only muddy toes and the milkyway.

One of my many intentions while here in Belgium was to write a lyrical essay as I experienced my exchange.  It was a style of prose I was introduced to at the Young Writer's Institute the summer before I came, and I've loved it ever since.  Essentially (at least in my definition), a lyrical essay is an ensemble of poetry which revolves around a certain theme or is written during a set period of time.  It may be surrealist and appear to make no sense at all, or it may be very descriptive and appeal to all the senses; it simply depends on the style of the writer, as does any style of prose.

I never truly began to write with intent to finally make the essay, which explains the lack of correlation between the poetry that I've written here.  Instead, I simply wrote to express myself (like always) in a notebook that I constantly carried with me, and this is the collection of some of that poetry, month by month, in my own kind of lyrical essay. 

Don't worry if you don't understand; most of the time I don't even know what or how I'm writing.  It's the beauty of surrealism and the subconscious of a higher reality.

AUGUST:

if i discovered the world, i would have thought this was the end of it.

clouds melting into ice, ice melting into rays of white,

a puddle of mid-winter familiar to the trod of thick-soled boots.

plastic window at my fingertips blinds me but to a

wrinkled smile of recent laughter

asking me, "what do you want to be?"

i don't know, nor do i know the you

"youth never will. 74 years still haven't given me the answer."

comment dit-on life en français? c'est la vie.

try to speak words, but only stuttered incongruencies.

see those eyes they dream,

as she melts the chocolat by minuit

avec ségolène.

SEPTEMBER:

minutes hide behind familiar words,

their bloodshot eyes blind to learning.

help me! aidez-moi!

mais pourquoi? the mirror's lips only whisper secrets.

ten days and only twelve faces.  elle se moque de toi.

and i whistled in the rain.

OCTOBER:

with you, i want an adventure.

i know of sweaty hands who feared they'd lose their grasp,

grasp of what they'd already captured:

a submissive firefly in a cupped-hand cage, glowing only to be his light.

dreams, or rather hopeful predictions

of swimming pools in the rainy snow,

sheltered by the ceiling. darkness embraced by walls,

disrupted by a smile- two smiles.

water blurs my view and is in my nose,

but i feel a hand which takes my fingers captive,

puts them in straight jackets,

otherwise they'll go astray, in thought

and in movement

from here.

four legs propelling, treading upwards.

feet clumsily make the next, first, bad impressions

as chlorine fights our drowning seconds.
and we pause the film and drown with them,
take this picture as the last.

breathe in, and satisfy the thirst of lungs.

but as lips part they are met by others

and everything and nothing is lost.

DECEMBER:

listen to only words

lost in the laughter the pen writes,

the footprint stays.

he stays to remind me,

rappelle-moi, j'ai oublié

how to speak, how to sing.

is this rambling? je dévaugue.

peut-etre. or maybe?

crowded train station with a toilet paper tree.

benches full of eyes watching her read,

i'm reading

is this rambling?

JANUARY:

mi chiamo jordanna

sono l'amica di sabina

sono americana

parlo inglese e francese

i came here with a hug and two kissed cheeks.

an artist told me

i was an artist, in english

now useless but always used.

how do i feel?

FEBRUARY:

est-ce que tu crois que

i laugh to be heard

and then run from those who hear?

est-ce que tu crois que

je crois que

i don't know what it is to believe?

fallen leaves in disguise of winter

still crumble.

sa beauté s'est fanée.

i used to look through the train's window,

seeing open fields interrupted by a cobblestone

road, harsh to my clenched hands and tires of my bike.

seeing "linkebeek" graffitied in green,

words i can not comprehend-

only colors.

i'd feel the trembling of the train

as he passed another;

his strength rendered weak by an attraction

of what he would be, of what he would say.

a force of fear and desire, aimless adventure.

he knew me, he spoke me-

a language i did not know.

MARCH:

bent comb bristles smile

like my mirror's crooked teeth
tangled by intent to defy a childhood
ashamed of natural tendency,
drowned in tear-free
strawberry scented spray
from something like a fish.
these bristles bend to free
what is now creation.

braided history, its sunshine
reflects against her sticky sunglasses.
cobblestones, they gleam,
radiate.
here is my skin for you, soleil,
burn it, beauty it.
leave my lonely shoulders
touched.

APRIL:

une heure fanée, injectée à mon sang.

ce poison est venu de ses yeux,

ses paroles de silence.

the sea paints me

with his broken colors,

fragility i crush in my palm.

i am a canvas,

your canvas,

create me with sand between my toes.

the sun's yesterday

moves in monochrome

ever-changing, but not in color.

i am a shadow,

your shadow,

leave me

where we wild as grass may grow.

MAY:

we move in phases

of playlists, preferred particularity.

we are nowhere, and she smiles
follow me, let you down

yet it creates, transcending these

inverities of her rusted,

metal reminissions.

to liberate, to set to fail

or someone like vitalogy,

a mirrored indifference to august

and everything after

yourself or something like it.

i see my yellowed fingers
embrace
an unlit cigarette.
i will inhale your words,
let them rest in my rusted lungs to then
exhale clouded Tuesday morning skies
who dare cover my sun.

this is the imagery of sin,
hiding behind my bitten, stuttered lip. 

