Natural Regression

Notes on the Weather
©Rachel C Johnson

Today was the first day in weeks I’ve seen sun. Today was the first time the clouds parted, and for the most part I was disappointed. I wanted it to keep raining; I want it to be raining now, but all I see are weary clouds and tiny stars peaking out. I could swear that it has been raining for weeks, non-stop, wake-you-in-the-night rain. I was sure by now the streets would be flooded, that all of life might be drowned in the heavy droplets—I was wrong. The streets are wet, a thin layer of oil and rain water keeps them slick, but nothing is drowning in the over-dose of hydration. It seems almost that the rain isn’t living up to the expectations; it’s quietly letting us down. Our flowers and grass, our streets and homes have not been sacrificed for the sake of the rain, and I am left down, down under the weight of the downpour.

It turned cold today, without me expecting it. I came out of the library and I was chilled instantly. The humidity was still in the air, but it was lighter, thinner, not as harsh as earlier in the day. I couldn’t see out the window from where I sat in the library, so I don’t know if it rained, if it poured, if a cold front pushed its way through behind a dangerous storm. All I knew was the cold as I stepped out into it, and as I walked to my car. All I knew was the chill, the wind, and the scent of past rain and drying concrete. The feeling of sudden cold after days of summer might have stunned me, but I smiled on the way to my car. I smiled and smelt the air, breathed deep the chill, breathed in enough to warm my spirit if only for a moment.

May 12, 2007
May 15, 2007

Catch My Disease

I did it once more, I submitted some work to a magazine.

In January or February I submitted to Cranky Literary Journal, but never heard back. I didn't know why at the time, but now I understand that my submission was ignored because I forgot the cover letter. Oops. Not this time. I looked through some of the writings, so that I could pick from my own the most suited for this magazine, and found a cover letter format. This is me hoping it's worked this time, and that I will at least get a rejection letter. Any word is better than none at all.

Dear Cranky Literary Journal,

I have been searching for months, sifting through websites and periodicals, for a publication I find most desirable for my work. After stumbling upon your magazine, I was instantly interested in the content and look of the journal. Thus, I am writing, sending in something I hope is appropriate.
I have been writing since I was six. Not necessarily a long period of time—most of which was spent writing useless poetry, the brainchild of an underage day dreamer—but over time and with experience I have developed my style and voice, and I believe I am matured enough for the literary world.
Of course, I cannot be the judge of my ripeness. Ultimately, it will be publishers and journals such as Cranky that will decide my fate as a writer and the future of my career. But you cannot judge, and I cannot learn, if I do not take the first leap.
I am sending what I believe is a good representation of my voice—which might be a little offbeat, or “quirky” if you will. Here’s hoping you find these intriguing. Thank you for your time; I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,

Rachel C Johnson


Rachel C has been writing for thirteen years, based in Oklahoma. After spending four months in Chicago, she has been working on developing her voice for publication. She is currently writing prose, poetry, and working on a chapter book based loosely on her life.



Down in a Rabbit Hole
January 16, 2006

Alice in Wonderland had nothing on girls living in America,
where dreams come true, so much more than
following the white rabbit down his hole,
to the pit of all insanity--because we don’t have to travel
so far to find that core

Take a subway, walk three blocks, break a heel
on your pretty new shoes, and call yourself a woman
of tomorrow, using superglue in the strangest
of places. You wouldn’t call yourself home, in these
alleyways stained with yesterdays,
and the seats on the subway are always different:
new people, new places, new ideas to fulfill,
all the while walking on a newly heeled sole;
balancing on tip-toe and hoping that those seats are all
empty, so you have something to fall into.

Rabbit holes don’t usually come on trains.
And all the gentlemen are mad to help you up,
because you’re independent now.



If Peter Pan Should Take You
January 24, 2004

Drop a tear into my ocean.
Trace the ripples
With your finger tips.
Let them linger on my skin.

