Socialist U

...or just indignant naivety. Here, from this week's edition of the USI student newspaper --

"...today's companies and corporations are using [the economy] to their advantage to swiftly and carelessly 'screw' over their lower level employees."

"It's still every man for himself out there, and it's taking the good will towards our fellow man out of the concept for a healthy society."

"Let's not focus so much on profit as much as we do on actually working towards a better future for everyone and letting our services and employees both be the best they possibly can be, as we always hear from said small businesses, but never really see."


...and this from the pen of a staff writer, not a letter to the editor. I could make a comment on how vague, PC, anemic writers have bleak prospects in any free market society (and the USI Shield certainly could use a steroid shot or two), but I won't be petty...just thought it was funny, and likely accurate. This is the way my generation thinks. Comments, anyone?

sounding

Hey, Joel. I'm finally posting the poetry for you. :)

This is the piece I wrote last Wednesday -- I ought to be churning one out per week from prompts in our textbook. The subject we were nudged towards was (guess!) family, and I had no trouble with that, but I'm not utterly happy with the quality...it was too easy. Read it aloud, and tell me if you can hear it. Or perhaps it's just incomplete -- when I planned it out, this was only the intro, but I ran too long-winded. I have so many things to write on, but they don't fit on a single page!

Oh -- and in class, I got an idea for an amazing piece on Grandma Linda, and an image of her stuffing five-year-old newspapers to take home to Chicago -- remember that? Couldn't that make something nearly as pathetic and dully horrifying as dementia? Maybe next week...



Antecedent


She catches me in a moment of quiet, wanders
Carelessly in from the kitchen to snatch
A seat next to me. She plants a coffee cup claim on the table
Like a flag; I start at the bright black clink and glance up at my grandmother.
She smiles down to me.

She sends me unwinding about roommates and ethics and algebra,
Leaning one elbow among plates
Still globbed with Wal-Mart-blue icing and half-burnt candles.
Her age-purpled eyes flutter off to another room, where the voices
Of five children wheel in ribbons, dancing and dizzying each other
Until they collapse onto the floor, breathless from sugar-spangled happiness.

The youngest sings out, “Chocolate cake is
Superior!” and vaults over the couch arm.
She laughs, low and quick as pebbles
In a jar. When she turns back to me,
Her eyes are twined up at the corners;
They pat my hand, wile words from my mouth. My face
Mirrors hers, all hills and valleys, with the same sudden
Open-arms reflex, the same gratuitous love
Blinking out. My nose crinkles, too;
I smile up to her.



Then this next is from two weeks ago...if the metaphor/subject matter confuses you, just go upstairs and open my closet door. And come back and read it again -- it'll all make sense. Or, rather, it'll all make sense except the title -- I don't really like it, either. I apologize for that, and the point of the poem, too...but it's exorcism, and it does help...



Staking Out


I am cleaning house, sweeping
My life into Rubbermaid buckets
To carry elsewhere. Dusting.
There are fountains of dead
Flowers along the cedar chest; the sharp petals
Of a chrysanthemum have dropped, remembered
Like teeth after a fist. They gum to the dust.
I scrape it all into my hand,
Brushing shards off over the trash can. Some vases
I set by the door to throw out; others
Will sit on the closet shelf until I come back,
Sit in front of the picture frames. If I am thorough
In my journey, when I return,
I will only find topsoil.



...love you, brother! And I promise to attempt to make this a regular thing...just keep reminding me.
(And if anyone else actually reads this [Bryce?], I appreciate your time, too!)

Alive Again

It's been too long, and I'm hungry for a writing outlet again. Round three. :)


And I won't say too much today. I've lived a lot of life since the last post, and I'm still feeling my way back into triviality, rediscovering washing dishes and watching birds and making hot chocolate. I still don't think I can reach it for you yet, but I've something better today anyhow.

