Soy Infeliz

In the last week, I've taken a day trip to Des Moines, adopted a ten-year-old kitty, caught up with old friends, researched auditions for local improv comedy troupes, and I'm even doing laundry right now.

Things could be worse.

- "Soy Infeliz," by Lola Beltran, from Lola la Grande (1976)

Walking Faster

I spent a fair chunk of my Christmas getting rained on by the river, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Crappy fisheye I

II

III, until the moon is upside down

Sweet Thing

I've been thinking much recently about longing, and how my conception of that emotion has changed with time. When I was younger (i.e., before I moved away for college), I longed to leave and see "the world." I've come home once more, and that longing still churns in my ribs, complicated by nostalgia and memory.

Now that I'm firmly in the eight-to-five office machine, far away from many of my close friends and the sheltered, challenging bubble of academia, I have a hard time accepting many of my memories from Wellesley. Most of the time, it seems simpler to view the last four years as a vacuum, an impossibly good dream. To dismiss that time would be, after all, easier and less painful than to acknowledge of the discrepancies between then and now.

When this happens, I have to remind myself to take off the rose-colored glasses. Though my time in college was good, it was also often terrible: I worked four (beloved yet time-consuming) jobs. I barely slept. I felt inadequate and self-conscious among my peers. I never had enough solitude. I felt perpetually lonely and uprooted. There was never enough time for anything or anyone. Remembering these realities alleviates the sense of loss I feel for that chapter of my life, and the friendships that are now stretched across miles.

Regardless of where I am, or what I'm doing, or who I'm spending time with, there are some feelings that will always linger. The fatigue, anxiety, and loneliness are perhaps the most difficult, but I find a perverted solace in these emotions as well: everyone feels this way, I imagine, and my capability to express those feelings may eventually provide a sense of solidarity to someone else. That motivation is, for me, one of the most compelling reasons to care about my writing.

And while I could use my fancy educational background to strengthen the structure of this post, or to pare down my language and rearrange my arguments, tonight I'll let these words simply sit, just as they are.

Thank you for reading this.

- "Sweet Thing" by Van Morrison, from Astral Weeks (1968)

Ode to a Drone

"Ode to a Drone"

Hell-raiser, razor-feathered
risers, windhover over
Peshawar,

power's
joystick-blithe
thousand-mile scythe,

proxy executioner's
proxy ax
pinged by a proxy server,

winged victory,
pilot cipher
unburdened by aught

but fuel and bombs,
fool of God, savage
idiot savant

sucking your benumbed
trigger-finger
gamer's thumb

by Amit Majmudar, from Dothead (2016)

Tenth of December

I admit that this is a pretty lazy post, but if you have a spare moment (or definitely more than that), read this.

Charles Junior

The strings in this piece make me sleepy.

- "Charles Junior" by Jorge Ben, from Força Bruta (1970)

The School

This short story, "The School," was written by Donald Barthelme and published in The New Yorker in 1974. When I read it, I feel occasionally unsettled, but consistently triumphant and amused.

Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that ... that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems ... and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don’t know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn’t the best. We complained about it. So we’ve got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant and we’ve got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing.

It wouldn’t have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes – well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that ... you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes they weren’t too disturbed.

With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now they know not to overwater. The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens and some of them probably ... you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren’t looking. Or maybe ... well, I don’t like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander ... well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags.

Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those numbers, you look at them crooked and they’re belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.

We weren’t even supposed to have a puppy.

We weren’t even supposed to have one, it was just a puppy the Murdoch girl found under a Gristede’s truck one day and she was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had finished making his delivery, so she stuck it in her knapsack and brought it to the school with her. So we had this puppy. As soon as I saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for about two weeks and then... And that’s what it did. It wasn’t supposed to be in the classroom at all, there’s some kind of regulation about it, but you can’t tell them they can’t have a puppy when the puppy is already there, right in front of them, running around on the floor and yap yap yapping. They named it Edgar – that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and yelling, “Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!” Then they’d laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity. I enjoyed it myself. I don’t mind being kidded. They made a little house for it in the supply closet and all that. I don’t know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. It probably hadn’t had any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning, routinely, because I knew what was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian.

And then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program, all the kids brought in a quarter a month, that was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing, the kid’s name was Kim and maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got, they suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case histories, but we didn’t have the heart. The class took it pretty hard, they began (I think, nobody ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the school, particularly, I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance. There were I think two heart attacks and two suicides, one drowning, and four killed together in a car accident. One stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier this year, it seemed so. And finally the tragedy.

The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo were playing over where they’re excavating for the new federal office building. There were all these big wooden beams stacked, you know, at the edge of the excavation. There’s a court case coming out of that, the parents are claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. It’s been a strange year.

I forgot to mention Billy Brandt’s father who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked intruder in his home.

