Notification

Hey people! Long time no post!

So I'm here to notify the readers that I have a new blog currently running. I am taking a creative writing class for school and we are required to create a new blog and manage it during the course of the semester. I'm not sure if I will continue both blogs or just one after the class is done, but go check it out for the time being:

creatorsaurusrex.blogspot.com

It's dinosaur themed, because hey, who doesn't love dinosaurs?

Hope ya like it!



c. Taylor Ward 2014. All rights reserved.

The Blackout Poem

Hiya guys!

So it's been forever. Yep. I admit it.

'Nough o' yer whinin'. 

So in school, we are working on poetry in English class to wrap up the school year. Today we learned about these things called "Blackout Poems," where someone finds a newspaper article or book page or something and finds certain words/phrases in the text to create a poem. They then blackout everything else on the page so that the only words visible are the ones in the poem created. 

I had a chance to create one of these blackout poems myself, using a page from the book Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom (a fabulous book).

I knew as soon as our teacher gave us the assignment that this was gonna be a blog post. I haven't done anything fun and creative-writing-y, short and sweet, in a while, so I figured this would be a breath of fresh air.

Enough talk. Here it is.

In case you couldn't read it, here's the poem on its own:

With

      sounds like a song,

                                maybe

                                         then you will

                                                          cry

                                                              on my tombstone.

                                                                                       Go ahead.

Try making one of these poems. And then just think about what it means.

...

I promise, I have more posts on the way soon, I have been working hard on them, the next of which will be a GRIM chapter (and one that actually makes sense!!!), followed by some more Ideas of the Day which I definitely need to catch up on. Stick around, I'm still breathin'.

c. Taylor Ward 2014. All Rights Reserved.

The Bells of St. Nicholas

The Bells of St. Nicholas

Guys.
It's Christmas.

Just think...the last Creatopia post of 2013...*sniff*

Soooooo sorry I haven't posted in over a month. It was NaNoWriMo, and you know what that means. I can say it was at least a successful month, so at least I was working. But I'm back with a Christmas special, and the posting will be back full-swing this oncoming year.

So sit back by the tree, grab a glass of eggnog, and enjoy:

The Bells of St. Nicholas

            The thin hum of the choir hung in the air like a brewing storm, yet a beautiful one, rising into the air as a golden cloud and stretching out to paint the sky in its milky warmth. My boots struck each cobblestone with a thick smack, the leather shattering the drifts of white and sour yellow snow. My coat was heavy and held my head above my shoulders, for the collar was high, and it took in many a crystal of wind as I pushed along.

            I was beneath the shadow of the church, and my thick gloves wound about the metal door handle. The gates into St. Nicholas’ were shackled shut, despite the fact that the chorus of the masses was already inside, probably because they took a back route. I huffed a great cloud of breath into the air and fumbled through my coat pockets, searching for my key ring.

            How could they have begun to practice? I was their director.

            I came to that church out of obligation. The night was dark and cold. I wanted peace and rest and a bit of drink, to sooth me, some pipe-weed perhaps, and maybe a bath, but nothing could have convinced me in that moment, as I yanked the heavy keys from my belt and fumbled shakily through them, that I wanted to be at midnight Christmas Eve mass.

            Nothing.

            The key went into the keyhole and I bade the outdoors and the looming carvings of the Virgin Mary in the arched gateway goodbye, entering the warmth of the chapel and its peaceful, candlelit glow. I stomped my boots off in the foyer, where were more statuettes and the guest book and a fireplace, and marched, tussled, into the church itself.

            The pews were stone, and the floor was wood, oddly enough. The altar and stage were festooned with fine carpets and designs of Jesus and Mary, today with Bethlehem in the background and the star high above, the shepherds in the fields, the three wise men on their camels. The choir, in their robes of black and crimson, stood in rows in their place behind the altar, and the podium was empty. I moved through the central isle, towards my place at the organist’s bench.

            The light came from hundreds of candles laid about the cathedral in many clever places, from within wall-carvings to on the altar to on the pews themselves, for when we sang certain songs such as “O Come All Ye Faithful” or “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” I had prepared the organ yesterday, cleaned its pipes, shined its keys, made it ready for the eve of Christ’s birth.

