Tuesday in Recap

8/28 in Recap

Tuesday Morning (Prayer Group, 10:30): Nelsey Tapley remarked that she “couldn’t remember when I was that young….cutting a’loose, probably.” She then informed me that she did the Charleston in front of a crowd of party guests when she was about 13. She looked silly, but it was the Charleston, so who cares? We’ve lost the art of social dancing. Now, you’re unique if you can tango or waltz; the girl in me longs for the elegance of social dances. Learning to dance tops the list of “things to do when you’re not in school anymore.” Re-learning the violin and taking more photography courses are there, too.

Tuesday Afternoon (Thesis Meeting, 2:30): “beautifully written,” “excellently stated,” “good progress,” “good project,” “excited to read your work,” “ambitious timeline, but we support you.” The panel of four encouraged me that the fifth (who was out for migraine-recuperation, and is notoriously the most challenging and difficult to please) was highly satisfied with my work, and impressed by the solidarity of my project. I felt that the only solid thing about me was the table I gripped with my palms. Are they just being nice? I feel like anyone can see that I have no idea what I’m talking about. Most of my self-esteem is tied up into academia, which is a precarious foundation. I’m scared I won’t live up to their expectations.

Tuesday Afternoon (Iraq War Protest, 6:15): A group of 30-40 people stood outside of a Unitarian church (not, duly noted, the First Baptist across the street) with signs protesting the Iraq War. “Honk for Peace!” a red sign screamed, and suddenly taken with a bohemian blush, I honked, and threw up a peace sign. Janis Joplin reincarnate in my Japanese sedan. Cars flew by me and I felt suddenly embarrassed. I’m not even fully in support of withdrawing our troops.

Tuesday Evening (Mom and Dad’s House, 9:30): My parents’ speaking becomes unintelligible when they note that I am suddenly less like their little girl in sweatpants and rubber boots than they would like me to be. It’s hard, as I’m slowly realizing that I can be disappointed by them, and their acceptance of the things I do, and their habits as maturing adults. And yet, they are proud of me, too, and that is a burden. And immense freedom. We are all growing older, and that's a hard thing for each of us to accept.

Tuesday Evening (Apartment Bedroom, 11:00): Folding clothes. Arranging underwear. A glass of ice water and Amos Lee through earbuds. Twenty minutes of solidarity of being. Contentment in lavender-vanilla scented fabric softener.

Dear Diaries

I’ve recently become privy to the heart of a 13 year old girl, via her secret and inner-most thoughts kept in her diaries. Behind her still child-like print and neon-colored ink, her thoughts lie in wait, behind her words, even, hoping to be discovered. It’s hard, sometimes, wading through the cotton candy that is firework flames and rapid fire heartbreak, but there’s a person there, a hint of what she will become.
Reading the account of her days is an experience. This girl works in extremes; opposites are built into her nature, and thus I am forced to operate on her same extremes, her same paradoxical emotions transferred to me. I laugh at her dramatic sentences, her wild emotions prefaced with haughty words and grand phrases. I sober at her expressions of her doubt, the quiet questioning of herself—with these she is less bold. I am emboldened when she is sure of herself, painfully afraid when she is challenged.
Our likeness is beyond our keeping of journals—I started writing at the same age she is now. I still have my journals; she will revere her pages until we are both too old to know we wrote them. She has become who I am; she is a part of me. Her 13 year old feelings belong to me at 21. Her hopes, mine. Her doubts, mine, too. She questions the same things I do, and faithfully accepts ideals I embrace along with her. “Who am I?” she asks, and I echo, “What am I doing with myself?” “Am I capable of love?” she wonders. I answer, “Is loneliness forever?” “Am I understood?” we beg in unison.
At times I want to scream at this girl, to rip out her words and abuse her immaturity. Other times, I embrace her in her fragility, long to protect her vulnerable heart. I want to give her the answers, show her how she can live and be happy, but then I remember, I am without answers. Just like her, I have only questions.
I don’t know why this girl has chosen to let me into her life, her world of possible lies, of beautiful truths. Perhaps I am the actualization of her desire for her secrets to be known by another person. Perhaps I am the person for whom she leaves her diary on a café table, the person she wants to read her thoughts and know her truth. Perhaps she needs the affirmation of her voice—as if someone reading her words validates their reason for existing. Or maybe only that she is not an apostle of secrets, a treasurer of mystery. She may be too bold, or not bold enough, too full of lies, or too strict with honesty. But I think in her writing, I have learned only a little of who she is, and infinitely more of who I am becoming.

time enough for words

I’ve had this poem in my brain since early Thursday; I’ve been working it and reworking it, and I finally got a sketch of it down in class last night. It’s been coming to me for days in the form of images—ephemeral photographs in my mind to which I’m struggling to ascribe language and words. It’s about 20 lines or so, folded in my pocket, being carried around in the anticipation of something to click in my brain and make it fit. It’d be a good poem…if someone else would write it. Or if I could make the images in my mind and my vocabulary connect.
Today was the day I would let it rest. Today was the day I would think about everything but that unrhymed demon nesting in my pocket, folded into notebook paper, just waiting to be constructed into something other than the half-formed mess it is right now. So in letting it rest, a completely different poem wrote itself out on my computer screen. I woke up with this new poem coated on my teeth, spoke this new poem to my dash on the drive to work, wrote out this new poem in about an hour at my desk.
I’m jealous of the ease at which this new poem unfurled; frustrated that it should have been more difficult to be justified.
Damn writing.

