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Monthly Archives: February 2012

at the seams

February 28, 2012
applications, good things, life

To say that the past few days has been amazing in news is an understatement. All around me, I’m hearing news of my friends being accepted to programs and having their work published, and I feel lucky to be surrounded by so many wonderful people. Personally, I think Denney Hall must be exuding luck or something. Soon that building I love for some reason might become a stranger to me.

I was emailing my request for time off from work, and it’s strange seeing the next few months laid out before me. There’s still a big question mark at the end of July, and there is still quite a bit of time before I’ll know the decisions from schools and my own decision. I’m waiting to hear back from 5 schools, and I already have two waitlist notifications. One seems more hopeful than the other, but anything can happen. I wonder if the stars align and I am admitted off the wait list if I should go just because of how improbable it will be that everything would work out. I hope even though I like to tell myself I don’t have hope. I always hope.

Monday was a beautiful day, and I could almost believe that spring is coming. Riding my bike to campus, I couldn’t help but think how lucky I am to know these streets, the old Victorian homes that line this road, and how beautiful this city can be. I’m not comfortable with the thought of leaving. It’s not like leaving for undergraduate when I felt I needed to leave and wanted to escape. I’m not running from anything. I’m not running away. I don’t want to run.

I’m sleepless. Now, she cannot sleep. Did I write that poem about myself?

take and try

February 26, 2012
applications, life, Ohio, school

This initial euphoric feeling of happiness and excitement has faded pretty quickly to worrying and trying to figure out my future. I realize that my time in Columbus might be coming to an end, but nothing is set in stone. I still have to hear back officially from 5 schools. When I say officially I mean a phone call, letter, or email telling me specifically I was rejected rather than the speculation in my mind that oh if I haven’t heard back by now I’m either on the wait list or rejected. The schools where I am on the wait list, I could be taken off. It’s only the end of February, and I still have time.

For some reason, my eggs taste like Old Bay, but I only seasoned them with salt and pepper.  Is this is a sign that I should get some crab cakes?

At the same time, it doesn’t feel like I have very much time. I was thinking about how actually poor my decision was to see Florence + the Machine at the end of July when my lease will be up and I might have to move to another state, but if I were to go to Purdue, maybe I could move up the Lafayette on the 29th, see Florence + the Machine in Indianapolis, have someone take me to my car in Columbus, drive up to Cleveland, oh goodness this is very silly. Nothing is set in stone.

I have so much hope for everything, but I’m worried and scared. It feels so different from applying and deciding on my undergraduate university. I didn’t even visit Ohio State before I accepted. My decision came down to Ohio State and University of Washington because I didn’t want to stay in Maryland, and I chose Ohio State because of the scholarship and proximity to home. I didn’t want to live in an expensive city like Seattle, and I didn’t want to travel across the country to go home. My considerations for graduate school are more extensive.

How long is the program? How close is it to a major city? What is the size of the town in which it is located? What would my stipend be? Who are the poets? How large is the program?

I think living in Columbus over the past few years has made a larger city more appealing to me. I know anyplace with a college is going to have bars and coffee shops, but I would love a city with an atmosphere like Columbus, relaxed but very fun. When I think about it though, could I just be happy anywhere as long as I have a park to walk in with my dog, a coffee shop, someplace to dance (maybe if I ballroom danced again, I wouldn’t feel the urge to dance all the time), and a bar with PBR and whiskey coke, which is pretty much every bar.

Maybe I’m fearful of leaving Columbus because it is fairly difficult for me to make friends, and even though I know I can make new friends, I guess I don’t want to leave the friends I have. My professor made the point that by the time I start, a lot of my friends will be in their 3rd year. Some of my friends will be leaving very soon. Some of my friends will still be here.

But I can only see myself as a Buckeye, as silly as it sounds. I don’t want to go to another school’s football games. (If I could go to Ohio State, which isn’t in my hands anymore, then I could go to two more Michigan home games.) I don’t want to dance for another university. I feel like a silly child. I don’t have to give up my love for Ohio State when I go to another school. I don’t have to give up Columbus forever if I leave. What does this city really hold for me aside from security and familiarity? I think if I visited schools, then maybe I would feel less anxiety.

I wonder where I will be in a year.

wake up

February 24, 2012
applications, dreams, good things, life, school, things that make me happy

Proof that today is a wonderful day: Florence + the Machine tickets for Cleveland on July 30th and an email acceptance to Purdue.

