summer nights

these really are strange times. three hundred square feet and three windows to myself in a dorm so small there's only one women's restroom in the whole building. not to mention the fact that the walls are adorned with crazy hippie paintings, relics of the school year's art and music students. my room is in one of the old frat houses, and the wooden paneling just screams logan hunter. bookshelves line all four walls, and i feel like--with the amount of books i've managed to gather during the past two years here--i could somewhat transform this space into the beauty and the beast library, evey bookworm's fantasy.

the grounds flanking the pond are positively alive. dandelions are scattered all over the place, and the willows with their dangling, bower-creating branches have finally returned! a bride and a groom wandered over to the banks with their photographer today, and i can't imagine wedding pictures more beautiful. weirdly though, the sunny, warm, breezy sky changed quickly--first a deep indigo blue, with streaks that made it look like watercolor, then a darker and colder dome. i just made it back to my room, barefoot with book and blanket in tow, when the most ferocious rain i've ever seen started. the wind lifted the rain drops back into the sky before they even reached the ground, and my room (windows open, of course) was suddenly wetter than i'd bargained for. i can already sense it's going to be a rainy summer night.

i have a friend on the way (to sleep in one of my THREE beds), and am ready for some human interaction. too much kimberly + nature time, perhaps.

not. leaving. maine. ever.

the predilection of the knoll

one-thirty in the morning brought a fire drill and a thunderstorm. after half-awake, half-drunk college kids poured out of the building and filed back in, the rain intensified, and the sky pounded outside my open window--open to the night, absolutely. as always. come three a.m., i rested my head, two feet from the water and the wind. the sky finally cleared, and i craned my head back to see the moon in the maine night sky, shrouded by shredded clouds. bright white, ominous with tawny streaks throughout. six hours later, the drizzly spring day was blooming full force. i quietly rejoiced.

a walk behind and around heights surprised me perhaps more than last night's unexpected thunder. it turns out that i live on a grassy knoll if there ever were one, and my window is yards away from runnals hill; a forest of fresh mulch, damp pines, fanning leaves, and bright magenta fuchsia bushes. tiny wild flowers--purple and white--with minuscule yellow centers grow freely beneath shady bowers, and it's hard to tell where campus ends and wilderness begins...until campus begins again!

the sledding hills are covered in lush grass, and the ground is softer than i can ever remember it. sometimes, i think the ground is and always was frozen solid as linoleum, ungiving. i already miss the hard ground, but i'm glad it's no longer frozen. this summer will be full of late-afternoon naps (with deet galore--turns out the stuff promotes neurite growth??), books from the library by the dozen, dreams of winter, and fears of old.

intrnasal administration of rat mesenchymal stem cells to mouse models can wait for now. just for a few minutes while i think ahead to summer days when i'll be looking back to this very moment of expectancy.

woodstock

were anyone from the outside to set foot on campus now, he or she would think this was a place of free love, barbecues galore, bare feet, and live music twenty-four hours a day. the campus is covered in paint, girls run screaming in sundresses, and boys drag their sound equipment outside to share their music with all around. makeshift tents cover the lawns, and roped off areas house kegs abundant. children and toddlers dodge around long legs, and everyone--faculty and students alike--keep an eye out. no where have i ever seen babies and booze mix so well (or so freely).

somewhere else on campus, doors are shut, and private gatherings held. smoke fills rooms, and it's the seventies again. when the dancing is done and the paint (and kegs) have run dry, girls totter home on bare feet. it's two a.m., but it feels like eternity and a day, as we stumble into bed, fully clothed--keys in the door, windows wide open--vulnerable to the world, but feeling all the while entirely safe. because, after all, these are the days. we are invincible, and this is rural maine. better yet, this is ___ college, and we have every prerogative to bask in privilege.

come monday, campus will fall silent, and reading period will begin. the libraries will stay open later, and the rockstars and redbulls will vanish from the vending machines. kids will be crazy without the adderall they've managed to pawn for a few bucks a pill. papers are due at all hours of the night (this is college, and yes, they can do that), and exams (taken far too seriously by all) approach full throttle. so, there is work. so, there is stress. still, we are privileged. still, we are blessed. professors leave their families to serve us nachos at midnight. librarians bake for days to make sure the cookies don't run out. how can we possibly complain when, all things (the economy included) considered, we have the world at our feet. especially those of us not graduating. still growing, still discovering.

