Yesterday was President’s Day. The office was closed. It was overcast and cold, but uneventful. Following along on Twitter, the news out of Memphis, where I used to live, was all about the ice and snow that was crippling the city. They’re not set up for winter weather. I think the city has a total of 8 plow trucks – it’ll be a while before things open back up. Aside from a coating of ice, we seem to have been spared from the storm. I stayed in anyway…. there was no reason to go out. I intentionally set some mental boundaries and limited my work time and thinking so that I could try to get back in the habit of writing. It was slow going – both in the settling in and the actual act. It was also effective. Not only did I feel like I restored some balance, I felt like I cleared out some of the cobwebs. In doing so, I was able to work on a small fictional scene last night. I have no plans for the scene or for a larger piece, but was just happy for the practice.
I hadn’t written much more than a few paragraphs of the scene when my dad called. He’s having trouble with his kindle and wanted to know if resetting his computer might fix the problem. I told him it wouldn’t. To me, it sounds like his device is no longer associated with his Amazon account. I tried to walk him through some steps in Amazon – though I can’t imagine I was saying anything Amazon support hadn’t already tried.
As I moused and clicked through my own account, I saw that I never disassociated the “family” account shared with my ex-fiancee. I suppose on some level I knew this and had forgotten about it. Outside of my small digital library (I still prefer actual books) we weren’t sharing any payments, orders, or content. I clicked on the little blue “remove” link under her name. A warning popped up – I would not be able to add a household member or join a household for 180 days. I think it said 180 days – which feels like a really long time – feels like I’m being sentenced to a Siberian solitude for the next 180 days…. but what if I decide I want to share my stuff before then? I’m now in Amazon family sharing jail. It all felt drastic – remove from family. I clicked the confirm button. It immediately sent an email from Amazon Household Notification. “You or B left your Amazon Household and now are no longer sharing amazon benefits with each other…” No benefits…. While it’s perfectly reasonable (and expected) that such an email would go out – I was still somewhat caught off guard by the idea that she just received a similar email. I remember when we decided to share – the plan was to merge accounts whenever one of our renewals was up… just one of the innumerable little ways people tangle and untangle their lives (a drawer, leaving a toothbrush, a key, shared Netflix and Prime accounts).
The scene I was writing before the interruption and before the Amazon family untangling was an argument. He’s a bit of a slacker artist. I hadn’t decided if it was visual, or music – but my default is usually a never-has-been writer (because it’s what I know ;-). I hadn’t gotten to the crux of the argument, but I think she had just gotten home from work and found that he hadn’t done anything reasonable or responsible all day – the dog should have been fed or the trash taken out or dishes in the sink type of stuff. She was taking a few cheap shots at his craft and the fact that he hadn’t created anything new in months. He was only half paying attention. He was stoned and avoiding eye contact. He could feel the heat in her gaze, the tension in her jaw, but was distracted by the tin taste of wine on his tongue and the tendril of smoke hanging in the middle of the room. She says her therapist thinks she should leave him. He’s thinks the therapist might be right, but he’s also jealous of the therapist’s professorial charm, wavy hair, and silver fox good looks. He knows he’s a bit of a man-child. He knows he hasn’t created anything and instead keeps treading and re-treading his old work. He feels threatened by the maturity and success of the therapist. I think they’re young, maybe early 30s. They live in a city, but not sure where.
I didn’t get very far with it and I’m not sure I’ll pick it back up. It seems to fit with a few things I’ve attempted – cobbled together pieces that might fit into a longer examination of how we do and don’t work together – as a species, as partners, as people who sometimes say we care and mean it. I felt compelled to write something having just read a few poems by Jane Hirshfield – another pleasant discovery among the stacks of books bought and never read. Specifically, it was the lines “What will become of these / my many lives,” which was preceded by her poem “This Was Once a Love Poem”
This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short,
before it found itself sitting,
perplexed and a little embarrassed,
on the fender of a parked car,
while many people passed by without turning their heads.It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie.Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen.It spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus.Yes, it decides:
Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.When it finds itself disquieted
-Jane Hirshfield, “This Was Once a Love Poem”
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them – one, then another –
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.
Yesterday, I tried to write about how we approach happiness and how to find balance. I read a few good lines of poetry and thought about how things that once fit become misshapen and decay – how we sometimes turn cold or untangle and unravel and then choose to do it all again. Yesterday, I cut a tie I had forgotten about… and overnight, the ice crept in coating everything, bringing with it a “pure and unfamiliar silence” of a new day.