When the Words Keep Arriving

It's a plague I've suffered heavily from before. Beginning sometime in late 2012, words and phrases began to come to me at all times of day and night. I was reading heavily at the time and writing often, but the words came from everywhere. They were wonderful, but an annoyance. I needed a notebook nearby at all times. I could think clearly, but the words still interrupted when they weren't welcome. It had begun slowly, happening for the first time in April 2012, during an especially busy time. Mostly the words arrived in the daytime, but gradually stretched into the evenings. I collected them as best I could, sentences of prose or a few poetic words, phrases, descriptions, ideas, characters and settings, but so many slipped away.

It intensified last winter and spring. Especially when I faded into sleep. I kept a notebook next to my bed and most nights, fought off the sleep to write down the words that kept arriving. Some nights I would promise that I would memorize the words and write them in the morning. Most nights this worked. I would dream about the words in the meantime. Then, sometime last summer, the words stopped coming. Few have since. Until last night. Or perhaps this morning. It was nearly 2 a.m. and the deep exhaustion was there. The sleep wasn't though. The words couldn't stop. In the dark, I scribbled down everything I could. Reading these words now, I had written in my half-conscious state, "It's not that sleep won't come, it's that the words won't let it. They fight and push and weave their way into every thought of my mind."

Before the flood of words arrived, I had been writing about something else in the same notebook. I was reflecting on how leading a student organization these past four years has led me to think about the journey I'm taking. How happy it's made me. I thought about the future for the organization, writing to those who will someday undertake the same responsibility, "It's my hope that you'll know the greater impact of what you're involved in, and know that it's worth every minute you give." This caused me to realize that everything in our lives are worth every minute we give. I might want sleep, but I want the words too. I want to be present in everything I can. I want to choose my life and grow to understand if I don't know what will come along with it.

I remembered this evening, after a long day, of words a friend once sang,  "I will leave a light on for you, my friend. I will hold a place for you on this road that never ends." This friend has since passed away. As I join many others in the entry into the world outside of academia, I want to remember these words. I want to know that the road going forward is a very good one.

Tea & Cooking

I taught my first cooking class on Friday! It was informal. One of my friends wanted to learn how to cook. We made mango-fried rice with tofu and vegetables. I'd say it was pretty successful.

Earlier today I went to tea with a friend. I had never been to the teahouse we went to before, but it was wonderful! In addition to my chai I ordered a daal soup with rice. I was also reminded of how fun Burlington is and how rarely I venture there in the midst of busy life. Time to change that.

A frightening dream of mine came true early Tuesday morning. It was shortly before 8 a.m. when I opened my car door to find the banana I had left there overnight had frozen solid. I had heard such was possible if a banana was left outside overnight when temperatures reach 20 below. I think it only got to 0 during the night, but it was true. The banana had turned to stone.

The frozen banana on a Bob Dylan CD. Once the heat was turned on, the banana quickly turned completely black.

Camera Joy

There are countless reasons why I feel fortunate to be a student of Saint Michael’s College and the department of media studies, journalism and digital arts (as a disclaimer, I’m writing this independently of Saint Michael’s College).

The writing instruction might be the most important to me, but the web design skills, journalism history, media law, audio recording skills, newspaper design, and certainly, the photojournalism skills have proved equally necessary. My few photographing skills come solely from my spring 2012 photojournalism class. With this class, came the best camera I’ve ever used. It was a canon and I know little else about it besides that I used a nice lens throughout the spring and a giant one when I photographed President Obama in late March.

the giant lens on the canon.

The giant lens in action.

When I needed to reluctantly return it in May, I told myself that maybe someday, I would purchase a camera like that for myself. As the next two years unfolded, I found the images I captured on my small point and shoot while exploring Scotland were more than sufficient and in the last seven months, my iPhone has taken over all photography. No complaints from either. With my ongoing senior seminar project though, a department camera came my way. It's another canon and I didn't think it would be possible, but it’s even nicer than the previous one. After purchasing a memory card this morning, I tested it out on my room's surroundings.

Portraying Reality and Writing for Freedom

As I write this on a train journey, I find myself distracted by the want to photograph the scenes zooming by. Many of the scenes would be considered beautiful, but can't be captured. Many others would not be considered beautiful, and still can't be captured. Few of the scenes make beautiful pictures. Yet they’re familiar. They’re what we witness everyday. Photography glorifies what we see each day. It breathes new light and perspective into our mental images. Blogging one's photography gives the photographer the power to choose the best of the best. What we don’t share is exactly what we see.
All scenes below were photographed in southern Vermont and western Massachusetts.

