Notre Dame (Prose Poem)

I took a 400-level creative writing class this semester, after some friends convinced me I should. As a novice writer, it was challenging but also rewarding. For this class we wrote short pieces, and this included some prose poetry. The secret's in the name: it's a poem that looks like a prose piece (think no line breaks, but with the lyrical imagery usually possessed by poetry). This is one of my favorites that I wrote.

Notre Dame

The heat became oppressive, so we escaped down to the river like we had ducked into the cathedral earlier. Before, our light show had been manipulated by the multicolored diamond windows set high in the walls of Notre Dame, but now the light sparkled on the Monet-blue water, reflecting and refracting just as beautifully. The cathedral had been quiet, filled with reverent whispers, and now I heard that softness in the water splashing gently against the paving stones. I smiled nervously at the Parisian natives wading in the Seine and wandered down the sloping road to join them. Like a pilgrim come to find a miracle, Notre Dame blessed me with new ears. Standing still in the cool water of the river, I closed my eyes and listened to French voices echoing off the river walls as the bells of Notre Dame echoed off the surrounding buildings, both in languages I couldn’t speak but momentarily understood.

Nightmares - A Poem

Laughing and smiling

When suddenly

The ring I bought in Arizona

Silver and turquoise and jasper

Handmade by an old Navajo man

When I first saw the Grand Canyon

Crumbles to dust in my hands.

A favorite thing

Ruined beyond recognition

Irredeemably broken.

No explanation -

Just gone.

“Don’t you have a plane to catch?”

The question catches me off guard

Like a sudden blow.

I can’t pack my suitcase

(Where are all my clothes?)

(Where is my passport?)

The traffic is standstill

The lines are too long

I didn’t buy a seat

I have to leave

I have places to be.

But I can’t escape.

Spiders slowly emerge

From the comfortable layers of fabric and down

That make my bed warm.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - no, no

There are too many to count

One after another after another after another

Leg after leg after leg

They spread across my wall,

An army overtaking my home, my refuge.

Paralyzed by fear

As one hairy arachnid,

Its black eyes gleaming with hunger,

Crawls, creeps up my right leg

To my torso.

I can’t breathe

I can’t breathe

I can’t breathe

But please

Oh god, please

Kill it

Before it kills me

We climb up a snowy mountain

Shivering in sandals

No water

No food

Know better

I know better

Why am I here

Get me out of here

Turn back

Save yourselves

We are going to die

I scream and scream

No one turns to listen

Helpless

So helpless

I bolt straight up

I’m in my bed

Palms sweaty

Heart pounding

(no spiders)

A dream

A dream

It was just a dream.

It doesn’t fade like a dream.

Stuck in the ridges of my brain.

I may be awake

But I’m still afraid

Because when I sleep tonight

The demons will come

Crawling

Out of the canyons of my mind

To haunt my dreams again.

Author's note: I wrote this kind of for fun, just exploring a bunch of different dreams I'd had. I'm pretty prone to anxiety dreams, and I'm pretty used to them, but I wanted to try to capture the emotions I feel while I'm in the midst of them.

On Wind

I couldn’t escape the wind.

It hit me as I walked along the trail, which was rocky and uncertain enough as it was. The unseen entity forced every step ever so slightly off course. After nearly 3 hours on the trail with the end nowhere in sight, the constant push on my right side was more than just unpleasant and annoying - it was exhausting. I stumbled farther along the path, small bits of that big wind sneaking into my ears and making a racket. Sounds slipped away into the flow of air, lost forever, never to be known except  by whoever was standing perhaps eight miles downwind. Clouds raced each other across the sky - whether it was because of the harsh wind or if they were simply trying to escape its power, I wasn't entirely sure. I pulled my jacket closer so that the wind couldn’t rob me of what little warmth my body produced.

A breeze whisked its way across my path. The blades of grass practically vibrated with excitement. This small movement of air was enough to set them off, dancing a little jig as the leaves joined in with their own dance. It cooled my face from the golden sun, and brought my hair around my neck to tickle my chin. It carried the light scent of flowers from a nearby bush. I inhaled deeply, enjoying the literal breath of fresh air.

Air whistled its way past my face. This time the air wasn’t the one moving - I was. I’d jumped onto the rope swing, held on tight, and felt my feet lose contact with the ground as I went soaring towards the blue, blue sky. The feeling is amazing. It’s like I’m a little girl again, being pushed on the shiny new swingset my dad set up in the backyard, to the times when my mom would brush my hair every night and give me butterfly kisses before I fell asleep. All the childhood joy and nostalgia come rushing back as fast as the wind rushed towards me. It doesn’t matter how I move, the air will move with me, wrapping me up, enveloping me, cradling my every move.

