Hi out there. April is National Poetry Month and also National Make Sophie Incredibly Busy Month. April is also my yearly reminder to never let people forget I majored in Creative Writing. So here is a poem for you from my most recent zine. It is my favorite of the few poems I have written in the last couple of months. [An Ars Poetica is typically a poem about the craft of writing and poetry itself.] Enjoy your spring! Rooting for you!
Ars Poetica
I'm going on Survivor to write about nature. It will be brutal, but the wilderness calls. As Whitman says in "Song of Myself," these are the days that must happen to you. Out here I am born, winds slice like machetes and the sun is my flint, but my team is so sick of me I hear them plotting all day: Why do we keep the poet around? She works so hard, but she is not strong. I say, Do you see the blue hermit crab inhabit a room to inhabit itself? Don’t you know "stanza" means "room" and the sky is a house? So they vote me off and I leave on a boat, now I write this to prove I am still from the world, my poems and the waves both taking me back.
It’s the end of March and it feels like Spring. I woke up two nights ago because the sound of the rain on my window in Los Angeles was so unfamiliar. It sounds different than the rain back in the Pacific Northwest. Someone needs to study this.
There were a lot of highs for me this month! I made a new zine that I am very proud of. I saw an artist who means a lot to me live in concert. I am falling behind on my yearly movie goal, but strangely didn’t mind too much this month.
I am slightly under the weather writing this. Sometimes when I get sick, I have these out-of-body experiences; I see myself as if a ghost. Maybe part of it is that I’m remembering what it’s like to be mortal. I guess it’s easy to forget some weeks.
I hope you have a lovely April full of nice weather, nice flowers, good health, and optimism!
I didn’t realize it was a leap year until it was upon us. I guess a typical year is six hours longer than our calendar year, causing us to make up for the deficit once every four years. (Or are we preemptively getting ahead?)
February has been a hard month for me. Year after year it feels like one of the hardest, which is strange because it is so short. I have been trying to create and write more, but sometimes it feels like clawing at frozen earth. It’s tough right now; the waves of the weeks are just rolling over me. Trying to come back to myself! Whoever she may be.
Side note: It’s so affirming to receive an indication that you’re acting normal! And that you are a person whom other people want to talk to! Sorry, this is kind of sad actually. And I’ll just speak for myself! But I get really in my head these days. When I was younger I used to despise normalcy. Now, I think it can be so reassuring to be normal. To find someone normal. Hm. Is this what it means to grow up? To change your norms?
How are you, friend? How have you been spending your time? Was it a fruitful month for you? I’ll spend my extra day feeling fortunate for everything and everyone in my life—not because I am making up for something, or because I am trying to pay my karmic debt in advance. Because you all deserve it!
Hello if you’re back! I just can’t really bring myself to delete this website haha.
So I think winter causes us to turn inwards sometimes. We examine ourselves because it is too cold outside. Or there is something about the season that makes us evaluate our own sturdiness. But maybe I am projecting my own feelings onto the season.
Lately I’ve been searching myself and trying to smooth out the corners. Sometimes it feels like ironing out the edges. Sometimes it feels like steamrolling the center of things. I tried to set resolutions this year, but didn’t successfully set any at the top of the month. I always get reflective around this time of year, which makes more sense than the start of January anyways. The end of December is for acceptance and celebration. The end of January is about looking forward and seeing what sticks.
Here is a list of a few things that have been making me happy lately:
- Sweaters - Wide noodles - Movies, of course - Strangely: being busy - My new zine - Listening to a full album of music - Leather jackets - Sunlight - Audiobooks
When I brush my teeth I think about dying and how the seafloor's dissolving and how it rains a blanket so we stay inside, my posture as bad as a gallon of water. Dad voiced a half-thought It is good to wake up— He thought of the lake, saw the news and stopped. The year so far is taro chips, movies, "The Leanover," and accepting at last that I am not a good reader. No, I am not ready to enter the world again. Will a good jacket cure me? A phone call for once? A frozen swim? Will the fish in the trenches know I am better? I'm relentless, the shaker, moving the clock, all to say at the end that I loved it.
