The Tree of Language

I'm writing again.

We had poet visit LCC from the States last week. She very kindly did a reading and a poetry-writing workshop with our students. It was nice to have another person on campus to reinforce the value of the written word. I, however, was very struck by the fact that her writing was - in my opinion- nothing spectacular! (Don't underestimate the jealousy of writers).

What this meant, though, was that I decided I need to kick myself into gear and write more regularly. I'm aiming at a poem a day. Here's where I'll house them in all their minimally-edited, "spontaneous overflow" stage of being.

Emily

Because I've been teaching American Literature for about 5 years now, I find that my appreciation of the stories, the language, the freshness of what the authors were doing has been blunted a little bit. It makes me sad that I'm not getting to read Thoreau and Whitman for the first time, like my students are. I'm sad that Thoreau's great words about living deliberately and Whitman's obnoxious confidence don't reverberate the way they did when I first took them in. However, I do occasionally read slowly and carefully enough that I get back to a moment of pure excitement and appreciation.

Behold, the best poem ever. I don't think I'm exaggerating - this one here is, in my humble opinion, a genius-level use of musicality in language, compelling metaphor, concise imagery, an integration of meaning and form that I don't think could ever get tired of teasing out. And of course, it's Emily Dickinson. Who else could it be?

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind –

An observation

Laughter is really, really good. "The Office" has the highest laughing-so-hard-I-can't- catch-my-breath quotient of any show I've ever watched (though "Arrested Development" is a close second). Example from last night's premiere that was greatly enjoyed this evening by those of us on the other side of the world:

Angela: Is everything alright at home?
Dwight: Well, you left your T.V. on. And your cat's dead.

"The cure for everything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen

I got home at 8 last night, at the end of a long, duty-filled week, worn out by the sense of how much of what I do feels like pushing a rock up a hill, or swimming against an inevitable tide of discouragement. And no one to talk to about it. I changed my Facebook status to "lonely," tried to read some Alice Munro, gave up and cried myself to sleep.

This morning I slept and slept and slept, crawled out of the covers around 11, made myself coffee and opened my computer to a few friendly messages waiting for me on Facebook. I ate my breakfast and clicked through my friend Andrea's blog, ran across her link to Donald Miller - an author I'was reading a lot of in the years before coming to Lithuania - which led me to The Burnside Writer's Collective, and their companion blog. Which led me to their links page which then led me to what quickly became my latest blog crush (shssh, don't tell him), which is why it is now almost 2 p.m. and I'm still in my bathrobe, the dishwater has gone cold in the sink, and I'm working on my third cup of coffee and wondering if those thoughts I was having last night - about getting myself out of this exhausting teaching profession and throwing my lot in with the starving writers of the world - may actually be worth paying attention to. Granted, while there is little money and no recognition in teaching, there is even less money and marginal recognition in writing, but I'd get to spend quite a bit more time in my pajamas!

Days of Awe

So I’ve had a few chastisements from friends and family for my long absence from the blog. And my friend Annie was right when, in our conversation via Skype yesterday, she noted that when I’m not writing on the blog it’s usually because I’m probably dealing with things I don’t necessarily want to air in public quite yet.

That’s not to say things are terrible or out-of-control, but it has been a month of many-traveled miles, lots of change, new schedules, new relationships, and stretched-out emotions. Today’s the 15^th of September, which means that in the past month, I‘ve finished work in Turkey, visited with friends for a week in England, flown back to Lithuania (via other friends in Riga, Latvia), moved out of one apartment and into another, endured countless beginning-of-the -school-year meetings, weekend work days, participated in expected community activities, wrestled for a week with the telecom company to get internet transferred from one apartment to another, adjusted to getting up at 6 a.m. to teach an 8:30 course, started swimming regularly, taken on 60 first-year writing students, and realized I now know the names of about 60-70 % of LCC’s students since I’ve now had 10 classes worth of first-years pass through my courses! Suffice it to say that I’m coming back to my senses a bit this weekend.

In the midst of this hectic time, I also am quite aware that I’ve been a bit of a spiritual prodigal lately. Various events and challenges of the past few months (and year, really) brought me to a place of just plain-out exhaustion with my relationship with God, with a little anger and disappointment mixed in. I’ve been pretty prayer-less and unsubmissive. It’s felt very much like an estranged family relationship, where both parties know that the child is going to crack sooner or later, but in the meantime, she just wants to have her heedless fun and numb herself to the concerns of the rest of the world.

Funnily enough, what brought this image so clearly to me yesterday was watching one of my “numbing” treatments, that being my vast collection of Gilmore Girls episodes on DVD. Rory and Lorelai Gilmore are pretty much my best friends at the moment, so I was spending my Saturday cleaning my (lovely new) apartment, washing dishes, baking and marathon-watching season 6 of the show. In the first 1/3 of the season, the main mother & daughter characters are not speaking to one another. Sparing the details, it’s enough to say that the daughter has the inevitable coming-to-her-senses and rushes home. Her mother runs out of the house to envelop her, and then pulls out a box of sticky notes containing all the thoughts, ideas and funny things that she had wanted to tell her daughter during the time they weren’t speaking. So they jump into making up for the time they’ve lost and spend the rest of the episode reading through the random notes, laughing.

God has a big box of sticky notes waiting for me, I know. Just because I haven’t wanted to listen, that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t have things He’s been wanting to tell me. I love the way He’s been trying to creep back into my heart.

For example, this Thursday, my friend Maja brought me some apples. Everyone’s trees are loaded with apples at the moment, so there’s always plenty around for baking in the fall. She also brought me a jar of honey, a small portion of a gift she’d received from some student’s parents, more than she could eat herself.

Putzing around my kitchen yesterday, I decided to see what I could cook with apples and honey. Running a search by ingredients, I found a recipe for apple-honey cake. It was on a webpage devoted to Jewish cooking. Coincidentally enough, apples and honey are traditionally eaten during the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. They are meant to symbolize the hope of sweetness in the coming year. Reading this, I remembered that the High Holy days of the Jewish calendar usually begin sometime in September, so I did some more searching. Rosh Hashanah was this past Wednesday and Thursday, and this weekend is the first Sabbath of the “Days of Awe” – the time of repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

I made my apple-honey cake and read about the meaning of these holidays. This is the time when the people are meant to have a period of self-examination and repentance, after which they are judged by God for the coming year. Psalm 81 is a traditional Psalm of Rosh Hashanah – during which the shofar trumpets are blown and God reminds them:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.”

Of all the things I expect from the coming year, I have to confess that I don’t really expect a year of sweetness. Hope’s run out a bit, and when God asks that I open wide my mouth so He may fill it, I suspect it to be filled with bland manna, not honey. But the verses that end the Psalm promise:

“He would feed you with the finest of wheat,
And with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

Where a Protestant might just see ingredients, a Jew sees promises. I baked my cake, invited friends over to share it last night, and try to believe that what lies ahead will be sweet. That a time of repentance leads to a year of dwelling in the presence of God.