This is probably

my favorite love poem. Written by a scientist by vocation who does poetry on the side (!). I love the last four stanzas especially.

Love

Two thousand cigarettes.
A hundred miles
from wall to wall.
An eternity and a half of vigils
blanker than snow.

Tons of words
old as the tracks
of a platypus in the sand.

A hundred words we didn't write.
A hundred pyramids we didn't build.

Sweepings.
Dust.

Bitter
as the beginning of the world.

Believe me when I say
it was beautiful.

-Miroslav Holub

I love this.

It's sort of cloudy and makes me think of antiseptic.

Falling

You're pressing your fingers against the sky,
asking Jesus if he sees how close those trees are.
You don't believe in Jesus. A stewardess takes everything
sharp that could hurt you: plastic cups, prayer beads.
All of her omelets are gone. You're watching your window
like television--a show about the suburbs, those stubborn lives.
Whole families relax and look lovely at home.
You're folding your hands around the armrests,
feeling the vague sadness of the stewardess's voice.
There are no clouds today above the boxwoods.
You could live in a world so solidly blue.

-Lesley Dauer

So I've decided

that I'm going to start posting in here again, because keeping good poetry to myself feels selfish.

Worry

Say you want to sing right now,
over and over, the name of an old lover.
Aren't you afraid the neighbors will hear
your voice shaking a little, the way you shook
in that lover's arms, the night you started
losing one another? If you were me, you felt
a lessening no talking could lessen, a sense
the motel television made sense just then,
with its wash of poorly adjusted color
lighting the room. Between leaving
for more ice and forcing a toast
to the future, plastic glasses patting
and sloshing, you thought, "This
is what we're entitled to."

If, unlike me, you had pulled the curtains open,
overhead lights might have glinted
off the balcony railing for you
and exposed the courtyard, the shutdown
fountain. The two of you might have danced
down there, slowly and close. The two of you
might have rescued something beautiful.
If you were me, you wouldn't sing
that name either. You'd worry
about the neighbors. You'd worry like I do.

-Aaron Anstett

This is so beautiful it makes me want to cry.

Dear Marianela,

I hope you read this, because my phone is, as usual, out of service, and I want to say that those poems are wonderful. I'm posting "since feeling is first" here, so it'll be more easily accessible for me in the future. Thank you for showing them to me.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all the flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- e. e. cummings

Also for the

rapture.

I'm reposting this

poem for the rapture tomorrow.

Your Blinded Hand

Suppose that
            everything that greens and grows
should blacken in one moment, flower and branch.
I think that I would find your blinded hand.
Suppose that your cry and mine were lost among numberless cries
            in a city of fire when the earth is afire,
I must still believe that somehow I would find your blinded hand.
            Through flames everywhere
            consuming earth and air
I must believe that somehow, if only one moment were offered,
    I would
            find your hand.
I know as, of course, you know
            the immeasurable wilderness that would exist
            in the moment of fire.
But I would hear your cry and you'd hear mine and each of us
     would find
            the other's hand.
                         We know
            that it might not be so.
                          But for this quiet moment, if only for this
                             moment,
and against all reason,
            let us believe, and believe in our hearts,
            that somehow it would be so.
            I'd hear your cry, you mine--
                         And each of us would find a blinded hand.

-Tennessee Williams

I have a

really intimidatingly large amount of chemistry to do tonight, so I'm updating my blog instead. I really want a donut. I blame you, Carolyn. And ramen. Yesterday, I bought some balogna and salami, but I don't really feel like eating it anymore.

Again, the Body

When you spend many hours in a room alone
you have more than the usual chances to disgust yourself--
that is the problem of the body, not that it is moral
but that it is mortifying. When we were young they taught us
do not touch it, but who can keep from touching it,
from scratching off the juicy scab? Today I bit
a thick hangnail and thought of Schneebaum,
who walked four days into the jungle
and stayed for the kindness of the tribe--
who would have thought cannibals would be so tender?
This could be any life: the vegetation is thick
and when there is an opening you follow
down its tunnel until one night you find yourself
walking as on any night, though of a sudden your beloved
friends are using their stone blades
to split the skulls of other men. Gore everywhere,
though the chunk I ate was bland;
it was only when I chewed too far and bled
that the taste turned satisfyingly salty.
How difficult to be in a body,
how easy to be repelled by it,
eating one-sixth of the human heart.
Afterward, the hunters rested
their heads on each other's thighs
while the moon shone on the river
for the time it took to cross the wedge of sky
making its gash through the trees . . .