I've been enjoying reading Poets to the People, an anthology published in 1980 spotlighting South African Freedom Poets and bringing attention to the ongoing apartheid in the nation. It's a collection of sadness, awareness, understanding, resilience and ideas for a better world. It's rare to find an anthology where nearly every poem connects with and inspires the reader. For me, this might be one of the few. Below are two of my many favorites in the collection, "At the Dawn I saw Africa" by John Matshikzai and "First Day after the War" by Mazisi Kunene.

At the Dawn I saw Africa

At the dawn I saw Africa,

And pride moved in its body

As I moved;

And the light which we breathed

Was strong.

Our King was our people,

And the king, Ngonyama (lion),

Moved without fear;

And the light in the sun

Shone on the birds, the trees,

And the voices of children.

Yesterday my people were fierce,

And smiled that all things moving,

In all the lands,

Beyond all seas,

Held no fear for us.

Today the king is dead.

Where is that dawn I woke to,

When the sun was round,

And breathed life from the earth?

We do not move.

Where are the voices of the birds and trees,

And the light shining on our children?

My child's voice is strong

But I do not hear. 

Yesterday when we were proud,

And knew that we lived

In all the lands

And beyond all seas,

The earth lived in us. 

Today the king is dead.

I, of the Nation, 

Have no king. 

Today I see

No light in the sun,

And today,

Before you, the Nation,

I am no longer living.

Before you, the Nation

I say that I am dead,

And will live again only

When our Nation is free,

And the sun sings in the eyes of my child.

And as I rise,

My king shall rise,

And Africa will come back.

Today I have died.

First Day after the War

We heard the songs of a wedding party.

We saw a soft light

Coiling round the young blades of grass

At first we hesitated, then we saw her footprints,

Her face emerged, then her eyes of freedom!

She woke us with a smile saying,

'What day is this that comes suddenly?'

We said, 'It is the first day after the war.'

Then without waiting we ran to the open space

Ululating to the mountains and the pathways

Calling people from all the circles of the earth.

We shook up the old man demanding a festival

We asked for all the first fruits of the season.

We held hands with a stranger

We shouted across the waterfalls

People came from all lands

It was the first day of peace.

We saw our Ancestors travelling tall on the horizon.

Evolution on a Thursday

Greetings! Oh man, I think this week has been the busiest yet. I hope to gain more sleep soon. All is very well though. Things are being accomplished and it's hard to believe how fast the semester and year are going. Most days, I wish time would slow down.

I don't think I've ever shared much of Lucie Brock-Broido's work before, but after reading her for the first time last spring she quickly became one my favorite poets. "Evolution" from her 1988 collection A Hunger might be my favorite. It's a blend of history, realization and imagery.

It reminds me of what we share and admire from one another as well as the memories we leave behind through art, music and image.

Evolution

The extinct creatures would have liked this day,
a festival flooded all the way to the river.

If they were still alive with us, they would curl
into the leaves last autumn,
begin their long journey to be coal.
Someday, they would be precious minerals.

They might have been confused,
the cello playing solo,
these chief black strokes --
the Chinese character for rain.

But they would have understood
the love of old leaves heaped,
the dogs barking down
the late afternoons, howling for summertime.

What I want is to sleep away an epoch,
wake up as a girl with another kind of heart.

In the Vatican library, the letters
to Anne Boleyn are pinned down to keep
from coiling. An entire country
changed its faith once for its king.

I want to know what the letters say & go on
saying, what her face looked like in sleep.

By supper the invalids will be lying
down, whorled in white coverlets,
exhausted from yearning,
Everything they do is smaller than these
who walked in a world
 that was greater than this one.

I am the medieval child in the basket, rocking.
Feigning sleep, up all night listening for secrets:
why there are punishments,
what news bad weather brings,
how things get winnowed out.

85 = 3.5 billion

The world's 85 wealthiest individuals have more combined wealth than the world's 3.5 billion poorest individuals (50% of world population). It's an Oxfam statistic released this week that I still can't wrap my head around. To better understand, I used my limited math skills to make some comparisons to understand 3.5 billion people:

3.5 billion people = roughly 3 times the population of India.
3.5 billion people = 3.6 times the entire population of south, north and central America.
3.5 billion people = 11 times the population of the United States.
3.5 billion people = roughly 5 times the entire population of Europe.
3.5 billion people = roughly 3.5 times the entire population of Africa.
3.5 billion people = 92 times the entire population of California.

                                                  On another front,

I'm going to miss college.

