In the Riptide

There's a soundtrack: Listen.


We start here. We go back. We come around again.

Some things have happened.

You see?

I wasn't sacred of anything. I knew who made the Light. and I knew He made it right. And it Lit me.

The Word came in and said: move. And we moved.

Well.

I moved. The literal kind.

And it was good.

Is good.


Slow down.

Things change: things stay the same. We write, cry, build, break, fly, fall.

We fall so flat splat useless on the pavement.

But in the tide.

But we move. Ooh how we move.

And then?

We
come
so
incredibly
undone.

We go running to the shore, to the tide, to the waves.

Throw ourselves into the drama of it all, lost in a riptide, lost in the days, lost lost lost.

You think you know. A person. The girl. The words.

You think she'd know. The words, the waves, the Light.

You think you'd know where she was going.

Here.


There's this story I thought I'd like.

This girl decides to quit her life and jump into some old ocean.

She clings to all the waves that were, and something of a rescue in the blur.

She hammers the nails in the pedestal legs she builds herself.

She settles in. But those damned nails.

What did you think would come?

But of course.

She moves in the water and

they come unstuck.


And she runs again. Into the riptide, over and over. Washing over and over.

In the water. In the little hours. In quiet conversations.

And there's something good.

And she thinks she sings the words right.

But I'm afraid she's singing the words wrong.

She is singing the words wrong.

And the nails are no good

But she's still moving.


Even now.


She wants to know.

Who and when and how.

She's just gotta gotta know.

There is no other way.

That Light Maker Breaker Creator knows she knows the Words.

And there is no other way.

And her little pedestal platform doesn't need those nails.

Doesn't need legs at all.

She's sailing on the riptide.

She's gotta, gotta know.


She's gotta know the words. The Light Words--The Right Words.

She's on the water, above the water, in the water.

Not in the water.

She's the on-the-water-above-the-water, kind of in the water.

And she knows the words.

And she won't write them wrong.


I'm on the water, I know the words.

I'm through above beyond the riptide in the wind.

I know the Words, the Light, the Love.



I'm not sacred of anything.

I know who made the Light.

And I know He made it right.

And it Lights me Floats me Lifts me.


I won't write the words wrong.

I won't write the words wrong.

I won't sing the words wrong.

Daylight Enough and Time

Some days a girl just needs to know that no matter what has changed, there is still some consistency somewhere in her universe. 

She needs to know there's Daylight. Listen up. 

She needs to know

She can lay away in tall grass alone in empty spaces
and come up alone and unharmed


That her breath can be pulled up from her lungs

to its rest for the time it takes
the leaves to come from green to gone

That her soul limbos in the inbetween
hanging on the memories of green and ultraviolet summers
in grass and water and smoke and deep breathing

She needs to know the soft place cradles what she hides

And she knows because
her body she beats on city streets
where the inorganic becomes the only and
natural a term she can no longer identify--
all caked in smoggy morning-after haze

And she knows
That when that scarred spirit returns to her broken body
while the tangerine light paints morning--
warms the shut-blind slumber of all the lonely people--
there creeps a feigned moment of Spring in the daylight

Enough and time

She reminds herself of the things she knows:
It is not the love of a man that makes a woman.

It is the hell she goes through for understanding of the love of God--
The love she saves only for herself that makes her

So body captures soul on the December set
and she tells that sun to stay longer stay lighter stay light
She knows
And she knows she cannot make that sun stand still
But she will make him run
in the daylight

A Damsel, A Tramp, A Wildcard, A Jack of All Suits: The Story of The Knight

Good Lord.

The Killers are the soundtrack today; you know the drill: open this link and listen while you read.
You know, artistic choices and stuff.

When there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son?

I'm warning you all now: I'm experiencing a bit of virtually every emotion on the spectrum today. So brace yourself. Here goes.

Becca told me once, "If they can't accept you at your worst, they don't get to see you at your best."

But for me, it's about being accepted at my best. And I don't quite know why that is. I get to the top and somehow throw others down to the bottom. Stay with me...

If you can hold on, 
If you can hold on, hold on.

I'm going through some things, and in the last 72 hours have been filled with love and heartbreak and angst and grief and shame and pain. Overall, I'm overflowing. And at the same time I feel a little empty inside. Like there's this swelling loss so big that it's taking up all the space inside my insides, and it's pushing my lungs up out of my chest and it's hard to breathe and eat and sleep. And I only stop thinking when I'm sleeping.

I'm hurting, because I was called fragile.

Fragile is one thing I am not. Never have been. Never will be. 

I wanna stand up, I wanna let go.
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't.
I wanna shine on in the hearts of men;
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand.

No.

I have faced abandonment and abuse, divorce, depression, hatred, loss.
I have seen cancer and rape and violence.
I have been hit and hurt and cut and thrown aside.
And what hurts most of all of it is the thought that I might not be able to handle any of it again.

Another head aches, another heart breaks.
I'm so much older than I can take.

I'm not asking for it, of course, but in life there's one thing I've learned again and again: Man will not save you. Man will not hold your world together.

You know you gotta help me out.
Don't you put me on the backburner.
You know you gotta help me out. 

You grab your satchel and your wheelbarrow; you load up your skeletons, and you call on your God to get you through. Because no one can carry the burdens of your heart but you. You set off along the railroad tracks, another tramp in the haze of a southern summer and you go make your own story. You march, crawl, scramble, amble, sprint: to your hurdles, your loves, the moments in time when you stand and point to the first person in the room who catches your eye and he changes your life.

And then you go to the next room. And you point out someone else. And someone else changes you, too.

But you never let those cards--the Jacks and Queens that float in and out of your hand through the trick, through the game, through endless turns and rivers--the cards never play for you, never throw your ante into the pot, never raise your stakes, never hold themselves up at the table.

You hold your own. You tramp along, another game awaiting your bid.