JUNE:
barefoot, painting with naked colors stolen from the moon.
we are an empty canvas,
naive
wasting to read poetry scribbled under our skin,
skin not yet immune to her sting,
stinging lil.

and we laugh,
and freedom takes the world 
between her fingertips.
breaks the flower's withered stem,
a flower of beginning's end,
yanks it from this warren soil,
and oh! how we are laughing still.

we feel her exhale,
and we exhale,
and the wish and the world is gone
and we are dancing in the wind.

reality,
we will never know.
only muddy toes and the milkyway.

as promised, if you've read.

Passing Stranger by Walt Whitman

(Read it aloud to feel it.)

PASSING Stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,

You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)

I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,

All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,

I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours

only nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take

of my beard, breast, hands, in return,

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake

at night alone,

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,

I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Le bois amical de Paul Valéry

Nous avons pensé des choses pures

Côte à côte, le long des chemins,

Nous nous sommes tenus par les mains

Sans dire... parmi les fleurs obscures ;

Nous marchions comme des fiancés

Seuls, dans la nuit verte des prairies ;

Nous partagions ce fruit de féeries

La lune amicale aux insensés

Et puis, nous sommes morts sur la mousse,

Très loin, tout seuls parmi l’ombre douce

De ce bois intime et murmurant ;

Et là-haut, dans la lumière immense,

Nous nous sommes trouvés en pleurant

Ô mon cher compagnon de silence !

Chanson d'automne de Paul Verlaine
(One of my favorite French poets.)

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l'automne

Blessent mon coeur

D'une langueur

Monotone.

Tout suffocant

Et blême, quand

Sonne l'heure,

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens

Et je pleure

Et je m'en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m'emporte

Deçà, delà,

Pareil à la

Feuille morte.

perspicacious diversions.

For my French class, I had to compose with a partner an anthology of six poems that we later had to present to our class in an original presentation.  My partner and I decided to stage a piece of "theater" for our presentation in which I was an American living in Belgium for a year (no kidding!) who had met a Belgian and fallen in love. 

Yes, I know,  it simply screams creativity.

(Here may I add my observation that Belgians, or at least those in my class, are seemingly incapable to think "outside of the box".  The majority of them had difficulties grasping the concepts of metaphors, symbols, and allegories- all of which had been introduced to them this year. 

For example, as we were reading Edgar Allen Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death", I had noticed that the seven rooms in Prospero's palace were placed from east to west, the easternmost being the blue room (symbolizing birth, the beginning of life) and the westernmost being the black and blood red room (obviously symbolizing death).  I remarked that I loved the little detail that the rooms were placed from east to west to emphasize the symbolism since the sun rises in the east (sunrise represents beginning/birth) and sets in the west (sunset represents end/death), and  I had simply made the remark in order to give credit to the genius of Mr. Poe (as he is an American). But instead my classmates gave me all the glory, as if I were the one to write it.  I didn't write it, I simply analyzed- a simple analyzation that I'm sure most of my classmates in the US would have made right away.

Due to this,  I now crave more than ever to be intellectually challenged.  I want to surround myself with people who love to learn and with whom I can discuss life, religion, politics, and cultures.  I need to surround myself with motivated people- people who want to be, need to be challenged as much as I do.  The problem is that my school in Belgium is densely populated with slackers.  It's a "technical" school:  it was originally created for students who didn't plan to go to college after high school, but now it's more or less for people who want to follow either a very specific option (such as Science or Economics) or a unique option (Athleticism or Cuisine),  or it's for those who are having trouble in other schools and want either (a) a smaller school or (b) a school where it's much easier to slack off.

Therefore, there are a lot of students who just don't try- or at least it seems to me that they go to school with their brains shut off.  I can see the potential in these students, as they do well when they apply themselves, but they just don't try.  They don't want to learn; they're going to school to go to school: to memorize for the test, take the test, and forget.  Of course, in the United States there are a lot of students like this as well, but I just usually don't have classes with them.  Though now I've been going to school with students of the sort for a year, and the lack of motivation that they bring to the classroom is contagious.  As an exchange student, I had put myself at their level.  I had told myself it was all right that I scored badly because everyone else had.  It was all right that I hadn't done the "homework" because no one else had.  It was all right that I hadn't tried because no one else had even wanted to try.

But then I began to truly be able to work in French.  I could understand everything (and if not I always had my handy-dandy dictionary); I could write; I could read. And then I realized the absence of motivation in the classroom, and I began to crave it.

Therefore, I can say that when I became fluent in French, I began to miss school in the US.  I felt like there was something I was missing- I wanted to, needed to learn more.  By learning French, I had always been fed with knowledge- my hunger was constantly satisfied.  Though when I began to learn less of French as I had known the language, my apetite- even larger than it was before- could not be appeased. 

