Answering your questions.
sapphirevampire wrote: I wanna know about you first pet. And stories about what my Valentine was like when she was five. =)
I came into the world as part of a household that had a number of pets. There was a dog, Annie, and a number of cats. The only cat I really remember from my earliest years was a cantankerous tortie named Other One. But none of those were really mine. My first pet arrived shortly after I turned four. I had chicken pox on my birthday, and as I couldn't really have a party, my mom decided that the thing to do would be to acquire a kitten each for my sister and me. My sister got a sleek little gray tabby that she named Junior, and I got Katie.
Katie was a wonderful first pet in many ways. She was a very small cat even when she reached adulthood, and due to a number of health problems, she had a short, crooked, stunted little tail that was knobby on the end. We called her "scrappycat" because she was so small. She had soft black fur that never really got as silky as an adult cat's normally does, so my memories of her were of patient green eyes and soft fuzzy blackness. She never scratched or bit to my memory, and I know that, since I was still very young, I probably wasn't as gentle as I am now. I remember dressing her in my doll clothes, and cuddling her in bed. She was my accomplice, my little black shadow, and I was enchanted by her. I loved her fiercely, and when I was in second grade, she started sleeping in a box full of thread in my mom's sewing area all the time, and crying piteously when I picked her up, which broke my heart. It turned out Katie had cancer, and I cried and cried the day they had to put her to sleep. I remember crying in my art class, and refusing to make a monster from the air-dry clay because I was so, so sad.
What was I like when I was five? I was very bright and energetic, for one thing! I was very petite, very slight, and constantly tanned because I was always running around outside. I had lots of silky straight light brown hair, and I was always talking and smiling. My mother swears that I learned how to read before I went to school, and I do remember sitting at the old dark wooden coffee table, stubbornly tracing the letters in my sister's writing books from second grade. I loved to play outside, and there was one magical place in my backyard that was very firmly mine. It was in the grapevine tree just beyond my dad's building, and it was perfect for climbing. There was one big limb that was lower to the ground, and then a slanting limb that went up higher, and it had very lush green leaves. I liked to play out there, because the ground was clear beneath it, and I would gather berries from the tree, mimosa seed pods, acorns, dogwood buds, whatever I could find, and I would "cook" with them. I'd make elaborate mud pies, and I would sit there and spin stories to myself about what I was cooking, these elaborate menus I was creating, what the occasion was. Then I would climb up into the tree and sit there and read.
I also roamed my yard a lot. There were, to my imaginative mind, different "kingdoms" almost in the yard. The far end of the yard was very far away and rather "bleak" to me, while the strange little dip in the yard near the big oak tree was a place to sit and hide and watch for The Enemy. I liked to "play house" in a little tangle of bushes near the front, and the sidewalk in the very front was always good for chalking. I also played in our sandy driveway a lot. I liked it when someone mowed the yard, because I'd gather the dried grass and use it to make a roof for a tiny little house of sand. When it rained, I'd run outside and make piles of sand in the driveway to divert the runoff to various other places. When I learned to ride a bike, I'd ride loops around the yard, going down my driveway, through the back yard, up to the front again, and tell stories to myself.
Inside was also fun. Obviously I played with Katie a lot, but I also loved my Barbies. I made clothes for them out of scraps of fabric and ribbons and strings, because my own creations always looked cooler. I didn't sew much, though I did with my grandmother--I preferred to cut squares of fabric from my mom's stash and drape and tie them in fun arrangements. Then I discovered the creative thrill of coloring and watering coffee filters and how they could be taped and draped for clothes as well. Later on I used toilet paper and tissues for the same effect, and I discovered that you could change the shape of your Barbie by wetting tissues and molding them to her body and letting them dry, making a plaster-like effect. I thought my Barbie needed to be curvier. I still feel this way.
nomadicdragon asked: What's the first book you ever read that really touched you...and what was so touching about it?
As you all know, books are utterly sacred to me, and I have read a lot of them in my twenty-two years. I have had books that stirred a frenzy of imagination in me, I've had books that left me brooding, books that made me giggle and smile and sigh with dreamy pleasure. But I'm going to choose to define being touched as stirring a great deal of emotion in me, to the point of tears. And that, therefore, would be Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voigt.
