Kayla M. Moses

Throwback Photoset: This is just a collection of some of my favorite photographs from around Austin in the past few years. 

Since I’m currently writing poem on the holiness of life’s details:

I will take an egg out of the robin’s nest in the orchard,
I will take a branch of gooseberries from the old bush in the garden, and go
and preach to the world;
You shall see I will not meet a single heretic or scorner,
You shall see how I stump clergymen, and confound them,
You shall see me showing a scarlet tomato, and a white pebble from the beach.  

312. “I Will Take an Egg out of the Robin’s Nest,” from the 1900 edition of Leaves of Grass.

It’s Doosday Tuesday! This little dog is perfecting the art of being cozy.

Although I’m sad to say I didn’t have time to put together an entire playlist for Mixtape Monday, this song has been getting me through the week. Hopefully it can lighten your spirits, too! 

“So call in the submarine,
‘Round the world we’ll go.
Does anybody know - 
If we’re looking out on the day of another dream?” 

Miranda:

“Do you love me?”

Ferdinand:

“O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,
And crown what I profess with kind event
If I speak true; if hollowly, invert
What is best boded me to mischief. I,
Beyond all limit of what else i’ th’ world,
Do love, prize, honor you.”  

From “The Tempest,” Act III/Sc. I from The Folger Shakespeare Library.

Have you ever come across a piece of poetry or prose that seemed like it was written just for you? The kind of literature that makes your jaw drop a little, gives you a familiar sense of wonder and light that feels absolutely delicious? 

Maybe it’s just because I’m a huge literature nerd (and English major, natch), but when this happens to me, it’s a bit of a religious experience. Usually the author earns a happy home in the treasure box of favorites in my heart. Among such lovelies are Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea.   

And today! Today I’m so pleased to add Robert Hass’ “Meditation at Lagunitas.” 

It absolutely plucked the heartstrings of my soul. It just so happened to be the first poem my poetry professor wanted us to discuss this morning after going over the syllabus. I’d never even heard of Robert Hass before (except in regards to Occupy Berkeley). Regardless of his overall influence in the rest of the course, I’m buying his work with the rest of my textbooks. 

This piece is everything haunting, everything nostalgic, everything forest and underfoot in the entire world. Enjoy! 

“Meditation at Lagunitas”

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that, 
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. 
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Read this poem and more works by Robert Hass at the Poetry Foundation. 

*As a belated side note to this post (since it was written yesterday), I met with my Honors English class today for the first time, and we also discussed this poem. I think perhaps the Thesis Gods are trying to tell me something.  

In honor of my second first day of school (one of the pleasanter aspects of having a differing schedule for each day of the week), this poem:

Beginning my studies, the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact, consciousness - these forms - the power of motion,
The least insect or animal - the senses - eyesight - love;
The first step, I say, aw’d me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone, and hardly wish’d to go, any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in ecstatic songs.  

8. “Beginning my Studies,” from the 1900 edition of Leaves of Grass.

Yesterday, the mister and myself went ice skating. My inner child could hardly contain herself. 

It’s that time again, when spiral notebooks still bear virgin pages and one’s planner hasn’t yet been annotated into illegibility - the first day of a new semester. Coming back to school in the spring always bears a different sentiment than returning in the autumn; after the summer’s torrid stupor I bear a striking resemblance to Simon and Garfunkel’s “59th Street Bridge,” more “dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep” than prepared to dive into a full schedule of classes. But Christmas break offers a pause - a breath! and then a healthy return to scholarship before my noodle becomes utterly useless.

Although I seem to predict the same of every semester, I’m hoping this spring will be more conducive to building a healthier self - both inside and out. I’ve already set my schedule in such a way that I can hit the gym at least twice a week, go to yoga, and still have time to fit in homework and time at the newspaper while generally going to bed before midnight. 

After last semester’s bedtime stretching into three and four in the morning several nights a week, I’m totally fine trying something new. Obviously whatever I was doing then wasn’t working. 

So that’s on the horizon. 

My first day of school isn’t technically over yet, as I have class again at three this afternoon. It feels bizarre to already be settling into a new routine. The time flies in college, if only because you’re required to focus so steadily on assignments and hour blocks and lectures. By the time you raise your head up from the books, it’s May again. 

One thing I wonder as an apparently perennial student is what life will be like without the pleasant markers of progress that are inherent in the passing of semesters. Even in grade school there’s a sense of advancement in the ticking off of grades - first, second, etc. What happens when you’re my age and about to graduate? After this semester, I’ve only got a year (and a stint in Italy) left. 

Then real life, big adult problems. No financial aid - which, perplexingly, is probably my greatest fear. Although the loans are technically my money (and things I’ll pay back over a very long time) it always feels like a Fairy Godmother drops those coins into my piggy bank. 

And that same Fairy Godmother retires after I graduate. 

Perhaps not the most optimistic thing to think on the first day of school? I suppose the lesson to garner from that tangent is the simple appreciation of the present.

