11 posts tagged “qotd”
What is one of your favorite poems?
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.
As a poet, I think I'm obligated to answer this question. I spent three years of my life learning how to write a good poem, a good short story, flash fiction. Poetry effectively saved my life.
Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets : Cien Sonetos de Amor have been among my favorites since I first read my suite-mate's copy my junior year of high school. I think this W.S. Merwin translation might be my favorite.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.Write, for example, `The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.The same night, whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.Though this be the last pain she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Yes, one of my favorites. Though now I feel like a bit of a traitor to Jim Harrison, Mary Oliver, Baron Wormser, Bill Meisner, Stephen Dunn, et el.
What's the best present you gave this year?
My father and I don't really talk. Ironically, we talk more now that I don't live in his house year-round than we did when I was here all the time. It still isn't very much, but I'll take what I can get. We used to fight a lot when I was growing up. When we did talk, it was either fighting, or him saying things to purposefully provoke me. When I turned 14, I told him that if he wasn't going to treat me nicely, he just shouldn't talk to me. He decided to never talk to me.
The first real conversation we had after that was three months before I turned nineteen. I'm not placing blame on anyone for our estrangement for almost five years. It's something that happened, and it happened for reasons on everyone's part. I still regret all the lost opportunities there have been with my father, but slowly our relationship is improving once again.
Despite our lack of a relationship, I was very fortunate that my father still supported me in all of my endeavors. He went above the call of duty to make sure I was happy and in a safe place. It was ultimately his okay that let me attend Interlochen Arts Academy for three years, and it is because of him that I will graduate from one of the most expensive universities in the country debt free.
I wanted to get him something meaningful and with purpose. I love my father, and it is an honor for me to give others opportunities like he has given me. Without him (and my mothers), I wouldn't be anywhere in this world. I probably would have dropped out of high school and become addicted to meth, which is what usually happens in my town when things take a wrong turn. My life started to head in that direction, but because of hard work and support from my family, I managed to rise above.
Everyone in this world deserves the opportunity to overcome the unfortunate cards they have been dealt in life, whether it is severe mental disease or poverty. I was given the tools to make something good out of myself, and to pass that on to someone else is one of the best things I have done. I hope this is not my last chance to make a difference in someones' life.
Do you have a nervous habit?
Submitted by Herding Cats.
Do I have a nervous habit? Habits? No. Disorders? Yes.
A lot of people don't realize that I have severe social anxiety. It used to be debilitating, but now we're just under that threshold. I used to be unable to go shopping due to all the nervousness around the people in stores. I used to be unable to answer the telephone due to the fear of who was on the other end. It's very difficult going through life feeling like everyone is watching you and laughing at you behind your back. I used to feel like that was the case whenever I wasn't alone.
I still have trouble using the telephone. Caller ID on cellphones is a godsend, believe me. And I can at least go shopping and actually enjoy myself. My coping skills have gotten better. But I'm still never the life of the party, even when drunk.
It was a lot worse when my trichotillomania was worse. I was diagnosed at 12. At 13 more than half the hair on my head was gone. I still had visible bald patches at 16. 18 brought me a full head of hair, and this greatly reduced the anxiety. It is a vicious cycle though: I get nervous and pull my hair out, which makes me anxious. Right now I have two small bald spots behind each of my ears. I've gotten a lot better about hiding it.
I still chew on my cheeks. My dentist stopped asking about all the scar tissue years ago. I have managed to partially stop chewing on my nails, though.
What's the most drastic change you've ever made to your appearance?
Submitted by Laurie.
It was September, 2001. I was 14. My mother cried as my hair got shorter and shorter until it was finally all gone. I've never felt so beautiful. I have never been more popular.
What are the 5 words that best describe your life right now?
Question submitted by mojito.
Secluded, frantic, waiting, slow, repetative.
What is your current computer desktop image? Let's see it!
It looks 1000 times better full size.
Go to one random page in Explore Audio. What CD do you see that you're most interested in listening to?
I love this woman.
Play any instrument or speak any language, which do you choose?
Question submitted by cruftbox.vox.com.
Speak any language, without a doubt. Communication is important and while both music and words are languages, it's easier to speak directly than figuratively. I think if people learned to talk in languages they could equally understand, there would be a lot less war and misunderstandings in the world.
Soda? Cola? Pop? What do you say? Any other regional words that set you apart?
Question submitted by Gladys.
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, went to boarding school in northern Michigan, and am now in college in New York City. This pretty much means I've been on every side of the argument at some point in time.
My entire family says "Pop!" but I'm a member of the "soda" camp, myself. I don't even know how that happened. Possibly because ESL classes teach students to say "soda" and since my high school was 40% ESL students, a lot of kids were "soda" proponents. Granted, the more people came from the Midwest than anywhere else. But in Korea it's "soda" and since I lived in what we affectionately dubbed "Little Korea" my sophomore year.
Besides, "soda" just sounds so much more sophisticated than "pop."
What's the most extreme weather you've been in? A memorable storm? Heat wave? Or something else?
Having survived the 2006 Blizzard in New York City without even batting an eyelash (those Traverse City winters were good for something), and the 1995 Chicago heatwave, the most terrefying weather I've ever encountered was the tornado.
Tornados in and of themselves are scary, but imagine being an 11-year-old girl at Girl Scout Camp living in a teepee for the week when one of the worst storms to rip through Rockford, Illinois crosses front and center over your campground. My unit was in a new campground that hadn't been used before. We had temporary outhouses and now storm shelter. The closest stormshelter was a good 1000 yards away, on the next hill with a dramatic valley between.
I remember sitting in the next unit over looking at the sky. There was a cloud shaped like a hand pointing. It was pointing in the direction the storm was moving, and five minutes later, it started rain. The rain wasn't bad, it was standard rain and we kept to original schedule. We went to bed in our teepees as thunder and lightning drew nearer.
An hour later, our teepee wasn't doing so well with the wind and the rain. It was slowly shrinking as the support beams were pushed closer together. The floor was flooding and the girl who had until then slept in the middle, had already climbed into my friend Amanda's sleepingbag. Then a flashlight approached with a counselor behind. She yelled at us to get our shoes on and to move. It was dark, we had only two flashlights for a unit of 21 girls and 4 counselors. We formed a line and began to run for the next campsite. The valley was flooded, and the slopes were slippery. We slid down into thigh-high water and grabbed onto whatever plants we could to crawl up the other side.
The storm shelter was already full with our neighbors. 47 girls and 9 counselors in a space designed for 25. At night. With no place to sleep and nowhere to go. My unit was thoroughly soaked and we would spend the night that way. We never went into the shelter's tornado hold, but through the night we heard the wind pick up. I was asleep on the floor when the tornado ripped by. It woke me up, and almost everyone was crying. We all wanted to go home.
And then it was all over. The tornado was gone, the rain stopped, and that was it. We emerged and looked at the wreckage around us. A tree had fallen on one of the site's tents, and the latrines were engulfed in the branches of another down tree. Power was out. Worse, so was the water. I was given somebody elses underwear and shirt to sleep in for the next few hours. We slept two to a cot with no blankets or sleepingbags.
In the morning, everyone had to fork over all our water so the cafeteria could cook us meager food. Trees were down everywhere and everyone was cowed into a eerie silence. I was just glad I that that was my last day at camp.
