for to fill up your soul...

I had an interesting and in-depth conversation yesterday about Truth and Beauty: how to define them, if they can be defined, if they’re relative, if they’re the same thing, if they have similar qualities, if they are opposites. While I was thinking about it today again I decided I would look them up in the dictionary thinking that might ignite some more ideas in my head. You can imagine my surprise then, when in this high intellectual state of mind, I discovered the contextualizing sentence for “beauty” to be this:

"The beauty of keeping cats is that they don't tie you down."

Now if that doesn’t take the wind right out of argument I don’t know what does. Thank you American Oxford English Dictionary…Samuel Johnson would be proud.

just shut your eyes, its not happening...

As an inspiration from Bethany's blog, I am writing my own list of things I really like that you might not have expected (sorry for two entries in a row involving lists)...

1. Listening to Ricky Martin music
2. Smoothing a perfectly folded t-shirt
3. Having a random assortment of earth-toned hairbands on my wrist
4. Carrying empty hot beverage mugs to the sink
5. Putting my thumb through my belt loop
6. Slipping my feet across snow-free ice
7. Plaid...i really like plaid...and not the trendy plaid, but the real, farmer/construction worker blue/red/grey tone plaid
8. Siting on high perches
9. Holding the straps of a backpack
10. Saying the word "futon"

pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire...

In the first stages of writing the People’s Institution Manual I find myself floundering through the sea of information I have and not knowing what to grab on to first. So, this morning I have allowed myself to take a deep breath and think about those things that motivated and helped me through writing my senior level English papers. One thing I know is that, the hardest thing about getting a project done is starting. What is most important in overcoming this initial overwhelmed feeling is taking the proper preparations. And what helps most, I’ve found, is to put off the actual act of beginning a project by occupying yourself with seemingly productive activities. I have my own special repertoire of these essential tricks:

#1: Make lists (mostly of things that I’ve already done or that require no action).
#2: Organize all loose papers (first alphabetically and then by size and color).
#3: Clean the working area (because heaven forbid that would distract me later on).
#4: Read the assignment over and over between breaks to make something to snack on (because I wouldn’t want to have to stop in the middle of my work to eat). It also helps to color in all the “o”s on the first page of the assignment while you read it.
#5: DJ duty A…flip through cds deciding just what music will best encourage a working mode.
#6: DJ duty B… organize cds alphabetically and at right angles (for easy access later on when I need more musical motivation).

And the most crucial step… Stare into space for at least a good hour in total I do this to collect my thoughts and ideas and mostly my mind runs a bit like this…
”I should start on this it’s going to be great I have so many good ideas I wonder what’s on TV I bet there is a good previously viewed movie on sale at Blockbuster maybe I should go see that would require putting on my shoes man this paper is going to be killer I can see it already I wonder if I ate my last can of tuna is ten percent Tuesday the first or second week of the month I can never remember I wonder what it would have been like to see the Beatles live how many feet of wrap are on a saran wrap roll I bet it says on the box where did I put my mittens at the end of last winter what was that one great quote I found about that guy who did that thing did I do laundry this week maybe I’ll go over to the school and see if someone there knows what day ten percent Tuesday is I really like folding clean clothes which is so strange considering my usual messy scattered self maybe it’s some sort of psychological phenomenon in me maybe I could use that in my paper I should go check to see if my camera battery is still charging I should buy more candles I never buy candles I’m so glad I get to write about something so interesting I love getting into my projects”

oh i could show you the way shadows colonize snow...

Today I have been thinking about Christmas. To be honest, its never been my favorite holiday. It has its good points like: family get togethers, snow, lots of food, etc. But it also has its bad points like: family get togethers, snow, too much food, etc. The thing is, with the looming absences of Christmas here, I have begun to miss it. And not just the good points of Christmas...I find myself wanting all those part of the Christmas season that I have spent the past 21 years of my life trying my best to avoid. I miss the creepy men dressed as santa, getting paid to wander down the aisles at Safeway. I miss having to listen to twelve different variations of Joy to the World within one hour of radio play. I miss the overly sugary sweet taste of candycanes and the gaudy glitter and garlands that end up covering everything. I miss food courts at malls that are in overdrive and smell of too much oil and processed food. I miss the feeling of wet wool mittens and uncooperative scarves. I miss the way the entry way of my house becomes a puddle that lies in wait to soak the fresh pair of warm, dry socks I just put on. Almost as bad, I miss the feeling of getting snow inside my mitten and having it freeze around my wrist. In fact, I will stop just short of saying that I miss having Hockey Night in Canada trump all other valid tv watching time on Saturdays.

