{by Sharone of zizzivivizz}

(photo credit)

The hum and whoosh of an industrial-strength air conditioner have accompanied every exam I can remember taking. They have laid their strains in an insistent ritornello with infinitely subtle variations, little waves and vagaries of sound that can only be detected in a room dedicated to silence, such as this one. Thirty-one heads bow over laminate desks that gleam dully under the unwavering fluorescence of the overhead lights. A deep breath and, with it, the eternal aroma of the classroom: the blue book, which smells, somehow, like other blue books and like nothing else, mingled with the dry, slightly acrid scent of a photocopied essay prompt.

I am sixteen, and the woman at the front of the room is from the University of California, administering a practice placement exam as part of the college preparatory program. At the back of the room sits Mrs. Juhasz, the steely, sharp-eyed Language Arts teacher known for demanding excellence. She is always willing to help me untangle the perplexities I find in the works of Dostoevsky, Dreiser, and the other companions of my extracurricular hours, and yet she has no doubt puzzled over the general indifference with which I greet her actual assignments. In spite of my stubborn determination to work through a daunting personal reading list, in class I am often undisciplined, uninterested, too self-assured and only occasionally earnest, usually preoccupied with boys and friends and the things I will do in two short hours when the final bell rings. But today the prospect of college, of the first plunge into the waiting world, glimmers before me. My stomach will not stop writhing. My fingers are cold, my ears hot. We are told to begin.

{by Thomas Hawk}

“The Best Years of Our Life” by Thomas Hawk / thomashawk.com / @thomashawk
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Featured by Story Editor Shannon | @mrlady

{by Jenica McKenzie}

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{by keli from kidnapped by suburbia}

I don’t think I make much of a distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘fantastic.’ They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I’m concerned. ~Alice Hoffman

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by Elizabeth of Boy Crazy [Clarity-Chaos]

For reasons unknown or unanalyzed, an old friend popped into my mind today.

My friend J was a quiet guy. He was an artist and a musician. In high school, these attributes do not necessarily make you the coolest of kids. But he was smart and sweet and funny and shy, and when I took his arm and played his date at stage right in a musical with a name I can’t recall, I crushed hard for J. I always liked the uncool kids. (They were always the coolest.)

I, a boy crazy sophomore, was the first kiss for this shy senior boy. He, all kindness and blue eyes, was the nicest, sweetest boy I had ever kissed.

But this was highschool, where fickleness and frivolity reign. And after he ended one of our dates with a run through Taco Bell drivethru, sending me shrinking to the far side of his parent’s giant blue station wagon in angst over how bad his breath would be when he walked me to my front door, it was over.

And the next week when I introduced my dad to G, who sat on our livingroom couch, arm slung around my shoulders, my father summed it up just right when he humiliated me in his befuddlement, “G? What happened to J? What is this – boyfriend of the week??!”

And it was. It was how I rolled, nothing personal, J.

But I always felt badly about how abruptly I ended things. The poor guy had no clue it was just about the Taco Bell, no idea about the fickleness, the frivolity of teenage girls. He let it end without drama, and he stepped quietly aside as I finished out the school year as G’s girl.

He was such a nice guy and I was the only girl he ever kissed.

A couple of years later I bumped into J at a summer concert in our hometown. He was home from college, and I was genuinely excited to see him. We laughed that War was headlining the show, twenty years past their peak; and we chatted for a while. After rocking out to Low Rider, I gave him another big hug and told him that it was really, really good to see him again and that I was so glad he was doing well. He stayed at the stage and I ran off with my friends. I turned back and waved goodbye one more time. He was smiling.

One week later J died of an asthma attack. He was 21 years old.

At his funeral, a college friend brought along a letter J had mailed him just that week. In it, J had written how he had bumped into a girl he used to date…

{by Trisha Haas from MomDot}

Standing on the edge of the water the past few months has caused me some great reflection. As my toe touches the sand, now dotted with black specs, no doubt remnants of the oil disaster, I can’t help but feel lucky; blessed.

Blessed you say? Blessed for what? The brackish water, the industry falling apart, the tourism detracting?

Yes.

Because if you don’t live here you don’t see. You don’t know. You can’t feel.

And that’s it, isn’t it? You can’t feel what we feel.

You can’t know what it feels like to wake up and smell the salt, to feel the wind whipping in your hair as you drive over a bridge, only to be greeted by so much never ending water that it must have been supplied by God.

You can’t know what it feels like to have a stranger, someone who is standing over their own pile of rubble, grab your hand and tell you its going to be alright.

And it will be.

For the beauty that I have spent my entire life witnessing can only be rivaled by the camaraderie and community I have been privileged to be a part of.

When I was 16 I lost my house…

{by Bridgette from Experimental Mommy}

My blog, Experimental Mommy, just passed it’s second birthday. As the site grows, I have had the privilege of traveling with the purpose of meeting bloggers, connecting with brands and honing my skills. Most of the round table discussions begin with each person in attendance standing up and stating their name, blog name and where they come from. It generally goes something like this:

“Hi! My name is Bridgette. I blog at Experimental Mommy which is mainly a product review site with a scientific twist. I am a Native New Orleanian and live with my husband and two daughters.”

And then it happens….I am answered with “the look.” You know the look of which I am speaking….squinty sympathetic eyes, a meek smile, the head slightly cocked to the right, and a small nod as if to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, honey.” I have grown to become accustom to this look as I know the wearers mean no harm. They are genuinely concerned for what happened to My City that fateful day nearly five years ago. “The look” is almost always followed by “the question.”

