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To You

I haven't been posting as much on this blog as of late because life and school have caught up with me--as in, I've been on the sidelines pondering both life and school, otherwise not doing much at all in my attempt to make sense of leaving Paris in less than a month.

Just as this time last year leaving for Paris seemed like a vast unknown abyss, coming back home after a year of staking temporary claim in Europe seems so much more infinitely terrifying but in a different way. Perhaps I'll write a reflective post(s?) on all that I have seen and learn here for a different time, but I stumbled upon a poem by Walt Whitman yesterday that has been making me think of friendships both good and bad, the ones that have stayed and the ones that have faded away. A poem that I otherwise would have taken years to find (when would I pick up a book of poetry and read it for what it is?)--or never would have found at all--one stanza of it was posted by someone I follow on tumblr (currently my favorite function of tumblr is kind of scrolling through in this half tuned-in half checked-out manner, culling material by liking things and then re-discovering it weeks or months later--a great informal way to be better tuned in to one's tastes, and even, I dare-say, one's psychology. But more on that later).

"To You", a part of the Whitman's anthology Leaves of Grass, is the third poem in the chapter/book "Birds of Passage."

The second stanza:


Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
  I whisper with my lips close to your ear.
  I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

My first reading of the poem was colored I think by a strong personal narrative of romance--I had completely disregarded the first word "Whoever" and instead focused right in on the part after this subordinate clause (read: the rest of the stanza). It spoke to me so poignantly of this feeling--however based in reality or not--of painful longing, of wanting to express love or passion in a way that bursts at the seams. But then when I read it again, I felt a little embarrassed that I had disregarded what Whitman was really saying--something universal, all-encompassing. Now I read it as "Whoever you are..."as in, it does not matter who you are--stranger, acquaintance, friend, lover-- I give you all this love, in a celebration of human life.

And again, in the infinite interpretations one could have of this one short stanza of this poem, I can turn back to a more personal reading pertaining to one person and his or her many selves ("Whoever you are"--whatever self you choose to be in this moment, or in this particular part of your life). And it is in this last analysis that I think of the the evolutions of friendship, how there is both beauty and difficulty in sticking with friends during certain periods of growth and change. The two sides of the coin: friends with whom I can share anything and everything--my deepest fears and the worst parts of myself; alternatively, those friends with whom after years of trying and trying and seeking and seeking, you (as in I) realize that there are fundamental differences so large perhaps I would be better off not trying and seeking anymore.

Every year, despite the fact that I don't reflect on it in a more chronological and organized way, I learn more about myself, the person I want to be, the people I want to surround myself with. Life never offers finalities (only Death can do that). But it's hard, still, to not want certain finalities as to what is good or bad, that is to say what is worth holding onto in life and what is better off being let go. There are so many people in this world who I want to "be my poem" but at the same time forces or structures outside of my control--social, economic, political--seem to prohibit that.

It is a paradox of open and closed.

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Read the rest of the poem here.