To say that I am happy and ecstatic is the understatement of the century. I had just taken my first bite of my lunch when I saw my acceptance email, and I half-screamed with excitement and half-choked on my food, picked up my dog and gave her a big hug, and ran around the couch three times. I thought about running outside on my back porch and screaming, “I’M GOING TO GRAD SCHOOL!” to the wind as it knocked over trash cans in the alley.

I am so excited for my future. The other day, I saw my professor, and he said that it’s still early in the notification season. Really, I am so relieved to have my first acceptance even though I don’t really know what will happen over the next few months, but I feel optimistic.

My summer is shaping up to be an exciting one–Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, Florence + the Machine, graduate school somewhere.

kept you

February 22, 2012
friendship, good things, poetry

The stress from waiting to hear back from schools is terrible, but I have been surprisingly productive this past week. I wrote two poems in two days but I will admit that I had a very good start on them, and last night, I made some progress on a new poem. I had scribbled something down in my new notebook at some point, and flipping through the pages, I didn’t even remember writing it down. In the top right corner I wrote “whoa emo. Was I drunk?”

I do love the slow opening of my mind and letting go.

Today was a nice day. I had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of months. Even though we haven’t seen each other in a while, it felt as though we hadn’t been apart really for that long. If I move away from Columbus, I would miss her so much. There are so many people I would miss. I don’t even know where to begin.

I have been aching to dance so much that I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. Did I use to crave dancing so much? I think when I was ballroom dancing I had practice and lessons that took some of that energy out of me. I don’t know where it comes from, but at work, I’ve started dancing a lot. Last night, when the restaurant was empty, I turned up the music and danced. Where does this energy come from?

unfurling

This winter has been so mild. I’m not complaining because the biting cold isn’t really that nice, but I haven’t gone sledding in the park because there hasn’t been enough snow. February is almost over, and I still haven’t gone ice skating. I think when I come back from Chicago, I’ll go ice skating. It’s hard to remember it’s still winter, and I’ve started thinking about spring. I love spring in Columbus.

the same

February 19, 2012
food, friendship, good things, life, memories

I’m so very fortunate to have such good friends even though I’m not terribly social. Today, I went to one of my favorite restaurants by myself, which I normally don’t do because I feel bad holding up a table in this tiny restaurant for little me. I was craving this one dish they have that they don’t have during the week, so I went alone for brunch. At least this time, they didn’t announce that it was a table for one, and the table was adjacent to two other Asian girls so maybe it sort of looked like we were eating together.

Brunch is an incredibly social meal from what I can tell. Brunch for me is always a luxury since I used to work weekend mornings all the time serving other people brunch.

Last night after work, my friend asked me if I wanted to get a drink. After leaving the bar, which I never go to on a Saturday because it is loud and crowded, I had a slice of pizza and wrote lines from other people on the chalkboard. I’m sure I screwed up the line breaks. The chalk was thick.

In the past few years, everything in my life has changed, but it feels like nothing has changed at the same time. Life and the memory of it. I’ve been here before standing in this same spot slicing lemons with the same knife. On that day, it was early afternoon, but now the lights have dimmed and it’s nighttime. Maybe I’m wearing the same shirt, the same pants, but my shoes are new. It’s been over a year, but everything is the same. I left that day and cut my hair.

I like to believe I’m strong enough just to power through everything, and if I get through this day, this week, this month, the distance of time will make everything feel better. I know it’s not that easy. I know that time doesn’t fix anything, but it’s easy to convince yourself it will.

third

February 17, 2012
good things, life, memories

On a Friday night, I’m sitting alone in my chair reading, and it feels like those days a year and a half ago when I would stay up late writing poems before a noon deadline on Saturday, when being alone was the only way I could be. I’m not afraid of solitude because there has always been that silence and solitude. I learned how to go out to eat on my own in high school. As a child, I learned how to sit next to someone but be in a different place. All those hours of silence.

Maybe it’s just because of this weird place I have been this past week–the memories, the thoughts, the feelings–but reading these stories and essays have been tearing me apart. Maybe I feel too much. One of my friends said she admired my capacity to care about others and how much I feel, how much I throw myself into things. I don’t know if any of those things are admirable. Experiencing those feelings means feeling too acutely the loss, the loneliness, the emptiness. Without emotions, what am I?

It probably would have been smart to read a craft book or something emotionless. I should have been reading all those nearly finished books or all those books I intend to read.

I should probably be writing in my journal or something, someplace private. I suppose these words are meaningless enough. It’s not like my life is that complicated and really I’m sure it’s not that difficult. How easy is it to piece together the threads of my life when I never tell anyone about them?

There are so many beautiful memories that I hold onto but are they enough? It’s hard to remember sometimes when the other memories are so persistent.

