Vivid Memories
A Memory, In Three Parts.
The immediate reaction, was that the cake wasn’t sweet enough.
On a rather picturesque day, with blue sky, shining sun, just enough greenery and all that other beautiful nonsense, a tea party took place.
From a distance you might be confused and think that the guests were merely two young girls, but on closer inspection, you would most likely realize they were princesses or duchesses or some other members of higher class.
In any event, they were girls nonetheless, although their finery would prove them anything but ordinary, and they sat together at a small wooden table to enjoy a tea party, prepared by the young red head.
What would we call this little red head? Perhaps she would call herself ‘Silvetta’ or ‘Crystal’, something along those lines. But this girl was more like the earth than the gems within it.
Her name was Cypress, like the tree that lives in the swamps.
Cypress had made the cake just the day before, with the help of her father. She had actually followed a recipe this time, unlike the last two or three times she’d tried to make cake. Cypress had already formed a style of cooking that she would probably end up using, in one way or another, for the rest of her life. The sophisticated way of explaining her method was she chose ingredients and measurements based on her interpretations of what they should be. The simple way to explain it was that she guessed.
It would appear she took after her father in that manor.
“It’s not sweet enough I guess.”
“Not really...” Her friend Lola sipped her tea and added another spoonful of sugar to it.
“Should we put extra sugar on top?”
“That would be lovely.”
Smiling, they took spoonfuls of sugar and topped the sour yellow pound cake with the sparkling sugar crystals. They never even ate much of the cake, mostly just the sugar on top. The inside of the cake was mostly inedible because of the frequent baking soda clumps, which was often a problem of Cypress’s, and apparently her father too.
They must have been ten or younger, two normal girls, who were really regal young women, who could and would do anything. Except eat something that wasn’t sweet.
After all, when you’re ten, what is it that sugar can’t fix?
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“Now, I give you fair warning, either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice!” My voice was loud and commanding as I commanded the Cheshire cat to remove his head, but still a bit more shrill than necessary.
I couldn’t help it, I was nervous. Yes even I, who almost never forgot her lines, who knew almost the entire play by heart, who was just loud enough and easily got into character, was nervous. It wasn’t my ability that was the problem, it was the eyes I felt on me, the moments of silence when I couldn’t determine what the audience was feeling, the lights that blinded me as I tried to cross the stage.
But nervousness, in a play at least, is as one might say, all part of the fun. No one is not nervous standing before all those people, be there 20 of them, or 200 of them. Each one is watching you, judging you, depending on you for entertainment. It doesn’t matter if you’re usually the loud kid, the class clown, up on that stage, you’re not that person at all. Even if your character is much like yourself, it doesn’t matter. You’re terrified.
My twelve year old self was plenty terrified, even as she walked the haughty walk of the Queen of hearts. And yet, despite that, I was confident. The Queen of hearts was a role that suited me perfectly, unlike the role of Mrs. Darling in Peter Pan which I would play a year or two later and sicken me thoroughly with her candy-like sweetness and angelic motherliness. The Queen of hearts was evil, or at least she is the villain of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And yet, when you think about her character more deeply, what she really is, is selfish and overly self confident. While I would never consider myself to the extremes of the Queen of hearts, those were traits I had at that age and younger.
You see, even as that audience scared me to self consciousness, I was extremely self confident. I couldn’t help but feel, that I was the best actress on stage. (Note that actors hardly count as there were about three of them. Drama clubs of today are often much the opposite from Shakespeare's day.) Naturally, though, I was wrong. I was not the best actress or actor on that stage.
There was no best actor.
But it would take a few years for me to really understand this.
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Waking in the familiar yet unfamiliar room, I tried to smile.
I shifted a little, on the think mattress, trying to pull the blankets around me more so as to retain warmth. Through my blurry eyes I could see my friends Maddy and Kassandra towards the other side of the make shift bed.
I rubbed my eyes, not to improve my vision, but to get the water out of my eyes. I’m pretty sure I inherited the eye watering thing from my dad. My dad who now lives in Hawaii. Halfway across the world...huh?
It always confused me how little I felt. Often I forgot I had a dad. That sounds terrible, but it’s not. It’s more like giving something up, rather than losing someone. Like giving up one sport for another. (As if I’d ever play sports in the first place.) It just means you’ve chosen a specific path in life, and to take it, you have to give up something that was in your life before. I respect his path, it means a lot to him. So what was my path? I had many ideas, but no answers.
I rubbed my eyes again, annoyed at myself. As I grew older, I started to dislike my habit about thinking in depth. I had no trouble figuring out everything about myself, and thinking about nothing other than my feelings for hours on end. I am an internal being, and I disliked that about myself.
