My biggest. No, that is not the word I wish to use to convey this. My heaviest. The most intense, potent… My most devastating fear of 2008 will be finding myself (watching myself, residing within myself, half removed and othered) with an inability to write like I mean it, to tell because it matters, to shape because my instinct is to craft—to choreograph souls in motion, the body as it is guided by the mind’s feelings—out of sync with reason, moving to pulsations that cannot be heard but only felt. Impassioned by the gift to make silence speak, the voices vibrating on the walls of solitude heard. I want to write as if words were a dancer’s feet, never lifting her sole from the page of the ballroom floor. A hunger, an obsession, a conviction that carries me and that I carry within. Words strung together like beads on a delicate string of sensibility: a writer’s sensibility that my mind talks in inwardly, a sensibility my own life supports, mocks, is pulled from. 
Some believe in theory this is the feminine way: accents of the female’s heart, motivated by her challenge to be heard—to be remembered—to be memorized—to have a voice that pulls in soul’s preoccupied in dispersing themselves with only an insubstantial trace of what they were. I want to be the voice that exposes what generations claim we need to swallow down—hide—because we are demanded to be stronger and passive aggressively pressured into seeming unconcerned and in control. But we rarely ever are what we appear as. In certain cities we emerge onto streets seeming unique—roaming different neighborhoods, we are responded to with unfamiliarity, in different tones of language, as if our representation has been altered—one changes his hair and it is like at the same time one wove his self a new face. I remember receiving the Highschool superlative for “Unique” and thinking how easily one could trick the mass by sight, and that was why I did it, to know ahead of time how superficial standards and qualities could be. I remember meeting men and being complimented on my “look”—a boyfriend telling me he loved me because I was unique; I remember being offended by these titles that were suppose to/are used to convey more, but in truth say even less. Titles that roll off the speaker’s tongue and do not stick to the subject’s skin, revealing how little effort one is making to see to know you. 
Our interiors fool the exteriors and our exteriors fool us into thinking our interiors should reflect a change, as well. But really, we are composed of more similarities than dissimilarities. We differ in the way we play into the performance of life. But we all have cast ourselves in the same role (maybe even for the same spotlight to be illuminated under, as if the sight of one under such lighting will change our skin, but alas, how we shed it so easily)—the actor pretending to be perfect, to master his lines, to fit the part. It does not exist. 
Yesterday was the first day of classes. I am enrolled in a Graduate Fiction course. The professor sat at one end of the oval table, and I at the other, trying to absorb inspiration—possibly even through a locking of the eyes (a committed stare)—I have hoped all summer for. But all along, as his speech spun around the students, I traced words across my page, in fear that this semester I will be unable to think of words to write deeply with, as to leave letters craved on the desk, my thoughts engraved wherever my mind goes wandering. I fear application dates will arrive from nowhere fast and I will manically search spaces looking for my manuscript of substance, only to find it wafting in and out of rooms, an air of intangibility that I will not be able to showcase as a solid—the surfacing of my self. The professor attended Columbia, my dream my hope my aspiration, and told us on the second hour, “It is impossible to write the perfect story. Very few can do it.” My pencil swam in cursive waves in the corner,The Sharing of the Imperfect Story. “Write a story of a scar of yours. You will have a few minutes. Do not lift your pencil from the page until the timer sounds.” I hate these activities, I thought. I hate in class writing. I hate being unable to think, to spread out and listen to myself. They remind me that I am not a storyteller. “BEGIN.” Stretch. Scar. Mark. Scar. Still there. A scar. Memory. Still there. Of a pill that caused the stretch that caused the marks that turned into a scar. A scar that is there. On me. A scar. In me. A memory. Of the weight. What is worse: the scar or the memory? The memory. The story I remember or the story’s effect? The effect. The effect causing another story. A story with a different memory. A memory with a scar. A second scar. A different scar. A scar that does not show. That did show physically. Just not now, physically. But internally a scar that scarred, bruised and burned. Burned sight. Losing weight. Weightless. A figure scared. An interior wound. And then we read aloud, one by one, the story of our separate scars. I spoke, all the while hearing my thoughts say, How trite of me, how trite. 
