i'll let you know when i get there

let's live suddenly without thinking e e cummings

"I think people misunderstand, sometimes, the difference between “empathy” and “sympathy”, and this is getting us in trouble. Sympathy is closer to pity. Empathy, which is essential for being human, means that you can imagine yourself in some else’s situation, good or bad. And feeling *real* empathy, even empathy with “the enemy”, with the bottom of the barrel of humanity, with the suicide bombers, with the child molesters, with the Hitlers and the Osamas, is necessary. If you, as a human being, can’t stop and try to imagine what sort of pain and agony and darkness must have descended upon these people to twist them up so badly, you have no roadmap to untwist the circumstances under which they were created. There can be no limit to empathy. If you can’t go the final mile, you’re not there yet." -Amanda Palmer

this week was a strange mesh of old and new discomforts a familiar fall heaviness old and new growth hurts in unexpected places from unexpected sources but at the end of it on a sunday night, i have a fancy cat by my feet & m&ms in the freezer so it can't be all that bad, right? (right.)

listen, colors up the back of sheep- we all know who's the belle of the ball i was thinking of you in england i was barely there at all staring out the window at hours of green a pastoral haze of physical ache for an absent limb. phantom. willed forgetting. back in america and i find myself elsewhere, still in some past.  some depth.  some nowhere. the way we speak to each other and are spoken to i started listening and all my words changed an excess of darkness before some fall back and i meant to write to you months ago. sometimes it's hard to contain these screams in little boxes the windows are open and everyone hears they used to sit together and coo like birds- there is no natural state this is all just the firing of synapses subconscious lunges at those magic hormones that tell us we are happy chase that connection call it out by any other name (the slight sagging around the earlobes. before you can detect it in the voice, there'...

after years of remaining completely off my radar, the song "Head Over Feet" by alanis morrisette made its way into my consciousness today.  i found myself humming, at first, and then singing it loudly (and with uncanny resemblance AM herself) on my drive home.  even when i had finished, one line stayed with me. "you asked how my day was." and then, to emphasize the profundity, a repeated, "you asked how my day was." it's as though the idea that a person who asked with genuine interest about her day was such an anomaly in her life that she had no choice but to fall head over feet in love with this virtuoso in human connection. at first i found the whole thing pathetic.  who are you, desperate 90's woman, who is so lonely in your angsty broken world that basic gestures of kind human interaction constitute reason to become utterly smitten?  do you think you deserve so little?  are you that dumbfounded that someone cares about your day that y...

miserable people are miserable. they eat little meals of misery and they talk misery blah blah blah and in between meals they have little snacks of misery and if you sit too near them, the crunch will drive you nuts.

the morning announcements contained this long reflection about 9/11 and how Jesus was there every step of the way.  It was about how Jesus was there with the man on the 86th floor calling his wife to say he won't make it... and how he's also there with the wife at home with the kids yaddy yaddy.  It kept repeating "I was there," and the reflection included the statement, "You may not know why, but I do." A familiar rant: WTF IS THAT?  HOW IS "GOD'S PRESENCE"  DURING A TRAGEDY LIKE THAT SUPPOSED TO BRING COMFORT?  HE WAS  THERE ?  WHY DIDN'T HE  DO  SOMETHING?  HE  KNOWS  WHY?  WHY DOES YOU KEEP IT FROM PEOPLE WHO COULD REALLY EXPERIENCE HEALING AND CLOSURE?" there is no goddamn why.  cruel to suggest. I don't know how on earth people find comfort in such evident bullshit. all bullshit. all.

back to school night reminds me of why i love teaching every year.  what i do matters. remind me in february- i love teaching and i'm damn good at it. emails like this help too:    Hi Ms. Ingram! I hope this new school year is treating you well :) I just wanted to thank you for the random vocab dances you made us do. Today in my English 111 class my professor asked what "poignant" meant. Immediately I remembered the move and the definition from sophomore year. Other students threw out descriptions and gave example but the professor then asked for a straight definition. I raised my hand and said "emotional; deeply moving". He was so impressed with the accurate definition he gave me extra credit! I miss you're class but clearly it's still with me. So I just wanted to give you reassurance that you are a fabulous teacher :) Best wishes, Sarah  Class of 2013

be still my heart some ancient yearning be still my heart a cruel need, a cruel beat be still my heart to a definitive halt to a definite stop a delay with no hope an end be still my heart some backtracking and the way it feels to hug a new body for the first time the way you feel new in your own skin too (i barely remember-                  the distance i barely remember-                 the intimacy). bare too bare to bare to bear something always known some thing to let go when the instinct is to grasp the habit says to hold the early morning light says merrily we dream but night brings dark & a slow beating heart we cling -how cruel- we cling

walls walls walls & motions:  going through them the incubation time for nonononononono virus is hours and hours and hours and you will be contaminated forever without knowing you will be infectious forever silently and unintentionally impacting just about anyone wallswallswallswalls wake up with that sour presence and absence at once it is not so dramatic it is mostly calm it is mostly hungry for regular food but not ready to process it yet.

at an art show with my mom and she is looking at picnic baskets for sale and i am taking a picture of the flowered sunglasses she's holding in her hands when a man finds his way into conversation- attractive, older man who clearly has kept himself up- looks like a chiropractor or the kind of dentist that would be featured in advertisements with a teeth baring smile. he talks, at first, about this neat photography exhibit that he and his wife (a bulldog face woman he keeps calling "honey" who is also looking at baskets) had seen in LA. he even includes her in the conversation, asking what museum it had been.  my mom and his wife step a little further away and then he is making sure to include that this exhibit was very sexual and risque- open legs- scandalous without being showy- and his words had this excitable, desperate sort of tone that confused me.  i thought we were talking about photography.  at some point i realize that he isn't really talking about photograp...