Resurfacing Poetry

I was looking through some of my old writings today in search of something in particular, when I came upon this old piece. I wrote it sometime in the fall/winter of 2006/7. I think I like it again.

It's amazing the different opinions one can have about one's earlier work. Usually re-reading my stuff makes me cringe a bit. My writing is so often time/place-specific that re-reading a piece brings me back to where I was when I wrote it, which is often not a pleasant experience. But This poem is speaking to me in a different way today.

So here it is-

Feelings of weight and poise, simultaneously pulling and pressing the skin on my arms toward a place unknown; reaching for a glass that moves mid-blink and knowing I must reach all the same. Without cause or purpose, agenda off missing in action, sending its notes back anonymously. Following their backward prods with one eye on the door and one finger on the trigger. Maybe I could squeeze if I wanted to, but I'll never know because the sound of opportunity is always beyond the next door. Working and running through a world colored only in a heightened shade of gray, distinguishing a base immorality on the surface of every smile, never judging why. Waiting for the order to push through another window, to break another fist, always blaming the pain on that faceless voice, mind paralyzed by the thought that it might come from within. Name-dropping and show-stopping for all I'm worth, which, after the run, isn't much. The ruin and the rain and the sleet, all beating my head and my back.

But the word is yes, and I will try, and that is, in a word, all.

Reading List, 2010 Thus Far

So. One of my goals this year has been to read as much as possible. A few years ago, after I dropped out of Calvin the last time, I set myself a goal of reading 10,000 pages in that year. I surpassed that goal, but then felt like it had been an arbitrary goal post, as reading middle school literature adds pages more quickly than more difficult tomes. So this year I have not been judging by counting chapters or pages or words, but I have been trying to keep a list of the titles. And I've gotten a bit lax of late.

Therefore, as the year is almost half over (sheesh!) and I'm almost 25 (Huzzah!!) I thought I'd post a list of the year in books thus far, so that when the year is finished I can more readily evaluate my progress. And I am admittedly curious, so I'm going to list page numbers here as well.

Maybe I'll rate them, too. . .

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen (331)

Naked, David Sedaris (224)

Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott (239)

The Somnambulist, Jonathon Barnes (384)

One Big Happy Family, Rebecca Walker (288)

Searching for Mary Poppins, Susan Davis and Gina Hyans (320)

The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell (248)

The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby (140)

Hamlet, Shakespeare (171) Admittedly for Humanities

Candide, Voltaire (144) Also for Humanities

Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me, Elizabeth, by e.l. Konigsburg (117)

The Prydain Chronicles (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, The High King), Lloyd Alexander (701)

Litttle Bee, Chris Cleave (266)

Push, Sapphire (177)

The Prisoner's Wife, asha bandele (219)

Crooked Little Heart, Anne Lamott (324)

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, J.D. Salinger (92)

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, Carl Sagan (304)

Atonement, Ian McEwan (368)


Whew!! Which makes a grand total of 5,057 pages read since Jan 1st. Crazy how it's almost exactly half the 10,000 mark. . .

Recent Excerpt

I don’t know if stars can be jealous or sympathetic. I don’t think that stars have feelings, but it’s amazing to me how much power I have given them in my life.

It’s amazing how much power they have given me.

When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter at all to me if stars are benevolent beings or personified lights or epically distant clusters of reacting chemicals- what matters is the feeling I get whenever I look at them. I really do mean whenever, as even in passing an upwards glance met by stars is ultimately an invitation for time to stop. Or maybe just to slow. But a warmth touches my heart (or some viscera at least near my lungs) and again something catches. I lose all interest in watching where I step, so long as that light is flowing directly into my retinas. So long as that feeling of profound connectedness, of ancient wisdom or guidance, or perhaps even the simple but unprecedented feeling of being nurtured is there, then I can feel like there is still beauty in life- like my life is worth living. And that is all that matters to me.