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Monday, December 14th, 2009
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I read a lot of Alice Walker when I was staying up late in high school, sometimes sitting up in a pretty living room with the cats, babysitting sleeping children, sometimes curled in my own overcrowded room.
I always liked poetry, even as a young child, and infinitely more so once I started writing. But I never really understood Alice until this moment. I know so many people are upset with her, for the extremes of her feminism and the realities of her life, but in some way Her Blue Body, Everything We Know sings so clearly to me now.
Last night I woke, gasping clear, in stabbing waves of pain. My dream had twisted in on itself, and my dreamself woke in a strange room, sparsely furnished, with sunlight pouring over waxed, bright oak floorboards. I took three steps across the room, wind moving softly against my skin, and your voice sounded out behind me, low and amused.
I turned, catatonic with shock, frozen with indecision. Which way to run, towards you as fast as I could, or away from you just as fast? Your massive eyes swept mine, holding my gaze. A flicker of an ironic smile. Pain jumped through me.
An image of one of my very favorite graduate students, one of the gorgeously soft-looking ones who always made me flush with unintentional eye contact, constructed itself between us. You looked at me, shaking your head. "She reminds you of me."
I flinch, visibly, shaking my head. Yes? No?
Guilt. Anger. "You shouldn't be here." I turn as if to go, suddenly released from the moment.
Another line of pain like fire, and you reach out towards me. I push away, keep pushing, keep fighting.
And then I woke, really awake this time, fighting nothing but the covers and a fierce headache.
I never wanted it to be like this, memories tagging me everywhere I went. I wish there was a way to put some force behind an old promise to be friends. I wish, not more than anything but more than many things, that I still had the parts of you that were my best friend in my life. And I will take this moment to humbly remind you, all the while repeating mea culpa, mea culpa that love is concerned that the beating of your heart should kill no one and I am terribly, terribly afraid that it is killing parts of mine.
From Walker:
When I no longer have your heart
I will not request your body
your presence
or even your polite conversation.
I will go away to a far country
Separated from you by the sea
--on which I cannot walk--
and refrain even from sending
letters
describing my pain.
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Sunday, November 8th, 2009
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everything, that I said I'd do
make the world blend in
take the time for you
I just got lost
and stepped right through the door
and the world spins madly on
You might officially consider this journal defunct as I don't really have the time or the persuasion to write at this moment. I am allowing myself to be consumed by my thesis which is delicate, well-turned, French, beautiful, but above all it is safe. Nothing other than my high-worded, academic personality in the form of a formal hypothesis and detailed analysis can enter into the work. Even something such as a departure from the formal "we" constitutes too many personal feelings.
I am doing all right without unpacking those feelings.
And how is it that I have been doing kendo for four years? Sometimes I can only mark the passage of time by the way I feel about the white belts, and by the visionary flashes, pure and painful, of the woman beneath my sword on kneeling iai seven. It's always a worthwhile exercise to second someone's seppuku in your mind. For me it is nearer to a level of worshipful remembering, and believe you me, she has changed.
I named my sword thé, after tea and after te, the Japanese word for hand. I do so much kendo I even dream about it. I think I'm a different person in the dojo, or at least a more controlled one.
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Friday, October 2nd, 2009
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In that order. Here is the result of one postcard, one artist, myself, and two poets intersecting.
for two poets
And you had written me then, four birds and nine words,
If only to say that all tears go upwards
That the same birds hear you, I ,
That we all sing the same song.
I want to believe that we are sublime
In these moments
More connected than we ever were as the sum
Of our parts, bodies
Moving upwards, always upwards,
My fingertips ache.
Have you ever seen a tear on the ground? All tears go upwards.
I have a wonderful memory that wings
Like soft small birds
In the residual space between two languages
(the second of which never was the language of love
never spoke to you and I).
All tears go
Upwards
Towards the sky
yet I would rather sing to you of death
and of things deathless, seeking the same song,
I the union of things unlikely.
Have you tasted the free air, small bird on the wing?
I swing mesmerized in the arms of poets
Learning the value of song
Between earth and earth-death
With no space lost in between.
I sing of last love and leaves of grass.
