Antigone

In life

Light tethered to a monument,

Daughter of

Blood and dark waters.

In death

Artemis’ discharge,

Pillaged town

More silent than the moon.

Fidelity ends not with a

Wedding-song,

No; with a rattle of bones.

The deep lake of literature had long sensed my infidelity

As great bodies of water sense the ripples and splashes

From stones skipped by small children.

At the alignment of VISTAS: INTRODUCCIÓN A LA LENGUA ESPAÑOLA

Between Poe and Oedipus, Quasimodo regarded me accusingly

With his single, lonely eye. Cervantes smiled quietly from the bookshelf.

Hamlet trembles in alarm as I conjugate.

Yo hago. Tu haces. Nosotros hacemos.

What cannibal becomes the poet

Who drinks the blood of language so that it cannot

Sing or scream? Who ties its lips to

Find that they are water, and will sing?

Of course, I had hoped to escape confrontation.

It was evident, however, in the professor’s calm

Derision as he blasphemed, “Nadie escriba poemas“—

No one writes poetry—

That my lording Titan suspected highest treason.

“Alyssa,” — with what noble bearing did I pale!— “Escribes poemas?”

And with what noble bearing did I malign, “No escribo.” I do not write.

Nowhere the poet’s faithful glory now— within him

Lives a mighty god who dies not nor grows old,

But, adulterous, the gods, the gods go down.

Emily Dickinson clicks her ever-chastening tongue.

“Έχετε κάνει άσχημα,” says Eliot with a frown.

How can I, poetess, deprive that lake

Of its sweet blood, its song, its silver swords?

I cannot drain that great reflecting mass

Of quiet answering stars which laugh out

Yes, and no, and yes.

I am heiress, always heiress, to those dark, entangling waters.

I will drink them, and their sweet black hands

Will carry me past death.

Canción de Amor (Rough)

Deseo dibujar tu forma en el sol

Para es tu forma que ve y dicta cuando

Duermo y cuando me despierto,

La luz de ta forma la luz que me ve

Descansar, cominar, preguntar.

Vería lleverías la noche

Pelirroja y tomarías el néctar silencio de

La medianoche.

Pues sería el día y

Escucharía cuando cantarías y

Contestarías, Catarías y

Contestarías.

+

I wish to draw your form upon the sun

So that it is your form which sees and pronounces

My waking and my sleeping, the light

Of your figure the light by which

I rest, walk, question.

I would watch you carry the redheaded evening and

Drink midnight's silent nectar.

Then you would be the day and I

Would listen to you singing and answering,

Singing and answering.

dancingaboutarchitecture7.tumblr.com

but for real.

Even Earth cannot contain you,

Much less a temple I could build. And yet—

How like Lebanese forests you make me. My legs

Become a roof, my arm a wall;

From Woman you architect a Synagogue.

Man and child become Man and

Facing love we all become children.

Limbs rise and fall under white sheets in

Tandem, Man and Woman,

Building a Synagogue, clamoring Hosanna

For the Gardens they have chosen.

Limbs rise to build, if not a monument,

A small and focused flame.

I do not wish to wake unless I wake

To find my brow illumined by no sweeter sun

Than he. Of my

Own reflection I retract husbandry. It is a cistern

Which cannot hold water.

Love falls to the warmth of an altar

In defense of what is tangible,

In defense against that last white sheet, death.

I have not reached for

Silence.

I reach for love and lo, I find

Cold calculus of

Silence.

I may not reach for the apple of

Eve's dissension,

Sit in a

Silence which is

God's

And not my own; I may not reach for

Antigone's autonomous sword, pace in the

Silence of those

Wedding lords of dark waters;

Echo may not find me, weeping,

Hating the silence which is not weeping;

Silence.

Decay and Understanding masquerade as

Silence;

Sing through

Silence.

The silence of Love is not a silence of

Death or of Life but of autocratic

Silence.

Facing love and

Silence

Man and child are silent.

God, woeful starmaker,

Spreads his hands and sighs at the

Vicissitude of silence.

Creation stills at her disorder and is

Silent.

Even Earth cannot contain you,

Much less a temple I could build. And yet—

How like Lebanese forests you make me. My lips

Become a roof, my arm a wall;

From Woman you architect a Synagogue.

My love’s wine replaces my unreliable water. Of my

Own reflection I retract husbandry. It is a cistern

Which cannot hold water.

Man and child become Man and

Facing love we all become children.

Limbs rise and fall under white sheets in

Tandem, Man and Woman,

Building a Synagogue, clamoring Hosanna

For the Gardens they have chosen.

Limbs rise to build, if not a monument,

A small and focused flame.

Limbs fall to the warmth of an altar

In defense against that last white sheet, death.

Ahem... We Are Now On Tumblr! (And By "We", I Mean "I".... .)