One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don’t know, I don’t know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of –
I said, yes, maybe.
They said, we don’t like it.
I said, that’s sound.
They said, it’s a bloody shame!
I said, it is.
They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done?
We know you like Helen.
I do like Helen but I said that I would not.
We’ve heard so much about it, they said, but we’ve never seen it.
I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out the window.
They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.

I said that they shouldn’t be frightened (although I am often frightened) and that there was value everywhere. Helen came and embraced me. I kissed her a few times on the brow. We held each other. The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door, I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. The children cheered wildly.

- "The School" by Donald Barthelme, from Sixty Stories (1981) and sourced from The End of Life website

City Rain, City Streets

I wrote this little tidbit while I was out walking last Friday night. It's still sort of doughy and shapeless, so I'm kneading little corners, here and there. It doesn't have a title. As always, your readerly perspective is welcome.

Last Saturday, I drove up to Omaha. I have enough to say about it to make a forthcoming post this week. For now, I'll just share that endless bookstores and giant slides exist there, and that driving in Omaha is 45% more frustrating than in Kansas City.

Hey, thanks for reading this.

The Last Beat of My Heart

I'm most certainly not posting lovely, moving songs from my work computer.

- "The Last Beat of My Heart" by Siouxsie and the Banshees, from Peepshow (1988)

Ready

Free Radical

"Free Radical"

Before Gilgamesh invented

the kaleidoscope and Galileo

the Rubik’s cube, before the

scimitar-horned oryx went

missing, before the tamarind

trees went bare, before the

stars’ eyelids were wrapped

in tinfoil, before the leaves

could gnaw on water, before

electrons made donations,

before the owl wore a mask,

before the wind had a sound,

before the moon had a name

and the smoke a spine, before

the tulips crossed their legs,

before the tongue was

armored, before the ghosts

rode centaurs to riots, before

cyberspace was culled and

belly buttons sown to wombs,

before the taste had an after,

before intellect became

property and thunder

premeditated, before the

New, New World, before a

stone wished to be more

than a stone, before we had a

change of clothes, before the

grass was color-blind, before

the rivers lost their fingers,

and the rain stopped teething,

before the kings were all

beheaded, the gravedigger

neither young nor old, before

a lion was still a lion, before

the girls were all killed, before

the trapeze gave way.      We

hung     suspended in time

by the arches of our curved

feet and this tickled the gods,

tickled them to death.      & I

think our silence cut us loose,

let us go falling from the doubt,

secretly thrilled at the hems

and ever so eager to break.

- by Alison C. Rollins, originally published in Poetry (November 2016)

Better Than This

Today was a tough day.

When we learned about the presidents in first grade, I vividly remember feeling distraught. Why couldn't women be presidents? My inimitable teacher Karen reassured me that, though this may have been the status quo, nothing lasts forever. She supported me and believed in me when I declared that, one day, I would become the first female president of the United States. (I think about our moments often, Karen, and you can never truly know how much your influence has meant to my development. Thank you for empowering me and encouraging me for the last sixteen years.)

Though my own presidential aspirations have long since faded, their underlying motivation has not. I was fortunate enough to go to Wellesley College, where that belief was championed, and where I was allowed control over my own body/thoughts/ambitions, without question. Thanks in part to the myriad positive influences in my life, I firmly and passionately believe that my femininity alone will not define me, and that people across the gender spectrum will soon be treated equally and fairly.

But after the results of our election, it's hard to keep that resolve as steadfast. After all, what have we seen? The most qualified presidential candidate, quite possibly in the history of our country, has been beaten out by a bigot, a loudmouth, a bully. (To rebut your arguments about corruption, I offer you Kristin Palpini's moving editorial in The Valley Advocate.) It's hard not to read this narrative as another case of a qualified woman being passed up in favor of an aggressive and obnoxious man who can shout just a little bit louder.

(Now might be a good time to mention that, though I'm choosing to focus much of this post on gender, many other factors played into this election: race, class, sexuality, education, and religion, to name the most obvious. These are all important pieces of the puzzle, and should not be forgotten. [If interested, I recommend you watch Van Jones's brief and harrowing perspective on the multi-dimensional implications of this election.] I simply chose to emphasize gender because, as a white woman, I feel most authorized to talk about that experience. The lives of women of color, of non-college-educated women, of transgender women, of Muslim women...those are all complicated by identities I cannot and will not ever truly understand. For that reason, I hope you will forgive my narrower focus.)

In short, it feels as though our nation is staunchly broken. It feels as though women and other minority groups have been squashed under the foot of patriarchal white supremacy. This violence has been aided by a broken electoral college, one that has failed our nation and its popular vote twice in my short lifetime.