Happy end of the year! I hope you found 2023 fruitful and fun. It was an interesting year that left me optimistic for 2024.
I think I had a good year! It flew by. It was kind of a year of putting my head down and working hard on the tasks in front of me. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose! All work and no play doesn’t make me a dull boy. But also: there was play! Some days, I felt so so lucky. Lots of great adventures and some very fun hours. Lots to be found in the small spaces of the weeks and days. Lots of unexpected laughs! And little life-affirming conversations and interactions. My interior life was fulfilling and lovely.
Do you have goals for 2024? I haven’t really thought about resolutions this year. I think they come to me over the course of January. Some years I need a fresh start more than others. Like many, I wonder if a new routine can heal me. Probably?! Like everything, that remains to be seen.
I am excited to write more in 2024. Rereading some of my old work has inspired me to reach back into that corner of my brain. 2023 left me feeling stuck in one style of poem. I wrote this while looking at the ocean:
I shelved a version and took out another: the book of _____ on the shelf of _____.
I am looking forward to 2024 and feel good about it! Staying optimistic at this juncture. (Maybe, for once, I am looking forward more than I am looking back and reflecting.) I hope you have a nice new year! May 2024 be filled with good luck for all of us!
I hope you’ve been well lately. I hope you had a nice November. I am so busy lately. With what? I guess school. I’m not really sure. But! It’s exciting! Filling my time with little tasks and little things. Crocheting gifts and watching movies. I’ve been using Duolingo and Headspace almost every day. Will apps cure me? Remains to be seen . . .
When I get reflective (usually in an Uber, or something) I see my life as a web of choices and paths. I saw myself writing for a living. I saw myself painting for a living. It made me curious, and it made me fearful. But I consider myself so lucky. Lucky to feel (at least right now) that I like myself! That is often a battle. I’ll spend December setting some new goals and just enjoying the end of the year, I think.
If I know you, please send me book recommendations for this winter. If I don’t know you, please do that as well. If anyone wants to be pen pals in 2024, please tell me! I am facing December with an open attitude and an open mind. So much love for the world! For now. I hope—forever!
I am writing this a few days early, listening to a playlist that Spotify created for me: “unhappy heartbroken saturday afternoon.” Am I offended by that? Maybe. If I think too much, maybe it becomes true. My inner monologue has been a little tumultuous lately as I reevaluate some of my priorities. But today I’m really enjoying my own company. I find myself in awe of my own contentedness and my dedication to myself. My heart is full.
I’ve been occupying my time with meditative activities this month. Practicing mindfulness, crocheting, reading, walking. Movies! I love them so much. It’s so wonderful. Sometimes I need to distract myself from things that are making me sad or anxious. Other times it’s just nice to have routine in my life. These activities have been lulling me into autumn this year. The sun in Southern California has been doing that too. Crazy how you can feel one way, then sit outside for twenty minutes and feel another way. Crazy how watching Kill Bill on my laptop can cure most of what ails me. The sweater I am slowly crocheting is coming together.
At the end of this month, I have been thinking about self-worth and how I spend my time. I want to get back to the things that make me happy and make me like myself more (see The Smiths). I think it can be hard to stay away from things that make me dislike myself, but a bigger picture perspective can often remedy that feeling for me. Lately, I feel so lucky to have the capacity for romance in my life (by romance, I mean in the sense of feeling excitement and wonder in daily life). Beauty, the arts, profound wisdom. Anything beyond survival is superfluous, really. But I am so grateful that those things feel necessary to me and my own personal sense of fulfilment.
I would also like to take myself less seriously and lighten up. Life is just life! I get so concerned with the rules and expectations that I set for myself (or that others set for me). Sometimes, I would just like to do what I want to do and be free from outside influence. If only I didn’t care what other people think so much! I think I put too much weight on the advice and criticism of others. If I took most of that as optional, I think I could let go of a lot of what holds me back.
But I love and appreciate most everyone in my life. People are so amazing. I want to write a long book of poems about that. And I will one day! That means that even when it feels like there is nothing to look forward to. There is.
End-of-Month | webzine and blog 