Devouring The Painted Drum

"So the spiders wait. I am careful not to disturb their quiet weavings. I watch each spider closely, admire its curved and tapered legs. They are black with hot yellow death's heads on their bellies. They are patient with the gravity of their intent. Of their means of survival they've made these elegant webs, their beauty a by-product of their purpose. Which causes me to wonder, my own purpose on so many days as humble as the spider's, what is beautiful that I make? What is elegant? What feeds the world?" ~Louise Erdrich

Close Reading

Most of the time, I am in awe of the world. A hundred times a day I fall in love with the grass, with the birth and death of flowers, with the ever-changing and simultaneously constant sky. My heart is heavy with delight for the senses, for the sights and smells and tastes and sounds and feelings of existence. To be alive is a wonderful thing, even in times of darkness, even in days spent nowhere but my own bedroom, even in moments of uncertainty. It is amazing to be a living, breathing creature on this planet. It is amazing to feel joy and pain and hope and reverence. It is amazing to feel.

I have read five books in the past two weeks and I spent this morning working my way through number six. Some were silly and short and read within the course of an afternoon. Others required closer reading, time to reflect on passages already read before continuing on, moments to laugh and cry and sigh in admiration for a simple turn of phrase. What I enjoy most about reading such an eclectic mix, enjoy most about reading in general, is that in some way or another, I find reflections of myself in each story. Every character, whether real or fictional, felt something I have felt in my life. Every author, whether through the first or third person, touched on thoughts and emotions and ideas that I have had. I could relate, in some small manner, to at least one moment in each of the journeys, always understanding that as for those moments that I could not relate to, someone else could. This is the beauty of literature, of language, of humanity itself. This is the great universal story.

It is our innate imperfection that connects us to one another, and it is this innate need to connect that binds us together. No matter our time or place or histories, we are all certain to experience the grand spectrum of human emotion throughout our lifetime. We all know what happiness feels like, and sadness, love and loss and frustration and determination and expectation and disappointment and comfort. Daily we discover new depths of each in one another and in ourselves. Daily the world grows exponentially bigger and smaller all at once. Daily I am impressed with such truth.

To be understood is a beautiful, consuming desire we all feel. Why else would art exist? We express ourselves because we feel the need to - in music and paintings and sculptures and movies and writing and cooking and in the simple art of conversation. We feel the need to express ourselves because we hope on some level that someone, somewhere, will smile and nod and say "me too." And how lucky we are that such expression exists, that people are able to share their music and paintings and sculptures and movies and writing and food and words, because we are then able to look and listen and taste and smell and experience those same feelings within ourselves. We are able to smile and nod and say "me too" and feel less alone in this world. We are able to understand and to be understood. We are able to connect to one another in the most important ways.

I read stories about lives I am not living, and in each one see a possibility for myself. My life could go anywhere. I could be anything. I could be anyone. Often I find myself longing for a quieter, simpler way of life. Perhaps I would be happiest living far away, isolated in the country, with only my books to read and my journals to write in and the natural world surrounding me. Often I dream of such things.

But on days like today, when I finished an extraordinary book and was able to log on to facebook and write to the author and thank him for writing such a remarkable story, I felt so grateful to be connected to the world in this small, arguably superficial way. He wrote me back to thank me, and just like that, I fell in love for the hundredth time today. It is an amazing world we live in. I am grateful to be a part of it, thinking the things countless others have thought, feeling the things countless others have felt, experiencing the grand spectrum of human emotion countless others have experienced. I am grateful to be a witness to the products of expression that have been, and continue to be, shared with the world. I am grateful for every moment I have been able to smile and nod and say "me too" and feel connected to something much bigger than myself, bigger than all of us. I am grateful for so much understanding and for the ceaseless delight that can fill my heavy heart with a simple turn of phrase.

The Road Less Traveled

I have taken this road more than once in my life. I like to think I'm better for it. After having placed all of those words on this blog on Friday, I woke up on Saturday feeling released from them, from all the the thoughts that become bottled up inside me where they were never intended to stay. I took a deep breath and then I moved on. What more can we do in this world?

From the bottom of my closet I removed a bag I bought on the street in India. It's held up nicely over the years. Inside I placed a book, my Ipod, a camera, my keys and a few dollars should I need them, and out the door I went, no plan, no purpose. I just needed to get up and go. And so I did. At the bottom of a familiar hill I decided impulsively to keep walking straight, instead of turning to the right as I do each morning in my car on the way to work. The bottom of the hill curves off to the left and I had no idea what laid beyond. It was the perfect place to start.

Because once I'd navigated the traffic on the street with no sidewalk and rounded the corner I found a river, which delighted me in ways I cannot begin to express. I followed along side it in the quiet of morning, reveling in the newness of it. I never cease to be amazed anew by the joy of discovery. When life begins to feel stagnant, as life inevitably does, it is always so comforting to find myself in these moments of uncovering surprises, quiet secrets kept from me because I'd never bothered to reveal them. It always feels like an awakening, of the mind, of the spirit, of the possibility brimming within each of us. Immediately I snapped out of whatever funk had previously had hold of me. I rounded the corner and it was gone.

I kept walking until I found a park where I decided to sit and read for a while. After a few chapters I got restless, and so I continued on, taking roads completely unfamiliar to me, not worrying about exactly how to get home, ignoring the "I should" feelings that weigh so heavily as I carry them everywhere. Every once and a while I'd find a perfect spot to sit and read a few more chapters, and then I would get up and keep going. It wasn't the same kind of restlessness I generally feel. It wasn't at all a long to-do list lingering in the back of my mind. I never once worried that I was wasting time. In fact, it was the best I'd used my time in quite a while. It was Mary Oliver's "Tell me, what else should I have done?" It was that kind of day.

Of course, after a few hours, when my legs began to grow tired and my skin began to turn pink, I had to return to some kind of reason. And naturally, the first rational thought I had was, "damn, I have no idea where I am." I had enjoyed all this time that I hadn't brought my cell phone with me. I liked that I was unreachable, that I had allowed myself to disappear from everything and everyone for a few hours, that I was free from playing any of the roles I have been cast in. But of course on the other side of not being able to be reached also meant that I was unable to simply pick up my phone and reach others. And so I kept walking, trying to get my bearings, looking for anything recognizable. Nothing. So I just kept going.

