My application to NESA went out on Thursday (hurrah) and I am ashamed to say it but I've got Jonas brothers songs stuck in my head but god they're just so catchy :) what can I do? It's been a day of shameful indulgences: I barreled through He's Just not that into You and Marley and Me complete with tears and tissues.  Tomorrow I am off to meet my large materal family whose family tree I've only recently figured out.

A man from China who was very poor arrived in Taiwan.

He became rich and had a son.

This son had 3 sons and said to each of them, "because we've only recently arrived to Taiwan we have little family here so it's important for each of you to have many children so that our family can support each other." He then told each of them to have 3 sons.

2 of the sons had 3 sons each but the 3rd only had one son, so, he adopted 2 more into his family.

My great grandfather was one of the adopted sons.

My great grandfather married his first wife and had five children with her: the oldest son who went to Japan and returned to visit only once in life when he was 50, the second son, twin sisters, and the youngest, a girl. His first wife passed away so he married again and had another son and my grandmother.  In those days, large families lived together and so my great grandfather absorbed his younger brother's family into his own and thus my granmother gained an additional five brothers and sisters, even though in reality, they were really cousins.

My grandmother married my granfather and had my mother, my older uncle, my younger uncle and my younger aunt.

And then mom met dad and had me.

seven generations....


Anyway, tomorrow we are going to go tomb sweeping and this year out of the 9 families (the 9 families are the living descendents of this line,,, because each of the 3 sons had 3 sons...) my grandmother's family which means my great grandfather's descendents are in charge of the celebration of our ancestors so tomorrow I am going to have lunch with god knows how many relatives in Taichung, my grandmother's hometown.

So there you go, a little piece of living history for ya.

I  just finished my second reading of  A Hundred Years of Solitude and feel like I am still wrapped up in the unending cycle of rain and warped time due to unending drip of bad weather.   What with the rain and the aloneness of being by myself at home for long periods of time, I really have lost track of the days in some ways, and it occurred to me that the two months that have passed by since I have returned home must have made completely different impact on the lives of the people I know in ways that are different from they ways they have made on my life.  Work and people coming and going and laughing and being in the company of others makes for memories and events that mark time significantly. How time passes quickly that way but how times passes quickly anyway.. I've spent most of my time in Taiwan sleeping as if to make up for lost hours from when I slept very little. The funny thing is the more I sleep the less energy I seem to have. And while I would like to see and be around more people, doing so exhausts me and I prefer silence sometimes and being alone.  It is quiet and the rain is peaceful and the ladybugs that have been carried home with the vegetables I picked from our garden are crawling around in the the plastic bag and onto the furniture searching for an exit. And so reading Cien Anos de Soledad seems fitting because it's weaving itself into life. 

In news more rooted in reality, people are thieving our lettuce heads and now I am off to see how the garden is doing so that people won't assume that no one comes around during the day.

:D today's harvest includes red juicy beets, boston lettuce, spring green onions, swiss chard, Taiwanese celery and glorious wild greens!

and my hands are stained pink from cooked beet juice!
and tomorrow I am making veggie lasagna!
and fresh food oh glorious food!

In the wee hours of Sunday morning after finishing "the Kite Runner", I finally began journaling again. Y'know, "the ink poured forth, inspiration struck"... all that good stuff. (In a real honest-to-goodness cloth bound journal too, mind you.)  But really, I can't remember the last time I wrote regularly for myself. Actually, that was what I wrote about. How after freshman year, alot of things that I used to do for fun was sort of phased out of my daily doings.  I used to keep a journal and take note of quotes that struck a chord. I used to sketch and doodle and make things. God, I used to read for fun, like a crazed junkie.  I wonder what the hell happened and at the same time I remember college happened, and how bursting at the seams everything was. Before college, there was rigorous and fairly regular paced learning and living time to for leisurely activities and then I entered college and I did everything bursting at the seams: learning, living, even breathing. We were all getting on by the skin of our teeth and seeing each other bursting, seeing the outsides and the insides that poked through straining seams. And in the bursting there were meltdowns and starbursts and many, many things had a brilliance that only bursting can give.  And so less time to putter around and dream, which was fine then, because all our time was bursting at the seams and we were occupied by bursting and resewing, bursting and resewing.

