About

Thank you so much for stopping by! I’ve been on a little jaunt to create a new space where I can post some thoughts, and Powerfully Quiet is it. I aim to post twice a week.

Who am I? I’m Laurin, enchanted by both small beauties and the world at large. More than anything else, Jesus, literature, human beings, and wanderlust have marked me. My stomping grounds have been the East Coast of the United States, then the Midwest, and now Thailand where I teach English to secondary students. Running, yoga, and stereotypical “foodie” food make me feel most alive from day to day; but, then again, elephants, pumpkins, and autumn do the same. I am mama to a pet hedgehog named Nora and to a kitten named Agnes. Little makes me happier than Doritos, mangoes, and Indian dinners. (Stringing together completely unrelated clauses is pretty cool too.) I love words like “rust” and “enjambed.” I have been told that I am fierce in my joy.

I expect Powerfully Quiet to be a hodgepodge of thoughts, at least for now, for my life is a hodgepodge of transformative moments. Most often literature, whether that be the classics, the little-known publications, or other blogs, acts as the transformer. It is not surprising, then, that the title of this blog comes from Jack Gilbert’s poem “The Butternut Tree at Fort Juniper”:

I called the tree a butternut (which I don’t think
it is) so I could talk about how different
the trees are around me here in the rain.
It reminds me how mutable language is. Keats
would leave blank places in his drafts to hold on
to his passion, spaces for the right words to come.
We use them sideways. The way we automatically
add bits of shape to hold on to

the dissolving dreams.
So many of the words are for meanwhile. We say,
“I love you” while we search for language
that can be heard. Which allows us to talk
about how the aspens over there tremble
in the smallest shower, while the tree over by
the window here gathers the raindrops and lets them
go in bunches. The way my heart carols sometimes,
and other times yearns. Sometimes it is quiet
and other times it is powerfully quiet.

Let that sweet truth make a quiet racket in your thoughts as you go about your day. It sure will in mine. And sometimes, in the days to come, it will overflow into words.