22 posts tagged “love”
Hey, it's been a while! I defended my thesis last week, and as soon as that happened I became very lazy and very happy, and very lazy.
Seriously. It's the last week of class, but I can't do any work. I have a bunch of finals stuff but I just can't get anything done. Instead, though, I've been being human again: I've cooked dinner with M. nearly every night in the past week, watched a bunch of fun things (including "Waking Life" D+ [directionless; bad writing; cool look], "Juno" which gets an A- [very cute; George Michael and Michael Bluth in one movie!; somewhat predictable; awesome soundtrack], "Lars and the Real Girl" which gets a surprising B+, and "Slings and Arrows," which is too good to grade). I've sent letters to my grandparents, I've taken a walk almost every day, I've slept late, I've gotten to email friends, we've had time to discuss (briefly) wedding planning; I've even had time to be BORED. What the heck? It's like... normal life is back?! The real me is back too, as the people around me will be glad to know - no more weird crying fits or monosyllabic responses or failures to do any chores ever. Certain persons who cooked and cleaned everything for me for two months (and to whom I am very, very grateful) will be particularly relieved, I suspect.
Just to celebrate spring and May 1st (though it's not related to workers in any way):
I'm glad to report that other parts of my life seem to be ok too: my school hasn't completely fallen apart, though it will be going through some growing pains. I'll know more about this over the summer, I think, if the committee ever starts meeting. We don't have to move this summer - excellent! I don't think I'll have a garden but hope to join a CSA or find a decent farmer's market. We've been talking a lot about what we eat and how we live and whether it can be (affordably) more environmentally sound - strategizing about "carbon footprint"s and organic vegetables and about how bad the beef industry is. I'm not trying to turn anyone vegetarian but sometimes you really have to stop and think...
My sisters seem to be doing well; my baby niece is now six weeks old and has already outgrown a piece of clothing. She has tiny eyebrows, apparently. Amazing! I hope to meet her in a few weeks. My parents are thinking about taking a trip with my great aunt, which could be a combination of wearing and hilarious, but she's an accomplished traveler and I think they'd probably end up having a good time. I'm pushing for Italy in September but it's all up in the air. They deserve it, though, they're working really hard. So is my sister R.; I hope she finds another job soon, one where they can afford to treat her properly (I'm worried she's getting burned out). She'll get a little vacation this summer, which is nice.
I hope this finds you well, and somewhere with cherry blossoms or daffodils or tulips.
My sister A.'s baby was born this afternoon! We're all thrilled. This means I'm an aunt, and my parents are grandparents. I can't wait to see some pictures of her. Hopefully M. and I will meet her in a few short months. Wow. I can hardly believe that my sister is a mom, though she'll be a very good one.... all of the things she's gone through now... birth is something that's very unfathomable to me.
Welcome to the world, tiny Lina!
Hi, all,
Mostly I'm writing with another translation, but I also wanted to do two other things. First, I wanted to post this picture of the cutest thing I've seen in about forever - a little farm scene that my mom is knitting for my sister A.'s baby (she's due March 11th! M. and I are very excited to be uncle & aunt). See Fig. 1 (just practicing my APA style, guys). If this thing doesn't just cheer you right up, I don't know what will.
Second, I want to celebrate my awesome trio of new girlfriends, who are helping me to stay sane (with plenty of girliness), and also making sure that I eat plenty of dessert (not that there is any danger of that not happening). We got to hang out last night and it really is encouraging to have one of those (sorry, for lack of a better phrase) "aha!" moments where you can see that you're not the only one who is a little nuts. :)
Now, to the poem. The photo isn't related unless you think about Marx (mentioned in the poem) and thus think about the estrangement of the laborer from the product of her labor, and thus think about collective and more small-scale human projects, and thus about a TINY KNITTED ORGANIC COMMUNAL FARM!! Sorry, got a little carried away there. Not sure that what Mom had in mind was to knit a Marxist utopia for the baby. Ok. Now really to the poem, by contemporary Venezuelan poet Eugenio Montejo:
GOODBYE TO THE 20TH CENTURY
Eugenio Montejo
to Alvaro Mutis
I cross Marx Street, Freud Street;
I walk through the ring of this century,
slow, sleepless, ruminating,
a pro bono spy from some gothic realm,
collecting fallen voices, small pebbles
tattooed with infinite murmuring.
Before my eyes, Mondrian's line
cuts the night into right-angled shadows
now that no more loneliness will fit
inside the glass walls.
I cross Mao Ave., Stalin Blvd.;
I witness the instant where the millennium dies
and another sprouts into its place.
My vertical, theoretical century...
My century with its wars, its post-war this and that,
its distant drumbeats of Hitler,
between blood and abyss.
