on the eternal nature of souls

B. 19. His mind bears the memory of many years before.
X. 32. His inner child openly protests the calendar.
G. 23. Seems to be accurate.

And I? For as long as I can remember, my mom’s best friend has joked that I am turning “27" on my next birthday. The closer I get, the more I am inclined to believe that she has always been right.

My mind has always disagreed with the number of years assigned to it by earthly calendars. I have found that this can be a good thing in many ways. But in other ways it just hurts. And I wonder if I wouldn’t give it up if I could? I have heard of the puer senex literary figure, but I have not read enough to know him well. I wonder if he suffers for his wisdom? I’m guessing that he does.

between 11 and 13

a dozen eggs,
a dozen donuts,
a dozen zodiac signs,
a dozen Alhambra leones,
a dozen Israeli tribes

it doesn't seem to bother
me that those things come in twelves

a ragman, or, agar man

While avoiding the daunting task of plowing through the 200+ (I'm really not sure how many) pages of Galdós that I am supposed to read tonight (i.e., last week), I have stumbled across (aka Naiad told me the address) this super-duper-time-eating anagram generator. Wow, those verbs I selected in that last sentence made for some intriguing images. And I think I used enough parentheses for the week (not that I'm going to abstain from them for the rest of the week). Anyway, skylark generated approximately (=exactly) 3 anagrams, one of which was, um, skylark. So I opted for my blog title, which still is somewhat limiting, but nevertheless produced some memorable results. I include the following for your reading enjoyment. My commentary comes as an added bonus, at no extra charge to you, the reader.


anagramming soar eyes...

a rose yes = sure, I'll accept fresh flowers
erase soy, I'm no lactose intolerant
rye oases = authentic Jewish delis... mmm
are yes so = playground retort
ore essay = thoughts on the problematic mining industry
see or say: the difference between the silent observer and the more aggressive vocalist
easy eros: simply descriptive or a cautionary plea?

mist

need to write but where to begin?
reeling mind in chaotic din
thoughts and words are lost in a mist
all that comes is my to-do list

and then the clouds stepped back

and the sun showed its face again. At least I hope that's its face. If it is its back then that's just inconsiderate.

Problem caused by my stupidity solved! Thanks, Dad.

I loved seeing so much green on campus today. It is my color, after all. So many lovely shades of green. Like the after-dinner-mint tint my teacher was wearing. Or the bright summer-lawn green sweater Tolkien Boy was wearing. Very classy.

Blackberry juice on my shirt. Not so classy.

Slightly less stressed out. For now. Except I have to go edit my paper. Dang it, false alarm.

Enjoy the (albeit muted) sunshine!

disconnected

(which describes both this post and my current state of mind)

I have done something very stupid. Okay, not just one thing. But one currently stands out among them. Not sure yet if it can be fixed.

I do not want to do school right now. Terrible timing.

Some rich guy in Newport Beach bought a "Picasso" drawing from costco.com for $40 grand. Pablo's daughter says it's a fake.

I want to go to Argentina. Right about... now. Care to join me?

Boys are dumb. Throw rocks at them.

Word on the street is that there is fair trade chocolate at the bookstore. I think I'll go buy some on tomorrow.

My best friend is physically and somewhat mentally incapacitated by large doses of industrial-strength antibiotics.

At least "I have my books and my poetry to protect me"

En el alma llevaba un pensamiento,
una duda, un pesar,
tan grandes como el ancho firmamento
tan hondos como el mar.

De su alma en lo más árido y profundo,
fresca brotó de súbito una rosa,
como brota una fuente en el desierto,
o un lirio entre las grietas de una roca.

~Rosalía de Castro

Ojalá tengas razón, doña Rosalía. Discúlpame mientras o golpeo la pared con la cabeza o salgo a gritar al mundo. Quizá los dos.

k'ax

and then I saw the first daffodil of the year

annoyed

today i am feeling rather annoyed

annoyed at mysef for falling so far behind in my schoolwork
annoyed with my school for withholding spring break
annoyed with my teachers for seeing me as someone better than who i am
annoyed with my neighbors for blasting the bass as the play their horrible repetitive american music
annoyed with other people for making me feel invisible
annoyed with the stupid doctor who told my roommate she wasn't sick when really she has had whooping cough for the last three weeks
annoyed with the sky for dumping snow on me as i walked to school only to clear to a brilliant sunny blue sky as soon as i got inside the classroom
annoyed with myself for being so prone to jealousy
annoyed with the world for being so full of war and pain and hate
annoyed with my president for propagating those things
annoyed with yale for allowing him to graduate without being able to say nuclear
annoyed with my country for electing him
annoyed with myself for falling for the tricks my mind plays on me
annoyed with technology for convincing me that i cannot live without the internet at my fingertips
annoyed with my sister because she is on vacation in argentina right now
annoyed with chance meetings whose effect i can't quite sort out yet but i'm guessing it's going to annoy me
annoyed with capital letters for no particular reason
annoyed with my roommates for letting their produce rot and for never taking the trash out both of which make my kitchen stink
annoyed with utah for making recycling so difficult and therefore making me drown in empty cans and bottles and cardboard boxes until i find a place to deposit them
annoyed with myself for being so annoyed
annoyed with you for reading this. don't you have better things to do?

