world shifters

Every time we read, a piece of the world we indulge in enters into our being.

We are like quantum mirrors, wired to shift through worlds, through realities. Each story we ingest is another set of coordinates unlocking another reality. When we are young it is obvious. We spend hours filling out our characters, continuing the stories our parents just finished. Children do not hide their imaginary play. But when we grow older, the reality shifts become more erratic, more embarrassing. We are not supposed to have imaginations over the age of 13, yet they still rage rampant. As we read, we lose ourselves into a different earth, a different reality, and our malleable body slips in with us. Like shapeshifters, only we are world shifters. We blend through worlds, consciousness streaming from Hogwarts to Middle Earth fluidly. The alarm goes off and it is time to wake up, to face the Capitol and eradicate their evil intentions, save the districts. And just as suddenly it is time to eat breakfast, to get to class.

World shifters are not rational. If they were, they would not choose to live in any of these worlds that are written about. Worlds where people face loss, pain, and impossible choices every day. Coddled readers would not choose these worlds if they thought about it. If they honestly looked at their capabilities in a mirror. But readers do not look into normal mirrors. They look into these quantum mirrors and see scars upon their faces, hair ragged because it was cut with a sword, eyes defiant because they are staring down an enemy, lips set in determination because it is time to live through another day of fighting.

The easy worlds never pull us in.

Life as a world shifter is hard, always that corner of the being that is being pulled somewhere else, somewhere that can never fully be. Always, the desire to reject shifting, to hate the other realities, to hate books and stories lies dormant, but once a world shifter has awakened her abilities there is no going back. Those worlds have laid claim to pieces of herself

pardon me, but...

The fact that people whom I know to be very peaceful, fair, caring, sweet human beings are crying at the ‘injustice’ of the fact that murder is being made harder to achieve leaves me heart-broken. Seeing my dear friends and their role models advocate the termination of anything organic makes me angry, sad, but mainly sick. Heart-sick, sick in spirit, and even physically ill. I just do not understand. 

I suppose that’s the root of it. I think I understand but I just do not. I am so radically, radically different. For me, it is all –all­- about the babies. The unborn children; their sweet faces and rough lives are yet to be lived. I don’t care about anything else in this matter; nothing else is as important. Nothing. If it were a life or death situation, me or my child, my unborn offspring, I would choose my child. I would consciously make that choice. I have lived nineteen years on this planet, nineteen damn good years. I still have many opportunities ahead, but I’ve had a decent time. I could never make the conscious choice to shut someone off from that life. from life.

It’s why I hate the politics of this issue so very very very very very times infinity much. I could debate some things all day and enjoy it. But this control freak epidemic is just too much for me. There is no way we can rationalize it to where we justifiably gain control over someone elses life. (I realize the implications of this statement on the death penalty debate, and it inspires me to reevaluate the arguments within that; but not at this moment)

once more: there is no way we can rationalize it to where we justifiably gain control over someone’s life. Not their quality of life, etc. etc. but their life. Their breath, heartbeat, consciousness. Their soul’s interaction with other souls. Their spirit making sense of earth, of humanity, of God, of the senses. As a woman, as one woman I do not want to ever have to make a decision that would prevent someone from being alive. With one signature I could literally obliterate a human person from existence. Change the future.

seriously let that sink in, please, no matter what kind of person you are reading this please just indulge your romantic side and imagine that. please.

I just can’t.

No matter what political, supposedly rational argument is carefully and articulately given to me, or thrown in my face with venom, or slipped to me in subtlety, I cannot let that option be given to anyone. The option to control human life like that. I cannot stand for it.

And I suppose I still do not understand anyone who could, no matter the extenuating circumstances. no matter the extenuating circumstances.

To watch these people I so dearly love and so firmly support and believe in, argue so rashly and emotionally against the people who stand for what I must stand for, it tears me to pieces. “do you know what you’re raging against. You are placing annoying, acerbic women above helpless life-unlived children.”

and so I keep quiet. I do not want to lash out. I do not want to alienate. I do not want to be them. I despise their methods (not them. never them.) their approach.

But I just cannot stand it right now. I feel like vomiting, like taking you by the shoulders and shaking you until your teeth rattle and the sense gets shaken into you. The knowledge that you want to end lives. you want to murder. you want to have sadistic control over humanity and breath.

The rage, frustration, and hurt is bubbling, and this is why I normally keep silent, but for better or for worse the radio silence is broken and the waterfall is rushing over and I apologize, to the right, the left, the middle, the up, the down. I know I am probably more like them than anything; my one and only priority is the unborn, theirs is elsewhere. We both narrow our focus too much.

forgive my outbursts, my posting of things I usually keep from the internet, my passion, my Texan pride, my naiveté, my grammatical and structural errors, my lack of trust.

Cora

A woman who has never in her entire nineteen years felt inhibited, unable, or devoid of opportunities in ANY way. more words I should not say. 

Almost finished

I am like a rag, dunked ceaselessly in a barrel of water and rung out, cycle never ending. I long to be laid in the Sun, allowing my weary body dry and revitalize. My lungs have no time to expel the water that was injected before more invades. My desire for the Sun deepens and intensifies, yet no time is allotted for recuperation. Back into the bucket, back to twisting and pulling til all has been squeezed out and yet still a ragged dampness will not leave. Back to a carmivourous devouring of a thanksgiving feast, placed in honor and reverance but attacked by a searching consumer. I am forced to consume in this way, discriminately, savagely, with no respect or regard. Knowledge is a consequence, perhaps, but so is exhaustion and irreverence. Yet that desire, unrealized and unquenchable, still rages, fueled and given motivation by the stained, holey, mildewed rag that I am

Essay 8; on Beauty

{An essay for my christian poetry class that concisely articulated some concerned pondering I'd been doing; thought I would share.}

     Is it possible to idolize beauty? Artists are seekers of beauty, in its many forms. In the current culture it is so easy to witness massive amounts of beauty. You can simply google ‘flowers’, or ‘Sistine Chapel’, or ‘babies’, and witness varying angles of the beauty that streams through the world. Artists are creating beautiful digital art and mass distributing it with the help of websites like Pinterest or Tumblr, which are partially designed to be gathering places for beautiful images. We strive to be surrounded by the beautiful, the decorative, and the transcendent. Amidst this abundance of splendor, we still yearn for more. The thirst for beauty is never quenched; a beautiful object is just as thrilling as all the rest you have seen. Yet if we are striving to be the most beautiful, even in deed more than in physical appearance, might we neglect our sanctification yearning? Though we guard ourselves against idolization of beauty, the sanctification journey is one of beauty as well; Christ transforming us from ugly corpses in sin to beautiful children of God. Thus the two are wrapped into one, and our desire for beauty is a natural part of our struggling towards sanctification. Jacques Maritain says that “He [God] is beauty itself” and later quotes Baudelaire as explaining that this intense emotion felt while witnessing beauty is not a joy, but rather an extreme melancholy caused by the realization that paradise exists, yet the soul is in an imperfect land. This definition of beauty’s impact in Maritain and Baudelaire is the clearest I have found. It provides hope that beauty is essentially God or God-breathed and thus will not distract, but direct the spirit to Him.