the summer of ending things

     Today was my penultimate day at NC State's Teen Writer's Workshop. I have cherished being part of this program for the past two weeks, and I can't believe that it'll be over tomorrow. 
     When I went to choose my two classes in this year's program, I first went with my go-to: fiction. I am a fiction writer first and foremost - being a novelist is my biggest dream. So obviously I was taking fiction. I had a difficult time choosing my next class, though - should I go with poetry, a class I took last year and loved, or dramatic writing, a new realm of creativity that I was not particularly interested in? Figuring that I needed to branch out and try new things, I went with dramatic writing. I wasn't expecting to like it, but I recalled the eccentric instructor of last year's dramatic writing class and the hilarious craft talk he gave about plot structure and decided that I wanted him to teach me. I guess I'm curious about eccentric people. Like calls to like.
     Now here I am with two weeks of writing classes under my belt, amazed at all I've learned and all the friendships I've made. Dramatic writing turned out to be an extremely beneficial choice. Not only was the class fun and hilarious, but it taught me so many new things that I would never have considered hearing about otherwise. I have such an appreciation now for plays and screenplays and the efforts that go into material for movies and TV shows. During the class, I wrote a screenplay about some hot chocolate that falls in love with a marshmallow, and I also wrote an incredibly stupid play about a proper English Regency-era family who get into a bit of a kerfuffle over who put too much sugar in the tea. It's called "Tea Time with the Huntzbergs", and I'm quite proud of it. I'm super excited to see it performed tomorrow in our reading! The friends of mine who practiced it today did a perfect job and it was all silly and absurd and wow, I just love writing camp and how am I ever going to let it go?
      I'm so aware of how a lot of things are ending this summer. My writing camp. My summer camp. My high school career. I'm so excited to start at university, but all I can think about is this song from the Paper Towns movie and these lines that say "i'll meet you in the evening, i'll meet you in the evening, we'll do it all again", and the lyrics land on this one chord that just makes me want to cry a lot. I won't get to do it all again. This is my last year of writing camp. I wish I could freeze time and live in these summer days forever. 

i am capable of bringing dead things (this blog) back to life

Hello, anyone and everyone who might still be reading this blog! Today is your lucky day, because today is the day when dragonsdancinginstarlitskies.blogspot.com gets a resurrection (and possibly a shorter url)! 

Back when I was in high school (I can say that now!), this blog was a really important thing to me. Forcing myself to regularly post my writing on here really helped me develop as a writer. I want to continue posting stories, but I'd also like to start straying away from some of the more journal-ish posts. I'm not sure how I feel about having my random personal thoughts out on the internet. So from now on, I'll be revamping this blog to focus less on my personal life and incoherent ramblings and more on making myself into a better author. I'll also be posting book reviews, because I've been looking for somewhere to do that, and this blog is as good as any. 

So that's it, I guess. Get ready for things around here to get a lot more timely.

so this blog still exists

Did I last post on here in November? That's a shame, because senior year is so memorable and I'm letting all the important things be forgotten because I'm too busy to write them down.

It has been eighty years since I last sat down to write. I miss it. Maybe I'll continue the story about Sparrow and Cas, but if I really had my way, I'd go back and edit the first few parts - change the plot around a little, and make Sparrow less of a victim and Cas more shy.

You know how the text on this blog used to always be purple? I can't seem to do that anymore. I also have problems using the font I want to, since it's not technically available on Blogger.

I'm just going to list some facts that are relevant to life right now. I mean, so much has changed since November.

- I'm officially attending the University of Toronto next year, which I'm really excited about!
- I've been thinking of starting a youtube channel about book reviews. Maybe I'll figure it out when summer comes.
- Remember my zombie novel? I'm trying to finish the first draft (which I'm still working on) by January. Heh, we'll see how that goes.
- I'm seriously not okay with this font. It feels so unfamiliar.
- I've begun writing book reviews and posting them on my tumblr because I want to reach that level where publishers just send me free books to review. That would be super cool.
- There's this band called Twenty One Pilots and I love them so much that it's almost a problem.
- I kinda wanna start collecting vinyls.

