I let myself believe that it was hopeless, that the rut of all ruts bestowed upon me... on a very special day. I woke up freezing and lonely and breakfast felt like death.
I turned on The Sugarcubes and New Wave and looked at every item of clothing that had gathered on my floor. I have tons and tons of gorgeous dresses. Material that is lighter than layers of skin, fabric that feels like milk running through my fingers. It made me realize that life can be beautiful, even for a moment. I threw myself down onto my white and aqua sheets and counted my breaths as a chilly breeze swam through the window and combed my hair.
It was then that my lover called me, and I felt my eyes stop burning and start lighting up like a child's. I realized that I do not need dependence, nor do I need to thrive on the loathing of people. People that are so much like me.

Last night my love and I sunk into the depths of our friend's basement where orgies and laughter set the night in stone. It has been exactly one year with him, and I cannot think of a better way to celebrate than to completely lose my mind and ball my eyes out... then to turn it all around and watch the craziest and most illuminated night unfold.
My emotions have been buzzing around me at lightning speed, but I think I have finally found the answer.
Step back and observe the canvas of life instead of thirsting for it.
Moments will come to you and I, and we all must learn to seek the beauty in them.
Dwelling on what we lack will not lead us any closer to the treasure.
Finding life's gem, accidentally, is what the hunt is all about.

b.

For right now, my surroundings are too beautiful to keep stored in my brain.
As of right now, I am capturing them and all that I see.

You can catch my photo blog at oh_nebula.

Yours,
Brittany.

From my view, the snow is white and blinding. Nothing but Donner Party landscapes and blank neon patterns holding still. A small black cat is the juxtaposition crawling low between little glaciers of bluish snow. When the white powder piles higher and higher onto the ground, I find it oddly comforting the way this can have a double meaning. When snow fills the concrete and the streets and the phantom grass, I feel lonely like a child feels when she can't find her mother in a crowded department store.
I feel lost and hopeless in a drunk debutant kind of way. I know that the world I see before me is new, exciting, and overflowing with opportunity for me, the wayward kid on the brink of adulthood.
But still I feel sad, and I cannot place the reasons why. When I dig into my Freud-found parts, I think that maybe I am scared. Nervous about the future and second guessing my instinct.
I never thought I would find comfort in a person, a grotesque notion I have always loathed.
I never thought I would feel so completely taken aback by the way a person moves and speaks and blinks. But I do, and this troubles me. It is will be so hard to be away from them. As days collect, the connection strengthens, and it seems like we will be living together and exploring together so soon.
Then I rewind the tape and remember that I will be flying, and they will remain stagnant in their suburban home. This makes me sad for him, and grossly sad for myself.
I considered staying in this state for a year and waiting for him to finish high school. I know it sounds terrible to hinder myself of living in my dreamland, but I know these dreams will be diminished the first time I pass hipsters and Louis Vuitton-clad mommies. I will grow to loathe the city I love based only on history.
So why not stay for one short year? Get my feet wet in the waters of Liberal Arts, then learn to swim in the city which will act as my safe, solemn womb. I may consider Oberlin for that test run. I have to decide.
I do not want to stay in the buckeye state where my family resides in their comfortable, safe environment. I do not want to become as ignorant and neglectful as they have become.
But if it means waiting for what is good to me now, maybe I will. Then again, maybe I will become tough and reclusive in another place. It is a paradox that I need to unwind so that I can live my life and remember who I am.

I can't help but feel empty after being so full up. It all comes as a rush, its vibrancy blinding me and making my teeth show. After it's over and no one is home, the colors become basic and my body is just another piece of furniture. I can dance with the most poignant of form and I know how to close my eyes and sink into everything I am feeling. I can sit alone with my thoughts, my memories, my dreams for later. Yet I still feel cold and tired and incomplete. Where is my missing piece, and why was it taken from me? I have always been whole, I have always been the complete picture. But I have lost a fragment somewhere along the way, somewhere amidst the streets I walk along everyday.
I think this is what it means to finally be open, to finally let someone slip in and make you feel something. Every time I am with him I forget about what is happening outside in the war zone. I swim into my sheets and I smile up to the forgotten light and I don't want to leave and I can't leave. I blink days later and realize that I have progressed into the future, and I am bombarded with concerns I give no thought to. All I care about is being irresponsible and naive, and I can't seem to put any thought into 2+2 or je m'appelle horrible.

