13 years later

Thirteen Years Later

Theology pushes us towards silence,

Peter said,

or wrote, rather, at some point during his years in

Baghdad. This would have been some time before

the year he played a recording of the adhan in class,

the year he stood -- or sat, more likely -- at the front

of the classroom and said he thought Arabic would be

a beautiful language to do theology in. I didn’t know

enough, then, to wonder at the way language fails.

I didn’t think about how maybe he was out of

words. I was eighteen years old, that first year

he was my teacher.

Ahlan wa-sahlan,

Louis coached us, bouncing up on the balls of his feet,

smiling at a semester’s worth of garbled consonants

tripping up against the dreaded ayin. It should be

the most beautiful letter, he told us, made us repeat words

after him again and again until the sounds had

lost all meaning.

It was two years after I came home,

two years after I walked the streets of Damascus

every day for a month, two years after I climbed the stairs

to the monastery an hour outside the city limits

before I learned that Father Paolo had disappeared.

Presumed dead, the report stated quietly, executed

by Syrian rebels.

You are writing the same poem

again and again, my poetry professor told me that spring.

I was ten years old when the towers fell. The neighbor kids

all gathered in my backyard, like usual, except this time we knelt

in a circle and James led us in the Lord’s prayer.

… as we forgive those who trespass against us …

No, I don’t understand any of it: twenty-three and still a child.

Who were the men who hijacked the planes, I wonder.

What were they like, as children?

There is no room here for naïveté.

I have seen the photographs of people jumping from the windows,

twenty floors above the ground, and yet --

Dialogue is an exercise in beauty,

Father Paolo said. His whole face changed when he smiled;

his eyes disappeared into slits before the force of his joy, crow’s feet

turning into deep creases. I want to believe he might be right;

even then,

even now.

what I think about during my day

today at work i had the skeleton of a story visit me. magical realism + the ghost of anna akhmatova + teenage sisters who think they know everything.


... if only i had, like, four more hours in my day ... i would totally write it. 

day 12: I Still Have Everything You Gave Me, by Naomi Shihab Nye

This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye is from an Anthology called The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women.

I actually gave this anthology away when I graduated from EMU, but I decided I would read this poem instead of one from a book of poems by Chris Martin that I bought at Gift & Thrift, because his poems don't really work at all for being read aloud. They are like the extreme version of what Stanley Kunitz was saying about poets writing for the page and not the ear. 

"I Still Have Everything You Gave Me" is pretty much the anthem for all unrequited loves. I remember reading it with friends at EMU and at various points we would all just sort of groan dramatically. 

"I do not ache," the poet says. "I would not trade."

"Yeah right," we all responded, flopping our angst-ridden bodies over our beds, or couches, or whatever horizontal surface was available at the time.

**

In other news, I had a dear friend visit me today from Lancaster. We met at Camp Hebron, although we weren't super close during the two summers we worked together. We laugh sometimes about how we didn't realize we were kindred spirits until after we had moved out of geographical proximity to each other; it's okay, though, we've conversed quite well via letter.

I made cinnamon rolls this morning. (The Housemate would be so impressed with me if she were here). I didn't have powdered sugar to make a glaze, so I just made a clear glaze with granulated sugar & water, which worked okay although it was less pretty than a white glaze would have been.

Then we traveled downtown to see the cherry blossoms. So beautiful. Also, so crowded. :)

My letter-writing kindred spirit & I have many things in common - for example, a love of poetry & beauty, an ability to enter conversations on Christian spirituality through these loves, and a recent and profound fascination with the poet Christian Wiman.

I'd like to note here that I was totally vindicated on my labeling of Charles Bukowski as The Hipster Poet. She mentioned Bukowski today and sort of nonchalantly said something about how she wanted to read him more, but he was the current hipster poet on Tumblr so she was putting it off for a while. "What?" I said, disbelieving my ears (she told me earlier that she hadn't read my blog all last week because of all the craziness that comes with end-of-semester happenings in your last semester of college). "You said that without reading what I wrote, right?"

"Yeah," she said, looking at me quizzically.

