor's mail and arrange it just so; when calling next week's patients, make sure they're on the correct schedule so we don't have anymore problems; initial and date everything you touch; do you realize how lucky you are to have this job? Always ask the nurse about fitting a patient in so the doctors don't get angry; on Fridays you can wear jeans, but they need to be nice; don't file that paper until you've stamped it; don't say that to a patient on the phone; but they were yelling at me about their prescription, and I'm not a nurse; this is how you make a new patient's chart; this is how you schedule the appointment; this is how you document a copay correctly so you're not fired; this is where you put the charge sheets so the insurance department isn't searching for them again; this is what you make a patient sign if they haven't paid us recently; this is what you charge a patient who doesn't show up so they don't do it again; this is who you talk to in order to request time off; you can't take that much time off, you know; you need to be here at 8:00 every morning; this is the drawer where you put patients with bad insurance; don't put anything there until you're sure; stop filing those papers, we do it all electronically now; you need to tell me who's calling if you want me to talk to them; but what if I need a day off, I haven't seen my family in months; make sure you're here at 8 am.

Creative Writing question #2

The thick red velvet curtain couldn't hide the sound of shuffling shoes and the smell of buttery popcorn. It couldn't calm my nerves either. I constantly pulled at my tights and retied my jazz shoes in an effort to lose some nervous energy. I resorted to hopping on the old wooden floor. The floor that held memories of some of the greatest performers of all time.

Outside the theater, people were lined up and down the street grasping their tickets and chatting with friends under the flashing lights. One by one the usher led the audience members to their seats with his dimming flashlight. Jingling boxes of M&Ms and seat change requests threatened to outdo the piccolo section as they filled the air of the historic Palace Theater. After a long couple minutes, the last audience member found his seat. The house lights began to dim, casting only a faint glow on the statues lining the walls.

It was pitch black backstage. Too late to run the dressing room for another swipe of the hideously red lipstick. I could hear the low, expectant murmur of the first few rows. Like a sudden gunshot, the orchestra struck their first chord. The stage filled with light as the curtain opened. I counted my three sets of eight. And just loud enough for the few of us to hear, the director stood behind us and whispered, "It's showtime."

Clinging to the cross.

Something is wrong.

For the first time in my 21 years of traveling I packed more than 48 hours in advance of my departure. I have NEVER done that. I'm so last minute that you'd think I had a paper due the next morning. Totally freaked myself out. I think it was the only thing I could do to calm my anxious thoughts.

I'm so nervous about flying to Scotland. I don't really know why. The trip is paid for (but not the plane tickets...ha), I found some traveling buddies, I have new music on my ipod, 3 books I've been meaning to read since Christmas, and after tomorrow I'll have my skittles and chex mix. Everything I could need for an 8 hour flight (yuuuuuuck), except for a bed.

BUT...I have no idea what will be waiting for me once I get off the plane. We're landing at 2:45 am Eastern time (7:45...scottish? time). And then we're off on an all day tour of the city and highlands. I'm totally looking forward to it, but I'll be so tired I probably won't remember it. Monday-Friday will be outreach events, but I have no idea what we'll be doing. I don't really know much about this trip. I do know that I'm staying in a hostel, and we'll be talking about Jesus. That's about it. Fear of the unknown. There's a small part of me that wants to just fast foward through this trip and come home. Back to my comfort zone. But that's no way to live. This is truly learning to cling to Jesus. If you had told me I would be flying to Scotland, meeting with a group I'd never met, and helping with a church's outreach, I would've laughed. The fear has been so intense at times that I've been writing Psalms on index cards to carry with me throughout the whole trip. It's been so comforting. I know this is something God is having me walk through, and I know I will be so glad I did it. Letting go of my comfort zone and clinging to Jesus is not easy.

On the other hand, I get to go home in August! Being in North Carolina and working all summer has been difficult. I've had issues with my duplex, my landlord, my professor, support raising...pretty much everything. It has been difficult and so many times I've wanted to run home to lay everything aside and just rest. Plus I get to be a bridesmaid in my friend's wedding....and then I get to finish planning MINE! I'M GETTING MARRIED!!!!!

I have a lot to live for. All I have to do is let go of the fear and cling to the cross.

Can I have yo money? Can I have it?

Ok. I express myself best through the written word. I'm going to school to be a writer. But there are no words I could write to express how I excited I was this morning.

Sidenote: I never really intended for this blog to be about missions, and it won't be, but that's primarily what I'm focused on right now. (Aside from the projects and papers sitting right to me....*cough*)

I've never had financial issues, so I've never seen God work miracles with my finances like He has so many other people. At the end of February, I signed up for the missions trip to Scotland on pure faith. I didn't even have the money for the deposit. Through a series of events, I raised the deposit money right on time. I figured this would be another by the book fundraising experience, but it totally has not been.