It's a valiant knight who makes the attempt to pull you onto his horse and carry you along. But there are some pieces of your life in that wheelbarrow (your family, your desires, your memories, your insecurities) that you cannot leave behind. And in his armor, he will try to lead his horse while you ride; he will push the barrow. And you're there: just riding along.

But eventually you both realize he has done too much. He has carried all your weight. You wrap your arms around the neck of the steed, laughing at the irony of a man so strong who has worn himself so ragged. You tell the horse to carry his master home. You thank the knight for the beauty of his heart. You give him one last look while the rider mounts, and you say goodbye, and thank you to your dear, dear friend.

You know you got to help me out, yeah.
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

And you pull your satchel back over your shoulder. You say a prayer of thanks for the kindness of a wildcard in a moment of need. You realize you lost the hand, but the Dealer is still at the table, and He's got another trick for you. And all the cards are back in His hand. And you've learned another secret of the game.

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier.

So many metaphors. Sorry if I lost you. That was maybe more for me than anybody else. And I feel good about it. But here's where I wanted to end up...

I am a strong, strong person

You're gonna bring yourself down.

And I am resilient.
Three weeks ago I was at the bottom: emotional, frustrated, hurt, trapped, angry.
But I built myself a terrace; I climbed my way out. No one else did that climb for me.
I had plenty of concerned hearts on the outside cheering, but for years now I've been the one to pull myself from the hole.


But this time, at the mouth of this crater, I was careless. I saw a hand reaching in to pull me out, and what I thought was one quick pull turned out to be much more, and when I regained my footing, I saw I had thrown the body of that salvation into the place I had only just left. I made a martyr of the grace I was given.

Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
All these things that I've done

I didn't realize how tired the knight had become until I saw him fallen and bloody at the the bottom of the hole I'd dug  I never wanted that. No one should ever work so hard only to come out feeling like a failure; like I feel now.


So, I shovel another heartache into the barrow. I say my prayer of thanks, remind myself of the lesson I keep relearning: man will not save me. But oh, it is a beautiful ride when he tries. And for that, I stay grateful, and with grace, I stay away while the knight picks himself up from the pit, rebuilds the terrace, climbs his way out.
 
If you can hold on
If you can hold on.

A Birthday Request for Corah; Very Important!! PLEASE READ!!

First, I'd like to thank you all so so much for the Birthday greetings! I've had lots of smiles today and am a blessed little lady to have seen so many of the people I love in the last two weeks.

Now I have a birthday wish that I would really like for you all to make come true. Let me tell you a story.

My cousin Jamie donated his kidney to his daughter, Corah, yesterday. She was born sick and in nearly four years of life, we've never really been able to say she was healthy. There were times when we thought her life would soon end, and weeks of desperation and sadness. But Corah Brigit Hanlon has a whole lot of life in her precious little body, and with a great deal help from her daddy, and a shower of grace from God, she's starting a new life today.

You all know how sentimental I can be, so excuse the fact that I'm going to that place and getting a little teary over here....

My thought is this: Today, July 27th, Corah gets to have a new birth day. And I get to share it with her. Oh, that I should be so blessed...

Corah's parents, Crystal and Jamie, are two of the kindest and wisest young people I've ever met. Jamie put faith in my writing in a way that inspired me like never before when they visited two years ago at Christmas. He is a loving and thoughtful man. He looks out for the broken, and brings peace to the hurting. Then there's Crystal. In my mind, Crystal is the perfect subject for the greatest poetry. She is the essence of womanhood. She'd bundle her Corah to her chest and walk in the snow of Maine in winter's most bitter fits, while pregnant with Corah's little brother, Burton. She plays and sings and reads with her beautiful children. She stands up for the oppressed, and challenges others to take action as well. Women like Crystal are what must have inspired men of the ancient world to believe that the were goddesses like Athena and Aphrodite. She is strong and even in the face of frightening times, she is brave; she is fierce.

These people deserve love from every corner of the world.

And Corah.

She is the single sweetest little girl I have ever seen. When I met her for the first time two Christmases ago, my heart broke at the thought that we might not get to see her grow up. It was too much goodness--too much purity--to see leave this world so quickly after it had come. I loved her immediately, and deeply.

She is the embodiment of joy: a truth that some people go their whole lives without ever experiencing.

My birthday wish is that all of you will help her to keep showing that truth to people every where she goes.

So here's the request.


My sister, Anne, and my mother, Kate, have set up an Indiegogo site to help financially support Corah's family. By following this link: http://www.indiegogo.com/careforcorah, you can watch a video with photos of Corah and a little bit of her story, and you can donate to help pay for the cost of the transplant and other medical procedures.

So, between my blog subscribers and almost 700 Facebook friends. Some of you are never on and won't see this, and some of you are children. Some are well-off, some have tight budgets. But one thing that I know is true of all of you: You all have hearts that know how to spread love.

I know this because I am so incredibly blessed by the love I've received in the last 23 years from all of you, and so many others. So today I have a request, a birthday wish. I would like for all of you who read this to go to Corah's Indiegogo page and donate a dollar or two. Our goal is to raise $1500 by November 24, but I know that we can do more than that with some help. I don't much like getting birthday presents, but if each of you would pitch in even that little bit, it will come together to make a huge difference.

Please open your hearts and help my dear, dear loved ones. And make my birthday wish come true.

God bless, and thank you all.


http://www.indiegogo.com/careforcorah

Heavy Things

Florence is the soundtrack for the day.
Shake it out, shake it off. 



Well good Lord. I've been elsewhere for months. But I'm coming back more and more all the time.

I forgot what I can do with words. The arrangement of letters and things that aren't just noise and aren't just about me in the sun with a chai tea latte at a picnic table. Keyboards and characters.

I'm swept up in the music of life and the astounding beauty of chance leading to the whispering moment when time slows and a chill rolls across my back. Life says, "This is pure and good, dear. Rest."

