cedarandstories

[cedarandstories]

Special

Have you ever met someone who just takes the words right out of your mouth? The person who just seems to reduce (or maybe amplify) you down to a giggling state of pure bliss? The person you want around all the time? 

I suppose I have.

It takes a really intrinsic spirit to interest me. It takes someone… unique. Passionate. Caring. Observant. Loving. There are so many qualities in so many people all around the world. All of us bring something new to the table. There’s sometimes that special something. The stuff magic is made of. It makes things feel like you put some sparkling filter over the world. Your jaw hurts from smiling, and you reach for your phone every chance you get, wondering if they have replied. 

God can it drive you fucking crazy. It can drive you mad. It makes you feel like you are crawling in your skin. It makes you anxious, and afraid of a misstep. But there’s the fun in that world. Fun in the insanity, I suppose. 

I don’t know what makes someone that magical fit. That seamless weave into life that just tells you that they are perfect, just a perfectly good fit. I wonder if it’s the first impression. What if you had said “hey” instead of “hello?” Would you have ruined that connection? Are we really that judgemental? 

I like to think we aren’t. I hope we see the beauty in everything and that the beauty that jumps out at us is like divine intervention, guiding us toward the person we want. 

Most likely, they are not the destination though. The journey is what makes it special. This discovery – the companionship – the good – we find that in ourselves and in others. 

I suppose the question still beckons, though. How do we know? What gives it all away? 

I don’t think I have an answer to that question. We all know our own answer to it. 

I’m glad I’ve met you because I get to ponder these questions now in your arms.

(this is an absolutely incoherent mess but being gay is rough and i had many thoughts)

#writing stuff #writing #essay

[cedarandstories]

[cedarandstories]

I thought about that curiosity. The words lingered, almost like a fog that your headlights desperately try to cut through on a dark country road. When was the last time someone had asked me something out of real curiosity? 

Did I ever even give someone the time of day to ask me something with genuine intent?

“I don’t dance because I hate the feeling of eyes on me,” I replied with a rather timid tone. “To me, there isn’t a thing more dreadful than the feeling of knowing people are perceiving me. It’s so weird and just makes me anxious.”

They inquired, “Are those eyes actually on you, or are you just judging yourself and using the unsuspecting strangers around you as a proxy for your fear?”

“I suppose a bit of both.” I cradled my drink close to me, the alcohol keeping me flush and bright red. (Shouldn’t this shit keep me calm and collected?) 

“Can I bring you back to the dance floor?” They asked. “I want to see how you dance.” 

I thought about it. Thought about my anxiety. Through about my fear. Then I replied. 

“Sure, but don’t be shocked at how bad I am.” 

We walked out to the dance floor. The music thumped in my ears like a marching band’s drum. The distant lyrics echoed through the thumping drum. “My love, my love, I know that you can take me…” 

I stepped onto the unoccupied strip of land that could just barely fit us in as we bumped up against and rubbed bodies with the others. The sweat flowed. The alcohol flowed. My anxiety did the same. Red LED lights cut through the dim lighting, shining occasionally on me as I rigidly danced and moved about the dance floor with them. I was rather slow to move, my rigidity set in like rigor mortis. Their rhythm and body flowed like water out of the tap. It was entrancing, and I couldn’t help but find myself smiling at them. I wondered if the stress, the worries, and the pain of the day were left at that barstool (I’m sure it would come back when the tab appeared there). 

I giggled to myself and did my best to match their rhythm and movement. The skin-tight gold sheer top clung to them as I did to the corner of this little space we had carved out for ourselves. Bit by bit, that same worry this stranger must have set aside drained from me, and I lost myself in the music, bodies on bodies, skin on skin, lyric on lyric. Was the worry still there? Sure it was, and occasionally I’d turn to imagine a sneering contempt and instead find someone stumbling back out of the club or trying to find their friends in a sea of alcohol-induced haze. 

However, for that night, dancing was fun. It wasn’t easy, but it was fun.

"You don't dance?"

"Nope."

"Why?"

"... Are you asking because you feel socially obligated to or are you asking because you're genuinely curious?"

"Now because I am genuinely curious."

[cedarandstories]

Intimate Moments

hugging them from behind, laying their head on the other's shoulder

breathing in the other's smell

whispering to each other

cuddling on the couch

walking hand in hand

playing with the other's hair

softly smiling at each other from across the room

telling each other how proud they are of them

leaning into the other person

feeling for the other's hand

pressing a kiss onto the other's hair

humming a melody together

playing with the other's fingers

holding each other's gaze

absentmindedly massaging each other

resting their hand on the other's thigh, slowly stroking it

handing the other one a hot cup of tea, their hands touching for a moment

moving closer in bed

reassuring touches

telling each other I'm here

cuddling in the first morning light

hiding their face in the other's neck

telling each other how much they love them

eating from each other's plates

brushing against each other, even if there is enough room

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[cedarandstories]

[cedarandstories]

Purpose.

I think one of the biggest questions that has weighed on me is the topic of purpose. Someone today at work was discussing it with me while I sat for my lunch break. 