I press on, passing old suburban pavements,
through misfortunes, through a little jazz,
thinking about the gods who sleep dissolved
in the sawdust of bars;
I decipher their names in passing,
and continue on my way.
ADIÓS AL SIGLO XX
Eugenio Montejo
a Alvaro Mutis
Cruzo la calle Marx, la calle Freud;
ando por una orilla de este siglo,
despacio, insomne, caviloso,
espía ad honorem de algún reino gótico,
recogiendo vocales caídas, pequeños guijarros
tatuados de rumor infinito.
La línea de Mondrian frente a mis ojos
va cortando la noche en sombras rectas
ahora que ya no cabe más soledad
en las paredes de vidrio.
Cruzo la calle Mao, la calle Stalin;
miro el instante donde muere un milenio
y otro despunta su terrestre dominio.
Mi siglo vertical y lleno de teorías...
Mi siglo con sus guerras, sus posguerras
y su tambor de Hitler allá lejos,
entre sangre y abismo.
Prosigo entre las piedras de los viejos suburbios
por un trago, por un poco de jazz,
contemplando los dioses que duermen disueltos
en el serrín de los bares,
mientras descifro sus nombres al paso
y sigo mi camino.
n.b. this poem is from a Montejo page (link), and here's another, where you can hear Montejo and others read their poems: (link). Also, Alvaro Mutis is a Colombian poet; you can read about him (here) and here's his awesome poem about (tequila).
That's the title of the new book I'm reading, a short collection of poems by Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti, who I got into when I was living in Mexico. He and Eduardo Galeano are two of my very favorite Latin American writers. After reading some more García Lorca, I needed something more accessible and less like a Dalí painting.
Something wonderful has happened - I've become friends with some of the women I go to school with. It's been happening gradually but I finally feel like my classmates and also this neat group of women are friends... it's been a long time since I've felt that I had more than one female friend in any one place, and often far away (the south, the midwest, even the city but just busy...).
I got really sad and anxious yesterday, total victim mentality, like the program has set me up to fail, I can't possibly do anything well this semester, etc. Probably it was helpful to admit that I was feeling that way to M., who was patient (though I'm sure it must be tiring when I feel like I'm being alternately whiny and genuinely upset). Maybe I should put my efforts into preventing this from happening to future second-year cohorts. I don't know. Of course, now I've spent an hour translating this poem and reading things in Spanish, but I think my brain needed it. Or that's my story, anyway.
Nomeolvides
Mario Benedetti
Tuve un largo poema
que aunque se prodigaba en sus malvones
al poco tiempo se quedó sin rojo
tuve otro con jazmines
frágiles hogarenos e insondables
pero se descolgaron como copos de nieve
y tuve alguno más
que era un cerco balsámico de rosas
pero se marchitaron sin grandeza
por fin tuve un harén de nomeolvides
y no puedo olvidarlos porque anaden
azul a mi memoria
Forget-me-nots
I had a long poem
that, though it was profuse with geraniums
went quickly to seed, empty of color
I had another, with jasmine blooms
so delicate, comfortable, unfathomable even,
but they melted away like a water ice
and I had one more
that was a soothing wreath of roses
but it shriveled up unceremoniously
finally, I had a harem of forget-me-nots
and I can't forget them because they add
blue to my memory
So, the holidays were lovely this year. As you might guess from the illustrations, and as you probably already know, I was visiting Oregon, where things are gorgeous everywhere you look (even dogs on the beach). M.'s family treated me like one of their own, showering me with love and even a little teasing. It could have been a difficult time, I think, because this year is different than most, and to throw me into the mix is probably a bit much. Everyone was super welcoming, though, and I was very glad to be there. It's always neat to learn about how M. grew up (Of course, I could use a few more embarrassing stories from his youth, but that will probably always be the case!) I got to meet lots of family friends/friends from childhood, all of whom were really cool and, again, treated me with so much kindness. How come every time I go to the Northwest I sort of want to move there?
I had thought it might be strange to be away from my parents and sisters over Christmas and New Year's, but I talked to them a lot, and then I went to visit my sisters. As you can see, there's a baby on the way, and they think it's a girl! (Yes, that is indeed a knitted huarache that my sister's friend made for her baby shower). I don't have the first idea how to be an aunt, but I'm going to try to be good. Our other sister has worked with moms and babies for a few years now, and has been chomping at the bit for there to be a kid around, and she lives only an hour away from soon to be baby niecey, so that's awesome. Mostly I was just humbled to see the future dad, my brother in law, so cute and excited and all full of plans and opinions (e.g. "Once you have it, leave everything to me" - he's planning on wearing the baby all around in one of those bjorn things)! Overall, I think my sisters and their husbands are doing well - they both have good marriages, and seem to be total masters at their jobs, and they're great hosts. I'm very proud of and grateful to them.
