Collections

I've never been a collector, though numismatists kinda fascinate me.  My mother, on the other hand, has gone through dozens of types of collections.  She has various Lilliput houses displayed throughout her home, a closeted stash of Barbie Dolls of the World from the 90's, and more expensive jewelry than anyone could wear in a lifetime.  At one point, she had a thing for porcelain baby dolls.  At another, she collected and solely wore overalls.  Obviously, there's not a dominant gene for collecting, at least not that I inherited.  I guess some of my siblings could be considered collectors: my 34 year old brother still plays with Legos, and I have a sister or two who are borderline hoarders...if you can count that as collecting.  Well, feeling a big left out, I've decided that I am going to collect poetry.  My first short collection will be of my facebook-by-poetrings that were discussed in an earlier post.  I'd like to have the handful of them all in one place, and here is as good a place as any...well, several tropical locations come to mind as better, but I'm good at settling.

On the hubs' wall:

This is just to say

I have borrowed
your razor
that was in the cup
in the upstairs bathroom

and which
you were probably
saving
... to trim your beard

Forgive me
my legs are less French
so silky
and so smooth

 

On my mom's wall:

Utah

If you had come away with me
into another state
we had been quiet together.
But there the sun coming up
out of the nothing beyond the mountains was
too low in the sky,
there was too great a pushing
against him,
...

too much of Mormons, bumpits
on their heads
with the pounds of makeup upon them,
too many testimonies of sweet spirits,
too many, too many knowings
beyond a shadow of a doubt at the
bare pulpit!
It was too strong in the air.
I had no rest against that
upbringing!
The rotating of the tires on the
paved roads
stayed with me half through two nights.
I awoke smiling but cold.

 

On my brother-in-law's wall:

 

To a Poor Sick Jason

gulping down pills in
an apartment a prescription bottle
of them in his hand

They taste good to him
They taste good
to him. They taste
good to him
...
You can see it
by the way he recovers himself
from the strep germ
bacteria raw in his throat

Comforted
a solace of penicillin pink
seeming to light the horizon
They taste good to him.

On a friend's wall (She gave me a teacup for my birthday):




so much depends
upon

a yellow tea
cup

painted with blue
flowers

filled with milk
chocolate

On the wall of the most inspiring poet that I know, personally:

Big Bird and the Stars

An evening in Nielson's chosen out of three years of
student drudgery! One best day out of so many good ones.
Big Bird in high spirits--"Ha, poems! Let's write one!"
And he made to catch the words on the vendor's napkin.

Now so clever were the line breaks, so nicely timed
to the full sweep of certain wave summits,
that the rememberance of the poem has come down through
two class reunions--which is relatively forever!

On a fellow SAHM's wall:

"Libertad! Igualdad! Fraternidad!"

You joyous bloom of a woman
you force me into crafts
with your busy knitting-needles!

Sister!
--if we were careered
we'd stick our chests out
and hold our heads high!
...
It is dreams that have destroyed us.

There is no more pride
in houses or in homemaking.
We sit hunched together brooding
our fate.

Well--
all things turn bitter in the end
whether you choose the home or
the workplace
and--
dreams are not a bad thing.

On my favorite blogger's wall:

Complaint

He blogs now and I read.
It is a frozen PC
past midnight, a dust
of virus caught
in the wire synapses.
The page opens.
I smile, enter and
shake off the impatience.
... Here is a great man
in his own head in cyberspace.
He is sick,
perhaps vomiting,
perhaps laboring
to give birth to
a written child. Joy! Joy!
Night is a room
darkened for thinkers,
through the jalousies the sun
has sent one golden needle!
I pick the comic relief from his words
and watch his misery
with compassion.

If you don't really want to know, don't ask.

