gaps for the universe to leak through

He hasn't responded, and I imagine him building a boat to the moon. I don't know where he is or what he's doing, only that an hour ago he was telling me how much he missed my voice and my hands in his hair. I miss his hair, which is soft and gold like the stars. I imagine him in an ark high in the sky, sailing along the milky way. His hair will be ruffled with the wind--they say there's no breeze in space, that a man's footprint stays etched on the moon for forever, or that a flag remains frozen mid-air for eternity--but I know that space is forever in motion. Nebula breathe in and out, pulsating against spinning stars and infinitely expanding dimensions. Space is a never-ending dream, and his boat is another spiraling star in the swath of the universe.

He'll land on the moon quickly enough, because he's strong and brave. He'll call to me from atop a sandy crater, his words whistling through space and time to reach my ear--I miss you, please come to me. And I will; I'll take a running leap into the sea, finding a spinning sky instead of icy waves. From the moon will spin a rope of golden thread, and I'll grab for it, holding tightly as he pulls me to him. I'll see his figure, he'll grow closer, his hair shinning among the stars. There's his boat! It's beautiful, made of wood from the deepest forests of the Earth, with gaps between the boards to let the universe leak in. The masts spiral away into infinity and the crow's nest is buried far away in distant nebula. I ache to climb the ropes and peer out over the whole universe.

He's built a boat to the moon, and he's going to call for me soon. I miss you, he'll say, please come to me. And I'll take a running leap into the sea, spin into the sky, and he'll pull me to the moon.

and I wonder oftentimes now
when those around me first fell in love
or if they've ever been in love at all.
whom did they love?
or perhaps not whom, but what?

for me it was when I was seven and building castles
I was in love for a moment, just a moment,
when he laughed against my lips and said, "you're still building castles."
I've never been in love with anyone but a dream
but I have always, and will always
love
     love

Love, more than any other emotion, makes a person feel like she's on top of the world. But is love an emotion? If so, it would intangible, a thing unfit to be a noun. You can't hold love in your hand. At least, humanity has the conception that emotions are immaterial. But when I think of anger, sadness, heartbreak, love...I can feel them cupped in my hands, with all their definitive qualities. Sadness is heavy; heartbreak is watery eyes that see too much and are crusty at the lids. Anger is something fleeting, cat-like, but more like a kitten than an elderly maiden. Love is something else. Love gets into you, overtakes you, until you overtake everything else with your love.

Love for another is perhaps the strongest or most palpable form of love. A human is not an inanimate object that accepts and reflects love no matter the case. A human chooses to love you, or perhaps loves you so wildly that he looses all control and cannot choose anything except to know that he loves you. I will speak of love between men and women, because this is all I have experienced. That a man will take the time to speak to you, to court you, to kiss your forehead and stroke your hair when you are hurt, is a sign that you are loved. Many of us deny love or remain skeptical of it because of these signs. When they are gone, we reflect and believe ourselves to have sought worth from another's attention. Through this, we've lost worth through self. But having another love you isn't devaluing the love you have for yourself, but adding to it. Another's love a gift to yourself. It's a challenge to love in return.

I have never been loved by a man, and I have never loved a man. I've perhaps never had a relationship either, although I've been involved with a man (boy?). His simple affections gave me a feeling of joy and exhilaration previously unknown to me in such quantities. I had experienced the same through my love for nature--atop mountains and in dark copses of trees--but I had never felt such affection or attentions from a man.

Love. I can feel it. I've felt love from God and from nature (although they are one in the same). I've felt a degree of love from a man, although we were not in love with each other. Perhaps one of the gifts of humans is to show love even when we do not fully love each other. Perhaps one of humanity's gifts is that we are always in love.

I felt once, when I was younger, that I loved everything and hated nothing. I did not like anything, but love to varying degrees. This didn't lessen the power of love, but strengthened it because the love was everywhere and constant. I grew older, met a man, became involved, and fell out of love with love as I fell more in love with him. I forgot that perhaps I was allowed to love him, softly, not in the traditional sense acknowledged by society, but in a way that was a soft blip on a monitor but still palpable.

So let us say that I did love him, and do still love him because I once did. I measure that love in forehead kisses, in glances sent before orgasms, in afternoons naps curled around each other, in awkward silences, in hands stroking hair. I cup this love in my hands, aware that it is not full love or true love, but a watery form of what is still...love. Love, seen in affections straight from my heart. I gave bits of myself to him, and he to me. We gave each other love, although we were never in love.

Love makes you feel special. We deny it because there is the inevitable downfall. Time continues, and humans drift into different phases of love. Perhaps we never stop loving, although perhaps we were never in love in the first place. Perhaps the idea of being in love is merely a dream. Perhaps love is the only reality--love and the varying degrees we feel compelled to give.