I laughed, and held out a hand for a high-five.

We had so many interesting conversations during the day, often circling around how we are currently interacting with Jesus and writing and life, and touching at some point this evening on the poet Osip Mandelstam, whose work Wiman has translated from Russian. This Mandelstam poem seems appropriate to share on this day of cherry blossoms:

 And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,

    Myself I stood in the storm of the bird-cherry tree.

    It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self-shattering power,

    And it was all aimed at me.

    What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?

    What is being? What is truth?

    Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,

    All hover and hammer,

    Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.

    It is now. It is not.  

We also visited the Smithsonian Museum of African Art. I was enthralled with this little carved crucifix.

All in all, a pretty lovely Saturday.

Day 1: Conversation With The Soul, by Robert Bly

I begin National Poetry Month by saying that my laptop has terrible recording quality, due to the fact that the microphone picks up the sound of the internal fan. But! An external microphone is en route to my apartment as I type this, so hopefully by day three or four the recording quality will be better.

I'm beginning with a poem by Robert Bly, mostly because in my practice runs over the past few days this one turned out the best. By rights I should probably start with something by Wendell Berry, who is the first poet I took seriously as an artist, I think; I cut a poem of his out of a handout in eighth grade and taped it above my bed, for example, and nine years later I am more familiar with his body of work as a whole than I am with any other poet, but. "Conversations With the Soul" isn't such a terrible choice - it gets at how I feel about poems, anyway.

"This field is getting too small," she said.
"Don't you know anyone else
To fall in love with?"

It reminds me of Ray Bradbury talking about writing: "I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories ... Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."


Talking about poetry from middle school has sent me down a whole rabbit trail of memories - I wrote a letter to Wendell Berry a few weeks ago (to which I received a response!!) in which I said that his poem "Woods" was the first poem I consciously memorized, but that actually isn't true. The first poem I remember memorizing is "Just Me" by Margaret Hillert - a children's poem I memorized in third grade, which I remembered well enough to just find online. And I also clearly remember the poem I Have to Write by April Halprin Wayland, which was from my 7th grade English class.

...My poetry prof & mentor from EMU asked me what I will memorize this April; the problem is that nearly all the poems I love I have at least partially in my head, and so picking them doesn't feel like a challenge, but I don't want to just randomly pick something I don't love.

Ummmm. It would probably be the depressing sort of irony to memorize a poem called "The Failure of Language" during National Poetry Month, right? Maybe the blackberry poem by Seamus Heaney, instead. Or "Touch Me" by Stanley Kunitz.


This weekend some out-of-town friends visited me & the Housemate and the five of us went downtown on Saturday to catch the afternoon readings from the Split this Rock poetry festival. "Poems of Provocation and Witness" was the tagline, and the readings were held in the National Geographic Grosvenor Auditorium - which is currently displaying images and quotes from the tv series Cosmos, and it was like all my favorite things in the world smushed together at once. I felt shivery with excitement while we were waiting, and was not disappointed.

Eating dinner at the apartment afterwards, my friends were asking me things about poetry and my thoughts about Split This Rock, and I talked for a bit about spoken word poetry (which is what was happening that Saturday). It can be lazy sometimes, I told them. Because you can draw people in by how passionate your voice sounds, by how loud you can yell, and the language will suffer. I care too much about the language to enjoy it very much when the poet gets lazy, even if their message is good. This is why I find myself occasionally annoyed by Sarah Kay. (I talked about this with Ken J at EMU once, about social justice hymns and the ways they can lack the beauty of a less pointed lyric.)

Anyway.

These poets weren't lazy; they were brilliant. There was one poet there (Myra Sklarew) who was both biologist and poet, which was awesome. But my favorite was Gayle Danley, who kept her audience on pins and needles, working us like a magician - laughing one moment, silent the next. In her poem "Just like you," which I linked to, she finishes by saying that she "hopes that boy will finish his sentence," meaning both a line of words and a prison term, and the double meaning reverberated in my head for a long time.


