Poem of the day.

Sonnet 43

I search for your trace in the faces of others,
in this rough, winding river of women,
in their braids and barely submerged eyes,
in their soft sliding steps skating out on the foam.

Sometimes, I find I can make out your nails:
fugitive, oval, children of cherry-trees.
Sometimes it’s your hair I catch flowing by,
burning into water your portrait of fire.

I searched, but no one else had your heartbeat.
No one else had your light, or your dark forest clay.
No one else had such delicate ears.

You are whole, exact, you are one apart from many.
And so I’ll go with you, traveling and loving,
a wide Mississippi into a feminine sea.

 

Pablo Neruda (Translated by Paul Weinfield, 2013)

Vacation is no party.

1980 - Small Vintage Portrait on Particle Board

A few days off have put me into thinking mode, one of my all-time favorite modes, as it were, and I'm sifting through my brain, trying to decide where to go and what to do next in my life. I wish I knew, truly. Today, I'm thinking about opening a thrift store. As yesterday's thinking revealed, dreams are sometimes only images flashing across our brains, without any structure to hold them together.

I wish I could step confidently into the dreams I've had for so long. But what I've found in my life, over and again, is that dreams are never what you think they will be. You fall in love, only to discover the hollowness of the other person. You buy an old car, only to realize that you aren't the hobby mechanic you'd hoped to become. You take a job you'd only just imagined in college could exist, only to find it radically conflicts with who you are as a person.

So I've become a little scared to dream, hesitant to take another step forward only to see a nubile dream die with a thud. I'm scared to discover that being human is really as difficult as it seems to be, full of failings and hardship, slim glimpses of true beauty, followed by slippery hope in something more, something big enough to hold, something more substantial.

I think I've stopped trying to find someone to fall in love with because I've realized it's impossible to manipulate, that some things cannot be made to happen, that some things really are out of our control.

Peace, friends :)

A beautiful thing :)

Anthropologie sweater from Field Flower

Two and a half months ago, I closed my poetry journal. It has remained on the floor beside my bed, and I have had no desire, or need, to open it, until today. I didn't want to look at all the poems I'd written for a man I no longer love. I didn't want to see the proof that I didn't know enough to say "good-bye". I didn't want to see my tears in words, all over the page, remembering how I cried through most of them, cried through nights for years, wanting the feeling inside of me to leave. But it never left.

It has now left, and I am reborn. I am solid and sure. I am open to radically new things. New has entered my life in a way I never expected, but has been an incredible gift. One day, the burden was lifted. And now there are things I do not know. There are things I have not planned. I am free in a way I've never been. It's a beautiful thing.

'angsty' is a fun word :)

These surprisingly sold in a few days from my Etsy shop, which rarely happens.

The last few days have been amazing. Between reading, angsty puzzle-doing, and some painting, I've reached a really good place. I've figured out some things about my life, like long-term, super important kinds of things, and those things make me feel more at peace with who I am, blah blah blah.

I've decided that doing puzzles will be my new angsty project, instead of angsty poem-writing, since that pile just keeps getting bigger and only brings me more of the aforementioned angst and longing, etc. So now I'm going to do less meaningful things with my time, less emotional things, like puzzles, and reality television, and responding to angry emails via eBay. I'll leave you with this amazement that awaited me this morning in my inbox, followed immediately (and happily) by my response.

Weird stranger: Hi, Just a suggestion! THIS PICTURE ON THE COFFEE MUG IS NOT OF A TURKISH CHARACTER, BUT GREEK!!! A little common knowledge of national costumes would reveal this fact!

Me: Hi. Just a suggestion. WRITING IN ALL CAPS MEANS YELLING. YELLING AT SOMEONE YOU DON'T KNOW IS RUDE. A little common knowledge would reveal this fact!

I did miss some exclamation points. Oops.

Delusional hope.

I can't decide whether to give these to my shoe-loving friend for Christmas.

I think I've decided (for a brief moment of time) to be hopeful, for the future, because why not? Hope might be silly, and embarrassing sometimes, but it's tangible. There is no ephemeral hope. There is only hope for change, hope for better, hope for something different already, geez.

I often hope for a day without war, without violence in name and deed. I hope for this because I believe that we, the people, have the power to change the world for the better.

There's nothing better for fostering hope than staring through the window of a moving car (or train, if you're so lucky). That's how I get recentered, I guess, seeing the same scenery I've been seeing all my life, the same highway, the same crazy religious signs, the same oleander bushes. And I think to myself, "Well maybe I could change, maybe things could change a little, and everything would be okay".

I have hope that emptiness will be filled, that loss would be redeemed, and that someday, everything will make sense already, geez.

Peace out :)

I never want to let go.

The most difficult things I have had to do in my life have been to see people as they really are, not what I imagine them to be, but as they really are. And this process usually ends in tears, tears of regret and grief, and then the ultimate work of figuring how to move on.

A few years ago, I had to do this over and over again, and it almost killed me. And I never wanted to do it again. I never wanted to be disappointed again, I guess. But then, this year (oh God), I've had to do it again. I've had to see the people I love for who they really are, and figure out whether or not I'm going to accept them, or whether I'm going to move on (fuuuuuuuck).

The thing is (and this is the most difficult thing), I don't have a lot of relationships that I've had for over a decade. And that makes me want to cling to the ones I have left, to forgive and forget, to make it work when I'm pretty sure it won't. Because I don't want to go on in my life and leave everything behind. I don't want to leave my younger years behind me. I don't want that part of my life to disappear; I don't want that part of me to disappear. And I'm willing to compromise big-time to salvage parts of my life that have all but disappeared. I don't want to lose everyone, because it makes me feel like I'll lose myself in the process.

Sad day.

Rilke, as ever.

Books about the rain for an elementary school classroom :)

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me — the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods —

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house — , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced
upon, —
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke

Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell