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=Marks on the Wall=



The act of putting words on a paper is a writer opening his or her mind the reader. This is an invitation only extended to the most privileged. Virginia Woof invited her readers to explore stream of conscious, through her short story //The Mark on a Wall:// "How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it.... If that mark was made by a nail, it can’t have been for a picture, it must have been for a miniature—the miniature of a lady with white powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. A fraud of course, for the people who had this house before us would have chosen pictures in that way—an old picture for an old room." Except our invitation to peer into our deepest thoughts and enjoy the joint collaboration of a variety of writing styles and genres. 

Our project reflects our inner thoughts at their moments of birth. We’ve chosen pieces that reflect a Stream of Consciousness. The mind is a marvelous creature which so often defies focus, most writing techniques and styles try to focus rapidly moving consciousnesses. Reflecting thought often gives birth to offbeat topics and deep thinking, which are swept away in the search for what interests the audience. Here, we preserve our thoughts for reader to hear, we preserve the trails of our minds. Some of us shift rapidly, others contemplate strange things, some languish in mental serenity, but we all think, and these are our flowing streams of thoughts.

[|Enter into the stream of consciousness (Click Here)]

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Sitting in my cozy room Wrapped warmly in my snow white blanket A muted silence sets in I am listening to the hum of the silence Lost in moments of solitude I only hear my heart pumping blood through my veins Nothing else A moment of pleasure taking over I am listening to the sound of silence Sitting in the dark corner of my room Easing my mind is what I do It is just a fleeting moment of happiness Walking in the fast lanes of life Working flat out to meet the rise in demand for our needs All I need is solitude It is a substance added to my moment of happiness It does not contain artificial flavorings It is pure and free I am listening to the sound of silence



By Kristen Gebhard
 * //Time Travels at the Speed of Light

Seconds to minutes, Minutes to hours. Why does time have such limits? Time. Who holds this power?

It’s about time! What time is it? What time will you be there? How much time do I have?

Hours to days, Days to weeks. Our occupation pays, How we spend our time, speaks.

Timesheet Time capsule Time of death Timeless

Weeks to months, Months to years, Smiles remembered, forgotten tears.//**



Christina Onorata

 12:41 PM I am sitting in the SMC computer lab. It is 12:41PM and as usual, it is pretty loud in here. However, I am listening to my ipod in order to drown out the sounds of the people around me while I do this seven minute freewrite. The woman next to me is wearing a beautiful brown and tan sweater, I wonder where she got it. I have so much homework this week. Since I have two online classes, I have a lot of work on my own. Not to mention I am working on a lot of online assignments for one of my other classes along with this one. I really hate school sometimes, I am getting more and more homesick everyday.

Soon, it is time to venture back out into the cold. It was even snowing earlier… ugh. I tried to deposit money in my new PSECU account today but was unsuccessful because the ATM’s are down. Just my luck. I am going to make chicken rice and beans tonight for dinner. I don’t know what else to write about right now. My mind is all over the place. I miss my little cousins and the rest of my family. It is my Nana’s birthday tomorrow. I wonder what they will have for dinner. It would be funny if we made the same thing.. that happens very often. Hm... what I should make tomorrow. Maybe I will purposely make what they are having. It is crazy how a simple piece of writing like this can become a masterpiece. Not to say that this is a masterpiece... but I am sure it could become one :)

Seven minutes is up.

Christian Le

 “It’s Name Shall Remain Nameless”

It’s super late and my brain feels like swissed cheese, not swiss cheese but some strange mutation known as swissed. Somehow the cheese ninjas have entered my mind, and turned my two pound noggin into something unrecognizable. Don’t ask IDK, if you don’t know what that means urbandictionary.com is brilliant for enlightenment. Anyways, to continue this rantage I will………drawing a blank. It’s late and I don’t know why I’m free writing now, maybe when I read this later it will be awesome. I have no idea………I’ve been considering for quite some time to write an ode to a male friend of mine. Having no homosexual feelings for him in any way, I just think it would be hilarious if, instead of sending him a card, wishing him well as he graduates, I sent him an Ode titled “Ode to a Friend Whose Name Shall Remain Nameless.” I would begin by discussing his good qualities, perhaps comment on his ridiculous beard. I would end with a call for women of the world to realize his greatness and recognize his existence. Now as I think of it, it doesn’t sound like a good idea at all.

Did I mention there’s snow…snow snow snoswsnowsnowsnownsow. It’s awesome. I really like snow, the quiet fluffiness is alluring. I realized it was momentarily not snowing and a torrent of sadness rolled over me. I know that car accidents (CA) are caused by snow, that it reduces the gross domestic product (GDP) and kids get fat (GF) when it snows a lot. But, I love, LOVE, snow. It’s awesome. My only complaint would be that I can’t fully enjoy it because I’m going to be studying for part of tomorrow. Moreover, I can’t get to MU to hang out with my friends and frolic with them like snow drunken polar bears in the white goodness of God who makes me cleaner than snow…which would be quite clean.