I wanted to have fun, fall in love, and have a simple happy life, not spend hours thinking about why I used to have such self confidence and then suddenly lost it all. But I couldn’t help it. I was simultaneously fascinated and disgusted with my own complexity.
That might have been why I often found obsessions to be the most important things in my life. As a child, my make believe games, princesses, tea parties, and whatnot. Then my friends introduced me to anime (Japanese cartoons) which was the beginning of a new world. As a group, we fell in love with the idea of Alice in Wonderland. It ended up inspiring us enough to write our own play of it. One of our greatest moments, in many ways. I continued to switch from story to idea to theme, and my obsessions never ended. As long as there was an interest, I had something to think about besides myself.
I rolled over a little and thought about trying to fall asleep again.
“Girls, time to wake up.” Lisa, Kassandra and Maddy’s mother called to us with a voice I was very used to. Just like the room. Familiar, but foreign.
They shifted under the covers and I sat up. My bare arms felt cold but I continued to make myself smile. I don’t know when it was that I realized, but through various accounts I’ve discovered how expressionless I’ve seemed to many people. So it’s become a habit to remind myself to smile. Sadly, it hardly seems to do much good. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been called out on for looking blank, or even grumpy at high school. (Not that the 14 year old me waking up at the Morse’s would know much about high school. Yet.)
“Good morning.” I say to Maddy as she sits up also.
She’s a bit late in responding, as most of my friends seem to be, but she replies, “Morning.” with a light yawn.
We start to get up and collect our clothes to get dressed for the day. As usual, I’m faster than both of them. Probably because my outfit was picked out yesterday and is already prepared for me, but my skewed perception confuses me and I don’t yet come to this conclusion.
Maddy and I start giggling about something as we continue waking up and we follow the ever responsible Kassandra upstairs to make lunch together.
Before long, we were all packed into the Morse’s car, chattering away as we headed down the hill to meet the O’Conners, a family who mirrored the Morses and were great friends with them as well. At the time, I was only semi-friends with them, but we would grow at least a little closer in the future.
When we reached the village, and had our little reunion, (Or rather they had their reunion. They went into a hug frenzy, and there was just me, off to the side, trying to pretend the sky was reeeaaally fascinating.) We took a photo together. All us kids, in a line, on the O’Connor’s lawn, smiling in a pained sort of way as the adults took photo after photo.
That photo would later come to haunt me, as most of my photos would, but in some ways, I still appreciate it.
It wasn’t a bad way to remember my first day of high school.
I can still remember the feeling of running, with my backpack thudding against my back, to the school I planned to spend my next four years at, though I don’t remember much of what actually happened on that day.
I went to that school to learn. But not to learn about Algebra, or Physics, or History, or how to write a decent essay. I went to learn how to be social, to learn how people normally learn, to learn what people would want from me in the future.
I’ve probably got only a half credit in being social, but at least a full credit in normal learning studies and probably another in what will be expected of me in the future. It’s a start. And there’s a lot more to learn. Beyond the lesson plans, beyond the homework assignments, beyond the tests. There’s so much to learn, about my future, my present, even my past. And beyond me, about others. About what it means to be them and how they are different from me.
Even when I’m wishing I were anywhere but the class room, even when the assignment in front of me is pointless, even when I don’t understand what I’m being taught, I’m learning. Maybe not always the way teachers want me to, but that’s just life. Some times a lesson will connect and I’ll learn something, because I actually care. And sometimes it doesn’t work. And instead I learn about something more to my interests on my own. Life is education, but life is not school. School is only one part of life.
But like every other moment of life, it is the pinnacle of the future.
The immediate reaction, was that the cake wasn’t sweet enough.
On a rather picturesque day, with blue sky, shining sun, just enough greenery and all that other beautiful nonsense, a tea party took place.
From a distance you might be confused and think that the guests were merely two young girls, but on closer inspection, you would most likely realize they were princesses or duchesses or some other members of higher class.
In any event, they were girls nonetheless, although their finery would prove them anything but ordinary, and they sat together at a small wooden table to enjoy a tea party, prepared by the young red head.
What would we call this little red head? Perhaps she would call herself ‘Silvetta’ or ‘Crystal’, something along those lines. But this girl was more like the earth than the gems within it.
Her name was Cypress, like the tree that lives in the swamps.
Cypress had made the cake just the day before, with the help of her father. She had actually followed a recipe this time, unlike the last two or three times she’d tried to make cake. Cypress had already formed a style of cooking that she would probably end up using, in one way or another, for the rest of her life. The sophisticated way of explaining her method was she chose ingredients and measurements based on her interpretations of what they should be. The simple way to explain it was that she guessed.