I stumbled upon this tiny cafe in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. I suddenly realized how thirsty I was. Not surprisingly, no one was inside but the girl behind the counter. She greeted me with an enthusiastic "hello!" and my heart fell for a moment at the idea that I had most likely stepped into another charming, failing cafe. It was completely my kind of place, with colorful mismatched chairs and shelves lined with books that were meant to be shared. I was instantly in love. I bought a bottle of water and sat at one of the empty tables, read a few more chapters in the book that was approaching its final pages. I got up to leave and considered asking her for directions, but then stopped myself. I didn't really want them, I realized. I much preferred the journey. And so I said my thanks and goodbye and walked on.

Only twenty minutes later I regretted it. My skin was burning and I literally had to will my legs to keep going. I was bordering on panic when I finally approached a busy intersection and realized I knew exactly where I was. I was on my way home. Thanks to years of traveling and the navigational keenness I've inherited from my mother, my sense of direction always seems to get me here somehow. I always seem to find my way home.

When I did finally arrive at my door, turned the key, and stepped inside, I smiled. I have taken the road less traveled more than once in my life, but I never seem to take any one particular road more than once. That's what makes them special. That's what makes me special. No one can ever live their life exactly as I have lived mine. It's a nice thought, isn't it? It's nice that only I had that exact experience yesterday. Only I walked that exact path and thought those exact thoughts and felt those exact feelings. Only I had that adventure. It is mine. And I'll carry it with me as I walk on alongside rivers and unexplored streets, in and out of charming cafes, on the only road that I will ever know, the one that curves and bends and dips and rises unexpectedly, the one that begins at birth and ends at death and marks the journey of my existence here.

Growth

Family Fun Day was established when my brother and I had reached the inevitable ages when we began to pull away from our parents. One Sunday a month each of us would take turns choosing an activity for the whole family to do together. In those moments we all have of blaming our parents for creating us as we are, I like to look back upon this concept and remind myself that my mother and father tried. They really tried. While I have forgotten a majority of the activities over the years, one single moment remains with me, a single image captured and saved in the photo album of memory. It is the image of my mother on our white water rafting adventure, slipping out of the raft and floating away down the river, her lifejacket hiked up around her neck, smiling and laughing and waving at us as she drifted further and further away. It is one of my favorite images of my mother.

We were all out of our element that day in the arduous physical activity, the hot sun blaring down on us, sharing a raft with a group of strangers who undoubtedly rolled their eyes at the very sight of us stepping into the boat to join them. "We don't stand a chance" I imagined each of them thinking, and justifiably so. I can't remember which one of us had the idea to go, but I think it may have been me, always wanting to be a different kind of person living a different kind of life. I would love to be the kind of person who goes white water rafting, I most likely thought. I have these same kind of thoughts now. I would love to be the kind of person who reads a book a day, who goes on daily walks out in the world, who cooks each meal, who writes novels and poetry in her spare time, who creates something artistic and new in every moment. I would love to be the kind of person who can just pick up and travel the world, fearless and comfortable and not worrying about what should be. I would love to be the kind of person who makes things happen, who doesn't just dream of things that could be, who does all of this instead of just writes about wanting to do it. None of this is beyond reach. It is just a matter of reaching out for it, and somehow, I can never seem to extend my grasp in that direction.

I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and I'm not quite sure what it's about. The semester ended and I found myself a little lost, without the constant movement from one place to the next, the constant intellectual stimulation and email inbox full of questions and answers. I always seem to find myself in trouble when my life slows down. Too much time to think, I suppose. My list of things I would like to accomplish grows longer and the list of things I have accomplished grows shorter. I always think that I want time off from my life, but having even the slightest taste of a break from things makes me feel lazy and uncertain and terribly unproductive. I work best under deadlines. I work best when the moments of free time are rare. I work best when I understand how precious those moments are. Like most things in life, to have an abundance of it detracts from its value. I don't want to be the kind of person who wastes her time.

And it shouldn't be so difficult, to get the things I want out of life, to be the person I want to be, to live the life I long to be living. It is as simple as opening this page on my computer and typing in my thoughts. It is as easy a practice as this. Still, I have to constantly remind myself of this fact. I have to constantly reset my mind, and I wish it wasn't like that. I wish it could just be an instinctual act. I wish I spent less time hating myself for the things that I am not doing, and more time doing them. I wish that I could take the unspoken advice of my mother who, having slipped from the boat of certainty, floats on with the rushing rapids of the river of life, smiling and laughing and waving.

Home

Two years ago today my best friend and I became homeowners. It is one of those monumental life-altering changes that simultaneously feels as though it was both a lifetime ago and only just yesterday. The anniversary encourages, as anniversaries do, some reflection on what the day marks, what the day means. Two years ago today we took a leap of faith together. We changed the course of our lives in a large and significant way. We wrote our names over and over again on the dotted lines and joked that we were signing our lives away. In some way, we were. Those dotted lines represented the border between who we were and who we were going to be. The past was gone. The future was a few signatures and a turn of a key away. And just like that, we were home.

I am a firm believer that in the course of a day we make hundreds of small unnoticed decisions that affect us, that change the direction of our path, but in the course of my life I have made a few substantial, recognized decisions that I consider to be the story of my journey. They are the choices I reflect back upon and think “what if…” They are the moments in my life where I paused to speculate the outcomes of my actions. They are the indicators of where things could have been different.

I cannot consider one without considering all those that preceded it. They are, after all, connected and sequential. One cannot exist without the one that came before it. That’s just how life is – moment after moment, event after event, choice after choice. Thinking about them today, for perhaps what is the first time, I can say without the slightest hint of doubt that I have no regrets about any of them. And it is because of this understanding that they are not isolated experiences, but rather, small incremental steps that have lead me to where I am now, here, in this space, writing these words in a room that is truly my own.

Of course there will always be “what ifs” because I am who I am and that’s how I look at the world. I will always wonder about that road not taken. I will dwell on the potential of what could have been – the positive as well as the negative. My junior year of high school we performed the musical ‘Working’ and one of the lines of the opening song was “if I could have been what I could have been, I could have been something.” It is a sentiment I carry with me in these recollections of the past. I still occasionally worry that I’ve wasted too much of my time, too much of myself, too much of the potential for who “I could have been” and now it is lost and gone forever. I fear those are things one can never get back.

But on days like today, days where I celebrate those leaps of faith, those hopes and the very sense that I have been and continue to be so hopeful, I find myself with a kind of comforting certainty that everything is just as it should be. The hot spring air wafts through my windows. The candle burns beside me. My roommate, my best friend, my sister is two doors down the hall undoubtedly reflecting on these same ideas. The world is quiet and still. My computer hums. My fingers tap on the keys. I write and write and write. And just like that, I am home.

