Today has been full of tiny competitions for my attention. At times, I’ve told myself, “no more! If it’s not related to x, y, or z, I’m not going to give it my time.” – x, y, and z being goals like getting some poems published, or figuring out the meaning of life, or building deeper and more consistent relationships, etc. etc. And then I’d spend twenty minutes scrolling through Twitter watching cat videos.
Mid-morning seems to be about when it all goes to crap. I’ll spend a good bit of the morning eating, taking care of the dog, and then settling in to some reading and maybe writing. I’ll get jazzed about words, take down some notes, write a thing or two or three. But then I start to think about the rest of the day. The chores line up on the to-do list… little soldiers waiting to be dispatched with their orders. Groceries, laundry, exercise. I start to walk from room to room as if looking for something to do or where to start. I begin to think about what I’d like for lunch and if I need to get groceries to make that happen. Do I want to shower before going to the store, and if so, what do I do about working out – seems silly to shower twice, and I’m not ready to exercise just yet because it’s almost lunch, I’m kinda hungry, and I didn’t finish that thing I was writing but also need to get groceries…. This is when I start to pick up the phone or look in the fridge as if that’s where the answers are kept. I also start to think about what I should write here in this space.
Earlier in the week, I was writing about how much I dislike our economy. I had been prompted by a meme that showed Pam (from The Office) shrugging. The text read, “all I do is work and sleep and I never have any money and I’m always tired.” As I wrote, I was googling information related to housing costs and inflation and how the big banks recently cautioned against raising wages while also increasing their CEO pay by millions. Everywhere, we see inflation amidst record corporate profits – which points to greed. I wrote abut 1500 words on the subject. It’s document one of six open and in-progress documents. Document two is a letter I won’t send. Document three is a not very good poem about a simple, affectionate toast that’s an inside joke between two lovers.
Document four is a memory or poem or a thought experiment. I had been reading some pastoral poems by Jane Kenyon – a life of linens drying in the spring air and the quiet details of her country house. They made me think of the weekend I rented a small house in a secluded meadow off a rural road in Raphine, Virginia. I was meeting up with a new friend I had met while road-tripping through Tennessee. She lived in Knoxville, I was in Philly-ish – Raphine was about halfway between us. It was September and mosquito hot. The house was quaint and quiet the way a country house is. It had lots of nooks and crannies, shaker furniture and grandma quilts, and a weather-worn deck with firefly lights and rustic charm. We sat out back listening to music, drinking, talking, and looking at the pitch black night with pinhole stars. We stayed in touch for a little bit, but the friendship faded. Today I wrote some of the details down (document four), but couldn’t get to where I wanted to go with it. This is when I wish I were a better writer – a bit more daring and in tune with the human condition.
As pleasant as the memory is, I found myself wanting more from it…. either wishing I had that same or similar experience with someone else, or wanting to recreate it with someone new, or… I’m not quite sure what. I’m not looking to overwrite the memory, and I’m not looking to relive it as it was. I guess sometimes, I come across places and experiences that have a type of magic to them. That’s when I want to give it all away, to share every secret garden I’ve ever found. The shacks in Clarksdale, Christmas in New York, an artist cottage in the middle of nowhere Virginia, the art warehouse in Winston-Salem, the mosaic bar in St. Louis, the cliffs overlooking the beaches in San Diego, an orange grove overlooking Rome. Where I wanted to get with the poem was this strange feeling of guilt in keeping some of these experiences to myself or limiting them to the person I originally shared them with. It’s as if I’d like to do those things again, but worry they might not feel as special. Maybe this is wanderlust or maybe it’s the desire to slow down time. In most of the magical place and people moments, it’s as if there’s no noise and an intense emotional focus. I couldn’t tell you the songs we listened to or what we drank, but I know we heard the crickets in the field and I can remember the soft glow of dimmed porch lights. A better writer would be able to uncover those complexities.
Documents five and six are poems. One is a type of narrative, stream-of-consciousness poem about living in this borrowed space, this borrowed house. The other is about the restlessness of a my mid-morning Sunday – this floating down the hall like a half-deflated balloon long after the party is over – head height with it’s ribbon torso barely touching the ground. After the writing, the early focus and intensity waned. I never got around to exercising, or prepping poems to send to journals, or whatever y and z might have been. I briefly thought of cleaning out – purging some of my crap in the basement… boxes that haven’t been opened in over two years. There’s a pleasant and familiar ache that sits in the present moment between memory and ambition…. all movement implies a past and future – where we were and where we’re going, and the magical spaces have the feeling of being just right for where we are. I’ll close with lines from two different poems that might work well together (from “Thinking of Madame Bovary” and “Camp Evergreen” by Jane Kenyon):
Everyone longs for love’s tense joys and red delights.
… From the marshy cove
the bullfrog offers thoughts
on the proper limits of ambition.