Joel introduced me to Matt Maher's Alive Again CD last weekend. I've heard the cover song on K-Love for a few months now, and enjoyed it -- but it's just a generic, catchy CCM personal-resurrection anthem, as the title so subtly implies. But Joel explained the theory of the whole CD, how it begins with a bright song to draw the listener in and gradually creeps into poignant, wince-inducing truth. And he was right. We listened to it on a road trip, and the point of theology this "CCM" reached, the hard things it dared to speak, took my breath away. Matt Maher must be a pastor.

And this particular song was near the end. Please note the departure from bland, self-help exorcism, the fact that the speaker's pain is not the whole world, the incredibly humble conclusion he reaches (humble in that he forgets himself entirely). It comes to a full circle, justifying and maturing the first, "I was blind and now I see -- happy day!" song. The music grows spiritually, with increasing knowledge and love of Christ, and it's breathtaking to listen to.


You Were on the Cross, Matt Maher

Lost, everything is lost
And everything I've loved before is gone
Alone like the coming of the frost
And a cold winter's chill in my stony heart

And where were You when all that I've hoped for?
Where You when all that I've dreamed?
Came crashing down in shambles around me

You were on the cross

Pain, could you take away the pain?
If I find someone to blame, would it make my life seem easier?
Alone, all my friends are asleep
And I can't find anyone to stay awake with me

Where were You when sin stole my innocence?
Where were You when I was ashamed?
Hiding in a life I wish I never made

You were on the cross, my God, my God, alone, alone
You were on the cross, You died for us, alone, alone
You were on the cross, victorious, alone, alone

You were there in all of my suffering
And You were there in doubt and in fear
I'm waiting on the dawn to reappear

post-English 302

I have been outed. My old-school, New England liberal writing professor asked for a showing of hands on who, in the class, was homeschooled, after reading an article on the local phenomenon. There are two of us, apparently, and we represent both ends of the spectrum: the tidy, early, verbose Latin scholar and the perpetually almost-late free-verse partier. Well, we aren't normal. On Thursday, we're assigned a poem on death. I want to make it something beautiful and terrible, something Sylvia Plath.

But I was also surprised in class - when he asked us two freaks if our parents didn't "believe" in evolution, like people don't believe in gravity - "Is the earth flat?" - half the other students started talking about how most schools teach it as a theory, and with other theories. He laughed at us, but the harassment was over - he didn't even defend the exaggerations, or claim a studied cultural disconnect, as he does when we have to explain references to Mario 64 in our work. I do wish I'd taken debate, though, sometimes...

Yes, I am skipping theatre class; I don't want to be present for today's assignment. I can take their language and innuendo; it only further cements everything I believe about the world. I bury my nose in the book, write excellent papers, and exult quietly when I find a fellow dissenter. But I will not stand in the middle of a black box stage and sing their songs, play their hand-organ, dance like a chained bear.

It is a day for Earl Grey tea, with the sky all fog and mold. The colors of the world are wet coals now, an infusion of cynicism and rusted loveliness. I shake an extra packet of sugar into my cold black bergamot and leave to run paperwork upstairs to the dean's office.

tread softly...

Good evening, dear world...

I would have you know that I am procrastinating. I'm between health papers; I've been researching online resources for smoking prevention, and now I need to write a page on our guest lecturer from last week, but I very much want a rambling break. This particular guest speaker was hilarious, new to the department, very self-serious and aggressive with the apathetic classroom, almost a 25-year-old Carol Burnett in her mannerisms. It was wonderful, but I'm supposed to write something serious on it.

But instead I am not. I'm going to type out for you one of my poems, the third out of four submitted and my personal favorite. The first two I wrote were rather ambiguous, pretty but muddy, and the fourth one was an epic in length - two full pages of size eight font - and I threshed out the concept and wrote the first half while I was angry, but had to write the second half after I'd run the anger out, so it didn't turn out too coherently. But this one is nice, and I didn't get any reviews of "huh?" from my class. Tell me what you think!

By the way, the title is Latin. It means either authority or domain; both fit, so I used it. Yes, I was fishing vaguely when I came up with it.



