Search the site...

MELISSA LEIGH GIBSON, PHD
  • Home
  • CV
  • The Present Tense
  • Teaching
  • Writing
  • Presentations
    • SS Curriculum Review
    • Big Questions, Big Issues
    • Getting Proximate
  • Home
  • CV
  • The Present Tense
  • Teaching
  • Writing
  • Presentations
    • SS Curriculum Review
    • Big Questions, Big Issues
    • Getting Proximate

the present tense

A collection of writing.
​
​​​​Part personal, part academic. ​
​Always a work in progress. 
​
Blog Home

Toulouse

10/13/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
At night the words come
effortlessly
long forgotten but now:
     Je suis
     Je vais
     Je peux
Though in the red brick streets by day
I am stumbling
over words and uneven pathways and dead-end mazes

​I am stumbling.
The basilica rises across a plaza
weathered bricks
hollowed at the corners
I circle the garden gate
looking for a photo
as if to prove
     Je suis
     Je peux
     Je vais
But the pictures are just
an unframed steeple
a horizon
a close-up of bricks
 
I am stumbling.
 
The door to the transept is open, inviting
Eleven hundred years of prayer
in these walls and these windows,
witnesses to a thousand years of whispered pleas
sent out to whatever is beyond
these cement columns, built over a millennia
curve into magnificence
I tilt my head and wonder
how something so heavy can rise up
so effortlessly
 
I want to touch these walls
I want to feel their rough texture
I want to run my fingers over their pockets and edges
But
they are roped off to me
Instead, I kneel
genuflection an instinct
as is the prayer that bubbles forth
hands at heart, more than the words I can muster
     Je peux
     Je suis
     Je vais
Three other people in pews, sitting in states of quietude
I imagine that
together
we are praying
remembering--
that we are more than of this earth
In these thousand-year-old bricks
we sit with eternity
and the universes unfolding within it
 
Later, in the boulangerie, I ask for a chocolatine
effortless
     S’il vous plait
     Merci
     Au revoir
effortless
But when I try to say more
the words are stuck in the sludge of who I was
who I am not now
who I have forgotten
 
I am stumbling.
 
Until I slip into sleep
and the words come back
     effortless
and I remember that I, too, am eternity
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    About 

    While living in Mexico, I joked that speaking Spanish forced me to be far more Zen about life: Since I could only speak in the present tense, I was forced to just live in that present tense.

    This blog began as regular travel emails when I was a naive undergrad exploring the globe, my meditations on wherever I was on that school break (or break from school). It has since grown into something more, a record of parenting, teaching, politicking, community-building, struggling, healing, exploring, growing, and laughing -- a record of my present tense.

    Archives

    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    June 2020
    June 2019
    May 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    June 2017
    November 2016
    August 2016
    May 2014
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    January 2010
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    June 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009
    October 2007
    August 2007
    August 2006
    July 2006
    June 2006
    August 2005
    July 2005
    December 2004
    September 2004
    July 2004
    July 2003
    March 2003

    Categories

    All
    Education
    Identity
    India
    Justice
    Learning
    Mexico
    Midwest
    News & Politics
    Parenthood
    Relationships
    Self Healing
    Self-healing
    Travelogues
    Wisconsin

    RSS Feed

    photos

    Like what you see? That's mostly Ross Freshwater. Check out my talented partner-in-life's photo gallery.

CONTACT

melissa.gibson [at] marquette.edu
office | 414.288.1421

Marquette University College of Education
Department of Educational Policy & Leadership
561 N 15th St | 113H Schroeder Complex

​Milwaukee, WI 53233
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Photos used under Creative Commons from tedeytan, Stig Nygaard, Matt From London, shixart1985, Ted Rabbitts