A Visit to an Introduction

A few years back, when I first began this blog, I was an unmarried woman (not even an engaged woman) with large ideas and vast ideals. I took myself a little too seriously sometimes, but I was also pretty silly. None of that has really changed. The adventure of marriage has only added to my unstable sense of... being grounded. I'm definitely not that.

The other thing that has not changed is this: the initial purpose of this blog was to share discoveries--or losses. Because it's called The Other Sock. We all know that sock--the sock without a partner, alone in a basket on the shelf in the laundry room, waiting for its mate who has supposedly gone into the dryer and never returned. There is something desperately tragic about a lonely sock and yet pathetically hopeful because you know, you KNOW, that the missing sock has to be somewhere. It can't just disappear. Growing up, those lonely socks actually were kept in a basket on a shelf in the laundry room, because my mother hoped to someday find their mates. Sometimes she did. Most often she didn't.

But imagine, what joy! at finding that misplaced sock. Especially if it's a special sock. (More about my relationship with my mother: she likes to send me seasonal socks.) How sad I am when I lose a sock with Christmas reindeer, or candy corn embroidery, or cute Easter ducklings. And how overjoyed when the long lost partner appears within the cottony depths of a folded bed sheet or a pair of pants.

Maybe it shouldn't be such a big deal. It's just a sock, right? You have lots of other socks. You can just go to the store and buy more. But it's not just about the possession of socks. It's the mystery of the loss, the hollow sense that something is missing and you don't even know how it could have happened. And then you find it, but you don't know how that happened either. The loss is a mystery, but discovery is like redemption.

The Other Sock has always been about the things you lose, and the things you find.

This last month as we celebrated National Poetry Month, with poems in abundance, I lost things and found things. I slowly lost pieces of myself. Other poets would probably agree with that. When you sit down to write a poem, you take out little fragments of your soul and insert them in different puzzles on the paper. They make a pretty picture, but until someone else sees them, they're still yours. You hold your own soul in your hands and you know it is safe, you know that nobody can judge it or steal it. Sharing those pieces on a public place like a blog--even if there aren't a lot of people who read it--is a little bit like losing part of yourself. It's out there now, out in the vast space of the Internet. It's there to be judged or stolen or misread, because people often misread poetry. It's just sitting there, waiting to be misunderstood.

But with that loss, that sacrifice, something else is found: new pieces of yourself. Before, they remained within. All the poems I wrote last month used to be dormant, they used to be just fragments of emotion and feeling and deep thoughts. Now they are substantial. Now they are fully formed and whole. And, they are out in the world, about to cause someone else to feel something, someone else to find something within themselves that might turn into another feeling, another thought, another poem.

With that said, I am going to take a vacation from my blog. Not for long. Maybe a week or so. Graduation is on the 11th and with it come many goodbyes and farewells. I want to focus on being present with my friends and fellow students during these final days of college. I want to finish strong, without wondering what I will have to say to the Internet. The Internet doesn't care, anyways.

So I will see you later. I'm sure I will find something wonderful to write about before I come back.