Persona Poem

This month I've been taking part in a 10/10, where I'm supposed to write 10 poems in 10 days. Prompts have been posted on my school's poetry slam page. I've been cheating and doing the prompts out of order and not on the days they've been posted, but whatever. Here's a prompt that I was particularly nervous about, but had a lot of fun with:

PROMPT #8: This prompt requires a little research! I think that New Year's time can be very wistful and full of bittersweetness. Or else it's just an arbitrary marker of time. You know, either or. There are OODLES Facebook statuses with summaries about the 2013 year. PICK ONE. It can be a stranger, it can be yourself, it can be mine, whatever. Pick someone's (probably too long and indulgent) 2013 New Year's status and write a persona poem from one of the events. Try to make it funny and wild and exciting! (Don't worry about whether or not you're actually funny, just try to be). Test out funny voices to read it in. Make up words like Dr. Seuss. Add dramatic pauses. Fling rainbow dust across the span of the universe. Make this event seem like the coolest, most entertaining event that ever happened.

For some reason, I'm friends with like 5 million people who got engaged this year, so my newsfeed had all sorts of "2013 WAS THE YEAR I GOT ENGAGED" statuses. That served as the starting point for this persona poem, which is completely fictitious and not actually about anyone I know or anything I've experienced.

We met each other in our freshman year music theory class.

I was a beautiful angel of dominant seven chords,

He was a pretentious douchebag.

The first time we talked was at a party.

You know, one of the ones your first week of college,

Where nobody has ever had alcohol before,

So everyone is puking in everyone else’s faces?

Mmm yeah. Romance.

Love smells like partially digested pizza from Little Caesar’s.

Everyone is a little different when drunk,

But at the time I thought that everyone was the same kind of drunk: freaking annoying.

I went to the party to pick up my roommate who was passed out on a thrift store love seat.

As I woke her up and let her lean on my shoulder, ready for the long trek back to our dorm room, she vomited all over my sweatshirt. The sweatshirt I didn’t even like. The sweatshirt I wore specifically because I knew she would vomit on it.

What a sweet girl.

Like I said, nothing smells like love like vomit does, which I guess is why he came over to help me take her back to our room.

Everyone is a little different when drunk.

He was the type that rambled about Wagner, Foucault, and Freud.

All the way back to my dorm room where we dropped my roommate off.

All the way to the lounge where I had been doing my homework.

All the way to 2:00 when he finally fell asleep and I could finish my music theory homework in peace.

He was the most pathetic 18 year old drunk philosopher I had ever met, and that made me love him.

I realized that I had been spending too much time searching for a love that smelled like roses and chocolate.

A love too sweet to be of any substance.

And here I had love in the form of an inebriated 18 year old misquoting Europeans into a puddle of his own bile.

This love was gross. It smelled bad. It was too human.

But it stuck.

The first time we kissed was after figuring out how to spell Neapolitan 6^th chords.

He had mellowed to the point that he stopped trying to show off his smarts around me.

He wasn’t as pretentious as he once was. But he was 5 million times more awkward.

When we kissed our teeth knocked.

Our love smelled like the gross fake Chinese food we had just eaten in the cafeteria.

When he asked me to marry him it was cold, grey, pouring rain, and muddy.

The forecast had been for 75 degree sunny weather, my favorite.

He had intended to have a bunch of people come and sing some stupid pop song from the radio,

But everyone was sick with the swine flu or something.

It was just me and him and the rain and the homeless guy passed out on the park bench.

“You’d better have a good reason for making me come outside in this, idiot,” I shivered.

As he got down on one knee he slipped in the mud and the ring he had been saving up for for months flew out of his hands into a puddle.

Embarrassed, my vomit- smelling, teeth-knocking, Foucault-quoting idiot sat in the mud, covered head to toe, sitting cross-legged. He smiled nervously.

I went and picked the ring out of the polluted water and sat down next to him.

“Yes.” 

World Mental Health Day

So, I wrote this over the summer and have been meaning to post this for a while:

For the past year or so I have taken a very typical life view: high school sucked, I was a nerd, everyone hated me, college is the best, the end.

But this summer something happened: the Internet.