This book utterly shattered my heart. I read it when I was in sixth grade. I was and am a big fan of Cynthia Voigt; she writes very deep, perspective-deepening books that can move and stir the young and the old. (Someone remind me to reread some the next time I go home.) I was sitting in my literature and history class, having finished my work early, and as I always did, I pulled out that book and started reading. The whole thing had been very touching, but I arrived at a place where Izzy and Rosamunde were looking into Izzy's closet, and all of her shoes were lined up there, but Izzy's mother had taken away the left shoe of each pair. And in the book, they fell into hysterics. And it was then that it really hit me--this fictional character is only fifteen, and her life has been changed so completely that she no longer has that simple girly pleasure of having rows of shoes. Just a shoe per hair. And for some reason that I still can't completely fathom, it opened up this well of compassion and empathetic pain in me. And the next thing I knew, I was sitting at my desk, my face buried in my hands, sobbing at the realization of just how much pain people could feel, knowing that as much pain as I'd known at the hands of bullies, there were people out there, people who hadn't done anything to deserve it, who knew pain that went far beyond that.
My teacher came along, and gently took the book away from me, tucked a bookmark inside, and set it in my backpack. She was one of those teachers much like I myself would be if I were to teach middle school--had a wonderful supply of toys, books, puzzles, all sorts of things to keep us amused. She handed me a 100-piece puzzle of a Monet painting, without saying a word, and a tissue. I continued to cry as I obediently put the puzzle together. Things were never quite the same after that.
zaianya said: Because I am in a violent mood, and you did request something you don't blog about: graphic, explicit violence. Of whatever kind suits your fancy.
I almost dedicated another entry to this because I've been thinking long and hard about it since last night. How I feel about violence, about the role of violence in my life. I think--and most people would agree--that I am a fairly peaceful person. I don't usually get angry about things; at most, I get cranky. Even when I was dealing with the Great Domestic Drama of 2007, I never truly felt any significantly violent urges. I would toy with the idea, and periodically, at my angriest, I thought that it would be very satisfying to lift my hand, and pull back my arm, and feel the satisfying, prickly sting of my palm connecting with her face. But I never did it. I usually managed to find some other way, even if, perhaps, beating the everliving hell out of my roommate might have actually been the better option.
The last physical altercation I had with someone was when I was fifteen, during the last few months of my sophomore year. My sister was a freshman at NC State, and she had come home. She was always very aggressive, high-strung, and angry, and as a rule, if I stayed out of her way and didn't argue with her, even at her angriest, we were able to coexist, if uneasily. At the time of the incident in question, my mom had been cheating on my dad for a few months, and my sister had known for a few weeks. She was, in those days, overflowing with rage about it. She was strung out like I've never seen before, and vibrating, rippling with the force of her constant anger. She was the powder keg and the flame all in one, and it was just a matter of time before it exploded.
It was a beautiful spring day in May, and she had stomped into the dining room and demanded I hand over the computer. As I was having a flirty conversation with my new boyfriend, I was reluctant to do this, and as a result, I was snappy when I told her to not mess with anything I was doing as I stalked into the kitchen. We were like a pair of territorial cats, bristling and prowling with temper. She said, "Shut up, you stupid bitch." I whirled around and said, "Don't talk to me like that." She said, "Shut the fuck up or I will come in there and slap the shit out of you." My temper was starting to rise to meet hers, and I said, "Don't. Fucking. Talk. To Me. Like That."
The flame met the powder keg, and I heard the chair scrape back as my sister jumped up and came stomping into the kitchen. Time slowed down as I saw her fist go back, and then stars of pain exploded, and my vision blurred. I dimly registered a thought that she just punched me in the fucking face, and then my world...just...went blurry. My well-controlled temper exploded, and this white-hot primal feeling rushed into my veins, with only one thought. Kill.
When she finally shoved me back, and when my vision finally cleared, my heart was pounding, tears were pouring down my face, and I was panting. She was also panting, and her eyes were wide, with the remnants of her fast temper, respect, and something mocking. Her lip was already swelling, and bleeding, and she had bleeding scratches running down at an angle from her cheek along her neck, across her shoulders. There would be a few more bruises that appeared later on, and her hair was a wreck. I had launched myself like an enraged panther at her, and she said, "I didn't think you had it in you." I snarled and launched myself at her again.
At last she shoved me against the wall, and said, "Enough!" My eye was throbbing--it later bruised--and as I shoved her back and stalked down the hall to my room, my last words to her--for the next week--were: "If you ever hit me like that again, I swear to God above I will break your fucking face."
There have been no such altercations since. Which is not to say I have not experienced violence since then. I have, especially as I have pursued my devotion to a very violent goddess, embraced violence in some contexts. I believe that one must accept that the world in general is violent, and not just on the human level. Mother Nature is savage, vicious, and utterly heartless. That's the way things are. I like watching violent movies, playing violent games. I like writing violent stories. I appreciate death, the intricacies of pain. In recent months I have begun exploring the pleasure that can be found in pain, on many levels.
And as I do so, my spirit seems to be ascending to an even gentler and more peaceful plane of existence. By embracing violence, and knowing that there's nothing unnatural about it--I'm not going to go into any debates on rightness or wrongness--I've somehow made myself a gentler and more pacific person. It's an interesting turn.
