assorted thoughts – 12:13am

1. Poetry is no stand in for writing. “Writing has become so salient for you” Tannya said to me one night, and it’s true. Poetry is a quick fix, a compulsive act to remedy a dizzy spell. Writing is something deeper, a loosening of the knots after a long day of toil, and to write at all means to sit through the initial lipbloodying of finding the nerve cluster in the first place. It hurts, and it kinda sucks to start with. And then, catharsis.
2. Catharsis from what? I’m not sure. I feel a bit stagnant, but that is to be expected. The semester has ended for those of my friends who were in class, and yet I truck on with my co-op well into the summer. Which is fine by me: money is money, and my wages are wages. But I miss class. I miss brainstorming essays and lingering after class ends to talk to a professor. I miss the annoyance of knowing how much work I have left to do. I even miss late nights at the library working on papers I left til the last day. But everytime I miss those things I think about all that I have done in my free time: make new friends (beautiful friends), read, draw, exercise, cook thoughtfully, take time to myself. In the moments next semester when I’m running between classes, frantic, I will miss the peace of my windowside nook, and the calm of my kitchen with nowhere to hurry off to. The thought slows me down, and I appreciate this moment all the more.
3. We are all far stronger than we credit ourselves for. Don’t file bankruptcy until you see the receipts.
4. Even marauders like me can miss home. Badly, at that.
5. Note to self: there is a time and a place for ones pen to scrape paper. Another person’s mourning is not the time for that. To write means to empathize – writing without empathy is journalism, and bad journalism at that. Don’t be a bad journalist.
6. Speaking of bad journalism, do not use the word “impact.” No one uses the word impact, just like no one uses the word “stated” instead of “said.”
7. Northeastern really sucks sometimes. I’m not donating a cent to Northeastern, alma mater or no, until they fix how they treat their international students and less economically equipped students. I might come to blows with the administration about that very soon. Or at least write an open letter and make sure everyone sees it. We’ll see. But I won’t easily forget a panic attack in an administrative building, and I’ll make sure Northeastern doesn’t either.