a topsy-turvy kind of life

[harborshore]

Today was odd. The idiocy of forgetting it was March (no, really, I thought I had a week to write something when in reality it was due last night) turned out to not really have any serious consequences, because I told my professor I was too sick last week to write. This is actually true, I just wasn't worrying about it because of thinking I had a week I didn't have. She knows about the recurring illness I have, so she just nodded and said it was fine and to take care of myself. And then she told me I should go back to the thing I wrote my paper on last spring eventually, because it's looking like people are moving into that. This, for the record, is the terrible advisor from last spring. So that was all very good, even if the seminar was sort of tiring, and I was on time for once, etc. GOOD.

Then I realized I've accidentally booked my trip to Israel so that I'll miss one of the seminars. OOOPS. That's what I get for having very little money and needing to fly on Tuesdays. BAD. BADBADBAD. And I'm also terrified about missing so many days of thesis work when I'm already behind. AWFUL. Relatedly, I have two months to finish my thesis. OH GOD NO.

Then I logged onto facebook (which I never do) and my oldest friend (since I was born, you guys) was on and we talked for an hour and then he invited me over next week! I haven't seen him since last May! AWESOME.

I have a cold. EW. Also I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO BE MORE SICK.

My poetry translations are up on the magazine website! :DDDD




So, like, what does one do with days like this? *feels wobbly*

I'm going to post a poem, that's what I'm going to do.

From egelantier (when you see this, post a poem--or feel free to post one in comments, should you feel so inclined)

Daphne

And if I was changed, what was the difference?
And if I was strung – myself and not myself,
a double thing, there was a consequence.
When I was a girl, I was a girl.
And now I’m a tree, I’m a tree.

Seasons don’t arrive. There’s just a shifting.
We move. I see it now. The staid worlds move,
and the sun is no dragged lamp. The gods die,
or never lived. They crawl home, damp and slow,
to the subtle, shallow sea that made them.

I’m not that happy. It’s not important.
And I’m not sad. It’s good to be a girl,
and a tree, with the wind in it. It’s good
to move in the wind, and to move the wind.
My leaves all move. They sing, and make the world.

--Emma Jones

Comments

[fitofpique.livejournal.com]

The Thing Is
Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

[crowgirl13.livejournal.com]

This made me cry. Thank you, pique. ♥

[fitofpique.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. It has had the same effect on me, more than once.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<i [...] again.</i>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

<I will love you, again.</i>

Oh. Oh, that is--that is pretty much exactly what I needed to read right now. Oh, love, thank you so much.

[fitofpique.livejournal.com]

You are very welcome, my darling.

♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I fail miserably at html when I'm verklempt, apparently. &YOU;

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

Sometimes
Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

[turlough]

This was lovely!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. and all goes well ♥

[crowgirl13.livejournal.com]

Nightclub
~Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love
with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don't hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else's can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o'clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Oh, what a gorgeous, gorgeous ending, I love it. ♥

[crowgirl13.livejournal.com]

Oh, I 'm so glad you do! Billy Collins is one of my favorites. Have you ever heard Johnny Hartman sing? His voice really is incredible.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I have not, no. Who is he?

[turlough]

Colds are icky! I hope you'll start feeling better soon.

I'm usually not very interested in Shakespeare (heresy, I know :-) but I saw this in poetry on DW a while ago and really liked it:

Sonnet 130
William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

SHAKESPEARE. He is kind of my favorite! So naturally I am delighted with this choice.

And yeah, here's hoping the cold fucks off and dies. I AM SO MISERABLE. /whining

[x_dark_siren_x]

Best of his sonnets, if only for its differences and individuality when compared to the others. It's the only kind of poem that I never felt bad about dissecting in school, because I feel like Shakespeare made his intentions obvious here, but also made sure that you'd have to work for them a little. And yet he still manages to keep his secrets - or rather, hers. :) I didn't feel like we destroyed the escence of the sonnet, because we didn't have to strive for the meanings, didn't have to take it completely apart to find something that might not even have been there. And I think that's just the true representative of his talent as a writer.

