kites_vinyl_vote

Three (3) vinyl copies of And the Glass Handed Kites are up for grabs, and it’s up to you to select the winners! Check out the submissions here and submit your vote at the bottom of this page.

Rules

From each category, you may select up to 3 entries.

Scoring will be done “Eurovision-style”:

12 points to your top choice

10 points to your second choice

8 points to your third choice

You may only submit your votes once and you may NOT vote for your own entry. You may only vote for each work once. If you submit multiple times, all your votes will be disqualified.

Names of creators have been removed to preserve anonymity and promote fairness.

Voting ends Sunday, May 22.

Contest 1: Writing

Title: The Other World

How can you describe the feeling you get when you’re standing in uncharted territory? Maybe you’re standing on the ground of another planet, a place you’ve never been before. Maybe there’s no ground beneath your feet after all, maybe it’s just gas or liquid. But you’re sure it’s something that will sustain you, because your soul is at ease. Maybe you’re not standing, maybe you’re floating, disappearing into something strange. Perhaps you’re just getting inside of a dream, you’re joining a herd of monsters that smile at you. Monsters that guide you through a fathomless land. Their fur is made of colors that didn’t exist before. Their claws are warm and gentle, you can feel their affability sending shivers through your spine.

In that place, you can feel your feelings freely, no remorse, no shame. Everything you want to feel, everything you can feel, is right there, inside of you. Because, in that place, freedom doesn’t mean to fly away in the clear sky, freedom means that you can be who you are, with all your complexities, with your good and your bad. You can be a complete being.

In that place, there are no eyes watching you, there are not hurtful words, just the sweet embrace of tender melodies. There, you can be introspective, you can gather the knowledge of all the centuries. All the mysteries are revealed to you. There is no safer place. There is no better place. Here, our days are multiplied. This is where The glass handed kites.

Title: Scent

That night, I was taking a walk inside my head, when suddenly a strangely familiar scent tickled my nose. I could not recognize it right away, so I closed my eyes and breathed in. I swear I could sense a layer of bitter sweetness that reminds me of something familiar and comforting. But soon as I breathed out, I realized what it was—it was the scent of failure. The revolting, ghoulish, yet—a little—comforting scent of failure. It made me feel anxious and light-headed, so I lighted up a cigarette to cover it.

As the fire burned the leaves, I watched the smoke dancing wonderfully before vanishing into thin air. I put the cigarettes between my lips, inhaled, and blew smoke rings as I exhaled, lots of them. I watched them floating away, sometimes on top of each other that they quickly broke into nothingness. I kept making and watching those smoke rings, and they kept dancing and destroying each other in the process. They were so beautiful that my hands moved on their own—they tried to catch the smoke rings. But the moment my hands touched them, they disappeared.

It made me feel morose- the fact that the smoke rings disappeared when I tried to catch them, because they reminded me of my dreams. The more I make them, the more they destroy each other, the more they destroy me. The more I reach for them, the more they vanish into thin air, back to their peaceful habitat. The cigarette was almost reaching its end, so I took a last drag, dropped it on the ground and crushed it. The smoke gave me a hopeless last performance, and faded away into nonexistence.

The absence of the dancing smoke brought back the faint scent of failure, along with my anxieties.

I sighed.