Short Essay

Lost within the Pages
A book consists of pages and a cover. On those pages are the words of many thoughts and ideas that came from men and women alike. A book can bring ease to the mind and love to the heart. Its twist on real life situations and those that are false can alleviate the heart and soul. The words of books are so beautiful and mesmerizing that no scenery can outmatch its beauty. Each time I read my heart pounds and my mind races into the impossible. So many people can overlook a book and never pick it up. I, on the other hand, love to engross myself in the pages of all books and bask in their fairytale endings.
When I was young, I adored the library. Each time I went, I would check out as many books as I could carry. I loved to read and I loved all that I learned from each and every book I picked up. I used to beg my mother to take me to the library so I could enjoy the glorious sentences of more and more tales. Most of the time it was a lost cause, seeing as I usually asked to go back the day after we had just gone. The library thrilled me though, and I could not stay away. I could not stay away from the books that filled its shelves, or from the pages that called my name so relentlessly. I envied the librarians because they could just sit and read all day long if they wanted to. I wanted to have as many books at my disposal as they had.
I feel that books have become more and more unnoticed. Today, children can just go and see a movie about a famous book without having to ever touch its cover. They abuse the privilege they have of rejuvenating themselves with a wonderful book. So many children do not want to read books anymore. They desecrate their minds with video games and television shows. Children cannot handle the patience and calm it takes to sit and read a book and that utterly destroys me.
Even I have grown farther and farther away from the books I love and cherish. I have found that everyday things have sucked the life and time out of me. I no longer can blow a day and just sit and read to my heart’s content. I miss the pages that were so familiar to me and I wish I had the time to divulge in the creative images that a book can bring. I often think “hopefully when I am older I will have the time to read again.” I do not want to wait until I am of an older age. I wish to read as much as I want now, but I simply have no time to do so. In high school, reading books was often a requirement, but here I find that I do not have any novels that are required text and that devastates me. Will I ever be reunited with my precious books again?

Kara Lohberg

Short Essay: Scar

There is a jagged scar near the inside crook of my elbow. It comes from the cap of a beer bottle. A very peculiar shape. More visceral than I would like. A bloodied caterpillar, with a fuzzed-out membrane that branches further than its putrid body does. Or some sinister, raised red Rorschach, assumed connotations attached. A piece of entrails that escaped out a hole in my middle. And while I tried to plug it up, it lodged its engorged self onto my awkward inner joint. Such an exacerbated pattern. And imagination. Of course I can’t rightly picture what it is after the ages I’ve lost staring into its murkily buffered edges. It still eggs on the travel of bloodshot up to my eyes.
As a child, I began to gain a consciousness of the damage it caused me and the restraint it held over my gaining of friends and developing of relationships. This imperfection became my source of so much malice and disgust, even at such a young age. Out of desperation and innocent ignorance I took a Magic Eraser to it. Diligently forcing the gray putty against the saturated blush. I truly believed the enchanted matter would eventually make it disappear, but it would only get more and more irritated. I lost a lot of childhood finding it still there. After my discovery of the purpose of household items, I remember dousing the tainted skin in bleach. I couldn’t vacate the consequences for more than a month after. I only kid myself now in saying that didn’t magnify its permanence or that the repercussions weren’t felt for much longer.
For years, I wore only sleeves long enough to shade it. If a situation arose where I absolutely needed to expose the sickening thing, I carried gigantic medical bandages always in tow. In the locker room before gym, I would shove my arm into the safety of the dark metal casing and eerily check for onlookers. Then would shortly emerge with a detectably renewed ego. Except for the interruption of a section of faux flesh, my newly unmarred appendage would come up for air; if but briefly. It was easier to excuse a bandage then suffer the looks of horror caused by my grotesque disfigurement. I relished in the wearing of sweatshirts, even in the heat. Developed a sort of affinity for it. It helped and hurt me when puberty struck. My insulters may have found less reason with my body all covered, but my self-esteem floundered constantly with my un-honed technique. I played a strong mental tug-of-war that I consistently lost. And always, the scar itched. Not a physical ache with need to be scratched. But rather the cruel tarnish branded my psyche with its presence. It became the constant reminder that the life I wanted wasn’t mine to have, could never have. I stood disfigured, blemished, flawed: exempt from the game. So I traced the sidelines with silent and unseen footfalls. Blotted out in shadow where the mark of a brute, and I, could not be recognized.
Time stretched away from me there.
I fantasize its sudden leap off my arm, to rid me of self-disgust and future embarrassment. If I ever give anyone the chance to see it, I seem to always be asked how I got it. I mean I too would be curious if such a vulgarity appeared elsewhere. I usually lie, giving a nobler or more humorous story. Like a fisherman would. I can remember more than I want to on how it came to be. So I push the inquiries away with personable untruths and the constant presence of cloth sheathing. Beneath the wretched material and mid my false retellings I feel it burning. I also feel the burn of the others as if they are being reenacted over again.

Short Personal Essay

I’m laying in the grass outside. I can feel little legs climbing over the hairs on the back of my arm. Ants don’t bug me so I let them have free roam when they wander onto my body.  No other bug gets that kind of clearance based on their reputation alone.  Ants are the coolest things in the world. I love the structure and purpose of an ant. They know what they are doing, they know why they are alive and they are good at what they do. They need no college education, no weight training, no special seminars. I always wanted an ant hill that I could grow myself and help to become successful. To make a vanilla hive that would have no problems. In science they call a subject or a control group “vanilla” when it is pure and has had no alterations. Then I could run experiments on the hive and see how different variables play out. I would have cameras set up all around the ant hill to see exactly what is going on. You could paint one ant with a black light dye and follow him for the whole day. Ants are lucky because they can have a home in the dark unused corners of the world. There is always enough space for an ant. No one has set up a system so ants have to pay mortgages their whole lives. 

Bees are a close cousin to the ant, or at least in my mind.  They are like ants with wings. The cool thing about bees is they make honey and honey is good on toast. Only if it is wheat toast straight from the toaster with butter melted half way through it and the honey melting on top of that.

The spider is an other interesting member of this bug world. Well, spiders aren't bugs their arachnids, but they are small and intriguing and therefore here in this essay. They are the lone wolves of the little people world. I love to watch them hunt. It would be cool to hunt people like that, with a paintball gun.  There is a spider on my balcony that I watch every morning while I am eating breakfast. They are so patient.  I know he hasn’t caught anything in three days and I almost feel guilty eating in front of him. There are little wispy webs all over that have lost their stick and today they cannot catch anything. Some of them have wrapped around themselves and they look like little faeries caught in gossamer. He goes from space between bar to space between bar like a fisherman trying a new hole. Spiders move with fluidity and poise that I think is due in part to the mechanism of their motion. Spiders have no muscles, but instead move through hydraulic pressure. When I see spiders, in my mind Mowgli speaks “I fear you Many Legs for you are one of the poison people, but I understand you and you will not hurt me. Good hunting all who keep the jungle law!”

Blake Stanger