but alas--it is only saturday. night two of loudness continues. more booze. more pot. more woodstock madness for all (whether or not they choose it). as for me, i've had my fun and i'm trying to regain focus. onto intranasal delivery of cells to the brain. and then female contraception. and perhaps post-traumatic stress syndrome, if i have time. tomorrow holds the world in it, and i know it with all my heart. rich, preppy, white kids abound--and i find myself one of them, as much as i hate to be..because i am here. at colby college. and i am privileged. and the faculty, staff, and deans here really would give me the world (or at least the benefit of a doubt should i really screw up).

nowhere like college can you make mistakes of a lifetime and have them smoothed over so smoothly. when you represent an institution, you must have the appearance of succeeding. they'll sit you down, show you your options, and tell you never to apologize for yourself because you are deserving and worthy. so, why is it that in the end, the entitlement scares me and makes me sick?

blueberry bogs await

mid-spring is here. the buds have burst into spurts of leaves, the daffodils are out, and the pink bushes where the snowdrifts used to be demand my attention from the corner of my eye. a chip-monk and a squirrel in one day, not to mention the choirs of not so melodious birds that sing all hours of the day and night--even they can't figure out where and WHEN they are. i step out of the library more often than i should, through the front doors that open onto the steps of the main quad. from there, i can see for miles--the horizon is layered in soft blues and reds, and the green leaves break the lines gently. ambiguity has once again arrived with the blurred divisions--the stark white snow is gone for good.

a little bistro on silver street. a six hundred dollar meal for ten. exorbitant? why yes, especially when i need half that for housing myself in maine this summer. charred steak and bailey's ice cream, topped by expresso. no jimmies (i still don't understand the way the people speak here sometimes). fern gully puts me to sleep, and i think of how much the deciduous forests of maine are not like those rainforests--and i tell myself that maine will remain forever and for always my little secret. that the rest of the world won't catch onto the beauty. that the urbanization won't spread, and those awful shopping complexes with the yogurt shops and the joanne's fabrics and the kohl's. my maine is beautiful, and the people here are quaint. they speak their own dialect, and i join in gleefully when i can.

i sit for hours at a computer in the library, researching and researching and researching globoid leukodystrophy--i hate knowing that all of maine is outside two sets of so very fling-able doors. and then i tell myself how selfish i am. thinking of how much krabbe's disease irks me, when there are babies out there dying of it, and i could actually be using my education to get myself somewhere where i could have a say in life or death. those matters aren't mine though. i will stick with my neuroscience (in the "wow, that's fascinating" sense) and my human development (yes, mother. it's called human development and it IS valid) and latin (eheu) minors...only because there is no room for three majors though.

i will go to bed tonight, knowing that my last chemistry lab report is written and that i have two weeks of academic hell before my first maine summer. it tastes like blueberries, i can already tell. a ten page literary analysis of pathetic fallacy and its implications for Arcadia in Vergil's (the NON-christianized spelling, thanks) Eclogues, a ten page neurodegenerative disease literature review, a who-knows-how-long exploration of childhood sexual abuse on adult mental health, a latin presentation, a muscle fatigue study and paper, a psychology ethics reaction paper, an advanced neurobiology figure presentation, a french exam, and then reading period. then six final exams. blessings, all of them. i try so hard to tell myself. thank you, god, for an able-ish mind. and a strong-ish body. and a kind-ish soul.

blueberry bogs await.