My parents seem to have had a good holiday despite a few horrid snafus involving taking a long busride across the Midwest (instead of a plane) and not having their luggage and having to talk to people in South Asia about it instead of airport personnel an hour away. I worry about how stressed they get, but I'm not sure there's a lot I can do. I am seriously considering getting them a book on meditation. And I hope to visit them this month.
There are a lot of other things to ponder (why are there so many books about atheism out right now, and is it really "atheism" that they're about? are we going to have a recession? was the NH primary result a miscount? how come Iron & Wine is so good? will i write anything creative ever again?) but I promised I'd go to bed early tonight. I'm back home, but only for a few more hours, before I rush off to Atlanta. Last night I went to dinner with some friends, and it was awesome to realize that they're my friends too - all people I met through M. Once again, great people welcoming me. I'm thoroughly awed.
It's been a very quiet day, with a few errands, a haircut, an early morning run, but not much other human contact. What do I think when I'm not thinking towards anything? I just found this nice poem, on the sometimes-good poetry website Poetry Daily:
Someone opens an orange in silence, at the entrance
to fabled nights.
He plunges his thumbs down to where the orange
is rapidly thinking, where it grows, annihilates itself, and then
is born again. Someone is peeling a pear, eating
a bunch of grapes, devoting himself
to fruit. And I fashion a sharp-witted song
so as to understand.
I lean over busy hands, mouths,
tongues that devour their way through attention.
I would like to know how the fable of the nights
grows like this. How silence
swells, or is transformed with things. I write
a song in order to be intelligent about fruit
on the tongue, through subtle channels, unto
a dark emotion.
For love also gathers rinds
and the movement of the fingers
and the suspension of the mouth over the confusing
taste. Love also places itself at the gates
of ferocious nights
and tries to understand how they imagine its
alien power.
To annihilate fruit in order to know, against
the passion of taste, that the earth works its
solitude—is to devote oneself,
sucking dry the loved one so as to see how love
works in its madness.
A song of now will say that nights
crush
the heart. It will say that love approaches
eternity, or that taste
reveals unending rhythms, the secrets
of the dark.
For it is with names that someone knows
where a body is
through an idea, that a thought
can take the place of a tongue.
—It is with voices that silence wins.
- Herberto Helder (link to the original Portuguese)
translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin
The end of the calendar year is always a natural time for reflection for me, and this year the retrospection seems to have taken me for surprise. All last week, I felt like I was fighting my ghosts (shades of the person I was long ago, images of the things I allowed to happen). Finally I stopped fighting, and just let them out.
Overall, it was a beautiful weekend, with baking, chocolate fondue, silly movies, and hanging out with friends, and most of all lots of time to enjoy being with M., pure time without hours or appointments or lists. I finally felt safe facing these feelings that had been building an attack. And I realized that there's an important difference between sympathy and re-living something that happened to me, assuming that's the truth for someone else. If I'm ever going to help people, I need to find a way to avoid imposing my experiences on theirs. And I need to learn how to be something other than a repository for secrets.
The ghosts come from my past, which is eventually where they'll stay, but they don't survive in my or anyone else's present. Thank God.
My friend W. has taken to what he calls "microblogging," chronicling the steps he's taking on his thesis, little musings about noisy neighbors, etc. I, apparently, am veering toward the opposite end of the spectrum, with great swaths of my life unchronicled, undocumented, and then five-line posts where I spend most of the time doing a terrible translation of a poem from some language I barely know, and then add a little postscript that says "By the way, I love all my friends (even though I never write to them), I'm going to be an aunt, and one of my best friends is going to be going through a very important ceremony soon, and I wish I were doing some community service, and I'm incredibly uninformed about all news except things in Burma (which are very upsetting) but I feel vaguely unsettled about everything from China to the habits of photosensitive coral, and someday I'll be able to practice in the field I'm studying (in a way that, right now, feels disjointed and futile), and oh yeah, P.P.S., I'M GOING TO BE M.'S WIFE."
Sorry, I just had to get that out there. For some reason I've been feeling guilty (and Vox hasn't been working), and I just want to put it out there: the length and style of my posts have nothing to do with the importance and wonderfulness of the things and people described therein.
So, please bug me if I'm out of touch; I'm still here, and happy, just scattered!
I've wanted to post for a while now, but every time I try, Vox won't load. It's still acting funny, but seems to be half-working, so I'm going to grab my chance.