I walk out onto the street, music bleeding through my conscious’ conversation. I think of the effects of music—how if it were not for it, I would remain in my apartment, ripping off clothes, searching closets for material that conceals, exhausted by what I see—the I have to see—that I am seeing what I am choosing to see. Despising that this is my interior battle—a superficial secret—a stupid waste, of me. I thank music, how it pushes me forth, keeps me moving ahead, passing through hindering momentary mentalities and into a feeling as momentary but more enchanting and invigorating. Musics way of encouraging the body to move forth, the mind to keep speed with sound as it flows. A man stops me. Laughs, sympathetically, that I wait patiently to go around a slower walker, instead of pushing through. We speak. “Are you an actress?” No. “What do you do? I write. And yourself? “A jewelry designer. I sell every week on 130 Spring. Tell me, what is your favourite gem?” Oh! I don’t know, I don’t know. “Well what do you like?” Ornate pieces. Simple clothes and shocking pieces that hold a story and make the character. “Underworld. Gothic?” He recommends a film to me. “What’s your name?” Chelsea. We shake on it, our names resonating between us. “Chelsea, I love it. That’s a name for a writer. Come this weekend between eleven and eleven, I’ll have something designed for you, free of charge.” I give him a piece of paper. He uses his pen and writes down the address and his number. “Call me before you come.” I wave goodbye, cross the street, underneath an awning, considering my life, how those are my weekly interactions, the unexpected, the small gestures, the meeting and not shying away. I think of how I feel like I am cut into halves—selves divided by cities—two characters exposed depending upon the certain crowd. Sometimes I feel like I have two selves that live separate lives and writing is my effort to have them meet and walk into each other to form one whole. Two yards and I’ve thought all this when a man says, “You must make your men happy.” Oh no! I laugh, flustered, aware of how in Manhattan inhabitants are traveling faces. “Well it is only my opinion. I think you are stunning.” I thank him and carry on, walking over the street with the subway underneath, like a grid, air from below pushing upwards, making my red skirt fly up around my waist like Marilyn Monroe. A group dispersing in front of me, holds high banners promoting the premiere of 90210. At this point, I am weaving through crowds of confused students trying to be on time to a class. A man giving away promotional chap sticks, turns and falls into me. I ask for a chap stick. He places one in my hand, apologizing over and over to the ground, not looking up at me. It’s okay, I tell him and thank him for the gift. He looks up as I try parting ways, “Take another. Have two. Please.” No, no, no worries. “You’re beautiful. I want you to.” I take it, thankfully, but hate how I—and others, I am sure, daily—are bombarded by compliments based on physicality. As if beauty becomes a reward that must be recognized and responded to. 
I gave a speech to freshman NYU students. I knew that it could not possibly be what the NYU chair wanted me to share, because it did not mirror his own words of wisdom. I had not lived in the dorms, I had not been accepted as a freshman, I have never eaten in the dining hall, I have not made friends at school. Quite simply, I have not had the experience one envisions while at Highschool. I do not have the story that I expected I would deliver. I have faced what students fear when they watch their parents leave and realize they know no one. But still, he insisted I speak. And so I did, candidly, encouraged by my potential of representing hope. The hope that you can have a goal you dreamt for yourself, but did not originally meet, and still achieve it a year and half later. That you can bounce back—use depression to inspire you. That you can fear being alone and have to be alone, only to discover the opportunities it provides. The hope that maybe there are two plans or more for you, that are better than your original design. After I spoke, he told my father how much I had revealed, how sensitive it had been. But then as he was saying goodbye, he told me that he had seen a picture of me, and thinks I “should be a model. Just be a model.” It was flattering, but it also felt cold, although I know he did not mean it to be so. I had just given a speech and small talked for multiple hours with parents about my intellectual dreams and educational pursuits. And yet, at the final hour one of the heads at NYU told me I should use my face for a career. Everyday, I try desperately for less and less of appearance and attaining this supposed look decide me and defeat me. I try and see my extra weight as a fullness that I cannot naturally or not obsessively get rid of—and therefore, something that is me and that I will keep confidently. I weave through the park close to my apartment, listening to music. I try and think about what my past modeling career actually meant to me. And I decide that I grow nostalgic over it because it represented a period in my life where I was unaware of perceptions (despite the paradox of being in an industry based on perceptions) and I was fearless—a time when I did not feel my body on me. And now, after the fact, awareness is my only tool for making art, for living, for producing matter and meaning. And also now is a period in time when beauty is believed to be significant by many members of this generation. That is why I fear being unable to write. Writing is like a drug that keeps me healthy. It is the reward of growing up and becoming aware. Writing is a way of making sense out of beauty—figuring out what it truly means beneath the surface. After one has penetrated through the appearance of beauty, is there anything there? Is it empty—perhaps a black hole where all knowledge is lost—or does it possibly bleed? 