            I had to continue to remind myself that it was, in fact, the eve of Christ’s birth, so as not to just give up and go home.

            Allow me to regale you with my tales of horror in trying to arrange this service.

            It started several weeks before Christmas Eve, when a woman entered my office in the adjacent building, requesting that the song “The First Noel” be removed from the usual evening’s midnight repertoire, because her poor hearing had convinced her that the choir was actually singing “The First Whore-el.” (Pardon my French, I promise that is what she said.) No matter how many times I tried to convince her that even the idea of such a thing would be absurd as well as blasphemous, she threatened to press charges, and I had to have her ushered out of my office as she was shouting at the top her lungs. Further proof of her hearing’s poor development.

            Well, because she was shown the door quite quickly, she decided to press charges anyways, and thus, I wound up paying five hundred euros out of my own pocket because giving in the church was poor that week and she blamed me for the incident.

            All because of her incompetent ears.

            Two weeks later, I was rehearsing with the choir when one of the members had a stroke right there on the stage, and I had to rush them to the doctor’s because half the choir members fainted out of horror at the head injury on the stroked man and the other feigned weakness so that they would not have to carry him.

            I was there for six hours.

            When I got back, it was two o’ clock in the morning, and I received a thirty-minute lecture from Father Mohr on leaving the church unlocked.

            So then, on the eve of Christmas Eve, during dress rehearsal, the choir was practicing, and things were finally going smoothly, when the woman who sued came back and revealed that she was the wife of the man who had a stroke, and she blamed us for putting too many candles in the room and thus causing him to faint because of all the smoke.

            Because smoke, apparently, causes one’s brain to bleed.

            She, once again, threatened to press charges, and then I lost it, because I just wanted the choir to finish working. So I told her she was ridiculous for having such delusions and that if she had a problem with the smoke she could extinguish as many candles as she wished.

            Shocking news: she considered this an outright insult and then ran, weeping, to Father Mohr and claimed that I had cursed her and her family and disgraced her before the choir on purpose. Father Mohr then asked that I leave the church, because she continued to shout fussed things at me every time I tried to defend myself before him.

            So I had until New Year’s to pack my things and go. All because of one woman’s faulty ears.

            I came into the church and made my way to the altar, past it, to the organ, and found the choir rehearsing, and I grew incredibly angry with every one of them, but furthermore Father Mohr, who was not in the room.

            “WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, STOP THE SONG, STOP IT!” I shouted at the top of my lungs to silence the choir, who had no director but sang nonetheless. They looked confused. Had Father Mohr told them to go on with the service without me? Was I to him a lame duck? “What is this nonsense? It is common practice to not rehearse until the director is here?”

            None of them spoke. They did not wish to tell me, I feared, who had commenced their singing.

            “It was Father Mohr, wasn’t it?” I grunted, coughing and swatting away my warm puff of breath in the cold air. Again, silence. “If none of you wish to confess, we will continue with rehearsal.”

            I sat on the organ bench and took a deep breath. I needed to be calm or the mass would not run smoothly. This is because Christ was born, I reminded myself. My fingers slid smoothly over the keys of the instrument, and I was, for a moment, at peace.

            But I still was not finished scolding.

            “Now, you all probably know already that I will be leaving soon, but that does not mean that you may pretend as if my job is already nullified. That will happen when the year has turned 1819, and Austria has seen me go to some other parish in some other country.” They nodded, not in unison, but in a slow ripple. “Good. ‘O Come All Ye Faithful.’”

            I began the organ’s introduction to the piece, immersing myself in the smooth music, and the pipes resonated with a beautiful sort of golden flow, like the wind of heaven blowing through the trees.

            And then I was interrupted, once again, by Father Mohr.

            He came in from a side door, carrying two ceramic mugs of something and a smile that seemed plastic and faux stretched across his once-shaven face.

            “Hello, Franz,” he greeted me, strutting like a drunken peacock up to the organ as I, irritated beyond anything you have likely experienced in your life, stopped playing for what I hoped was the last time in the rehearsal process.

            “What is it? I have to practice, Father.”

            “Oh, no need to be upset. I just came to bring you a drink.”

            He set one mug down on the organ, and I nearly beat him, because I have a strict rule of absolutely NO drinks on the organ.