If anyone is reading this, s/he is probably asking when I will stop promising to write an informative post and actually do it. Unfortunately that's not this post! I've been pretty busy with school and have been saving my free time for actually interacting instead of documenting. Tonight, though, I took the night off from everything, and in fact M. and S.M. are out, so it's just me and J.S. Bach here at home. So, the few most important things, and a brief "translation":
Matt and I are going to get married! I'm sure you know this already, lone reader, but if you don't, I am very sorry to have somehow not told you already. We don't know when, or where, but we ARE, and we'll always BE, and, and... it's the most perfect thing that could ever happen. Sometimes I have to write this reality in all caps to make it sink in. Sometimes it appears in the middle of my head and thus in the middle of my emails, like this: "Dear [Advisor], Yes, Friday at 4pm I'M ENGAGED TO THE MOST AMAZING PERSON IN THE WORLD HOW DID THIS EVER HAPPEN TO ME HOW DO I DESERVE THIS I'M SO OVERWHEMLED! ahem, yes, Friday at 4 sounds like a great meeting time. Thanks, S." etc. One of the other amazing things about this whole thing is that, not only do M. and I get to join (together) each other's wonderful families, both of whom have been so accepting and joyful, we're also starting our own new family.
Ok, before I start crying, I have to tell you the rest of the news. My sister A. is having a baby! It's a girl! They've seen the ultrasound and it's got organs, arms, legs, a head... I'm so amazed by this. My sister R. just won a major award at her job, finally giving her the recognition she deserves for all the hard work she does, helping so many women be healthy and make good decisions. My cousin M. is engaged! My other cousin M. is graduating from college in December! My friend A.K. survived a very dangerous car accident, and I'm still processing that - all those times that could have been me... every day we take our lives in our hands...
Ok, before I start crying, I told myself I would do a little writing tonight, so here's a "deaf" translation of the first part of the poem I posted a while ago. I don't really know Portuguese...
Thank you for being exactly for who you are.
--
How you make a poem
Rhetoric won't work if you want to talk
about the poem as an object. Simplification isn't enough,
no formulas. Instead, maybe a flower,
growing for its own sake in the middle of a field.
Not the one for sale along the loggias, though. Here: these syllables,
these alien, bright vowel petals, the joint of this
against the stem.... You could pause at each turn
of the sweet green stalk, wait for another twist
of succulent leaves, but no--you should keep going...
COMO SE FAZ O POEMA
Para falarmos do meio de obter o poema,
a retórica não serve. Trata-se de uma coisa simples, que não
precisa de requintes nem de fórmulas. Apanha-se
uma flor, por exemplo, mas que não seja dessas flores que crescem
no meio do campo, nem das que se vendem nas lojas
ou nos mercados. É uma flor de sílabas, em que as
pétalas são as vogais, e o caule uma consoante. Põe-se
no jarro da estrofe, e deixa-se estar....
August started off with a bang. I flew out to Iowa to visit my sisters (and parents, who took a road trip) last weekend, and it was a great time. There were some of the usual neuroses (mine), sure, but for the most part, it was full of amazing food (R. and J. can cook like no one's business, and they have an exploding kitchen garden full of cucumbers and tomatoes) and recreation (we visited several parks, went pedal-boating, visited the Amanas, a now-disbanded set of intentional religious communities) and relaxation (I had some good talks with A. and A., while admiring their handiwork on all their house projects in their pretty arts & crafts house) and catching up (my parents and I got to talk about the fall and we even talked about their retirement a little, which I always thought was a scary topic but suddenly here we were, discussing it, and they seem to be considering it at a distance, like a strange object on the horizon, but not with too much fear, so that's good - more on that later).
It was lovely, but the trip back wasn't - I'm starting to seriously not like flying, which is sad, because I used to. M. stayed up until 1:30am to pick me up at the airport and I pretty much fell over when I saw him, I was so happy to be back together. It seems like ages since we've just had our normal life of cooking dinner together and laughing about anything and everything. Amazingly enough, at the end of the month, we're moving in together, and I can't quite get my head around how great that will be.
Anyway, now it's more like 10 minutes, but I wanted to say hi from cyberspace, and I hope you're having a good, non-humid day, wherever you are.
Human Beauty
by Albert Goldbarth
If you write a poem about love . . .
the love is a bird,
the poem is an origami bird.
If you write a poem about death . . .
the death is a terrible fire,
the poem is an offering of paper cutout flames
you feed to the fire.
We can see, in these, the space between
our gestures and the power they address
—an insufficiency. And yet a kind of beauty,
a distinctly human beauty. When a winter storm
from out of nowhere hit New York one night
in 1892, the crew at a theater was caught
unloading props: a box
of paper snow for the Christmas scene got dropped
and broken open, and that flash of white
confetti was lost
inside what it was a praise of.
----
I should be editing my thesis project presentation, but I ran across this poem and liked it. A short recap: the past weekend was wonderful, involving as much beer and socializing and Thai food and hanging out with family and kickball and sleeping and holding hands as weekends should, and as much work as was absolutely necessary. Nuff said. Ok, back to work! To those of you who are far away and to whom I haven't talked in ages, I apologize; after next weekend I hope to re-emerge.