I was the girl in the front row of the ska band, the girl changing her shirt in public, the girl not caring that her mom was sleeping downstairs. It was all in one day, and days like this are a beautiful whir and it's a harsh, harsh comedown when it's all said and done.
So I sit, waiting for the next time I can throw the world away like sad words on a ball of paper. I wait for the next time I can stop walking around with him trying not to let my magnetic limbs go where they whisper they want to go.



I am not used to being in such a good place.

It is difficult for me to think of things I am thankful for, because I am convinced I could fill up an entire volume. At the same time I would be staring blankly in my own eyes searching for suggestions. When I look outside, I am searching. The sky was white as snow, gray as smoke. There is smoke swirling to the sky like we are all seeking for spirits. Snow is stuck like crystal leeches on automobiles in the city. The ground is covered with a neon orange of leaves falling from trees I've been convinced were dying. Funny how things come alive.
Music has been flooding my ears, wreaking havoc on the parts of me that wish to hum in silence. I am serenaded by everything and it is so perfect. I've given up on others, and I've taken in some like they are candy and I have lost it.

I'm glad I am spinning around in the fresh air again. For a second I thought I'd gone crazy.

I was published in the November '07 issue of Teen Ink.
You can read the published review HERE.

It isn't difficult to escape the wind when you build up a sturdy cuccoon of objects. Films, books, and music rest in stacks on the cool floor of my bedroom. I want to experience everything. I want to fall in love with something again.
I have been so busy, I almost feel like I am a different person. I tag along with this girl, this strange girl who has joined clubs and goes to the same coffee shop everyday, and I feel like I am caught there; chained to her feet and growing very tired. Not to mention burdensome. But this is me, and these are the two shades of my mind lately. Last year it was so easy to avoid everyone and read a book a day. It was so easy to sit home and think about history and Kant and finches if I wanted to. It's more difficult now.
I learn so much, and I want to keep it all in, I want to really enjoy it. But the passion is slipping as papers pile in front of me and my novels get hidden under carbon copies of the same lost dream.

However, I have grown in some ways, as I write so much more that isn't a foul-smelling rambling that spills from nowhere. I write fiction, I write reviews, and I write essays that mean something to me. I feel my voice shaping and my opinions breaking through the chrysalis.
Newspaper has helped me in some ways, giving me a real medium to and a real deadline to spill out something genuine. I suppose it's nice to hear people who've read your article. Not that the notoriety is something I can say I wish to have. But recognition is often the kick one needs to jump a bit higher.

I have been trying to get out more, and I don't just mean from school to work and all places in between. I gave in and started in-car, so hopefully I can finally be alone for a while to finish all that I've started. I really feel my life narrowing into the size of a cubicle or a panic room. I really wish I could spread my wings outside of this little bubble. I need to meet more people, maybe.

Well at any rate, a few exciting things have happened, so it isn't all a standard teenage sigh.
I became Vice President of Students Active For The Environment, which I am excited about.
A Halloween story I wrote might get in the school paper with a few others, but I'm not entirely sure yet, so I'm not counting on it. I do, however, have to produce a drawing that goes with it. Should be interesting.

Oh, and... I met Amy Sedaris!!


( More Pics From Amy's Visit to Akron! )

She gave me a free magic fairy wand, told me she liked my hair, and signed her book for me. It was fantastic!

( Assorted Pictures of Ma Vie... )

Tomorrow means:
PSAT
Book Sale @ library
Video sale @ Hollywood Video
Thrift store (for Halloween costumes)
One week until my party!

-Brittany.

The weather is getting colder, the way it feels when everything I experience blends together in this snowglobe of time I wish I didn't lose. My bedroom lies at the highest point in my house, and when the wind blows it circles in and out of each window freezing the wooden floors and planting a perfume of maple and pine all throughout. The season brings back time I'd like to forget, but in a sense I wish I could remember so deeply. Last year was a time of firsts, which lead to the Spring of lasts. I wonder if the burnt colors and open air will spark a year that is entirely new for me.
I can't say that I've grown in my Junior year, but perhaps the aspect of growth is something that can only be observed through reflection. For one thing, I haven't been this happy in a while. It's nice to realize that the ghosts of pale days have crept back to their place in my imagination, and I can live my life without the burden of some space in my brain creeping back up to spread its virus in the present.

