Je suis arrivée!

Après beaucoup d'heures à l'avion, je suis arrivée à l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle à 9h30 hier matin.

Mahaut et sa famille sont très sympas. Ils habitent dans un bel appartement à Neuilly-sur-Seine, une ville près de Paris. La fenêtre de ma chambre a une belle vue de la ville et des autres appartements.

C'est ouvert tout la journée.

Ce matin, j'ai réveillée à 5h30 avant tout la famille. L'appartement était totalement silencieux. Il faut que j'attends le petit dejeuner, donc j'ai lu et j'ai changée mes vêtements. Après une heure ou deux, Sibylle a réveillée. J'ai mangée avec Sibylle et Charles parce que Mahaut et sa sœur n'ont pas réveillées. Charles est drôle et il a un mauvais accent américain qu'il utilise parfois. Sibylle est gentille et elle a beaucoup d'enthousiasme.

Mahaut et moi sommes allées à la mairie pour procurer un licence ou quelque chose, je ne sais pas. Mais j'ai regardée Neuilly, et c'est une très belle ville.

Je veux rester ici pour longtemps, et ça fait seulement un jour!  

Whirlwind Update

It's taken me six weeks to remember that I have a blog. I can't believe I've spent a month and a half forgetting something that was once so important to me. Maybe I was unsure that anything I had to write was worth reading, maybe I was just out of ideas. But I am back for good this time, I think.

To catch everyone up on my life, here's what I've been up to this summer:

• Finished off the school year with very few permanent mental scars
• Teaching pilot-program poetry workshops to kids at the Boys and Girls Club as a high school intern
• Started dating a super cute lady-friend of mine (!!!!!)
• Organization and data entry for my kooky and magnificent French teacher
• Drinking lots of coffee with my best friend
• Watched Game of Thrones in marathon sittings (I've now seen all three seasons in two weeks)

My mental health and body image have both improved significantly. I'm proud to say that, after years of heartache and struggle, I can now look at myself in the mirror with a totally neutral attitude. That is a major step up from the hell I used to put myself through every day.

To hear the story of my struggle with eating disorders, click here.

And here is the big news: starting Monday, July 1st and continuing through the 21st, I'll be blogging from France! 

My flight leaves on Sunday afternoon and it hasn't quite hit me how big of a deal it is that I'm leaving the country for three weeks. I don't think I'll fully grasp that concept until I've strapped myself into the plane. Regardless of how I process my travels, the trip is going to be amazing. I'm staying with my friend, Mahaut, who stayed with me for a few weeks last summer. We're unbelievably excited to see each other again.

Actuellement, Je Pense en Français

Mary Beth Gets Intellectual And Overwhelmed

I'm spending most of my night writing a paper analyzing criticisms of capitalism in The Grapes of Wrath. It isn't a difficult concept- Steinbeck was seriously not into the American culture of greed and made that fact explicit in his work, especially in Grapes. He makes the point that the greed resulting from the constant need for economic expansion that is a characteristic of capitalism does much more harm than good for the average American.

And I believe him. That book was written long ago, but I understand and I agree with every brain cell. There is such a push for growth in this country- if a business is not growing, it is failing; if people are not making money, we are failing; if we are not constantly buying more technology to "improve" ourselves, we are failing. This race is so stressful, so overwhelming. No wonder the suicide rate is up.

I don't understand why we always have to be better than ourselves. Why must we keep buying new things, keep expanding our businesses until they harm the people? The world could be so much simpler if everyone agreed to spend their lives resting, without the pressure of having to "get rich or die trying."

We have so much here we think we need.

she says while writing a blog entry from her iPad in the quiet of her own room, surrounded by so many things she doesn't need.

That was unfair. A little contradiction is okay. It is, Mary Beth. It is okay.

I am trying so hard to stop criticizing myself like that.

We do have more than we need. Those first paragraphs were even more words than I needed. More is overwhelming. I am drowning in "more".

Let's tone it down, world. Let's be good to one another, be good to ourselves. Go slowly, be at peace.

