Notes.

Hi all,

Glad you're stopping by again. I don't have much to say tonight, but I wanted to check in since it's been over a week since my last post. I spent a few days out of town and have had a bit of a whirlwind life this month so I've gotten a bit behind from where I want to be.

One thing I've been meaning to do though, is to write this quick message. Over the course of the next couple weeks, I'm going to be pulling already-posted poems off the blog. At this point, I'm not overly concerned about material being plagiarized/stolen, but it may be an issue in the future, and further, I'm getting ready to send material out over the summer in hopes of getting published.

So, I'll be starting with the oldest poems and taking down poems from each month at the end of the week... meaning I'll take the January poems off on Saturday, and the February ones off the week after that.

I wanted to let you know so you'd all have a chance to look through them if you had any desire to do so. I'll make poems available to individuals by email after they've been removed if you request them.

Now, that business is all out of the way. I've been writing some pieces about perception and childhood and my grandfather, so you can expect to see some selections from those in the coming weeks. And I had a zombie dream last night that I want to write about here, so we'll see how that goes.

We're in our last two days of classes, and have finals next week, so it might be another week before I get to posting, but you'll hear about it when I do. Thanks for checking in, everybody. Have a good week! And as always, thanks for reading.

-E

I Was Climbing In The Rain (Brand New Poem!)

When the kettle came off the stove
with a whistle and the smell of forgotten toast
I cursed the coils for trapping food beneath themselves.
Such greed displayed in the morsel hoarded there.
I thought it selfish.
And the steam
when I emptied the steel out into my glass mug
crawled up the air and I felt it on my cheek
because it was a quiet love letter
from some man some place.
I closed my eyes and felt its warmth to my shoulders and down
so I breathed and grabbed my keys.

It was raining and I thought it ought to be snow—
quiet and cold—just the same with the
sliding of tires on the hill and the way my eyes felt.
But my cheeks were still warm from the steam and
the color stayed until I opened my empty mailbox
and remembered my eye-open dreams
where letters are for novels and
tea waited, steeping for me.

I smiled at the sadness of reality
that I, with words like these, might
not know an address for their envelope.
So in the buzzing yellow and the icy drops
I laughed like tobacco at the thought of you,
and how you had let me become a drug
that you could swirl in your fingers and exhale
in any weather.
Smoke to climb the same air, to break under falling love.

How Important is the Who?

I've started five or so posts in the last week, and haven't finished any.

I've started a lot of things, and only finished some.

There's an incompleteness, a sublimity. Something to do with Spring not being quite here yet, with Summer feeling so far, with so much left to do.

And life is changing all the time but some days we feel it more than others, and right now I feel it everywhere and deeply.

I've been particularly afraid of things lately: death, love, the future, uncalculated change.

All of these play into who I am, aside from what is happening to me.

Someone pointed out to me recently that these words, these thoughts--they're coming from some place far inside my head. I think that got to me a little bit.

I'm thinking about how many things I can say before I run out of anything I can even put into words, because we do run out and quiet down and fall apart.

Why do we listen? Why do we ask questions? Why do we give up moments for some people, things, places, experiences---and not others? Is that who we are, or just what we do?

I don't mean that in an apathetic why do anything at all kind of way, but as a serious series of questions: how do we decide what to spend parts of our lives on? What is our currency, and are we responsible in our spending?

My time is undoubtedly the commodity I trade with most. It is the most valuable thing I share without great restriction, and I think I do so generously. I love giving my time to people. I much less like spending it on tasks: cleaning, driving, working, studying. Writing and reading are exceptions.

I wonder if that's pretty average, if most people find that time is the best way to show a person love, or at the very least, concern.

I don't much like talking on the phone, and I like texting even less. But spending a few minutes with a friend, even just in passing on campus or at work--that I love.

So I'm spending time with these words to let you into some far space in my mind and I'm not quite sure how to feel about the lack of time spent with you. Do you feel like you've spent time with me? Like you know me any better for having giving moments of your day here---for the sacrifice of time you're giving?

Because I want these things to be worth your time, to be worth the trip into my head without my knowing who you are when you enter.

I read Virginia Woolf for class last week. In her piece titled "A Sketch of the Past," she makes a comment that strikes me:
"Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties--one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being... I do not know how far I differ from other people. That is another memoir writer's difficulty. Yet to describe oneself truly one much have some standard of comparison."

Woolf was writing about memories, and I do a bit of that, but hardly.

But it makes me wonder. How important is the who of the what that happened, if it's only me. And here I am, saying what's happening. And nothing of who I am. I think the who is irrelevant, but I also think I may be wrong.

