Still Here

It's been too long since I've written (sorry Grandma!). This is my life: I'm footnoting like a fiend, preparing one of my last essays for my graduate school applications. It's about the discourse between the rational intellect and the passionate emotional self. A discourse that I hope is possible. I turned 24 watching the sun rise; I was reluctant to see 2011 go. My motto for 2011 was "it's gonna be fine," but now I don't know anymore... AH. But recently I decided that 2012 can be "year of the wonderful,'' at least on certain days. I was admitted to river rafting guide school, and now officially plan to spend the spring and summer making the river my guru in Sequoia National Forest. I'm working as a "medical records technician" in my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, which means that I listen to This American Life podcasts while scanning images of people's kidney stones. This is in addition to my internship with the Eugene Weekly -- of late I have written about flying squirrel populations in the Pacific Northwest. I drink too much coffee, but that's not new. I read, I sleep (sometimes), and I laugh -- I've also been noticing absurdly beautiful atmospheric projections with strange regularity. I can play two chords on the guitar and I strum them when I have writer's block. I like hot toddies. I am itching for movement and I'm greedy for the whole universe, but I'm trying to be satisfied. This is my home. These are my roots. I love the rain.

January's process is ice, and 

the knobbed oak branches have halos at dawn.

I love too much, I think, and I use a shovel to splinter

the frozen water troughs before driving to work, 

before impressing the things I cannot say onto a

translucent sky. The mist fell last night

while water dripped from every sink in the house

and I listened. The morning is silver and yellow

and I'm walking on fallen mist, longing to

be refracted as the dog's exhalations

glow with greed and life. Cracks scatter quickly 

across the thin ice -- synaptic transmissions

or Buddha fingers, or escape. This 

is the beginning. Every delicate thing has a

glistening edge. The light is growing.