In other news, random Chels quote from class today:

So, the question was: What gives you the right to write poetry? How do you start a poem? What do you have to say that is more interesting than the process of the paper's creation?

Nothing does, really. I write because I have to. In my life, only two things are imperative: to breathe, and to write. T.S. Eliot once said that "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

I can't remember who said it, but one of my favorite poetry quotes says something along these lines:"A poet is someone who, in a lifetime of standing in out in thunderstorms, manages to get struck by lightning seven or eight times."

At the end of the day, I don't know what gives me the right to write poetry. I do know, however, that the desire to write it, for me, is insatiable. I am continuously compelled into some form of verbally constructing my life, my keen feelings, my moments of glory and agony, into something solid. Something I can wrap my mind around, and feel pour out of me onto the page. For me, in so many ways, writing poetry is a kind of exorcism. Of coping. Of reaction. Of catching the smoke of subconscious thought in my fingertips. It's gold-panning for the occasional eternal ideas that so often in life lie just beneath the surface of things.

If I cannot tell me to you in some distilled and simple way, how will you ever hope to know me?

Yawn. Today is my last day of my stint as a temporary full-time employee. It's been three months, and I can tell you right now, I'm wholeheartedly sick of it. Sure, the money's great, but when you have no time for anything but your job, you realize how much life must blow for your dad, or your other friends who seem to work ALL THE TIME. It's been impossible for anyone to play with me, and I miss my friends. Hooray for having the afternoons and evenings back to myself. At least temporarily. I think it's time for Chelly Bean, here, to find herself a new job.

Go figure it happens the same week I finally get the last of my music collection downloaded to my iTunes. (Can we say junkie? I'm currently at 84.6 straight days of music, capacity-wise.)

Rhino is hiring currently, and I like the idea of working retail at a game store, however, I'd prefer to be accepted at Gamerz Edge (poser name, I know) which is a local gamers "mom n' pop" if you will. I mean, since I lost the ability to hang out at the D&D shelf in Media Play when they went out of business...I figure I'll take the next best thing. I dunno. I should check out the old record store and see if they need some summer help. That was the best. Nothing like a discount for a music addict to get an adequate fix and still afford to pay the phone bill.

Yawn. 2 more hours. Then I can go home and play Fable. I can make it!

Ummm....let's see. I didn't write anything new. Though there was a lot of revising old poetry. I'm trying to put together a manuscript for a book which I've apprehensively entitled "Mercurial." It'll be mostly comprised of my favorite pieces from the batch I wrote during a rather emotionally telling previous relationship. It's at least the most complete body of work that I have, because it's a time period with a definitive beginning, middle and end. I'm working on it with my poetry comp. professor, who has been an invaluable resource as far as that goes. She stretches me with my work. A lot. It's great.

Went up to Grandma's yesterday, and helped put in a sprinkling system. Girl howdy, with all the yardwork I've been doing these days, you should see my guns. I'm ripped - and better - tan. Woohoo! However, I'm totally aching, because I got to be the trench-digger. I should have been in the army. Or a migrant worker. (I think I'm going to hell. It's my Utah-native elitist white republican fear-of-diversity upbringing. (Are you Hispanic or Illiterate? Oh wait...) <--- SEE?!?!? I can't help it. ERRR I could, but choose not too. I mean, why quit if you have a good excuse? lol)

Anyway, yes. That's it for now. Not much else...oh, one thing cool - we went up to the Logan Cemetary to leave flowers for my two Grandpas and Grandma, and my 4 uncles and aunt and everything. It was really cool. I was talking to Grandma (the one who's still alive) about what it was like to lose 5 babies to stillbirth. And she was talking about the amazing lessons it taught her and as she barely finished talking, some guy about 50 feet away, who I hadn't noticed, started playing "Scotland the Brave" on his bagpipes. It was awesome, because my Mom's family spent 5 years living in Scotland while my Grandpa built churches. I have decided that the bagpipes is one of my very favorite sounds in the world, and I REALLY want to learn how to play them.

Last item of business: X3

I hated it. It made me want to punch people. And I spent the whole movie with my friends telling me to stop crying and yelling at the screen, because the actors couldn't hear me. I you have any sort of affection for the real X-men stories, don't see it. It's not worth the money. Sigh.

Short Round

Synopsis: Hate job. Feel like crying, don't know why. Also feel like hitting things. Probably more likely to hit things. Starving. Grabbing lunch, and then heading to class to once again flaunt my poetic genius (<-- facetious).

More on this later.

Um, I don't have much to say. Today is better. However, I'm broke and need gas for the scooter. Yes - I'm so broke that I don't even have the three dollars required to fill my tank. Plus I have to run home before class and print off some homework, which I have yet to do still. But which I'll probably do once I get back to work.

And for my notorious SPF, I would just like to say, you have not been a jerk. I have been rather jerkish. Not just to you, but to every aspect of my life in general. And I know it's not PMS, because that was two weeks ago.

I think I'm being devoured by my writer, and when she roars into such prominence, I withdraw and lash out. For that, I am sorry.

It is hard. So much hardness, so many rocks I seem to notice in all the wide open paths. I had forgotten the difficulty of these things in longs months of misty nostalgia. In regret, and disappointment.

It is worth it. But it is a hard thing.






My problem is that I seem to do so well at running when things get hard. And I don't want to run, but it just seems to happen.


Hold me, even when I say I don't want you to. I need you so much, to keep me here. To help me see.

It Won't Hold No Milk

Sigh.

It's one of those days, you know. Been one of those weeks, actually. The sense of settling into contentment with some aspect or other of your life that really, you shouldn't be content with. At least, not content with leaving it as it is, instead of elbowing it into some semblance of progression.

I spent the weekend baking cookies for sad friends, beating Republic Commando for the umpteenth time. Scrubbing a bathroom that my sister had supposedly cleaned all last month, but sure didn't seem that way.

Then yesterday, I had to give an impromptu Sunday school lesson, because I thought that we split lessons by odd/even numbers, but apparently it's split on the every-other-Sunday basis. So... last week's lesson was an even number, which is what I usually teach, and it was Mother's day, so no one was in the singles' ward, because we all went to church with our families. And I just figured that I got to skip a week, which was fine by me, but it turns out I was wrong.

And what was I supposed to teach about? Judges. From the Old Testament. However, apparently I'm a marvelous teacher because the lesson turned out fabulous, and I am a genius. No, not really. Well, I just felt like I was standing up front babbling, and wondering to myself why I was talking, and confessing to any number of heinous stories from my past... but at the end of the lesson, this guy, Irving, who doesn't come to Sunday school much, came up to the front while I was erasing the board and he gave me a hug and said that he was so glad that I taught today and that I had said some things that he really needed to hear.

Can I just tell you how satisfying it is, as a teacher, to find out that what you're doing actually touches people? I love my calling. I love teaching Gospel Doctrine, even though we're covering the Old Testament this year, and it's usually a bugger to help people understand or motivate them to read. However, not only am I an exceptional teacher, I happen to be a master chef, and for all intents and purposes, I could get them to memorize War & Peace for my cookies if I wanted to. So who says that God doesn't utilize ALL of our talents? Hah.

So, at least the spiritual aspects of my life are doing spiffy. They'd probably do better if I could curb my swearing, but at least I don't swear when I'm teaching. And I've done a good job the past couple of weeks of keeping the words in my head, instead of streaming out of my mouth. Which means I'm pretty much screaming obscenities constantly in my brain, but at least no one can hear them.

This past week really sucked. I mean, honestly, it did. And I don't really know why, because it wasn't like some great, traumatic crap happened. I think it was just a whole jumble of little grievances that by Saturday turned out to be one big hairy Ball o' Grief. Do you ever feel like you have so much you'd like to talk about, but you don't know how to word it, or who to tell it to? That's how I feel. I feel all... knotty inside. And I can't untangle it because I don't have long enough fingernails, or a fork handy, and all the people who keep trying to help me are just making the knot tighter and bigger and more frustrating.

I feel like I'm missing some crucial person in my life at the moment... the problem with that being the fact I don't know who the hell it is.

There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza. A hole.

No Ideas But In Things

This week, I've been pondering somewhat extensively the poetry of William Carlos Williams, one of my most favorite poets. I want to share with you the pieces that my attention has been focused on the most:


A Sort of Song

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless
-- through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.