No bills today; no full-time job with benefits. No car payments, cell phone bills or student loan payments. No 401K or retirement fund. No graduate school applications, engagements, or job interviews.

There is only now. Only the glass of pomegranate juice beside me and a temporarily empty planner. And that, my friends, is a thing of beauty.  

It’s Doosday Tuesday!  This week the Doo’s looking a little forlorn, probably because she’s being forced to wear a sweater when she goes outside. Hey, it’s cold! 

As the melancholy grey clouds roll in, this set of songs seems reminiscent of flying through January’s fog. 

Listen to “Flying” on Spotify.

Original photography credit here.

In which I cover my bases just in case you missed some of this week’s general awesomeness.

January 9th:
Mixtape Monday - No. 1: Neon Lightbox

January 10th:
Doosday Tuesday - Morning, Doo

January 11th: 
The Weekly Walt - “An Old Man’s Thought of School”

January 12th: 
Assorted Tomfoolery Thursday - On anagrams, book happiness and the porn crusade.

Although it’s too late for Mixtape Monday, I wanted to share a playlist from early this month. Everyone seems to go through a bit of a futuristic phase right around New Years, and mine manifested in a surge of adoration for techno/house. Hope you enjoy! 

Listen to “Neon Lightbox” on Spotify. 

Original photography credit here.

This week brings forth a veritable cornucopia of tomfoolery. First on the list, a rather snarky anagram generator suggested by Noelle. My anagram? “Hokey, Claimless Male.” I tried a few more with great results:

1. Albus Dumbledore - “A bulbous meddler.”
2. Gandalf the Grey - “Deftly anger hag.”
3. Hermione Granger - “Ignore her German.”
4. Walt Whitman - “Ham twit lawn.”
5. Holden Caulfield - “Ill-founded leach.”
   And perhaps my favorite…
6. George W. Bush - “He grew bogus.”  

On another text-based note, here’s a video that’s quickly gaining popularity in circles of book-lovers.

And a last interesting piece to share - GOOD Magazine shared an article earlier this week on the “anti-porn crusade” undertaken by some current GOP candidates (Romney, Santorum, Gingrich) to save the institution of marriage. While I do feel that pornography is a controversial subject, this article absolutely hits the nail on the head by pointing out the obvious elephant in the room… that porn probably isn’t the problem at all.  

“The key to preserving the age-old institution is bolstering the newest, most passionate spokespeople for marriage: gays and lesbians. In a logical world, you’d think Republicans would be jumping at the chance to support a population that upholds traditional values and is just itching to don a tux or a wedding dress. ”

I’ve often discussed my unabashed love for Uncle Walt. If there was any author that could bring me to tears, it would be him (and perhaps Elie Wiesel). Being that my blog is beginning to narrow its focus to self-actualization and growth, it seems only appropriate that the Good Grey Poet make more regular appearances. Thusly, I offer to you ‘The Weekly Walt,’ your healthy dose of Uncle Walt every Wednesday. 

An old man’s thought of school;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot.  

Now only do I know you!
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass!

And these I see - these sparkling eyes, 
These stores of mystic meaning - these young lives,
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships - immortal ships!
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the Soul’s voyage.

Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a public school?

Ah more - infinitely more;
(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and mortar -
these dead floors, windows, rails - you call the church?
Why this is not the church at all - the church is living, ever living Souls.”)  

And you, America,
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future - good or evil?
To girlhood, boyhood look - the Teacher and the School.

263. “An Old Man’s Thought of School,” from the 1900 edition of Leaves of Grass.

Today’s choice comes in light of the impending semester - my sixth in college, which marks only two left until graduation! Education and learning are two facets of existence that I’ve always identified as somewhat holy - bizarre to some, but true to the belief of many educators. What could be more sacred than the immortality of knowledge? And to have the ability to impart it - how inspiring! But that’s just me, and we all know what a Hermione I’ve proven to be. 

It’s Doosday Tuesday! Time yet again to marvel at the Doo’s preciousness and general awesomeness. Case in point - this photograph details what I woke up to this morning. 

In which I cover my bases just in case you missed some of this week’s general awesomeness.

January 1st:
Sunday Meditation - A Reflection on the New Year and Spiritual Inventory
Popular Posts of 2011
Reading List of 2011

January 2nd:
Mixtape Monday - Young the Giant 

January 3rd:
Doosday Tuesday - A Wild Doo

January 4th:
Retrato Wednesday (GPOYW) - Feeling in the Dark
Walt Whitman’s “Darest Thou Now, O Soul”

January 5th: 
Assorted Tomfoolery Thursday - On hipsters, racism and offbeat homes.
Project Mailbag: Brown paper packages tied up with string; from your mailbox to mine.

January 6th:
Photography Friday - Zilker Botanical Gardens 

 

This afternoon I wandered through the Zilker Botanical Gardens, a lovely find tucked away in Austin’s best-known park and Austin City Limits Festival locale. Although many of the pond features were shut down due to the water restrictions, the afternoon light made my walk through the trails nothing short of magical.