I’m sitting in a pillow of clovers, hoping to find my luck

I wrote this little short story today.  It's a little cheesy, but I think that's necessary every now and again.  Hope you like it and I'd love any feedback :)

Clovers

I’m at the park again, day dreaming.  It’s hard not to when the earth around me has exploded with green.  The trees are heavy-shouldered, weary from bearing the burden of a weekend full of rain.

I’m sitting in a pillow of clovers, hoping to find my luck.  In the midst of green are tiny white flowers, smaller than baby’s breath, and little purple buds, hiding beneath the overgrowth.  Those fuzzy flowers, the ones that lead to dandelions are here too.  Most people look at them and see weeds, but I see magic.  I love anything you can wish on.

Here, in my little patch of clover, I imagine a fair skinned beauty.  Sun dress fanned out around her, legs hidden by the clover and buds.  She’s reading  a book, Jane Austen probably, maybe a Bronte.  She’s not afraid of being cliche and sighs heavily as she holds the book to her chest and relishes in the mystery of where her Mr. Darcy might be.  She lies down, blanketed in green, with one arm over her delicate forehead as she gazes up at the sky.  The sun is desperately trying to make itself known to the world, and as it pushes the clouds aside, she closes her eyes and lets her skin drink in the light.  This is her Eden, her Utopia.  She feels like Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, alive with nature and comfortable in her solitude.

Despite the many constants in life, solitude is rarely one of them.  She hears footsteps, slowly approaching.  They’re close, but not close enough to warrant a reaction on her part.  She tries to slip back into her dreamlike world, where only she, the clover and the sun exist, but it’s no use.  Her trance is broken.  The plurality of humans has always complicated man’s relationship with nature.

The footsteps are far enough away to mean they are not meant for her, but close enough to be annoying.  She silently curses her intruder and sits up, opening her eyes slowly as she goes. The light from the sun blinds her for a moment, her dark pupils shrink and a shadowy outline of a boy, maybe a man, comes into view.  She squints her eyes, wishing the process didn’t take so long to see things in the light after being in the dark as long as she had.

Finally the young man’s image comes into view.  She quickly falls back into her bed of foliage, taken aback by his strong, yet nonintrusive frame, his dark hair parted like he went to Yale and yes, even an alabaster brow.  She lay their silently, terrified by this man’s perfection.  A gentle, organic sound begins to float above her, whirling around with the wind like cherry blossoms, teasing her ears like nymphs.  He was playing the acoustic guitar.  

Perfect, she thinks.  Mr. Darcy has sat down next to me, I haven’t showered today and I’ve been laying in plants all afternoon.  A lady bug confidently crawls along her forearm, making her feel, more than ever, like a woodland creature.  There is only one way out of this, she decides as she promptly sits up again, completely in control of her faculties this time, and stands up with as much grace as any woodland creature I’ve ever seen.

This supposed Mr. Darcy quickly drops his hand from the neck of his guitar and looks in her direction.  She quietly brushes the dirt from the front of her dress and cautiously meets his gaze.

“Do you frequently emerge from foliage to scare the song right of men?  Or am I your first victim?”

His voice is smooth, the way water effortlessly glides over weathered pebbles in a stream.  She imagines how that might translate to his singing voice and almost forgets he had attempted a conversation with her.

“I’m sorry, it’s just I’ve sort of claimed this area as my own, I thought everyone knew.”  She cringes, slightly, at her attempt at wit, but he doesn’t miss a beat.

“Oh I see.  Well miss, I suppose the sign must be on it’s way because I don’t see anything here with your name on it.”

She revels in his calling her Miss.  Her mind shoots three years in the future, them lying in bed together, reading the newspaper and sipping french pressed coffee, and him calling her Miss, a nickname to remember the first day they met.

Her absent response due to daydreaming didn’t seem to phase him.  He added, “well I wouldn't dream of disturbing you and your clover, so I’d be happy to move to the other side of the park.”

“No!”  She almost interrupts him and winces at her bad timing.  “I mean, I have to leave any way, so I guess you can borrow it for today.  But this isn’t a time share mister.”

He smiles genuinely.

Oh God, he has dimples, she thinks.

“It’s a deal.  And thank you for your generosity...” he holds on to the remnants of the word, as if to ask a question.

“Ella,” she responds.  “My name’s Ella.”  she smiles a thankful sort of smile, exploding at the thought of actually getting to know this novel of a man.

“Pleasure to meet you Ella, I’m Henry.”

“Henry,” she repeats quietly, still smiling.

“Say, just so we don’t run into any border patrol issues in the future, is that bench past that tree over their fair game or is it part of the Kingdom of Ella?  I come here the same time every evening wouldn't’ want to make another embarrassing mistake.”  He smiles and winks at her.

Keep it together old girl.

“Hm.  I suppose so, but only if you can get there before Pete the pan hander claims it.  He’s a little territorial.”

“Well Pete and I will just have to discuss the logistics of sharing the bench, though I doubt it will be nearly as fun as it was with you.”  Another wink.  Her knees momentarily forget how to function.  She nods and smiles and walks away slowly, careful not to trip.  

Moments later she does trip though, over a tree root.  She wants to sink into the ground right then and there, and start living as a tree gnome, never to see this wonderful specimen of the human population again.

