Poetic License on a Reflection Paper

What I Know Now

Is it selfish?

to say

“

  I’d rather study myself than any other person on this planet?

”

Does it make sense if I convince you

That studying others is really the same?
Can I persuade you to believe that the

whole world is a

   lens, a reflecting

     pool, a refracting light scheme

       on in the inner

           the self

     the other above and the

you below

and in learning of others,

we mostly learn of ourselves      ?

This is true, you see, because

When I’m studying you,

I’m studying me

How I react and how I read

And what all those words mean to me

But why, you ask, do I continue

To study me and

instead of you?

Because I control me and the things

I see and the things

I do shape the world around

Me, just as yours do.

To be a better me,

I must study other

use

So I sat down in this class to read about a Justice

And I read

and we talked

and I learned a lot

but what I know now

    is not how much work Sonia Sotomayor put into her dreams

it is not how life can be difficult for a Latina

it is not how much the world of diabetes has changed through modern medicine and

it is not why you should bother to read her book or take this class

what I know now

is that I have dreams that are

                B I G G E R

                than I knew, and they are

valid.

 

is that my life is really difficult, but that

does not mean it is not worth living

is that the world is changing all around me

right now

and if I don’t pay attention,

I’ll miss out

is that I should bother to get out of bed every day and put on clean clothes

is that I should bother to go to work and be proud of a job well done

is that I should bother to put on a smile and do something to make me and you a little bit happier today

is that I should bother to change the world.

Parable

Time Well Spent

In college I worked two jobs during the term and three during the summer to make sure I graduated with as little debt as possible.

Most other students partied on the weekends, or relaxed. I worked. And got sick. I was sick a lot, so I spent a lot of time in bed. It’s different than napping, because you feel just as guilty afterwards but only half as rested.

 I didn’t have time to make many friends, and the best memories I have involve purchasing a long craved after food product at ten o clock at night at the big grocery store down the road. You have no idea the amount of joy a bag a nacho cheese Doritos can bring after you’ve spent seven sweaty hours dreaming of them at a cash register in the basement cafeteria of a tall office building. Nothing felt more right than wiping my orange fingers on my work-stained pants, knowing the mark would blend right in with tomorrow’s mess on these pants that used to be my favorite before I accidentally spilled scrambled eggs on them last month.

The friends I kept back home were busy too, but we’d talk over the internet, sometimes arranging for visits when I was back in town. They always asked me how I was and I said I was great, working hard. I invited someone to my apartment one day and I showed them the place above my desk where my degree would go, on the wall.   

When I graduated early after working through 9 straight quarters, all of my friends were off seeing the world, and doing other twenty-something like adventures. I was only twenty, and I had loans now. I set goals to pay them off within two years of graduation and found a job and a half to keep me busy

while I waited for everyone else to get back from having their fun, I watched their pictures on facebook. Sometimes I would cry to myself, hot with jealousy and so angry at the world for their good fortune. The good fortune of having fun. But then I would drown my sorrows in my favorite frozen pint, and things weren’t so bad again.  

I watched a lot of youtube. I mean, doesn’t everyone? I followed vloggers and beauty gurus and the news pages too. Mostly BBC sources. I liked the accents. I mean, I’m a college educated person; an adult with a preference towards news casters with an accent. I’m not a teenager anymore, I mean, I have a degree, look, it’s there on the wall.

And everyone on facebook had posts and posts and posts about the friends they made and the fun they had and the memories they enjoyed and the lessons they learned and the things they’ll never forget about being eighteen and nineteen and twenty and twenty one and twenty two and twenty three because most of them had so much fun they stayed an extra year to finish up.

#timewellspent

But my time was well spent too. Because, look, I have a degree, it’s there on the wall.  

Criticism as Autobiography

At the Literature Symposium

When I Got in a Fight

with a Vending Machine

            Black, carefully pressed trousers swished against my ankles as my kitten heels tapped down the tiled hallway, also black. For the sake of the image, I will also tell you that I was wearing a salmon colored blouse with a black fitted jacket; my hair was perfectly smoothed and in my left hand was a professional folder with my presentation in it. It was in my left hand so that I could easily shake hands with someone important, should I meet them just around the corner. I walked expertly into the classroom and sat down at the conference table to watch the other presentations while I awaited my turn.  