- Lucia Perillo

Incredible. ". . . that is the problem of the body, not that it is mortal / but that it is mortifying."

I absolutely cannot

wait for school to be over. You have no idea. You think you want to be out as badly as I do. You don't.

Instead of doing stuff now, I'm going to make a list of things I want to do this summer. No promises I'll actually do any of them.

1) Read books. Read lots of books.
2) Write at least one short story.
3) Improve my poetry skillz.
4) Improve my sketching skillz.
5) Study Roman/Greek mythology (sit in on class?).
6) Sleep
7) Research a lot a lot.
8) Take the bus to D.C.
9) Watch Parks and Recreation.

That's all I can think of right now.

This poem is happy.

Happiness
 

So early it's still almost dark out.

I'm near the window with coffee,

and the usual early morning stuff

that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend

walking up the road

to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,

and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy

they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take

each other's arm.

It's early in the morning,

and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light,

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute

death and ambition, even love,

doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on

unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it.


-Raymond Carver

I read somewhere

of some poet talking about poetry and how to read it. "Poems just mean what they say," he said. I don't know what I think about that.

Bio lab is over. Thank goodness.

New Year's Eve

However busy you are, you should still reserve

One evening a year for thinking about your double,

The man who took the curve on Conway Road

Too fast, given the icy patches that night,

But no faster than you did; the man whose car

When it slid through the shoulder

Happened to strike a girl walking alone

From a neighbor's party to her parents' farm,

While your car struck nothing more notable
Than a snowbank.

One evening for recalling how soon you transformed

Your accident into a comic tale

Told first at a body shop, for comparing

That hour of pleasure with his hour of pain

At the house of the stricken parents, and his many

Long afternoons at the Lutheran graveyard.

If nobody blames you for assuming your luck

Has something to do with your character,

Don't blame him for assuming that his misfortune

Is somehow deserved, that justice would be undone

If his extra grief was balanced later

By a portion of extra joy.

Lucky you, whose personal faith has widened 

To include an angel assigned to protect you

From the usual outcomes of heedless moments.
But this evening consider the angel he lives with,

The stern enforcer who drives the sinners

Out of the Garden with a flaming sword

And locks the gate.

-Carl Dennis

I have almost

officially decided that I don't want to be pre-med anymore. My new ideal is just becoming a really great researcher and writing while I wait for experiments to run. It fits better, I think.

A Hundred Bolts of Satin

All you

have to lose

is one

connection

and the mind

uncouples

all the way back.

It seems

to have been 

a train. 

There seems

to have been

a track.

The things

that you

unpack

from the

abandoned cars

cannot sustain

life: a crate of

tractor axles,

for example,

a dozen dozen

clasp knives,

a hundred 

bolts of satin--

perhaps you

specialized 

more than

you imagined.

-Kay Ryan

Procrastination means more

poetry. So does getting my New Yorker in the mail.

The Long Up

You can see the
land flattening out
near the top. The
long up you've faced
is going to stop.
Your eyes feast
on space instead
of pitch as though
you'd been released.
The measured pace
you've kept corrupts
with fifty yards
to do--fifty
times as hard
against the blue.

-Kay Ryan

Nothing like a

good poetry reading to make you feel completely inferior. But now I have a new book and an autograph, and a beautiful poem to share.

