Maybe it's another poem... early stages... needs work and reformatting (thanks to blogger). But writing is helping me get by... Any title suggestions? I think this one is a little cheesy sounding...

I am a tree by this tempestuous sea

branches weep over—water
leeches on leaves, sea under
toes. Reflections grow cold, while
my neck sorely poses
away: sucking in doesn’t make any harder—any
simpler to look at the face that
carved up this wan breast.

She’s eaten the figs that
fell from my fingers; but
spoon-spots of moon on the water—
don’t count. Will
never fathom—with lungs buried in chest: boats
heave and capsize. I should
lend them my branches—
lest they all spill out.

When I thought I was sturdy, could carry the weight,
it snapped—
at the elbow. Fell, me
fallen through. Now, I'm swallowing

down shivers and waves. Splinters from bones
and rafts and high water. With disease
in these veins, I couldn’t hold on:
they were just figs of meaning,
shelling off my own bark.

So have
—all known loneliness,
been shaken at root, then
stilled by notions—longings
to meet at the banks, mend untidy scars.

Who will know me with no fruit?



It's a very self-centered poem, which I think is important to note... The speaker's failure and focus on victimization doesn't really help produce anything worthwhile in the end... Guess it's not healthy to be in states like this... Who knew...

climbing out

How I used to love coming here to type. Coming to this screen, I mean. Because I felt like I was really talking to people, like there were others listening. Other times, I come with thoughts, but sitting to type them makes the thoughts fall apart and seem so empty of emotion, so detached. Then I can't even picture an audience, or a person who, in reading, understands the core of my meaning. And, well, that's what prayer is like too sometimes, isn't it? I mean, believing God is always right there and hears, listens, responds in his own way to every thought we have. Sometimes it feels like words or thoughts are hitting nothing but the walls of our skulls. I spent a number of minutes on my calling card this weekend trying to reach people, leaving messages, wanting to talk to someone... When every phone call comes up with the dead tone answering service, every word I read in the Bible seems so good--yet so far away--it's hard to feel connected. It's hard to feel ready for tomorrow today.

I don't know what kind of shape I'm in.

Jesus told us not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. I'm not even that worried about the big general "tomorrow" (metonymically, the "future") , I'm worried about what kind of attitude I'll have in the real tomorrow when I go back to work. Whether I'll come up with any good ideas for teaching, whether the students will be willing to learn... whether I'll be able to shove any of my fear and my dissatisfaction aside, whether or not I'll be able to see joy in the work--and help the students to see joy in it as well. I am, perhaps, hyping the situation in my mind. I'm worried about today--because most of my recent past days have included many prayers for me to get rid of my pessimistic attitude, to rejoice in the Lord and his good work... and I don't feel as if I've made much progress. It's as if I'm in a hole in the ground and I've been grabbing on all sides to try to climb my way out, but every clump of dirt I grab just crumbles and now the whole wall is smoothed. But I guess that's it. That's the truth--the only way out is to get help.

I don't know if I'm ready to be sold as Pottiphar's slave, but whatever it is, wherever he leads me--I will cast my cares and my burdens on Jesus, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. I will follow him.

Gulp, gulp. Right.


Late into the night, I was thinking about faith. I've been trying to think coherently about faith a lot recently.

What isn't always confident, not always sure. Sometimes hanging onto the thread of something--even when nothing seems to change, nothing seems to point to anything more, or I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall... Faith, as also love, is not a feeling, but a choice. My choices may waver--depending on how I feel or think--though God's choice to love and to provide a way for me to be fulfilled and complete, never changes. His love endures forever.

Great. Now I've discovered that everything on my USB drive has been deleted too. What's next?

Maybe I had viruses that needed expulsion. Bah humbug.


It's a blessing I can only specifically remember a few of the things I've lost...

tips from benjamin

And again, everything's in Thai on the blogger screen. I'm thankful for the little script at the bottom that shows the command for those buttons the mouse scurries over.

In addition to the internet, some fishy things have been happening with my computer recently. Just today, while I was charging my battery and trying to do too much at once on my computer, the power died and my computer overheated. Wouldn't turn on for a little while. Yesterday, I lost everything that I'd saved onto my non-administrator account. That is, Jack's account came up brand new--like my computer was trying to surprise me or something, but it doesn't know enough of the world to realize that it wouldn't be a nice surprise to find the majority of my photos, my documents, and quite a bit of my music (that I left on backup cds somewhere in the States) zapped from my hard-drive. How this happened in the first place is quite a mystery to me.

