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I'm Major Jackson and discuss is the great difficulty of emoting,

which is why we have poetry.

Your local bookstore's poetry section is full of field guides to feeling.

Some cultural heritage is forbid tears.

Some prefer to keep calm and carry on. Some people mirror the modes they were

raised in. Others turn 180 degrees. In my household, passions ran high. I'm talking full throttle.

And so I subscribe to the school of restraint. Learning to emote might be more difficult than learning to walk. At one point, we were all

apprentices at that too, but then learn to run.

If only we had stood out of our crawl and learned to express ourselves with as much assurance

and clarity. Not everyone gets close to their feelings through reading. Some shirk at turning to

poetry for lessons on how, say, to grieve a friend's death. But reading poems or stories is like a map to a

refined emotional landscape. Reading is like wandering through our dreams where the details blur once we awaken,

yet we are still changed throughout our day.

Sometimes we want to be lost, but what is to be gained when we find where we're going,

when we see what our subconscious is are processing.

Today's poem suggests the benefit and challenge of consuming literature is that we thaw into our nourished lives where existence is sometimes hazy.

Theories of influence by Anseum Berrigan.

I do not know how I got through the first day after the storm, but recall that during the night doubting what I had seen with my own eyes, I walked once more through the park.

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