Land that I Love

I hiked partway up a mountain an hour before sunset tonight. The lovely display of nature yawning and sinking to sleep behind the far mountains was an idyllic setup for the firework shows to follow. From up where I sat I was able to see several dozen shows popping up around Utah valley. It was a game of whack-a-mole for my eyes, scanning up and back, a quick visual mallet-bonk on each erupting spark. I shut my eyes and yet behind closed lids they still reflexively chased the echoing bursts, pops, and whistles entering my ears from around the valley. These words danced in my head and even escaped on a tune from my lips:

the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air . . . but the flag was still there

Thought stirred with feeling as I sat atop the hill thinking of all those people celebrating.
So many people have filled this valley since those pioneers rolled in 160-some years ago.  
This is a great big world . . . small in comparison to some, but so very big. 
This country has supplied more than a fair share of glaring rockets and bursting bombs in other countries. 
So many dogs are scared right now.
Land of which freedoms, home of how many truly brave?
All those people having their individual celebrations—most are seeing only one show. I see them all.
Do I feel guilty about that? Nah.
All those spurts looks like that part in The Dark Knight Rises when all the manhole covers burst with flame, except these burst with sparkles. Maybe more like an active lava field where pressurized molten sparkles spray from the street-lamp-speckled earth. A herd of fairy whales surfacing, clearing their magical blowholes, splashing up and down and up from electric puddles around the baking city.
Everyone down there is celebrating because, probably, they believe in America. It's interesting that every single inhabitant of this country can believe in America without needing to believe in God. And that doesn't comfort me, but somehow it represents freedom to me, and if we can't be one nation under God, I'd somberly accept one nation unified at least in the belief of that old American hope.

As I later drove home to Salt Lake valley, even more shows exploded along the way. As I rounded the point of the mountain and saw the celebrations going on above the quiet prison, I thought, do prison mates get to watch fireworks? Surely no choice that lands you in there is worth losing the freedom to celebrate. There is no hero's welcome in prison for a citizen who gives up his or her life on the battlefield of impulse to steal a cheap replica of freedom.

For me it seems easy to love America. I don't know, maybe patriotism is just something you're born with, as with bones or strands of DNA. And America's become so normal to me I forget how great she is, how she could be if we let her. She's only as free as the feet treading on her. And when she's sick, hurting, bruised, I get sad. I get sad because it takes a lot of people to hurt such a large country, and so when it gets to the point where she's hurting, a deep lot of things have happened to get her there.

And yet she finds ways of healing her wounds, of drawing the attention of those who should be caring for her to step up and remember. Stand up and defend. Bend the knee and remember compassion. Reach out and help a neighbor.

And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free. And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me.

It is written and many believe that freedom, liberty, is an inalienable right. That means it can't be taken from the possessor. Did you know we also define it as the possessor can't give it away, either? This implies that freedom is a human right, not an American right. Only those humans, true patriots who don't hurt their given country and would that no country be oppressed, will gain access to practice that right.

The lyrics above give an insight to where one access point of freedom is found: men who died. How does death unlock the right to freedom? If we can possess it because others died to defend it, surely we must believe we could lose our access to freedom if others die in a pursuit to pump it into the unsuspecting structures of foreign societies. I'm not saying other countries couldn't use help to lift the oppression of their governing powers, but how can patriots be born if the citizens die at the hand that reached to help them?

Because some covet oppression so much they cannot even see the value of freedom, countries war to reclaim their inalienable right to freedom. Our world has fished some real crazies from the ever-evolving seas of tyranny. And so patriots go, prepared to give their lives, to give the countries an opening to freedom. And I won't forget how I'm free.

My government would never die for me; it cannot give me the right to freedom. These days, true patriots who desire to be elected to an office for the pursuit of real liberty aren't often found. By their works we shall know them. But unfortunately, by the media are their works filtered, twisted, polluted, and glazed so that we hardly know real from script, authentic from special effect. The media likes reality TV, beauty pageants, talent contests, game shows, and that's what the political scene has become, nearly entirely forgetting the men who died who set up their rights to stand, speak, offer to serve in government.

So many have forgotten that government is a service. Some who seek a position in government want it to serve them. Few would ever die for their country if it came to it. There are a fading number of patriots elected to fill our government.

