Jars of Peaches

 

                I need to stop writing with a meaning in mind I need to take a step back from the holes I have made in my digital screen of posts that aren’t good enough.  They fill up my folder with line after line of jammer that was spit on to the document as if trying to make artwork from air. Not impossible, but highly difficult for a girl who has a one hour opening per week to write.

            Meanings aren’t born, they are created. I found myself listening to a Shane Koyczan today as the basement buried me with dusky walls and lost journals I wish I hadn’t found, and this slam poet had a point when he said:

“Every day, Grandma would come into my room
And I’d hear her say, “Rise and shine.
The world is a window that holds a sign
There’s help wanted somewhere.” ”

            Because behind each sign is a desk that has a story that is shared with the goods the shop is trying to sell. And every time I sit and scratch my forehead and try to piece together what my post will be about, I just keep drifting back to the tales behind the signs…

            For if I were a jar of peaches in a Fine Foods Grocery Store and my Grandparents were the desk then I would be able to sit all day and listen to the adventures they have rode to overcome.  If it worked that way then I would never be sitting scratching my forehead trying to think of a meaning within my post because all I would write about are stories I have lived to hear.

            But my Grandparents are evergreens tall and strong, loving everything that is near to them, staying in colour all year round.  Were I am more like a jar and a peach, separate, keeping things sealed and sweet.

            And Evergreens and jars with peach labels don’t always have all day to lounge around and natter.

            If I had a tool that scalped air into lyrics then I wouldn’t have everything to work at. Plus, maybe jars aren’t suppose to have labels or lids to keep them shut.  Maybe help wanted signs aren’t just suppose to go on store windows next to posters advertising glass containers of peaches.  Perhaps this new year we all should start caring around help wanted signs in our back pockets and hold them up every time we doubt the seal, or when we have created our meaning.

                                                                  

My dear love…

            My dear, sweet unforgiving love!  Oh, how lost I would be without you- No- how scared I would be without you!

            OH! Alveno!! How I do ever so love you! You do more than I could ever ask for.

            People can ask who I love, I can say friends, family, but to be honest my only love in this world is you….  Alveno Anti-Itch Cream.  I was sure bug spray was the one, but you are my back drop when bug spray doesn’t work.  You are always my savior in the end.

            For you stay on my dresser through all the seasons! Unlike bug spray that only seems to appear in the back shoe cabinet in the summer.  No, you are my pepperoni to my pizza! You are my cloud to my sky; unless there are no clouds in which case you would be my air to my lungs. 

            In summer you talk the swelling down into a less noticeable allergic reaction.  In the winter you are not forgotten because you smooth my rash from basketball tournaments.  You whisper a lullaby to the turf burn as it screams out. 

            Your sweet flowery, sickening, medical sent fills my nose and I know, love, you are the one for me.

            You turn me pink every time I apply you to my ever so misquote bitten limbs.  You are the reason I sleep at night.  For when I am awake I cannot take my mind off the moment when we get to be together, at night I am dreading the dawn when I have to leave you behind and go to school.

            Oh ,my beautiful, Alveno, where would I be without you???

            Bug spray may work for an hour or two and then it gives up on me.  Not you, my sweet, no you would never leave me in a time of need.

            Oh, my deeply gorgeous bottle of Alveno lotion I just don’t know if I would be me without you and your heeling skills.

            Because both you and I know that we are better matched then blood and Band-Aids, or make-up remover and eye shadow, yes, nothing will ever be as perfect as Jessy Lee and Alveno Anti-Itch Cream.

Send and Receive

                                 I clicked the Send and Receive All button above my inbox and 295 emails flooded in making me smile.  Not necessarily because that’s a whole bunch of emails for a fourteen year old, but because it means my computer is back to working! Four months is a long time, if you ask me, for one to go on without their laptop.

                Today’s post is not about getting things fixed it’s about the 295 waiting emails.

                I once had a person ask me to write a blog post on beauty, many, many, many, perhaps dozens of documents had been started. I could write about beauty, what went wrong was I was trying to write about the beauty Hollywood wants. The kind of beauty that does not exist. Then I thought to myself, why in the world can’t I write about my kind of beauty on my blog?

                Myself shrugged as a reply.

                Beauty is…

                Dancing around the house belting old country tunes.

                It’s the first snow fall and the first time every season you face plant into the same snow bank.

                It’ when your grandpa, Albert, teaches you to howl to coyotes.

                It’s the silent sound of a dishwasher running.

                The scent of a new book.

                The smell of an old book.

                It’s the candle light on the Christmas table, waiting as I make a nest under the tree.

                It’s watching Disney movies when your home alone.

                It’s apple crisp.

                It’s downloading apps on your phone about authors.

                It’s daring to shoot from half.

                It’s whipping out.

                It’s taking a leap from the trapeze.

                It’s having a Cori in your life.

                It‘s suffering the next day because you stayed up to late reading.

                It’s saying there’s more to the Social network then Facebook, there is the world in the web too.

                It’s the sigh of realization when you slip but don’t fall.

                It’s caring the art stool out of the art room after you think it’s your binder.

