Chaos

It's interesting to notice just how quickly order and disorder trade places in my life. These past few days have been a blur and I seem to be waking up unprepared for the next morning that follows.

My bedroom is especially a mess of clothes, shoes and books. With my long-awaited vacation to Mexico quickly approaching, the packing process has been on hold. Instead, the more pressing concern I have now is figuring out what books to bring with me on the plane.

In other news, I've been editing my brother's artist biography for his website but struggle to really get anywhere. Needing to walk away from the task at hand to gather my thoughts, I picked up my copy of The City Visible to reread my old notes. My book's folded corners and lightly tattered cover surprisingly still bring me joy and the smell of it alone (weird I know) calms me. It's a musk of mostly rainwater (I accidentally left one of my windows open with this book on the sill during a storm) and my perfume (which sprayed onto it multiple times while in my purse).

Clearly, my mind's a mess as well, but sometimes not everything should be in its proper place.

Maybe I'll start packing tomorrow.

This Poem Waits

I spent a great portion of my evening lost. Lost in the restored, original copy of Sylvia Plath's posthumous collection of poems, Ariel. I cannot even register any other emotion at the moment except for the emptiness I feel. I am emotionally drained, tapped dry of any useful feeling or thought. I've forgotten how much of yourself you have to give in order to allow Plath in. Although I'm exhausted from almost reading the entire collection in one sitting, I cannot complain. Ironically, at the same time a sheath of fulfillment creeps within me. I just need to process the experience, let it register and reflect perhaps in the morning.

I picked up another (hopefully) great read today, Word of Mouth : Poems Featured on NPR's All Things Considered. I haven't gotten around to really reading it, still kind of reeling from Plath. (I'm not really interested in compilations of poems by different poets, when I do read these anthologies I read them out of order, I'm neurotic, I know). I did open the first page and was overcome with the urgent need to share this with you. It's a dedication (or at least I took it as such) to introduce the book, Quincy Troupe so beautifully and transitionally writes:

this poem waits for you to cross over
to cross over love, this poem waits for you
to cross over, to cross over love
this poem waits for you to crossover
too crossover, too, love

If this is the beginning, I look forward to losing myself in it as well.