            “What’s that?”

            “Eggnog. Bottoms up.”

            “You know I do not drink, Father.”

            “Oh, it is not spiked. Trust me. Some kids in Germany figured how to make it non-drunk friendly, and trust me, it is perhaps the most soothing drink in Austria.”

            I reluctantly took a sip and the warming egg, cream, and nutmeg filled my throat and relieved the stress for a few minutes. I sighed with peace and loved it, setting the mug back on the organ and forgetting my rule. It was Christmas Eve. Exceptions could be made.

            And then I remembered.

            “Say, who told them to start rehearsing?” I asked him, trying to stay polite. He smiled and set his drink down. “It’s usually the case that the director need be there to…well…direct them.”

            “Oh, I did,” he informed me nonchalantly. My brow furrowed and my eyes thinned. “You are leaving soon, after all, I just wanted to let them get used to having no leader until I hire a new director.”

            I could feel my face flush and I really wanted to hurt him. That comment stung in a way it should not have, but he said it with such selfish, insensitive gusto that I felt myself die a bit inside.

            “Thank you for the eggnog. Now get out.”

            He looked only a little taken aback. “Fine then, I will let you be. Oh, and one thing: you are fond of composing music, correct?”

            I looked up at him with red eyes.

            “Right, yes. So. I wrote some lyrics that I think you might want to use.” He handed me a little piece of paper, with a short little poem etched into it in black ink. “They are about Christmas. I hope you consider them for a song someday. Who knows? Maybe it will spark some inspiration.”

            I continued to glare at him, for every word that came from his mouth was even more insulting than the last.

            “Good. That’s all.”

            He turned and left on spindly little legs.

            I watched him go and then slowly glanced at the choir. I think a tear or two had come from my eyes, and my face was tomato-red. They all got looks of understandable fear and pity, because they knew I was in a bad mood and knew what I had been through the past few weeks.

            They also knew that the guilt was on them, because not a single one of them decided to speak up for me when that dreadful woman was blaming me for all her problems.

            I looked down at the paper.

            Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,

Alles schläft; einsam wacht

Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.

Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,

Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!

Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!

            And that was it. A simple German poem. Nothing but this, and I was so enraged that he had the NERVE to do such a thing. To ask me to use his own garbage in my work.

            I crumpled up the lyrics and swung my arm out with full force, hurling the ball of paper on the ground.

            And when my Christmas season could not get worse, I found my knuckles gracing the mug of eggnog and knocking it off-balance. It fell over and spilt onto my organ, the white liquid sliding into the cracks and crevices. The choir and I all watched with horror, and the organ made several swishing, hissing noises, the pipes resounding once again with a sizzling sound.

            My fingers trembled. I knew what had happened, but I had to test to be sure.

            I pressed down on a key. And it made no sound.

            I slammed down on as many of the keys as I could, and none of them worked, they were all silent or made creaking noises, grunting out nasty belches but not providing music.

            The organ was broken.

            I just sat in frozen anger. We could not sing that mass, for our music was gone. I was going to be fired and had to search for yet another job in another country, no doubt. I had been outright insulted by the priest not once but twice and the choir was already ready to work without me.

            I grabbed my sheets upon sheets of music with furious fingers and shoved the bench out from under me, sending it clattering to the floor. I marched into the isle and threw the pages into the air, letting them drift down into the pews and burn to crisps on the candles. The flames leapt and the music was destroyed.

            I dropped to my knees and screamed with anger, tears splattering onto the wooden floorboards. We were several minutes from mass and the music was gone and the choir was shuddered silent.

            So I decided to take the easy way out.

            I jumped to my feet, shoving the tears from my face, and screamed now at the choir.

            “GO HOME! GO HOME ALL OF YOU!” They jumped at my voice. “This is service is gone! There is nothing to worship tonight! Go feed your families and enjoy this STILLE NACHT!”

            And when I said that, I stopped. I froze. Where had I heard that before? Stille nacht…stille nacht…STILLE NACHT…

            I rushed forward, up to the altar, and picked up the crinkled poem. Sure enough, there it was: stille nacht, the first phrase on the paper.

