So you check my blog once a day or you figured out the rss feed. Or you are in my too big family (yes too big) and you read the family blog. Inevitably you will ask, what has happened to Maggie?

It's graduation time. Time for new beginnings.

Want to know what I looked into? I looked into loosing sight of the prize, moving to Costa Rica, Mexico, New York, Philadelphia, Washington State for jobs. Loosing sight of the prize, I looked into jobs that I could do from home, transcribing for some dumb company. Cha ching. $$$ Cha ching. $$$ Money and this thing they call success clouded my eyes.

I looked in so many directions, and then I looked down. There was a book at my feet, because of my sad room cleaning job. "Maggie Poet and Muse" the cover read.

It is not just a gift, as in a typical graduation present, handed over once again after crossing over the Walmart counter. No no no!

It was an acknowledgement of my identity, of my duty in life.

It is ok to write. Better is writing enough to pull something together that matters. To make words an expression of the meat of who I am. Not just an ars poetica, but an expression of politics, love, and the spirit of what matters to me. And since I am not firm on the substance of what that is just yet, I need to give myself the moment to find that out.

I have taken years off before. But never with the self prescribed structure I need. This year I will.

So I am setting rules for myself. My rules.

Because of the nature of my writing and who I am, my rules look like this:

AFTER GRADUATION 6AM-12PM Monday through Friday. Somewhere special. Like here. Outside as much as possible.

Write, disconnected from internet, not checking email or on facebook, before morning email, creating new words. Not shuffling around old stuff. But making new creative writing.

Do for One Year. Don't show a word of it to anyone. Don't talk about what I am writing too much. Don't worry when people ask what I do for money.

After the year may try to publish. But for this period, it is art, just for the sake of Literature (with a capital L).

Write on Paper. Six hours a day. Five days a week.

I will make a new set of rules if the world is still around come May, 2013.

Halleluiah. I have a plan!

DEAR BEREA: I want a meaningful job now and a place to stay starting August with minimal pay. I want to work as a social activist/volunteer for organizations and causes like the Fairness Coalition and KFTC and to garden as much as I can. I want to be as active in my Friends Meeting as I can, to spend time with my lovely friends, and to swim and walk until the cows come home. I want to do as much of my purchasing outside of walmart as possible and to limit my purchasing to the minimum. And this is not a lot to ask at all because I am a hard worker (especially now I feel refreshed) and I am a Berea graduate. And with that, my life dream of capital "L" Literature will come. Right?

Welcome Abundant Alaska

When I found short bread,
molded from last bits of dough,
raw wabi sabi.

xo Maji

I went to bed at 10 and woke up screaming at 12:30. I woke up with a terrified shriek half way out of my lungs. My suite-mate, H, was standing over my bed. I told him soon after that I wasn't awake for the full scream and that my adrenalin was already running.

"There was somebody walking upstairs and opening squeaky doors," he told me in a voice much more anxious than his usual calm way. We decided to go upstairs and sweep the house. He kept my back and I his as we turned on all the lights of the expansive upstairs where the professors on sabbatical live. The house was empty of intruders, but I believe H. I am not certain who was in the house, but someone was.

And then there were the phone calls. He mentioned that someone leaves messages of a dial tone on the family phone at the same time every night. I didn't realize they called at the same time, but I was aware that they called repeatedly.

I took to heart the alcoholics motto about accepting things I cannot change. That one statement, even though I am not an alcoholic, leaves me a much more relaxed person than I would have otherwise been. H was regularly terrified when we returned to the basement. I cannot say my blood wasn't pumping. But I am not worried. We will figure it out tomorrow.

I thought I was taking a vacation from vocation, and then it occurred to me.

For one moment, think of the absolute worst of your character, your most vile trait, your awfullest deed, your worst habit. Don't even say it. I will not send it away in New Age energy work or hypnotize it out of your system. But I will suggest to you that there is no better time to seize what you want to be than now.

I want to read more. I want to write. My secret dream is that someday I could share my love of writing, my inspiration for creative self expression. I don't care who I teach the love of writing. As long as they are people.