Well, let it be known that the era of puddling and puttering and dreaming has returned. I am writing and drawing and reading again.  One would think that this leisurely lifestyle would encourage rest and thus sleep but au contraire. I am a night owl.

hoot. hoot.

:D And now begins the naming of things created since the last entry:

A dusty pastel of three oranges
A pot of coconut curry noodles
A wandering journal entry


I have also begun the process of editing my application essays and oddly, I am enjoying it. Who knew that without a next day deadline nipping my heels I would actual enjoy the process.

Mel: 1
deadline demons: 0

damn straight.

Dear Journal I never post on anymore,
I drew a persimmon today. It wasn't mindblowing work and the fact that it made my day is probably an indication that I need to get out of the house pronto but it felt satisfying. Wonderful. I haven't sat down and drawn seriously in awhile. It was like meditating. Suddenly, I had focus, and I've been needing some of that lately, focus. Now my hands are dusty with the pastels I bought earlier today and it's lovely, dusty and lovely. I am on a dusty and lovely roll.

Will post picture of my dusty persimmon soon.

Persimmon, today, tomorrow, the world.

Ok,  but maybe just waking up early and doing yoga....

Also, it was a brilliantly blue day today, all sunshiney and glorious. Then an hour passed and the storm clouds rolled in. No rain though. Just rolling clouds and gusting wind. Like the kind that American Idol uses in their "it's the moment they've been waiting for" commercials. God, I've been watching way to much tv.

This particular blogpost reminded me of graduation mayhem. Suddenly for a week, young twenty-somethings went drunkenly from one party to another (unsurprisingly) and mingled with older alumni from generations of yore, while screaming Bilie Jean and Don't Stop Believin' lyrics at the top of their lungs.  Were we trying to be ironic? Maybe. But I think I felt much more drunkenly earnest about how much I loved the Thriller dance (even though the only part I know is the left to right zombie stagger) but perhaps that's just me.  In any case, the sudden reappearance of the 80's all around me (case in point: graduation and the campers at Shire Village) amuses me to no end.  But then I kind of understood where this blogger is coming from when many of my campers didn't know the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC because they were born after Y2K (thank goodness for Justin who is still hip but began as a curly haired frump on the Disney channel when I was a kid).  For now, I will reserve my right to sing "I Want It That Way" for only private kareoke rooms and my shower.

Another post on dogs by the same blogger for the times shares my view on dogs as pets, which is that they are cute but that's not all there is to owning one.   And while I love my pup, there have been plenty of moments in my life when I have not felt the keen desire to take him outside for a walk as the sky continued to pour like it had been for more than a week (or perhaps the potty training process). Peace is something that is rarely felt by an owner of an energetic dog because while you may want a tea break with a good book your dog will still want you to throw the dang squeak toy for the 127th time (soon, you will learn to hide the squeak toy and trade it in for a cloth rope. Better yet is an empty water bottle that skids around on the tiles as he tries to chew it, thereby providing self-entertainment). There are of course plenty of redeeming moments.

   

:)

I've reconnected with one of my favorite columns in the Times, Modern Love (perhaps second to On Language by the William Safire), and happened upon the winning essays from last February's Valentine's Day college essay writing contest. One of the runner-ups, "Why Spoil Great Sex by Dating"  deals with the issues surrounding the hook-up culture that dominates the college dating scene. This is interesting because as of late, its been something I've been pondering a lot about.  

In college, I'd never been particularly compelled to participate in the culture. You might call me a prude or, more accurately call me a person extremely conservative with relationships (because I don't think the qualms I have have as much to do with physical intimacy than with say the trauma of people coming and going quickly out of my life. I and yes, I will say it, am interested in pleasure and sex and fun and play as much as anyone else).  Either way, casual encounters, while now and again enticing, never seemed worth the risk. I've only recently realized how much I thrive on relationship and community building, how the moment I meet someone I am working towards a long-term dependable relationship and that I feel most comfort when I have a network of these kinds of relationships all around me (but don't most people you wonder?).  I would say that that is how I am wired as a person and I cannot comprehend any other way for myself to relate to the world. There are times when this philosophy has served me plenty well and I feel embodied and composed and completely present. Then there are those other times when I feel lonely, and miss the complement of another person, warm, absentmindedly dozing beside me or the kind of companionship of which you continue to push the depth and breadth over time because someone has decided to stick around long enough to explore that with you. And my resolve slacks and I wonder if I am taking things much too seriously and should loosen up and while I am young, accumulate and enjoy experiences rather than always weighing the long-term consequences and treating relationships as emotional investments (Fields perhaps articulates best what runs through my head in these moments of self-doubt).  Perhaps those free-love happy hippies of the 60's got the whole living-in-the -present-moment-going-where-ever-the-wind-will-blow-them lifestyle right after all?