Watch the sky,
For the stars might fall.
And we can follow them
To Never, Never Land.

Listen to chop sticks,
Hidden beneath towers
Of paperclips,
Where you hide.

And when night falls,
I'll watch you
From here I stand.
Dance with fairies on the wall.



Dematerializing Bonnie
January 16, 2006

She catches her hair in a brush every
morning, and watches strands she’ll miss
float to her feet, where they may hang
for the rest of the day, not letting go yet.
She’ll pick them off, one by one, and watch them drift
away to catch on to someone else, be drug along
to see sights they were never meant to see,
and hear things she would never have said.

She keeps her lips closed throughout the day,
never speaking unless asked, avoiding eye
contact with pretty faces, pretty mouths
saying words she’s heard in movies, and once
from my father. She imagines they go home and
see their parents fighting, beating, screaming,
and crying, but they sit
with their families at dinner tables--
study, read, play with little brothers.
From the way they speak, shouldn’t someone be
hurting them? From the way they yell,
shouldn’t someone be yelling back?

The world has engulfed its morals around material
items, and Bonnie has too. She still relies on childhood
fantasies, that family is always what it appears
on the outside looking in; but, I’ve realized that family
is not the street we live on, the car we drive, the home
we reside, and all the quiet girls, who do well in school,
who are obedient and respectful, and who never
say more than what is seemingly appropriate,
are always the broken ones.

Tear-Drop-Style
December 21, 2004

I
haven't

spoken yet,
and wink-smiles

are all I've got for

your lonely mind

and sad head.



Toes
May 12, 2005

I envelop myself in sand

and I hope it could swallow me,

but I can’t dig deep enough

and the suffocation is stifled.

I can see my toes above the surface

wiggling with spasm to release

themselves from the weight

I’ve taken on.

And when I pull myself from the

grasp of beach and tide, my toes

remain uncovered, unblemished,

unadorned with the grains that seep

into the crevices of my body

and weaken my breath.

It is they who carry me

to the bathhouse to find a

shower. It is they who take me

to the wardrobe where I dress.

It is they who create my movement

and force me forward with inch-steps,

twitches, convincing me with wiggles

that I should continue further.

I miss the sand some days,

the feeling of my toes above the surface;

for when I stand upright

the weight of all my burdens

falls to my toes.

Directionally Backwards and Mentally Challenged

Then I Could Travel Just by Folding a Map

©Rachel C Johnson

No matter which direction I am facing, while I am driving I feel as if I am heading north. I have no navigation system in my car, so I have to remember where I am going before I can remind myself why the sun is setting to my right. South, west; south, west. I can point it out, but I inevitably have to repeat the words as I drive. I find it interesting that I must remind myself I am driving south in a city where every street is familiar. And I could give you directions, from where you are standing to where I am waiting, north, south, east, turn west on Skelly and keep driving. Yet here I am, pointing east, mumbling streets through pursed lips, feeling all the while as if I’m moving north. Face south, speak south, live north. Move west, know west, feel north. North is calling me, calling me as I drive south toward a house no longer home. And as I stare out the window overlooking rows of houses, ancient trees, tarnished streams. I wake in the morning and instinctively look toward the sky. The sun rises out of sight, southeast of my bedroom window, and the light streams into the backyard just north of my house. Maybe it’s habitual, my intuition of the north. After all, I’ve grown up gazing at the northern sky. The Big Dipper comforted me on long summer nights, and Venus was always visible from my bedside. Maybe I was raised north, belong north—maybe I’m being called home.

May 19, 2007
Author's Note: I dunno, maybe I'm back on track, headed once again in the right direction. Maybe.
I Wish the World Were Flat like the Old Days.

