M.H.’s AWC Application

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Mixtape Heart’s AWC Application

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1.) How active are you?

Well I’ve only been here a week, so screenshots with a grain of salt. Also I’m a grad student so my activity will sometimes go sideways; better to be up front about that.

2.)Why do you want to this club?

Because:

a. I know that my participation in this Amino will be more consistent if I am a part of a group(s) that I am interested in, and I really want not only to come here for the occasional prompt, but to be actually participatory.

b. Of the types of writing I do, fan fic and aesthetic are IT. 2/3rds of my life are aesthetic. I mean, I’m in graduate school for literature, people, come on.

3.)What is your current aesthetic?

So my always consistent aesthetic is monochrome in soft focus, like movies from the 30s, but right now I am also in one of my historical tears, Victorian and Edwardian especially.

4.)Write a short story based on one of the pictures below.

It wasn’t like this, before. Weeks ago, when I’d stood near the bottom of this hill. Back then the leaves hadn’t fled their comfortable havens along trunks and branches - many were still the calm green of summer. But a chill was already in the air, even then.

"There hasn't been a frost yet - only bright days leading to cool evenings, and warmer overcast days, and misty rain." He reached up, easily plucking a bright leaf from a branch and spinning it between his long fingers. "Autumn is a time of revelation, but how much revelation depends on how cold it becomes and how quickly. Many cool, even days allow the chlorophyll to break down for longer and the leaves become more vivid - as though the chemical that fed the tree was at the same time hiding something until the nights become longer and cooler. Then we can see the tree's true self. But if frost comes too early... then the chlorophyll is taken too quickly and the leaves go from the hint of vivid color to dry grey-browns in moments instead of months.... Everything is chemical reactions, in the end."

I can sit here, now, looking across this sunlit slope at glowing golden leaves that do still cling to their branches. It’s tempting to do as he did and pluck one … but it isn’t needed. There are more now, under me and all around, scattered over moist, dark earth and sun bleached gray stone. I take one of them instead, setting it on my knee and breathing in the peaceful stillness. It makes me smile a bit - this is nothing like that day. I was so much more angry, then. The thought quiets the smile.

I’d asked him why it mattered. Why he would wax pedantic at me about photosynthesis as though I’d never heard of vitamin D. Why he would talk about nature and seasons and science when he and I are not these spindly trees or these delicate leaves, or the stretch of time that changes them.

"But we are like them,” he’d said. “Every stranger is a person waiting to be revealed. From the moment they enter our lives, it becomes a process of revelation. That’s how it is with us. I am sure there are many things about each other we don't know."

"I'm sure you're right. The span of one person's life is not generally revealed by a conversation over coffee, or text messages exchanged over a month or two. But I also doubt we are anything so poetic as trees undergoing the decomposition of our chlorophyll."

The leaf went still in his fingers. "Well… you might not be," he said thoughtfully. "You don't strike me as the tree. You… are not beautiful. There are no stunning autumn colors or soft spring blooms hidden in you, waiting for an unspoken signal to show themselves."

I am still uncertain how offended I should have been. And though I was angry, angry enough that even the warmth of today’s dappled sunlight gives me no joy now, I wanted to understand what he meant. After all, it wasn’t the first time he’d told me I’m not pretty. That had never mattered to me. I wanted to understand why this did.

So I let him sit in his pause until he continued.

"I wasn't speaking of you ... only me. But that - might be wrong, too. I am thinking about how relationships are formed. How people become friends, or do not. Perhaps you are not hiding cherry blossoms, but you may be an evergreen. Maybe you are always ready to become someone's friend, no matter what circumstances push you to them, and no matter what happens between you. But I, I am not like that. I am like these trees, and I think there’s been too much frost between you and I for my leaves to turn anything but brown.”

I look down at the leaf, bright and yellow against my black jeans, and wonder if perhaps, later, there could be a spring.

Maybe I am an evergreen.

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Background picture taken by me. :relieved:

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