Despite these levels of love, I still am unable to say, "I love you, _______." Because that means something different too. I have love for you. I have shown love to you. You have pulled love from me. I may even love you. But I do not, "I love you, _______." We haven't shown each other enough love for that yet.

And so this becomes an ode to literature, or rather language, and the power of words to explain what we feel.

Feeling. Emotion. And who is to say this emotion not palpable and real, simply because we can not see it cupped in our hands? I can feel it. I can feel the warmth of breath against my neck and soft kisses and fevered sex. I can feel love in my hands. It is real.

Is it ephemeral? Have I really lost my belief in love? Or am I finding it again, stronger than ever? (And why is it that I only believe in love when I am not with a man? But being in love with love makes me want love again, makes me want to find a man to whom I may give this love. Is that the true meaning of love? We all have love inside of us, and we find different channels for it? When I am with a man, my love is for him. When I drift from this man, I return to loving love, or words, or trees, or God. To giving all my love to them. For leaving love with memories of this man. What is love? Is love real? Why have we construed love to mean so many things? But I can feel it. I can feel love cupped in my palms. I decided once that love is God. I believe it again; I want it to be so. God is within us, and we give love to others while keeping it for ourselves. Love and God is universal. We take it and give it as we are able. Oh, I want for them to be the same, but oh how it requires thought. I can't feel it fully as I once did, when I knew they were the same. Why has the faith left me?)

I can feel love in my palms. Warm. Light. Like soft kisses and wind whispering through the trees.

"Poem Rocket" Allen Ginsberg

I write you a poem long ago
already my feet are washed in death
Here I am naked without identity
with no more body than the fine black tracery of pen mark on soft paper

and leave all other questions unfinished for the moment to turn back to sleep in my dark bed on earth

"Poem Rocket" Allen Ginsberg

Mr. Snufflebottoms was tired from translating German for five hours straight, especially considering that did not know German, save a few elementary words that coincided with the English forms of "the" and "a" and "to be." Mr. Snufflebottoms liked to pretend that he knew German, but he also like to pretend that he knew a lot of things.

Mr. Snufflebottoms had a twenty-two year old son he hadn't seen in five years. Work at sixteen, out of the house by seventeen! Mr. Snufflebottoms always said. It was something he had heard in college, laughed over at the time, and deemed downright genius by the time his son had hit his teens. Children were incurable, Mr. Snufflebottoms knew, and they had to become adults before they could know anything. His son, Joshua Snufflebottoms, had his first job as a gardener, which was to say that he carried bags of mulch to soccer mom's minivans and mowed the lawn at the garden center. He attended community college, paying his way with his gardener's job and weekend beggary, and he lived with his girlfriend in her parent's house. Luckily, his girlfriend's parents liked Joshua, and although they did not consider him a son, per say, they did feed him peanut butter rice cakes and allow him to mow their lawn. He always does such a nice job, they'd tell their guests at dinner parties. See how beautifully he trimmed the edges by the south wall?

Joshua spoke German fluently, as he had been brought up by a German nanny who wore white aprons and black shoes that sounded like gunfire when she walked. Joshua hadn't seen his nanny since moving out of his father's house, but she still sent him cards for Nikolaustag, which had always been his favorite holiday. For thirteen years, he'd place his left tennis shoe outside his bedroom door and awake to find it filled with treats and toys left by St. Nicholas.

Mr. Snufflebottoms had spent his afternoon translating German exactly because of this German nanny. Mr. Snufflebottoms had developed something of an infatuation throughout the years of her service, especially now that Joshua had moved away and his wife had left him. His wife had actually left within the third year of Joshua's life, but Mr. Snufflebottoms didn't pay attention to these things. He had more important matters to concentrate on, such as translating thick books of German.

He had bought this particular text from a small second-hand bookstore at a "reduced" price. Mr. Snufflebottoms had told the store clerk that he spoke German fluently and was planning a trip to Germany to marry his German lover. The clerk had not contradicted him. Mr. Snufflebottoms, although having translated this text for five hours, had still not discerned that the work concerned horses, particularly their eating and mating habits.

Mr. Snufflebottoms knew everything, however, so he had nothing to fear. The man would figure it out soon enough.

The German nanny entered the room just as Mr. Snufflebottoms settled fully into his relaxing stupor. This habit meant the loosening of many restraints, such as his waistcoat over the substantial girth of his stomach and the ties of his very wide shoes. Mr. Snufflebottoms had a condition where he lacked a sense of smell. He was never bothered when untying his shoes.

when you want everything, what do you have?

