Dear Oscar,

I don't have time to put all of my important thoughts down here for you. But I never did. Ideas are like the strawberries my sister grows in her garden. Waiting to write them down is like mashing them down and letting them dehydrate into something more concentrated like fruit leather. Ideas are like strawberries down to a T. What we eat changes their potency. I've had store bought strawberries that were mass produced in great big industrial farms, drenched in fertilizer, poisoned with pesticides and herbicides. They came from Genetically Modified seeds, like the ideas that come when people watch too much television. But the best ideas I have are like strawberries from heirloom seeds, picked on a sunny day, and popped straight into the mouth like a stream of conscience. Interesting, quirky, unusual ideas all gel together on a long cookie sheet, in the heat of a May or June day, on the dashboard of a warm car. When strawberries are melded together in long leathery strips, they don't have to make sense, or mix together in a way that is predictable. The uniqueness binds them like a well seasoned thought; the imperfections that get stuck in your teeth are intricately linked to the perfections that lure you to eat more. Together these traits represent the concept of wabi sabi. Take some now and save the rest for later. Proportion it out like a ration to sustain you through the winter. Your yums will be mmms. Your mmms will be om's. Lick your lips. Smack your chops. Do what you need to express the exuberance of a wonderful strawberried idea.

Keep in touch, Maggie

Anna et all,

Hehe!

I found a book in which I used to write all these letters to Oscar, my imaginary friend.

Good for keeping track of things like Odyssey of the Mind teams, passed animals, and misspelling over space and time.

I am a Flighter!

I'm coming to terms with the reason I dropped out of school so many times and continue up until last week to hop between my grown city and my home town. I flee situations because I cycle through emotions and phases of energy and sometimes I need to decompress and other times I need my mother's TLC or the presence of pets, Tobin the dog and Pickle the cat.

I am a Flighter!

Back in Berea I was accumulating concerns about my living situation and my budget, about my lifestyle and my self perceived laziness.
Things weren't exactly as I envisioned they might be or how I'd planned. And work was piling up all over the place while my low energy turned congestion and a cold. So I flew.

I am a Flighter.

And believe this is not a flaw. It is a personality trait. Not good. Not bad. Or only as good or bad as I make it. I constantly am remodeling myself, my person. Reconstructing my way, the Way of Maggie. So while I do not blame myself, I am considering that I need to give people warnings, because my dear friends and allies all have special needs like me.

It is neat that my (cousin aged) nephew, Jeremiah, is here while I process at my mother's house after graduating from Berea College. Last night he was reflecting about the past, when he and I went to the same Tennessee High School for his senior year, when I was a freshman. Yesterday he was talking about more moments from the past, as he often does with me: he said I was a wild child. Maybe he meant I was a "hand full" but maybe a crazy child or a bad egg. I rarely think about my past lately but I did for the entire year after high school.

My favorite high school teacher told me college students have the great ability of recreating themselves when they move to a new school or a new town. That was one of the many interesting things she said that I remembered. Today, hanging out the clothes, I was glad for these thoughts because they launched me out of my current mantra: how can I make it work in Berea?

I began thinking the following. I am not the person who people think I am. I understand the desire for people to want to recreate themselves but I think more accurately it is a constant explaining. A book I am writing to explain who I am. As I say in my Facebook profile info, I create myself on Facebook. That is why writing is such a great thing. But my friends know who I am better than my family. This is probably a trend that lots of people have experienced. Still, I feel the need for family so deeply.

As an important side note, I am invested in my Berea Community. Melanie and her daughter Inanna, Brad, Brianna, Elizabeth Vega, Jamie Brown, the Berea Quakers, my house mate Hans, Libby, Roger, other professors and staff I keep in touch with, the people at the local health food store, the coffee shops, willie, Bethany, so many other people are a huge part of my Berea Community and my Berea Community is so central to why I want to live in Berea. Plus I still have hope that some of my graduate friends come back and be townies!

Back to speaking of the past though, because of my mental health and insecurities, it took me a long time to launch from my childhood home. In my Emory and Henry years, I wanted to be able to live with my Mom and grow up so to speak into a person of integrity at the same time. I did the best I could do, but it was hard for me to live in a house where the light from my computer (when I typed past midnight) woke up Mom or household disagreements were tempered by the weight of the players being family. I think people should live with family and can happily and I was very happy for a very long time. I need to try this now though.

But the depth of this essay has not been written yet. I am trying to say something that I don't think I have ever articulated and it is hard for me. Here goes. I was saying I am not the person people think I am. I am not. Sometimes that bothers me. Other times I realize that no one person is honored as the deep person that they are. Another way to say that is we all pass by each other. There are so many people in our lives. There was a bubbly woman at the Bristol farmers market this morning, for example, but maybe she is a truly deep soul. Nobody knows me; nobody knows you; nobody knows anyone and we don't talk about it.

We make ourselves. We make ourselves on and off of facebook. It is flattery, like Adam Bailey, Mary Bruce Mounts, and Ahmad Shujah on my recent hilarious wall posts. It also is recognition of love and truth like Adam and Mary and Ahmad in those same comments. We love you. That is what interactions should say. We love you and honor you and recognize who you are and what you want to be and that you are what you want to be.

Elizabeth Vega is an activist, meaning an actor, a doer, a woman who gets things rolling, who could do so many different things, who acknowledges and works on her weaknesses, and who has opted to work with the population of dying people for many reasons and because they are the most overlooked group of people in the world. I love you, Elizabeth.

I could go on and on speaking out to the love I have for people in Berea in Bristol in Abingdon in Asheville. The ABC's of loving shout outs. But so many Victorian people - not only my mother - would call this nonliterary, awkward, uncool. On the other hand, my free loving Lauren would eat it up like Pecan Pie in Georgia.

As people say, writers often look better in text than in person. That suits me.

The processing process is a works in process. Life flows on.

So is my illustration on the 4th or 5th grade level?

Another old poem with a sketch.

I wrote this a few years ago and it was published in Blue Fifth Review. But I am going back and trying my hand at illustrating as many of my poems as I can.

Does the person look like a teenager play acting as a swamp monster?
Suggestions? Questions? Comments?

Anticipation is my worst way of being.
I plant impatiens in the ground.