Paper Anniversary

A forgiving spring and now July's heat. You can almost see
the grass growing. In the mornings, white-throated sparrows take turns
flying through the spray of lawn sprinklers up and down
the street. Our driveway bends around an ancient pin oak--you tell me
it is a willow oak, Quercus phellos, but I will keep calling it
what I have always heard it called. This is how names work:
they come about somehow and stay if they stay. We are still
unpacking, finding resting places for the belongings we brought
to this old house, the silverware and wedding china, odd pieces
of furniture, cartons of papers and books, the heaviest things
to move. It has been the season of discovering the yard's plantings,
blooming in their time to speak what we'll take as a welcome. The azaleas
announced themselves to us as pink or white, solving that mystery
before coloring the lawn with discarded flowers. You were happy for a week
when you discovered the peonies languishing and neglected
beside the one good section of fence on the property and could hardly wait
until their lavish blooms shamelessly came open. The hydrangeas, you say,
have their color decided for them by the soil's subtle chemistry.
You brought in panicles of blossoms mostly the tint of a day-sky's blue
in a cooler season, but also shaded with tincture of iodine and a wash of rust
to complicate the hue. All of this is news to me. Every flower
has at least two names. Butterfly bush, summer lilac, something in Latin
I would have to look up. Since we moved in, you have been arranging
cut flowers from the yard in what vases we have, the widemouth jar
I found in the crawl space, a beaded white stem vase handed down
from somebody's grandmother, the blue bottle vase I paid a few dollars for
at a secondhand shop, purple iris against the parchment-colored walls, a spray
of narcissus on the dresser. Le Corbusier said, "The plan proceeds from within
to without; the exterior is the result of an interior." Outside, on this narrow city lot
a sense of order arises as I take up the chain saw and clear away a decade's worth
of mimosa volunteers and wild cherry trees. I can see the plan that someone laid out
before us, hollies in a line below the dining room window, the bulbs arrayed
around the house's corner and in a long bed beside the garage, a declivity in the lawn
where a flowering tree must have stood. In early summer a single surprise lily
emerged two feet tall overnight with a trumpet flower. We will make our revisions.
I prune the ivy and pull it from where it has climbed the window screens.
The massive oak, seventy years old, planted the year the house went up,
has endured as long as anything on this street. We should stop worrying
what to call things. Something will come to us, a phrase that holds
a like meaning for you as it does for me. I've found the place where the soul goes
when it is set loose from the body. I do not know the word for it.

-Bobby Caudle Rogers

I really just

post poems here, because in the time that it takes me to type them out, I feel like I get them a lot better.

There's a poetry reading tonight. Everyone should go. Hodges, 7 P.M.

This one is unsettling.

On An East Wind From The Wars

The wind came in for several thousand miles all night
and changes the close lie of your hair this morning. It
has brought well-travelled sea-birds who forget
their passage, singing. Old songs from the old
battle- and burial-grounds seem new in new lands.
They have to do with spring as new in seeming as
the old air idling in your hair in fact. So new,
so ignorant of any weather not your own,
you like it, breathing in a wind that swept
the battlefields of their worst smells, and took the dead
unburied to the potter's field of air. For miles
they sweetened on the sea-spray, the foul washed off,
and what is left is spring to you, love, sweet,
the salt blown past your shoulder luckily. No
wonder your laugh rings like a chisel as it cuts
your children's new names in the tombstone of thin air.

-Alan Dugan

So this blog

has basically just become a collection of all the poems I like. I'm ok with that.

Credit to Mark for showing me this.

When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be
   Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
   Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
   Their shadows, with the magic hour of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
   That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
   Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

-John Keats

Katie showed me

this poem, and I think it is wonderful, so I am sharing it with all of you (Marianela, Babz)!

Vertigo

Mind led body
to the edge of a precipice.
They stared in desire
at the naked abyss.
If you love me, said mind,
take that step into silence.
If you love me, said body,
turn and exist.

-Anne Stevenson

I just keep reading it, again and again. It it delicious.

Most days, I

just don't really have anything to say. I have good poems to share, though. So that is what I shall do. Writing in verse is so hard to do.

This poem was in the latest New Yorker, and I like it a lot, though I'm not entirely sure I get it completely:

Rat Wheel, Dementia, Mont Saint Michel

My last god's a theodicy glutton, a good-evil gourmet--
peacock and plague, gene-junk; he gobbles it down.
Poetry, violence; love, war--his stew of honey and thorn.

For instance, thinks theodicy-god: Mont Saint Michel.
Sheep, sand, steeple honed sharp as a spear. And inside,
a contraption he calls with a chuckle the rat wheel.

Thick timber three metres around, two persons across,
into which prisoners were inserted to trudge, toil,
hoist food for the bishop and monks; fat bishop himself.