Yes, indeed. I have transferred to the dark side.

http://dancingaboutarchitecture7.tumblr.com

Visit me there! =DDDD

Fidelity (Sonnet #6)

Should thou deprive of sunlight and of sleep

The photic room that thou hast made of me--

Should windows sigh and floors begin to creak

And murmur at the sudden weight of thee--

Should I hurl all my insults at the moon

And master the divine and aching art

Of cursing the sad star at which I swoon--

Find all my arrows broken in the dark--

The song would be the same. The broken hymn

Of which he says, "See, how she sings with weight!"

Would rip from hand and nose and tongue and hip.

The song the faithful bleat knows not of fate.

It lauds (peering around the final breath)

Two white stains on the arid face of death.

27 June

One does not have to feel worthy of much to ask for a pencil or a slice of bread. However, to reprimand anyone with "I need you to love me more and better" requires that one thinks himself worthy of love, which is quite a lot to be worthy of. It allows one to be told "but you are not worth that", which I would imagine to be the most horrible thing in the world.

I once wrote a rather bad poem of which the gist was the last couplet, I dare not ask affection of you/ Only give me leave to love you. That's a rather stupid concept, however. Of course it is not enough to love. I am no longer that classical nor that stupid.

This is a very good poem:

The Ache of Marriage

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,

are heavy with it,

it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion

and are turned away, beloved,

each and each

It is leviathan and we

in its belly

looking for joy, some joy

not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of

the ache of it.

21 June

I can't think and I can't write. I can, however, sing. Foer says that music is the "anti-word". It is rather a refuge from language, which in turn abolishes organized thought, which in turn abolishes organized emotion.

When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters whether the weight be of gold or of lead; when, at any rate, happiness passes into that place in which it becomes identical with pain, a man may admit that the reign of wisdom is temporarily suspended.

-Henry James, The American

Swimming Pools (Thao)

Can't Get It Right Today (Joe Purdy)

Little Lion Man (Mumford & Sons)

Vagabond (Wolfmother)

Rise Up (Diane Birch)

Quelqu'un M'a Dit (Carla Bruni)

Dance Anthem of the 80s (Regina Spektor)

World Spins Madly On (The Weepies)

12 June

Sartre depresses me greatly. I don't think that I like his writing style... or perhaps I do not like the translation. I would be much more interested in Le Nausee than in finishing Nausea. I shall finish it, however, because I lack about eight pages.

Next is The American by Henry James... I need to get these James books back to my attractively-literate boyfriend. I plan to start this one on the car ride to Samford tomorrow for freshman Orientation. (Woop!) I took a James break to read East of Eden (Steinbeck), Identity (Milan Kundera) and Nausea. Milan Kundera makes me more nauseous than Sartre, and for very different reasons: Sartre is philosophically depressing, but Milan Kundera makes one want to think very strongly and then take on the vestments of a nun.

I think that the fundamental and irreconcilable difference between my father and me is that he thinks that he is living out a Steinbeck novel, and I think I am living a Fitzgerald one.

I can't seem to write any poetry. Reading really erudite authors always stunts me. I have a plethora of Post-It notes with maxims to integrate into future poems pasted on my desk, but my writing life is getting flaccid. (What an awful word that is! Flaccid! I hate it! But how perfectly it fits its meaning!)

My poetry grows flabby, but I am growing very good at making cakes. This is a stellar way for the rest of one to grow flabby as well.

07 June

Once you wanted revolution;

Now you're the institution.

How's it feel to be the man?

-Ben Folds, The Ascent of Stan

There are certain institutions which demand desecration. Henry the Eighth, Marriage. None of these, however, are inherently bad; it's we who have made them into something worthy of desecration who are bad. Henry the Eighth was once an agreeable little boy and there are many husbands who love their families.

I've always wanted to sing this at somebody, perhaps at myself. I haven't particularly wanted to be the Man-- although, according to Nicholas and several other anti-establishment Newspaper vagabonds, I have been-- and I haven't particularly wanted revolution against any particular institutions. Institutions are too vague to revolt against; if one is small, as I am, and one wishes to succeed, one mustn't revolt against an institution, but against one or two individuals who symbolize it. One must realize one's scale; rather than throwing one's body at an institution in hopes of having become a Brontosaurus, one must realize that one is a kitten, and use one's pointed teeth.

Eventually, however, one will realize that apart from teeth, one also has fur. One has vital organs. At this point one will long for the institution in its finer form-- one will grope blindly along its moss and grime hoping to find a clean and well-lit place to rest. And one will rest. One will give up the search one way or another-- it is inevitable. One will lie in the moss or the sun. This is, Steinbeck-style, simply another facet of the struggle between good and evil which has peopled our skies and our shoes and our poetry. We will lie somewhere, and where we lie will define us. We will become an itinerant monument to joy or to Wall Street or to despair or to meekness or to lesbianism. Humanity always wishes to symbolize, to the fullest extent, an entity other than itself. We all become an itinerant monument to something.

