There's a place on LJ that's my home away from home, my empty canvas whereupon I can splash my life with all its hideous and beautiful colors. The inhabitants of this place never mind; when I come to them crying, they lend me sympathy and understanding, and when I want to celebrate, they dance with me wildly. This place is called 2_lines.

The concept of this community is simple: write about your life in two complete sentences, both of which fit into a single line of text, separated by a line break.
It's harder than you think. Sometimes you're just in the "post entry" box, writing along, and suddenly, you realize, "Oh, damn. That's way too long." Sometimes there are things that I'd really like to say, but they're too big to fit into the post requirements. So I smallerize them, pound them down so they're fit in the little 2_lines box. It takes creativity and patience.

But the unique layout of the community isn't the only thing that keeps me coming back. It's a community in the truest sense of the word. Talking to my boyfriend about it recently, I mentioned that I consider pretty much everyone on there, whether I know them well or not, to be extended family and friends I haven't met yet. It's one of the closest knit communities I've ever come across. We don't judge, at least on the virtual paper of comment boxes. All things are accepted as vital, important parts of life, from "Hey guys! I got a new dog, what should I name him?" to "My boyfriend dumped me today. I'm not sure what to do now."

I'm not saying that it's the best community on LJ, but it's pretty damn close. It's where I come to lay down my troubles to the better half of two simple lines, and the open hearts that will inevitably rally to meet me.

This isn't my usual LJI fare, but it's fiction and it's sort of odd, so I figured I'd get feedback on it from you lovely people!

***

The bar was quiet that night. Landon moved his hand over his cracked beer mug, the insides frosted over with the stout's chill. His fingertips were crushed red and stained black, as though he had just been in some kind of altercation. When he moved to shake the bartender's hand, he covered a quick wince, the kind of grimace found in sharp deep pain, over so fast that the bartender nearly didn't see it. "How are you, Ben?" Landon asked, scooching over on his bar stool so that his big portfolio bag was near his body.

"Not doing too bad, Landon," said Ben, looking at his friend warily. "You got in some kinda fight? Your hand's all fucked up."

"Only a bit of an artist's brawl, that's all," Landon replied, gripping his mug and taking a swig of the dark liquid inside. "Creative differences, let's say. It'll be in top form again before long, just you wait." He flashed a sly smile at Ben. "And who's to say that I came off worst, after all?"

"Suppose that'd be so," said Ben, but he didn't look convinced. "Seems to me that you got yourself in a little over your level, boy, if them marks on your hand serve any indication."

Landon's eyes flashed for a moment, sparking darker green, and he tossed his head, dark blonde hair mussed once more. "It doesn't really concern you, Ben. You're just my backer. Speaking of, let's get down to business. Care to see the new frames?" He plucked a large sheet of cardstock out of his folio bag, pushing it over to Ben. "The King of Rats Versus the Prima Ballerina!" dripped down the thick paper in a haze of sickly green, splotches of red here and there to add that Christmassy appeal. "Look, it's The Nutcracker in comic book form. Only this time the ballerina pirouettes his balls in before he can kidnap her. That's feminism for you, man."

"Is there more coming?" deadpanned Ben, blinking. "This isn't going to be like the last one, is it? You're not going to spend all of my money on Russian vodka and mob girls, right?"

Landon rolled his eyes. "That was a case of writer's block. I've found my muse, don't worry. She's going to provide me with more inspiration than I know what to do with."

"Well, while you're out gettin' inspired," said Ben with a smirk, "start finding a way to pay me back for all that booze, huh? The last thing I need is a mobster named Rugeloff nosing around here." His eyes disappeared for a minute behind the wide wrinkles his smile brought on.

"Here," said Landon, sliding a ten-note piece across the bar. "We'll start with that." He slugged the rest of his beer back and stood up. "I'll be back tomorrow. You can hound me for more cash then." He walked out of the bar humming "Takin' Care of Business", hands deep in his doubtlessly empty pockets.

"Mrow. Mrow. Mroooow."

I glance down and see my cat, Salt, rubbing up against my ankles, purring and looking up at me with hopeful, "I'm not too old to look like a kitten" eyes. Her tail twitches as she blinks up at the table.