So that's life, I guess. I'll keep writing soon - I promise.

anatomy

Hands:

I am a creator.

My hands are blades that carve words into wood,

brushes that splatter color on snow.

I am a healer.

My hands are solid, and they are warm, and they are the light

To take hold of when only darkness fills your grasp,

The glue that wants to hold together the cracks in your skin.

But in the seat next to you

They become alien things and I can't remember

If I've ever had hands before,

Or if they go in my pockets or in my lap or...

Eyes:

Windows to the soul?

Most seem to want their soul

To look shuttered, cold. Masked. Hidden.

No trespassing, stay out.

My mother always taught me

To look people in the eye, to find

What dwells behind. But you.

Your eyes are so sharp that my gaze glances off.

Too bright to be looked at directly.

Too real to fall on a girl who is immaterial.

Too deep to fall into with any hope of survival.

What if I want to drown?

Heart:

Excuse you. How dare you!

That thing is labeled.

I wrote my name across it in glitter glue.

And that scar down the side?

That happened in high school.

What makes you think you can just,

I don't know, swipe it?

Without my permission? And no,

The overzealous thrumming it performs whenever you're around

Does not count as permission.

Even if I were to give it to you,

Why should I subject you

To my awful gift-wrapping skills?

moving on (november 1)

you don't even seem sorry as

my eyes dissolve into two brown napkins,

the paper rough against my swollen eyelids.

you watch me, eyes earnest and

whoever said brown eyes aren't gorgeous was a liar,

because somehow you have never looked so handsome.

your hands twist, untwist,

searching for something to hold onto.

i keep mine clasped between my knees.

they can no longer be that something.
i tell you everything,

my speech interrupted

by sporadic pauses for tears and extended, sobby silences.

i will never forget how much it hurts to tell you

that i will never forget how much you mean(t) to me.

your arms around me one last time,

and i guess I'll be seeing you around,

and your face is blurry through a veil of tears, and

i turn away.

they start spilling down my cheeks like

the rain against the cafe windows.

there's this little old lady and she says,

“oh, you're leaving? can i have your table?”

and I brush past her in disgust,

which is not deeply felt because the

sadness is taking up all the space.

i sob all the way back to the car.

i wonder if you watched me leave,

your face in the window,

or if you stared down at your hands,

marveling at what they had taken apart.

you told me you would have done

anything to change things,

anything to make it right.

i would consider it if i learned

that you did not give the little old lady our table.

aardvark poetry

I've been at summer writing camp these past two weeks. One day, my poetry class was trying to write a rondelet, which is a french form poem. One guy came up with our first line: the aardvarks say. And here is the poem we wrote.

The aardvarks say

Your love is smallpox for the tribes.

The aardvarks say

Send the spaniards out to the quay

Carrying whips and sneering knives

To kill the men and steal their brides 

The aardvarks say.

From here, we went a little crazy with the aardvark themes, and now there's this running aardvark joke in my class. I am really going to miss this camp.

Here's a poem another group in my class wrote. It had to be written to a certain meter pattern:

The rain, it falls upon aardvarks

so deep with dark of night. I watch

them run in fear through the trees. Aardvarks

in the streets, in the schools, in the city, in the wild. Everywhere.

two deaths and a reunion

   (tfois fanfic)
   