Robert Bly can be lazy sometimes, too, I think, undercutting his ideas with words that are very hard to picture. Words like "soul," for that matter. But "Conversations With the Soul" has enough solidity to it that I forgive him for that.

and so, with little enough fanfare,

i become twenty three. 

a nice day; The Housemate fed me today (hooray birthday pancakes) and i went to an interesting lecture hosted by the Washington Theological Consortium in the evening. listened to a pretty interesting discussion including quotes from Karl Barth ("i am so uncomfortable with him," said the Catholic professor, to a roomfull of laughter), a bit of Koranic exegesis, and thoughts about whether or not our religious traditions give us an advantage with God. met some M.A. and PhD students from Catholic University and imagined other courses my life might have taken. or, i suppose: might take, still. every once in a while i think about the way Michael King looked at me, that last month at EMU, the way he said you should think about seminary. we'd love to have you back here.

--

The Housemate took me to City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco when we were there last week, and they have a whole room of poetry books. i got lost there a bit, trailing my fingers over the spines, not able to decide where to start. i managed to escape with only one book in my hands, which was lucky enough for my wallet, i suppose, although i can name a few titles i'm still coveting a week later. The Meridian by Paul Celan is one that comes quickly to mind.

the book i walked out with is Morning Poems by Robert Bly. the poem from that collection that i am currently sitting with (maybe a birthday poem; a new tradition):

He Wanted To Live His Life Over 

What? You want to live your life over again?
"Well, I suppose, yes...That time in Grand Rapids.
My life - as I lived it - was a series of shynesses."  

Being bolder - what good would that do?
"I'd open my door again. I've felt abashed,
You see. Now I'd go out and say, 'All right,

I'll go with you to Alaska.' Just opening the door
From inside would have altered me - a little.
I'm too shy..." And so, a bolder life  

Is what you want? "We could begin now.
Just walk with me - down to the river.
I'll pretend this boat is my life ... I'll climb in."

i am thinking now of Christian Wiman saying that a poem ought to help you comprehend more of reality. this Robert Bly poem makes me feel like i can see my own bolder life, a path of choices stretching out in front of me that i might just manage to take...

if it wasn't so dratted cold outside i'd type out Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day," but it just seems cruel to be thinking about warm things after walking five blocks from the metro stop to the theology building.

"tell me," though, even on this cold day, "what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?"

why I write (an exercise in attention)

IV ii

in the middle of traffic at Church and Gerrard I notice someone, 

two women, for a moment unfamiliar, not crouched with me

in a hallway, for this moment unfamiliar, not cringing at the

grit of bombers, the whine of our breath in collapsing chests, in

the middle of traffic right there for a moment unfamiliar and

familiar, the light changing and as usual in the middle of almost

dying, yelling phone numbers and parting, feeling now, as the

light beckons, all the delicateness of pedestrians. I wish that I

was forgetful. All that day the streets felt painful and the

subways tender as eggshells.

-Dionne Brand

---

in the middle of traffic at Greentree and Old Georgetown I notice the 

two black women waiting for the crosswalk to start counting down,

20, 19, 18... I step confidently past them, I walk across the six lanes, 

the light is green; I have the right of way, the light is green and I step into 

traffic; I step out on to the dark macadam and the car turning right

honks, the driver leaning into the sound, and I keep walking. The solid thunk

of my books keeps thunking across the six lanes and the light is green.

I'm not who I was. I hold my head up. I stare into middle distance. My boots

thunk on the solid road.

all the delicateness of pedestrians. the last time a driver honked at me while

I had the right of way was while crossing a four-lane (five lane?) (six lane?)

road in Damascus. I do not wish that I was forgetful. 

And yet: all that day the streets felt painful and the subways tender as eggshells.

---

"And my personality is such that I'm more likely to just sit and try to figure it out. But I'm getting better at using M___ as a resource, I think."

He looks at me closely. Nods. "Constitutionally, I'm like that. Maybe it's a Mennonite thing. Take care of yourself, be self-sufficient. You know."

I can feel the corner of my mouth tipping up. Yes. I know.