More Contemplations on Being Lost

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

©Rachel C Johnson

The feeling of being lost never retreats, never goes into hiding, it is never replaced with familiarity and comfort. Once you are lost you are not found, once the feeling seeps into your soul you cannot strip yourself of the overwhelming desire to scream for the lack of words or wander for the lack of a roadmap. The sensation fills you, swarms inside of you, drowns you in the struggle between stiff legs and the urge to never stop. Never stop walking. But that is your only choice. Walk or stop, stop or walk. Stand still and wait, or wander until your feet lose feeling and your heart hungers for home. Stand still, rest, breathe, cry for the sake of frustration, and hope—hope someone will stumble upon you and carry you home. The urge to stand still is overwhelming, it taunts you to stop walking, stop thinking, to just stop. But you can’t, because the trouble with stopping is that you won’t ever get farther than where you are—eventually you’ll have to start walking, eventually you’ll have to keep moving to stay alive.
Stay alive—stay alive you must. The emotions of being lost, of never finding your way home, are gateway drugs. They lead you onto a path of overwhelming depression, a path of unworthiness. How bad do you want to stop, how bad do you want to let the ache in your feet subside? Kill the pain only to stand again; it’s pointless to even try. Unfortunately, walking does very little for the mind but to fill it with unspeakable thoughts. Walking alone in the dark you cannot speak, you cannot say what is on your mind—but maybe for a whisper of frustration, and mumble of your deepest aggression. The situation worsens as your head dives deeper into itself, as your mind closes off. You focus on your anger—you become bitter. Bitter at map which led you wrong, bitter at street signs that have become difficult to read with tired eyes, bitter at the road beneath your aching feet, you’re so angry with the road. Bitterness seeps into your heart and turns it cold against the world. Thoughts creep in, conspiring against the sleeping citizens, so humble in their homes while you wander the streets alone. You’re unwanted, banished into the night, no one in these houses wants you, no one will come out and guide you. You’re lost, you’re disappearing. As you wander further, all the anger is lost. There is not point, this far from home, this dark of night. All you want is to stop wandering. All you want is to stop feeling so lost. To not exist for the sake of no more pain. The trouble with nonexistence is that when you want to exist again...you can’t.
And so you walk; and so you walk. Because life cannot end while there is still so much road to cover, life cannot die when you’re halfway home. The idea of never finding your way, the fear of being on these roads forever will haunt you with every step. But, you must remember there is one more corner to turn, one more street sign up ahead, one more chance before the dawn, when someone might emerge to find you wandering your way home.

May 18, 2007
Author's Note: possibly a little cliche, but necessary.
I am Finally Seeing Why I was the One Worth Leaving.

Taking Nothing for Giving Everything

To those who might read: I am wanting to publish, and I think these may be the pieces to try for, so I need some advice. Which one should I work toward, and if you have any ideas, who should I send to? Thanks.

Dematerializing Bonnie
January 17, 2006

She catches her hair in a brush every
morning, and watches strands she’ll miss
float to her feet, where they may hang
for the rest of the day, not letting go yet.
She’ll pick them off, one by one, and watch them drift
away to catch on to someone else, be drug along
to see sights they were never meant to see,
and hear things she would never have said.

She keeps her lips closed throughout the day,
never speaking unless asked, avoiding eye
contact with pretty faces, pretty mouths
saying words she’s heard in movies, and once
from my father. She imagines they go home and
see their parents fighting, beating, screaming,
and crying, but they sit
with their families at dinner tables--
study, read, play with little brothers.
From the way they speak, shouldn’t someone be
hurting them? From the way they yell,
shouldn’t someone be yelling back?

The world has engulfed its morals around material
items, and Bonnie has too. She still relies on childhood
fantasies, that family is always what it appears
on the outside looking in; but, I’ve realized that family
is not the street we live on, the car we drive, the home
we reside, and all the quiet girls, who do well in school,
who are obedient and respectful, and who never
say more than what is seemingly appropriate,
are always the broken ones.


