thanksgiving poems

thanks
     by w.s. merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is



from a window
     by christian wiman

Incurable and unbelieving
In any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree
Rise kaleidoscopically

As if the leaves had livelier ghosts.
I pressed my face as close

To the pane as I could get
To watch that fitful, fluent spirit

That seemed a single being undefined
Or countless beings of one mind

Haul its strange cohesion
Beyond the limits of my vision

Over the house heavenwards.
Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood
Exactly as it had and would

(But why should it seem fuller now?)
And though a man’s mind might endow

Even a tree with some excess
Of life to which a man seems witness,

That life is not the life of men.
And that is where the joy came in.

a sort of fall-cleaning

I spent an hour today organizing the bookmarks folder on my laptop. A smattering of what I re-discovered:

on fitzgerald
a beautiful blog
raymond carver
on missions
a feminist analysis of rand paul
exposing sexism
gluten-free chocolate cake
syrian civil war reaches maaloula
congress is actually getting dumber
why we should support basic science research
on arguing
the case against high school sports
kim jong-il's sushi chef
a nuanced view of GM food
on systemic evil
on mountain top removal
on racism
why I love wendell berry
DFW breaks my heart
I had this guy as a professor
NSA pickup lines
how to create a letter postage scale
llama font
how a sewing machine works
the frog that didn't quite make it into space


The Housemate & I were talking recently about missing our Friday Night Dinner conversations from the past two years. That dinner group lead to so many interesting thoughts and conversations. But I said something about how my internal life has still been feeling really interesting to me, recently...I think it is possible to cultivate interesting thoughts just by being curious in all kinds of things. Like, for instance, the above links.

reading back through my blog is fun

I've been going back through my blog to add tags to my posts and I came across this, which was just sort of sitting there as a draft. I don't know why I never published it.

Mennonite Writer's Conference: draft 3/31/12 

This weekend I was able to attend 'Mennonite/s Writing VI: Solos and Harmonies,' a writing conference hosted at EMU. It was an amazing experience. 

Throughout the weekend there were all sorts of presentations, panel discussions, poetry readings, singings, and book signings. I have a ton of new and exciting thoughts in my head... 

One of the most interesting things for me was attending the banquet this evening. Not very many EMU students were in attendance (the table I was sitting at held most of us); the rest of the people at the banquet were professors from Bluffton, Bethel, Goshen, Conrad Grebel; retired professors; people associated with Mennonite Media; editors of things like The Mennonite; authors of poetry, novels and nonfiction. 

I have to admit that I didn't know all that many of the writers that were present this weekend, the exceptions being Rudy Wiebe, Jeff Gundy, and Julia Spicher Kasdorf. I learned quickly, though: about writers of my grandparents' generation, and my parents' generation, and the atmosphere of things now in the world of Mennonite publishing - the way things will be for my generation. 

At the banquet, 4 writers were honored, two men and two women, interspersed with discussion about Rudy Wiebe's first novel, Peace Will Destroy Many. It was absolutely fascinating for me to hear and think about the community that these authors lived in; the things they have spent their lives pushing back against. 

All of the authors honored were older Mennonites, and every single piece of writing talked about was published after Wiebe's Peace Will Destroy Many - which is a novel that created quite the controversy, if you aren't aware. His novel is about a Canadian Mennonite community and their struggle in how to think about conscientious objection to war as well as moral issues and communication within their church. The book changed a lot of things for Mennonite writers; here is a great resource by Wiebe about the reaction of the Mennonite church to his novel.

Actually, I think the reason I didn't publish it to my blog was that I wanted to write something more, about how the weekend felt rather than what I learned. It felt beautiful and hopeful to me, so many artists gathered from this faith tradition that I belong to, this faith tradition that has such a tenuous and anxious relationship to art. And the women - ah, I wish I had tried to finish writing this last year, because now I don't remember it as clearly as I'd like to. But the best thing, maybe, was this one older women - in her eighties, maybe? - who was recognized at the banquet. I believe she might have been the first Mennonite woman to have a book of fiction published? Maybe not, but anyway, she was given a microphone and rambled on and on about people she remembered, about what church was like for her as a child, about growing up and gaining a voice.

And also all the connections shimmering just under the surface of things; that was maybe the other best thing. Like my great-uncle's brother introducing Omar Eby, and like eavesdropping on Jeff Gundy, who somehow has a connection to a different great-uncle, and like hearing all the things about Rudy Wiebe, who I first heard about from my uncle who is the pastor of a church in Lancaster (where I first met Julia Kasdorf.)

And, you know, that sort of paragraph, right there? Is one of my favorite things about Mennonites.

i'm not exactly sure why,

but this story keeps going through my head and making me grin, so I thought I'd share it.

When I was in Hburg for the pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving, we played a game of fishbowl. In the 'taboo' round, where you have to get people to guess the word by describing it, whoever's turn it was said, "That thing Emily is afraid of."