She wanted everything. She wanted to touch the sky, riches, his skin, a dove's feathers, smooth metal, and countless crystals. She wanted to see the world, to breathe air by a volcano, to move her toes through sand of a different color, and to laugh under the shade of a rain forest. She wanted him and him and him. She wanted a lot of boys, and she didn't care if she wanted them at the same time. She wanted him because it reminded her of the first him, and she wanted him because he had hair like gold and a smile fit to break windows. She wanted to smash things. She wanted to run into an old factory and smash every old window in the building, and she wanted to scream as she did so. She wanted to watch the glass fall pitter patter to the ground through the silent air as mouth screamed wordlessly. She wanted silence. She wanted deafening noise. She wanted to be music, to have lyrics running through her skin and harmonies tangled in her hair. She wanted hair down to her waist so she could shave it all off one day and understand the meaning of loss. She wanted the world to be green and beautiful forever. She wanted to know the meaning of perfection and understand the truths of the world. She wanted to know why she was alive and what her purpose was as a human, as a creature, as a soul. She wanted to meet her soul, and she wanted to drink tea with it in Italy and bring it into the future laughing. She wanted to love. She wanted a rabbit to feed and watch wriggle his nose. She wanted to be a bird, or a leopard, and she wanted to run faster or fly more freely than anything else in the world.

She drew maps by the window in her room, sometimes stopping to crush an ant that crawled across her desk. She really needed to stop eating food in her room. The wall aside her bed was papered with maps; she had even drawn the lines for Europe onto the wall with pencil, with the intention of filling in Asia and then Africa. Her landlord would hardly approve, she was certain, but Alexandra couldn't bring herself to care. In fact, she was quite looking forward to the red glow of his face and his angry hand gestures. They reminded her of his orgasm face. She sighed, finishing the curve of France into Belgium. That dip was her very favorite part of Europe, above even the broken line of Norway's western coast.

Alexandra had never been to Europe, and she'd certainly never been to Asia, Africa, or any of other continents. Her very rich friends had all taken trips to Europe after college had ended, and the especially rich had taken trips to Africa. They'd all returned wearing scarves around their necks even when inside, and sighing together over days spent drinking cool drinks in outdoor cafes. Alexandra didn't speak much to them anymore. Perhaps it was because she didn't own any scarves save the woolen monstrosity her grandmother had knit her two winters ago. It was made of alpaca.

A knock came at the door. That would be Tony. He was a big teddy bear of a man she had met in a local Italian restaurant. She'd been with friends, and they'd all giggled and tittered over his tie and shiny shoes, regardless of the fact that every other waiter in the place had been wearing the same thing. Tony hadn't been Tony then, and the girls had spent all evening calling out male names as he walked by, trying to get him to react to one. He never did. While leaving, Alexandra approached the counter, tapped Tony on the shoulder, and asked him his name. He smiled. "Tony," he said, as if asking her a question.

Alexandra hadn't expected to see him ever again, but they ran into each other at the supermarket in the alcohol aisle and fell into bed that night. Tony wasn't very smart, she discovered, but that didn't matter when the lights were dimmed and all one needed was to not feel so alone.

Her pencil snapped on the paper, and she sighed, pushing her map off the desk to land on the floor. Probably on an ant nest too, she thought, before slamming her head onto the desk. Something rattled and another something fell to the floor and smashed. She had to stop that too--she'd lost too many tea mugs to slamming her head on her desk.

Five months later, Alexandra was in Canada. Her landlord had family there, and he couldn't bear to go along. Please Alexandra, he had begged. He hardly needed to put so much effort into asking; it's not as if she had anything else to do. Her bags were packed that night, and she flew the 293 miles to Toronto with a man whose favorite color she didn't know. He didn't have a favorite movie, she knew that much. Who didn't have a favorite movie? Everyone had a favorite movie, except maybe the hobbits who lived in caves and danced after rings.

Canada was perfectly ordinary. Everyone spoke English, and Alexandra found herself forgetting that she was in a foreign country at all. She was in a park one morning, having escaped the stuffy dryness of her landlord's bedroom, with the hopes of catching the sunrise. A map of Europe spread into the dirt before her, before she angrily spit on it. Her own metaphor disgusted her. She was trying too hard, and she vowed to rip down every map as soon as she returned home. She had been right about her landlord's reaction to the drawing of Europe. He had gotten all red in the face and angrily waved his hands, but he didn't seem to mind as much ten minutes later when they were tossing in the sheets. She had smiled then and kissed his hair, loving his predictability.