(photo by Alexandra Byrne)

Wild Dreams of Temperatures Above Zero

Oh man it's cold. I wish I could remember days above 0 degrees. I've taken a few photos of the weather on my phone this week when the windchill is at -27, or last night, -18. I like the sounds of the 12 degree high tomorrow. Despite the chill, there's been a bit of laughter as my housemates and I arrive home declaring our immediate need for frost bite treatment (usually just on the few inches of face that can't be covered) or our dislike of the ultra-dry crunching sound each step makes. Or the cuts below our knuckles from the dry skin separating. Or the de-icing of car windshields and filling our gas tanks. Or last night as I left class, when a drop of water from my water bottle dripped onto the ends of my hair. Once outside, my chin pressed into my scarf, the chunk of hair had frozen. The late-night gym visits I've been taking with a friend have since ceased as the walk there is just too far. It's days like these  that I vow to never spend another winter in this  climate. And then, life brings me back. It all could be far worse. Until then, I think we'll stay inside.

I have many poems and short stories on my wall above my desk, each a favorite for different reasons. Most have been gathered in creative writing classes and have been chosen because they provide scenes, life and words that are too beautiful not to see each day. Some apply to my life, like E. B. White's Once More to the Lake which begins:

"One summer, along about 1904, my father rented a camp on a lake in Maine and took us there for the month of August."

This line reminds me of childhood summers, of laughing with my brother on the shores of lakes that are now nameless. Of jumping off docks and swimming in places I can't remember. Somewhere above my desk too is Jane Kenyon's Three Songs at the End of Summer. The second stanza is my favorite, evoking a natural summer beauty scene mixed with a possible biblical reference:

'Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.'

One of my favorites though, is Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Wild Dreams of a New Beginning. It's challenging to explain everything I see in it. It's a mixture of a failed American dream, a recognition of religion, history, of our own successes failing, our failures succeeding, living as a shared people yet fiercely independent through choice. It's distress, tragedy and our shared existence. It's almost Americana with an emphasis on fragility, how meaningless we all are. I have so many select lines I like, but they wouldn't be worthy without the full poem:

Wild Dreams of a New Beginning

There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking place in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
with the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless hush
on the freeway tonight
as a Pacific tidal wave a mile high
sweeps in
Los Angeles breathes its last gas
and sinks into the sea like the Titanic all lights lit
Nine minutes later Willa Cather's Nebraska
sinks with it
The sea comes over in Utah
Mormon tabernacles washed away like barnacles
Coyotes are confounded and swim nowhere
An orchestra onstage in Omaha
keeps on playing Handel's Water Music
Horns fill with water
and bass players float away on their instruments
clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a roller coaster
Skyscrapers filled with like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Great Books watered down in Evanston
Milwaukee beer topped with sea foam
Beau Fleuve of Buffalo suddenly become salt
Manhattan Island swept clean in sixteen seconds
buried masts of Amsterdam arise
as the great wave sweeps Eastward
to wash away over-age Camembert Europe
manhattan streaming in sea-vines
the washed land awakes again to wilderness
the only sound a vast thrumming of crickets
a cry of seabirds high over
in empty eternity

Origin

I've been thinking and writing lately about our relationship to the clothing we wear and where the pieces come from. It might have been the media attention on the fires and deaths in Bangladesh clothing factories last year, or it might be something else.

I've begun to wonder how the western world has continually exported jobs that can be done faster, cheaper and far less safe beyond our borders. Slavery seems a harsh term to use, but as modern-day human trafficking and workers rights projects have used it, including this startling and upsetting quiz on how many modern-day slaves one owns, slaves might be the best term to use for those who make our food, clothing, and allow us to live the way we do, wherever we do.

A few months ago, I read the 2000 year-old work 'Slaves' by Seneca. Two passages remained with me, "Whenever the thought of your wide power over your slave strikes you, be struck too, by the thought of your master's equally wide power over you," and "Remember, if you please, that the man you call slave sprang from the same seed, enjoys the same daylight, breathes like you, lives like you, dies like you. You can just as easily conceive him a free man as he can conceive you a slave."

Lastly, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, one of my favorite quotes from Robert F. Kennedy's 1966 speech in South Africa,

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle, or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation, those who seek to enter the moral conflict, will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe. For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success, so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us." 
 

January

Greetings again.

I'm back at school and all is very well. It's still unbelievable that I'm in my final semester, but I'm enjoying and looking forward to everything it holds. I was on a nature walk with a friend earlier today and was reminded while taking photos that I have so many more of this winter. They're below, beginning with today's.

Vermont, today.

Grantham, New Hampshire, early January.

After a box of crayons I brought to a Yankee Swap were sent home with my brother, they quietly made their way back to me and since this picture, have been well used.

Things went downhill on January 3rd.

City from afar.

Bryant Park gray sky.

southern Vermont.

skating with my Mom, late December.