Thirty Days of Inspiration ♥: Day Four: An Open Letter to the DMV

To Whom It May Concern:

I must say, of all the horrible things I have ever done in my life, the road rules exam was the absolute worst. Now, don't get me wrong, I love using driversed.com. Using the tests here? Not so much.

Can I please ask you, why, after paying a whopping thirty dollars to take the test online, why I would I be kicked off my exam, that, mind you, I PAID, capital PAID, for and was not allowed the opportunity to even COMPLETE? Why, tell me, why? I would also love to know, why me and dear friend both took the test online just now, were both kicked off (me at thirteen questions, her at twenty) when we both forgot to answer the right answer on our own information that has nothing to do with driving. For questions that should not even be asked. For example, I was asked how much I weighed. I, of course, forgot how much I weighed since I applied a few months ago. But, no.

I inputted the wrong weight. I’m sorry that I am too fat for your exam. Society is clearly coming to an end.

And to allow you to understand the anguish I felt when I was kicked off of the exam (THAT I PAID FOR), I will describe the scene.

Exam: Please input your weight. [___________]

Me: What the hell did I put then? When was the last time I weighed myself?

(enters random number and clicks next)

Exam: F*ck you.

(Exam clicks out)

Me: …......

(beat)

What. The. Hell. MY MONEY!

This is the beginning of a long life struggle with the DMV, I see.

I hate you, DMV.

A Poem

Refugees

They stood tall against the bush

because the forest was too thick to see through.

Watering cans filled with good intentions,

they whispered, “Don’t depend on the mountains

to sing answers disguised as hymns.”

They knew better than to take the middle path.

“Could you say the birds led you the wrong way?”

The youngest stood apart and wrote in the dirt:

“Would you skim the borders of the other

direction, to taste the lies the rivers weep?”

Would you see that gold has made you a fool?

Would you test the cloud’s path against the horizon?

If you met a boy who wrote

his dreams in the language of the stars,

would you press your fingers

that were stained with the blood

of wit against his temples?

Or would you ask him to sit?

And see how he would taste

the difference in the mountain’s tears?

Thirty Days of Inspiration ♥: Day Three: Rejection

So, being an artist (specifically, a writer), you find that more times than not, you will have to deal with rejection.

And I'm writing this post to shed some light on why rejection inspires me.

Now, I'm going to put it out there, I was rejected from a major arts organization, one that-for some reason, in the back of my mind-I was nervous about, and felt insecure. I sent in all of my non-fiction works that, in my opinion, displayed some of the most painful and heartfelt moments in my young life as of now.

So, the shock of recieving a letter that I started screaming and jumping when I saw, and finding it as a whopping rejection of all three pieces..It put me in a bad place.

Before you jump to conclusions, I didn't resort to extreme measures and hurt myself or burn my portfolio or something. I did something worse.

I doubted myself.

I sat in my room for hours, poring over the fact that someone rejected what I plainly considered my heart and soul. It was writing that I cried over as I wrote. It was writing that forced me to go back and retrace the places where I had to grow up, where childhood just kind of stopped for me and would never be the same.

And it was rejected.

Now, this isn't the first time I've been rejected. But to be rejected from a place I so badly wanted to win made me realize a few things.

Midst my tears and heartbreak and self doubt, I had a sort of revelation. And it's something I want everyone to understand.

First, I had to realize that the reason we don't get things, or we are rejected, is plainly to see whether or not we have the strength to accept the challenge of accepting ourselves. I realized, little by little, that my self worth or my talent should not be measured on such subjective terms. I, we, all of us who have ever been rejected need to see that at the end of the day, we are the only people whose products matter most to them.

There is a power in everything we say or do. And I intended to use it.

That weekend, I sent out almost every piece of unpublished work to any literary magazine I could find.

Now, I want you to try it too. Every single time you have ever been rejected, don't take it as an insult. Take it as a challenge to prove them wrong.

And prove yourself right.

xoxo

Dalia

Thirty Days of Inspiration ♥: Day Two: Immeasurable Strength

What really inspired me today was the immeasurable strength some people possess in this world, despite how many hardships are thrown at them. I was reading this article on Yahoo! yesterday about the Clark brothers and their rare disease that forces their bodies to regress over a period of time. They grew up as normal boys, responsible adults but at some point in their 50's and 40's both brothers began to, as Yahoo! dubbed it, age backward.

It was easy for me to imagine how rough it must be to raise your boys all over again and I commend their parents so much for being able to go through something they never, ever imagined happening to them.

I'm going to keep this post short because I feel like this is almost something that needs no explaining.

Please remember that out there, no matter how seemingly bad our lives are, there are people dealing with harder.

Thirty Days of Inspiration ♥: Day One: Writing

I haven't posted much about it, but I felt like it was time to let you all, whoever reads this, know this.

I am a writer.

One of the biggest influences in my life, writing has stuck with me since the beginning. I can actually tell you that I started out hating writing. I hated writing essays, I wasn't good at writing stories, and I just felt like it was a waste of my time.

But I loved reading.