Some Well Spoken Truth

"I thank you very much for this award. I am joining a list of very distinguished writers, and I probably don’t deserve to be joining it; but as the theologically pessimistic used to remark, if we all got what we deserved, we’d be boiling in oil.

I hope however that this recognition is not the equivalent of the gold watch to the retiring manager. No, surely not! For writers can’t retire, nor can they be fired: As we hear constantly from those who think there should be no arts grants, writers don’t have real jobs. That’s true, in a way: They have no employers. Or rather their employers are their readers: which imposes on them a truly Kafkaesque burden of responsibility and even guilt, for how can you tell whether you’re coming up to the standards of people you don’t even know? Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

Or else you find out in an unpleasant way: You’re arrested, you are condemned, you are tortured, you are shot, you disappear. Those doing the shooting and the torturing, whether they are from the left or the right, whether they represent theocracies or secular totalitarian dictatorships or extreme factions, all have one thing in common: They wish to silence the human voice, or all human voices that do not sing their songs. They wish to indulge their sense of power, which is best done by grinding underfoot those who cannot retaliate. Writers—artists in general—are easy prey for the silencers. They don’t have armies. They can be cut out from the herd—they‘ve already cut themselves out, by daring to speak—and few in their own countries will be foolhardy enough to defend them.

Voices can be silenced, but the human voice cannot. Our languages are what make us fully human—no other creature has anything like our rich and complex vocabularies and grammars. Each language is unique: To lose one is to lose a range of feeling and a way of looking at life that, like a living species that becomes extinct, can never be replaced. Human narrative skills are found in every language, and are very old: We all have them. We writers merely use them in what we fondly believe are more complex ways. But whether written down or not, stories move—from hand to paper to eye to mouth, from mouth to ear.

And stories move us. This is their power. Written stories are frozen voices that come to life when we read them. No other art form involves us in the same way—allows us to be with another human being—to feel joy when he laughs, to share her sorrow, to follow the twists and turns of his plotting and scheming, to realize her insufficiencies and failures and absurdities, to grasp the tools of her resistance—from within the mind itself. Such experience—such knowledge from within—makes us feel that we are not alone in our flawed humanity."

~Margaret Atwood

Under A Sky That Is Grey

It never ceases to amaze me how green the world in spring can look juxtaposed against the ubiquitous grey of a rainy afternoon. It never ceases to amaze me the moment I find myself struck in a childlike state of awe and curiosity and delight at such small, natural wonders. It never ceases to amaze me how simple everything can become, if even for an instant, how quiet, how manageable, how effortless.

Recently I have been considering the way I have become most apt to notice beauty when it is juxtaposed against the grey. I wonder what that is about - whether it says something about beauty, whether it says something about me, perhaps even, whether it says something about all of us. I used to find goodness in everything. I used to see beauty everywhere. But lately, it feels as though I only stop to recognize it in moments when I need to. I only find it when I’m searching for it. I only see light when it is surrounded by darkness. I only notice the green when it’s encompassed in grey.

I can blame it on being busy and growing older and the increase of difficulties that arise from each new stage of life. But it is not those excuses in and of themselves. It is the part of me I am forgetting, the part of me I am unnoticeably giving up, the part of me I have left in pieces all over the world – in parks and playgrounds and bookstores and cafes. It is the part of me that carried my journal everywhere and took the time – no matter how inconvenient or inappropriate the timing or setting – to stop and observe the world, to record the goodness everywhere, in everything. It is the part of me that noticed the beauty of the grey as much as the beauty of the green.

These days I only stop to write out of sadness. I only take poetry off of the shelf when I’m feeling uninspired. I only reach out in kindness when I need it in return. And I wonder what that is about. I worry that the line between “that’s so unlike me” and “that is me” is growing increasingly blurry, increasingly grey.

And yet, there are these gentle reminders that not all of me has been lost. I am sure what I’ve just written sounds depressing and sad, but that was not my intention. That’s not what I am trying to say.

What I’m trying to say is that I am still capable of being amazed and dazzled and delighted, in these pure and simple ways. I still write in happiness, even if it fails to make it onto the page. I still carry poetry within me, even if I am already feeling inspired. I still desire, in all consuming ways, to give kindness, even if I don’t need any in return. The point is that in those moments when everything in this complicated, complex world suddenly feels simple, it’s because it is. It is simple.

It is as simple as remembering how to be struck in a childlike state of wonder and amazement. It is as simple as remembering back upon those pieces of myself I have left around the world. It is as simple as remembering that I left them there for a reason, to be looked back upon, collected in the catalog of memory, synthesized into the story of a life made up of beautiful moments.

Early this afternoon I added the greenness of the world in spring juxtaposed against the ubiquitous grey of this rainy afternoon to my collection. I remembered how to see without looking. And then I came home, opened my grey computer, and filled it’s blank page with some beauty and goodness.

A Bit Of Beauty

"I imagine my life to be big, so big that I cannot see the end of it. Big enough for everyone to fit into it. You will be in it...people I have never met or known will be in it. I will be in it. I can see it. I have a picture of it in my head. It's a field in bloom so deep you can swim in it. I can see it now, and I cannot see its end." ~Aleksander Hemon

A Lesson In Value

It was the sight of her home that stopped me from my hurried routine. I couldn’t imagine the structure surviving the monsoon season or providing any relief from the thick sweltering heat of an Indian summer. It had only three walls and a flimsy thatched roof, and it reminded me of the dioramas we used to have to make in elementary school, one side cut off of a shoebox to see the story inside. This story, however, seemed incomplete, as all that contained was a small elderly woman and a dirty grey blanket, filled with holes and frayed at the edges. I watched her pick it up and stroll to the corner, dipping the blanket into a murky puddle of water collecting beside the curb.

It was no more depressing than the faces of the women who handed me their babies in the street and silently pressed their hands to their mouths asking for food or the men who crawled alongside the dogs in the park having lost the use of their legs. I felt the same amount of injustice and guilt for everything I had as any other time I had encountered poverty, and yet there was something about this particular woman that touched me deeply, that made me pause, that changed everything.

My first thought was that I wanted to save this woman from her life. I wanted to hug her, to hold her in my arms and tell her everything would be alright, and mean it. I wanted to give her all of the money in my bank account, and the very shoes upon my feet, and be able to, somehow, allow her to share in every wonderful experience I had been privileged enough to know.

I crossed the street, removed the few hundred rupees I had from my pocket, and held them out before her. She looked up and met my gaze. We stared at one another for a moment before she shook her head from side to side, said “nay,” and returned to her work. “No,” I said, “take it.” Again, she held up her hand and declined, not in a sad or angry way, but like a dinner guest turning down a second helping of dessert. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” her expression suggested.