I think I'm too far into my thoughts, and wrapped in myself tonight. I think I've asked plenty of questions and that I need to answer to myself.

There's something in the way, I feel, of connecting to people in these words. I believe I am capable. I am unsure of any success I may have had of late.

I am not a memoir writer; this I know.
I started with intentions, well-defined.

Those goals might be changing.

How important is the what here when the who is staying the same?

Are you here for the words, or are you here because they're mine?

And you. Do you wear your hair the way you do because it's easy, or looks nice--because it's you? Or is it you because it's cool? Hairstyles don't define who you are.

Nor do fads or clothes or accessories.

Are you letting anybody in your head? Or just trying to get them to turn theirs in your direction?

How important is who you are? How important is what you do?

Child, Live Slow.

We had a Spring rain today. It was cold and beautiful.

And everyone in the city knew that it would get colder and the rain would slow itself in the downward freeze. So the people in the city put on their coats and shoes and laughed at the sandals left on the bedroom floor from last night.

We people, in the cities and the towns and the hills and the country, we get anxious.

We anticipate. And we prepare. We fret.

We're always living so quickly.

Ask around. How are people feeling about the next month. People--they'll tell you--people are overwhelmed.

I wonder why we get so weighted down. Why today when I turned my music off and opened the window and listened to the rain turn to snow, why I was amazed at how much peace I felt, even though doing so made me miss out on other things.

I sat and closed my eyes, back to the wall in my room, and thought about what was happening through the wall and the glass.

The temperature dropped. The water in the sky froze. The people drove slower.

The little green buds that I smile at in the morning tightened up and curled inside themselves telling the Winter breath, We've captured the light of the sun, chill all you desire.

We've captured the light of the sun. For a moment, I wasn't anxious, and I anticipated nothing. I only perceived. It was calm and mild and some kind of intoxicating.

I heard the rain turn to snow.

And I realized that I'm people---people who drive too fast and talk too much and live too quick.

So I start to make promises: I'll slow down. I'll listen. I'll breathe.

I'll watch the season change from slumber to birth and I won't take the next month for granted.

And I'll remember little things.

Today I remembered that we sat three to a seat on the school bus. We were small enough to fit three of us in a seat. I had forgotten.

And I saw two pictures of my cousin's son, one from two summers ago, and one from last week. He's almost two. He grew so fast. Lived quickly.

Because when we're children, we don't know how to live slow, how to age slow.

When we're children, we heal fast and learn fast and change fast.

And what's hard to do when we're not children anymore?

To heal, to learn, to change. Let alone to do any of these things quickly.

So I want to slow down my living.

Not like in a country song that sets me on the porch watching the clouds and reflecting on old times. And not in dirty nostalgia or forlorn longing.

I want to slow down and absorb the mess of life that surrounds me, the slop that ends up in the gutters after a day of half rain, half snow. I want to understand the ticking of the clocks on the roads that connect me to the people I love. Because we're all connected by roads, to Chicago and Boston and out West and down South. The same stretches of pavement and dirt are woven together all over the country where we lay our heads.

And some of you---some of you are reading this across oceans and I'm sure at least one of you is shaking your head at my logic. You're in Germany or Russia or China or South Korea or Malaysia or some dusty or rainy or beautiful or sad place off this continent.

But we're breathing the same air.

I may not be able to take a single path on asphalt to get to where you are, but we are breathing the same air, the great forgotten cloud.

And I want for us to indulge in every breath--marvel at the slow aging of the middle years and the slow learning of the adolescent ones. The slow healing of the late and last days.

I want to appreciate every glimpse I have of the foothills: when I drive to school, walk to class, look out the windows. I want to stop taking mountain views for granted. And I want to remember why I love the plains of the Midwest, the flatness, and the way the clouds don't look the same without a contrast for their depth.

I want to remember what it was like to grow and learn and heal fast, but to live slow like the solitary moments of a child in the summer when the days are longer than the waking hours and the sun is slow and lingering like heaven and perfection at the little child's horizon: just beyond the reach of her hand as she giggles and falls asleep.

The slow settling of warmth after a cloudy morning. The thick heat of Illinois.

I want to drink it. I want to wear it on my skin and in my eyes.

I want to look out the window at the frozen buds--still green and very much alive--and hear the echo that tells me We've captured the warmth of the sun, and we'll heal fast, grow fast, learn fast. We'll live slow and steady, unrolling in the Summer and drifting in our crispy Autumn plunge.

We'll listen to the rain turn to snow, and back again.

We'll live slow and happy in the light of the sun.