"But you're still having fun," he asks, before sending me on my way to catch the bus. "You're still feeling like you're growing? Because that's high on my priority list."

I pace in the elevator, too alive to keep still.

---

I close Dionne's book, holding my place with my index finger, think of what else I've read on this bus route. Fahrenheit 451 is the first thing that comes to mind.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. 

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

The man next to me gets off at Rolston Road. I think of Jacqueline Berger's poem The Failure of Language, think "there are no right words," ask myself "...or does it only deepen what we know of loss?" 

I get off the bus at my stop. Marywood Road. I start trudging up the hill. It is dark; I think of the little red cabin in Pennsylvania that my grandparents took us to when I was small. I think of the streetlights on South Fulton Street. I think of walking late at night on the roads west of EMU.

I think, as I walk, of Jacqueline Berger writing about her friend's kitchen; I don't have the whole poem memorized but I know the line about the glass, the etched walls, "and add it to a box marked Kitchen."

That line is the whole poem, I told Thia once. The weight of it, the amber against the glass, all of it wrapped in words (newspaper) and reduced to a brown, nondescript box... the poem was trying to rescue rescue her friend from her radiant perishing, was trying to see and love what was vanishing, and the language was important. The language was so important, was the thing that could keep a life from disappearing into a small brown box.

---

I estimate that since January 1 of this year, I have written very nearly 100,000 words. They have taken the form of academic essay, poetry, blogging, journal entries, and attempts at fiction.

Oh, and letters. Maybe - maybe add a few thousand more words to that tally.

---

I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense.

-Ray Bradbury

---

Last week I was looking through an old journal in search of something and stumbled across this instead: 

...and also him telling me that he had heard i can 'read a book and know it.' 

They make good companions, books do. They are worth carrying around in your head, worth the mental space.

---

It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios, and televisors, but are not. No,no it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type or receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

-Ray Bradbury

---

There are no right words, if by right we mean perfect. But there are good words, and words worth remembering. 

As I walked up the dark sidewalk to the door of my apartment, I had a line of a poem knocking around in my head - "I am not done with my changes." 

I couldn't remember where it was from, and so I looked it up. Oh, yes. the layers by Stanley Kunitz. how shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? 

yet I turn, I turn...

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go...

I think again of my conversation with K___. "You're happy?" he asked me. "You're growing?" 

I think of Lancaster, of Harrisonburg.

Some losses. Some gains. 

Maybe I am finally learning how to love the place I am in.

---

In this language I have sought, during those years and the years since then, to write poems: so as to speak, to orient myself, to find out where I was and where I was meant to go, to sketch out reality for myself.

…A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are underway: they are making toward something.

Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.

Such realities, I think, are at stake in a poem.

-Paul Celan

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.

in memoriam: seamus heaney (1939-2013)

today, i am sad. i used to imagine meeting him someday. it's strange, because i haven't read much of his work. but what i did read (mid term break, singing school, gifts of rain), i adored. he wrote lines that stuck in my ears for days.

so i wrote him a poem, as the overly invested fans are wont to do. a double-acrostic, even, because i needed a wall to push against.
here it is.

--

elegy

“The main thing is to write for the joy of it.”

-Seamus Heaney

and so, these things remain - but no cascade of light//

no gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear//in the porch//

dark blobs burned/like a plate of eyes. inter alia.

the world is tending towards stillness, my love. towards quiet.

heat death, they call it, the whole universe one mass of low

energy. you know. your words carry the weight. momento mori.

jesus christ, son of god, have mercy. have mercy, spirit, my will

often weak; my spirit crying out in this thin time, in this thin place. will

you remind me, a chuisle, a chroí; what is poetry for?

once, he said that there is holy force to art. and the words were

full of power. yes, they were. I believed him.

