Silence--thanks, Billy

Now it is time to say what you have to say.
The room is quiet.
The whirring fan has been unplugged,
and the girl who was tapping
a pencil on her desktop has been removed.

So tell us what is on your mind.
We want to hear the sound of your foliage,
the unraveling of your tool kit,
your songs of loneliness,
your songs of hurt.

The trains are motionless on the tracks,
the ships are at restn the harbor.
The dogs are cocking their heads
and the gods are peering down from their balloons.
The town is hushed,

and everyone here has a copy.
So tell us about your parents—
your father behind the steering wheel,
your cruel mother at the sink.
Let's hear about all the clouds you saw, all the trees.

Read the poem you brought with you tonight.
The ocean has stopped sloshing around,
and even Beethoven
is sitting up in his deathbed,
his cold hearing horn inserted in one ear.

-Billy Collins

Muse

Did they have to taint "Supermassive Black Hole" by putting it on the "Twilight" soundtrack?

Baa Baa Black Sheep

"Real learning must ultimately be limited to men and women who insist on knowing--the rest is mere sheepherding." -Ezra Pound

My AP Comp teacher read this to our class my junior year of high school and I remembering thinking: I'll never be a sheep! I'm no sheep! I insist on knowing!

Truth be told: I am sometimes the sheepiest sheep ever. Physics? Political science? Please, herd me. Jab me with your hook-stick thing. Get out your cattle prod and zap me into line because there's no way I'm going to warm up to Cicero or Althusser unless you make me.

But I'm not a sheep about some things. Can you really be un-sheep-ish about EVERYTHING? Sounds exhausting. I'd rather stand over here and chew on some clover.

Cap and Gown

Please stop bothering me with a degree. I just want to take the same writing classes over and over again. And art classes. I want the art minor to switch back to the awesome program. The one with figure and spatial drawing. Not the lame-o program it is now. I want to be a perpetual student. The kind that never takes tests, but just bumbles around taking the most delicious classes and only working part-time for forever. I want to take all the art history classes. I want to re-take the art history class I already took because it was AMAZING and because I was absent on the day we covered Rodin. I would also like to take an archeology class. And one of those specialty classes that are all about one person. A semester on Chaucer, on Milton, on Dostoevsky. I want to re-take the second half of British lit from Dr. Eastley just so I can hear the recording of Ted Hughes reading "Jaguar" which Hughes pronounces "jag-U-ah." I want to take Shakespeare from Duerden again--but covering different plays because he made us read each play twice and watch it once. And because he gave that speech at the beginning of the semester that made me all emotional-nostalgic and happy I was an English major. I would like to put my student loans on hold--looming, but kept at bay by a graduation date that never comes.

No--I don't plan on being a teacher. I knew you were going to ask that once I said I that I'm an English major.

Parental Unit #1

My life has been fairly eventful as of late and there are a lot of things I would like to write about. But yesterday was Mother's Day and since I have an exceptionally fine mother, I will write about her first.

My mom has amazing cheekbones. They are firm and high and straight and gorgeous. None of her children got them. I'm hoping it's a recessive trait and one of my daughters will have her grandmother's face.

My mother has blue eyes and they are beautiful. I am a brown-eyed, brown haired, olive-skinned girl. I used to want green eyes and never really thought much of blue eyes. But my mom's eyes remind me of why people covet that hue and why sometimes I would like to have them myself.

My mother is kind. She taught me kindness. She is gentle and she speaks gently to and of people. She serves people all the time. I think that is a common trait among mothers, but my mother is really, really good at it. Service is never a burden for her or something she doesn't want to do. I used the word "never" because I meant it.

Every Christmas I ask my mom what she wants. She says "I want my family to be happy." When I was younger I used to roll my eyes and say, "yeah, yeah, but what do you WANT? What can I GIVE you?" It was just a few years ago that I finally understood how much she wants us to be happy--how that really is the source of her joy.

My mother loves the smell of lilacs. We had two lilac trees/bushes growing next to our house in Oregon. One white and one purple. The white bush was taller than the first storey of the house. They bloom for such a short time.

Sometimes I think my mom is fragile, but then her strength comes through and leads me when I most need it. When I am at my weakest, I want my mother.

My mom grew up in California and is a nurse. The wind at the beach hurts her ears--I think it always has.

I like to spend time with her.

I like to make my mom laugh. She likes to laugh. I have a picture of her from a few summers ago when I said something ridiculous and she is laughing completely. Her eyes are squinted, her mouth is open and she is smiling.

She has difficulties with drinking soda.

She loves to read. She loves to learn.

My mother is an excellent seamstress. Whenever I had a vision of some skirt or dress or whatever, she could always make it for me.

My mother loves children and babies. LOVES them. When the grandchildren are around, we children just step aside.

The last few years or so that I was in high school I went on walks with my mom most Sundays when it was nice outside. We walked down to Memorial Park and swung on the swings. I miss that.

She is humble.

My mom read to me and my brothers and sisters a TON when we were growing up. She loved the books with us. On Sundays I would comb and style her hair while she read aloud to me (she even let me use a spray bottle and clips. Now that's patience). The summer after my sophomore year of high school I was making a trip from Oregon to Utah and back with my parents. I had a reading list for my AP lit class I was taking in the fall. I had to read Great Expectations. I was driving for a while and I think my dad was asleep and my mom was in the passenger seat. I remember my mom reading it aloud to me as I drove and both of us cracking up about the part with the dinner party and the gravy that was supposed to give Pip solace.

My mom is awesome. The end.