Regnum

I have never danced.
Mothers ask me after I have coached
Their daughters' milky butterfly feet
Into a pair of pointe shoes,
Silvery-pink platforms, twins of a diamond rack,
Where one graceless step cracks an ankle.
Or little girls smile up at me stammeringly,
Hoping their new baby-brassy taps
Have been given to them by a prima donna,
A fairy godmother.
No, I stumble, I do waltz on the weekends,
But I spent my high school nights in Latin textbooks.
They gather themselves up from the bench,
Snatch the shoebox from my hands.
One smooths a "dance is life" shirt over her
Beautiful ribs. Smiles down at me.
I have never danced.

I've missed writing here...I may come back. I do not write as I used to, and the practice would be good for me.
I have been writing poetry lately, heaps of it, after being set rolling by my creative writing class, so bits of that may end up here. We'll see if I can make any of it ambiguous enough for internet publication.

...reading over my posts from nearly a year ago...that running away sounds lovely. I am so bewildered nowadays, what with the sifting out of the two things which, I admit to my shame, I trusted most.

But I cannot run to where I ended up last time. You have infiltrated and consumed everything, haven't you?

If anyone reads this, please do leave me a comment. I'd like to know just who is still around, who I am writing to.

rambling, again

Just talking to talk, I suppose. :) I'll try to keep it low-key, I promise!

The days at Dancehaven are very good -- long, in the slowness, but very good. I have cleaned the store enough times, and am now on to the neighboring store, Get Wet, which should take me a while longer... *grins* we'll see. But it is lovely...such a world unto itself! I walk in the doors, and immediately I am the mistress of a pretty little realm of definite grace. Perhaps the Cookie spoiled my head -- it's so nice to have a store of one's own, free from the mall-walkers! I am thoroughly enjoying Dancehaven.

The schedule is so nice, too...I'll have Monday and Tuesdays off nearly every week, which is decisive luxury, and rarely have to come in before ten. That's a significant amount of sleep right there...I am beginning to lose my insomniac superpowers anyhow, so it's a very good thing.

-- I feel like I'm not writing coherently at all. Bother. It has been a long day...not bad at all; once again, people are quite nice to me, even if the shoes are expensive, as long as I'm patient with them and fetch the twelfth pair cheerfully. People just make me tired. And sitting up all night writing gives me energy. Isn't that silly?

Oooh, but this is pointless. I need to either decide upon a subject, or go and do something Productive.

I can't flesh it out now, I'm not coherent enough, but I have been turning a problem about in my head over the past week...when my brain is caught on writing, and I analyze everything grammatically, my first reaction to many things is to want to write on them. Oh, and there is so much needing it in this world, putrid, gangrenous stuff that makes me crackling and angry. I sit quiet and white for a moment, and then I throw the magazine down and fly out of the room, and I will snap inside unless I do something about it. I scream to write it out -- words are my sharpest weapon by far; I turn to them first -- to ignite a hundred thousand eyes and brains against it, for surely they must not know; why else has it not been ground out? I could, too, I could...but then here is the wall, and my question, and if anyone would like to help me with it, I'd be grateful...it's something I must learn.

But how -- how does one present, draw attention to, illuminate something so evil? -- there is nothing less than what would be too graphic. Journalism can get by with certain things, but fiction -- no. Much less in a form that christian contemporary culture, which is rich, and increased with goods, and has need of nothing, carefully laundering its white gloves in the tears of ages past, would condescend to read! And yet without making it a Peretti thriller... (Remind me again why they sell Frank Peretti at the Vineyard? Argh...but that is another rant. :)) I've read one book that was close, Rivers' Atonement Child, but that was an easier subject...not a closed one, by any means, but less messy...

And what do I know, anyhow? How could I assume to write about something my life has been so far removed from? Will I ever know? -- could I stomach it? Oh, God...

Why did I have to get stuck on the hardest thing, eh? Silly Katharine...I should've gotten angry at the clumsy capitalist oil liners who spill yucky stuff all over the poor little penguins and make them cold. Highlights would buy my dear little stories, and I could have many pairs of white gloves. Oh, yes...silly Katharine.

*sigh* It's a different sort of melancholy, tonight. I hope it's alright...