I'm harboring a fugitive, a defector of a kind and she lives in my soul and she drinks of my wine...

I am back in Dhaka. Back in the pollution and noise and chaotic life that is Dhaka. Alana loves the city, lives off its life and energy and I definitely have my moments where I feed off the life that pulses through this mass of people but in general, I miss space and freedom and fresh air. The most beautiful thing about the Bangladesh countryside for me, is its incredible flatness. Between the highrises of Dhaka, you don't notice the flatness of teh land, but in the country, between trees and rivers, the land lies completely prone and open against the sky. Maybe its flatness is part of the reason I love it so much. I feel at home there. No matter where I have been in the past few years, part of my soul is always tied up in the flat open land of southern alberta. And something about this similar Bangladesh countryside pulls at something deep inside me.

It is a strange feeling to have so much of myself spread across the world: My soul embedded in the soil of southern alberta, my mind tangled in my work here in dhaka and my heart spread between the tumbling river of the varsovia, honduras jungle, the snow covered streets of edmonton and a million other places strung along highway 2 from red deer and calgary to high river and lethbridge.

somedays her shape in the doorway...

Since I’ve been living upcountry lately, I’ve been taking malaria pills. I don’t usually take them in Dhaka because its not required and they have some unfortunate side effects. However, other than a slight loss of appetite I had yet to feel very many of these negative side effects. That all changed yesterday. I felt a bit light-headedly dizzy and sick for most the day, which is easy enough to forget about if you put your mind to it, but then I went to bed. Now, on the warning label, they say that you may experience various “psychological disturbances”. Well, I’ve heard of people having some crazy dreams when they’re on Mefloquine, and I’ve had some myself, but that’s about as far as the “psychological disturbances” went. Last night, however, I woke up at 3:21am, completely wide awake and was absolutely convinced that there was someone in my room – which is quite impossible because you bolt all the doors from the inside – but nonetheless I laid completely still and wide awake for a good 25 minutes hearing imaginary footsteps and breathing. Then when I finally got a bit of a hold on my rational self, which told me I was just hearing things, and it was all in my head, I laid there for another 20 minutes trying to remember or decide if I was awake or asleep which proved to be a very confusing and perplexing task for me. I was quite convinced that I was still asleep but decided to get up and put on some quiet music to put me at ease and it was only then I realized that I was actually very awake and still in “fight or flight” mode with adrenaline pumping through my body still and feeling the effects of my paranoia. Needless to say, I am writing this blog entry malaria protected, but oh, so tired.

Take me to the edge so I can fall apart...

Bri’s essential songs for this past week:

(because I know my roommates miss being forced to listen to the music of my moods!)

1 Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade Fire: Alana calls it the best morning music ever, and I’m a starting to agree

2 Attack El Robot! Attack! – Calexico: how can you not love it with a title like that?!

3 God Put a Smile Upon your Face – Coldplay: roommates…I listen to this loudly when I shower

4 When the World Ends – Dave Matthews Band: Dave Matthews is pretty irresistible to me I must admit and this one is no exception

5 Its Gonna Take an Airplane – Destroyer: if you haven’t heard this song yet, you should. I particularly like the way he says “now in my, evil empire eyes”

6 The General – Dispatch: beautiful advice “I have seen the others, and I have discovered that this fight is not worth fighting, and I have seen their mothers, and I will not other to follow me where I’m going…so take a shower and shine your shoes, you’ve got not time to lose, you are young men you must be living!”

7 Let Go – Frou Frou: sit back, close your eyes, breathe.

8 On Your Wings – Iron & Wine: I think I just really love the intro to this one, but it is representative of my entire obsession with Iron & Wine…thank you Bethany B for introducing us.

9 Are You Gonna be My Girl – Jet: the kind you sing aloud and “feel free” to, right Justine?

10 Kärleken Väntar – Kent: a great Swedish band, although it is dangerous for me to sing in a language I don’t understand

11 Shiver – Maroon 5: I have no excuse for this one…Its just good.

12 This Year – The Mountain Goats: my motivating song in particularly rough patches of frustration

13 Throw the “R” Away – The Proclaimers: and you thought they only sang “100 Miles”!

14 Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider! –Sufjan Stevens: another song that represents a greater love…mostly for the entire “Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State” album

15 Tom’s Diner – Suzanne Vega: I have a weakness for “talking” songs…remember Vitamin C’s Graduation song? Yeah, I enjoyed that one in its day too…this one is infinitely better though.

