One Year Later

Let's try again.

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Sidewalk Days

Lately I have been spending a lot of time alone, an inhibiting trend that tends to occur in this paradoxical world where many people exist while no random conversations do (unless it's asking for money or handouts, of course). The time spent alone has manifested itself primarily in the form of long walks, which rightfully occur more as the temperatures rise. I find my emotional state to be driven by apparent paradoxes as well: I've been doing a lot of thinking about how events shape our mental states, and whether it is possible to feel nostalgic about a place and time that has never been programmed into our psyches.

This song has been the flint for my ears to strike upon to spark this strange feeling. I don't know Japanese, and that's okay because I think this song might not be the same for me if I did. All I know is that it is perfect for those sidewalk days – the days that are so heavy you feel like you might sink beneath the pavement; where people don't shine quite as brightly as the trees do, so you take comfort in knowing that there's always a conversation partner underneath your feet, reminding you to slow down the world. But, as the :47 second mark also reminds me, nothing can last indefinitely – at some point or another, that sad string will work its way in to interrupt the sought-after content feeling, but it's what we do with that unexpected interruption that truly matters.

Baibaba Bimba, Tenniscoats

Of Diamonds and Squares

An elementary school teacher of mine once distributed a series of puzzles to everyone in the class. I wish I could explain this act as something grand, something of the ages – like a new psychologically-approved study to increase brain power 40% – but in reality she handed out little Ziploc baggies filled with brightly colored blocks of varying shapes which we were told to assemble into a square. After what seemed like hours staring at what perpetually returned to a light blue pile on my desk, hoping somehow the blocks would melt together cohesively, I managed to fit the blocks together into a perfect diamond. The resulting feeling was twofold: relief at having created something discernible, and disappointment at having created the wrong shape. These feelings quickly amalgamated into something resembling pride and excitement when my friend Kory brought to my attention that by turning the supposed "diamond" around so one of the elongated sides became parallel with the desk's horizontal pencil holder, the shape would magically transform into a square. Amazed, embarrassed, and thankful to Kory, I gathered my prize (probably something sweet and holiday-related – my favorite), and moved on to a new shape or maybe we gave up on the puzzle altogether and watched the most appropriate holiday special of Charlie Brown.

I guess what I'm trying to say through a painfully dull and minor memory is that it's all about perspective. And this concept has been something I have clearly struggled with since the days when learning was still a bright, messy pile of blocks on a desk. And sometimes it takes that one person to nudge you along by offering new perspectives. It is a key ingredient in transforming diamonds into squares. It has been about two weeks into the experience of living in a new city, trying to find out what it is I truly want, and, honestly, a slight hint at which shapes I've already built doesn't sound half bad right now.

Dark Places

I moved to Boston – at least short term. It still sounds a lot more cavalier than it is, so try this instead: take out moved to, insert something like ended up in, and it might hold more merit because I came here out of a fortuitous situation and free will – a leap into the dark, I suppose – and now that I am here, a pivotal question enters my mind: what am I looking for? It's a pretty heavy question, certainly one I can't answer as readily or confidently as someone dragged here for school or for work. And that's the difference: purpose. I think people move to be closer to what is important to them, but for me it feels backwards: move first and find importance in that process. I write this because, after four days, I'm starting to realize all that I had – great family, friends, comfort, a routine – and I am starting to worry that I unintentionally ran away from that. It's twisted, confusing.

The city has been somewhat bipolar, too, as temperatures hover slightly above freezing one day (prime sweater weather) and traverse over 50°F (tee-shirt weather) the next, but above all there's always a peculiar dark grey sky overhead, casually puking raindrops here and there (only when I decide to venture into another unknown territory, of course). And I guess I could draw a link between the threatening sky and myself: on the surface I am calm and I am eager to explore, but underneath I am spiraling. I don't know how else to explain it: bundles of nerves deep in my abdomen oscillate vigorously, waiting to explode with breakdown.

