Italy Post #2

Dear Readers,
I finally have my address! It is:

Erika Olson, Gordon College
Monastero San Paolo
Via Postierla, 20
05018 Orvieto (TR)
Italy

So here's the deal: you send me a letter and I will send you one back. There are many benefits to the situation. Not only are you sending me your love and support which I greatly appreciate, but there is also the fact that you also will receive a letter back from me (100% guarantee) which will have cool Italian postage and stamps on it which will in turn make you look and feel more awesome because someone cared enough to send you something from Italy. Sweet stellar action (this is for you Kelsey).

Please please please write me!

Italy Post #1

Dear Readers,
I never thought this time would come. I remember in February I would sit at the reference desk in the library, lonely and bored, and dream about being in the Italian countryside. I never thought I would make it to this time; my last semester at Westmont obscured any reality of the summer or even the next semester. I'm through that fog now. And I'm looking at an unfamiliar place, filled with unfamiliar people who speak an unfamiliar language. It's a bit daunting.

There is some part of me that wants to just be there at this very moment. I think its the uncertainty of this whole situation that is making me the most nervous. I don't know what to expect. I don't even know what really to bring and what to buy there (although there has been some help in that area, thanks Allyson!). I don't know what life will be like, if there will be a schedule and a routine, or if every day will be completely unpredictable. I'm hoping for the routine.

But, with only 9 days to go, I'm starting to become nervous and excited at the same time, like the two parts of my emotions are converging into this one jumpy feeling towards Italy that I hope will fade once I get there. I'll find out soon enough.

Lessons from today

I retired my old pajamas today. Burning,
trashing and recycling all came to my mind
for the disposal of this old friend, but I decided
to keep them hidden away in the back recesses
of a drawer, among all the other worn-out refugees
from my past. Maybe, I thought, some day I'll

take them out when I have learned to sew from all
of the patched knees and ripped socks of my
future, when children tangle my legs and crying
becomes my alarm clock, when soccer practice
and ballet class become my schedule and dinner
time is the one moment of the day where

I can sit and watch the future unravel before
my eyes as the high chair is replaced with
a booster seat and I time my day with the
honk of the school bus and the swimming
lessons that come right after the last bell rings.
Maybe then I will go to that obscure drawer

and pull out the old brown moth-eaten pants
and think back on the time when life didn't
rise above me like floodwaters, where toys
never were a concern and the only responsibility
I had was my own.

Inheritance

Grandpa Charlie, my mother would tell me, used the earth
as his trash can. I can see them now on those long
trips to Michigan in the power-blue '69 chevelle,

rushing past the saturated plains of golden
leaves and sky-blue lakes to a dingy
vacation trailer and a swarm of

relations. Smoke rose like incense
in that car, creating a carcinogenic fog
to accompany their entrance. I can still

see Grandma Helen sitting on the porch,
surrounded by a cloud of white exhaust.
We breathed in the same smoky haze,

the distinct perfume clinging to our
clothes with each expiration. She had the same
attitude about our world as she did back then.

But its now my world.
How could our generation not see
the signs of a burdened inheritance,

the reckless spending and waste
of the years gone by, a consumer
culture raised in terms of economics

and exchanges, not in responsibility?
How can we abandon this place, our
birthright, to become a wasteland? -to turn

our eyes from the only home we have
been given? When land is laid on the operation
table while men tear open the veins of the earth for his own

benefits, we have lost all right to an
inheritance. We have sold it to our younger
brother, for the meager price of a quick

satisfying pleasure.

The [Bucket?] List

Dear Readers,
I'm feeling old this morning. Not old in the sense that my bones creak when I stand; old in the sense that I've lost something which can't be regained. Being home is hard: I have conflicting interests here. I want to be the mature, sensible young woman that I know I am in Santa Barbara. Yet, I find sometimes that I revert to the teenager that once lived here. It haunts me sometimes; my mannerisms come back, my attitude changes and I can't get over the fact that I should have homework. Instead of my life spreading out before me, I see the walls closing in around me.

