the end in the beginning

i recently told a friend that "i tend to be melancholy," and it's quite true. it's one of those things about myself that i am learning to embrace. i also tend towards meandering. literally around the globe and internally, as i think (often over-think) and feel all over the map during any given day. sometimes i am so internal, so contemplative, that i forget how to interact with other humans. it can take hours, days even, for me to come out of a too-long-bout of reflection. my global travels are a big piece of my thoughts (above photo from most recent trip: to casablanca, morocco), giving me many realities to wrestle with and making me long for returns to beloved lands and their peoples. i suppose, if you're reading this, you already know this and much more about me. i've decided to start a new fresh blog. welcome to it! the old xanga was started long ago to keep friends and family abreast of my nepali adventures, and, while that chapter is not closed by any means, i feel so totally in another place now, that a new beginning to writing and reflecting "out loud" for you all, on my attempts to embrace the moments and cling to bits of hope that can often feel so elusive, feels appropriate.

it's a summer of relaxation and a race against boredom. as a grad student with one year of schooling remaining and a summer free from classrooms and assignments, it may be my last few months of hours upon hours of nothing to do but what i iwill and wish. however, i've never done well with too much time and too little structure. i thrive under lots to do in little time, with a handful of purposes to fulfill at once. and now it's easy to feel purpose-less, and therefore quite frustrated. but i am trying to spend the days with intention, not with mere "timepass" as they say in nepal. and i believe writing in the way i love, the more poetic mind-followed way, rather than the edited and technical form my education asks of me, could be a beautiful to truly LIVE this summer. and may you and those who stumble here find some enjoyment, and (dare i hope?) encouragement or comraderie, in the words i place.

thanks for beginning anew with me. it feels good, doesn't it?

a poem by mary oliver

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
1.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass?Will the owl bite off its own wings?Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing?Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I say–beholdthe reliability and the finery and the teachings of this gritty earth gift.

2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.Drink water, and understand delight.Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets are opening their bodies for the hummingbirdswho are drinking the sweetness, who are thrillingly gluttonous.
For one thing leads to another.Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.
And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a starboth intimate and ultimate,and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the twobeautiful bodies of your lungs.

3.
The witchery of livingis my whole conversationwith you my darlings.All I can tell you is what I know.
Look, and look again.This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.It’s more than the beating of the single heart.It’s praising.It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.You have a life—just imagine that!You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another.

4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,the dancer, the potter,to make me a begging bowlwhich I believemy soul needs.
And if I come to you,to the door of your comfortable housewith unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,will you put something into it?
I would like to take this chance.I would like to give you this chance.

5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same or we change.Congratulations if you have changed.

6.
Let me ask you this.Do you also think that beauty exists for some fabulous reason?
And if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—your life—what would do for you?

7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.That was many years ago.Since then I have gone out from my confinements, though with difficulty
I mean the ones that are thought to rule my heart.I cast them out, I put them on the ush pile.They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

~ Mary Oliver, from Evidence