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Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
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Why is it so hard to pin down a thesis topic?
Why did I start writing a four page paper and then stop?
Why am I sitting on the sofa as it gets darker and darker, instead of doing something useful with myself?
I miss the connectedness of grounds, the feeling that kept me moving through the days and through the nights. There was something slightly magical about the tame freedom of Lawn wandering at night, walking in peaceable company with other lone meanderers. The pace was slow and the purpose was to clear my mind, to lean my hips back against the cool-slick marble and inhale, breathe out soft smoke clouds, contemplate.
There were more possibilities for these days, this short remaining time, while I was in that moment. What I have now is different, infinitely more immediate, but no longer with the same sense of withheld anticipation.
I have not spoken with you or with anyone about the differences between then and now, about the fears that are seeming less adolescent, less free, and much more adult. I am hesitant to say that I would trade this last year of experience (and what a year it was) for the body I was walking around with a year ago; I am hesitant but I am unsure. It's not as bad as I might have thought.
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"stereo eruptions of pleasure, separated by miles yet tied together by microwaves."
(from Easily Aroused)
In retrospect, we will admit that love is better with technology, that we are children of the digital age, but that our thoughts and secrets and desires are, comfortingly, part of something so much older.
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Friday, December 12th, 2008
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I am not going to go back to sleep.
I am not going to drink any coffee.
I am going to take a shower, get dressed, get food, turn in my French paper, go to my appointment.
Then after that I will go to the library to continue studying for my English final (open book, open note, tomorrow from 2-5).
After that is workout from 5:30 until 8:00 pm. Possible dinner afterward if I have time / feel up to it.
Back to the Nest to crash and watch a movie, perhaps review my English notes.
Tomorrow morning: return to Grounds, sweet weekend parking, shower / eat / cram / final.
I miss my horse. I won't be able to ride until Sunday with my exam schedule. However, we are about to seal the deal with Avery, and Tommy's agreed to keep doing his feet. All I need to do is write a couple of checks.
I should really start packing.
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Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
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Ah, things are oddly calm in midst of the incredible stress that I'm under. Any one of the things on my mind would justify my wild swings of emotion and general lashing out that have preceded this point. But I have not one, but four, major stresses pressing on me.
I've worried, and raged, and cried, and panicked, and now I am calm. Things are in no way resolved, in no way even clear, but I am literally so exhausted that all I can do is operate as if nothing is moving around me.
Everything will be fine, it's just the waiting, this accursed waiting and planning and trying not to plan that can really wear a girl down.
I made a calendar. Sometimes that helps with things. And I have an appointment, then class, then an outline to do. So here I am, being calm.
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Monday, August 11th, 2008
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Trying to move three people in two weeks.
Trying to restart ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) thisisoursecret -- if you want a sweet community to join, pick that one.
Trying not to let my head explode over the massive stresses of school and study abroad options.
At least I'm trying.
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It is such a good thing I didn't go to Girl Talk, right? Since everyone I've ever known appears to be there right now.
And, I mean, concerts are the epitome of things I don't enjoy. I don't like large crowds, even when the people in them are strangers (and surely not when they are awkward, socially-obligated acquaintences). I don't like dancing, and I don't like to let go, either. Loud noise and sweating profusely are fine, but most preferably in contexts that happen on my own terms.
It's never who I've been. I like twentieth-century American poetry, British history, French literature in the original. I listen to girls-with-guitars music and spend my spare time at the barn. I am a semi-violent flincher, a night walker, a conversationalist, and many other things besides.
Above all, I have always been the one who nests, who remains here, perpetually and resentfully tied to the velvet rut. I define myself and everyone else by the spaces that we occupy and the places we have known.
That's the end of it, anyway, with my habitudes strange, morning-loving, and intensely private. I will wall myself up in my space and study for my British History final, leaving only to return the same day. And what was I thinking, with drumsticks, with trying to throw my little, little body up and over walls, down staircases, along railings, through an urban environment I've always disdained?
You shamed me Thursday, while I was fighting with my flinching and the exercise, and from the periphery I watched the two of you move, paced and violent, hurtling through space and directly into collision with each other, without pain and without fear. And you parted just as softly, spinning in opposite directions, adrenaline alive.