She wished she had predictability now. If life were practicable, Canada would be exotic and enticing, just as she had expected. Instead, she was in a park watching the same old sun rise over the same old horizon, drawing the same map of Europe that she drew every other day of her life. The map of Europe never changed. The dip of France into Belgium was always the same, and the western cost of Norway always looked as if it'd been torn apart by a rabid dog. If only life could be predictable. No, if only it weren't so predictable! She spit again on her dirt drawing and then danced over the ground until Spain became France and Russia ate all the rest of Europe

"I can't find the damn safety pin."

Maria knew that she should have brought more pins to college. She used them for everything--decorating her room, holding necklaces on her wall, securing awkward necklines on some of her favorite blouses. One blouse that was especially tricky was her transparent blue shift of a shirt. She had bought it in Europe, and she wore it once to the gardens of a yellow castle in Germany, as well as to a regal-sounding place by the name of Falkenlust. She'd only worn it a handful of times since then, but it always reminded her of dancing in the gardens and amid the trees on the way to Falkenlust. If she grew bored, she would play with the shirt's bow, smiling at the shirt's sparrow print. She often wore it with just a bra, despite its transparency, which made her feel foolish only sometimes. Mostly, she just felt free.

She needed a safety pin today for much the same reason. She had a cardigan she wanted to wear to a dance, but the neckline was a little too risque for her liking. Her friends laughed at her. It's a dance, Maria, they said. We're going to a club, they said. But Maria felt no shame at wearing cardigans to bars, clubs, or dances. It wasn't as if she were uncomfortable with herself--obviously if that were the case, she wouldn't be walking around with transparent shirts. Her friends simply couldn't appreciate the idea of fine fashion.

Maria spent much of her time collecting small items from antique shops. She had boxes of pins on her dresser, each with dozens of decorated trinkets from across antique shops across the world. She hadn't left home without a pin in over five years. Her friends laughed at her for that too. They just didn't understand.
The floor of her closet was dark, and she couldn't bring herself to turn the light on, even as she crawled on the ground to search. She thought of stormy ocean waves illuminated by floodlights whenever she turned on a light, and she was in too awful a mood to think of an ocean storm tonight.

When she was eight, Maria had visited the ocean with her mother. They lived in a small house inland, so the trip was a momentous occasion for her and approached with much anticipation. But the drive was longer than expected, and they arrived late at the shore. A storm had started twenty minutes before their arrival, and the car had shook with the force of the windshield wipers and the rain. As they were crossing a bridge, a flash of lightening cut the sky, and Maria could feel it like the slash of the night. She screamed until her mother slapped her across the face. You need to be quiet, Maria, or I'll lose focus and we'll plunge off the bridge. They were crossing the bay, and the bridge towered over the choppy bay. Before them, sky met ocean in one heaving mass of grey and black. Maria didn't know where the ocean waves ended, and she whimpered. Isn't this beautiful, Maria? Her mother whispered, repeating her question faster and faster as the car approached the shore. They could scarcely see out the windows now, the rain was coming down too hard, and Maria began to believe that they had driven into the ocean. Any second now, water would drip through the cracks in the door, the windows would hake with pressure, and then car would collapse on itself, water streaming inward with a rush of broken glass and twisted metal. Her mother stopped the car before any explosion, but she pushed open the door to the screech of an unearthly howl. She stumbled out of the car, scarcely able to move for the all wind, and clawed her way over to Maria's side so she could rip her door open as well. A rushing wind tunnel sped through the car, and Maria grabbed frantically for a handhold while her mother pulled her from her seat into the wind and the rain. Her mother was already soaked, her long white dress transparent with the rain. Maria tried to look away, to find anything, anything of comfort, but her mother pulled her close, spreading both their hands into the sky. Look, Maria, look! she screamed. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it gorgeous? But Maria couldn't distinguish her mother's voice from the wind. She began to sob, but she couldn't tell her tears from the rain. Everything shook, and she collapsed to the ground.
On her hands and knees on the hard carpet, a sharp pain suddenly came to Maria's finger. She pulled the safety pin from the floor, a button of blood already blossoming on her finger. See, Maria told her friends. I didn't need the light.

Susan couldn't wait to return to Maine. At night, she dreamed of running over beds of fallen pine needs in the forest, swimming in lakes pebbled with rain, and eating fresh lobster rolls by the river. She spent her days painting watercolors of Maine's sunsets and sunrises, continuing even after she blanketed her walls with scenes of pine barrens at dawn and kayaks against the sunset. She began to paper her ceiling, allowing not an inch to be spared.

One evening, Susan awoke to the ringing of the fire alarm. She left without harm and returned three hours later, cold, tired, and ready to dream of Maine. Unfortunately for Susan, the fire alarm had not been the only system to go off in the night. The ever-concerned firemen had made certain that the sprinklers go off too.