I am not a scholar of the written word, nor a

teacher, nor author. I am only a writer, and I

am also only learning. even so, I knew right from when

lines jumped from page to ear to pulse, warm

like wine hitting my blood, letting me dance, setting my

yearning loose; I knew, sitting strangely in that stranger

evening, crowded around desks on a tuesday night, the              

sweat cold on my palms, classmates reading poems where burqa                 

enters walmart, horses run under the sky, husbands          

vow to love their wives, oh, I knew I would read more, two

easy poems not enough. I knew he knew things. my throat feels tight. in

no living world, now, will I meet this man, whose picture I saw       

staring out at me, it seemed. it isn’t fair. sláinte. good health.

oblige me. lift the glass. now tilt your mouth up, smile just a little wry.

endings & beginnings

by my rough calculation, I've spent 12% of my life in Harrisonburg. today's my last full day in the shenandoah valley for the forseeable future, and I'm finding it fitting that it's sort of grey and dreary outside. it's hard to leave things behind, places and people; my internal landscape is tending towards grey, today. and yet some of my favorite people in the world have already begun to scatter from this small town. and some are remaining here, staying in Harrisonburg, to see what else can be gleaned from this place outside of the university doors. and I am heading home to lancaster, and then on to the NIH.

my facebook news feed has been full, recently, with friends and acquaintances three years younger than me. they're coming to the end of their first year of college, and are talking online about all of the things they'll do over the summer, the people they're excited to see back home, the friends they're leaving for the long summer break. see you soon, they say, and they can say it to either group of people and it will be true.

I feel ages older then my first-year college self. it all feels much harder, now. much more real. much scarier.

* * *

beginnings: also appropriate for a damp and clouded day.

"But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark."

I don't know where I'm going, I wrote in a book earlier in the semester. It would be nice to have a map. I still think that, some days. but I am also starting to feel eager - to do, to try, to see if I can make it in the real world that is out there, outside the safe bounds of my childhood, out past the walls of EMU. Jayber was right: it isn't a resting place, exactly. I am not calm or still when I think about the next year of my life. I feel a bit like I've been thrown onto a river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. but I also feel the truth of this other thing he said, which is that I have been led. I feel the truth of that down in my bones, which I guess is the faith that is causing me to stay on the raft (in the fog, in the dark), paddling with the certain thought that it will be alright.

“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line...But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.” 

* * *

12% of my life in this place, though. Harrisonburg, a second home; the site of so many mistakes, so much growth.  Ah - I will miss you. The ugly grain elevator, even. 

May the Lord bless you & keep you, dear small city; dear, lovely EMU community. Until we meet again - because, Insh'allah, we will. 

my housemates keep telling me...

...that I haven't updated my blog recently. So I'm trying to remedy that.

The problem is that everything in my life seems simultaneously too large and too small to write about. What am I doing but homework, sitting through lectures, finishing my fourth year of lab work, long Tuesday and Thursday mornings? And housework, doing dishes, sweeping the floor, making sure rent is mailed on time, visiting the Comcast office in Harrisonburg when we're charged too much for our internet?

In short, small things; the things that make up an ordinary life; the things that aren't so interesting to write about.

And yet, at the same time, I move through this semester and come to those moments of finality: the last hymn sing. the last Easter chapel. the last birthday in Harrisonburg. I am coming up on the last morning at Early Church, and I am mourning this loss already.

These are things that loom large in my life, and that I don't know how to start to explain.

Last night was the last hymn sing, full of Easter songs and finishing out with call-out requests. As we stood in a circle in Martin Chapel, I thought - I will miss this - I was standing between two friends with strong voices, soprano and alto, and I thought about how I learned to sing my part in four years of circles like that one. I learned a bit about what it means to belong, and about how to articulate my theology, and about loving place and people.

We sang the two best Easter hymns, Low in the Grave He Lay and Lift Your Glad Voices, and they were beautiful. At the beginning of Lift Your Glad Voices everyone sings the same four notes and then splits into four parts, and when we reached that moment in each verse it felt like the room was alive.

The best thing, though, was maybe when we sang the song about Christ making all things new; the lyrics are lovely words to meditate on in light of graduation:

(Chorus) Christ is alive, and goes before us
to show and share what love can do.
This is a day of new beginnings;
our God is making all things new.

This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that's gone.