I work my way through TV shows 1 or 2 at a time. Right now it's "Boy Meets World," but earlier in the summer it was "30 Rock." I've watched every single episode that was available on Netflix, duh.

And like many people, I found myself drawn to Liz Lemon. I'm not going to say that we're the same person because that definitely isn't true, but we definitely have our similarities. This was light and funny and pretty impersonal...

Until I got to the episode where Liz goes to her high school reunion, expecting to meet the popular kids with mature forgiveness for how they treated her, only to find out that she, in fact, was the school bully and somehow didn't realize it. Now, I don' think I ever made fun of someone's mom's pill addiction (watch the episode), but this came like a splash of ice cold water- was that me?

It was and it wasn't. I don't believe I was ever that mean (and if I was, I'm sorry), but I certainly was emotionally unavailable. I was a stoic who shut herself off more and more from everyone around her as the years went on. I probably had more friends than I thought I did, but I convinced myself that very few people liked me and eventually I just stopped trying. When we voted for "Senior Bests" at the end of the year, I was voted biggest brain, but was also voted second biggest ego in my senior class. It only hurt as much as it did because I knew that it was true but didn't realize that everyone else knew as well. But the thing was, and I'm pretty convinced this is true for most people with over-sized egos, I was internally very nervous and had really low self-confidence. I confused self loathing with humility and have the diary entries to prove it.

And for a long time, I chocked it up to being British, so of course I'm a stoic. I didn't grow up in Wisconsin, so of course I would never fully fit in at school. The inadequacy I felt never really needed an explanation.

But then the Internet threw more cold water in my face- this post on depression from "Hyperbole and a Half." Just as I sat staring at Tina Fey, wondering if I had been the high school bully, I sat there wondering if I had actually been struggling with depression without realizing it.

I had always thought that depression meant that you were sad all the time, and since I barely ever cried, that couldn't be it. But after reading that, I realized that depression manifests itself in lots of different ways for lots of different people. Yes, I had a great relationship with my family. Yes, I was well-fed and had a home to live in. Yes, I was a straight-A student and very involved in music and theatre. But somehow I had forgotten how to show excitement about things. My friends all assumed I didn't like hugs, but really I had just forgotten how to respond to them.

Until a couple of years ago I couldn't look at myself in the mirror without tearing myself apart and this I'm sure forced its way into how I treated others. I had forgotten how to start conversations and relate to those around me. So as a result, I could only talk about myself and only if people asked me. No wonder I felt like people were drifting away.

But, somehow, probably mostly due to new environments where I feel more comfortable, I'm a lot better now. My diary entries are now much more philosophical than self-deprecating. When I'm excited about something I show it and I'm just fine with giving and receiving hugs.

I also realized, however, that I'm not cured. After years of drawing into myself I internalize everything and am not always sure how to express what I'm feeling. So, if you feel like I don't like you, I probably do but I'm too scared and out of practice to initiate the conversation. It's sad because there are so many people I wish I knew better, but I'm still kind of at the tricycle phase of social interaction wile I sometimes feel like everyone else is whizzing past me on motorcycles.

So, this summer I challenged myself to start more conversations. Somehow I've gotten myself into the habit of not speaking unless spoken to and I've only just realized that it's in my power to change this. I only ask for your patience and to help hold me accountable.

I decided to share all of this (man, it's long- 500 points for making it to the end!) not to whine or to get attention, but as a means of trying to express what I'm feeling instead of internalizing it like I usually do. Also, I believe that the only way we can move forward is if people start sharing their stories about mental illness. Maybe if I had heard more stories when I was younger I would have realized what was going on sooner and I could have saved myself from a lot of emptiness.

I love, love, love you all. Thank you for reading this. It's much easier for me to express things in writing than face-to-face... but I guess the whole point of this is maybe we need to start having more face-to-face conversations about this as well.

