Things That I Know

Here is the first poem I wrote about my childhood in Indonesia. I wrote it in about 2004. Enjoy...


Things That I Know

The smell of a monsoon rain,
the pressing silence after.
The sound of wind in a bamboo thicket,
the thick cold of mud that settles
between toes in a rice paddy
in the long season of rain.

How to climb a coconut tree
with my bare hands and feet,
what noise a rhinoceros beetle makes,
rattling angry in the matted grass.
Sweat that radiates from the body
at 105 degrees, mid-October sun
in my window, glaring.

A place where the earth melts away
in the stillness of dawn, where shadows
stretch long in a sandy crater as the red sun
creeps over the volcano’s edge,
pouring into the barren mountain
like lava.

The voice of the Indian Ocean
calling out in the dark to all the distant shores
it may never touch, the heavy water
turning itself at the edges,
pulling over glistening beaches,
reaching again toward the deep.

Turning 30

I recently experienced a rather momentous age-related milestone. I like to think of it this way because "I just turned 30" still leaves a slightly bitter, metallic taste in my mouth, as if I have just bitten my cheek, or perhaps because I perceive that I began hemorrhaging my youth and vivacious personality the moment my twenty-somethings ended. The buildup to this death of vivacity was sort of a mixed lump of feelings that ranged from pride--"hey, I earned it," to the bleak but customary desolation--"oh my gosh I'm freaking old."

I finally realized that this sort of a milestone (thankfully) isn't really about the numbers at all. For me, most of the stomach churning wasn't from the sheer enormity of my age number, but more as a result of my perceived notions of where I ought to have been in life by this point. When I was twenty, if you had asked me where I would be in ten years, I would have told you for sure that I would be married and have two small children by the time I turned 30. In the months prior to this little milestone, however, I started to be conscious of just how different my life is now from what I had envisioned. This collective disparity between anticipation and reality hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks a couple days before my birthday. Did I do something wrong? Should I have changed my major? Should I have married that guy? Should I have stayed in that job a few more years?

Then I realized something else. If you had asked me at the age of 20 where I would be in ten years, I would have never told you that I would have a Master's degree. I would have never thought I would be considering a PhD. I wouldn't have guessed that I would be a certified interpreter, loving my work and participating fully in the rich life of the Deaf community. It would have never occurred to me to wonder if I might be respected by my peers and loved by my friends. I was too young then to know that success is not measured by whether or not you do exactly what you set out to do. It is much more about how you shine in whatever circumstances in which you may find yourself. It is the cumulative wonder with which you approach each change, each realization, each achievement, each failure, each new venture and unexpected turn. This is what defines "where you are in life."

So, that having been said, here is my 10-year plan. Here are the things I want to say I have accomplished by the time I am 40:

- I want to know that I have always been unafraid to laugh loudly and to fully enjoy all of the irony and silliness of life.

- I want to have either completed my PhD, or have decided that, in fact, a PhD is not the right thing for me.

- I want to dearly love the people in my life, and know that the people in my life dearly love me.

- I would like to be able to say that in all things, I have carried myself with a fair amount of grace. (Inherent clumsiness doesn't count.)

- I would like to have been to France.

So there you go. Here's to another decade of unexpected victories, exhilarating exploration, the search for knowing and for self, the adventure of new places and things, the momentous occasions and the occasional moments, falling down and getting up, and rejoicing in all the wonderful silliness of the world. Here's to life.

I suck at blogging.

So my little project that began with the idea of starting a blog has gone up in a metaphorical cloud of smoke. Either because of my irritating desire to please people or my obsessive need for perfection, every single blog post idea I have had in the last two months has been tossed aside for one or another reason. Moreover, simultaneous to the hibernation of my brain's creative side, my life suffered the addition of a new set of responsibilities, which promptly usurped nearly all of my computer time, leaving me with far too many excuses not to blog. At this point, it seems like it's been so long, I almost feel the need to beg forgiveness and delete my blog from the cyber-world altogether so it can no longer torture anyone with its nonexistence. However, as I am attempting to rid my life of its overarching pattern of starting projects and not finishing them, I have decided to push through the nothingness in search of something... anything... to fill this void. Wish me luck.

