It’s morning. The sun is bright. Steam rises from my cup of coffee and the foghorn from the bridge keeps time in 18-second intervals. In between my coughs, I’m reading and writing and looking at my phone.
Looking for a line of poetry that might inspire me, I go to look for recent screenshots of poems I’ve liked. I check Google photos to see if it’s still syncing (I’ve stopped using the app). My library shows me the folders I had created: Kimbrough, Savannah, Painting, Kimbrough (II), Thousand Steps, Nick, Mt. Nittany, Funny, MidState to Indian Steps, Profile Feedback, Babes, Unedited album, Zelle, Profile. In some of my more buttoned up and put together moods, I’ve attempted to organize my photos – hence the folders. The folders of hikes needed to be filed because otherwise one grassy trail or leafy canopy begins to look like all of the other grassy trails and leafy canopies. The folders of pets… well, because pets. Babes was a pet nickname for a past partner. Funny was full of comics and memes. Generally speaking, I don’t revisit these folders. More to the point, the one folder that would be useful that I haven’t created is screenshots of poems I’ve liked.
The folder that made me pause was Profile Feedback. In the winter of 2019/2020, I had taken screenshots of compliments I received on various dating apps. My initial thought upon seeing this folder was, why do I have these and who the fuck cares. Did I really need that much validation? Then I remembered that I probably wrote a blog post about dating and feeling lost but also hopeful but also tired and maybe wanting a snack and needing to get the car inspected and how expensive kitty litter is… That’s how those blog posts meandered back then – as opposed the tight ass shit I write today (present post excepted). I may have saved the screenshots for that blog post. What a braggart. What an insecure noob. I also remembered that I used to do freelance writing and had been hired to write dating profiles for a handful of people – maybe I saved these as “testimonials”? But given the timing of the screenshots (less than half a year after a rough breakup), I suspect I was looking for validation – something that told me that I seemed like an awesome (or at least a decent and thoughtful) guy. Hard proof evidence that I was desired and desirable. Feeble attempts to say to myself – “see, she’s missing out on a great guy.” Egos can be fragile little eggs and rejection can feel like a sledgehammer.
I may not know exactly why I created the folder, but I can safely say that I’ve kept it (until today) out of laziness (honestly, I forgot that it even existed). Which is similar to why I haven’t gotten around to deleting or editing old blog posts from that same time period (that and my weird, almost obsessive, adherence to the historical record). Yes, I’ve written cringe things that I might disown now, but, you know, multitudes and growth and honoring all parts of the self and all that shit.
What intrigued me in seeing this folder this morning was my reaction to that time in my life and what I may have needed to prop myself up. This is another instance in which I’m surprised by the distance between then and now. Then, even though I knew I wasn’t terribly interested in, much less ready for, dating, I maintained multiple dating profiles and was fairly active in talking to people (though not meeting many of them). Now… I don’t know, I just feel different – less intense in my seeking, more confident in what I have to offer, more willing to walk away if the vision doesn’t mesh. I don’t know where this restored confidence is coming from, and I’m not sure I realized just how much of it had been lost or misplaced.
The lines of poetry that I read this morning, the lines that sent me looking for a few other lines, that sent me to my photos, were from Kyla Jamieson’s poem, “I Need a Poem”: “Can we talk about the moon / tonight? Low & full / in the baby blue sky…” I liked the idea of beginning a poem with “can we talk about…” By it’s very nature, it invites you in. In my own version, I wrote, “Can we talk about this dying fire, this clear and cool autumn night?” I was remembering the few fires I built in my back yard just after building a fire pit out of retaining wall stones left over from my dismantled garden (and also the small, cheap fire pit I bought that rusted out). I was remembering the few times the girlfriend and the dog and I sat outside. This thinking was inspired by a different line of poetry that I had read this morning from Dean Young’s poem fate: “rising like smoke, dying fire given a poke,” But I was also thinking of my campfire nights in Joshua Tree – the mystical beauty in the silhouettes – the rocky ridges against the near dark of the nighttime sky.
Both scenes, the fire pit with the girlfriend and the campfire and silhouettes on my solo trip westward were images and reminders of what mattered: peace, warmth, and an inspiring sense of quiet and bigness. They were also metaphors for impermanence and, yes, all natures of relationships. Kindling, burning, ashing over. In that regard, the question, “can we talk about…” had, to my ear, it’s own softness to it: a loving and never-ending curiosity – a game two people with decades of familiarity between them might still play. That was the distance. Those moments and this way of thinking had/have nothing to do with seeking validation in others or holding on to a few crumbs of self-worth collected in the form of compliments for a well-written dating profile. Like two book ends, those moments of fullness are in stark contrast to where I’ve been these past few years.
This has been a theme with me lately: re-visiting where I’ve been, deleting what wasn’t important; revising old and hard beliefs into softer, more flexible, and less certain versions of the “truth”; re-discovering what I’ve already known; and ultimately, trying to simplify simplify simplify. For a few months now, I’ve been haunted (in a good way) by the sense of something familiar yet also different. I’ve tried to write about it a number of different times – mostly because this feeling eludes my understanding. For a few months now, I’ve had this sense of potential (perhaps unrealized) and swagger.
But it’s more than that.
At times, I feel like I’ve reclaimed the life I had before but in a more interesting, robust, and resilient way. I feel like my personal and recent history is coming into perspective and with this perspective comes potential and confidence. In this revised version, I can see (unapologetically) that I spent at least a year mourning and internalizing a failed relationship. I spent a year flailing about, followed by years in which the flailing may have diminished and became less spasmodic, less desperate, but still felt like flailing. In this respect, it’s almost like learning (or re-learning) to swim or breathe or run or walk. It is the broken arm that doesn’t heal right and needs to be re-broken, re-set. The metaphor of breaking down and reassembly, of unlearning only to relearn, is as old as human story-telling is. Yes, it’s felt like I’ve spent a few years trying to figure out how to break everything down into recognizable parts only to reassemble them into something that resembled my past but a little funkier and wonkier. Such a process involves duct tape and shims, patches and putty. More than anything, reassembly takes time and the end result is never the same. In this I’m reminded of several lines from the poem “Torn Map” by Naomi Shihab Nye:
Once, by mistake,
she tore a map in half.
She taped it back, but crookedly.
Now all the roads ended in water.
There were mountains
right next to her hometown.
Wouldn’t it be nice
if that were true?
Almost by accident or by some trick of erosion, I’ve torn my map and ended up back where I started, except also in a different place, different form and shape. Or to re-reference my fragile egg/ego comment above, it would be preposterous to think that all the kings horses and all the king’s men could ever re-assemble Humpty to look exactly the way he had looked before the fall.