Afterwards, I wrote about the paradigm of feminine unpreparedness.
It is a good thing I didn't go, after all of these things. Leaving makes me nervous.
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one.girl in a strappy, green gauze prom dress on saturday
two.acts of the compiled text of king lear to be read
three.stuffed animals hiding under the blanket
four.days until this week can be over
five.expensive chocolate bars that were free for me
six.ribbons hanging from the corner of my bookshelf
seven.days of quiet girl agony on the way
eight.pieces of tack got perfectly cleaned last weekend
nine.things i've started writing recently
none.of these things are at all important in this moment
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I can't share what I haven't written, and what I've written I will not share. This defines us as at an impass.
I don't know what to say about this, except for three things:
Today is N.'s twentieth birthday.
I now have to get in intellectual shape to research and write a thesis on French history.
Plantains are yum.
I don't prefer living alone, as I'm rediscovering. And I would write about this but there is nothing to say.
Assez, assez. I'm thinking half en francais as it is and that's not helping my coherenece right now, tu sais.
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Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
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Have you noticed, anyway, that the titles are always about sex when I'm too tired to function?
I have. It's okay with me.
recently, there was a confession
or more accurately
a one-and-a-half way conversation:
one slutty cowboy hat (confiscated)
and one fedora (imagined).
i made up that fedora, you know
to compensate for
what?
a moment i didn't have a name for.
the way you raised your palms to
insinuate
face to face
did its best to crush me.
and now i'm lying around
haunted by this ocean of hats
watching them drift
lazy, borne on the things i should be doing,
around my room.
so driven away from self-comforting and sleep;
the lights watch me
(sans cesse)
blink behind my eyes
imagining a sea of fedoras
joined in their rampage by
streams and streams of artificial reality.
i close my eyes
think of england --
dream myself into the past and the
birth of romanticism,
its silly hats.
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Monday, December 17th, 2007
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"it's time to take this off"
she whispers to herself
to my general direction.
her voice like a thousand sailing ships
catching the almost-wind.
i do not know what she has made of me.
she forces me into daydreams
of all the books i wish i'd read
teases forth t.s, neruda, and tolstoy
until my mind shimmers and dives.
these are my nights, then,
on the couch
curled tight with tea and the radiating heat
of a stocked bookshelf waiting for me.
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girls with hair
snapping clear and bright as
the long grass we charge through together.
the sky in early morning
mirrors the sea
clouded over with foam.
these four walls kissed you on the lips
and let you go as jealous lovers do
to find and redefine home.
and still you are tied
down with a length of silver thread
a spiderweb of
girls with hair (& sharp smiles)
snapping clear and bright as (though drawn through)
the long grass we charge through together.
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It's a night for the writing.
There are people I want, in a esoteric sense, to be reaching out to. I have things to say to girls who can very well take care of themselves but have never met one of this kind before. She will initial her name on the soft skin at the nape of your neck and you will never be quite yourself again.
The smooth regularity of my breathing underneath the blanket. I am losing the feelings of power, of total control and of self-connectedness. The shape of skin and bone is somehow off, unsettlingly familiar but at the same time changed, as though I am losing touch with the things my body does and goes through. The lack of fear and pain and an empty burning easily mistaken for joy, then, is nothing but pillowy apathy (the normal noncritical state of the world?), nothing to strive for and nothing to gain.
I wonder how much we know, how much we bs, and how much we value.
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I decided there was a need for something a little more cheerful. Lacking that, I'm settling for something different. After all, what have I been doing lately here except updating tidbits to thisisoursecret?
I am sososo anxious about finals starting in twelve hours. I don't feel prepared and by this time tomorrow I have to be finishing my paper. Except I don't and that's bothering me almost more, that it's not due till five and I can procrastinate and potentially create a really bad situation for myself.
I'm sitting back in my desk chair with my feet propped against the armoire, a good foot and a half above my head. The inside of my lip tastes sweet, I wonder what that's about. My hair is still wet from the shower I took this morning because I've had it up all day, humid and sticky short skirt season. There is whiplash living in both sides of my neck right now (I suspect a surprise jump tumble fall over Wellbeloved-Stone's shoulder may be the culprit).
