I have never been much of a breakfast person...

but recently I have been craving oatmeal like crazy. We're talking breakfast...dinner. Really, just about any time. Give me the funny looking Quaker guy, some milk, a two packets of Splenda and I am a happy camper.

Today, as I was laying in bed eating a bowl of oatmeal I started thinking about a poetry reading I went to a few years ago. I was lucky enough to not only hear Galway Kinnell read his poetry, but I got to meet him after the reading. It was incredible, as he is (in the literary world) extremely distinguished and I enjoy his poetry quite a bit. After reading several well-known poems that he selected, he read one I had never heard entitled: "Oatmeal". I immediately fell in love with this selection because it made me laugh and the imagery is fantastic. I thought I would share it with you.

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
companion. Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it, with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal should
not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly okay to eat
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John
Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something
from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
"Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it; those were his words "Oi 'ad
a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through
his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his
pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if
they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket
through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal
alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there
is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started
on it, and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their
clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering
furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneously
gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh
to join me.

An Open Letter to Sylvia...

I sit here and read your words,
strewn across these crisp white pages
and I think about how you used them for kindling.

Your shy-awkward smile makes me wonder what thoughts circled
in your head as the photographer pressed, index finger down,
stealing your soul, trapping you in a moment I can buy.

The last pages filled with raw potential,
a life of boundless talent, a beautiful mind,
but sorrow that flowed through veins like Formaldehyde.

The weight it must take to force one’s heart to move,
cutting all ties, breathing in death’s fumes,
the cries of children fading away as eyelids closed.

And as I think of brilliance slighted, works of art
unfinished and burned, I suddenly catch a glimpse of you.
It was life, and the brain’s chaotic swirl. The panic, the heaviness. Life.

In conferring with a girl at work...

she asked, sarcastically, "Melia, have you always been a smart ass?"

I wasn't sure how to respond without being a smart ass, so I told her I would do some research and get back to her.

This research led me to lengthy conversations with close friends, painful and self-searching dinners with ex-boyfriends, and a few long and draining therapy sessions, but all in all...it really just comes down to this photograph.



I was five and a half in this photo, and I can only assume that the smart ass-yness began long before this was even taken. This is the same look I give to said co-worker multiple times every day.

I think it may be contagious as well, because you see the cute strawberry blonde kid in the oversized coat? That's my little brother Miles, and now he has joined the ranks. You can check out his thoughts on life at:
http://becauseimawesome.blogspot.com
And let me tell you now, he is awesome.

Nightminds...

Just lay it all down.
Put your face into my neck and let it fall out.
I know...
I know...
I know...

Johnny Panic comes to town...

So, I thought I better post something so Tee Cake will stop bothering me. Sheesh.

Let's see...there's really nothing of any importance to note.

I am looking for a job in the Metroplex, and I am excited about several potential leads at different companies that I am interested in. I do not know when I want to move though, so I have a few things to figure out. I can't approach this all "willy-nilly"...or whatever.

I think I have OD'd on Sylvia Plath. I read a short story called "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams" yesterday, and in talking to my mother about it I was like, "I wish I could get into her mind just for a second...just to see what the hell she is even talking about." My mom was like, "Well...as long as you don't stick your head in an oven." Oh, Debs...you are so funny! Anyway, in going back over it I have decided that...maybe, to really understand where she is coming from, you have to get to that breaking point. Right now, I am not willing to ride that mental roller coaster with Syl, so I am going to try to approach the story from the angle that will work best for my thesis...wrangle up whatever I can from what I am working with...and move on. Dwelling on her work is detrimental to the soul. That's what I have discovered this week.

Have I mentioned that I want out of school and out of Abilene in a bad way? Well, I do.

At this point, I think I would even take a Greyhound bus ticket. Now, that's desperate people!

This week brings quite a bit of school work. I need to finish two presentations and two papers. However, I am rewarding myself with a trip to Ft. Worth at the end of the week. Emily has a wedding shower and, of course, Katy needs a visit from Ashley and me.

Focusing on light at the end of the tunnel...
and I'm out.

Where the flame turns blue...

I went looking for someone I left behind.
Yeah, but no-one, just a stranger did I find.
I never noticed, hadn't seen it as it grew,
the void between us where the flame turns blue.

Different places, well they all look much the same.
Dreams of faces in the streets devoured by names.
I'm in collision with every stone I ever threw.
And blind ambition where the flame turns blue.

Words dismantled, hey and all the books unbound.
Conversations, though we utter not a sound.
I heard a rumor, I don't know if it's true,
that you'd meet me when the flame turns blue.

So I venture underneath the leaden sky.
See the freight train with its one fierce eye.
And then I listen as it tears the night in two
with a whistle and the flame turns blue.

In the morning I will sing.
In the morning I will sing.

Through the lemon trees the diamonds of light
break in splinters on the pages where I write
that if I lost you, I don't know what I'd do,
burn forever where the flame turns blue.

Yeah if I lost you, I don't know what I'd do...
burn forever where the flame turns blue.

In the morning I will sing.
In the morning I will sing.
In the morning I will sing.
In the morning I will sing.

And if I listen to the sound of white...

sometimes I hear your smile, and breathe your light.
Yeah, if I listen to the sound of white....
You're my mystery.

Hello friends. Man, it's been a while and I'm sorry. I don't really know where the time has gone...but then again, I can't recall what I had for dinner, so there you go. I think it's more of a memory problem than me being so busy that the time has just flown by.

Well, slowly but surely I am working on my thesis. It's overwhelming at times. Right now...I equate it with...hmm...okay, say you really want green beans for dinner, and in this analogy you live on a farm that happens to grow green beans. Well, first you have to gather the green beans. Then you must break off the tips and discard them. Then you have to break them into smaller pieces. Then you must wash them. Then you have to cook them. All of this work when the idea, "I could really go for some green beans", seemed so simple. You have to go through all of that just to set down to a plate of green beans. Well, that's how I feel about this "project". I mean, I know what I want. I have said, "You know, I could really go for having my finished thesis sitting on my desk ready to turn in", but unfortunately, that simple idea is a multi-step process. Right now I am in the gathering/discarding stage of the process. Research. Gathering every piece of "evidence" I can to back my original idea, and throwing away the crappy stuff...isn't that a scientific term? Crappy stuff. I have written a little bit, but it's so hard to take an idea and make it tangible. I know what I want to accomplish, but I have no idea how to get there. Make sense?

Tonight I got to see my brother Miles, Peets, Carrie, and Ashley play at an open mic night. By the end of the night they talked me into playing and singing as well, and this party was sans alcohol...crazy, I know. I don't know what got into me. All in all, it was a fun...albeit at times mundane..."party". It was on HSU campus. That should tell you all you need to know.

Alright, it's time for me to...do something. I will probably watch Nick-at-Nite and fall asleep with my glasses on. Afterall, that is what I do.

Deuces.