Vanessa Paige Israel's Blog

I find myself thinking about the way of storytelling often, of the types of stories I have read most of my life. Such tales including those of heroes and gods, of princes and dragons, of detectives and criminals, of little girls and evil red queens. I long delighted in classic stories of good vs. evil, the hero vs. the villain.

Noticing a pattern of western storytelling, Joseph Campbell coined the term, "the hero's journey" in the 1940's, though the concept long predates him to the early times of...

Journal Entry no. 7

Friends were never enough. Just friends was never enough. Why not best friends? Why were we not each other's favorites? Why not more than friends?

I liked being just friends. I was content to be just friends with you. I was happy even. Because we never were "just" friends. We were friends and that was enough.

I liked riding in the car with you. I liked grabbing food with you. I liked swimming in the ocean with you. I liked shopping for Halloween costumes with you. Because it was...

Journal Entry no. 6
Time. Always so much of it, but never enough. Never enough. And I know it's the natural cycle of things, to live and to die - to lose. But it doesn't make it any less difficult, feeling helpless as time rushes past me in a silent blur, slipping through my frail human fingers as I reach out and try to hold it. But I cannot stop it. And it is gone. Just like you.
Time is just something by which we experience this life by, isn't it? And what if everything is happening, all the tim...

Journal entry no. 5
It's very dark outside right now. It feels later than it is because it's that time of year when the sun starts setting a little earlier and earlier each day. It's raining too. My body feels very relaxed and my mind is altered. I can smell the petrichor. I can hear the rhythmic patter outside my open window and I thought it was such a lovely sound and I decided to journal a little because writing during the rain is a very romantic notion. So here I am. And I was just thinking a...

Journal entry no. 4
Everyday I see people. Usually, though not always, the same people. We look at each other, and sometimes, we even say hello. We might even chat for a moment or two before we feel we've both run out of things to say and awkwardly excuse ourselves from the conversation long after our eyes started looking for a way out.
Why do I look for a way out? I am not in danger, I tell myself. Yet, I feel uncomfortable. Like there is a disconnect - a disconnect between two souls which are me...

Journal entry no. 3
Twice. Twice now I have seen Them. Well, that's not entirely correct. Let me start again.They have always been here, I think, and I have seen Them many times. In my childhood bedroom, I saw Them standing just outside my window, watching as I slept. In the big white house on the hill, They were there. As I ran through the woods, They chased me and stalked behind every tree. Even in the downtown shops, I saw Them and I knew They wanted me. For what purpose, I never wondered.
They...

Journal Entry no. 2
I see her name. And I wish she was with me now. Instead, I have only a little mottled bottle with her name engraved on the outside and a little clear bag with white ashes inside. And I have a wooden basket painted a bright shade of green. It reminds me of happy times. It reminds me of spring and new life. But there is no life here, only an empty food bowl and an empty water bowl, a stick and a ball that will never be played with again, and a little collar that's either purple ...

 A Saturday night as I sit to write this. So many things on my mind, so many things have happened. I don't know what to write about, but I know I want to write and that is why I am here. I suppose I feel like I'm just writing words, to write something, anything, to fill up the page. Much like I do for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) every November. I suppose that's a good place to start. Is it ok to start two sentences right next to one another with "I suppose"? It probably doesn't matt...

click to enlargeTo my dearest friends and followers,
Do you see the little red-haired girl in the garden outside her father's castle? She is crying, crying as she desperately holds onto the black hound for comfort.The boy notices her. He is nothing more than the illegitimate son of a farmer and now an apprentice black smith. He notices her, only the little red-haired girl doesn't know it. He stands silently in the distance, watching. Someone like him would never be allowed to speak to someone lik...

To my dearest friends and followers,
and to my fellow creatives,
Whew. It's been a while since I've written anything. I feel a bit guilty and upset with myself for allowing that to happen, but I'm here now, so I hope we can all move forward together.

Basically, since about the middle/end of January, I've been dealing with a lot of stress. I got some sort of infection on my right leg - possibly a staff infection. It wasn't bad at first. In fact, I didn't really pay much attention to it at all, think...