So, in lieu of this feeling, I've decided to create a list. A list of things I want to do before I die. And yes, I know that's (hopefully) a long ways off, but I also know that time stops for no one and I don't want to look back on my life one day and have one more dying wish that will remain unfulfilled. This list has a few things already covered; they've been marked by an x.

One last disclaimer: this list isn't complete. These are just the things I've wanted to do up until this very moment. Some dreams may drop off the list and others be added; some will take lots of time and might go unfulfilled.

Let's hope not though.

-Write a novel and have it published
-Sponsor a world vision child continuously
-Write a book of poetry and have it published
-Get a higher degree of education than a Bachelors
-Fall in love (this one is optional)
x Be published
-Sing in an opera (also optional, because unlikely)
-Go to an opera
-Go on a sailing trip
-Take a backpacking trip
-Go to the British museum/Llouve
-Decorate a home
x Be in a band/be recorded
-Continue to sing after I graduate
-Be completely surprised
-Visit the cathedrals of Europe
-Live in another country (Italy!)
-Learn another language
-Live all on my own
-Have a pet that's not a beta-fish
-Mentor someone
-Be mentored
-Live differently

-Not let my life pass me by

That which comes upon us in sudden moments

-the instant realization that life is
fragile, the necessity of suffering and
joy in equilibrium - this is my study.

But I cannot focus. The light bursts into
the room where I wait, anxious at the prospect
of waiting for my mom to come out of the drug-
induced coma. Nothing stirs outside the

windows lining the waiting-room, the cars
even seem sullen for their tasks. The world
gasps. And yet my memory rifles through the
years, where moments become pages in

my memory, all that time wasted which stares me
in the face like an old crippled man.
The air shutters. And yet nothing
changes. Conversations bubble over the

room where we are all kept awaiting the
fate of a moment in time. Carmina Burana
marks my time spent here, creating a
musical limbo for my eyes. I close them.

And wait.

Poetry and God

Dear Readers,
It's hard writing to poetry with any religious tint. Yes, references and allusions are acceptable and even can enrich poetry, but any poetry written directly to God seems old and out-dated, or even just simply over-played. The songs on the Christian radio stations sound all alike (although I can't make much more of an argument for pop music; they just focus on a different subject). Christian poetry isn't any different. We have the whole book of Psalms; how could you beat that? Then there's the fact that every writer of Christian poetry wants to slip into using the dozens of cliches that have developed over time. For example: "struggle", "wrestle", "joy", "peace", and "speaking to me" are all words or phrases that I have heard a thousand times. They have become meaningless sayings that people rely on to get their point across. My problem with them is that they don't convey what I'm trying to say, but they're easy to use and Christians react to them because they are similar to what everyone else says. Maybe its the fact that these words unite the whole Christian culture is why they are so popular.

One conversation about poetry that has impacted me was with the director of the Phoenix this year. I was asking her about the kind of poetry submitted; she said that a lot of it was directed as praise toward God. That surprised me, although maybe it shouldn't have. A Christian school should have tons of students writing poetry to praise God. The problem was, they were relying on the phrases and cliches that every Christian uses to explain their life, situations, and faith.

So I've decided to make my Christian poetry decidedly different. It may not be good, technically or creatively, but its an attempt to break away from the formed rhetoric of faith and to forge a new path ahead into the pagan culture that surrounds us. I don't want to forget my Christian roots, but I don't want to make them blatantly obvious. I think that my poetry is trying to be a meditation on the words that God has given us instead of a song to God, which is comforting to me since I think that faith should be based on the mind and not on emotions. Which is definitely hard for me, since I'm a feeeeeler.

Purpose

Esther 4:14

White buildings burst from my spot
on the porch, covering the city in red
roofs and winter leaves. Peace surrounded
that place, where the Bible and hot tea

met like two long-lost siblings to convince
me to believe. Does everything happen for
a reason? If we hadn't been caught in this
fin-de-cycle of broken promises between the

faith of science and the matters of man, the
assurances of people who are only guessing,
maybe I could be convinced of certainty.
But I can not be. Thread is woven and becomes

unravelled, cycles of time turn in a widening
gyre. Hearing becomes hard. The written words
age over time, voices of the past become distant,
and still we wonder if there is a purpose to

all this madness.