"Each friend represents a world in us, a world not possibly born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." -Anaïs Nin

The Continuous Life

What of the neighborhood homes awash
In a silver light, of children crouched in the bushes,
Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
Have run their course? Oh parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the first
With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and believe
It has meaning, despite the occasional fear
You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,
That your search goes on for something you lost--a name,
A family album that fell from its own small matter
Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,
You don’t really know. Say that each of you tries
To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear
The careless breathing of earth and feel its available
Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending
Small tremors of love through your brief,
Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.

-Mark Strand

Can You

Can you love the dawn and hate the day? I do.
“Addicted to the beginnings of relationships,”
as I’ve been told. And told. And told. The new
light looks as something else when it first hits,
something more like Catherine standing up
across a strangered room, that promising look
she had before the promises, still stuck
with sweetness to her face in my notebook
of pre-day ecstasies. I love the feel
of gray seeping into black – what it represents:
the casting-out that could occur—and the real,
truant world opening, before it grows dense
with light and the need for endings, setting free
that inkling some lasting love might come to me.

Christian Barter

ASP Fourth Graders Say the Darndest Things

Me, asking my fourth grader, Fernando: "Can you use the word REBELLION in a sentence?"
Fernando: "Ummm. . .yeah. . .like the hippies' rebellion!"
(What?!?!)

Giancarlo (in his country presentation on Hungary): "And this is a picture of the king of Hungary, though some people say that he is the king of the vampires."

Me, to my fourth grader Carlos: "Nope, it's a red light right now, you can't enter the classroom."
Carlos: "Oh, but Miss Johnson, I'm Mexican! We pass all the red lights ANYWAY!"

Finally, one of my own poems:

I think that I would call
nostalgia a taste, or a touch.
Sadness, a look.
Anger, a flavor
that permeates and overwhelms.
Loneliness, a half-hearted gesture;
fear, a deep sigh;
remembrance, a breath.
Reverence, a tuned ear,
awe, a minute without blinking.
Redemption, a parting of lips;
connection, a hand opening.

Cuanto vive el hombre, por fin?
Vive mil años o uno solo?
Vive una semana o varios siglos?
Por cuanto tiempo muere el hombre?
Que quiere decir para siempre?
-Neruda

How long does a man live, at last?
Does he live a thousand years, or only one?
Does he live one week, or many centuries?
For how long does a man die?
What does he want to say for eternity?
-Neruda

How to be a poet

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

-Wendell Berry

A Year of No Posts

A friend commented to me today that she still checks my blog, but I never update it or write anything. I realized just now, as I logged in, that it has been over a year since I last wrote something on this blog.
Sometimes I think that I put off writing because I have nothing worthwhile to write, or that no one will read it. I so often forget that the worthwhile ideas and realizations often come as I am writing, and I shouldn't write for the sake of having an audience of readers, I ought to write simply for the sake of expression.
I have known since I was in elementary school that it was my "destiny" to be a writer. I often avoid words like destiny, because they are too loaded with meaning, and cause us to assume too many things. So, I suppose I mean by the word "destiny," that I was meant to be a writer, and it was something like a gift and a curse put together.
One of my favorite ideas about writing, that I discovered when I was in high school, is from Sylvia Plath: "Why do I write? Is it satisfying, is it worthwhile, above all, does it pay? No, I write because there is a voice within me that will not be still."

I constantly feel a voice within me that will not be still, not just prompting me to write, but to understand the world, myself, others, beauty, poetry, pain. I think one of the greatest tragedies in life is when people only live to get through each day, survive their job, seek some diversion, get enough sustenance and rest, and all of those things are enough. Aren't we made to seek something more than this, the daily life that numbs us into passivity and submission? We have forgotten, in this land of consumption, conformity and waste, how to dream and hope that life could be more than this, that we were made for more than this superficial life?

I am grateful that I was born with such an innate discontent. . . .may I always be seeking something more.

"The world seems to always be waiting for its poet. . ." -Emerson

When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

-W.B. Yeats.