Today I was going to go to an open studio event (local artists opening up their studios to the public), but I feel a sickness coming on. It’s that scratchy nasal feeling. I feel like I’ve gotten sick more often in my year-and-a-half out here in San Francisco than I have in other places and other times of my life. There’s a certain logic to it, I suppose. I’m out around people far more often than I used to be: buses, trains, bars, block parties, restaurants, concerts.
I’m using the opportunity (the less than feeling 100% opportunity) to have a nothing day. In the morning, I read and wrote. I went to the farmers’ market. I’m spending the afternoon mothering a bolognese in half-hour and hour increments – layering flavors on flavors. I’ll shuffle the music library – and at a socially appropriate time have some good wine, good cheese, good bread. When it’s all done, I might walk to the water to see the sailboats and what’s left of the setting sun.
Without really trying or being intentional about it, I’ve written twenty new poems in the month of April – close to a dozen of them in the last two or three days. Poems with cookies in them, and poems with Cara Cara oranges, and poems that mention the garage where my grandfather restored old race cars, and poems about my grocery list of minor desires. Most of the poems won’t survive into adulthood, but I’m pleased with the output. whatever I’ve done to incubate them, whatever momentum I’ve established, I hope to continue, or at the very least bottle / remember this recipe for later.
Because of the writing, I’m noticing more things: gulls that cry like car alarms in the early dawn, the dents warping the rusty backstop at the ball field, a flashcard on the ground that says earthworm with a cartoon picture of an earthworm on it. Because I’m noticing more things, I’m writing more things down. It’s nice to have this sense of flow, this sense of presence. The hard part will be in the editing, and maybe submitting, of poems. But that can come later, or not at all. Now if only I could avoid this cold.