On Death

I've been engaged in conversations about life lately, and as I was writing tonight, I found something I wrote about death back in October. We view death and life as paradoxical extremes, but I don't know if that's true or not. These paragraphs speak of death as beautiful, and at the same time, I realize that the whole process of death can be bitter, terrifying, and ugly. Can the two be one? Anyway, the post.

~

We're afraid of death. As a culture we want to live a long time, and have a painless death, and there be guaranteed the peace of happy eternal existence. That's not a bad hope... The truth is, no one knows what death is like, and no one knows what death will bring, so we're scared of it. Perhaps we should be. But we don't even talk about it--not until we're standing over cocktail weenies at a funeral, and even then we're saying trite, meaningless things like, "Well, at least he's in a better place now," and "She would have wanted it this way."

How do we know what she would have wanted, what kind of place he's in if we never talk about it? It's morbid to talk about death. Instead of it being a healthy and necessary curiosity, it's a secret thing only the depressed and dying think about.

I think about death, I always have, especially m own. I always think about how people will react to it, as if their reactions and grief would be something I could watch from an invisible perch on the wall.

I want my own death to be something talked about, candidly, without fear and hesitation. I want people to think about mortality, and [the existence of] God, and perhaps most of all, each other. I want my death to allow people to see how much they really need other people. When I die, I want people to find healing in each other--through the love they can offer, through stories that won't fall on deaf ears, through shared meals and silent hugs, through meandering down neighborhood streets where life's essential questions are asked and challenged, through the community of connection with other people. I want people to enjoy their lover's body, I want people to pay attention to the warmth of the heart next to them, the feel of a person in their hands.

I want the healing of my loss to be found in the commonality of grief and love.

Grievers, be comforted...seek your ability to love another person. If you need to, sit amongst my things and remember. Know that I was happy. I would want people to know that I was happy, and that my moments of unhappiness were only because of things still not experiences, and not because of pain....Experience your life, love your life and the people in it.

We are so comfortable in the things of our life, when really, I think the prospect of all that is really in the world--truly seeing and knowing the true beauty made in creation--if we understood that, we should never be comfortable.

I think death touches that chord of true beauty in our souls--death shows us that things are transient, and even such a think as intangible as our connection with another person can be broken, that its bitter ripping away from ourselves leaves us with a would we aren't sure how to heal.

Death makes pain natural, and healing a discovery. Death should make us know we are meant for other people.

she la fuit.

This is how it happens.

Someone finds something beautiful. Or useful. Or both. The thing they find is good in itself, but the person who finds it soon thinks the thing was found on their own merit, because they did something right to find it. But even though the person thinks the thing is theirs, someone else comes along and wants it too, because that other person is jealous of the first person who found the good or beautiful thing and wants it for himself. Or herself. I'm not being biased here. So the second person tries to take the thing from the first person, because he (or she) is convinced that the thing will make him (or her) happier. Or more _________________. (Insert appropriate adjective; e.g. smart, powerful, rich, valuable.) The second person does whatever he can to get the thing from the first person. He lies. He is violent. He is hateful. He is spiteful. He is lustful, gluttonous, avaricious, slothful, wrathful, envious, and prideful. (Count those adjectives).

He gets the good and beautiful thing. Only now it's stained with blood (not his). Because of the thing, he is more powerful. He wants more of the thing so he can be more powerful. Or wealthy. Or valuable to society. You decide. He thinks about how he can get more of the thing. He doesn't want to get it himself. He's too powerful, wealthy, and valuable to do that. So he goes back to the first person. He threatens the first person with his power, wealth, and sense of status, and the first person gets more of the good and valuable thing for the second person, who grows more and more powerful, wealthy, and important.

Until.

