Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools

moved in there was a death in the landlord’s family and a several-day-long
funeral was being held in the front yard. We’d step out onto the balcony
and hear the women keening below us, decrepit buses trundling past on one
of the only paved roads in the city, and the squabbling of shirtless children
from around the corner.
That was part of the reason that moving back to the United States was
so difficult for me. I could not believe the smug indifference of the people
around me. It felt unnatural to walk into a sterile supermarket because no
disease-carrying insects swarmed around the produce. I tried not to breathe
when I crossed the road because I was used to inhaling sand if I did, and I
hated that there was nothing to worry about but gas fumes. There is always
that something that reminds me how forgetful we as humans are, and how
uncaring. After a couple of years back in the U.S. I find myself lapsing into
that complacency, and I have to remind myself to care about the things that
happen around me, whether or not I can do something about it, whether or
not it affects me. I like to think that that is the reason that the human race is
dominant in the world – not because we were smarter, or fitter, or stronger
—because we knew how to care for each other. Ignoring those who suffer—
worse, blaming the poor, the illiterate, the immigrant, for their problems—is
so offensive, yet so easy in the typical American life of ease and privilege
(and believe me, the poorest of Americans is highly privileged compared to
the Sudanese). I refuse to believe that we can so easily forget to love and
protect the people around us.
AI; Why is writing special to you? What do you get from writing poetry and non-fiction?
ELP: I was five years old when I got my first cello. It was an eighth size,
barely bigger than a viola. I played for nearly ten years, every year improving
and beginning to put more of myself into it. I found that when I was upset,
I could play a slow, mellow song on my cello and restore peace and order
to my world. I was in fourth grade when I complemented my music with a
second art. My teacher told me I could write, so I did. I wrote all the time.
Now I can find that same peace by writing a melancholy poem or a sad
scene in whatever narrative I’m currently focusing on. Of course, I was a
storyteller even before I was a writer – with myself as my only audience.
As long as I can remember, I’ve told myself the story of my life in my head
while it happened. I’d make myself a peanut butter sandwich, and through
my head would come the narrative: “Emma Lucy made herself a peanut
butter sandwich, with just a little too much peanut butter because she likes
it that way.” Writing lets me take my emotions and those thoughts and
express them so that I can learn to understand what I’m trying to say. In the
end, I suppose it’s little more than basic instinct: a survival technique on a
raw, caveman level, a level that insists I recognize what my being tries to
express, When my stomach snarls at me, I eat. When my throat scratches
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