The wheel weighs and weighs. You're chained in; you toil.
Then they extract you. Where have your years vanished?
What difference? says theodicy-god. Wheel, toil: what difference?

theodicy-god has evolved now to both substance and not.
With handy metaphysical blades to slice brain meat from mind.
For in minds should be voidy wings choiring, not selves.

This old scholar, for instance, should have to struggle to speak,
should not remember his words, paragraphs, books:
that garner of full-ripened grain must be hosed clean.

Sometimes as the rat wheel is screaming, theodicy-god
considers whether to say he's sorry: That you can't speak,
can't remember your words, paragraphs, books.


Sorry, so sorry. Blah, his voice thinks instead, blah.
He can't do it. Best hope instead they'll ask him again
as they always do for forgiveness. But what if they don't?

What might have once been a heart feels pity, for itself, though,
not the old man with no speech--for him and his only scorn.
Here in my rat wheel, my Mont Saint Michel, my steeple of scorn.

-C.K. Williams

"against all reason,"

This poem does not apply to my life in the slightest, but still, it's beautiful.

Your Blinded Hand

Suppose that
            everything that greens and grows
should blacken in one moment, flower and branch.
I think that I would find your blinded hand.
Suppose that your cry and mine were lost among numberless cries
            in a city of fire when the earth is afire,
I must still believe that somehow I would find your blinded hand.
            Through flames everywhere
            consuming earth and air
I must believe that somehow, if only one moment were offered,
    I would
            find your hand.
I know as, of course, you know
            the immeasurable wilderness that would exist
            in the moment of fire.
But I would hear your cry and you'd hear mine and each of us
     would find
            the other's hand.
                         We know
            that it might not be so.
                          But for this quiet moment, if only for this
                             moment,
and against all reason,
            let us believe, and believe in our hearts,
            that somehow it would be so.
            I'd hear your cry, you mine--
                         And each of us would find a blinded hand.

-Tennessee Williams

Thank God For

the promise of spring. Or, in this case, actually spring! Jubilee!


Happy World Poetry Day, readers (Marianela, Babz)! So today, I post a spring poem to celebrate. I couldn't find the one I was thinking of, so we'll have to settle for this. Still good, though.


A Light exists in Spring


A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period --
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay --

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.


-Emily Dickinson (not the cat)

So much for

posting everyday this break. That obviously didn't work out. My streak of productivity lasted a grand total of two days. It was going quite strong until it was met with the daunting prospects of doing chemistry. I just  spent like five seconds trying to figure out if you spelled "met" like "meat" or "met." My brain on break is not doing ok.


I don't have the patience for paintings. I'm not a bad artist, but I don't have the patience to actually sit/stand there and make something--especially something creative. I'm a copier, at best.


Ramblings. None of this probably makes any sense. I can't think.


The problem is that I don't actually care all that much about doing, well, anything. There is nothing that I feel a drive for. Not even writing. There are things that I appreciate and there are things that I enjoy, but, at the end of the day, I don't appreciate or enjoy them enough to spontaneously do them. I don't have any passions--not any lasting passions, anyway. I'd really rather just sit or sleep. So I just pursue things that people tell me I'm good at doing. 


And that, my friends, is the cold, naked truth. 


Unless I'm PMSing. Then I care about everything.


The Second Coming


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 


-William Butler Yeats

I need someone

to keep me from spending money for the rest of the year. Seriously. All I do at home is eat, sleep, and spend money. This is baaaad.

I've decided that I'm not going to bed tonight until I finish Uncle Tungsten. I've got about 200 pages left. Doable.

I really, really, really love Borges. I react to his poems the same way that I react to T.S. Eliot's, and that's saying something. Plus, we share a fascination with dust.

Maybe I'll start posting a poem a day. It's more for me than anything, though, 'cause it'll force me to read a poem a day. Hmm. Readers (Marianela, Babz), what do you think?

Remorse for Any Death

Free of memory and hope,
unlimited, abstract, almost future,
the dead body is not somebody: It is death.
Like the God of the mystics, whom they insist has no attributes,
the dead person is no one everywhere,
is nothing but the loss and absence of the world.
We rob it of everything,
we do not leave it one color, one syllable:
Here is the yard which its eyes no longer take up,
there is the sidewalk where it waylaid its hope.
It might even be thinking
what we are thinking.
We have divided among us, like thieves,
the treasure of nights and days.

