Life Things and Literary Things

I am back in Indiana after a very fun and at times kind of hard spring break. The fun part is obvious--friends, NYC, museums, great food, kind people, my wonderful family. The hard part is a little more abstract, and it mostly involves distance. I realized this visit that the vast majority of my best friends live in the Northeastern Corridor area, and I really miss them. I miss being by water in a way I never thought I would, and I miss being close to my family. My grandmother has been feeling poorly and while I was able to spend a few days with her, and she is a tough lady, I hate being so far away. Today was a bad day for her and I do not want to be here right now. I didn't get to see my parents or other grandmother this trip, and that was hard, too. It is making me wonder if I can really stand a career that is far from my family. I was talking to one of my friends last week about how we feel like we don't know what we're doing with our lives sometimes (who does though, really), which brings me to this poem:

Electrical storm

On August nights, when pressing heat and swarms
of heavy air hang thick above your bed,
and traffic lights outside your room birth forms
that shift on darkened walls in ugly red
and purple flames, you find yourself awake.
You shuck to clinging boxers, crossly shed
confining sheets, and pray the fan won't break.

These nights all pass the same, until one night
you face the window, conscious of the ache
of sunburned skin. A sudden burst of light
breaks darkened sky and fragments in a flash
that makes you stir with something close to fright.
You watch the show with awe. The feathered slash
of lightning does not echo into thunder,
but rather bears another splintered gash,
and then another, and another. Under
mottled clouds the streaks of white combine
and you, in stupid, juvenile wonder
only stare, as worries leave your mind
and time becomes irrelevant.

It's you
and nature, nothing more, the strange design
of marbled evening, burning deep into
your eyes—the muted fireworks that brought
the ancient people to their knees.

And through
the web of fiery rain in which you're caught
you realize that you truly understand
the marvels of the earth; and age has taught
you swift dissection of the cryptic, grand,
and interwoven meanings of the sky.
You feel your wonder dimming which each brand
of white that shudders through the dark. You sigh
and shut your eyes, ashamed of how naive
you used to be…

and yet, you can't deny
how powerful it was when you perceived
(when you were young, and quite alone)
the magic of the storms. And you believe
that now, since all that can be known is known,
your life meant nothing more than it did then
(when god-like sparks were very much your own)
and it will never mean as much again.

Nature has seemed so scary and destructive lately. In a microscopic example, my flight went through a thunderstorm yesterday and I never want to do that again. But this poem reminds me of summer storms, standing in our sunporch with my sister or running through the rain in the street by our house. I love thunderstorms (except when I'm on an airplane!) and I love summer nights where you feel small yet safe and you can just marvel at the sky.

Oh, and the poet? My sister, Elizabeth (Liz, as she's normally known). She is a college senior and is presenting at her first ever conference starting tomorrow! Basically she is awesome, she is crazy smart, she never ceases to keep me in line and make me laugh, and I firmly believe she will be a poet laureate some day. She won this lecture-thing last year at her school and I went and she did a great job, so though she may be a bit nervous right now, SHE WILL ROCK PITTSBURGH. There is another poem I love that she wrote after I took her to Brighton Beach last year, but I can't find it right now. So you might get another taster later.

AND, in other tales of my accomplished family, my cousin Melis is shortlisted for a writing contest in the New Yorker, about what your next journey would be. And you should all vote. This is the link. Melissa Slater is a teacher at a transfer high school in Brooklyn. I slept on her couch all of last year, so I can personally vouch for how much she cares about her students, how much work she does, and how deserving she is. We need more teachers and human beings like her. Continuing the theme, her post is about nature, too!

I need to catch up on reading and work and school-stuff, but at the moment it just seems terribly insignificant. Sometimes, one just needs to open all the windows (it is freakishly warm here), drink some tea, and read some poetry. And that is what I intend to do.