Today was Janet Thomas's twentieth birthday, and she had no idea what was doing with her life. She had just finished a congratulatory telephone call in which her friend, after many birthday wishes and discussions about presents, had convinced Janet to discuss grade point averages.
"Liz, I don't even know what I even want my GPA to be."
"What is it, exactly? Are you please with it?"
"I don't know if I'm happy. How can I know?"
"Just tell me. Are you happy with it?"
"I guess. I don't know what my standard is yet."
"Janet, I'm sure it's not bad. What it is?"
"Again, I don't know what my standard is."
"Okay, that's fine. But what's the number?"
"I guess it's a 3.3 or something."
"Oh! That's fine, Janet, just fine. Nothing to worry about. Mine is between 3.6 and 3.7"
"That's great, Liz. Fit for the Dean's List."
"Better than the Dean's List, because that's only 3.6, and I have a 3.689."
Their conversation had ended soon after. Janet poked slowly at her birthday cake with a fork, her phone still close at hand. The party had ended half an hour ago, not that there had been much of a party. Two of her friends had brought a cake and some sparkling cider, but the cake was store-bought, and the cider was leftover from a New Years Party two years ago. Janet's birthday was in December, so that made the cider three years old.
GPAs didn't matter all that much in the real world, she told herself. Job opportunities didn't care about such things, and as long as Janet was learning, numbers didn't matter, right? Numbers were an absurd system anyway. They didn't tell stories, and they didn't tell Janet what to do with her life.
Her cake grew lopsided, and Janet took a sip of the cider, forgetting that it was flat.
What a pleasing birthday twenty was turning out to be.

"I'm okay, thanks."

She had the habit of always saying that she was "okay." In truth, she was not okay. She doubted that many people ever were, so she didn't think of herself as especially extraordinary. In fact, she found herself painfully unordinary, unfit even for the joys of being ordinary.

She began to hate the term for every lie it represented and every connection she failed to make. "Okay" became an unsightly and common term that her peers vulgarized further by shortening to O.K. The word always rang with glaring double capitalization and periods, and no one could ever understand how to punctuate around it. The ordeal was entirely unprofessional, and she decided to remove the word from her vocabulary, wanting not just to rid herself of lies, but also to grow up.

For the first week, she placed a quarter in a jar every time she said the dreaded word, but that felt very childish as well, so she stopped. I must grow up, she thought. She began grimacing every time the word escaped her lips, but that wasn't enough, so she grimaced whenever she heard others say the word as well. As a result, she spent most of her time with an expression of pain. Her classmates were afraid to approach her, thinking her to have some terrible and perhaps contagious disease. So they stayed away, and the girl returned to her room each day, alone.

She spoke with her mother on the phone every evening, and when her mother asked her how she was, she began to say, "I'm awful." "Today was horrible." "I feel terrible about my lack of achievement." Her mother never knew how to reply, so the line remained silent. Eventually, the girl began to say, "I hate myself." Mother and daughter both wished for comforting words, but nothing ever came. "Okay then. Goodnight," her mother would say. And the girl would grimace.

After three years of refusing to say okay, the girl found herself with no friends, no acquaintances, and a mother who avoided her telephone calls. "To put it bluntly," she said to herself, alone in her room, "I am not okay." She grimaced, but she noticed that her face didn't move. It was frozen in a permanent expression of pain.

kissing

He could have kissed her in the outskirts of London, still technically in the city but twenty minutes from the nearest tube station. They were lost and atop a bridge, their fingers clutching at the wire netting. The wind teased the tassels of his hat and made the unfastened clasp of her bag dance. Below them, a traffic sign read, "CAUTION: Humped Zebra Crossing." Both could barely breathe from laughing, and they clung to the bridge to keep standing. He could have kissed her in England.

He could have kissed her under the puzzle-piece cliff in Edinburgh. They were both visiting for the first time, and after a three minute walk from the antiquated bus station, a river appeared, bordered by endless apartments of brick and glittering windows. A cliff-face rose opposite, fully in the sun and impossibly tall over the sea. Silent, they stopped on the sidewalk, tourists knocking past their shoulders. The two stole looks at each other, both blind from the sun. He could have kissed her in Scotland.

He could have kissed her atop a cathedral in Cologne, 515 feet in the air and with time moving fast forward. Snowflakes stuck to her hair and his beard. A play set of a city unfolded below them, and she pretended to reach down and move a figure to a distant roof. He smiled at her, unable to turn away from the white snowflake on her eyelash, caught above her blue eyes. He could have kissed her in Germany.

love outside of time
equates painful bliss
of bruised knees scabbed heels

She flicked sugar from her cookie and kicked together her patent Mary-Jane shoes. For someone trying very hard to grow up, she couldn't help reminding herself of a child. She needed to find herself, which certainly must mean that she needed to travel to India. Cookie crumbs fell to her lap.  She felt slovenly and fat, especially as she thought of all of India's starving children. They had slave children making shoes there, didn't they? She peered cautiously at her Mary-Janes and decided that she didn't want to know.