viaje en paracaídas

I'm not sure how I wanted this to unravel
nor how I expected the loose ends to settle

but I don't think this is either

(just ride the current, soar on the jet-stream, skylark.
I suppose that's the answer)

but the higher the flight, the more vulnerable the flyer,
the faster the fall, the harder the landing.
the views are more spectacular, yes, but also more difficult to decipher and to retain.

grounded temporarily for repairs (I guess)
tomorrow I'll be back in the air (I hope)

addicted to m&m's

(one result of shopping at costco while hungry: bringing home a 3-pound bag of bite-sized candy-coated m-printed delectable circular chocolate disks)

red reminding me of a bright new tumbling mat symbol of my childhood

yellow I can almost smell fresh as grated lemon peel to garnish a summery dessert

green the same as nothing I know in nature but there must be something I just have not seen it yet

orange a cross between the color of the windsock at the hospital where I was born and the happy drinking glasses party favors from my sister's wedding

and blue
blue like the sky of course
or like B's eyes on a day like today smiling and giddy for no particular reason

but let us not forget dark chocolate brown lending its color to flavor the entire mix which might otherwise taste different...?

daily dose

Poetry should be a part of every day.

Now that I think about it, every day is poetry. Every day is its own poem in the anthology called a lifetime. Or rather, every day is a single syllable, and we string them together in careful heptameter because that is what the first and great poet did, when he created the marvelous first verse of creation. I do not know how long my poem will be; instead, I go on painstakingly composing it--day by day, syllable by syllable--and some days it seems to write itself. Call it inspiration, call it revelation, call it chance, call it fate. Say it comes from the Muse, from God, from invisible electrical impulses, from a far-away intangible force somewhere in the cosmos. Whatever it is, it is more felt than seen, although it can indeed sometimes be seen, or heard, or even smelt. And it is everlasting and inexhaustible, if only we can figure out how to tap it and to convert it into a form that is more readily comprehensible by human intelligence. That is, I believe, where the poets come in. And that is why our dear friend Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer said that "siempre habrá poesía" (there will always be poetry).

And so we ought to read a bit of poetry every day. Aloud whenever possible. If we are aspiring poets ourselves, we do it to learn from the masters. If we shy away from our own poetic possibilities, we do it to learn from the masters. They have so much to teach us, if only we will take the time to listen.

skylark trying to be poetic again?

two observations of Friday:

chicory flowers picked up by the delicate breeze soar high above my head and slowly descend into a field of forget-me-nots teased by mounds of daisy petals cascading down the stairs

chilly ocean breezes disquieting dry leaves in a land-locked valley
sounds of autumn on an almost-spring afternoon invaded by a wintry sky


and one from today:

distant clouds ignited by the setting sun
ephemeral flame of grapefruit and lavender

"Hoy la tierra y los cielos me sonríen..."

In this morning's post (I'd link to it but it's right there below this one; you can scroll down a bit if you really want to check it) I wrote that one place I would rather be was "in a magical place where I don’t have a Latin exam in five hours". Well, it turns out I was in that place! After unintentionally falling asleep and not waking up until five hours and twenty minutes after that post, I rushed up to campus, kicking myself the whole way* for a) falling asleep b) sleeping late c) not having studied enough. I arrived just before the bell rang and I waited until the class let out to approach my teacher, still not knowing how I was going to convince her to let me make up the exam. "The exam?" she says. "It's tomorrow." Tomorrow!?! Hmm, I guess that happened when I slept through class yesterday... Anyway, instantly the color of my day went from somewhere around charcoal gray to something much brighter, golden and shining like the sunglobe this morning. Went home, showered, put on a cute outfit to celebrate the beautiful weather and my amazing luck, turned on my computator and got an email inviting me to a luncheon for scholarship recipients(!) Let me back up. About a month ago I applied for this scholarship, and, not having heard anything by the date by which they said recipients would be notified, I had resigned myself to the fact that I didn't get it. It is a fairly competitive scholarship, after all. So you can imagine my surprise, and dare I say elation? (yes, I dared) upon receiving this message. Cue color shift. By now I was feeling just like the color of the sky today: blue yes, but a happy blue, not a sad one by any means. Brilliant azure tinted with emerald green, deep and rich and just glowing with sunlight and joy and God and hope. I saw that color in B's eyes today, too.

