clydesbetterhalf sent in this note yesterday:
I am making my first financial contribution to a political campaign tonight. This is a big decision for me, both as I am casting my faith in President Obama in a significant way, and also financially.
I was raised in what is considered to be the very low middle class, until my parents divorced as a teenager. Since then, my mom, sister, brother and I have been living the life of the working poor, just missing the income line qualifying for food stamps, relying on HEAP to get us through the cold New York winters, barely scraping by month to month. Going to college because of the faith and belief of Scholarship committees and federal grants and loans.
My mom worked hard, raising us as a stay at home mom. Leaving my father was particularly difficult because of our financial dependence on him. But she did. And now she works hard as a Head Start teacher, bringing hope and education to many families in similar and far worse situations to ours.
She wants to gift these children with equal footing to start kindergarten as their middle and upper class counterparts.
I am 20 and in college, about to vote in my first presidential election. Giving monetary support is a big deal for me, since I never spend on “non essentials.”
But here’s the thing: I don’t view this contribution as non essential. It is as essential as my college education, as my food, as my apartment. Because it will hopefully help the campaign of a politician I believe in. Someone I trust to stand up for my rights as a young woman, as a student, and as an aspiring teacher.
I believe that President Obama needs these 4 more years to continue fighting for woman like my mother, for students like my sister and brother, and for children like my mom’s Head Start kids. I will do anything in my financial and personal power to help him get those years.
Amen, and thank you, so much.
tell stories with me,
little girl.
open your hands wide
and show the world
all the colors that
make up
marvelous you.spread the redness
of solid ground,
the orangey hues
of a harmonious dawn.
sing out the yellow
of your inner sunshine
and the green blades
of fresh grass
that grow deep in…
Here are Vonnegut’s eight rules for writing a short story:
- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
- Be willing to break the rules.
(Source: maskofreason.wordpress.com, via deadchinadoll)
this town lives in expectation;
the sky never sets
an apple topples in the grocery store to savor the fall
a girl muddies her hands in the creek, because one day the compulsion
to keep them clear will be second nature
easy as breathing
like sleep amongst the crickets
when she turns twelve she waits for soft, pert breasts
fuller hips and wiser lips and an easy walk
when she turns eighteen she waits for the name on her wrists
like butterflies inked with best intentions
but the name is not what she expected.
her dreams carry the undercurrent of waterfall like
the most pleasant way to drown,
and she tries to paint over the letters with flesh tones and marker hearts
and she tries to wrap them with gauze and feign lesser injuries
and she tries to cut them out one drowning night
but
they spun themselves back into place
and she peers at them through the heavy water
and the lines coalesce into the bricks of a labyrinth
hers.
when she turns nineteen she tries for an odyssey
she scales the fence and pretends it is Everest
she cannot decide if she is the sword or the stone,
the long-haired maiden in a tower of her own creation.
better keep quiet
the devils do not
want you to speak.
subliminal hypnotic
messages coiled around
the fragments of your
favorite movie scenes,
encoding, collecting, dispensing
jailing your amygdala,
messages designed to stick to
the walls of your medial temporal lobes,
planting
false alarm bugs to
crawl into the heart
of your hypothalamus,
pump up the fear
until you
give them
what they want.
(Source: fckyeaharthistory, via fabricscraps)
OUR PORN IS SAFE is literally what i said when i found out
(another anonymous ficlet—non-smutty)
aaron wanders the streets of paris. it’s early january and bitterly cold. parisians and the few tourists bustle indoors to escape the night air and the falling snow, aaron moves through the dark streets without aim or purpose. he knows he should go back to the hotel, he knows he should be sipping a cocktail and having a cigar while room service brings him a hot meal. he knows this, but he doesn’t want to. he’d rather walk. tonight, he’d rather be cold and alone than warm and alone.
he finds himself crossing yet another bridge and heading straight for notre dame. a bit of music filters out from a café, some old song that he knew once upon a time. something sung to him once in perfect french. something that stops him in his tracks as the snowflakes dot his black coat and his glasses fog. he hums along, so quietly that barely a soul would be able to hear.
“you always were tone-deaf.”
aaron feels an elbow graze his own. his eyes stay on the café.
“at least it made you laugh.”
he hears the soft chuckle that makes his heart skip.
“quite true. you’ve always been good at that.”
aaron turns to face his fair-haired companion. alex’s grin is absolutely infectious.
“ah, there you go!” he nods at aaron’s half smile. “knew i could get that out of you.”
“so cocky.”
“and you should know from experience.”
aaron shakes his head.
“what are you doing here, anyway?”
“i’m not allowed to visit?
“i didn’t think you’d follow me.”
“well…it was about time i did.”
alex glances at the café, his head swaying for a moment to the tune.
“remember this one?”
“of course.”
alex grins again. “and the words?”
aaron rolls his eyes. “you don’t need to remind me that your french is better than m—”
“tais-toi, mon amour.”
alex tugs aaron to him, wrapping one arm around his waist, taking aaron’s hand in his free one, holding it to his body.
“allons-nous danser?”
aaron lets alex lead, resting his head on his shoulder, letting his cold, tired body warm in alex’s arms.
“and who would have thought,” he mumbles into alex’s coat, “with all your neuroses, with all my calm, that you would be the one to relax me?”
“la vie n’est pas tous les orages.”
“hmm?”
“life isn’t all thunderstorms, aaron.”
“hmm.”
he closes his eyes, breathing in the familiar scent of cinnamon and ginger, with a hint of butter (“did you stop at a bakery before finding me?” “…yes, but i left the pastries in the hotel for later.”), holding on for dear life, as alex sings the final strains of the song:
et dès que je l’aperçois
alors je sens en moi
mon coeur qui bat——————————————-
oh my actual god.
…….anon, this was absolutely flawless.
Overheard Statements to Toddlers
Stop that. Come here. I love you.
No, that isn’t for babies. Shut up.
You can’t have any of this. Stop asking.
Mommy needs to wake up. Mommy needs
this coffee. You need to shut the hell up
before I make you. Come here. I love you.
Don’t touch that. What’s your problem?
Who the fuck do you think you are?- Sierra DeMulder
not dna.
not your father’s crisp color copies; not your mother’s favorite apron.
nothing physical. not soft pencil shavings where lead hides its toxicity.
[it could never hide from you
nor you it. but n o r y o u i t
… exactly that!] letters. not a dress code or a birth certificate
but twenty-six axioms. not rational.
not grammaticallycorrectwellresearchedthoughtprovoking.
not dna. not schoolsconnectionssuccessmeasuredinlinedpockets.
nothing but truths made so in their creation.
Gary Provost (via qmsd)
This might be my favourite quote on writing ever.
(via bdoing)
(via greaterandmoreterrible)
