Gravity

I'm getting so slack with my writing habits since I've been home. It's bothering me. So, lovelies, here's some thoughts from my backyard:

I took an old beach towel and a book outside to relax and read and enjoy the sun and wind, but it's a little colder today. I'm a bit chilly but it's refreshing anyway. Laying here looking up at the sky and the tree limbs above me reminded me of a habit from my childhood. I would lay smack in the middle of the two-acre lawn at my dad's house and close my eyes for a while. My family always thought I was napping. I think I wanted them to think that, but anyway, I was taking some time to just ponder. I'd press my fingers into the grass and dirt and seriously will myself to feel the earth moving. It was during those years in school when you're just learning about all the wonders of what it is to live in a universe, the specifics of gravity and orbit, and the incredible incomprehension that is an infinite universe filled with countless galaxies like ours. I loved those small moments to myself. Looking back, I was a strange little kid. I guess that's what happens when the gravity of a family weighs so heavily on children.

Here's to remaining sane in the face of all those facts that threaten to hurl you into oblivion.

I'm seeing Rusko tonight in Philly, so a review of that will be coming soon.

Never Quite Free

This is how I'm staying so serene through packing up my room, writing papers, taking finals, saying goodbyes, leaving leaving leaving once again. I love this band, and you should too. The Mountain Goats will make you better at life. Just listen. Do it.

inner monologue -- 3 days from home. Breathe in, breathe out, don't forget to laugh.

Fire-Tender

The soft line of her mouth underscored my mornings,

the first creak of her step into my doorway enough

to jolt my mind from far away lands filled with lives
too lovely, too dangerous to consider when awake,

lest hope take hold. I imagined those rare night terrors
that flung her flying down the stairway were beautifully

freeing. Carefully constructed resolve broke in her sleep,
walls she never let fall, steely scaffolding splintering when

consciousness split layers. Winters, when electricity failed
in our converted-barn-house, as darkness seeped from corners

she slumped next to her pile of five before the fire, tending
to us all. She found ways to hide warmth in the worn and rough

wooden beams, storing laughter in jars on shelves among
the mousetraps. Her fingers splayed on my scalp, combing

the tangles from my mind. I never noticed the moment my
breathing slowed, until I drifted again on tides of dream-comfort.

Rain

I’m sitting in my grandparents' RV, listening to the noise on the roof as Gram does her crossword puzzles and Grampa reads. It’s pouring outside, the kind of rain that asserts itself on every surface, flying back up on impact. The campground surrounding us has turned to deep shades: all dark browns and lush greens, really beautiful saturated colors.

Normally I’m not a fan of rain, but it’s the drizzle kind I hate, the half-assed drops soaking you through without your consent. I like rain like this because by escaping it, it contains you. You huddle up inside with your hot coffee and books and your house becomes a shelter. I love that.

This rain feels like it really could continue for 40 days and 40 nights, lifting this motor home and washing us down the creek that Grampa says must be rushing by at 6 knots. It occurs to me that it wouldn’t be the worst way to travel, pitching hard to starboard on the rolling spontaneous sea.

The forest out the window sways and drips and I fight the urge to run outside. My brother and I used to do that when we were young. Storms would strike and we’d burst out the door, running and laughing in the odd exhilaration of warm summer rain. Three years ago a hailstorm struck at midday and we sprinted around the yard, the ice sliding under our tanned feet and striking the tops of our heads. I remember feeling so free, as if the violent sky allowed my chest to crack open and spill out pent-up feeling, as if I could let it go and just be for a little while.

I walked down to the creek and took a picture of this flash-flood rain. As my Gram put it, this sort of raw nature is awesome. Evidence below:

Words, Books, & Magic

"The magic is only in what books say, how they stitch the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."

Ray Bradbury

I have spent easily half of my life escaping into stories. I guess most people would consider that unhealthy, and, hell, it probably is. I don't care. My number-one-favorite-thing about reading is that just by opening a book, my life disappears. Sometimes all I need are those few stolen minutes with some lovely words. When it comes down to it, everyone needs some form of respite from the daily trudge through the muck of life. We're all looking for that little bit of escape.

I have this habit of searching for those phrases and sentences that, to put it Bradbury, stitch the patches of the universe together. You know, those combinations of words that punch you in the chest and knock your mind around, dislodging something small inside you and capturing a tiny facet the human experience? I love those magic moments when I come upon a gathering of words that unsettles me with impeccable truth. It's the sort of lovely contentment born of knowing the precise way to put something, the words that pin down exactly what you're feeling and living. I always save them, storing them away like medicine to soothe the existential ache.

When I'm in need of some linguistic pharmaceuticals I usually turn to poetry, like the quietly brilliant verses of Billy Collins:

"I will still carry in my pocket
the small coin of that moment,
minted in the kingdom
that we pace through every day."

and often Kurt Vonnegut, who always makes me feel better and worse all at once:

"All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber."

College vs. Learning

“Education is the sum of what students teach each other in between lectures and seminars. You sit in each others' rooms, you share enthusiasms, you talk a lot of wank about politics, religion, art and the cosmos and then you go to bed, alone or together according to taste. I mean, how else do you learn anything, how else do you take your mind for a walk?”

Stephen Fry

I'm currently sitting awkwardly on a bean bag that generally sucks at being a bean bag, listening to my friends talk around me and occasionally chiming in. It occurs to me that so much of my time at college is spent having alternately asinine and profound conversations peppered with insane amounts of profanity. And really, I have to agree with Mr. Fry; this is how I take my mind for a walk. 

We talk a lot of wank, for sure. I just finished explaining the awkward tale of the first time I shaved my legs, for example. Bee just walked in and complained of the smell in here, which is admittedly an unfortunate mixture of chinese food and bleach. Marilyn Manson in blaring, and I'm blocking it out. Gorillaz just came on, much better. Across the room, Cathi flails with joy while stumblin' upon the flashy flashy lights of the internet, and here I sit writing words to nobody. 

We help each other with homework, sometimes academically and sometimes just by letting each other bitch about the sheer amount of bs that goes into every assignment. We discuss the notion of time and how we always seem to lack it, make some nerd jokes, share stories, gross each other out. We help each other through.

So for now, as I stare at the drawing of a cow next to the word "brodeo" and shudder at the sheer amount of poetry I have to edit by next week, I'm simply content thinking about how so much of what I know has not come from my time in a lecture hall but from listening to the people around me talk nonsense and truth. Man, I love college.