somewhere i have never travelled

I was looking through some old videos and photos today (as that seemed like a decent Sunday activity for me to do), and I came across a photography slideshow I made for an art exhibit in college. I thought I would share it again just because I really love it (but please excuse the extremely crappy quality - blogger really downsized it for me). The pictures are pieced together by words from e.e. cummings' "somewhere i have never travelled." I forgot how beautiful that poem is to me, and how goose-bumpy it makes me. And the music and photos are lovely, too.  

I think of the boy in my belly:

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility...

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

For the whole poem, look here.

(See Collette, I like him too!)

Oh Life! Can you blame me for making a scene?

Personal 
Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal—
the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,
the wet hair of women in the rain—
And I cursed what hurt me and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father, with its deafness and its laws,
and the weather reminded me of my mom, with her tropical squalls.
Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk
Get over it, they said at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t believe in the clean break;
I believe in the compound fracture served with a sauce of dirty regret,
I believe in saying it all and taking it all back
and saying it again for good measure while the air fills up with I’m Sorries
like wheeling birds and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me for making a scene? 
You were that yellow caboose, the moon disappearing over a ridge of cloud.
I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking: trying to convince everything else to take it personal too.

-Tony Hoagland