Stems

I have been a busy person my entire life.

No, I have not always had a place I needed to go, or work that had to be done. I only went through my day-to-day encounters with the idea that everything needed to be done quickly. I must get to my next class quickly. I need to take these photos because they are needed quickly.  I would move from one project to the next, completing them frantically or not at all, in an attempt to jump to the next thing as fast as I can. As if it is an accomplishment, somehow. As if maybe I am trying to prove myself capable. Of what, I’m not sure. Life? Life is the only thing that comes to mind.

I use to glorify busy. It made me feel important, so much that I placed it into every aspect of my life. I was wrong. There is nothing glorious about rushed behaviors. It is only exhausting. Numbing. I have developed into a state where slowing down is considered both boring and dangerous, as if I will miss everything in the extra minute I take to just breathe.

I am trying to break this habit. It lacks presence.  I feel like I am not even here, or scratch that, I do not feel. Your mind is racing, your heart is racing, your body is racing, and you’re out of breath. I don’t feel. I do not remember to breathe.

It’s this busyness. This rushed pressure pushing you to get things done because you only have a short amount of time to do them, which is a lie. You have all kinds of time, and the only thing you need to do is buy milk, do the dishes, and finish your homework. Or walk down the hall, up the stairs, and into class.

I once read an article from a Colorado online magazine about grounding. In yoga, you visual the four corners of your feet meeting with the four corners of the Earth, and you hold on to that, using it to become grounded where you are.

Today I went for a walk to drop clothes off at my cousin’s. On my way back I realized how fast I was walking, as if determined, or in the process of being late. I stopped. I closed my eyes. I visualized the four corners of my feet meeting the four corners of the Earth. I remembered to slow down. I am here. I thought. I am here. I am here. 

I thought that, if I were to recreate this moment, what details would I need to know? I felt the coolness of the air biting at the tops of my cheeks, the wind curling around my fingers and hair. The sun, filtered dim through the trees, warmed nothing, but danced across the left side of my face. Small, needled branches dotted the path before me, and besides the crackling of the forest around me, the world was quiet. I walked in the middle of the road on my way home without the busyness of thought. Without busyness at all.

Authors note: The original copy of this blog post did not save properly and it took me a long time to rewrite this based on my faulty memory. I almost decided not to post, but I did. I just thought it was important to point out that the words you just read, or are currently reading and you decided to skip down from, had more potential. I might come back and edit this later. I hope I do because the beginning of this disgusts me, but oh well. Computers for you, eh? (Too Canadian?)

 

 

Leaves

This past Saturday, I was taking pictures for my high school’s prom when I was suddenly overwhelmed with the bizarre feeling of seeing yourself in the future.

I mean, that’s a normal thing for a 16 year-old to feel, right?

The odd thing about it to me though, was that graduation, college, life, was always just something people told you was going to happen.  It was just like when people tell you that one day you will turn 40, or one day you will have kids of your own, or that your parents have decided to save up and take a trip to Florida in four years. You know it is going to happen eventually, but right now?

Right now I am looking back at sixth-grade me who was so excited when she was told she was halfway done, and now thinking how close I am to actually being done.

Am I using italics too much?

It’s just, we are getting to the point where the people that we know, and the people that we hang out with and are friends with, are leaving. They are graduating from our small high school where everybody knows what everybody did last night, to move on to bigger and better cities with bigger and better things, and that’s slightly terrifying. Because, to be honest, I don’t think it’s the jobs, or the bills, or the living on our own that scares us; it’s the thought of losing people. You take a small group of 25 kids who have seen each other for 13 years and you send them away, what are the odds of them seeing each other again? We are scared of being forgotten; of becoming unrecognizable to those we hoped we knew, of becoming another stranger’s face in a line up, or worse, forgetting about the people you promised yourself you never would, or being left behind by those who told you long ago that they were there to stay.

And that’s who we are right now.

I will be starting my Junior year in September, and a person who has always been a rather large part of my life is already fundraising for the expenses Senior year brings. This upcoming year will be filled with “lasts,” and they aren’t even mine yet. They will just be the last times with her, and then they will just be the last times.

And part of me is sad about that. Part of me actually doesn’t want all of this to end, which is ironic considering how much there is outside of this little town waiting for me, and how I am convinced atmospheres condense overtime and this one was overdue four years ago, but people affect people overtime too. And no matter how much it kills me to admit, maybe it is the people that part of me doesn’t want to leave.

 

 

 

Seeds

I’ve never been good with titles.

I’m not going to apologize for it though. The only thing I will apologize for is the sticky “n” button on my keyboard, making all of my names, ames, my an’s, a’s, my notifications, otificatios. The frustrating thing about it is not only the noise that seems to be consistent and much louder than maybe it would of been if I was not sleep deprived, but the rhythm of my typing is off, and that is one of the only reasons I like to write on a computer screen. Instead of “tap, tap, tap, tap,” it is now, “tap, tap, SMACK, tap,”. The loudness of my words matching the loudness of the house around me. Fitting.

I have just recently come home from taking some workshops at WFNB’s WordSpring, which is why I was suddenly filled with the notation of creating this blog. It’s hip. It’s fun. It’s cool. It will make wearing my, “I am not a Blogger”, T-shirt an act of rebellion. I’ve had the idea to do this for a while but never took it any farther than an idea due to my serious condition of procrastination and laziness, but Chris Mackay quickly changed that (about this particular thing anyway).

Chris brought a workshop entitled, “Websites for Writers”, which I honestly only attended because the other option was the part two to a part one, which I had chosen not to go to. At first I was a little intrigued, thinking the workshop would be about websites that help you to improve your writing, or communities in which you can post them. I was wrong, of course, which I discovered when I actually did the thing that writers do most, which was to sit down and read about it. It turned out that what Chris was really doing was teaching us how to use WordPress to promote ourselves as writers, or to just have a place to post our ramblings, prose and poems, so it’s at least out there, out here, for strangers to see. At first I was slightly disappointed, as one usually is when they find out they were wrong, but my curiosity still thrived. I knew the mechanics of making your own website was generally easy, but to have a fellow artist show you just how easy it is? It was inspiring and interesting and exciting, and that was yesterday and now I’m here.

So, where did Rotted Apple come from? I’ve already told you that I’m terrible at titles and ‘ames, so while looking through some photos that would soon become header nominees, I happened upon one that I took of an apple tree in early December with all of it’s apples still securely attached. I had always liked that photo with its layers and subtlety, and so Rotted Apple was born, or planted, so to speak. At first it was Rotten Apple, but sadly that domain was taken, as was Rotten Apples and Rotted Apples, because apparently I am not a very original person.

I’m slightly curious as to what those websites are about though, so I’m going to link them because this could be fun.

…

Update: How immensely disappointing.