so much on my mind that it spills outside

what a beautiful, beautiful weekend. shorts + flip-flops. poetry + music. friends + nostalgia.

here's a song for you all:


Sweet summer night and I'm stripped to my sheets
Forehead is leaking, my AC squeaks
And a voice from the clock says, "You're not gonna get tired"
My bed is a pool and the walls are on fire
Soak my head in the sink for a while
Chills on my neck and it makes me smile but
My bones have to move and my skin's gotta breathe
You pick up the phone and I'm so relieved
You slide down your stairs to the heated street
And the sun has left us with slippery feet
And I want to walk around with you
And I want to walk around with you
And be here with you, we're going.

It doesn't really matter, I'll go where you feel
Hunt for the breeze, get a midnight meal
I point in the windows, you point out the parks
Rip off your sleeves and I'll ditch my socks
We'll dance to the songs from the cars as they pass
Weave through the cardboard, smell that trash
Walking around in our summertime clothes
Nowhere to go when our bodies glow
And we'll greet the dawn in its morning blues
With purple yarns/yawns you'll be sleeping soon
And I want to walk around with you
And I want to walk around with you
When the sun goes down, we'll go out again
Don't cool off, I like your warmth.

Let's leave the sound of the heat for the sound of the rain
It's easy to sleep when it whets my brain
It covers my rest with a saccharine sheen
Kissing the wind through my window screen
The restlessness calls says that I cannot hide
So much on my mind that it spills outside
Do you want to go stroll down the financial street?
Our clothes might get soaked, but the buildings sleep
And there's no one pushing for a place
Let's meander at an easy pace
And I want to walk around with you
And I want to walk around with you
I want to walk around with you
Just you, just you, just you.

~lyrics of "Summertime Clothes," Animal Collective (off their awesome new album which came out earlier this year, Merriwater Post Pavilion). thanks to this site.



i want to write a spring/summer poem. i want to write a spring/summer poem with this kind of joyous directness of expression.

been talking to e.m. a lot. talked to him last night when i was over at jeanette's mod - me and everyone else in my hampshire world, it seemed. talked him while feeling all this nostalgia, watching gilmore girls again (jeanette's dvds), listening to aimee mann's Bachelor #2 album. talked to him this morning and then this afternoon on the phone. read him bits of lorrie moore, margaret atwood, polina barskova. talked to him about how a part of me really misses russian lit. really misses polina. it's weird - and kinda nice - how e.m.'s bringing out all this nostalgia. and i think russian lit. & polina certainly still have a place in my life.

although i am exploring different things. and when i actually think about a piece i'm working on or - gasp - actually working on a piece, then it becomes clear to me that yes, i am exploring different things. nonetheless, it's not like i can't draw inspiration from many different sources. in fact, i think that's when my writing is at its best. when it just can't be any one thing totally. when i just can't be any one thing totally.

the thing is, i think i get nervous talking about these new things. because they're so new. i don't feel quite as comfortably articulate about them as i do with the stuff i was looking into last year or a couple of years ago. it takes time to find the words of the present moment. also, time to warm up to someone...it's funny how the 'now' can be the trickiest, most complex thing to communicate. perhaps because it's not merely a 'thing' that then gets exchanged through language. 'now,' like 'then' is something i create...we create...socially. so to bring someone into that creation, that process...it's an intimate act. letting someone really create with you.

that's precisely what i want, though :)
that walking around with you.
that so much on my mind that it spills outside.


**

so glad to see g.d. tonight. my laptop keeps powering off, maybe because it's so warm. what i was writing in this section was basically how, as s.l. keeps saying, it's good to have multiple, or plural friends...you share different things, create different things. and g.d.'s just been one of those rare people with whom, for whatever crazy reason, i immediately felt like i could talk about anything. we cover quite the range.

tonight in the bridge, the upper rcc, g.d. brought out something in particular...my thoughts on why i'm probably not going to be in a chinese class next semester. why i'd prefer instead to make more an effort to speak to my parents on the phone (in chinese), to keep up an email correspondence with my favorite aunt...i need more of that personal investment. because chinese is such a personal, emotional language for me. it's not a textbook language. it's not a a language of a non-chinese/white/american learning the language just for fun or for research, for job opportunities. it's the language of my childhood, the language of my relationship with my parents (though maybe 'chinglish' might more fully encompass that), with my entire extended family in xiamen. in the classroom, chinese begins to lose its realness...

the dialogues and scenarios that the textbook offers simply don't cut it. the classroom doesn't cut it. and even doing this immersion program this summer in hefei won't really cut it. i already know. because while yes, it's good to expand the meanings of the language for me, the possibilities of it...i feel like i'm losing the very reason the language is alive for me. in expanding meanings, i could start watching taiwanese dramas with j.l., explore more cpop with s.l. ...friends who i know from our conversations have similar sorts of personal, emotional histories with so-called native tongues. the standard, academic-ized ways are getting too confining. i want to still go to hefei this summer, but i need for that trip to be more mine.

otherwise, learning chinese actually begins to feel not so important to me, kinda lame. i feel distanced from it. ...and that distance closes up all at once, though, the second my mom or dad calls me on the phone. they have important things to say to me. suddenly we're all of us living our lives in this language. yes...i need to learn chinese in ways meaningful to me.

**

and here's a bit of the nostalgia i've been referring to...
a poem by polina, from last april (the reading she did at amherst college)...

Physiological Sketch

I remarked the madman,
Scourge of the Berkeley snails,
On his head a black diadem,
In his hands a trident.
He stalks them in flowerbeds by wicket fences,
Catches them on lawns and crunch with his foot...
Left on the ground are bits of shell and clumps of ooze...

You asked me to write about life so I'm writing about life.
With amazing frequency it looks like this...
Elementary... in our suburban village,
Populated by small beasts and rejects, embroidered
With unbearably green threads (William Morris
Influenced the decor). With haughty mien
My infant - rain or shine -
Surveys her kingdom in a stroller drawn
In the gloomy suite of her grandmother (she's more Rossetti,
That patina on bronze, pattern of spiderweb on a rose).

They don't need anyone, like they're all alone in the world --
Two fantastical beasts woven into a single mural.
Now they pause in silence over the snail
Who died in the holocaust of a neighbor's cane.
Now they pause in silence over the victim,
Who had crawled like a hieroglyph from another world.
Nona leans over, and Frosenka beats one light foot
Against the other as they hang above the gravel, above the path:
What do they see are there? Tell me. And what do they see there?
And where are they going each morning together? --
Forerunners of all who move, cry, breathe,
Perform great deeds.

-trans. Catherine Ciepiela