Flashing Lights

So this post is definitely more for the interesting lighting in these pictures than it is for my outfit. It is quite cold in Arkansas this Tuesday morning. I spent most of it in my robe drinking coffee and finishing a short story for my evening class. I try to be open minded about both poetry and short fiction, but I often feel that my heart is in poetry. But it is nice knowing that I never have to settle on just one. This thought has been clouding my mind alot lately as I am getting my resume ready and starting to look at internships. Idealy I want to get an internship in the UK (preferably England), but we will see where life takes me. I feel that the best part of being young is that at this point in life my future is the most flexible which excites me because I know that anything could happen.

Me and my friend Laura, took these picture on top of Mt. Sequoya in Fayetteville about a month ago. This is a mountain in Fayetteville where among many houses there is also a lookout that you can see all of Fayetteville from. On this particular evening we were racing against the sun to get some decently lit pictures. These are the results and we were very pleased with them. I know some of these are harder to see my face in but I chose them because of the colors in them and the way the light hits my hair and my face.

Due to all the craziness going on in the east coast with hurricane Sandy, I thought of a poem that I critiqed for a paper a few months ago. I am sad to say that the author of this poem, Rachel Wetzsteon, committed suicide when she was 42. This poem is packed with some beautiful metaphors and nicely portrays the speakers feeling towards some horrific event taking place in her life. I have been seeing alot of posts on twitter and instagram about ambulances that were lined up outside of hospitals without power in NYC, which is what made me think of this poem. To all those ambulances, volunteers, and people stuck in their houses, my thoughts are with you.

Apologies to an Ambulance

The red light was my racing heart,

the siren my pain made public,

and the body inside, a study in scarlet,

was battered yet somehow grotesquely pretty.

I drew a rosy curtain over the city.

But the naked city went on bleeding, and so

to the ambulance that roars down my street

apologies, and the wretch in the back

apologies too: you come from a place

where pulp's not fiction, you know a world

where bullets are more than metaphors

for lovely eyes, and though I roped you

into my story I'll let you go now, wish you

safe passage through a lifetime of green lights.

-Rachel Wetzsteon

Cheers