I have Multiple Sclerosis.  Apparently, inquiring minds want to know, so I'm going to give you an expose on what having MS is like for me.  Let me begin by saying that MS is a disease that is unique to each person who has it, so if you know other people who have been diagnosed, don't casually ask about their neurogenic bladder just because I tell you about mine.  Here we go...
In late 2007/early 2008, I became excessively dizzy.  This wasn't a vertigo kind of dizzy, or a drunk kind of dizzy.  This was the type of dizzy that required me to be in a constant state of horizontal.  This was the type of dizzy that only allowed for me to crawl to and from the toilet as my sole daily activity of living.  I went to the doctor.  I went to the neurologist.  I went back to the doctor.  I had blood drawn.  I went to the doctor again. Finally, I got a sinus infection and went to the otorhinolaryngologist.  The ENT noticed a nystagmus in my eye.  Basically, on top of having my head spin like the kid on the Exorcist (minus the pea soup), my eyeball was bouncing every time I looked over to one side, trying to go back to center.  ENT had me march 'in place' with my eyes closed.  This was not easy for me to do at that moment.  In fact, it was so difficult that when he had me open my eyes, I found I had turned 180 degrees during my march and was facing the opposite wall.  He told me that I needed to have an MRI and that autoimmune diseases were often the culprit for such conditions.  He was the first person to drop the 'multiple sclerosis' bomb on my ears (A bomb that was far more threatening than North Korea's current one).  The MRI came back with white spots.  See, scleroses are plaques that build up in the brain and spinal chord (the central nervous system, or CNS) so white spots in the brain are not a good sign.  I then went back to the neurologist, who previously had thought nothing was wrong with me.
Neuro dude thought he was a god.  He was still doubtful that I had anything wrong with me other than some sort of virus.  He did, however, have me go in for another MRI.  After waiting six months, I had yet another MRI.  There were more white spots than on the first two, so I was sent for a spinal tap to confirm that I did have MS.  I was diagnosed with Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (yes, there are more aggressive kinds) in October 2008, shortly after becoming pregnant with my second son.  Neuro dude was shocked that I took the news so well.  I didn't cry, or even ask any questions.  But I'm a pessimist, so I figured I had it long, long before the actual diagnosis.  I had done a lot of reading, and the sudden symptoms I was having all seemed to fit.  After the dizziness went away (of its own accord) I went to the Minnesota Zoo one day.  During a long walk to see the outdoor animals, my left leg suddenly felt as if I had been caught by the mafia and fitted in a cement shoe prior to a watery finale.  I was dragging my leg behind me by the time we got back to the building.  People were staring.  It was embarrassing.  (I'm used to it now) This particular problem seemed to fit well with everything I had read on MS.  I needed no further convincing.
When you're pregnant with MS, your symptoms usually go into remission.  It's after you're done being pregnant that shit happens.  The week I birthed my son, I also started injecting myself with glatimir acetate.  It's a subcutaneous drug that is supposed to keep symptoms in remission more often/longer and slow down the progression of the disease.  Other than the occasional extreme faux panic attack, there aren't many side effects to my particular injectable.  On the downside, it's an injection that I have to take daily.  Sometimes it bleeds.  Sometimes it hurts like a mofo.  Sometimes I get as bruised as a junkie.  But mostly, it's not that bad.  What's bad is the disease itself.