16 Beautiful Dawn – The Wailin’ Jennys: could serve as a credo for me in so many ways…I believe that the world needs this song. NEEDS it. I could probably go on for some time about this, but I’ve already included more than I intended too.

freedom hangs like heaven...

There is something very romantic about mosquito nets. And not the candlelit dinner kind of romantic, but more of the “suggestive of an idealized view of reality kind of romantic”.
This may sound ridiculous until you have slept under one, but there’s this fantastic sense of belonging to a different world when you lie under that canopy of sheer. It casts everything in this diffused light and transforms everything around it…the crows picking through garbage on the street even sound a little more exotic. It is so much easier to wake up under a mosquito net because the world seems that much more exciting to explore. It keeps making me want to quote Lisel Mueller’s “Monet Refuses the Operation” …The world is flux and light becomes what it touches…(I would recommend anyone to look up the poem in its entirety)
It is difficult to explain and even more difficult to photograph but I keep trying.

down to where the cliffs meet the sea…

I had an interesting experience last night. My friends who work with MCC here invited me to come with them to a children’s program at the convent where one of them stays. There were the expected songs and dances and skits and all in all it was really nice.
However, what made this a once in a lifetime experience was what happened after the planned program. First they asked us foreigners to perform something and so we made Cecily – on behalf of all three of us – go up and sing a song.
Then, they asked the sisters to do a little something. This one sister, who has that look about her that you just know she knows how to have a good time, stood up and started singing and then got everyone clapping with her singing and then pulled up another sister to play music to the song and then put on traditional Garo dress on top of her habit, and began to dance. It was hilarious and fun and great. While she danced she had this plate that she would flip around without it ever falling off her hand.
By the end everyone was laughing and clapping and cheering her on. And rightfully so! I mean, how often do you get to end your week with a performance by a dancing nun?

Watch as the stars disappear to nothing…

Despite my lack of contact with them, I love the kids here.
This morning when I walked past the neighbours, this tiny little child, who I would have sworn looked too young to speak, laughed, threw herself against bars on the window and cried out BIDESHI!! It took me completely by surprise and I laughed out loud which made all the women in the street turn and laugh at me too, Then a few other kids, maybe not more than five years old ran down the street after me calling “Auntie! Auntie!”
As I was eating dinner tonight, two little boys came to the door. One was five and one was seven and when Bipul answered the door to ask what they wanted, they told him that they had come to see me, the foreigner. He told them I couldn’t see them because I was eating right then and they said to him, “but she’s so beautiful!” There’s nothing like little boys to boost your self-confidence.
I’ve also created this pseudo relationship with the teenage girl who lives one building over across the street and one floor up. Every afternoon at about four, she sits at the window and waits for me to come sit on the balcony and we wave and smile at each other. She once shouted across the street to ask my name, but it was too noisy for her to hear me or for me to hear her name in return. And once she brought her little sibling to the window to wave at me. It struck me tonight though, as I am potentially leaving within the next few hours, how I will miss something that seems so insignificant. I’ve only waved at this girl a handful of times but when I was late coming home tonight all I could think about how she was probably waiting for me to come out and wave at her.
As I sit on the balcony right now writing this, she sits in her window watching me. And I’m starting to see myself through her eyes, and the eyes of those little boys and the children in the street. Just now two more girls have taken up their post in the balcony beside mine. And the just sit and watch me, waiting for me to look up and smile and then their whole face lights up and they smile back. I must look so glamorous to them. I am a celebrity quietly living among them. As if Julia Roberts took up residence on your street and you were the only one who knew about it. And it makes me laugh because I sit here self conscious and awkward and an island of loneliness in this place, but to them I am so very different than that. They have created for me a life, a personality, a confidence that is not mine. But perhaps, when I think about it, maybe they’re not so far off. Is it possible that someone’s idea of who you are could be closer to the truth that what you have believed about yourself?

