An Institute of Higher Yearning

I just want to go home. Step inside the door and feel the weight of world made bearable by a backpack just fall off my shoulders. I want to sit down on an unfamiliar couch that feels invitingly informal. My shoulders would drop a few inches more and I'd exhale everything I've wanted to bare. The wanting would be done and maybe we would have a conversation or two while watching this glowing-awkward box as the focal point of our words. We could speak whole sentences with no destination but a closer proximity. We could float them up to that place that tangles prayers like a dream catcher. I could whisper to you the stillness I feel in this place and you could nod with your eyes instead of your head. We could both think this novel and choose to read between the lines. We could pretend to go at full speed when everything happened in slow motion. We could live a memory life, slowed by age. We could break our ribs and let our hearts grow in the same syncopation. Inhale until we teemed like blow fish and exhale to take flight like falling. You could throw stones at these glass exteriors. You could give them veins and bring them to life in the breakdown. We could hold hands for the first time knowing. You could prove that walls can't stand between us. We could sit while the past dismantled to the floor and choose to fix the pieces in better places. Or maybe we could just comb through the shards for a scrapbook sharper than the rest. I'd leave my fingerprints all over the pages just to say I'd been there but had never lingered. I'll happen there again, to show you my hands, when the dust settles. You can take me to print and validate every time we've ever fallen.

Where the Earth Cradles the Sky

There's a place I discovered in the alley heading from Court St. to Kantner Hall that I want to share with the world. I was contemplating Midnight in Paris, the bricked rues to which the cities lay claims, the commencement of my 4th year in Athens, and the importance of footsteps to Cagean symphonies. I happened on a stretch of brick to my left that met the vertical bricks of the building that lined it. Here there was an ordinary drain pipe that I'm sure has outlived any student I have known to walk these same bricks as I. A small, yet lively, puddle had formed under the pipe where years of rain nestled so closely and oft that the brick had reformed around the years of puddles.

 So here I was, an alley at dusk after a great film, and I just stop and watch this small body of water dance. An old muse, to which I've dedicated such time to through my life that I now consider it more of a friend, captured me once more.


This groove in a small heavily traversed alley is representative of decades--even a century of rain fall. It's a cradle for the sky. A nest of all eternity. Soul mates, fitting puzzle pieces of the city together since the advent of the town. A place where a gaze can be flattened into the environment it usually streamlines through. Well, I'm not sure of this at all but there is pleasantry to it.

Though that's not even as I prefer to think of it. I much rather prefer to think of myself as a body of water, which is all too 90-some-odd% true. I like to think I know the stability of earth wrapping around me. The comfort of running into an old friend so many times that we both just melt into one giant puzzle piece. The lines are blurred, the brick is seen only through the puddle. Nestled as they are they continue because of one another, whether in spite, spirit, or sublimation. They could not exist any other way.

Why would they want to?

Late Night Write

It was stupid, even childish. One little thing went wrong, I felt flaky, and I felt failed. The mask was slipping away and the camouflaged flaws flashed neon lights. I felt undependable and incapable of self control. I wanted to be held not buoyed. Furthermore, I wanted this to not be shrugged off. My standards may seem high but they’re what I have. Cheapening the strong emotional response to failure, however minute the failure may have seemed to you, was only making it worse.

 Now I was failing everywhere. I couldn’t communicate the situation or the effect to the degree I felt necessary. Maybe I was detailed enough, perhaps I just would never be able to make you understand. I know that if I had allowed the attention to be spared just a few more moments upon myself a great conjunction of catharsis could have resulted. This novelty felt selfish with you. It was a kid complaining about apple pie without ice cream to the kid who hasn’t had a meal all day.

Instead, I decided it would be much more proactive to switch roles. I did for you as I wanted done for myself. I comforted you and assured that everything would be okay. I catered to your needs no matter how minor they may have been. I felt that I was taking control of my own emotion by taking control of your comfort. That was until there was nothing left for me to do. We sat a moment in silence.

It was a silly little moment where I could feel the weight tottering above me. The claustrophobia had returned and the need to flee was a new necessity I was all too obliged to fulfill.

 Failure, an actual entity. I felt like I was swimming in an oversized coat. It was as if I had shrunk, but my clothes had not come with me. I couldn’t breathe and my vision started whirling.

Anxiety attack. I reach for my door and pull myself inside. The handle clicks shut and all I can see are a deprecation of thoughts. I shrink against the door. The weight has become unbearable. I’m shaking through it with shallow breath. Gravity calls me down to the ground as the door behind me guides my back. Insults and insinuations are hurling back and forth within the static room. Flashes of memory and potential narrative flash between black space and my, now, sepia toned vision. Nothing feels real but all feels dire.