It would appear she took after her father in that manor.
“It’s not sweet enough I guess.”
“Not really...” Her friend Lola sipped her tea and added another spoonful of sugar to it.
“Should we put extra sugar on top?”
“That would be lovely.”
Smiling, they took spoonfuls of sugar and topped the sour yellow pound cake with the sparkling sugar crystals. They never even ate much of the cake, mostly just the sugar on top. The inside of the cake was mostly inedible because of the frequent baking soda clumps, which was often a problem of Cypress’s, and apparently her father too.
They must have been ten or younger, two normal girls, who were really regal young women, who could and would do anything. Except eat something that wasn’t sweet.
After all, when you’re ten, what is it that sugar can’t fix?
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“Now, I give you fair warning, either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice!” My voice was loud and commanding as I commanded the Cheshire cat to remove his head, but still a bit more shrill than necessary.
I couldn’t help it, I was nervous. Yes even I, who almost never forgot her lines, who knew almost the entire play by heart, who was just loud enough and easily got into character, was nervous. It wasn’t my ability that was the problem, it was the eyes I felt on me, the moments of silence when I couldn’t determine what the audience was feeling, the lights that blinded me as I tried to cross the stage.
But nervousness, in a play at least, is as one might say, all part of the fun. No one is not nervous standing before all those people, be there 20 of them, or 200 of them. Each one is watching you, judging you, depending on you for entertainment. It doesn’t matter if you’re usually the loud kid, the class clown, up on that stage, you’re not that person at all. Even if your character is much like yourself, it doesn’t matter. You’re terrified.
My twelve year old self was plenty terrified, even as she walked the haughty walk of the Queen of hearts. And yet, despite that, I was confident. The Queen of hearts was a role that suited me perfectly, unlike the role of Mrs. Darling in Peter Pan which I would play a year or two later and sicken me thoroughly with her candy-like sweetness and angelic motherliness. The Queen of hearts was evil, or at least she is the villain of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And yet, when you think about her character more deeply, what she really is, is selfish and overly self confident. While I would never consider myself to the extremes of the Queen of hearts, those were traits I had at that age and younger.
You see, even as that audience scared me to self consciousness, I was extremely self confident. I couldn’t help but feel, that I was the best actress on stage. (Note that actors hardly count as there were about three of them. Drama clubs of today are often much the opposite from Shakespeare's day.) Naturally, though, I was wrong. I was not the best actress or actor on that stage.
There was no best actor.
But it would take a few years for me to really understand this.
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Waking in the familiar yet unfamiliar room, I tried to smile.
I shifted a little, on the think mattress, trying to pull the blankets around me more so as to retain warmth. Through my blurry eyes I could see my friends Maddy and Kassandra towards the other side of the make shift bed.
I rubbed my eyes, not to improve my vision, but to get the water out of my eyes. I’m pretty sure I inherited the eye watering thing from my dad. My dad who now lives in Hawaii. Halfway across the world...huh?
It always confused me how little I felt. Often I forgot I had a dad. That sounds terrible, but it’s not. It’s more like giving something up, rather than losing someone. Like giving up one sport for another. (As if I’d ever play sports in the first place.) It just means you’ve chosen a specific path in life, and to take it, you have to give up something that was in your life before. I respect his path, it means a lot to him. So what was my path? I had many ideas, but no answers.
I rubbed my eyes again, annoyed at myself. As I grew older, I started to dislike my habit about thinking in depth. I had no trouble figuring out everything about myself, and thinking about nothing other than my feelings for hours on end. I am an internal being, and I disliked that about myself.
I wanted to have fun, fall in love, and have a simple happy life, not spend hours thinking about why I used to have such self confidence and then suddenly lost it all. But I couldn’t help it. I was simultaneously fascinated and disgusted with my own complexity.
That might have been why I often found obsessions to be the most important things in my life. As a child, my make believe games, princesses, tea parties, and whatnot. Then my friends introduced me to anime (Japanese cartoons) which was the beginning of a new world. As a group, we fell in love with the idea of Alice in Wonderland. It ended up inspiring us enough to write our own play of it. One of our greatest moments, in many ways. I continued to switch from story to idea to theme, and my obsessions never ended. As long as there was an interest, I had something to think about besides myself.
I rolled over a little and thought about trying to fall asleep again.
“Girls, time to wake up.” Lisa, Kassandra and Maddy’s mother called to us with a voice I was very used to. Just like the room. Familiar, but foreign.
