Your Inner Anthropologist

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Imagine that an anthropologist is studying your life.

Based on the evidence, what will he or she infer is most important to you?

1. Subject is devoted to Spider Solitaire. (That would be me.)

2. Whenever the cellphone beeps or pings or kaboodles, subject picks it up as if it were  a fussy baby and soothes it.

3. Subject watches television for several hours every evening.

4. Subject devotes substantial amount of income to espresso drinks.

And so on.

Not that any of this is necessarily bad (and maybe “creates beautiful family dinners,” or “knits sweaters” is what your anthropologist discovers), if these activities are what you wish to spend your life on. As Annie Dillard says, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

But here’s the real question for anyone reading this blogpost: Would your anthropologist infer that you are a writer, based on the evidence?

This idea doesn’t apply only to writing. A few years ago when I read Jeff Olson’s The Slight Edge, I realized that despite my flaky youngest daughter’s difficult behavior, if she was actually a priority for me (and she is), then I needed to find a way to have at least one positive interaction with her every day. Once I made that a priority, we began to make a little progress.

I asked a boyfriend of one of my older daughters what was most important to him. He got all glowy (it was kind of inspiring!) and went riffing off.

Anything outdoors!

Snowboarding!

Hiking!

He made his ideal life sound like it could be profiled in Outdoor magazine.

However, anytime I see this young man, he’s staring at his cellphone (one arm wrapped around my daughter) while watching television. Or (no arm around my daughter) he’s playing a video game. As far as I can tell, he spends most of his income on games and tee-shirts.

Bless him for highlighting a lesson for me. And of course it isn’t just him — we all spend inordinate amounts of our time doing what is not important to us.

If writing is important to you, you should write.

 

 

 

Poetic Medicine

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“Writing and reading poems is a way of seeing and naming where we have been, where we are and where we are going with our lives.” -John Fox

I saw this book, POETIC MEDICINE: THE HEALING ART OF POEM-MAKING, by John Fox, at a friend’s house. She hadn’t read it yet, but promised to forward her recommendation. I remember that day, that writing session, especially, because, as we were finishing, her front yard suddenly filled with all sorts of birds. I think it was a precursor of the weather that was sweeping in, but it had that feeling of an omen. When I spied Poetic Medicine on the shelf at Half-Price Books, I remembered those birds, and I bought it.

While visiting my mom over the last couple of days, I packed the book with me, and read in all the interstices. Some gems include the preface by Rachel Naomi Remen, and an abundance of poems from every where, including this one by Wendell Berry, which spoke directly to the emotions I’ve been dealing with these last few weeks. I started in September to work on a series of poems about my dad’s death, and wings seem to push their way into every poem. I’ve been trying to read between the lines of my drafts, and see what this is saying to me, what it’s saying that hasn’t already been said by so many others. And this book is helping. So, the poem:

To Know the Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

-Wendell Berry

 

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

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fall winter 2012 013

I was awake at 5:30 this morning, eager to crack open my notebook and begin writing. But it’s 30 degrees here, and I am not good at being cold. I turned on the heater in my cabin, and then I carried my journal and my favorite pen inside. I turned on a lamp and I sat down in my comfy green chair.

Then, I stalled. Every word I wrote felt like an ice cube stuck with all the other ice cubes. I had to chisel each one free and it wasn’t rewarding. My fingers were blunt and stiff. Surfaces. Temperature. What I ate yesterday. What I might do later today, if I ever get out of this chair. I grabbed some poetry off the bookshelf next to my green chair and I read. Nothing grabbed me, but I copied out a short poem, and then I tried to write a poem using the same sort of gestures.

cabin2But what was the point?

Why write?

And then, I remembered to ask, What is this? What exactly is it that I’m feeling? Can I name it? Where did it come from? What is it trying to tell me? 

I remembered something I read yesterday in Tracey Cleantis’s book, The Next Happy. Fear can masquerade as lethargy. I wrote down that question, too: What am I afraid of? 

The pages began to warm up, and the words weren’t solid little cubes of ice anymore. They began to flow.

Gratitude

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Photo post.

Source: Gratitude