Inattentive Clockwork

i am falling sideways, i am disappearing through the cracks
i am held up by a hundred hands, i am holding a hundred hands up

*

some people are empty
not without substance in the traditional sense but made of delicate
cross-hatching
of relevant colors instead of ((more solid materials))
we are more easily defined by the SPACES
between lines than by the lines themselves

i cast no shadow in these moods
my two-dimensional shoulders are a
cosmic and caustic mockery
i become a parody of myself

*

We were dancing until we ran out of breath
and howling at the moon
We were doing drugs and sinking ships
and losing the will to swoon.

And all this is running through my head
set to some kind of tune…

i have been carrying around a sketchbook i got for christmas with a set of watercolor pencils. the pages are all still blank…i haven’t found anything worth drawing yet. i always feel as though the first page of a new notebook needs to be just perfect. nothing has felt “right” yet.

this is a strange sort of homecoming. it is all too evident that i don’t quite belong here anymore. everything is a little fuzzy at the edges, as though the world can go either way: become more solid and take me back as one of its own or disappear altogether. perhaps it is all the silent spaces. middlebury is so full of noise and laughter, i rarely listen to the quality of the silence around me. and here there is always a time when everything falls quiet and my thoughts can keep me awake.

it is nice to pretend that i belong here again though.
it is nice to have so many places that i can call my own.

in the center for the arts at school there are two pieces of art along the wall that leads to the dance studios which i love. one is a pencil sketch, on several large sheets of butcher paper that have been taped together, and the other is the painted version of this drawing. i like looking at the differences between them, overlaying the sketch on the painting in my head. the lines are looser, inexact. it is the dream of the painting, the pre-performance. i want to draw things like this. the loose outlines of reality.

we are loose outlines of reality. it seems a lonely state.

but “you’re not designed to be alone” –frank turner

i think this is part of what i love so much about college. even though it is exhausting to always have people around, it is also affirming of our own existence. if someone is visiting your room then you must exist just as much as you dream you do. there is no chance that life is unreal when everyone is around you, when arms hold you, when people pile on your bed, when laughter surrounds you.

so here’s a hug to tide you over until we can all go back to our new homes… <3

i have these really beautiful friends.

i don’t necessarily mean that they are attractive, although that is or is not true in certain cases. i just mean that they are beautiful: for who they are, for the hugs they give and the words they write and the way they smile, for their ability to laugh, for their warmth, for their uncertainty and for their power. for everything they already are and everything they will someday be and i love them for this and for more than this.

i love jillian clark’s poetry (i have to say her names together, it just feels wrong otherwise) and i love duncan’s photography. they make me ache inside in good ways. i love that matthew coleman turbeville would gladly bitch-slap any boy who broke my heart (i would do the same for him). i love iracema, my roommate and how we have learned to live around each other. sometimes we are together, rocking out and sometimes we are just in the same space, freaking out. it works. i love thomas for making cake and leaving milk in our fridge. i love pete for telling me i’m “langweilig” (did i spell that right?).

i didn’t expect to love college this much so quickly.

we are all miniature cataclysms in our own right.
and i’m a cuckoo hen woman (which is a double pun in japanese because hen means strange, thank you spoon).

at school i come up with these crazy projects i don’t have the resources for so while i am home i will:
-make christmas cookies
-sew a quilt
-start (and finish!) my earflap hat (but first fix the pattern)

i am very very very very very very very very very very very behind.

i need to write almost 40,000 words before the end of the month. in five days that is.

also canada is nice. montreal is rather large. especially after small town vermont. i kind of miss my midd kids but i am happy to be here with spoon and matthew. the noise quality is different. (less people noise, more vehicle noise.)

today’s song is “beach song” by speechwriters llc.

“And I’ll be back to save the world, sing my songs and get that girl
And I will try to live my life like I believe in something more
And when it all seems less than great I guess I’ll put my trust in fate
Just sit back down and take my mind off and try to stop aching for you”

© Dave Lowensohn, Speechwriters LLC, 2002

i don’t know who read this to begin with so i don’t know how i would tell if you are still listening, in spite of my long silence. i feel like i am dropping pebbles into a well without hoping of hearing the klink as they hit the bottom.

i feel like i am being slowly erased.
that’s a lie.
i feel like i am being slowly changed/stretched/grown/repressed/expressed/quantified/denied/explained/translated/frozen/shaken/stirred/etc.

we are all very tired here. thanksgiving will be a welcome break. i will probably stay up just as late as i do now but hopefully spoon and matthew will let me sleep in too. (dear spoon, if your insomnia leads you to wake me up early in the morning, just know that i WILL punch you. love, jo*)

—-

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,
Jack Flash sat on a candle-stick.

Planes flying over the cities and the shape of your shadow
and chocolate oranges tied up in string and elbows, pointy and sharp
in their own way.
I’m resurrecting lovers
in my own way.
I’m shaping shadows
in my own way.
Beneath the full moon//above the full ground,
swelling with its own importance, its own last vestiges of life
before the frost comes at dawn,
I am screaming about my father. My breath trembles,
full and broken on the open air.

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider, who sat down beside her
and frightened Miss Muffet away.

Eating pancakes with a spoon and stumbling in high heels
and an aspirin with my cup of coffee and
it is easy to blame all our problems on drinking too much.
The taste of raspberries at the back of my throat reminds me
of the nights I danced alone
while without me you smiled so many miles away,
across state lines and rivers and the shape of mountains.
I know that you would disapprove
I wonder
if you would love me less this way.
Not a theory I care to test.
Not a chance I care to take.