Yesterday I wrote to myself that "I'm exhilarated and impassioned and full of everything," and I truly was. I saw the potential of our democracy. Today, I feel discouraged and tired. What seemed like an imminent victory, in so many ways, was swept away in a bad dream of hatred. This election was a beacon of change. I believed that that change would be much-needed proof that our society was growing up and away from prejudice and fearful "other"-ing. I believed that we would finally have tangible proof that women are valued in this country. Instead, I awoke to the reality that our president would be a multiply-accused sexual predator, a proud racist, a homophobe, and a nationalist xenophobe. Though I feel tired, I can't imagine what my mother, my aunt, and my older sisters must be feeling: I've only lived under the shadow of misogyny for a fraction of the time they've endured that same darkness.

Despite these feelings, I am hopeful. We've put up a hell of a fight, and I still believe that most of the people living in this country are strong-hearted and true. No matter the electoral results, those feelings of exhilaration linger in my mind. I believe that we can pick up the pieces and make sense of this outcome in order to better ourselves as human beings. I'm not quite sure how, yet, but I know that we are better than this. Together, we will prove it.

And in the spirit of open discourse, I genuinely invite a civil discussion about anything and everything in this post. Especially disagreements.

Thank you for reading. This week more than ever, be good to yourselves and to those around you.

Vote Today

If you're able to vote in the U.S., please go do so. I'm scared. I want to see our democracy kick some ass tonight.

For comfort, here is a photo of a rainbow.

That's all I've got.

Rendezvous Girl

With each day, I'm more aware of the value and finitude of my time. To be honest, I'm discouraged and frightened, because I know that I have an obligation to myself to take my interests seriously. While I still take time every day to write something small, I haven't felt focused enough to make (or even read) anything remotely substantial in several weeks. And though a couple of weeks is only a snap of the fingers, I still feel an enormous anxiety about the passage of time.

I wish I could write some sort of sweet, immediate resolution to that, but I can't. Even if I could, it would be unfairly inauthentic and performative. Today, I will try to simply sit with these thoughts, rather than overanalyzing them in search of a solution.

While I'm sitting, though, I'll listen to Santigold, and dance modestly in my seat.

- "Rendezvous Girl" by Santigold, from 99¢ (2015)

With A Girl Like You

I have about thirty unfinished little blog-post ruminations about anything from gender roles to highway medians, but they're only yet little seeds.

I'll keep chipping away, but for now, here is a little head-bopping boost to keep this here blog afloat.

- "With A Girl Like You" by The Troggs, from Wild Thing (1966)

Moundridge

Lots of feelings; back again.

Grain elevator; Moundridge, KS

Underlay

Sweet sweet pups

cuddled up

in the slightly-less-sweet underlay.

Cheerleader

The first time I truly heard this song, I was with my friends, careening around central MA in a minivan. This song's associations have grown far beyond that moment, but I'll carry that memory with nostalgia for a long time.

- "Cheerleader" by St. Vincent, from Strange Mercy (2011)

New Age

Lots of exciting stuff is happening right now:

• Last Friday, I signed a one-year lease. I'm living alone in a studio apartment in Midtown Kansas City. After I spent months looking at places in other cities, I've realized that housing here is dirt cheap in comparison.
• Yesterday, I began working at a new job, at a health-food cafe on the Plaza. The team was exceptionally friendly and welcoming, but the work environment was scattered and disorganized. For fear of retribution, I will say nothing more about this company on the Internet, except that I hope I get another job soon.
• This morning, I'm interviewing for a position as an office aide in the Astronomy Department at a local university. Posting about this here makes me wonder if I'm hexing myself, but I am terribly excited about this job and I hope I get it. 
• Today is the forty-seventh consecutive day I've written. That thrills me like a drawn-out game of Jenga: I'm trying my best to keep the tower from toppling. Most days it's a paragraph or two in my notebook about my feelings (imagine that), but those little turns of phrase have a way of worming themselves into poems.

In short, I've decided to settle down here for a while. After all, I've never lived in Kansas City—living on a gravel road in unincorporated Platte County hardly counts. When I left Wellesley, I felt this heavy pressure to use my privileged education to go "change the world." And because so many of my peers were moving to huge new cities and working high-powered jobs, I told myself I had to do the same. But the more I thought about it, I realized that this pressure was entirely self-imposed, and that sometimes it's okay to simply be for a little while. My plan was to find a job to pay the bills so that I could focus on writing, and I'd already become enamored of the poetry community here. On top of that, I've realized how much I missed my friends and family here, and why I want to spend more time with them now. Staying here made a lot more sense when I looked at my priorities in that way. All of these factors pushed me to consider staying, and every morning I wake up more content with that decision.

I have a good feeling about today.

Plainsong (for New Beginnings)

I'm starting a new job, signing a lease, and writing spontaneous (and spotty) ekphrastic tanka poems about clouds:

When I leave this place
(even only if in thought)
dumb, I ossify
the highs of the arms-wide sky
that envelop me, all here

A Rainy Day in the Back Bay

It's been just over three months since I was in Boston.