Those are the first three. I will answer more later on.
I came into the world as part of a household that had a number of pets. There was a dog, Annie, and a number of cats. The only cat I really remember from my earliest years was a cantankerous tortie named Other One. But none of those were really mine. My first pet arrived shortly after I turned four. I had chicken pox on my birthday, and as I couldn't really have a party, my mom decided that the thing to do would be to acquire a kitten each for my sister and me. My sister got a sleek little gray tabby that she named Junior, and I got Katie.
Katie was a wonderful first pet in many ways. She was a very small cat even when she reached adulthood, and due to a number of health problems, she had a short, crooked, stunted little tail that was knobby on the end. We called her "scrappycat" because she was so small. She had soft black fur that never really got as silky as an adult cat's normally does, so my memories of her were of patient green eyes and soft fuzzy blackness. She never scratched or bit to my memory, and I know that, since I was still very young, I probably wasn't as gentle as I am now. I remember dressing her in my doll clothes, and cuddling her in bed. She was my accomplice, my little black shadow, and I was enchanted by her. I loved her fiercely, and when I was in second grade, she started sleeping in a box full of thread in my mom's sewing area all the time, and crying piteously when I picked her up, which broke my heart. It turned out Katie had cancer, and I cried and cried the day they had to put her to sleep. I remember crying in my art class, and refusing to make a monster from the air-dry clay because I was so, so sad.
What was I like when I was five? I was very bright and energetic, for one thing! I was very petite, very slight, and constantly tanned because I was always running around outside. I had lots of silky straight light brown hair, and I was always talking and smiling. My mother swears that I learned how to read before I went to school, and I do remember sitting at the old dark wooden coffee table, stubbornly tracing the letters in my sister's writing books from second grade. I loved to play outside, and there was one magical place in my backyard that was very firmly mine. It was in the grapevine tree just beyond my dad's building, and it was perfect for climbing. There was one big limb that was lower to the ground, and then a slanting limb that went up higher, and it had very lush green leaves. I liked to play out there, because the ground was clear beneath it, and I would gather berries from the tree, mimosa seed pods, acorns, dogwood buds, whatever I could find, and I would "cook" with them. I'd make elaborate mud pies, and I would sit there and spin stories to myself about what I was cooking, these elaborate menus I was creating, what the occasion was. Then I would climb up into the tree and sit there and read.
I also roamed my yard a lot. There were, to my imaginative mind, different "kingdoms" almost in the yard. The far end of the yard was very far away and rather "bleak" to me, while the strange little dip in the yard near the big oak tree was a place to sit and hide and watch for The Enemy. I liked to "play house" in a little tangle of bushes near the front, and the sidewalk in the very front was always good for chalking. I also played in our sandy driveway a lot. I liked it when someone mowed the yard, because I'd gather the dried grass and use it to make a roof for a tiny little house of sand. When it rained, I'd run outside and make piles of sand in the driveway to divert the runoff to various other places. When I learned to ride a bike, I'd ride loops around the yard, going down my driveway, through the back yard, up to the front again, and tell stories to myself.
Inside was also fun. Obviously I played with Katie a lot, but I also loved my Barbies. I made clothes for them out of scraps of fabric and ribbons and strings, because my own creations always looked cooler. I didn't sew much, though I did with my grandmother--I preferred to cut squares of fabric from my mom's stash and drape and tie them in fun arrangements. Then I discovered the creative thrill of coloring and watering coffee filters and how they could be taped and draped for clothes as well. Later on I used toilet paper and tissues for the same effect, and I discovered that you could change the shape of your Barbie by wetting tissues and molding them to her body and letting them dry, making a plaster-like effect. I thought my Barbie needed to be curvier. I still feel this way.
nomadicdragon asked: What's the first book you ever read that really touched you...and what was so touching about it?
As you all know, books are utterly sacred to me, and I have read a lot of them in my twenty-two years. I have had books that stirred a frenzy of imagination in me, I've had books that left me brooding, books that made me giggle and smile and sigh with dreamy pleasure. But I'm going to choose to define being touched as stirring a great deal of emotion in me, to the point of tears. And that, therefore, would be Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voigt.
This book utterly shattered my heart. I read it when I was in sixth grade. I was and am a big fan of Cynthia Voigt; she writes very deep, perspective-deepening books that can move and stir the young and the old. (Someone remind me to reread some the next time I go home.) I was sitting in my literature and history class, having finished my work early, and as I always did, I pulled out that book and started reading. The whole thing had been very touching, but I arrived at a place where Izzy and Rosamunde were looking into Izzy's closet, and all of her shoes were lined up there, but Izzy's mother had taken away the left shoe of each pair. And in the book, they fell into hysterics. And it was then that it really hit me--this fictional character is only fifteen, and her life has been changed so completely that she no longer has that simple girly pleasure of having rows of shoes. Just a shoe per hair. And for some reason that I still can't completely fathom, it opened up this well of compassion and empathetic pain in me. And the next thing I knew, I was sitting at my desk, my face buried in my hands, sobbing at the realization of just how much pain people could feel, knowing that as much pain as I'd known at the hands of bullies, there were people out there, people who hadn't done anything to deserve it, who knew pain that went far beyond that.