You are the sun, you are the moon

This semester, I'm taking a class about North Indian classical music. We've been learning all about different Indian music traditions, which are all really interesting, profound, and tied up in spirituality. Half of the class is singing, and today we learned a song with this poem that really struck me:

Sthayi
Tu hi surya tu hi chandra
Tu hi pavan tu hi agan
Tu hi aap tu akaas
Tu he dharani Yajamaan

Sthayi
You are the sun, you are the moon
You are the wind, you are the fire
You are yourself, you are the sky
You are the earth and the conductor of activities

Our teacher, Pooja, prefaced this song by telling us that it's over 200 years old and is about the Almighty. It's always so cool how music can unite us in our search for the Almighty/Transcendence/the Sublime/the Divine/God/the Universe/whatever else  you want to call it. That which is beyond our understanding yet for some reason so much a part of us.
So, what struck me so much about this poem? The word for you. Pooja told us that "tu" is the word they use in Hindi for friends/other people you are informal with. They use "ap" for parents and grandparents and so forth. What is so incredibly interesting is that this poem uses "tu" to address the Almighty... because it's a part of yourself and you are familiar with it. Honorifics are always something that I think about because they are so much a part of Korean, which has complete different levels and ways of speaking to people depending on how much respect you owe them. What is so interesting for me is that the Korean Bible is notoriously hard to understand, especially for non-native speakers, because of the super high honorifics it uses to address God... yet this poem addresses God in the informal way.

What do you think?

New directions

I haven't posted in over a month-- this often happens whenever I try starting a blog... Life gets in the way or I run out of things to talk about or it just isn't worth it.

I've come to the realization that I keep talking about silly stuff that in the grand scheme of things doesn't really matter and doesn't really speak to me... So I think that it's time to expand the purpose of this blog.

I'll admit- initially I started this because I heard it was a really good way to draw traffic to your etsy shop. Well, I'm still going to share and talk about projects of mine, and if I find an etsy shop that is really spectacular I'll share it, but I want to do more.

This blog is now going to become a receptacle for my thoughts, ideas, and dreams. I'll throw journal entries on here and poetry and art and questions... I've found that my mind is very theologically and philosophically oriented, so probably a lot of posts will end up being about that, but don't worry! I will do my best to make my thoughts and questions relevant to those of you that don't share my beliefs, because I think we can all learn from each other's questions.

"Learning to Fly" taken by me Spring 2011 of my friend Chris 

Trogdoooooor! (A little baby dragon quilt)!

Greetings from Missouri, where I am right now for family Christmas shindigs!
The super exciting thing I want to talk about has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, however. My sister Miriam's having a baby! In February! Her baby shower was yesterday, so to get ready for it I got to crafting as soon as I got home from school last week (I survived finals- can you even believe it?!)

When my sister Sophie had her baby Felix my mom and I made a quilt for him and that was my first semi-major batik project. It was all adorable and sailory, so I batiked an anchor center piece. This time around I made the quilt by myself and dyed all of the fabric on the front, and I'm really pleased with it! Miriam and Danny decided to go with a dragon theme for their nursery, which I think is awesome.

The batik pieces are all left overs from other projects in my etsy shop and the kind of mottle-y pieces were dyed using the method described in this tutorial. It's really nice because it's a fun way to dye fabric without having to go outside, which I certainly appreciate given all the snow. The back is some fun cotton I found at Hancock Fabrics and the center piece is a dragon my dad helped me design (hence the Celtic knot work stuff).

Now that I'm home for all of January, I have all sorts of crafty ideas to keep myself busy, so stay tuned!

Oh, and here's TROOOOOGDOOOOOOOOOOOOR, in case the title got you all excited. 

What I actually want to do for my whole life

I ended up being the poster person for the student theatre group I'm in at Mac... these are the posters I made for our two festivals. Needless to say, I'm super proud of my artistic skills. I'll be expecting the emails to do graphic design work any day now.

(The last one is my favorite).

365 Days of Gratitude- The Conclusion

So, last year on Thanksgiving I started doing this thing called "365 Days of Gratitude" on my tumblr.
...I never finished. I even stopped regularly using tumblr.
But that's only because my life has been so full that I haven't had time, and I'm thankful for that.
This year I've fallen in love with people, ideas, music, and myself.
I've been sad and angry.
I've been happier than ever.
I've been homesick.
I've made new homes.
I've grown so much,
and realized just how much growing I still have to do.
I've figured some things out,
and realized that I'm never going to completely know what the heck is going on in this world.
My cup has overflown, and for that I am truly thankful.

And I'm home this weekend, so I've been eating yummy food, reading my nephew bedtime stories, and snuggling lots with my cat.
Life is wonderful.