I'm excited to be starting my "life" and to be out of the pressure cooker that Wellesley could be (maybe I'll just write a whole post about that sometime). Simultaneously, I miss it. A lot. At the most unexpected moments, I'll be entirely enveloped by this cavernous sense of longing and loss. In those moments, I'll wonder which street performers are out in Harvard Square, or what the breeze might smell like on the waterfront in the North End. Most of that feeling is fueled by a sort of nostalgia: I miss the place where I was an irresponsible college student, sheltered and safe from the world.

But there's more to it than that. Metro Boston was the first place I ever knew away from home. It was the first city I ever got to "discover," just by wandering aimlessly on the weekends. It was the first place I felt independent and confident enough to spend entire days wandering by myself. When the marathon bombings happened my first year, it was the first place I'd ever felt any sort of city-wide unity. (That's not to imply that unity doesn't exist in Kansas City; it certainly does. But tragedy and loss can leave deep and unique impacts on a place, and nothing similar has happened in K.C. during my lifetime.)

The point is: I grew there. A lot. That growth could have happened anywhere, but it was shaped by the buildings and the people I knew in Boston. And that city only exists in my recollection now, because when I do eventually return, it will be different: friends will have moved, buildings will have been demolished. I will be different, and my eyes will see the city differently. Even though that perspective will probably lack the youthful excitement of a first-timer, I can't wait to see what the years grant me and how my view matures.

I'll be back soon enough.

Commonwealth and Mass Ave; northeast toward the Common
May 2016

Atticus, In The Desert

I recently finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time. It was pretty good, though Harper Lee's style occasionally confused me (which was almost certainly her intent, I'd guess). I could write a lot more about it, but I'm slogging through cover letters and job applications at the moment. This Kishi Bashi song will have to suffice.

Ever onward.

- "Atticus, in the Desert" by Kishi Bashi, from 151a (2012)

Alone Again (Naturally)

Some Sundays.

- "Alone Again (Naturally)," by Gilbert O'Sullivan, released as a single in 1972

Moundridge

Last weekend, I went to Moundridge. This was significant for several reasons:

1. It's my mom's hometown,
2. my uncle Monte lived there his entire life, until his death in May, and
3. I hadn't been back to visit since my grandma's funeral in 2008.

So my mom and I trekked out to the wilderness of central Kansas, to see houses, streets, and cemeteries. The landscape was more captivating than I remembered, and the sunflowers were in full bloom. There was this unbelievable quiet. All you could hear was the wind skimming the tall grass; the sound of male cicadas calling out to a particularly blue nothingness. The low hills there stretch on in a way that makes it seem that they could contain everything.

It's a special place.

Breathing the air in Monte's house felt unusual. It smelled so specific, in a fleeting way. To see his space, his land...it gave me a sense of closure that I didn't have before. I still often forget he's gone, but being where he lived gave me a sense of peace that I needed. I'm grateful for that.

Along the way, I took a few photos using the cheap fish-eye lens I bought last year. And so this is all I have, for right now.

Potentially southward

Lying in Grass

I was in the middle of drafting a meandering rumination on the tragedies in Hermann Hesse's life, and then I thought better of it. Sure, lots of sad stuff happened in his life (he had severe depression and his wife was schizophrenic, which probably only exacerbated their myriad marital problems). Despite this, Hesse managed to write a lot of insightful, challenging work, and it seems reductive to focus on one already-overemphasized aspect of his life.

Siddhartha was his first work that I ever read, and the memory of experiencing that book still rests fresh in my recollection. I was just beginning my second semester of college, and I thought I knew everything. That book helped set me straight. It was one of the catalysts to my decision to study writing. It's short and stylistically straightforward, so I recommend it to any reader looking for a brief and enlightening novel.

Digressions aside, Hesse is lesser-known as a poet. The first English-translated collection of his poems was published in 1970, which posthumously afforded Hesse greater recognition for his precise poetic abilities. Here is one of those poems, translated from German by the American poet James Wright.

"Lying in Grass"

Is this everything now, the quick delusions of flowers,
And the down colors of the bright summer meadow,
The soft blue spread of heaven, the bees' song,
Is this everything only a god's
Groaning dream,
The cry of unconscious powers for deliverance?
The distant line of the mountain,
That beautifully and courageously rests in the blue,
Is this too only a convulsion,
Only the wild strain of fermenting nature,
Only grief, only agony, only meaningless fumbling,
Never resting, never a blessed movement?
No! Leave me alone, you impure dream
Of the world in suffering!
The dance of tiny insects cradles you in an evening radiance,
The bird's cry cradles you,
A breath of wind cools my forehead
With consolation.
Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!
Let it all be pain.
Let it all be suffering, let it be wretched-
But not this one sweet hour in the summer,
And not the fragrance of the red clover,
And not the deep tender pleasure
In my soul.

