Calliope's blog

While reading Reading Lolita in Tehran I was struck by the image of a girl forced to cover herself in a burka whenever she is outside, and longing for some of the small daily pleasures we might take for granted.

I can’t feel the gentle caress
of the wind,
only a jealousy for
fallen leaves
that may dance and fly
freely
in the arms of their lovers.

I can only dream
of the soft kiss
the sun might rest
upon my
naked
shoulder.

I want to lie
so still on the grass,
the blades brushing
my arms
the backs of my knees
until I cannot breathe
for laughter.

Inspired by the rehearsal of the Mozart string quintet in g minor.

If the piece could be seen
it would be a rich
purple, deep
red, swirling
midnight blue.

It is a dance
in the shadows,
(a sad lovers’
serenade)
an innocent
in a forbidden land.

There are gypsies
and Georgian dancers
slipping between forests
and assembly rooms.

There is a spell
cast across the centuries
by a man many years ago
and five musicians
in today’s setting sunlight.

I wonder
if they can feel the pull
of the magic
as the last notes are drawn
from the strings and the bows

The palace rose. The white towers stained a raven grey, the windows barely shedding a muffled light, which did little to pierce the raging darkness.

And the woman went unnoticed.

She had come by a small door through the gate, ignored by the guards who were too preoccupied protecting themselves from the lashing rain to search an old servant hurrying into the night. She held her cloak tightly about herself and the motionless bundle tucked into the crook of one arm.

Note: The characters in this piece are from a story I've been working on for about nine years. I've been trying to develop them because I feel as if I'm having trouble getting the way I see them in my mind onto the page. I've never put this particular group all in one room before, they would have killed each other too quickly, so I wanted to give it a try. This is not an actual scene from the story as far as I know, but maybe it will become one.

I work towards putting the stand down.

I’m not good at beginnings, and yet they’re the most exciting. There’s so much promise at the start, so much uncertainty and possibility.

I can hear everything more clearly when the stand is down. I set aside the books and carefully push back the curving black wood.

If there is a book of music left on a shelf, never played, is it worth anything?

Prologue

Have you felt darkness? If you tell me you have, and that it’s soft and silky and surrounds you like a midnight cloak, then you are lying.

I know darkness—the suffocating black that stabs you with knives of brutal white light. I know the darkness that slips in through your dreams and paralyzes you. I know the darkness that illuminates every aspect of your past; every moment you’ve tried to bury in the rubble of time.

I know mankind.

In response to a photograph of Greek rioters, May 7th, 2010

He’s wearing my shoes,
Asics,
perfect, pure white
with darker lines
like sunsets
or striking snakes.

What color are the lines?
Blue? Green?
Red?

I can’t see
because the picture’s black
and white
and swirling, muddied grey.

One leg bent out—
one perfect, pure white
Asics shoe sliding—
in stillness—
across rough,
grey-black
pavement.

One leg tucked
beneath him,
his body bent,
face hidden
like a fetus

Joyce found it in words,
Mrs. Pontellier in death,
How strange is freedom.

Some find it in war,
Most never know it in peace,
How strange is freedom.

Some find it abroad,
Most never find it at home,
How strange is freedom.

Some find it falling,
Others never learn to fly,
How strange is freedom.

Joyce found it in words,
Mrs. Pontellier in death.

I've been absent from YWP for several months, but I'm making my return along with the sun. A while back, GG started a YWP book club that could be a lot of fun. Do you ever just need to read something, but can't decide what to read? Or sometimes you read an incredible (or terrible) book and you're just dying to talk to someone about it? Well, hopefully this club can solve those problems. I've put up a couple of posts and I can't wait to see what people think of the books, and what other suggestions there are! Here are the links:

Where the pavement’s cracked
last year’s lost leaves lie
undisturbed until some passing breath
rushes them out from shadow.

When the faces pass
too fast for my sleepless eyes
but slow enough to perceive
a glimmering thread spin by.

There’s a man who sweeps
the traveler’s dust away, away
only for it to fly again into his face
the sandy grit of time.

Here lies a girl not in sleep
but drunk from dreaming days
when the sun reflects on ripples
of swaying grass and placid lakes.

Somewhere in the thinning wood
a bird has trilled a melody

Take it.

I’m giving it to you,
No strings attached,
At your fingertips.

Winds across the sea,
Fly away
Where sunsets never end.

Don’t you understand?
There is no wrong answer,
Except silence.

Fresh grass and soft snow
Under unhindered steps,
Dance on! Dance on!

In blurred reflections
I’ve turned away to watch
Your study of fingertips.

Breath in eternity,
The world outstretched,
Ours is only a moment.

Why won’t you listen?
It’s not such a slippery slope,
There’s no need for my hand.

Step surely,
The roads have no end

Link: "http://voices.washingtonpost.com">/44/2010/01/obama-continues-to-assail-supr.html?wprss=44

President Obama continued to assail the Supreme Court decision striking down limits on corporate spending in political campaigns, saying Saturday that the ruling "strikes at our democracy itself.” Washington Post

Just the start...trying to write a little bit every day.

They’re just words.

They’re just lines
rambling
across deserts.

White deserts.

Blank, staring
white

Desert n. a dry, barren area

Just words.

You want to master words?

Master n. a person who dominates

Dominate words?

