Non Fiction

Free at Last

It all began with a beat. A palpatating rhythm is my first encounter through a shared pulse running through our veins, for I am still a part of her. A listener from the start. The muffled frequencies of the outside are uncharted to me for now. It is here that I learned my first melody. Succesion of single tones. An agreeable arrangement. Most may say it is impossible for something of my 'stature' to know. To process. To hear. That was not the belief of my carrier as her everyday ritual consisted of an ancient cassette taoe with her favorite tunes of principal harmonies and connected speech. Each a prayer to our harmonized souls. As the lofty music entangles me, I feel her embrace as I see the shadows of ten long digits projecting through her protective force protecting me. Mine are much smaller than hers, but someday, they will bring joy to the receivers of sound.

It is now my time to pass through a veil and into my journey's dawning. Time to say adieu to my sanctuary and maternal nest for my lease is belated.

My once linked body is now detached. My new world is a neverending expance giving me clearence to amplify and thrive.
"Goodnight my sweet child." A blanket of comfort escapes my Mother's mouth as she departed my room with an affectionate glance. I have never been aquainted with a lonesome surrounding like now. Bleached bars confine me with a chilling texture unlike my mother's assurance.

What seems like eternal is altered with a familiar sound.
Suddenly, A wave of orchestrated warmth greets me as each word emerges from the tape. Each resolution is a triumph, each voice so pure. Every plunk of the piano employs pure color. This repitition, no doubt, is creating a passion.

By the Credulous age of two, these songs are still part of my everyday routine. The only difference is now I sing along.
"Won't you sing for me?" My mother asks frequently, nearly every day. "You need practice!" She shakes her wrinkled finger at me with a stern softness in her voice.

I am singing at an elderly woman's baptism. There is no such thing as getting nervous, because the butterflies are my playmates. The woman sitting in front of me with her pristine countinence angles her head awaiting my performance. Her sterling mane floats over her head like smoke. Her youthful smile invites me to begin...

Oh Lord my God

when I in awsome wonder

consider all the worlds thy hands have made

These words so simple to me are merely a performance of my practice

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder

Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

The words arise and are more than simple speech. They defy worldly utterances and become a delicasy.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee

how great Thou art, how great Thou art

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee

how great Thou art, how great Thou art.

My voice is no longer of a child, but an angel singing in my place with a resounding innocence. As I finish the fourth verse, I know my life's vocation will be surrounded by music. My love for a melody is a congenital disease that I will enbrace for the rest of my life.

My affinity grows with me as I become a young lady. I am still the same girl, but my enveloping life is faultering with every word entering the pages of my story. My parents ask all of us children to gather around the clumbsy wooden table my father forged when I was a small child. He could do anything. I instantly resign to a memory of hide and seek with all the chairs tucked in and fused together by my body. What a delightful way to begin mourning.

"Your mother and I have decided to get a divorce. The decision has nothing to do with you. You are the best thing that has ever become of us, and we want you to know it is not your fault." My father delivers as my momentary joy retreats. He continues to read a passage from a book about keeping a family together through a parental divorce. I find no solace from the text, only agitation. All I must do is confide in that steadfast beat in my cemented chest. With each quaking meter, a crack emerges allowing light to strain through. I now wait for my time alone.

It was an unusually obscure afternoon and dusk was approaching. The only source of light raidiated from the rustic lamp on the piano. I lay my confused fingers on the pearly keys as some lose their place and find reasurance on the charcoal keys that create a beautiful distortion which suits my dispair. Flat. Sharp. Wrong, but so right. My brain disconnects from my hands and they begin their ballad. I cleanch my humid eyes as my agony drains from my fingertips. Don't stop, for the heartache is drowning my sprit. The marrow of my being is quivering with no indication of rest. Not a trace of peace. Not until my bones are hushed.

I can see a beam of hope when the aria of serenity takes its toll on me. I uncover my shielded eyes as they direct their focus to my reconnected hands. A salt water ocean floods my drenched hands. Each tear a reminder of my forgotten pain.

Each day I face adversity to some degree. The people I once called friends are now my adversary. To this day, the most important aspect of my life is music. I must never forget the hardship it has hoisted me from. I know that if I have faith, it will give me strength in times of hopeless sorrow.

Dream Children a Reverie by Charles Lamb

I was reading a blog of a friend when I saw a quote she posted by Percy Bysshe Shelley, the husband of Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein. This took me back to a class I took called Academic Literature which the main focus was on english literature throughout time. Our first piece being Beowulf which I must say is much better than any movie hollywood could have made. I never knew this, but it is amung the first writings found in this area dated back to the Anglo-Saxon period. As the class continued, I began to love it more as we read Shakespeare, works of some of the most famous poets, and studied art. It is hard for me to remember anything specificly unless I am reminded of them, but today I remembered a specific essay by Charles Lamb that really struck me. He was a loney man who spent his life taking care of his sick sister...never having the chance at a family of his own.... so here it is

Dream Children A Reverie
By Charles Lamb

CHILDREN love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about, me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene -- so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country -- of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts, till a foolish rich Person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great. grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by every body, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "that would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman; so good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer -- here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted -- the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said "those innocents would do her no harm;" and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she -- and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eye-brows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grand-children, having us to the great-house in the holydays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the Twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken pannels, with the gilding almost rubbed out -- sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me -- and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, -- and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at -- or in lying a out upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me -- or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth -- or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, -- I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such like common baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand-children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L----, because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out -- and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries -- and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of every body, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame- footed boy -- for he was a good bit older than me -- many a mile when I could not walk pain; -- and how in after life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame- footed; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarreled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he their poor uncle must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children fell a crying, and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them, some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W---n; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in maidens -- when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech; "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice called Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name" ------ and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side -- but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever.

Sorry, Im a little late! More to come!

So I have lots and lots of great pictures from the wedding but have no time to get them all on here! These are some that I somehow uploaded already! Amanda, I will get the rest for you!