But what do I really know? I don't stroll through the separate world that politics has become in our nation. It saddens me to see America's own blood attack itself and weaken the immunity. She'd heal well with some unity.

And all that said, I still believe in America. I believe in my creator, God. I believe in the inalienable rights we're trying to latch on to like newborn babes. I believe that goodness prevails in the hearts of many, many Americans. I believe that many others are one kind gesture away from believing in themselves again. I believe we can revive our nation one treading step, one better choice, one sacrifice for the greater good, one person at a time.

“We don’t have to consider just statistics to be reminded that America is still good. . . . Most of them are honest. Most of them try to do their duty and live unselfish and responsible lives. Most Americans honor their commitments to their marriages, their families, their employers, their communities. Most Americans show compassion and courage to the needy. Most Americans still look at their children and see strength and optimism in their eyes.” – Seven Miracles that Saved America

What is a nation without a free people? A government. I love this land for what it stands for deep down: opening the right to freedom to all mankind. She's old, worn out, but still beautiful. Now if God were allowed to do a quick facelift to smooth out those few 237-year-old wrinkles she might just feel good as new.

Poetry Reading – Felling

What the judges said:
This poem is an enviable example of word as subject, displaying phonetic craft which utilizes onomatopoeia internal rhyme and assonance. The sounds in this poem are the strongest of the poetry competition, enhancing the author's idea, and moving the reader through the poem at a specific pace. Beginning with the title, "Felling" is a very poetic, language-centered, sensual journey.

What I said:
Felling
I never thought of sex before
as a sexy word. The hacking
hatchet chopping
trunks cracking splinters
splitting rings of life apart;
factories snatching branches,
whittling forests into firewood.

I hear the milling lyric making love
mixing hum and la from a pull saw
bending, begging—catching;
music wobbles, giggles when a handle slips
then grips again, mapping latitude
lines through layers of life, composing
honeycomb cradles in the moonlight.

Emily Fairchild 4/18/13

— at Utah Valley University.

April's Fool: The Hundred-Dollar Penny

Somehow I've been 24 years old my entire college career. Guys always guess 24/25 to be my age. And I still feel 24. I'm afraid as soon as I graduate, 28 will catch up to me all too swiftly.

Because I started college at 24, already the average age for dateable boys on campus was a bit on the low side. But the real problem was how as time went by, the boys kept getting younger, and I aged without really getting any older. They would always think I was 23–25, but those numbers didn't always stay. So because it happened so often that guys sort of reeled away and grimaced once they heard the number of years I'd been on Earth, I just made a habit of separating school and dating. Like church and state, dating and schooling just didn't seem able to co-govern in my mind. I expected the church setting to be my reliable dating source (ha), and the school to be my skills and education source.

This final semester, as a last-ditch effort, I decided I'd make an attempt at repentance and take the Dating and Courtship class. Might as well get some good prophetic advice before I leave the university environment and its ripe breeding ground for dates and marriages, which environment I neglect as often as I trudge straight through it. I've been learning a lot of good things in this class, and putting them into practice in life. Such learn+apply behavior has been making my dating life less pathetic, though my date quota hasn't increased one bit. So that's a nice side effect already.

Today, though, the dating class offered a lesson I never would have expected and still may not fully understand. We were talking about tips for selecting a good mate. At one point the teacher settled down in a chair and said he would need a female volunteer. No immediate hand rose. He said, a girl who likes money. I kicked my hand to the sky, joking about enthusiasm for the money part, but ready to climb on stage for the magic trick.

As I approached, he briefly told me that if I wanted more than I was given, I would need to give up what I had to get it. Those were the rules, that was the system. I sat down in the sideways-facing chair he pulled out for me. I faced him, the class faced us. When he reached into his pocket, we heard chattering coins. He lifted out a quarter and placed it on the table between us.

"Do you like that?"
"A nice quarter."
"What could you get with that?"
"I could use it at one of those bubble gum machines."
"Would you like something better?"
"Sure."
"What's the system?"
He holds out his hand.
"Have to give it up if I want something better," I say, placing quarter-George face-up in his palm.
He whips out a dollar.

Easter Is Life

I read this poem for the first time the other day and just love it. It's not particularly religious or Easter-themed . . . but life itself is something of a pure religion. It expects a lot from you . . . all of you, really; it gives you whatever knowledge you seek from it; and you'll die for it—martyrs, all of us, for the faith of breathing.

