Song of myself

I am now a Whitman addict. I started reading his poems for English class and now I can't stop. I am particularly partial to the shorter ones, though some longer poems ("Song of Myself" and "Whoever You are, Holding Me now in Hand") resonate within me as well. Actually, the second of those two is my favorite of all the Whitman I've read, and though it's too long to copy into my journal, I found it here. He's written far too much to read in a day, or even to comprehend in a week, so for now I'm just savoring the words I've found and letting them slide across my tongue like tiny grains of salt, so savory as to be sweet.

For now I've brought a small poem into my LJ, a little fragment of a great genius, and a sentiment that I echo so clearly that I can almost dance with the words:

JOY! shipmate - joy!
(Pleas'd to my Soul at death I cry;)
Our life is closed - our life begins;
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last - she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore;
Joy! shipmate - joy!

Current family dynamics: Forte

I hate it when Mom and Nick (my younger brother) fight. It's like they don't realize that the rest of us have to listen and don't want to hear what they scream at each other in blinding moments of passion that they'll invariably regret afterward. And I hate that I can see everything from a removed perspective - the fact that Nick is at least mildly depressed and therefore refusing to do his schoolwork, that Mom is going through a great deal of anxiety because of the house we just had to buy and the fact that I'm struggling to get along with my teachers, that Pop is not happy with our new status as somewhat less comfortable financially than we were before.

But what they don't see is that I'm perfectly happy. I don't need fancy clothes and cable television and the latest CDs. I'm in love with my life, and I wouldn't change one thing about it for fear that the change would skew it ever so slightly and send it off in a different direction. Somehow Mom and Pop get the impression that I'm dissatisfied with my school and my teachers, which leads them to believe I'm not having good experiences. What I try to explain is that I live in the middle of a city, so that even when school becomes too much for me, I just take mental health days and go to the Smithsonian. But they're too worried about Nick to believe me.

I'll just ride this one out like I've endured all the others: with a smile, a deaf ear, and a properly administered separation of the two antagonistic sides.