*This is a figure of speech, of course, though if I really did kick myself all the way to school I imagine it would have been quite an amusing (or perhaps disturbing, or both) sight to anyone who witnessed it (from a safe distance, to be sure).

for...

Considering myself tagged by classifying myself under 2. Anyone else who wants to do it... here goes:

Four Jobs I've Had
chemistry TA
taste-testing lab assistant
Spanish teacher for a day
commercial jet pilot–wait, that wasn’t me

Four Movies I can watch over and over
Office Space
Chocolat
Alice in Wonderland
home videos of me and my sisters as little kids. walk-walk!

Four Places I've Lived
Merryland
Utah
Spain
Mexico (okay, not yet... ask me again in a few months)

Four TV Shows I Love
Arrested Development
Seinfeld
Iron Chef
Lizzie McGuire

Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I've never watched a single minute of
Lost
The Office
The Sopranos
and that other one

Four Places I've Vacationed
Yellowstone
San Francisco
Ohia
OBX

Four of my favorite dishes
hot chocolate anywhere in Spain
pork salad from Café Río/Costa Azul/Costa Vida
thai-tanic chicken at Thep Phanom, SF (cheesy name, I know, but OH so good)
a warm, nutella-filled crepe on a chilly, rainy day on the street in St. Jean de Luz

Four sites I visit daily
bedroom
bathroom
living room
kitchen

Four Places I'd Rather Be Right Now
the Reina Sofía museum
Zion canyon
DC
in a magical place where I don’t have a Latin exam in five hours

Four* Bloggers I am tagging
Naiad
Saule Cogneur
you

*I say Four only to conform to the template; really I mean Three.

spring cleaning

Okay, so it’s not quite spring. Only a few warmer, sunnier days and a bit of wishful thinking.

Today I slept through my morning classes. Well, I woke up when my first class was half-over, and then I proceeded to make a conscious decision not to get up and rush to my next class either unshowered or unmakeupped, since both were not going to happen within twenty minutes, and I am 150 pages behind in the book we are discussing anyway, so I would have nothing to contribute to the conversation, and my professor is out of town. I had grand plans of reading all morning and afternoon* (since I do not have class again until 6 pm), thus catching up on my schoolwork (for that class, anyway) and having an enjoyable, relaxing day as well (since I really do like the book).

Plans, schmans.

Got up and puttered around (it’s one of my talents) until Naiad swam home, then continued to do non-homework-related activities while she skipped her next class to study for another (she actually succeeded in this point). So I’m sitting in my favorite spot (it has a fabulous view of the sky), wishing the breeze coming in through the open window were as warm as the sunshine and chattering birds seem to say, and I notice (again thanks to the sunlight) that my computer screen is very dusty. So I set about making it undusty. Hmm, keyboard could use some work, too. Well, one thing leads to another, and before I know what’s going on I find myself inside my bathtub, scrubbing the shower from top to bottom, front to back, left to right, et cetera. I will not say how long it has been since this last happened, because my mom might be reading and I don’t want to cause her any unnecessary stress**. Anyway, it’s been a while, so I’m cleaning for a while. And I get to thinking (there she goes again, doesn’t she know it gets her into trouble?) As I was saying, I was thinking not only about how nice it was that my bathroom was looking inhabitable once again (not that anyone would inhabit my bathroom–gross) but that cleaning can be satisfying in a metonymic sort of way as well.

See, like now my bathroom is clean. It’s not perfectly spotless, nor will it stay as clean as it is for long. People are going to use it, and people are messy. And even if we didn’t use it, it would get dusty anyway. So I feel that part of my mind has been scrubbed clean. It will not remain shiny and fresh-smelling forever, and if I neglect it, it will get dusty too. But it still feels better. Like the dust has been cleared from the crevices and now my neurons can breathe (okay, so neurons do not really breathe–think figuratively, people, work with me here) and I can see a little better what is going on up there.

The living room is still a bit more cluttered than I’d like, the carpet needs to be vacuumed at least once a day to keep it looking clean, there are always dirty dishes in the sink, and sometimes my roommates put my wood-handled knives in the dishwasher. Pardon me, that last item was tangential. So it is with me: I still have a vast number of schoolwork-related tasks to do that are scattered among the spaces of time in which I might address them, every day the people I let into my mind carry in bits of the outside world on their shoes and the floor needs vacuuming again, and my little daily failures and disappointments pile up until I get tired of looking at the mess every day and I realize that no matter how long I wait, nobody else is going to wash them, even if they helped dirty them, and I break down and wash them and the empty kitchen sink is a beautiful sight.

And now it’s time to go to class and this is the only thing productive I have done with my mind all day. At least it’s a little less cluttered.


*Those are grand plans? you ask. Welcome to my exciting life.
**I refer, of course, to the specific activity of cleaning the shower, not just finding myself inside my bathtub. Give me a break; it is shower week, after all.