Six Weeks
A couple days ago I noticed that I have been calling my dorm room “home.” I was beyond startled. When I first came to Simon’s Rock I had already decided that I would not call my room “home.” I felt like I could never really be at home anywhere but in New Mexico. Now, six weeks later, I am sitting in Albany International Airport waiting to fly back to New Mexico for the first time since I enrolled at Simon’s Rock. With my carry-on suitcase and my Norton Shakespeare at my feet, I am packed to visit … home.
When I first came to Simon’s Rock I felt a physical sensation of nausea every time I looked out my window. I decided this must be what was meant by the “sick” part of homesick. I wrote a poem, which I’ll attach to this blog posting. I had no idea what it meant for a place to be lush until I came to the East Coast. I felt (and sometimes still feel) like I was being eaten by all the green. However, living at Simon’s Rock has been an incredibly exciting experience so far. I have passed several milestones in these last six weeks, including buying my first umbrella (which, having been well-used, hangs proudly on my closet doorknob) and turned in my first round of papers.
Simon’s Rock teachers, like my Shakespeare teacher Hal Holladay, demand complete engagement of their students. I entered not knowing much about Shakespeare, and I’m still overwhelmed every time I begin a new play, but Hal poses questions and those questions along with my classmates’ ideas are giving me a method for thinking about things I don’t understand. When I was in high school it had never occurred to me that I might someday be ecstatic about receiving a “B” on a paper, but after getting my paper for my Shakespeare class I wound up doing a little dance in my room (ending when I tripped over my chair). The “B” is a challenge. It reaffirmed what I have already been discovering: at Simon’s Rock I am not the smartest person in the room, I am surrounded by people who are much better read than I am, and that – in and of itself – is a thrilling experience.
[Untitled]
Leaves hang in moons over her pale skin,
round and luminous near the roof of the canopy.
The burning twigs exhaust their fragrance,
curled and pungent they depart
to tigered flame. Their smoke wafts to
the imperfect triangles of slate colored sky,
body corrugated and rippling between the foliage.
People can be eaten by all this green.
She leans back from the tented fire
so that verdant palms brush against her cheeks,
moist—
softer than the plastic orchids potted in her mother’s atrium.
Her eyes remain open against
the cacophony of leaves—
she doesn’t believe in divinity.
The circle of crossed legs and male voices ignores her retreat,
the quiet strumming and moaning
of the boy with the guitar
continues.
She can smell someone dragging on a cigarette,
wonders if tobacco tastes different
when incensed by fire
rather than the click of a lighter
or sulfurous match.
If she lifts her head
just high enough to feel the tug on her neck
she could see the gray
billowing from some gape-hinged mouth.
The bed of rock has furrowed her skull with trenches
for decaying leaves and ants to invade,
busy and dead in their colonies.
She imagines
that the insects peak out from their miniscule holes
like burrowing owls,
dew-eyes sable and reflective in her loose hair.
