Sunday lessons

"Prayer"


 Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
 utters itself. So, a woman will lift
 her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
 at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.


 Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
 enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
 then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
 in the distant Latin chanting of a train.


 Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
 console the lodger looking out across
 a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
 a child's name as though they named their loss.


 Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
 Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.


- Carol Ann Duffy



I can't stop this urgent feeling that there is a lot of good left in me to do.
I used to find this feeling scary. I'm glad that I have grown to find it exciting and hopeful.
Because there really is so much to do.

I ain't no wise man

"When I Was One-and-Twenty"


When I was one-and-twenty
    I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
    But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
    But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
    No use to talk to me.


When I was one-and-twenty
    I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
    Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
    And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
    And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.


-- A E Housman

This is me with the diploma that was sent to me in the mail a couple weeks ago. Inside is what we are told is a representation of what I have learned up to now. If I could take out my heart and show what I have really learned, it would be much more impressive. I am now going to go write a horrid pop song using that last sentence as the chorus lyrics. Peace. 

My heart is high

 "Morning"

I went out on an April morning
All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining meadow,
I was a sister of the sky.

There in the windy flood of morning
Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

-- Sara Teasdale

San Diego Temple
Taken by Erin, some time ago. 

I had a very good day at the temple doing baptisms.
My Heavenly Father loves me.
I love the gospel.
I am very thankful.
That's really all for tonight.

Good night moon

In the Quiet Night 


 The floor before my bed is bright:
 Moonlight - like hoarfrost - in my room.
 I lift my head and watch the moon.
 I drop my head and think of home.


- Li Po

Home '05

It's really late.
Mom is being crazy.
Laundry needs to happen soon.
I had quite a rockn night.
I miss my family.
I will be a college graduate in two days.

Choose or Die

A Psychological Tip


 Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
 and you're hampered by not having any,
 the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
 is simply by spinning a penny.


 No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
 while you're passively standing there moping;
 but the moment the penny is up in the air,
 you suddenly know what you're hoping

- Piet Hein

I like this poem for making it clear that decision making is an active process that takes work and desire.

And guts. Most of my bravest moments are the ones in which I make a decision that I have been struggling with. It means I have committed to something, and that I trust my Heavenly Father and myself. It means that I have accepted letting the other options go, which is always a risk. It means I am willing to take on the task of following the path (cliche bleh) I have chosen.

Decision making is also a way to prove to yourself that you even have desires and passions at all. There aren't decisions to be made if you don't give a rat's tushy about anything. I know that I am fairly well known among my friends for being the most indecisive person ever when it comes to choosing where to eat. Maybe I'm justifying a personality flaw, but I think it is ok to be indisisive about things that really truly do not matter as long as I am decisive about the things that actually affect my life and those around me.

Important: My friends, how to help my family, what school to go to, who to marry, where I live, how I spend my time, what I study, my opinions on things like religion, black or blue pens (blue). 

Not important: Wendy's or Arby's, diet Coke or diet Dr. Pepper, cereal (I always end up eating a little bit of EVERY type of cereal that is available, always. Tip: start with the less sugary ones end with the chocolatey ones so that the milk isn't all weird with your other cereals, unless you like that kind of thing which makes you kinda messed up.)

 Ok, I digress. Which is NOT the same as being indecisive. Moving on.

What you are decisive about = What you care about

The inverse holds true as well. Being indecisive is a manifestation of a lack of passion, which really just makes you super boring at best and a douche at worst.
Frills though, I would rather someone be a douche than bore me.


Indecision and indirectness = BORED

The past little while has been full of decision making for me. I was frustrated with it at the time, but am now so grateful for all of it. I am grateful that I know what I am supposed to be doing with my life and that I have answers that have been a long time coming. I like having my desires made clear to myself, even if it is accomplished through the often crushing process of decision making. Changing and growing and learning is pretty darn awesome. And the more it happens the more I like it and the better I am at it. 

So, you know, don't fear change blah blah blah. But really, improvement, though inherently painful and stretching, is da bomb. 


 “a crisis and upheaval in his soul, which shook his mind but also ultimately strengthened it for the whole of his life, and towards a definite purpose.”  

- Dostoyevsky's Brother's Karamozov

Most of all I am grateful that I know how to communicate with my Heavenly Father and that I am taken care of. I know how to tell feelings of fear apart from feelings of caution. I know complacency apart from peace. I'm not always the quickest at getting it right, but I do get there eventually. And the best thing is that I am getting better and better at it. It has been so neat these past weeks to feel promptings and recognize them for what they are. Just being reassured that I really am capable of that and that I am improving in it has been the best part of this whole experience. 

"In a word, something disorderly and absurd began" - Dostoyevsky

Morning

 dam's broke,
 head's a
 waterfall.

- Robert Creeley

I can, and so

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

- Robert Frost

 

 Whose woods these are I think I know,
 His house is in the village though.
 He will not see me stopping here,
 To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 My little horse must think it queer,
 To stop without a farmhouse near,
 Between the woods and frozen lake,
 The darkest evening of the year.

 He gives his harness bells a shake,
 To ask if there is some mistake.
 The only other sound's the sweep,
 Of easy wind and downy flake.

 The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
 But I have promises to keep,
 And miles to go before I sleep,
 And miles to go before I sleep.

