i hadn't posted because i wasn't sure how to follow my last post without making it seem like i don't care about it. i care about it.

yesterday i lived again, at riverside park. i've been having really good days lately, and feeling light and beautiful and asymmetrical and delicate and carbon-based.

and i'd like to live yes i think i'd like to live in this blue house.

i'll miss you when you are gone.

my grandmother died at 6:45.

i don't want to insult her life by inventing an intimacy between us, because in truth i did not know her as well as i could have or perhaps should have. i do know things about her, though, and i know that she was a very tragic person. i know that she lived through a great deal and experienced more of the world than people normally experience. and i know that i have her face. now that she is gone, i have inherited her.

please pray for my father and aunt.

on saturday night, i was at adam's apartment, weary and just a bit afraid. i had propped my head up inside my hand, adjusting myself for the scene in the movie that everybody agreed would be beautiful. something happened: my little finger gave an even smaller spasm, and i swear i thought it was a different hand. it was, of course, just a trick; i was alone. but, oh, what a trick! what a trick a trick, God. i'm really not that lonely.


to sing of colors

looking not directly,
all places our
eyes touch except the
light literal lid-brush:
the peripheral is brightest.
leafless trees are cracks
dividing white sky.

though it seems that my mouth never closes,









here is proof that it occasionally can:

i'm up early this morning because it was too cold for me to sleep. so i went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the shower. and i sat and sat and read and read les fleurs du mal.

baudelaire told me that the world is a forest of symbols. i think he wants me to interpret them. it reminded me of friday, when on my hand i had written "is everything in the world a metaphor for something else?"

and in the shower, when i finally moved from the bathroom floor to the shower floor, i picked off the rest of my french flags. i did that with my own hands, no chemicals, because i get to control when things come and when they go. i won't live days when flags chip and chip without permission.

baudelaire also told me that a poet is exiled as an albatross on earth. his giant wings prevent him from walking. then i accidentally sat on the drain again and flooded the bathroom. my copy of les fleurs du mal is sitting on the vent drying. i hope i did not ruin it. i was only on page 27.

everything is!

i went to all of my classes today. that's not unusual, but it felt worth mentioning. dr. williams told me that i should make more of an effort to be on time to class, but then he paused (long enough for it to be more than just a comma) and said, "i think." what does that mean?

we paired up in class and my friend casey and i wrote a sonnet about a girl like a manatee. in the ending couplet, he and i rhymed "seek now" with "seacow" and maybe that will be the triumph of wednesday. if that's not beauty, then i'm wrong so wrong about beauty.

today dr. fortner told me (he was speaking to the class, but how different a class would be if the individual student felt directly addressed! try it once. you'll never go back.) that there need to be times in worship when we set up monuments to mark what god has done in our journey, moments to be solemn.

also, why didn't job need the devil to explain good and bad? his wife told him to curse god and die, and job said "you are talking like a foolish woman. shall we accept good from god, and not trouble?"

and somebody said to me, "the testing comes when things are good just as much as when things are bad. name one part of life that's not a test."

name one part of life that's not a test.


memorial

to capitalize,
my stomach
and my topfeet in thick
and thin black
lines

circles in my
nosewindow
pigment smell
yes

red begonia to alive
keep and myself prove

yes can i i can
the highest shelf and
is my ebenezer!
parted water and I walk on dry ground.


egypt air

mustn't forget
the aircraft and the
wretching on
well not on but in
not into but
inside

the dripping cold towel
slapped my neck's back
hello claire and
until i am
not breathing,
thank you.


the eating of two oranges

the first i shall
rip into with my
teeth and lips
the way one does
an apple
and does not an orange.

the second i shall
peel perhaps
peel and toss at passers-by
and slice-share.

tomorrow i shall
eat a third and
grow never ill but
upwards well.

this is just how i want to write this is how
i want to write. because if my thoughts had a shape, welcome!

i am resolved

to understand myself much much better
with words and thoughts and occasion-
ally spoken language.
and i recognize now
why i haven't been writing a lot, but trying
to live in
the white space. (!)
i needed more room than i had been giving myself.

and i am resolved

now not to take every-
thing apart
as i have been doing until any given thing is so
small that
i can't really take it in except
maybe intravenously. and really i have

been so
afraid of needles
that i would rat-
her get the flu
than the shot that keeps me from the flu.

the word inoculate is strange, seems
like it should have more than just that
one n.

and i might not want to be immune to any-
thing every-
time the sun goes down.

i could not help but today
think about that
very first white swing, and the
very unexpected quest-
ion and answer.

i remember wondering when you were going
to give up and stop trying to convince me,
because i had no intentions of accepting it
even after i asked again and again. i don't

want to ever
be that person again. and i have
been feeling that i'm
ready ready ready to stick all
of that in a cardboard box

and drop it off a cliff to see how high the cliff is
like all the pennies i wasted on cruise ships
and gosh i hope they did not hit the fish.