They shifted under the covers and I sat up. My bare arms felt cold but I continued to make myself smile. I don’t know when it was that I realized, but through various accounts I’ve discovered how expressionless I’ve seemed to many people. So it’s become a habit to remind myself to smile. Sadly, it hardly seems to do much good. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been called out on for looking blank, or even grumpy at high school. (Not that the 14 year old me waking up at the Morse’s would know much about high school. Yet.)
“Good morning.” I say to Maddy as she sits up also.
She’s a bit late in responding, as most of my friends seem to be, but she replies, “Morning.” with a light yawn.
We start to get up and collect our clothes to get dressed for the day. As usual, I’m faster than both of them. Probably because my outfit was picked out yesterday and is already prepared for me, but my skewed perception confuses me and I don’t yet come to this conclusion.
Maddy and I start giggling about something as we continue waking up and we follow the ever responsible Kassandra upstairs to make lunch together.
Before long, we were all packed into the Morse’s car, chattering away as we headed down the hill to meet the O’Conners, a family who mirrored the Morses and were great friends with them as well. At the time, I was only semi-friends with them, but we would grow at least a little closer in the future.
When we reached the village, and had our little reunion, (Or rather they had their reunion. They went into a hug frenzy, and there was just me, off to the side, trying to pretend the sky was reeeaaally fascinating.) We took a photo together. All us kids, in a line, on the O’Connor’s lawn, smiling in a pained sort of way as the adults took photo after photo.
That photo would later come to haunt me, as most of my photos would, but in some ways, I still appreciate it.
It wasn’t a bad way to remember my first day of high school.
I can still remember the feeling of running, with my backpack thudding against my back, to the school I planned to spend my next four years at, though I don’t remember much of what actually happened on that day.
I went to that school to learn. But not to learn about Algebra, or Physics, or History, or how to write a decent essay. I went to learn how to be social, to learn how people normally learn, to learn what people would want from me in the future.
I’ve probably got only a half credit in being social, but at least a full credit in normal learning studies and probably another in what will be expected of me in the future. It’s a start. And there’s a lot more to learn. Beyond the lesson plans, beyond the homework assignments, beyond the tests. There’s so much to learn, about my future, my present, even my past. And beyond me, about others. About what it means to be them and how they are different from me.
Even when I’m wishing I were anywhere but the class room, even when the assignment in front of me is pointless, even when I don’t understand what I’m being taught, I’m learning. Maybe not always the way teachers want me to, but that’s just life. Some times a lesson will connect and I’ll learn something, because I actually care. And sometimes it doesn’t work. And instead I learn about something more to my interests on my own. Life is education, but life is not school. School is only one part of life.
But like every other moment of life, it is the pinnacle of the future.
The Goldilocks planet
The goldilocks planet is nowhere near here,
Its far to the west of the porridge hemisphere.
The goldilocks planet really should have been gold,
but actually its blonde, or so I am told.
The people of goldilocks planet are all little girls,
all nine or ten with big bouncy curls.
On the goldilocks planet you might meet a bear,
or three rather, with brown shaggy hair.
Those bears won’t like you and you won’t like them,
but that’s probably because you’ve eaten their porridge again.
The end. ^ ^
The goldilocks planet is nowhere near here,
Its far to the west of the porridge hemisphere.
The goldilocks planet really should have been gold,
but actually its blonde, or so I am told.
The people of goldilocks planet are all little girls,
all nine or ten with big bouncy curls.
On the goldilocks planet you might meet a bear,
or three rather, with brown shaggy hair.
Those bears won’t like you and you won’t like them,
but that’s probably because you’ve eaten their porridge again.
The end. ^ ^
It looks like night
By Cypress Ellen
From my window I could see the world as it looks so early in the morning that it looks like night. The world was blue, literally. In the middle of the night there is no light, but it is not black, it is a very dark blue.
This time in the morning reminds me of what its like going to the airport, that early in the morning feel of leaving your home, quietly, as though no one will notice. But I’ll be back much sooner than when I go on a plane. And I won’t have the luxury of being chauffeured to my plane.
I have to walk. It is freezing and a moment ago I wanted to stay in bed forever. But I’m awake now, alive with a slight sense of excitement. Just like when I go to the airport. Just like running away from home.
So I pretend, as I walk out the door and down the street, that I am in a giant airport. That the entire world is just a station, taking me somewhere else. This is just the prelude to what is to come.
And suddenly I start running, even though I shouldn’t have the energy to do this. I am running faster than I have run since school started. I see a place and I am there. There is no pause or hesitation. I run. And then, I stop. But I continue walking. As though I had never even began running.
The world is still very blue.