Poem After Carlos Drummond de Andrade
"It's life, Carlos."

It's life that is hard: waking, sleeping, eating, loving, working and
        dying are easy.
It's life that suddenly fills both ears with the sound of that
        symphony that forces your pulse to race and swells your
        heart near to bursting.
It's life, not listening, that stretches your neck and opens your eyes
        and brings you into the worst weather of the winter to arrive
        once more at the house where love seemed to be in the air.

And it's life, just life, that makes you breathe deeply, in the air that
        is filled with wood smoke and the dust of the factory, because
        you hurried, and now your lungs heave and fall with the
        nervous excitement of a leaf in spring breezes, though it is
        winter and you are swallowing the dirt of the town.
It isn't death when you suffer, it isn't death when you miss each
        other and hurt for it, when you complain that isn't death,
        when you fight with those you love, when you
        misunderstand, when one line in a letter or one remark in
        person ties one of you in knots, when the end seems near,
        when you think you will die, when you wish you were
        already dead—none of that is death.
It's life, after all, that brings you a pain in the foot and a pain in the
        hand, a sore throat, a broken heart, a cracked back, a torn
        gut, a hole in your abdomen, an irritated stomach, a
        swollen gland, a growth, a fever, a cough, a hiccup, a
        sneeze, a bursting blood vessel in the temple.
It's life, not nerve ends, that puts the heartache on a pedestal and
        worships it.
It's life, and you can't escape it. It's life, and you asked for it. It's life,
        and you won't be consumed by passion, you won't be
        destroyed by self-destruction, you won't avoid it by
        abstinence, you won't manage it by moderation, because
        it's life—life everywhere, life at all times—and so you
        won't be consumed by passion: you will be consumed
        by life.

It's life that will consume you in the end, but in the meantime...
It's life that will eat you alive, but for now...
It's life that calls you to the street where the wood smoke hangs,
        and the bare hint of a whisper of your name, but before
        you go...

Too late: Life got its tentacles around you, its hooks into your heart,
        and suddenly you come awake as if for the first time, and
        you are standing in a part of the town where the air is
        sweet -- your face flushed, your chest thumping, your
        stomach a planet, your heart a planet, your every organ a
        separate planet, all of it of a piece though the pieces turn
        separately, O silent indications of the inevitable, as among
        the natural restraints of winter and good sense, life blows
        you apart in her arms.

Marvin Bell

Victoria's New Secret

"Our main appeal is for women. We are not for men to look at but for women to feel good about themselves."

When a life-changing dilemma sprouts in a little girl's soul, she will think of little else until she works out a solution.

I was about twelve. Breasts were a shy, uncertain, recent addition to my body. My body had been so busy growing upward it neglected filling in curves until it seemed every other girl had a little something to fill the training bra. I was sidled up next to my mom on her bed. We were watching some family TV show that I wasn't paying attention to in the least. My mind reeled for squirming words in the rushing flow of thoughts obsessing about bras. It was time for me to wear a bra, I just knew it. It was strange; I'd never worn one before, so I'd never had to ask for one before. But when Mom buys all your clothes, and she's had enough breast to feed six kids, she's not only probably a good source, she's probably my only source for bra dealing. And trust me, Mom knows a good deal.

It seemed like hours that I sat there, my heart like a dryer loaded with soggy shoes, rounding up any available nerve and wrestling scattered words into a proper row. This was neither the time nor place to discuss lingerie, but like I said, once possessed by the problem, girls will obsess over a resolution or burst. As most men know, this never changes. 

When the words finally came out, they dribbled toward Mom's ear in a terrified whisper.

"Mom, I think I need a bra."

"What?" Her eyes stayed on the TV.

Oh horror! Don't make me repeat it! Then Dad might hear. Other siblings heaped on the bed might hear. . . . Oh humiliation.

"I think I need a bra." If snakes cry, that's what I sounded like.

"Oh honey, you don't need a bra. Maybe next year."

My heart shuddered down my spine and triggered a whole series of unpleasantries. A loud buzzing silence vibrated in my head. My face no doubt seared red, sending a steam thick with embarrassment toward my eyes. I blinked rapidly to keep the pricking fog away. 