"I think I should be a Buddhist."

"You told me once that you wanted to shave your head."

"Maybe I should move to India."
"People our age don't travel to to India for enlightenment. They go because it's cheap."

"I went to the park the other day. You know the one with the man-made pond, where the boy in the velor jogging pants winked incessantly at me last month? I had with me my moleskine and a printout of an Apollo sculpture, but the sun was too bright to see and my bench lacked a backrest."

"Obviously, you're lazy and spoiled."

"Exactly why I need to become a Buddhist and move to India."

"You finished that art paper, didn't you? Tell me truthfully."
"Yes."
"And you received an A for it."

"Actually, no. I lost points because I approached Apollo as if he were a painting rather than a sculpture. I forgot that he could be seen from multiple sides."

"You think that life is a painting."

"I wish I could; life as a painting would be romantic. Living would be the brushstrokes that paint our interpretation of life. Everyone would have a different portrait, and each would be uniquely right."

"So you know that painting is a singular task, when life is infinite. We're part of something bigger."

"You forget about death. We're finite, and it would be absurd to wish for life to have the glory of a painting."

"Yet our paintings are our creations. And whether they be ethereal or corporeal, creations are infinite. We worry too much, love passionately, and over-think our every action because we can't stop ourselves. We have only potential."

"Potential towards what? I create my painting known as life, and I'm left with my solitary interpretation. I try to make other paintings by drawing, writing, meeting other people, but I'm left only with shoddy attempts at empathy. Maybe I can feel proud of myself for trying. But what have I done?"

"You've tried to give meaning to life. Isn't that enough?"

"To try because I want to feel like something of worth isn't good enough. It's selfish. I've found no answers, no reason, no goodness. Why am I here?"

"You are here because you love me, and I love you. You are here to be confused and scared, to paint and interpret. You are here to live, and to define life as you live it."

"I will not accept living as an attempt to define life."

"You want answers."
"I want to go to India."
"I'll get scissors for your hair."

I hope that I'm the only person making to-do lists to keep herself occupied. Returning to normal life is not going well. The first two months of remembering Germany were a dream. Now I understand that I won't be going back. I am to remain here, in a tiny town that I outgrew three months after moving in. I'm trying to feel like my life is worth something, but it's difficult when I have nothing to do. It's even more difficult when I find myself struggling to understand what I could do that would be good and meaningful.

Most of my school lives through networking (but doesn't everyone?). Dress trashy, visit a frat, get trashed, so on and so forth. Greek life dominates the campus. And while I love my two non-partying friends, I wish I had more people to whom I could go. I wish two of my closest friends hadn't transferred. I wish my lovelies from home were around to love and cherish. Because life has to be more than this--escaping the drunken brigade with two fellow souls.

I wish here had the ocean. Because one never feels mindless or worthless when standing before her waves. She will accept you, take you, be there for you, even if you have no idea where your life is going or what living means.

Remember those to-do lists I mentioned? I try to arrive at tasks that mean something. "Clean out empty salsa jar" is at the top of the list. The highlight of my week was visiting the bank and falling through ice into a mud puddle.

What makes one's life worthwhile, meaningful, and good?

How are we good people? Plato insists that there are forms to which we can aspire. He thinks that we can be good, even if his idea of goodness is more mechanical than humane. No emotion, little laughter, keine literature! Aristotle's Poetics argues that fine tragedy needs good people who are destroyed by their own faults. These  faults don't necessarily have to be bad character traits; they simply are the traits to which they cling and arrive at their downfall. Aristotle's idea of tragedy is frightening because it questions whether or not we are good. We spend our lives doing what we think is right, only to fall into tragedy through our own actions. Can people be good? Are there forms of perfection that we can strive to attain? Or are people struggling through their lives, thinking they are good while never recognizing their tragic flaw?

Tell me, please. What makes our lives worthwhile? Is it creation? Helping others? (But what truly helps them?) Living without thought and enjoying the gift of life? But there must be some greater good, there must be something beyond hedonism! Oscar Wilde shows us this.

I should take some philosophy courses. I need answers.

Love/Hate.

German. Deutsch.

I have a love/hate relationship with German. Ich habe eine Liebe/Hass Bezeihnung mit Deutsch.

The preposition is probably so off. Die Preposition ist vielleicht (wahrscheinlich) falsch.

I miss it. Ich vermisse es.

I miss you. Ich vermisse dich.

