we

I couldn't have loved you then
Even if I had
I wouldn't've really known
Well here it is, plain and plumb:
I was not then
Who I am now, or
Who I might become

Then I was someone
Who had someone
But I was just one with one,
Not whole with whole
Nor all with all

I knew not me,
Just the false
I knew not I,
Just the fake
Oh but that was not the true
(Then, I didn't have this fact
I had an inkling though)

If I had known me the new
I could have been someone separate with
And synced without you
Look at us complete someones
Content not or with the other
Humph, oxygen.
Yes this
Would've been a wonder

But because
You were the you that you were and still are
And I was a me unlike myself, then
I had to dismiss self
From possession current
To find self
In an embroidered my,
Swaddled amidst enlightened garment

you can leave whenever

I want to write. I don't much know what I want to write about, but I'd like to take a stab at it. There's so much in my head that seems write-worthy, but I can't just pick one from the grab bag of choices, is the thing, the conundrum. Why am I a complete cluts at making choices? Ask me if I want fluff or grape jelly and you have me in the pickle of a lifetime. I could see myself as a pickle, come to think of it. Pickles are slippery silly and not similar to anything. What's like a pickle? Not a simile comes to mind.

Anyway, I want to write, but what about is the question. I'm seeing Whoopie Goldberg in my mind, talking to Lauryn Hill and she says "If you wake up every day and all you can think about is singin, then you're a singer!" But the funny thing is, in the movie she's talking about a book and in the book the author's talking about someone else, and in that someone else is this crippling desire to write. Point is, I should read that book.

I should do a lot of things. Like call my grandma. I haven't talked to her in a while. She's a kind woman. But sometimes kind women are the most difficult to converse with. Because it seems they ride on nothing more than puffs of air and speak fragile sentences into the phone that require delicate pauses in-between so they don't just drop to the floor and shatter into bits of consonant and vowel and untidy syntax. Your ear has to turn into a word-pillow of sorts; and this, I suppose, accounts for the awkward silences. I imagine her, right now, sitting on her porch in the cold breeze and bright sun, sewing me something and wondering how I am.

I'm quite well, thank you.

I used to sew. One Christmas, I sewed a pillow for every one of my cousins. Do you know how many cousins I have? I don't either. Anyway, I sewed those pillows and presented them in glorious, regal fashion, holding each one on my forearms like a platter of jewels for a righteous king. But they were just pillows. And I blushed later when I saw they had flattened like rolled-out apple pie dough. I probably should've just made them apple pies instead; I used to do that, too.

Gettysburg is into apple pies. We're the apple capital of the world! Did you know that? Actually, I made that up. But I feel like I saw a sign somewhere, swear to Mr. Snoke! Apples and dead people--what an odd set of interests. Yeah, I'm into apples, I guess. Maybe dead people, too. If you count E.E. Cummings and Ben Franklin, and I don't know why you wouldn't. What can I say, this hammy town must've gotten to me after fifteen years or so. I'm not a native, though. Nope, I used to live in Georgia. Warner Robins, they called it. I feel like Pooh Bear should live there. Used to have an accent, too. Said things like "ya'all" and "yes ma'am" and "Kathleen, you ain't right fer hittin me on the belly with that baseball bat!" because she had. I don't know why I brought that up; I guess I'm still bitter.

Now I live in the city. Well, I go to school in the city. So it's like I have this bubble around me where I don't have to deal with guns or food stamps or the nauseating education system but I can walk down the street and admire tall buildings sticking out of the ground like sprained pinkies and I can say, "Hey, I live in the city," and then people can ooh and ahh and think me courageous for being a small-town girl braving the world a whole two-and-a-half hours away from home.

It's pretty cool, actually.

The other day I saw an Amish family walking down Market Street. And then I saw the most beaten-down, red neck rusty pick-up truck I'd ever laid my fat brown eyes on. This is impressive because I've seen lots of pick-up trucks in my time. I rode in one before. A boy took me to do donuts in the high school parking lot once. And then we skipped school and ate lunch in the parking lot of the Dollar Tree. Then we left. A lot of parking lots, a lot of pick-up truck that day.

