Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Seperations Pt. II

I believe that we all need each other. Not because without our friends we'd grow bored or because we'd miss our family members if they went on a long trip, but because each of us plays a role in creating all the others. I think in the end if I look carefully, I'll be able to see how each person crafted me, imbued me with the characteristics I thought uniquely mine. I think I need my friends and family, even my rivals, like I need my kidneys. Sure, they're pleasant, but they're also what allow me to function as a person. Without them I couldn't grow or develop, test myself or even learn who I really am.

Maybe that's part of why it's so hard to lose someone you need. Especially if you lost them through a fault of your own, like taking out your own kidneys.

2

We sit in a parked car on an empty street
and I keep trying to talk but everything
in the car is shouting: the steering wheel
and dashboard, the pedals and black vinyl seats -
all keep shouting. Now your hands are pressed
against your ears and I keep raising my voice.
Cold night, cold street, rows of dark apartments -
then I see a gray dog run into an alley
carrying some creature in its mouth, something
that twists and raises its arms. And raising
my arms I turn toward you and abruptly
the shouting stops and the place where you were
sitting fills with silence. Before I can speak,
soften my words, you jump from the car.
Once, when you were away for a week, I wrote
your name on a banner to welcome you home.
Now the wind blows pieces of paper against
the car windows, and on each I see a letter
of your name, as if my voice were a pair of hands
good for nothing but tearing and breaking. How
did we become so foreign? I tell myself, I could
collect these fragments, patch them together.
I sit without moving as the wind rocks my car,
whips scraps of white paper through the street.

-Stephen Dobyns

Monday, May 12, 2008

Finding What You Never Lost

Since doing our poetry project in Lake's class last year, Stephen Dobyns has held a special place in my heart. I'd never really enjoyed anyones poetry before, and after putting so much time and energy into his work, I forged a connection with him that I haven't really felt with other poets since. I guess it's a kind of first love.

I think someone first introduced me to the idea of "Celestial nostalgia" in a seminary class a couple of years ago. Basically, the idea observes that occasionally we'll read something, or hear something, or think of some "new" idea and in that moment be overcome by the idea that you've known whatever it is you've experienced all along. The idea is that occasionally we hear things in certain Sunday school lessons that, well, that we somehow remember from the pre-existence. And you know, how could we remember that thing unless there was a pre-existence, etc...

I guess I should be a little more serious about the idea, I'm totally in love with it. In fact, anyone who knows me knows I'm a major C.S. Lewis fan, and that's one of the biggest reasons. When I read his work I feel like I'm just getting back in touch with something I always knew.

Almost ironically (not all of his work is what I'd exactly call spiritual), I get that same feeling when I read Dobyns' work. Like when he writes he's just reciting something that was already there, often something a little dark, but still ancient.

Anyway, here's the first part of a four part poem titled, "Separations."

1

To begin with photographs of summer: lakes
ringed by white birch held by hands of white bone -
skeletons as delicate as the skeletons of birds.
To begin with a scene in a theater: a man and
woman sit on a red couch and between them
are photographs so bright that each becomes
a small lamp lighting their faces, making
a circle of yellow light around the couch;
but then it is darker, and moving back one sees
that the couch is alone on an empty stage.
The man and woman look at the photographs
and although they are talking there is no sound.
The only sound comes from a cleaning woman
at the back of the theater as she moves along
each row. She is old and lives with her cat.
She thinks of nothing but raising the seats
which she likes to flick up in such a way
that each snaps shut. Outside it is snowing and
almost dark. People hurry from office to home.
They are dissatisfied and all their cars
complain: snarling, honking, hating each other.

-Stephen Dobyns

Friday, May 2, 2008

Open Mic Night

Here's the first in what I hope will be a serious of posts kind of spread throughout what I write. I understand that, you know, sooner or later you'll get sick of just hearing my thoughts so here's a piece from a friend.

It's a piece by Margaret Atwood, a Canadian poet, and has no title. It has a marked political slant but I get the feeling there's more to it than meets the eye.