To me, writing is like music, it keeps you moving forward—looking for patterns in words, structured like a dream, and it keeps you listening for the sound of a certain sensation that will consistently move you. An art of living, you can rely on. One day I had an exterior beauty I believed was beautiful and was paid for having. Another day, I woke up and I had changed. I no longer believed my exterior was beautiful and I ceased being paid and left the agency. It came and went, just as a dream does. No matter the phrasing of the compliments I receive nor the amount, I do not rely on it because I do not believe it. I write from the interior and expose it to exteriors. It is the only thing I rely on—the only thing I believe will keep me from regretting something I use to be: a face who was unaware, a soul that was naïve and a body that was young.
Some believe in theory this is the feminine way: accents of the female’s heart, motivated by her challenge to be heard—to be remembered—to be memorized—to have a voice that pulls in soul’s preoccupied in dispersing themselves with only an insubstantial trace of what they were. I want to be the voice that exposes what generations claim we need to swallow down—hide—because we are demanded to be stronger and passive aggressively pressured into seeming unconcerned and in control. But we rarely ever are what we appear as. In certain cities we emerge onto streets seeming unique—roaming different neighborhoods, we are responded to with unfamiliarity, in different tones of language, as if our representation has been altered—one changes his hair and it is like at the same time one wove his self a new face. I remember receiving the Highschool superlative for “Unique” and thinking how easily one could trick the mass by sight, and that was why I did it, to know ahead of time how superficial standards and qualities could be. I remember meeting men and being complimented on my “look”—a boyfriend telling me he loved me because I was unique; I remember being offended by these titles that were suppose to/are used to convey more, but in truth say even less. Titles that roll off the speaker’s tongue and do not stick to the subject’s skin, revealing how little effort one is making to see to know you. 
Our interiors fool the exteriors and our exteriors fool us into thinking our interiors should reflect a change, as well. But really, we are composed of more similarities than dissimilarities. We differ in the way we play into the performance of life. But we all have cast ourselves in the same role (maybe even for the same spotlight to be illuminated under, as if the sight of one under such lighting will change our skin, but alas, how we shed it so easily)—the actor pretending to be perfect, to master his lines, to fit the part. It does not exist. 
Yesterday was the first day of classes. I am enrolled in a Graduate Fiction course. The professor sat at one end of the oval table, and I at the other, trying to absorb inspiration—possibly even through a locking of the eyes (a committed stare)—I have hoped all summer for. But all along, as his speech spun around the students, I traced words across my page, in fear that this semester I will be unable to think of words to write deeply with, as to leave letters craved on the desk, my thoughts engraved wherever my mind goes wandering. I fear application dates will arrive from nowhere fast and I will manically search spaces looking for my manuscript of substance, only to find it wafting in and out of rooms, an air of intangibility that I will not be able to showcase as a solid—the surfacing of my self. The professor attended Columbia, my dream my hope my aspiration, and told us on the second hour, “It is impossible to write the perfect story. Very few can do it.” My pencil swam in cursive waves in the corner,The Sharing of the Imperfect Story. “Write a story of a scar of yours. You will have a few minutes. Do not lift your pencil from the page until the timer sounds.” I hate these activities, I thought. I hate in class writing. I hate being unable to think, to spread out and listen to myself. They remind me that I am not a storyteller. “BEGIN.” Stretch. Scar. Mark. Scar. Still there. A scar. Memory. Still there. Of a pill that caused the stretch that caused the marks that turned into a scar. A scar that is there. On me. A scar. In me. A memory. Of the weight. What is worse: the scar or the memory? The memory. The story I remember or the story’s effect? The effect. The effect causing another story. A story with a different memory. A memory with a scar. A second scar. A different scar. A scar that does not show. That did show physically. Just not now, physically. But internally a scar that scarred, bruised and burned. Burned sight. Losing weight. Weightless. A figure scared. An interior wound. And then we read aloud, one by one, the story of our separate scars. I spoke, all the while hearing my thoughts say, How trite of me, how trite. 
