Making Wise Choices in Poetic Wonderland

The current issue of Poetry Magazine is unbearably good. Just what I need. It’s currently doubling as my journal as well. The poems by Tony Hoagland stand out in my mind:

One poem will make you bigger.
The other poem will make you smaller.
Drink and/or eat them.

Strange creatures in a garden. Also known as peacocks.

Hailed, or: The Universe Must Think It’s Being Funny

(For those who don’t know, one of the really fun and positive things about my trip to England was the development of a relationship with a lovely Frenchman. Now add an oceans worth of distance and a six hour time difference…)

It’s simply amazing what inanimate, obscure things come to life right before your eyes once they become relevant to you. Two semesters ago, in a poetry course I took, we discussed what it meant to be hailed. The act of being flagged down, being tagged and marked by your influences… Or I suppose, by what you let influence you.

Garrison Keillor is a bit of a champion to my English major heart; I’ve always looked forward to the old timey Americana anecdotes and music on his radio show. In celebration of Bastille Day, the kind and humorous folks at A Prairie Home Companion put together a show called “Vive La France.” This aired as I was driving home from work this evening. I was okay with it.  Until a sad and sweet song in that flighty tongue came on. I was in that moment, truly appreciating my near total ignorance of the French language until Keillor chimed in at the end:

“That song was for all the expatriates who, upon returning home can no longer find at home what they had when they were abroad.”

The more I believe the universe to point and laugh at me, the more I want to rise above. So keep it coming:

In the video store ten minutes after Mr.Keillor’s hailing, my mother pointed me in the direction of a movie called The Fox and the Child. The story of an unlikely friendship between a girl and a fox (!)! It’s exactly the kind of thing I would love to see, but upon further inspection, I realized it was a French movie. Oh, ha ha ha, universe. You think you’re clever?

I no longer take every little obscure coincidence as a “sign” of some kind I suppose, but damn if that wasn’t a silly and ironic hour in my day.

We used to have a dog that looked like Garrison Keillor...

This One Time… #1

Do not ask the ice lolly man for directions.

This one time in Liverpool, Magdalaina asked the ice lolly truck driver for directions to our hostel. He talked for a long time and ended up leading us down an alley. This was before we knew about Magdalaina and her somehow endearing ability to misinterpret directions.

Laura and Magdalaina show you where it's at.

This one time in Liverpool, we trekked all over the suburbs looking for the Beatles sites. We started at Penny Lane and got lost around Sefton Park. It was cold, wet and nearly impossible to catch a cab, but once we did, our cabbie took us to Strawberry Field and told us about how Paul McCartney rode in his cab twenty years before!

Liverpool Cathedral

Dirty RAT!

This one time in Liverpool, we found a Banksy piece by accident in Chinatown! We also saw a lot of stained glass and neon at Liverpool Cathedral. The Cathedral is so massive, it really makes you consider the influence of Catholicism at the time. Did you know the architect who designed the cathedral also desined those charming red phone boxes all over England? Now you know!

Poetry Post #4

Disintegration

i live in a square.
one night i ate it
with my nose and thought this:
you’re a pillar.
my friend, who is also a demanding
lover looked me dead in the eye
and said:
this is wrong. and then a sudden turbulence
over the district.
i broke a neck for you – let
the juices run down like
i was wringing my hands.
i went back home
i didn’t want to talk about it.

Memory Loss and Storytelling

The trend in recent years has become to record events almost in the instant they unfold. Facebook status, “away” message, blog-spots and word-presses, photographs from the night before viewed by all the morning after. When did we all become so afraid of our own memories? Do we really not trust ourselves enough to remember these occasions so momentous?

I personally am afraid I will be entirely forgotten. Rubbed off the map somehow, or simply replaced.