One More Hand-Me-Down

January 18, 2007

Do you ever wonder if people just give up on love? I mean, literally, just give it up. Like giving up baseball or art, or giving up driving or giving up golf. Do you think people can love someone, something, but just let it go? They literally, despite loving it, despite caring how it is, how it deals with the sudden change, how it survives without them, do you think that people can just drop it like an old habit, one they think is time to quit? For some reason, that doesn’t seem illogical to me. For some reason, I can see someone doing that, living that way, knowing it’s wrong, it’s hard, but doing it anyway. I can see a man love a woman; I can see him realize there is a choice to make, and instead of choosing to make the relationship—whether or not it was working in the first place—he gives up on love and walks away. Maybe I can see that because my mother was given up on, my sister, my best friend, I was given up on. Maybe that is how you explain what has happened, maybe we were just pigeonholed, just let go.
As a writer, I feel like the concept works well for a plot, for a storyline, and a character. I guess because I have never been on the romantic side of a failed relationship, I can’t understand how wrong it is for that to actually happen. I can’t understand that, to be given up is to be broken up, to be broken in, and to be hurt. I don’t think I can understand that, even though I was broken in, pulled apart, left with holes where my father didn’t bother to suture his incisions. Because, my father gave up; he gave up and I can see how tormented my mother is, how broken my sister is, how numb I’ve been left.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe what has happened wasn’t a man giving up on something he loved. Maybe the difference is that he never loved us, he never wanted us, and he is bitter all this time for taking one road instead of the other—taking the wife-and-kids expressway instead of the degree-and-career city street. So, I guess if that were the case, I guess if it’s not exactly giving up, I don’t understand anything at all....
When my parents first separated, I had a name for the way I felt. I felt like a hand-me-down, juggled between two people, treated like old news, no body really wanting me, but being forced to wear me for lack of anything new. A hand-me-down, and not even one shuffled through the same family. The kind you find at The Salvation Army or Good Will, the kind that has a strange scent from years in closets and boxes, the kind that went out-of-style and won’t come back in, the kind of stereotypical homeless people. That feeling, and the bitterness attached to it, sticks. Maybe unsuspectingly, but you feel trampled on one morning, or you smell ancient fabric the next; and everyday you thought you’d moved on, you find you’re less than one step closer—you’re barely out of the door. That feeling retraces its footprints through your heart, it makes your head hurt, your stomach ache. It makes you wonder if you belong. Honestly, you don’t. Hand-me-downs are old clothing: out-of-style, embarrassing to wear, cheap. Hand-me-downs belong in an aluminum trashcan, lid sealed tight.
I wished that I wouldn’t feel so lonely, the only hand-me-down in a closet full of brand new clothes—tags still attached. But, there was no place to go were I could be with others of my kind. There was no Salvation Army for adolescent hand-me-downs—at least not one I was willing to find. If I wanted a room full of used clothing, there was a price I had to pay. Rip a seam, get a stain, some sort of damage to be returned to the storefront with the other second hand fashions. But, I didn’t believe in slicing myself open, especially for attention, especially to feel comforted. I always figured having a hole would add a draft to my already cold interior. Ripping myself apart would just give me something new to cry over. So I was lonely, I was a lonely hand-me-down; no one understood the pain in being worn by more than one person, the fear in being thrown away, or the ache in hanging around waiting for someone to pick me off the self. Pick me up, shake me out, wash me off, and slip me over their warm body. There were some attempts, to give me a closet and a body to belong to, but, true to second hand nature, I found myself in the waste basket once again.
Hand-me-downs happen, I think, because the first time owner gives up on caring for the garment. They have worn out the fabric and are tired of washing, drying, folding, and hanging it. They are tired of maintaining it. So they go out and find a fresh piece. New, more appropriate for the changing times, and they use that as an excuse to pull the old one from its place in the closet and drop it in the trash. The good owners, the ones with big hearts, they give their used garments to stores that will discount the price and disregard the label and throw the thing in a bin to be rifled through. The ones to be feared in the world of hand-me-downs are the ones that give up entirely and don’t bother to pack the garment in a box. They mistake it for an old rag, use it to clean up their messes; or they just wad it into a ball and toss it to the garbage with food wrappers and used Kleenex. The feeling is the same, for the hand-me-downs. Used, abused, and disposed of. Trampled, stained, torn and tattered, tossed around like a cheap sock. Even if they eventually find somewhere to belong, it never lasts, not the way they would want to, and hand-me-downs become bitter. Hand-me-downs wall off, break away from the rest of the closet, and blame the world for the way they’ve been treated, for the way they feel.
It’s never really their fault, being tossed around and worn out, because, if it were up to hand-me-downs, they would remain in that first closet interminably, worn by that first body continually. Nothing feels so great as being picked for one person, because they like your colors, your style, the way you form to their body; nothing feels better than staying that way, form-fitting and snug, for the rest of forever with the original buyer. But, I also don’t think hand-me-downs are made resentful. I think that comes with time, with endless storefronts and never-ending buyers. I think it starts with anger toward the first to give them up, and as it happens more and more, the feeling grows and cynicism sets in. And it makes me wonder, for all those things given up despite the love and admiration they once received, if hand-me-downs are made in one moment, when that first owner drops them into the trash bag labeled “Good Will”. It makes me wonder if all it takes is that split second to question if that piece just isn’t worthy anymore. And then the hand-me-down is made, one quick moment and it’s just another item of everyday clothing—no longer that special article bought solely to make the owner feel extraordinary. If that first time, that first heart break, that first “give up” is all there is to creating a hand-me-down, than I worry that I am not actually alone. I worry that I am just one of many, one of many hand-me-down people, given up by that first love, that first chance, that first impression of what a man is supposed to be.
There is a small chance for a hand-me-down to find a permanent home on someone’s back, to no longer be second hand clothing. For the rest of us, I can’t help but wonder who will find us next; pick us up, shake us out, wash us off, and slip us on over their warm bodies, if only just to turn around and throw us away again, back on the shelf for another day. The future remains a mystery for the hand-me-downs in this world, never able to tell if that next shopper is the kind of person who gives up on love.