It is Hope, trite, incorrigible Hope, which keeps my fingers mossy, searching for the bright patch. This is why I will marry, and why I will Iron, and why I will allow some bright patch to father my children. I will not become an itinerant monument to Feminism. I will not desecrate Fatherhood, for a Brontosaurus is not needed to survive a mouse.

04 June

Viola! We have graduated! (Blog, meet Blakelee. She's the curly-headed one.)

I feel that I ought to make some vague comparison between writing poetry and singing Jazz music, since I like them both very much, but I cannot think of any at the moment. They are not really terribly similar.

If I could make more than 50$ a night being Billie Holiday, I would certainly choose that over being a lawyer. At the moment, however, I am making 50$ a pop being Billie Holiday, and that will not work out so hot when I have an electric bill and a Volvo. For now, however... it is absolutely stellar! =)

All this is to say: the Jazz concert went very well, and will happen again in the near future! Check Facebook for a quick video.

The Harlot Sings of Wisdom

I sing, who have known men and men:

Who have known them to walk a little while

And then be seated,

Eating, Rowing,

Filling the Earth with their dead,

Emptying the cannister that Love built; men.

I sing not of love but of flashes of silver

In deep water.

I whose eyeful is no angel's eyeful.

My mouth is lined with pearl, my heart with bronze;

The graver parts tin out their sharpening song.

I sing not of love but of flashes of silver.

A rose on the skin is a coin in the mouth of another.

I sing not of love but of silver.

My fear is the fear of the moth on the

Windowpane: frightened that

Air could be solid, be walked upon.

I sing not of love.

I sing that the warm woolen mist is a

King to the thunderclout, to

Shaking out a sheet against the sky.

I sing.

I with my eyeful of sin and my

Rapid tin beat.

I sing to a room I could die in.

I will enter as a light would enter.

I will sleep with the shamelessness of

Animals who have known no Man but

God.

01 June

I have graduated from high school!

Among my summer projects (along with nannying and giving voice lessons to several darling little girls) is to read rather voraciously. Dr. Foreman gave me some Hawthorne and James books (I'm currently entrenched in The Portrait of a Lady), and I just spend 120 graduation dollars at Books a Million. Here's my summer reading list:

The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James)

The American (Henry James)

East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)

The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Toujours Provence (Peter Mayle)

500 Days of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Candide (Voltaire... Dual-Language, to practice ze French)

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Nausa (Jean-Paul Sartre)

Amsterdam (Ian McEwan)

Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

Rather ambitious... yes? It is rather probable that I shan't finish this list until well into the winter, but I have at least some literature to keep me occupied on college. =) For a pre-Law English major will have lots of spare time, correct?

18 May

Look at those ballet calves! And who on Earth is that handsome gentlemen holding me? Oh, right. That one's mine. =)

I am trying, and failing to write a poem at the moment.

Let's start with the fantastic and move to the stressful:

Fantastic:

1. NO EXAMS!

2. No exams! Did you read that? Did I type that out correctly? Can I stress how incredible that petite piece of information is?

3. Philosophy of Service--> Done & Presented!

4. Senior Project --> Done & Presented!

5. Stats Project --> Done & ready for presentation tomorrow!

Stressful:

1. Tomorrow I will be at school all day even sans exams because I must put together a newspaper for production Thursday.

2. I haven't started packing for the senior trip.... which I must be packed for by tomorrow night.

3. I have two days before I shall have to go three weeks without seeing my darling boy.

4. POL will be finished after I write a conclusion and after Matt finishes editing it. (No one else has the guts to edit me. Literally. Que c'est de malheur!)

5. I need to finish my Slovakia letters.

Wonderfully, as you see, the fantastic outweighs the stressful. Even so, what on Earth am I doing on here at this time? (A better question: Why on Earth am I signed in to Facebook? Answer: I am talking to my very cool future roommate, Cara!)

Graduation is in 10 days.

May 1

Prom.... Check! Yellow dress unstained... check. Lots of lovely pictures with my best friend and my boo? Check. General lack of martyrdom about bringing a sophomore to prom? Ehh.... Check. Bean and Jasiri brought sophomores, too. Matt survived; the boutonniere, unfortunately, did not.

"...there is such a distance between how one lives and how one ought to live that he who leaves aside that which is done in favor of that which ought to be done studies rather his ruin than his preservation: for a man who wishes in all particulars to make a profession of good comes to ruin among so many who are not good. ... Universally men judge more by the eyes than by the hands since seeing touches everyone while sensing touches few. Everyone sees what you seem, few sense what you are, and these few are not so bold as to oppose the opinion of the many."

-Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Checklist:

+Finish Senior Project

+Writing Portfolio

+AP Statistics Exam (Tuesday)

+AP English Comp Exam (Thursday)

+Choral Concert (Thursday)

+Write Philosophy of Life Paper

Lessons In Thirst

Love is much like the lighting of a small black room

not with lightning but with the glowing bodies

of torched kingdoms and and of slowly quieting suns.

Love is much like this when, upon waking,

arms meet arms and eyes spark in their thirst

like the reflections of stars in the

Liptovská reservoir, barking out their being,

singing: here I am, here I am. See how I

stretch my small body

over many ancient floodwaters like a scab.

24 April

Je vais faire quelque chose d'importance, je crois. Oui. Je dois.

18 April

Anorexia is a kind of laryngitis of the spirit. There are few things that can stop that kind of entropy.

On Absence

When I became we I became

Water. I am liquid in too many places.

See how I babble, how I cannot read or speak,

How nightly I cannot uncork the light

From the windows and lay instead counting the

Stars between me and Slovakia.

I am liquid in too many places. See?

I am ink. I am stamped on Trnava buildings and

Buildings like the Furies.

Look, a leg, a heart, a liver

Float like candles in the Danube.

Bratislava is beautiful with so many

Dawns growing bright inside my belly.

Evening sets over the Tatras

And stars again sleep, sleep below the

Surface of the water.

2 April

Father, I was, I am, I am

what you have made of me--

and from the graven You

in my bulimic limbs we flee.

Abstinence Ode

It's a kind of maneuver against

elegy. It's a kind of static game we play

where the hungry and unfathomable

remain so. It's a kind of spiritual

anorexia.

Legs crossed, legs crossed,

as simple as yeast, while in the backseat

of an empty cop car Hamlet and

Ophelia's heads bob and rise

in tandem like blonde-sweatered stars.

If not now, will Lazarus crawl into my bed?

The sweetness of earth will have

vamoosed and lepers will give us

new names.

It's a kind of dance where you swallow

both me and yourself.

Older and older men will crawl into my shelves

and fill me with their bullets.

It's a kind of interminable sonnet in which

love creeps from your room

and from my room and from age

creates eternity in skin.

It's a kind of crucifix to which we press

our virgin foreheads,

lifting warm untasted Eden

to our lips.

Nonesuch Submissions.... I Think

Love Sonnet #3

...shouldst thou hurl all thine insults at the moon/

and curse the fetid star at which you swoon... -Anonymous

I shall not curse the star on which the sky

Leans resolutely: no, nor shall I bow

To any other star of blue or white

With love-penned constellations on its brow.

Celestial point, you, Love of stone and glass

To which I, planets, stars revolve in spires;

Light without which the sky unpins; a Mass

In which the priest is burned with holy fire.

I, You cannot forever intercept

Each bolt from an ungracious silver sky:

I know. We order our small silhouettes

In tandem, Love in spite of Stain and Sight.

Press palm to palm, and I will hold you till

The lights extinguish from your own black hill.

Sonnet #5

It's a kind of marriage. It's a kind of war where I plant bombs inside of myself. -Anne Sexton, The Addict

Green suckling power of Self, I thee defy

And consecrate my body unto war--

Send soldiers forth till limbs feel made of light.

Come bandits, liars, theives-- I am light's whore.

Great emptying Spirit, nurse this heathen child

That lust and innocence have wrought in me;

Ride Victory to bone. Suckle the light

Till darkness howls its pious elegy.

The dark's skin, cracked, bleeds light; the light bleeds black;

We run, we run, consuming what we've slain

And watch the ebb of captains turning back.

Now lights of red and purple fade to grey:

Two unmatched armies barter in the night;

I once again in sin succumb to light.

31 March

happy spring, y'all =)

Grass-Growing Music:

Bulletproof La Roux

Turn On Me The Shins

Let the Distance Keep Us Together Bright Eyes, Spoon & Britt Daniel

Sheep Go to Heaven Cake

We Intertwined The Hush Sound

To Be Alone With You Sufjan Stevens

i love the boy; i love him =)

Katie, return to me from Nassau; Alex, come back from Texas. Matty, return from Whitwell; Kathell, get thee off of work. Mother, get thee well. Spring! Spring! Je t'adore.

Lip Song, unfinished

You, godding my whole white room

as carefully as Christ would do,

loose fingers where, were I a nun,

the nape would be--

O love, proceeding,

ripe against a hunger and receding.

Love, you, tetherer of gods to men;

Unusual habit under which

Beauty is blackened and ripe.

O star to my befuddled star, love neither quite

so quickly nor so well.

Sonnet #5

It's a kind of marriage. It's a kind of war where I plant bombs inside of myself. -Anne Sexton, The Addict

Green suckling power of Self, I thee defy

And consecrate my body unto war--

Send soldiers forth till limbs feel made of light.

