Playdough

So many colors and so many shapes to make.  Sitting there at your table alone or perhaps with your siblings or friends, you can make anything, do anything, be anything.  When you're young, you can mold your future into anything you want it to be.

And then you grow up.  Playdough is a fond memory, perhaps one you choose to pass onto your own children, but its not something for you anymore.  Your life is what you've made it.  The choices you've made when you were younger seem to shape who you are today.  You can still make tweaks, minor corrections, but the mold's already set.  The playdough's been left out for days, weeks, months, even years without an intervention.  It is what it is, and it feels like there's very little you can do about it now.

What if you want to start over, to begin again.  Is your only choice to give fresh dough to the future generation, to those who come after you.  Is your future really already hard and fast, determined by all that's led up to this point without much room for growth.

Maybe you want to go back to just playing with playdough again.  Maybe you want to crush what you are, start with a fresh ball, use a different color.  Maybe you want your future to once again be undecided, like when you were young, like when you were too young to worry about your future at all.  Can you do that?

It isn't fair really... when you're shaping your life, molding it into what it is to become, you don't really appreciate it, may not even realize what you've doing.  You've always been able to reshape it before, to recreate it, to try a different mold.  And then one day you realized you'd forgotten what you were doing.  You'd let it set out for those days or weeks or months or even years and its hardened.  Is there no going back?  Now that you actually realize what you've done, are you stuck with what you created back when you didn't even know what you were doing?

Watching the new children play gives you hope.  Can you pass onto them the lessons you didn't learn before it was too late?  Will they even listen?  Didn't the adults in your life try to do the same thing with you when you were young?  Did you listen?

Maybe you can start all over, maybe you can't, but there's always playdough out there somewhere, wanting to be formed into something beautiful, even if its not just your own.

Write Something

Too long have I found distraction in the lesser things of life, caught up in what I think matters, but doesn't really.  It's time to refocus on what truly matters, at least until tomorrow, when I fall back into my rut again.  Is there no breaking free?  I know I can't do it alone.  Who will help me?  Isn't that question the thing that really matters?

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Nothing novel remains, especially the desire for novelty.

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Dance, twirl, spin.
Fall, and get back up again.

A smile, a wink, a nudge.
How could anyone hold a grudge?

An anger grows in me,
trying mightily to break free.

Dance, twirl, spin.
Fall, and get back up again.

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Out of words, nothing left to say.  Is it okay to steal thoughts from others at a time like this?  Will they even care?  Some do, some don't.  Do you want your words to be yours alone, or do you want them to truly live?

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Hope.  It's more powerful than you think, no matter how powerful you think it is.  (And love is even better.)

Amber - Part 1

Amber's hair is black.  She just finished dying it to spite her parents for naming her in such a ridiculous manner.  Amber's parents are more than a little odd.  Before Amber, their only child, was born, they decided to make a concentrated effort to not think about any potential baby names ahead of time, opting to name their child the first thing they thought of when they saw him/her (also not knowing ahead of time the gender of their baby).  Amber supposes she should be grateful for that ugly tuft of orangish-red hair that showed up on her newborn head.  Otherwise, she might have had an even worse name like "Scream" or "Wrinkle".  Those are the things she associates with babies.

Amber doesn't really hate babies, though.  Mostly, she actually loves them, or at least once did, and is just bitter at her parents for never having another child.  Amber would have loved, she thought, to have a younger brother or sister.  Her parents decided she was wrong.  When Amber asked if she would ever have a sibling like the other kids in her fourth grade class (at that time it was just her and a very strange boy who still ate lots of paste who were only children), her parents smiled and said that they loved her too much for that.  In confusion, Amber said she wanted a younger brother or sister, but her parents patted her on the head and wandered off to make some weird organic dinner.  Turns out, they had decided that if they had another child, Amber would think they didn't love her enough.  Strangely, Amber decided they didn't love her enough because they ignored her request for them to at least consider giving her someone to play with other than the bratty girls at her school.

