hanging on the edge of nothing

continuing this series...

day five - your dreams.

i just want to be a writer, okay?

it's not my fault that i have only one talent in life, and that talent decides to come and go as it pleases. it may not even be that great, what do i know? all i know is that the one thing i want to do with my life (write) is the most difficult thing to achieve as a "real" job. i'm not competitive enough for an actual writing job and my grades weren't good enough so an MFA is probably out of the question, even if i decided i wanted to jump back into school again.

and the worst part is, i don't even know what i want to write - poetry? maybe, but the only poetry i can manage to write these days are either a) dripping with treacly nostalgia or b) about doomed love/my past that i've romanticized to sound more glamorous than it actually was! i tried to write short stories but that never worked out. i even tried to start writing a book and well, that just sucked. the only thing that i'm really that good at is writing non-fiction, writing about myself and my life experiences in overly romantic terms. but could i really write a memoir? my life isn't even that exciting!

i'm having a minor life crisis here.

i don't want to sit in an office and write about things i barely care about when there's real truth and beauty in the world waiting to be written about! i don't want to stay inside all day when i'd be happier just sitting in a field writing about a freaking blade of grass! i don't want to force myself to find a job that i know i will never love because i am not a career girl, i'm a writer, probably not the best writer, but a writer nonetheless. and i want to do what i love, is that too much to ask for?

i know so many people here in DC who are all about careers, careers, careers. if you don't have a career path or a five-year-plan or any vision for your future then you are not a feminist, you do not have self-worth, and a whole bunch of other nonsense that, on paper, should apply to me.

i don't care about a career, or a five-year-plan, or losing my freaking independence as a woman if i don't have a job. i am a writer and that means that my primary purpose in life is to feel, and then put those feelings into words. i want to love life, and i want to feel the good and the bad as much as i can, and i want to enjoy friends and enjoy family and i want passion and i want joy and i want anger; i want to "suck the marrow of life," damn it!

i am so frustrated with trying to find a job that i know i won't enjoy, when all i want to do is write and write and write until i have enough to make some sort of compilation and get someone, anyone to read it and get someone, anyone to say it's good enough.

that's it. and yet, it seems so impossible.

i will never forget those books and poems and essays that i've read that have made me laugh out loud, cry, think, write, dance, call my friends and say "you just have to read this book/poem/essay/whatever it is." i will never forget the way other people's words have made me feel, the moment i realize that this is important, that it's speaking to me in ways i never knew were possible.

i just want to give that feeling to someone else. is that too much to ask for?

it's the way we feel that this is real

seriously dudes, i feel like my life undergoes a spring cleaning every year. maybe it's because every time lent rolls around i take a look at myself and think, "hey, you can always be better!" and then i actually go and do something about it... but this fledgling spring in particular has been great because i can actually feel myself getting better, and i feel myself becoming happier.

i always wonder whether i secretly have SAD (seasonal affective disorder, for those non-midwesterners out there), because winter seriously gets me down in the dumps. i cannot tell you how many times i have cried on the phone to my mom, to jeff, about how much i hate DC and the weather and the get-ahead mentality and all that good stuff. and while i still feel similarly about the get-ahead mentality (among other DC work/people-related things), now that the sun is out and it's warmer and the cherry blossoms are in bloom, i find myself walking a little slower, smiling a little more, and realizing that i don't hate it here. maybe it's not what i would have dreamed for myself - i have always wanted something a little more exotic, exciting - but it's all right. and i'm actually happy. and life is good.

the temperature outside is above fifty degrees. the sky is brilliantly blue. i'm wearing a skirt without leggings. i've been going to mass almost every day. i've been eating healthier and i am in much better shape than i've been in a while. my leg hasn't been in pain or swollen for months. i'm about to buy a plastic adirondack chair for balcony. my family is coming to visit. molly's baby shower is this weekend. jeff and i are coming up on two years. summer is just around the corner. spring is a beautiful time that reminds me how much i love life, and that anywhere can be home if i keep the things and people i love close to my heart.

