I Feel So Different

I Feel So Different

by Rasmenia Comment Closed
People crowd the street, most of them women with flecks of silver in their hair and lines on their face etching a map back to who they used to be: young women full of joy and anguish. Weird, creative girls trying to survive the constant pressure of what parents, friends, schools, and institutions said they couldn’t and shouldn’t do. Lonely girls who want to scream and dance and smash convention and patriarchy but feel powerless to do so.The music in the street gets louder and one woman in the crowd, a grandmother in leather and Doc Martens, pounds on her heart with her fist, eyes closed, oblivious to all those around her as she sings along with Sinéad:I'll remember it And Dublin in a rainstorm And sitting in the long grass in summer Keeping warm I'll remember it Every restless night We were so young then We thought that everything We could possibly do was right Then we moved Stolen...
Read More
Resurrection Through Fiction

Resurrection Through Fiction

by Rasmenia Comment Closed
Somewhere in northern Colorado there's a dingy gray duplex sitting on a cul-de-sac near the railroad tracks. Behind it is a dry, yellow field where grasshoppers and mice keep busy.One half of the duplex is occupied by my mother and a version of me at 16 years old. The other half is occupied by another single mother and her 16-year-old son, Shawn.My friend Shawn.We call one another "Neighbor Boy" and "Neighbor Girl."We call the duplex "Our House."There are shenanigans. There's trouble and fun. But life is always fucking with things, flipping them upside down, changing them into something new and almost unrecognizable.People drift apart. They move away, have adventures and things happen to them.By the time we turn 19, Shawn is a quadriplegic due to a car accident and I'm in Florida, acquainting myself with the redneck bar scene.I soon flee back to Colorado, and from time to time, I run into my old friend at a party, a mutual...
Read More
Break Through These Times of Trouble

Break Through These Times of Trouble

by Rasmenia Comment Closed
This is a love story. It is not unique. I've lived others like it, and so have you. Like many love stories, this one ends with tears, confusion, and a lot of reminiscing about its beginning. Where it began was 1991, a time in my memory that is strange, dark, and forever distorted by a thick layer of time and smoke. It was an unhappy time, immersed in anger, abuse, and large amounts of cheap booze. My mother and my boyfriend at the time had a weird and wildly inappropriate thing going on together. When I'd catch them in the act, they responded by telling me I was crazy. I felt crazy. This was compounded by the fact that we three lived in the same house. I wanted him to leave. She did not. Every day, I was furious and frustrated. But, one day, just as 1991 was nearly at an end, on a not so very special day in...
Read More
The Middle-Class Farm Boy Who Cheated Death

The Middle-Class Farm Boy Who Cheated Death

by Rasmenia Comment Closed
"Like all artists I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation."  -Dennis Hopper"I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography was all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It's not been a bad life."  -Dennis HopperMay 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010...
Read More