Palmtree Contemplations

When the rain begins I leave my Philosophy reading behind with a squeal, run down the twisting Music Department hallways, and stand, breathless, watching the downpour from just inside the department's glass doors. Outside, the world is being washed clean by the deluge. The deep black pavement of the parking lot is covered in a sheen of water. I can see currents forming on top of it. Raindrops bounce and slide down the sides of the glass enclosure surrounding me, and I am lost remembering... I used to watch the river currents bending and curving in the rain outside my window. During most rainstorms, I was out in the river with everyone else who had any sense, feeling the currents and rain up close. Swimming in a rainstorm was wet, cold, and electrifying. The world was grey, black, and fierce, hitting us with full force from all directions. Everything became the ever present now: this feeling of water smashing into your face, the giggle you let out whe...

"Show me, O LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life." Psalm 39:4               When I was young, my siblings and I used to play hide-and-seek in a small California cemetery. Those were bright, summery days filled with laughter and frantic chases amongst headstones and memorials. To me, the cemetery was my family's private playground. When my parents did language study in Manaus, there was one particular bus route that ran right beside the cemetery. It seemed a place of magic and mystery to me, with its white, sloping, walls that glittered with broken, green and brown glass. I wanted a key to those barred blue gates. I always leaned forward in my seat, my eyes memorizing the shapes and peeling colors of the many crosses and monuments to the Holy Virgin. Years later, at college in Arkansas, the cemetery near my ...

My girls made me stay in the bathroom for ten minutes before sending someone to lead me back to the cabin. We made very exaggerated small talk on the walk back through the trees as though there was nothing going on, although we all knew there was. When we reached the cabin, they threw open the door, pulled me in, and proceeded to serenade me with a parody of Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway". It was silly, filled with references only we understood, and incredibly off-key. Halfway through, I wanted to cry, but there was more. They made a neon green "Early Birthday" card (VERY early, since my birthday's not until November), bought me a Blue Lake shirt that they all signed, and filled a Blue Lake mug with Skittles, M&Ms, and AirHeads. Then they presented me with a picture of WonderWoman. "See? I gave her green eyes and brown hair like you," one of them told me. "And her suit is blue with white and black because you like blue and play the piano...

It is evening and you are four, Walking in your nightgown To see the golden, gleaming moon. It is morning and you are sixteen, Scribbling a prayer in vivid blue ink Beside the dew drenched field. It is twilight and you are ten, Jumping and sliding in thick mud While night-swallows swoop by. It is afternoon and you are seven, Running in your bathing-suit Beneath the gutters gushing rain. It is barely light and you are fourteen, Sighing with simple delight As you wake and warm the piano. It is midnight and you are eighteen, Swinging with happy eyes shut 'Neath stars and a trembling tree. It is June and you are twenty-one, Writing remembrances by lamp light To keep away forgetting.

When I was nine, my father built a large bookcase that stretched from the smooth cement floor to just below a crossbeam supporting our rafters. You could say that the Palm house was held up by all the knowledge stored on that bookcase. Over 500 titles stood proudly on its shelves. If they were particularly large and cumbersome, they knelt pages down and spines up with their fat, attractive corners silently pleading to be grasped and opened. Even then, I saw myself living out my days in some apartment filled with books: leather bound journals featuring my own adventures, novels that should have been read by everyone but were not, volumes of poetry in original languages, and dusty histories with photos of the author on the back of a fraying, half-torn paper cover. Scattered throughout the apartment would be all the books my father had passed onto me from his own exquisite bookcase. Two weeks ago I arrived home to Brasil to help my parents move back to the States permanently. One of m...

I sank into a blissful dream Of mysteries and hidden things, Never caring for the consequence The stolen moments soon would bring.   For when the mists receded And dreaming was no more, I woke to find myself in sunlight, Not more rich, but poor.   Then I wept and hid my face, I filled the silence with my cries. For the blissfulness was only dreaming. All I wished had been a lie.  

It was late Thursday night before Spring Break when Sean drove me back from Pour Jons. Thursdays are always long, but this one was particularly draining, and cold besides. I had neglected to turn in a rough draft of the Music History final paper a week earlier, and was attempting to complete it before Spring Break. This involved hours of typing, highlighting, and analyzing alongisde all the regular homework I was doing. After an hour at Pour Jons with some friends, I left to try and rest before the chilly morning arrived. As Sean pulled into the parking lot, we discussed our current papers and future projects. "Honestly, I don't think I want to do all this for the rest of my life," he said. "Do what?" I asked. He had just finished animatedly explaining his idea for a History paper, and I could not see where the conversation was going. "All of this. In the History department the professors push becoming a teacher or getting adoctorate, but I really don...