Sometimes, I want to be a bolder other me and be impulsive and spontaneous and have a little casual fun. I even entertain ideas of what Walkowski calls friendship that morphs into a sexual encounter and then reverts to friendship the next day (I believe the boy I  liked over the summer termed it "platonic romance"). But even when I try encounters with people that I know are short-term and won't live beyond a certain length of time and my mind understands this perfectly well as a truth, the gears kick into motion and long before I realize, I have begun my process of incorporating these people into my world, giving them emotional texture and meaning, adopting them into my circle of care/trust/intimacy. Most of the time, this is fine, until, that is, I expect the same degree of interest and incorporation in return.  Then you realize that everyone in this world comes to relationships with different intentions and that relationships support people in a million different ways, perhaps different from your own (complementing? conflicting? Who knows?).  Because casual or short-term encounters can be just about frenzied physical forays but most often then not  they can also be accompanied by shared interests, small intimate tender moments, genuine appreciation of the other person, inside jokes, humor, empathy, care and all these qualities seem to conflict with casual (because why bother spending energy on these things when you know the effort leads nowhere?).  Because when you spend time with someone you can't help finding joy in learning new dimensions of the person and the funny dynamic that develops when two systems of being collide. Because as social beings we relate even when we would like to keep things non-committal, casual, impermanent (because I like implicating the rest of humanity).  Because once I start to appreciate your presence, it's not a hard or big leap to want to have you around for awhile and then indefinitely.

Anyway, these encounters always send me back into the arms of the single existence, feeling relieved to be drama free with renewed independence.   Simultaneously I wonder much about what is dependable in life and how friendships and relationships are formed and the different shapes and sizes they come in. I wonder if I rely too much on "my peoples" and need to be more solitary and self-reliant and just treat the relationships in my life as bonuses to what should naturally be a more alone kind of existence.   I know some people categorize the people in their lives based on their degree of intimacy with them ranging from casual friend to people who have been adopted into their concept of family. They are perfectly fine with the idea that there are friends with whom they enjoy hanging out but could never envision engaging in a deep conversation, that there are different degrees of giving and receiving and it varies from person to person. Other friends I have believe that connections between people take work and keep around only those friends who naturally put effort in maintaining friendship, with whom a basic level of intimacy has been reached. People who are dependable and open.  The other day I asked a friend if she would every have a friend with whom she could not have a serious conversation and she very matter-a-factly answered "No because then I wouldn't know you." I get that, fair enough.

All this spinning in circles thinking has lead me to one conclusion which is that thinking about these things is good for the learning but ultimately those who are wired in ways that complement my own way of being will find their way to me and those who cannot accept my long-term nesting tendencies will naturally gravitate elsewhere. Such is the force of life. I am quite done being apologetic.

uh oh do I want to buy a guitar so much.

I wandered Harvard Square with my dad today while national college move-in weekend continued to progress. We blended right into the crowd of college students and their parents wandering the streets. My dad even made me take a few pictures in front of Harvard's church. Red banners hang on either side of the entrance with "Veritas" emblazoned across them. They flank me in the picture. It easily could have been a prefrosh move -in day picture and I  remembered how exciting arrival day was (yes) four years ago. It's like every first you can think of piled into a short 24 hours: moving into your dorm room, meeting your roommate (if you have one), meeting your hallmates as they slowly trickle in, finding where the food is, learning in my case that everything is "gender neutral", registering all sorts of things, fill out more forms you can count, taking pictures with or in front of every stationary object on campus, etc. etc.  Each event is a carefully negotiated new experience and you can trust that everyone before you and everyone after you will experience similarly the newness of it all.   The structure helps to keep you from exploding because of the overstimulation.