The biggest problem I face with MS is FATIGUE.  I had mononucleosis in high school (from making out with a side dish while I had a boyfriend...karma).  That was nothing compared to how I feel some days because of MS.  Some days, if the house were burning down, I would only *consider* fleeing.  Most likely, I would incinerate.  That's how little energy I have sometimes.  Today, for instance, I was so tired that after I took my firstborn to school (I probably shouldn't even have been operating a vehicle), I went back to bed and slept until noon.  (It's very lucky that my kids like movies) Guess what?  I'm still tired.  In fact, I'm going to save this draft and go to bed now.  I'll finish on another, less exhausted day.
Slightly less exhausted now, so we'll continue.  The second biggest problem with my MS is the limping.  I'm a gimp.  I can't walk quickly anymore.  And I often hobble or have difficult lifting my left foot.  People stare.  I don't care.  I do think I might use a cane in the (possibly near) future.  My legs sometimes give out on me completely.  I won't be able to stand, or I'll just suddenly fall down.  Doing that on the stair is my absolute favorite.  Running is an impossibility.  In fact, both my children know that running away from me is a cardinal sin in our family, and they will be severely punished when I finally get my hands on them again (Good thing they don't realize that they could just keep running and I'd never catch up).  I miss going on long walks.  I have always liked walking around outside.  And hiking.  I still do those things, but only when I am with someone else who can potentially fetch help or a car, if necessary. 
Earlier in my dealing with MS, the next symptom would have been my top irker but it has gotten better over time through remissions and Kegel exercises.  I have a neurogenic bladder.  This means that my bladder never empties completely.  Sometimes I feel like I have to pee, and I go sit on the toilet for five minutes waiting for the urine to come out, and when it does, there's almost nothing there.  Then, ten seconds after I leave the bathroom, I urgently have to pee again.  The urge is urgent.  Self-explanatory?  Nope.  When I get the urge to urinate, I had better find a restroom within two minutes or I might have a puddle at my feet.  Anytime I go anywhere new, my first order of business is to locate the toilet.  I know that I will have to visit said throne at least once if I'm going to be in a particular location for an hour or more so I like to acquainted quickly.
While we're discussing the potty, let's talk about poop.  It's my kids' favorite word, anyway.  I am extremely constipated.  I've always been a toilet clogger, but since my immune system started attacking my CNS (central nervous system), dropping a deuce has been more difficult than birthing a baby.  I am not exaggerating.  On the up side, I save money on toilet paper.  Let me tell ya, when it's hard as a rock, there's nothin left behind (pun intended). 
Now that we've gone TMI, I might as well talk about my battle with depression.  Mental illness runs in my family.  I have an anxiety disorder and chronic depression.  I have been on an off pills for this since 2003, when I almost instantly regretted getting married (Turned out to be the best decision of my life, however).  I have no been off of them since 2007, a few months after having my first, extremey colicky, child.  You've probably noted that those events pre-date my MS diagnosis.  Well, MS causes depression as well.  It's unclear whether having an incurable, debilitating disease is the culprit for most MS patients, or whether the attack on the CNS is actually responsible.  Either way, MS has worsened my depression (along with another major life event that happened around the same time...but that's a whole different story).  I go through bouts of medication adjustment.  Usually, when I start thinking about running my car off a bridge, I know it's time to up my dosage.  Ya know?  Nah.  You probably don't.  That's okay.
So those are my constant symptoms.  I get other crazy things happenening every now and again, like numb or tingly body parts.  Sometimes the veins in my thighs turn hyper-blue and bulge out weirdly.  And I have actually shit my pants a time or two (I won't go into how humiliating or degrading that feels as a *young* adult).  It's all related to the MS somehow.  What a fun disease, eh?  Hope that answered some of y'alls questions. 