The goodness makes me realize just how good it is, the essence of the thing in itself being so very beautiful.

Talking in circles.

What I mean is this. 

We, many of us, have a habit of finding heavy things on our backs: scandal, cancer, abuse, divorce, death, despair, depression. We then bear the weight of the pain, the secrets, the sickness. Brokenness: the constitution of tragedy. And the harshest inherent pang is the sly grasp of darkness when it settles on us and we forget what makes us human.

We have the ability to comprehend the badness, to carry it, share or shelter it, to shoulder it.

And we have the ability to shake it, to shrug the devils off our shoulders and rip out the deepest claw.

We, again, many of us, have the habit of letting the heavy things name us, shape us.


The blessing is here: the goodness in my life reminds me of how much I have shrugged away, and of what I still carry, the residue of disaster that makes me who I am:
Em, a product of...

Dark days and basketball games.
Youth group retreats and awful Halloweens.
Christian community and measle immunity.

Breakdowns. Lemont. Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. Rocks and rivers, brothers and sisters. Lakes. Salt. Broken-hearted boys that never could be fixed. Grand grandparents.

And so much music. The melodies that run me up and down.

I am the cocktail drink of everything I've ever seen, Daughter to the Creator of all the greatest scenes.


I've no need for the nagging presence of the bad things telling me who to be. The big disasters that make me forget that my capacity to love is limitless, and boundless.

So I shrug off all the ugly, and embrace the beauty I see in the architecture of the Fox River when my favorite playmate says, "God knew exactly what he was doing to make this all look exactly as it does." And He did.

The essence of the thing, the beauty in itself, that heartbreak lays itself to the side when its time comes: the ugly fades away.

The good persists.

 And oh, how much good there is, how much better things get.

A frightened girl finds a safe place in a drunken gamble. She teaches the art of tenderness. It all falls together.

We, many of us, let the heavy things define us.

But what if we defined ourselves by the slow moments when we feel a little more alive, and the lines that hang in our memories... You're changing me. You're beautiful. I'm better when you're with me. I'm learning to trust again. I am the way I am for a reason, and I want to share it with you. I can share with you. I'll stay with you here. I'm happy. It's wonderful.

What if we defined ourselves by the awe that fills us in the most precious sights: our children, nieces and nephews. An eagle bowing in the sky. Water crashing through a garden. The laughter of an old friend.
The quirks of our grandparents.

The moment in the precise center of balance: time goes too quickly and time drags on.

So shake it off.

And write your story with whispers Life lays in your breath: "This is good. And there is more to come."


It's hard to dance, with a devil on your back, so shake him off.

Give A Man A Dollar

I know many men named Michael.

One is Mykael.

One is a dear old friend who knows all my secrets.

One shares his name with a dead celebrity and is my go-to for zombie apocalypse advice.

Two went to grade school with me for years.

One is my father's brother-in-law.

One is my mother's brother.

One is my step-father's brother.

One is my cousin.

One was in my high school youth group.

One dated my best friend for a minute one summer.

Some are brothers of friends.

Some I went to high school with.

Some I met in college.

And this is a story about one of those Michaels: Michael Krepps.

I met Michael during my sophomore year of college. The next year, he lived with my friend Austin, whose brother and sister-in-law would have a group of us students over once a week to hang out and play cards and eat Pizza Rolls. I went to EJ and Chad's with Austin and Michael and a collection of other friends most Wednesday nights over the course of three school years.

Michael was always pretty quiet, but as he began to open up, I realized how funny and genuinely caring he was. He spent last Spring studying abroad, and unfortunately for me, it was my last season in Colorado so I haven't seen much of him over the last year. I still have a Paragon magazine (our college's yearly literary publication) sitting just across the room from me with a post-it on it that reads: "Send me to Michael!" along with the Florida address of the office for the mission organization he worked with this summer. (Sorry I never sent that Michael!)

Being so far away, sometimes you forget to remember the people who played different roles in your life. Ready for a cheesy metaphor in which I explain Michael's role in mine? Here it is:

If my life was a weekend-long party, the main players like my family and closest friends would be sitting with me on the patio hanging out and telling stories. There would be other people mingling and scattered about throughout the venue, maybe a restaurant or some kind of big estate. Michael would be the guy who would show up early to help set up on Thursday. He'd quietly help until things were pretty much set, and at some point he'd slip out and head home. He might not even come to the party on Friday, but at some point during the event, he'd show up while I was feeling overwhelmed about running out of guacamole, and he'd stand in the kitchen with me cutting avocados and hearing about what he'd missed, just smiling, for as long as I needed him. I'd dash out of the room to go refill the bowls, and he'd wander the party, people watching, until he found someone else on the sidelines. It would probably be someone that I'd just met once or twice, but who had to be at the party because to some degree, they were an important part of my life.

Michael would be the guy to sit down and ask that person their story, and to invest a little bit of who he was.

Like I said, it's a cheesy metaphor, but the point is that Michael takes notice of the broken or the lonely, and he cares for them. He is a seedplanter, and a thoughtful, kind man. I'm proud to have been a friend to him. And now I'm excited to share what he's doing.

On January 31, Michael kicked off an experiment: His goal is to ask 1 million people to each donate a dollar to him over the course of the next year. He has pledged that the first $10,000 will go to charity. If the donations surpass this amount, he will then begin using the remaining money to enable his work for those in need. I could tell you what I know about the work he has already done, but I'd rather you explore for yourselves.

The link for Michael's experiment and for the Facebook event page are below:

The Self-Serving Social Experiment: For the Benefit of Others

SSS: For The Benefit of Others Facebook Event

You can use the first link to visit the Experiment website where you can learn more about Michael and donate $1. You can further help by going to the Facebook event and inviting your friends to donate as well.