I stood there for a moment feeling helpless and confused, and it was only then that I noticed how delicately her fingers rubbed the blanket in the muck of the public water, how tenderly, how lovingly. What material thing had I ever loved with such fervor? What work had I ever done that had brought me such pure and simple joy? How would I possibly ever understand the value of anything, unless it was everything?

And while my first thought was that I wanted to save this woman from her life, my second thought was, who would save me from mine? Who would teach me to sit all day and observe the world, to listen to my breath move in and out as it declares my existence, to know that this was enough? Who would teach me to savor the sweetness of food upon my tongue, to appreciate the comfort of my shoes in each step, to revel in the singularly significant success of surviving? Who would teach me to recognize the accomplishment of closing my eyes at night having lived another day? What wisdom had my affluence cost me? What knowledge? What understanding?

Slowly I am learning to greet the morning sun as it rises each morning, as it brings light where once there was darkness, as it lays warmth upon my greedy skin. Slowly I am learning to accept the invitation of the rain as it washes the slate clean, softens the hard earth, clears the streets of people and fills them with it’s own unique symphony of sound. Slowly I am learning to treasure the silver of the moonlight reflecting on the quiet pond, the gold of the sunflowers turning their eager faces to the sky. Slowly I am learning that wealth is a state of mind, and that knowing this is a luxury. The value of anything, of everything, is subjective, and so to become rich in this world is as simple as perceiving the gift of existence as priceless. To become successful is as simple as cherishing this perception. To live a worthy life is as simple as loving.

She lifted her head to once again meet my gaze, and all I could think to offer her in that moment was a smile, which she returned graciously. And so I left her there to tend to her happiness, as I walked on into the world, in my comfortable shoes, determined to save the most precious of all possessions -- my one and only life.

Our Story

I wasn't certain of how to begin this. It's been eleven days since it happened, and I've had time to think and discuss and numb myself to what needs to be felt. Most of what needed to be said has already been written in emails. I regret not writing here first, when it was raw, when I was open, when my emotional outrage would have sounded more heartfelt and less like whatever analytical composition I'll form here. Still, I feel the need to write about it. I feel like this story needs to be told.

The thing about stories is that once they are told, they no longer belong to just the narrator. They become part of someone else's story. They are released out into the world to be observed, to be understood, to be retold and retold until they become part of a larger story, the story of being human. I once posted something very personal about my mother and she immediately called me and requested I take it down, which of course I did. Certainly I didn't blame her for it. In fact, I agreed and felt foolish for having released her experiences out into the vulnerable lens of the public eye. Years later she told me she had made a mistake. Partially, I think, because she understood the point I am trying to make. Her story belonged to me too. Once told, even the events that took place before I was born became part of my history. They are stories I think about and feel things about. They are stories that have shaped my perspective and my sense of self. They are stories that are an important part of my story.

This story, the story of father and daughter, is just as important. I've been looking through old posts from years ago and what strikes me most about this story is the way in which it has remained unchanged. It is a story of the devastating cycle through heartbreak to forgiveness to heartbreak, time and time again. It is the story of a young woman asking, pleading, begging for love and all of the attributes that accompany love, encompass love - honesty, respect, affection. It is the story of a father who not only denies her such love, but denies that such love is even possible, not only between her and him, but between anyone. "Love unconditionally is a line for children to beat their parents with," he will tell her. And it will break her heart. Not only because he cannot love her, not only because he believes this to be true, but because believing such a thing means that her father is a sad, sad man who has never experienced the joy of loving something, someone, unconditionally.

And it is a joyful thing to love that way, to love as I do, so openly, so freely, so unconditionally. My very existence is based around the knowledge of, the feelings of, the faith in such joy. My whole life revolves around love - for the grass, for the trees, for the sky, for every other person I have encountered in my life. Yes, even for the father who is incapable of feeling the same way. I still love him as my father. Otherwise none of this would matter. Otherwise it wouldn't hurt that he cannot see that.

The details of what instigated the latest fight don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. It was only a manifestation of things that have gone unsaid for the past seven or eight years. I have tried more than once to say them, but they have fallen on deaf ears. They continue to this time around, as is made evident in completely unfair and irrelevant remarks made towards me. I'm still uncertain of what exactly is happening, but it's somewhat comforting not to understand. It only convinces me that so little of it is actually about me.

Why can't you love me? You claim that what I speak of is movie screen, soap opera love, but it's not. It's real. I know because I feel it daily. I feel loved. I feel an infinitely vast capacity to love. I know, more than anything else in this uncertain world, that love exists. Why can't you love me?

You tell me to stop acting like a child, but you seem equally upset that I am not a child, that I don't need you like a child needs their father, that you can't control me like a father could their child. Also, I am not a child. I am the oldest twenty-five year old I know. I am independent and thoughtful and responsible and I have asked so very little from you over the years. And yet that little has been much more than you are willing to give. I express to you my very genuine emotions. I ask you to share yours. I attempt, over and over, to allow you to be a part of my life. I stand up for myself when your responses seem unjust. You tell me to stop acting like a child, but I don't know what acting like an adult is if not doing all of those things. "Love isn't whining" you tell me. Is telling you I'm hurting somehow whining? I am not some whiny child. I know that about myself.

You tell me I am disrespectful. You tell me appeasing you is not enough, but you seem equally upset when I offer any authentic emotion that isn't happiness or love. You feel disrespected by my "polite courtesies" but also by my honesty. What is it I'm supposed to say? You cannot demand affection from me. You have to earn it. You have to allow me to be who I am, say what I feel, feel what I feel. Or you have to accept the fake front I offer you, my attempts to please you, my attempts to be someone you deem worthy of your love. Those are the options. You have offered no choice or solution, simply anger and frustration at my inability, at the inability of all people, to be both genuine and fake all at once. I cannot be both. I know that about myself.

And I know too that a year ago I would have allowed this to destroy me. I would have allowed your inability to love me unconditionally make me feel as though I am someone unworthy of unconditional love. But I know better than that now. I am not a child. I am not a little girl feeling sorry for herself that her father won't love her. I am an adult feeling sorry for another adult because he cannot love his daughter. I used to think that I needed your love, your approval, your opinion of me to matter in order to define myself, but part of my definition in the story of my life is that I am who I am without you. You have helped to create me, in good ways and bad, as the person I am today, but your chapter is over and I can continue on without you.