                It’s looking from a window into a window.

                It’s googling McGill sweatshirts.

                It’s laughing so hard you fall down on the basketball court with your friends.

                It’s getting a blog idea and leaving your homework till morning.

                It’s 295 emails in my inbox. Not because that’s 295 emails saying that I have missed them. No, it’s the 295 emails in my inbox that is saying open me and discover what’s behind the subject.

                The best part of opening emails is so you can figure out 295 different possibilities of beauty.

My Kinda Fit

                I already had a blog post edited and saved. It’s a perfect blog post. I meant to have posted it last night. The post was on beauty, something soft and sweet, something that did not hang in the air of last night. Thinking about last night has made me change this week’s post. 

                There was close to 30 girls wanting to make one of the 12 spots for junior basketball. We were all in, grinding for the next level of being better. All digging into our worsening blisters without a flinch. We had been out to tryouts four times now, and we were all so sure of ourselves that we had forgotten that only 12 girls could be in a jersey.

                At first, I told myself I was doing this for me. I told myself, I love basketball.  But, my heart won over my mind. I like basketball; I love soccer.

                My soccer shoes don’t give my feet blisters; I don’t feel like an outsider when I am on the rubber turf or the muddy fields. I feel like a stranger on the gym floor, digging deeper for a spot on the court.

                Last night, I had a blog post planned out, but after I decided this week needed something different.

                Last night, a clip board was pasted around. I watched it as it climbed through the girls over to me. I didn’t even read the names I was just searching for something that would be familiar to me, my name, Jessy Lee Saas. It wasn’t there though.

                Neither were 17 other girls’ names.

                The 12 lucky girls who don’t get blisters in high-tops stayed. The rest us hurried to our feet and rushed out thinking that the crowed of girls could maybe hind us from the ‘better’ girls who still sat. I turned to my friend beside me, her face was broken, a replica of everyone that surrounded me.

                “That was a walk of shame,” Sabrina whispered to me, or maybe to her locker that clung next to mine.

                Either way, I had to agree.

                I had come to basketball straight from the field house and had worn my cleats into the change room.  The change room that now was an unearthly silence with nothing but the screams of tears. I sat down on a bench, looked at the girls around me, as I unlaced my shoes and saw 17 girls who deserved a team. Maybe not because they’re ‘good,’ but because I see 17 girls who will learn from each other and whatever shoes they put on before they learn from this set-back.

                That doesn’t change the fact that this is still a set-back.

                I unlaced my basketball shoes that my Albert gave me and relised I won’t need them again. Their life from here is in the back of my spots cupboard.

                Then I felt it, as I slipped my jacket from my locker, I had let him down. My Albert; I play basketball because I like it, more then that, I play basketball because my Albert loves basketball.

                I hurried away from the tear soaked floor and into the front hallway where I sat with my basketball shoes looking longingly at my cleats. I slowly laced back up my tight Nikes, when a girl walked past.  She was on the phone with her mom, “I told you I wasn’t good enough.” I watched her walk out the doors because she was good enough. We all are.

                I then saw that a tear had dropped from my cheek onto my basketball runners. I ran to the doors, the girl who didn’t think she was good enough, had just left from.

                I snapped at each tear almost before it had a chance to glide down my skin. At first, it was because I thought I had let Albert down.  Then, it was because I thought I could have let Albert down, something Albert says is impossible.

                Now if you excuse me, I have a pair of regularly warn soccer cleats to go put on…

Echoing night

Last night, long after the walls had fallen into a slumber, I lay wide awake.  And in the inky haze I could hear the soft murmur of my mom on the phone with my grandma.  I heard the word “Keyhole” which stood out agents the other mutters like a rain in the desert.  

                The blankets kick off letting the air settle as a sweet cover around me. When I heard it echoed through the snoring walls bounding off the dosing dresser,

keyhole,

keyhole,

keyhole.

That’s when I thought of it, keyholes aren’t really only on doors. The purpose for a keyhole on a door it to keep the thing inside locked up so the people around you can only peek in.

            But, keyholes are everywhere because life has come to the point where people can’t trust themselves if they’re not locked up.  We keep everything so deeply buried that we lose the keys, so when we want to open up our heart, we have blocked ourselves out. 

            All we do anymore is tip toe around peeping through keyholes hoping to get a glimpse of anything. Of the key, that could unlock the cemented door of the spirit. Or, maybe, just a look at the person that has been fastened away from the world.  If we don’t find anything on our first try, then we simply give up.

            We are all so advanced that in today’s age we can lie through the digital screen and get away with the ever locking doors with no handles.  Till one day man will find a way for us to breathe through masks so we don’t have to talk about problems, like the ozone, we can just leave them.  And when it happens our doors can be bolted so tight that even a look though a keyhole won’t tell you more than a name.

            As I lay in the soft blackness of the dead night, I think about rusting doors that have be shut for too long. I am tired of rust cutting people out, of lost keys, and muttering in the next room. And of peeping though keyhole after keyhole trying to find which one holds the true.

            But, trying to open up doors these days is like the fading of the echo of

Keyhole

Keyhole

Keyhole.