My teacher came along, and gently took the book away from me, tucked a bookmark inside, and set it in my backpack. She was one of those teachers much like I myself would be if I were to teach middle school--had a wonderful supply of toys, books, puzzles, all sorts of things to keep us amused. She handed me a 100-piece puzzle of a Monet painting, without saying a word, and a tissue. I continued to cry as I obediently put the puzzle together. Things were never quite the same after that.
zaianya said: Because I am in a violent mood, and you did request something you don't blog about: graphic, explicit violence. Of whatever kind suits your fancy.
I almost dedicated another entry to this because I've been thinking long and hard about it since last night. How I feel about violence, about the role of violence in my life. I think--and most people would agree--that I am a fairly peaceful person. I don't usually get angry about things; at most, I get cranky. Even when I was dealing with the Great Domestic Drama of 2007, I never truly felt any significantly violent urges. I would toy with the idea, and periodically, at my angriest, I thought that it would be very satisfying to lift my hand, and pull back my arm, and feel the satisfying, prickly sting of my palm connecting with her face. But I never did it. I usually managed to find some other way, even if, perhaps, beating the everliving hell out of my roommate might have actually been the better option.
The last physical altercation I had with someone was when I was fifteen, during the last few months of my sophomore year. My sister was a freshman at NC State, and she had come home. She was always very aggressive, high-strung, and angry, and as a rule, if I stayed out of her way and didn't argue with her, even at her angriest, we were able to coexist, if uneasily. At the time of the incident in question, my mom had been cheating on my dad for a few months, and my sister had known for a few weeks. She was, in those days, overflowing with rage about it. She was strung out like I've never seen before, and vibrating, rippling with the force of her constant anger. She was the powder keg and the flame all in one, and it was just a matter of time before it exploded.
It was a beautiful spring day in May, and she had stomped into the dining room and demanded I hand over the computer. As I was having a flirty conversation with my new boyfriend, I was reluctant to do this, and as a result, I was snappy when I told her to not mess with anything I was doing as I stalked into the kitchen. We were like a pair of territorial cats, bristling and prowling with temper. She said, "Shut up, you stupid bitch." I whirled around and said, "Don't talk to me like that." She said, "Shut the fuck up or I will come in there and slap the shit out of you." My temper was starting to rise to meet hers, and I said, "Don't. Fucking. Talk. To Me. Like That."
The flame met the powder keg, and I heard the chair scrape back as my sister jumped up and came stomping into the kitchen. Time slowed down as I saw her fist go back, and then stars of pain exploded, and my vision blurred. I dimly registered a thought that she just punched me in the fucking face, and then my world...just...went blurry. My well-controlled temper exploded, and this white-hot primal feeling rushed into my veins, with only one thought. Kill.
When she finally shoved me back, and when my vision finally cleared, my heart was pounding, tears were pouring down my face, and I was panting. She was also panting, and her eyes were wide, with the remnants of her fast temper, respect, and something mocking. Her lip was already swelling, and bleeding, and she had bleeding scratches running down at an angle from her cheek along her neck, across her shoulders. There would be a few more bruises that appeared later on, and her hair was a wreck. I had launched myself like an enraged panther at her, and she said, "I didn't think you had it in you." I snarled and launched myself at her again.
At last she shoved me against the wall, and said, "Enough!" My eye was throbbing--it later bruised--and as I shoved her back and stalked down the hall to my room, my last words to her--for the next week--were: "If you ever hit me like that again, I swear to God above I will break your fucking face."
There have been no such altercations since. Which is not to say I have not experienced violence since then. I have, especially as I have pursued my devotion to a very violent goddess, embraced violence in some contexts. I believe that one must accept that the world in general is violent, and not just on the human level. Mother Nature is savage, vicious, and utterly heartless. That's the way things are. I like watching violent movies, playing violent games. I like writing violent stories. I appreciate death, the intricacies of pain. In recent months I have begun exploring the pleasure that can be found in pain, on many levels.
And as I do so, my spirit seems to be ascending to an even gentler and more peaceful plane of existence. By embracing violence, and knowing that there's nothing unnatural about it--I'm not going to go into any debates on rightness or wrongness--I've somehow made myself a gentler and more pacific person. It's an interesting turn.
Those are the first three. I will answer more later on.