What I Did on My Vacation

So I was gone for nine days.  Nine days away from home, from my job, from my schoolwork.  Nine days of heaven, three states away.

And because I've been on the subject of fairy-tales lately, I wanted to discuss a motif that pops up from time to time in some fairy-tales, and more modern, realistic work that is inspired by them.  You see, one thing that comes up is the notion of "hiding one's heart" (sometimes one's soul, but usually the heart.  I suppose hearts, technically tangible, are easier to hide).  Sometimes the heart is hidden in a place you don't expect, like in a person's heel instead of his chest, or in a dusty trunk somewhere in a forgotten attic of a crumbling house.  Occasionally, it is broken into several pieces, and hidden all over...making the owner, of course, harder to kill.

Of course, it is usually the monsters, the villains that hide their hearts.  They are the ones that need to fear death, aren't they?  However, while I do not consider myself any kind of monster (except maybe Animal from The Muppets because he's pretty rad), I have split my heart in twain, as some dippy poet would say, and I have hidden half of it in my heaven that is three states away.  While it does hurt to be missing half my heart, the guardian to whom I entrusted it is very careful--in fact, he is more careful with my own heart than I am--and so I am invincible.

And yet more writing.

I've been writing a lot more recently than usual.  I always write a bit, but these past couple of weeks have been a deluge.  Most of my work will probably never make it here, just my favorites.  But I wrote something that managed to touch my own heart deeply.  It's yet another villanelle, but I may love it best of all the ones I've written.


I await your favors, still dreaming of your face
If darkness overwhelms me, still that memory is mine
Maybe love is best where it is not commonplace.

I walk my past uncertainly, all my steps retraced
Through triumph and tragedy, every rise and each decline
While I await your favors, still dreaming of your face.

What came before was easy and at frenetic pace
But this is slower and not looked-for, and for all that much more fine
Maybe love is best where it is not commonplace.

What I have is little, laden with dishonor and disgrace
But in your dedicated fire inferior tempers to refined
So I'll await your favors, still dreaming of your face.

Now the scribing's almost done, vows that cannot be erased
I anticipate the seamlessness, the joy of being aligned
Maybe love is best where it is not commonplace.

No one prepared me for you, but now I've joined in the chase
To hunt and moon for something that's approaching the divine
I await your favors, still dreaming of your face
Maybe love is best where it is not commonplace.