a haiku map of my dc

this is my city as i know it.

dc surprised me. i didn't expect to love it as much as i do, but it will always hold a lot of significance for me. i became much more of an adult here, and i think more authentic. the city offered me a lot of opportunities to really invest in an interesting, ambitious, courageous version of me and i like who she is becoming. it was lovely for me to feel like i belonged in a place and within a few different groups of people. that feeling doesn't often come to me in provo.

my little map has red and green pins of all my favorite places to eat and to go. i wrote a little bit about them, but then i decided i'd rather remember the memories in all these places and i wasn't sure how to include that. so i made extra purple pins of all those street corners where my love is and wrote a little haiku about my memories. hi, i'm pretentious. we're going with it.

so here's my formal goodbye to dc: thank you. you were perfect. and i can't wait to return to you.

love beginning

i'm here. i live in a baltic state. in a little soviet apartment. in the land of rain. 

i'm teaching english again, this time as the head teacher. my leadership abilities often feel questionable. it has been chaotic as the beginning always is. i think about china all the time and i miss those sweet children that hold so much of my heart. i can already feel it here, though. i can see love beginning. 

i've said it a zillion times but that love i felt in china changed my life and my soul. living in a different country, especially countries like china and lithuania, is challenging. the other teachers don't see it yet because they haven't lived it, but i am already anticipating those heart bursting goodbyes and the way it feels to miss a life and a self that you cannot go back to. 

missing is something i am getting very good at. it feels like a gift now. i want to feel it, that sinking soaring feeling of loving something so much that it hurts, or just that simple and deep appreciation for people and places that have offered you growth. missing is terrifying and precious. i have spent too much time numb. 

i've loved and lost, and the world still spins on. love and attachment have never broken me. i would rather continue to give it without requirement for reciprocation than protect myself. not to say that i don't have fears or pause. i can give love and accept love, but the idea of needing, of dependence, that still seems suffocating. i am probably still afraid of it, but now i would rather be brave.

i met a mormon latvian national volleyball player named matiss this weekend, and his name sounds exactly like matisse, and i am so happy about that. eastern europe is treating me well.

tin

i read a short story once, and in it it described how every age you've ever been is like a tiny tin can inside another tin can, and on and on, like russian nesting dolls, and all the while all your ages are rattling inside you. i was thinking about it on my walk to school, and i thought that maybe love is like that, too. maybe all the people we meet and love make our hearts grow, but our hearts grow layer by layer, person by person. so the reason our hearts can be so big is because we've loved and been loved by so many, and the influence of those people rattle inside us as we move along. 

but maybe not, maybe that's not what love is at all. who really knows?

but i do know that i can still feel certain things rattling inside me. certain people rattle inside my heart, making noise and reminding me. i wonder how much of me i really am, and how much if me is a conglomeration of all the people i've met and all the love i've felt.

i wonder if my determination is jenoa rattling inside of me, or if jackson's tin can is what makes me so still or if trevor's drives me to be kind, and maybe julia and whitney are where my laughter comes from and the way i squeeze people's hands comes from mikelle's place in my chest, and maybe mack gave me two aspiring green thumbs.

when i gracefully concede in arguments, parker taught me how. michelle painted me lavender, and the wrinkles in my nose when i laugh are steve's. i think my generosity originated all the way from the sands of weihai's international beach, where mei first handed me an orange and a can of coconut milk.perhaps all future lifts of my right eyebrow will have a bit of ben in them; perhaps my blinks will be sydnee's. all my sunshine came from allie's light, and colin is in the way i dance.

i ask emily's questions and listen with ari's ears,
or at least all that is what i'm trying to do.

and i could go on and on,
and on and on,
but if you're ever around and you hear rattling,
it's my heart making room for your's, too.




originally written 8/25/12
*i often find that things i wrote on the diaries of a fly on the wall keep teaching me lessons i need to learn. i would like to relearn them, add to them, and collect them again. anything posted with a date at the bottom like this is a repeat of something already written.

Open Window, or: My Insides Look Like A Matisse

this is my favorite painting.

when i was fifteen i visited the national gallery, which happened to be showing a lot of matisse. his colors struck me first. without much thought, i bought a postcard of open window.

a few weeks later my parents separated. walls fell. oh, they immediately tumbled. what was left was the core of me, this very vulnerable but very authentic self that i hadn't ever met before. my internal demolition also knocked the words out of me. i found myself struggling to verbalize, struggling to feel understood. the little postcard hung on my wall.

i went to park city a few months later. in a tiny art gallery on main street, i found myself in front of a picasso sketch. i remember this feeling vividly. i remember feeling bright blue like a mylar balloon. my mind was clear.

so it was then that i noticed the connection i had with art. paintings and i, we both couldn't speak. we were made up of colors. i carefully collected postcards and hung them on my bedroom wall. i laid on my bed for hours just looking at them. we understood each other. they still decorate the walls inside of me.

we often talk about tearing walls down like its winning, like a person belongs to you if you can get past theirs. but walls are valuable. protection is important. walls are meant to make homes. the danger comes when we create our own cages.

it was one of those days, those silent afternoons studying brush strokes, that i began construction.

and here i am. i have walls. they are a gallery. they are malleable. they are the color of roses and emeralds. they are frescoed lavender. and they frame many, many open windows.

kind of blue

i stood in front of this rothko and i was filled
to the brim with missing even though it was right in front of me.
there's something about me: i miss things
and i miss them hard before they're gone.

as i rode the bus to work today i missed the city mornings,
that soft warm light filtering between gray stone and the way
the day
feels full of possibility.
i miss the tiny brick jagged sidewalks cerulean front doors black shutters
trader joe's
and i really miss cookie butter

miss how i look different,
how everyone looks different, so much that we're all the same
and how the standard of  beauty here is so inclusive
that i don't feel like i have to measure up,
taller, blonder, thinner.
here: me, short, curvy, mismatched eyebrows, more me,
i don't even own running shoes, more me.
the cookie butter helps.

i miss west end cinema and independent films
tuesday  night open-mic poetry at busboy's and
how he looks at me when we're dancing.
i miss saturday brunches and having a to-do list
full of experiences yet to be had

i miss being at the center of the world,
meeting harry reid nancy pelosi jeff flake
i miss swimming in this alphabet soup

above all
i miss being in a dim room late at night and looking around
at people that i love and more people
that i'm starting to love
and feeling like i belong.

i miss this familiarity.

smart trips

sun shines through and warms my left foot.

this city is a forest

forest

of neoclassical columns.

bus rides begin with yamakas

zipped-up babies

and The White House.

the Constitution is my co-worker

and Pennsylvania Avenue is my chauffeur.

going home goes like this: 

she gets off and runs like

the wind, or forrest, 

Forrest!, he yells in front of the national gallery

private school kids call the suicide hotline

and neither are funny.

and there’s a young woman in a wheelchair who makes me feel 

sorry so sorry that i get off at

*ding* stop requested: L street...

a stop early and then the homeless man I helped feed

last Friday at Miriam’s Kitchen

shakes a cup full of change.

are we there yet? 

or have we been here all along?

i have memories of familiarities 

from before they ever were

and i have heart space for people

that existed long before we ever met.

thawing

life is so good here that sometimes it feels like my bones are glowing.

last thursday i went to the national gallery by myself and there was almost nobody else there. there is something that happens to me when i walk into a museum--especially alone. it feels like everything that has been living inside my rib cage is released. and i get to look at it and feel it and be in it. we have conversations, the gallery walls and i. its a heart distance thing, not something i can tell you about with words. but it feels like i belong. and it feels like i am a work of art as well.

i was riding the metro home with my friend the other night and we were sitting in front a glass panel by the doors. i kept looking at my reflection there and what i saw was joy. i almost didn't recognize it on myself. i smile a lot here, and i have never before been quite so aware of my cheeks.

it is good to be happy. i am feeling more myself. i am just now realizing that 2013 has made me too hard. that might sound silly, i have always been a softie. but i have also always been fiercely independent, and the two are hard to balance. i didn't let myself fall in love. i don't mean with people and plans and ideas, but with everyday living. i didn't let myself fall in love with the mundane things, and you've got to love those. you've got to always be noticing the details, or else you're always looking ahead and never living.