I was downloading an updated virus-protection, kerberos and mulberry software onto my computer via the administrator's account, and when I went back to the other--the one I usually use--it was gone. My admin. acct. is quite itself--with a slightly cleaner look, due to the new software and some spring/summer cleaning I'd done.

Alas for the loss. It's just stuff, though. Right? I mean, it's a good thing that I watched Fight Club recently. At least, I watched up to the part where "Jack" starts living with Tyler Durden, having first had a conversation about all of the things that got blown up in his apartment. "The things you own end up owning you," if I recall correctly. Now I don't have to think it was such a huge loss.

Keith Taylor once left a notebook full of poems on an airplane. Bye-bye, poetry. Hemingway's wife once left or lost or had stolen from her a whole suitcase of his writings on a train. At least, that's what I think I've heard. (Did you know there's a whole Wikipedia page devoted to records of famous writers' lost works? I've only just found it.). At least I'm not famous.

Besides, maybe there's still room to hope. Maybe I can still recover a lot of my work--who knows? Or maybe God will erase the memory of those things from my mind. Suppose I don't know if that would be better or worse. Black spots over part of my mind's life? Or a depressing memory of what I lost and no way of getting it back. Kind of like nostalgia, I suppose. I'd probably remember things as being much better than they ever were... Ha.

But in a list of of Thirteen Theses on "The Writer's Technique," (from Walter Benjamin's "One Way Street," translated by Edmund Jephcott), number 6 states:

"Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it."

That said, I wonder if some of my ideas from past writings could return to my memory--if not erased--and then come out more maturely in writing the second time around. It's worth wondering about, though not so worth forcing experimentation. I must let the thoughts arrive as they will--hopefully also heeding the advice of Thesis #5:

"Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens."

Benjamin, mind you, was a great Jewish, German Marxist philosopher, essayist, translator, literary critic, etc. who both lived and died during the Holocaust. One of his idols in life may as well have been writing and the record of thought as a means of obtaining and refining knowledge. From what little I've read of his, though, I sure am grateful for his work and perseverance--not to mention his tips. I think he believed that ideas are more than transient...

I'm also grateful to the internet, as being another place to save and back-up documents.

Peace.

humdrum

Mosquitos caught in my room--drab! I guess I don't feel that I've done a great job of updating people of my experiences in Thailand. Sorry to disappoint some of you.

Last weekend, I did a bit of research on my personality type and career profile placement surveys, yahta-yahta-yahta. I'd been advised by a book about law school that my brother has let me borrow to take one of those personality tests and see where my "type" seems to fit well in the career world. Too bad the website given in the book is no longer valid... I did, however, manage to find plenty of Myers-Briggs survey tests online and the home page for the creator of the career profile/personality placement test mentioned in the book. The guy now charges some fees to access his info, but there were some free bits that I found. Out of some of the "types" that were named (I only remember a few--including Artisan, Idealist, Architect...), I think I placed myself on the quiet idealist personality type. The description said something about not focusing much on the present realities of life, but often having other ideas and things dominating a person's mind and time. I'll have to find the description, if you're really interested...

It seems that I've written all of that just to say that maybe that's why I've not focused much on writing about the details of Thailand life. The gritty details might show up in random spots--poetry's great for this, for instance. Also, in my recent idea for a detail in a story... the detail of the cab drivers that I saw from my bus window while they were parked beside someone's little home and were practicing their putting. Seeing that just about made my day... and I've got to put it somewhere. Things like this, I've got to share them somewhere...

But I never thought of myself as an "idealist." I guess there can be several kinds. I don't tend to enjoy making decided judgments about people or things--don't like choosing one thing and having to stick to that one thing, for instance... and I think that may fit with the description I read of Idealists... Then again, we're not all alike. None of us are alike--no one really knows himself...

There's another similarly-lacking-of-details post for you all... Someday, maybe you should check out Nora's blog about Bangkok (norainbangkok). It's not just about Bangkok--it has much to say about her experiences in Thailand as a whole... but there's more there to offer if you're looking for more tangible-seeming news about the world here.

I've got funny students I guess I could write about.... but my long posts fill the blog too much for many of you readers, I think. Patience, my friends. Patience please. (Man, that reminds me of Eddie Murphy and "Dream Girls." Gotta love that movie and that music.)

Thanks to all who are still reading, still with me. Hope you are well.

hopefully not too many metaphors

IF YOU’RE STILL ASKING THE SHORE WHAT
NEXT YOU SHOULD DO

you’re pouring a bowl of frozen blue
berries for your dying body. just 21,
but we’re all a dying body—every one of us—
staring across a sea of cars, concrete, cinderblocks.
it’s not the dead sea, not the red sea either,
still we’re stepping through the middle
holding our heads stiff-neckéd.
please tell me you’re keeping
on. not stalled out

yet. if I could be the yellow taxi cab waiting

to pick you up,
to whirl you away—I don’t know how
easy you’d come. just crack
your window, listen. it’s a rippling
across your town, my town—homebound. so
quiet, but there. you can travel down, too—
today, don’t wade. just plough on through.