Pie, not Pi.

     Okay readers (Mom), if you're not dead or mentally retarded from holding your breath this long, take a deep one now.  I'm finally going to compose my piece(peace) on that subject which I've been researching.  I fear I've made it sound as though I've spent countless hours translating the Dead Sea Scrolls when all I've really done is look up a few online articles and scriptures from various religious texts.  See, my lack of posts is more about my lack of commitment to myself than anything else...but that's an entirely different subject.  Tonight's subject is Intelligence. 
     The 'g' factor.  (Yes, that was an incomplete sentence within my monologue on intelligence) The idea that there is a general factor underlying any activity requiring mental effort is controversial at best.  There is a positive correlation among tests meant to measure congnitive function, but cognitive function is not necessarily tantamount in our modern definition of intelligence.  Psychologists Robert Sternberg and Howard Gardner purport our intellect to be made up of many different and multiple intelligences, including (but not limited to) logical, spatial, kinesthetic, rhythmic, and interpersonal.  It's romantic to think that whatever one is gifted at (for we do, truly, all have something we do well) can be defined as intelligence in one category or another.  However, in some ways, I worry that this definition is too much in keeping with the modern-day Little League rules where everybody plays and everbody wins: ego boosting, but not very grounded in reality.  But how, then, should we define the indefinable?
     "I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing."  As the tale goes, after a search for the most intelligent man alive, in which many men spouted knowledge on all sorts of subjects and demonstrated expertise in various areas, Socrates deems himself to hold the position based on a *lack* of knowledge.  We all hate know-it-alls.  One of my biggest pet-peeves is having a discussion with someone about something I know like the back of my hand (because I've had a unique life experience, or because I spent years studying it in college, etc.) and having that person tell me, without any foundation whatsoever, what that thing is really like.  And because of said peeve, I'm always very careful to defer to others when I don't know what I'm talking about, admit when I don't have a clue, and ask a lot of questions.  Do I think this makes me intelligent?  Yeah.  I kinda do.  I know that even those things I know well are so vast that I can't know them completely.  So I'm like Socrates, willing and able to learn. 
     Willingness is important here, but what of ability?  Is someone less able to learn automatically less intelligent than I am?  It's been a long time since I read Flowers for Algernon, but on the subject of intelligence, it's a classic that can't be left out of this one-sided discussion.  In case you're not familiar with the story, Algernon is a mouse that undergoes surgery to enhance its intelligence.  Charlie Gordon, the main character, is a mentally disabled man who is the first human to follow suit.  For a time, Charlie's life is greatly improved.  He even develops a relationship with his former teacher, but then comes to surpass her intellectually to such a point that the two no longer have any common ground.  Eventually, the intellect begins to wear off.  Charlie, as a genius, watches Algernon's decline (and death), frantically trying to find a way to prevent the same from happening to him.  The story raises many thought-provoking questions.  Charlie becomes increasingly friendless and unhappy as his intelligence accumulates.  Are intelligence and happiness mutually exclusive?  If so, is intelligence even desirable?  Or is ignorance truly bliss?
     Where science and literature fail me, I look to religion.  On this topic, I thought I would delve into a few seemingly unrelated texts: the Book of Mormon (This may come as a shock Mom, but I'm LDS [not to be confused with LSD, though both can be trippy]), the Quran, and the Rig Veda.  These texts represent the three largest religious traditions in the world: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.  You would think that three religions with such vastly different concepts of God wouldn't be uniform on any one topic, but I found the opposite.  In fact, all three texts associate intelligence with moral action.  The Rig Veda implores, "Be our lord and protect our deeds performed with intelligence," implying that some greater force should secure actions that are worthy only through the qualification of having been done with intelligence.  The Quran backs up this idea, saying, "(Remember also) the 'Ad and the Thamud (people): clearly will appear to you from (the traces) of their buildings (their fate): the Evil One made their deeds alluring to them, and kept them back from the Path, though they were gifted with intelligence and skill (Al-Ankaboot, Chapter 29, Verse 38)."  Here, intelligence and skill are assumed to be enough to keep one from falling into the enticements of the "Evil One".  The Doctrine and Covenants (which is a scriptural companion to the Book of Mormon) states, "All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.  Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light (Section 93, Verses 30-31).  Here, as with the Quran, the agency of man is intertwined with the intelligence that God has placed in him.
     So now that we've established that intelligence is perhaps moral rather than intellectual, let's define what it is, exactly.  "Man was also in the beginning with God.  Intelligence, or the light of truth was not created or made, neither can be (D&C Section 93, Verse 29)."  We learn here that intelligence is the "light of truth" and that it exists independently from God.  Sounds to me like a Platonic absolute.  While God has the power (being God) to bestow intelligence (see Verses 30-31), He does not create it.  In fact, though Mormonism purports that God is the Father of our Spirit bodies, it also refers to our state of pre-Spirit being as Intelligences: "Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones (Abraham [in the Pearl of Great Price, another scriptural companion] Chapter 3, Verse 22)."  So Intelligences were organized even before God created Spirit bodies.  The Rig Veda seems to concur that intelligence is not dependent on a higher power.  "Intelligence is the mightiest and nothing is beyond its reach."  The "mightiest" leaves no room for misinterpretation.  God is not mightier than intelligence.  How do we, then, as mere humans, access something mightier than God?
     The Quran explains that God gives us intelligence as a gift: "It is He Who brought you froth from the wombs of your mothers when ye knew nothing; and He gave you hearing and sight and intelligence and affections: that ye may give thanks to Allah (Chapter 16, Verse 78)."  As we read earlier, the Doctrine and Covenants is in agreement: "All truth is in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.  Behold, here is the agency of man (...) and they receive not the light."  God 'places' intelligence within us so that we may recognize the "light of truth".  There is no point to our existence if we do not have the intelligence necessary to exercise agency, making decisions good or bad.  Here, we also learn that we are under condemnation if we do not receive the light of truth using the intelligence we have been given.  Basically, then, we all have an equal ability to be intelligent, what with "that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto" each of us.  Intelligence can be measured by the "light of truth" we receive.  Those who are using their agency for the good are obviously more 'enlightened', if you will.  In this version, intelligence is definitely desirable.  In fact, existence itself is pointless without it.  And if intelligence truly does align with morality, then it can, in fact, make us happier.  So, while I might be pretty brainy in the critical thinking department, I'm really not all that smart when compared to millions of other people who are doing far more good in this world than I.  How's that for some humble pie?

