The Darkness Lifts, Imagine

Alternative titles: school is kicking my ass, all my friends are punk rock guitar players, offseason life, the birds are singing

--

Packed powder in winter turns

to ice in the spring

mummontappokeli –

grandma-killing weather,

I’m told as we gingerly pick our way down the sidewalk

laugh so hard I slip

this season does not discriminate by age.

--

Mist lay thick in the trees

under glowing grey sky

I walk to school in this weather

March entwines October

ghosts of fall resurface in spring

and versions of myself from past

seasons come closer, I remember

iterated and reiterated

--

Woke up this morning to stiff muscles and popping joints

Yesterday at the skate park learning how to drop in

feet on board on lip of halfpipe Ose tells me

falling forward is infinitely better than falling backward

Take his hands, stomp down

jumbled limbs and board and twisting and air and

ground coming up behind me Ose towards me

a moment of oh god

infinite millisecond later

we look at each other from the ground

helplessly laughing board nowhere to be seen

collect ourselves, check for damage

impressed by my fearlessness Ose says

send without hesitation

but I think of my whitewater days adrenaline and consequences

I went big because I knew

wherever I was, whatever situation I was in

my friends would find me

and I would be okay

now in the skate park looking at the drop

Ose standing beside me

so absolute is my trust that being brave is easy

--

library(spdep)

fi.map <- st_read(file.choose()) ## D:\JYU\Statistical_Methods\Demo9\Kunnat_2013.shp

fi.nb <- poly2nb(fi.map)

fi.w <- nb2listw(fi.nb)

which(fi.map$Kunta_ni1 == " Jyväskylä ")

[1] 120

fi.map$Kunta_ni1[fi.w$neighbours[[120]]]

[1] "Petäjävesi" "Muurame"    "Laukaa"     "Uurainen"   "Jämsä"    

[6] "Toivakka"   "Joutsa"     "Luhanka"

--

To tell you is to become aware

and I will not risk losing

the way your eyes look when I ask you a question

--

Not a memory but a feeling

so acute and present I can recall the texture

of the seats of my car and

the angle of the afternoon sun in early spring

left turn at the corner of Brooks and Sussex

into different worlds I am split

a tree transplanted

cut me open and count each ring of me pressing

under my skin layers of nesting dolls

I am the same every year but a little bit different

more defined

dark mountains stark against the washed-out sky

white heatless sun across my face

I never left

always with me I don’t even have to

close my eyes one breath and

I am already home

** title borrowed from the poem The Undertaking by Louise Glück