gratefulness

is the warm calming of restlessness that transpires
when you see a familiar face
at precisely the right moment
to keep you from breaking. And gratefulness is
in exchanges--languages--
that face---until time becomes
immeasurable again.

30-loves list. (for Dale). (and also for myself).

1. Love of family.
2. Love of friendship, that becomes a kind-of family.
3. Love of the way we can be many different things to each other.
4. Love of farm stillness.
5. And farm movement.
6. And love of knowing that I might plant the garlic, but I do not make the garlic grow.
7. Love of service.
8. Love of the humility that allows oneself to be served by another.
   
9. Love of the capacity for reinventions.
   
10. Love of second chances, with things right in front of you.
11. Love of saying sorry.
    
12. Love of music, and the way it shares things between people (the way it shares things between the multiple people in one person).
    
13. Love of moments when I recognize I'm human.
14. Love of my cat Comet.
15. And my old cat Chewy (rest in peace).
16. Love of the people who have passed--physically, or emotionally--from my life, for they are and always will be a present part of who I am.
17. That is, Love of the way Love lingers, even when bodies and hearts do not.
    
18. Love of functioning in a Communion of Saints.
    
19. And of the Joy and value in little pleasures and safeties.
20. Love of my body (on a good day).
21. And my spirit (on a good day).
    
22. Love in strength and flexibility (but not malleability).
23. Love of the way I am big and small in a world that is big and small.
24. Love of warm things.
25. Love of the intimacy allowing one to speak a coded language, that only one more understands.
26. Love of spending a lifetime, almost knowing one another.
    
27. And the way that people return to each other after miscommunications to try to communicate again; their persistence shows a caring language cannot capture.
    
28. Love of deep peace.
29. Love of not taking oneself too seriously.
    
30. Serious Love.

"There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, a eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest."
-Anais Nin.

(Wholly honest; I am terrified).

suspended (in the visceral).

"In Speak, Memory, Mabokov makes the poetic, or the playful speculation that Russian children before the Revolution--and his exile--were blessed with a surfeit of sensual impressions to compensate them for what was to come. Of course, fate doesn't play such premonitory games, but memory can perform retrospective maneuvers to compensate for fate. Loss is a magical preservative" (emphasis mine).

FROM Lost In Translation: A life in a New Language (1989)

via: Hoffman, Eva. "The New Nomads." Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss. ed. André Aciman. New York: The New Press, 1999.

"if I could go back-ways" get you no-ways fast.

Sometimes, funny things haunt me--like shoe strings; sometimes shoe strings haunt me. Like Cat Steven's Trouble haunts me. Like Gumby and putt-putt golfing haunt me.

Sometimes, I am afraid of losing faces. Other people's faces. I can always recognize them. I never forget. But I can't close my eyes and create the isolated image. And somehow I feel like this is losing. This is losing faces.

Sometimes I remember belonging to the Communion of Saints. Before my experience of agency complicated my understanding of fatalism. Before the two became incongruous. I remember when doubt was more consolable. When faith was easier. And sometimes I swear I still do belong. Sometimes, when I think or feel or love strongly enough, I swear I hear echos from all around that are not my own. And I know. I know it's the Community of Saints.

Sometimes poetry is laughable. And sometimes poetry is laughing at me. (For not believing in masks// For self sacrifice// For causes).

Sometimes I laugh at myself.

Sometimes oatmeal makes everything better.

But most of the time it takes more. More than oatmeal. More than peppermint and honey. More than immersion in a safe place with safe things-- until contentment and discontentment become simultaneously and increasingly necessary; the former at an immediate, personal level; the latter at a macro-political level.

"No amount of 'if-I-could-go-back-ways' gets you back-ways," they say.
And I say: Oh, God, where are my boxes?



no-ways fast. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I am here (and have temporarily abandoned abstractions).

I have been up at or before 8:00, since I've returned to Athens. It doesn't seem to matter what time I go to sleep. I wouldn't call it insomnia, really; I'm not laying, exhausted; I'm alert and energized. If anything, my mind's restless, but it's the good kind of restless that just needs the right creative channel.