It's okay to be awesome.

No, this is not my well-researched piece.  I haven't had the mental energy or the self-discipline to continue working on that composition.  It will come, eventually.  Patience is a virtue, right?  But while we're all waiting together (and I say 'all' as though more people than myself and my mother are reading this), I'm going to break my own rules about blogging and share something that happened straight out of my day-to-day life.  Last night, I shared a poem that I wrote with a large group of non-poet women.  It was incredibly embarrassing.  But it was also surprisingly affirming.  They actually liked it.  One of them even asked me if I was planning to publish.  With as much poetry as I read, I know I'm not the most brilliant poetess, but I think I forget my own talents in the enormity of talent existent in the world.  I think we all forget our real significance. 
My husband (Jeff) and I were joking one night that we might be two of only a handful of people who really think about life.  We had both recently read Tinkers by Paul Harding and we were likening his book of deep contemplation to the messages that humankind has sent out into space in case there is life elsewhere in the universe.  We thought we should write to him and let him know that he found us, the other intelligent life on this planet.  We were kidding, of course, but maybe we shouldn't have been.  Paul Harding's gifts and effort are wasted if there aren't people like us out there.  Obviously, there are far more people than Jeff and I who would appreciate Harding's book, but we can't really know how many.  We all have different aptitudes.  Some fully understand the beauty of concert piano.  Others comprehend the intracacies of a Rembrandt.  Jeff, for example, sees art and grace in a skateboard griding a handrail...which is beyond me.  But while he may not be a professional-grade skateboarder, his love for and ability to skateboard add value to the process as a whole.  In that sense, all of our talents, whatever they may be, are vitally important in this world.  We shouldn't sell ourselves short.  The Nobel Prize Winner is nothing without those who understand the significance of what he/she accomplished in order to qualify for such an award.  In that vein, I'm going to post the poem I shared last night.  This is my version of publication.  And yes, I'm proud of this poem.  I should be.

For My Children

How I See Myself:
A package
marked
'Fragile' with a sticker
on the wrist, a calf,
this uncreased forehead.

Porcelain white skin,
Japanese paper thin.
I fold
myself into an origami
lotus flower, petals crushed
by clumsy hands and
numb fingers.

Three hundred sixty five
needles remind me something
can go wrong any day,
and always does.
Justice will claim me post Murphy.

How You See Me:
It's an analogy.
Atlas is to a Harlem Globetrotter as
Mommy is to a circus juggler.

They made a day for you
to make me
breakfast as though
I get to stay in bed.

When you were old enough,
you picked dandelions
for me on holidays. Maybe
you understand me
better than I thought.

How I See You:
Today the crayon marked
toilet should be put in
a museum.
Today your smile compensated
for the silence
of your laughter.
Today your are my suns.

You'll both be missing soon
but in the Lost and Found.
Here's my hat. Here's my job.
Here's my wife. Here's my God.
You're found,
but I'll have lost you.

Freud sends the word:
In the end, it's my fault.
My only redemption?
What you mean to me -
I did exactly two good things
with my life.

Cha-ching!

