A leaf falls on loneliness
Friday, October 21, 2005
it may not always be soit may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another's,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be,i say if this should be-
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands. -e.e. cummingsIs there anything harder than love lost? Yes. It's feeling that there's still so much there; the whole reason you loved them in the first place. That desire to not throw the baby out with the bathwater is both seductive and destructive. It makes you want to keep all of the things that made you good in the first place, makes you want to watch baseball with them while still keeping that detachment it took so long to develop. You want the best for them, but deep down you still want them to struggle as much, if not more, than you did.
Losing love isn't as hard as keeping friendship. So says me. But then, I've been known to be wrong before.
Someone else is a cummings fan.
My head is in the air, but who am I?
Thursday, October 20, 2005
This is just to sayI have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand which you were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold-William Carlos WilliamsI met my friend James when I was a freshman in high school. He was a year older and seemed so funny and alterna cool. I was, um..not. But I can remember being at lunch, and for some reason we started talking about William Carlos Williams.It was one of those moments that you remember decades later. My insecure fourteen year old heart couldn't believe that there were other people who loved what I did, and certainly not this guy that was so far above me in the high school pecking order. I think our early teens are generally about being ashamed of everything we are, and trying desperately to be someone else, who, ironically, is also ashamed and afraid. When you find out that you might not be as repulsive as you once thought, it is a revelation.James and I have been friends ever since, and I wonder how a simple, sweet poem about a fruit thief could make me one of my favorite friends in the world and lead to a pretty fantatsic adolencesence. I actually enjoyed my high school years, and it's mostly due to Mr. Carlos Williams. That's the power of poetry, me thinks: the ability to evoke such powerful emotions in the shortest, most efficient way possible. They have to make a connection quickly, and it enables others to do so as well. I've found quite a few connections through poetry, and the most important of them have been with myself. By the way, my favorite-est James writes poetry as well as reads it: http://eyeforaniris.com/home.html
I be getting more stupider by the moment.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
It's true. I, the girl who missed only two questions on the English section of the SATs just a few years ago, have daily conversations that go something like this:Me: What's that thing, you know, that you cut the other thing with...god...you know what I'm trying to say. It has points and it goes like this (makes emphatic hand motions). You know!Them: No, I really don't. Please leave me alone.Anyway, in my post college haze of reality TV and poorly typed IM conversations, roughly half of my brain cells have been lost and/or are asleep at the wheel. To slow my steady intellectual decline, I have decided to begin reading and paying attention to one of my first loves, poetry.Poetry is a funny thing. It takes the kind of attention and concentration that isn't possible in a 25 minute public transportation commute, or even a fourty minute "I'm-exhausted-from-not-working-all-day-and-am-cuddled-in-bed-reading-some-crap-that-my-nearly-slumbering-mind-can-comprehend" session. These scenarios are where roughly fifty percent of my reading is done lately, sadly enough.Poetry requires reading the same passage three, four, twenty times, reading aloud to yourself, pausing and reflecting, and all sorts of other things that can't be done while simutaniously watching "The People's Court." So this will be my new project, reading and admiring the wordsmiths who can express more in three lines than I could say if I babbled all day. I'm hoping, in my dime store psychology mind, that this might lead to the pursuit of other things I love but am generally too lazy to actually do.In honor of this first post, here is the poem that inspired the project:PoetryAnd it was at that age...Poetry arrivedin search of me. I don't know, I don't know whereit came from, from winter or a river.I don't know how or when,no, they were not voices, they were notwords, nor silence,but from a street I was summoned,from the branches of night,abruptly from the others,among violent firesor returning alone,there I was without a faceand it touched me.I did not know what to say, my mouthhad no waywith namesmy eyes were blind,and something started in my soul,fever or forgotten wings,and I made my own way,decipheringthat fireand I wrote the first faint line,faint, without substance, purenonsense,pure wisdomof someone who knows nothing,and suddenly I sawthe heavensunfastenedand open,planets,palpitating planations,shadow perforated,riddledwith arrows, fire and flowers,the winding night, the universe.And I, infinitesmal being,drunk with the great starryvoid,likeness, image ofmystery,I felt myself a pure partof the abyss,I wheeled with the stars,my heart broke loose on the wind.-NerudaHoly crap, I wish I could read him in his original language.