Call it artistic inspiration? But I'm no longer daunted.

I've got some leads on programs for a year (or two) of service. And I know it's what I need. I'm appreciative of academia, in a way; despite my distaste for some of the bureaucratic roadblocks and elitist behaviors of this institution, I really am grateful to OU. I say all the time how grateful I am for Athens and for Appalachia and how I really couldn't give two cents about the university, but that's not entirely accurate. It has provided the venue. It has led me to a handful of really inspiring professors--Dr. Marciniak, Dr. Bloomfield, and Dr. Duschinski--who have radically transformed the way I approach knowledge (I have nothing but unwavering respect and admiration for those three women), like it has led me to the theories and texts that have becomes "ins" to my own, independent research. And so: I reject being the "poster child" of academia, but I do not reject academia. I know I'll spend a lifetime monitoring and curbing my own privilege, but I can't keep running from something inevitable (that I'm meant to be in academia, that I thrive in it, that I'll be involved in it--in some way or another--all my life), just because I'm disenchanted with the large-scale structural inequalities that have given me this path in the first place. I can't run Into The Wild. Not because I'm incapable of discarding possessions, of living a simple lifestyle... but because I really think I'll make a bigger difference if I work with, and not against, the existing institutions, if I change them from the inside.

But not now. Not yet. I refuse to go through motions. I'm not ready for an MA and I'm not ready for a PHD and I'm not ready for a Law degree. I can't enter those realms of learning the same person I am now. No, it's essential to take a break--and what better way to do that than a year or two of service? There's an innate selfishness that accompanies being a student; it's a time where one's time and energy is focused, primary, in the development of self. And that's not necessarily wrong; that self development facilitates later ability to give more, to do more, to contribute more to society--
but right now, for me, I find it isolating. And I'm ready to integrate myself back into a world I can feel, one that I know I'm not the center of. So there you have it: a few years of service. That's what comes next. I'm sticking to it.

And all this excess, "restless" energy? It's going to get me through this final stretch healthily.

Here's my (immediate) plate:
1. Thesis.
2. Capstone--on sexual violence against women (I am not really excited about that).
3. One last English class--on Keats, by a Keats PHD, so it'll be angsty, but beautiful. (I am excited about that).
4. Program statements of purpose/applications.
5. Internship with Adam Baker, Attorney and Counselor at Law
6. GRE in Spring (so I don't have to take it later).
7. A year of service abroad--right now, I'm leaning toward a program in Ecuador.
8. = improving my Spanish skills, which are, at this moment, quite rusty (but still there).
9. LSAT studying while in Ecuador.
10. Then a year in DC, doing service in my own country.
11. Then a MA, a degree in Human Rights Law, or both--depending on what the aforementioned experiences lead me to.

And here are my intentions:
1. To be a better listener.
2. To maintain better communication with my brother, and with all my loved ones who are not in close, physical proximity.
3. To balance my Pitta with lifestyle and diet changes--beginning with a detox/cleanse.
4. To further my yoga practice, which, like my Spanish, is quite rusty (but still there).
5. To practice more humility.
6. To remain thankful.
7. And to, despite all the sad things in this world, find enough to hope for to keep going.

steady. strong. unwavering.


I am here by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

leaping.

Sometimes I feel like a horse with boat shoes, where the land wobbles and the water sinks.
And then I kick 'em off and remember: horses are excellent swimmers.
Oh, silly ebb and flow; you've frayed and faded my puzzle pieces.
Oh, silly ebb and flow; I don't mind.

leaping by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Holiday

"For my sister who sometimes needs to take time to grieve with the world. Don't forget what a beautiful place it is. With love from Frances, Christmas 2010."

[photo: cousins Maize (head-bopping), Zoe (leap-frogging), and Oliver (mohawk-rocking);
they are part of my beautiful place]

Wait- Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: the enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asked to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

--

Maybe faith is just an active--it cannot be passive--acceptance of others' love, and the hope that, despite all the darkness, we share enough goodness between each other to keep on//fight for.

Merry Christmas.