I know this phrase is often tossed around, but God really has been coming through for me. Last year, when I went on the trip to Baja, Mexico, I got all of the money I needed, but not by any jaw-dropping means. This year has been different. I'm raising about three times as much money with less people to go to for support and less money of my own to give.

Last week, I was looking at my supporters this year and realized that well over half of my money is from people I never asked for support. These are people who have come to me and offered to help me. How crazy is that?! Only God can prompt that kind of giving. For example: I was late on a deadline last week, and I needed $125. Needed it right then. I spent days in prayer and brainstorming. That particular morning at church, a friend handed me a $75 check. That was awesome, but I had no idea where to get the next $50. More prayers and brainstorming. This morning I got an email from the director of the trip with updates on online giving, and I saw a mysterious $50 deposit that took place last week, right when I needed it. Apparently a family friend saw my facebook group, about my trip with donation directions, and gave $50 on the spot even though I haven't been in contact with this person in years. I can't make this stuff up!

I haven't even mentioned the out-of-the-blue $200 check from my grandma, who I never told about the trip. God does things in His own way and His own time. I haven't met all the deadlines right on time, but through the grace of God deadlines have been extended and I've gotten all my money there. I have an additional $500 due in two weeks, and I don't have a penny of it yet, and after all of this I'm not a bit worried. Ask me in a week, and I will probably be panicking :) I also have thousands more to raise for plane tickets. That terrifies me a bit, but all the money in the world is God's, and He'll give to me in His own time and way. Just so you know, I'm writing this all out to convince remind myself of this as well. It's so easy to forget. Oh, and I was also supposed to go on this trip with a couple friends of mine, but due to unforseen circumstances.....it's just me. Me and fiftyish (I think?!) other people from the US. That means chances are good that I could be traveling by myself and braving a lot of this trip by myself. Funny how God calls us out of our shells. Yes, I am the only person from my not-so-small church going on this trip. The only one. Sometimes I feel like I need a swift roundhouse kick to the face to remind me what I'm actually doing. I can't even talk about this without laughing, because I have no idea how I'm going to be able to handle that. But I'm really, really excited.

If you've ever wanted to go on a missions trip, you need to. It's scary. It's fun. It's scary fun. And you'll probably kick yourself for it at times, but you will never regret it.

Also, I'm really hungry.

Faithful Provider

Living for God has to be the sweetest thing ever. I remember once hearing that following after God would be an insane rollercoaster adventure, and you would never know what's going to happen next. I totally experienced those crazy, never-saw-that-coming moments, but nothing like this.

Saturday morning I was flipping through my Bible before lunch with my small group, and I started reading in Matthew 21. I read about the part where Jesus saw a fig tree, it didn't have fruit, so He cursed it to death. I had never fully grasped the meaning behind that, so I looked down at the commentary in my big momma study Bible. It talked about how the tree looked pretty and delicious from afar, but it bore no fruit. It went on to talk about genuine faith resulting in bearing fruit that advances the kingdom of God. BAM! It just confirmed something God was speaking to me the entire week. "Step out in faith. Do things you never thought you could do, because all things are possible with Me."

So with that said, I have stepped out in faith. I know God has been calling me back to Baja, Mexico this summer, so that wasn't a difficult decision even though the money will literally have to fall from heaven. All year I had a stirring for two mission trips this summer, even though I only knew of the trip to Baja. Well, my roommate and I were casually chatting about life, and somehow she mentioned a trip to Scotland. This summer. Something, aside from my desires to go to Europe, lit up in me. I felt this intense need to go, and I didn't know one detail about the trip. Not one. But God has called me and confirmed it countless mini-miracles all weekend.

Anywho, I have a nice chunk of change due for Scotland in a few days. I have no money, and no prospects of getting any. I have to change my fundraising tactics from last year, and I'm still waiting for clearance from the parentals. But I'm stepping out in faith and what I believe I'm called to.

Here's the cool part: I got the email from the Scotland dude this morning about the finances, and I have never felt such tangible peace in my life. I could literally feel God telling me that He's providing for me. I flipped over to facebook [my morning ritual], and everywhere I looked I saw "God will provide," and "Faithful Provider." It was crazy. God did something similar to that when I was raising money last year for Baja. And I got every penny that I needed.

So, long story short, I'm trusting God for approximately $4,000. A disgusting amount. But I know God has already provided...I just have to find the money. If you want to donate, contact me =) ....I'm dead serious.