            And like that, the tune rushed to my head. Note after note, it filled my senses, and I took a quill pen to a blank sheet and wrote them down, each one different, until there was a simple song scrawled in my nasty etchings on the page.

            The choir had not moved. I wiped away more tears and then spoke again, this time a smile coming on.

            “Never mind. This will be no stille nacht.”

            About ten minutes following, they knew the tune, and the people began to enter through the door. They filled the pews and grabbed their candles, a few of them in the center isle brushing the ashes of old paper onto the wooden floorboards.

            And while I was recently despairing, it was then that I had come up with an idea, and the choir smiled with newfound hope.

            The bells rang.

            Father Mohr stepped up to the podium and the service begun. He seemed unawares as to our new developments.

            The doors were shut but the cold air filled the room. A Christmas tree stood in one corner, its red glass ornaments reflecting the candles and the heads and the pews, and its needles falling onto the floor slowly, one by one. The deep shadows on the statues of the Virgin Mary made her seem thin and weary save for her face, which was illuminated and looked soft despite being made of stone.

            And when we began to worship, Father Mohr stepped out of the way. I rose up and spoke to them as a fellow sufferer.

            “Tonight there will be no repertoire,” I said, and the looks on the faces were confused. They gazed upon me with befuddlement and some whispers slithered through the masses. Music was always the piece of steadfast culture, the untouchable worship. “But we have prepared a song.”

            And I began to sing. Even in my time of anger I sang.

            Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,

Alles schläft; einsam wacht

Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.

Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,

Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!

Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!

            And the crowd just listened. Then I turned and, though there was a moment of silence, I lifted my hands to the air and the choir joined in, singing the same tune, the song a beautiful harmony, its notes soaring into the belfry and into the air of the village outside, into Austria’s sweet night. The music of God.

            Even the snow must have wept.

            When I turned around I saw something wonderful, a sight I never saw again, one that lifted my soul as well as my voice.

            Every man, every woman, every child, each one lifted their candle to the air, singing along with us, waving their little flames to a synchronized hymn.

            And I remembered once more. Christ was born on that day.

            And then, in our love and in our warmth and in Father Mohr’s awed face and in the glow of God’s flame, we sang it in another language.

            Silent night, holy night,

            All is calm, all is bright.

            Round yon virgin, mother and child

            Holy infant, so tender and mild.

            Sleep in heavenly peace,

            Sleep in heavenly peace.

            I forgot about having to go. I forgot about my grudge against that dreadful woman and Father Mohr. I simply sang.

            When mass was over and the people had left, throwing out their candles and thanking me time and time again for such a wonderful time, the priest spoke with me and decided, seemingly gladly, to let me keep my job. And there was no crazy screaming woman there to drown me out. He thanked me for using his lyrics and I almost thanked him for giving them to me but I thought otherwise.

            And I went out into the cold that night knowing that no matter how bad it can get, the birth of Christ is always the birth inside.

            I did not lock the church that night.

............

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. :)

c. Taylor Ward 2013. All rights reserved.

Things You Will NEVER Be too Old For

Things You Will NEVER Be too Old For


New video! YYYAAAAAYYYYY!!!!! It's been FOREVER, so sorry about that, but now I've finally gotten some filmed and in the editing process. I ran into so many problems trying to shoot during the summer, so I kinda just gave up for a while, but it seems to be going fine now. So here ya go, and hopefully I can get back into the semi-weekly groove.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIAvZ8wufMI




c. Taylor Ward 2013. All rights reserved.

GRIM Chapter 6

GRIM Chapter 6

HERE IT FINALLY IS. So sorry it took this long guys, but here you have it. I am going to start writing several at a time now, so that I don't slack and come in a month later and be like "oops."

This one follows the same characters that were in chapter 2, so if you need a recap, go there. The next one will feature a new storyline to mix in with the long, intertwining plot. 

So without further ado, here you have it: 

CHAPTER 6

J A C O B

AIR FORCE ONE

JULY 7, 1969

10:13 A.M.

            The barf bag is perhaps the most ingenious invention ever created by man.

            I sat within the blue cushions of the conference room, alone, right hand clutching a tonic bottle and left clasped against the armrest with a little brown bag between my thumb and forefinger. My stomach thrashed like a cat caught in a washing machine.

