Literature

What do I want to do with my life? 4 potential directions

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." - Henry David Thoreau

"We think of self-control as something that limits freedom, but in fact it’s just the opposite: the true freedom of the sailor is taking the helm of his boat and sailing in the direction he wants to go, thus being the master of his destiny." - Matthieu Ricard

I have been unsure for quite a while about what I should do with my life when my course finishes in September. I am especially worried about where I will work and live. To try and bring clarity to my mind, I have written down four potential directions that my life could take and the reasons for each one. Some of the options are not mutually exclusive, and hopefully I will be able to find some form of synergy between them, for example by working part-time within an agricultural workers' co-operative. As always, suggestions, criticisms and life lessons are welcome from anyone who comes across this:

A Love Poem

Below is a love poem I wrote some time ago to an ex-girlfriend after she split up with me. The poem is a remix of around 20 of my favourite Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost and John Ashbery poems and incorporates my own writing, thoughts and feelings. I attach a second version below with all of the references to where I got my inspiration. I thought I'd put it online as it reminds me of good (and bad) times past. Unfortunately it didn't work out between us, but I still love her very much as a friend...

Love Poem

Sky and sea, horizon-hinged,
Clapped shut, flatten this man out,
I crawl now like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow,
To try to mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white anger of your eyes.

Up here among the gull cries, we strolled through a maze of clouds,
The sun purpled the fig in the leaf's shadow, turned the dust pink.
It's not easy to state the change you made,
If I'm dead now, then I was alive.

All night I have dreamed of destruction, annihilations -
An assembly line of cutthroats, and you and I
Hitching off in a gray Chevrolet, drinking the green
Poison of wild fields, the little indistinguishable signs,
Noiseless, on rubber wheels, on the way to the city of a thousand spires.

I don't want what happened between us to happen in darkness,
Vanishing easily and often as each breath.
I could be mute as mannequins in a shop window,
But my heart is under your foot.

I need to pour myself out like an unfolded fluid,
But will these flowery words that fly and all but sing,
Having ridden our desire, lie closed over in the wind and cling,
Like smiling hooks, onto your skin?

I don't want to keep washing up like an old bone,
You finding me over and over with the sound of the sea in my mouth,
Full of contradictory ideas, stupid ones as well as
Worthwhile ones, but all flooding the surface of our minds.

I try to think of a place I could hide and forget you
As a desk drawer hides a poison pen letter,
But there is no drawer to hold you.
Blue sky or black
You preoccupy my horizon.
What good is all that space if I can't be with you?

When one of the stars falls from the blueblack sky it leaves a space,
A sense of absence in its old shining place,
And where I type now, back to my own dark star,
I see the absence in the constellations.
My mind gravitates to the weight of this single thought,
Unable to escape this singularity, this point where all lines meet:

Can we meet up sometime?

For god's sake I love you, you fill my dreams.
I'm so sorry I upset you,
I promise to try and never do it again.
I promise to appreciate you, to believe in you, to hold you in my arms.

Posted in Day to Day Life | Literature | Stories ed's blog | read more | 456 reads
Submitted by ed on Thu, 2006-12-14 12:38.