Today Is Lovely

largely because the sun is shining and the air reached up to it, finally collecting over forty speckles of warmth to stipple fresh freckles on my skin. It's a wonder what fragrant spell a mere dusting of sun can put me under. As though my heart was tossed in the dryer to get the wrinkles out, now hung neatly back in my chest the heat wraps me from the inside out. Like my lips were just pulled out of the oven, a crescent smile gently cools above my chin. Like the greatest vacation spent in bed in a book, my soul feels at home on holiday when my body is tucked into folds of sun cover.

My phone supposes cold will pull down the curved corner of this lemony quilt tomorrow till only bare sheets of snow fit the ground. The month is March, but the valley is Utah, so winter will still rule for a season. Tomorrow casts backward ideas into today, but tomorrow only might be; it might be flurriously cold, but no one can say for certain until tomorrow becomes today.

Today, the breeze paints my face with powder pastels; the buzz of a million blades of grass pushing to the sky carbonates my reservoir of blood; leafless trees point and whisper as I bounce along on my toes, and I feel so famous under the light of that high, bright spot I'm convinced they'll name a summer flower after me. Today is just that lovely.

Five Years Seen

We've all been asked before to consider the question, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Considering the obvious impossibility to look into the future, I never truly pondered and prepared a realistic futuristic answer to this question whenever it was asked. I'm one of those goal-shunning, flow-going life-livers. It's not that I'm aimless (I have passion that steers me in satisfactory directions), I just don't like to think I see myself deciding myself five years from now, let alone just tomorrow. Who KNOWS what could happen in 24 hours! Why determine the destination before the route is guaranteed to even exist?

I'm not being entirely truthful. I do have hopeful destinations in my heart and head and I project them into the pretend future, and those idea-destinations propel my daily motions, my day-to-day actions, and everyday choices. I just wanted to use three ways of saying the same thing right then.

Feb. 27

On this day in 2008 I walked onto the top step of the descending escalator then stopped. But it soon became the bottom step and Terminal 2 spit me out on the great salt lake city pavement. My family picked me up and took me home from my mission. Soggy boots walked the streets of France mere hours earlier. Airplanes walk the air so swiftly.

And time has now leapt five huge strides to the present, and what have I got to show for it?

How about an awesome Top Five of the Last Five list? Here is where those five years have seen me.

2008

• Dated and broke up with the last "official boyfriend" I've had. Wow. I've dated since, duh, I've tried; but no one's called me his girlfriend in 4.5 years...

• Drove me some school bus.

• Grandma Bonnie offered funds for school. God bless that woman forever. I took an Editing class at UVU and discovered my passions had professional application. Switched the track right under my wheels. Vision changed.

Center: Biker Bonnie ;)

• Hiked to Havasupai falls. Joined facebook to prove it.

• And, Uncle Scot added Vickie to my family.

2009

• Little bro left on mission to AZ.

• Started up yoga.

• Dad added Shawna to my family.

• Sister gave me nephew #2

• I finished Math courses forever more.

2010

• Drove buses for the Vancouver, BC Winter Olympics and met my best Merilee and Seth friends. Also drove during Paralympics.

Swiss Wheelchair Curling Team

• Went to Alaska for the third time, this time to work with Royal Caribbean Tours. Also bought a ukulele. Combined the two to win best safety speech ever award.

• Treated my sister, my mom, and myself to a discounted 12-night Mediterranean cruise. Saw those pyramids in Egypt. And other things around the neighborhood.

• Also visited Paris and its Eiffel and Louvre.

• Got my first smart phone

2011

• Took a sculpture class, an astronomy class, and a biology class. Marveled at the sculpting of universes.

• Went to Alaska again. Did some deep sea halibut fishing! 

• Moved in with these dashing dolls.

• Found out I was famously awkward...awkwardly famous? AFP (Awkward Family Photos) selected this sibling picture to appear in the 2012 Calendar, the board game, and a 999-piece puzzle. We're the prettiest awkward.

• Went an entire month without wearing a bra. Sorta wrote about the experience on my blog; also wrote up the whole experience for my non-fiction writing class. Still don't know what I'll do with that work. In the meantime enjoy this from my Movember celebration that same month.

Pin the stache on the Biebe

2012

• Became Editor-in-Chief of Touchstones journal at UVU. That rocked.

• Had poems and an article published in V Magazine (now Hex), the arts and entertainment section of UVU Review newspaper.