Amber's parents tend not to listen to anything she says.  Well, sometimes they listen, but then they promptly come up with a reason why Amber doesn't actually know what she wants.  They tell Amber that she is so good at art, particularly the darker variety (Amber has considered telling them it's because she channels her rage at them into her paintings), and that she should pursue that as a career.  Amber has decided that instead she will choose a subject she would like to be better at but did horribly in during high school.  For now, that seems to be Chemistry.  She's all signed up for the basic Chemistry course and another Chemistry elective in spite of technically being enrolled in the art school.

This is only Amber's second night away from home for college.  Her naturally blonde roommate is off whoring herself at some frat party that said roommate's older brother invited her to.  Amber's not bitter about not being invited along.  She would have said no anyway.  She's all too happy to sit her looking happily at her reflection as she reflects upon the fact that her parents would never let her do this.  She'd actually asked once before around her sophomore year of college and her parents forbid it saying that if she dyed her hair, she wouldn't be Amber anymore.  Amber is considering whether she should legally change her name to "Black" and claim she was just following their advice.  Amber is pretty sure 18 is old enough to get a legal name change.  Maybe after she's done with this smiling contentedly crap, she'll look that up on the internet.

Applications

My name is Sarah.  I'm a wife and mother of two.  I want to join the uprising because my entire life has been pointless and you are the only option I have left.  My husband doesn't love me and I've spent so much time trying to get him to love me again that I neglected my children to the point where they've become little brats that I can't stand to be around.  They are lost to me.  I've given up all hope of getting either them or my husband to love me again.  Even if my kids said they loved me, I would know it was a lie.  How could they love me after how I've treated them?  And even if they did love me I don't love them.  I think my whole family would be better off if I just disappeared.  And my career is a joke, too.  I worked for one year before I got pregnant and by now, my degree is so far outdated that I would be laughed out of any job interview.  Except this one.  I have nothing left to live for, and that's exactly what you need.  My past gives me no fond memories and my future gives me no hope.  All I can do is live in the now.  That's exactly what you need.  Also, I have a very generic face, as my husband has told me, so I can blend into any crowd without a problem.

My name is Garret.  I think what you guys do is totally awesome and I am so totally on board.  I can't think of anything more sweet than the way you guys show the man what's what.  I can't even describe how excited I would be to join you.  Plus, I'm such a total screw up and so totally going no where with my life right now that I'm sure my parents would be thrilled to see me gone.

My name is Sam.  I am a shadow.  I am no one.  No one knows where I come from or where I go.  Unlike a shadow, I can be controlled, reigned in.  I want that.  I want to be controlled by you.  Use me.  I'm perfect.

My name is Roger.  I do not fear death.  I've already died twice, legally, and obviously been revived both times.  I used to be a daredevil when I was younger.  That's what got me killed, those two times.  I've had plenty of lovers, but no one I've ever connected with.  Love and attachments are not a concern.  I think I might even be incapable of love.  But I am not incapable of loyalty.  I was so loyal to my manager when I was a daredevil that I still listed him as my manager for five years after he was dead.  And speaking of being a daredevil, I have skills that you wouldn't believe.  I can twist myself, contort myself, throw myself, run over hot coals, jump an amazing distance, I can ride a motorcycle and drive a speed boat at speeds and angles you wouldn't believe were possible, I can also ski and snowboard, probably lots of other stuff I'm forgetting to list buy haven't forgotten how to do.  You need me, and I need to feel that thrill again.  Everything else has grown stale.  And I do not fear death.

My name is Charles, or Charlie if I like you.  I used to be in the army, active duty, so I'm smart enough to take orders and clever enough to improvise when needed.  I'm guessing that most of the applications you guys get are from desperate or crazy people.  People who have lost all hope.  People who want one last thrill in life, or don't even know what they want.  People who have illusions of grandeur but don't understand what they'd be fighting for.  I am none of those people.  I know what you really are, and I more than approve, I wish I had started it.  But since I didn't start it, all I can do now is join you.  Even if you don't accept me into your inner circle, I will do all I can to fight for you.  I know you try to keep it a secret, but I know that your cause is just and noble and something worth fighting for.  Most people come to you wanting to die, but I come to you wanting to live, and to give that life to others, others who won't even know what I did to help them.  I don't need you and maybe you don't even need me, but I want to be a part of what you are.  I want to help.  And I think that desire is something you won't get from anyone else you applies this way.