Jasmine

This is a poem I wrote several years ago that talks about my experience of being an MK (Missionary Kid) and growing up in Indonesia. It was one of about 7 or 8 poems I wrote about Indonesia during a poetry class that served as an elective for me during my Grad school. Perhaps I will share the others someday as well. I decided to share this one first because, while the others are about the place where I grew up, this one is, primarily, about me. Enjoy.

Jasmine

A jasmine tree guarded the front steps
at the house where I was a child.
Its branches reached toward my window,
bending down, looking in.
Every morning it whispered,
leaned toward me in the wind,
raining blossoms on my path.
I tried to memorize the tiny white curves,
kiss their sweet fragrance,
hoping it would stick to me.
It was the smell of being young,
of sun on my skin,
cool wind smoothing the island.

Now I cannot remember the smell of jasmine.
I never learned to live one and a half lives.
Breathing the thick air of Texas
I search for the scent of green,
angry at my white skin
hiding Asia like a secret inside me,
the breath of an island where
I never did belong.

Loki, Norse God of Mischief

This is Loki. Aptly named after the Norse god of mischief, Loki is a one year old Ragdoll Siamese mix that I adopted from a rescue shelter in Ennis, TX last March. Despite his obvious feline species markers, Loki actually thinks he's a St. Bernard. He drools profusely, chews up papers, and chases the cat. The other cat, that is. I have a 7 year old female, Cecily, who is a total sweetheart. My intention was to find another cat to be a companion for her, but Loki has turned her whole world upside down, poor thing. Come to think of it, he's turned my world upside down too. He climbs up my clothes to get to the tall shelf in the closet, which is cute but I haven't exactly enjoyed finding holes in the shoulders of my shirts.



Anyway, possibly the most infuriating thing about my little god of mischief is that as terrible as he is, he is equally as cute. He cuddles and purrs and loves on me, so it's impossible to stay mad at him. It would be nice if someday he would stop ripping papers out of the file cabinet through the hole where the handle used to be and shredding them all over the floor of the office. I could also live without him stubbornly insisting that things I have put on my dining table or kitchen counter ought to be thrown to the floor and played with until they are either destroyed or lost forever under the refrigerator. Still, I love my little boy. He makes me crazy and he requires frequent punishment, and he will probably have Cecily and me both losing our hair out of frustration... but somehow my crazy life wouldn't be the same without him.

Blog the First: "This is not a blog about toothpaste."

So I thought about writing a blog. I mean, I like to talk, I like to write, and I generally don't mind sharing my opinion, so why not? Well, one could argue that there are a lot of boring bloggers out there, just typing away whatever they feel like going on about, expecting that people will then read their random blog and somehow be fascinated by it. As I said before, I would hate to be lumped into that category of people who blog about toothpaste. That being said, it seemed clear from the numerous responses of my facebook friends that toothpaste might be just what the public is looking for. Thanks to them, I almost ended up with a blog entitled "The Toothpaste Chronicles." (It was made clear by several of my loyal friends that they would, indeed, read a blog by that title.) Another viable option for a title came from my sister-in-law, who knows me so well, she suggested I title the blog "Finally, Marnie says what's on her mind!" I actually laughed out loud for a good minute when I got that suggestion, and the hilarious irony of it nearly won me over to actually using it. (Thanks, Annie!)

Anyway, I'm gonna try this out. I'm not sure how to describe what this blog might be about, since I haven't yet figured out what I'm about. Theology? Interpreting? The Deaf World? Being a Third Culture Kid? Traveling the world? Theater? Scrapbooking? Maybe you could say there might be a little something for everybody here. OR maybe it will just end up being a lot of little somethings about me. Either way, I can promise you one thing: This is not a blog about toothpaste.