for real this time

According to some, I officially became an adult in June 1993 by reciting Torah in front of a bunch of my friends and family. Others might say it happened the day I left for college, or perhaps the day just before the beginning of senior year when I signed the lease on my first apartment and wrote my first rent check.

I don't know if any of those milestones really made me an adult. I'm not sure I know what being "an adult" really means, since I've often seen so-called adults acting pretty childish or childlike (with negative and positive connotations, respectively). In fact, I'm increasingly less sure that this whole adulthood thing is really all its cracked up to be.

Regardless, I think maybe my real passage to adulthood happened during the past few days. My first serious boyfriend got married. Two of my dearest friends in the world announced that they are (well, technically she is) pregnant with their first child. And, for the first time in my (very lucky) life, I am dealing with the very sudden and shocking death of a friend.

It's funny how things hit you sometimes in a particular way, at a certain time, and take up nearly the whole world. Other friends and people I've dated have gotten married. It's not like he left me for her; in fact he got together with his now-wife a few months after I had a fairly immature romantic crisis and ended our relationship (um, you're welcome?). Other friends, including some very close friends, already have or are about to have (yay for the Lady of the Lakes and Cool Cat!) babies. And people I love - people to whom I was, frankly, much closer than I was to the friend I just lost - have died.

So why is this so hard?

Is it because I feel very far away from the joy and very close to the sadness?

I see wedding photos that someone posted on Facebook, full of many of my closest friends, and it hurts a little that I wasn't there to help celebrate. I know that sounds nuts, but I'm actually on good terms with just about everyone I've ever dated, and I was friends with Boyfriend Numero Uno long before we were in a relationship. I miss him like I miss other people who were a very major and positive part of my life at one time or another, and I still care about him. All that I-use-to-love-you-but-now-you're-pond-scum stuff has never made sense to me, unless the other person cheated on you or kicked your dog. I'm so happy for him, and just wish I had a way to convey it without feeling slightly awkward.

I read and write emails to my close circle of friends about due dates and growing bellies, and know that nothing I could say in an email or in our rare phone calls will ever convey how much I love and am excited for these women with whom I have and will continue to grow into "adulthood," even as I wonder when or if I will (want to?) experience those supposed "joys" of pregnancy. I want to be there, darn it! Watching their bellies grow and hearing the daily updates and feeling the same infectious excitement that enveloped me when they got married, that made it actually fun to be around celebration-planning even though hunkering down over the minute details of a big formal white wedding has never really been on my to-do list.

But I'm not there. I'm here, remembering the moment last Friday night when I noticed out of the corner of my eye Mel Long walking out of the contra dance to head home. And I remember looking for her Saturday morning at her booth at the farmers market where she's been doing massage therapy for years, and seeing only a sign announcing that she'd be "back in 10 minutes" - a few minutes more than my friends and I were planning to stick around. And I think about this weekend and next, and all the dances and markets I will go to from now on where I won't see her huge smile or feel the squeeze of her hand as she said hello.

Mel was the only person who gave me a birthday present this year. She came to my potluck and quietly handed me a small white cardboard box, which I opened to find a perfect little bird's nest. She kept finding them in the woods around her house, she said, and loved them, but had collected too many and thought it was time to share.

Thank you, all who have shared your love with me. I will keep trying to not take it for granted.

from poetry to...

While it's true that, like most Vermonters, I mostly eat granola and hug trees, as you know I do like a few aspects of "pop" culture. The one that really makes me seem freakish to most of my community here is that I love sports, and the one that doesn't make me a freak but does force me to drive a ways to find a friend who actually owns a TV is my annual addiction to the best darn TV show in primetime: So You Think You Can Dance (otherwise known to its supremely creative loyal fans at SYTYCD).

I'm not going to say much about the latter except that this week was AMAZING and I highly recommend checking out some YouTube videos* of Wednesday's performances. See, Thursday night is TV Night, in which I and several of my hippie friends gather at RaRo's (aka Friend With Television) house and watch Wednesday's episode on tape before watching the live results show. It's a beautiful tradition that I firmly believe should last forever and ever.

But back to the sports thing, for the few of you far-away friends (and strangers who read my blog? I love finding out that strangers are reading my blog. I hope you enjoy it. Hi, Patti in Seattle!) who actually share this interest. Or maybe I'm just talking to my brother here. Anyway, we are in the thick of sports fun these days, between the Celtics and baseball season and one of the best Euro Cup tournemants in years. Also, the NBA draft just happened, and while I don't actually have the time or interest to follow it in minute detail, the ESPN.com commentary is hilarious.

Today is meandering along, and I'm just counting down until I can skip away from the computer and go on a swimming and picnic outing with the Adventure Man and then head down to what promises to be a ridiculously good dance. TGIF, I'm telling ya.

*Update: the copyright people for the network are trolling YouTube and the links might have been taken down. If you're really motivated you can search YouTube for "Kerrington & Twitch hip-hop", "Chelsea and Mark hip-hop" and "Katee and Joshua samba."

poetry week, day 6: the end (for now)

I can feel Poetry Week winding itself down, so here's one more to close it out. Of course, that doesn't mean I won't continue to post poems now and then. It just means that posts will have a different title, I guess.

A number of people commented on both the NY Times site and here that "If" is the poem they try to live by. I would not argue at all with the sentiment, but... well, ironic as it may be, I need my mantra poem to be a little less wordy. Luckily there's a perfect one. Thanks go to the Magic Lady in Atlanta for introducing me to this one a while ago. As far as I know it's untitled.

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom
goes on as fruit.
~Dawna Markova

poetry week, day 5, plus an explanation of the global economic meltdown, and my feelings about golf

Want to understand the current economic crisis? Here's some major help. I've listened to the podcast twice now and I intend to keep it as long as possible and listen at least once more, just to make sure I actually understand it. Not because it's complicated, but because it's so obscenely simple that I can't wrap my head around how things went so wrong.

Want to know how I feel about golf? Yeah, I'm sure you don't really, but read this anyway. It's funny.

Want to know the best thing that happened yesterday, or maybe in weeks? Someone else did my laundry, not for the first time ever. This poem is for her, with oh-so-much gratitude and love.

Do you know a laundry poem? Post it in the comments. It wasn't so easy to find one.

Sock Eater
by Betsy Rosenthal

On laundry days
my mother says
the dryer is a crook.

It’s all because
a sock is gone—
the one the dryer took.

I tell my mom
she shouldn’t let
the dryer see us eat.

It’s sure to munch
a sock or two
because it craves a treat.

poetry week, day 4

I can say this, because the only credit I can take for the success is that I correctly followed a recipe: the maple bourbon sweet potato I made for today's pie potluck kicked total ass. Especially the version with chopped hazelnuts sprinkled under and over the filling (I ended up making two pies - I had too much filling and an extra crust, why the heck not?). And also because maybe I put in a little more bourbon than the recipe called for. And I had Grade C maple syrup from the Adventure Man's sugar bush (forget Grade A Fancy, man... and really forget Mrs. Butterworth; the "cheap" real maple syrup is where it's at). All I can say is, whoever came up with the idea for that pie was having a damn good day.

It's a non sequitur, really, but I do think that the author of today's poem would enjoy a good maple bourbon sweet potato pie. Here's to him~

The Peace of Wild things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the last sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry

poetry week, day 3

I'm bursting with happiness for some dear friends today. It's a good way to start the weekend.

The agenda is pretty full, as usual - picking strawberries at the farm, Indian food at the farmers market, making a maple bourbon sweet potato pie for the pie potluck at the happy/sad going-away dance tomorrow (for the wonderful people who got married a little while ago), hanging out with A Boy (yes, and that's all I'm going to say for now), going to said Boy's friend's going-away party... and all of that is today! Tomorrow: hiking, going to the happy/sad dance, going to a potluck, and perhaps going to the Brattleboro dance in the evening.

And, um, laundry? I'm hoping it will magically do itself while I'm busy with all these other things.

Oh, how I love summer in Vermont(/western Massachusetts)!

Anyway, Poetry Week continues, so here is another of my very favorites: "Ask For Nothing" by Philip Levine. When I was studying abroad in Ecuador in college, a friend on my program loaned me a slim volume of Philip Levine poetry. It pretty much changed my life. I had read and enjoyed poems before, but never had I devoured poetry, been struck dumb by it, felt wrapped in its warm blanket. When I got back to the U.S., I walked into the Hungry Mind (sigh... R.I.P.), our lovely local bookstore that later went the way of so many locally-owned bookstores (have I mentioned that Brattleboro has at least four that seem to be thriving?), and ordered the book, The Simple Truth. I even stuck with the order when they told me that those 68 pages would cost me $16, a fortune for a college student to devote to a "frivolous" purchase. But I've never regretted it.

Ask For Nothing

Instead walk alone in the evening
heading out of town toward the fields
asleep under a darkening sky;
the dust risen from your steps transforms
itself into a golden rain fallen
earthward as a gift from no known god.
The plane trees along the canal bank,
the few valley poplars, hold their breath
as you cross the wooden bridge that leads
nowhere you haven't been, for this walk
repeats itself once or more a day.
That is why in the distance you see
beyond the first ridge of low hills
where nothing ever grows, men and women
astride mules, on horseback, some even
on foot, all the lost family you
never prayed to see, praying to see you,
chanting and singing to bring the moon
down in to the last of the sunlight.
Behind you the windows of the town
blink on and off, the houses close down;
ahead the voices fade like music
over deep water, and then are gone;
even the sudden, tumbling finches
have fled into smoke, and the one road
whitened in moonlight, leads everywhere.

poetry week, day 2

I was going to post something else, but I was reading the NY Times poetry comments again and found a new favorite. This is by Rudyard Kipling, who (factoid!) lived for a while in none other than... Brattleboro, Vermont. His house is just down the road from where I work. He wrote Jungle Book here, and also built the first tennis court in Vermont and supposedly introduced skiing to the state. You can rent out the house for a few nights (it's expensive but sleeps something like 17 people). I'm not kidding.