I have school work (SW), it seems like a lot, but well work is a curse of humanity. So what can I say? Maybe one of these days I’ll complain to Adam, and maybe ask him why he wasn’t made allergic to fruit or smart enough to squish that serpent.

I’ve begun listening to Top 40 music. Aside from the fact such music is incredibly over produced, blatantly fake auto tune (AT) abuse is rampant. Seriously, I know Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus can’t exactly sing well, but //seriously// some people think they are musically unnaturally talented. For the uninitiated AT is an algorithm which normalizes bad singing. (Apparently some engineer figured it out.) Basically, AT means that good looking people, who have no other skills can pretend to sing. It’s rather sad because faked singing is not all that great. My favorite musicians are those who are real. Not robotically modified.


 * Lynn Eager

A Gallon of Milk

She entered the store and headed straight to the rear where the milk was stored. When she opened the cooler door her image reflected back. She looked tired, her mouth, though full, turned down in the corners. Her skin was stretched tightly over the fine bone that was her face. She would have been considered beautiful except for the bruise located over her left eye and cheek.

While gazing at the refrigerator her mind returned to the moment when leathery skin and bone connected. She could still smell his sweat, though he’d been gone for hours. She heard a soft moaning; not realizing it was coming from her own mouth.

She never knew when the attacks would come, never knew what would set him off. Was she that difficult to love? She remembered that in the beginning of their relationship he would come home from work humming and scoop her up into his warm embrace.

She remembered feeling warm and safe in his strong arms. Those same hands that caressed her arms became weapons that inflicted pain. The first time he struck her was unexpected, a flash of anger and his open hand connected with her unyielding flesh.

She reached in the cooler and grabbed a gallon of milk, then turned to the checkout to pay for her purchase. She exited through the doors and was swallowed by the sun. **



Leah Wash

Surrendering the wheel of the car is never easy. I would not consider myself a control freak but a car is something that if I am in, I want to be in control of. It is not that I do not trust others, I just enjoy driving. But now I am falling asleep at the wheel and we still have more than twelve hours to go. I must rest. I can drive again later. I climb out of the driver’s seat and crawl in the back. I lay down, my seat belt on, my head on a pillow and try to rest. Andrew climbs in the driver’s seat. Of the two people along with me on this trip I know him the least. He claims to [|know] how to drive a manual shift car but this is the first I will see of it. If he can’t I do not know how I will make it through this night. But, I have no reason to disbelieve him. He fails to turn on the car, because he did not push in the clutch. Fear begins to creep up my spine. When I correct him he laughs and says that it has been awhile. Fear climbs higher like goosebumps on my back. Second try he nails it. I breathe a little slower. He puts the car in first and starts moving. Lurch. Lurch. Stall. I mentally hit my head against the seat. How did I get in this mess? He laughs again and mumbles something about my clutch being weird. I shut my eyes as he restarts the car again. This time, it is a success. I start to relax until I realize that ten miles an hour later he is still in first gear! I jump up. “Shift!” I say, “You should be in second, maybe even third by now!” He shifts and the car, engine racing is now in second, then third, then we are on the entry ramp to the highway. Andrew slams on the gas. We are going 60 in third gear. “Shift!! For chrissakes you should be in fifth!!” I want to scream. I don’t know what else to do, but he makes his way, finally to fifth. We are cruising now and it is the middle of the night. I wonder about what damage he may have done to my clutch and engine. I wonder if even now he is riding the clutch. I am exhausted though. So I lie back down and think that I will worry about his actual inability to drive a manual transmission after I nap for a bit. No more shifting its just straight driving now, until we stop again. My head on the pillow I look up at the roof of my car. My insides are in turmoil. I try to accept my own lack of control in this situation; I try to accept my own death. Should it happen, there is nothing I can do about it. I try to relax. Every once and while my eyes drift over to Andrew driving, chugging red bull, smoking constantly and this litany begins in my head: two hands on the wheel, don’t talk with your hands, watch for ice on the road, slow down, put your cell phone away, do not touch the Ipod, do not drive with your knees, two hands on the wheel, watch for ice on the road, slow down, two hands on the wheel, don't talk with your hands, slow down... I try to [|relax] and stop it but I can’t. I breathe slowly and deeply imagining my own inevitable death. I picture the funeral everyone so sad. Andrew somehow survived and is just wrought with emotion at causing my death by being a horribly irresponsible driver. He has vowed to never drive again and also to be a less annoying person in general. He has vowed not to wedge himself into trips where he is mostly unknown and totally unwanted. Slowly, this calms me. The next thing I know it is four hours later and we are stopped for gas. I wake, splash some water on my face, grab a cup of gas station coffee, and resume my comfortable spot behind the wheel.