I can’t escape them.

I can’t escape my thoughts. At times, my thoughts seem as wild as the wind. They push me around and I have no control over their efforts.They come roaring in, uninvited, wreaking havoc. I worry worry worry, the thoughts racing around my head so fast they’re practically tripping over themselves. It’s nonsensical. And when they settle down, they settle into the darkest corners of my brain, taking up residence in the cobwebbed corners I try to ignore. Like the wind sneaking into the smallest corners of the Scottish mountainside, anxiety creeps into every nook and cranny of my mind. I remember one spring afternoon when I hadn’t seen my friends for a few days, when my mom wasn’t picking up the phone, when my assignments were piling up and I had work starting in thirty minutes. I tried to schedule an appointment with my therapist. She was booked for a month out. I ran to the nearest bathroom, locked myself in a stall, put in my headphones, and cried until 12:27, just enough time for me to dry my eyes and race upstairs to work that day. Work was a welcome distraction, but I still felt the anxious thoughts strolling around my skull like the soft Edinburgh breeze tugging at the roadside grass.

I’ve always said that I hate wind. It’s bitter, it bites, and it’s harsh. I’ve also said the same thing about my mental illness, my own mind. These two unstoppable and unseen forces have such an effect on my life that I can’t control, it can be easy to dislike them.

But then one day I stood on a hill. It overlooked a valley filled with shades of green my eyes had never seen before stitched together in a patchwork quilt of sheep pastures and small gardens. The top of this treeless hill offered no protection from the blasting wind that roared up from the valley floor. This wind was more powerful than almost any I had ever experienced.

I leaned into the gusts, arms outstretched, eyes shut, letting it hold me up. It felt like something solid, rather than something ethereal. It felt more like a supportive body than a destructive force.

I wondered if simply by embracing the wild winds around me, like I was doing on this English hillside, like I did on the rope swing by Loch Lomond, if I could learn to love it. Only with that love of even the parts of myself that I wish I could change will come the actual ability to make them any different.

Perhaps it’s not about loving it at all. Maybe it’s more about learning to live with the wind. I’ve been learning to live with it for a while - it’s not like there’s much I can do to change the weather. I could stay inside I suppose, but on especially windy days you can still hear it howling around the eaves. But I should learn to love it. Love begins with acceptance. So first I’ll accept it. I am broken, like a cracked windowpane. The wind is inside of my house. I need to replace the windowpane or buy new shutters. I could be better about going to therapy regularly, or start taking medications, but I’ll always know that the wind, the anxiety, is inside of me.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to change the winds inside of myself.

But for now, I let the wind push me. And I let myself push back.

Processing Manchester

I woke up to the sun shining on my face. 6:40 AM, Tuesday morning, Manchester. I checked my phone as something to do before rolling over to go back to sleep, and saw an unread text from my mom and another from my roommate, Kjerstie.

1:14AM Momma: You all ok after the explosions at the arena there? Concerned mom checking in!

5:31AM Kjerstie Olson: You're not anywhere near Manchester are you? Hoping all is well.

Now I was bleary-eyed and confused. What had happened last night to make my family and friends so concerned? Before I could process much more, I fell back asleep.

About 40 minutes later, I woke up again to a knock at the door. My roommate for the night, Alison, opened it and I heard Steve, our program director, asking if we were all accounted for. Alison said that yes, we were, and then I got my first real explanation.

"There was a terrorist attack at a concert last night here in Manchester. Some deaths, many injuries, but our group is all safe and here." He proceeded on to the next door, and I sat up in bed, realizing I really needed to text my mom back.

After quickly sending some texts letting my mom and Kjerstie know I was okay, I began to wonder what had really happened. Thankfully our other roommate Karina was in the know and had actually heard about the bomb the night before.

I sat on my bed and felt a great deal of both sorrow and shock while she explained the situation. A bomb at a concert? If you know me at all, you know that live music is one of the cornerstones of my life, right up there with the gospel and ice cream. It was even more shocking to discover that it was an Ariana Grande concert - which was one I had attended almost exactly 2 months earlier in Salt Lake City.

I felt so sad for this city that I had spent so little time in, but that I had come to appreciate over the last 36 hours I had been there. We had just spent the previous day doing about 5 miles of city walking. A writing assignment from Steve to select three people throughout the day and describe them had only made me much more conscious of the huge variation of lives in this metropolis. My connection to the city felt so real.

Later, when I went downstairs and had Wi-Fi, I looked up how far away the arena was. Just one mile. A little too close to home. My thoughts, however, turned to ones of gratitude - that none of my friends were there, that I wasn't there, that even though we were very close - we were safe.