Post-Poetry

Just a few days ago was the last day of National Poetry Writing Month. I wrote thirty poems in thirty days. I posted most of them here.

Finishing the 30 For 30 Challenge has given me a huge sense of accomplishment. I'm not someone who usually follows through on anything, really, and I always seem to lack the motivation I so desperately need to complete anything. Because of my past issues with completing projects, I am proud of myself for committing to and finishing such an extensive one.

Let's talk about it. I'd like to start facilitating more conversation on this blog, so let's have a dialogue about the poetry. What are your favorite poems from this month? Is there a distinct voice that permeates all of the poems? Sometimes I wonder if my voice is big enough yet.It's really interesting, I think, to note the differences in style between some of the pieces. What, in your opinion, are the biggest differences between any of these poems?

Use that comment box, please. Words are nice things to share.

I send all my love.

Day 29

Part of the grieving

is wearing her clothes.

Tucking her blouses into my own skirts,

wearing three-sizes-too-small slippers,

wrapping her sweatshirts around me

close.

The way I used to hold her.

My mother watches me leave my bedroom

covered in relics,

memories of saintly, tissue-paper skin.

My mother watches me leave my bedroom

and smiles the smile she smiles

when she does not understand me,

but knows

I understand myself.

For The Little Woman

My great-grandmother died this morning. I do not have words right now. Instead, I'm going to share a post from my old blog. I wrote this on Christmas 2011 after visiting with Gram for the first time in too long. I love that woman.

I went to see my great-grandmother yesterday. She is ninety-five years old. It was the first time I had seen her since her birthday in September (I think), and I felt bad because I really should be seeing her a whole lot more. She's always so happy to see us.

Gram has lived through every major national event since World War One. She has the most incredible memories, and the stories that she tells are amazing and often come out of nowhere.

I learned a lot about life from my visit yesterday. We had been talking about my cousin's plans for college, and then she asked me if I had any plans for myself. I don't, really. Not for sure, anyway. She asked if I wanted to do theater, and I said that I really, really want to, and do you know what she told me?

She said that she hoped I could do it because she knew how happy it makes me.

I had no idea how much I needed to hear that.

A few minutes later, as she was trying to describe my clothing style, she let her voice trail off a bit. Then, she took my hand and told me, "you're just...you're just you."

I didn't think about it then, but that was a really wonderful thing for her to say. I've been searching for the words to define myself for such a very long time, and it was nice to be reminded that no matter what, I am me.

Thank you to the little old woman with the crooked fingers and hair like cotton candy. I owe you one.

Day 26

When we meet tonight, he does not hug me.
I stumble through small talk for awhile- 
it has been too long. There is not enough for me
to say.
I let him speak the most-
it is familiar, like the slow tying of a knot.
I want to cover him in rope burns. 
I think he knows.
It is too tight to untie now.

He asks if I've added any medication since the last time we spoke.
Not because I seem happier, 
but because I am tangled in angry twine.
I seem pissed at the world, he says.
He is right.
He does not know.
If we're being honest, 
I have always been this way-
cutting the ropes slowly at first,
then all at once.

Day 24

For my father, my teacher, my friend.

While the rest of the family is sleeping,

Pa Joad is waking up to a yesterday covered in dust.

Dust ripening the windowpanes.

dust harvested from tent camps.

dust retreating across the plains.

dust going home.

Day 23

Things to do when you fail your calculus final

The grade is a cigarette. 
You will want to crush it underfoot, to stamp ashes into the pavement. 
The grade is a cigarette. 
You will feel like a collapsed lung.

When you make eye contact with your teacher for the first time all day, remember that you do not know him. Don't imagine his thoughts or fill his head with concern for your future, your falling grades. 
You do not know him. 
For all you know, he could be thinking of baseball. 
For all you know, you're just a student who struck out.

Remind yourself that in the space of two school years, you've revised your definition of a low test score from 99.9 percent 
to the sound of a plane crash.
You were a genius once, a walking abacus. Today, 
you are the back of the classroom, 
the steepest learning curve.