Standing in the water holding my no longer new blue dress. Someone would say that no longer new is completely unnecessary because of course it’s no longer new if it’s not new, but to me, no longer new is the most important detail.

The air conditioner flickering on and off through the night.

Walking back to the train station with the lights of the wind turbines flashing in the distance. The cow bells ringing in the stone pen.

We danced, perhaps too close. You pressed your forehead against mine.

Fleeting memories. Will I remember?

keeps me

February 17, 2012
life, poetry

February vanishes around me, and I hardly notice. The days are more or less the same filled with anxiety about schools and this strange emptiness that’s not quite emptiness. It’s an emptiness but also heartbreak. How can an empty heart be broken?

This poem I have been working on has felt like I’m cracking apart my heart like an egg. Always eggs. What is with eggs and heartbreak? I’m probably too close to this poem. How can I write about the things that matter now? I want to write another poem, but it’s too vivid for me, too close. Is this a situation where I am supposed to write through it?

I bought a new journal. It’s so strange having a new poetry notebook and a new journal. I feel like I’m just starting this writing thing.

I can’t stop thinking about “Couple From Hell” by Craig Arnold. The poem drives me crazy, and I keep turning over the words and lines. I can’t stand it. I want to photocopy hundreds of copies and carry them with me everywhere.

But the heart loves the sound of its own breaking
It circles itself in a knot of ice and glass and steel
a kaleidoscope that she never tires of turning over
What can hurt her deeply enough to heal

I love these words so much I can’t stand it. I love this poem so much that I could read it a hundred times.

I have so much to be thankful for–waking up with dog snuggles, walks in the park even in February, roses my mother sent me for Valentine’s Day still in bloom, friends who are so supportive of me and my work.

Has anything really changed? Probably not. It’s a resurfacing.

history etched out

February 14, 2012
journals, life, memories

It seems that I can never escape my memories, and even though the memories that repeated over every waking moment for 6 months have faded, now they have returned mixed and overlaid with new ones. How do I gouge out the mind’s eye?

I have nothing to say. It’s so strange how quickly everything turns.

Last week, all I could think about is this quote from Tess of the D’urbervilles.

Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she was now, possibly never would be so happy again. She was, for one thing, physically and mentally suited among these new surroundings. The sapling which had rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soil.

I can justify my thoughts in thinking that I wonder if I will ever be so happy again because in moments of sadness all you can think about is how all encompassing and permanent the sadness feels even though less than a week ago, I was laughing with my friends and dancing. Maybe in a few days everything will feel more distant, but right now, everything feels so immediate.

In all honesty, people perceive me as beautiful, which is fine I guess but I don’t really care for it. I must have some sort of strange association with my physical appearance and my emotional state even though it’s really illogical. Everything is illogical. I look at a picture of a younger me, and I think that I look so much more beautiful then even though I was probably in some sort of state of minor emotional turmoil (work, classes) and really is there that much difference in how I look over the past few years?

I look at the picture, the one I think I really truly look beautiful. I probably look about the same as I do now, maybe, but to me I look beautiful because that me, Distant Past Sara, doesn’t carry the emotional burden that current me has. I look at a picture of me from last week and that me looks happy and beautiful but that Recent Past Sara doesn’t carry the emotional burden that I have now. She doesn’t see the images, the new ones, the ones I thought I buried. Recent Past Sara is happy and hopeful. Present Sara doesn’t want to think or feel anything.

Things just happen. You can’t control what other people do or say. You can’t even control your reactions. What in this world is really mine?

I have one page left in my journal, and I saved it because I didn’t want the entry I wrote last night to be the last. These were the last words in my last journal:

This notebooks is filled with the new direction my life hast taken this past year–poetry, independence, and so much hope. I can only hope this all gets better because I feel like I’m trying to begin a new journey or a new step. I’ll end this here…my heart is pounding. I am so hopeful.

How do you gouge out the mind’s eye? You can’t. can’t. I can’t do anything about anything. Can I ask for things to be better? Is that too much? Maybe. I’ve stopped wanting. I’ve stopped expecting things. It doesn’t matter. I know I do not want the memories I’ve carried with me. I thought I was done with that. I thought I had escaped those images, but they return so easily, so quickly.