My professor came over to greet me, commenting on how sharp I appeared and wishing me luck. I had spent the better part of five weeks working with him on my essay on the well-known Hemingway piece, Hills Like White Elephants. Everyone else in the room had read it, surely, and no one else cared nearly as much about it as I did.  I was convinced that I had cracked the code; what I was about to say to them would impress and astonish, and they would go home and reread the story and credit me forever in their retelling of how their life was changed by this story.

The presentation went well, my slides all worked in order, and the polite applause felt more than polite as I sat down. We were all professionals there, no one knew, unless previously introduced, who was a student, or an author, or an editor, or a professor. Everyone was dressed in the same black-heavy ensemble, using big words in complicated sentences to say simple things.  “She was piously indebted to his work” instead of “She is obsessed. Really, it’s sort of an issue”.

And right in the middle of this wonderful networking opportunity, I got the munchies. There was a table in the corner with coffee and tea and cheese cubes from the sponsors, but that would not do. I took my very professional self out into the hallway, and went on a hunt for some chocolate, crunchy chocolate. This was a situation in need of nothing short of peanut M&M’s. Arriving at the vending machine. I quickly scanned the rows, nearly disappointed before I caught sight of the last yellow bag of pure happiness, sitting precariously on the edge of the shelf. I hurriedly collected dirty coins from the bottom of my little purse and paid homage to the vending machine gods to the beeping song of “E-12”.

The coins clanked and the buttons beeped and the machine whirred as the little silver cage let my M&M’s free; the yellow package hit the bottom of the machine with a noise that was just loud enough for me to be embarrassed, hoping no one had heard me. In the hopes of being discreet, I stooped to retrieve them and planning to quickly put them in my bag, the end open for the sneaking-one-by-one position I had perfected by now, after days and days of mid-class breaks that required just this stop to get me through the last half of lecture.

And that’s when it happened. The machine. The door, the little door on the bottom of the machine, behind which sat my prize; it wouldn’t open. I mean, it opened, but not enough to get my hand in. I paused with a verbal question mark escaping my lips as I tried again. Nope, the door would only open far enough to get my fingers through the gap, several inches away from my candy before it loudly hit the metal plate inside that was bent just a millimeter too far in.  I tried again and again, clank, slap, clank, slap, clank, slap. Surely someone would have heard me by now but it didn’t matter, I needed my M&M’s; I paid for them and I was NOT about to leave them here for the next person with slightly smaller wrists to conquer!  

I stood up and peered down into the machine, where my M&M’s were held captive like a prisoner of war. My makeup smeared on the glass as I leaned into it, holding both sides of the machine as if I could shake the door open. I decided to try my foot as a means of opening the machine, and my foot came in contact with the metal door just as a larger door swung shut, and the director of the English program came out of the classroom where I had just presented and walked down the hall towards me. I quickly turned around and leaned ever so casually against the corner of the vending machine, as if it would not be at all odd to find your presenter hanging out with the overpriced junk food mini-mall. She approached me and after faux-warm greetings, she said “I really enjoyed your speech; your essay was so well thought out and it was a very dignified presentation, I look forward to meeting with you in the future!” I offered thanks and an enthusiastic smile as she walked down the hall. And when she turned the corner, I kicked the machine again.

“Do you feel better?” He asked. “I feel fine,”she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.” 

Trust in Excess-Lovers Quarrel

 

            Carefully, she tucked the white garment bag into her suitcase, slipping her hand around all the corners to ensure nothing could catch on the zipper. She could feel the thick satin between her fingers as she pressed and held the dress she had spent weeks finding, every movement of her creamy hands a smooth and measured dance.  

            Zippers crashed through the still air and she picked up her bags. Boarding pass in hand, she smiled, only eight hours now and she would be in his arms once more. It would be a long flight, but somehow, he always made it worth it.  Nathaniel was working in Sacramento, where she met him. This was the third time she had planned a trip from her hometown in southern Minnesota, calling him excitedly at ten pm on a Tuesday when she found a great deal on airfare she couldn’t pass up.

“Sure darling, you can come down.”

“Well, is it ok, does it work for your schedule, do you want me to? Because it’s a great deal, and it would give us so much time together, longer than the last trip, and I think I can get it all off work, and it would be so great to see you again!”

“It always works baby, of course I want you to come down.”

“Are you sure, is there a better time for me to come? If not, I’ll book the tickets tonight.”

“Whatever you want to do.”

She laughs. “But that is what you always say!”

“And it is always true, my love. Come down if you want to, it’ll be fun. There is a company party that weekend, we can go together.”