- "Lying in Grass" / "Im Grase Liegend" by Herman Hesse (1915), translated by James Wright (1970)

Everybody's Stalking

- "Everybody's Stalking," by Badly Drawn Boy, from The Hour of Bewilderbeast (2000)

Rediscovery

Recently, I spent an exciting and thoughtful day with my dear pal Tory. We hadn't seen each other in four or five years, and reconnecting with her felt like rediscovering a hidden treasure.

Tor and I first connected during junior high track practice. I was the new kid at school, but I could already tell that she was someone I wanted to be friends with. Being a shy thirteen-year-old, I couldn't bring myself to talk to her. Passively, I figured that fate would introduce us if our friendship was supposed to be.

And it was. While practicing hurdles one day after school, I completely biffed on the track. The coach told me to go up to the bathroom and wash the gravel out of my legs. I was almost certainly crying, and Tory offered to go with me. I have no idea what we talked about, but we took our sweet time to return to practice. There was lots of laughing. When we finally did go back, I remember walking down the hill together and feeling comfortable, and hopeful that we would become friends.

That was nearly nine years ago. Tor remains one of the most remarkable people I know: she's absolutely irrepressible, and she can make me laugh in absolutely any situation. She seeks out the best aspects of people, and of the world. She has given me countless treasures, of memories, of music, of ideas; and she has taught me much about friendship and perspective. In short, she challenges me to grow as a person, and for her being, I am grateful.

Goodies in the wall at Prospero's Books

Beaming

The air was so humid yesterday

that halfway through my morning

run turned into a morning

swim through Line Creek

This Week's School Lunches.

This piece was taken from McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

This Week's School Lunches.

Monday:
Chicken-crisps (hamburger may be substituted), peas, milk. Dessert: apple or chocolate cookie. I can’t sleep unless I check all the switches. 

Tuesday:
Choice of French-bread pizza or turkey ham sandwich, steamed vegetable mix, chilled peaches, milk. If I bang my head I count 1 plus 1 is 2, 2 plus 2 is 4, 4 plus 4 is 8, 8 plus 8 is 16, and I keep going until I ‘m sure I don’t have brain damage. 

Wednesday:
If everyone had seven fingers it wouldn’t even be weird because everyone would have seven fingers. We would all go around and say, wouldn’t it be weird if we had five fingers. I can see into the future. Choice of steak-um sandwich or Italian-style cold-cut sub with lettuce and tomato, quick-baked potato, fruit shortcake, milk. 

Thursday:
Sometimes when I have to pee I drop a tissue square in the toilet first and then pee on it so no one will hear me, peeing. It really helps to quiet the sound, of the pee, when it goes in the toilet. Steak and cheese sub, carrots, applesauce, milk. Secondary schools add green beans. 

Friday:
When I am older I will carry things around in buckets. All kinds of things. I will have secret areas that I will put them in, and then each day the things in the buckets will be different. I don’t know why I like buckets, but I saw a picture of a lady with wooden shoes on and she was carrying around things in buckets attached to a pole. I asked my dad why, and he said it’s her job. I could do that, easy. Alternate for the week: Chef’s choice.

- by the hilarious Peter Bebergal

Gelaye

I first heard this band while watching the phenomenal A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. Its atmosphere and acting aside, the film has a fitting soundtrack full of gems which were yet-unknown to me. I recommend it if you're into horror movies more complex than scantily-clad teenagers, creative cinematography, or sad vampire stories.

- "Gelaye," by Radio Tehran, from 88 (2010)

Exploring Abandoned Castles

Yesterday, my new pal Celeste showed me the Vine Street Workhouse. This building, which looks like an abandoned limestone castle, was built as a jail in 1897. It's been abandoned since the early '70's, and has since become a relatively benign, high-traffic hangout for graffiti artists, local kids, and curious eyes. While we were there, we ran into a young, high-heeled couple on a date, as well as a suburban mom who learned about the place from her kids. As one might imagine, she wasn't too happy to know her sons were spending time there, but the space itself seemed very lived-in and (dare I say it?) "safe."

When non-locals ask me about Kansas City, these are the vignettes I want to share: the unexpected, the accidental, the strange. Days like yesterday help me uncover the true depth of my attachment to this place, to its streets and its spirit. Though my worldview is still narrow, I have yet to find a place as quietly alive as K.C. The air here carries an electricity I can't describe, one that belongs to both the people who breathe it and the space which contains it.

When I leave, I imagine I'll miss this city quite a bit.

Boxers, fire, vodka, and the Sponge

Morning #2 (More New Writing)

I'm writing indiscriminately these days, at least when I make the time (which, admittedly, isn't often enough). Mostly, I find that the things I make are little unrevised stanzas of sentiment without substance. But maybe these tidbits can be the seeds for better writing later.