Reading was a way for my little mind to explore the different aspects of the world and taste the flavors in the world that were a little out of my reach. I've read everything from Because of Winn-Dixie to Nancy Drew to literary classics like Wuthering Heights (which I could not finish because, despite the beauty of it, eighth graders are not meant  to be reading a book with words they had to write down, look up, and re-read). The point I'm trying to make is that words are what inspire me. They are also, now that I've been introduced to Creative Writing, the outlet for my inspiration.

Writing has become such a vital point in my life that I just don't know where I would be without today (cliché). I was always one of the most brilliant academic people in my learning career as of now, with dreams of six figure jobs and being a jackass-kicking professional, up until I was-and this is where ish gets cray-chosen to be the speaker of the words. Sort of like Speaker of the Dead except less creepy. Once I fell head over heels in love with writing (kudos to Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson for inspiring me to write my first poem), I just knew it was what I wanted to do, what I will be forced to do for the rest of my life because once you go black you can't go back, know what I sayin'?

But, yeah. Writing is the purest form of love and expression for me and so that is why I thought it fitting to make my first post about what inspires me to be writing.

Thirty Days of Inspiration ♥

As I've mentioned on my beauty blog, for the whole of December I will be chronicling every single thing I do worth interest in order to help me find a good foundation for my goals and really stick to them.

So, in light of this new idea, I've decided to do Thirty Days of Inspiration! Each day there will be a new post on one topic that inspires me that day.

I invite you, the reader, to join me in this journey and enjoy Thirty Days of Inspiration.

Be Brave

Since November is coming to an end, and the New Year just around the corner, I've decided I'm going to use the next month to dig up old projects and try to complete old goals and challenges. I try to be as honest as I possibly can with people in real life communication, and I'm going to try to do so here. On the online world. Where people judge you behind screens and stab words at you with their laptops. No pressure, right?

Jokes aside, I honestly believe that it's time to dig out the old New Year's resolution from the beginning of this hectic year and finally bring them to a resolution. People often don't realize that they have the strength to complete their out of this world goals and it takes nothing more than this: self discipline.

In fact, in class today, my math teacher-a wise old man who, in his eyes, hasn't even hit his mid-life crisis at the marvelous 61 years old-said to us, between ridiculous algebraic equations, that smart people are not the ones with the most intelligent; they are the ones who know their skills, their strengths, their weaknesses, and know just exactly what they're good at. And you know, as I sat there and watched him chuckling over his own wisdom, I placed my hand in my chin and just thought: what am I doing, everyday, that I know I've succeeded at? Just what exactly?

And so I brainstormed, and decided: I don't want to live another day of my life not doing something I know I'm proud of.

So. Here it is, hopefully this'll be the product of my pride and I ask you, whoever you are to take my hand and join me on this interesting journey.

For the next month, I will be adding new editions to the site and thinking up creative new things to spice up this place and make it a place I hope one of you will see it as, the way I want to see it as: home.

Be brave.

Be strong.

And Be Shameless.

P.S. Check out www.shamelessmaya.com to see one of my favorite YouTubers of 2012. She's inspired me to start this blog and I think her first video will certainly inspire you guys the way it did for me.

Stay Poetic,

 xoxo Dalia

A Seedling

So, this isn't the first time I've had a blog.

I know. I know exactly you're thinking.

Okay, so I don't. But, that doesn't mean you can't get to know what I am thinking in (gestures at the blog title) The Melting Pot of a Flower. I happen to adore that title because:

a) It is the title of my favorite poem that I've written and,

b) It represents my jumble of thoughts that I will invariably dump on this page whenever I get the urge. The flower part comes from my name, which happens to be the name of a flower.

I am into moments like these. Moments where you can feel the sun rising within you and just know that big things are going to happen, and that this is the start of a new poem in your life.

I'll leave you with this.


The Melting Pot of a Flower

We were better off left
alone in our unjoined coffee cups
than smelling the brew of the hot pot
we call our home.
Smoke and ashes replaced hugs
and kisses and our words
were sacrificed to the silence,
buried underground like roots
of coffee trees.

Tears that take the place
of dewdrops tell our
stories. They sing a melody
that spreads across our leaves
and seeps through our roots.

The soil of our home is no longer
safe, it is war where angels
are hidden in doorways,
love nothing-
but a secret weapon.
Denial is our universal
language that we pray does not
become embedded in the stories
that we will tell our grandchildren.

Violence is not the virtue of our
cause, but hope,
the definition of foolish dreams
of its foolish people.

We could not help but pray to God that the labels
are mistakes, lies stamped across our faces
similar to the bruises skinned across
our arms like wilted daffodils.

Coffee beans stain pigments
across our hearts, ground sins
with bitter aftertastes.

"I am a flower dying as a seed,
growing too soon for my petals to breathe
and taste the air of a new beginning,"
a seedling yells to the gardens,
because a renaissance was not written.

Her promises of “never again” are lost to the wind
because she was a flower not meant to breathe
and the only offering she owes to the future
is the revival of her seeds and the remembrance
of her dreams, for they are flowers that
will get a shot to be free.

                                      -D.A.

-xoxo Dalia