I understand that this may sound completely crazy, especially for those of you who haven't heard of Michael, not to mention those of you reading who don't even know me personally, but let me tell you this: If Michael Krepps collects even half of the million dollars he has set as his goal, he will change the world for good. I know this because he is already making a positive impact through his work with the International Action Club at Colorado Christian University and through the missions work he has done over the several years in eight countries.

I believe in Michael's experiment, and in the charity and hope of the people I know, and of the people who read this blog. I can promise you that Michael is not and never would be scamming anyone. His desire is to do good things for people who have little, and who need love. So please, give a man a dollar, and help him change the world.

If you have any questions about the experiment, you can comment or email me at emilyymariee@gmail.com and I will forward them on to Michael for you.

Thank you for supporting a dear friend.

Nothing

This is something that isn't anything.

This is where I ask a boy why he would let me think we could love each other.

This is where I wonder what reality is, because someone has deconstructed it. And everything. With single words, with "I can't talk about this now."

This is the moment when I wonder why any of us are where we are, because why are we why, because when are we when, because what are we?

What!?

This is nothing.

This is where I stop letting myself love.

This is where you break my heart...

where my heart breaks all which loves it.

This is something and nothing and everyone who knows what I have not yet been allowed to understand.

This is conspiracy.

This is dogma.

This is life.

This is.

I don't know what is tonight. The things I believed are no longer believable.

This is a man sleeping on a mattress. This is a girl waking in the night.

This is a boy not knowing what love is.

This is a girl who is not the boy's own to love.

This is how a girl hates him for no promise he made.

This is nothing.

This is everything.

Relationship. Words exchange.

This is no poem; this is no cry.

This is what falls out of my mouth as I think about carelessness and novels and song lyrics, the mix CDs made for me, and the city streets I cannot face, for love has paved them, and I do not seal its tar.

I am forbidden from the paths the men have laid. I am restricted from the asphalt under my feet.

This is nothing.

So on I'll drift to nothing else.

The Old Year

Listen while you read: "There Goes The Fear" - Doves

Every night is a reset button.

But tonight is something different.

Tonight, I'll close my eyes when I sleep and wish with every muscle and tendon and cell, that I'll wake up to the first day of 2011.

I want a reset, to do the last year over. Not because I made mistakes, although I did, but so I could relive the best moments, and appreciate them, and so I could make choices for the right reasons, not out of desperation or expectation.

If I were to wake up to January 1, 2011, all over again, I'd be in the same room, here in my parents' house. My ears wouldn't be pierced yet, and my grandfather would still be alive.

What I'd do first: I'd wake up in the morning, and call the Foxes of Hickory Hills to ask if they wouldn't mind having me for lunch. I would cherish it. I'd take a picture of the three of us together: a replacement for the one I won't have on my wedding day, and didn't get at my graduation.

If I woke up to the old year, I'd make mostly the same choices, because the point isn't to make some manufactured future where things are "better," but I'd care better for the hearts of the people I love, because I've done a poor job of that for the last six months. I've been selfish, to the point where I lied myself through a relationship that was completely fabricated in my mind--I made it something it would never be.

But I'd still approach that relationship with the same hope, because we came to understand each other better and more easily than anyone ever had before.

My heart was out of sorts for a while because of it, but I learned about myself, and about relationships and people in general. I now I know what it's like to have a man ask me what's wrong, because he knows that I'm thinking about something that has upset me, but that I won't talk about it. All this he can tell by the way I bite my lip when I'm simultaneously frustrated and resigned. Yet he doesn't love me.

I'd do our friendship the same way in a repeat.

There are times when I'd hold my words and wait for better ones to come, because there have been, especially in a Chicago apartment since October, plenty of words that never should have left my mouth. And for all of those, I am still sorry. I was destructive in the wake of the waves that a broken heart made in me. I was some one entirely different.

But I'm better now. If I was to do it again, I'd skip the disasters, and come straight to the healing.

If I woke up to the start of 2011, I'd be so very excited to go back for my last semester of college, and that, I would do better. More studying, more reading, more writing. The new friends I made in the last year: I'd start those friendships all over again. Everyone from Westwoods, in particular. And I would pour into that community ten times over. Those people helped me hold my world together this summer, and I never gave them proper thanks. They were all beautiful and I hold them in my heart. I would be a better youth leader, and I'd be closer to those kids. They'd know I'm still here for them.

I would be a better roommate to my best friends, and I would value living with them so much more, because A207 was a perfect home for us, and I never loved it while I was there, but now I miss that place and the three girls I had lived there with so very much.

I would spend more time with Laura and Jessie. I'd get closer to Jess.

My college friends started sort of slipping away from the scenery of my life before we were even close to leaving CCU, and I wish that even back in our sophomore and junior years, we had kept the bigger group together--all those Shelter boys. I know that people drift apart, and that's obviously a part of life, but I know that a good number of us are still close enough and have the sort of relationships where the distance and time apart will never matter. Boys, I miss you, too.

The summer was a dream. I wouldn't change a thing. Except I would have saved more money, and saved Barry. Poor little guy all crushed up from an RV on I-25. (Barry was my old car, for those of you who don't know. And no one was harmed in the accident.)

If I'd been smarter and worked harder, who knows, maybe there would have been a job waiting for me when I graduated, and maybe I wouldn't have ended up coming home. But it's no matter, because despite this great wish to relive the last year, I've found my way:

"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength." -- Philippians 4:11-13

I've made it through another Old Year, in the air of loss and change and heartbreak and a hundred other ugly things.

I've made it through another Old Year, because I was swirled with snowflakes and love and laughter and butterflies in the rain. There were fireworks and we held hands and breathed the mountains like we owned them, and we did: they were our private gift from heaven, and we threw worship to the Creator from their roads. We worshiped with our hands and our mouths and our pounding feet and fists. There was love. And wedding cakes in bright and shiny shoes, on my best friend's best day. There was Denver and DC and Lakewood and CCU and Target and Lemont and wonderful everything. I wrote letters. I danced. I laughed, God did I laugh. I walked and I smiled and I cried and I hurt. And there was so much love.

