Firetruck sirens have been wailing all day. The wind is whipping something fierce. This isn’t the start of a fictional piece, just the state of things in Memphis today. I went for a walk that I cut short because it was so windy – blow your hat off your head and lift your shirt up to your shoulders type of gusts. I took my earbuds out to listen the wind howl between the buildings. Down by the river, the wind was strong enough that it looked like the river was flowing backwards and the sound of the waves was almost as loud as the dull roar of the ocean. On my way back I got nervous walking under the swaying traffic lights… what an absurd way to go – killed by falling traffic signal – was it green, yellow, or red at the time the wires snapped and the yellow metal knocked him down, crumpled like… hmmm, can’t come up with anything – I keep thinking of an aluminum can or those trick spring-loaded snakes that pop out of the fake can of nuts….
For the past three days, the weather has been unpredictable and the forecast always wrong. If it predicted rain in the morning and sun in the afternoon, it stayed cloudy all morning with downpours later. Just as I was writing a post about routine and not trying to plan everything out, nature added an exclamation point.
Both yesterday and today I spent a fair amount of time writing. This morning I worked on three new poems. I’m not sure if they go together under the title The COVID Cycle or not. Yesterday’s post, while not terribly long, took me the better part of the day to write. I had a small hiccup yesterday afternoon when, as I was getting ready to go for a run, a shelf in my kitchen collapsed. I didn’t see it, but I heard the slow motion action of one item fall, then another, then two or three, then everything. Oatmeal mixed with a little vanilla extract and cat water makes for a fun clean up and, I’m sure, a tasty treat.
As if that wasn’t annoying enough, while walking down to the river to go for a run, I could feel a tiny shard of glass stuck in my foot – not a big deal, but a sequence of unfortunate events that made me feel like maybe I should just refill my growler of beer and call it day (which I did after the run). I’m not dying to own a house again, but I had forgotten how cheaply put together most apartments are – and I’m not in a cheap place.
I suppose at some point, I need to figure out what I’m going to do with my life – or at least the next step. I have very little interest in going back to the status quo. For one thing, I’ve noticed a change in the way I think. I’m much more observant, but also more able to create details out of thin air. Spend enough time trying to create, and you start to describe things in your mind. I saw some blackbirds picking at insects and seeds on the side of a grassy hill and they seemed like peasant farmers working the terraced rice patties in the east. One of the undertakings that I started this morning will be an attempt to describe the sky every day…. I also thought about cheating and giving multiple descriptions (without waiting for tomorrow or the next day). As part of that effort, I read up on the different types of clouds. The tallest ones, the Cumulonimbus clouds, can be as high as 75,000 feet or 14 miles – that’s more than twice the size of Everest….. I got a little lost thinking about seeing a force of nature like that on the horizon. My current lifestyle, while not even remotely sustainable, has felt nothing short of transformative. I feel more observant and present in the world. I’m a little afraid I’ll lose that when I get back to an office type of job with deadlines and drama and every project being all-consumingly urgent.
For now, I’m just trying to take in as much of it in as I can. I’m trying to think deeply, write a good line or two, and, to use the title of that book I finished a week or so ago, let the great world spin.