One of my good friends told me that I needed to grieve for you, for this, for us. And she's right. This is a loss. So I will grieve, and slowly, I will begin to heal. There will always be a scar, of course, but it can be a symbol of my past rather than my future. It can be a reminder of who I was rather than who I have to be. It can be contained to part one of my story, trapped in my childhood, as part two opens upon a new stage of adulthood, a stage that doesn't contain stories of you.

Our stories are intertwined, of course. This is your story as much as it is mine. I would like to think the best of you and assume you too will be saddened that your final chapters will not contain me. I hope you too feel the loss. But mostly, despite everything that has happened, I hope that you find happiness. I hope that you discover what it means to be loved and feel love unconditionally, even if it cannot be with me. I hope that you get to experience such joy. From one adult to another, I hope for you. From one storyteller to another, I hope that your concluding lines are genuinely lovely and consisting of something real.

A Balancing Act

Part of my struggle has always been balance, as I suspect is true of most people. Balancing my time, my responsibilities, my relationships. It all begins to feel so fragile as I delicately divide my attention in a way that I hope to be fair and equal, but ultimately is never enough. I have not yet learned in my twenty five years how to separate myself into each significant section of life without dissolving completely. I have not yet learned how to give up pieces of who I am without creating holes in my heart that can never again be filled. I have not yet learned how to let go without falling.

Yes, sometimes the fall is beautiful and elegant and necessary. Often it brings with it new wisdom and understanding and lessons that could not otherwise be learned. But mostly it still hurts when I inevitably hit the ground. The cold, hard smack of the pavement of reality continues to leave bruises, which only deepen and widen with each new fall. Mostly it becomes more and more difficult to find the strength to get up again. It becomes more and more difficult to allow myself to let go.

And so I concentrate on what I can control, on school and work and the small daily choices that are of no real consequence. I choose to smile and laugh and play the role I have created for myself. I choose to portray the person that I think the world wants me to be, and while this is often beneficial, it is not without cost. I have not yet learned how to balance who I am with who I want to be seen as, and I worry that the imbalance has meant sacrificing aspects of myself that I should have been more unwilling to part with.

Namely, writing as truthfully as I want to, as I am capable of. I find myself becoming so increasingly wrapped up in the "supposed to" of writing that I've lost what it is I love about it. I used to be so honest here. More than that, I used to discover honesty here, as though the truths I was unwilling to admit to myself would manifest on the screen without my assistance. I was writing the words, but I was reading the content. I was, and continue to be, an outsider looking into the depths of my own existence.

And I liked that other people could see that too. I liked that people could open to this page and see me, hear me, understand me. But then, more difficult truths emerged and suddenly the availability of this blog to the rest of the world became a terrifying thing. It became more real than I was prepared to accept. It became a balancing act between what I would say and what I really wanted to say, what I claimed to feel and what I actually felt. It became a balancing act between not hurting other people and hurting myself. And so I chose not to risk offending anyone and consequently gave up the one thing in my life that allowed me to be as authentic as I needed to be.

So I didn't write here when I really wanted to, needed to. I stopped myself from revealing those dark, unpleasant emotions to the world because it stopped me from having to see, to read, to believe they were legitimate. But they were. They are. And the truth is, this latest fall has shown me, for the first time in my life, that I can't really worry about what people find here. How you react to my words on this page is a reflection of you more than it is of me. I cannot spend my life apologizing for who I am. It's not fair to any of us.

I was recently accused of hiding my genuine feelings behind the mask of melodramatic prose, and in that moment, hurtful as it was, I understood that it is fairly easy to misinterpret my writing. My feelings are never more genuine than when they are on the page. I am not hiding behind prose. I am prose. I am a living, breathing poem, as each of us are. I write directly from my heart, not from my head. After all, it is my head that tells me I have to balance. It is my head that stops me from writing the words that are aching to be released inside my heart. It is my head that keeps me from this blog.

But my heart is here. My heart is in every word I have ever written. I end every journal with the same line. "This is it. This is me." Nothing has ever been as true.

I will write what I have not yet had the courage to write. If you read it and feel offended or angry or sad or guilty or a combination of those dark, unpleasant emotions we would all rather not see, or read, or believe, than perhaps you too will understand, finally, what it means to be honest. It is letting go. It is being an outsider looking into the depths of your own existence. It is finding the fortitude to get up again, to fall, to greet the cold, hard pavement of reality as it hits you, to reflect on the bruises, to share them with the world, to write about it, and if you're strong enough, to begin to heal. This is where it begins. This is it. This is me.

Blind Spot

"But you don't want to fall back into "oh I should be writing" only to stop again," she said. The intention behind her words wasn't cruelty and I didn't take as such. I knew what she meant, that this blog had served it's purpose, but now it was time to move on. Yes, forcing myself to write out of some self concocted obligation is pointless. It produces meager results and creates unnecessary guilt and stress because I allow it to. Each time I return to this, or a journal left half finished on my shelf, I feel the need to excuse my lack of writing. I apologize to this poor blog, to those poor journals, to myself. It's so useless.

Driving from school to work yesterday, I came within inches of being side-swiped by another car who was changing lanes. I must have been in his blind spot. I honked and swerved and let out a single curse, and then, just as quickly, was back in my own lane, breathing again. In that single moment I felt angry and relieved and unnerved and sympathetic. I looked at the man in the car next to me who was most likely feeling all of those same emotions simultaneously with me, and some part of me wished I could tell him that it was okay, that we all make mistakes, that we're okay, here, breathing.

I drove past the stadiums that I've stood inside so often, enjoying concerts and sporting events and the company of various different friends. I drove past the airport that I've flown out of and back into on all of the beautiful journeys I've embarked upon in my life. I watched from a distance as a plane moved through a snow covered field, only to suddenly lift from the ground and make its way toward the sky, smoothly, effortlessly, as though at any moment the buildings behind it might follow. I drove past the shipyards and the Delaware river, glistening in the first sunlight that had appeared in days. And yes, it's silly, but for a few moments in time I was deeply moved by where I was, in the world, in my life. I make this drive three times a week, but I have always been focused on the drive, on the road, on the cars. I forget that I'm driving through the city, through my city, through my history and my present.

And just as easily as I had become aware of my surroundings, I noticed too, that I was writing in my head. Perhaps I am always writing, and just not noticing. Perhaps it is like the way I live my day to day life and forget where I am, in the big picture, in the important ways. My life has become so full and I have trained myself to tune my mind to "now I am at school" becomes "now I am at work" becomes "now I am at home," and everything else goes unrecognized. Everything else is in my blind spot, which seems to grow larger as the responsibilities of the day to day increase.