Please note the correction made in the poem about the Chesapeake. It was my father's baseball game, rather than softball. He played catcher. And a great athlete he is, I should add.

Get ready for a weird one... it's supposed to be center justified... so please pretend. Thanks!

GOLDEN CALF CRISIS

you’ve come down
now don’t you see
how we ran out of
gold listen such
weeping nights how
no body kept their
gold a part because
nobody could help
but we didn’t see
you coming with
candles all out you
were so far a way
weren’t you silent
just watching so we
did nothing wrong
you were keeping
yourself and your
gifts away weren’t
you weren’t you
weren’t you with the
great him up there?

dream about law

Goodmorning, goodnight--whichever you please.

It's 010:13 here, 22 or 23:13 there....

And when I speak with my sisters on the phone or in person, sometimes we talk about dreams. Sometimes Nora and I exchange our morning dreams too, when we can remember them. The question of law school must have been on my mind. I've finished reading about Scott Turow's "turbulent" first year at Harvard Law School (his book, One L, and its subheading on the cover reads, "The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School"), and I was on the search last night for a bookstore with English books and stopped at one with a smallish selection of Bestsellers. One such bestseller involved a rich lawyer and some kind of mystery tale. I didn't feel like I'd really relate to or be much engaged in the story, so I didn't buy it... but I'm still thinking... and trying to understand myself--my skills, my desires, what kinds of things are important to me and how I should be preparing for my next step in life. It's a lot easier for me to think about my future here than it was for me while I was still a student at Michigan. First of all, there's a lot less homework; secondly, I'm apart from certain familiar things that help create a sense of activity and business while there may not need to be so much.

I still have too many distractions that I let in, though. I'm on the computer too much--not really doing things worthwhile. Not having a bunch of e-mails sent out that will demonstrate how my time's been spent. But back to the dream thing.

I woke up this morning from dreaming about my first day at law school. I only had one class, so maybe it was actually just a practice first day, but the professor was one of my old literature professors from college. Michael Byers is his name, and he's got a great teaching style, a great sense of humor and personality that he brings to his teaching. It helps that the class he taught was the Contemporary American Novel and he's a contemporary American novelist.

As for a law professor, he seemed to adapt surprisingly well (as far as I could tell, never having had a law professor). I remember, however, that we had to turn in a very time-consuming report on the second day of class and when I got mine back, he'd made one jot of a pen on the front side for my mark. On the back, I was surprised at the length of his comments. They were detailed, thoughtful.

And often, that's important to me... Response. Discovery about myself #1. Now I've got to process that more.

I had some friend interactions in my dream, as well. An old high school friend, Heidi, had two children by this point. Zenia was there; Tricia T. was also there. And Tricia had thrown a bubble bath party for the kids' birthdays--this happened at a photography studio, where a photographer could take advantage of the kid + bubble magic. Tricia was the godmother or something; but I was feeling kind of sad because it felt like everyone had lives except for me. I couldn't do anything, go anywhere--except to sit at a picnic table among the autumn leaves--because I'd had to write a report or a brief--whatever it was. I didn't take notes in my dream.


Happy July. Happy late fourth. Jello jigglers are waiting for you.

LEAVING THE CHESAPEAKE

With crabmeat: pieced out, flung in rice, fried
together, spiced. My salty fingers—
once a child visiting the Chesapeake
Bay—shucked crabs from the cage
after the last of my father’s baseball
games. His whole team there, their families,
like quiet dreaming. I wanted to stay
my whole life, my future. All
grown up, able to keep up
a boat, a house on the bay,
cages and cages of crabs—everyday—
and how to remember how to find the blue lungs,
never to eat them. Gray blue like sea. And
I had a nightmare afterwards. Always afraid
I’d kill someone—myself?—
on poison crab lungs. Maybe it’s best
I don’t live at the Bay.

I went to the beach this weekend. A beautiful Thai island called Koh Samed (I think that's how it's spelled). Our dinner at the shore on Saturday night consisted of fried, spiced rice with crab and a separate dish of fish. (I seem to be all about the rhyming right now). It was delicious, and the whole experience was unreal, but this particular night made me think of something from my childhood. Don't remember exactly how old I was when this took place... but I got a poem out of it.