Feeling Sentimental

I was going through some old photos today, and I found some primo, hilarious ones of me and my friend Mark. I wish that my scanner was working, but alas, it is not cooperating. So that you can put a face to the name, here's a picture that I *do* have of Mark and our friend Megan at my wedding.



Instead of silly photos, let's walk down memory lane together instead.

Mark and I became tight pretty much the instant that we met. I was a senior in high school when he was a freshman. He was dragged by a gaggle of girls to the "Swing Club," which I happened to be the president of (NERD ALERT!). We *were* in the height of the swing revival. Remember the Gap Khaki Ad?



I wasn't sold on Gap's khaki's, but man I was sold on swing dancing!

But, I digress...

So, me being the president of the swing club, and Mark being one of the only boys, (certainly the best-looking, least smelly and lightest on his feet), he became my dance partner by default, and soon enough a very good friend. We had a much in common, including a mutual obsession with a certain poet named e.e. cummings.

Oh e.e. cummings...Mark and I spent many an afternoon sitting on the stone wheel between the main building of St. Thomas Aquinas High School and Notre Dame Hall reading e.e. cummings aloud to each other, and analyzing it to bits! We would bust into giggle fits at the less weighty words in e.e.'s poems, "flatulence" being one of the ones that comes to mind. Seriously! How can you read "flatulence" out loud in the context of a poem and not die with laughter?!

Tonight, I went to my bookshelf after flipping through my pictures and picked up my much dog-eared copy of 100 Selected Poems by e.e. cummings with "Sarah Duclos" written in silver ink on the top right hand corner of the front cover. I opened it, read, and remembered back to a time in my life where every trivial matter was "major" and so steeped in seriousness, and yet, so fun.

Here's one of my all time faves:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
( touching skillfully, mysteriously ) her first rose

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Ten years later, I barely had to refer to my book to type that out!

Tomorrow's a big day at work. Time to get some rest for a big day, goodnight!