To them I am the young foreign woman who has traveled all the way across the world to do something glamorous and fabulous. I have the bearing of someone who has not grown up in a gender discriminating society. I have the skills and intellect cultivated by higher education. I have the freedom and resources to travel and live independently and therefore I must be glamorous and confident and idealized by them.
My friend across the street is now doing her homework, still sitting in the window, no doubt feeling connected to me working on my laptop as she scribbles in her notebook. And the very nature of each action both connects us and shows the incredible gulf between us. Will she ever, in her entire lifetime, have the opportunities that I have had in the past month?

Perhaps waiting behind the bars of this balcony has taught me more than I expected.

and counting loonies trying not to say...

Tonight the rickshaw whalla sang all the way home while he peddled Leema and myself through the streets of Mymensingh. And I couldn’t help myself but smile and feel positive in spite of my plans and hope for this trip falling down around me, I just felt a rush of optimism inside me. Not optimism for anything specific, I just felt hopeful. And I thought, gripping my bag with one arm and the edge of the rickshaw with the other as we bumped across railway tracks and potholes, that this isn’t the first time someone singing in public has had this effect on me. And if it happens to me, it must happen to other people too. (it is my belief that there are very few, if any, original experiences in the human condition) So I decided today to sing in public twice a week. Or hum a few audible bars at the very least.

said goodnight to the sea of empty seats

I finally found a way to charge Romero so now I can have more distractions from my own mind, or perhaps its just another space for me to vent those musings of my mind. Anne Lamott says a few things about listening to your mind that I’ve filed away because they are so utterly appropriate – for me at least.

My mind is my main problem almost all the time. I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out, but it likes to come with me. I have tried to get it to take up a nice hobby, like macramé, but it prefers to think about things, and jot down what annoys it. (from Plan B: further thoughts on faith p.259)

Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren’t there. I walk alone defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them , or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I’m on their TV talk show or whatever. (from Bird by Bird, p.26)

And here I am again…left alone with my mind. It is a dangerous thing indeed. Don’t get me wrong, I often love solitude and rest in the time I have with myself, but to quote a line from my favorite Chronicle editorial ever (thank you Bethany Benoit) this is Unsolicited Solitude. And though there are many great things to be gained from being alone and quiet, the major problem for me – and in my opinion, the scariest part – is that you have to spend all this time with yourself. The past two days I have awakened hopeful that the day will bring me either out to Jamalpur to start my work, or back to Dhaka to eat chocolate with Alana. And then I get that call, and I hang up and think…dear god, I am going to have to spend all day with me!

Looking at these thoughts, I can’t decide whether this dissociation of self is mental illness or creativity and imagination (maybe those of you currently in Hales’ Search for the Self can answer that one for me!) Anyway, I refuse to delve very deeply into this other than to say that if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my English degree, it is that the two are not often mutually exclusive. And perhaps if I were a true artist, I would opt to live in solitary confinement for the rest of my life to nurture my art.

tryin' to throw your arms around the world

November 12th,

I felt an entire range of emotions today and for a variety of reasons…

Elation at the thought of finally going to Jamalpur and the villages
Devastation at the death of my soul (aka at having to return to Dhaka)
Anger at my supervisor’s decision
Frustration with the government of this country
Uncomfortable juxtaposition with Leema, trying to act polite and nice when I’m really angry and frustrated
Resignation to: the unreliability of the Bangladeshi government, not going to Jamalpur, being stuck here.
But most of all, I am feeling a sense of restless waiting, stuck in a kind of purgatory. Not able to go out because I don’t know when the car will come to take me back and so confined indoors with only my prison-like barred balcony to provide any break from the monotony of my own mind. I do have C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”, but I promptly closed it after he said “I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless he sees that it is good for him to wait”.

and as I recall I think we both kinda liked it...

I’ve been in Dhaka 45 days now. Only 45 days. It seems extraordinary that so many things can change in only 45 days: the way in which I speak, the clothes I wear, the way in which I carry myself, the perspective from which I see myself for that matter! In 48 hours, I leave to go upcountry for 30 days. Which, from the outset, seems like a very brief amount of time, and it is, but when you consider that I’ve only actually been here 45 days, it feels possible that the world itself could move and change in the next 30 days.
I’m afraid the time will fly by in the country though. For the past week my head has already been out of the city. I can’t wait to be away from the noise and pollution and crowds of Dhaka. These same factors energized me at first because this city is so full of life and movement and color. But my soul needs space. I need air and vegetation and to feel less boxed in by concrete buildings.
Perhaps 30 days from now I will be ready to come back into the chaos and life that is Dhaka and be energized and inspired by it once more, but for now, the prospect of visiting rural projects everyday gives me a deeper, more sustainable energy and a peace that I haven’t felt in a while.