Come bandits, liars, thieves-- I am light's whore.

Great emptying Spirit, nurse this heathen child

That lust and innocence have wrought in me;

Ride Victory to bone. Suckle the light

Till darkness howls its pious elegy.

The dark's skin, cracked, bleeds light; the light bleeds black;

We run, we run, consuming what we've slain

And watch the ebb of captains turning back.

Now lights of red and purple fade to grey:

Two unmatched armies barter in the night;

I once again in sin succumb to light.

22 March

Norwegians spell out their fates in coffee cups. The patterns of the grounds are prophets of sorts, which is an interesting manifestation of creating our own gods and our own fates. Today I had a cat, which on further examination developed fangs and wolf-like features. I wonder what this means.

Happy one-day-late birthday, Mum. :)

19 March

love.

Think About It.

Emotional idioms are idiomatic for a reason-- namely, their proven universality-- and anyone who claims himself to be above the idioms of human feeling is a liar and a cheat.

28 February

College.

Everything, everything becomes you, or in your absence becomes your negative: aluminum soda-can lid, you are not what you ought to be. Carmex, warm and rubber-scented, you fall short. Where are you now, precisely, and what negatives of Me pass by your lips?

27 February

I have never really had to work, really ferociously work, at anything, much less for anything. But I shall learn to work for you, at persistence and fidelity. In several months there will be a vast numbing expanse of states-- Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, the portentous splendor of each lost in its status of between-ness--for there are several hours between Lookout Mountain and Birmingham that shall separate your forehead from mine.

hm.

Neitzche says, "God is dead"-- Lewis staunchly claims the opposite, that man's great project has been his own abolition. These two must run in tandem; one must be true: either we are dead or God is dead, for inherant in the composition of both God and man is the state of supreme reign (alone). It is a familiar concept, particularly in Christian circles, that only one power may reign supreme in the life of a man. What is it, then? Which is the living and which the dead diety?

The Christian answer is fairly simple: even against our reason, we must consider God to be more living than ourselves. In this light, man is most certainly dead: we are told that without God, man is an irretrievable corpse. Even with God, we are ourselves not living: the Bible teaches that it is Christ who lives in us.

21 February

There is such an enormous gap between literature and actual people.... one can delve into the world with the most fantastic intentions after reading, say, The Awakening, or Atonement; the world, however, shows itself to be much less high-minded and intellectual: teenagers do not discuss life and philosophy from the cool hard stone of Victorian windowsills, but from Facebook chat windows prattle about boyfriends and frat parties. It is so, it is so.

another in-process poem, structured

stanza
(something profound; for it is so maddenlingly difficult to procure any sort of original thought processes about love; love itself being so terribly idiomatic)

------> stanza: allusions? nothing mythological. Biblical? literary. fallback=plath

stanza: end in couplet?

(what is so terribly ironic, matt foreman, is that the last "poem, structured" was for you in the sense that you wanted to see how the process was structured: how alarmingly we have developed, that this is for you in the sense that I love you, I do.)

------->

A thousand barren earths beseech, "love
Neither quite so quickly nor so well."

01 February (thought conglomeration)

It is cold here, and I am trying to be Billy Collins.

There is a fistful of snow on the porch railing,
As if some celestial being had softly shaken
Slightness from its scalp.

Outside there is neither Moon nor Yew Tree;
There is sunlight on the snow, light of the bright sort
Underneath the skin of one in love.

(All these, things I said I'd never write about,
Line up in accusation, as if against a wall,
Like ghosts of animals I've cooked but never eaten.)

31 January

I just finished Kate Chopin's The Awakening. I am very frustrated.

Why is it that every literary "awakening" ends in death? All of them! Brilliant Plath, awakening, ends at the oven-- tired of carrying the "burden of... dead selves", waiting to live once again; Edna Pontillier throwing herself into the sea after discovering love, "a bird with a broken wing... beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water", having proven herself rather than strong ("The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings"), a weakling, "bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth."

But must every awakening end in death? Why on earth, in that case, would one want to be awakened? Mme. Pontillier's awakening was, in orthodox terms, foolish; her journey of self-actualization led her into simple narcissism, farther from others and into herself. She was awakened to: a beautiful "maybe", an impossible love which flung open the passage to a newfangled version of herself. Her love for Robert was selfish, really; she admits this openly ("Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted. There was no one thing in the world that she desired. There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existance, leaving her alone.")

Really she only awakened to herself (but this self was fragmented, blurry, confused; she did not know it very well, and upon discovering it to be as flawed as her former self [if, at least, more interestingly so], she abandons hope not only in humanity, but eventually, herself. I suppose when one reaches the state of utter self-dependence, the discovery of one's own flawfulness would be irremediably shattering.)