We wandered all morning around the historic area down Brattle Road, past the historic buildings and graveyards. I didn't particularly feel like I was bearing witness to history as we rambled along. Maybe it's because after traveling in Europe and China some, history needs to be at least more than 300 years old to feel awe-inspiring. I think mainly it was that Harvard seemed to be unending and colored everything around it. I suppose that is to be expected since it is a college town and the square afterall is named after the institution.  It felt comfortable hanging around the area though. We sat outside a cafe for more than an hour watching men (not one female player) play chess (for money) while listening to a street musician play Beatles music. I realized while I was sitting there that I felt done with this kind of environment. It's the same way I feel about Northampton.  Not much stimulation happens around these parts if you aren't in class. Life can't be dependent on community building either because people continue to move on down their own paths and communities form and separate and I can't bet on constancy of relationships to be happy.

Mom told me the other day to remember that 真善美 (truth, compassion, beauty) are the things that give meaning  and direction to life. I keep forming attachments to people and then am disappointed when they have to leave. I'm kind of tired of that cycle. I've realized that I have allowed it to influence so many of my choices.

I'm itching to leave.

Good lord. Vogue printed an issue depicting the poorest of India carrying designer bags and umbrellas and in response to the outrage, all the editor of Vogue India can say is "fashion is no longer a rich man's privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful" so "lighten up". Perhaps, but can these people who are not privileged with riches buy such over-priced accessories when they can't even feed themselves? Boorish, much?

Health insurance and money give me headaches. le sigh.

many things floating around like dust particles in the sun

conversation with mother about nose piercing, less traumatic than anticipated
conversation with mother about WOOFing through Spain and Acupuncture/Oriental Medicine grad school, better received than anticipated
ps. 1 tube plants parading towards a pale blue sky, tubes tubes tubes, tube scuttling
money thoughts that continue to plague me (need temp work soon)
Woofing from Barcelona to Segovia to Granada, yes?
post-camp nostalgia, obssessively searching for bluegrass lyrics, somehow the music at camp formed my experience there
...

hmm

Adrift and unfocused is what I am. I suppose this is the blank space that mom instructed me to embrace. Roz asked me today how I feel as I live with no apparent obligations or structure for the present and future and all I could say was "frightening. absolutely frightening."  Feels uncomfortable on every level, definitely not "my style", though from this summer I've realized types and styles are really just fronts for the fears we have. What is my type or style is really just what I think is most comfortable and what is most comfortable isn't necessarily always the best or most worthwhile choice or experience.

mmf.  mmmmf. feel like I spend all day spinning around in my head and thinking about myself.

trying to find a way to let it all go.

So currently staying with Diana in Flushing while I gather my wits about me. Last week I visited Maggie in DC for a week and met a wonderful dog named cider, a sloth bear that tried to kiss Maggie on the face (thankfully the glass was in the way but he left a giant print of his lips on the glass) and surprise surprise Emily Gallivan and her bf on the tube. It was a weskid moment. Maggie and I had been having conversations of the confusing nature about dealing with family and finding a job, post-graduation madness.... it was such a funny relief to run into someone familiar. Just the act was cathartic. It was splendid.

Yesterday Theo and I spent the evening not exploring the NY Public Library (I got lost and arrived just before closing), doing Yoga in Bryant Park on very damp and stinky yoga mats (free! pretty splendid, you get used to the smell and its outdoors every thurs 6-7 pm), and eating/chatting in park. Went on a search for  ice cream and found an ice cream truck immediately after I had splurged on not so satisfying Coldstone. Weskid #2: Running into Karimah and her friend at Bryant Park.

Somehow after graduation you 1. run into weskids everywhere and 2. even if its someone you only peripherally know its damn exciting....


I should replace my camera batteries so that I can also take pictures like Cecil does to prove that it actually happens. Imagine a blog called "I ran into a weskid on the other side of the world..." full of weskid-we-ran-into-each-other pictures.


haha ok maybe thats silly.

today is June 1st and a Sunday. it feels like an official beginning. Beginning a month beginning a week beginning a new adventure. I've watched Pirates I and II in the last two days and I am hoping the wanderlust will grip me something bad so I too can feel adventuresome and piratey and all that good stuff. Because lately its all been about endings. Last week ended at the very beginning of the week with graduation and that ending seemed to drag on throughout the rest of the week.