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

a few nights ago all my new Midd friends were in my room, “studying” and since half of us were working on language homework (me on german, thomas on french, my roommate iracema on spanish and arabic, conor on chinese), we started talking aloud in our languages. sometimes it was just muttering a new word we were trying to pronounce and other times it was a full-blown conversation with someone else in the room who spoke a foreign language we knew. (doing german homework while having a conversation in french is really hard i have learned.)

it was one of those moments that still cause us all to stop after a little while, looking at each other in awe until someone says what everyone is thinking: that we can’t believe that college is actually so much of what we imagined it would be. when the tour guides said that you would talk about your classes outside of class, they were telling the solemn truth (we started even before classes did by talking about our summer reading one night just for fun). when they said that everyone here was incredibly smart, was intellectually curious, was willing to try new things, they meant it. all of my friends are taking a language and all of them are willing to talk in it (or another language they took in high school if they’re in a language 101 class right now), to teach you phrases, etc. (my friend thomas taught me how to say bitch in french and iracema taught us all how to say slut in portuguese…[^_^ got to get the college language in there somehow!]. i swear, this is the only school i can imagine where i would receive a text message jokingly calling me names in TWO DIFFERENT FOREIGN LANGUAGES.)

and in a place where so many people have unusual names it is remarkable how hard everyone tries to get them just right. one kid has a name that non-hindi speakers literally cannot pronounce because it has a dh sound in it that doesn’t exist in any language–but everyone has been trying to get it right anyway. and a few days ago my friend mike spent our entire walk to an event working with iracema on how to pronounce her name the way it was intended to be pronounced.

i love it already–it just seems so right to be here, to be doing these things and even though i thought that the first few months would be really lonely as i got to know people, already my hall has become really close. every night we have company in our room as we study. music plays–often in a foreign language–, voices chatter, (some) work gets done…even though we’ve only been here a little over a week we have already become close, already started looking out for each other. i can’t wait to see how the next four years unfold.

tonight i am in shoreham, vermont which is a fifteen-minute drive from middlebury (!). i move in to my dorm room tomorrow morning though right now i am considering just staying in this hotel because it is beautiful. all the windows are open and i can hear people laughing outside.

there are black and white pictures on the walls in here and the hallway outside twists and turns like the maze of walls in someone’s home. i feel like i could belong here–perhaps someday i will own a b&b. i would bake bread for the guests and make my own jam and paint the front door a different color every year.

we went out of our way to go to burlington before coming here so that we could find a “real” coat. now i kind of want it to get cold so that i can use my new spiffy jacket. and i’m hoping that my roommate (or one of my suitemates) will want to go hiking with me. perhaps i can walk around and introduce myself to people and ask if they will go hiking with me. i wonder if this would endear me to people?

as we were driving today, with the windows down because it seems like a crime not to enjoy the beautiful fresh air in vermont, the car kept filling with the scent of cow dung and hay, fresh grass and wildflowers. i am not completely on board with the reality of me moving here for the next four years. it seems to good to be true that there can be a place where it is sunny and cool in august/early september and that i can be going to school there with lots of like-minded, knowledge-gathering enthusiasts.

PEOPLE I RAN INTO TODAY:
someone who’s going to be in my dorm, on my floor at midd (chris from ohio)
someone from charlotte, nc who just graduated from state a few months ago (justin who works at oge in burlington)
a boy with my name (who also works at oge)

this is a random collection of thoughts. someday i will try to write a story that feels like this and see what happens. what do you think?

INTERACTIVE PORTION OF TODAY’S BLOG:
what is the theme song to your life? (pick only one song and tell me the name & artist.)

truth: i like looking through pictures of strangers on flickr.
this is one of my recent favourites:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaitlinsalias/3812840104/in/pool-allpeople

truth: it’s not that i’m afraid of growing up, i just don’t know if i’m brave enough to let myself. board games are more fun than cocktails and i never got to have a pair of bunny slippers.

truth: sometimes i say things without knowing what i mean by them. i’m deciphering myself just like you are.

truth: for days on end i can not be hungry. i have to remember to eat anyway.

half-truth: 82% of what i write on here never happened.
full-truth: that number is made up. some things never happened, some pronouns indicate people who don’t even exist, some words mean nothing at all. it’s probably less than 82%, maybe more like 37%.

truth: i never draw real people.

the fact that i am hungry probably means that i should go eat something.

for the first time ever i am writing a poem in multiple sittings. i started a piece about the way music connects people and am still messing around with it, adding stanzas, rewording, cutting things out. this editing of poetic work is completely new to me… i’m not sure how it’ll turn out.

she & him (zooey deschanel and m. ward) is my current new favourite band although okkervil river is vying for the same spot.

it ends with a fall and change is hard are my favourite songs right now.

i am tired. my shoulders hurt.
too many hours seem to disappear into staring at my computer screen.

i don’t like the world online as much as some people. it is less fascinating than the way people shape themselves around each other off the page. but there are few people here, limited opportunities for study.

i should have brought my tennis shoes: then i could go for a walk, which is something nice to do in the texas hill country on this ranch and which is something that lets you not think about anything in particular for a good while because you have to concentrate on your feet and rocks and cow turds.

i am staying in a house with a car in pieces on the lawn. the engine is strangely beautiful.