Here is the yet-untitled fruit of this afternoon.

Fantino

This morning I went to an enormous booksale with my mom. (If you're interested in going for yourself, here's the website for the Wesport Half-Price Books, which has more info.) It was, quite simply, a giant expo center filled with $2 books. While 25% of those books were Twilight, I still found a few needed nuggets, including White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and a collection of John Ashbery poems.

In the name of early rain, reading, and chugging coffee, I'll leave you with some quiet morning music.

- "Fantino" by Sébastien Tellier, from L'Incroyable Vérité (2001)

Jeans Instability (Some New Writing)

Jeans instability is when a cloud of interstellar dust doesn't have the adequate internal pressure to counteract the inward gravitational pull of its own mass. At this point, the cloud collapses and begins its transformation into a star. The idea that nearly all matter is born from this volatility...I like that, in a foolish, pathetic fallacy sort of way. It makes strange sense.

I wrote a short little poem yesterday. Because I'm beginning to navigate this whole world of publication, and because many magazines won't accept "previously published work," I've decided to keep any new tidbits immediately off of this blog. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, even the smallest personal blogs count as "publication" in the eyes of many publishers.) The poem is here, on Google Drive, for your reading. In the name of tradition and transparency, the line "the shooting stars in your black hair" is not my own: it was lifted from the Elizabeth Bishop poem "The Shampoo."

As always, I'm grateful for suggestions, feedback, and the like, so please feel welcome to reach out with any ideas or responses you might have.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading.

Netsanet

Balance is tough. I'm coming to appreciate that differently, now that I'm out of the structure of school.

My resolution is to blog here more. Even if it means having to use a computer.

- "Netsanet" by Mulatu Astatke, from Yekatit Ethio Jazz (1974)

Down South

I will write more when I'm at a computer, but for now, here is a nugget from our roadtrip: the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Georgetown, D.C.

Virginia is absolutely beautiful, but I think Kentucky still takes the cake for my favorite landscape thus far.

The True-Blue American

Tomorrow, I leave on a roadtrip to Richmond, Virginia. I'm tagging along with two of my favorite found-family members, my friends Cat and Jill. In acknowledgement of this All-American trip, and in response to the repeated and frightening rhetoric of the Republican National Convention, I share a poem by the writer Delmore Schwartz.

"The True-Blue American"

    Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American,
For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must
Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about,
Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy,
Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity
For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and
Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah
Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split
He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it
Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began:
Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European;
Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between;
Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing
         in his breast
                  The infinite and the gold
                  Of the endless frontier, the deathless West.

    “Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed
         By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten,
Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of
         Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon,
Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and
         Shining in the darkness, of the light
On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures,
The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light
Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus,
         Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

- by Delmore Schwartz, from Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems, 1938-1958 (1959)

Mojo Pin

"All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful."

This is a way more articulate sentiment than I could produce right now (or ever), but it speaks to a certain sense of ennui/dread/wonder/distraction which currently occupies my head. These are the final lines of "The Bight" by Elizabeth Bishop, and are also the epitaph on her headstone. I visited it once, but I can't seem to find the photo I took of her grave. All I have is an image of this tree across the road.

November 2015

Anyhow, when I was on my wild Greyhound trip back from visiting my friend Rose in Chicago (hi, Rose!), I listened to this Jeff Buckley album a lot. There was a bunch of night lightning in the western sky over Illinois, and I caught a calm twenty minutes of sleep to this music. Then a fight almost broke out at the bus station and our bus broke down in rural Missouri, but the adventure was worthwhile.

- "Mojo Pin" by Jeff Buckley, from Grace (1994)

On Kindness

My sister and I were talking about this speech yesterday, and I thought it was worth sharing. You can watch the whole thing below, but I've copy-and-pasted a few highlights from the New York Times' transcript in case you're into skimming:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

...kindness, it turns out, is hard — it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, everything. 

...The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love, now.” 

And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE. If you have kids, that will be a huge moment in your process of self-diminishment. You really won’t care what happens to YOU, as long as they benefit.

...So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf — seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Cookies, Cocaine, and Hospitals

I got a phone call on Wednesday morning from a detective who told me I'd been sent a suspicious package. After I asked a few clarifying questions, he told me FedEx had reported it as leaking a "suspicious substance" and that he and two other detectives were driving to my house to deliver it.

Then he asked if he had my permission to open the box, specifying that "if it's anything illegal we have to take it." I consented, and he told me that the suspicious package was a box of rainbow sprinkle cookies sent to me by my thoughtful friends Broti and Katie:

Clearly drugs and explosives, right?