-Jorge Luis Borges

So I've already

posted today, and I'm fairly sure no one reads these poems I post, but I just had to put this here, because it pretty much blew my mind:

To Whoever Is Reading Me

You are invulnerable. Have they not granted you,
those powers that preordain your destiny,
the certainty of dust? Is not your time
as irreversible as that same river
where Heraclitus, mirrored, saw the symbol
of fleeting life? A marble slab awaits you
which you will not read--on it, already written,
the date, the city, and the epitaph.
Other men too are only dreams of time,
not indestructible bronze or burnished gold;
the universe is, like you, a Proteus.
Dark, you will enter the darkness that awaits you,
doomed to the limits of your traveled time.
Know that in some sense you are already dead.

-Jorge Luis Borges

I read this

poem in Borders today and just had to buy the book, which brings my book-purchasing total of these last two days to 11 books and ~$90. Weakness? Probably.

I think it is wonderful.

The Alchemist

Slow in the dawn, a young man, hollow-eyed
from lengthy thought and unrewarding vigils,
is lost in his reflections, contemplating
the sleepless braziers and the silent stills.

He knows that gold, that Proteus, is lurking
in all chance happenings, like destiny;
he knows it hides in the dust along the way,
in the action of the bow, the arm, the arrow.

His occult vision of a secret being
hidden in the stars and in raw earth
echoes that other dream, that everything
is water, the dream of Thales of Miletus.

There's another vision, that of an eternal
God who appears in every single thing,
as Spinoza the geometer explains
in a book more tortuous than all of Hell.

In the vast blue expanses to the west,
the planets are beginning to grow pale.
The alchemist is thinking of his secrets,
the secret laws that link planet and metal.

And while he dreams of finding in the fire
that true gold that will put an end to dying,
God, who knows His alchemy, transforms him
to no one, nothing, dust, oblivion.

-Jorge Luis Borges


It must be awfully hard to translate poetry.

I think I'm going to try to blog everyday this break.

I've decided that

I am going to get my life in order this spring break. So in the spirit of Marianela emulation, here is a to-do list:

1) Read Brave New World
2) Read Uncle Tungsten
3) Write first draft of 5-page paper on Uncle Tungsten
4) Write chemistry lab report
5) Write biology lab report
6) Re-learn how photosynthesis works
7) Read, learn, and make index cards for three chapters in psych
8) Read and learn everything I've missed in bio
9) Read the current unit in chemistry
10) Read literature for the lab
11) Do Haslam readings
12) Write Haslam essay

I should try to write more poetry, too, but I doubt that will happen. So much to do, so little time.

On a brighter note, though, I just bought my Les Mis tickets! I am so, so, so excited. I've only been waiting for this moment for, you know, forever.

Once this break is over, no more skipping classes.

Jack Gilbert is

so, so good.

Michiko Dead

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.

To See if Something Comes Next

There is nothing here at the top of the valley.
Sky and morning, silence and the dry smell
of heavy sunlight on the stone everywhere.
Goats occasionally, and the sound of roosters
in the bright heat where he lives with the dead
woman and purity. Trying to see if something
comes next. Wondering whether he has stalled.
Maybe, he thinks, it is like the Noh; whenever
the script says dances, whatever the actor does next
is a dance. If he stands still, he is dancing.



Absolutely perfect.

Chemistry is beautiful

I admit it. Chemistry is incredible, and the closest thing to magic any of us have. Matter and energy and enthalpy and entropy and all that beautiful jazz that work together in a dance of system and surrounding and a big, expanding universe--chemistry.

I just suck at it. I really do.


And so, Katie, when I say, "You disgust me," I really mean, "I'm so jealous," because I'm still waiting on my letter from Hogwarts.

Sometimes, when I'm

walking somewhere, I just get the really strong urge to sing. Usually, I'm alone, though, so I have to refrain lest people think me crazy. 

No fun.

I don't know

what this means, or why I'm posting it here. But I feel like it.