 I am afraid of forgetting. Even the events that transpired two weeks ago seem hazy, incoherent, out-of-sinc. So much has happened in the past year and since I have not been blogging as religiously as in the past few years, there are gaping holes in memory, like lost chunks of time. I wish someone could return them to me. I know they have become a part of my experience and who I am and they haven't blipped out of existence but somehow still, remembering is important to me.  I found myself laying in bed yesterday thinking about the course of the week before last and it took the collective effort of all my brain cells  just to figure out what happened when on what day with whom. But going through the days like that drops me in a pit of nostalgia and sadness and then the ending that should be wrapping itself up keeps draggin on and on and I am quite done with the ending. Makes my heart hurt. Makes my body paralyzed, makes planning and being excited about beginning things difficult.   

And I want to feel excited and curious and surprised by the world. I want to travel and learn new things. I want to be filled with curious anticipation. I want to have faith and trust that all my memories and people can be put to rest somewhere in my heart for later revisiting because revisiting now is much too fresh and sad. 

Writing down the incoherent thoughts passing through my mind makes things less disorienting.  I think it might be a good practice while I do my soul searching.  oh beginnings.

I am currently staying with my family friends in East Hartford, CT until tomorrow when I go down to D.C. for a week  to see Maggie. I think it will be good to decompress with someone who is going through similar degrees of separation (yes I've decided leaving Wes is like breaking up with someone).  I just came in from standing on the patio outside the house. The entire area is awash in darkness because theneighborhood until very recently used to be farmland so there is very little light pollution. The stars are visible right now and there are crickets chirping. Its really peaceful and quaint. My family friend told me yesterday that a family of woodchucks lives in an old fallen tree in their backyard and he has even seen a fox rambling about during his evening walks. It's the kind of thing I tend to associate with Connecticut: rambling foxes and woodchucks digging holes all over your backyard. All we need is a skunk or two  to complete the association (which I finally saw a week and a half ago outside of PAC on one of my own night rambles. I was sitting really quietly and both it and I were alarmed by the presence of the other. I of course, do not spew angry fumes when I am startled so I figured it was best that I move away quickly.  It was a good call. I swear in my hastey escape I saw his tail go up an inch or two).  Anyway, I breathed in the night air (skunk-free, lately, hard to come by at wes, funny I don't ever remember smelling/seeing skunks my frosh or soph years at wes) and the smell was filled with the aromas of wet grass, moist dirt, and the smell warm concrete gives off at night after a day in the heat of the sun. Pretty fabulous. Had an immediate association with freshman orientation which was and is still a blur but I remember interludes of this smell between foss cross and rolling down foss hill, between hall forays to mocon for dinner and wes student musical stylings outside of Clark. I also remember at one point freshman year in the fall pulling out my meditation cushion and blanket and sitting in the Butts courtyard meditating while the wind was blowing at night. The air felt just as full then as it feels now and it smelled just like this, only infused with the smell of pine needles.

More thoughts later. I realize that I was initially going to post lists because I've been thinking in list form for the past few days. 

- fill out apps for internships for the fall in SF and NJ
-research more about getting masters in Traditional Chinese Medicine perhaps relocating to NM
-send out Camp forms 
-figure out which dance studios in NYC will give free dance lessons in exchange for work
-think of potential ideas for camp production/ games/ dance and theater class structures
-get back into movement because nostalgia makes me lothargic
-organize random recipes accumulated from past year from our fridge (which is our fridge no longer)
-collect snail mail addresses from friends
-study for the GREs
-get more knowledgeable about taxes and rent paying and credit and insurance
-stay in perspective 

silken spidery threads weave us together,
you and I, 
the kind invisible to the eye
until sunlight and dewdrops converge
on one fine morning-day 
then magic reveals the enduring strings
stretching steadily across the ocean the cities the far-reaching mountains and islands we call home or seek to find
they stretch
to you to me
to everyone

we tug upon each other as we move about the universe
and the twitch of your finger sends a rumbling to my heart
that someone i love in this world
is active is moving is creating is traveling is mourning is sleeping 
someone i love in this world is moving,
is moving!
and we move toward and away from each other 
and we move and we move 
meanwhile the threads send light signals motion signals love signals 
like space age morse code
between the moving living breathing souls 
that govern the motion of my universe.


why then can words not heal the world we live in?
make sense of my confused and questioning heart?

writing and writing the way into a question.

today I stumbled upon a post by Intisar who articulates so well so well...
well, parting and remembering....