Somatization, Sex, and Silencing

When it comes to the topic of sex, we Colby students are willing to speak up. We loudly advocate birth control, joke about “sexting” significant (enough) others, stress protecting ourselves from STDs, and speak openly about pleasure. We do not, however, talk about all aspects of sex, especially those aspects pertaining to abuse and violence. Few mention shameful sex, passive (read “passed-out”) sex, or powerless sex (blissful and willing surrender of control aside). We rarely discuss sex that hurts years later, and sex we feel we cannot have because of the sex that was done to, rather than had by, some of us. We remain reticent to speak about sex that feels like a betrayal of our bodies, the kinds of sex during which our organs respond physiologically while our minds remain unwilling, or unaware. We do not articulate that some of us make sexual choices influenced, if not dictated, by the acquired understanding that our bodies our not our own, that they are designed for the pleasure of others. In short, as much as we Colby students love to talk about sex, some types of sex-talk are absolutely off-limits. It may be that we keep these types of sexual experiences silent because they are not so much about the sex itself as they are about the feelings of futility, uncontrollability, and fear that accompany the types of sex that are not consensual. Sexual assault—whether it is in the form of childhood sexual abuse, date-rape, stranger assault, et cetera—is a reality in the lives of students on this campus, and I see it taking its toll, especially on our bodies.
I see young people playing out emotional wars against the backdrop of their bodies, and why shouldn’t they? What better battle ground is there than one over which we think we can exert total control? I see students who struggle with eating disorders, pushing around food on their plates in semblance of nourishing themselves. As long sleeves and gloves disappear with the arrival of spring, I see telling scars upon wrists, and I know the marks are just too clean. I see the student with the serious alcohol problem, who drinks in excess because he feels he has every reason to do so. It’s easy for me to pretend Colby students are making wise choices with their bodies—the HR-distributed condoms disappear from the bathrooms, and the campus is vocal about safe sex. But why are we so quick to dismiss the student whose sexual promiscuity coincides with her parents’ marriage problems, her academic disappointments, or her uncle’s death. I see bodily manifestations of deeper issues, yet I do not speak.
I am most saddened by the fact that, because the issue of sexual assault and its toll on our bodies is deeply personal, we are unlikely to address it. How much harder it is and how much bolder we have to be to stop destructive battles so intensely personal that we are able to watch them from afar and remain unscathed. I sometimes wonder whether we, as a student body, would be vocal about these issues if they affected more of us individually.
How long are we able to keep the impact of sexual assault quiet, to pretend that the issue doesn’t exist here because its confrontation is painful, and, above-all, delicate? Perhaps a few of us address sexual abuse in the rooms of Garrison-Foster, but we certainly don’t speak about it in our dorms, in our classes, or over dinner at Dana. Our mind-body split seems to be serving us well for the time being, but when the neat divide disintegrates, what will we be left to work with? Scarred, buzzed, diseased, chemically imbalanced bodies upon which emotional wounds have taken their toll? I’d hate for us to awaken to the issue of sexual assault, only to find that the very resources we might mobilize to take action against it have been ravaged—our bodies themselves.
I see silencing on this campus when it comes to issues of sexual assault, and, candidly, it scares me. I am a part of the problem, because I see and do not speak. I hope we can all gather the courage to speak out on behalf of ourselves and on behalf of those here and at home whom we love.

hurt

how do we respond to people who are mentally ill? how should we respond to people when they are sick? how can we not judge people when they hurt others so badly?

how can we encourage medication compliance so that our hurt children and fragmented friends do not become offenders ? where has our society erred in caring for its children who become young adults sick with schizophrenia--eventually to become offenders (by societal and moral law) when traumas, sometimes repetitive and sustained, tip them away from the equilibrium that may never have existed? and how do we return to the outsiders their identities once the title of "offender" has been applied to them and will not come off?

alas, that view is sympathetic. too sympathetic. is it not attributing emotion where there is none, where perhaps there is not even capability of feeling? pathetic fallacy is every empathic youth's downfall, and it ends up undermining the hurt that's been done. in short, this world is horrific because people are horrific, and, until hearsay otherwise, we will be inhabiting this place for some time. people hurt, and people hurt. Hurting is an action and a feeling, a choice and an inevitability, a simple fact and a blatant contradiction. what do we do when the world hurts and we withhold empathy for fear that we will seem sympathetic to horrors?

i am so sorry that i don't have answers when people tell me they hurt, or tell me they've been hurt, or ask me what to do when they themselves have caused hurting. i sit. i listen. phone to ear, i validate (even as i stutter). and all the while i pray to god that maybe the hurting will--for even a moment--abate.

the film hangs thickly even after i've put on my glasses, and my eyes roll off the board, across, the page, out of the room, and into me. where i'm sitting on a bench drowning in snow turned ice turned freezing rain, turned inundation. noggin, nanog, PAX 6. (fry). SB431542, SMAD, iPSCs (zap). wiki, moodle, webmail (nothing). chart, powerlab, axiovision, excel (i left yesterday). F, F, F, F+ (A-), F, F+ (B) (they're all the same. degrees of failure. explanations of waste).

hyperreactivity

I've always been one to put too little stock in chronicity. On early March days when the temperature skyrockets to thirty-eight degrees and the sound of icicles dissolving into rivulets around my feet seems to follow me everywhere, I somehow convince myself winter has passed--only to wake up the next morning and slip on the rivulet-turned-black-ice.

I go a week, thinking my winged scapula has miraculously fixed itself, somehow receding into the depths of my flesh (like most people's) until stress sets in, and I can barely sleep for the discomfort of the nasty thing.

Anxiety takes its break from me, for sometimes an hour, sometimes two, and I feel as though I have all the control I can hope to muster over my surroundings. But precisely at hour three, or 1:00 a.m. (whichever comes first), my chest tightens, I reach for a paper bag, and my sternum pops with the utter fear of it all.

