Christmas at Starbuck's

Snow is layered on the ground

Music playing all around

Kindly pointing to a chair

Ask if someone’s sitting there

Take a seat and sip your drink

Now is time to stop and think

Now that you are all alone

You softly take a bite of scone

Busy shoppers pause to rest

This coffee shop is like a nest

Where we can come and have a cup

Of coffee that will warm us up

I have memories uniquely mine

Made at Starbuck’s at Christmastime

Christmas at Starbuck's

Snow is layered on the ground

Music playing all around

Kindly pointing to a chair

Ask if someone’s sitting there

Take a seat and sip your drink

Now is time to stop and think

Now that you are all alone

You softly take a bite of scone

Busy shoppers pause to rest

This coffee shop is like a nest

Where we can come and have a cup

Of coffee that will warm us up

I have memories uniquely mine

Made at Starbuck’s at Christmastime

Just a Quote

This is something I read recently and I went, “Yes!”  It relates to my previous post “Why I Don’t Like Literature Class.”  Stephenie Meyer, author of The Twilight Saga and The Host: “When I write stories, they’re very specific—it’s about this one situation, and one person who’s not like anybody else in the world.  So that person’s decisions and choices are not a model for anyone else.  And it bothers me when people say: Well, this story is preaching this, or the moral is this.  Because it’s just a story.  It’s about an interesting circumstance and how it resolves.  It’s not intended to mean anything for anybody else’s life….This is a fictional account—I wasn’t trying to teach anyone anything—I just wanted to entertain myself.”

Idolatry: A Friend of Mine

She’s beautiful and athletic

She’s accepting

One of the kindest people I know

She’s good with animals

Loves children

Does well in school

She looks good in anything

She does nothing to her hair and it looks gorgeous

Falling, cascading, rolling down her back

Perfect, brunette curls, ringlets

Her eyes are soft and brown

She has such a natural beauty

She’s amazing

In every way

She my idol

A Life in a Slum

           I could either work in a factory or work on the streets.  I could work all day or all night.  I had to risk my life either way.  Did I want to die in a fire, or be killed by an abusive man?

            What were my options?  I had no money, no education, and no connections.  I couldn’t even afford to leave the island.  I was stuck.

            Standing at the river.  The water looks cool and relaxing.  If I could get beneath the water, so that it shut out the dark world, then maybe I could escape.  I stare into the water.  Dreaming.  Imagining.  Longing for escape.

The Last Andrew

Note: if you’re familiar with Twelfth Night, this story will be more entertaining.
  
        Whether it was a movie or a play, she always fell in love with the actor playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek.  Twelfth Night was, in her opinion, Shakespeare’s masterpiece, and whenever she had the opportunity to see it, she did.  Since the first time she’d read the play in high school, she had been in love with Sir Andrew, and now she was smitten with actors who played him.

            For two weeks, she stalked Richard E. Grant, from the movie Twelfth Night, until she saw a production of the play at the local middle school.  That was awkward, since Sir Andrew was played by a 7^th grader, but only three days later, she saw a youtube video of a college production from 2001.  She moved to Pittsburg to be near Jake Collins, who was now a paralegal.  He was going to get a restraining order against her after she crashed his stag party, but she promised to leave him alone.  After that, she cultivated the art of disguise.

            Every few months, she encountered a new Sir Andrew and fell violently in love.  Though it grew tiresome, she simply couldn’t help it.  She even very nearly got married once, but three weeks before the wedding, her fiancé foolishly brought her to see a local production of Twelfth Night, probably trying to remind her of the night she met him.  But the new Sir Andrew, ugly and scrawny though he was, tore her heart away from her fiancé.

            And so her life continued for years, until she was so sick and tired of it all that she did her best not to go see Twelfth Night anymore.  But her intense love for the romantic comedy was not easy to keep down.

            One snowy evening, she was standing outside a movie theater.  A new version of Twelfth Night had come out, but she was a dollar short on cash.  A dollar!

            “Please, sir,” she said, approaching a rather hideous-looking young man standing there.  “Have you got a dollar?”

            “Sir?” he answered.  “Am I a sir?  No, I’m Andrew.”

            “Sir…” she began.

            “Andrew,” he corrected her.

            “Sir Andrew?!” she gasped.

            “Yes?” he said, confused but wanting to please the fresh face before him.

            “Sir Andrew Aguecheek?!”  She was smitten.  “Please,” she said.  “Marry me and take me away from all these productions!”  After all, she thought, when Olivia asked Sebastian to marry her, he agreed even though he’d never met her.  But then, she was beautiful…

            “Take you away where?” he asked, taking her hand.  Her heart fluttered.

            “Away,” she said, “away from all the other Andrews.”  This was enough for him.

            “I have a cabin in the mountains,” he said.  “We don’t even get radio.  And the City Hall is just down the street.  We could get married now!”

            “Oh, Andrew!”

            “I suppose I ought to know your name,” he said as they set off.

            “Call me…Viola.”

            And they lived happily ever after.

'Twas a Pretty Morning

‘Twas a pretty morning this morning

Snow like sticky dust on the ground

On the trees

A white scene so lovely

Funny how such a delicate thing

Not even an inch of crystalized water

It conquers mighty fir trees

Fields of grass and weeds

The dead raccoon across the road

Is covered in a layer of snow

My whole hill is frozen cold

It’s like death, and yet

It’s so pretty

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Well then, my eyes have issues

But ‘twas a pretty morning this morning.

Why I Don't Like Literature Class

           Literature is not something to be pondered or mulled over or picked apart.  It is something to be read and enjoyed and accepted.  Is he a believable character?  Was she justified?  How might this have been different?  

            This isn’t real life!  In a fictional story, we don’t need to pick these things apart.  We need to read it, enjoy it, and take it at face value.  Literature is not created to make sense; it is created to stir emotion in the heart of the reader.

            When a writer sits down with passion in his heart and fire in his eyes and he puts his pen to paper and pours out eloquent words to capture the feelings he feels, he is not intending for the one who comes across his words to point out the inadequacies or inconsistencies.  He intends the reader to feel what he feels and see what he sees.  When he describes a scene, he doesn’t want you to ask, “Is this realistic?” or “What does this say about the narrator?”  He wants you to visualize it and feel the cool air and hear the gentle music. 

            Art appeals to the heart—to the emotions.  If we wanted it all to match up, we would study math, not literature.  The beauty of fiction is that it doesn’t have to make sense; it just has to be beautiful.  A writer has succeeded if it is beautiful and if it makes the reader want to keep reading.  Let us stop studying literature to the point of destruction and let it be what it was meant to be.