I am likewise fragmented, blurry, confused, yes; I love, and perhaps it is equally selfish as the love Chopin portrays. I am not, however, subject to mad self-destruction. (This is, perhaps, because I have a future: if infinitely mired in present circumstance, I might consider the same. There are always avenues of subjective newness, when one fears stagnation; when one is unhappy, there is always some form of escape.)

I suppose what I am grappling with is this: would it not be better to live blissfully, unawakened, like bland contented Mme. Ratignolle? That is, I am sure, a terribly unpoetic statement, but there it is. The romantic, poetic concept would be that it is always preferable to be awakened, to live in a tumult of love and agony and feeling, even to the point of death; that death in an ecstasy of emotion is preferable to a slow swaddled life without self-actualization. I suppose that to Mlle. Average, here, the blind contentedness born of innocence (or, depending on your philosophic prejudices, ignorance) is preferable to languoring in bleak oppressive wisdom.

To be quite frank, and blasphemously unpoetic, is happiness not preferable to wisdom? To quote Douglas Adams (ha!), "I'd far rather be happy than right any day." To bring faith into it, ma foi, we are certainly instructed to pursue wisdom at all costs. Proverbs 4:6-8 says, "Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. Wisdom is supreme, therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Esteem her and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you." (Naturally, Mme. Pontellier's "wisdom" is not parallel with Biblical wisdom; the wisdom of Solomon would never recommend that vast deviation from both her husband and mankind, especially for self-love, self-discovery, and the pretense of love that Mme. shares with Robert.)

Even if one acquieces that blind contentment is preferable to self-actualization, however, a problem arises: this thought process in itself implies at least some of self-actualization is in place, and once one has left this contented state of blindness, once one has ripped open the chip-bag of self-actualization, one loses the ability to return to it. Do I propose running about among the innocent with a black veil, shouting, "No! you do not want to see"--? Naturally, no. It is proverbially best to be wizened; the difficulty lies in procuring the correct sort of wisdom, and building a Self from this base. I propose a turning-about of the tables: rather than seeking self-actualization and from that garnering wisdom, begin with wisdom, and from that a Self will grow.

Once enlightened (if choosing the non-Christian vein of self-actualization), one is left with a subjective future of self-development. One is left to the stripping away of layers and layers of Otherness, and, particularly, of others. The refining of Self apart from all other entities depends largely on a premise of unmolested solitude. (Mme. Pontellier discovers this in relation to her husband, and later her children. Initially it is her love for Robert that spurs this, but eventually, it is simple self-acquaintance, independence, and the accompanying mistrust of the rest of mankind: "Instinct had prompted her to put away her husband's bounty in casting off her allegiance... Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt; but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.") Life, then, is either hurtling towards some sort of point of isolated self-actualization (assuming one can fully know oneself) or an unconsummated journey, an endless stripping of influence, fanning out in endless subjectivity. I hasten to choose the latter, shrinking from the possiblity of knowing myself fully; the former sounds frighteningly like Existentialism, which has always seemed rather infinite and hopeless to me.

(I do beleive that Chopin thinks so as well... Even in the midst of Mme.'s passion, she consistantly picks illusion over reality, narrating: "...And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested. There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why-- when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead, when life appared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly towards inevitable annihilation.")

Life, I suppose, is all. Perhaps it is best to leave the philosophy here on the table, and live; for there is snow on the ground, and coffee cake in the oven. Watch out, though, Chopin, I'm not through with you yet....

Next on the Menu: East of Eden by John Steinbeck (apparently also profoundly depressing. Heavens. I am growing weary of great geniuses of sorrow; I am ready for the world to produce more geniuses of love.)

28 January

funny how
.........................................

Narrative (24 January)

Holidays, among other things, never fail to remind me why small towns depress me. It is the terrible abundance of tennis shoes, of muss-headed mothers, of bark-- and of bark colored brick, and of brick colored sky-- one horrible mound of nondescriptness, emotional anarchy. Brown. As if color and feeling had proven too awkward a burden to live under.

Uncle D sells pottery and is very wealthy; he wears corduroy shirts that smell vaguely of clay dust and mint. Small towns remind me of what I ought to have aspired to, and, worse, of what I could still mend and become: arriving my slick-waxed blue Nissan into a small town, an Adamsville, stopping and living and dying there, wearing Carhartt rubber boots and drawling about pottery sales.

Small towns remind me of how instead I am flushed and rather fidgety in my white JCrew cardigan, dead broke, fragile and rather classically pretty, my main gig being how I am conversant in French and Shakespearean English. Uncle D speaks in dollars, and in dirt.

B, my cousin, eyes me as though I am a corn sample. On the back porch when the stars prick out white against the clearness, he looks at me squarely and says, "I mean, I'd offer you a joint, but, you know..."