She did cycle her way to her spot of clover again the next day.  She arrived a little late hoping he would already be there, so she could redeem her exit with a flawless entrance.  No sign of him, but right where he sat the day before was a small piece of wood plunged into the ground with a hand painted sign that read “The Kingdom of Ella.  All trespassers will be sentenced to a lifetime with Pan-Handler Pete.”  Tied to the sign with a  purple string was a note Ella would always keep in a cedar jewelry box, explaining to her children and her children’s children how this wonderful man, with an alabaster brow, would come to love this fair skinned beauty, and forever call her Miss.

{all images courtesy of weareinfinate}

Haitian Happiness

I recently spent 8 days in Haiti, working a few organizations.  I won't bore you with the day by day details other than to say that day by day, I fell in love with Haiti.  Here's something I wrote for my creative writing class:

“The Road to Jacmel”

or

“A Crash Course in Poverty”

We left Port-au-Prince, Haiti around 11 am.  The air was already thick and sticky, holding every smell in it, good and bad.  Ken helped me hop into the back of the pick up truck and I slathered on the sun block.  I found a comfortable spot on top of someone’s back pack and settled in for the four hour drive out of the capital of this little island, to the small beach town of Jacmel.

The clouds had parted ways with the sky and the sun was free to beat down with all it’s fury.  My shoulders started to tingle with that familiar feeling of vitamin D entering my skin.  We headed out, pass all the gated homes and sad looking “guard dogs” biting away their ticks and looking longingly, hoping for a meal.  Sometime you forget about Port-au-Prince from behind those gates.  We were reminded immediately.  The city’s 4 million inhabitants were running about madly.  A busy intersection greeted us with nothing but chaos and poverty.  People hopped on “tap taps” (Haiti’s version of a taxi cab), children dangerously meandered around the street, men leaned against things and women got their hair done.  Everyone was rushing somewhere.  Where, I’m not sure, since no one really has a job in that town.  Meat sat in it’s own stink on the side of the road with a haggard looking woman sitting next to it, hoping for customers.  American looking apparel hung on the side of buildings, and Digicell billboards littered the skyline while almost every inhabitant of Port-au-Prince rushed along with their cell phone in hand.  Apparently the company came in a few years ago and handed out free cell phones to everyone.  So, whether or not they work, almost every Haitian in the city has a cell phone.  Venders were selling tin art, paintings, plantanes, and water packaged in little bags.  I would not recommend drinking from these bags unless you would like to experience “Haitian Happiness.”  Trust me, you will not be very happy about it.  

Naked, or hardly clothed children ran about and shirtless women stood fragilely.  the smell of urine wafted into the air and held there, stubborn in the humidity.  Stern looking men with seat bubbling on their necks tried to sell us their wares while we sat in traffic.  They walked around with cell phones and pirated dvds, pushing them towards us.  We were white, which meant we had money to burn.  The hardest thing to explain to a Haitian is the concept of an American not having money to spare.  

My pale skin acted like a beacon, screaming “easy target” or “sugar mamma.”  Men crawled by on their motorcycles and yelled “blonde blonde!”  Junior, our Haitian friend that rode along said there were proposing.  On man called out to me and said “darling” and reached out his hand.  Their much more polite in their cat calls than Americans.  The UN soldiers were the worst, they made kissing faces and lude hand gestures. The exuded entitlement.  We asked Junior exactly what it is they do other than drive around with machine guns.  He said that was about it.  He said “it’s all politics.  They make problems so they can fix the problems so they can stay.  But they help keep things stable.  It’s all politics.”  

The truck navigated it’s way through a roundabout and stopped in a traffic jam.  Children, babies really, came up tot he back of the truck and stood on the bumper with out stretched hands.  Some laughed with us and had a fire in their eyes.  They had personality and jokes.  They said “give me a dollar give me a dollar!”  Junior said back to him, “you give ME a dollar!”  They both laughed.  Poverty is part of Junior’s everyday life.  He can look at this begging child and laugh.  Another little boy stood on the bumper with a pink palm upturned.  He looked up at me with hopeless eyes, eyes that were hungry.  I really had no money so I held his hand in mine and looked into his eyes. He looked at me pleading with my soul, to either take him out of this filth or give him something to survive in it another day. Nothing else in Port-au-Prince captivated or haunted me like this little boy’s face.  His dark almond eyes pierced every thing I thought I knew and could compartmentalize about poverty.  He was poverty.  This beautiful, young, starving ball of potential was the face of poverty and corruption.  I gave him and his joking friend all I had, a protein bar.  Seven of them shared it.  

That’s the hardest thing about Haiti.  It’s not the shirtless women or the feces infested water, it’s those dark almond eyes, full of want and me with nothing to give them.  There is a hopelessness in Haiti, but an acceptance and resilience, and completely contradictory hopefulness too.  We met a boy who said he loves Haiti because it is his country and that he wants to grow up to love his family and change Haiti.  These are the thoughts of the youth there.  They are not beaten down by their circumstances, they want to change what they were born into.  

We began to see the ocean and I began to think more about Haiti.  The country is not a sob story.  It is beautiful in it’s imperfections, in it’s corruption, greed, and complacency.  The people are it’s beauty, their spirit of wanting something more than what they were handed is it’s wonder.  As I watch the brown statue like people whirl behind me, left behind the truck in a hazing diesel black smoke, the noise starts to fade the statues become less and less packed.  I shifted my weight back against the truck and snapped some pictures of mounds of garbage.  The ocean breeze pushed away the smell of filth in the air.  All is quiet as we approach the mountain.  Jacmel is just on the other side.