"No, Salty kitty. No cake for you!" I admonish her. In all her twelve (thirteen?) years of life, I've never known her to be this excited about something so... un-cat like. I shoo her away from my ankles with a gentle swat and move the cake from the table to the counter. She follows me and stretches up, putting her paws on the top of the bottom cabinet under the counter, still purring.

I sigh. I really shouldn't have let her try the damn cake, but now that I have, it's her new favorite thing. I didn't even think she'd like it, with its almonds and clementine and slight bitter tang. It's certainly not what she normally likes. It's not fish or meat or even milk. Sometimes I'd like to sneak around inside her head just to see what the fascination is.

A few minutes later, after tossing her a couple of kitty treats, I go to move the cooled cake from the counter back to the table. She's at my heels, not distracted at all by the treats, as I'd hoped she would be. As I dart into the living room to turn the television on, I think, 'No, she wouldn't.' But she does. When I come back into the kitchen, she's up on the table, eagerly sniffing and tentatively licking at the edges of the cake.

"SALT!" She spares me a look that plainly says, "Haha, it's mine now!" I roll my eyes and grab her off of the table. The second time she jumps up, right in my full view, I think, that's it.

The cake's in the fridge now, and she knows. She's been sitting by the fridge door for the past hour, just waiting for her chance to leap in and gobble down the next bite. I guess sugar addiction runs in my family.

"...A stolen key from an old hotel room door" is a line in a Chely Wright song. I'm in love with that song, but more importantly, I get this lyric. I steal keys from hotel rooms. Well, okay. I don't steal them. They just end up in my pockets or bag or purse, and suddenly I'm on the plane going home, and oops! It's too late now!

My very favorite pilfered key is from Key West.. It's from the Almond Tree Inn. I stayed there for my twenty-first birthday with my parents. I remember walking back to the hotel after drinking all night with them, expecting to find my dad asleep in the room, snoring his head off, and instead finding him in the Denny's across the street, glorying in drunk food. Of course when he came back to the room after his Grand Slam breakfast at two in the morning, he kept me up all night with his ridiculous wood-sawing.

Know why I like the Almond Tree so much? There are other hotels that I've enjoyed more, been more comfortable staying at. But the memories are just too much. I remember sitting out by the pool, waiting for sunrise, talking to my boyfriend back home and being so overwhelmed with the beauty of the soon-breaking day that I could barely breathe. The early-morning rustle of the palm trees and ferns in the cool breeze brushed the sweet scent of vegetation across my face as the maintenence workers came into the pool area to clean it. I smiled at them, bloodshot eyes grinning in a lightly toasted face.

The sunrise that day was beautiful, but I didn't get to see it. Around four AM, I quit my evening vigil and headed inside, whumping down on the bed beside my mom and breathing in that special hotel smell: old cigarette smoke and lemon cleaner and freshly laundered sheets. The sun slanting through the vertical blinds the next morning woke me up, and I growled at it, nursing a headache. Mom just grinned at me and pushed the Tylenol and toast my way. "Welcome to adulthood, dolly."

“Hey sunshine, how’re you doing?” The IM box pops up at me. Dad. I smile. “Hi,” I type. “I’m…” I pause. How am I doing? What can I tell him? I rifle through a series of ideas, each less likely to make him happy than the last.

“I’m okay, spent last night with a couple of friends, watched movies and drank beer until we put on a movie that had a dying mom in it and one of my friends had to hold me so I’d stop crying. But I’m all right this morning.”

Or…

“Not too bad. Spent the morning doing dirty things with an engaged man. He’s amazing in bed and he’s my best friend, but I’ve fallen in love with him, just like I wasn’t supposed to.”

Or…

“I’m about to break off a two-year friendship because the girl thought it would be okay to flake out of a concert we’d been planning to go see together for the past month. The kicker is that she showed up anyway and utterly ignored me the entire night.”

But just like the dutiful daughter I’m expected to be, I swallow down all of those admittances, like bitter water against my throat. Because my dad and I don’t talk about that kind of stuff. Because we’ve never had that kind of relationship, and it’s even more pronounced now that Mom’s gone. I don’t tell him how much I miss her, and how hard this holiday season is going to be without her. There’s this need to act like everything is all right. So instead I type a smiley face and say, “Just enjoying the morning, Dad. How are you?”

You know, I was going to write this one on things that I should care about, but don't. And then I woke up and smelled the coffee.