Life is better with love.

On the painfully slow days where the clouds seem glued to the sky and the trees move not a whisper, Germany feels very far away. Days in this small town are very slow. Putting cookies into a freshly-washed mason jar can be the highlight of my day. Falling through ice into a puddle of mud is the most interesting thing that's happened to me all week. And I've been wondering recently, if this is why we're so dependent on love. Our lives seem devoid of romanticism, so we go for something romantic is nature. Obviously being with a loved one makes the real world fall away. As Austen mentions in Sense and Sensibility, you're in a relationship, and you smile down on everyone else with pity, because you are experiencing bliss in a way they never will. Life is simply better with love.

The love doesn't have to be for a person. Society tries so hard to tell us that the perfect relationship is all we need. But this relationship can be between woman and book, child and sparkling grey rock, old man and the mountain air. Society tells us also, quite often, that such relationships are unhealthy. A book can't love us back. This is entirely false. A book is perfectly capable of giving more love and support than some people ever can. If the object fascinates, invites curiosity, or makes the world seem a bit brighter, than the object is half of the relationship making this life worth living.

All life is worth living, but it's the bright lives that are worth the most. The lives with the memories, the books, the sparkling grey rocks, and the mountain air--these are the lives with the relationships and the love. We need something to make the tedium of the slow days a bit more worthwhile. If this solace is found in a book rather than a person, all the more power to the person strong enough to make life interesting through their own means and imagination.

Sometimes I think I need to be back in the city. Not simply New York or a dirty new American city, but one of European tastes, where there's a Romanesque church on every corner and a museum on every street in between. I do miss Europe; I do miss Germany. But sometimes I think that that's having love too easy. Life is a lot of hard work, and Germany was a gift of time that allowed me to see what life could be like without the work. If I had infinite money and infinite time, I could have gone on living in Germany forever. But life means working, maybe earning money, or at least earning enough to keep oneself going. Returning to the slow tedium of life in small-town Pennsylvania reminds me of this. It reminds me I need to work harder; I need to find my solace in books. Perhaps I even need a break from trying to find love in people.

I traveled to Alabama before I discovered that life could be so easy, and I was shocked at how difficult life was in this beautiful southern state. Under all the Spanish moss and brilliantly-crisp starry nights lurks a lot of poverty. The true beauty of the state, however, is in the people who find love regardless. They work to create better schools, to devote themselves to religion, or to make a living in small, self-owned businesses. I was in one such business, a tiny boutique just beside an old house that had been converted into a bookstore, when I came across the most gorgeous grey coat. I tried it on, fell and love, and went to the cashier to pay. She still had hand-written receipts, and she always wrote down the location from which all of her customers came. I told her Pennsylvania, and she seemed surprised to find someone from out of state. She didn't know how to spell the state. I could tell she was embarrassed. I was too, because I couldn't tell her the proper spelling.

I'm still not sure that I would be comfortable spelling the word on a piece of paper, without the modern device known as spell checking. To be fair, it does look quite strange. Sometimes I try to remember Sylvia, and it helps me with the ending.

But we don't need spelling to be good. We don't need spelling to be in love. And if we look in the right places, sometimes love can help us with all that we need. Even if that means spelling.

(I don't want to stop writing. My hands are flying over the keys and the words feel beautiful.)

I am trying not to be overwhelmed by the little that I do that takes up all my time.

and the words don't come for her either. we have a silent telephone line that's 200 miles long and filled with the pains of being mother and daughter for over nineteen years, of being bored with each other, of not needing to be there for each other, of wondering if we'll even understand each other well enough when the time comes.

the silence grows uncomfortable. we're mother and daughter of nineteen years; there should be something to say. but the words don't come.

she ends the silence, but it's always the same words as the night before. work was good. it was a little slow today. I'm watching the news. they say a storm's coming tomorrow.

grow up, get a job, have a family, don't live your life, have nothing to say. grow old, have nothing to say, die with your silent daughter by your side, both of you unable to make the words come.

the phone line is silent. I am frustrated and angry, because she can't make the words come for me, and I can't make the words come for her either.

empty pages.

Ginsberg's inspiration lacks. neck cracks.
these words mean nothing if they are meaningless to others.
but when they're meaningless to me, how can they mean something to you?

I miss you.

Sometimes I forget to remember you. I'll be putting on my left boot, and the thought will strike me that you're out there, maybe putting on your shoe too. Sometimes it's less difficult to forget. Something--a dinosaur, Rammstein--will remind me of you so strongly that my chest hurts and I feel sick. I miss you in these moments more than when I missed you all the time.

Be well, and don't feel bad if you forget to remember me too.