I walk out onto the street, music bleeding through my conscious’ conversation. I think of the effects of music—how if it were not for it, I would remain in my apartment, ripping off clothes, searching closets for material that conceals, exhausted by what I see—the I have to see—that I am seeing what I am choosing to see. Despising that this is my interior battle—a superficial secret—a stupid waste, of me. I thank music, how it pushes me forth, keeps me moving ahead, passing through hindering momentary mentalities and into a feeling as momentary but more enchanting and invigorating. Musics way of encouraging the body to move forth, the mind to keep speed with sound as it flows. A man stops me. Laughs, sympathetically, that I wait patiently to go around a slower walker, instead of pushing through. We speak. “Are you an actress?” No. “What do you do? I write. And yourself? “A jewelry designer. I sell every week on 130 Spring. Tell me, what is your favourite gem?” Oh! I don’t know, I don’t know. “Well what do you like?” Ornate pieces. Simple clothes and shocking pieces that hold a story and make the character. “Underworld. Gothic?” He recommends a film to me. “What’s your name?” Chelsea. We shake on it, our names resonating between us. “Chelsea, I love it. That’s a name for a writer. Come this weekend between eleven and eleven, I’ll have something designed for you, free of charge.” I give him a piece of paper. He uses his pen and writes down the address and his number. “Call me before you come.” I wave goodbye, cross the street, underneath an awning, considering my life, how those are my weekly interactions, the unexpected, the small gestures, the meeting and not shying away. I think of how I feel like I am cut into halves—selves divided by cities—two characters exposed depending upon the certain crowd. Sometimes I feel like I have two selves that live separate lives and writing is my effort to have them meet and walk into each other to form one whole. Two yards and I’ve thought all this when a man says, “You must make your men happy.” Oh no! I laugh, flustered, aware of how in Manhattan inhabitants are traveling faces. “Well it is only my opinion. I think you are stunning.” I thank him and carry on, walking over the street with the subway underneath, like a grid, air from below pushing upwards, making my red skirt fly up around my waist like Marilyn Monroe. A group dispersing in front of me, holds high banners promoting the premiere of 90210. At this point, I am weaving through crowds of confused students trying to be on time to a class. A man giving away promotional chap sticks, turns and falls into me. I ask for a chap stick. He places one in my hand, apologizing over and over to the ground, not looking up at me. It’s okay, I tell him and thank him for the gift. He looks up as I try parting ways, “Take another. Have two. Please.” No, no, no worries. “You’re beautiful. I want you to.” I take it, thankfully, but hate how I—and others, I am sure, daily—are bombarded by compliments based on physicality. As if beauty becomes a reward that must be recognized and responded to. 
I gave a speech to freshman NYU students. I knew that it could not possibly be what the NYU chair wanted me to share, because it did not mirror his own words of wisdom. I had not lived in the dorms, I had not been accepted as a freshman, I have never eaten in the dining hall, I have not made friends at school. Quite simply, I have not had the experience one envisions while at Highschool. I do not have the story that I expected I would deliver. I have faced what students fear when they watch their parents leave and realize they know no one. But still, he insisted I speak. And so I did, candidly, encouraged by my potential of representing hope. The hope that you can have a goal you dreamt for yourself, but did not originally meet, and still achieve it a year and half later. That you can bounce back—use depression to inspire you. That you can fear being alone and have to be alone, only to discover the opportunities it provides. The hope that maybe there are two plans or more for you, that are better than your original design. After I spoke, he told my father how much I had revealed, how sensitive it had been. But then as he was saying goodbye, he told me that he had seen a picture of me, and thinks I “should be a model. Just be a model.” It was flattering, but it also felt cold, although I know he did not mean it to be so. I had just given a speech and small talked for multiple hours with parents about my intellectual dreams and educational pursuits. And yet, at the final hour one of the heads at NYU told me I should use my face for a career. Everyday, I try desperately for less and less of appearance and attaining this supposed look decide me and defeat me. I try and see my extra weight as a fullness that I cannot naturally or not obsessively get rid of—and therefore, something that is me and that I will keep confidently. I weave through the park close to my apartment, listening to music. I try and think about what my past modeling career actually meant to me. And I decide that I grow nostalgic over it because it represented a period in my life where I was unaware of perceptions (despite the paradox of being in an industry based on perceptions) and I was fearless—a time when I did not feel my body on me. And now, after the fact, awareness is my only tool for making art, for living, for producing matter and meaning. And also now is a period in time when beauty is believed to be significant by many members of this generation. That is why I fear being unable to write. Writing is like a drug that keeps me healthy. It is the reward of growing up and becoming aware. Writing is a way of making sense out of beauty—figuring out what it truly means beneath the surface. After one has penetrated through the appearance of beauty, is there anything there? Is it empty—perhaps a black hole where all knowledge is lost—or does it possibly bleed? 
To me, writing is like music, it keeps you moving forward—looking for patterns in words, structured like a dream, and it keeps you listening for the sound of a certain sensation that will consistently move you. An art of living, you can rely on. One day I had an exterior beauty I believed was beautiful and was paid for having. Another day, I woke up and I had changed. I no longer believed my exterior was beautiful and I ceased being paid and left the agency. It came and went, just as a dream does. No matter the phrasing of the compliments I receive nor the amount, I do not rely on it because I do not believe it. I write from the interior and expose it to exteriors. It is the only thing I rely on—the only thing I believe will keep me from regretting something I use to be: a face who was unaware, a soul that was naïve and a body that was young.
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