And for those of you following my Flickr stream, I may not get to upload many pictures while I’m upcountry, but I’m sure I will have a whole slew to put on Flickr in December then, so stay posted!

its thoughts like this that catch my troubled head...

Last night I had dinner with the High Commissioner, CIDA officials and some other interns. It was awesome. Both the High Commissioner (Barbra Richardson) and Head of Development (Dr. Rajani Alexander) are young and brilliant, down to earth women. The High Commissioner was especially interesting to me because she and I were the only Albertans in the room and she happened to have gone to the U of A where her degree focused on English literature and Sociology. So you can imagine that we had a lot to talk about. When I told her that I have an English degree and a strong concentration in sociology, she laughed and asked if I always get asked what I’m going to do with a degree like that and then she smiled and told me I was on the right track. And it was good to hear…not that I have questioned my choice of study. I love both literature and sociology and if I had it all to do again, I would do exactly the same – with perhaps a bit more effort in some papers and maybe I would try harder to actually make it all the way through Beowulf…maybe not. But, back to the High Commissioner! She welcomed us all and told us a little about what she does and encouraged us in our work. And she had this ability to demand our attention and respect in a way that was totally not intimidating. She was eloquent and powerful in a very personal way and I was completely drawn in by her. It made me so hopeful to see her in a position like that and know that she came out of Edmonton years ago in the same position I am. Liberal arts degree in hand, passionate about so many different things that I can’t begin to answer the question, “what do you want to do with your life?”
And I am lucky enough to have a giant cheering section. As Dr. Zinck recently said to me “how many photographers come with their own readymade fan base?” And its true because I have experienced so much encouragement from my family and friends and professors that I have been plagued with the feeling that I have the ability to do anything I set my mind to do. But it was interesting to talk with these women, who don’t know me at all but who see something in me that could have great potential and encourage me in that. And it makes me stop and think that maybe, if these women see it in me, perhaps I need to pay greater attention to the encouragement I have lavished upon me at home because maybe there’s something to it. Maybe it’s not just my mom being my mom, or my English profs being my English profs. Maybe it’s not so much something that is being said just because they love me, but because they really actually see something in me as well, maybe it’s something they’ve seen in me for a while and are getting sick of waiting for me to get up and do something about it. Maybe its time for me to stop waiting for the perfect opportunity to fall into my lap and maybe it’s time to hold my breath and jump in with both feet in blind trust and see where the current takes me.
In his confessions, St. Augustine says that during his youth his mother was in constant prayer and tears for him and a Bishop once told her in her worry, “it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish”.

take me to the end so I can see the start...

I’m reading this book by Anne Lamott called “Bird by Bird”. It’s a book mostly about writing and how she teaches creative writing, but she puts things in such a way that it is about so much more. I read something this morning in it that struck me…she said, “Every room is about memory. Every room gives us layers of information about our past and present and who we are, our shrines and quirks and hopes and sorrows, our attempts to prove that we exist and are more or less Okay” (74).
This got me to thinking about what the things we display have to say about ourselves, our lives, our priorities. I got to thinking about my room at my parent’s house. Since I’ve moved out, I haven’t changed it a bit. It’s a little time warp/black hole from my high school self. And I like it that way. I like to sometimes go through my desk drawers looking for things I forgot about…a cap gun, a birthday card from a friend, a keychain I bought on a class trip. Each of these outwardly meaningless little things release a flood of memories for me. Sometimes I’ll lay in bed and look at the posters and papers that are on my walls, and I’ll remember why I put them up and what my frame of mind was when I did so, and what they meant to me…the kind of things you can only know by looking back. I’ve learned more about my high school self by spending one afternoon in my room, than I knew about myself my entire high school career.
And then I began to think about my house in Edmonton. About my room there, and more than that, about the way my roommates and I have “decorated” our house as a whole. Each of our rooms are so different…everything between Louise’s “everything has its place, clean lines, made bed, pictures at right angles” room to Janina’s well meaning chaos of clothes and blankets and paper mixed with splashes of color and culture and windows into other worlds from Manila to Smithers. My room is a mixture between these two…everything has its place, it just usually chooses to end up somewhere else. Pinned to my walls is everything from flags and pictures that curl at the corners to a Team Espana t-shirt, a gigantic world map and handmade paper. Perhaps I’m still too close to really be able to think about what they all mean to me and what it says about me that I’ve chosen these particular items. And what I choose to bring back from Bangladesh and incorporate into my room will say something else again, something new, something that gives insight into a new phase of my life spent here.
And traveling is a different sort of experience…when all you have is temporary places to “set up house”. At the moment, my walls are bare except for a embroidered picture left by the previous inhabitant years ago, and a newspaper clipping about the extinct status of the rat-squirrel (which always makes me laugh and says something about Ali, who had my room last, and left it up for my enjoyment). In a situation like this, what does my room, which really displays nothing that is intrinsically mine, have to say about me? I began to think that maybe it isn’t so much what I display so much as what I chose to bring with me that says something about me: pictures of my family and friends, Canadian flag stickers, an obscene amount of books (according to my mom), a pair of old jeans, a picture of a fish drawn by my nephew, a book of matches. I don’t know what this says about me or what I will remember about these things a year, a decade from now. But I take notice of these things and collect these thoughts not with the conscious decision to learn something about myself, but as a record for my future self to be able to look back on and think about and understand me more deeply than I can know myself in the moment.