You Know How I Can Be

Through Your Kaleidoscope, It's Beautiful

©Rachel C Johnson

When you’re a child it’s so easy. So easy to believe in fairy tales and God, so easy to imagine big futures and create impossible goals, so easy because you’re told anything is possible, that you are capable of doing whatever you set your heart to. What no one tells you is that when you grow older, your heart becomes practical, and those fantasies seem so childish, and you want more realistic goals for yourself. Of course, true to human nature, we never stop dreaming, the child lives on secretly, maybe more practically, but continues to dream. When one dream dies, new ones kick in, and the cycle never stops. You keep dreaming, your imagination keeps the child alive, if only to continue the fantasy you base your adult life after. It’s not always a fantasy that comes true, but it is always there, gnawing at your insides, growing from the food of your soul, dying to be alive, dying to exist outside of your body. The fantasy becomes your inner self, it becomes who you are alone, in the car, in the dark. And your exterior and interior combat for your attention. You dream in the meantime, between living your life. You feed the beautiful monster your childlike spirit has created, you nurture it for all of your life. When you retire, you imagine you may have the chance to bring it to the world, the real world with the real people, and let it live for once as it was meant to. None of us know, however, that there is a binding source, something keeping the dream inside while we wilt away in the real world dying to let it out. We work all of our lives to finally birth the fantasy that has been brewing inside, only to find that our hard work, what we believed made life worth living, was the only thing holding us back from death. The moment we stop working, trying to give life to something childish and impossible, we let ourselves die in the span between success in the real world and personal achievement. Our dreams become hollow, just as God has become useless, and we find we have nothing left. Nothing left of what we believed in, what we put so much stock in, and in the end all we can do is try to dream again.

May 15, 2007
Author's Note: I don't know what to say, I have nothing to say, no one does.
You've Shown Me the World as It Could Be