With another shot at that old year that tore up my picture of the world, I'd love more yet.

Cheers to the Old Year, here's to the New Year.

For more love, we'll take 2012 as it comes.

Because You Asked For It

First a note: I'm shutting down my Facebook, so if you use my posts on there to find my blog, you obviously won't be seeing them anymore. You can sign up to get emails when I post, if you want to keep following me, in the box to the right on your screen. Otherwise, let me know and I'll be sure to let you know when I put up new poems/posts. You can email me at emilyymariee@gmail.com if you want to be on that list of emails.

Now for the real stuff...

Listen to The Shins cover The Postal Service's "We Will Become Silhouettes" and hear these words...

How do I know I'm a "writer," and not a writer? I just watched The Simpsons episode "The Book Job" featuring Neil Gaiman and spoofing the Ocean's trilogy, and realized that as Lisa was trying to write the next great teen series, she looked like me.

I've got a cupboard with cans of food, filtered water, and pictures of you.

And I'm not coming out until this is all over.

She reorganizes her CD collection. I create a new Pandora station. She goes to a coffee shop, as do I. She watches the entire series of Friday Night Lights, and I'm watching her. We get mad at sellouts, we play with pencils, we kill time, we write next to nothing.

I know, it's stupid that I'm using Lisa Simpson as a metaphor for my life. I get it. And really, I don't even watch The Simpsons. I was just procrastinating... the life of a "writer." (But give me a little slack: Neil Gaiman was in it, so how could I not watch, right?)

So I'm taking my headphones and a notebook out, and I'm going to start writing a story that's not quite fiction, and I don't know where it will go yet. But I've been asked for it, by my stepfather, and an ex, and some boy in some city some where, and by the smiley-est girl in all of Colorado, and by my own need for recognition, and by that feeling in my heart when I believe in greatness because the right song is on and I close my eyes and my hair is curled and I feel light and like flying.

Because you asked for it, I will create, and I will not abandon my own pages this time.

I don't know what it's about yet, but I know I'll know when it's finished. So now just for the start.

You're right, I'm not giving you much here. But I'll tell you this: today's the day I start the next big thing. It's a story of a girl who's almost me, but not me enough to be somebody else so I can make up all the wonderful and awful things that happen to her.

She loves going to the movies alone because she hopes to see some grumpy boy on a date, looking miserable, so she can nickname him Holden. And she's unstable as Esther Greenwood, but she'd never try to kill herself. And she's just realized that she has faith in herself, really, for the first time, and has moments of infinite feeling, like Charlie the wallflower. She's sweet as Scout, and gentle as her "Hey, Boo." She's as adventurous as Sal Paradise, and thinks about the sadness and wonderfulness of life like him too. She's reaching into something bigger than herself and trying, like Nick Carraway, to look like she belongs.

She's a philosopher, a heartbreaker, a beauty, a poet, a lover. She has been let down, and she is ready to surpass her highest highs. She is, quite simply, a real girl.

She isn't me. But I'll tell her story. I'll write her name.

And today's the day I begin.

Had You Followed Me Home

An old poem: for October and November, for quirks, for happy times and timely goodbyes.

Had You Followed Me Home
For all the things that never happened with you,
and all the things that shouldn't have happened to anyone else.

If you had followed me here, we’d be in the breaking leaves
behind my parents’ house—the dying earrings of the cottonwood
litter the grass, the chopped onions from a mower blade in a lawn salad.
Your warm Pacific blood would move slowly and
you’d beg my worn Midwestern hands to assure you—
You’d stand, swirled by yard dusts and flakes,
and I’d touch your knee and smile with my father’s laughter
when we’d meet him for pizza on an October Thursday in Chicago.
We’d see my high school friends and sing our way to the all-night diner
that’s been made-over (purple ceilings and yellow walls) by the
Greeks who’ve owned it for the last five-hundred years or so.
Holding the menu half open, you’d order—no, ask for—chocolate cake and
my friends would taunt and tease you, actions typically reserved for me.
I’d swipe a taste of the frosting and bury myself in the corner of the booth,
green glows for irises at the impossibility of you on the vinyl with me.
Had you followed me home, you’d have seen Chicago play a symphony of who I am:
the Metra hum beats percussion with State Street brass and theater light strings
and my hometown, my mother’s house—its mellow reeds play woodwind tones.
In grass under cotton shade, we—with closed eyes—would float on
the rising of the suburban orchestra and then, with the birth of these thoughts,
you’d tune the masterpiece and call it love.

A Tribute to Anne & Ian

I want any where but here. I don't care if I'm alone. I just want out of this cubicle.
Seven years: some of them have been here, doing this, for seven years.

How do people do this? They say, "Easy job. Decent pay. Reasonable hours."

I say I'm going insane, sitting here staring at the same three textured little waist-high walls that shut me out from the rest of the office. I'm in the back with a real wall to my right, over the carpeted hedge.

It's almost demeaning. No windows, just three rows of little worlds: phone, computer, catalogs. I need out of here. Everybody should need out of here.