No, literally. The smell of coffee woke me up a few days ago, and I followed it into the kitchen where my suitemates were talking about our school's proposed budget cuts. I attend a small, all-women's college in Raleigh, North Carolina. We made the local news last week for our administration's supposedly brilliant plan to save the school... by cutting academics and professors' benefits. Great idea, guys. Really.

So far, three majors, including Women's Studies (hello, we're a women's college, *that* makes so much sense) have been cut, as well as five faculty from the art department. When you take into consideration that our art department is small as it is, and that many of the classes are three-hour long studio classes, cutting professors just doesn't make much sense either. And yet our college president makes over $300,000 a year, although our face-saving administration office will tell you that she only makes about $280,000 a year, but of course that's not including things like benefits, the upkeep of her house on campus, or her second home at Hilton Head, North Carolina. It doesn't stop there. Because of a budgeting error, for which the school was audited this past spring, faculty are being asked to give up a cut of their retirement funds to make up for the deficit. Required classes such as Western Civilization will not be offered this spring, making it harder for students to meet graduation requirements. When questioned about the cut of Western Civ at today's budget forum, the president completely avoided the question by answering that only non-required classes would be cut.

Excuse me while I get up on my soapbox. I am a senior this year. To see this happening to my school while students are fed some party-line bullshit about how "this situation isn't unique" and "a lot of other colleges are having to make budget cuts in these tough economic times", is not only disheartening, it's downright shameful. I came to this college for an education. "Educating Women to Excel" is our school motto. How can women be expected to excel when piss-poor leadership and money handling is making the education itself impossible?

“You can smell the sheep today,” I puffed to my friend Molly as we made our way up the hill to the dining hall. “It’s like Iceland’s calling card. ‘Hello, welcome to Iceland, have some sheep’.”

 

She giggled. “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if they just gave you a sheep when you got off the plane? My parents went to Iceland and all they brought me was this lousy sheep.” She slowed down to take a breath. “Man, this hill. It just gets more ridiculous every day.” We made this half-mile trek to the dining hall every four hours or so during a weekday: out Oddstofa’s door, across the gravel driveway to the paved path that wound past a small brook, and then the journey up the big hill to Skalholt’s parking lot, up a steep set of stairs, and finally, the blessed warmth of the cafeteria and the inevitable smell of fresh-baked bread. We walked up and down that hill in all weathers: rain, sun, once even sleet. Sometimes I didn’t walk with people. Sometimes it was just me and the fuzzy Icelandic breeze and the sounds of snipes diving in the brush. Those birds were our near-constant companions: they dove to signify their intent to mate, and while doing so, their wings made a high-pitched beating sound, almost like a goat bleating. “Hello, snipes!” I would call brightly whenever I heard the noise. They didn’t seem to mind the attention, and their calls went well with the sounds of my hiking sneakers bouncing off the pavement, like the music inside a metronome beat.

 

Taking my shoes off and wiggling my toes when I finally did make it to the cafeteria felt so good. There was nothing I loved more than running around in socked feet, soles against the warmed rock of the floor, zipping over to the tea stand (fourteen different kinds, every day!) and grabbing some of our chef Stina’s wonderful bread. And the butter. Oh, the butter. Just for tea, bread, and the little milk chocolates that came wrapped in foil, I would walk up that hill a hundred times now, the wind whipping my hair around my face, snipe calls and the laughter of my friends in my ears. I would walk it barefoot if I had to.

It didn't really matter that I wanted to ride more than anything in the world. What mattered was the fact that I couldn't seem to just make myself do it.

 

I practically grew up on the back of a horse. From when I was seven to when I was seventeen, weekly lessons, once a week, every week, weather permitting, I got on top of a thousand pound animal and rode around a small dirt ring lined with a wooden fence. I loved it more than anything, except maybe reading and chocolate. The quiet snort of a trotting horse, the rhythmic pulse of a canter, the sweat and leather musk after we'd been out in the hot summer sun. Crunching through the snow in deep winter felt like moonwalking to me, like bouncing on air bubbles.

 

I was good at it, too. For four years I rode the trickiest horses, got on stallions that no one else would touch, and got bucked off more times than I'd care to admit. The adrenaline rush was a drug to me; I lived on it. Finally feeling an unruly mare relax and match her will with mine was something that I haven't been able to replicate anywhere else. I had a dream to become a trainer. And then, when I was fourteen, everything changed.