There's something about Fall that makes me feel this way. It's often difficult to explain, the way feeling mesmerized is hard to explain. Working at the library has been great, and I've been putting so many items on hold that I've been waiting to experience. Walking around my neighborhood with the wind secreting the first scent of snow, listening to so much music. Polaris and R.E.M. define my kind of autumn.

The pumpkins have been places out on lawns... one of my favorite things to see. I don't know if it's childhood crawling back into my psyche again, but I get this christmas type of feeling when I see gourds and orange dots speckling the town. I smell rain and cider and something just triggers this instinct to leave my house and feel nature all over my skin and in my lungs.

I walked through Artapalooza last weekend, running my hands through stained glass shaped like jellyfish and feathers. Letting my eyes catch the rays reflected on the icy water of the pond in the center of the market. It felt like a trail I would find when I was small... maybe searching for ghosts inside hollow trees or in a thousand buried jars. I had an imagination then. Perhaps it comes back to find me when the sun goes down and the earth becomes so cold.





Next week should be good...
+The Office season 4 premiere
+Hayride
+Hike with Environment club
+The Melvins concert

B.

It's hard to believe that things can change, they can mirror themselves as perfectly as matter but they are a parallel almost blinding to what makes you feel.
I can't believe how happy I've been inside of this completely normal jar. I am in a relationship that keeps going up and up like a swirling rocket or a note written on a balloon. There is something that is so different to me- no emotional meltdowns (from either party), no uncomfortable breaks in conversation or activity. No tension in the darkroom because I need the attention I'm not getting. Everything is just.. good. It's foreign but it makes me feel human, and I suppose that's what matters.

School has started, I've been aware that this is the year that matters, and I've been using my energy to experience, and not just to let words and time sink into me like a wall of absorption. I've been speaking up, offering opinions, and reading too many books. My classes are perfect for what interests me and what I am willing to take in.
I walk to work from school, so it's like this story book I can pull out from the depths of my memory.

I can't believe I'm joining clubs, have a boyfriend, and have a job I love at the library. This is like a shitty teenage series. I can't believe I like it so much.

Last night I went to the football game with Dylan (we'll call this book #8) which was a lot different than in middle school. I didn't feel this colorful blast of endorphins, but I didn't feel like the concrete the entire suburb walked upon. I just felt each step and each person I met and it was just really good. A new perspective on an old past time.
I saw someone from my past I don't care about anymore, who is dating/dated my neighbor, and I just avoided all of that. Instead I convinced a group of people I just met to walk over to the dark playground to swing.
It was a lot of fun, I met a really cool girl, and the grass was much longer than the city prefers. Something I appreciate.



( + PEOPLE PICTURES )

Cool blues
The rain gathered in tiny jars,
the ocean's everyday song,
his hands along the cellar walls.
She is sapphire
Eyes heavy like smoke
burning their fire to create
ashy nothings which fuel the music.
Dreams gathered in seams
Folded like paper cranes
in the blue atmosphere.
She is not alone.
Sisters dance in the moonlight,
their celestial fire haunting midnight.
Aquamarine and alice
the goddess waits by her madness.
Diamonds pool around the dust
of her gray eyes.
Sisters chime their serenade
gazing at life's tricky hand.
The royal fog of cloudy days
exposes blue dances
which crown their mermaid figures.
Forever gypsy hymns
Chime through our perception.

-Brittany.

PS: I created a journal to tie in with this one, a less inspired log of my days through pictures and basic thoughts.
Feel free to add it if you are interested in my lame life:
mothmoth

What a whirlwind of a week!
I spent six days at an Honors Institute Workshop for Creative Writing at BGSU, and I feel so refreshed, experienced, and eager to keep learning. My entire world was college for this week. Finally I was able to walk around an inspiring town to my classes, passing sunflowers and jade-colored trees as I made my way past each beautiful building.
I learned so much, wrote some interesting things, and met some amazing people.
I was pleased that I finally got the chance to interact with pretty girls who only talk about interesting things like books and school. I thought those kinds of females only existed on Gilmore Girls or in books I've read. It was refreshing to meet people of value and intelligence.

It's difficult for me to explain my experience in great detail, so here are some pictures...


( *PHOTO-JOURNAL OF BGSU* )


It feels comforting to be home after so much excitement
and exertion of the mind and feet.
I was constantly tired,

but never felt depressed or on edge.
It was such a relief to interact with such interesting people and places.