little things

(here)

a little skip for your step

There are a few things I've been wanting to start for a while. I'd like to memorize a poem a day. Well, at least a stanza a day. I came across this article while hopping around poetry blogs, and it resonated with me. There's something so enchanting about the repetition, recitation, and rhythm involved. The poems become yours to shuffle through in your head - roll around your tongue, swish between your cheeks. A channel to the poet across time, space, distance. Like reading aloud, intimacy abounds.

I'd also really like to learn to identify birds, flowers, and trees (all plants for that matter, I suppose). Maybe it's the same sort of inclination. A desire to hold those names and images, delicate scents and feel, in my head, internalized, make them mine without having them physically in my hands.

For the past I don't know how many years, I've had an increasing problem with spoken and written language. Sophomore year of college I learned the vocabulary of semiotics, and reading and discussing Saussure and Irigaray, among others, helped me vocalize that plaguing intangible distrust for the confines of language.

While I'm consistently preoccupied with language's inefficacy and frustrated that natural feelings, meaning, and interaction are trapped by arbitrary words, I can't help but love these classification systems.

I can't explain it, but there's something inexplicably romantic to me about these names. Maybe it's uniting the natural world in my daily discourse. Integrating language, man-made and enforced, with the mysterious and beautiful. Maybe words can't rationalize it.

(here)

somewhere in the black mining hills of dakota

When we drove home from college last May, Amy, AJ, and I decided to take the northern route from St. Louis to Los Angeles. Up through Wisconsin --> Minnesota --> South Dakota --> Wyoming --> Colorado --> Nevada --> California. The geography was stunning. The US has such a diverse wealth of landscapes. Rolling green hills then flat cow-speckled prairies, drastic terra cotta rocks piercing endless cloud spotted skies, people concentrated only in the few and far between cities and towns.

As we were driving through South Dakota, I saw a sign for the Laura Ingalls Wilder house. The trip to her house, something like 90 miles out of the way, was vetoed.... and I've yet to let that grudge go. Not only did her books captivate my childhood, but they defined my girlish confidence and strengthened my sense of self. And I know I'm far from alone.

(here)

I love the shared experience that books provide. An infinite number of people can read the exact same words and have myriad experiences, interpretations, ideas. A single written thought shoots sparks in every direction, incessantly spurring domino reactions (always diverging and intersecting) of discourse, contemplation, understanding, confusion, who knows what else and to what degree.

That's sort of magic to me.

"I think if you buff history you get violence." - Lee Quiñones

(here)

from Jamie

Ways of Talking

by Ha Jin

We used to like talking about grief

Our journals and letters were packed

with losses, complaints, and sorrows.

Even if there was no grief

we wouldn't stop lamenting

as though longing for the charm

of a distressed face.

Then we couldn't help expressing grief

So many things descended without warning:

labor wasted, loves lost, houses gone,

marriages broken, friends estranged,

ambitions worn away by immediate needs.

Words lined up in our throats

for a good whining.

Grief seemed like an endless river--

the only immortal flow of life.

After losing a land and then giving up a tongue,

we stopped talking of grief

Smiles began to brighten our faces.

We laugh a lot, at our own mess.

Things become beautiful,

even hailstones in the strawberry fields.

the key to this girl's heart

Peonies

By Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready

to break my heart

as the sun rises,

as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---

pools of lace,

white and pink ---

and all the day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes

into the curls,

craving the sweet sap,

taking it away

to their dark, underground cities ---

and all day

under the shifty wind,

as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,

and tip their fragrance to the air,

and rise,

their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness

gladly and lightly,

and there it is again ---

beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.

Do you love this world?

Do you cherish your humble and silky life?

Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,

and softly,

and exclaiming of their dearness,

fill your arms with the white and pink flowers

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,

their eagerness

to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are

nothing, forever?

(here)

Longing on a large scale is what makes history.
- Don DeLillo

reading aloud is under-appreciated

I'd like to have a book club. Headquartered here:

Or here:

We don't have to dissect or analyze all that much. Mostly take turns reading aloud. People from anywhere or anywhen with anythought will be welcomed and embraced.

(here)

here comes the sun

Rain in LA is lovely.

And always long overdue.

All of our colors are saturated. The sharp blue sky flirts with the dancing greens of the happily quenched leaves, thirsty for so long. Smog, dust blown to bay for a brief respite. The coast is clear for miles.

The sleepy grey green mountains born anew. Flowers awaken, remember how to bloom.

I used to be frustrated in the winter when I lived in St. Louis and miles away my mom or brothers would exalt at any sign of rainfall. "You should be grateful for the sunshine! I'm dying in the cold." I guess I had forgotten the beauty that unfolds in response to each infrequent shower.

(here)

endorphins are real?

For Christmas a couple of years ago my mom tried to make a holiday card by cutting and pasting pictures of her, my brothers, and I into one. While her creative intentions/ideas are usually pretty good, her follow through isn't always there. This time was no different. In the final Frankenstein photo, there were cute little floating heads of her, AJ, and Mike, but the picture she chose for me, who knows her logic, was one taken right after a run. Sweaty, sports bra, frizzed out hair. Honestly, I don't exercise that often, that may be the only existent photo of me after "working out" since I played sports in high school. It's almost as if she had to work to find it. "What? I think you look cute!" Ugh.

Where am I going with this?

This was a pretty rough weekend. I'm not one to talk that much about things that upset me. I sort of dissect and internalize them. I realize that's not the healthiest method and am trying my best to open up to and lean on my friends. That being said, I'm not going to loose my cool at work. Still, its hard to prevent emotional stress from affecting day-to-day behavior. The end of last week, beginning of this one, I was sort of short at work. Did what I needed but invested no more energy than that.

Then, finally, Tuesday morning I went for a long walk along the beach. On the phone Jamie reminded me that, while it's easy to use upsetting events as excuses to vegg out, be lazy, sort of shun taking physical care of yourself, exercise can be a catalyst in pulling you out of a slump.

Shooooot, girl was right. Just going for a quick run these last couple of mornings has given me so much more energy and enthusiasm than I expected. Yeah, none of this is mind blowing, but it's sort of nice to remember. Physical health is so obviously tied to mental health, yet it's pretty easy to forget.