Yesterday my boyfriend and I decided to define ourselves by doing everything that came to mind and reporting our adventures to the other. I report:

First, I tripped over The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton. Then, since I was already on the floor, I read through the highlighted ones (Anne Sexton has some fantastic sex poems. This is ironic because a) I am seventeen and a virgin and know absolutely nothing about sex; and b) 'sex' takes up half of her surname.) and translated the first page of The Bell Jar into Italian. Next I pirouetted down the hallway, which is surprisingly difficult to accomplish in toe socks. Mum gave me some walnuts. I kissed her on the top of her head and ate them, even though I hate walnuts. The End.

"I love you," he said. "That's all."

(When one is loved, the world becomes a mammal: all births are live; more light than muscle flickers under skin. And if the world is a mammal, it is necessarily a lighter sort of brother; and we, necessarily, great stompers of any facet of it which our Love does not inhabit. We idiomize love, and all is either in or out of love, and one wishes to become Love, and to stomp on the black throats of every other song: to become transparent, a carrier of it, as if it were a cancer or a chromosome; mute white angel with unsullied feet leaving puddles of water behind her.)

Last night I dreamed about Adamsville. A black-headed angel stood comfortably on the side of the interstate, red staff in hand, mud heavying the edge of its white robe. It did not light my tongue with fire, preparation for prophecy; it shook my hand smartly and said, "Yes. I will take twenty-five of the red Terra Cotta. How far do you ship? Oklahoma?"

Missed (4 pt love poem, attempt #2)

Odd how "-ed" (innocucous of phrases!)
Can change so much.
It is Plath in the kitchen, mouthing
"I lived, once" into a dishtowel--

It is Echo in the forest, following,
Never pursued--
It is also the white-rimmed Atlantic,
Rounded, De-Edged.

It is the black-eyed guitarist shaking
His head, saying, "You cannot fathom how much
He cared for you,"
As if eternity had driven off a cliff,

Lips clamped, determined to drown,
And I stitched to the hem of her coat.

A Brief Soliloquy on Infatuation (4-pt love poem attempt #1)

When one is loved, the world
Becomes a mammal:
All births are live; more
Light than muscle flickers

Under skin.
One finds that one is mammal
Striding on a lighter sort of brother,
In and Out of Love, and Of Love,

And one wishes to become Love:
To become transparent, a carrier of it,

As if it were a cancer or a chromosome;
Mute white angel with unsullied feet,
Leaving puddles of water behind her.

16 January

I have arrived at the point where I love your skin more than I love other people's opinions.


New Fantastic Music:
Ben Kweller (Ben Kweller)
Contra (Vampire Weekend)
Coeur de Pirate (Coeur de Pirate)

life is good again.
dassss all i got, folks.

Adventures in Translation

French music is infinitely more lovely and poetic than American. (Perhaps this is because French music concentrates on love, while Americans like lust. Just a thought.) Carla Bruni is probably the most familiar of les femmes Francaises (besides being Carla Bruni, she is also First-Lady Mrs. Sarkozy), and Quelqu'un m'a dit is, according to iTunes, her most famous song. (The 500 Days of Summer soundtrack popularized it, I believe.) Anyway, my quite non-Francophone friend Jon asked me to translate it; armed with a Fr-Eng dictionary and four years of French classes, I commenced. These are some of my favorite song lyrics. Naturally, it rhymes in French while in English, not-so-much. My favorite French couplet from this song is: On me dit que le destin se moque bien de nous; qu'il ne nous donne rien, et qu'il nous promet tout. (That would be the first two lines of the second verse.) Anyway, voila:

It is said that our lives are not worth much;
They pass in an instant like fading roses.
It is said that Time is a bastard, making a coat of our sorrows.
Yet, somebody told me that you still loved me.
So, would that be possible?

It is said that fate mocks us,
That it gives us nothing and promises us everything.
When happiness seems at hand, we reach out and find that we are fools.
Yet, somebody told me that you still loved me.
So, would that be possible?

So, who is this that tells me that you still love me?
I can no longer remember; it was late at night.
I can still hear the voice, but have forgotten the face:
"He loves you, it's secret, don't tell him I told you."
Yes! Somebody told me that you still loved me.
Would that be possible?

3 January

School starts tomorrow.
(How brilliantly effusive and cohesive I am today!)

Most Notable Christmas Presents:
(in no particular order)

from Emmett, a "Reading is Sexy!" shirt from American Apparel;
from Kathell, a set of those refrigerator magnets (which Mum and I have not ceased to play with; the favorite phrase so far being "I need cake, perhaps men. Crap.");
from my Great Aunt Vera Cate, a pink bottle of Mace;
from Matt, a Regina Spektor poster (!!!);

from Christ my Savior, a terribly transforming "Valley" experience which has and shall continue to refine my heart by fire; also on that front, the birth and death of God to save my soul.
(I think that might just be the best one so far.)