And then one day, quite unexpectedly, something swerves toward me and wakes me up. It is that feeling of opening your eyes to only then realize that you've been asleep. It is not noticing the room is dim until someone turns on an extra light. "Oh," you think to yourself, "why was I sitting in the dark?"

I think about the night I was the saddest I had ever been and took out my journal to write through it. I think of the way when the power went out, my friends lit a candle for me to write by. And when my pen ran out of ink, they found me a pencil. And when the point of the pencil broke, they found a knife to sharpen it. And so I continued to write with my jagged pencil in the dimness of the room, surrounded by some of the most caring people I have ever known. And I felt better by the time the candle blew out. I felt comforted by the selfless acts of my friends, but even more so by their understanding of how much I needed to write. They could see in me what I saw in myself. I needed to write to be okay, here, breathing.

"But you don't want to fall back into "oh I should be writing" only to stop again," she said. I think of her words all this time later, and while I understood what she meant, even then some part of me didn't agree. It's most likely while I still remember that line after all this time, having forgotten the rest of the conversation. This blog has served a purpose in my life, but it isn't finished. It continues to sit and wait, often very patiently, for me to return. Like all writing, which is as much a part of me as anything, it is here when I need it. It is sitting in my blind spot, waiting for me to see.

Wednesday

Praise Song For The Day
By Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Green Is Ten Times Worse.

Whether they were coming or going I couldn't tell. I was too far back to overhear their conversation. They plopped their heavy oversized backpacks on the floor and stood at the front looking tired but excited, the well worn expressions of traveling strewn across their faces. It is a look I know well, a look I could be comfortable wearing for the entirety of my life.

I found myself staring. Her wild unkempt red hair fell so naturally around her freckled face. For a moment I thought that I knew her and searched the catalog of my memory trying to place her within some context, but she wasn't there. Instead there were a series of girls who looked like her, radiating that same sense of unbridled passion for life, girls who lived their lives outside of the conventional rules, girls who wrote poetry and traveled the world and wore their hearts on their sleeves. In a way I did know this stranger who had stepped onto the train. She was the ideal of who I have always longed to be. Or at least, she looked like her.

I was five when I first saw Anne of Green Gables and consequently fell in love with the poetry of life. I couldn't imagine wanting to be anyone but Anne, so fiery and creative and unwittingly beautiful. I adored the way she spoke and fought and spent all day dreaming of things she read in books. I adored her sadness and likewise her hope. I adored her imagination. I adored her ability to be so deeply moved by the world around her. Even at the age of five I felt we were kindred spirits, to borrow her own expression. I too wanted to grow up to be brave and smart and delighted by small beauties. I too longed to be impetuously adventurous. I even spell my middle name Anne with an "e."

That summer my parents took us to Prince Edward Island and we visited the infamous Green Gables. They bought me a little straw hat with two red braids attached and I wore it around for weeks, pretending to be Anne. For a little while, I felt as beautiful and lovable as the girl I admired most. Sometimes I would quote her, not ever really understanding what any of it meant, just knowing that it sounded pretty. These are the things I look back on now and understand more than ever that it is in me to love language.

It was a few years later before I discovered Pippi Longstocking, and while I never admired her with quite the same grandeur as I did Anne, she quickly became another hero of mine. She was fun and inspiring. She brought joy to those around her. She was red-haired and freckled, quirky and assertive. She could do anything, and did do anything, and I loved her for that. I loved that she was strong, both physically and emotionally, and I loved that she created magic everywhere she went. Even after all of these years, I still believe in the possibility of such magic.

All of my childhood heros were unconventional characters, people who dared to be different, people who weren't afraid to be themselves, people who stood out among the ordinary. Not much has changed. These are the same traits I look for in the people I choose to surround myself with now. The people I love most in this world are the ones who inspire me to feel impassioned about life. They are the creators of dreams. They are the believers of magic. I look for such passion everywhere.

And so I grew up associating red hair and freckles with the fervor of the human spirit. I longed to look that way because I longed to be that way, so ablaze, so alive. And when I saw that girl step through the doors of the train, her red hair glowing in the soft afternoon light, I found myself green with envy, full of the familiar jealousy I feel whenever I come across such an archetype of my fictional heroines. It is not just their beauty. It is their ability to transmit their zest for life without having to speak a single sentence. It is that they represent poetry and hope and individuality and joy. It is that they innately express that which has taken me tens of thousands of words to even begin to explain.

How It Came To Be

It seems as though I am always leaving the door open. I ask you over and over again to come in. In winter I have saved you a seat by the fire and made you a cup of tea. In summer I have turned the AC on and saved you a rainbow popsicle. In rain I have offered to share my shelter with you. In sunshine I have offered you a place in my garden among the roses.

But instead you stand on the front porch of my heart and over and over again decline. You are forever just outside the door as if to reassure yourself that if someone were to ask, you could tell them that you were there for me. But it is not enough to just be there, hovering outside the boundaries of comfort and love. It is not enough to stand beside me without knowing what's happening inside, my head, my heart, my soul. It is not enough to simply be invited in. You have to step through the threshold for it to count.

Instead you stand outside my door and tell me how good the winter air is for your heart, how good the hot summer sun is for your head, how soothing the torrential rainfall is for the soul. You tell me I am the foolish one for not knowing that. You tell me I am not smart enough to understand. You tell me I am not worthy of your company inside.

Perhaps you are right. After all I am the foolish, stupid girl who keeps asking you in. I am the one who keeps making an extra cup of tea and saving an extra popsicle. I am the one sitting beside an empty chair. I am the one who keeps expecting things to change even though they never have, even though you have made it clear they never will. I am the one silly enough - or hopeful enough - to think I could someday be worthy.

Meanwhile your popsicle is melting. Your tea is getting cold. My hope for us is fading. You stand outside my window and scream that brilliance is a burden I am lucky not to have to bear. You think that you are explaining why it is difficult for you to come in, but all that I hear is that I am not invited out. Out into this world where you live, among the brilliant and articulate and successful and accomplished. And so I hide further and further away, inquiring over and over again if you could just come in and sit with me a while, tell me about your life, listen to me about mine.

From the other room I hear your voice on the answering machine without even having to get up. "You don't know a thing about poetry. You're writing would be better if you simplified it. Get to the point" you say. So I stand up. I walk to the door. I listen as it clicks behind me. I lock you out.

And for the first time in my life you are impressed by my succinct actions. For the first time you see I can be as cold hearted and hot headed and poetically direct as you. But of course by this point, the door has already closed and you realize that it is already too late to tell me of your brilliant discovery.

On The Last Day Of School

Summer In A Small Town
    By Tony Hoagland

Yes, the young mothers are beautiful,
with all the self-acceptance of exhaustion,
still dazed from their great outpouring,
pushing their strollers along the public river walk.