Just on a twenty minute call:
"Ok, ma'am, I'm going to spell that first name back to you. V like Victor-I-E-T like Thomas-R Robert-A, correct?"
She says yes and gets frustrated that I can't find her in the system. Exasperated. I ask her who she's shipping to and look up her boyfriend's name. Mark. I find him and the order confirmation.
My, my, Vietra, what cute little shorts you're getting for the boyfriend. Funny that you first referred to him as your husband. (I don't ask. There's a reason she's shipping directly to the man.)
"Ok ma'am, I apologize for the delay. I've found your order here using Mark's name, and just once more, I'm going to spell your name to make sure we've got it correct on the order here: V Victor-I-E-T-R-A and the last name starts with B like boy?"
And then she snaps, "No! It's a D. It starts with a D. Like... like Dead." Well, that's certainly uplifting, Ms. D--. Golly. "I see. Well let's cancel your original order and open a new one because it looks like the original was put in for cheer shorts, not boxers, and I'm sure Mark would prefer the boxers."
"What's the difference?" she scoffs.
"The cheer shorts are for women and fit like softball shorts, and the boxers are for men. Like boxers, ma'am."
"Oh." Yup.
Here's my issue: I pull up her order, and her initials: D. B. not V.D. Learn how to spell your name, Dietra. Are you even listening?
V like Victor. D like David. Not the same thing. What are you hearing?
Delaware. Another state I've never been to, but right now, I'm glad; at least I'm not going to run into Vie--I mean-- Dietra when I stop for lunch on the way to work.

So I send her boyfriend some boxers and roll my eyes; why don't people hear anything?


I spent last weekend in a blackhole, a parallel of lives that were not my own. And I came out on the other side with few lessons learned:

We all need people.
We all need books.

More noise. More poetry. More revolution.
More plumbers and Netflix and hardwood living rooms and Saturdays and lawyers and busses. And housewives and sisters. More Annie, more Ian.

Yes, more busses and streets and birds and mornings and floors.
Less carpet. Less work. More real. More laughter. More youth.
We need more hummingbirds.

("Yes, Ms. Humphries, I know that the website should tell you that there will be additional charges, and I agree that it is unfair as is... No, I don't write the code for the web so there's really nothing I can do." When did I become such a sell out? I should move to the city; this office is killing me. And Ms. Humphries, please don't call me sleazy again. "Yes ma'am, I do know how to spell sleazy... Yes, I did go to college..." not that it's any of your business. "Yes ma'am, I do have a conscience, a big one. My mother gave it to me, and I don't ever take that for granted... Yes, she is a good woman. She gets it from her mother." Was your mother a good woman, Ms. Humpfries? Are you?)

We get stuck. Not ruts. More like dry troughs or run-off ditches. More like deserts.

This is the desert and I am searching for Moses--lead me out, old bearded patriarch.
Or Aaron, too, a man with a voice.

Someone just lead me out, anywhere but this cubicle. Anywhere but Delaware.

"I'm glad your daughter is in love, Adelaide. Summer must be a happy girl, and I'm sure Charles is a lucky man. We'll get this order in and you'll be receiving your confirmation shortly." Thanks for reminding me about all of us who aren't happy-in-love. Thanks for bringing up summer, that season of empty passion. "Oh, no, thank you ma'am, it was a pleasure, and good luck with the rest of your holiday shopping. Enjoy the season!"

Because it's cold, because it's anything but summer, and I'll find a way to be anywhere but here.

We all need books.

More noise.
More poetry.
More revolution.

And all the president's men.

Anklet

If I were to make a road map,
I’d begin with where I am
which would span into the metro
and plains mountains deserts
oceans continents that haven’t
had the please of my bare
feet digging through their
soil grain dirt dust sand—
our toes sliding over white
porous stone on glowing
cerulean greenblue seas—

The map veins would circle
in the net of longitude-latitude
yarn choking the hemispheres
in place—a fat ham in my
mother’s Chicago Easter Morning
Kitchen, the lines holding meat,
threading spools of fishing line,
wrapping packages.

I’d sketch the map of every thing
that ever passed between us—
word and wave stitched together
with the string around your ankle.

Waking Up

I took a nap for the summer.

I slept in the wake of funerals and baseball games and hot afternoons. I curled up in a nest of cool basement air, of inconsistency and laundry baskets and evenings on front porches in recliners.

I was in a coma of lust for life and other things, a trance of disproportion and an adventure that took me no where in particular, but home.

And home is where I hope to wake up.

A professor told me near the end of last semester that I was in a funk, and that a trip to DC would pull me out. It did something, but I think I ended up losing part of myself in the capitol's old thick air and its sidewalks, which seem to know more than those of Chicago or Denver. The city has been breathing. The people wake and sleep.

When I returned, I moved out of my apartment and into my vagabond summer, the strangest of my life. And though it had some of the best days I'll ever know, I look back on an October morning and laugh: wasted time and useless motions.

What did I read? What did I write? Where did I spend my weekday mornings? When did I run? Who did I love? Why did I cry?

All just to end up where I began, another midwestern girl in a small town with a wish to get out. But this time, things are changing: Maybe I'll go somewhere new.

In the summer slumber, I fell into some directional blindness. I saw nothing of where I was headed until I was there, in everything I did: where I lived, somewhere new nearly every week); when I worked, checking my schedule only the morning of; who I saw, making plans on my own whims and movement. All these things with no intentionality.

And now I feel invisible. Youngest person in the office and all us little women answer the phones: "Thank you for calling. This is Emily. How may I help you today?" followed by either, "Great, may I have your order number?" or "Alright, are you calling with one of our catalogs today?"

What am I doing? Still sleeping.

But the choice now is to be awake and wide-eyed and ready--for a campaign, for a crowd, for a move, a leap, a change. And I will be.

There is no excuse for the post-graduation summer to linger through October morning moons.

So I say, "Good morning Moon," and Mrs. Hill of Indiana puts me on hold to the sound of country music while I'm waiting for her credit card number, then I laugh, and continue, "Good morning Sun."

I'm waking up.

The Weight

I keep wanting to start things, but I'm afraid of finishing.
When you finish something, you want it to be good, to be right, to know perfection.

But that's too much Weight.

The Weight

For Thomas Walter, Stephen Thomas, and Thomas Stephen.

I laid down in my home town, feeling the weight of the dead,

fresh off the flying machine with altitude dropping in my head.

Here, brother, I made it, where’s Grandfather in his eternal bed?

He looked down, and shook his head, and Here was all he said.

Let your cross fall, Grandmother.

Let your burden fall free.