"If"

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

happy poetry morning!

I'm generally nothing but annoyed by the endless opportunities for readers/listeners/viewers to express our opinions of whatever the sound bite of the day may be - I don't watch the news to get Mike from Omaha's opinion on things, and I don't really think everything from NBA Finals (go Celtics!) MVP to President of the Unites States should be treated like an American Idol-esque popularity contest in which the people with the twitchiest text-messaging thumbs get the illusion of majority rule.

But occassionally what I might (on a good day) call collaborative or open-source journalism is actually delightful. Such is today's call in the NY Times for readers' favorite poems, pursuant to a wonderful story about a team of young poets from the Santa Fe Indian School competing at the International Youth Poetry Slam Festival in Washington D.C.

Have you ever gone to a poetry slam? Yeah, they vary in quality and you might hear a poem that is laughably lousy (or squirmingly inappropriate). But a good slam poet will make you laugh, cry, shiver and gasp for breath, all in a few stanzas. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the semifinals (not even the finals!) of the National Poetry Slam Championships in Minneapolis a few years ago, and honest to God I walked out of that building with my faith in the magical possibilities of humanity restored.

And that's not a bad way to spend a few hours.

(For an excellent introduction to slam poetry, watch this.)

So I started my workday today by reading some favorite poems of people all over the world, and commenting on a few of my own. In case you're curious, below are a couple of my favorites. And now that I'm on this kick I just want to keep sharing poems. I think I'm declaring the first official Poetry Week on Monkeyhippy's Adventures (OK, so some of my adventures are fairly low-key). Watch for more poems. This particular week might not end up being exactly seven days long, we'll see... And if you have a favorite, post it or at least the title in the comments, please!

Como Tu (Like You) by Roque Dalton [click for translation and more info about Dalton]
Yo, como tu,
amo el amor, la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas,
el paisaje celeste de los dias de enero.

Tambien mi sangre bulle
y rio por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lagrimas.

Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesia es como el pan,
de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mi
sino en la sangre unanime de las que luchan por la vida,
el amor, las cosas, el paisaje y el pan,
la poesia de todos

To Be Of Use by Marge Piercy [and, truly, anything by Marge Piercy]*
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

*Particularly "Report of the Fourteenth Subcommittee on Convening a Discussion Group"

it's about time

I was just wondering aloud yesterday with some friends/future housemates why no one is talking about the coming disaster that is the ever-climbing price of heating oil. Turns out a few people are talking about it, notably my governor. Go Vermont!

It may not be an issue for people in other parts of the country, but most New Englanders still heat their houses with oil. The title of this story is: We Are Completely Screwed.

Me? I have a good job, so while I'm not thrilled at the thought of how much of my money is going to go toward heating my (new and otherwise exciting!) house next winter, I will be able to pay for it without real hardship.

But a lot of people around here? The ones who have no savings, no health insurance, and are spending all their earnings just to keep the gas tank full enough to get to work and back? They simply won't be able to turn on their heat when it gets cold. And if it's anything like last winter, the nastiest and snowiest in decades, it is going to get really cold.

I'm serious: disaster in the making. It may be slow and quiet, but that doesn't make it any less scary.

why i love risk management in study abroad

Hazard: Bureaucracy
Management Strategies: Keeping papers up to date, making sure students have passports with them at all times.

Hazard: Street Cattle: cows, water buffalo
Management Strategies: Educate students not to get chummy with sacred cows

growing up

As I write this in sweltering (believe it or not) southern Vermont, almost everyone I went to college with (or so it feels) is partying in Minnesota at our five-year college reunion. I didn't know that people actually go to college reunions, at least not until there are several decades between you and the graduation dais, and hadn't imagined going to mine until suddenly it seemed that everyone and their uncle was going to descend upon St. Paul, MN this weekend to relive our glory days.

I'm not there for several reasons, (lack of) money and vacation time being at the top of the list. Also up there is the feeling I got when I envisioned myself there trying to catch up with about 100 people while spending actual quality time with at least 10 people. In two days, three if I stretched the fantasy. That sounded half fun and half awful, so I stayed home.

But the half fun part would have been really fun. I'm not going to say wistfully that college was the best four years of my life. But those were four damn good years. I laugh to think how much I've changed and how much I haven't. And to look around at my friends and where we've been and ended up in the last five years, some more mildly predictable than others (with me probably on the rather unpredicted end, I'm guessing, especially when you consider that I searched out my current job because I wanted to live here, not the other way around). And it would probably be great fun to drink beer and listen to all the stories from the people I haven't kept up with, or only know through Facebook these days.

So, y'all at reunion, I hope you've had a blast, and I hope you are taking notes, because I'm going to ask. Except I really don't want to know who is reliving college by hooking up with who. Thank you.