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'.