I know I am not the only one, but I am getting so tired. Sometimes it is like these woods, a deep dark lull that entices me towards indifference. Sometimes a maze of confusion that only gets worse the more times I try to get out. Sometimes hysterical panic.

There have been five times in my life where I not only felt I could not get up from under such heavy weight, but that I actually desired to not get up.  

I always got up.

I never completely understand how, but I always know why.

The why is because I want big and important things.
Things so important that it is impossible for me to stop working for them. Things I will work for until I have nothing more to give, because there is nothing else worth having or doing anyway. And I have a responsibility to get them.

And there are some things that I want, that are not so essential, but I want so badly. Things that I know I can have if I work hard enough, harder than I care to think about. And so, I will not think about the work, I will simply work.

I have made myself promises. I promise to get what I want, what should be mine. 

I don't just feel like my heart is bursting with desire, or even that it is bigger, but that my heart has changed shape and filled everything inside me. Everything under my skin is gone and replaced with heart, my insides are one giant muscle that has no other purpose other than working for what I want.

And so I will.

Welcome Fall

Ode To Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

Wishblows are for making all your dreams come true.

Our heads could do with filling, with some interesting stuff

The School In August

By Philip Larkin 

The cloakroom pegs are empty now,
And locked the classroom door,
The hollow desks are lined with dust,
And slow across the floor
A sunbeam creeps between the chairs
Till the sun shines no more.

Who did their hair before this glass?
Who scratched 'Elaine loves Jill'
One drowsy summer sewing-class
With scissors on the sill?
Who practised this piano
Whose notes are now so still?

Ah, notices are taken down,
And scorebooks stowed away,
And seniors grow tomorrow
From the juniors today,
And even swimming groups can fade,
Games mistresses turn grey.

My house woke up early today. I made lunches while eating breakfast.
It is the first day of school today for Rosie and PJ, the first day of their junior and senior years.

This poem came to my mind yesterday and will not leave me alone today. I can't complain too much, Philip Larkin is most often wonderfully biting. But I must be getting old if this is on my mind. I'm just thinking about how I miss having an exciting and scary first day of school. I miss caring so much, taking the entire week before to plan my outfit.

I miss that bucket of emptiness in my stomach that grew even bigger right before going into each classroom because I didn't know who was in the class with me. I miss it becoming filled with some form of helium if I saw my best friends or a cute boy, or filled with mushy mashed potatoes if there was no one I knew or just that one guy who didn't wash his hair.

I'm nostalgic for newness and exciting change.
But Emy, aren't you still in school? Aren't you going to start a new semester soon? Don't you get to go to new classes every semester and even a new ward every year?
Yes yes and yes.
BUT,
Going to class is not new anymore, going to the singles ward is not new anymore. In other words, I no longer have an empty stomach on the first day of class. It's filled with comfortable fluff. In the last few years the fluff has been slowly filtering in. I mistook it for bravery, courage, even maturity and welcomed it on in. I am braver, I have more courage, I am more mature. But the fluff is different. I now see it for what it really is: complacency. I don't think it has necessarily been all bad for me; I do have to get all my credits and get my degree and that takes some time.
 But the fluff is old.
Grey.

I don't want to get stuck in nostalgia, as too many do when they are at the end of a portion of their life. I cannot forget to allow the good kind of empty space back in.
 I want a chance to be filled with new things again. The exciting helium, the disappointing mashed potatoes, maybe even unpredictable waves, folds of silk, or blue and green pebbles.

To make one glad

This is one of my favorite poems. My absolute favorite depending on the day. It is from Songs of Innocence by William Blake.

On Another's Sorrow

Can I see another’s woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow’s share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

And can He who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird’s grief and care,
Hear the woes that infants bear,

And not sit beside the nest,
Pouring pity in their breast;
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant’s tear;

And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
O, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

He doth give His joy to all;
He becomes an infant small;
He becomes a man of woe;
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.

O! He gives to us His joy
That our grief he may destroy;
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan.

What time is it? It's Valentimes!

On this day of loves and stuff, I thought I would share one of my favorite lovey poems. There have been papers written on this poem talking about how a man dominated society makes women dependent on them for identity. Some see it as a beautiful depiction of appropriate marital passion.


Personally, I just find this poem extremely sexy in a not trashy way.
THE CINNAMON PEELER by Michael Ondaatje

---

If I were a cinnamon peeler
 I would ride your bed
 and leave the yellow bark dust
 on your pillow.

 Your breasts and shoulders would reek
 you could never walk through markets
 without the profession of my fingers
 floating over you.  The blind would
 stumble certain of whom they approached
 though you might bathe
 under the rain gutters, monsoon.

 Here on the upper thigh
 at this smooth pasture
 neighbour to your hair
 or the crease
 that cuts your back.  This ankle.
 You will be known among strangers
 as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

 I could hardly glance at you
 before marriage
 never touch you
 - your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
 I buried my hands
 in saffron, disguised them
 over smoking tar,
 helped the honey gatherers...

 When we swam once
 I touched you in the water
 and our bodies remained free,
 you could hold me and be blind of smell.
 You climbed the bank and said

          this is how you touch other women
 the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
 And you searched your arms
 for the missing perfume

                      and knew

            what good is it
 to be the lime burner's daughter
 left with no trace
 as if not spoken to in the act of love
 as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

 You touched
 your belly to my hands
 in the dry air and said
 I am the cinnamon
 peeler's wife.  Smell me.