A bigger person, or body of people, sees the growth of the second person and doesn't like it. So the third person(s) decide to stop the second person. That happens these ways.
A) The third person is crafty. He wants to stop the second person, but without the second person knowing. So he goes back to the first person and pays off the first person to help the third person get whatever good and beautiful thing it is the second person wants. The third person may even go to the second person and give him a second thing, just to keep the suspicion away. Until the second person finds out what the third person is doing with the first. But because the third person is still more powerful than the second, the second person decides to take it out on the first person by being more of one of the above seven adjectives. So logically, the first person wants the seven adjectives to stop being against him, so he goes back to giving the second person more of the first thing. The third person doesn't like this very much, because it means his position and power is threatened, so a war breaks out over who can control the first person faster, and get more of the first thing.
B) The third person goes to the second person and starts a fight to see who is really stronger. The stronger person must deserve the first thing, of course. Except now that the second person is almost as strong as the third, it's a really long fight. And both the second person and the third person are beating up the first person to get more of the first thing to help them win the fight. A war breaks out over who can control the first person faster, and get more of the first thing.

Either way, the first person doesn't really want to be in the war.

Until.

The second convinces some of the first people (there's been some cellular division and regeneration) that their side is right, and promises them the good things if the first person will help them in their part of the war. In counteraction, the third person goes to the rest of the first people, and tells them that their side is right, and that they should help them instead. More promises are made for good things. The war gets bigger.

But nobody ever really sees any of the good things, except the leaders of the second and third people.

At first, the war was just in one place, but then, the second (or third; you pick, it doesn't matter) realizes that fourth or fifth or sixth peoples might want some of the good things, and that they can sell the good things to the other people and get other good things in return. Only the second (or third) person knows that if the other people know about the exploitation of the first person involved in getting the first good thing, the other people won't want it, so they don't talk about the exploitation, and sell it anyway. Only they don't sell all of it at once, because if there's not a lot of it, it will be seen as valuable, and people will want it more and more, so much so that even once they hear about the exploitation and seven deadly adjectives, they'll be so hungry with desire that they don't really care and want it anyway. And all the movies and songs and t-shirts and campaigns and projects in the world won't make a difference.

Until.

Someone really decides that it's got to stop.

And really decides that it's got to stop. Decides so much that they don't support the buying or selling of anything involved in what started the war(s) in the first place. Decides that someone else's life is not worth comfort, or utility, or functionality, or chic newness. Or cool points. Or wealth. Or power. Or status. And they give it up. And they love the first person. And the second. And the third. And the fourth and fifth and sixth and they keep on loving until they can't stand it anymore.

And they don't run away. They don't flee or hide or pretend it's not there and they aren't comfortable.

They just love. And hurt.

Thoughts on Being

My friend Charlotte wrote a line once that I really liked. She's a better writer than I am, a freshman at Smith. She'll share an alma mater with Sylvia Plath so I already feel like she's got something going for her. Anyway. She wrote this line about instead of liking poetry, she is poetry--I am a poem, my hips are commas carving out a space in the air--I liked that line, and the rest of the poem was good, too, it made me jealous of her ability to command words to do something for her, to speak to people.

My creative writing professor told me once that I could make a living out of writing, he's told me several times that I'm good at it. I don't really know what that means. In a conference once I told him that writing was coming easier to me than I expected it would but I think I lied. Writing is hard. It scares the hell out of me because it means always putting yourself out there to be judged. And people are assholes, they judge, and it's usually not nice.

Any kind of writing is hard; academic papers are hard and short stories are hard. Plays are worse and don't even start on poetry. And the thing about creative writing is that it's big. How do you define "creative writing?" I think even the most scholarly of papers require some degree of creativity, and a lot of the smut at Borders has nothing creative about it. Then how do you define the writer? You've got the serious writer, who produces piece after piece that really means something, and then you've got the asshat who thinks his 14 lines of free verse will really capture the world. Sometimes it does. It's just so hard to talk about writing.

But...

Writing means the very real probability of someone reading your work who's smarter than you and not liking it. Or saying it's wrong. At least if it's an academic paper and they don't like it you can always say you misread the sources, or were offering a different interpretation of a common idea.

But if it's your work--your heart and mind on the page--Christ, that's a terrible thing to have shot down. Because if they don't like it, or they think it's wrong or--worse--bad. Well, what are you going to do? That's you on the page-not someone else's review of a larger piece, but you. Little bits of your psyche thrown up on the page for the world to see.

It's worse than being naked.

It's like being naked while having eggs chucked at you by people who probably can't write any better than you can, or worse, they can.

I am not a poet, a playwright, and I'm certainly not a novelist or even anyone "creative" or "talented." I just put words on a page that I hope make sense, that mean something to me and pray to God that I'm not suddenly naked covered in egg yolks by the time the thing's done.

I want so badly for my "work" to be good--but what is good? Good gets in the way, approval gets in the way right there along with trying too hard. I think that as a writer, I'm screwed. I haven't an idea in my head that hasn't been tried a thousand times. The emotions I feel are the same as yours, and how am I supposed to capture the way you experience your life? Who am I to think my life's trials are worthy of putting on a page and calling them literature? I'm not dark enough to be a poet's fool, witty enough to be a cynic's comrade, and certainly not brave enough to not give a damn.