And the day is also beautiful - the replica 19th-century paddle-wheeler
perpetually moored at the city wharf
with its glassed-in bar and grill
for the lunch-and-cocktail-seekers
who come for the Mark Twain Happy Hour
which lasts as long as the Mississippi.

This is the kind of town where the rush hour traffic halts
to let three wild turkeys cross the road,
and when the high school music teacher retires
after thirty years

the movie marquee says, "Thanks Mr. Biddleman!"
and the whole town comes to hear
the tuba solos of old students.

Summer, when the living is easy
and we store up pleasure in our bodies
like fat, like Eskimos,
for the coming season of privation.

All August the Ferris wheel will turn
in the little amusement park,
and screaming teenage girls will jump into the river
with their clothes on,
right next to the No Swimming sign.

Trying to cool the heat inside the small towns

of their bodies,

for which they have no words;

obedient to the voice inside which tells them,

"Now. Steal Pleasure."

In The He Said, She Said, Sometimes There's Some Poetry

I forgot my Ipod yesterday. Lately I've been using my lunch break to go for walks around the neighborhood. It's been nice to get out during the day, to relieve some of the day's stress, to reflect on the hour, the day, the life I'm living in general. I've made different musical mixes each day in an effort to soak in new music, walking in rhythm to the beat of the songs. It's nice to have a soundtrack sometimes.

Sometimes not, as I discovered yesterday, walking in the middle of unfrequented streets. It was so blissfully quiet that I couldn't help but hear each step on the pavement, that I couldn't help but listen to my thoughts. What I realized, more than anything, is that I am always writing. And while most of what I promised myself I'd remember later I quickly forgot, the knowledge that I spent that divine hour writing in my head the most beautiful words I have ever written is enough to be grateful for.

I realized how much more I noticed without the distraction of music, how the trees bowed toward me as I walked by, the smell of the air thick with the soft finality of a storm, the depth of color in the purple flowers (I don't know what they were), so elegant and lush that it became impossible not to feel flawed in comparison. These were all things I had missed the day before, walking down the exact same street at the exact same time of day, concentrating on some poetic artist's lyrics instead of the poetic natural life wafting all around me. It was a welcomed change.

I remember coming home and being asked about the culture shock. "Having a car makes you feel isolated?" My mother questioned. I understood her confusion at such a statement. In truth I know that the ability to drive realistically broadens my life. I can hop in my car and go wherever I chose. I can drive great distances I would never otherwise reach. On any given day I drive from the neighborhood of my house to the neighborhood of my work to the neighborhood of my school and back again. I am all over the city and it is the freedom of having a vehicle to get me there as I choose.

But in the day to day, my favorite places in the world have been the ones where I didn't need a car. They have been places with easy and accessible public transportation or places so small when everything one could ever need was in walking distance. And if you have ever spent time in a place so confined and self sufficient, you understand the importance of having lived that sort of life. Somehow it emphasizes what is important, what is essential, and whatever does not fall into that category becomes not only unessential, but superfluous and silly. If I can walk to food and a place to buy writing supplies and return to shelter, perfectly fulfilled and content, then why do I ever really need anything else?

It is something else too, something that I meant more at the time. It is the lack of communication between people. People don't generally smile and say hello when they pass one another in cars. Some people don't when they're walking either, but I do. And I do even more so in other countries where people have spent their lives walking by each other and saying hello. It's such a simple joyous act and I spend a lot of the time wondering why it is not more often done. I wonder where that fear of reaching out comes from. I revel in the happiness that comes from connecting with a stranger, if even for a moment, the way the woman who sits outside my local grocery store always comments on the weather. "Yes, it IS surprisingly cold" I say and we both feel better that someone has taken the time to hear us.

I think it is in all of us to want to be heard, and that's really no great secret. So why are we not screaming from the hilltops? Why are we not writing our stories, filling the streets with our art, impregnating the air with our music? Why are we not listening? To each other, to ourselves. Why is every house not a different shade of color and every person not a walking expression of themselves? Why is it so easy to become so much like everybody else, to be quieted with fear and self doubt, to fade away into a life already set?

I am not any better. I conform just like everyone and I'm not going to pretend to be above it, but listening to the weight of each footstep on the pavement made me feel somehow unique and important and big and small in the grandest meanings of the words. Walking makes me feel part of the world because I am who I am, without the ever present thoughts of material things and judgement and the heavy supposed-tos of obligation. It is enough just to exist in a world forever living. It is enough just to notice the poetry of your thoughts.

Some Gladness

He lowers his umbrella so that it's upside down. Behind him she tilts her umbrella forward. He giggles as the rain falls from her umbrella onto his unsuspecting head. The sun is still casting her light behind the clouds as though she refuses to give up the fight. A crack of thunder. Lightening. The world is brighter than it's been all day. I sit on the front porch, safe and dry, watching the every changing flowers revel in the light and rain that feeds them. And then everything is quiet and still for a moment except for the trickling of rain. It is perfect. It is spring.

Friday night we sat here and talked about everything. We hadn't planned to spend the night together, but it happened anyway. Sometimes those unplanned conversations are better than any of great importance. We talked about work, about family, about mutual friends, about the purpose of life, about where we've come from and where we need to go, about where we are now, about the gratitude that comes from that realization. Four hours later we both wondered where the time had gone.

It's been over a year since we bought this house together and still I am amazed by the rightness of that bold move. It is easy to worry about a choice like that. Will money be a problem? Will we continue to get along? Will my consistent wanderlust lead to regret? But thirteen months later, I find myself more certain than ever that this is home. I love every inch of it. I love my roommate who has become my sister, who I have yet to ever fight or bicker with. I love sitting on this porch watching the neighbors speak to one another from their porches, listening to the greedy earth soak up the soft rain. I sigh in contentment for the life I am living.

Earlier today I went into a toy store to buy some bracelets one of my students brought in today and I simply had to have. It was a quaint store, the kind where every item on the shelf has been carefully and lovingly selected. Immediately I was surrounded by pieces from my own childhood that I had neglected to remember. Silly little crafts I had begged my parents for, old puzzles, decorated pencils and pens that made me wish I was a better artist. I took my items to the register and the woman laughed. "Yes, sadly, these are for me" I said. She smiled. "Oh, you don't have to explain it to me, I own a toy store!" She exclaimed. Could anything in life be happier?

