"Forget What Did", Philip Larkin

Stopping the diary
Was a stun to memory,
Was a blank starting,

One no longer cicatrized
By such words, such actions
As bleakened waking.

l wanted them over.
Hurried to burial
And looked back on

Like the wars and winters
Missing behind the Windows
of an opaque childhood.

And the empty pages?
Should they ever be filled
Let it be with observed

Celestial recurrences,
The day the flowers come.
And when the birds go.
-"Forget What Did", Philip Larkin

Towards the end of my time in college, I took a class in Modern Poetry.  (As a Religion major, I didn't have as many required courses for my major as a lot of other majors did, so I had a lot of elective space in my schedule. Taking an English course was usually my "fun" course for the term.) One of the requirements for this class beyond the regular readings and papers and class participation was to memorize a poem from our Norton Anthology and recite it in front of the class.  I could have picked a poem by any number of poets familiar to me then, or even a poem that I knew fairly well, but instead I chose a poet and a poem I'd never heard of before. I think I did this so that I could approach the assignment with a "blank slate"--no preconceptions about the poet or the poem, no previous feelings or emotions of my own associated with the words.

Forget What Did is not a long poem, just 18 short lines in free verse. It wasn't a difficult assignment for me to memorize, having previously had the task of memorizing lines (even Shakespeare!) for theatre in high school.  And as I worked on the memorization and inflection of the words, of course they began to become a part of me, and I associated certain words or phrases with feelings and emotions I've experienced.

As a girl, I occasionally kept a diary. I would receive a lovely blank diary as a gift, or buy one from the book fair, and rededicate myself to the task of entrusting my thoughts and feelings to its pages. I was never terribly diligent about this and as a result, when I left for college, my bookshelf had a half-dozen diaries half-filled with spelling mistakes, bad handwriting, and the usual teenage angst. I found them largely embarrassing but couldn't bring myself to throw them away.

In the Jewish tradition, when a Torah scroll (Sefer Torah) is aged or damaged beyond use, it is buried rather than thrown away or burned. This is because the Sefer Torah is considered part of God and must be treated with the utmost respect for its holiness. Sacred or profane, words have weight. Once uttered or written, words become a permanent part of history, whether they are ever heard or written by anyone else. Words, like memories, can be buried, but they will never cease to exist once they have been created.

The words in the poem stay with me always, even when I am not thinking about them. Still, sometimes a phrase will float up in my mind the way a bubble floats up from the muck at the bottom of a still pond. And I am reminded of the permanence of the words we put into our minds and onto the page, even if no one reads them.

The One Where Buckley Gets Adopted

Well, friends, the day has come. My awesome, adorable, funny fostercat Buckley is finally getting adopted!

Buckley was my first fostercat through Hyde Park Cats. I got him on October 31, 2010, and fostered him from a scared, skinny friendly feral to a sweet, funny, fat, lovable cuddler.  He will be going to his forever home the first week in August, and although I am very happy that he's found a wonderful forever home, it will be a little bittersweet for me.  However, soon after he goes to his forever home, I'm sure I'll have a new fostercat to take care of (maybe even a kitten!).

(Apparently he has a pose he really likes to use, and it is "Kittehloaf".)

Music, of late.

I don't have any real fodder for a true update (no thoughts in this tiny head of mine worth truly sharing) (although I did finally get to watch The Fighter last night and it was ah.mazing; quite possibly the best sports movie I've ever seen, I was cheering out loud at the end of it. Highly recommended.) but I thought I'd share some of the music I've been listening to lately, in case you're looking for new music to listen to or just wonder what kind of aural vibes make my ears happy.

• Jeremy Messersmith's albums The Alcatraz Kid, The Silver City, and The Reluctant Graveyard:  I see the term "chamber pop" thrown around a lot with JM's sound, and I have no idea what that means.  I know that singer-songwriter Messersmith is clever, smart, talented, and writes the best sad-happy songs I've heard since we lost Elliot Smith.  These three albums will always remind me of Summer 2011 (not to mention quite possibly my favorite concert experience ever, seeing Messersmith at Schuba's in Chicago in June on the night of the Naked Bike Ride).
• Bob Dylan The Essential Bob Dylan:  I was raised on folk music. Sort of. Mostly, I was raised on the albums of John Denver (my mom was a fangirl back in the day) and oldies music stations.  (I think my parents reasoned that oldies music was the least-offensive kind of radio for us to listen to as young kids, with which I pretty much agree.) There was always sort of a pooh-pooh attitude toward Dylan though, because of the way his voice sounds and his, ahem, lack of enunciation that has become his trademark.  (My parents are both choral singers, so enunciation is key, which would explain this distaste for Dylan. However, my dad's a pretty big Sting fan, so I call foul.)  Anyways, I finally put my foot in the Dylan door with this sampler of 30 songs (plus an extra download of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", because I love that song) and I'm loving it.  The songs just put my mind at ease and makes me think of a simpler not-so-simple time.
• Bobby McFerrin's arrangement of the 23rd Psalm (from his album Medicine Music).  This song has to be heard to be understood; my brief description here fails to do it justice.  With a redrafting of the language to use feminine God-language and an all-male a cappella voicing, it's one of the simplest, most beautiful, uplifting modern psalmodies I've ever heard.  Even if you're not Christian or religious, this song should be heard at least once for it's beautiful, haunting tonal qualities.
• The Wombat's "Techno Fan". Dance song of Summer 2011.  Tells a great story, uses some fun lyrics, great beats, a great song to blast in your car as you're driving around the city.