The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens



The parenthetical aside in A Sort of Song: "No ideas but in things" is the part of Williams's writing style that gets me the most. That makes the most sense to me, and it's evidenced in the poem The Red Wheelbarrow. Because The Red Wheelbarrow is not about the wheelbarrow, or the rain, or the chickens, per se. It's about the first two lines. The opening line makes you peel open the layers of rain and paint and feathers to find out just what is being depended on. Wiliams believed in the straightforward conveyance of imagery to tell meaning without actually telling the meaning. I remember a quote by May Swenson, a poet from Logan, Utah, which talked about symbolism in poetry, and how it's crucial to explain your symbol explicitly, but to never tell the meaning. You can hint, but you cannot tell. I will have to search for that one, it was a great quote, and I hardly do it justice.

I have found, for me, that I prefer to convey the meaning of metaphorical images, instead of actual images. Instead of finding the meaning in the small rock on my windowsill that says "compliment" in black letters on it, I come up with metaphors for possible meanings, and compile them. I am fascinated by imagery, but I am equally fascinated by metaphor.

For me, the beauty of poetry lies in its ability to communicate things depending on the reader's perception. In a very real way, almost like scripture, you get out of a poem the things you bring to it. The wonderful thing about poetry is that it waits for you. Novels don't; characters change, but a poem will always wait. I love poetry because it's rereadable, because it's vague. Because you can empty your pathos into its cup, and only those who identify with it can drink it in its entirety. But then, poetry is things you communicate to be related to. We write to know we are not alone, just as we read to know we are not alone, and love to know we are not alone. Poetry it not about loneliness, it's about solitude. It reminds me of one of my very favorite Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes:

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intelligent life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know your duty better than you know it. It is easy, in the world, to live after the world's opinion; it is easy, in solitude, to live after our own; but the great person is the one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

For me, poetry is exactly that: the independence of solitude kept in perfect sweetness. Though, admittedly, my poetry is not always sweet, it is, in a vitally real way, truth of feeling. I write what I feel. I write how I feel, things that make me feel. Poetry is about relate-able feelings. About communicating the unique perspective that you, and you alone have. I share my poetry to connect with to people, and to have people understand and relate to me. Poetry casts light on things we keep hidden. It whispers our inner screams to the passersby.

Yehuda Amichai once said, "Our despair is domesticated and gives us peace. Only the hopes have remained. Wild hopes, their screams shatter the night and rip up the day."

No ideas but in things. The challenge: be an observer. Look for the meaning in things. Only by setting down the very fundamentalness of things can we truly split them apart in detail and understand them.


And now for something completely different:

It's been a long week, and it's only Tuesday.

Yesterday I got The Office (BBC version) on DVD and watched the first season. But it was only on the first episode of the second season that I realized Dan is Garreth. They even have the same freaking haircut. (Nearly) It was the rendition of the Muppets' Mahnamanah song that made me finally realize it. Because Dan comes into work every day and sings that song. It freaked me OUT, dude. Pleh. Posers.

Today I feel...blah. My poem is being critiqued in workshop today, and I'm feeling rather trepidatious. Also, I'm wearing a shirt that says, "Don't Make Me Get My Wookie" on it. And I decided that it's a good thing I'm wearing a jacket.

It's so nice outside. I want to go outside and play. I want to go up the canyon by the water storage tank and roll down the huge grassy hills. Or throw rocks at the tank, because it's makes the coolest ping-y Star Wars™ blaster-fire noise ever.

There are some days when I really miss being a kid. I miss only having to worry about penmanship homework and complaining about bedtime and vegetables. I miss playing red rover. My cousin and her husband just had a baby recently, and he's the tiniest, perfectest thing I've seen in a long time. So much dark hair and dark eyes and he's just gorgeous. It made me sad. Sometimes I really, really want one of my own. And lately I've been wanting that a lot. I suppose it comes from being the oldest of 6 kids. I've been a "parent" since I was ten. And now that the youngest is turning 5, I miss having a baby around the house. I dunno what it is.

All my friends are getting married. It's getting really annoying. I think that inadvertently, I've surrounded myself with an inner circle of friends who are all pretty much bound and determined to remain single - mostly because they all love each other and it's a mess. It frustrates me. People in general have been frustrating to me. I don't seem to be able to relate to anyone around me.