Perhaps only that the sun has won her fight in the few minutes it's taken me to write this. The rain has already gone. The neighbors have emerged back out into the street. The birds sing in triumph and the raindrops tap lightly from my roof in rhythm with a child's basketball being dribbled a few doors down. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. The beating of the universe pulses on.

Ecrivez Votre Vie. Vivez Votre Ecriture.

I chose French because I consider it to be one of the more elegant languages. Perhaps because I learned what little I know of it from such an elegant teacher. I think it looks pretty, poised upon the page, hanging in the air after it has slipped from soft worldly lips. There is something so remarkable about languages, about the availability of something that feels so secretive, that infinitely extends an understanding of the universe. If I were a better student, I would take the time to learn more. If I had known sooner what I know now, I would have done a better job of paying attention. I suppose it's never too late.

But I also chose French because it is cryptic to those who don't know it. I wanted to have those words that mean so much to me without having to explain it over and over again. The words themselves, in any language, are cryptic to those who don't live it. So when I decided two years ago to get "Write your life. Live your writing." tattooed on my foot, it was about something more than the alluring factor of coolness attributed to permanently decorating oneself in ink. I needed in some way to remind myself that I am a writer. I needed in some way to remind myself that my purpose in life is simple. I needed in some way to be able to see that one clear thought when the rest of the world seemed foggy. "Oh right," I can think "it is just that easy to find my way back."

And when people ask me what it means, the reaction is almost always the same. I hear a lot of "oh, cool" or "well, that's different," the way people may respond when you get a bad haircut or have made some other seemingly inappropriate decision. Their response is code for "it's okay, you can always cover it up." The thing that strikes me about myself in those moments is how little this response bothers me. In fact, I may prefer it to having to dive into some pseudo-intellectual conversation about writing with people who haven't written a word outside of their obligated assignments. Which is fine, if they haven't, but they're not going to understand the words unless they have. They're not going to understand what writing means to someone like me.

What those words mean to someone like me, is everything. My ever supportive friend J. once tried to decode them. "So, you write what you want to do and then you write what you end up doing?" She asked. Well, sort of. Even now, after all this time, I have difficulty explaining it, which only means I have a long way to go before I'll ever be anything close to a good writer. The closest I can come to articulating the meaning is to express that writing and living are one in the same for me. I never feel more alive than when I write. I am never more myself than when I write. And that is not a fact, but simply a feeling that has dwelled inside of me since the day I picked up my first book of poetry and understood what it meant to love words.

I do write what has happened to me, what is happening even as I write, but I also write about what could happen if things were different or if things continued to stay the same. I write about who I was, and who I am, and who I could be. I write about my own life but also about the concept of life, the eternal life that came before and will continue on long after I am gone. I write about my own experiences but also experiences I have yet to have, or will never have, and how those too, play a role in each life.

I have had more than one friend watch me write in my journal and ask me about what I am writing, curious and anxious perhaps that there are some dark and secret thoughts lingering on the pages. And I do write about the people in my life, the good and the bad, the awe I have for them and sometimes the venting about them that needs to be expressed. But mostly I think they would find my journals to be quite dull. Generally they are about the way the sound of a chirping bird delights me, or the way the soft warmth of the sun has effected my sentence structure. They are what you are reading here. My writing is not a collection of my daily happenings, but of my daily thoughts. Sometimes they are one in the same. Sometimes not. The point is to keep a record of who I am in any given moment, and so I put myself on the page.

And that's what it means to write your life and to live your writing, for me anyway. It means that while it often feels frustrating to be passionate and deep and wise in my writing and not in my "real life," I am still essentially all of those things. They are not separate lives. They are one. They are all pieces of me. Even those moments of inarticulate ramblings that make me cringe in retrospect only act as fuel to be written about later, to be that much closer to understanding who I am. Writing is cathartic, but it is also ineffably magical and beautiful and essential, like life itself. And if you have ever sat with nothing more than a journal and a pen while the world blazes and hums around you, you know what I mean. You too, understand that sweet secret.

After A Long Day At Work

"No!" I screamed from across the playground. He froze in shock. Immediately I regretted the harshness in my tone. I called him over and he approached me slowly, clinging to the branch in his hands. "The reason I tell you not to pull the branches is not to be mean, but because that tree is alive, just like you and me, and it's not okay to hurt it. It would be like someone coming over and taking off your finger and that wouldn't be fun now would it?" I smiled and he laughed, offering up the leaf covered sprig as though it were an olive branch. "But I got it for you," he said, understanding the irresistibility of such innocent sweetness. I hugged him and he went about his way chasing a butterfly.

And I understood then, perhaps more clearly than ever, why I love to teach preschool. It is not just that the children are cute and sweet and funny and insatiably curious, although they are of course all of those things, but it is because they remind me of that part of myself that might otherwise go unnoticed. They remind me that it is our purpose to be insatiably curious. They remind me to be in awe of nature and airplanes and stories and music. They remind me to look and listen and see the world around me as though that is all there is. They remind me that I still believe in magic. I really do feel that way about trees.

Each day I am reminded of why I love what I do. Most of all, it's that I love it. It's that I know deep in my heart that if money was unnecessary, I would still continue to do it. And really, how many people can say that about their jobs? The thing is, it's not just my job, although I refer to it as "work," which it ultimately is. But it is equally a large part of my definition and an even larger part of my happiness. It is the work of my life, like learning, like exploring, like loving. It is what I would dream of doing if I had chosen to fulfill a different dream. Surely there is nothing more rewarding than having a child repeat something that you've taught them. I did that. Just as my teachers and parents are the reason I am who I am now. And the cycle continues. And it's lovely.

Which is not to say there are not bad days. It can be the most frustrating thing in the world to calm 20 screaming four year olds, to get them to sit and listen and do what you've asked of them. Some days I lose my patience. Some days they lose theirs. But we get through it together. We work as a team. I understand that they are also my friends and therefore deserve every ounce of my compassion and empathy and devotion and love.

I used to consider this one of my weaknesses as a teacher, blurring those lines between friendship and authority. I laugh at things I shouldn't. I let things slide that should perhaps be addressed. I too, would rather play sometimes than work. But the more I teach, the more comfortable I become with the balance I've struck. I watch the more professional teachers and wonder where the love is, where the joy can possibly come from without the laughter, without the silliness. I wonder why anyone would want to do such difficult, often unappreciated, work unless they were having fun.

And I felt this way today, a day filled with highs and lows, a day that reminded me that in the end, I am where I want to be. I am grateful to spend my days feeling needed and happy and loved. I am grateful to be having so much fun. And so I joined in on the chase for the butterfly and together we waved goodbye and wished him well as he fluttered off into some unknown of which we can only imagine.