It's been a little while.  There are two reasons for the time gap: I am again attempting to potty train the toddler (which is *still* not going well) and I have been doing some research on a subject about which I am very interested in writing.  My research isn't done, so while you're awaiting the magnificence of that thoroughly investigated post, you get some unfounded musings on that stuff that makes the world go 'round: money. 
I am not rich.  I could be.  I have abilities equal to that of Stephenie Meyer or E. L. James.  I also have the mental capacity to learn to do almost any profession (I'm not going to pretend that I could have been Bill Gates or Michael Jordan), including those that are very well-payed.  My husband is equally as talented, and actually has immense earning potential in his chosen field right now.  So why does our family of four live in a two bedroom, one garage townhome?  Why do I drive a used Subaru Forrester that's more than a decade old?  Why do the majority of the items in my closet cost less than $20 each?  Because it's true that money can't buy happiness.
1. "Happiness is only when shared."  If you haven't seen Into the Wild, you should (especially because one of the most talented of all musicians wrote the soundtrack).  Basically, a dude ventures out with nothing to call his own, to live by himself in the middle of the snow in Alaska.  He dies.  But before he dies, he writes the above quote in the margins of a book.  The way I see it, the quote could have more than one meaning.  Two are applicable to this post: a) Sharing happiness is the only way to have it to begin with. b) Life experiences mean nothing if they are not shared with someone else.  I don't have time to be rich. The countless hours that I or my husband would need to spend away from our family in order to make considerable amounts of money are not worth any dollar amount.  We are too busy engaged in the life experiences of raising children *together* in the pursuit of our own happiness, and in imparting the happiness we have in our having children *with* our children that there is no time for money. 
2. Some people can make money without spending copious amounts of time doing so.  I don't think authors of popular fiction like those I mentioned earlier have had to sacrifice family time to make their moola, so why am I not busy writing a stupid story that will enamor millions of adoring fans instead of this blog that maybe three people read?  That was rhetorical.  I can't bring myself to write something stupid...at least not on purpose.  I've tried.  I wrote several chapters of a novel once before I had children.  It was deep and poignant, but I still wasn't satisfied with it and I scrapped the whole thing.  I don't think I could live with myself if I were to make money doing something that didn't require a lot of time, effort, thought, etc.
3. I don't like stuff.  I have absolutely no attachment, sentimental or otherwise, to any object.  When people ask me what one item I would try to save if my house burned down, I tell them it's the laptop because all of our family's photographs are on it.  Even if the laptop didn't make it out, I wouldn't be too upset.  I have memories, documented or not.  I'd prefer to live in a society that didn't depend so much on material things.  However, I live where I live and I have stuff because it's culturally convenient.  Point is, I definitely don't need more of it so I don't need more money to buy it.
I have no beef with people who do or want to make oodles of money.  I don't want their money.  I don't even want more of my own.  They might be every bit as happy with their money as I am without it.  In fact, I think some people are happiest while in pursuit of money, and I don't think that's a bad thing.  But money really can't buy happiness, though it can buy ice cream...which is the next best thing.

facebook-by poetrings

I like poetry.  In fact, I like poetry so much that lately, I've even taken to unloading rounds of it into other people's heads.  I've found facebook to be a great medium for this task.   I rewrite William Carlos Williams' poems (I choose him because his poetry is concise and maleable) on fb walls with a hidden meaning for the owner of the wall. They read it. Our friends read it. Their friends read it. And I feel like I've done something akin to a drive-by shooting, except with a positive effect. A facebook-by poetring? Okay. We'll go with that. 
I dabbled in poetry when I was fifteen on instinct, and delved from seventeen to twenty-four.  I still read it, textbooks of it, for kicks.  It's a slow process, though.  The reading of poetry, I mean.  You don't just skim or even read only once any poem.  There's too much going on that is prone to being completely missed.  My analytical mind likes to pick them to carcass.  My creativity likes to phoenix a new one on the remains.  I write poetry because "I love you" and "The weather is so nice today" don't really express what I mean. Whether I simplify these ideas or complicate them through my convoluted metaphors, concrete imagery or abstract wording, I write creatively because I can't say it right otherwise. I believe that I would stop writing if I were ever able to say anything and have it mean what I really meant. Even my best poems fall short. I write because I have to keep trying to communicate, with those whom I care to communicate, the composition of my insides. My poems are successful when the idea I'm trying to put across is the same idea that's being picked up, even though there will always be something lost in translation. I want you to know who I am and what I feel, how I think and what I've come to know. If my poetry can't tell you, then nothing will.
After I posted my first blog entry, my little brother asked me what the poem posted there is about.  He didn't know what the word 'sternutation' meant, for starters.  (You have to understand that my little brother is on the cusp of earning his doctorate in Math.  He's scary smart.  I'm actually kinda flattered that he even read that blog entry)  I told him that all poems are either about love or death, and that Sneezing is about both.  Of course, that's a very generalized (and, as such, not quite truthful) statement.  But it is always true that there is something of the human condition found in every poem.  And what two enigmas embody better the human condition than love and death?  Sure, the human condition can be written about in any form of literature, or even portrayed in music or movies.  But nothing quite has the same impact as a poem.  Like the compactness of a fist delivering a heavier blow than the open-handed slap, the brevity and packed in meaning of a poem alters its recipient far more than a drawn out explanation.  That being said, please consider this my giving you a black-eye:

Meniscus

My brother studies the curve of the universe
in the fourth dimension, nearsightedly.

(No, no the world is flat. No, no
the world is round) He's getting
a doctorate. (Columbus sailed
the ocean blue in 1492) I study

human convexes: tears on cheeks, a
fingernail, and imagine my dreams as spherical.

 See what I mean?  I pretty much just told you, in eight short lines, everything I said in all the previous paragraphs combined.  Which was more powerful?  If you don't like poetry, you probably shouldn't continue to read my blog.  Just sayin'.     

I grow old...I grow old...I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Happy 30th Birthday to me.

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

Flip-flops are a type of shoe. That is all.

I know a guy who gets upset when people change their minds.  He thinks politicians are wishy-washy if they reverse their opinions.  He points to a money trail when organizations rethink their policies.  He believes that people should stick to what they believe.  I get what he's saying.  But here's the deal: it's not that simple. In fact, the most intelligent people I know carry around conflicting paradigms and embody those paradigms' constantly fluctuating harmonization.
Polarized thinking seems to be our current society's downfall. Hence, a fiscal cliff over which a bridge was not built nor from which lemmings leaped. Politicians kicked the can down the road. And what choice did they have but to do so? To represent their constituencies, politicians have to be hard-nosed liberals or stubborn conservatives. Even a mere glance toward the middle, or God forbid, the other side, and there's a mass exodus from their support base. But if we could peel back scalps and peer into, perhaps not the thoughts themselves, but the processes that form them, I think we'd see that nobody is truly as flat as paper. We're all more dimensional than that. We believe in contradicting values. We make exceptions to our own rules based on circumstance. We do things we never dreamed ourselves capable of doing, both good and bad. It's the people who realize themselves to be so 'hypocritical' who can harmonize their thinking without ridding themselves of the dimension and produce rational ideas. They're people like Juan Williams, writing in Muzzled about how political debate is stifled by political correctness. And earlier, Rhana Reiko Rizzuto, redefining what it means to be a mother in Hiroshima in the Morning. And here, I'm going to be pretentious, and voice that I have no affinity for either of these people, but that while I disagree with them, personally, I see the value in what they have to say and I do agree with them, philosophically. I attempt to put into practice the harmonization of which I'm speaking. I attempt to be one of the intelligent, to see the thing for what it really is.  Does this mean that I'm not holding to my belief system?  I don't think so.

'Archipelago' is my second favorite word.