Then, that afternoon, I ended up in the hospital after a panicked nurse at the Minute Clinic told me that my airway was being obstructed by a tonsillar abscess. After a very cold trip to the E.R., the nurses and doctors told me that it was just a rough case of tonsillitis and that I'd probably contract it not infrequently from here on out. They gave me the good drugs for pains and fever and infections and sent me on my way.

That's all I've got for now. There's plenty more to write about—there always is—but to cop a phrase from T.S. Eliot (whose hometown I'm about to visit!), "there will be time, there will be time."

The Dentist and the Crocodile

Here is a poem by Roald Dahl. According to the Poetry Foundation, it's "good for children."

The crocodile, with cunning smile, sat in the dentist’s chair.
He said, “Right here and everywhere my teeth require repair.”
The dentist’s face was turning white. He quivered, quaked and shook.
He muttered, “I suppose I’m going to have to take a look.”
“I want you”, Crocodile declared, “to do the back ones first.
The molars at the very back are easily the worst.”
He opened wide his massive jaws. It was a fearsome sight—
At least three hundred pointed teeth, all sharp and shining white.
The dentist kept himself well clear. He stood two yards away.
He chose the longest probe he had to search out the decay.
“I said to do the back ones first!” the Crocodile called out.
“You’re much too far away, dear sir, to see what you’re about.
To do the back ones properly you’ve got to put your head
Deep down inside my great big mouth,” the grinning Crocky said.
The poor old dentist wrung his hands and, weeping in despair,
He cried, “No no! I see them all extremely well from here!”
Just then, in burst a lady, in her hands a golden chain.
She cried, “Oh Croc, you naughty boy, you’re playing tricks again!”
“Watch out!” the dentist shrieked and started climbing up the wall.
“He’s after me! He’s after you! He’s going to eat us all!”
“Don’t be a twit,” the lady said, and flashed a gorgeous smile.
“He’s harmless. He’s my little pet, my lovely crocodile.”

- by Roald Dahl, from Rhyme Stew (1989)

Cool It Now

My great friend Kate shared this with me last year. In celebration of her birthday, her employment, and her existence, I give you New Edition.

- "Cool It Now" by New Edition, from New Edition (1984)

Back from the Dead (+ some stuff I wrote)

I'm exhausted, but I finally have a computer again, so here's to more posts.

My thesis was released online last week. I'm still revising it, and I think it has a way to go. That said, I feel very grateful that this is online, and excited to see what the future holds.

If you're interested, you can find the collection here.

Now I have to go write cover letters, because I graduated and am yet unemployed. (Did I mention that I graduated? There's a lot of catching up to do. I'm not sure where to begin, so I'll just save all that for another time.)

On a Weekday

At the dead end

For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike

I found this poem a few days ago. If you like it, you can find more about its author, Laura Kasischke, on her website. Hell, if you really like it, you could even send her a note saying as much. I'm beginning to realize it never hurts to let people know when you like the things they make. Regardless, here is a poem she wrote.

"For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike"

I'll tell you up front: She was fine—although
she left in an ambulance because
I called 9-1-1

and what else can you do
when they've come for you
with their sirens and lights
and you're young and polite
except get into their ambulance
and pretend to smile?

"Thanks," she said to me
before they closed her up. (They

even tucked
her bike in there. Not
one bent spoke on either tire.) But I

was shaking and sobbing too hard to say good-bye.

Later, at a party, I imagine her telling her friends, "It

hardly grazed me, but
this lady who saw it went crazy. . ."

I did. I was
molecular, while
even the driver who hit her did
little more than roll his eyes, while

a trucker stuck at the intersection, wolfing
down a swan
sandwich behind the wheel, sighed. Some-

one touched me on the shoulder
and asked, "Are you all right?"

(Over
in ten seconds. She
stood, all
blonde, shook
her wings like a little cough.)

"Are you
okay?" someone else asked me. Uneasily. As if

overhearing my heartbeat
and embarrassed for me
that I was made
of such gushing meat
in the middle of the day on a quiet street.

"They should have put her
in the ambulance, not me."

Laughter.
Shit happens.
To be young.
To shrug it off:

But, ah, sweet
thing, take
pity. One

day you too may be
an accumulation

of regrets, catastrophes.
A clay animation
of Psalm 73. (But 

as for me, my feet. . .) No. It will be
Psalm 45: They

saw it,
and so they marveled; they
were troubled, and hasted away. Today 

you don't remember the way
you called my name, so
desperately, a thousand times, tearing

your hair, and your clothes on the floor, and
the nurse who denied your morphine
so that you had to die that morning
under a single sheet
without me, in
agony, but 

this time I was beside you.
I waited, and I saved you.
I was there.

- Laura Kasischke, from The Infinitesimals (2015)

Campgrounds

Campground Beach; Eastham, MA

Discovery

After living here for four years, I'm glad that I can still find new treasures. I went for a run today in search of this specific bridge—a few friends happened upon it and encouraged me to visit—and on the way back, I found my way into the musty attic of a campus building.