“Are you still living in New Orleans?”

In my head, the answer goes something like this:

“Why yes, I do still live in New Orleans. Why on Earth would I leave? Where else could I sit outside while eating a beignet at midnight and listening to a lively brass band play “When the Saints Go Marching In?” Where else could I take a steamboat ride on the Mississippi while sipping sweet tea and eating crawfish etouffee? Where else could I walk down the street and see ten friends, three family members and our priest who all inquire “How’s your Mom and n’em’?” Where else can I take my kids to a Mardi Gras parade, stand on the neutral ground and immerse them in the rich culture that is my City?”

But most of the time, I just smile and say, “Of course! It’s great! You should visit some time!”

My home, my place of business, my car and my city were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, but my spirit, my courage and my resilience were not…

Find yourself where stories blur the lines. That is our challenge to you here at Story Bleed. Find yourself where the edges of our stories bleed together, where eager hands smear wet ink, where our boundaries become permeable. Push yourself to see your own story in the narrative of others.

Five years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, Story Bleed Magazine is partnering with our sponsor Tide Loads of Hope and hosting Hope Remains, a blog carnival designed to celebrate the passionate resilience of Gulf Coast residents and simultaneously encourage you to unearth your own passion for your local culture.

To inspire you to write about your home, we asked Gulf Coast writers, “Why do you stay on the Gulf Coast? Why do you remain?” We believe their answers will inspire you to share your own story of what your local culture means to you, whether you live in Alabama or Oregon. Dig deep and reveal part of your personal story that you may not have shared with your own readers before, then come back here and share your link in our reading list below.

We are asking readers to look more closely at the stories they discover. Draw parallels. Ask questions. Do you not share the same sense of place as our writers? Challenge us in the comments, lay bare possible reasons why our connections to the places we call home diverge so wildly. Our bet is that our stories merge more than you expect.

Hope Remains will culminate in a glorious celebration of hope and strength in New Orleans on Tuesday, August 24: Tide Loads of Hope is proud to present Faith Hill in concert, along with the Dirty Dozen Brass Brand, at the Mahalia Jackson Theater.

A gift to the city of New Orleans, tickets are being given to local families that have used the Tide Loads of Hope mobile laundry truck, volunteers that have answered the call during natural disasters along our coast, and other special guests.

Live in the New Orleans area? Check out Velveteen Mind for details on how you can win tickets through local radio stations in Louisiana and Mississippi.

I am grateful to be one of Tide’s special guests, so follow @VelveteenMind and @StoryBleed on twitter for updates from the event, including time with Faith Hill before the concert. She’s a fellow Mississippi girl, but we are all the Gulf Coast down here; New Orleans is our pride, too. Long may she reign.

Want to help? Visit TideLoadsofHope.com to learn more about their program, a mobile laundry truck that answers one of the most basic needs of victims of natural disasters nationwide. No area of our nation is immune to natural disaster. This story belongs to all of us…

Welcome to Story Bleed Magazine! A re-imagined literary magazine celebrating essays and art that move and enlighten. More importantly, connects through storytelling. Story Bleed aches for you to discover yourself where the lines between our stories bleed together, unexpectedly resonating.

Out of the crumbs of Blog Nosh Magazine, we have created a new magazine that digs more closely to our roots. We craved what Blog Nosh delivered, yet its foundation was inherently flawed. I knew from the start that using the word “blog” in our title could be limiting and “nosh” occasionally confused new visitors, despite its allowance for indulgently clever imaging.

Rebranding an established platform can be dangerous. We are not scared.

That is the beauty of storytelling: It is a pliable art. Stories grow and stretch to accommodate the audience, to allow them to slip between the threads and become part of the fabric.

Our mission remains. Story Bleed Magazine amplifies the most affecting work by online artists and writers. Grounded by a revolving slate of editors, we are submission-based and focus on work that has been previously published. The stirring work you published before anyone was around to witness its brilliance? It is still brilliant. Dig it out of your archives, dust it off, and breathe new life into your art.

We are the writers behind the blogs you follow, the photographers capturing the images you favorite on Flickr, the poets and painters generating the strokes that inspire you to retweet on twitter and heart on etsy. You know us as well as you know yourself.

Find yourself where stories blur the lines.

Megan Jordan, Founder and Editor-in-Chief
author Velveteen Mind
follow Megan @VelveteenMind
follow Story Bleed @StoryBleed

(note: Consider this your sneak peek under the renovation tent. Our archives remain. Prior submissions and editor applications are still under consideration. We simply got a little distracted with redesigning outside of the bleed.)

{by Katy from Bird on the Street}

“Your child has brain damage” is on the list of things you never want to hear, but in June of 2007 those were the exact words I heard just one day after my son was born. A few minutes later they told me that he would probably not live, but if he did, he would be in a wheelchair and could be mentally handicapped as well.

Long before he was born, I knew that motherhood would change me. After Charlie’s traumatic birth, I was scared to death that it would be his brain damage that would alter who I was. Being the mother of a disabled child did change me, but it turns out it would make me better, would challenge me, and would help me become the person I always wanted to be.

I’ve spent my whole life wanting to do something creative. I thought about interior design; I thought about party planning. I perused web sites, tried to discover my personality type, and stacked career guides up on the bedside table. But there was always the day job, and creative ventures were restricted to painting walls or creating art work when I couldn’t afford the real thing.

Charlie’s birth changed all that. I quit my job to stay home with him– convinced that no one could care for him like I could. Suddenly, there was time in the day. No longer consumed with the test scores and lesson plans of a full-time teacher, I needed some kind of outlet.