Day 22

Today is not this poem. There is too much
story in it that does not belong to me.
Today is not for everyone to read.
I will not publish others' invisible ink.

Instead, 
my lips will fold around the space between sunrises
and swallow sadness that tastes like horizon.
Push sunset secrets down my throat 
and relish in the aftertaste.

Day 19

My sister lets me borrow her sunglasses.

I take her everywhere she wants to go-

heart in my stomach,

shaking hands at 9 and 3-

This is new.

She puts the sunglasses on for me at a red light.

I pretend it is my mother driving 

instead of me.

That I am my mother.

My heart returns to its home.

My clock hands do not tremble.

This is good.

The light changes again,

and I am not my mother.

My sister and I play dress-up in the front seat.

We are advisory speed signs.

Yellow lights.

too small to be heeded.

too small to be alone.

Day 18

Today is a hijacked carnival ride. 
Today is cotton candy stomachaches.
Motion sickness. The fist in my belly.
The dizzying teapot.
The twister.

I am seven years old.
My cousin and I are pinwheels 
spinning too fast.
scared.
She begs the man with cigarette eyes to turn off the Tilt-A-Whirl.
I am silent.
She screams into his tobacco cheekbones.
I am silent.
She pleads with his nicotine lips until he parts them in submission 
and everything 
Stops.
I am silent.
She vomits next to a bumper car. 
I am silent.
The cigarette eyes take one last drag.

Day 17 or I've Got a Lot Going On

things i haven’t finished ye

two baskets of dirty laundry
on my mind
(and also in my room)
,
blankets cocooned in the corner
on a chair
holding pen for useless
(i sit there sometimes)
,
second-day showerless shoulders
slump in silence
i should scrub them
,
should do homework
,
build empires
,
i should read essays
,
write universes
,
i should
i think
i
i
think
,
should
,
I’ve been thinking a lot lately,
and I haven’t finished that eithe

Days 15 and 16 or What To Say When Your Best Friend Gives You The Ring

Day 15
For frozen fanfare and street side photography,
PROM! and poetry and passive aggression (but only to twenty-something assholes),
for giving ourselves the literal cold-shoulder on nighttime walks to the parking lot,
for the future clink of silver-on-silver,
For you. For me.
For forever.

Day 16
You’ll notice I haven’t been keeping a countdown.
Not because I fear the not-so-distant distance
(I do)
or our last walk down the hallway
(I do)
Best friend, if it were possible to count down from infinity,
today would be infinity and one.
52.3 miles is nothing when our friendship runs marathons.
We are so far from any endings.
I love you.

Day 12

For my 2013 Louder Than A Bomb team. You are my life and my love and my light. Thank you for staying with me.

I have never felt so beautiful about a poem.

Today, my heart is in all the right places, spinning swiftly around my ribcage and fluttering into my palms,

into my poem. I 

have never felt so beautiful.

Not even when my best friend kisses me on the forehead

and calls me “amazing”, 

not even when she is teaching me how to breathe again, 

I will never feel the beauty of recovery, 

the wonder of discovery so much 

as when I am watching her from one side of a microphone.

I will let myself feel this kind of beautiful

every day.

Never write a poem when you have serious heartburn.

Day 11

My heart won’t fall apart for you. 

no tearing

no shredding

no crack in this wall but

Everything hurts.

You 

have set fire to all of my thoughts

and torched my brain into believing only in you

I didn’t know that 

heatrbreak caused my

heartburn but now

You are branded into me.

Day 10

For Kika
happy birthday, wonderful girl.


I do not believe in permanent separation. After all,
we are constantly in motion. Our lives are
pendulums swinging beneath clock hands,
the circular path of a planet in orbit,
tides washing and drying and
washing and
drying,
Our friendship is nature's strongest poem.
No matter the months eroding our canyon walls or
the states filling the rift between us,

There are six degrees of separation between everyone
so the man next to me in the airport knows you better than I do,
I pretend I am talking to you.