these times are hard and they're making us crazy

this morning was a fight to get up

those words still ringing in my head

never felt like such a fool in front of anyone

i guess that's what you do when you love someone

i was in nashville, you were driving home

i wish I'd been in the passenger seat

i just needed you to know that i'm coming undone

that's what you do when you love someone

if i fall, i'll try a little harder and get back up

please stay by me, love

that's what you do when you love someone

that's what you do when you love someone

just give me time, if you need more

there's no way to ever really know

how to protect yourself or predict the outcome

but you'll do anything when you love someone

you'll do anything when you love someone

if i fall, i'll try a little harder and get back up

please stay by me, love

that's what you do when you love someone

that's what you do when you love someone

i just hung up the phone

you've got a way of changing my day

you proved me wrong

when i was convinced i was alone

yeah, that's what you do when you love someone

if i fall, i'll try a little harder and get back up

please stay by me, love

that's what you do when you love someone

that's what you do when you love someone

-- When You Love Someone, Bethany Dillon

the morning will come

every so often i come across what i like to call a "punch in the gut" poem. in my facebook profile i quote kafka:

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

i think this can apply just as well to poetry, or even more so. i can completely understand the need for a book of fluff, or chick lit, or a mindless read after a book that leaves your mind spinning. and while i have nothing against, say, william carlos williams (i have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox, etc.), i personally feel like when you have so few words, you should use them to say as much as you possibly can. yes, yes, different tastes and all - but if it's possibly to achieve so much with so little, why not do it? or at least try?

the point: today i read a poem that speaks volumes to me. it is called "A Litany for Survival," written by Audre Lord. it's a tad long but the beginning and the end are my favorite parts:

For those of us who live at the shoreline

standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

...

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive

what this poem says to me is that we are not meant to just be survivors. we shouldn't sit and endure, coming away with only what the storm did not weather. when we are silent we are still afraid. so speak! maybe we still won't be heard, or welcomed, but at least we didn't have to wonder what might have been. to me, this poem screams, live! to me, this poem screams, be! we were not meant to merely exist; we were meant to do more than just survive. these thoughts, i think, are one of the many things we can hold on to when remembering not to be afraid.

for my friends

love and maps

i can count the sparse scattered freckles
on my arms like stars, or like dots on a map,
colored pushpins over cities we can connect
with a pencil line or twine. we loop around each
opaquely and solidly placed pin amidst paper earth tones,
orange, blue, yellow, green, red just like
our rough chapped palms grasping at strings,
plus two big cans and some small hearts
who whisper hello, goodbye.

we were strewn about like birdseed
countries, continents wide; seagulls snatched us up
and flew us away over bodies of water,
though none as vast as our ocean eyes, airplane skies;
just catch the wind and we'll sail the sunrise.
but the world turns my head and time zones make it spin
so maybe i'll just write to you instead:
pen scratching, thumbs tapping, keys clacking.
we can build this world on words, our alphabet maps
out this place where all the you’s and me’s still spell out us,
lettered across the clouds, the land, the sea.

don’t let go of the string; i won’t let go of your hands.

you are whatever a moon has always meant

pablo neruda is coming close to tying with e.e. cummings as my favorite poet of all time, because this is one of the most beautiful things i have ever read, especially in spanish (there's just something about reading the original rather than the translation, and i'm lucky to be able read it this way!):

Soneto XVII

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.
Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

(i love when poems hit that place where your head can't quite grasp what it's trying to say, but your heart just gets it.)

the heart not to lose it

there are always moments like these, after talking to my friends, when i miss them and notre dame so much that my heart lurches and i have to catch my breath. sometimes i scowl at the injustice of it all, how the powers that be gave us those four years to love and treasure and then ripped it away without a second thought. it's like london all over again, but a thousand times worse. all i can do is think about how even though we weren't perfect, or even happy with each other all the time, we stuck together through it all. we were a unit, each of us parts of a whole. on nights like these i yearn for nights we took for granted: sweaty, singing, laughing, dancing; conversations in the dark when we were supposed to be sleeping; not caring when the clock ticked to 3am, then 4, even 5.

in moments like these, at my most selfish, i wish i could have any of those nights back, relive their ordinary glory now that i know how much it actually meant in the long run. at my most selfish, i feel like i'm turning into those people i can't stand, who pine over the past until it's long overdue. but at my most selfish, i can't help but feel justified, because damn we had it good enough to care so much that it's over now.

i love and miss my besties so much.