I failed this task.

Well, it’s a stupid student run organization. You’re just having trouble adjusting back to school. Probably jolted by the many changes that had occurred basically at the same time.  School start, re-acquainting with roommates, reacclimating to a live-in boyfriend, leaving home after starting to feel comfortable, the shit Christmas that was. I don’t deal well with change.

I failed to communicate

I didn’t want to be selfish. You just have to be strong. This will pass. In comparison to what could be happening in your life, you should feel lucky to have this be your down-trodden state of madness. Really if you break for this there isn’t much hope for the future—figure it out.

I couldn’t control the situation

A physical response isn’t always something that you can mentally control. It could be any number of outlying factors. The important thing is just to breathe. This will actually be funny at some point in time. The melodramatics of a 20-something with nothing-problems rooted in her perfectionistic, overachieving, never feels good enough psyche.  Why isn’t my life a sitcom?

I failed at eating

Put the card back in the deck. Half the time I don’t believe myself that you had any disorder. I’m more than tempted to declare that card a comfort to your current self so your current skewed eating looks better than a lack of self-control.

I failed at an eating disorder

13 year olds with crushes on movie stars are somehow able starve themselves yet you couldn’t continue it. What does that say about your resolve?--- it’s a good thing you eat now. Though sometimes I believe you’ve just exchanged one disorder for another.

My expectations of any relationship are too high. Fail

If they don’t meet your expectations you don’t want to lower them. In addition, you’re dwelling on this. Just focus on the breathing, try not to think, and calm down. You’re fueling your own fire.

All the while these audible noises are coming from the living room and I begin to feel paranoid that I’ve drawn attention to myself. This paranoia is both upsetting and intriguing. On the one hand I desperately want not only to be heard but to be saved by myself and on the other I’m ashamed of this reasonless tantrum that has so physically manifested. This puts the tears, the heaving surface breaths, and blackness on hold. The pins I feel heating my skin cool until I’m frozen.

I look around and all is still. The same as it always is, tantrum or not. The climax feels cheapened. Nothing has changed, this has all happened in my head, and the only souvenir that remains is this shakiness. I’m not even sure if it’s a shakiness that is visible. The buzzing silence of an unchanged world by my dramatic moment courses underneath my muscles. I’m sore and exhausted. I imagine what I look like.

A crumpled ball on the floor, leaning against a door below a Katy Perry poster, nauseated by lack of oxygen, and demonstrating the calm reddened eyes that explain an inability to care anymore. This vision of myself, out of myself, is quite a funny one. I start to worry that someone might actually have heard me and come to “check up”. I reach up to lock the door, only to find that it’s already been locked (either as a result of muscle memory or a black out occurrence). How funny, blackout anxiety. How terrifying.

I shake either as a result of muscle fatigue or temperature and truly dissolve into a text book case of madness. I’m laughing but only insofar as I’m crying. I’m judging and counseling and crumpled helplessly all at the same time.

I realize how sad a notion it is that I can’t even allow myself the luxury of a natural breakdown. One unprecedented by motivation. A happening that refuses to be kept in the closet and instead topples out on its targeted victim.

The laughing turns solely to crying. I delve even further into emotional extremity. Heaving sobs at a frequency where I try to move my body to secure a muffling pillow. I’m a sack of bricks. A sad sack of Stephanie and there is no way my body is moving. I have no choice but to conclude and become over it.

Man was that weird. I have to find tissues, I have to get the tissues to me. Finally raising to my feet, a surreal experience indeed, I witness the aftermath within my body. My skin is offset in color, a palid dewiness with goose bumps and palsy wrists. Tears have been unkind to my eyes and the redness extends out from my veins onto the surrounding area. Lashes are clumped by dew and paired with swollen frames. I fan myself hoping to drive the redness away. It remains, however, stubborn as it is—I swear it even darkens.

I leave my room with an immense feeling of fear and stagnancy. Nothing has happened in the living room while a hurricane devastated a wall away. The sepia tones had diminished and left only traces on the walls, the floors, and the furniture. I beg in my mind for them not to look at me. One look and the trump will be played. I’ll have no choice but to show my hand and take responsibility for my gamble.

Are you okay?

Shit. I muster up the weakest of all smiles as if to call more attention to my predicament.

                Yeah, I’m fine.

I can’t even get through the sentence without sniffling.