Let your cross fall, Grandmother, and

pass your lover’s timber box on to me.

I picked out dark sister, and I took her to the alley to hide,

then I saw how same and different we are, standing at her side.

I said Hey Sister, where’s your life going, there downtown?

She said, It’s something else—this town ain’t a place to stay around.

Lay your load down, Father.

Let your weight fall free.

Lay your load down, Father, and

pass your handle on to me.

Go hush great-grandchild, there’s nothing you’ll ever say;

It’s us asleep and waiting—to see the man on Judgment Day.

Well Thomas, my brother, our children, he’ll never see,

But I say, Burn our worries, brother, our stories will keep us company.

Let your pain fade, Thomas.

Let your name be free.

Let your pain fade, Thomas, and

pass your name right on to me.

Mister Grief came in shadow stalking, and settled on me, a fog.

He said, I will take your heart, blanket and warm you in my smog.

I told him, I’ll stay awhile, Darling, but I’ll leave you alone, man.

He said, You think you’ll leave, girl, but you’ll come back when can.

Take a load off, child.

Leave it there buried.

Take a load off, child, and

put it in the ground for me.

We held our unthorned roses, and all stood there in line.

Our ungloved hands, were shaking then, knowing it was time

To drop the petals and the bones, with the casket all as one.

We said goodnight, grand man, rest well from everyone.

Take a load off, Grandfather.

Let your spirit fly free.

Take a load off, Grandfather, and

You stay in heaven and keep a watch on me.

Mountain Breath

Miles out from the foothills at the end of a July light:

look up and west.

Peer beyond those ridges, to the verdant valleys

nestled between weighty hills.

Then, when the sun hangs low,

and the clouds grow heavy, spilling with wet pearls

You will see the earth reborn.

Breath goes climbing and life comes falling, in drops, sheets.

Watch it come graceful and smooth over all,

heaven and creation.

I stood east of the range, and

saw the great land go up,

crawling through golden, misted flame,

reaching into the lungs of God.

He spat life down on the hills.

I watched with the eye He gave me,

and I will tell you—with the rhythm of

the rain in my chest—this:

This is the way of the rain,

the Creator falling with the air.

Montage with And Today

I've started a couple different posts over the last few weeks, but haven't finished any of them.

So rather than starting another that I likely won't finish, I'm posting all the scraps together.

Snippets of my brain all weaved in patchwork and sad melody. La dee da.

First, listen to a sad song while you read through the first few posts. The song in the link, Manchester Orchestra's "Sleeper 1972" has been a backdrop for the last two months of my life. It's beautiful and heartbreaking.

3/27/11

On Silence

We had a moment at chapel last week when they had us all quiet down and pray in silence.

But I didn't think it felt the way it should... the creaking of bleachers and rustling of paper.

I think if we really heard silence, we'd be terrified.
We are caught in the noise of our lives.
Wadsworth hums outside my window.
My laptop purrs on my bed.

My breathing tenses and flows.

My roommate closes, opens doors.

My mind jumps on drums and thoughts and clatters.
Words dance over highways in our brains and if you concentrate, sometimes you can feel them between your ears: which synapses are firing, which cortex is acting.

And they pop and fly and fuse and all at once we get going in a dozen directions and suddenly the peace we were trying to find in the quiet is a race inside us--to find conclusions and to really feel the contentment we try to believe in.

But I don't believe it at all.

4/11/11

Yessing

I'm sad about some things, and it's making it hard to write. I fall into these cycles of pushing everybody away for little spurts of time, and I'm approaching one. And the rough thing is that there are people I don't want to leave me, to get past me.
I worry that I say all the same things over and over and that these rambling thoughts start to all sound repetitious and shallow.
I think I repeat myself---I say the same things and live the same patterns and make the same choices and give in to the same fears.
I think I'm unprepared for happiness--that I'm afraid of it. I freak out about the future so I'll feel like I'm preparing, but really, I'm circling.
Commitment makes me shudder. Saying yes to anything means saying no to everything else. So I worry so much about missing anything that I hardly let myself ever really experience anything.
And life is about to become a bit bigger. City and family and choices and saying no, so I can say yes. I've been afraid of yessing anything for a long time, and sure, there have been exceptions, but for the most part I've stopped at cliff edges and backed away with apologies and insecurities: I bailed on China, I can't choose what September should be, or where my life will feel at home. I want the future to fall into my lap, fully stocked with adventure and love.

4/17/11

Choosing, further thoughts on 'Yessing'

Life, at its barest, demands little of us. But the breathing and moving and living of every day requires that we make decisions. We have to choose.
There's a flooding phenomenon in my generation for a dislike of decision-making. I'm certainly guilty of this; I've told friends recently that choosing what to do after graduating from university is like marrying something. Picking one avenue to pursue, and leaving the rest to fall to the wind. And I'm not talking about leaving paths for other days; Frost covered that business, and it isn't what I'm addressing here.
Decision making. Choosing.
It takes saying no: prioritizing, and letting go of the other options.
So settling into some role, some thing for the next year of my life is commitment, but it isn't marriage. It isn't exclusive and picking an opportunity doesn't mean saying no to all others; in fact, chances are, one will lead to another.
But I worry. I get scared. Jobs, connections, relationships, everything. Terrified.
It takes responsibility and courage just to live, to function and sleep and commit to being ourselves and doing the best we can.
Then there's risk. We have to ask ourselves what we want, and we have to answer--stand to make a choice.
I'm asking myself--and ask yourself--'What do I want?'
And how big and how much and where? And how much am I willing to say no to, to get those things? What am I willing to sacrifice to be able to grasp the things that are yet out of my reach? And why, to all of these inquiries?
How do I answer, and what do I say to the questions I have to ask?
Do I want places or people or opportunities or experiences---or all of them?
What am I willing to risk?