I look for you at a crowded poetry slam,
waiting until someone else fills the seat
I wanted to be yours.

Find me nestled under ukulele strings,
a random page in your favorite notebook,
When the gavel in your stomach bangs a little too loudly,

find me in food.
Calories are just the energy it takes to start a fire and
One day, your heart will be ablaze. Find me
in the moment before the flame.

Day 9

People still ask me if I write my own poems.
If my voice box has gift wrapped someone else's words,
If I am giving sound to a deaf child or
extracting a gold tooth or
sealing a crack in the Liberty Bell.
I do none of these things.
I am filling the space between wind chimes
with a breeze, I am composing this music
myself. So
Yes, these are my poems.
I made them to love me a little more.
These are the friends my fingers fashioned from their own nerve endings.
I made them to put a metaphor to madness.
This is my story
This is my heartbeat measured in pages of poetry,
This is how I built a house with no windows.
how I scream the darkness onto paper instead of at friends,
how I hate so hard I bleed alphabets into my notebook
This is my heartbeat measured in how many times
I've loved myself enough
to write something
worth sharing.



 

Day 7

Sorry, I wrote one yesterday but didn't post it. This is what I wrote today.


When the girl on your swim team turns benign homophobia into a Facebook art form, scream your cheekbones bloody in rebellion,
let your faith in her bleed itself out of you,
bind her betrayal into pages of poetry.
It is the only way you'll remember without shattering your trust on the sidewalk
over
and
over
and
over again.

My girl, my poet,
my hero,
myself,
do this for us.
Remember that you are love in kaleidoscope
You are most beautiful when you are shaken.

Day 4 (and 5)

Day 4
when you left, he spoke only in metaphors,
when you left, he told me he was drawing maps to you,
when you left,
I wondered where his compass heart would point.
Roaming girl,
you are the wildest path through the forest.

Update: continued from Day 4

(Day 5)
when he knew you were leaving,
he confessed to faulty cartography and tried again, topographically this time.
he mapped out your mountaintops,
reset the scale to account for the distance between your heart and his
When you left,
he realized how thin the air was at this altitude.

Day 3

The Yellowstone Caldera

Half a million years ago, a volcano loved the world too much.
Her attraction covered the continent in 250 miles of volcanic ash
and turned magma into mountains.

For awhile, she was hiding.
Caldera settled miles underneath us,
suppressing underground sobs,
striving for salvation
and slowly seeking sunlight for the second time.

-

Lately, she's been sprinting upward,
climbing three inches each year in search of the sun,

Scientists say Caldera will see surface again.

Not today.


Not tomorrow.


Her ancient scalp will scratch the surface in a thousand years.

Hers is a prolonged arrival,
fashioned across centuries,
Caldera will embrace our atmosphere
like coming home.
the earth will be singing,

shaking,

sobbing,

stunned at her reckless return.

She will greet us with Leviathan love and a landslide of lava,
her joy coating our lungs with the dust from her lips.
We will asphyxiate from her affection.

Caldera's kiss will be our last.

30 Poems, 30 Days

Happy National Poetry Month, everybody! I'll be writing one poem a day this month. Hopefully I'll remember to post what I've written.

April 1

When the boy you loved too much asks for your darkness, do not laugh.

Tell him you plucked your heart from prescription pill bottles,

filled the hole in your lungs with a therapist’s armchair.

When he asks how to care for the nighttime, answer in astronomy.

consider telling him that midnight’s speckled shimmers are better antidotes to depression 

than bright blue daytimes.

Teach him to chart his own constellations,

see Jupiter reflected in his pupils,

increase your distance and watch him from telescopes.

When this comet of a boy enters your orbit again,

do not spoon feed him sunlight.

Show him the stars.