When I was young(er) I had dreams of being the next great somebody, tough and resilient, with a John Wayne stagger and a stoic's heart. Only I realize I'm a sell-out. I'll write what people want to read, I'll write what people tell me is good, I'll push aside those pieces that don't go over well and people can laugh at the manuscripts when I'm too dead to care.

My flaw in writing is that I want to be the best when there isn't one. There's not a best--there's a talented, a prolific, a versatile, or captivating, and a lot of other basically meaningless adjectives, but I don't want to be an adjective, I want to be a noun.
I am a poem.
My hips are commas carving...

I am a writer.
Lips sketching.... sketching what? How should I know? I have no answers. Sometimes I don't even have a decent conclusionary paragraph.

These thoughts always interrupt my paper writing

So, it's here. That dreaded season for retail employees everywhere: Christmas. I realized today that I haven't always hated the Christmas season, just since I worked at Hallmark. (Digression: how is it that Hallmark is perhaps THE Christmas store, but ever since I've been an employee there, I've never gotten a real Christmas with my family? I'm not bitter or anything, but it seems that if corporate Hallmark is going to try to make Christmas perfect for everyone, they might consider their employees in that. I'm so getting fired.) Okay, that was a larger digression than I'd planned. So it's Christmas-time, even though Thanksgiving isn't until this Thursday, it's Christmas. I've even started buying gifts already, which is something I NEVER do until at least 4 days before. I've been thinking (about everything but my history paper) about the commercialism of Christmas, and at the risk of sounding like one of those "damn college hippies" I'm going to say I don't like it. I guess being behind the scenes for the so-called magic of Christmas (a bonafide Hallmark employee-motivation slogan, there, folks) I'm disillusioned. I see how marketed everything is, how pre-packaged Christmas has begun. I'll really try not to get into the trite CHRIST-mas argument, because I know I hate it as much as everyone else does, but even the church markets Christmas. No better time to get back into church! Let's make our Christmas service enjoyable so they'll come back for more! If we can sell them on Christmas, we can sell them on Easter, and then on church membership! et cetera and so on. (Father, forgive my cyn-icism.) So it's true, I'm a bitter, jaded soul, who probably needs to quit hanging out with the Grinch to bake some sugar cookies.

I'm not doing Christmas this year. Well, I am doing Christmas, for other people. But not for me. If you're family, or if I like you, you might get a present from me. But I'm going to say this, and I want everyone to take me seriously when I do: I don't want any presents. If you insist on spending money on me at all, I insist as much as possible without being rude, that you put that money towards a charitable donation. Something in my soul doesn't rest easy on Christmas morning when I sit in a comfortable 76* living room under a Christmas tree decorated with electric lights drinking English imported Lady Grey tea wearing comfy pj's opening presents that are yet more things I've convinced myself I need and really don't. In short, less dramatic prose: I feel guilty knowing there are impoverished kids all over the world (and in America, too, my friends) who not only don't have presents Christmas morning, they may or may not even have food to eat that day.

I realize I should be doing more than just requesting that my potential gifts be replaced with charitable donations, but consider this step one. Step two: Who likes working at soup kitchens? A better question, Who wants to go with me to the soup kitchen?

After already posing this proposition at work today, and it a) not being received very well by those that had already bought/planned my gift and b)not being received very well by those that really enjoy giving tangible 'just for you and not Malaysian kids' gifts I realize that some of you guys are not comfortable with this idea. And I respect that, I understand, I feel I'm being terribly rude just by suggesting it. But let me say in my (ever so humble) defense, that I will appreciate you guys giving money to charity just as much as I appreciate foil-wrapped gifts. And even better, whatever people you're helping out appreciate it, too.

Go with me on this one. Considert it a "damn college hippie" experiment. My immediate family did a "charity swap" with my uncle's immediate family last Christmas, and as a collective, we'd never felt so good about gift-giving before. That sounds cheesy, I know, but realizing that our financial gift increased two-fold over what it would have bought here was just an amazing thought. $20 buys clean water for a village for a month in Africa. In America, $20 buys a CD and some string. If you're comfortable and willing to give up the normal American Christmas tradition of swapping wrapping paper and whatszits, please do it. It will mean so much.

Please?

Need some help picking a charity?

International (look for links titled "Gift Catalog"):

• World Vision (probably my favorite organization, they do a lot of really good work)
• Samaritan's Purse

National

• Habitat for Humanity
• Girls, Inc.

Local

• Golden Harvest / Soup Kitchen
• Augusta Urban Ministries
• Ronald McDonald House (I've worked with these guys doing some copy-editing stuff, they're really nice!)

Okay, most of these have international, national, AND local chapters. Do some research, pick one out that you connect to, that you think I (or whoever else you're donating for!) would appreciate, and go for it! It's really a good feeling.