Leafing the grass

I just had to share it with you. I believe, not just think, that you should read more Walt Whitman than you already do. I am currently leafing (ha) through the 1855 version of Leaves of Grass, and I cannot help but sound out a voice about it....because I don't really want to subject myself to voicing it on the bus ride home, because that would make lots of people uncomfortable, and since I love people, making them uncomfortable on a bus as opposed to a fairer place, isn't what I want to do.

Dearest you,

I still don’t quite understand….Walt Whitman’s use of….ellipses and the word soul, though I do understand why the word (I almost typed world, which is cool) soul is central to the poet. Though it’s much more than that, more timeless, more than I can write at this moment with the time and space I have. The wor(l)d deserves more.

The other night, I read “Song of Myself” out loud. The whole thing. I usually don’t read things out loud. I don’t talk a whole lot (at least in terms of understood, articulate speech). I have been mapping my conversation patterns (in my head, of course) lately. I listen and look….a lot. I just listen and move my body so as to say that I care. My close friends, though, always teach me how to talk, which is why they’re my close friends, and I love them. I love others, too, because Walt introduced me to equanimity.

Reading for hours was exhausting for my voice but entirely liberating for my soul. It’s ironic that this poem about “self” was read by my “self,” and that in reading it to my “self” I, maybe for the first time, actually gave my(self) a chance for a long conversation with inner boiling feelings and love for people. This conversation made me realize how much I want to say but also how much my voice doesn’t let me, or rather, what my accoucheur “potentialized” in me at birth – that I would articulate life, which now I realize is articulated in many ways.

But what an advocate for the POET! I don’t always consider my self one, but I think the salty liquid flowing out of my face when I read this collection of poems thinks otherwise, turns inward on its self.

So, anyway, I’m reading “Song of Myself” all the while thinking of what the song of my own self would sound like. Then I came to “It is you talking just as much as myself….I act as the tongue of you,/It was tied in your mouth….in mine it begins to be loosened.” Maybe you can imagine the swelling within me, but just then I read it over and over and listened to the sound of my own voice, and therefore understood the explosion….for a better word in me, the poet and his/her (seemingly) worthless miniscule leaves of grass that can become a collection of sorts, a book, or a conversation, or, my favorite, “the roughs and beards (!) and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves.”

Thanks for listening, my friend, whenever I keep talking about my self.

Forever your poet-hypocrite lover-of-our-souls,

Lindsey

Ooo, lookey here

It's been a very long while since I've written here. This is because so many, ahem, distractions have entered my life in different ways. Besides incorporating Nutella into my diet, and all the cookies Mom sent, the coolest not-so-much distraction, but improvement is that I've been fitness-ing in order to conquer said Nutella and cookies, and Seasonal Affective Disorder. I know, I don't want this to turn into a workout post or an "I feel so great post," but I do want to emphasize how beautiful God has made our bodies and how we should take care of them.

For those of you who care, or read this blog because you want to know about my life, which is not really what it's all about, I'll tell you: that I am starting a new internship at TimeOut Chicago, a magazine (!) here really soon, pointing my creative wandering in a new direction; that I'm letting the sun shine through a partially if not more raw broken heart,

and I am currently putting my focus into a poetry series entitled "White Girl Awesome Sauce: A Series of Poetic Events" and my thesis that will examine criticism through the eyes of Wes Anderson, Bill Murray, and some of Wes' movie characters. I'm real excited about both of these things.

In other news, I saw a guy the other day that looked just like Aziz Ansari, and I wanted so badly to shout, "Hey, Aziz!" really loud. I'm not a shout-hey-to-someone-that-looks-like-someone kind of person, so that's a new development of impulses. I also have been looking out my kitchen window more frequently, and I've noticed that some people waiting at the light in their cars or walking by will look back for a just a moment, and this makes me joyful for the moments after, because it's always good to know someone wants to look back (not in a creepy way)...that there's still other people with new and curious impulses. Last night at the bar, my table of friends and an adjacent table of friends we didn't know erupted in laughter at the same time, and, for about a minute, we all laughed together, unaware for a while. I caught the eye of someone at the other table, and we just locked, looked, and laughed together. I don't quite know the reason I'm writing all of this down for you, but maybe look at it as a way of "looking back." Because I always want to give you some of my time to look.

Instead of free-writing, I've been free-designing lately. Triangles are everywhere I look, and everywhere in my head, making me think about things in the power of three. Like tote bags and doodles and origami and buttons and feelings.

And bigger things, like "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And, "the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." And "hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."

Cheers to God filling in the voids of the world's broken hearts! Huzzah! But, also for the ability to really look and really see the shapes and creations that point and lift us upward.

photo(s) above by my friend Leah

Today's BONUS: a way to look at the supposed confines of life differently. This video has changed my view of the city and its potential claustrophobia forever.

New York Biotopes from Lena Steinkühler on Vimeo.