Writing in the Lab as I Wait for the Gels I Screwed Up to Finish Solidifying

There are rats on top of the computer. Plastic
ones--gray and black, with their tails hanging over
onto the screen and reaching down into
all my words as I write them.

I squeezed one, and
I swear I could feel the
warm thump of its
chest in-between
my fingers as his lungs
opened and closed.

I've been instructed

to update my blog. I don't have anything to say, though.

I've been thinking about making this blog about the new things I learn everyday, since everyone learns new things everyday, right? Thoughts? That would probably get really boring really fast, just like that stupid 30-day challenge.

Things I learned today:

Cheerwine is not all that it's cracked up to be. 

I was making a 2 A.M. run to Kroger's with Katie (shout-out!) to stock up further on my precious Coca Colas, without which I would never be able to survive college. On my way to grabbing the 20-pack of Coke, I stumbled upon the 12-pack of Cheerwine, which I had good heard good things about and which had words like "unique" and "sparkling" written on it. Needless to say, I bought it along with a 12-pack of Coke.

When I got back to my dorm, I opened the box of Cheerwines immediately. I took out a can, saw that the tab was colored maroon, and was encouraged. It seemed to be living up to its "unique" reputation quite nicely. So I opened it, took a sip, and...was disappointed. Where was the sparkle that I had been promised and had so looked forward to? Was its uniqueness based off of its boringness? Why, in hindsight, was the tab even maroon?

So many questions.

So now I am sitting here listening to Andrea Bocelli and eating the hunk of salami I also purchased at Kroger's. This is probably why I'm still single.

"And I say,

nevertheless."

I love this poem by Jack Gilbert. It is beautiful and powerful, and it has a pulse.

I have to write a love poem tonight. Wish me luck.

A Stubborn Ode

All of it. The sane woman under the bed with the rat

that is licking off the peanut butter she puts on her

front teeth for him. The beggars of Calcutta blinding

their children while somewhere people are rich

and eating with famous friends and having running water

in their fine houses. Michiko is buried in Kamakura.

The tired farmers thresh barley all day under the feet

of donkeys amid the merciless power of the sun.

The beautiful women grow old, our hearts moderate.

All of us wane, knowing things could have been different.

When Gordon was released from the madhouse, he could

not find Hayden to say goodbye. As he left past

Hall Eight, he saw the face in a basement window,

tears running down the cheeks. And I say, nevertheless.

I'm taking a

break from this 30-day challenge thing. It hasn't been nearly as exciting as I thought it would be. And I didn't even think it would be exciting.

I'm supposed to write a love poem for poetry class, which is a problem, because I don't love anything. You can probably tell this from my lack of favorite anything. Well I love my family and friends, but that's pretty much it. This is an issue.

Maybe I should write a love poem to all the new Haslam finalists! Oh how I love them so.

http://honors.utk.edu/haslamscholars/Finalists/2011/2011finalists.html

10. Talk about your

pets or the pets you would like to have.

I have no pets. These topics all make me feel like a really boring person. And I'm not going to talk about the pets I would like to have, because I honestly just don't feel like it right now. Too lazy.

9. Favorite meme at

the moment.

I don't like this topic, because I don't have a favorite meme, and it's making me look boring. Same with that favorite color topic. I have a personality, I promise!

I just remembered that I have a chem lab report due tomorrow. I knew there was something I was dreading.

8. Are you a

fitness guru or a couch potato? Talk about your exercise habits.

Once again, if you don't know the answer to this question, you don't know me. Fitness guru! Just kidding. Good one, right?

I am a couch potato, through and through. No doubt about it. The only thing I like more than sitting down is laying down. My diet consists largely of ramen and coke (the perfect late-night combination).You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

There was actually a fairly short time in my life when I was not a couch potato, though, and I did five hundred sit-ups a day. That was also when I was 91 lbs, so you can make your own judgements about that.

It's not that I don't care how I look anymore. My laziness just trumps everything else. And my fear of working out publicly and having people see and ridicule how pathetically weak I am. That, too.

7. How you came

across tumblr, and how your life has changed since joining it.

Well since this is a blogspot blog, I'll write about that.

