The calm...

The calm,

Cool face of the river

Asked me for a kiss.

--Langston Hughes

From now on, I’m going to try to repeat this haiku like a mantra during shavasana, during those last five or ten minutes of a yoga class when we all lie on our mats in silence, trying to quiet our thinking minds. Those five minutes are harder for me than eagle pose and shoulder-stand combined, if such a thing were possible.

At the end of class yesterday, Katherine came around the room and gave each of our feet a little massage. As she did, I thought (my thinking mind was still on) of the scene in The Little Mermaid when Scuttle lifts shipwrecked-Eric’s foot to his feathered head to listen for a pulse and declares that there is none.

Maybe our hearts really are in our feet—only someone we really trust is allowed to touch them, or would even bother. Maybe believing we walk around on our hearts all day makes about as much sense as anything else.

and each will smile at the other's welcome

The last in a series of love-themed poems, here is Derek Walcott’s Love After Love. The poems this month progressed in an order unlike the phases of a relationship—first the nurturing, satisfying (or dissatisfying?) love of Billy Collins’ Osso Bucco; then the classic, overwhelming I carry your heart by e. e. cummings; followed by the flirty sentiments and deep-felt loss of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why. Finally, and perhaps my favorite of them all, is this poem about the loss of one love and the rediscovery of another—the love we come back to again and again: the love for ourselves.

Right now, I interpret this poem indirectly. (Isn’t that the beauty of poetry? A single poem can speak to us in so many different ways, at many different times in our lives.) I haven’t gone through a tumultuous breakup—though maybe a few losses—but here I am, greeting myself at my own door, in my own mirror, and I am beginning to smile at the welcome.

I am once again surrounded by things that feed me, things I had forgotten about thanks to time and distance—walls covered with familiar paintings; shelves of well-loved books; ceramic vases and pitchers and lopsided animals that I shaped with my own hands; the seashells mom and I painstakingly gathered on dozens of walks down Juno beach; and photographs of me at every age, carefully selected to fill the house when my scampering footsteps are far away.

Yesterday, Mom and I spent the entire evening and well into the night on our quiet pursuits. The snow was coming down silently on our woodsy, white backyard, while the back room was filled with churning creativity and my constantly streaming Ann Arbor radio. I sat at the long table, with art and books and photographs and the chess set I bought in China for company, and sketched for hours—jars, vases, tea sets, bowls, bottles, and sake sets that I will hopefully be able to make soon. My hands are itching to get back in some clay… Mom set up a batik silk-painting lab of sorts all around the room—with sponge brushes, containers of wax, huge sheets of paper, a wood painting frame, finished scarves draped over chairs—and I watched her, all night, exhibit the kind of quiet delight she once directed towards gardening and which I haven’t seen in a long time.

I could say a few things about our talk at lunch—about Bill Joy and the Michigan computing center, about law school, about that internet democracy firm in DC—or I could say how strange it is to be so quiet all the time. I could talk about the haphazard objects around the house and how I’m trying to do my part by getting rid of some of them, or how hearing Tchaikovsky on the radio made my legs crave dancing again. But I’m trying out this quiet thing. I’m doing something that’s hard for me, like everyone keeps telling me to, and it’s slowly becoming easier when I can pass the still, snowy evenings watching Star Wars with Alex or absorbed in art with mom.

There’s a reason this poem is quietly and simply one of the best mantras on love. And it’s the last line, my favorite in all of poetry. I assembled an anthology for a poetry class in college and I titled the entire thing after that one line—one thread to quietly pull everything together, one phrase that I am still trying to heed.

Love After Love

--Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

I only know that summer sang in me

I have spent the last two weeks reconnecting with Emily, and it has been really nice--discussing our similar love for exotic, delicious foods; laughing about our escapades in Southeast Asia; comparing what we learned in China and Vietnam now that we've had some time to digest; and spontaneously donning a whole lot o’ spandex for The BANG, like only we would. Above all else, it was really nice to celebrate Chinese New Year/Vietnamese Tet with the same person I celebrated it with last year, even if there is snow on the ground this time around.

I would like to dedicate this week's poem to me & Em, because I like its earnest spunk and I know she will too. I'm continuing with my February trend of love-themed posts--had you noticed?--but with a slight change of pace. In honor of silly St. Valentine, here is a coquettish little sonnet from saintly Edna Millay. The poem's humor comes from the juxtaposition between its traditional structure, natural imagery, and its subject matter, which takes on a decidedly modern twist. It's a nice break from bold declarations of love, insipid cupid, and last weekend's chalky candy hearts, isn't it?

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why (Sonnet XLIII)

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

In this country, in this world, there are a lot of lonely, unfulfilled people. We breed fear in the American suburbs and isolate ourselves from our neighbors--both next-door and across international boundaries--and in our cities, we don’t know the faces on either side of our apartments’ walls.

Now that winter has settled-in and the remains of the hollow, frenetic holiday season have long dissipated, all we’re left with is a cold, hard, loneliness. And as a possible antidote we have... Valentine’s Day.

Like the holiday season, it, too, has largely lost its meaning and luster.

When I look towards lovey-dovey day this year, I have a new association: a dark, unfamiliar city; a clanky, janky bus; a language I can (still) neither speak nor read; and a steamy huo guo restaurant where I shared hot pot with Stella, Tracy, Yolanda, and Kelly on my first full day in Qingdao. Everything was foreign then, but the warmth offered to me by that food and those faces over the following months is enough to keep me full on nights that now seem even darker.

So for all of you who are feeling cold--inside and out--I wish I could take you for hot pot. It does wonders. But instead, some written love from e. e. cummings will have to do.

When I read this poem, I think I interpret it differently than the author intended. Because when I think about "love," I don’t think about one time or one place or one person. I imagine every face--however unlikely, however far away--that I can’t go a day without thinking about, even now. I carry all of you(in my heart).

i carry your heart with me

--e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)