Uh. Big Shakespeare fan. And forgive me if non of that made sense, it's two am here and I should be in bed :/

[turlough]

We probably had to dissect poems back when I was at school (Swedish poems of course) but I have no memories of it at all. I think most of our lit studies were concentrated on prose. I think that's why I can enjoy poetry, both Swedish and English, much more than I can "literary" fiction. I've never really been a fan of Shakespeare's though, he just doesn't "speak" to me in a way that other poets do. This one is just different enough from his usual sonnets maybe.

3 by Richard Brautigan

[kickingrad.livejournal.com]

Deer Tracks.

Beautiful, sobbing
high-geared fucking
and then to lie silently
like deer tracks in the
freshly-fallen snow beside
the one you love.
That's all.


Boo, Forever.

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.


A Boat.

O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.

Re: 3 by Richard Brautigan

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

That's all, that's all.

I love you, also.

[halflinen.livejournal.com]

Geez, what a crazy day. That's sweet that you get to see your friend, though.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

*clings* MEGAN. TOO MUCH.

But it is! I told Vanessa he's half a ridiculous hipster and half a total birdwatching, wood-chopping, walk-for-miles country boy. I missed him. *grins*

[halflinen.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. My own best-friend-since-forever lives way on the other side of my country, and so I haven't seen him in YEARS. I love how with those kinds of people, even though you haven't seen each other in AGES, when you do finally meet up it's like no time at all has passed.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I know! It's like we're still snotty-nosed little kids pretending to be Superman and Batgirl. :D

PS. I am keeping my fingers crossed for you, lady.

[softlyforgotten.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love that poem. I went through a phase where I used to read it nearly every day. ♥

I am sorry your life is being tumultuous in a bad way at the moment! I hope it settles down, darling. <3 (Also, because I still owe you that email: you are very welcome, always, and I am glad to help but also especially glad that your mystery illness is... well, not that it's mystery, but at least that it's not anything terrifying like cancer. <333)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I am so incredibly pleased you like it as much as I thought you might. ♥

I hope it settles a little too! Not all of it is bad but I sort of feel like I'm clinging to a raft in a storm; still waters would be good. (Lovelovelove, that is all. And I am still so glad about that last part, glad and incredibly grateful.)

[torakowalski.livejournal.com]

I would love to post you a poem, but I don't know any poems /o\

Hi? ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

That, my darling, is totally fine.

Hi hi hi! ♥

PS. I accidentally opened your last email while on the phone with my dad. OOOPS. (topical icon is topical.)

[torakowalski.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, ooops indeed! I'm assuming you didn't reply to it while on the phone with him? ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

No, no, I did not. I just clicked on it and went very quiet for a second and then hit the button that minimizes the window. Ahahahaaaa.

MOAR SHAKESPEARE (73)

[extemporally.livejournal.com]

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Life sure is tumultous, bb, but on the other hand you've got 3 awesome things and 2 bad things on your list? It feels mildly positive on balance! Take care of yourself, yeah?

Re: MOAR SHAKESPEARE (73)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

It is totally mildly positive on balance! I was just feeling overwhelmed by the sort of very abrupt turns the day kept taking. Like a surprise!roller coaster.

And I've always loved that sonnet so much. Thank you, darling. ♥

[x_dark_siren_x]

Oh sweetie, that's...hetic. :S I hope your cold isn't too awful and that everything sorts out.

I would leave you a poem - I love your poetry posts - but I have to be up in oh, six or seven hours, max, and finding my favourites takes time, because I have hard copies of them only. :/

Feel better, sweets. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

The cold is pretty darn bad, but the rest should be sortable.

That's fine! I appreciate the thought. ♥ Sleep is important.

[turps33.livejournal.com]

I don't know any poems, sorry.

Have my love instead, and a hope that your days get less crazy.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I am very appreciative of love, dearest. (The poetry thing was more of a suggestion than a requirement for commenting ♥)

[wethepainted.livejournal.com]

I don't have a poem to share, but the one you posted reminded me of a song I love: Jónsi - Boy Lilikoi

Colds are most annoying, but they're a good excuse for wearing multiple scarves. :)
(http://anonym.to?http://www.mediafire.com/?5jztnrxmnut)

[wethepainted.livejournal.com]

And somewhere there I failed miserably at html. Oh well, at least the link seems to work!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Fuck, fuck, those are both wonderful. I've seen the Loomis one before, but oh man, oh god.