Blast/Past/Aghast/At Last

The summer after my freshman year of college, I commuted by bus to a government job in Greenbelt, Maryland. One day, a man I'd seen a number of times on the bus came up to me with photocopies of charcoal pictures he'd sketched of me. I asked him if he would sign them, and the man said that he would only sign originals. He then ripped the sketches out of his note-pad, signed them, gave them to me, and took back the photocopies. As it turned out, the man wasn't a total stranger, but the ex-boyfriend of one of my mother's coworkers. I don't remember his first name, but he signed his last name, "Kamp" on the sketches, so I'd like to give him full-credit for his own sketches.

These sketches, along with a host of other objects, arrived in a large box this afternoon.What struck me most about the portraits was not so much that they looked like me then, but how I would look ten years later.

As I looked through ancient journals, juvenalia printed out on an actual typewriter, and other potentially embarrassing things, I expected to reel in disgust. I didn't. What a relief! Of course, the poems were filled with murky, overblown images inspired in equal parts by my adolescent struggles and Simon LeBon's lyrics. (Does this sound familiar, O Goddess of Clarity?!) However, I can read the poems and remember what I was thinking at the time I wrote them. For example, I submitted a poem to Cricket Magazine. The subject matter was supposed to be about clouds. This is the poem I sent:

Beneath the clouds of midnight
The gale of dream blizzards blow
Sweeping icy splinters of hate into the hearts of mortal men
Chilling the bare hope that eternity exists
Where wishes live between the songs of lemon trees
Ever convicted to lie in wait for the rebirth of the moon’s daughter
Shadowed silhouettes dance on blades of grass
Stained with the blood of a thousand years hence
One hundred whispers sway in the breeze as one:
“Pass by quickly, child, pass by quickly.”
But I will never be a child again.
--Alkelda the Gloomy, age 13, 1985

Nevermind that nonsense about "songs of lemon trees"-- that was classic Simon LeBon obscurity. I stuck in the "clouds" so that the poem would technically be eligible for the contest. My mother gently pointed out that this poem was probably not what the editors had in mind when they asked for "clouds," but I was undeterred. I wanted to be treated as an adult. I had no idea what that concept truly entailed, I equated innocence with naivete, and I wanted to stop being treated like a child. I wanted my writing to have the depth of a grownup's.

Ironically, it was around the time of my brother's death that I finally got it: there is enough world sorrow. There is more than enough pain. No matter what we do, we will always have struggles. Therefore, why not encourage joy? Why not remind you of the times you laughed? Why not make you laugh again?