For by the life and death of Jesus,
love's mighty Spirit, now as then,
can make for us a world of difference,
as faith and hope are born again.

Then let us, with the Spirit's daring,
step from the past and leave behind
our disappointment, guilt, and grieving,
seeking new paths, and sure to find.

a tiny thing that made me laugh today

thinking about writing a lot, recently (obviously), and so today was thinking about an article I had read online somewhere about kurt vonnegut and a term paper assignment he once gave students. I found the link (here) which was as lovely as I remembered, but in the process I also found an image of a letter vonnegut wrote to one of his peers back in the '60s. He was writing to someone hired to teach at the Iowa writer's workshop. My favorite line: "Every so often you will go nuts. All of a sudden the cornfields get you."

humans are so interesting, all the time. a challenge for this day - pay attention.

"it's really scary to be alive and to be human"

"I think the reason why people behave in an ugly manner is that it's really scary to be alive and to be human, and people are really really afraid. And that the reasons...

That the fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we're so afraid. But the fact of the matter is, is that, is that the job that we're here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we're not terrified all the time. And not in a position of using all kinds of different things, and using people to keep that kind of terror at bay. That is my personal opinion.

Well for me, as an American male, the face I'd put on the terror is the dawning realization that nothing's enough, you know? That no pleasure is enough, that no achievement is enough. That there's a kind of queer dissatisfaction or emptiness at the core of the self that is unassuageable by outside stuff. And my guess is that that's been what's going on, ever since people were hitting each other over the head with clubs. Though describable in a number of different words and cultural argots. And that our particular challenge is that there's never been more and better stuff comin' from the outside, that seems temporarily to sort of fill the hole or drown out the hole.

Personally, I believe that if it's assuageable in any way it's by internal means. And I don't know what that means. I think it's fine in some way. I think it's probably assuageable by internal means. I think those internal means have to be earned and developed, and it has something to do with, um, um, the pop-psych phrase is lovin' yourself.

It's more like, if you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it's probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we're here for is to learn how to do this."

- David Lipsky, quoting David Foster Wallace, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace

I'm trying to write more

Thia gave me a book of poetry by Czeslaw Milosz for Christmas. He's a Lithuanian poet who lived through both world wars and, of course, the Holocaust. The book Thia gave me is a large collection of his works translated from Polish. The Foreword to the book (by Seamus Heaney, another poet I like) says, "His life and works were founded upon faith in 'A word wakened by lips that perish.' This first artistic principle was clearly related to the last Gospel of the Mass, the In principio of St. John: 'In the beginning was the Word.' Inexorably then, through his pursuit of poetic vocation, his study of what such pursuit entailed, and the unremitting, abounding yield of his habit of composition, he developed a fierce conviction about the holy force of his art, how poetry was called upon to combat death and nothingness..."

What a lovely thought, and one I want to strive to live into, in my own amateurish attempts at creative writing. The holy force of art. Mmmm.


Current Milosz poem that's caught my eye - a poem called "Notes," that is really a collection of epigraphs ranging on a wide variety of subjects. A small excerpt:

SUPPLICATION
From galactic silence protect us.

THE PERFECT REPUBLIC
Right from early morning - the sun has barely made it through the
dense maples - they walk contemplating the holy word: Is.

STRONG OR WEAK POINT
You were always ready to fall to your knees!
Yes, I was always ready to fall to my knees.

LONGING
Not that I want to be a god or a hero.
Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
For two thousand years I have been trying to understand what It was.

thoughts in my head about writing, at the beginning of creative writing class

"… 'I want to perfect my craft so I won’t have to tell lies.' So often, when you’re stumped, the temptation is just to back down, but when you feel this is complicated or so tenuous that there’s no way you can say it, you have to persuade yourself you can say it, that there is a way of saying it, that there’s nothing that is unsayable. And this gives you strength for the next time.

"The poem, by its very nature, holds the possibility of revelation, and revelation doesn’t come easy. You have to fight for it. There is that moment when you suddenly open a door and enter into the room of the unspeakable."                  

 -Stanley Kunitz