Good morning, Baltimore!

Our ultimate team played at St. Mary's in southern Maryland this past weekend. My roommate Mike and I decided to stay on campus and fly by the seat of our pants. As we sat in an archway with our bags for the week, a few girls came up to us and offered us a place to stay. We decided to go for it.

I felt like I was dropped into a moment at Messiah College again. Our new friends treated us like old friends. We watched Hairspray and danced the salsa, I had my first shot of rum, went to a bar and danced with us, listened to Total Eclipse of the Heart in spanish with us, came to our ultimate games. People came in and out of their apartment whenever. They left it unlocked. They knew most everyone we walked past all weekend. One of them even helped out our girls' team, driving them around in the very earily a.m.

In short, there was community.

That word, community. That fucking word. At Messiah it was beaten into us. But now, at a place where there is little community, my weekend at St. Mary's made me realize, at long last, what I had been missing.

I miss walking into Ross's room, or Mohar and Phil's room, and bullshitting for a few hours. Or walking over to Dean and Devin's and discussing Amy Winehouse, or Ryan and Dan's room for some Madden (back when Michael Vick wasn't in prison yet). And I miss my new friends, and how sweet they were to us, complete strangers.

Most of all, I miss community.

Little boy blue and the man in the moon...

Here's the second poem I turned in. I didn't like it, because I thought it was like "Cat's in the Cradle," except a happy version. Which naturally defeats the whole purpose of Harry Chaplin's song. But my prof really liked it, and here it is either way.

Socks to the Sailor

We hear the screen door open
We sprint for the kitchen
“Daddy’s home!”
Socks slide on linoleum
And the thump of Dan hitting the floor
Scares the bejeezes out of the cat

The bright eyed man in a crisp uniform
Puts down his tattered lunchbox
Just before he gets hit by a kid
Then another, harder than the last,
And then Dan, making his recovery
Driving him, laughing, back into the mudroom

He tussles my hair
Knocking my glasses askew
And drops the hat of a captain
Onto Nelly’s head
Dan snatches it off and there is a scramble
And the sailor becomes a jungle gym

He reads to us for a while
And we are breathless in Narnia
Then laughing as Mr. Toad gets a motorcar
And when we see what’s through the looking glass
We, too, can’t help but to think
“Curiouser and curiouser.”

Now the sailor is weary through the door
And his mustache has flecks of gray
We have changed too
A long-haired hippie, a long-limbed guitar player
And a girl who wears her own uniform hat
But our socks still slip when we run to greet him

See you in a day or two, or maybe less.

Love,
Charlie

The consonants and vowels

Okay, so I started taking a poetry class. This was an off-the-cuff decision, and a good one. I am pretty mediorce, but I enjoy it a great deal. My professor reminds me of Helen Walker (for all you Messiah College fans out there), if Helen wore knee-high leather boots daily. She also really likes my poetry, although that could very well be a result of a class of primarily non-English majors.

At any rate, I'm putting all of them in here, whether I think they are brilliant, or brilliantly below average. This one was my first one.

(Untitled)

Nations in brilliant colours and sharp borders
Loudly stand in defiance
A too-blue English Channel splits
The stately red United Kingdom
And the pale yellow French Republic
As already out-of-date countries in Africa
Invent fresh lines and shades to be displayed
At a later date

Stars litter the land
A star for Moscow, a star for Helsinki
Stars for each of Beirut, Beijing, Buenos Aires
The same star dozens of times
With a different name with each appearance
Small spots spell out Strasbourg
Santorini
Seattle

A tug on the string
And the world whirs together
In an instant we are stacked
Pressed together
It is dark
Silent
At last
We have peace

Feel free to leave love or rip me a new one. If you hate it or love it, there's more to come. In fact, at least one more today.

Love to you all,
Charlie

This is bat country.

I am starting another blog. This is really getting out of hand. Just when I thought I was beyond my last one, I suddenly had to start again. Plus, everyone keeps telling me to write down my thoughts, write down my thoughts. So here are my thoughts.

I've changed a lot since my last blog, since fall of 2007. I went suicidal. I started taking antidepressants. I started drinking (only very rarely, and in a calm social setting), and have smoked once or twice. I started at another college, this one a huge university where there is no real shot of getting a sense of community. I think about things I never thought about before. I never cry. I read poetry, and just started writing some. I get frustrated with people for little to no reason. Sometimes I shut down for days. My sense of humor has broadened. I am more interested in meeting new people than ever, which is saying something.

I spend hours a day alone in my mind, listening to music or reading novels or reading histories or walking around. Maybe some of that will get in this thing.

I don't know what I want out of this blog. I'm not going to try to be really artsy or really funny or really much of anything. I'm going to write for me, and some days I will want to be witty (here's looking at you, Wit has truth in it), sometimes it will be dark, sometimes just about my day. Mostly it will be about nothing, and everything, because that's what I think about.

Cheers, friends,
Charlie