I've known about blogspot for forever, obviously, since it's been around for forever. Before Xanga, even. I am a person of really weird loyalties, though, so I never joined, because I didn't want to betray Xanga (I do, in fact, still own and operate my Xanga from seventh grade, but it's on friends' lock, so unless you can already see it, no you cannot see it). But then my sister got a blogspot for her photography, and I decided that I liked it a lot and that I wanted a place where I could post things publicly without also giving people dangerous insight into what I was like as a thirteen-year-old (weird, so weird). And, of course, everyone was getting a blog, and I am a bandwagon jumper.

How has my life changed? Well, it hasn't really. Except I feel guilty if I don't do this 30-day challenge everyday. It's also encouraged (at least I like to think that it's had some effect) some of my other friends to get blogs, which I love! They all have much more interesting things than me to say.

I'm good about blogging on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, 'cause that's when I have this awkward two-hour gap in-between classes. And since I have a backpack now, I can actually take my laptop places with me without killing my shoulder! Huzzah!

Einstein Bro's was out of the salad I wanted, so I opted for the turkey chili. Also delicious.

This post title sounds dirty.

6. Your favorite season,

and why.

My favorite season is summer. I'm obviously not very unique. I like summer, because I'm not in school and it's warm everywhere all the time and I can wear shorts and skirts. It does get a little too hot sometimes, but I'd take hot over cold any day.

I like clear skies and flip flops and nice things like that. And not being in school. Did I mention that? In the summer I get to sleep on my natural sleep cycle (nocturnal).

On a completely unrelated note, I seriously do not understand how anyone can not like classical music.

5. Tell us your

three favorite colors.

I'm doing two today, since I skipped a day. And also because I am waiting for biology lab time.

I can't tell you all my three favorite colors, because I don't believe in favorite colors. I don't want to hurt the other colors' feelings, you see. Every color has beauty and ugliness in all of its shades and nuances. The end.

4. Write about your

closest friend(s).

Well, I had a post all written, and then I accidentally deleted it.

I skipped a day. My bad.

My closest friend: Carolyn and I have spent so much time together that we've developed our own kind of subculture that no one else really gets and/or thinks is funny, even though we think (know) we're hilarious. It also makes it so that we're a little socially awkward with everyone else, because we only fully know how to interact with each other. It's pretty sad. We've been friends since Kindergarten when she invited me to her birthday party because Kerry told her to and I showed up on her doorstep with a present and pneumonia. We have way more inside jokes than I could possibly list. Here's a joke, though: Catholicism.

Just kidding, Catholic friends.

Anyway, I keep her around, because she laughs at all my jokes and makes me feel funny. And, don't tell her this, but I'm actually quite fond of her. I wouldn't go as far as love though, and certainly never a hug... :)

3. Your favorite television

program.

I think the answer to this one is pretty obvious. If you've ever stumbled upon my facebook, even for just a little bit, you should know my favorite television program. It's so obvious, I'm not even going to state it here

There are a few pretty close runner-ups. Modern Family is great. Scrubs is hilarious. The Jersey Shore provides mindless entertainment like no other.

But nothing beats good, 'ole Liz Lemon and her TGS shenanigans.

Liz: Wanna see me shotgun this?
Jack: Oh God, she means the pizza!

Quality stuff, right there.

2. Talk about your

piercings or tattoos, if you have any.

I don't have any piercings or tattoos. Lame, I know. I've thought about getting my ears pierced, but I figured that would just turn into an added expense, and I definitely don't need more things to shop for.

I kind of want a tattoo, though, even though I never like them on other people. It would just be something small on the side of my finger or on my wrist or something. Apparently it would be "unprofessional," though, so it'll probably never happen. Plus, I feel like I would regret it afterwards. For now, I'll just stick to fake stuff.

And now, a vintage video of my dear Katie Rush that I just cannot get enough of:

New favorite quote? I think so.

1. You middle name,

and how you feel about it.

My middle name is Ann, and I am mostly apathetic towards it, though I do wish it had an "e" at the end of it. But mostly I just don't care.

Upon discovering my middle name, a teacher once said, "Melissa Ann--that's a sweet name," which I thought was odd. 

I was going to explain my Chinese name and its relation to "sweet" here, but then I decided that was too complicated.