            The President was in his office as I waited, finishing his final investigations of the photos he had shown me earlier. Copies of them were strewn about the conference room table, reflecting the overhead white lights and the gray overcast of the world outside.

            I took a swig and then set the bottle heavily down on the wooden table. Empty.

            There was a meeting scheduled in this room, set to happen in about five minutes. And I was the only one present.

            The skull warped into the photo taken in the halls of the White House still shook me, no matter how many times I looked at it, no matter how many times I tried to stare into its eyes and not be afraid. It continued to reach into my soul and tell me that everything was not well.

            I could only hope that Area 51 held answers to this mystery. And it had better; I hated flying, and that one was perhaps the longest one of my life.

            My walkie sparked to life and crackled randomly. I picked it up and pressed the button.

            “WHAT?”

            And on the air, instead of coming from one of the workers on the plane or the President or his secretary, all I heard were clicks. Strange clicks, but not from a machine, from what sounded like a human with strep throat.

            The voice was like gravel scraped beneath an iron boot.

            I took my feet off of the conference table and leaned in, trying to see if it was just the distortion on perfect English, but I could still only hear clicks. Like a sort of rabid Morse code it went on, the pulsing the same but the rhythm uneven.

            I fell slowly into a trance.

            The door swung ajar, and I leaned back, Mr. Nixon entering the room. I stood up and offered him my chair out of respect, quickly swiping the walkie off of the table and breaking it, the batteries flying out of the device and sliding to the back of the room. We were ascending.

            “I’ll take this one,” he said, pulling back the chair opposite the table from mine and sitting down. Oddly, he was alone.

            His briefcase was dark leather brown. He set it on the table and held the buckles in hand as he turned his eyes to me. I instantly pretended, in my mind, that the clicking never happened.

            I sat down and Mr. Nixon spoke with a hint of controlled urgency in his voice.

            “Mr. Dawn, we have a problem.”

            I nodded and tried to be nonchalant about the bottle of tonic on the table. Hopefully I could swipe it before he noticed.

            “What is it?”

            “The transmission lines of the plane have gone haywire. We can’t communicate with the landing pad of the base. And we can’t land in any local airport. We have to use a plan B.”

            “And that is?”

            He opened the briefcase.

            “Manual pickup.”

            Inside was a stack of papers. They were written in numbers, letters, probably a sort of code.

            “I need you to deliver these to the man next to the pilot. He will be wearing a black suit with a red tie, and will carry a matching briefcase.”

            What did he mean by “manual pickup?”

            I took the papers and examined them. The numbers were random, but I could start to see a pattern, or at least a recurring sequence. Five numbers, in the same order, spelled out one word in code:

            1-12-9-5-14.

            I didn’t ask him about that word. Instead I tried to get the details straight.

            “What do you mean, ‘manual pickup?’ And what pilot? Pilot of what?”

            He opened his mouth to speak and then looked down and his eyes met the bottle. I shut my eyes out of annoyance.

            I waited for it. My berating. My re-assigning. My badge being taken away. Drinking on the job.

            And to my surprise, he didn’t say anything about it. He just pushed it off of the table.

            He must have trusted me that much.

            The President folded his hands and leaned on the table, his face somber and dark. The light outside seemed to fade and the clouds gathered even more intensely.

            “Jacob, the papers in your hand are coded transmissions sent out from an unidentified source in Africa to Area 51. According to the memos sent to me just recently, the source is a spy sent there to take care of a cell of drug smugglers in the  country of Ethiopia.”

            “What does anything in Africa have to do with this skull photo?”

            “That was my question exactly, however, I have recently received several transcripts of the messages sent, and the reason you and I are sitting here, right now, on this very plane to Nevada, is that there was one word that appeared in each of the transmissions.” He paused. “Would you like to know what that word is?”

            I was apprehensive, but I nodded. His tone was what threw me off, not his words.

            “ALIEN.”

            Before I could speak, the walkie on the floor grunted to life and the clicking noise returned, this time louder and more audible. I could not hear what was going over the airwaves, but knew that the world had twisted as I picked it up slowly.

            Nixon trembled.

            “What on—”

            I turned it thrice in hand to reveal that the batteries were still strewn about the floor.

More stuff coming soon!