see where that acceptance landed me:
sweating over the mediterranean bass.

i hate that this has to be
left-justified and never left
justified.

i guess that is everything.

spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, academically--i have made no progress. i have perhaps stumbled backwards.

i was trying to figure out my spring break plans. i would almost prefer to be alone on my birthday because i am really uncomfortable with the anxiety i know i would feel with having to perk up for somebody else. and i'm uncomfortable with the pressure the other person would feel to make my birthday special. i'd like to sleep through the whole week. if i stayed in searcy, i could at least work on the many papers i'll have due. i think that's overall the best and most practical way i could spend those days. there's only one thing i really want to do, and i'm not going to stop being frustrated that i can't do it. i am held back by my immense respect for my parents. that just makes me more frustrated.

i'm not sure what to do when i'm awake now that i feel like things can't happen. i genuinely can't imagine good things happening, and i am bothered that i had such a willingness to expect them. i had been used to immediate gratification, which is a sad way to live, and i hate the waiting from now until march. i hate the waiting from today until two mays. and the wading the treading water.

i have no confidence, and i'm listening to cat stevens again. i don't know what to say, guys. i felt like it was a very bad day.

i can almost promise you that you're wasting your time with me.

oh very young
what will you leave us this time
you're only dancing on this earth for a short while
and though your dreams may toss and turn you now
they will vanish away like your daddy's best jeans
denim blue fading up to the sky
and though you want him to last forever
you know he never will
and the patches make the goodbye harder still

i had a day.

and i spent a lot of today thinking about how human beings affect each other. primarily in dating relationships.

i have felt that boys make girls feel completely worthless, because they never care as much as you'd like them to, and when they do care then it's in all the wrong ways. all of the thinking brought me to an uncomfortable destination - that i have made people feel completely worthless. and i have to wonder who failed whom. is it honesty when i'm saying that i don't know whether it was my fault?

the trouble with a complex from a failed relationship: whoever is next in line (in line how long how long is the line) has to make up for everything in the face of hopelessness. and they shouldn't have to, and they are never willing to. i need that right now. here is how it feels. i was a two-sided loop of paper. and circumstances ripped me, flipped me over, and taped me back. now i'm a mobius strip. just that one side now. somebody else has to be that other side, because i don't even have the capacity anymore. it's really too much to ask, and there isn't any choice but to ask that much. so strange.

i'm terrified about what i'm going to do with my life. i have big ideas and i don't want to give them up but it would be so much safer to leave that behind. and people tell the young to pursue their dreams, but it's an easy thing to tell the young. it's very different to say,

pursue your dream, and if you fail then i'll take care of you.

i think people are going to tell me that god is saying that, and tell me that i don't have enough faith. i think they're wrong about me. i don't want to hear those comments because i already think about it more than anybody knows. i would die this very moment if i could be sure of god. does that mean that uncertainty is what keeps me alive?

and i don't want to work. i don't want to ever work. it's the worst kind of cowardice, even worse because i'm completely aware of it.

it's funny the impossible situations i run run run from, given the impossible situations to which i have ferociously attached myself and to which i am now ferociously attached. i don't regret that.

and you, not plural, you told me that you are waiting and it's killing you? i am waiting also. college is a joke. i'm not working toward anything - i'm just waiting. what will a degree in english get me? it's true that i love my classes and i love the way i get to spend my time, but i know it's not life. i'm postponing everything. i don't want to graduate early anymore. and i want to go to graduate school. i want to get a doctorate. i want to be in college forever so that i don't ever have to deal with how overwhelming it must be to live, to be alive.

and i'll post my stupid song lyrics, the stupid ways i fill my time in stasis. i love books and music, more than most anything else. but they are filler. they are filler for experiences that i'm not having and am very very afraid to have.

deep green hills whose shoulders fade into thick grey
tall wet grass whose flesh makes fools of grazing sheep
whose fleecing makes a fool of me
who shall i blame for this sweet and heavy trouble
for ever stupid struggle i don't know
i could buy you a drink
i could tell you all about it
i could tell you why i doubt it, and why i still believe
i can't say it like i sing it
i can't sing it like i think it
i can't think it like i feel it
and i don't feel a thing
why i still believe it, why i need it
and what the pharisees can't see
we'd have more drinks
and speak of so many things
but i don't know you and you don't know me

i hate posting things like this because they seem too dramatic. i'd like to erase it, but i'm not going to. and here, here is what i gave up on -

same question same how
bad is my
sin how bad
is my sin if i
am in a forest and a tree
falls jesus how
bad is my sin

this is so contrived.

i'm finding new poems to make up for every year of my life i had not found new poems. yesterday i found 22. that means 188 left. if you don't understand, i can't explain it, but it's the only thing i want to do. pesky classes.

i'm writing again and i had it in mind to post some of what has managed to trip out of me, but right now i feel less inclined to open up my chest cavity and let you all touch my lungs with your bare hands. i hope that's fine.