 

It was a soft spring day. The ground was spongy and there was the hint of thawing ice in the air. I swung up onto a filly called Hanna, whose father I'd successfully trained the year before. "Now, she's really responsive," my trainer said. "Go easy on her." I nodded and walked her off, working her up to a trot a few minutes later. "She's fast," I called to my trainer as we covered the ground more quickly than I was used to. A tickle of something invaded my belly, prickly like a feather, but I was too busy reining her in to think about it. A couple of more turns around the ring later, I noticed the big yellow school bus pulling up to the housing complex behind the barn. Squeal! Squeak! Screeeech! For a second I was distracted by the sound of the bus' brakes, and in that moment, Hanna decided that the bus wanted to kill her.

 

We were off. Like a shot, we were covering ground at a desperate gallop. I pulled on the reins, called to her, tugged some more. Nothing doing. My body felt frozen. "Pull her into the center!" my trainer called. "Circle her!" Slowly it hit me what she wanted me to do. What if she bucks me off? I thought. Or what if I fall off? God, the ground's gonna be hard. That's *really* going to hurt. But she wasn't slowing down. I mustered up my strength and yanked her, hard, into the center of the ring, circling her until she finally stopped. I got off, shaking, my jaw aching from clenching it, eyes huge as dinner plates. "That was the only time I've seen fear in your eyes," my mother said later.

 

I kept riding after that. But the loss of control haunted me. I never trusted horses again after that, not really. I started all over, riding horses I'd started out riding eight years before, mastering the basics while never truly letting go of the panic that filled my head whenever I felt a horse spook underneath me, or snort, or do anything that I hadn't expected. It was like static; I couldn't think. Suddenly I'd be in the fetal position on horseback, crouched over my horse's neck, holding on for dear life. Why did I keep doing it?

 

I kept doing it because even though I hated it, I loved it still. "Shit or get off the pot," my mom told me once in the car, two years later, after I'd freaked out and been bucked off by a stubborn pony I'd trained three years before. "You don't even try anymore. I don't know why I'm paying all this money just to see you fail." And in my junior year of high school, I finally quit, thinking that time would take away my fear. It hasn't, not really. Whenever I'm on horseback now, I can't relax or let go without visions of my body hitting the cold, hard ground. And yet I keep my hope alive, waiting for the day when my will to keep riding overrides my fear, waiting for the day when it will become more than just an empty gesture.

 

Well hello world!

I'm Rachel, I'm 22, and right now I'm much too sleepy to really be writing this introduction. But that's what you get for going to bed at an unreasonable hour last night after watching your guy friend play way too much Oblivion. I've also only had one cup of coffee this morning. I should do something about that.

Anyway. I'm a college senior, English major (yes, as in "What Do You Do with a BA In"). This semester I'm taking a plethora of classes, from beginning java programming to photography to research methods for my thesis. My thesis is going to be badass, just wait. I'm tracking the character development of Puck from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream throughout the centuries and all the different ways actors have played him, and what that's said about his character. I'm also doing NaNoWriMo in November, for the second year running, something I'm very excited about. I've got a bunch of my friends doing it this year with me and I can't wait to be an utter geek about it.

I love notebooks. The worst thing to get me for a present is a notebook because I'm very particular about them. I love leather ones, though, and ones that smell good. Like, the pages smell good. Not like artificial strawberry shortcake scent. Nah. Speaking of scents, I'm a BPAL (Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab) nerd. It's a perfume company out of California and they do amazing work with perfumes. You'll never want a Bath & Body Works scent again after trying these. They're *awesome*.

My favorite color is green and if I had to eat one food for the rest of my life it'd have to be strawberry-chocolate trifle. If I had to drink one thing for the rest of my life it'd be cafe con leche or this fantastic reisling I had once at a restaurant in New York. I also love French food and really simple, rustic cooking (I'm a huge food nerd, too).

I grew up in Connecticut, about an hour away from NYC, the only child of a mom and a dad. My mom died this past February from cancer and I'm still very much dealing with that. I've got a wonderful boyfriend of three and a half years. We're often in a long distance relationship when school is in session, so I spend a lot of my time online talking to him and keeping in touch with my relatives back in Connecticut. We plan to move in together this coming summer or next winter sometime.