Caffeine flooding my system becomes a necessity, because it masks something frighteningly close to tachycardia. I'm agitated because the stuff's coursing through me, and the stuff's nothing more than those three cups of coffee or that gallon of diet coke. No, I'm fine. Ask me tomorrow, and the jitters will be gone, my heart will no longer be racing, I'll be back to my normal self--well, the self you understood at least to be my normal self. Chronicity? No way. I'm only reaching for the brown paper bag just now, only today. The fear won't be here tomorrow--I'll have established control by then.

My nervous system will calm down. I won't jump at the crack of a knuckle or the click of a pen; there's no chance I'll snap at the sniffer or glare daggers at the whisperers; as for the slamming of drawers and the loud intake of breath, I could ignore them if I wanted to (really).

oh, one day, one day, this world won't be too much.

the ground is still frozen, and my step is light so long as the forecast says there's a chance of snow. the cold somehow punctuates the forever-and-a-half days. thank you, jesus, i have only twenty four hours, each one. waking up to forgotten coffee, forgotten keys. stumbling through lectures and getting myself to lab. i roll up my sleeve and can't find the pulse. not the branchial, the radial, or the ulnar. it's gone, so i give up and release the pressure, diving underwater, finger up. i forget as the ice numbs. it numbs so healthily, and i want to scream and shout at the ones who wait for spring. my precious winter--i wish it were here to stay.

when library turns sanctuary, and god is in books, and books are full of numbers and figures (and too few words), where is my creator? where do i fit in amidst the constants and equations, the formulas i don't care to use because they are nothingness attributed all the meaning of the world? I want so badly to feel so much, and these symbols mean nothing to a girl of words.

tap-tap. (fake). i didn't hear a pulse.
just pretend. graph it out. t-test. set. go!
p is less than .05, so i must be sifnificant.

diversity is important. S.H.O.U.T. it out.
come to my events and see how i plan.
see how i try so hard in search of meaning
(close your eyes when i fail miserably).

the rat in latin class gives teacher the creeps.
take it out NOW. it might gnaw off those mots.
la nouvelle vocabulaire. ce n'est pas tres importante.
NON. je m'en fiche. c'est fini. the rat is long dead.
mon souris. ne le souviens pas!

laden

i stutter over the words laden as the woods
following wednesday's winter afterthought
the trees too heavy and my world so white.
i look for miles, and i see soundless footfalls.
anticipation forgotten, because nothing's there.

looking up quickly, the blue hurts my eyes
slow adaptation--my retinas can't fire enough,
the blank page is filled with the things i never
wrote. meeting at three thirty, eternity at two.
sleepiness betrayed, because nothing was EVER there.

i forgot to write it down, so sure it'd be there always.
neglected the shrieking pen. no need, donc stay firm!
invisible ink appears in the wintry mix of morning,
in mourning sepia skies, i see them each crash down.
was THAT commotion worth it at all? nothing will ever be there.

it might have been should it not have been, but it was. i'm so terribly sorry.

a wordless janplan in words

the tissue between my forceps is opaque and persistent. i pull in opposite directions, creating particles, teasing out choice pieces. my eyes strain, and i move slowly away from the microscope—the eye pieces and laboratory appearing before me. i look down at the dish and see nothing—no one can see the work i’ve done, unless they were to view the specimen through the powerful lens to which i acclimate slowly. even then, should someone else decide to look, there’s only room for one near the microscope. and, whether that person looks or not, there’s no way i can nearly articulate what i’ve seen. the focus for me and position of the ocular parts is different than it is for the rest. my eyes are set strangely, and i hate how i can’t tell them about this private world i’ve seen.

the ambiguity makes the matter workable. the cells valid. applicable to life as i understand it. nothing is cut and clear, and tissues vary depending upon the light. finding the right plane is always a task, and sometimes i land on a plane where i see nothing at all.

a recovered poem

i missed the moon for days on end,

the frigid air that cracked my hands.

they bled amidst the sorry integrals

and the latin words I held so closely.

i missed the sun slip down playfully

beyond the brick, the white columns so firm.

it was already dark, and I understood no change.

i was silent in the whirring blizzard

and the white noise lulled me to forget.

the flurries beckoned me to the sanctuary

barely lit.

I missed the wonder, the fear, the pain

I swallowed obediently, and slept.

water, swallow. sleep. forget.

i forgot to cry until it was too late.

my protest was futile and I lost it all.

I missed nine months of red sunsets.

I missed a year of days.

I lived a long time of time not going

and then, it went. then is now, and now

I’m scared. I am terrified and I do not sleep.