We hear nothing these days
from the ones in power

Why talk when you are a shoulder
or a vault

Why talk when you are
helmeted with numbers

Fists have many forms;
a fist knows what it can do

without the nuisance of speaking:
it grabs and smashes.

From those inside or under
words gush like toothpaste.

Language, the fist
proclaims by squeezing
is for the weak only.

-Margaret Atwood

Discuss.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Maybe just one more...

Growing up as an only child, I quickly discovered a world that spoke only faintly of reality, where I could go when long hours of loneliness threatened to creep upon me.

To avoid boredom, the enemy of every childhood, I played odd, exciting, creative games with elaborate stories and intense climaxes. Sometimes I'd pretend I piloted futuristic spacecraft through high-speed-and-higher-tension race courses filled with tricky elevation changes and underhanded competitors. Other times, I'd simply create stories like those I watched on TV. Ace pilots performing impossible maneuvers to outfox pursuing enemies and escape to safety, just in time. Occasionally my heroes, for all their tricks, were vanquished unjustly. I remember once spending what seemed like hours discovering the personal reactions of each character to the untimely death of their beloved friend, Hero.

Whatever happened, a particular pleasure filled my imagination adventures. The pleasure of excitement, like the feeling of playing with new toys on Christmas day. Unlimited possibility flashed like lightning, lightning that I became. Dancing, crash! Boom! I leapt like like between ideas and I felt the energy unleashed when the climax arrived. Lightning strikes the Earth, burns a scar into the immortal Earth.

The pleasure became part of me, a companion who spoke joy to my heart. I developed a feeling like passion, a deep affection for the characters I played with everyday. My adventures burst with excitement, freedom, and a wild rush. They left a story on my bones. A story I read and relive now and again.

Imagination means children discovering a rushing fire within themselves.

"The Centaur"

The summer that I was ten-
Can it be there was only one
summer that I was ten? It must

have been a long one then-
each day I'd go out to choose
a fresh horse from my stable

which was a willow grove
down by the old canal.
I'd go on my two bare feet.

But when, with my brother's jack-knife,
I had cut me a long limber horse
with a good thick knob for a head,

and peeled him slick and clean
except a few leaves for the tail,
and cinched my brother's belt

around his head for a rein,
I'd straddle and canter him fast
up the grass bank to the path,

trot along in the lovely dust
that talcumed over his hoofs,
hiding my toes, and turning

his feet to swift half-moons.
The willow knob with the strap
jouncing between my thighs

was the pommel and yet the poll
of my nickering pony's head.
My head and my neck were mine,

yet they were shaped like a horse.
My hair flopped to the side
like the mane of a horse in the wind.

My forelock swung in my eyes,
my neck arched and I snorted.
I shied and skittered and reared,

stopped and raised my knees,
pawed at the ground and quivered.
My teeth bared as we wheeled

and swished through the dust again.
I was the horse and the rider,
and the leather I slapped to his rump

spanked my own behind.
Doubled, my two hoofs beat
a gallop along the bank,

the wind twanged in my mane,
my mouth squared to the bit.
And yet I sat on my steed

quiet, negligent riding,
my toes standing in the stirrups,
my thighs hugging his ribs.

At a walk we drew up to the porch.
I tethered him to a paling.
Dismounting, I smoothed my skirt

and entered the dusky hall.
My feet on the clean linoleum
left ghostly toes in the hall.

Where have you been? said my mother.
Been riding, I said from the sink,
and filled me a glass of water.

What's that in your pocket? she said.
Just my knife. It weighted my pocket
and stretched my dress awry.

Go tie back your hair, said my mother,
and Why is your mouth all green?
Rob Roy, he pulled some clover
as we crossed the field, I told her.

-May Swenson

What's the deal?

AP tests! That's the deal!

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten the blog and still feel horrible guilt every day I realize I didn't write anything. For now though, I'm just to busy!

Be back after AP tests...