Anyway, Ann. And I think it's okay.

I stole this

from Elizabeth's tumblr.



This will be my current blog niche.

There are a

number of things that I could be doing right now. For example, I could be reading the chapter in chemistry and working on the challenge problems. Or I could be going over those two papers the professor in my new lab gave me to read. Or I could be trying to write poetry. Or I could be reading that chapter in psych.

But let's be realistic. We all know this blog was created and will be used mainly as a procrastination tool. So procrastinate I shall.

I thought today I'd blog about neuroscience.


The dentate gyrus of the brain as seen via fluorescent microscopy and the "Brainbow" technique.


A lot of people seem to think that I am only going into neuroscience, because it is the more proper thing to do. They also think that I am more apathetic towards it than anything else, but neither of those are actually true. It's true that  the main reason I have chosen neuroscience as my "main major" is that I think it is more practical, and it's true that I never originally sought out neuroscience (I just kind of ended up there through convenience), but I am actively engaging in the pursuit of neuroscience now, because I really, truly want to.

Why? Because the brain is the beginning. Because I get excited (no pun intended) at the idea of tiny electrical impulses traveling through dendrites and axons and terminal buttons and building and building into who we are. Because, assuming monism for the purposes of now, the source of the answers to all of life's questions of why and how and who are locked up in an organ that is, more than anything else, fat, and that is incredible. Because neuroscience is, at its core, a philosophical pursuit. Because that, all of that, is art, and it is beautiful.

I want to know. I want to understand. And that's why I'm in neuroscience.

Alice told me

to update my blog, but I don't really have anything to say. I'm already behind on all my reading.

I'm really worried about my poetry class, and I'm really tempted just to drop it. If I dropped, my Tuesdays and Thursdays would end at 12:25 as opposed to 4:55, and that would be so, so nice. And I really just don't know if I can write all this poetry!

I just love words so, so much. Language is so, so beautiful. I want to be a poet.

So, so.

I should be

reading Keat's letters and writing a response. Or reading all that Haslam stuff. Or reading chem. Or bio. Or psych. I'm doing this instead, though.

I've been trying to think of a niche for this blog, and I haven't really come up with one. I mean, I have my actual, physical journal for deeper, personal thoughts, my xanga for surface-level musings, and this blogspot for...? Other than additional procrastination, I'm not really sure. Maybe I should get rid of my xanga once and for all, but I would feel like I would be committing some sort of gross betrayal. After all, I have had it since seventh grade. It would be sad to say goodbye, even though everyone else in the world has. I'm just weirdly nostalgic like that. I don't think I used that word correctly.

I'm being told

that Jon Stewart said the exact same thing as my previous post. I didn't know, I promise. Why don't I ever have any original ideas??

"And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate--but there is not competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

-T. S. Eliot, "East Coker"

I love, love, love that last time.

I just watched Jon Stewart's segment. It's only half the same...his is better.

I understand that

the shootings in Arizona were probably not a direct result the violent political rhetoric that has been going on. I get that. I really do. They were the result of a mentally-ill individual that had shown many warning signs before and simply fell through the cracks because of a mental health system that could use a lot of reform. And they were the result of extremely lax gun control laws that allow citizens to obtain guns (and semi-automatics at that) incredibly easily and carry them around without a permit. Political rhetoric, though? There's no evidence to that. I understand that.

But that's not the point.

The point is, it could have very easily been the cause. It is altogether far too plausible that slogans like, "Don't retreat, reload!" and political hit-lists in red-white-and-blue image-form could have pushed a mentally-ill individual to violence. That may not have been the case here, but it could easily be the case in the future. 

The left says, "You did it!" The right says, "Don't blame us!" and, of course, "blood libel!"

But that's not the point.

The point is, six people died, and thirteen people were injured. A Congresswoman was shot. A nine-year-old girl that was only there because she wanted to learn about the government died and died pointlessly. This isn't a time to point fingers. This is a time for people, left and right alike, to come together and find a way to make it so that something like this never happens again. And that includes toning down the hateful rhetoric.

That is all. 

Fancy seeing you here.

I decided it was finally time for a new blog. Photo credit goes to Alice, of course. Sorry for the unreadable banner. I'll find something better soon.