Top Three Things I've Learned This Year:

1. Life is so much easier and more fulfilling when one loses one's sense of entitlement;
2. The Ideal Scenario is for one to love indiscriminately, and err on the side of trust; and
3. Love, by nature, is neither selfish nor manipulative. It is gentle and merciful and yielding, and it wants to give. (If it is selfish and manipulative it is not love; if it is gentle and merciful and yielding, it is most likely love.)

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do."
-Elvis Costello
(The origins of this quote are highly disputed. Lynne Truss quotes it in Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Why do I like this quote so much?)

Currently reading: Sailing Alone Accross the Room by Billy Collins, and a collection of Shakespeare's sonnets. I have a vague premonition that things are about to get messy.

10 Favorite Albums of This Decade

1. Far by Regina Spektor
2. Begin to Hope by Regina Spektor
3. Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend
4. Say I Am You by The Weepies
5. Speak For Yourself by Imogen Heap
6. Re-Arrange Us by Mates of State
7. Give Up by The Postal Service
8. The Reminder by Feist
9. Boys and Girls by Ingrid Michaelson
10. Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens

Honorable Mentions:

Ellipse (Imogen Heap); Paper Television (the Blow); Plans (Death Cab for Cutie); Emotionalism (the Avett Brothers); Taller Children (Elizabeth & the Catapult); The Reminder (Feist); Girls & Boys (Ingrid Michaelson); Fearless (Taylor Swift); Marina & the Diamonds; Every Second Counts (Plain White T's); Volume One (She & Him); A Good Day (Priscilla Ahn) More Adventurous (Rilo Kiley); The Crane Wife (the Decemberists)

Winter Descriptive Writing Project

In the backseat of my father's sedan I stretch the backs of my ankles against the leather passenger seat. If I lean my forehead against it, I can smell the floral crispness of Mother's hairspray sticking to the back of the headrest. She twists around a white bangled arm to pat my hair, black and dully warm with the filtered sunlight of the backseat window. Outside the sky is pockless blue, gelatinating in idignant clumps against the deadness of the bald November forests. With my head cocked against the headrest, I see the outline of my father in the driver's seat-- I search the red-checked rim of his cuffs for a stain, for a patch of rubbed-out fabric, and in vain-- and behind his black head, out the window, a vast expanse of grey. 700 unread pages of anna Karenina lay in my lap, ignorant that the world outside has died.

Alyssa Duck (1:22 PM): It's grey and grey and grey outside here today.
Kathleen Sims (1:22 PM): Must be symbolic or something.
Alyssa Duck (1:23 PM): Yeah.

Rows of worn depleted cornfields pass, stripped brown of green and yellow. Clots of blot-red bushes curl domestically against the edge of the field, as if something on this empty road were blooming, like a forehead-ring of red teethmarks against the dead brown stalks. At the edge of the highway a fox sniffs interestedly at a dead rabbit. The cornfields look exactly as if some sweet celestial mother had oiled them and attacked them with a comb.

I lean my head against the wind-chilled windowpane and let it bang along with the potholes in the road. The backs of my ankles are sore from underuse; my eyelids close around a vague and empty blankness--

In the fuzzy post-rain haze of a 3 o'clock sun I sit on the edge of the sidewalk, shoulders scrunched into the folds of my neck, and flex my ankles against the thin crease where the concrete meets the asphalt. If I lean my neck far enough to the left I can smell Matt's clean musky crispness; he is warm and soft-smelling with the particular comforting meekness of men's deoderant. The sky is split thinly into folds of grey and blue; splotches of indignant blue patch the sky like cerulean eczema on the bones of an old hand. Coolidge Park sprawls incongruously cheerful and blue against the punctured wreck and tangle of spit-dried winter trees. My thoughts begin flitting laboriously, like an injured bird, between concrete/musk/philosophy; to be riduculous, I imagine some ancient existentialist philosopher in love, alarmed for a moment at his own animal physicality, quoting J.S Foer's Brod: Nothing (was) more than it actually was. Everything was just a thing, completely mired in its thingness. I watch the clouds shift in the infinite grey, and come to the conclusion that I am quite all right with thingness; that, in the end, eternity is and can only be captured in the contact of skin or in bee stings; that neither Emerson nor Brod was seated physically, in no vague proverbial sense, on a park curb beside a lank-limbed boy with aster-colored eyes, who smelled of musk and young affection.

I squeeze my eyelids closed until white and purple stars appear and Handel begins ringing in my ears; when I open my eyes, the highway still slides greyly and languidly by, inch by fractured brown inch, uninterestingly enough; 4:30 gathers its defenses, the sky is grey, and it is still not beautiful.