Maybe I should just leave that last page blank and place this notebook on the shelf. I can only hope that things will get better. Maybe I can go back to worrying and hoping about geting into graduate school. Maybe I can worry about the poems I have been trying to write. Maybe I am deluding myself. Nothing is the same.

fractured

February 11, 2012
journals, life, love, memories

I haven’t been writing very much here lately, but the pages of my journal are filling up. If I were to title this journal, it would be “Hope and Disappointment” or “Boys are Stupid.” I don’t know. It seems strange after the exhaustive personal journal reading that I did a few months ago. This time period hasn’t been that bad, but it’s all been endlessly disappointing. Once, when I was young and went through a series of disappointments, I thought I would name that journal “Falling in love, giving it everything with a wish that this is the last heartbreak,” which is from Sakura Drops by Utada Hikaru. I haven’t listened to that song in a long time.

Maybe love is only for the young and idealistic, and now that I am older and more heartbroken, maybe it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be in love again. I feel that each day I’m building my heart out of glass like a champagne waterfall, but instead of a bottle of champagne, I’m placing a bat in someone’s hands.

As I barrel towards the end of my journal, I find myself stalling. I’m terrified of finishing this journal, and as always, I wonder what will change next. I’m terrified because the last time I finished such a tumultuous journal about relationships, I fell in love. It seems silly because there is no correlation except for the contents of my life leading up to this moment and there’s always some sort of change in my life as I finish a journal, but I am terrified. Am I afraid of falling in love? No. Falling in love is the best. How do I describe my fear without saying everything? I’m terrible with words. I fear the aftermath. Please refer to the charts here.

The past few weeks, I have been thinking about how on April 22, it will be two years. Two years. How have I come this far? Earth Day. For some reason, thinking about it, I feel terribly alone. As the weeks pass and the day moves closer and closer, how can I confront this on my own? Maybe I need to because I can’t depend on someone to be there to hold me every year for the rest of my life. I am alone. I’m sure if I called someone, they would be there in a moment, but there’s this story that I don’t want to tell. I would have to tell people the story. I mean I’ve told it. In fact, I stood on a Facebook soapbox and screamed it, but I can’t tell people.

I was talking to someone about safety around Columbus. I’ve never had been mugged, but you always hear stories of people or someone someone knows. When I was in Madrid years ago, a man tried to mug me, but that was a long time ago. Now, after nearly two years, there is nothing that anyone can do to me. I don’t say that as in I am so strong nothing can hurt me. I say it in the fact that there is nothing anyone can do to me that will hurt me more than I have already been hurt.

I’m afraid of having my heart broken, but it doesn’t matter because I’ve made it through heartbreak. I’ve had my share of unrequited love and my share of longing. I’m afraid, illogically, that this is a cycle. When I finish my journal, I’ll start a new one, and I will fall in love. When that love begins to fade as I finish a journal filled with happy memories and how much love I am capable of, I’ll start the next journal and something terrible will happen. This is completely illogical. I probably won’t even fall in love.

all of the landscape

February 5, 2012
books, food, friendship, good things, life, memories, poetry, things that make me happy, travel

So many thoughts have been racing through my brain, and while I was in Chicago, I was constantly writing in my journal, which is good I suppose. I definitely needed to sort through a lot of my thoughts. One of the poems that I have been working on but only had a faint outline is shaping up quite well. I guess I just needed my life to inject substance into it.

Chicago was wonderful in that I had breakfast everyday (who needs lunch?) and seafood for dinner all the time. On my last night, we went to Fish Bar, which was outstanding. Not only was the food amazing, the space super cool, and the service great but we had make your own smores for dessert. Life doesn’t ever get better than smores. So many wonderful memories of smore eating. That was a long time ago.

After breakfast, I roamed around the city going to bookstores looking for a few books, reading on the bus, and writing in coffee shops. The last couple of times I was in Chicago, I forgot to go to the Poetry Foundation, but this time, I was determined to go. I spent a few hours there reading since they have such a wonderful selection of poetry, which was to be expected. I read a lot of books on my to read list, which made me feel somewhat accomplished, and the space in the library was very nice. Of course there are still a lot of books I want to read, but it felt great to get so much reading done. I also went to the Chicago Public Library to photocopy a poem I have been wanting. I love libraries so much, and I love being among all those shelves of books. The worst feeling though is wanting to read every single book you can get your hands on because that’s never going to happen. Oh well. I just need to read more.

While I thoroughly enjoyed being in Chicago, I felt so lazy just eating, drinking, reading, and writing all day. I guess it’s an ideal way to spend my time, but I need to do something to keep me occupied just so I feel like I’m accomplishing something. I guess the self-reward of being like “Oh look at all this stuff I did and all the books I read” isn’t quite enough, and I need someone else to be like “Good job!” Maybe it’s because I enjoyed it so much, and I feel a little guilty for that.

It’s good to be back in Columbus, and certainly, I’m very happy to be home even though I’m not sure how much longer this will be home.

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