I was fascinated and confused and a bit sneezy and I really wanted to shower after it all.

Memorial Day barbecue

Chat écoutant la musique

You can laugh at me all you want, but I cried the first time I ever saw this video.

If you're interested in learning more about this film or its director, Chris Marker, check out this unofficial archive of and about his work.

- "Chat écoutant la musique" by Chris Marker (1985)

The Wind

I listen to the wind,
to the wind of my soul

Where I'll end up, well, I think
Only God really knows

- "The Wind" by Cat Stevens, from The Teaser and the Firecat (1971)

You May Know Him

I'm plodding along through finals, trying to write about syntax and physical spaces. Focusing on anything right now feels nearly impossible, but if Wellesley has taught me anything, it's that the work always gets done (even if that means getting extensions to finish up while everyone else moves out and celebrates).

I'm not sure how to make sense of everything right now. I feel a lot of grief, and disbelief, and optimism, and guilt on behalf of the optimism. Luckily, I have people to lean on, and that makes the next few months seem surmountable.

I could talk about feelings forever, but it's probably wise that I return to these last essays. This is what I'm focusing on right now:

'The Even comes and the Crow flies low'

The Even comes & the Crow flies low
And the swallow he dips at the spring
The Leveret starts in the corn from the crow
And frights up the Lark to take wing
The Shrew Mice & Crickets they sing
I' the rushes & grass on the baulk
The swallows have gone from the spring
And the Shepherds have gone from their talk
While lovers only take their Evening walk

by John Clare, written between 1837 and 1864

Also, I unexpectedly woke up to this song today.

- "You May Know Him" by Cat Power, from Moon Pix (1998)

I'll Find a Way to Carry It All

- "I'll Find a Way to Carry It All" by Ted Lucas, from Self-Titled (1974)

"And later as you go again"

After a semester filled with death, endings, goodbyes, and loss, I'm trying to accept that mourning and sadness are permissible, especially when physical distance complicates those feelings.

That's a mighty tall order.

I'm also trying to balance an acknowledgement that a lot of other people from various facets of my life are in similar mental spaces right now. I can't solely focus on my own sense of grief, but I am allowed to feel the grief when it pops up like an unexpected intruder at 5:30 a.m.

I don't know what else to say.

- "Ari's Song" by Nico, from The Marble Index (1968)

Baby Ride Easy

- "Baby Ride Easy" by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, from Out Among the Stars (recorded in 1981 and 1984; released in 2014)

Falling and Laughing

Three days of college left.

Remembering to breathe.

- "Falling and Laughing" by Orange Juice, from You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (1982)

Song

Even near the terminus of college, paper-writing never slows down. I'm writing an essay about the relationship between mood and nature in the works of John Clare. Something of a forgotten Romantic, Clare wrote a lot of bucolic scenes using irregular punctuation and grammar. Because he didn't receive a prestigious formal education, his work was brushed off as "pastoral" and "unsophisticated." Recently, his work has been "rediscovered" by scholars, and so we're learning about him alongside Shelley and Keats and Hemans and all the other writers from that period.

I could talk all day, but there is work to be done, so I'll leave this poem right here.

"Song" by John Clare 

A seaboy on the giddy mast
Sees nought but ocean waves
And hears the wild inconstant blast
Where loud the tempest raves 

My life is like the ocean wave
And like the inconstant sea
In every hope appears a grave
And leaves no hope for me 

My life is like the oceans lot
Bright gleams the morning gave
But storms oerwhelmed the sunny spot
Deep in the ocean wave 

My life hath been the ocean storm
A black and troubled sea
When shall I find my life a calm
A port and harbour free

Written in 1843, first published in 1949

"Groceries, Without Incident"

So theses are due tomorrow, and I definitely haven't worked hard enough. But I did read at the Boston College Intercollegiate Poetry Festival last night, which I've told myself counts as work.

After I performed, someone came up to me and told me I had a "silky" reading voice. I don't know why that comment made me feel so good, but it did. Naturally, I rehashed that remark with everyone I've seen today, and am doing so again on this here blog.

Anyhow, before I digress too far, this is one of the poems I read.

"Groceries, Without Incident"

Susanna lives somewhere along the Rock Island District— 

when I don’t see her waiting for the train 

she’s pricing soups at Food-4-Less

I still read her nametag each Tuesday afternoon 

but we have never said more than 

two words to each other 

Last time I went to the supermarket, 

I was shopping for taco ingredients 

too shy to see down past her plastic nametag. 

Susanna, shy too, wouldn’t look me in the eye 

until she handed me my receipt. 

I wondered if she had a someone 

if she too told him “not tonight, I'm tired” 

and what he’d known under her nametag 

I thought she would drink up my soul like Kool-Aid 

(on sale, 39¢/packet).