Why glitter sparkles.

Imagine me in the role of scientist.
I could explain to you exactly why, when you shake out a handful of glitter, it sparkles as it falls to the ground. I could endlessly prattle on about light refraction and angle and intensity and draw you endless schemes on a chalkboard pocked with age and decimal points.
Business tycoon.
Take this here glitter, this simple vial of synthetic wonder, and with one shake I guarantee you a life filled with joy and success and instant gratification. And there's a very low price. Just come a little closer with your wallet. Closer. That's right. I smell your money.
Soothsayer.
What is the pattern as the dust falls to the ground? What is your most-wished-for-wish? Cross my palm with glitter, I will show you how the aging lines in my hand have nothing to do with your future. What I might tell you instead is that the tears streaking your face have much more to tell than the shine that comes from some child's art project.

I was born in the heat of summer in the heat of Chicago, an August birth. We soon relocated out of our beautiful brownstone to a nearby suburb, with hopes of a safer education for me, and perhaps a little more backyard room to grow a garden, space for the dogs to run around. We lived in yet another beautiful house, this one Victorian in style. Nearly one hundred years old, this house had a turret and a large front porch. My Dad planted trees on either side of the walk running up the front door: one for me, and one for my brother, who was born almost as we moved into this fixer-upper-glorious thing.
We lost our house sometime right after I entered my teens and after we suffered a bankruptcy, brought upon by a restaurant business that failed. (Repeat the mantra after me: location, location, location) This was right before mom sat us down and reported that her and my dad would indeed be splitting up.
Actually, the conversation went something like this:
mom: "I have something to tell you."
me: "I know. You and dad are getting divorced."

The following years were spent moving, sans dad, into apartments that never fit all ten rooms of furniture. My brother once had a bedroom made up of the sunporch of a two bedroom flat, no privacy whatsoever. My room was hardly better, but much prettier: a small study with French doors and the odd closet with a high window looking up into the sky. I listened to my A-ha albums in there. We let all the furniture and all our toys and photo albums moulder in donated storage spaces, affected not only by time, but by neglect, moths, and flooding.
High school was great. But after junior high (which, as some insipid web page had put it, "wAs NeCeSsArIlY TrAgIc"), anything would be better. I had a first date, I had a first kiss. I went to 3 homecoming dances, and two proms. I sang and I danced and I acted and I wrote. Ah, such a young Renaissance woman.

At a large midwestern college, Northern Illinois University, I earned a bachelor's degree in Theatre, a comprehensive degree that makes for nice litter paper at this point. I got a lot out of my time there, but it was so very self-motivated that I should have been paying tuition to myself rather than my professors. Wait, that sounds bitter.
Cut to the present. I'm a young woman of one quarter century in age, and I spend my days working in a bookstore, and my afternoons coaching high school students in the competitive art of individual events, or speech team. I'm a fiend for live music, I am a fiend for recorded music. I read hungrily, and I write. I've done my share of outdoor Shakespeare in the suburbs, and I've even done my share of moping about the two bedroom that I've shared with Scott and two glorious cats this past year.
I'm no stranger to community. I'm not the shy, retiring type. I crave an audience, but I never feel like really asking for it. I wait for them to come to me. And that's when the shine begins: usually I can feel it in the tips of my fingers, the resonance of my voice vibrating there and buzzing in my head. I threaten with brightness: I can clash in an instant with another strong personality. I even clash with myself: the doubt that forms like a tinny string of dialogue, scratchy on old vinyl beneath my thoughts.
"You won't even come close to making it this far without screwing up."
"What? That old idea again? Haven't we been here before?"
"Dont chance it. That way, people won't mock you."
This spring marks my journey back to myself.

Check out the other abouts:

two+three+four+index to glitter

I was born in the heat of summer in the heat of Chicago, an August birth. We soon relocated out of our beautiful brownstone to a nearby suburb, with hopes of a safer education for me, and perhaps a little more backyard room to grow a garden, space for the dogs to run around. We lived in yet another beautiful house, this one Victorian in style. Nearly one hundred years old, this house had a turret and a large front porch. My Dad planted trees on either side of the walk running up the front door: one for me, and one for my brother, who was born almost as we moved into this fixer-upper-glorious thing. We lost our house sometime right after I entered my teens and after we suffered a bankruptcy, brought upon by a restaurant business that failed. (Repeat the mantra after me: location, location, location) This was right before mom sat us down and reported that her and my dad would indeed be splitting up. Actually, the conversation went something like this: mom: "I have something to tell you." me: "I know. You and dad are getting divorced."
The following years were spent moving, sans dad, into apartments that never fit all ten rooms of furniture. My brother once had a bedroom made up of the sunporch of a two bedroom flat, no privacy whatsoever. My room was hardly better, but much prettier: a small study with French doors and the odd closet with a high window looking up into the sky. I listened to my A-ha albums in there. We let all the furniture and all our toys and photo albums moulder in donated storage spaces, affected not only by time, but by neglect, moths, and flooding. High school was great. But after junior high (which, as some insipid web page had put it, "wAs NeCeSsArIlY TrAgIc"), anything would be better. I had a first date, I had a first kiss. I went to 3 homecoming dances, and two proms. I sang and I danced and I acted and I wrote. Ah, such a young Renaissance woman.
At a large midwestern college, Northern Illinois University, I earned a bachelor's degree in Theatre, a comprehensive degree that makes for nice litter paper at this point. I got a lot out of my time there, but it was so very self-motivated that I should have been paying tuition to myself rather than my professors. Wait, that sounds bitter. Cut to the present. I'm a young woman of one quarter century in age, and I spend my days working in a bookstore, and my afternoons coaching high school students in the competitive art of individual events, or speech team. I'm a fiend for live music, I am a fiend for recorded music. I read hungrily, and I write. I've done my share of outdoor Shakespeare in the suburbs, and I've even done my share of moping about the two bedroom that I've shared with Scott and two glorious cats this past year. I'm no stranger to community. I'm not the shy, retiring type. I crave an audience, but I never feel like really asking for it. I wait for them to come to me. And that's when the shine begins: usually I can feel it in the tips of my fingers, the resonance of my voice vibrating there and buzzing in my head. I threaten with brightness: I can clash in an instant with another strong personality. I even clash with myself: the doubt that forms like a tinny string of dialogue, scratchy on old vinyl beneath my thoughts. "You won't even come close to making it this far without screwing up." "What? That old idea again? Haven't we been here before?" "Dont chance it. That way, people won't mock you." This spring marks my journey back to myself.
Check out the other abouts: two+three+four+index to glitter