I am watching as 80 year old husbands...

Insist that their wives get up and dance with them. The banjo is sweet. The atmosphere is vibrating with it. Even the voices whip through the air in some special way.

I am not the greatest fan of country music, but sitting in this little cafe in this small town, makes me want it. I want banjo. I even want the nasal voices.

This kind of sound makes me feel like I'm growing out into the deeper world. Into some kind of home that's bigger than houses, or families. I feel connected, though I'm the wallflower. The only interaction I really have here is smiling back at all the old ladies.

I don't understand how the elderly take so much joy in the youth around them. I feel like I could be wearing chains all over my body, black makeup in great circles around my eyes, and they'd treat me well. They'd be happy to see me.

I wonder if the reason they're so nice is that they realize how crazy this time feels. At least for me. I feel so unnatural. So abnormal. So psychotic. So in-between. I feel caught in this bind where I have so much to think about and plan and work on, which exhausts me, but I can't give up, because I'm terrified of what will happen.

In a way, I hate this time. I don't want to. I want to stop. I want to go slow. I want to steep in it. I want to absorb all the good spots...the tangled garden of it. But, there is terror in possible homelessness, and joblessness, and savingslessness, and lovelessness, and all of that, and so my mind keeps running, my body keeps moving, and I am lost to what I could find here in this time.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm losing something big lately. My chance at things. Will there be other chances? Other loves? Other cities? Other explorations? Other moments?

I want it all, now. I want to have discovered it. I want safety. OH GOD, I want safety. Security. A solid ground to stand on. I want love. I want sharing. I want time to myself, I want waiting time, growing time, but what if that's all I end up with? Years and years of waiting time, and nothing I've waited for.

Here I am, in the midst of this. Headache coming on. Mocha in front of me. Music around. Banjo still going on, hanging all of it's notes up in the air. It is Spring Break, I am reminded suddenly. I have just started Spring Break. Sloooow down. Here it is, the moment. The soft, country, calm, familial moment. Take it. Take it. Steep.

Here it is.

In the Spirit

of trying not to be so negative, especially since I still haven't heard from graduate schools and am pretty sure my rejection letters have just been sealed and dropped in the mail, I'm going to try and read a poems daily (just open up books and read whatever page I've opened to), and appreciate each of them. I want to savor them. I want them to sit deep in my chest. I'm so used to reading a poem, and either analyzing it to no end or using it's goodness to degrade my own writing. I often read my favorite poets' pieces with this feeling of, Oh how could I ever live up to that. What I forget is that those pieces are their art. Not mine. I have my own voice in this body. And it has its own plans. And they are good plans. And above anyone else, I must love those plans and that voice. Soooo...I'm going to stop for a while and just love other poets voices. I'm not going to interact with them. I'm going to sit in awe and appreciate.

Here's my first one.

I found this poem in the Winter 2008 edition of The Florida Review, last night, during my Contemporary English Lit. class. It's by Tony Hoagland.


Elegy

It's easy to write an elegy.
All you have to be is sad.
It's more difficult to drive a car, or open a can of soup
than write an elegy.
It's easier than keeping the ones you love alive

or trying to tell them how crazy they make you
with their stupid, self-destructive ways,
and their refusal to change.

To love people feels often like a battle,
but to write an elegy is easy.
An elegy comes after the battle is over

and the soldiers are sitting around on the ground,
their faces dirty and relaxed,
telling stories and taping up their wounds.

To live is to pay the rent,
to have dishes dirty in the sink,
to start a fight with the one you love
in the car on the way to the store.

To write an elegy is to move out
and leave only the elegy behind,
like a sponge or a mop, or a roll of towels

or a bowl of fresh wter
you place on the cleaned-up floor
after your precious dog has gone.



I felt this poem in my throat and behind my eyes. Even in class, a roomful of people, I almost cried. This is a big poem. So encompassing. It is hard--blue--dark--but also comforting. It doesn't make me feel foolish for having written an awful elegy about my father. I am inspired. I feel closer to the truth of life--of moving out and the fact that I am still in.

Waiting. Uck.

Can I just say that I am so scared out of my mind. I should hear any minute now from the graduate schools I applied to, and I'm pretty positive I didn't get in. I mean, there's NO WAY I got in to these schools. I'm just waiting for four rejection letters to come my way. And it's awful waiting for that. It's so depressing, considering I don't know how I'm going to provide for myself when this semester ends.

I hate this.

So, if you would...please send up any prayers, or spiritual pleas on my behalf. I would really appreciate it.

Back to waiting.

Fit of Glee

Sun is just as bright through my eyelids.
Mid-February and it is sixty degrees.

I dragged my rocker out on the deck--
1 cigarette down. Some coffee. A fit of glee
rising in my chest. Books. My journal. Wind.
Sun. Bare feet. Warmth. Maybe I will paint
my toenails.

I am skipping class for this. What a good choice.
I can hear cars buzzing by beyond the trees. I see
the shadows of my hair curling against the siding of my house.

It is warm. There is no bad taste in my mouth--
Not even the fact that the temperatures will drop,
and the snow will fall, and my car's engine will sputter
for seconds before it starts, if it starts.

But, this is a promise. This day--this unusual day is a
promise that it ends, that it will be warmer, and there will be
bare feet, there will be porch afternoons and porch nights.

It is a promise that this is not the end of my life.
Just like this last semester is not the ned of my life.
There will be a home for me somewhere. Food,
most days. Jobs, somewhere.

There will be love. There will be sharing. There will be
rooted, real people. The ones I know now won't all
disappear. Some. Not all. I will not disconnect. I will
be here. I will be somewhere.

I will have time in my life after this to sit outside. To look
up. To take off my shoes. To find blue sky and to rest a while.

I want power tools.

Like this one:

So I can build a cool headboard for my bed like this:

Yup. I know, with the help of power tools, and home decorating magazines, my life would be complete.