Here's the thing that's so lovely about the city, though: unnatural does not mean unnormal. Of where else is this true? Twice now, I've been getting tea at the coffee place up the street and someone has struck up an hour-long conversation with me. Like I'm the conversation matchbox or something. The first time this happened was with a small chatty black man who worked at Barnes & Noble. His name was Henry. I didn't find this out until he had asked to sit next to me outside at the marble table and we had already discussed God and politics and Broadway and the fact that it is simply inevitable for bubble gum to get stuck on your shoe when you're already having a stub-toed kind of a day. He laughed buckets of belly laughs at most things I said. I would sip my English Breakfast and wait a minute til the buckets emptied. I don't know if he was happily high or just really nice, but either way, I liked him.

There's really something about tea in October that makes my heart sashay and my being sigh. Even bad tea is more comforting to me than most things, especially if it's in a hefty mug and just warm enough to fog over my thoughts. It's like holding a newborn baby. They're similar, actually--both warm, little nuggets of perfection. Maybe I shouldn't take on motherhood if I'm thinking cups of tea are just as good as newborns. Still, I've always said, if love were tangible, it would look like my favorite tea mug. Even though my favorite tea mug is pretty ugly. It's clunky brown and definitely not something you'd take to a tea party and show off to all your french-braided friends. Maybe that's why I like it.

I used to take that mug to work every day, yessiree I did. Every day. I used to drive there listening to really calm, zenny-ish music like the Weepies or something and get to work and still be humming to myself, like I was happy to be there. I wasn't though. Not just because it was work but because people with cancer make me sad. I remember walking an elderly woman out to her car one day. She was literally bent in half from fatigue, like a mis-hammered nail. Damn chemotherapy. I don't know why they call it therapy; I sure wouldn't ask for it at the spa. But this woman, she slipped her little hand into mine, and I held her elbow while we walked about the pace of patience. From the looks of it, flamingo pink crocks were all that remained of what had once been whole-hearted, head-to-toe hope. I remember wishing I could drive her home and tuck her in and make her herbal tea in bed, tell her everything would be ok. I remember wishing I could tell her I loved her. Maybe that would be weird, knowing her for only five minutes or so. But I wished I could because it was true. I wonder if she'd've liked that. I wonder if she remembers.

restless hope

Sometimes I can't sleep.
I'm too excited.
I'm too excited about life and living and loving,
Learning life, really
My heart performs a small jig,
Thoughts begin their foot-tappings on my spirit

There's a fire in my belly--
This fire, the true sun,
The real sustenance of life since time first breathed:
Hope.
The flames flutter and leap
Tumble up my insides and spill out in to, atop, over and above, my outsides.
The tiptoes of my mind
Are ready to move in on tomorrow
And the next day
The next year
The next sixty years
Of structured unstructure
(It's planned out
But not pinned down and penned in on a timeline,
Written in perfect no-fun font)

Tomorrow I'm moving on.
Tomorrow, the fire in my belly becomes an engine that propels me
Towards something different and new
Maybe not something easy or care-free
But an experience,
A downright colossal mess and bumble of people and places
Rain bare feet language motion music life

Tomorrow might be a blundering stumbling drunken old man
Or a clear-eyed fiercely-poised lawyer
Who walks impeccably in heels
I don't know

But tomorrow night
When I lie down to dream once more
I will have changed.
I will have evolved in some way,
However slightly or drastically,
But I will be different.
I will have hoped and breathed
Been let down?
Perhaps.
But lived?!
Certainly.

and so, I presume

Unlike most rascals my age, I didn't much hang around with friends or sit by the pool or flirt with prospective boyfriends this summer. No, not much of that went on. I was with me most of the time. Plain old me, with my frizzy hair and my fat fingers and my frazzled brain cells buzzing around like go-carts. Of course there was the usual tea with Judy after work-- does this count as socializing? Anyway, when your mom is the one you pal around with most during the summer, it has the power to change a person. You start thinking profound things and asking questions that aren't normal to your nature; you start being introspective to a fierce degree, is what I mean.