Hmm, what else is there to say? I suppose you'll get to know me through the course of Idol, I hope you like what you find, and I'm always up for new friends! Even though I don't post much here anymore, I still read and comment on my friends' entries.

Yes, friends. On top of NaNo and eighteen credits, I am taking the plunge into the Real LJ Idol for the first time. Crazy? You bet your sweet buns it's crazy.

Our bodies threaten us nowadays. They creak, they weigh us down and sometimes they attack us. Thousands upon thousands of cells can suddenly well up against a peaceful owner and form a life altering parasite.

Cancer. It's everywhere. Skinned heads of hollow-eyed children stare out at us from our televisions, hungering for money for research, cures, teddy bear stuffing. Chemo therapy names are thrown around like clothing designers in wards: "Oh, what's dripping into you today?" "It's sure as hell not Cool Water by Armani, I can tell you that." I've never sat in those vinyl chairs myself, but I've sat in the white, plastic ones, the ones with the slotty backs and orange juice stains, beside them. I've joked with them as poison drips into their veins to kill the parasite brewing in their blood.

And even if the parasite can be put down, if the enemy can be vanquished, cleaning up the proverbial war zone afterwards is as tricky as killing the disease in the first place. Fatigue causes inactivity which causes depression, so the doctors prescribe anti-depression, anti-fatigue and anti-nausea pills, all of which have interactions, and suddenly they're really awake and happy and can't get to sleep, so out come the sleeping meds and tranquilizers, marching like little dream-bringing armies. Of course, after the sleeping meds wear off, there's the fatigue hangover the next day, and the whole cycle starts over again, just in search of a normal, fifteen hour day.

It always comes back. Even when it doesn't come back, it comes back. Memories are dangerous things, and if the parasite does re-surface, the doctors start looking desperate. Fear trickles out of the corners of their eyes as one treatment after another tries in vain to kill the steadily growing enemy. In its last stages, screaming its victory as its host is lying in a cold, artificially lit hospital room, it is a gross and ugly thing. Helpless, you hate yourself a little more with every gasping breath your loved one takes, and anger begins to form like tiny beads of blood against your brain. And just as the re-heated, not-food dinner comes on plastic trays, you bolt and snap, pressing your nose against the plated glass window to watch the sunset, because if you don't, you're absolutely sure that there will be nothing of beauty left in the world. And the sunset is there, gorgeous and vital as a beating heart, deep in the wine colored sky. And you breathe, and cry, and know that you will never be the same, because cancer changes everything.

I'm here.

I'm happy.

I'm not drunk yet.

ONLY SIX AND A HALF HOURS UNTIL I LEAVE FOR THE AIRPORT. IN TWELVE AND A HALF HOURS I WILL BE IN KEY WEST.

I AM SO EXCITED I'M PRACTICALLY VIBRATING.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!! 

(by the way, this week I got sick and got high. Pretty quiet week otherwise if you don't count that.)

banyangirl1832 is happy.

You're a rosy-cheeked ray of f'ing sunshine 24/7. I bet you smile a lot and little things don't get you down. Must be nice. Fuchsia's definitely your color.

wanna know your lj's moodring color? enter your user name and hit the button. (discussion thread)

Real post sometime tomorrow, I swear.
Really.

So I'm officially in love with the show Weeds. Watch it! 

Hi guys. I've not been posting because I've been busy/lazy this week, and now I'm sick with a cold. I think I'm running a fever, but I'm eating pineapple and Eric thinks I'm wonderful, so there is that. Thinking of making a completely irrational post on TQC about it. Link to follow.

Oh, and I'll get back to real updating once I have the energy back to think in more than monosyllabic words. Love you all, though.

There's something wrong with the fact that I'm too short to break into my own first floor dorm room.

Dear emotions: 

Sex will not make this better. He does not want it.

Sex will not make this better. He does not want it.

Sex will not make this better. He does not want it.

We clear? Okay, good.

No really.

No love,
your logical side

NEED SEX. NEED LOVE. NEED ERIC TO NOT BE SO FUCKING NEEDY. NEED TO BE ALLOWED TO BE NEEDY.

Ok, I'm done.