I missed the sunset,

but I didn’t miss the sunrise.

sepia skies

On February days when people talk and forget to listen; when the very things I'm supposed to do feel petty and empty; when I sit down to translate Vergil only to realize that I can finally breathe, and the air comes in too quickly---I need more than anything else for my best friend not to be 3500 miles and two time zones away; I need the courage to say no definitively and yes wholeheartedly; and I need a brown paper bag, a liter of coffee, and a worn Bible to hold (if not to read).

I feel like too little and the world feels like too much. And then the world too little and myself too much. Big me in this box of a hill, trying hard to thrive in a place more conducive, more viable, than that from which I came. The air here is clear, yet I forget to complete my own breaths when classes feel like guilty pleasures and labs feel like nightmares. When people talk incessantly and each thought fights for its space in my head. I miss bitter cold mornings, Anne Sexton in tow--snowshoes drying on the cardboard near my door. I miss the hot Los Angeles pavement on my skin until I remember the glare of the sun that made it that way.

February days are cold in Maine, without the crispness of Fall. They bear uncertainties up to their brims, and they don't keep promises they never make. February nights have sepia skies, but everyone else says they have purple. The stars go into hiding because summer sometimes feels so near, until daylight comes and I see the black ice.

I'm learning to navigate today before tomorrow, and to treat yester-February-day as a fond memory upon which I might focus when the March nostalgia comes.

windows

Some nights I can't help but be drawn to the cold. When it's twenty below zero, I generally keep my distance, but when the bell strikes one a.m. and the temperature's hovering between seven and twelve degrees, everything changes. I'm suddenly (and miraculously, considering the codeine in my system) giddily alive.

Now, I have this thing with windows--my roommates would rant to you all about it, perhaps through clenched teeth. I hate screens on principal. (In rural Maine, what really is out there that you need to be screened from, aside from the drunken hockey player gallivanting on the roof and the occasional black fly?) To be separated by black netting from an unadulterated night sky and miles of pine trees seems sacrilegious; the fact that the window-pane itself must exist pains me enough (note: I am grateful for the barrier on those -14 degree nights). In the suburbs of Los Angeles, a thick pane (and skin) is a blessing; I'm happy to keep out the blaring sirens and the roar of the freeway. But here, glorious here, I want the windows wide open, the air streaming in--forcing me under (my blankets), all the while pulling me in (to the black sky).

The cold was as cold as cold can be, and I opened the windows as far as I could, safety latches allowing. Thinly clad in bedtime attire, I leaned over the sill, looked both ways, and impulsively climbed, barefoot, out into the darkness. Onto a roof swamped in two feet of snow, and dimly lit by windows all around. Cold moved fast to my head, and I surrendered. Already stupid, already resigned, I dove facefirst into the snow. Quickly coming to my senses, I rolled onto my back, flapped out a quick snow angel, and scampered back through the window, snow in tow.

With a face and shoulders sporting red splotches, and hair and eyelashes full of white, I grabbed my towel and marched triumphantly to the shower, where I stood in the heat for a long, long time.

I don't know why, but I finished my shower with cold water.

delicate

"The stuff is delicate," my dean stressed, attempting to explain why so few were willing to touch upon the issue at hand. If it weren't delicate, I wouldn't do it, I wanted to say out loud.

***

The truth is, most things worth dealing with--worth weighing, worth pulling apart, worth putting down a cup of black coffee for--are immensely delicate. They are delicate because, when taken too far, they can be destroyed easily; but also delicate because their threshold values are varying and confounding. If the stuff of life is heavy and tough, oftentimes requiring a bulldozer (or snowplow, say, in Maine) to make headway through, then it is equally fine and intricate, quickly damaged with a child's shovel (or a tame April snow-blower).

I read poetry because words are delicate. Easily shuffled, they change meaning with the deletion of a modifier, with an appositive omitted. I peel grapefruits because the segments come apart perfectly--and I'd never want such a brilliant design to be wasted on me. I study neuroscience because it's abstract, because action potentials themselves are unpredictable and sometimes inexplicable, and because cells create beautiful images on my eyelids before I go to sleep. The stuff of life in which I wish to immerse myself most is, above all else, delicate.

Delicate like the eyestalk of a fiddler crab. Delicate like fine tissue under a dissecting scope. Delicate for the very reason that the thing lying on the other side of the boundary you're probing is unthinkably dangerous. And because that boundary is so easy to perturb (especially with three cups of coffee in your bloodstream and shaky, shaky hands).

This sturdy girl is indeed ready to brave the fine powder and finicky balance.