I need to let myself be free. Allowed to write crap sometimes, to delve into my realm of experiences, good and bad. To go at it full tilt, headlong, and risk it all and plow into brick walls and end up totally spent but maybe--maybe--find a well of story that I can draw from, and shape into something recognizable and True, and send back out into the world.
I do kind of want to be a little bit famous... Only don't tell anybody.
June 28, 2011
June 23, 2011
June 19, 2011
over it
I'm not over it. Any of it. I doubt I will ever be "over it." Rather, I feel as though I am--suddenly--in it. Not again, but for the first time. I am in my life. And the clarity and the openness come not from looking back, but from looking around. Here. Now. This moment, and this one, and this.
I am in.
I am in.
June 16, 2011
June 14, 2011
yesterday
Yesterday, I wore my letter A necklace and Lissie's new pony necklace all day. I colored in her coloring book. I sat by the pool and read poems. I went swimming. I laughed with my cousin. I went to a hole-in-the-wall Phở restaurant, and had lovely food served to me by even lovelier people. I got the oil changed in my truck. I ate a grape popsicle, outside, in heavy summer heat, and didn't mind it dripping down my wrist. I wrote about my girl, and the circumstances surrounding her existence, on fb. Took a deep breath, hit publish, asked more people to remember her with me. I went to the gym after dark. I ran a 10.5 minute mile for the first time in a long time. I walked out afterward into the first true summer night; still warm, and smelling of flowers. And I was happy.
June 13, 2011
do not stand at my grave and weep
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.
Mary E. Frye
June 6, 2011
the book of time
2.
For how many years have you gone through the house
shutting the windows,
while the rain was still five miles away
and veering, o plum-colored clouds, to the north,
away from you
and you did not even know enough
to be sorry,
you were glad
those silver sheets, with the occasional golden staple,
were sweeping on, elsewhere,
violent and electric and uncontrollable–
and will you find yourself finally wanting to forget
all enclosures, including
the enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf, and will you
dash finally, frantically,
to the windows and haul them open and lean out
to the dark, silvered sky, to everything
that is beyond capture, shouting
I’m here, I’m here! Now, now, now, now, now.
Mary Oliver, The Book of Time (excerpt)
June 5, 2011
identity
I'm trying to think about who I am, of what kind of a person I am, and I find that I am almost entirely defined (inside my own head anyway) by what has happened to me in the past, and what I want to happen in the future. Meanwhile, or until then, or whilst I'm in-between... it's as if I only partially exist. As if the space of life I'm occupying right this minute isn't quite real, or isn't quite enough; or I am not quite real, yet, nor quite enough. As if, until I reach the very end of it, I won't quite know if mine is a story worth telling.
June 1, 2011
to have no stars to reach for
It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is a sin.
Benjamin Elijah Mays
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