All that’s best of dark and bright…

I was thinking, over-thinking…

April 25, 2007 at 10:47 pm (Life, Poetry)

 ”I was thinking, over-thinking
‘Cause there’s just too many scenarios
To analyze. Look in my eyes
‘Cause you’re my dream please come true…”

    You know, for as anti-social as I often am, I’ve realized lately that I truly am a very people-oriented person.

I don’t want a career.  At least, I don’t think I want a career.  I know I don’t want a career that would take me away from investing in my (someday) family.  Long term, Isn’t making an investment in my family a more valuable contribution than making an investment in a 401k?  I think so.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely want to work.  Can you really picture me staying home all day, keeping a perfectly clean house with sparkly dishes and fluffy pillows? Ha.

I’d like to work somewhere where I can be valuable, make a contribution, influence someone’s life.  I don’t want to be just a cog-wheel in some giant corporation-machine.  I don’t want to punch numbers all day.  I don’t want the only personality that shows through at my job to be a 5″x7″ of my family sitting in a cubicle.  I want to make kids laugh with paint smeared on their noses and smocks.  I want to love on animals.  I want to give people the joy of reading.  I want to have pink hair, or dreadlocks, or messy hair stuck in a tangled ponytail.  I want to love. I want to show people Jesus, without ever having to say His name.

I look at this whole college thing, and I love it.  I love learning.  I love hearing people’s thoughts and expressing my own.  I love having my poetry harshly critiqued by a Pulitzer Prize nominated poet.  I love professors who are truly interested in their student’s lives.  I love the books and the writing and the writers.  I love the people part of learning.  When you get right down to it, people are what’s most important.

But I look at this whole college thing, and I don’t know what to do with it.  What does a degree in English, specializing in Creative Writing, focusing in poetry get me?  It gets me a piece of paper that says “English, Creative Writing, poetry.” Yeah, that’s great.  But it will hang on a wall somewhere and gather dust.  That won’t be the important part.  The important part is the people.  Like when my professor compared my writing one day to the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and the next day to Seamus Haney. (Go read “Digging.” You won’t be disappointed.)  I was floored.  I’ll remember when I had to work my ass off for an 89.4 in Dr. Nelson’s history class, and it was the most satisfying grade I’d ever received.

I might not be a poet laureate.  I might not be some award-winning professor at a prestigious university.  I might be just a mom and a wife.  I might be the strange, artsy girl with pink hair who gets funny looks from pedestrians.  I don’t know what I’ll be.  But if I can make my kids laugh by reading Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” in a silly voice, I have succeeded.  If I can foster in someone a love for anything that’s as intense as my love for poetry and literature, I have made a difference.  If my life reflects my love and His love, I will get my “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I want to be happy.  I want to be a wife and a mommy.  I don’t want to make the big bucks; I want to make a big difference, even if it’s just in one person’s life.

And, lastly, here’s a poem I’m turning in tomorrow in my poetry class.  It’s a revision of a poem I turned in earlier in the semester.

Miller Moth 

Fat-bodied insect with wings that smear like powdered pastels,
I see you. My nose pressed to the window,
nostrils leaving smudges, warm breath
against still-cool spring evening.
Each clink against the porch lamp:
a champagne toast to your future success.
You stumble towards the light;
bump, fall, stumble again.
Wings hum at a frequency I can’t quite identify,
stuck, singing, somewhere
between steady timpani and tenuous viola.
Your path winds like a symphony.

Your wings thump the glass.
My pen prods the paper.