I keep putting half full ginger ale cans on the milk carton that my paper journal lives under and wondering if one will tip over and spill down to my journal and smear the ink and glue all the pages together and then I won't feel obligated to read over it anymore and write things that don't matter.
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Thursday, April 19th, 2007
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Les journées qui nous approchent
Seront difficiles.
Qu’est-ce que je peux dire
Pour améliorer, aider
Ceux qui ont perdu la joue de la vie ?
Même qu’on se stresse
Au destin des morts jeunes,
Que peut-on dire
Aux amis laisses seuls ?
Rien ne s’approche à la tristesse
Et à la peine immuable
Que les déroule.
Je mentie a moi-même
En penser que c’est assez
Ces pensées, celles prières
Les bras d’une copine, les lumières
Cachées au milles des mains dans la nuit.
One sait que c’est la tragédie
Quand on dit :
« que peux-je faire (amie, copine,
Amant ?) »
Et personne ne répondre.
On n’a rien à donner, sauf que
Les mots ensemble
Que le vent vole en soir.
Ainsi, je vous laisse,
Les vifs qui viennent et
Les qui viennent de partir,
Sombres aux ombres
Avec le silence et les mémoires.
Pour vous, je trouverai
Un petit oiseau
Affixe mon amour a son poitrine,
Il volera à la terre des rêves
Et délivrera l’aide à vous.
L’esprit du monde vous prête toujours.
( translation under cut )
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Wednesday, April 4th, 2007
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I am indescribably unhappy with the proliferation of prospective students here.
Everywhere I go, they're there, Vera Bradley bags and multicolored plaid pantshorts, Rainbows, Dior sunglasses. The places that used to be quiet, warm, and easy to find a place in (gardens, the ampitheater, the lawn, the library) are overrun with people asking me for directions.
I hate these people. I hate them for their comparitive youth and money, inexperience and security, the smug looks on the faces that say "I'm in. Now, am I too good for this school?". I hate them for having a world of choices, for thinking this little town nestled between mountain and piedmont is an adventure, a party, a dream school.
More profoundly than anything I resent them for the possibilities sprawled out like twisting limbs before them, the supreme un-weight of choices labelled "better" and "best." I see the looks in their eyes that say they've found the place for them, and I resent their belonging. I remember what it feels like to belong somewhere, to step from the pavement to the bricks to the grass, to look across a campus at the setting sun and feel the excitement rise in your stomach when you imagine being a small part of a whole big thing.
I also remember what it feels like to understand, with your whole self, that you are never going to be that small part of that big world. I know that moment where your happy, chittering, self-serving brain stands still and realizes the plans and hopes and dreams you are busy crafting are no longer yours. Instead they belong to someone more diverse, more articulate, more interesting, someone ahead of you that you will probably never know. And once the dreaming stops the decisions start, each more determinate than the last -- pick a school based on money, proximity, a legacy; it doesn't matter anymore.
And for the prospectives that I don't hate or resent I have deep compassion, because in their eyes I see hope and fear, mixed with the knowledge that they won't get into this university. I want to tell them that if they are clever they will not die of it, that their dream schools will break their hearts and tear them apart, but that the sun also rises. I want to tell them that you can wake up in the same place you've lived for your entire life and still have a place to put your love and excitement that would have gone into the school you wanted so badly. I want to tell them that a horse can save your life, that distance can deepen love, and not to let it turn you bitter. And that you might never stop resenting yourself, but you can't hate everything.
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yawnstretchslumber.
folk music and blood memory.
three phone calls: penitent, needy, and evasive, in that order.
too drained to get worked up about anything (the greatest natural check-and-balance there is; get exhausted enough and you'll fall asleep).
even if your heart is convecting and your mind is burning and your skin is torn and burning burning burning.
sleep is the most important thing in my life. it is the one thing i cannot live without and it fixes everything i've ever done.
that's a bit pathetic.
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nibblednib's journal
mellow.
hungry.
anxious.
drained.