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Like everyone else I know, I’ve been obsessing about the headlines, about France, about Syria. Closer to home, about homelessness. I came across this poem as I was sorting through papers in my writing cabin, and I thought it was good advice for such times. “Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world.”

I think this is only an excerpt of a poem by Ron Padgett. I first saw it on Joan Chittister’s Benetvision website.

Get some sleep.
Eat an orange every morning.
Be friendly, it will make you happy.
Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room
before you save the world. Then save the world.
Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.

Don’t stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don’t
forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm’s length
and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass
ball collection.

Wear comfortable shoes.
Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.
Plan your day so you never have to rush.

Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if
you have paid them, even if they do favors you don’t want.

After dinner, wash the dishes.
Calm down.
Don’t expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to.
Don’t be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory.
Don’t think that progress exists. It doesn’t.

Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don’t do
anything to make it impossible.

Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not
possible, go to another one.

If you feel tired, rest.
Don’t be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel
even older. Which is depressing.

Do one thing at a time.

If you burn your finger, put ice on it immediately. If you bang
your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for 20
minutes, you will be surprised by the curative powers of ice and
gravity.

Do not inhale smoke.
Take a deep breath.
Do not smart off to a policeman.
Be good.
Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.
Do not go crazy a lot. It’s a waste of time.

Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to
drink, say, “Water, please.”

Take out the trash.
Love life.

 

                    Tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.
–Octavio Paz, “January 1st” (translated by Eliz. Bishop)

For my husband’s birthday dinner this week, we invited a friend to join us. He is 92 years old, and regaled us with stories of his first dog, his experiences in the Navy, his career, his marriages, and his children. (I was especially impressed with a daughter who insisted on taking her horse with her when she left home for college.)

After dinner, our friend had several riddles for us, all of which required “thinking outside the box.” These required, he warned, that we focus on certain key words, and not assume that they meant something conventional. So in one riddle (the most straightforward of them) “home” got translated from one’s house to homebase in baseball, but even words like “man” and “distance” and “into” had to be further or more deeply perceived.

Writing requires a constant thinking-outside-the-box. I remember a poetry professor who warned us (back in my MFA days) against including the moon, or love (!), or hearts in our poems. But of course we do want to write about the moon, and love, and hearts. I’m often dismayed by how many other poets are writing about struggles with teenagers, or care of aging parents. But that doesn’t mean we don’t write about these things — of course we MUST write about them.

The trick is to think more deeply, to think in layers, to not write conventionally or through our first assumptions. As I have said before, my goal is to write — and to live — as though the gate’s been left open.