And so here she was, walking through the chilly April night between the airport and the shuttle station, rolling a bag with her new dress in it, something to impress him and help him miss her, remember her.

They went to the company party and danced just one time. She looked up at his handsome face and his eyes, which were lost somewhere on the horizon. He had that look all weekend, and she decided it was romantic, for him to be so consumed in thought.  

“Nathaniel, isn’t it wonderful to dance together? Just like when we first met, can you believe that was only last year?” She rested her head on his lapel, trying to capture every second and slice about being with him, her heart speaking loudly enough for the both of them.

He stayed in her hotel that night, a getaway for the both of them, he said. She giggled as he opened the door, his arms around her waist, backing her slowly into the room.  His arms which had hair darker than hers, and graying; it gave him that “classic” look. She had spent many lunch hours with her girlfriends raving about “her very own George Clooney”.   

In their hungry race to the bed, she left clothes strewn across the floor. Something made a small, sharp sound as it hit the carpet, but she spent only a second deciding it was his expensive leather belt.

The midmorning sun came in through the sheer curtains, and she surveyed the room, thinking to herself how it looked very much like a movie set.  She was the gorgeous leading lady and Nathaniel was the handsome older man, head over heels in love with her, of course. They were ready to start their lives together, she was sure of it. It would be just like in the movies.

She rolled away from the window to wrap herself around him. He stirred slightly in his sleep, and she closed her eyes once more. And between the window and her naked shoulders, a worn gold ring sat on the floor, a few feet from the pocket of his suit where it had hidden all night, the sun playing off its edges, just like in the movies. 

Black and White

Grow up, we sang, a foot or two until I’m grown. And when I’m grown I’ll go. When I’ve grown a foot or two, I’ll go, I hope. We sang for years those words, no tears. The tears come now, the words still echoing in the air around us, the air around those extra feet we grew. Not real feet, not like octopi, not like we thought when we were younger. But height feet, normal feet, we are adults now.

But we aren’t. We are teenagers, barely graduated from high school. We know nothing about the world. Nothing about the world which we are called to change, nothing about the world which we know will fight against us every single time we open our mouths. We know nothing about the fight they will fight. We know nothing about how to fight back. We won’t fight back. We don’t fight.

This is about love and life, they say. This is about caring and sharing, like in elementary school. This is about showing the world that you are not of it. This is about showing everyone in the world that they don’t have to be either. This is about an escape route. An escape route from the darkness. A door to let in the sun, and an umbrella to keep you dry, even when you are drowning in all the rain of the world.  This is about families and eternity and remembering and saving everything that is important on earth.

So we go. We call our doctors and our dentists and our bishop. We make appointments and appointments and we fill out forms so many forms so many times our names so many pictures in a suit and tie so many teeth next to us after all our wisdom is gone.  We work, and we don’t take our girlfriends on lots of dates because they know we are saving up for our mission. But we spend time together, lots of time, because we know we are saving up for our mission. 

Saving up for two years without newspapers or facebook or phone calls or skypes or dates or after school Sonic runs. So we spend time together. Lots of time. Trying to engrave on our minds the way that everything is so that when we are gone, we can remember and return, though we know we will never be the same.  

But we work so we can go. And we are happy to go. But where will we go? We don’t know, but He does. And we ask Him; we send papers and files and pictures to Salt Lake and they send us back a letter. A big white letter in a big white envelope. The letter is black words on a page, but it feels like gold. It is heavy in our hands and we open it slowly. Our family screams. We cry. We are going, going, going somewhere we have never been before.  Going somewhere we can’t find on a map yet, we need to get the bigger map. The letter tells us to report to the training center on March Twenty Sixth, and we scream.

We scream with excitement and they scream with excitement and now all anyone ever says to me is about excitement, or encouragement, or commitment, or not paying rent, or not going to college yet, or not marrying my girlfriend of two years because I promised myself I would do this first.

And she waits.

And everything is all about black now. Black socks to match my pants. Black suits to meet the dress code. Black ties for looking nice. Black bags for carrying my life in. Black pens for writing home with.

And blue books to teach from. Blue books to give away with a prayer and a promise.

And everything is black now, except my white shirt. And my white name on the black tag. The black tag I clip to my white shirt after everything has been done. The black space between me and my mother disappears as I hug her for the last time. The last time for two years. And the whites of her eyes disappear as I walk through the airport. And the white of my smile stays.

I readjust my name tag.