I could write a book on writing. I could go into the prisons and volunteer in a literacy program with writing as my twist. I could walk down the street to the nursing home and and help old folks get down their thoughts, past shaky hands and tiredness. I could lead a workshop in the bookstore across town.

And I will have chances, I will make these things happen. I will seize this moment. There is life after English Degree. I am living it.

A first try doesn't always do justice in poetry.
Often the second poem in a flux of poems is best.
At least that's what I've seen.

Sometimes the best poem of a series comes fourth or tenth.
Often it is the last poem in the group,
a poet's sigh – I have expressed.

The problem of thinking you have no poems in you to write
is regretfully cured in a painful process of
pouring out twin and triplet poems when the water breaks.

The problem with a writing drought
is I would have written every tiny detail each morning
and now I have to make up for it in one sweaty day.

Typha they are called,
their Latin botanical taxonomy.

Corn-dog looking plants on long
dried out stalks.
They puff like white dandelions
in the heat.

I am an adult
so I can give myself
permission
to act like a child.

Walking past them,
I break a cattail off,
the seedy mass,
already beginning to send
it's cotton into the wind.

I will correct Wikipedia.
Wind is not the only seed disperser
of the Typha.
The plants co-evolved
in a symbiotic relationship with
childlike humans, young and old.

I carry my cattail up Estill Street
turning my neck sharply
as I watch my seedy friends
drift where they land
on lawns, ditches, sidewalks,
and on the clothes of me --
some in my nose and mouth.

Everything so transient,
of course wilderness is transient.
Typhas are transient because they
clear the usually fogged vision of people.
That and the fluff makes good moccasins.

I felt a call to duty
as I carried the cattail along.
To profligate a plant
that sucks toxins like arsenic out of the water.

Anticipation is my worst way of being.
I plant impatiens in the ground.

I wrote this a few years ago and it was published in Blue Fifth Review. But I am going back and trying my hand at illustrating as many of my poems as I can.

Does the person look like a teenager play acting as a swamp monster?
Suggestions? Questions? Comments?

Another old poem with a sketch.

So is my illustration on the 4th or 5th grade level?

It is neat that my (cousin aged) nephew, Jeremiah, is here while I process at my mother's house after graduating from Berea College. Last night he was reflecting about the past, when he and I went to the same Tennessee High School for his senior year, when I was a freshman. Yesterday he was talking about more moments from the past, as he often does with me: he said I was a wild child. Maybe he meant I was a "hand full" but maybe a crazy child or a bad egg. I rarely think about my past lately but I did for the entire year after high school.

My favorite high school teacher told me college students have the great ability of recreating themselves when they move to a new school or a new town. That was one of the many interesting things she said that I remembered. Today, hanging out the clothes, I was glad for these thoughts because they launched me out of my current mantra: how can I make it work in Berea?

I began thinking the following. I am not the person who people think I am. I understand the desire for people to want to recreate themselves but I think more accurately it is a constant explaining. A book I am writing to explain who I am. As I say in my Facebook profile info, I create myself on Facebook. That is why writing is such a great thing. But my friends know who I am better than my family. This is probably a trend that lots of people have experienced. Still, I feel the need for family so deeply.

As an important side note, I am invested in my Berea Community. Melanie and her daughter Inanna, Brad, Brianna, Elizabeth Vega, Jamie Brown, the Berea Quakers, my house mate Hans, Libby, Roger, other professors and staff I keep in touch with, the people at the local health food store, the coffee shops, willie, Bethany, so many other people are a huge part of my Berea Community and my Berea Community is so central to why I want to live in Berea. Plus I still have hope that some of my graduate friends come back and be townies!

Back to speaking of the past though, because of my mental health and insecurities, it took me a long time to launch from my childhood home. In my Emory and Henry years, I wanted to be able to live with my Mom and grow up so to speak into a person of integrity at the same time. I did the best I could do, but it was hard for me to live in a house where the light from my computer (when I typed past midnight) woke up Mom or household disagreements were tempered by the weight of the players being family. I think people should live with family and can happily and I was very happy for a very long time. I need to try this now though.

But the depth of this essay has not been written yet. I am trying to say something that I don't think I have ever articulated and it is hard for me. Here goes. I was saying I am not the person people think I am. I am not. Sometimes that bothers me. Other times I realize that no one person is honored as the deep person that they are. Another way to say that is we all pass by each other. There are so many people in our lives. There was a bubbly woman at the Bristol farmers market this morning, for example, but maybe she is a truly deep soul. Nobody knows me; nobody knows you; nobody knows anyone and we don't talk about it.

We make ourselves. We make ourselves on and off of facebook. It is flattery, like Adam Bailey, Mary Bruce Mounts, and Ahmad Shujah on my recent hilarious wall posts. It also is recognition of love and truth like Adam and Mary and Ahmad in those same comments. We love you. That is what interactions should say. We love you and honor you and recognize who you are and what you want to be and that you are what you want to be.

Elizabeth Vega is an activist, meaning an actor, a doer, a woman who gets things rolling, who could do so many different things, who acknowledges and works on her weaknesses, and who has opted to work with the population of dying people for many reasons and because they are the most overlooked group of people in the world. I love you, Elizabeth.

I could go on and on speaking out to the love I have for people in Berea in Bristol in Abingdon in Asheville. The ABC's of loving shout outs. But so many Victorian people - not only my mother - would call this nonliterary, awkward, uncool. On the other hand, my free loving Lauren would eat it up like Pecan Pie in Georgia.

As people say, writers often look better in text than in person. That suits me.

The processing process is a works in process. Life flows on.

I am a Flighter!

I'm coming to terms with the reason I dropped out of school so many times and continue up until last week to hop between my grown city and my home town. I flee situations because I cycle through emotions and phases of energy and sometimes I need to decompress and other times I need my mother's TLC or the presence of pets, Tobin the dog and Pickle the cat.

I am a Flighter!

Back in Berea I was accumulating concerns about my living situation and my budget, about my lifestyle and my self perceived laziness.
Things weren't exactly as I envisioned they might be or how I'd planned. And work was piling up all over the place while my low energy turned congestion and a cold. So I flew.

I am a Flighter.

And believe this is not a flaw. It is a personality trait. Not good. Not bad. Or only as good or bad as I make it. I constantly am remodeling myself, my person. Reconstructing my way, the Way of Maggie. So while I do not blame myself, I am considering that I need to give people warnings, because my dear friends and allies all have special needs like me.

I found a book in which I used to write all these letters to Oscar, my imaginary friend.

Good for keeping track of things like Odyssey of the Mind teams, passed animals, and misspelling over space and time.

Anna et all,

Hehe!

Dear Oscar,

I don't have time to put all of my important thoughts down here for you. But I never did. Ideas are like the strawberries my sister grows in her garden. Waiting to write them down is like mashing them down and letting them dehydrate into something more concentrated like fruit leather. Ideas are like strawberries down to a T. What we eat changes their potency. I've had store bought strawberries that were mass produced in great big industrial farms, drenched in fertilizer, poisoned with pesticides and herbicides. They came from Genetically Modified seeds, like the ideas that come when people watch too much television. But the best ideas I have are like strawberries from heirloom seeds, picked on a sunny day, and popped straight into the mouth like a stream of conscience. Interesting, quirky, unusual ideas all gel together on a long cookie sheet, in the heat of a May or June day, on the dashboard of a warm car. When strawberries are melded together in long leathery strips, they don't have to make sense, or mix together in a way that is predictable. The uniqueness binds them like a well seasoned thought; the imperfections that get stuck in your teeth are intricately linked to the perfections that lure you to eat more. Together these traits represent the concept of wabi sabi. Take some now and save the rest for later. Proportion it out like a ration to sustain you through the winter. Your yums will be mmms. Your mmms will be om's. Lick your lips. Smack your chops. Do what you need to express the exuberance of a wonderful strawberried idea.

Keep in touch, Maggie