But what I know is that people don’t ever really forget. They carry things around with them until the day they die, even if they never reflect on a time or a person or place ever again. Things happened to you, things shaped you. ..But still, why the manic immediacy? So much raw material and information can damage. Things are overlooked and warped by your present bias. I’m guilty of looking for answers for situations present, that don’t have answers. They probably have an answer that goes something like this: C’est la vie.

I want to tell perfectly true stories, woven with fantastical details. The fantastical details are the truest parts of any really good story, and often mistaken for the mundane: what you thought about when you woke up, your friend walking round with their shirt inside-out, the way the music felt in your stomach or the disputed color of your loved ones eyes.

My Obscenely Small Town

Every time  I come home to Troy, NY – I dread leaving the house. The area I was raised in is fairly nice: it’s near the Adirondacks, plenty of parks, the arts scene is picking up… However, I have no desire to run into someone I graduated high school with whenever I want to buy groceries.

I turned a corner into the produce section of our local monstrous Price Chopper Supermarket and was assaulted by someone I apparently should have remembered. His face was vaguely familiar and he insisted we had an art class together, but I couldn’t remember this guys name. Do I really have to remember the names of everyone I sort-of kind-of but-not-really knew five years ago? I legitimately felt guilty for a moment; but then he refused to tell me his name, shook his head as if to say “shame on you” and walked away.

I spent a good deal of yesterday downtown, hiding in Market Block Books. I started and finished Sherman Alexie’s YA novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian“. It took two hours and it felt really good to blow through a book (even if it was YA). Alexie always gets a thumbs up from me.

It is somehow jarring to me to spend so much time in the place I was raised: the public library where I spent many summers, the bars my father used to drink excessively in, 70% of my graduating class hanging around (they’re EVERYWHERE), the familiar faces of local crazies – forever embedded in my brain… They say you can always go home.  Right, well while Troy may be my hometown,  it has long lost its spot as “home” in my heart.

The American Girl Returns…

…and then questions what it means to be American.

I suppose I should have realized early on that the majority of my posts on life abroad would be made retroactively. You truly hit the ground running and then suddenly the ground runs out, you’re sky bound and back on your home soil.  I wont delve into detail too much, it’s not the greatest feeling: In fact, it is the strangest feeling I’ve ever experienced.

I found myself frequently defending my nationality when I was abroad. To be fair, everyone felt the same need: If you were from Canada, you we’re a happy-go-lucky pacifist. British? Way too proud. And I won’t even get started on the repercussions of being French… All of this was taken with a cheerful grain of salt, however. International students seem to understand they’re all in the same extremely overcrowded booze crusie boat. It’s a lot of fun.

However, now that I’ve returned to the land of McMansions, vanity license plates and the overweight… I question what it really means to be American. I’ve lived here my entire life! Could five months abroad really throw so large a wrench into the works?

Absolutely. Welcome to reverse culture shock.

So I’m going to continue with this blog now, reliving and recording all my experiences, thoughts, poetry and little snapshots of the amazing and beatiful people I met during my first time abroad. Note I said first time. That’s right Europe, now you wont be able to get rid of me!

Lost in Hudson, NY

Poetry Post #3 and Keele Rituals

Levity

Any showering now
of rain or sunlight
feels like the birth
and fall of stars -
catching in my hair;
debris I wear proud
like a crown, for years to come.

Sediment

it’s raining properly: great silly drops making fools of themselves
rushing the ground over and over like it will give immediately.
relentlessness painting my shoes with clay mud,
smothering the fireworks that spring violently
every time i open my mouth-
so i’m a hushed little lamb with damp ears
and today you can have what you want

——————————————————————————————————–

I would call nothing here routine. Every day is some kind of new adventure. However, we have some rituals. One of them is playing cards. Almost everywhere we go, someone brings along a deck of cards. I’ve learned a large handful of card games here, from three or four different people. Another ritual is of course, the snakebite. A snakebite is a local invention, I believe…. a drink you wont find in the states for sure. Cider, beer and blackcurrant juice combine to make a slightly foamy purple sweetness that coats your throat and lips and gets you terribly drunk. It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s a snakebite!

