It’s Sunday morning slow and I like that. Down the street someone is using a leaf blower. On the sofa opposite me, the dog is breathing heavy but not quite snoring. I’m sitting by a lamp, wearing a gray winter hat that was given to me as a gift a few years ago. I’m fighting the urge to get things done (dishes, laundry, vacuum, groceries, exercise). I think tonight I’ll slow-cook a bolognese. For the past two hours I’ve been reading and writing – mostly poems or snippets of thoughts that I’ve tried to express a dozen times before. I’m getting up from the reading and writing more frequently. I suspect my mind is looking for other distractions, maybe something physical, or maybe it’s just the reality of the day pressing in. The reading sometimes brings clarity – suggests ways to use words that are far better than my own. Last night I came across a quote that I’ve been mulling over.
I recently read an article in Esquire magazine called ‘The End of Sex,’ that said something that struck me as very true. It said: “If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.” What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories — and in a way, that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over. You can’t do that with a longtime mate because he knows all that old material. With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love. It’s hard work, though, and a lot of people run at the first sign of trouble. You’re with this person, and suddenly you look like an asshole to them or they look like an asshole to you — it’s unpleasant, but if you can get through it you get closer and you learn a way of loving that’s different from the neurotic love enshrined in movies. It’s warmer and has more padding to it.
-Joni Mitchell
I like that. I like being challenged with the idea that many people are simply falling in love with themselves over and over again, but that if we strive for something deeper – it might be warmer and have more padding to it. This morning I read a byline of a poet who wrote, “I write in order to remember and love.” I like that too. From a different poem, I copied down the lines: “in his back pocket–black & white photos / of pedigreed squabs he’d fallen for, folded // for a later that never came: the careful study we do / with things that refuse to become ours.” And from another poem, “going nowhere / strenuously” The other day I borrowed from a psychology article, “pulling toward and pushing away are each a form of clinging” and in terms of sound, I’ve been obsessed with the cadence of a line from the song “Waiting Around to Die”: “I came of age and found a girl in a Tuscaloosa bar.” I like the way Tuscaloosa rolls off the tongue.
I’m trying to weave all of these things together. Right now, it’s just a word doc with some disjointed paragraphs. I keeping picking up my phone and checking it for no reason. I should have left it in the other room. This is my mind’s way of saying ummm, or filling in the awkward silences, or looking for an external stimulation because either it can’t provide it’s own or it’s grown accustomed to having every void filled. The dog has moved to floor beside my feet. He’s looking up at me wanting attention and I suppose I should get on with the day…. but for a brief while, this was exactly how I wanted to spend my morning: slow and lazy and deep in thought – and I like that.