Mad Girl’s Love Song

Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)



Howth, Ireland

Labels: fall, growing up, poem, transferring

It seems strange that in a few weeks I'll be back in the United States. I can't tell if it's because I think my time Not There has gone so quickly, or so long. Part of it ties into spending four months identifying, defending myself as an American, and now I face returning to my ancestral home. When in Barcelona, walking up to Park Guell, we passed what looked like a punk house. Written on the roof was 'Why do they call it tourist season if we can't shoot them?'. I was sympathetic; I remember the same sentiment from living on the Shore, waiting and wanting for all the Bennys to leave so the stop signs could be covered again and the beaches empty. But then right after, was a bit of graffiti that said simply enough 'Yankees go home.'

I was angry. I may be an American, but I am no fucking Yankee. A Yankee is the kid in our group who went to Spain with a cowboy hat; a Yankee is someone who doesn't bother to learn the language (not even a please, or a thank you); a Yankee wears socks with sandals.

And since then I've been rethinking how I feel about being an American. Reading 'Into the Wild' only encouraged the questioning, and instilled a desire to road trip across the Pacific Northwest, to boot. And now knowing that I am leaning towards relocating down to Virginia, Williamsburg no less, where I will face tourists, and Yankees and inevitably be North--- the meaning of American hasn't settled down much.

Still, it seems unusual that soon enough my hands will be close to my mother's hands, that I will be able to have lunch with my father and coffee with my friends; that I will see Boston and New York and the same old town I have lived in for much too long. I worry about slipping back into my old ways, and yet not being able to shed the worst habits I picked up here. I must resolve to hold onto the good things- the sense of freedom, and better baking especially- while returning to better habits- running, not eating at all hours simply because I am in the mood to cook- and holding onto integrity. Such a little town, and I am half-afraid of it, convinced it is loaded with weights and claws, everything joined together in a grand attempt to impose stasis.

I'm not really worried about the summer. It sucks that I haven't heard back from internships, but even if nothing turns up, I'm sure I'll find some sort of gainful employment, be it Starbucks or doing some sort of transcribing. Things will come through; they always do.

Music: Broken Social Scene 'Swimmers'

Labels: americano, barcelona, photos, summer, transferring

Labels: literary, quote

I’ve been listening to podcasts lately teaching me rudimentary French. I’m not sure why this trip to Paris has brought on the urge to go with some language skills. Maybe it’s the perception that my background in English and German will not exactly win me friends in France. Maybe it’s because I will be alone for at least part of the trip, and I hate appearing to be a tourist. Whatever it is, I’m preparing more now than I did for traveling to Eastern Europe, or even to Spain.

I think part of it was that I took French, and I liked it, more or less. Granted, it was middle school, and not that difficult, and Stephen B. kept throwing our textbooks out the window and the teacher had no control over the class, but it wasn’t bad. I could never get the r right, but I managed to retain the ability to count to four and your basic manners- please, thank you, hello and goodbye, the toilets please?, very bad, tough shit.

Listening to these podcasts, it doesn’t seem to be sticking like it ought to, like I feel like it did for German (I’m pretty sure I’m glamorizing that). I keep mixing s’il vous plaît with prosim, and thank you with köszönöm (like kissidem), the few words I picked up in Poland, Prague and Hungary. Prague makes sense- I liked the language, and I’d like to learn more of it. 

I wonder sometimes if we overfill our neurons. I have this vision in my head of nerves like diving boards, everything, all the information crowded on edges and then flipping from one to the next, springing on and on and then splashing down on our tongues and fingers and telling us what to do- making our muscles move. And then sometimes, the diving boards are full up, information crowding down to the backs, so nothing can get a decent jump going and instead it all just belly-flops into primordial mush and grey matter.

I wonder if other people break their bodies down this way, into images and similes instead of accepting that each of my fingers has millions and billions of smaller parts too many to think about and that each piece is straining and pulling away from me, that I’m losing parts of myself everywhere and leaving myself behind on everyone and everything. That makes me think of crime scene TV and how if there was only a swab small enough, advanced enough to be able to collect those chunks, to remold them back into images of ourselves- two sides and translucent, newly born and shaking legs, ready to hear our advice and heed none of it, to start living and breaking apart again.

Labels: body parts, language, paris, travel

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Fuck that. I had it on the iPod, listened to it once or twice and was finally grabbed.

Then again, I'm sitting here in zombie make up in the dark blogging. I really have no leg to stand on. At all.

I went to the Smithfield horse fair on Sunday. It was surreal and voyeuristic. Basically, it's a horse market held the first Sunday of every month in Smithfield, an industrial area of Dublin, right next to the Jameson factory. On this pavilion next to these new apartment buildings you have kids showing off the horses they keep in their back gardens and Pavee and horse traders, all showing off and selling and buying. And then you have people like me, stumbling around with their cameras a snapping and then going home and screwing around on Picasa and posting them on their blogs to tell other people to go and stumble around with their cameras and then post their pictures.




















Right after snapping this last one, I made eye contact with the boy. It was one thing to take a photo of those eyes on someone else taking a photograph of him, and another to have them turned on you. It's my fault for making eye contact with too many people, trying to see into too much. All I could do was make apologetic eyes and put away my camera.

Labels: dublin, musing, ny times, photos, smithfield

Labels: budapest, dublin, education, language, photos