My favorite ritual thus far has become dinnertime. I never got into making meals back home. I’m happy to eat bowls of cereal, crap or nothing at all. Here, however – a couple of my friends are good cooks. We make dinner together a couple nights a week. It almost always includes pasta and vegetables, but I think I’ve got some cuisine creativity tucked into me somewhere.

Laina eats pasta, mozzerella, tomatoes and basil. Mmm!

Another ritual my friends and I seem to be developing is attending the open mic nights around campus. Every Thursday, Keele Folk Club hosts an open mic at the Postgraduate Association. It’s a really cool little club house on one of the far sides of campus. Undergrads aren’t meant to hang out a lot, as they don’t want the motley crew from the Union coming in and making spectacles of themselves. It’s low key and has a great community vibe. The musicians are amazing, too. Classical guitarists, bass guitarists, violins (fancy a jig?) and acapella vocalists. It’s a great way to just relax.

My friend Ryan did a couple songs again at open mic. She’s quite brave. We were meant to do a song together, but I had a little panic and decided against it. I’m a good singer, folks – but I did not leave my stage fright back in the United States.

Ryan plays "Chocolate" by Snow Patrol

One American ritual my friend Kelly is trying to bring to Planet Keele is beer pong. We had a party in her dorm this past Friday, with the hopes of teaching the Brits how to play. They quite enjoyed the game, but need some help with their throwing. They tend to shoot the ping pong ball like its a baseball. And if you know beer pong at all, you know that is not the way to go about it.

I felt momentarily like I was back home, though I’ve never played beer pong at the University of Southern Maine. It’s  just a quintessential American college kid pastime. I hope it becomes a ritual here. After a few rounds we moved on to a massive house party. Kelly came up with the best comparison for the party: “Have you ever seen the movie Can’t Hardly Wait…?”  Too true, Kelly. Too true.

British, French and Australian beer pong players.

Canadian and American girls play beer pong too.

My Latest Musical Companion

It was time to flush everything stale from my musical system. Enter Andrew Bird, the dreamy musical/ lyrical genius.  He guides my strides across the red clay and green grass on campus. His violin bow is the gentle wind that repeatedly strikes my nose with the familiarity of a lover, reprimanding me for not accepting compliments. His words come like the thickest dark of our nights and the only way to find yourself through is to dance with each piercing intonation.

This is how I feel about Andrew Bird. Enjoy!

Lovely, lovely musician...

Some Kind of Beautiful In-Between…

A typical Wednesday night...

I feel very fortunate to have made the friends I have at Keele. It’s some kind of small miracle that I was bound to these lovely, mustached girls only a week and a half into my life here. There’s a network of support that I know will dissolve once we return to our regularly scheduled lives. It doesn’t bother me to know it, only helps me to appreciate and cherish the insulated community we live in.

Keele is an extended vacation of sorts…. It allows us to live without abandon, to press on through anything bad, to break free of what hang ups we have in our “real world” lives. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about my own limits and boundaries. I’m pleasantly surprised to report that I am, in fact limitless. Anything here is possible.

The beauties above, from left to right: Laura (South Africa), Magdalaina (Canada), Ryan (Canada/U.S) and myself.

This is not at all to discredit my impossibly wonderful friends in the real world. They undoubtedly helped to prepare me for this leg of my journey. I think of them often. I’m surprised to find that more than anything, I miss Maine. I feel a sense of belonging and home when I think about the people there. Portland is still a shining beacon in my heart. There’s a very full feeling I get thinking about it.

In less emotional and heady news… We went to see Watchmen last night and…. It was perfect. If you’re a graphic novel geek,  I suspect you wont be disappointed. They got every detail but one right… and I believe that detail was sacrificed for the betterment of the movie. Mmmm hmmm.

"A miracle, by its very definition does not exist...."