live or tell

about how naive I was though never 
admitting it, how badly I chose early on
spending my affections carelessly as 
spare change then making quick getaways 
igniting the bridges—or when I think of the time
wasted brooding and stewing, my heart a sort of
crock-pot simmering bitterness, it’s good to be
grown-up at last with boxes of journals I’m unlikely
to get back to and albums of photos as a very
selective mnemonic aid as though most of life
had been a string of holidays, reunions, bright
birthday parties when of course it’s dreary Mondays,
Friday nights watching old black-and-white movies,
hands ink stained from the newspaper, waits
at the post office, subways, trips to the drugstore,
thousands of bowls of cereal, pots of soup—And
when I think of all those I went to school with,
worked alongside, ate with, taught, those I will not
ever see again due to the odd cruel way time
shakes us and scatters us and never recombines
us even perhaps someone I was married to, even
him, and those I failed or let down or otherwise
proved myself a disappointment to, and those I will
never share the same time and place with, we will never
coincide, and that’s a shame but also reassuring
because how much are we capable of accumulating,
of absorbing I wonder, for already I try to grasp
one thing only to feel another slip away to make room,
a musical chairs of the mind and who keeps taking
a chair away—so that when I think of the finite
it seems the most profound fact, the boundaries
of minutes, years, borders of gardens and countries,
frame of the painting, edge of the screen, that one
chair left though it has the softest fabric, high back,
cushions to nod right off in until the music stops.

-Jeanne Marie Beaumont

1. everything is tremendous

2. everything is fluid

3. better living through learning. work past the initial discomfort, ignore the ridicule (or fear of), ask questions and fill the gaps in your knowledge, embrace mistakes, to paraphrase ‘just motherflipping do it already’

4. the past really is a grotesque animal

5a. there’s only so much of your life you can broadcast via social media
5b. & you probably don’t want to date anyone who’s too internet savvy

clear eyes, clear head, clear heart. HEY

secondgradefresh:

Meeting your inhabitants IRL is pretty good.

It’s been 3/3 so far for me!

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

—Philip Lopate