monday morning poetry

If
If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 
But make allowance for their doubting too; 
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, 
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, 
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; 
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; 
If you can meet with triumph and disaster 
And treat those two imposters just the same; 
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken 
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, 
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 
And lose, and start again at your beginnings 
And never breath a word about your loss; 
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 
To serve your turn long after they are gone, 
And so hold on when there is nothing in you 
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; 
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; 
If all men count with you, but none too much; 
If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run - 
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
RUDYARD KIPLING

This morning is a morning filled with wonderings and waiting. I am awash in Monday, trying to piece it together and feel calm. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done on all fronts: I am awash in impending process. Process, process, constantly in process. No product to touch or look at except this hard, shiny diamond of promise~a ringing bell breathing bits of light.

transitions...

The end of summer has been coming for quite some time. I've felt it, creeping steadily towards me with the promise of fall activity and motion. I am almost sad to see the slow, sundrenched days leave. I am a person who makes herself busy by nature, but I had just about settled into the languid days where sitting on the porch, or listening to records, constituted the activities of the afternoon.

v. i. 1. to begin or set out, as on a journey or activity. 2. to become active, manifest, or operative; appear, issue forth, or come to life...to set moving, going or acting...to begin work on...beginning of an action, journey, process, etc.


During my recent trip to Chicago, I found this path in the middle of Lincoln Park. It caught my eye, because the asphalt had been picked away to reveal the stone cobbles beneath. Kind of a resistant act toward modernization, I thought, and I loved it. These pictures of the path are perfect for today, which is at the start of a new path in my life. And like this path, it leads forward and, I believe, upward (in whatever existential way that means). Finding myself calm, yet containing such adrenaline, I feel present and alive.
This, I think, is a microcosom of what life is: ever changing, moving, inclining and holding all the hope and excitement that I am willing to recognize.

jittery

This morning is alive. I am caffinated, and I start my new job today. I had the lovliest night's sleep, and woke up without once snoozing my alarm. I feel sharp, on the knife's edge of action, like all the adrenaline has somehow solidified into my body's equivilant to plastic explosives.

There is a song that I love, that is so melancholy, called "Waiting for my Real Life to Begin". Today is not that day; today, I am living, buzzing with "happenings". It is exciting!

That's all.

:)