"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?"

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? (Mary Oliver)

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?
   
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
   
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!
   
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
   
   
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
   
   
Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.
   
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
   
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
   
   
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
   
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
   
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night
   
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
  
    
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
   
While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
  
   
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
   
I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
   
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
   
   
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
   

   
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
   
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
   
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
   
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
   
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets, and I definitely feel that, with about 65 days left of my exchange (9 weeks?!) I am experiencing Spain to the fullest. My friend Marianne (AFSer in Logrono from Norway) came and visited me for a few days, I finally got around to going to El Rastro (biggest open-air market in western Europe), and every day I feel like I am better able to speak Spanish (okay, still haven't gotten the hang of subjunctive, but at least I recognize it and think about it sometimes). Tomorrow, I'll leave for Burgos with my host mom and brother and spend a few days there, and then Sunday I'll take a bus to Logrono to visit Marianne. And May 1st I'm getting on a train from Logrono to...Barcelona!! I'll stay there until 10 PM on May 6th with my friend Robert, and then take a night train all the way back to Madrid, arriving in the morning. AND that very same day I'm going to one of the Master Series Tennis Matches in Caja Magica with my school (if I don't collapse from exhaustion).




Now on to some serious stuff: the journal I've been keeping throughout my time in Spain was started 65 days before my departure, and I'm feeling weird about it being only that small amount of time before I'm back home. My exchange experience so far has been NOTHING like I ever expected; it's been fantastic, as well as extremely challenging. It has taught me many things about myself as well as about others, mostly I ask myself: how do you want to be living your life? How are other people living theirs? I am surrounded by so many people every day, in the train and at school, and I wonder to myself: are they happy? Are they doing what they love? Or are they "breathing just a little, and calling it a life"?

Of course, I don't have any say on how other people are living their lives, and I try to never pass judgements. However, thinking about these things causes me to question my own habits and motives, it causes me to take into serious consideration my thoughts, hopes, fears. What I have realized more than anything is just how capable we are of making changes in our lives: if you want to change something, change it. If thoughts or habits are making you unhappy, change them. There is literally nothing stopping you from taking a good long look at your life and turning it completely around. People have more power over their lives than they like to think, and it is when we start believing that we have lost this power to change and become that we become malcontent.

I'm not saying everyone needs to change, or even that all changes are possible, because there are indeed some things that fall outside our circle of control. I'm not saying it's easy to change, or simple; I am simply reminding people that it can be done. It is a misconception that change belongs solely to the Youth. I guess what I'm trying to say to everyone reading this is: you are capable. You are powerful.

Branching off these questions of self, I begin to question our societies and how they function. Here, it is easy to feel powerless, especially in terms of education reform, third-world conflicts, world hunger and corrupt government. I try and read the news every day, and I am constantly wondering how so many terrible things can happen; why are we incapable of changing? I am a firm believer that people are fundamentally good, and yet it seems that there are so many people who lose sight of compassion. Sometimes I feel as though trying to better the world is a fruitless endeavor.

And yet, I still believe in it. Why? Because as individuals we are powerful within ourselves, and therefore when we are united we are also powerful. And I have met so many people who are not only powerful, but intelligent, informed, and eager for change. The problem, like when we are struggling with ourselves, is in believing that we are capable; believing that we are capable both on our own and working with our peers to create good, to educate and enable, to spread peace and to, ultimately, change the world. If you believed you could in grade school, why not now?

By saying these things I do not expect people to run to the streets and start protesting, these are just things that have been on my mind a lot recently. I do however, believe that people are a lot more capable than they believe;  and so lately when I find myself complaining ("The train ride is so long!" "Our education system is so screwed!") I then tell myself: you are capable of change, you are capable of changing your attitude and your actions. With a lot of hard work and a dream, you are capable of changing the world.