The question, or idea, that took a seat in my mind this summer, twiddled its thumbs, enjoyed a tall glass of lemonade, and just about overstayed its welcome, was that of love. Love, love, love, love (I'm almost queasy!). Well of course love is a pretty crazy thing; we all know that. It's a constant source of conversation, and no doubt, whether in whisper or proclamation, the word's bound to slip out of your mouth at least once in a day. But what I wanted to figure out was, to me, to you, what exactly is it?

At first thought, I see love as a flamboyant show, a gaudy expression of head-over-heels passion, or compassion. You know, something like a weekend getaway in Maui, the launching of an orphanage, the donating of bone marrow to your uncle. But when you really get down to it, I mean break it down into buttercup-sized blossoms of thought, the most basic form of all of these things is selflessness. Any act of love--big, small, or medium-sized--seems to me, has to begin with some sort of selfless behavior. As I thought, I began to realize that, as far as passion goes, love could range anywhere from Pitbull to Golden Retriever on the spectrum. What I'm saying is, an act doesn't necessarily have to be a boisterous show of love in order to remain... well, loving, I guess is the right word. So, I figured, seeing that my goal was to find my own definition of love and put it into practice, it was time to start somewhere.

Before work one night, I toss up a small request to the Heavens: I'd like to help someone out tonight. It's a tornado of an evening; we're on a wait. "Shannon clear those plates; Shannon stock the ice, run the food; Shannon smile smile at the patrons!" Restaurant work is not for the faint of heart. I've always known it to be true.

At the end of the night, I finish up my closing tasks, no doubt I'm about to be dismissed, and meander out to the host station. There stands my forlorn co-worker, a cast on her wrist. She explains that she has tendinitis. "It's starting to hurt real bad," says she, a pinch between her brows. I stand there a moment. I think about my throbbing bunions, my stiff back, my own wretched, aching wrists (Oh, blast the rolling of silverware!). I think about being home, my pajamas, my bed, a cup of tea. Could this be it? Is this my selfless act? So lame, so nothing, yet to me, so something! I muster hard the will: "Listen, I'll stay. You can leave." How I flinch inside to say it! But I have come to believe that if we feign sincerity in a way that we hope to one day act genuinely, we can train ourselves to become real in our kindness. "Are you sure? Cool." She shrugs and scurries over to the clock-out station, leaving me there at the front to wallow in my noble generosity. I am proud of myself, though and try to maintain a good attitude. After all, this had been my one and only desire earlier in the night.

It isn't for another ninety minutes that I get the OK to bolt. Finally, I am free to go. I walk through the doors into the real world without so much as a thank you or expression of sympathy from anyone; not a soul offers a pat on the back for my effort. As I walk outside, the summer flies prance around me, caring more that I smell like french fries and all-American burgers than anything else. The universe proves indifferent to my amicable gesture. I suppose it has every right to, as I so often overlook even the most majestic acts of the universe.

I open the door and heave myself into the seat of my car. I have dwindled to this: a worthless blob atop two slip-resistant shoes. I give myself a slight nod of self-approval. "So there," sigh I. I start my car in solitude and drive home with only my thoughts riding shotgun.

And so, I presume, I have loved.

hello again, friend

Today, I realized that I haven't written for over a year. I came across a notebook of mine with little snippets of thoughts from my thinkings, thoughts that I never did anything with. They were supposed to evolve into quirky poems or deep, evoking pros, but there they sat, in my tiny floral notepad, the ink set soundly on paper. And I wondered why I let this happen, why I let writing, a love that is deeply set inside me, in the core of my core and the gut of my gut, wane almost into nothing. Writing is perhaps the only gift that I have ever felt really defines me. And for the past year, I've let this definition slip away into nothing more than a thank you note or a half-finished poem.

So now, Self and World, I make a vow on this measly, amature blog posting, to rekindle my relationship with writing, to be a pal to the pen once more. The desire for perfection has put an ugly cage around my heart and the fear of failure has tied my hands for too long. I realize now, that the pen does not have to be perfect in order to be lovely, nor uncriticized in order to be perfect.