Egypt was in the midst of a revolution, attempting to overthrow a president whose name begins with "M." She could never remember his full name, although she'd read a lot of articles and sometimes listened to the news. America had never had an issue with presidency, at least not in the way of revolution. Some would argue for the Civil War, but she could think only of when their first black president was elected, and his approval rating was somewhere between free beer and pictures of baby pandas.

The New York Times was running a breakdown article about the situation in Egypt, and she approached it halfheartedly, knowing that she couldn't bring herself to care about the politics. She stared at a picture of thousands crowded into Tahrir Square and zoomed in until she could see their faces. Immediately, she was near tears. Many figures smiled up at her, more frowned, some held cameras, and a few had flags. She couldn't bear the thought of so many lives; she could scarcely fathom that all these people had dreams, fears, families, pasts, memories. The crowd stood close together, their dreams fighting for space as shoulders pressed against shoulders. The faces continued with their lives, unaware that she watched their frozen image.

She left her bed to shut the window shade, near tripping as she rose. The shade flashed past two dirty streaks from the night she had cried for three hours straight because she thought herself pregnant. She'd pressed her salty cheeks against the panes as she stared into the darkness. It had snowed that night, which muffled the world so that even the passing train streaked by silently. Two weeks later, she still hadn't been able to clean the window.

She returned to her bed, slower this time, staring again at the picture of Cairo. She thought of the salt streaks on her window, and she thought of her country's president, wondering vaguely what he was doing. She hoped that he was kissing his wife. Her hand raised to touch her mouth, lightly, and she finally made herself close the article.

creative writing assignment, pt ii

Poems have rhythm, measure, lyrics, and lines
(well, sometimes, maybe, not all the time).
A rhythmic articulation of feeling - not concealing, but revealing,
Our emotion, our devotion, our expulsion, our revulsion.
Poetry is everything we have felt, do feel, will feel.
Poetry is the past poet, the present poet, the future poet.
Poetry is
Late nights, moonlight through the window,
exhausted, ecstatic, devouring Poe or Thoreau.
Ginsberg howling, raving, stark mad through the street,
Sappho exuding, illuming, love through beauty and heat.
Poetry is
the feel of paper in the hand, truth in the heart,
all of life spanned, an immersion into art.
Poetry is
stillness of the soul, like a soft winter snow,
— nothing left to show.

things you think you know about first love.

The stories always said that there would be fireworks. Even when she grew older and read different stories, they still told her that she'd think only of his touch. But it's a summer night and cold in the air conditioned-room, and she knows where she is. She knows that it's past midnight; she hears the ticking of the clock on the bookcase. She knows that the bay windows are before them, ans he feels the room's every light, painting, and doorway. She knows that he's kissing her, and her mind races faster than it ever has in her life. He's kissing her, she's being kissed, her first kiss, she's not a leper! Where does she put her arms, shouldn't it be more romantic than this, why is the television still on, that can't be good for the environment, can it?

She remembers the stories of fireworks; she remembers everything as he kisses her. She feels all the awkwardness of her youth, all the love she's ever spent, all her memories of the sea. She's surprised and a little angry when he speaks: "You can open your eyes, you know." She's mad because this is supposed to be a dream; neither of them should be able to think, let alone speak.

But she's thinking of everything; she can't help it, she can't stop.

It's a summer night. Her dress is blue and tight against her skin. He's kissing her. She can't stop thinking of the little things.

Time makes it easier. The television fades. She forgets about ocean waves, memories, and love. Kissing him grows easier, and she thinks even less as she loses herself to what is.

When she's balled on the rug in his sister's room the next morning, her body again all too alive and rushing with every thought, every touch, every emotion, she wonders if the moment really should be all that matters. Because she's just relived her life in one night, and that seems more real to her than any firework ever could.

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade

"Howl" Allen Ginsberg

We wake up some days thinking about the time that's passed since we last thought about passing time. We're different people on these days, probably unable to recognize our own bodies or come to terms with all that we've done.

Childhood ends the first time we realize the time gone by.

Maybe it was the first time you considered skipping school because nothing you could wear or say or do felt right. Maybe it was when you  laughed at your old journal's laborious and misspelled entries of early morning television and bowls of dry cereal. Maybe it was the first night you spent in a boy's bed. But maybe it's none of these things. Maybe you're nineteen years old and driving to the sea, unable to remember what it's like to be a child or fathom all you've seen.

You remember playing with dolls, laughing at an off-color joke because you didn't understand racism, or crying in your mother's arms. But you don't understand the dolls' simplicity, there's a burning shame when you think of the joke, and you're unable cry in your mother's arms without feeling his touch.

You don't remember what it's like to be a child.

Maybe this is growing up, or maybe this is just time passing.

to the sea