feist + sesame street = 4

day before a wedding

My coping mechanism (other than pure, unadultered cynicism): a playlist. I threw some songs together last night, and I'll fine tune the list later today, but here's what I'm thinking:

1. Fidelity, Regina Spektor
2. Where Does the Good Go, Tegan & Sara
3. Cath. . ., Death Cab for Cutie
4. Wuthering Heights, Pat Benatar
5. I'm a Broken Heart, The Bird & The Bee
6. Falling Slowly, Once (Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova)
7. Die Alone, Ingrid Michaelson
8. Out Loud, Dispatch
9. I Write Sins Not Tragedies, Panic at the Disco
10. Company Calls Epilogue, DCFC
11. These Photographs, Joshua Radin
12. Paperweight, Joshua Radin w/Schulyer Fisk
13. Chicago, Sufjan Stevens

Lucky 13. The list I put together last night is actually 76 songs. It includes a lot (a lot) of Death Cab and the Shins--not a big surprise--and a healthy representation of the rest of my iTunes library.

Suggestions? Questions? Comments?

Credits: K for intro'ing me to The Bird & The Bee, England and Lit for "Wuthering Heights," and TB for Radin's "These Photographs"

talk me out of myself

I can't sleep, can't turn off my head. Which isn't always a problem, but it is tonight because I have to be awake, showered, and out the door at 6 a.m. Hell hell hell.

So far I have tried taking a bath (which woke me up), reading magazines (bad idea), and listening to my iPod (really bad idea). Now there is so much in my head that I'm getting this off-kilter sense where everything has sped up around me except the voice in my head who is monologuing (and the voice isn't that great of a monologuer).

Thought one. The magazines were wedding magazines, of which I confess to owning a small stack. A stack which has increased in size since Sven announced he was engaged (except he didn't announce it--Mom told me to call him, and he told me in a very short conversation because he was at work). I've spent way too much time in these magazines, on wedding blogs, and just hearing about weddings lately. And the Wedding (Sven's, not mine) is on Thursday. This Thursday. Which just leads to another round of profanity.

Thought two. What is my brother doing, getting married? I kind of understood Lauren getting married--it was inevitable, and I like JessE (not a typo--Pixar boy's name is getting a Wall-E update). But Sven was supposed to come home from his mission and focus on school. Not focus on school and attaching himself to some chick. Which she's not just some chick. She's sharp and down-to-earth and cute and I like her. But why couldn't he stay single for a month? Two months? I mean, seriously. Seriously.

Thought three. Confession: During blog posts like this, I skip over to this post from someone I've never met. But it makes me happy and shuts down the pity party for one.

Thought four. You are invited to my pity party.

Thought five. There are a lot of things I'm ready to leave. More things I want to hold onto. But it's time. And realizing that it's time just makes me panic at the thought of not having an opportunity to leave.

Thought six. I cited Wordsworth in my statement. I don't particularly like Wordsworth.

Thought seven. I have to be awake in five hours.

In the immortal words of hmp, "Dammit."

I can't get over this

and I don't want to.

proof that even I can take a decent photo (when my subject is this cute)

I have a problem. Actually, I have many problems. But tonight, one giant one in particular that I have 24-ish hours to figure out, to some degree.

I'm a writer. Who has no idea what she's writing about.

Here's the thing: I'm sending one last application out into the void/abyss/hellhole. Only this one is for an MFA. I can't get by on my academic charm (of which I have many). It's the poetry first and foremost, and then how I talk about the poetry. Steve Tuttle warned me of this: I have to say what it is I write.

I don't know what I write.

I write about wings, because they began to represent Trent, and then (I think) they became something bigger than that one friend. They represent the people who leave, one way or another.

I write about backs (although I don't think any back poems made it into this writing sample) because I am acutely aware of my own back, my own pain, and because the shoulder blades suggest wings.

I write at and about and around art because I wish I were a painter--even if Dickinson and O'Hara argue against it. Because there can be an entire world in a canvas--something I think my poetry suggests is that a poem can't contain the world, can barely contain a piece of it.

Kim once said I write about relationships. And I was mildly annoyed with her. But she was right: every poem is creating the space between people. The space we can't cross. The space we try to cross. There is the speaker and there is the "you." And the "you" is god or a man or all men and all women.

Jordan asked who I wrote "First and Last Looks" for, because it must be a love poem. I didn't tell him that there wasn't anyone to love like that.

In "things incommon," I propose an artist's statement of sorts: "This poem//is autobiographical mostly it is honest it lets me love you on days//which never come you know love is [. . .]" I am writing what I know, what I don't know, and (most of all) what I want. I want art and life and wings of my own. I have lived in the same state, in the same place, for over two decades--just a few years in Texas to break up the years in Utah. I want a chance to experience something new, someone new. I don't want to sit in on neighborhood gossip and suddenly be approached by the mention of Michael, who was the original "you." Which means that there was, once, someone to love like that.

That's what my poetry is about: the Other and trying to connect with the Other, trying to establish relationships. It's about remembering those who don't always want to be remembered, or who the speaker doesn't want to remember. "Memory is a verb is is an action is an abstract withdrawn functioning of function of the chair holding folding dropping and fall, fall, fall. Forget to stand I forget to walk forget to experience the morning and everything falls with him with you and you all fly away golden godlike."

But this is too honest, in my mind, for a statement of purpose: Dear Sirs and Madams of the Admissions Board: I need to leave Utah. I need new ideas to write about. I need a chance to live outside of these relationships.

And yet. . . I don't think I will ever let go, even when "you" do.

total eclipse

I am totally, completely, head over heels for this blog. I keep coming back to make sure it really is this perfect.
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That being said,

I haven't been able to keep my head on straight today. It's full of poetries and Andrew Bird (I'm going to that concert) and self-doubts and people coming home and people not coming home.

As for home, apparently it is 5:00 and time to leave the office.

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I want to live in this song.

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dilemma

Thursday: Free Andrew Bird concert.

Thursday: Barbeque at my parents' home in honor of Stephen and Ashton's marriage.

a poem

They rise, halo’d
by the light and their own
wings. They rise

in joy and the sound
of more than one breath

breathing in.

We watch, lifting our
arms, our bodies, moving
to flight.

They all rise, holy
in the light and rising.

I have been buying book after book of poetry, for inspiration.

I forgot that inspiration comes from other spaces.

things I am not

It's not pink. It's not green. I don't even know if it's me, but after a week or so of dreading even visiting my blog, we're going to try this.

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My brain is so tense right now. I'm overwhelmed by all the things that I'm not: trendy, artsy, indie, thin, published, sleeping, in school. It's the last one that hurts the most right now. The only time I really feel 100% eg is when I'm with K--when I can put everything in my head out there, and be understood.

Understand.

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In other, and more important, news, it's finally out:

sugar coma

I couldn't do the pink.

This is a work in progress.

Comment accordingly.