I chose to take my lunch out in the city and enjoy the calming effect of the air. The noise of the city – cars, people, construction – was all drowned out to me. The ethereal state of people is just reflected in what everyone is doing. A woman calling her friend, concerned about her daughter’s increasing medication needs. Someone else was sitting down on the park bench, head slumped back at an angle that could not possibly have been comfortable for human anatomy. I suppose the question of purpose weighed on me during my walk. A small corner restaurant caught my attention and reminded me of what I was actually here for, disregarding the question and burying it deep in the recesses of my mind. 

I swung open the door and meandered inside, trying to glance at the menu handwritten on a chalkboard above the cashier while others ordered ahead of me so I could decipher what I wanted. I greeted the young cashier, a gaunt teenager maybe sixteen or so, and put it in my order. He tapped a few screens of the tablet in front of him, and the card reader slowly rendered to life with the instructions to pay. 

Sitting down at a small booth and enjoying my meal and a break from my office, I saw someone sitting alone and asked to sit and talk with him. I introduced myself and told him where I worked, and he agreed to let me enjoy his company for my break. Amidst the typical chit-chat that’s awkwardly worked out when you first meet someone, I decided to ask him the question: “What do you think the purpose is? Is it universal, or something truly individual?”

He kindly (not so kindly) asked me to move tables. 

After finishing my meal rather quickly (I kept accidentally making eye contact with him and as a result, wished I could teleport myself anywhere else but there), I departed from the corner and walked back to my office. 

While walking, I kept my observations up. I always appreciated people, the things we all do, the struggles bubbling just beneath the surface, the kind of inflection you can only see in someone’s eyes. The knowledge that sometimes, no matter how hard you hide it, it’s just there. I wonder if humans have that inflection as an evolutionary mechanism. The knowledge somewhere in our psyche that no matter how hard we try, sometimes opening up is hard, and we need that small push – just one soul in a vast ocean of them – something that asks us to open up. 

While I observed this smaller, I don’t know, lake of eyes? It isn’t exactly the biggest city known to man. Anyway, when I observed these eyes, something sort of clicked in me, like two gears finally clicking into place in an assembly line. Purpose is everything and nothing. It is what drives some of us, our only reason to live – revenge, success, greed, fame, love, anything. For others, it is an afterthought. You only live to survive, you live to work, or you live to get going someplace else. Purpose is precisely what we make of it. 

We have the ability to weather the impossible. Every day, someone gets news that breaks them. It disassembles them, piece by piece until nothing remains. And that “thing” always manages to make sure it is as painful and excruciating as possible like thousands of needles piercing the skin all at once across every inch. It isn’t a quick and swift end, it is the most difficult and unbearable kind of one – the one where you feel that spark die, two fingers pinching together and suffocating the light of a candle. 

But it doesn’t end us, does it? It might be for some, and we cannot change that course. However, it can harden us, it can break us, can weather us, it can even pass us by. But: we push on. 

I think the hardest thing to accept about purpose is that it changes. It’s fluid, flexible to time, ourselves, and who we desire to be. That scares me. But it also excites me.

I cannot wait to see what the future has in hold for my purpose, James. 

Yours,

Daniel.

#fiction writing #writing #writeblr #fiction #short fiction #short story

[cedarandstories]

Bless

[cedarandstories]

[cedarandstories]

[cedarandstories]

"On The Wing," Owl City

[cedarandstories]

The thing about writing is we’re taught to write in a very specific way as children that is deemed as the “correct” way. And it’s so important to have those fundamentals — to know how sentences are constructed and what is proper paragraph structure and to become familiar with grammar. Those are essential building blocks.

But because schools have to focus on essay writing and technicalities and whatever is needed for the latest standardized test, it’s often the only way we learn how to write when there’s so many ways to write. There’s technical writing, journalistic writing but also editorial writing, copywriting, letter writing, free writing … to infinity and beyond.

We often don’t explore creative writing in an academic setting until later in life when we seek it out (or never at all in most cases). And while there’s guides for these looser types of writing, as well, it’s important to know you can just say FUCK ALL and bastardize the rules that were beat into your brain by red pens all your life.

Make up words. A paragraph can be one sentence, one word, or a whole damn monologue. Run-on sentences can be a style choice. Make a chapter one line. Use capitalization however you see fit. Start sentences with conjunctions. Be abstract in imagery. Forget commas exist and keep using ‘and’ instead (<- my favorite). Fragments can be fire. Create your own voice in the remnants of a burned language.

Learning the rules also means knowing how and when to break them. So break them to tell your story the way you want.

[cedarandstories]

please please go to your local shopping mall, coffee shops, outdoor markets, gathering spots, gardens, parks, ALL OF IT. ESPECIALLY if you live in a rural or suburban neighborhood

Your kids need independence.

[cedarandstories]

[cedarandstories]

me, squinting at a main character: do you have zero personality or have i read this scene too many times?

[cedarandstories]

[cedarandstories]

[cedarandstories]

I have this disease called starts too many WIPs syndrome