This morning, Saturday morning, sunlight filters through the leaves of the magnolia tree outside of my living room window. Sitting on my sofa with my legs propped up on a makeshift ottoman (a throw pillow on top of a hard, square storage cabinet), I’m awash in a mix of feelings: guilt for not dedicating myself to the one thing I’m supposedly good at (writing); desire and appreciation for the bigness of the world; hope for words better than my own; admiration for the creativity of others; a sense of peace that comes when one swims in beauty and slowness and simplicity.
For an hour, maybe more, I’ve been putting off the “I should” obligations: answer a few emails, do a little work, run, go for a long walk, get groceries. Before turning to my computer and this slothiness, before really digging in to the “I shoulds,” I bounced between two books of poetry and wrote a few paragraphs of free-association. It was the poetry that put me in this mood, that awoke my senses to that narration in my head that I often ignore. From “How to Become a Poet” by Dobby Gibson, I enjoyed the simplicity of the closing lines:
For me, it’s the impossibility of a Wednesday,
it’s the note Kath left on the fridge this morning:
Chickpeas
Semolina flour
When will you be home?
Who hasn’t experienced the impossibility of a Wednesday? Who hasn’t asked or been asked When will you be home?
Between reading and writing, I put on some music to distract myself from my upstairs neighbor. I choose “Burnin’ Coal” by Les McCann – a song that begins with a simple bass line and some clapping and builds to this jazzy, funky beat. The upstairs neighbor had put on a recording – perhaps a meditation. The voice on the recording speaks in a matter-of-fact and affirmative tone. I’ve heard this recording before from him. It reminds me of the narrator from the Twilight Zone or some dystopian sci-fi film in which it’s always sunny and every resident wakes up and listens to the positive government programming that praises the day and the work and the goodness of the supreme leader. I write about this too. The sunny dystopian suburban landscape that I envision as this voice drones through the ceiling reminds me of the TV show “The Good Place” – a show I watched with a woman I once dated.
The sun is higher now – no longer diffused through the waxy leaves. Out of necessity (blinding glare), I move to the table where I eat and work. I’m distracted by the drawer in the cabinet next to me. When closed, it doesn’t sit flush. The coffee’s almost gone. I played a few more songs. The neighbor was on the phone. The “I shoulds” creep closer, knocking at the door of my attention.
At some point in my morning slowness, I was trying to understand my own capacities. I was reminded of a line I wrote, “I don’t remember how I used to live.” It was going to be the start of a poem – or maybe it was the start of a poem that’s buried somewhere in my digital files. I find it nearly impossible to sequence different types of morning productivity. I used to exercise early in the morning. I used to revel in slow mornings with a partner. Now, when I remember to not get sucked into the news and its retelling of yesterday’s outrages, I revel in my own type of slowness. I can’t imagine having the capacity for all three of those things in the same morning. Each deserves it’s own space, and I’m almost sad that I can’t live all three lives. The slowness I now enjoy was mirrored in one of the poems I read. From “An Abbreviated Tour of the Not Yet Fallen World” by Stephen Dunn:
Next morning, like every morning,
the dog moaned
about the same time sunlight
found a crack in the curtains.
No need for an alarm.
Juice and pastry and pills,
the newspaper open
first to yesterday’s box scores
before any details
of our collective disgraces–
oh how easy it is to control
how things begin.
I even saved the funnies for last,
as if such an order, because it was mine,
could possibly matter.
I always save the funnies for last and I love a good beginning. In these moods, on mornings like this, when I try to choose my own beginnings and where I’ll pay attention, everything seems to matter: the angle of the sun, the tall alertness of well-watered house plants, the crows and gulls that sweep through the impossible blue. Everything seems to glow with the warm fires of memory or the gold outline of sun-kissed leaves. Everything lingers a little longer in that liminal space between the verifiable now and what’s yet possible – what the day might soon reveal. I love morning like this – mornings when I’m foolish enough to believe that I’m free to wander and roam – that I’m in control of giving up control.