Overall, I am still hurt by this experience. It's one you always hear about but never think you'll be close to. As potentially scary as it was for me, I can't begin to imagine the horror the victims and their families went through.

During our debriefing tonight, now many miles away on a beautiful Welsh lakeshore, Steve encouraged us to live our lives without fear. Terrorists, as is evident in their name, want to spread terror, to make people give up their normalities in exchange for fear. But we cannot do that. We can and we will continue on as planned - because that is the best way to fight back.

Grateful for safety. Grateful for friends and family. Grateful for Manchester.

Against Trusting: An Essay

Why should we believe anything? Especially the nebulous, the unseen. Trusting in something you have never experienced with any of your five senses can make one a fool. Restrictions and rules and regulations imposed upon you, all for something you cannot touch, cannot hear, cannot fathom. But this physical world, its tactileness, its sights and sounds and scents and tastes - it surely can be believed, for it is there. Human beings less so - while they exist, their wills may lead to deception, to change, to harm. They can be believed and trusted, but only to a point - in that they are real. Forget all trust in that which you cannot hearseesmelltastefeel - how can you be certain of its honesty otherwise?

[[We had a writing prompt the other day where we were encouraged to write in support of something people wouldn't normally support, or against a "virtuous" thing. This is what came out. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but I think it is important to think about.]]

The 11 Miler/Eating Lunch in Poo Fields

I'm sorry for the lack of actual updates, but today was simultaneously long and hilarious, so I have to write it down somewhere.

The notorious English rains haven't actually been present until about two days ago. Today, rain came down in steady streams from the moment we started our hike. We got to go to the top of Malham Cove, where Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 was filmed, which was very cool. It made for some pretty slippery rocks. We also had to walk straight through some cow fields. I'm pretty used to walking past sheep by now, but cows is another story. And since a cow charged at me yesterday (I'm serious, it was traumatizing), I will never look at a cow the same way.

Anyways, we had been walking for about 3 hours when it came time for lunch. Now remember, hiking or walking through England involves a lot of moving from pasture to pasture, opening wooden gates or climbing over stone walls. We walk past hundreds of sheep and their adorable lambs on a daily basis. But do you know what comes with hundreds of sheep?

Poop.

Lots of it.

So here we are, in the middle of this sheep pasture in the Yorkshire Dales. Picture the most beautiful rolling green hills you've ever seen, and you're probably about halfway to how crazy green and gorgeous this place is. Pretty flat, a few small rocks... and a ton of sheep poop. As my friend Ellyn and I sat on neighboring rocks, avoiding the piles of poop, I watched a car slowly roll up to a nearby farmhouse, and the thought of how ridiculous we all must look just set me off.

Imagine approximately 30 Americans, sitting in a sheep field, carefully trying to eat their sandwiches while also trying not to think about the sheep poop 18 inches from their feet... add in a nice cold blast of air, some crazy bright rain jackets, 4 miles already behind us, 7 to go, and the general fatigue that comes with hiking every day for the last two weeks, and you have one hilarious situation. I. was. dying.

This was my day today. I'm sitting in a hostel now, warm and dry, but thinking back on lunch is still making me chuckle. If you need any sheep poop related funny stories, I'm definitely your girl.

April 30th through May 2nd: Arriving in London/First Impressions of Edinburgh

Guys! I'm in Great Britain! A lifelong dream is finally realized.

I flew in to Heathrow on Monday morning, and my friend Hannah met me at the airport. I never sleep in cars, and therefore I never slept on the flight. So after a sleepless night, I was very tired and felt like I might fall asleep on the tube back to her flat. I took a short nap and then we headed to dinner - some very yummy pizza.

We then went on a walk in the South Bank area of London, along the Thames. I got to see Tower Bridge, the Shard, St. Paul's, the Tate Modern, the London Eye, the Globe Theatre, and Big Ben - all things I had been dreaming of seeing for years and years. It was magical.

The next morning (May 2nd), we made our way to King's Cross Station so I could catch my train up to Edinburgh. The train ride was so beautiful! I luckily had a window seat and got to watch the countryside roll by. There were even some parts where you could see the ocean, which I loved!

We met up at our hostel, went for a walk, ate some dinner, and then headed up Calton Hill as a group. This is a large hill right in the middle of Edinburgh with several monuments. One of these is the Scottish National Monument, a half-finished replica of the Parthenon. It's half finished because they ran out of donation money, and is now sometimes referred to as "Edinburgh's Disgrace". The views were so beautiful. This whole city is beautiful. Coming up out of the train station I had to stop on the sidewalk for a moment to take it all in. I'm still taking it all in. I love it here.

(I can't figure out how to upload pictures from my phone onto my blog at the moment - so you can check out my instagrams! @sarahjean1206 or @sarahinbritain)