    It's gotten to the point where he can't remember much. But he can see Hazel Grace. He doesn't know if she's a dream. A memory. A hallucination. 
   There she is, slouched in her chair in the literal heart of Jesus - fiddling with the cannula that's keeping her alive. She looks radiant, despite everything. Despite the drugs and the exhaustion and the lack of air. Her eyes are bright as she catches his glance, and her lips curve up into the tiniest smile. She is so beautiful.
   There she is as she sits next to him on that lonely swingset, her face solemn and lit by the light of the cloudy sky. Staring down at her lap, she's telling him to stay away, but even as the words leave her mouth, he can feel the magnetic pull between their hearts, and he knows that promising to stay away is a promise he can't make. 
   There she is when he's dying at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, only a husk of the former great Augustus. Now he is only Gus. The scared little boy with his shirt drenched in vomit. But Hazel is there, and she is only Hazel. She has never been anyone else but herself - unashamedly so. She is the Hazel who wears t-shirts with obscure Magritte references and gets sad about pathetic swing sets and is willing to drive out to recite poetry to him when he's losing himself. He may have tried to be many things, but she has only ever been Hazel, and she is more than enough.
   When death finally comes to Augustus, there is one thought - one thought directed at whatever capital S Something is waiting for him. 
   Give her more time. 

   She can't breathe.
   She hasn't been able to for a while now, but this is different. This isn't like before.
   She has always been drowning. Always struggling for air past the liquid that insisted on filling and refilling her tired lungs. She has always felt the weight of an ocean inside her, trying to drag her down into its unknown depths. 
    But there is no water now.
    Now, there is fire. 
    It licks at her chest and the smoke rises to clog her throat, to turn her screams of pain into muffled, bloody coughs. It burns unreachable places of her. For the first time in her life, she wishes that there was water enough in her lungs to make it stop. 
    And then it does.

    There is light.
    Then there is air in her lungs. Sweet, pure, cold, and real - painless. She gulps it in like it's water and she's been dying in a desert. That's what it feels like - like water soothing her cracked, dry, burned-out lungs. She finds herself on her feet and the air keeps filling her and she feels no exhaustion. It's like flying or falling, or like swallowing pure goodness.
    She takes a few steps forward and then breaks into a run. She hasn't run since she was thirteen - since before the diagnosis. And now she's racing like her feet have wings. When she stops, she doesn't have to bend over to catch her breath or to still her pounding heart. She doesn't collapse. She just stands there surrounded by whiteness as tears fall down her cheeks and as her lungs don't fail her. She feels reborn. The new and improved - 
    "Took you long enough, Hazel Grace."
    Now her breath catches. She looks up and swipes away her tears, but they only continue to gush as she considers the figure before her. Someone radiant and tall, wearing a crooked smile and tousled hair.
    "Augustus," she gasps, and then his arms are around her. She leans her face against his powerful chest and cries. He's laughing, but when she looks up at his face - God, she's missed his face so much - she can see that he's crying, too. She raises a hand and places is it on his cheek. His skin is soft and his tears wet her fingers and she can't get past the fact that he's here, right in front of her. "You're real?"
    "I'm real," he tells her. 
    "This is heaven?"
    He grins. "If ever there were a literal heart of Jesus, this would be it."
    She laughs. And then she puts a hand on her chest, so overwhelmed with joy that she almost feels lightheaded. "Gus, I can breathe. I can breathe. Look at this!" She steps away from him to spin in circles, her laughter filling the air. Just as she's about to fall over, Gus catches her, and as she's laughing in his arms he pulls up his pantleg. "Check this out, Hazel Grace." His leg is whole.
    She can't stop staring at his face. The Augustus she missed, the Augustus who left her behind - she can't believe he's here, real and warm against her skin, and without thinking she stretches up on her toes and kisses him. She doesn't have to stop and gasp for breath.
    When she breaks away, he's smiling, and he relinquishes his hold on her to drape an arm across her shoulder. "There are some people you need to meet, Hazel Grace." He looks forward, into the indeterminable whiteness, but then his eyes meet hers, and he smiles. "Okay?"
     Smiling back, she takes his hand and holds it to her chest, gazing at his fingers. Nails, skin, muscle and bone, all real and soft and holding her. She says, "Okay."
     And they step forward together into an eternity that, this time, is real.