See text here

• Scored the publishing internship for the summer at Deseret Book. Biggest miracle experience of the decade f'real. Met some new besties.

• Took a Digital Document Design class. Built a website that had a sweet homepage and a secret page.

I tweaked those buttons (except the middle one) in Photoshop

• This beautiful lady got a degree! 

She be my mama

Now

• Most recently my sister brought me nephew #3. Great way to start off a new year.

The past five years have been full. Blessings and challenges, heartaches and triumphs, pressures and joys, miracles and miracles and faith and learning and love. Lots of love. I imagine if I'd sat and pondered about it, I would have liked to have "seen" marriage and kiddies in these five years...but knowing my ways, I would have forgotten to be specific; so, just as well, I have seen loads of marriages and heaps of kids all over the place in these five years. Just not my own. All in good time. As the plane flies.

Coping with Pain, Survey

As humans, I believe we've all come to know a thing or two about pain. From heartaches to stomach aches, we all have different ways of coping with the sometimes indescribable feelings. I am compiling responses to the survey below about coping with pain.

Depending on the quantity of responses, I will include as many of them as I can for my article which will be going into Hex magazine at my school, Utah Valley University.  The survey is set up to be anonymous and I hope to gather many honest, sincere responses by TUESDAY JAN. 29 at midnight. It should only take about ten minutes, depending on how deep you want to go into your philosophies! (but your response length IS limited because so is my time :])

Once the article is featured, I will send out a link to the magazine's website for all to see.  This should be really quite interesting to get a panoramic view of the strategies our neighbors have of coping with pain. PLEASE share and forward this link to your friends and your friends' friends (the more varied backgrounds the better) and so on!

If you need any more information, contact Emily at mlefair@gmail.com
Thank you!!

https://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3Wp2wWnaRfE9Wrb

Looky!

I made a website!


http://digitaldesign3340.com/fairchild/exhibit/index.html


It even has a secret page! Go find it, go, go!

Peacemaker

I had two poems published in Touchstones journal this semester. They asked me to read one at their release night event, My Word!. I read "Peacemaker" and I think it went really well. I was nervous at first. Usually I'm not so bad, but I had to calm my mind and whomping heart with some discreet yoga breathing before going up. Man, sometimes it just feels good to get applauded for doing what you love.

beautiful cover by Frankie Mercado; digital medium

some wonderful publications this semester!

So, the sound and image matchup of this next media clip is off. Kinda drives me crazy. But the sound doesn't suck, so whatev; now you can listen as you read along! (*the hanging art in the background is not Japanese, though that would've made its presence cooler. It's Vietnamese for "patience," which is a key element for being a true peacemaker.)

Sometimes, when I exit the school, I see this plume of white smoke some distance to the north. Oftentimes it makes me ponder what it must have been like waking, breathing free on a still morning in August, year 1945.

I could have been born any time, any place, but as it happened, my grandpa, yet unmarried, was at war the morning Enola Gay awoke, breathing, pregnant with the death of hundreds of thousands of volunteers of the enemy. Drifting on divine wind, Gay dropped her Little Boy; a steel stork with nuclear delivery, a warrior child whose entire life would last 44.4 seconds in freefall.

I might have been placing a pot of rice on the flame, or pouring steaming water for father’s tea, and I know I would have felt a pausing measure of profound pleasure in the whispering morning air, cool like clammy palms, so I would have stepped out to the porch to listen. I wouldn’t so much hear the lightning geyser erupt in town, but every eyelid wipe would try for weeks to scrape the inverse x-ray pillar from my retinas.

Here from school, where I see the smoky finger poking at the sky, my guess is the town of Pleasant Grove would disappear, every cant slab of concrete an unmarked headstone. I used to live in PG. I want to say I remember what that plume is from. I can't.

I picture the people in the surgical clinic above which the Little Boy released his nuclear tantrum: the nurse bowing, lifting the page of a patient's chart; the patient turning his sick gaze toward the window, his breathing subtle like the leaves nodding sleepily at the summer morning sun—

then in the profound silence of full volume noise, an instantaneous slurping of every atom simultaneously resisted by a force that turns teeth to ash snatches their two bodies, etches them for an instant in the transparent monolith of time, the rupture of artificial sun searing each human statue, radiating skeletons framed in charcoal silhouettes—

and after leaving a melting tear in the earth, their stunned souls rise on a smoldering halo of smoke.