Midden

Listening to a poetry podcast, wherein Fanny Howe talks about her latest novel (and Conor O'Callaghan graces the world with his wonderful Irish brogue), sparked a thought in my head. Nothing groundbreaking, but perhaps interesting nonetheless: when asked when she wrote the opening, autobiographical essay, Howe stated that she wrote it many years before – an understandable response considering the content (her life) as a topic of consisted analysis. The rest of the book was a compilation of fragmented ideas that she had cut and paste into different stories. I paused the podcast (which I have yet to finish) and reflected on my writing: I often feel as if my thoughts are never coherent, never fully realized. I write down half-formulated ideas, something scratching on my brain and nagging me to let it out. So I find a place on my computer or a spare notebook and give it a home, but generally that's the last I see of it. Lately this has been bothering me, how much potential may be wasted because I don't have a larger plan for it, because I'm ignoring it (though "ignore" connotes an active refusal to acknowledge, doesn't it? "disregard," then?). After all, if these ideas bother me enough to write them down, they must mean something, right? This process of writing reminds me of the life of a pack rat, a rodent whose nomenclature tends to mimic my habits in many ways: they store and store and store because there's room for everything and everything can have a place, and leaving something out makes room for regret. It's all a matter of finding the right area of the nest to place it. Some ideas need space and time to permeate, to expand and embody a larger, possibly unexpected theme, whereas other ideas function more semiotically. They may need tweaking and cleaning, sure, but their presence, however large or small, can nestle their way into an even greater nest of writing.

The Importance of a Sonnet

For the first time in months I managed to jot down a poem. It's rough and somewhat rambling (as rambling as a sonnet can be, I suppose) and it probably won't make it past the page I wrote it on, but it's a step in the right direction. Why is it in form? Well, the shallow, thoughtless responder inside of me would say that it is because form has rules, and manipulating words to reach a predetermined syllable count is easy (in theory). The more analytical side of me would say this:

Having graduated college in December, I am in a state of flux. A sporadic surgical procedure, while non-life-threatening, unfortunately pushed the timing of my life off by a few months, which sounds minor, but it was just enough time to disqualify me from applying for spring internships. The whole point of a fall semester graduation was, of course, to beat the majority of applicants who would still enroll in the spring semester. And as a graduate from a relatively no-name state school, I needed any advantage I could get. As it is right now, I am waiting out the days until student loan payments start chasing me through the night, merciless with their sharpened, greedy teeth. It's intimidating and it's chaos-inducing. Perhaps "chaos" is too bold of a term right now, but the naivete enrapturing my life (wait, is that a contradiction?) will soon lead me into a chaotic state.

Form is grounded in rules. It is established for various reasons, one of which is to keep poetry clean, recognizable. A sonnet is a sonnet is a sonnet, sure, but to me it also represents something that I can control, something that I can still hold on to. And in unstable times like this it is important to embrace whatever is within my grasp, however miserably written it may be.

Grass

Spring is gaining momentum and that means some kind of weight lifts from our shoulders, like an invisible machine attaches itself to the dead feeling long winters drape over us and pulls it away. And socks are becoming less and less important, which is a good thing because the holes are eating up my feet anyway. I think my musical preferences are becoming less and less about the dumps of a blanketed world and more about the recovery of the grass as it learns to open up its tiny collapsed lungs and breathe again. That is: less Bon Iver and more Kite Flying Society and Page France, because they are bright, but not too bright. They have songs about dazzling things, about grass, about the liberating fresh air; but they also have songs about things being too dazzling, and the pollution that overtakes the grass. It is a time of recovery, true, but it is hesitant. It's confusing. And that's what I mean to say: for the first time in my life, I am seeing spring sprout around me in a slightly different environment. An environment that threatens cold, but a snowless cold. But the wonderful thing about spring is the visual evidence that it exists: watching snow piles fall away, finding alternate pathways around muddy areas, remembering the patterns in the cracks of the sidewalks previously piled too full with invasive snow. And I can't help focusing on that absence.