Who is master?

Where are there
no words?

We are the bearers
of ideas,
the creators.

We are helpless
without words
to speak us.

Do you dream
in pictures?
Do you live
in a

Void n. a completely empty space

guarded
by indescribable
flickering images,

Ladies and gentlemen!—
Here’s to perfection!—
Raise your glass in the air,
And be blind to the dazzle,
By the dazzle,
For the dazzle.

Ladies and gentlemen!—
Here’s to perfection!—
Here’s to beauty
That can kill.
Here’s to beauty
That will kill.

Here’s to perfection!—
The perfection of a face
With arches and dark
Lines so easily erased,
But fearing the mirror—
Without the mask—
That can only unveil
The ghost of flawless
Reality.

Here’s to perfection!—
The perfection of life,
So carefully maintained,
So precisely dressed
And painted,
Cast into golden

I remember her crimped brown hair and the way she would always wave and smile warmly at me even though we barely knew each other, even though we could barely communicate since her English was limited and my Spanish was worse. I remember that she played the viola. I remember that she was from Venezuela.

Darkness softly takes in hand
Stars of silver scattered high,
Tossing diamonds towards the land,
Dancing with the winter’s sigh.

Shrouded in dream and fantasy,
The Lady Night breathes frost and rime,
Icing the grass, the glass, the tree
In robes as white as agéd time.

Silence reigns over a sleeping world,
Softly embracing the rising moon,
Whose argent beams evince unfurled
The frozen sea of Winter’s tomb.

Though some would call her seasons’ Death,
Beneath her cloak of snowy lithe,
Winter guards the frozen breath
Biding till the time for Life.

I feel like I need to start posting more, but am currently struggling with a bit of writer's block. Just tried a free-write to get the words moving again...

Morning’s glory brushes
Branches reaching towards the sky
Supporting the unblemished red—
Wreathed by honest green—
Guarding what has not yet fallen.

Bending and blending
Until what was once
Green edged with gold
Is now gold
Edged with green
And what was once
Red becomes the gold,
The filthy lucre,
Whose sweetness becomes sour
Though we would treasure it,
Even after so many battles
And promises of beauty.

And when all wars are
Won or lost
And Helen is simply
A name of the past,
The Hesperides will reclaim
The solitude of stretching shadows,

I had never seen a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream vending machine before England. The first one I saw sat nonchalantly by a set of stairs leading to the lower level of bus stops. I just crossed an ocean and there’s a little piece of home staring at me. I point this out to my sister, and she tells me that she’s been to small shops in rural corners of the UK and found Ben & Jerry’s vending machines. Imagine that.

The Oxford bound bus never did appear, at the misplaced fourth stop or any other. Its status went from being Delayed to nonexistent, and so we sat and waited for the next bus.

Resting on the treetops,
Brilliant stolen luster
Sending rays of ivory
Dancing through the dark.

Strokes of wispy grey
Patterning the sky
Wrapping round the scattered
Sparks of frozen flame.

Colored shadows stretching
Towards arrays of light,
Breath of ice rustling
Passing season’s wake.

Gatwick airport misplaced their fourth bus stop.

Sitting in a daze in the airport, too excited and too exhausted to actually realize that my dream of coming to England had actually come true, I stared blankly at the little television listing buses, times, and numbers.

Oxford—10:15—Stop 4

Muffled by the night’s gathering of snow and fog pervading the streets, Boston sat in silence. The midnight hour had struck and, upon finding the town quietly asleep in warm beds, wandered sadly west in search of a livelier welcome. The darkest hour of the night, that time just before the grey announcing the approach of morning, enveloped a large stone building.

Here begins the Shoshana&Shakespeare project, inspired by the movie I saw yesterday "Julie&Julia". Today is officially the first day, I find it rather fitting because it would be my grandfather's 97th birthday. He played a huge part in developing my love for books and writing; reading me everything from Dickens, to James Herriot, to Harry Potter, and always ready to read and critique my own writings. For that, I dedicate all the following writing I will be doing for this project to Donald.

To Read: 37 plays, To Write: 37 short stories, In: 365 days

Walking out of the movie theatre, with those golden beams that only an early October sun can produce, slanting down on hills ablaze with reds and burnt yellows, I considered what I had just seen. "Julie & Julia" is two stories in one, separated by time and space, but overlapping in three important areas: cooking, writing, and, most importantly, food. (I was recently reading the book "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" in which it discussed how stories tend to retell other stories, and most frequently the origins of a story come from either Shakespeare or the Bible.

Here's a rough draft of the synopsis of a screenplay I'm working on. Comments are greatly appreciated. Does it sound interesting? Am I trying to put too much into one movie? Thanks!

Ivy League bound Elisa Chase decides to spend her last summer before college away from her suburban New York home. She takes up an invitation from a school friend to visit her at her family’s vacation home in Stowe, Vermont, but is plagued by the question of what she actually wants to do in college. Looking for a distraction and a way to be useful, she volunteers at an immigration center.

Chapter One
Dane pulled irritably at his collar, his tie felt unnervingly like a noose. The rain hung menacingly in the air, blotting out the rising sun and making chills run through the inhabitants of the grey college town. The mud squelched beneath Dane’s once shining shoes, and he could feel it being kicked up on the back of his newly pressed suit.