Incandescently.

I feel slightly more settled tonight for no obvious reason, though I think spending all day in the sun helped. Walking all day in the sun leaves me tired all the way through, but in a contented way.

I want to be in love with someone who turns me into the person that I can be. My dad told me today about a little girl he saw who reminded him irresistibly of me—a fearless, blonde toddler with a big vocabulary and a bright smile and a hunger for everything. I want to be fearless like I was when I was small. I want to keep feeding my curious spirit as long as I’m alive. I want to be my best self, someone I haven’t met yet. I want someone who can draw me out when I am unnecessarily cautious and egg me on when I hit my stride. I want someone I want to impress.

I want to lie on a bed with tangled sheets and a boy and a map—an old Rand McNally road map or a National Geographic fold-out. And I will say, “Have you ever been to _________?” You know I want to go to England and Scotland and Wales, and also Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Croatia, Montenegro, France, Austria—all around. Vancouver. Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Greece. Australia. Really, the only place on the map I have no interest in is Antarctica, though someone should look out for those ice shelves. I want to talk about these places, even just the way their names look printed on a map. I want it to be okay if we don’t go any of these places. I want someone I can live a simple life with, too. In my mind, this boy plays the guitar and rides a Schwinn and has an inventive, mechanical mind. I can improvise a recipe and sew straight seams and write decently, but I don’t have an inventor’s mind; I appreciate it in others. Whoever he is, he should love to be outside on days like today. On sunny days, it pains me (really, physically) to be trapped inside. On a warm day, I want to wander around tirelessly, revisiting old haunts and scouting out undiscovered corners of my adopted city. People change in warm weather: they tilt their faces upwards and smile easily at strangers. I love staking out a sun-warmed bench to watch the fascinating variety of people. I never listen to music outside of my bedroom. I want to hear everything and miss nothing. So many people walk around with cellphones stapled to their ears, or iPod earbuds in place, and they isolate themselves from their surroundings. I imagine it’s possible some people have gone years without hearing a bird and a distant train or an amusingly out-of-context snippet of someone else’s conversation. He should like to immerse himself in the everyday, the grind of gravel underfoot and the way light dapples through tree canopies. I am such a little kid that way, and he should be, too. I love swings and big friendly dogs and the most basic sounds of the city—the wail of sirens and the soft whirr of tires spinning on wet pavement.

I want someone I can be quiet with—all my silences now are loaded and heavy. I want quiet, reverent silences.

I saw a boy on a bicycle with a guitar slung across his back today. He was only passing, but I liked him immediately.

But you are not defined by your deficits any more than I am.

Sometimes I reread his old Mr. Blue advice columns, and I have nothing but love for him. He says, “But you are not defined by your deficits any more than I am,” and “you know that loneliness is an accident and no reflection on you, and you simply have to see yourself through it,” and “get off this bus and wait for the next one,” and also this: “Life is a mess, we agonize over it, and then we get in the car and go someplace to do something we need to do, and we are showered with mercy and forgiveness.”

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one into the past more suddenly...

My three favorite poems are "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins, "Love Poem" by John Frederick Nims, and "September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden. There are a handful of other poems and poets I appreciate (let's see... Yeats, um, Yeats... Atwood! Margaret Atwood writes some poetry... Yeats, Atwood... and David Slavitt wrote this one poem about the sinking of the Titanic that I wrote an essay about once...), but these three take the cake.

"The Lanyard" - you must read it, really. Or you must log on to the NPR website and hear Billy Collins read it, in his dry monotone.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Classic.

/ / / / /


Next, Nims' "Love Poem," which addresses its subject as "my clumbsiest dear."
My clumbsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burrs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill at ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before red apoplectic streetcars-
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease.
In traffic of wit expertly manoeuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgeting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gayly in love's unbreakable heaven
Our soals on glory of split bourbon float.

Be with me darling early and late. Smash glasses-
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should yor hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break. I love this poem for its unorthodox warmth and honesty. No shooting stars, no pounding hearts, no sweating palms. Only with words and people and love you move at ease. The last lines (For should your hands drop white and empty / All the toys of the world would break) crushes me a little.

/ / / / /

And, lastly, Auden's "September 1, 1939." I love every line from I sit in one of the dives / On Fifty-Second Street / Uncertain and afraid / As the clever hopes expire straight through to the closing words, but especially the closing words, which I will post here and not spoil by saying anything more about them:

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.