Do you have any song/band/artist/music recommendations for me? I'd love to hear them.  Especially if you have the new Bon Iver and you want to tell me how much you love it.  I'm anxiously waiting for Friday (payday) so I can get it and spend all weekend lounging in it's luxe-ness.

Feeling Unremarkable

It's a "blah" kind of Thursday.  Aside from my few every-day tasks at work, I literally have nothing to do.  And I've got laundry, dishes, a cardigan in need of buttons, and packing to do at home.

I'm feeling pretty unremarkable today.

Whenever I feel like this, I think of that scene in Garden State, you know, the one where Natalie Portman's character Sam tells Zach Braff's character Largeman that whenever she feels unremarkable, she does one completely unique thing that's never been done in the history of the world--she makes a noise, does a little dance, and does it in a certain way and on that spot that makes her feel completely one-of-a-kind.

And then I think, Well, that's stupid.  (Cynicism is an ugly snake of a monster.)

Being a person who dreams big is a blessing and a curse.  Big dreams allow my imagination to take flight, and, at times, I can very easily escape into a daydream kind of world and create, dream, think, plan, and just be.  But in reality, being a person who dreams big can be crushing, because of the limits of my life and my own self-imposed pragmatism keep me from taking anything too far.

Being a grown-up who dreams big requires discipline:  I'm going to need to start writing regularly again (this blog is helping keep me accountable to that); I need to practice my guitar more regularly and work harder at writing real songs; I'm going to need to find an outlet for all this pent-up energy I've got (I'm seriously thinking about improv classes...).

But at the same time, I've got all these dreams in my head which are quite remarkable.  If I can somehow translate these to tangible outlets, I've got a goldmine.

KnitPost: My love affair with needles and fibers (and knitting websites!)

If we are friends IRL, you probably know my favorite busy-hands activity is knitting.  I learned to knit from my mom about three and a half years ago, and since then I've become a tornado of knit-tivity!

Why do I love to knit?  Ever since I was a little girl, I've been fidgety.  (In case you haven't figured it out by now, my Twitter handle, @je_gigote, means "I fidget".)  I can't even tell you how many thousands of times my mom would hiss at me "Sit. Still!" I just can't do it! And now that I've learned to knit, I can do something with my restless hands and actually be productive.

I love the easy repetition of making stitches, but I also love the challenge of figuring out a new stitch, or how a garment is worked, or making modifications to a pattern to make it a perfect fit.  I love making little gifts for friends and family, and I love that every garment/piece is unique.

I love love love yarn shopping and pattern browsing!  All the beautiful colors, dyes, textures, and fibers of a yarn store are enough to make a color enthusiast like me fall over backwards with happiness.  (Seriously, if you're wondering what I'm on about, go to your local yarn store and just bask in the fiber-y goodness.)  I love looking at patterns and wondering how that would look on me or my mom or my sister or my friend and what yarn I'd use.

Right now I'm working on a super-easy slouchy hat for my mom, and I have a beautiful cardigan that I finished a few weeks ago that needs to be blocked and have buttons sewn on. I promise I'll post pictures of that, because it's a gorgeous, soft, warm garment that I absolutely adore.

If you're wondering what knitting websites feed my addiction, here's a few I love:
Ravelry (The ultimate social network for knitters. Love it.)
Knitty (Awesome knitting ezine. The patterns featured in each issue are super awesome.)
Knitted Bliss (A blog by amazing knitter/designer Julie Crawford, who is smart, beautiful, creative, and Canadian. Basically, I want to be her.)
KnitPicks (Online yarn store. Good quality yarn at excellently low prices. Plus, they sell a ton of books. I go to this site all the time and droll over yarn colorways.)