Another Up-too-Late

"I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

Such a silly line in such a somber poem (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot). I love getting lines of poetry stuck in my head.

This summer I'm going to write lyrical narrative poetry about my adventures with a close friend in an old van, my experiences with dog fights, the people who have taught me music, about suicide, talking to curtains, Jules and Sarah, and that awful boyfriend from high school (it's so stupid, but he still occasionally haunts my dreams, telling me how inadequate I am, transforming me back into that self-hating martyr), about my sister and our language and singing and sidewalk lunch and driving in circles to watch the lights and lying in the grass. Snailing. I could write a poem 30 sections long about her. I want to put mundane things side by side with dark and light philosophical things.

I want to write children's stories about monsters and my friend the cebolla (onion) who plays violin. Children's stories about visiting a goblin market and how to thank house brownies without sending them away. Children's stories that teach science and magic at the same time. I want to write children's stories that do not try to hide the darkness in life. Children's stories that know monsters really do exist and people hurt each other, even the people who are supposed to protect you, and that awful things can happen to children even though they shouldn't. I want to tell them "I know. Come with me, and I'll walk you through it until you can find your own way."

I want to write young adult fiction and work on all this story dough sitting around my kitchen.

Do you know how amazing you are? How many incredible things, beautiful and dark, painful and liberating, that you constantly absorb and change, preserve, remember, and give back to the world? How valuable you are as a creature, as matter, as energy, as a human being?

Work your dough, your paint, your clay, your crinkling pages of crunched numbers.

"Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves" -Mary Oliver, Wild Geese 

Remember and believe that you are a child of the stars.

You are so Important

I'm up late and I shouldn't be. But that's okay. For good or ill, it's all over tomorrow.

In spite of everything I've had a good semester. Mostly right now, I just wanted to put down some happy thoughts.

It makes me so happy that I've become friends with Ian's roommate. I'm not just his roommate's girlfriend. I can come hang out with him without Ian and plot silly jokes with him. He sends me facebook messages about government conspiracies and annoying things that the U.S. does, things we can be angry about together. We went halvsies on an early birthday present for Ian. Recently I've taken to spending my up-late-and-shouldn't-be's sitting on his bed while he sits at his computer, watching "The Angry Beavers" or "Hey Arnold" together, commiserating about the decline in quality cartoons since the 90's. We have awesome 1v1's on Melee, and he coaches me through Majora's Mask and Fire Emblem.

I've embraced my identity as a gamer and feel totally comfortable among my nerdy guy friends. I've become a confident speaker in my classes. One day I more or less soloed a discussion with Caswell and I informally led a group discussion in my poetry class. I feel like a skilled peer reviewer and feel confident and comfortable speaking in workshops. I shamelessly volunteered to read my work in creative writing class, breaking the ice for my classmates.

GPA shmeePA. My grades aren't so good, but I have direct quotes from my professors saying how much they appreciated my contribution to discussions. I genuinely learn things. Isn't that the point?

Well. That's my big project for the summer, and deadlines, like extinction, are not evil, but simply Are. They can be good things. They'll serve to keep me from striving for unhealthy perfection so that I don't squander my thoughts and experiences on one project that is already valuable as it is. They'll help me help people.

All my life until now, I've felt like a martyr in training. I've valued unconditional patience, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. I've deliberately suffered great harm even if the benefit for others was small. Why do these unconditional values make sense in a conditional world? The one unconditional thing I still believe in is love. Even then, love need not be alone. Emotions can coexist.

Now, I seek wisdom. I still seek to understand as much as I can, but I want to learn to exercise patience when it is appropriate, and alternately to act swiftly and decisively when I need to. I no longer suppress and fear anger. It has a place in things. Sometimes anger is as helpful as patience.


I'm just as valuable as any other creature, and so are you.