April 2
forgive stomach symphonies
in empty lunchrooms
swallow your shame

FEEL MY QUEER GIRL RAGE

If you've been on Facebook today, you've probably noticed a sea of red profile pictures supporting marriage equality and the repeal of DOMA. As a queer female ("queer" meaning that I don't limit my attraction to a gender binary) living in a world that makes it hard to love people I might want to love, I'm thrilled by the outpouring of acceptance and solidarity that my friends have shown to the LGBTQ* community.

A few minutes ago, a conservative "Facebook friend" of mine changed her profile picture to a red cross with a caption reading as follows:

God loves all people, all genders, all ages, all people groups. Today i will stand with Christ on his definition of what a marriage is :

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh" - Matthew 19:5

I have no interest in taking away freedom, or creating controversy, but rather just to wave the flag for Jesus above all causes. I am more interested in biblical truth than I am with aligning myself with what the world deems acceptable.

I'm an angry mess right now, an angry, disappointed mess. My level of comfort and trust in my school community is diminished. I know this girl. I see her every day.

I fail to see the logic of her words. I'm not Catholic, but I know very well that Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. Jesus was a man whose heart only knew love. There is no biblical truth in being discriminatory. Hatred is not Truth. Love is.

I'm sorry this post isn't more eloquent. I probably shouldn't write when I am shaking.

I didn't write in my journal yesterday.
I write in my journal every single day.
That should be an earth-shattering moment for me. Any other day, it would have been.
But I didn't write in my journal yesterday and it didn't seem so huge, either.
There was nothing that I knew how to say.

Yes, I should move on, but this is the first family death I've really cared about in years. I am grieving magnificently. Since Wednesday, I've exhibited all of the same outward signs of depression I experienced earlier last year. That dog, my baby, he's a huge loss for me. I'm going to have difficulty adjusting to life without his warmth, and the nightly sounds of him snoring contentedly under my bed.

I've moved his brother's dog bed into my room and his sister now sleeps in my bed. I am trying to compensate for the friend I've lost.

I don't know how to say all of the things I want to.

He wasn't always this quiet.

Humanity's capacity to inflict emotional torment on itself is astounding. I will never quite understand why we continue to do things we know will break our hearts. Why we still love, even when we know nothing is permanent. 

Why we keep pets.

The little guy in pictured above, that roley-poley dachshund of mine, has been with me for nearly fourteen years. He hangs out around or under my bed most days, waiting to eat or to be let outside to play. My Bindycake teaches me every day how to love without judgement or reason, how to spread warmth wherever life takes me.

How to grieve when the time comes.

Bindy stayed under my bed for all of yesterday. I knew he was sick, that this was probably the end. And it was- my poor baby was in so much pain, all we could do was help him out of it. 

It still hurt, though, when I came home to silence from under my bed. 

I want him back. I just really miss my dog.

Find the Derivative

Earlier today, I found this picture I took of my first semester final review for AP Calculus. It is the prettiest homework I've done. In addition, it's probably incorrect.

Calculus is the most difficult academic challenge I've ever faced. It's the only class I take that actually diminishes my confidence as a student and makes me second-guess the intelligence everyone tells me I was born with.

Math has been a struggle for me since middle school. I moved to the advanced class halfway through sixth grade because Normal Math felt too easy for me. Immediately, the gaps in my mathematical knowledge base started becoming more apparent. As the years went on and I kept advancing, Algebra  to Geometry to Algebra 2 to PreCalculus, my lack of fundamental skills set me farther and farther behind.

Today I play a constant game of catch-up with the rest of my Calculus class. They are unimaginably sure of themselves. That is one thing I'll never understand- how is it possible to actually be good at Math of any kind? I'm so lost that I don't even know what kind of questions to ask my teacher in order to receive help.

But for all of the stress and the struggle, I am in love with Calc. Everything flows so beautifully, from the derivative to the integral to the limit, it is all so certain.

It's the most beautiful language I've ever seen. I only wish I could be fluent.

Laotong Appreciation Day

My epiphany came one sunny Saturday in March, in a concrete room just past the stage lights.