away with this spilled milk...

I know, I know, my last entry had to do with poetry, but when I opened the newspaper this morning and saw this poem in the literature section, I couldn’t help myself but share it. Its called ROMANCE by Nuzhat Amin Mannan, who teaches English at Dhaka University.

For birthday got a hand bag, brand: fossil:
For anniversary it was a bottle of hot chili paste
What a pretty moon, I say
He asks where?
Who’d blame me
If I was now a spoil sport
Yearning for romance.

I hung around sulking
For old fashioned declarations
A handwritten avowal, a full-blown rose fragrant on my desk…
Something hidden, somewhere discreet
Less spicy, almost stark
But more fond for sure…priceless!

Men do not write any more, I gather
What a waste of time it would be
To serenade when a dinner for two
Peppered by his cell phone chimes
Is all that it takes!

I would have not minded at all
If he would have counted the many ways he loved me
Or if he lied all winter
Swore his love was infinite, to declare in
Spring his love for me had grown again some more*

But men are done being like John Donne:
They are our equals now
Neither worship the ground we walk on nor ask us
To for God’s sake hold our tongues.

Equal now,
Like blessed sweeteners
In the place of
Sweethearts!

*adapted from John Donne’s poem “Love’s Growth”

Now, though I’m not so much in love with the poem itself, I absolutely love that Donne has transcended language and culture to be as amazing here as he is back home. And one that note, I stumbled across a quote by Donne that I had never heard before and thought I would share it with you before I force myself to write something not directly related to poetry.

“Art is the most passionate orgy within a man’s grasp”.

Oh John Donne! I was born in the wrong century.

breaking the girl...

It is already November and I am due for a new blog entry. I can’t believe October has somehow slipped through my fingers and I only have two months left! At the moment though, I have more pressing concerns. I have a meeting with the field managers in 30 minutes and I just spilled tea on my white shirt. Classy, as usual!
That aside, my latest inspiration in thinking and writing has been a volume of poetry Dr. Zinck gave me before I left. I’ve been reading the novel “Hungry Tide” lately because its all about the Sundarban region that I recently explored, but last night instead of picking it up to polish off the last few chapters I found myself going for poetry instead. There is something so very different about handling a book of poetry rather than a novel. I could have easily picked up my book and jumped right in, remembering the story as I went along plunging deeper into it, but poetry takes preparation. I usually do something a little like this:
I pick up the volume and just hold it for a moment, letting myself feel its weight. Then I turn it over and admire its color and texture (this book just so happens to be a lemon yellow with blue edging). Next I open it up and run my thumb across the pages and – you heard it here first – I lean in real close to smell them as they fly past my nose. Only then am I able to decide on a poem to read. Now, I am of the adamant opinion that poetry is not a quiet activity. All poetry must be read aloud. (My roommates are all too aware of my opinion on this!) I read it first once…quietly…slowly, trying to feel the flow rather than the meaning. Then I read it louder once I’ve gotten into it. Then, once I’ve read it like that several times, I sit back for a moment or two and let my favorite lines run through my head…letting them be stored in my memory. And before I close the book, no matter how many poem’s I’ve read, I always return to my favorite and read it again.
My favorite today is one by Don Marquis called:

the lesson of the moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been and uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude towards life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself