Monday, November 24, 2008

Inspiration

So in class today, we had a guest, a poet by the name of Florence Weinberger. When we had some extra time at the end of class, she asked some of us what our writing process was. Let me preface this with the fact that I had asked her to read one of her poems "Prayer" but I could not explain to her why it struck me. I sounded like a jumbled idiot asking for directions at a gas station...or at least that's what I felt like.

When, however, she asked what our writing process was, I was one of the students who decided to jump out and answer (why? you may ask...I'm still wondering that myself). I started with the fact that I began writing because I questioned too many things, I was depressed and I didn't know what else to do. Sentences didn't fit what I was feeling and never seemed to come out right, so I put my expression in poetry and images instead. They began to be my arguments with God as to why I was alive, what was my purpose, what was I doing here. They became my prayers in a form. She told me I was quite articulate, and that she would have never been able to tell someone why she had started writing poetry.

I realized why I so much enjoyed her poem "Prayer." The first lines of this poem say "Of course I prayed. Partly out of habit" which caught my attention right away. That was the way I prayed, if I began to sit down and just pray in my head or in my words, it was habitual, the prayers I had learned in Sunday school so many times. Even now, when I pray before meals, it is always the same prayer, exchanging some words for others, always ending the same...the same way my grandpa prays. But it is indeed still habit. I get caught up in the fact that I don't know if that is true prayer. We are told to have real conversations with God, that He is our Father, but then when it comes time to pray, everyone seems to have to be formal about it. I have since realized, that poetry is my prayer. It is my way to be truthful and honest in my prayers. To tell God what's really going on inside of me and to cry out in dire need of Him. Granted, not ALL of my poetry are prayers, but I will venture to say that all of my true prayers are poetry.

Everyone tells you that you can't be angry with God, you can't argue with Him. They tell you that you have to be polite and indifferent when talking to others. You mustn't start a disagreement, argument, disruption of any sort but simply stay diplomatic in all matters. Poetry has given me an avenue to change that, to be outspoken, to be truthful, honest, and frank about who I am, where I'm at and the life I haven't figured out how to live yet. It gives me a way to argue with God, trying to find answers in the predicaments of life. I feel sometimes as if I struggle with issues more than others because no one vocalizes them, so I hide them in my poetry. I feel as though I am not allowed to question anything because I cannot cause any disruptions.

So I guess in essence, my poetry, is my disruption of society, although it is not much of a disruption at all. Or at least that's what I feel like. I feel as if this is my story. We all have stories, whether in music, in film, in art, in novels, in short stories, in expressions, in acting, in plays, in speeches, in every other genre of expression possible...mine is in poetry. I may not be a good poet, I may not write about anything interesting which no one else will ever want to read, but this is my story and my expression. It is my argument with God, my prayers for loved ones, my wonders and amazements at the world around me, my hurts and pains that no one else feels, my distractions, my contemplations, my hopes, fears and dreams, my expression of love as well as my expression of doubt, my disruptions against society, my enlightenments of reading, my mundane every day life, my dreams of excitement elsewhere, my nightmares lurking hidden in my thoughts....my poetry is my life, my everything.

Because this contemplation was inspired by Florence Weinberger and her encouragement today, as well as her poem "Prayer," here is that poem for you to read and contemplate yourself.

"Prayer"

Of course I prayed.
Partly out of habit; I prayed as a child without learning how,

without knowing what haunting necessity possessed me then.
So when it seemed certain

my husband, my partner of my entire adult life was going to die,
I prayed the hardest prayer: Thy will be done.

I was giving up arguments, bargaining, recriminations. The carnal
fragrance of hope.

Except for an almost inaudible request for mercy, I would go on living
with Thy will. Except for an almost unquenchable quest for meaning

I would go on laying down one word after another with trembling,
shaking, dwelling with moving lips on the relentless decay

and the way we love the children of our children; what it means
to leave an absence behind. What it is: to leave.

But would I be able to skirt the divinity and order and moral protest of poetry?
And how else to obliterate the glibness of death by cancer?

I began pounding these Kabbalistic questions on Afro-Cuban drums and found
I could reach pure anger by banging beyond concept.

Drumming with other women and men I became a lunatic drumming
my frenzy in chorus on bare nerve briefly giving up my quest for meaning.

Hearing how grief and heartbeat augmented each other
I began to regain my personal sense of desire.

I kept walking rapidly early in the morning, chanting
conviction under my breath

talking about him to everybody I came across
not caring that they seemed uncomfortable

baffled
that I let him die in the house in the bed on the side where I will never sleep

dosing him with almost invisible tabs of morphine
forced past his lips and under his tongue

to melt like hot snow the more swiftly to enter his blood stream
fully understanding intervals and ultimate objective

and why it is I can now bring myself to remember
as many details as I can bear

and I can keep walking and chanting and drumming thy will
and I can call it prayer and I can keep praying and praying

that someday my will comes closer to yours, O Lord.

--Florence Weinberger in Carnal Fragrance
Red Hen Press, 2004.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Venting

Venting is not usually a good idea on the internet, and I will try to make this as indestructible as possible, but I can't make any promises.
So I'm really frustrated with so much that's going on and I just don't know how to keep going on. I mean I will and I know I will get through this season in my life, but I just don't know how the next few days or weeks are going to go.
Let me clarify before people get scared, I'm just really stressed out right now.
I have 11 papers due before december 12th, which is only actually 13 days of school for me. And people don't understand that I just shut down when I think about it all. I just need time to figure out what is going on in my life and what parts of it are important. I'm extremely terrible at time management and in the process of trying to cut the less important stuff out of my life, I tend to cut the VERY important people out. I hate that! I don't mean to in any manner, and then it makes things more stressful because they get sad and I don't like to make people sad. I really don't mean to hurt them in any sort of way and I hate myself for doing so. But then is it actually a good idea to give up school instead? I mean some of the papers and such I can skip or write really fast, but that's too much to read and write in the 24 hours a day I have left. That's only about 500 hours left that I have to write these papers and such. How do I fit papers, reading, end of the semester projects, presentations, and tests...as well as God, boyfriend, friends, family, roommates, and well life into 500 hours???

And then there are other things that are on my mind and bothering me. I don't know how to bring it up to the people that are bothering me. And I just don't know how to approach the entire situation. How am I supposed to handle this whole situation. How do I figure this out on my own? I don't even know the process of action to take and I don't know who I can talk to about all of this without hurting these people by talking behind their backs? But at the same time, that is the issue I hold with them, that they talk behind my back...most often when I'm just sitting in the other room, so I hear everything they say. It's so hard, and it hurts and is painful. I wonder if they just smile to my face to confuse me or just to be nice to the friends who introduced us originally. I wonder why they can't just talk to me about what bothers them about me.

I know I should just go to God with all of this, and I have, but I still don't have a practical application as to how approach them.

Then there's my whole financial situation which is less than satisfactory. And that just adds twice as much stress on top of everything.

AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! Let me just say this. If you read this, please pray for me, wisdom, strength, and well everything...thanks.