instead i will post something more:

"alone"
by richard shelton

what a word and i thought it would be
less disrespectful
old rotten truth hanging on
there is no radius for this

so here i am
with the rusty motor of hope
sticking out of the sand like a dead arm
well it lasted
long enough it lasted until it was over

it ground the corn and did the dishes
and when it started to break down
where could i hide the pieces
with that repairman
looking at my uncouth hair
while i handed him tools always
the wrong one

now i can watch bushes
running their fingers over the legs
of strangers and say why not
let them have whatever
they get out of it

under the shadows are more
shadows and under those shadows
is nothing

I have my work to do
inventing new memories
and keeping the verbs in the proper mood
somebody has to
and if I walk my defeated secrets
like a dog what's that to you
who left by way of the mirror
still believing that rain shows mercy

when how many times did i tell you
the fireflies are naked and cold
in the rags of their light

this is something i'm honestly concerned about.

should i be making more of an effort to interpret literature through a christian lens?

in my english classes, i'm becoming increasingly amazed at how people immediately connect everything in some way to christianity. tonight in shakespeare (the reading was the tempest) there was a discussion about whether or not ariel should have been obligated to repay prospero with servitude after prospero released the spirit from the tree.

it began because i said i thought that ariel's freedom was a right, and ariel shouldn't have had to earn it with service to a "benevolent" dictator. and immediately where do my classmates land? god. how does god treat us. what does the tempest say about god's attitude towards us. personally, i hated prospero and was uncomfortable with any implied link between prospero and god. but other than that, what am i supposed to do with all of this?

i'm worried that it might be a shortcoming of mine. i have been trying very hard not to react acidly to people who make special efforts to connect assigned readings to the gospel. however, since this is a small private christian college, is this what we're all supposed to be doing? and would i be limiting myself, or submitting myself to god in a more complete way by training myself to look for him in every piece of literature i read?

i'm sure i see god. if i didn't see things about god in literature on a subconscious level, i don't think i would enjoy it. i think my definiton of god is widening - not to something all-inclusive, but to something more than just what i have thought him to be for most of my life thus far. and is it just that i haven't gone out of my way to verbalize his presence in my interpretation of literature?

verbalizing it for a classroom of people seems like it would cheapen everything. so what am i doing studying english? how can i expect to become an english scholar, and what value does that scholarship even hold? why am i even attending college?

i'm not going to abandon college, though i have wanted to leave so often. i'm not worried about the quality of my education, because it's the students who grasp wildly for the religious undertones, not the professors.

i want to hear murmurs of god all of the time, not invented religious themes in every far-removed piece of art.

he cares so much for sparrows - won't he toss something out my way?

i have never understood this backward world - how sometimes tears shed eyes.

several things.

first, something to think about: I drills. This am and so I set one's mind on write to They at Norwegian as a matter of I no matter has any better do. I'm bleak for all misspellings , albeit They likelihood no matter lays brand at. I making use of fri compilation. It is the bound be feel blemish. I hope They have fun. Devotional am a good deal gear. We likelihood attends this ambit at the world eines tages and becomes in an cabin for a bit bit. I am betting it is the fun , and full of ideas shall bar and bloom in in glorious flowers at fancy.

decode it decode it i dare you to.

second, today had absolutely no right to be an amazing day, and it was. i loved today.

i made an awful mistake on my bible exam and came out with a high d. d! dr. fortner allowed me to correct myself and now i'm giving him my firstborn. oh, also he spun some straw into gold for me. and... i couldn't guess his name. (why am i this way?) after class, we sat down in his office and spoke for a while. i feel a peculiar kinship with him now - never thought i would find a faculty member who is experiencing the same struggles with the church as i am. in a way, i guess we're all experiencing the same struggles. we just haven't all realized it yet.

i don't think i told anybody, but i was excessively worried about my test in english studies. the things we went over in class seemed too simple. surely dr. williams would find some way to really nail us on the test, i thought. but alas, he has failed. unless i made another awful mistake with how i recorded my answers and i end up with another surprise d. college is the best. also, my classmates made affirming comments.

my family has spoiled me and i'm lostlost without affirmationaffirmation.

i'm sorry about my stupid audioblog. not a lot of positive feedback about that, for some reason... =)

i hate just listing the events of my day here. i think it's boring to read. if i kept a real journal, a handwritten journal, i would never say, "today i did this and this and this." rather, i would say "today i felt this and this and this."

today i felt lonely and surrounded and jubilant. people say that life can change in a single moment. it has been a frightening and reassuring idea, but i have not truly believed it before now. nothing secures belief like personal experience.

Don't begin by saying
everyone like freedom;
we adapt an old word--
a dropping of the voice
at a heightened moment.
Human efforts fail us.
His father's thankless work
in the awkward handshake between man and son
can be pulled down like scaffolding.
A killjoy might ask why
we plunge across known and unknown oceans.
How unbelievable an invented story can be!

i'm happy