We stumbled
one, two, three,
one, two, three,
around the backstage rubble, mad with adrenaline, keeping each other from falling,
disturbing bystanders in a futile search for silence.
"we're going to Hell," I told you as we swayed in the dark,
voices at a whisper,
hands clasped in mock reverence for something we never really believed in anyway.

It's been eleven months. You still do not know how to waltz.

I can't remember when the music first started, but it sounds a little bit sweeter that way.

Best friend,
You are my reminder that loveliness is still alive, good intentions have not died,
and life is too beautiful a thing to sit back and watch with a vacant expression.
I will not watch from the other side of the room,
but live in the middle of the dance floor.
Maybe my grace is only imagined, but you are the best partner
and we are my favorite song.

Very soon, we will both be dancing solo.
We'll vacate the floor for awhile, try to accommodate each other's absence,
make up new steps as we go along.
We will teach each other the moves we have learned, incorporate them into our old routine,
We will flow just as seamlessly.
Our grace is no longer imagined.
This song has no end.

Things I Know But Will Not Use In Real Life

I wrote this a few weeks ago. Here's to memory and living for (or in spite of) it.

My first memory unfolded itself in my toddler's hippocampus when I was three years old.
I am sleepy-eyed, watching my uncle eat a fudgesicle from across the room,
tossing its wrapper down his throat with the rest.
The light is rain-grey through smudged glass.
Thirteen years later, I still wonder if it is a dream.

It snowed in Yellowstone National Park on June 26, 2004.
If you want, I can draw how the trees looked driving through them that morning.
I'll sketch the wind's pattern down the mountain, the bumblebee path of the each snowflake settling on the windshield.

I am fifteen and writing poetry for the first time feels like finding a lost pair of glasses.
My best friend and I shatter like laughing lightbulbs, sprawled on the small-city sidewalk, shimmering in sunlight and we
don't remember why.

Today is for testing my memory. Today is for tracking time through trivia. Today I will tell you.

There are more than 20 different ways to break an arm.
My sixth grade band teacher had used 14 of them, he said, and I wonder if it was for intimidation's sake. He spoke in murmurs and the underlying threat of his judo techniques kept me from asking him to speak up.
To this day woodwind instruments make my whole body shiver, bones tingling like wind chimes.

You can bite off your finger with the same force it takes to bite through a carrot
I have threatened my fingers with the strength of my jawbone,
the joints do not sever. Knuckles have entered my throat
and nothing comes out. There is no blood,
no vomit,
no shredding of skin.

It only takes seven pounds of pressure to snap off your ear.
Sound died for me in the bottom of an end-of-summer swimming pool. I was young enough then to forget how to mourn, but ghostly grief has been haunting me lately. I am hyperaware of the absence of hearing like your mouth remembers
a lost tooth.
If my ear were to split from myself, I would hear
nothing but an echo, phantom sound waves
in an empty room.

My uncle is thirty two. It is thirteen years after the Fudgesicle Incident. He's married to a small and beautiful Mexican woman and they give me religious calendars every Christmas. Last year, I wanted to tell him I am no longer Catholic. To explain that one day I might marry someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns,
maybe I won't marry anyone at all.
I am not the bleary-eyed child who watched you eat that morning.
My uncle,
I worry you will not love me.
I stayed silent. The light is rain-gray but waning this time.

It did not snow in Black Hills, South Dakota on July 23, 2012.
If you want, I can sketch you the path of the road through the mountains and my finger will trace the outline of  heat over the blacktop, draw a line in the creek bed where I wanted my blood to leach itself into the water.
I will make a map for the route back home.

I am sixteen and writing poetry still feels like looking for my glasses.
My best friend and I laugh ourselves to pieces on the pavement all over again
and I now remember why.

First Breath

Good morning, lovely.

I've made this new blog because the old no longer feels like me. I am different now than I was last year, last month, or even five minutes ago. Gray light is filtering through the blinds today. This is the beginning, the recognition of myself as a poem always in revision, the realization that I will never be finished growing.

This is the new.

I promise to welcome it.