Islands.  A group of them together.  They're not alone, but they are separate.  Each has its own landscape, its own view of the sunrise.  Perhaps each even has its own inidigenous people with imperceptibly different dialects from the that of the other indigenous people on the other islands nearby.  But I am not part of an archipelago.  I am a boat that continuously and monotonously circles the islands.  My identity is only in relation to the position of my orbit.  Because I am a mother and being a mother is my only career.
I am a classic case of Betty Friedan's problem that has no name.  I can name all of the things that are not the problem: being a wife, being a mother, staying at home, cleaning house, perparing meals, organizing playdates, reading stroybooks, volunteering at the elementary school.  Yet, I am unfulfilled.  In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan concludes her first chapter as follows:  "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.'"  And I do.
Friedan, writing in the 50's and 60's, suggested that women solve the unnameable problem by continuing on with higher education to obtain worthy careers, not just part-time secretarial work.  She is credited with sparking second-wave feminism.  And since her time, the ideals of femininity have changed in many positive ways, opening up all sorts of opportunities for women.  However, her solution cannot apply to me. 
First, I have a college education.  I would actually argue that having an education furthers the complexity of the problem that has no name.  The more of my potential I realize to exist, the more I'm aware of how far I'm falling short.  Ignorance is bliss, after all.  Second, having a career at this time in my life is not an option.  In the face of a society that doesn't care at all about what I do everyday as a stay-at-home mom, I find immense value in what I do, as boring and mind numbing as it is.  I often wonder whether the problem that has no name wouldn't be resolved completely were society to truly value women who do what I do, but as time marches on, society seems to care less and less about the family as an institution so I won't be holding my breath in anticipation.  I wish that the value I see in my own work would somehow make that work fulfilling, but it doesn't.  I am still not part of the archipelago.
So, what am I to do?  After a lengthy and meaningful discussion with my husband, I came up with a plan to form my own, new identity while continuing in my chosen occupation.
1. I will do something I want to do everyday.  Right now, this thing happens to be posting to this blog.  Once necessary tasks are completed for the day (and I mean *necessary*), I focus solely on the want.  It's interrupted multiple times with my children's needs, of course, but I don't give up on it until it's done. 
2. I will not worry about whether or not my house is clean.  This is not to say that I will not clean my house.  In no way will I be transferring any of my own workload onto the income provider of the family.  I will do everything I always do, but in my own good time.  If I don't feel like doing the laundry and the laundry can wait until tomorrow, it will.  If I need a nap, the crumbs on the floor and the piles of toys will stay.  It sounds very simple, but before I made this conscious choice to care less, I was constantly beating myself up for being 'lazy' and not getting things done when reality was that my expectations of myself, my resentment for the chores that were sucking away my life, and my guilt over putting things off were paralyzing me from getting anything done to begin with. 
3. I will figure out what it is that I want.  Because I don't have to worry about making money, I have the unique opportunity to go back to school or take unpaid internships or do volunteer work in pursuit of a career I would like to have when my children are older.  I can literally do anything I want.  I just have to figure out what that is.  Spending more time thinking about the future will ease the painful boredom of the present.  I don't believe in living in the moment when the moment makes me want to take five bottles of pills, lie down in a full bath, and slit my femoral artery.
I'm on Day 2 of the plan.  I have no idea whether or not it will be successful.  Guess we'll find out together. 

Wilde about Oscar

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde writes, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.  Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."  As you follow me along on the journey into the furthest recesses of my mind, I would ask that you keep this quote at the forefront of your own.  You may read about the time I envisioned myself bludgeoning someone to death in great detail.  Or you might realize, as I'm rambling on about family and friends, that I am a true misantrhope - equal to Bronte's Heathcliff or Dickens' Estella.  You could find out something as trivial as the fact that I passionately hate carrots.  But no matter what you read, please reserve your judgment to nothing more than whether the writing was at all effective - did it resonate with you?  If it did not, you might consider not visiting here again.  But if you feel it, and it permeates into your soul and maybe even moves you, I hope we can be more than friends.  I'll come to love you, my reader, with the whole violence of my being...

Sneezing

Loving you is a slow motion sternutation. Fireworks,
short-circuiting myelin sheath, light up
both hemispheres in the pitch behind eyelids,
... photo reflexively, at the thought of you,
keeping me
awake. No one can sneeze in her sleep.
But it's not self-contained, this reactionary body.
You drop through numb fingers like wet sand
along with our unformed memories
so my heart stops. 'Gesundheit.'
And the skin also
forgets its own pressure. Flower-like our bodies
dry, alluvial limbs splayed, a colorful momento
in life-thick volumes of meaningless black marker.
I bite my lip: blood. I'm unforgivingly alive.
I bit my lip and know you,
orgasmically
without touch, every spasm coupled with a fatal exhalation (God bless)
as my systems shut-down, simultaneously lacking you.
There goes my soul, trigeminally. You see it fall
before it's too late

for you, anyway.