I began raiding the cupboards, leaving the refridgerator door hanging wide open in search for anything to fill my stomach, empty and constantly rumbling.  I bit into literature, gnawing away at it slowly so that each tastebud could learn a new word, a new taste.  I read and read, but I needed more.  I realized I needed other people with whom I could discuss what I'd read.  I wanted a classroom and opinions, hands flying into the air to open other's eyes by sharing what had been seen.

This then leads me to yet another example:  for my French class I read Servitude et Grandeur Militaires de Alfred de Vigny, a Romantic writer of the 19th century.  In the final recollections of the book, Vigny concludes that soldiers fight and die with little thought of God for they ultimately follow a different "God" which is Honor.  He goes on to say that Honor is the virtue of the life of this world, that it is a guiding light which leads one to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.  Always and everywhere it maintains in all its beauty the individual dignity of man:  it is manly decency.  In the end, he feels that Honor should always possess such power and such beauty, and he hopes that no religion will try to suppress the sentiment.

While reading this, I couldn't help but to think of Al Qaida and other extremist groups and the fact that they have nearly the same beliefs as Vigny.  Of course, they don't follow the "religion" of Honor, but instead they abide by Honor in practice of their religion or ideology.  Vigny believes that honor is manly decency; therefore he believes himself to be decent as he abides by honor.  In the same sense, members of Al Qaida believe they are decent for they also submit themselves to honor.  However, the honor of Vigny has not the same meaning as the honor of extremists, and this displays a way in which our society has changed since the 19th century due to racial and religious separations.  Vigny hopes that no religion will try to suppress the sentiment of honor, but what he should in fact hope is that no religion should alter the definiton of honor.

Nonetheless, as I read, I wanted more than anything to express these ideas with the class, have a group discussion where we could exchange point of views and opinions.   I wanted to be in my school in the US, or at least any school that challenged me.

I've now realized how much I've digressed.. Did you realize this was all in parenthesis?  Well with that said I'm getting off this train and hopping onto the right one.  Parenthèses terminées! )

So my Belgian friend and I acted out our presentation, for which I had to memorize three poems that I would like to share here (which was my primary objective for writing this post).  But I'm going to post them after this or else this is going to be horrifically long...  I'd be surprised if there's actually someone still reading this.  (Click the smiley face below if you are, just to satiate my curiosity.) 
The presentation turned out really great by the way.  I'd never realized how much I liked acting, or rather just making everyone laugh.
Exactly what I'm not doing at this point in time,
alors je suis partie! 

he is henry david thoreau.

Sleep right now would be logical, logical in that my body fatigues at such an hour of early morning when yesterday's tomorrow has already come and gone.

My brain begins to decrease his speed, his rythmic footsteps are deep of a bass drum, drum, drum, bum, bum, bum. Deep and measured in nature's synchronisation. He walks in freedom of wandering thoughts and observation of all which he is born. Each morning I walk to feel my creation, to center myself. Listen to the trees, they are wiser. They have read more books, for they have written them in those constant rings. Rings of years and poetry, his music. Music recorded, forever inscribed, as the notes of summer's birds. True music, this is how to feel, how I feel, how she feels. We can only truly feel if we stay here. No, don't leave for cement sidewalks, littered with wasted paper we have stolen from wisdom, created from inutile intelligence of detail. "Simplify, simplify, simplify" as he had said. We stole from the earth to only let her body wither, weather. Now it must rain, and feel it. To feel, you need to stay. They'll corrupt you, shove an umbrella in your hand and tell you not to like the rain. Beauty is not to be wet; your makeup will run. To be dry is comforting; so tell me, why does the human body cry? The rain is beauty, beauty of the world's constant changing and giving to all she has created. We're thirsty, thirsty for knowledge and feeling. So drink. Feel the raindrop's rythym on your skin, of a deep bass drum, drum, drum, bum, bum, bum. Deep and measured in nature's synchronisation.

I'm dancing.
My body always in movement like the earth, never static. I spin, spin, and spin. Dizziness abrupts my thoughts other than that of sunlight. I see only sunlight, and blue, and a glimpse of leaves in green and my world is crashing down. I'm falling, fearless, for how am I to fear when I'm falling into heaven? "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads" is a secret that we share, he and I.
And I fall.

And I think I'm dreaming, or maybe it's simply that "our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake."

Though sleep right now would be logical, logical in that my body fatigues at this hour of the morning- but is that an effect of corruption? Was the human body made to sleep as much as they tell us we should? Are we tired simply because they tell us we should be, technically? And what if we had never known, what if we had simply lived by true nature without searching for Science and his truth. Would we sleep but for four hours? For six? How much more life would we live if they wouldn't have told us when to sleep and when to awake, if we could just live by the nature of body without the mind's influence of "8 hours"? I can pose the question, but I will never know truth. All I do know, and he knows, is that "it is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet." Otherwise we can not see, we can not breathe, we cannot learn, we cannot be.

And "how can any man be weak who dares to be at all?"

© Jordann Funk Photography