5/8/11

In Chaos

Today's soundtrack. Aqualung: "Broken Bones"

Another sad sort of song. Sing sing sing.

Simultaneously graduating and grieving, I've found, makes for uncomfortable handshakes and repetition of all the same things: No, I'm not quite sure when I'm leaving; Oh I haven't quite figured out what comes next; Yeah, it was a great time at CCU; I've been friends with your son for years and he's one of my favorites here; She's a wonderful woman; Yes, I'll miss them.

I miss you. I already do.

The thing is, I miss everybody when they're not there. I cry when listen through Transatlanticism. And I miss Dr. Woodruff every time I write or read a poem. I miss the relationships I had with all my crazy friends from high school and the early days of college. I miss Uncle Rich when the Bears play and when it snows. I miss the dynamics that used to characterize my life because at some point along the way I started with this grieving and I haven't stopped.

And now I'm grieving all the moments I won't have with my grandfather in the future. My children will never meet him, and he won't see his grandchildren marry. The sons- and daughters-in-law won't understand who he was.

That was why I loved Salinger's Holden the first time I read Catcher.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

I do; I do miss everybody all the time because I can't stop talking about the people in my life, and because I love hard. It's exhausting, wanting to be everywhere, to be everything to anyone who might need anything. And it's exhausting to fail.

I want to see heaven, and know what it's like, if my grandfather is sitting with his mother, catching up and playing cards. If Dr. Woodruff has been having lunch dates with T.S. Eliot or anybody like that up there.

I want more time. To finish, to smile, to breathe. I'm always in such a hurry, getting from one thing to the next and trying to do and solve and fix and save and salvage.

5/28/11

Saturdays: Plans

Plans fall apart on a Saturday night, so I finally post on my blog. [Clearly, this didn't actually happen.]
A lot has happened lately, and I thought that at the end of all of it, I'd sit back and feel some deep relief and profound change. An "I just grew up so much in the last two months I can't even believe it" kind of thing, you know?
But instead, yesterday, I was sitting at the pool with a friend and I thought to myself, I haven't really changed at all from last summer. I'm still lusting for the sun and burying myself in novels. I'm wishing I was younger and things felt easier, or that I could fast forward to a point in time where these things all begin to make sense.

I've been obsessing over plans for months now, yet I still don't feel like I've made much progress. I said a big "No" in a case that was incredibly difficult, and I've realized home isn't what it used to be, but it never is.

And today...

In rereading all these posts and pasting them together, I think the main reason I've had such trouble finishing them is that they're all just about me and getting inside my head. That's not what I set out to do here. It is not what I want.

The problem then, as a result, is that I don't know what I do want. Always the problem, really.

Relationships? I'm utterly lost these days. The major shut out I predicted in the scrap of "Yessing" absolutely came true. (That said, if I haven't responded to Facebook messages or texts or phone calls, I'll call this my reason; apologies.)

One thing I know: I want to get back to bigger things, the bigger things at work. The abstract and undefined.

So I'll try to do that more in the coming posts while I'm sorting things out here and getting my head back on straight. It seems that I'm finally managing that after a couple months of being pretty scattered.

I said goodbyes and found some peace... now just to find a place to live.

I appreciate your patience, and as always, thank you for reading.

Earthquakes

I think my generation is going to feel an earthquake this week.

Osama bin Laden is dead. I've known for just about an hour now, as I sit in my room, at 10:45 PM in Denver on May 1, 2011. Sixty-six years after Hitler's death was announced. What did Hitler's death do for the families of his victims? Was there rejoicing, or quiet closure? (I wasn't there, and I don't know, so maybe I shouldn't use that parallel.)

I'm already thinking about the conspiracy lines people are drawing. Like the coincidences of life are scripted by the Victorians.

I'm speechless and happy and angry all at once. People are celebrating the death of a man.

I am rejoicing too, but not at death. I am thankful for closure that is settling over some of the survivors of 9/11. I am hopeful for the return of American troops.

And I am fearful.

Tomorrow, Sarah Palin is coming to speak at CCU for the Tribute To The Troops. Does a man's death diffuse the anger of potential protesters? Alright, good.

But what about the response now? The whole world is seeing America rejoice in the death of a man and I am attached to the news just the same as I was on the second Tuesday of September when I was in seventh grade.

I can't stop.

My generation is going to be shaking, because some of us are shouting USA, because we believe we've met a goal, we've made a safer world, we've showed evil what's what.

But I am aware the hiss of evil, and its sting, and I do not rejoice at suffering.

I am weary of men.

I trust my God, and I rest in knowing that plans are in hands bigger than the universe itself.

But I can't say that the world will smile at the show we've made of America tonight.

How will individuals who have never been to America see the rallies of my peers outside the White House and at Ground Zero? Thousands of people cheering. Will the world understand that this is our response to nearly ten years of agony?

Will they know that our cheers--some of us--are for the peace we hope to see?

Reports say that Pakistani officials were unaware that bin Laden was within their borders. How will Americans respond? Floating levels of approval for Obama now like Bush had based on war "success" and casualties? Will tension with Pakistan rise?

I have anxieties indeed.

My generation, all of us, saw tragedy when we were children. We saw steel giants collapse and we were impressionable and our lives were changed, impacted more than we can even understand.

And now, what? I don't think the death of bin Laden should be a platform for jubilant celebration. Obviously, others in my generation disagree. A college student at Ground Zero said on MSNBC: "I feel great right now. We need to party right now. He's dead."

I think this is only a single battle, not the weight to tip the scale toward a "win" in war.

My generation will feel the quake. Because we are young and we are strong and a man hurt the country we were born in and we got voices--politically, philosophically, socially.

This man had a huge impression on us, and he is dead. That doesn't make the impression go away. His actions affected my life. His death... his death means almost nothing to me as an individual.

I am not rejoicing in his death.

My peers, the masses of them: they are drunk on the air of his demise.

I feel the tremors.

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?