And instantaneously, there were three things shouted out:

"Crumbs!"

"Spiders!"

"Car crashes!"

My friends know me so well. :)



In other news, I am:

learning fingerpicking
teaching myself the tab for 'Frail' by jars of clay
reading a lot of poetry
making tiny bits of progress at work
(interspersed with repair work at work - I'm getting quite handy with a screwdriver)

there was an owl on my porch this morning,

perching on the handrail to the deck. Its face was turned away, and after a moment it turned to look at me with wide dark eyes, then lifted its wings and flew away.

It's going to be a good day.

this explains my life so well

I live in a super zip, and it means my life is so, so strange, and you should read this article.

some interesting quotes:


“It’s a megalopolis of eggheads,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.


Life surrounded by affluence can also breed worries that might seem absurd to people who do not live in Super Zips — such as whether to hire a professional tennis coach to help a child make the school team, or get an iPhone for a child in elementary school.


When Kulp travels outside the region, he says he realizes that people he meets don’t talk much about things such as foreign policy and countering nuclear terrorism, as he does at home with other people with advanced degrees. Instead, he said, “people elsewhere talk more about what they see every day.”

“They mention ‘those people in Washington,’ ” he said, echoing a common feeling that the words are perjoratively pinned on everyone who lives in the region, not just its politicians and bureaucrats.

it never ceases to amaze me

how much better I feel about life after I clean up my living space.

dishes. two loads of laundry. cleaned the bathroom. swept the floor. (the amount of hair that I shed each week never ceases to repulse me). clean sheets, folded the laundry. made real food for supper.

now it's writing time, I think! hooray. 

and maybe time to listen to the third period of the Blackhawks game online. which, here's my thought process for which NHL team I should be a fan of: I'm from southeastern pennsylvania, but let's be real, no one likes philly. my dad is on record as saying, "can't we just give Philly to New Jersey?" (which did make me think of Infinite Jest, yes, and the near-future dystopian US government forcibly handing over part of New England to Canada. but I digress). aaanyway. Philly teams generally are terrible and/or heart-breaky [although I admit, I've been stockholmed into caring about the Eagles - it's nearly impossible to escape WSMC unscathed in that regard, haha] and the Flyers seem to be no exception. I started watching hockey games during the playoffs last year when the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, and they have this guy, not to mention the best PR people ever. (Yes, I clearly have too much time on my hands right now). So I think I'm just going to call myself a Blackhawks fan, and continue to amuse and befuddle my friends who still can't figure out why I care about hockey at all.

***

Some pictures from my walk in the McCrillis gardens today:

i need a more catchy phrase for 'petty grievances'

since graduation in April, classmates of mine have dealt with:

moving to a different continent and eating cow lung (as a vegetarian)

beginning work as a first-year teacher and having their house egged by a student

beginning work as a first-year teacher and having (high school) students who can barely read

not being able to find work

having manipulative bosses

long-distance relationships

my complaint today sounds really dumb in comparison, but here goes:

I'm kinda sad about how I can't complain about work to anyone but The Housemate. Not because I don't have great family & friends who listen to me talk about anything (even when I'm whining), but because no one will understand what I'm saying. 

Fluid dynamics is screwing up my life, you guys. AHHHH. I just about had a meltdown today at 4:00 pm when I realized the stupid suction tube on my setup was positioned wrong and was destroying my gigaohm seals. I was like, "Argh! That explains everything about this day and why nothing is working!!!" 

The Housemate happened to walk into my little closet right then and she looked at the computer screen and said, "Um, what's going on there?!" 

And I said, "I just figured out something terrible. The suction tube is sucking my cells off the pipette!"

And she said, "You didn't notice?"

On the one hand: yay, you know why I'm upset! On the other: Nope. That's why I feel dumb.

Then I realized that even if I wanted to, I couldn't call anyone and complain to them because the whole exchange would be utterly incomprehensible. 

Basically, my life is ruled by the flow of saltwater, which is surprisingly tricky to control. Between the RSC and the suction tube...woe is me. :/


On the bright side, a little retail therapy:

Buying boots felt a little like an entrance into adulthood. (Read: a paying job. Hah.)

bus stop with a view

i'm feeling witty

and hopeful. got an email today about an NIH book club from a post-bac in the NIMH. I responded! maybe I will make a friend! haha.

why witty, you ask? well, the email was funny [Are you a closeted reader? Do you cringe when people ask you what you did Saturday night because you realize you huddled in a blue polyester beanbag in the corner of your apartment next to the only good reading lamp and pored over Aurelius's Meditations (or some similarly nerdy book) and have to explain this fact in a way that doesn't seem pathetic (WHICH IT ISN'T!)?] and said something about a character from Infinite Jest, and when I replied, I changed the subject line to 'you had me at Hal Incandenza.'

what can I say. it's the little things. 

'and say my glory was I had such friends.'