It is so funny to have danced all semester about lingering, about residue,  about ever-presence
and then not really understand what is remaining, what is behind, what I am leaving, what is escaping, what is fading, what has dug its heels deep in my heart, what has a found a home there.

Perhaps I am still leaving and what remains has not been birthed yet.

Walking home with Stephanie after out last performance of Katja's piece we both talked about how powerfully it had emotionally impacted us, in ways we had not thought it would.  I have never felt so connected to any material before being in this piece.  Maybe it is because she always told us to bring whatever is happening in our lives into the studio, into performance, into her work. My life in the past four months feels inextricably linked to my movement. I can mark exactly what was happening in my life at the beginning of the semester by the very first walk in the piece. We slowly break off, performing, re-experiencing the space and person she had told us to evoke, to feel.

Every time I do that small phrase, I remember that moment last semester in the theater lights dim, my heart sinking in a pool of honey, fingers fluttering in the dark, small wishes and hopes like the wings of moths beating in the heat. 

Desire charges forth into oblivion
careless, breathless, hair streaming like a mane in the wind.

I think of the disorienting draining heart -thumping -like-a-hammer-on-wood circle of energy we create on stage, our sweat sweeping the marley, our bodies are small rain clouds releasing body-tears. How every time I jump I feel like my feet have left me to my falling misery and surprise, I am moving still moving sweating I can do this alive. How my feet are raging against the stress and the anxiety and the sadness and the busy whirl of life and people I love love and the leaving and the loss and they keep moving as testament to the world, nothing! nothing! stops the movement, we will go on moving.

Moving creates a kind of faith I am so grateful for in my disorientation. You would think one would be more disoriented in motion.

but clarity,

that has been Katja's gift to me. Also, I realized that her dance and her work with us has become material by which I can remember this last semester here at Wesleyan. I wrote a couple of weeks ago to some friends about giving them gifts for the future in a few months when they need a boost of faith, to remember that there are people scattered all over the world who think the world of them, who love them dearly and to also mark this particular moment in time as it passes by in such a bewildering manner.

Can I say that living in a place you know clearly you will leave and at exactly which moment it will happen is extremely bewildering and emotionally draining. I am leaving I am leaving but I am here and here are these people whom I love, here is this person whom I love, here is this space which is home and I am leaving and leaving. I am leaving.

but I am still here.

moving, performing, presence, leaving and returning and leaving again, leaving traces as I leave.

It is not often one has the blessing of knowing when something will end. Most often endings find us in shock, unprepared and we look behind us wishing we had been more present, wishing those footprints had been deeper, more substantial, so those following could see the lines of our skin writing the ground forever, after our profiles have long disappeared into the horizon, into the skyline.

If I must leave,
If something is left behind,
can I choose what I leave,
can I choose what those traces are
in the space,
in your heart.



may I leave this for you,
can I say to you this:
forget everything, forget the trees
and the hill we rolled down our first night in this place,
forget dinners and feet wiggling,
forget dancing forget the dance,
forget our words and arms reaching,
forget exuberant demands for hugs,
forget bicycles and rides,
forget breakfast forget scones,
forget the dams bursting because
forget the trace of loss in your voice transmitted over phone
forget death
forget forget forget

but I am the molecules
that run your feet that beat your wings,
you are my hope bringer,
you give pieces of your soul
and release them into the air,
their wings beating forth,

we could shoot each other down
but yet we fly,
free,
vulnerable,
wild.



you are the community
that screams
you exist
we exist
we are alive
we are here because we love each other.
we are here because we love.

We are the moved and the moving.
spinning spinning
till our molecules separate
suspended,
as the rain pours down.

Dearest friend,
I haven't spoken to you in a while. The other day, I found tucked between the pages of my developmental psych book some mail I had picked up so long ago and  to my shock, your letter was there, unopened, greeting me.

Today my dance professor, Katja, said something in class that I want to share with you.  When you make mistakes and forget obligations, when you let the people who are important to you down, when you have let yourself down, when you feel like you've let yourself lose control even though it was going to happen anyway because we are all perfectionists, and eager, and earnest and want to do everything, remember this: forgiveness.

