Verbal art (maybe) for skeptics.

I have things to say today.
LET'S TALK ABOUT THEM.

Instead of saying, 'I know what you're going to say," I will instead say I imagine there are one or two of you that were thinking of saying (or would be thinking of saying if I was physically present with you), "Wow, Lydia, you are blogging so regularly now!" to which I would respond, "Yeah, well, don't get used to it." I have been in college for...um, three years, but I think I meant to say I've been here since a few Fridays ago, as in here, in this apartment, being a senior. We talked about this already. Or maybe we didn't, but it's anything but crucial.
Let's move on.

Today's subject is a rant-gone-tutorial, because this morning I woke up with a ravenous desire to force my knowledge on people (exaggeration). Actually, five minutes ago I suddenly had a ravenous desire to blog, and the quickest thing to hop to the front of my mind-line (metaphor, weird metaphor) was forcing my knowledge on people. The following is based on my wealth of experience and expertise on the subject (lies), my overwhelming boredom, and the fortitude with which various members of my opinions have decided to make themselves known to the world (personification).

this is a post about poetry.

Here is my (probably way too) vulnerable announcement of the day: I write poems. I primarily write them in this tiny journal my roommate Sarah gave to me, but they have been known to make appearances in older journals and Word documents and old church bulletins and school flyers and old sheets of notebook paper, and sometimes I stumble upon them years later and am shocked and appalled, but that, I suppose, is the creative process. Once or twice I find something I wrote in sixth grade and wonder why I never ended up more talented. Actually, that did only happen once, but if you say once or twice, it makes it sound like it happened way more often and you're just being humble.

A lot of people are skeptical about poetry, or just don't enjoy it. Which makes sense; some people don't even like chocolate. We can't all have the same taste; if you want to talk about that, go find someone who feels like being philosophical. I am not there right now. This is not what I am trying to address. I actually don't really want to address anything super critical about the subject, but that always ends up happening regardless of my motive.

More along the lines of what I wanted to talk about is how humans of all walks of life feel enabled and obligated to criticize various poems based on what they do and do not like. This is something I understand, because as I said earlier, everyone has different taste. One is not required to immersively (not a word) read a piece writing one does not find to be pleasing. But one is also not required to stare fervently at visual art that one does not find to be enjoyable. I mean, think about the Mona Lisa. Honestly. It's super cool, and I enjoy it, but I probably would not put the Mona Lisa up in my house. You totally can (a copy; the original is very much not for sale, I'm gathering), but I'm not really that into pictures of people that stare at you from whatever angle you are in the room, and that's the vibe I'm getting from her. Do I admit that Leonardo is talented? Okay, obviously he nailed it, and I admire what he has accomplished. But I don't stare at it all the time and find overwhelming meaning, because

a) I know little to nothing about art history, which limits the story behind it
b) I don't care enough (sad, but true)
c) I am blinded by the culture that has amplified it to its current position of "most famous painting in the world" and therefore cannot look at it without that lens in front of me
d) I do not understand, from a professional standpoint, what it took to make the piece, although I'd guess that it was pretty difficult

Okay? Do you understand? You can not like famous art, and it's still undeniably art. You can not like famous literature, and guess what? Literature. That is still what it is. Oddly enough, this applies to all aspiring and growing forms of art as well; just because it is created by someone who hasn't quite gotten to the big leagues doesn't mean it isn't something that reflects personal expression. You hear me?

EXPRESSION.
PERSONAL.

People can still write poetry if you don't like it. You probably guessed I am the kind of person who appreciates expression through writing, so I am going to fight for it. Obnoxiously.

Of course, you can't just dive right into it and say that you've created something revolutionary. This is why Pinterest bothers me. There are many deep caverns of Pinterest, and the largest of them all are the off-center-over-filtered-dramatic-picture cavern, the minimalist-display-version-of-the-object-of-interest cavern, and the recipes-with-one-too-many-ingredients cavern. I freely indulge in several of these caverns, with low levels of shame, personally striving to avoid stubbing my toes on the stones of dramatically-vibrant-misquotes or falling down the deep, dark hole of zebra print accents. However, during your perusal of the cave system that I have made this website out to be, every now and then you will see etched on a wall pictures and writings that someone has made out of very many of their feelings, and some of them will be well-written or well-drawn or at least very meaningful, and some of them will be ripped straight off of a sixteen-year-old's Tumblr, and they will almost always say little to nothing. That does not mean it is not art...admittedly, sometimes, it makes me doubt that I have talent, because if people are confident enough to flaunt this sort of haphazard word assembly on the internet, why can't I read mine to my parents, who are basically obligated to love me?

The moral of the story is that it takes time. If you want to share what you've made with someone, feel free, and if they hate it, take it in stride, I guess, but don't let that stop you. (Obviously the fear of criticism is something I relate to.) Everyone has to start somewhere; the point is to be actively creating something and letting little pieces of yourself walk around outside of you and say, "Hey! I am a person with thoughts and feelings, and that is cool!" I know it sounds weird, but you don't have to do things simply on the grounds of whether or not other people appreciate them. The fame and acclamation requires growth and patience. Actually, it requires an obscene number of internal connections, usually, so who even cares.

There are a lot of people who only appreciate poetry in limited forms, as well. Most people strongly associate poetry with rhyme, which makes sense, because songs rhyme, and children's books rhyme, and a lot of older, more established poems rhyme. It is easier to figure out or remember a poem if the lines end in the same sounds, because you're so often struck with, "OH! How clever. They must be talented." I mean, when you say things that rhyme that mean nothing, you always notice it, and then make jokes about how you're a poet and didn't know it. Rhyme is just something that strikes us. But the mentality of people who think in this way would say, "If this person worked hard to find rhyming sounds and rhythmic patterns why does your poem get to be a poem too because all it looks like is a bunch of words with weird spaces? Hmm?" To which I would say that if the "free verse" or "non-rhyming" poem (they would say free verse or non-rhyming "poem") has to make up for the shock-and-awe-type rhyme factor with sheer poignancy, then maybe it's harder.

Personally I think both are equally hard, but then again, I'm a step above a sixteen-year-old's Tumblr, maybe.

This is just to say there are a variety of ways to compose poetry, with a variety of schematics. For some, the Dr. Suess pattern works well with rhymes and rhythms that match, but you have all the couplets or the triplets or the alternations, so you can make that your own, and then you have the rule breakers who don't rhyme, but then some of them have a rhythmic pattern that is very evident, and then some have no pattern at all. Some people leave out punctuation symbolically. Some people don't capitalize anything, and not just to be trendy. And then you have the people who write their poems and to make shapes out of the words (physical shapes, not metaphorical ones, but that happens, too). And the people who write acrostic poems. And the people who make the absolute most of the word sounds and turn everything into a giant onomatopoeia (of course that is a word but immersively isn't. BUY A CONSONANT). And then you have haiku, which is...who even knows. You have a variety of options.

Isn't this so fun and exciting? Look what you can do with words! You can SAY things. So fun! You should do it. Really. Go do it right now. Yes, you, you snarky art-hater whom I have judged so strongly since I began to write this two days ago. Go write a poem. Here are the rules/tips/suggestions/proposals I just made up right now to encourage you/seriously it's fun go do these things:

1. Anything goes. DO WHAT YOU WANT. I am so excited for you.
2. Rhyming is fine, but you can't just assume you're doing something cool because it rhymes. You have to actually have something to say. That's honestly the point. If you don't have anything to say (which I honestly doubt), write one tomorrow. I can't deal with any more people spinning straw into profundity. It is just too much.
3. If you choose not to rhyme, it will probably sound awkward at first, but do not let that stop you.
4. Start with paper/pen, so you have to draw lines through the parts you don't like and can observe how you changed it more easily, and then type it so you can orient it spatially and SAVE YOUR ART FOREVER AND EVER YAY.
5. Be bold. Change your mind about what you wanted to say. Cross that crap out. Change your mind back. Write it again. Have no shame.
6. If it turns into prose, accept it. These things happen.
7. If it makes you feel things, DON'T STOP.
8. Okay, objection. If it makes you feel a lot of things and you really need to just cry it out, then totally feel free to stop. Sometimes that's what you needed to do anyway.
9. If you think more/differently afterward, you did it right.
10. DON'T THROW IT AWAY. EVER.

See? I think you can do it. The last thing I want to say is that you don't have to feel like you have to tell everyone you did it. I write these kinds of things...often...and it is exceedingly rare that I let them flutter out into the visual ranges of any human, even humans I care about. I really wanted to be able to share one in an effort to say something like, "If I can, you can!" but it honestly is too scary for me. Also very many of them were born out of very dark periods of life and that is a lot to share with random blog watch sites from France who have found me on the internet. (Hi, France!)

And if it's scary for you, maybe that means you did something significant or said something important (or at least cathartized, which is always good, and once again so far from being a word), whether or not someone finds it and wants to hang it up or Pin it on their "Inspiration" board (or their Tumblr). Or maybe you'll find your gift and become more famous than I ever will be because of my terrified refusal to publicize.

Either way, I'm proud of you.

fin.

It's hasn't even been a week.

HELLO. This is more for me than it is for you. These usually are.

I have nothing to report. Nothing, of course, meaning probably a great number of things that I am going to avoid consciously, relevant topics including (but not limited to):

1. Why I never resolved the angst-fests that were my blog posts from summer school in Michigan. (Too many feelings.)
2. Why I never resolved the angst-fest that was my recovery from my semester in South Africa. (Feelings.)
3. Why I never really blog at all anymore. (Disinterest. More pressing commitments. Feelings.)

Nutshell resolution: actual problems require a lot of vulnerability if you're going to plop them down on the dinner table for everyone to sniff and criticize and stick their forks into.
Does this mean I don't trust you? Probably.
If that offends you, you may abandon the boat. I will be proceeding.

This is something I have been able to find a strain of positiveness (positivity? Is that not a word?) in: I have been a senior in college for (by credits, nine months, but by years) six days! Almost a WEEK. Now, every time some chapel speaker or individual of university-related power mentions the date May 4th, my heart disconnects itself from my circulatory system and threatens to beat so fast that I consider fainting, which would be embarrassing, because I'm usually just sitting around. This is also strange because I just checked the date May 4th, and it is a Monday, and I am fairly positive I will be graduating on a Saturday. They have definitely been saying May 4th, though. Hm.
I suppose May 2nd is most likely the actual Day of Reckoning. Especially since I have just checked the all-powerful calendar, and that is what it says.
How mysterious.

Also, can you tell I'm living with people who utilize vocabulary skills for things other than facades of superiority? The rapidity of their influence is honestly kind of alarming. But they are nice. They are Sarah and Mikaela. And Nicole (round three!) but we already knew she was nice and eloquent and relatable, or at least I did. Hopefully you inferred it.

Considering that great snippet of truth, "You learn something new every day," I decided that maybe it was a good day to force my learnings on you. And in that regard, take it as you like it. At this point, I have nothing to lose until some unidentified date in early May.

SOME CONCEPTUALIZATIONS THAT HAVE RECENTLY ARISEN, OF VARYING SIGNIFICANCE.

Firstly, concerning food, this is the most important thing I have learned thus far: any purchase of spinach is a race against the clock. I buy my own spinach, and there is so much in there that it almost always wilts before you can eat it all...sad. In an effort to be less wasteful, I have been eating it on every sandwich and before every dinner. The bad news is that I'm slowly turning green. The good news is that anemia is nowhere near a concern anymore. Today I threw a handful into my soup. Which brings me to my next statement: eat soup whenever the crud you want. Or sandwiches. Or box macaroni. Never be ashamed of your food. We are all just trying to survive. I once had people comment on how much water I was drinking, and it was then I decided that if my hydration is under speculation, I do not care anymore. And you don't have to always follow my lead on everything, but...you shouldn't either. I mean, care, but...don't. You know? Okay.

Live with people who laugh freely and cause you to do the same. That is what I am doing, and every day is an adventure. Of words, obviously, but also of recollections and dinners and coffee-drinkings and theoretical futures. On the same note, live with people who are okay with you crying in movies. Because feelings are important. Also, About Time is a good movie (which, admittedly, contains bad words and sexy things, so don't attack me after letting your twelve-year-old watch it on my recommendation: I warned you). Live with people who don't judge you for what you eat. This refers back to previous statements.

Keep yourself clean. You don't have to shower every day (#drought), and you don't have to hold your living space to the status of immaculaticity (not at all even close to a word), but you should know how to keep your things together on a regular enough basis that you don't have to launch full-scale invasions against your belongings or your hygiene practices.

Learn to let crap go.
That's really it.
I guess that deserves elaboration.
I mean this in a small scale and in a large scale. There are some aspects of life that are really just #notworthit to fight about, and I guess no one has to do what I do, but it would be fabulous if we could all just adopt my policy on this. Stop valiantly defending your hairline preferences that do not matter (rule of thumb: fluids. Are there tears? Blood? Inordinate amounts of sweat? Is someone dead? That one is important. If so, these things matter).

The things that are worth fighting over/about/concerning are things that can be discussed, for sure, civilly, but if the end is less than ideal then do yourself a favor and bury the dang shovel. Honestly, some people are awful. I like to think that there is good in everyone, but that in no way means that everyone is worth your obsessive devotion. Not everyone is going to come through for you. (IT HAPPENS. It's completely normal for humans to decide to pursue matters of other importance over other things, including friendships. It can be handled according to various methodologies, but...that's not something I want to get into right now.) But guess what? Some things work out. Some people will come through. And they make it worth it, because they know you are worth it.
Just because a story didn't have a happy ending doesn't mean it had to end in chaotic destruction, and just because you have been hurt does not mean you have to turn into one of those crazy old people with scary beards who mutters all the time about the depths of their bitterness.

Eventually, you are going to have to decide what in life actually matters to you, and if I may be so bold (format pun) as to make a suggestion, your peace of mind/quality of life/generic brand of sanity should be one of those things. If you can handle anxiety like a boss, this may be an easier task for you, but if anxiety regularly swallows you whole like boa constrictors are known to swallow their various specimens of prey, you may have to cut a few cords. Drop a class. Quit an insignificant part-time job. Send back the tiny kitten you are hiding from your RA (editor's note: we are not hiding a tiny kitten from our RA. Not to say that I have not ever done that, because I definitely have and am not sorry for it, but that is not currently the case, as Sarah is very allergic to cats of all ages). Kittens take up a lot of time, especially if they are evil and have to be bottle-fed.

Some things that could end up actually mattering: exercise, education, people with whom you are bound by the bonds of love, friendship, and/or blood, your dreams, getting enough sleep, eating a good breakfast, fighting for the underprivileged, kittens that are not evil (also known as puppies), your art, your heart, God, the drought, the planet. And despite how exhaustive this list appears, there could even be a few more.
The good thing is that despite the popular opinion of those on campus, we actually have options. And a fat wad of time.

that is all.
happiest of Tuesdays.
(fin, for consistency.)