Remember that you are only one person, with only two hands and two feet, to wave and walk around on. That no matter how hard you try, and try you do, or when you just don't have it in you to try, but you'd sincerely like to, you will forget something, you will let something fall. It may be small, it might be the most important thing in the world and your doubting your commitment because you can't conceive of how something that important could just so easily have slipped away. But it happens. Because we get tired, and distracted and we don't get as much sleep as we'd like. Because there are a number of things we want to do: read a good book, make a pie, go for a run, explore a forest, go to a party with no inhibitions, live with no inhibitions, and every now and then they occur to us and we give them side long glances but continue on in whatever burdening cycle we are participating in.  Things happen. We forget. We offend. We say "fuck off!" to our best friends for no apparent reason but feel deeply sorry we did. Sometimes chaos distortion confusion and mistakes mistakes mistakes are so necessary, they are necessary.

Let them happen when they need to. even if you are aware that it's not what is "right".  Maybe you need to go through that process to become wiser.  Be brave enough to have courage to do something stupid and take responsibility for the consequences.  You can do as much as you're willing to be responsible for-Bill T. Jones. First and foremost, play. Play when everyone thinks you're crazy. Play in awkward moments. Play and forgive.

Some of this is me, some of this is Katja; this is me citing.

Just so you know, everything you wrote, shows that you know what you have become. Remember that what you don't like makes you who are, and supports all the things that you adore and find precious about yourself. Remember that by default all those things about yourself that disgust you are wonderful because they are apart of you. Remember that you have the agency to change, are you brave enough?
Yes you are.

Remember that people around you are more kind and accepting than you think.

Remember to put yourself out there. Always and continuously.

Remember I love you alot

and just let shit happen because once it does then you can rebuild.

love mel.

this. 

applicable to the life I lead methinks.
------
Untitled

Dear love,
I need to be free.

Dear love,
Where am I going?

Dear love,
Risks are for living.

Dear love,
I am here.

Dear love,
Another summer comes.

Dear love,
The heat, seeps brains,
makes memories, distorts my time,
makes my world damp, melted,
makes home.

Dear love,
Changes, happening everywhere,
Changes, I need to be a part of,
changes of motion,
motion of feet,
feet of mine,
running,
moving,
touching.

Dear love,
my mistakes, my own,
to call my own,
my wisdom,
mistakes create change.

Dear love,
waiting, I find solace in waiting,
I find platforms of waiting people,
dreaming and waiting.
We are waiting together for different trains.
Which will you get on
and when will you leave me?
Will I go first?
uncertainty in waiting on platforms of dreams.

Dear love,
I do not value love as much as I should.
I do not value life as much as I should.
Aged hands scare me,
losing them scares me more,
so I do nothing.
I need to do more than nothing.
I need to be,
in whatever capacity I can,
for the aged hands in my life.

Dear love,
This is my body,
my body that moves me to move,
that screams to stop, to sleep,
to break for rest,
to consume, everything, all, you.
This is my foot, my ear, my womb,
this heart lives,
and so do I.
Thank you my beating drum.
Thank you heart.

Here is her gift to everyone:


i thank You God for most this amazing
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

edit-----

written by the great e.e. cummings

given by the lovely alissa

To my art teacher:
Dear Mr. Franco,
I hope you are doing fantastic and discovering the emergence of spring, perhaps in dear old Connecticut.  I am currently deeply submerged in the creation of dance and movement and in this brief interlude of snorkeling amongst the art, I thought of you and your poetry. Recently I made a trip to San Francisco over Spring break and was reminded of a conversation we once had about your back roads cross country trip and locker room full of journals. As my college year wind down (amazing isn't how quickly the end arrived), I am seized by an intense case of the wanderlust. Perhaps being around twenty somethings for four years has made me want to see more of the rest of the world and a greater range of people and experiences.  As of yet, I don't know where I am going to be in three months, but perhaps that is a blessing after twenty-two years of always returning to school in the fall.

If you have any adventure suggestions please throw them my way. :D

In celebration of the coming of spring and rejuvenation, a poem for you.

So Much Happiness

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…..

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

Naomi Shihab Nye

so caught up in the poem forgot to wrap up the letter.

:) much joy,
Mel

Hello Melamine,